A 'syllabus of errors' for the 21st century?
A document condemning mistaken interpretations of Vatican Council II -
as Pius IX condemned what he considered to be the errors of modernity -
has been requested by the German-born Bishop of Kazakhstan, at a recent conference in Rome.
Also prompting strong objections is Benedict XVI's announcement of an inter-religious meeting in Assisi.
ROME, January 14, 2011 – The announcement by Benedict XVI after the Angelus on New Year's Day, that he will go to Assisi next October for a new meeting for peace of the world's religious leaders, has re-ignited the controversy not only over the so-called "spirit of Assisi," but also over Vatican Council II and the post-council.
Professor Roberto de Mattei – who has just published a history of the Council which ends with the request that Benedict XVI promote "a new examination" of Vatican II documents in order to dispel the suspicion that they broke with traditional Church teaching – has joined a few other Catholic figures in signing an appeal to the Pope to reconsider his decision on an Assisi-III.
In order, they say, "not to re-ignite the syncretistic confusion" of the first Assisi meeting convened on October 27, 2986, by John Paul II in the city of Saint Francis.
Then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger did not go to that first meeting, of which he was critical.
[That's not a fair presentation of what happened. I don't think he was part of the program at all, and he expressed his criticisms of Assisi-I publicly long after the event - when it also became known that he had reviewed the texts of what John Paul II intended to say in Assisi and suggested some changes which were apparently accepted by the Pope. In fact, we have now learned that Cardinal Ratzinger was not originally invited to Assisi-II in 2002, either, but that now-Cardinal Dsiwisz called himn the day before to say the Pope wanted him to join him on the train to Assisi. He did, but other than that, He did not play any part in the program.]
He did, however, take part in a repeat of it held also in Assisi on January 24, 2002, agreeing "in extremis" after being assured that the mistakes of the previous meeting would not be made again.
The main mistake fostered by the meeting in Assisi in 1986 was that of equating all religions as sources of salvation for humanity. [It was the impression given and reported by the media. But a reading of John Paul II's texts chows clearly he made all the necessary distinctions, including even the place for the common praying together in a multi-religious way. From the available reports, the more egregious mistake was that the Franciscan friars who organized the event for the Pope allowed pagan rituals - sucs as animistic slaughtering of chickens on a consecrated altar - to be performed inside the Church of St. Clare. Clearly, that was a very visible and unacceptable instance that seemed to signal religious syncretism.]
Against this error, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued in 2000 the declaration
Dominus Iesus, reaffirming that mankind's only Savior is Jesus Christ.
[Seeing as four years passed between Assisi-I and Dominus Iesus, that's quite a stretch! Dominus Iesus of 2000 was a document intended primarily to reaffirm the basic tenet of the Catholic faith on the Grand Jubilee Year celebrating the second millennium of Christianity.]
Even as Pope, Benedict XVI has not failed to warn against any confusion in this respect In a message to the bishop of Assisi dated September 2, 2006, he wrote:
In order not to misunderstand the meaning of what John Paul II wanted to accomplish in 1986, and what, in his own words, is described as the ‘spirit of Assisi’, it is important not to forget the attention that was paid at that time to prevent the inter-religious prayer meeting from being subjected to syncretistic interpretations founded upon a relativistic conception. [...]
For this reason, even when we gather together to pray for peace, this prayer must be carried out according to the distinct approach that is proper to each of the various religions.
This was the decision in 1986, and this decision cannot but remain valid today as well. The coming together of those who are different must not give the impression of a concession to that relativism that denies the very meaning of truth and the possibility of attaining it.
Visiting Assisi on June 17, 2007, he said in his homily:
The decision to celebrate this encounter in Assisi was suggested by the testimony of Francis as a man of peace, upon whom so many look favorably, even those of other cultural and religious persuasions.
At the same time, the light of the 'Poverello' upon that initiative was a guarantee of Christian authenticity, because his life and his message depend so visibly upon his choice of Christ, excluding a priori any temptation to religious indifferentism, which would have nothing to do with authentic religious dialogue. [...]
It could not be an evangelical or Franciscan attitude to fail to combine welcome, dialogue, and respect for all, with the certainty of faith that every Christian, like the saint of Assisi, must cultivate, proclaiming Christ as the way, truth, and life of man, the only Savior of the world.
Returning to the controversy over Vatican Council II, an important conference was held last December 16-18 in Rome, not far from the Basilica of Saint Peter, "for a correct hermeneutics of the Council in the light of Church Tradition."
The speakers focused on the 'pastoral' nature of Vatican II
[as opposed to being 'doctrinal' - ie, to Council was called to determine how the Church should relate to the modern world through its pastoral activities, and not to define new doctrine!] and the abuses that have taken place in its name.
The speakers included Professor de Mattei and theologian Brunero Gherardini, 85, a canon of the Nasilica of Saint Peter, professor emeritus of the Pontifical Lateran University, and director of the journal of Thomistic theology
Divinitas.
Gherardini is the author of a volume on Vatican Council II that concludes with an "Appeal to the Holy Father", asking him to submit the documents of the Council for reexamination, in order to clarify once and for all "if, in what sense, and to what extent" Vatican Council II is or is not in continuity with the previous magisterium of the Church.
[Submit to whom, though? To the Bishops' Synod? To a new Council? To the Pope's own personal judgment? All three ways are problematic because advocates of the false 'spirit of Vatican II' will insist that an ecumenical council supersedes the Magisterium of an individual Pope - though other ecclesiologists have pointed out that like a Pope, a council cannot be considered 'infallible' unless it pronounces on dogma, and Vatican II proposed no new dogma, despite the spiritists' claim that it effectively built a new church!]
The preface to Gherardini's book was written by Albert Malcolm Ranjith, archbishop of Colombo and former secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship, made a cardinal at the consistory last November.
Ranjith is one of the two bishops to whom
www.chiesa recently dedicated the article entitled "Ratzinger's best pupils are in Sri Lanka and Kazakhstan'. And the second of these bishops, the auxiliary of Karaganda, Athanasius Schneider, was present at the conference in Rome from December 16-18, as a speaker.
The final portion of his presentation is presented below. He concludes with a request to the Pope for two specific remedies fto the post-Conciliar abses:
- Release of a "Syllabus" against the doctrinal errors of interpretation of Vatican Council II, and
- The appointment of bishops who are "holy, courageous and deeply rooted in the tradition of the Church."
Other speakers included Cardinal Velasio de Paolis, Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, Bishop Luigi Negri, and Monsignor Florian Kolfhaus of the Vatican Secretariat of State.
The audience included a large contingent of Franciscans of the Immaculate, a young religious congregation following in the footsteps of Saint Francis, bursting with vocations and decidedly orthodox in orientation - the polar opposite of the so-called "spirit of Assisi"
[just as fallacious and damaging as the 'spirit of Vatican II'!]
THE CHALLENGE OF OPPOSING INTERPRETATIONS
by Athanasius Schneider
[. . .] For a correct interpretation of Vatican Council II, it is necessary to keep in mind the intention manifested in the conciliar documents themselves and in the specific words of the Popes who convened and presided over it, John XXIII and Paul VI.
[Which the 'spiritists' have chosen to ignore completely all these dacades!]
Moreover, it is necessary to discover the common thread of the entire work of the Council, meaning its pastoral intention, which is
salus animarum, the salvation of souls. This, in turn, depends on and is subordinate to the promotion of divine worship and of the glory of God - it depends on the primacy of God.
This primacy of God in life and in all the activity of the Church is manifested unequivocally by the fact that the constitution on the liturgy occupies, conceptually and chronologically, the first place in the vast work of the Council...
The characteristic of 'rupture' claimed in the interpretation of the conciliar texts is manifested in a more stereotypical and widespread way by
hypothesizing an anthropocentric, secularist, or naturalistic shift of Vatican Council II with respect to the previous ecclesial tradition...
One of the best-known manifestations of such a mistaken interpretation has been, for example, so-called liberation theology and its subsequent pastoral practice which was devastating.
The contrast between liberation theology and its practice, on tHE one hand, and the Council, on the other, appears evident from the following conciliar teaching:
"Christ, to be sure, gave His Church no proper mission in the political, economic or social order. The purpose which He set before her is a religious one" (cf. "Gaudium et Spes," 42)...
One interpretation of rupture with lighter doctrinal weight has been manifested in the pastoral-liturgical field... in the decline of the sacred and sublime character of the liturgy, and the introduction of more anthropocentric elements of expression.
This phenomenon can be seen in three liturgical practices that are fairly well known and widespread in almost all the parishes of the Catholic sphere:
- the almost complete disappearance of the use of the Latin language;
- the reception of the Eucharistic body of Christ directly in the hand while standingl and
- the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice in the modality of a closed circle in which priest and people are constantly looking at each other.
This way of praying – where not everyone faces the same direction, which is a more natural corporal and symbolic expression that everyone is oriented toward God in public worship – contradicts the practice that Jesus himself and his apostles observed in public prayer, both in the temple and in the synagogue.
It also contradicts the unanimous testimony of the Fathers and of all the subsequent tradition of the Eastern and Western Church.
These three pastoral and liturgical practices glaringly at odds with the law of prayer maintained by generations of the Catholic faithful for at least one millennium, find no support in the conciliar texts, and even contradict both a specific text of the Council (on the Latin language: cf. "Sacrosanctum Concilium," 36 and 54) and the "mens," the true intention of the conciliar Fathers, as one finds in the proceedings of the Council...
In the hermeneutical uproar over contrasting interpretations, and in the confusion of pastoral and liturgical applications, what appears as the only authentic interpreter of the conciliar texts is the Council itself, together with the Pope.
One could make a comparison with the confused hermeneutical climate of the first centuries of the Church, caused by arbitrary biblical and doctrinal interpretations on the part of heterodox groups.
In his famous work
De Praescriptione Haereticorum, Tertullian was able to counter the heretics of various tendencies with the fact that only the Church possesses the
praescriptio, meaning only the Church is the legitimate proprietor of the faith, of the Word of God and of Tradition. The Church can use this to fend off the heretics in disputes over true interpretation.
Only the Church can say, according to Tertullian, "Ego sum heres Apostolorum," I am the heir of the apostles. By way of analogy, only the supreme magisterium of the Pope or of a future ecumenical council will be able to say: "Ego sum heres Concilii Vaticani II."
In recent decades there existed, and still exist today, groupings within the Church that are perpetrating an enormous abuse of the pastoral character of the Council and its texts -
written with pastoral intention, since the Council did not want to present its own definitive or unalterable teachings.
From this pastoral nature of the texts, they are in principle open to supplementation and to further doctrinal clarifications. From the now decades-long experience of interpretations that are doctrinally and pastorally mistaken and contrary to the bimillennial continuity of the doctrine and prayer of the faith, arise the necessity and urgency of
a specific and authoritative intervention of the pontifical magisterium for an authentic interpretation of the conciliar texts, with supplementation and doctrinal clarifications - a sort of "Syllabus" of the errors in the interpretation of Vatican Council II.
There is need for a new Syllabus, this time directed not so much against the errors coming from outside of the Church, but against the errors circulated within the Church by supporters of the thesis of discontinuity and rupture, with its doctrinal, liturgical, and pastoral applications.
Such a Syllabus should consist of two parts: the part that points out the errors, and the positive part with proposals for clarification, completion, and doctrinal clarification...
Two groups stand out in support of the theory of rupture. One of these groups tries to "Protestantize" the life of the Church doctrinally, liturgically, and pastorally.
On the opposite side are those traditional groups which, in the name of tradition, reject the Council and exempt themselves from submission to the supreme living magisterium of the Church, from the visible head of the Church, the vicar of Christ on earth, submitting only to the invisible head of the Church, waiting for better times...
In essence, there have been two impediments preventing the true intention of the Council and its magisterium from bearing abundant and lasting fruit.
One was from outside of the Church, in the violent process of cultural and social revolution during the 1960s, which like every powerful social phenomenon penetrated inside the Church, infecting vast segments of persons and institutions with its spirit of rupture.
The other impediment was manifested in the lack of wise and intrepid pastors of the Church who could be quick to defend the purity and integrity of the faith and of liturgical and pastoral life, and not allow themselves to be influenced by flattery or fear
[or by what is 'in fashion'!]
The Council of Trent affirmed in one of its last decrees on the general reform of the Church that
"The holy synod, shaken by the many extremely serious evils that afflict the Church, cannot do other than recall that the thing most necessary for the Church of God is to select excellent and suitable pastors; all the more in that our Lord Jesus Christ will ask for an account of the blood of those sheep that should perish because of the bad governance of negligent pastors unmindful of their duty" (Session XXIV, Decree "de reformatione," can. 1).
The Council continued: "As for all those who for any reason have been authorized by the Holy See to intervene in the promotion of future prelates or those who take part in this in another way, the holy Council exhorts and admonishes them to remember above all that they can do nothing more useful for the glory of God and the salvation of the people than to devote themselves to choosing good and suitable pastors to govern the Church."
Therefore, besides the need for a Syllabus on the Council that shall have doctrinal value, there is likewise a need for more holy and courageous pastors deeply rooted in the tradition of the Church, who are free from the mentality of rupture, both in the doctrinal field and in the liturgical field.
These two elements constitute the indispensable condition so that doctrinal, liturgical, and pastoral confusion may diminish significantly, and so that the pastoral work of Vatican Council II may bear much lasting fruit in the spirit of Tradition, which connects us to the spirit that has reigned in every time, everywhere and in all true children of the Catholic Church, which is the only and the true Church of God on earth.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/01/2011 00:14]