Notes: Saturday, February 19-Monday, February 21, 2011

1. "Study finds merit in distractions"

http://www.smh.com.au/world/study-finds-merit-in-distractions-20110217-1ay8e.html?skin=text-only

Labels: psychology

2. "BENEDICT XVI RECEIVES PRESIDENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION"

Full text of a Vatican Information Service daily e-mail bulletin item from the other day:

BENEDICT XVI RECEIVES PRESIDENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

VATICAN CITY, 17 FEB 2011 (VIS) - The Holy See Press Office released the following communique at midday today:

"Today, 17 February 2011, the Holy Father Benedict XVI received in audience Dimitry Medvedev, president of the Russian Federation. Subsequently the president, accompanied by Sergei Lavrov, minister for foreign affairs, went on to meet with Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone S.D.B. who was accompanied by Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, secretary for Relations with States.

"In the course of the cordial discussions, the parties expressed their pleasure at the good state of bilateral relations and highlighted their desire to strengthen them, also in the wake of the establishment of full diplomatic relations. The broad-ranging collaboration between the Holy See and the Russian Federation was recognised, both in the promotion of specifically human and Christian values, and in the cultural and social field. Subsequently, emphasis was given to the positive contribution inter-religious dialogue can make to society. Finally, attention turned to the international situation, with particular reference to the Middle East".
OP/ VIS 20110217 (180)

Labels: Russia

3. Latest Australian developments regarding so-called gay marriage

3.1 "Labor ministers find backing for same-sex marriage"

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/labor-ministers-find-backing-for-same-sex-marriage/story-e6frg6nf-1226009086049

Labels: G.L.B.T., marriage, morality

3.2 "Tony Abbott won't change gay marriage stance"

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=25124
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/tony-abbott-wont-change-gay-marriage-stance/story-fn59niix-1226008409033

Labels: G.L.B.T., marriage, morality

3.3 Mr. Hunter on 'gay marriage'

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/hey-julia-civil-unions-are-no-substitute-for-real-marriage/

Labels: G.L.B.T., marriage, morality

4. Mr. Furedi on, among other things, past and present explanations for homosexuality

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/is-that-biological-determinism-in-your-genes-or-are-you-gaga-about-free-will/story-e6frg6zo-1226008077137

Labels: biology, G.L.B.T.

5. Information on Fr. Crothers's curriculum vitæ

Here is my transcription of the third item from the "parish pump" section of the Sydney Catholic Weekly of two Sundays ago on page three:

Parish cheerio this week to Fr John Crothers and Fr Van Vuong Nguyen, parish priest and assistant priest respectively of St Declan's, Penshurst, and Our Lady of Fatima, Peakhurst, and their flock. Fr John has just celebrated his 10th anniversary at the parish, having moved there in late 2000. He has also served as Diocesan Justice and Peace Promoter and parish priest of Enmore/Tempe.

Fr. Crothers is in the news again, as it happens.

Labels: John Crothers

6. Cardinal Pell on, among other things, the Neo-Catechumenal Way

http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=7&articleID=7799&class=Features&subclass=Cardinal's Comment

Labels: George Pell, Neo-catechumenal Way

7. Interesting article on the religious situation in The Ukraine

http://www.therecord.com.au/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2341&Itemid=28

Labels: R.O.C., Russia, Ukraine

8. "Scottish Humanist weddings more popular than Catholic ones"

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36126

Labels: humanism, marriage, Scotland

Reginaldvs Cantvar
21.II.2011

Notes: Thursday, November 11, 2010

1. Mr. Andrews on the philosophy of The Greens

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/new-third-force-are-ecological-marxists/story-fn59niix-1225951490061

Key excerpt:

[The Hon. Kevin] Andrews [M.P.] says the roots of the Greens lie in the self-declared "ecological Marxism" of former BLF boss Jack Mundey and the Green Ban movement of the early 1970s that saw well-heeled Sydney NIMBYs and hard-left unionists join forces to block development, rather than the broader environmental movement.

Greens leader Bob Brown has cited the Green Ban movement as a key inspiration.

"Mundey's 'ecological Marxism' is an apt description of the Greens," Mr Andrews argues. "It sums up their two core beliefs. First, the environment is to be placed before all else. Secondly, the Greens are Marxist in their philosophy, and display the same totalitarian tendencies of all previous forms of Marxism when a political movement. By totalitarian, I mean the subordination of the individual in the impulse to forcibly rid society of all elements that, in the eyes of the adherent, mar its perfection."

Mr Andrews believes that while the Greens see themselves as humanists, their policies disregard humanity. "According to the Greens ideology, human dignity is neither inherent, nor absolute," he says, citing the 1996 manifesto by Senator Brown.

I would be interested to read all of Mr. Andrews's critique. It does not seem to be available on-line in its entirety, however.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Feast of St. Martin of Tours, Bishop, Confessor, and of St. Mennas, Martyr, A.D. 2010

Mr. Jenkins on the debate over prayer in Parliament

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24554498-5005941,00.html

Originally I had intended not to blog on the latest attempt to banish even the mere invocation of the Lord from the corridors of power, but then I read this remark by the Hon. Harry Jenkins M.P., Speaker of the House of Representatives:

"One day we'll get to the level of maturity where this can be discussed without being divisive," he said.

Is he saying, then, that to be fervently for (or for that matter, against) the Our Father is to lack the ‘maturity’ to move in the enlightened, genteel circles where all are glib, syncretistic irenicists who don’t really feel too strongly one way or the other? The glaring contradiction in his remark, though, is that any debate with clear-cut affirmative and negative sides will be, of its nature, divisive.

Reading the comments at the on-line edition, I was interested to see secularists speak of Christian belief in a ‘sky-god’ (Zeus, perhaps?), like MgS’s resort to puerile talk of a ‘cloud being’ when it became clear that she had no clear idea of what justice was. Obviously these childish little outbursts of name-calling are intended to belittle Christian belief, but it’s interesting to look a little more closely at these terms. They reveal the humanistic immanentism of the secularists, whereby there is no deity ‘out there’, and so with humans the closest things to gods ‘in here’ we can strut about like the Giants and Titans (reference to Iota Unum intended) and create our own morality; thus MgS spoke for her fellow secularists when she said that “I do not reject metaphysical constructs as a way to frame thought”, while rejecting them in truth and picking and choosing according to her whim, case by case, which of these concepts she wants to borrow. Sadly, it is clear that thinkers (such as they are) like this exert a great influence on social, political and judicial outcomes.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
27.X.2008 A.D.

Mr. Verrecchio on the death penalty

I have been consistently impressed with Mr. Louie Verrecchio’s Harvesting the Fruit of Vatican II column in the Sydney Catholic Weekly, which is a pleasant surprise given my adverse opinion of the proceedings of that Œcumenical Council. Yesterday’s installment, provocatively entitled “Human dignity via the death penalty” was no exception. Now Mr. Verrecchio writes from a mainstream-conservative perspective of the purported ‘true spirit of Vatican II’, and accordingly I expected him simply to echo and elaborate on the opinions of recent Popes on the matter. Indeed, for the first half of the article it seems to be going that way, beginning with some quotations from John Paul II and then-Cardinal Ratzinger, and offering a curious examination of the death penalty in the Old Testament. But around the midway point Mr. Verrechio changes direction, acknowledging the disturbing connection between opposition to the death penalty and support for abortion, and he writes that it is possible that rather than being “a victory for the culture of life”,

it may very well be more accurate to consider [prohibition of the death penalty] the result of the kind of humanistic narcissism that sees man as the ultimate goal and master of all things; including determining the value of human life, not to mention choosing who shall live and who shall die.

He concludes by suggesting that

Perhaps we should consider that the truth of man’s unique dignity may be best communicated when the infinite value of a human life taken is demonstrated by applying the only penalty that can ever reflect the value of what was lost; death.

How refreshing to see a partisan, as it were, of Vatican II acknowledging what Traditionalists had defended all along (and what I have been arguing since my first post on the death penalty), namely, that there is simply no other earthly penalty that can satisfy justice in the case (at least) of murder. Mr. Verrecchio’s article was not perfect—its leisurely lead-up to its main point, its timid assertion of that point (“it may very well be more accurate …”, “[p]erhaps we should consider …”), and its use of the word “infinite” for the value of human life when a word like ‘inestimable’ might have been more apposite are among its shortcomings—but it was most pleasing nonetheless to see a bit of balance in a paper that is usually (or rather, always) uncritically anti-execution. The reaction in the letters page should be interesting.

What a sad irony it is, though, when a defender of Vatican II condemns as “humanistic narcissism” the view that “man as the ultimate goal and master of all things”, when in Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes we read the startling assertion that man is “is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself”.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
27.X.2008

Secular liberal democracy vs. the confessional State: which is the better defender of conscience?

[Updated, October 17, 2008, approx. 1600 hrs.: I have corrected the paragraph beginning "Now it was not" in order to make clear that one cannot force anyone to disobey his conscience, but that if someone is going to disobey it, then others must not co-operate with this disobedience except under the conditions that I mention.]

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=9408

So the Victorian Upper House has passed its monstrous abortion liberalisation laws, and they now await Vice-Regal assent. (If only the Governor could exercise a ‘conscience vote’ like everyone else at the other stages of the passage of the laws.) But of course a law that contravenes the eternal moral law is no law at all. It is a mere piece of human scribbling, worthy of nothing but our defiance and contempt; the pages on which these laws are written would be more suitable as a lining for one’s spittoon than as an addition to the statute books.

Obviously, any freeing-up of access to the means to the wanton destruction of unborn human life is repugnant enough in itself. But what makes these laws uniquely odious (as far as I know) among the various pieces of anti-baby legislation floating around the unflushed toilet bowl of present-day Western ‘civilisation’ is their provision, or rather non-provision, for conscientious objectors. It is these non-provisions that elevate Her Majesty’s Government into the annals of infamy occupied by régimes, like those in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, that thought that they could trample on individual conscience at will. Fr. Brennan reported on these conscience non-provisions recently, and the Sydney Catholic Weekly reminded us of them at the weekend:

Under the legislation doctors with a conscientious objection to abortion would be required to refer a woman to doctor [sic] who didn’t. They would also be obliged to perform abortions in an emergency if necessary to protect the woman’s life.

It is a basic truth of Catholic moral theology that it is a sin to disobey one’s conscience, and that sin is a free act—no-one is forced to sin. Yet these laws attempt to do just that. Furthermore, it is wrong to co-operate in someone else’s wrongdoing, except under very restricted conditions. His late Grace Msgr. Lefebvre reminds us of these conditions in his excellent Religious Liberty Questioned. He writes that

To act against one’s honestly erroneous conscience is to sin. Thus, to force someone to act against such conscience is to cooperate in his sin; but again, we need to further distinguish between two different cases:

To formally cooperate in someone else’s sin is never permissible (in this case, willing precisely to extort from someone an act against his wishes); it is a sin against charity.

It is, however, permissible to cooperate materially in someone else’s sin (desiring that someone do willingly what at first he did not want to do without opposing the eventuality of a forced act) provided that this cooperation be remote and that there is a grievous proportional cause for such a course of action.
(emphasis in the original)

So the conditions are that the co-operation be: purely material, remote, and that it is involves a grievous proportional cause. So let’s see, then, if the Bill’s conscience clauses satisfy these criteria, examining firstly the requirement to perform an abortion in the case of an emergency:

The co-operation is indeed material—the authors of the law (presumably) do not desire to elicit disobedience of conscience as an end in itself.

The co-operation involves a grievous proportional cause—they think that the baby is just a ‘clump of cells’, a human non-person, while the mother is indeed a human person. (This is wrong, of course, since if we are to adopt a radically materialist outlook then the mother is just a ‘clump of cells’ too, and in any case, an organism is never a mere ‘clump of cells’—it is a united whole; perhaps the ‘clump of cells’ folk need to consult an elementary biology textbook.)

But I cannot see how the co-operation is remote, since it requires a direct order to perform an abortion.

Now for the requirement for conscientious objectors to refer infanticidal mothers to a neutral second doctor. Could a conscientious objector make such a referral with a clear conscience? By making the referral his co-operation would clearly be purely material, and possibly remote too, but there can be no possibility of a grievous proportional cause, since what ‘proportion’ can there possibly be between mere financial livelihood and the very destruction of human life? So the laws are morally wrong on both counts, even when evaluated on the pro-abortion crowd’s own terms (assuming, of course, that they agree that it is wrong to force someone to disobey his conscience except under limited conditions—one hopes desperately that they are not so far gone as to disagree on that point).

Now it was not for no reason that I chose Religious Liberty Questioned as my source for the conditions necessary for co-operation in evil. Respect for honestly-erroneous conscience would be one of the basic principles of a Catholic confessional State. It is licit, of course, to restrain someone from acting to obey his conscience, but one cannot force him actively to disobey his conscience, and one may only co-operate in such disobedience under the most limited of circumstances. So examination of these horrendous laws produces the remarkable result that a Catholic confessional State would be a better defender of conscience than the secularist abortocratic brutopia.

This conclusion raises two important questions, one for secularists and one for Catholics. For the secularists, how do you feel about the fact that your cherished liberal democracy is less sympathetic to individual conscience than the supposedly ‘mediæval’, ‘fundamentalist’ confessional State? It is not so long ago that you would no doubt have been scoffing at then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s warning of the rise of a ‘dictatorship of relativism’, yet now you have passed laws that encapsulate perfectly the paradox of a régime that is simultaneously relativistic and dictatorial.

And for Catholics who are opposed to the doctrine of the confessional State, how can you continue in your opposition when this vile legislation gives the decisive proof of H.H. The Pope’s words during WYD08:

There are many today who claim that God should be left on the sidelines, and that religion and faith, while fine for individuals, should either be excluded from the public forum altogether or included only in the pursuit of limited pragmatic goals. This secularist vision seeks to explain human life and shape society with little or no reference to the Creator. It presents itself as neutral, impartial and inclusive of everyone. But in reality, like every ideology, secularism imposes a world-view. If God is irrelevant to public life, then society will be shaped in a godless image. When God is eclipsed, our ability to recognize the natural order, purpose, and the “good” begins to wane. What was ostensibly promoted as human ingenuity soon manifests itself as folly, greed and selfish exploitation. And so we have become more and more aware of our need for humility before the delicate complexity of God’s world.
(http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/july/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080717_barangaroo_en.html)
(my emphasis)

Given that no régime is truly neutral, why continue to defend one whose agnosticism towards faith and morals constitutes a veritable Social Reign of Pontius Pilate, washing its hands of guilt while permitting injustice to fester? All States are confessional, it’s just a matter of whether they confess Christ or Belial. The ‘integral humanism’ advanced by Fr. Maritain and influential even at the highest levels of the Hierarchy has been shown to be a pipe dream; the benign phase of secular liberal democracy has now well and truly passed.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Feast of St. Edward, Confessor, 2008 A.D.

Genuine Freedom

(warning: the following link may not be suitable for tender consciences)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/tuning-in-to-an-old-beat-renewed/2008/08/15/1218307227894.html

Professor Clive Hamilton offered the following observation in an article on trends in television and society in the Sydney Morning Herod on Saturday:

"But when you walk around and see teenage girls wearing T-shirts that say 'Porn Star' or, even worse, one that says [a slogan too obscene to bear repetition]', then you ask yourself: where else can society go? And you realise the big disappointment of liberalism's failure to deliver genuine freedom."

It is pleasing that Prof. Hamilton, a political and social progressive, recognises a distinction between true freedom and false freedom, or licence. But what does true freedom constitute for this gentleman? He has published a book recently entitled The Freedom Paradox, and at his website it says that

[h]is search takes him to an unexpected conclusion: that we cannot be truly free unless we commit ourselves to a moral life. The implications of this conclusion are profound, and they challenge many deeply held beliefs in modern secular society.

An ‘unexpected conclusion’? For the secular humanist, perhaps. And what is this ‘moral life’ of which he speaks? Is it that of his Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics colleague, Professor Peter Singer, in which it is all about getting oneself onto one’s highest possible indifference curve without putting someone else on a lower one of his own, and with its horrifying scheme of ‘human non-persons’ and ‘non-human persons’? Perhaps I will obtain a copy of this volume and find out.

Catholics know what real freedom is all about, though. For the individual, St. John tells us that it is the truth that makes us free—it is truth and goodness that are the just objects of freedom. And as for society, His late Holiness Leo XIII puts it quite succinctly in Libertas Præstantissimum:

[…] the true liberty of human society does not consist in every man doing what he pleases, for this would simply end in turmoil and confusion, and bring on the overthrow of the State; but rather in this, that through the injunctions of the civil law all may more easily conform to the prescriptions of the eternal law.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Do you want the good (Cath)news or the bad (Cath)news?

Firstly, the good (Cath)news:

Apparently His Eminence Cardinal Pell had some involvement in the A.L.P.’s abandonment of its policy unambiguously in favour of a Bill of Rights. This is a most welcome development, and one that invites some reflection on the notion of ‘human rights’.

The Christian acknowledges that everything he has is from God, and recognises that God is entitled, therefore, to impose such duties as might please Him. From these duties we can infer corresponding ‘rights’, e.g., ‘thou shalt not kill’ implies a right to life (with certain qualifications, as I shall examine shortly). But the basis for ‘human rights’ is rather shaky in the secularist world-view. It seems that for the secularist, ‘rights’ are not ‘rights’ as a Christian conceives of them, but that the term in fact has no absolute foundation but is just a convention for referring to some of the agreed implications of the principle that we should all be able to seek pleasure, constrained only by the pain that obtaining our pleasure might inflict on other pleasure-seekers (the harm principle). This, of course, is basically preference utilitarianism, and seems to me to be the only internally coherent (though nonetheless false) atheistic world-view, since humanism, for instance, asserts things like the uniqueness of mankind and ‘man as the end of all things’, which have no basis in the (false) evolutionary world-view, since man is just one species among many, and many of these other species can feel pain too (speaking of pain, that’s why it’s call ‘preference’ utilitarianism, since some people, namely sadists, quite enjoy pain, thankyou very much). Now the harm principle is nonetheless every bit as arbitrary as any humanist principle, but as an ordering principle for society, it has proven quite good (in the U.S.A.) at preventing complete anarchy, by enshrining rights in law. But nonetheless, it is a completely inadequate way to order a Christian society, since some who cannot feel pain enjoy, nonetheless, a right to life (as well as all the rights that the fully sentient enjoy) because of their innate capacity for God—their ontological dignity.

Now for the bad (Cath)news:

We see that Rev. Fr. Frank Brennan S.J. has reiterated his universal, in-principle stand against the death penalty. This goes by the name of the 'seamless garment approach', the idea that abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty and unjust wars are all to be rejected for being anti-life (ignoring the fact that only innocent life has a right to life). It would be regrettable if any readers inferred from this that the Catholic Church has somehow changed Her ancient teaching on the matter, especially if an alleged change were part of a compromise ('we'll oppose the death penalty if you'll oppose abortion') with secularism, meeting it on secularism's terms as so many clerics are keen to do. See Dr. Peter Chojnowski’s essay at the American S.S.P.X. home-page (in the ‘against the sound bites' section, as I recall) for the timeless truth. Now let me be clear that I do not support the death penalty being applied to ‘drug-running’, since it is not in the worst category of crimes and since, as practised in some South-East Asian countries, it treats the destruction of human life as a means to an end, namely deterrence, when it can only ever be taken in this manner as an end in itself, i.e. for justice’s sake.

Now some (many, I suspect) will object that it is not licit to impose the death penalty except when it is impossible for the offender to be prevented from doing more harm. They base this on the relevant section of Evangelium Vitæ. But when one thinks through the situation that His late Holiness John Paul II envisioned, it becomes clear that he made a category mistake. Think about it: we have a criminal who is, purportedly, so psychopathic and violent that it is impossible to restrain him safely, and so he must be executed. So evidence is gathered, the trial is convened, a jury empanelled, witnesses gathered, the jurors have their deliberations and give their verdict, and the judge considers and hands down his sentence. But the criminal was restrained the whole time! All John Paul II was really doing was reiterating the liceity of using lethal force against an unjust aggressor. Capital punishment is not self-defence; it’s a category mistake. The death penalty is to be applied whenever no other combination of imprisonment, corporal punishment and financial penalty can balance the scales of justices. At the very least, then, murderers must receive the death penalty. To deprive a man of his liberty for life (life imprisonment) is an inadequate substitute for depriving him of life itself. To which one might object: that’s an eye for an eye! We’re more civilized than that! But ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ is true in principle, it’s just that if one, say, puts someone else’s eye out intentionally, justice can be satisfied through some combination of imprisonment, corporal punishment and financial penalty; it is not necessary literally to put the offender’s eye out in order to satisfy justice. But no such combination of other non-lethal punishments can ever compensate for the injustice of murder.

One might raise an even more fundamental objection, though: the very conception of justice involved. Many in the legal fraternity will argue that we have ‘outgrown’ retributive justice in favour of the presently-fashionable ‘restorative justice’, in which punishment is only ever a means (and one of a range of means) to one or another of a range of ends (rehabilitation for offenders, closure for victims, deterrence for potential offenders). But the essence of justice is giving to someone what he is owed. If the situation of the ‘scales of justice’ being balanced means a situation where good deeds are properly rewarded and bad deeds are properly punished, then as far as the ‘bad deeds’ side of the ledger is concerned, justice is retribution. Rehabilitation for offenders, closure for victims, deterrence for potential offenders, among others, are all worthy ends, but they are subordinate to justice.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Rebuttal of “Confessions of a Nobody or why I quit the SSPX milieu”

In his lengthy blog post, entitled “Confessions of a Nobody or why I quit the SSPX milieu”, Dr. Brian Sudlow explains some of his reasons for disaffiliating himself from the S.S.P.X., as well as offering some impressions of his experiences in this connection. But his reasons for this departure are inadequate and at times contradictory, failing apparently to grasp the extent of the post-Vatican II emergency situation, underestimating the importance of the Sense of the Faith and the objectivity of Tradition, and ignoring the extent to which liturgical abuses have followed naturally from the re-orientation of the liturgy (as well as the humanist/modernist subtext to the new liturgy).

Dr. Sudlow takes for his starting point the notion that, according to Fr. Paul Aulagnier, “on their current course, the SSPX were on, or risked following, a schismatic trajectory”. This seems to me an odd way to begin, since any number of Dioceses in the past forty years have been on such a ‘schismatic trajectory’, and when Traditionalists in those Dioceses have decided to cease their involvement in these Dioceses they can expect accusations of ‘fleeing the fight’ from accomodationists. Why, then, did Dr. Sudlow not remain with the S.S.P.X. and try to reign in any imagined schismatical tendencies?

Dr. Sudlow lists a few of what I think are the more trivial post-Conciliar aberrations as blinding him to this ‘schismatic trajectory’. But these are mere symptoms of the underlying cause of the catastrophic post-Conciliar emergency situation, namely, Vatican II’s overall re-orientation from God towards man, inaugurating a veritable ‘Cult of Man’, a humanism with some Catholic trappings. The key features of this re-orientation are:

• man created as an end in himself
• Christ incarnated to ‘show men how to be truly human’
• re-orientation of the Priesthood from being primarily sacrificial to primarily pastoral
• re-orientation of the Mass from a Holy Sacrifice to a community meal
• re-orientation of marriage from child-bearing to ‘companionship’

The advance of this humanism through the Church is, for me, key to understanding the state of necessity and the clouding of His late Holiness John Paul II’s intellect which rendered him virtually morally inaccessible. We see this in his all-too-frequent basing of his teachings on ‘human dignity’ (in line with Vatican II) rather than the glory of God. (Especially odd, given that most Westerners still do believe in God, and his first duty is to ‘feed his sheep’, the Catholic faithful, anyway.) As this Cult of Man marches through the Church we can only expect the probability of invalid Sacraments to increase over time, especially as Priests start to tinker with the very form of the Sacraments (more on this later).

It is in the nature and exercise of the Church’s Magisterium that Dr. Sudlow’s reasoning seems to me most dubious. He quotes the Rev. Canon Berthod, but ignores two of Berthod’s key points as regards the reception of that Magisterium: namely, the importance of the Sense of the Faith and the objectivity of tradition. Now to speak of the Sense of the Faith is not to fall into the error of universal assent as a requirement for Magisterial status rather than assent as a characteristic of those who have the gift of Faith, nor is it to set up a ‘rival Magisterium’, as the S.S.P.X.’s interlocuters are so keen to allege. (And surely one’s Sense of the Faith is to be trusted all the more when the teacher in question confesses that his primary aim is something extraneous to the Faith, such as appealing to non-Catholics or trying to incorporate into Tradition things that are alien to it?) As for the objectivity of Tradition, this hardly need be elaborated on, especially when some of the propositions that we see advanced during and after the Council contradict, in the manner of polar opposites, earlier teachings.

In particular, I take issue with Dr. Sudlow’s highly dubious dichotomy between the ‘Magisterium of the Teachers’ and the ‘Magisterium of the Pastors’, and an asserted priority of the latter. The Holy Ghost was sent to ‘lead us into all truth’, not to guarantee the pastoral re-orientations that are necessary with the passing of the generations. Theological dissent from Humanæ Vitæ is a bad example, since its opponents were immersed in the contraceptive mentality associated with marriage being valued primarily for the companionship involved, and was really an assertion of truth rather than caving in with what could have been (falsely) rationalised as a ‘pastoral’ concession.

Now of course, a variant on this dichotomy can be found from some opponents of the Council’s teachings in invoking a dichotomy between the pastoral and the dogmatic. But Bl. John XXIII’s description of the Council as pastoral in character is merely to forestall any doubt as to whether the fullness of his Apostolic authority was to be committed behind these teachings, reinforced by his rationale that the Council should study doctrine “thoroughly and [explain it] in the way for which our times are calling” (http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2008/jun2008p15_2827.html). One could well argue that these ‘new explanations’ were outdated within five years of the Council’s close.

It was inevitable that we would see the ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ invoked here. But we can hardly be expected to try to cram a blatant discontinuity into such a ‘lens’ for interpretation. The proper way to read Magisterial documents is this: with a respectful presumption that their contents belong to the ordinary and universal Magisterium. If it is unclear, then the Pope or Bishops enjoy the benefit of the doubt. But if it is clearly an innovation, then this hardly need provoke a crisis of faith. In asserting that “I see no reason why a confessional State and religious liberty, not in the Enlightenment sense but as understood by Dignitatis Humanae, cannot be reconciled”, Dr. Sudlow demonstrates just how unhelpful an ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ can be. One can only react with bewilderment when one hears of scholars working on a harmonisation of Dignitatis Humanæ and the Syllabus of Errors, or when people speak of awaiting another interpretation—the documents are supposed to be the interpretation! When the terms are known, the meaning is supposed to be clear!

Dr. Sudlow argues, based on Lumen Gentium, that

“the promulgation of teachings by the Magisterium, even if they are only part of
the authentic Magisterium, requires us to give religious assent of mind and will
to their contents. Their promulgation makes them become a kind of theological
datum which can no longer be treated as a mere theological opinion.”

Now we need firstly to be clear about what is meant by the term ‘authentic Magisterium’. If this is taken to mean, very broadly, a hierarch’s public teaching on faith and morals, then this is fairly unobjectionable. But we need to specify that this public teaching is always a matter of handing on what has been received in an unbroken line from the Apostles. And clearly, this was not the case in sizeable portions of the Vatican II documents. The then-Cardinal Ratzinger acknowledges this in ‘The Ratzinger Report’ and as quoted in Berthod’s essay. And what of statements like

“Thus in Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an
inexhaustible abundance of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry.
They seek freedom from the anguish of our human condition either through
ascetical practices or profound meditation or a flight to God with love and
trust”

(Nostra Ætate, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html)? How can this possibly make any claim on our religious assent? And we can add to this a number of other ambiguities and inconsistencies.

As for liturgical matters, we hear the thesis that the New Mass “had to be considered as integrally Catholic in their original Latin versions.” But the Ottaviani Intervention and comparisons of the Old and New Rites, such as Fr. Franz Schmidberger’s, demonstrate amply that this is not so. The New Mass has a strong humanist/Protestant subtext, unsurprising since His late Holiness Paul VI intended thereby to reduce the ‘stumbling blocks’ to the ‘separated brethren’ that might be associated with the Old Mass. The notion that the Church’s indefectibility in sanctifying her children would guarantee the New Mass books might have had merit if the Old Mass and associated ceremonies had indeed been truly abrogated, but now H.H. The Pope in Summorum Pontificum acknowledges that this was not so! (Just as the S.S.P.X. had been arguing all along!) Surely we can infer from this that the Old Rites were suppressed unjustly, rather than the Holy Ghost abandoning us in our need for sanctification, as one might have inferred otherwise? Might we not detect the Holy Ghost’s assistance, rather, in the surprising resilience and vitality of the ‘indult communities’ and the S.S.P.X.?

Furthermore, is not the spirit of innovation (through inorganic evolution rather than true development) and improvision (numerous Eucharistic Prayers, &c.) at the core of the New Mass, and therefore we must admit that the experimentation that has been observed over the years is a natural consequence of the liturgical revolution, rather than an aberration? And we have seen this kind of experimentation not only in the Sunday Mass, but even in the rite of Baptism (quite recently, as the C.D.F. reminded us), imperilling the souls of babies.

So it is rightly then that the S.S.P.X. continues to hold out against the long march of modernism. Far from ‘privatising ecclesial thought’, they simply look to the unchanging, objective, clear teachings of the Church. And it is hard to see how an acceptance of the New Missal would not imply the potential to have to offer Mass according to it. As for their autonomous governance, clearly this need last only as long as the emergency that necessitated it.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Secularism vs. The Church after WYD08: the opening barrage

http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2309743.htm

On the night that World Youth Day festivities came to a close, the A.B.C. launched its counter-offensive against the Church with an episode of Compass entitled “Catholic Dilemma: Part 1: - Sex or celibacy”. Presumably one is supposed to categorise it as a documentary, but it was so totally biased that it is no exaggeration to describe it as a piece of advocacy, advocacy for the insidious agenda of the ‘Catholics for Ministry’ set. This ‘documentary’ failed to explain in a remotely adequate way the meaning of the Mass as a True Sacrifice and the importance of celibacy for the Priest in associating himself with Christ, i.e. the importance of celibacy for theological reasons rather than practical reasons; is it really too hard to convey that the Priesthood is primarily sacrificial rather than pastoral (contrary to Vatican II’s re-orientations as enshrined in the 1983 C.I.C., see here for more on this: http://christianorder.com/features/features_2001/features_nov01.html) and that whoever will not renounce marriage and family (the second biggest sacrifice that one can make, next after the sacrifice of life and limb) is not worthy of being the one through whom Christ offers Himself to the Father?

Now, this is to be expected from a secular humanist programme (since the humanist can only ever understand celibacy as a means to the end of ‘greater availability’; for him man is the end of all things, so that even if he tries to understand things with God in the picture he can only ever see the value of celibacy in utilitarian terms rather than as a sacrifice offered directly to God—see here http://news.stjamescatholic.org/2006/week51/index.html for H.H. The Pope’s thoughts on the matter, under the title “Benedict XVI Meets Roman Curia For Christmas Greetings”) but what was inexcusable was the biased selection of interviewees, who were all either opposed or seemingly neutral to the question of celibacy; none offered (or was allowed to offer) an articulate, cogent justification for celibacy, though one did offer a timid, materialistic argument based on the cost of supporting a married Priest’s family. What I found most remarkable of all, though, was that by a brilliant rhetorical sleight-of-hand, Mr. Paul Collins was able to position himself and, by association, his fellow-travellers in ‘Catholics for Ministry’ as the defenders of the Catholic understanding of Mass against creeping Protestantism! Listen to this (from Mr. Collins himself):

We’re talking about the unavailability of Mass and the Sacraments. We’re talking
about replacing the celebration of Mass with readings from Scripture and a
communion service. Now with respect, I mean I have a fairly good record
ecumenically, but with respect that’s a more Protestant approach and I don’t
belong to a Protestant Church nor do I intend to join one. I belong to the
Catholic Church. And at the core of Catholic belief is the Mass. And if we don’t
have the Mass then it seems to me we are taking away from the essence of being
Catholic.

No mention of sacrifice or anything, of course; the word only appears once during the course of the show, and not in a strictly theological sense.

Surely the producers could have found, somewhere in this wide brown land, a forthright defender of the gift of celibacy? Just a single apologist for this venerable norm? Instead the producers took care to portray the requirement for celibacy as a mere matter of positive law (achieved by the use of a non-cassock-wearing Jesuit canon lawyer), with the possibility of a theological dimension rejected through Mr. Collins.

Add to these shortcomings the usual stereotypes of Rome and the Australian hierarchy as out-of-touch and unresponsive, in contrast to the two former priests, the married convert from Anglicanism and a ‘pastoral leader’ nun, hard at work (over-worked, even) at the “front line” and you have a piece of journalism that gives only one side of the argument. It was truly dreadful. One can hardly wait to see what rubbish they’ll offer next week (I expect the word ‘deaconess’ will get a good showing).

Reginaldvs Cantvar