Article at Catholic World Report asks: Could the pope suppress the rosary?

hat if the pope sup­pressed what-if ques­tions?

But this one is easy, or should be: Of course the pope could sup­press the Rosary. The ques­tion here is not would he sup­press it, or should he sup­press it, but only could he. And of course the pope has the pow­er to sup­press a devo­tion. An obvi­ous exam­ple of this is when, in 1959, John XXIII sup­pressed devo­tion to the Divine Mer­cy. (John Paul II lat­er lift­ed the sup­pres­sion, in 1978.) This kind of thing hap­pens all the time.

Now, the Rosary is so beloved, so tra­di­tion­al, so root­ed and fixed in Catholic devo­tion­al prac­tice that the chances of any such thing hap­pen­ing are all but zero; but there’s no rea­son the pope could­n’t do it. Not even the author of the arti­cle—John Mona­co, a doc­tor­al stu­dent in the­ol­o­gy at Duquesne—offers any the­o­ry about why the pope’s author­i­ty to sup­press a devo­tion is sub­ject to any lim­its in canon law. The pope is the Church’s supreme leg­is­la­tor, so it would be odd if canon law lim­it­ed his abil­i­ty to leg­is­late over Catholic devo­tions.

For­tu­nate­ly Mona­co agrees that the chances of Pope Fran­cis sup­press­ing the Rosary are “slim, if none.”

Actu­al­ly, they are none, if none.

So why does Mona­co both­er us with this weird ques­tion?

Because he thinks that, by pos­ing it, he’ll reveal some impor­tant truth about “the lim­its to papal pow­er.” It as though he thinks a ques­tion that sounds like it was dreamed up dur­ing a wild night at The­ol­o­gy on Tap is a lit­mus test of your doc­trine of pri­ma­cy. If you think the pope can ban the Rosary, then you must think a pope can do what­ev­er he wants. If you think the pope has lim­its, those lim­its are under­scored by the untouch­a­bil­i­ty of the Rosary.

It’s bizarre. And it’s a straw man, any­way. No one believes that a pope’s pow­er is with­out lim­it, though Mona­co imag­ines oth­er­wise. “What is often ignored in … neo-ultra­mon­tane cir­cles,” he says,

is that the pope’s pow­er is indeed lim­it­ed by nat­ur­al and divine law. For exam­ple, the pope can­not declare that euthana­sia is per­mis­si­ble or abol­ish mar­riage as a sacra­ment.

Well, of course he can’t. But Mona­co is con­flat­ing two unlike things. The Rosary is a devo­tion­al prac­tice, not a doc­tri­nal or dog­mat­ic teach­ing. There is no divine rev­e­la­tion that Catholics must pray the Rosary; Catholics, in fact, are quite free nev­er to pray the Rosary at all. It’s not as though, in hypo­thet­i­cal­ly sup­press­ing the Rosary, the pope would be declar­ing that the Ave and the Lord’s Prayer weren’t part of Scrip­ture. It’s not as though the pope would nec­es­sar­i­ly be declar­ing that the Rosary was inher­ent­ly dan­ger­ous to the faith.

How does Mona­co’s ques­tion about the Rosary help advance the truth that a pope can’t change dog­ma? That’s not clear. What doc­trine, essen­tial to the faith, is threat­ened by the recent motu pro­prio on the Tri­den­tine Mass?

Mona­co does not say; instead, he bar­rels on:

More­over, the promised assis­tance of the Holy Spir­it does not mean that the pope can­not, at least in the­o­ry, speak and write errors. What divine assis­tance assures is that the pope is pro­tect­ed from error in his for­mal def­i­n­i­tions. The pope is not the mas­ter and cre­ator of the deposit of faith; the pope exists to serve divine rev­e­la­tion, not vice-ver­sa.

Well, okay, this is miss­ing some nec­es­sary nuance, and I dis­agree stren­u­ous­ly with Mona­co’s insis­tence (ear­li­er in the arti­cle) that a pope could fall into heresy. I’ve refut­ed that claim else­where and see no rea­son to reit­er­ate it here. Mona­co attempts to give exam­ples of hereti­cal popes in the past; and if you are inter­est­ed, dear read­er, you may read my refu­ta­tion of all of these claims:

• Pope Hon­o­rius did not teach heresy;
• Pope Liberius did not teach heresy;
• Pope John XXII did not teach heresy

But it’s not impor­tant to make the claim that a pope could teach heresy, or that a pope could not teach heresy, in order to get to the point that Mona­co thinks he’s mak­ing when he rais­es the spec­tre of a pope sup­press­ing the Rosary.

Sup­press­ing the Rosary would not mean that a pope had taught heresy or denied an essen­tial truth of the faith.

The one has noth­ing to do with the oth­er.

To say that a pope could sup­press the Rosary in no way implies you think a pope can do any­thing at all.

Next Mona­co tries to explain the illic­it­ness of rosary sup­pres­sion this way:

[P]apal pow­er [sh]ould … be under­stood as one of a gar­den­er than a bull­doz­er. The pope does not have the pow­er to cre­ate and destroy the true, good, and beau­ti­ful, because he is not the one whose pow­er made truth true, or good­ness good, or beau­ty beau­ti­ful. Only a deca­dent, reduc­tion­ist approach to the litur­gy and devo­tions would see them as papal play­things rather than gifts to be trea­sured and pro­tect­ed.

By sleight-of-hand, Mona­co has changed the ques­tion here from what a pope has the pow­er to do, to whether a pope should do some­thing just because he can. It’s tyran­ni­cal and destruc­tive to be arbi­trary, but that’s a philo­soph­i­cal point rather than a legal one. Under this ratio­nale, the pope could not sup­press any devo­tion at all if some­one claimed it had some­thing to do with truth, good­ness, beau­ty, and trea­sure. John XXI­I­I’s sup­pres­sion of the Divine Mer­cy would have been an abuse of papal pow­er. But no. Pop­u­lar devo­tions, unchecked, have had a noto­ri­ous abil­i­ty to be dam­ag­ing to the uni­ty of the faith and to ortho­dox belief.

I agree that the Rosary is not one such devo­tion, and I’m glad to know that Mona­co real­izes there’s no dan­ger the pope will try to “can­cel” it. But play along with The­ol­o­gy on Tap. Assume that, at some future time, some future pope deter­mined that the Rosary had become destruc­tive to the uni­ty of the faith. Sup­pose the Rosary, harm­less of itself, became a weapon one fac­tion of Catholics used to divide them­selves from oth­ers. Sup­pose it came to be exclu­sive­ly asso­ci­at­ed with a fac­tion of Catholics who were mak­ing war against the Holy Father. The pope might be entire­ly right to sup­press it. It’s not your job to dis­cern such things; it’s the pope’s. That’s part of the rea­son why we have a pope.

What claim is Mona­co try­ing to make: That in putting restric­tions on the Tri­den­tine Mass, Pope Fran­cis has exceed­ed a pope’s pow­er, or that Pope Fran­cis has used his pow­er in an arbi­trary and destruc­tive way? These are not the same, and what has either of them to do with chang­ing doc­trine or whether a pope could teach heresy? Mona­co spends a great deal of time slop­pi­ly con­flat­ing A and Non‑A.

Mona­co con­tin­ues:

If we find, then, that a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac pon­tiff on the Bar­que of Peter is drunk with pow­er while man­ning the wheel into a rock for­ma­tion …

Okay, nev­er mind. When some­one who’s upset about Tra­di­tiones Cus­todes starts to talk like this, it’s clear the pope did the right thing when he issued Tra­di­tiones Cus­todes. If a day ever came when the Rosary was almost entire­ly asso­ci­at­ed with those who talked like that, the pope should sup­press it.

But imme­di­ate­ly after com­plain­ing about “a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac pon­tiff … drunk with pow­er,” Mona­co writes the words: “This requires care­ful nuance.”

That made me laugh.