Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XXVI. In which the EWTN schism infects a priest’s homily at Mass.

ne would think that the pur­pose of the homi­ly at Mass is to shed light upon the Gospel read­ing. So here’s some­thing worth a real com­plaint: At EWT­N’s dai­ly Mass on Mon­day, Fr. Matthew Mary read Christ’s prayer for his dis­ci­ples in John 17, and there­after had noth­ing what­ev­er to say about it; instead, he used the occa­sion of the homi­ly to pro­mote a fac­tion in the Church that engages in schism against Pope Fran­cis. (And yes, I quote the def­i­n­i­tion below.) So let’s be clear that that’s a scan­dal, an abuse of the sacred litur­gy, treat­ing it as an occa­sion to pro­mote dis­sent against the Holy Father.

Oh no no! says Fr. Matthew Mary. I love the Holy Father! I pray for him every day!

Okay. Let’s look at that.

TRY TO SEE IT MY WAY!

Fr. begins with this illus­tra­tion: A woman com­plains to her hus­band about a severe pain in her head. Her hus­band says, “Well, of course, it’s because you have a nail in your head.” He offers to take the nail out, but his wife com­plains that he’s not lis­ten­ing; he just wants to fix things; she just wants him to lis­ten to her.

It’s a humor­ous anec­dote about the dif­fer­ence between men and women, where men feel that they they have to fix every­thing and women don’t always want to have their prob­lems fixed: They just want to be lis­tened to and com­fort­ed.

Fr. com­plete­ly missed this point, but we’ll see the point he made of it a bit lat­er on. He leaves us hang­ing upon the anec­dote while he makes an abrupt switch to a recent inter­view with Pope Fran­cis in which one reporter asked what he thought of his crit­ics and the rumors of schism. (Fr. just had to bring this up dur­ing the homi­ly at Mass.)

Now, let’s be very clear about what a schism actu­al­ly is, Fr. said. A schism, he said, quot­ing Canon 751, is “the with­draw­al of sub­mis­sion to the Supreme Pon­tiff or from com­mu­nion with the mem­bers of the Church sub­ject to him.”

Wait, let’s stop here. You mean to say that refus­ing to sub­mit to the pope con­sti­tutes a schism? I’m very glad Fr. has inad­ver­tent­ly admit­ted this, since lat­er on he appears to for­get that that part is there. (As we will see.)

From there, Fr. brings up the pope’s dis­cu­si­son of “rigid Catholics.” Fr. does­n’t quote him direct­ly, but here’s what the pope said:

After the First Vat­i­can Coun­cil, for exam­ple, the last vote, the one on infal­li­bil­i­ty, a well-sized group left and found­ed the Old Catholic Church so as to remain “true” to the tra­di­tion of the Church. Then they devel­oped dif­fer­ent­ly and now they ordain women. But at that moment they were rigid, they ral­lied behind ortho­doxy and thought that the coun­cil had erred.

So this is one form of rigid­i­ty: Think­ing that you are ortho­dox and that the Mag­is­teri­um has erred, but being wrong. (That’s impor­tant. Remem­ber that.) Here’s anoth­er:

The pas­tors must lead their flock between grace and sin because this is evan­gel­i­cal moral­i­ty. Instead, a moral­i­ty based on such a pela­gian ide­ol­o­gy leads you to rigid­i­ty, and today we have many schools of rigid­i­ty with­in the Church.

Here the pope speaks in gen­er­al terms, but by “Pela­gian” he seems to mean a way of think­ing that cuts out grace. Pela­gians act as though a legal­is­tic obe­di­ence to moral codes will earn sal­va­tion. Pela­gians are much like the Judaiz­ers.

Fr. does­n’t both­er with the pope’s actu­al words too much, but instead assumes that the attack on rigid­i­ty is an attack on Faith­ful­Catholics™ who are mere­ly ortho­dox. Ortho­doxy is not rigid­i­ty! Fr. protests, and goes on to draw a dis­tinc­tion between the two. And he’s cer­tain­ly cor­rect about what the dif­fer­ence is, but he does not tell us why he thinks that Pope Fran­cis is using the word “rigid­i­ty” illict­ly. The pope is real­ly object­ing to ortho­doxy. The cler­ic doth protest too much. He assumes the pope is being disin­gen­u­ous, but does­n’t tell us why he thinks that. Instead he just assumes it. That’s pret­ty unchar­i­ta­ble, if you ask me. (And dur­ing a homi­ly at Mass, no less.)

Now, Fr. does men­tion the pope’s dis­cus­sion of the schism after Vat­i­can I, which occurred because of a dis­pute over papal infal­li­bil­i­ty. That was a gen­uine schism, Fr. says. The coun­cil was ful­ly ortho­dox, but those who broke away—i.e., the “Old Catholics”—rejected ortho­doxy.

But Fr. does not men­tion that this is one of the instances in which the pope used the word “rigid.” If Fr. thinks that the Old Catholics gen­uine­ly were schis­mat­ic, if he thinks they reject­ed ortho­doxy, then how is it that he also thinks that the pope is calum­niz­ing ortho­dox Catholics as rigid? Fr. agrees that the schis­mat­ics after Vat­i­can I were not ortho­dox at all; they real­ly were rigid. So in oth­er words, Fr. tells us the wery same thing the pope just did, but pre­tends that the pope was say­ing some­thing else. That’s worth pon­der­ing.

The pope’s sec­ond use of the word “rigid” is a descrip­tion of Pela­gian­ism. And I hope Fr. does not believe that Pela­gian­ism is real­ly ortho­dox. Is that what he means to tell us? It’s hard to say, because he does not men­tion this part of the pope’s words. If he thinks that the the pope has a bad under­stand­ing of what Pela­gian­ism is, that what the pope’s real­ly attack­ing is not Pela­gian­ism at all, then he real­ly should tell us why he thinks that. (But not dur­ing a homi­ly at Mass.)

Fr. assumes that the pope is attack­ing as “rigid” what is real­ly noth­ing more than ortho­dox, but nev­er tells us why he thinks so. It has all the marks of an unchar­i­ta­ble assump­tion read into the pope’s words (because the cler­ic doth protest too much).

YOU CAN GET IT WRONG AND STILL YOU THINK THAT IT’S ALL RIGHT

I would like to ask Fr. a ques­tion at this point: Have you ever con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty that maybe the peo­ple you describe as faith­ful, ortho­dox Catholics real­ly do have a rigid under­stand­ing of what ortho­doxy is? Or do you just dis­miss the notion out of hand? All I heard in your homi­ly was that you are dis­miss­ing it out of hand. Rigid? Me? I thank God I’m not like those Catholics, or for that mat­ter like that for­ni­ca­tor over there who’s tak­ing Com­mu­nion now.

After a digres­sion into Nova­t­ian and St. Cypri­an, Fr. returns to his theme by bring­ing up Car­di­nal Burke and Bish­op Schnei­der’s “cru­sade of prayer and fast­ing” over the six “here­sies” in the work­ing doc­u­ment for the Ama­zon Syn­od. (Here I remind you, dear read­er, that I have refut­ed every last item on that list: one / two / three / four / five / six.)

What’s remark­able to me is that Fr. does not once con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Burke & Schnei­der might have it all wrong. It’s unques­tion­able, in his view, that the work­ing doc­u­ment pro­motes these here­sies. It’s unques­tion­able, in his view, that they are here­sies.

I would ask Fr.: How do you know this? Have you con­sid­ered oth­er argu­ments about the work­ing doc­u­ment? Why are you so sure you’re right? Why do you assume the pope must be wrong and his “faith­ful crit­ics” must be right? Isn’t that—oh, I don’t know—rigid?

You can get it wrong, and still you think that it’s all right.

THINK OF WHAT YOU’RE SAYING

And now Fr. returns to his illus­tra­tion about the nail in the head. He ends his homi­ly by com­par­ing the pope’s faith­ful crit­ics to the hus­band who notices the nail and wants to remove it. And he says that it’s the pope who has the nail in his head and obsti­nate­ly refus­es to let his crit­ics remove it.

Well, that’s all just very … smug. There’s no sense at all that part of ortho­doxy, if you’re a Catholic, is docil­i­ty to the Mag­is­teri­um of the Holy Father. Schism includes dis­obe­di­ence to the Mag­is­teri­um of the Holy Father. Fr. said so him­self. If you’re recast­ing dis­boe­di­ence as ortho­doxy, then per­haps it’s not the Holy Father who has the nail in the head. (But you know, Fr. loves the pope!) Think of what you’re say­ing.

And con­sid­er that per­haps the Holy Sac­ri­fice of the Mass is not the con­text in which to say these kinds of things. I find it an abuse of the Mass—as though stir­ring up dis­sention against the Holy Father is appro­pri­ate any­where; but it’s espe­cial­ly offen­sive at Mass.