Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XXVII: Schismatic? No, no, no! It ain’t we, babe!

oyal defend­ers of the Church Ray­mond Leo Burke & Athana­sius Schnei­der have anoth­er doc­u­ment out! The impar­tial Edward Pentin includes it in the text of his arti­cle today at the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter. The title of this one is “A clar­i­fi­ca­tion about the mean­ing of fideli­ty to the Supreme Pon­tiff.” The gist of this one is: Fideli­ty to the Supreme Pon­tiff does not mean you can’t call out his man­i­fest errors and here­sies. Paul cor­rect­ed Peter, don’t you know? Since I am not giv­en to polemics on this blog, I will go through the doc­u­ment point by point, so that we can cooly and with­out emo­tion dis­cern whose errors are real­ly man­i­fest.

I.

“No hon­est per­son,” the loy­al­ists Burke & Schnei­der begin, “can any­more [sic] deny the almost gen­er­al doc­tri­nal con­fu­sion which is reign­ing in the life of the Church in our days.”

I see. So if you’re some­one who, like me, says, “What’s all this talk of con­fu­sion? I’m not con­fused at all,” it’s because you’re dis­hon­est. You’re a liar. Dear read­er, behold the char­i­ty! Now, we can’t be polem­i­cal, we can’t engage in attacks, we must think the best of oth­ers. But if you deny being con­fused, you’re a liar! Lat­er on in their state­ment, Burke & Schnei­der will com­plain about those who say they are “against” the pope” and invit­ing schism. That’s defama­tion! Well, if that’s defama­tion, then what is it when those who deny being con­fused are said to be liars? It’s a ques­tion worth ask­ing, in the inter­est of non-polem­i­cal sobri­ety.

All this unde­ni­able doc­tri­nal con­fu­sion, the two loy­al­ists go on, “is par­tic­u­lar­ly due to ambi­gu­i­ties regard­ing the indis­sol­u­bil­i­ty of mar­riage.”

“Ambi­gu­i­ties,” you say? Okay, then let us go to Amor­is Laeti­tia and take a look at this ambi­gu­i­ty about the per­ma­nence of mar­riage.

• 62. The Syn­od Fathers not­ed that Jesus, “in speak­ing of God’s orig­i­nal plan for man and woman, reaf­firmed the indis­sol­u­ble union between them, even stat­ing that ‘it was for your hard­ness of heart that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the begin­ning it was not so’ (Mt 19:8). The indis­sol­u­bil­i­ty of mar­riage – ‘what God has joined togeth­er, let no man put asun­der’ (Mt 19:6) – should not be viewed as a ‘yoke’ imposed on human­i­ty, but as a ‘gift’ grant­ed to those who are joined in mar­riage.
• 123. It is in the very nature of con­ju­gal love to be defin­i­tive. The last­ing union expressed by the mar­riage vows is more than a for­mal­i­ty or a tra­di­tion­al for­mu­la; it is root­ed in the nat­ur­al incli­na­tions of the human per­son. For believ­ers, it is also a covenant before God that calls for fideli­ty: “The Lord was wit­ness to the covenant between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faith­less, though she is your com­pan­ion and your wife by covenant… Let none be faith­less to the wife of his youth. For I hate divorce, says the Lord” (Mal 2:14 – 16).
• 218. Anoth­er great chal­lenge of mar­riage prepa­ra­tion is to help cou­ples real­ize that mar­riage is not some­thing that hap­pens once for all. Their union is real and irrev­o­ca­ble, con­firmed and con­se­crat­ed by the sacra­ment of mat­ri­mo­ny.

Can I ask the loy­al­ists Burke & Schnei­der to explain where they’re con­fused here? Because I’m not con­fused by this. But they say they’re con­fused. Pope Fran­cis says, “Mar­riage is indis­sol­u­ble,” and they come away think­ing that he holds out the pos­si­b­li­ty that mar­riage might not be indis­sol­u­ble. Maybe it’s a mis­take any­one can make, but I seek answers from them as to where the con­fu­sion hap­pened.

There is also con­fu­sion, say the two loy­al­ists, over “the increas­ing approval of homo­sex­u­al acts.”

Real­ly? I’ve noticed no such approval. Where is this approval? Is it in Amor­is Laeti­tia 29? Let’s check: “The word of God tells us that the fam­i­ly is entrust­ed to a man, a woman and their chil­dren.” No, I don’t find it there.

Is it in AL 52?

Only the exclu­sive and indis­sol­u­ble union between a man and a woman has a ple­nary role to play in soci­ety as a sta­ble com­mit­ment that bears fruit in new life. We need to acknowl­edge the great vari­ety of fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tions that can offer a cer­tain sta­bil­i­ty, but de fac­to or same-sex unions, for exam­ple, may not sim­ply be equat­ed with mar­riage. No union that is tem­po­rary or closed to the trans­mis­sion of life can ensure the future of soci­ety.

No, I don’t find it there.

Is it in AL 251?

There are absolute­ly no grounds for con­sid­er­ing homo­sex­u­al unions to be in any way sim­i­lar or even remote­ly anal­o­gous to God’s plan for mar­riage and fam­i­ly. It is unac­cept­able “that local Church­es should be sub­ject­ed to pres­sure in this mat­ter and that inter­na­tion­al bod­ies should make finan­cial aid to poor coun­tries depen­dent on the intro­duc­tion of laws to estab­lish ‘mar­riage’ between per­sons of the same sex.”

No, I don’t find it there.

The loy­al­ists Burke & Schnei­der will have to tell us where they find this approval of homo­sex­u­al acts. I’ve checked and can’t find it, and they don’t help me out by cit­ing which approv­ing state­ments they have in mind.

But they also find “con­fu­sion” in the “erro­neous affir­ma­tions on the diver­si­ty of reli­gions”; and this is a clear ref­er­ence to the Abu Dhabi doc­u­ment, which says:

Free­dom is a right of every per­son: each indi­vid­ual enjoys the free­dom of belief, thought, expres­sion and action. The plu­ral­ism and the diver­si­ty of reli­gions, colour, sex, race and lan­guage are willed by God in His wis­dom, through which He cre­at­ed human beings. This divine wis­dom is the source from which the right to free­dom of belief and the free­dom to be dif­fer­ent derives. There­fore, the fact that peo­ple are forced to adhere to a cer­tain reli­gion or cul­ture must be reject­ed, as too the impo­si­tion of a cul­tur­al way of life that oth­ers do not accept.

Now, dear read­er, I’ve lost count how many times I’ve gone into all this on this wery blog—this sober, non-polem­i­cal blog. Fr. Z was not con­fused by this at all and explained, quite right­ly, that the ref­er­ence is to God’s per­mis­sive will. Every­thing that hap­pens is God’s will (in the per­mis­sive sense) because God could stop it but does not. So Fr. Z was not con­fused, but per­haps the loy­al­ists Burke & Schnei­der will tell us that Fr. Z is a liar.

How­ev­er, Pope Fran­cis clar­i­fied this point—and behold, he clar­i­fied it to Schnei­der him­self. “You can say,” the pope told Schnei­der, “the phrase in ques­tion on the diver­si­ty of reli­gions means the per­mis­sive will of God.”

So if Pope Fran­cis clar­i­fied his mean­ing to Bish­op Schnei­der in March, and Schnei­der forth­with report­ed it to Fake Site News, and Fake Site News declared vic­to­ry, why is the same Bish­op Schnei­der say­ing now that the state­ment is “erro­neous”? (Can I call them Fake Site News, or is that polem­i­cal?)

In any case, here we have even Fr. Z say­ing that the Abu Dhabi statement—the part about the diver­si­ty of religions—is clear and ortho­dox to him. And here we have Pope Fran­cis clar­i­fy­ing it that wery same way to Bish­op Schnei­der. And so I must protest, in Chris­t­ian char­i­ty, that it is quite rude and polem­i­cal for the two loy­al­ists to insist on describ­ing those who aren’t con­fused as liars. I find the pope’s words on in the indis­sol­u­bil­i­ty of mar­riage and the illic­it­ness of homo­sex­u­al acts to be utter­ly clear. Do Burke & Schnei­der say that I am a liar?

II.

“In view of this real­i­ty,” the two loy­al­ists con­tin­ue, “our con­science does not allow us to be silent.”

Are you real­ly so sure your under­stand­ing on these points is “real­i­ty”? How now? First you claim that there’s con­fu­sion; then you change the ground of argu­ment, declare that there are “errors,” and insist you must cor­rect them in con­science. You can’t have it both ways; you can’t say “This is con­fus­ing” and “this is erro­neous.” Nor can you ask the pope for clar­i­fi­ca­tion, receive one that’s ful­ly ortho­dox, and then turn around and say, “This is an error!”

Do you begin to see why Burke and Schnei­der seem disin­gen­u­ous to so many?

“We speak with rev­er­ence and love,” the loy­al­ists cry, “so that the Holy Father may unequiv­o­cal­ly reject the evi­dent doc­tri­nal errors of the Instru­men­tum Laboris.”

Par­don me, good sirs—and I don’t mean to be polem­i­cal here—but how is it you can be sure that the IL con­tains “errors” which need to be “cor­rect­ed”? I’ll explain. You say that the Abu Dhabi words about the diver­si­ty of reli­gions is “erro­neous” even after receiv­ing a whol­ly ortho­dox clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the pope him­self. So do you begin to see why I would say that your abil­i­ty to dis­cern error is—what’s the least polem­i­cal word I can think of?—sus­pect? (Per­haps “in doubt” is kinder. Your dis­cern­ment is in doubt.)

If you can say there is con­fu­sion about the indis­sol­u­bil­i­ty of mar­riage, even though Amor­is Laeti­tia asserts that indis­sol­u­bil­i­ty mul­ti­ple times, your dis­cern­ment is in doubt.

If you can say there’s increas­ing accep­tance of homo­sex­u­al acts, even though Amor­is Laeti­tia rejects them mul­ti­ple times, your dis­cern­ment is in doubt.

There may be con­fu­sion and accep­tance in soci­ety; I don’t dis­pute that. But it’s not the result of any­thing the pope has said; I do dis­pute that.

III.

“In recent times,” the two loy­al­ists con­tin­ue,

there has been cre­at­ed an atmos­phere of an almost total infal­li­bi­liza­tion of the state­ments of the Roman Pon­tiff, that is to say, of every word of the Pope, of every pro­nounce­ment, and of mere­ly pas­toral doc­u­ments of the Holy See. There is, in prac­tice, no more the obser­vance of the tra­di­tion­al rule of dis­tin­guish­ing the dif­fer­ent lev­els of the pro­nounce­ments of the Pope and of his offices with their the­o­log­i­cal notes and with the cor­re­spond­ing oblig­a­tion of adher­ence on the part of the faith­ful.

Has there? I take a back seat to no one in being accused of Ultra­mon­tanism, and yet I have nev­er argued that every word the pope says is infal­li­ble. In fact, I have dis­put­ed it. (Here’s one place I dis­pute it.) Infal­li­bil­i­ty, I write, “does not mean that every­thing a pope says, or every opin­ion of the pope, is infal­li­ble. The pope must be speak­ing ex cathe­dra. A Wednes­day audi­ence, or a papal inter­view, are not infal­li­ble. The pope must be speak­ing on a ques­tion of faith or morals. The pope’s opin­ion about a sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry is not infal­li­ble. The pope’s opin­ion of the Red Sox is not infal­li­ble.”

And when I wrote about Lauda­to Si, I even said that we are free to dis­agree with the pope—on some points. Imag­ine that! “The Church does not pre­sume to set­tle sci­en­tif­ic ques­tions or to replace pol­i­tics,” the pope wrote. And so on sci­en­tif­ic ques­tions, or polit­i­cal solu­tions, we can dis­agree with the pope’s ideas. I, for one, cer­tain­ly do think there’s much room to dis­cern what calls for adher­ence and what does not. Behold, here a place I even say the pope is wrong about some­thing! Imag­ine that!

So frankly, I don’t know what the loy­al­ists Burke and Schnei­der are talk­ing about here or who they mean when they decry the view that every­thing a pope says is infal­li­ble. Who thinks that? I don’t know any­one who thinks that. And Burke & Schnei­der don’t cite any­one they have in mind.

There’s actu­al­ly a dif­fer­ence between say­ing that a Mag­is­te­r­i­al teach­ing is not infal­li­ble and say­ing that it’s “erro­neous” or “hereti­cal” and demand­ing that it be “cor­rect­ed.” That’s quite a leap of imper­ti­nence.

IV.

“Those who crit­i­cize our expres­sions of con­cern,” the two loy­al­ists go on,

employ sub­stan­tial­ly only sen­ti­men­tal argu­ments or argu­ments from pow­er.

 

[Pos­si­bly this is a ref­er­ence to “the first see is judged by no one”—a canon I’ve cit­ed in the con­text of accu­sa­tions of heresy, not mere “expres­sions of con­cern.”.]

 

They seem­ing­ly do not want to engage in a seri­ous the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sion of the sub­ject. In this respect, it seems that often­times rea­son is sim­ply ignored and rea­son­ing sup­pressed.

Let me stop the loy­al­ists here, because I have a seri­ous ques­tion. Schnei­der “expressed con­cern” with the Abu Dhabi state­ment. He asked the pope direct­ly. “This,” the pope clar­i­fied, “is a ref­er­ence to God’s per­mis­sive will.” And then Schnei­der turned around and con­tin­ued to refer to the orig­i­nal state­ment as “in error” and need­ing “cor­rec­tion.”

So on what grounds do you think any­one ought to engage you in “seri­ous the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sion” and inter­pret what you’ve been say­ing as noth­ing more than mere “expres­sions of con­cern”? Because when you do receive answers, you dis­re­gard them. And that’s why many peo­ple think you’re disin­ge­nous. If you don’t want to be thought “against the pope” or “schis­mat­ic,” per­haps you should accept the pope’s clar­i­fi­ca­tions when he gives them. If you think it’s “defam­a­to­ry” to say that you’re “schis­mat­ic,” per­haps you should con­sid­er whether it’s defam­a­to­ry to call the uncon­fused liars.

V.

After a paren­the­sis to insist that Paul cor­rect­ed Peter—Paul did not say Peter’s teach­ing was in error; he cor­rect­ed Peter when Peter dis­obeyed it—the loy­al­ists Burke & Schnei­der say:

The affir­ma­tion on the diver­si­ty of reli­gions in the Abu Dhabi doc­u­ment and espe­cial­ly the errors in the Instru­men­tum Laboris for the com­ing Spe­cial Assem­bly of the Syn­od of Bish­ops for the Pan-Ama­zon con­tribute to a betray­al of the incom­pa­ra­ble unique­ness of the Per­son of Jesus Christ and of the integri­ty of the Catholic Faith. And this occurs before the eyes of the whole Church and of the world.

They go on to com­pare this to the Ari­an heresy, and we can skip that part. I point out again that Pope Fran­cis clar­i­fied the “affir­ma­tion on the diver­si­ty of reli­gion.” He clar­i­fied it to Bish­op Schnei­der’s face. The doc­u­ment speaks of God’s per­mis­sive will. Bish­op Schnei­der is going to have to tell us why he insists on dis­re­gard­ing this clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

Because as I see it, if the you’re going to dis­re­gard the pope when he does clar­i­fy, then it appears to me that you’re not real­ly inter­est­ed at all in hon­est the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sion. (Your insis­tence to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing.) I’m not going to spec­u­late as to what you are real­ly inter­est­ed in, because that would be polem­i­cal. But when you behave that way, and then say, But we real­ly do love the pope, “we are true friends of Pope Fran­cis,” it rings hol­low. What friend asks for clar­i­fi­ca­tion, receives it, and then dis­re­gards it?

It all has the appear­ance of more disin­gen­u­ous­ness from Burke and Schneider—the loy­al­ists.