Does Pope Francis say that grace is insufficient? Part 1 of a response to The Correctors.

he “fil­ial cor­rec­tion” of Pope Francis—but let us, dear read­er, pause over this descrip­tor. Edward Pentin at the Reg­is­ter breath­less­ly says that this is the first “fil­ial cor­rec­tion” since 1333! I mean, wow. Let us cry over Jerusalem. But what canon­i­cal stand­ing, may I ask, do any of the sig­na­tors have to be cor­rect­ing Peter? Can any­one cor­rect Peter, oth­er than, you know, Christ? The high­est-rank­ing indi­vid­ual among them is Bp. Fel­lay. He used to be excom­mu­ni­cat­ed, until Pope Bene­dict XVI lift­ed it. But the SSPX, of which he is the head, has no canon­i­cal stand­ing in the Church; it is not in com­mu­nion with Rome. The rest are a bunch of “lay schol­ars” and a few cler­gy. There is Fr. Claude Barthe, a “dioce­san priest.” There is Fr Isio Cec­chi­ni, a “parish priest in Tus­cany.” There is Fr. Linus F. Clo­vis, the direc­tor of the Sec­re­tari­at for Fam­i­ly and Life in the Arch­dio­cese of Cas­tries. Fr. Paul Cocard is a “reli­gious.” Then there’s Mar­tin Mose­bach, a “writer and essay­ist.” (I looked him up; he writes nov­els, opera, the­atre.) There’s Prof. Robert Hick­son, a “retired pro­fes­sor of Lit­er­a­ture and of Strate­gic-Cul­tur­al Stud­ies.” Dr. Philip Bloss­er is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Sacred Heart Major Sem­i­nary; I sup­pose that’s some­thing. Christo­pher Fer­rara, con­trib­u­tor to The Rem­nant, is among them. Main­ly, it reads like a who’s who of Who?

Any­way, The “fil­ial cor­rec­tion” claims to find sev­en here­sies in Amor­is Laeti­tia. But, the Cor­rec­tors add, there may be more than that:

In list­ing these sev­en propo­si­tions we do not intend to give an exhaus­tive list of all the here­sies and errors which an unbi­ased read­er, attempt­ing to read Amor­is laeti­tia in its nat­ur­al and obvi­ous sense, would plau­si­bly take to be affirmed, sug­gest­ed or favoured by this doc­u­ment: a let­ter sent to all the car­di­nals of the Church and to the East­ern Catholic patri­archs lists 19 such propo­si­tions.

See, if you find no here­sies in Amor­is Laeti­tia, it must be because you’re biased. The Cor­rec­tors enter­tain no oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty. But if you are unbi­ased, who knows how many here­sies you may find? There might be 19, or 47, or 95, or 476, or 16,209.4.

The Cor­rec­tors list the here­sies in Latin—in order to give the appear­ance of true Catholic grav­i­tas, I imag­ine. For­tu­nate­ly, for those of us in the Novus Ordo sect, they gra­cious­ly trans­late them in the foot­notes.

Here is the first:

A jus­ti­fied per­son has not the strength with God’s grace to car­ry out the objec­tive demands of the divine law, as though any of the com­mand­ments of God are impos­si­ble for the jus­ti­fied; or as mean­ing that God’s grace, when it pro­duces jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in an indi­vid­ual, does not invari­ably and of its nature pro­duce con­ver­sion from all seri­ous sin, or is not suf­fi­cient for con­ver­sion from all seri­ous sin.

Now, I hate to be the one to point this out to The Cor­rec­tors, but Amor­is Laeti­tia not only does not endorse this hereti­cal view, but it express­ly denies it. Go to §295. There you will read:

For the law is itself a gift of God which points out the way, a gift for every­one with­out excep­tion; it can be fol­lowed with the help of grace.

Imag­ine that. The Cor­rec­tors say that the pope denies the jus­ti­fied can fol­low the law with the help of grace. Amor­is Laeti­tia asserts that the jus­ti­fied can fol­low the law with the help of grace. Not only that, but the law is “a gift for every­one with­out excep­tion.” No one is exclud­ed.

Now, per­haps The Cor­rec­tors will say that the pope is being devi­ous. He is includ­ing this sen­tence in Amor­is Laeti­tia, but wink wink, we know he does­n’t real­ly mean it. For The Cor­rec­tors know all; there are actu­al pro­fes­sors amongst them, and parish priests in Tus­cany! Per­haps they will say that the sen­tence was not in the orig­i­nal text, but Mod­ernist con­spir­a­tors full of mal­ice and decep­tion went in and added it lat­er as part of a cov­er up. Per­haps they will say that any­one who sees such a sen­tence in §295 is hal­lu­ci­nat­ing and needs a pre­scrip­tion for Risperdal, or Zyprexa.

Who knows what The Cor­rec­tors will say, but they leave that part out when they quote from §295. As a result, they present an incom­plete pic­ture of what the pope is say­ing there. This is the full para­graph:

Saint John Paul II pro­posed the so-called “law of grad­u­al­ness” in the knowl­edge that the human being “knows, loves and accom­plish­es moral good by dif­fer­ent stages of growth.” This is not a “grad­u­al­ness of law” but rather a grad­u­al­ness in the pru­den­tial exer­cise of free acts on the part of sub­jects who are not in a posi­tion to under­stand, appre­ci­ate, or ful­ly car­ry out the objec­tive demands of the law. For the law is itself a gift of God which points out the way, a gift for every­one with­out excep­tion; it can be fol­lowed with the help of grace, even though each human being ‘advances grad­u­al­ly with the pro­gres­sive inte­gra­tion of the gifts of God and the demands of God’s defin­i­tive and absolute love in his or her entire per­son­al and social life.’

The Cor­rec­tors latch on to the part where the pope says that some peo­ple “are not in a posi­tion to … car­ry out the objec­tive demands of the law.” The text goes on, how­ev­er, to say that every­one can fol­low the law with the help of grace. Since the con­text here is the Law of Grad­u­al­ness espoused by St. John Paul II, the pope is ini­tial­ly refer­ring to peo­ple who can not yet car­ry out the objec­tive demands of the law, due to a mal­formed con­science or some oth­er mit­i­gat­ing fac­tor. They can, how­ev­er, with the help of grace, be led in that direc­tion. Thus “each per­son advances grad­u­al­ly.” That’s what the pope is get­ting at. But he is not assert­ing that grace is insuf­fi­cient.

So I need to cor­rect The Cor­rec­tors. They are just wrong.