I’m glad to report that Ultramontanists do not exist.

Note: In this post, I dis­cuss the term “Ultra­mon­tanism” sole­ly as it is used by the cur­rent pope’s crit­ics: as a term of oppro­bri­um against his defend­ers. There exists an actu­al school of thought called Ultra­mon­tanism in Church his­to­ry, and noth­ing I say here should be tak­en to mean that that Ultra­mon­tanism is a myth.

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ltra­mon­tanists are like the bogey­man: a myth­i­cal being used to fright­en chil­dren. Thus at The Catholic Thing, Fr. Jef­frey Kir­by warns his read­ers about “the rise of the Ultra­mon­tanists.” You nev­er know when the bogey­man is going to come and get you; you nev­er know when the Ultra­mon­tanist is going to wreck the Church. It’s an always-present dan­ger.

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I have very fre­quent­ly been accused of being an Ultra­mon­tanist, for no oth­er rea­son than that I defend the pope and believe the Holy Spir­it safe­guards the Church from ever teach­ing error. Thus when­ev­er I see an arti­cle like this one, the first thing I do is check whether the author defines what an Ultra­mon­tanist is. Not every­one who uses the term does; it’s a dis­ser­vice to the read­er. Describe this bogey­man for me, so I’ll know him if he creeps out from under my bed at night, or pulls up beside me on the free­way to offer a ride. If an Ultra­mon­tanist knocks on my door and says he wants to cut my grass on the pre­text that he’s doing a cor­po­ral work of mer­cy, I want to know that I’m being deceived by anoth­er one of these shift­less Catholics who are on the rise.

For­tu­nate­ly, Fr. Kir­by defines his terms. Accord­ing to him, Ultra­mon­tanism

is the false belief that every­thing a pope says is with­out error. Every­thing a pope decides must be right. Every­thing a pope speaks or does is para­mount and can­not be ques­tioned. The shock­ing rhetoric of the ultra­mon­tanists is found in such slo­gans as, “If you don’t believe every­thing the pope teach­es, then you’re not Catholic.”

The prob­lem is, not only does this not describe me, it does not describe any­one I know or have read. And Fr. Kir­by is no help in fig­ur­ing out who these Ultra­mon­tanists are: You will read his arti­cle in vain to find the name of a sin­gle one. You will find no link to any arti­cle or book that advances the views he describes as Ultra­mon­tanist. I’ve seen pic­tures pur­port­ing to be Big­foot, or the Loch Ness Mon­ster, but Fr. Kir­by gives us no pho­to­graph of an Ultra­mon­tanist. He assures us they exist, but we have to take him at his word—ipse dix­it, Pater locu­tus est.

NO ULTRAMONTANIST AM I.

I’m not going to try to speak for any of the oth­er Catholic writ­ers who are fre­quent­ly accused of Ultra­mon­tanism. But I can speak for myself; I can document—from what I’ve pub­lished on this wery blog—that I don’t sub­scribe to a sin­gle one of the car­i­ca­ture views that Fr. Kir­by insists he detects in the pope’s defend­ers.

Accord­ing to Fr. Kir­by, the pope’s defend­ers believe:

• Every­thing a pope says is with­out error.

I believe no such fan­ta­sy. The prob­lem is, Fr. Kir­by does­n’t nuance this accu­rate­ly. He’d have been cor­rect if he had put it this way: Every­thing a pope teach­es as part of his authen­tic Mag­is­teri­um is with­out error—error being under­stood to mean heresy, or any­thing destruc­tive of faith, or any­thing con­trary to pri­or defin­i­tive teach­ing.

But that’s not how he put it, and of course not every­thing a pope “says” is free from error.

I. On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2016, I wrote that Pope Fran­cis was wrong when he told a reporter that con­tra­cep­tion might be lic­it in order to avoid the Zika virus. It’s pos­si­ble that all the pope had in mind was that a per­son­’s cul­pa­bil­i­ty is mit­i­gat­ed in such cas­es, but the only lic­it way to avoid preg­nan­cy is absti­nence. So yes, the pope was wrong. He was­n’t speak­ing in a Mag­is­te­r­i­al con­text; popes do not exer­cise their teach­ing office when answer­ing a reporter’s ques­tions. It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble that the pope’s words when talk­ing to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press con­tain a googol­plex of false­hoods.

II. In these two arti­cles [one / two] on April 5, 2017, I wrote that Pope Fran­cis was wrong when he said that Mar­tin Luther “did not err” on jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Of course Luther erred: He taught jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone; that’s a heresy. Heresy is very seri­ous as errors go. The Coun­cil of Trent infal­li­bly con­demned the errors of Mar­tin Luther, as did Pope Leo X in his bull of excom­mu­ni­ca­tion, Exsurge Domine. The pope can’t over­turn the Coun­cil of Trent in reply to a ques­tion from Reli­gion News.

Giv­en that I have writ­ten these three arti­cles say­ing Pope Fran­cis was wrong about some­thing, I can’t be said to believe that noth­ing a pope “says” is ever with­out error.

But get back to me if Pope Fran­cis ever writes an encycli­cal teach­ing that Luther was cor­rect about jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, or an apos­tolic con­sti­tu­tion that con­tra­cep­tion is some­times lic­it. Then we’ll talk.

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Accord­ing to Fr. Kir­by, the pope’s defend­ers also believe

• Every­thing a pope decides must be right.

Again this is a car­i­ca­ture; I cer­tain­ly believe no such thing. The pope decid­ed not to answer the dubia about Amor­is Laeti­tia, and on Novem­ber 30, 2016, I wrote that the pope (in my opin­ion) was wrong not to do so:

The car­di­nals are seek­ing a defin­i­tive, Mag­is­te­r­i­al answer to some people’s doubts—not answers in inter­views, not pri­vate lec­tures, not “go lis­ten to so-and-so.” The rea­son the Church needs a defin­i­tive answer is to pre­vent bish­ops in some places from run­ning wild and doing what­ev­er they want to the poten­tial harm of souls. If some­one in a state of mor­tal sin, not dis­posed to receive the Eucharist, receives the Eucharist any­way, that com­pounds the prob­lem. It is a harm to both the indi­vid­ual who receives and the priest who know­ing­ly dis­trib­utes. A defin­i­tive clar­i­fi­ca­tion would, poten­tial­ly, fore­stall this. …

Only the pope has the author­i­ty to answer such ques­tions. This is why the Church has a pope.

That Pope Fran­cis has refused to answer these ques­tions is a prob­lem. It is tan­ta­mount to the pope say­ing, “I know there is con­fu­sion, I know peo­ple want it cleared up, but too bad. Fig­ure it out your­self.”

Per­haps that is not an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the pope’s think­ing, but that’s what comes across. Con­fu­sion? Pshaw! Con­fu­sion upon your con­fu­sion!

These are not the words of some­one who thinks the pope always makes good deci­sions. Popes have very fre­quent­ly made very bad, very dumb, even very harm­ful deci­sions. Can I men­tion the name John Paul II in con­nec­tion with sex­u­al abusers in the priest­hood?

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Accord­ing to Fr. Kir­by, the pope’s defend­ers also believe

• Every­thing a pope … does is para­mount and can­not be ques­tioned.

Every­thing a pope does? Fr. Kir­by makes it sound as though these “Ultra­mon­tanists” believe a pope can’t sin. That’s non­sense. At least twice I’ve refut­ed the Protes­tant lie that Catholics believe a pope can’t sin. I refut­ed it as far back as Decem­ber 18, 2014, and again on March 2, 2023.

In the lat­ter, I give a long list of sins that popes have com­mit­ted through the ages—from Stephen VI exhum­ing the corpse of his pre­de­ces­sor, to Urban VI hav­ing ene­my car­di­nals tor­tured, to Paul IV cre­at­ing a Jew­ish ghet­to and forc­ing Jew­ish cit­i­zens to wear yel­low hats.

We’ve had very wicked popes, but the cur­rent pope is far from one of them. If Pope Fran­cis ever starts behav­ing in a way that approach­es those noto­ri­ous evils—if he arrests Car­di­nal Burke or Bish­op Strick­land and has them water­board­ed in the Vat­i­can Gardens—let me know and we’ll talk about him being a “bad pope.”

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Accord­ing to Fr. Kir­by, the pope’s defend­ers also believe

• If you don’t believe every­thing the pope teach­es, then you’re not Catholic.

In fact, I have been quite firm in my belief that peo­ple who object to Church teach­ing are dis­si­dent Catholics, but they are still Catholic.

It was Bish­op Strick­land, remember—not some “Ultramontanist”—who said that Nan­cy Pelosi was “not a mem­ber of the Catholic faith” because she is pro-choice. I wrote then that Mrs. Pelosi is Catholic by bap­tism, and bap­tism is indeli­ble:

Nothing—nothing—erases bap­tism. Sin does not erase bap­tism; dis­sent does not erase bap­tism; excom­mu­ni­ca­tion does not erase bap­tism; not even apos­ta­sy eras­es bap­tism. Even Catholics in Hell are still Catholic.

 

[…]

 

Being Catholic is not a mere “label,” as Strick­land pre­tends. It is our iden­ti­ty. It is an indeli­ble spir­i­tu­al char­ac­ter. Like it or not, Nan­cy Pelosi is Catholic. We don’t just get to kick her out or pre­tend she doesn’t belong to us. God nev­er dis­owns his chil­dren, and Catholics don’t get to dis­own their broth­ers and sis­ters.

That is my view.

I find it a tell­tale sign of hypocrisy that the pope’s crit­ics like Bish­op Strick­land want to kick Mrs. Pelosi out of the Church because she dis­sents on abor­tion, only to turn around and wor­ry that “Ultra­mon­tanists” want to kick them out of the Church because they dis­sent on the death penal­ty.

I am con­sis­tent. Bish­op Strick­land does not get to say Nan­cy Pelosi is not Catholic, and I don’t get to say that Ed Fes­er is not Catholic. I have nev­er once thought any such thing.

THERE ARE NO ULTRAMONTANISTS.

There is, to my knowl­edge, zero evi­dence that any Catholic believes any of the things that Fr. Kir­by describes as Ultra­mon­tanism; and so, by his own def­i­n­i­tion, I am forced to con­clude there are no Ultra­mon­tanists.

To be sure, there are a lot of Protes­tants who think that Catholics believe all these things. They will be aid­ed and com­fort­ed to know that Catholics exist who agree with their myths.

If Fr. Kir­by, or any­one else who believes “Ultra­mon­tanism” is a prob­lem, wish­es to iden­ti­fy an actu­al Ultra­mon­tanist, and back that claim up with quo­ta­tions from their pub­lished writ­ings, then I will take a look. But he does not do that in his arti­cle at The Catholic Thing. He names a sin­gle Ultramontanist—and that per­son has been dead for 2000 years. Accord­ing to Fr. Kir­by, Cor­nelius from the book of Acts was an Ultra­mon­tanist because he “fell at [St. Peter’s] feet in rev­er­ence.”

Cor­nelius’ actions went beyond the fil­ial rev­er­ence of the believ­ers (cf. Acts 5:15–16), who saw the chief apos­tle as a reflec­tion of God’s pres­ence and saw the divine pow­er work­ing through him. In Cor­nelius’ case, he sought to cir­cum­vent God and saw Saint Peter him­self as some type of demigod. The apos­tle saw the abuse and was right to cor­rect Cor­nelius. As a man of virtue, Saint Peter would allow no wig­gle room for ultra­mon­tanism.

Frankly, this is luna­cy. Do you know any Catholic who thinks that Pope Fran­cis is a “demigod”? I sure don’t. They live only in Fr. Kir­by’s fer­tile imag­i­na­tion, which is still not fer­tile enough to con­jure forth an exam­ple of any such Catholic, apart from pass­ing anec­dotes like this one:

[W]hen Pope Gre­go­ry XVI first saw a steam loco­mo­tive, he cursed it and called it the “road to hell” (a play on the French chemins de fer). Some then won­dered exact­ly where trains stood in Catholic doc­trine.

Appar­ent­ly the fail­ure of some (pos­si­bly une­d­u­cat­ed) Catholics of the time to under­stand that Gre­go­ry XVI was stat­ing a pri­vate opin­ion in metaphor­i­cal lan­guage illus­trates the dan­gers of Ultra­mon­tanism and why the Church need­ed a very strict def­i­n­i­tion of infal­li­bil­i­ty in Vat­i­can I.

What wor­ries me is that the pub­li­ca­tion date of Fr. Kir­by’s arti­cle is not April 1. He means this seri­ous­ly.

The prob­lem with those who mis­un­der­stood Gre­go­ry XVI is not that they were Ultra­mon­tanists; the prob­lem is, they were sim­ple. There have always been sim­ple peo­ple and always will be. There’s a fun­ny lit­tle guy who pops up on Face­book every now and then like a lat­ter-day Torque­ma­da; he seems to believe that when John Paul II called abor­tion “a holo­caust,” the pope was speak­ing infal­li­bly: Even John Paul II’s metaphors are infal­li­ble. You can’t dis­sent against the metaphor or you’re a heretic.

There’s no evi­dence that such peo­ple prove any­thing oth­er than that the stu­pid will always be with you.

In any case, the rest of Fr. Kir­by’s arti­cle is noth­ing more than a gen­er­al ram­ble with­out any specifics. So I will take my leave of it.

FINAL REFLECTION ON STRAW MAN ARGUMENTS.

On Twit­ter, in response to the same arti­cle, Mike Lewis of Where Peter Is writes: “If the pope’s crit­ics can­not respond to the ACTUAL posi­tions held by his defend­ers, how can we even begin to dia­logue with them?”

Hon­est­ly, I don’t think we can, and that’s a greater dan­ger to the Church than the entire­ly myth­i­cal Ultra­mon­tanism. Back in 2019, Eric Sam­mons wrote an arti­cle at One Peter Five claim­ing that I was one of the Church’s “new pap­o­la­tors.” He defined “pap­o­la­try” in part as the belief that every­thing a pope says is infal­li­ble. In reply, I linked to numer­ous arti­cles prov­ing that I hold no such posi­tion. Mr. Sam­mons was aware of my reply, for he men­tioned it on Twit­ter. But he nev­er print­ed a retraction—and lo, it’s been five years. Mr. Sam­mons was more both­ered that I did­n’t know who he was than that he had mis­rep­re­sent­ed my views.

What I con­clude from this—unless evi­dence to the con­trary is forth­com­ing, and so far it nev­er has been—is that Mr. Sam­mons does not care that he got my views wrong. He only cares about cas­ti­gat­ing a per­ceived ene­my.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I don’t think dia­logue is their goal. You don’t insist on straw men if it is. You don’t engage in calum­ny if it is. You don’t refuse to print retrac­tions if it is.

I actu­al­ly hap­pen to think that there is wide room for debate among Catholics on the top­ic of papal author­i­ty. But you can’t have debate if all you do is mis­rep­re­sent oth­er peo­ple’s actu­al views. The only thing you do have is fac­tion­al­ism and entrench­ment.

And fac­tions are a sin against Church uni­ty. That’s the only thing Fr. Kir­by achieved at The Catholic Thing.