The Testimony of Archbishop Carlo Viganò

In all places, Christ is only one, and on that account we cannot receive him against others or without others. Precisely because it is the whole Christ, the undivided and indivisible Christ, who gives himself in the Eucharist, for that very reason the Eucharist can be celebrated rightly only if it is celebrated with the whole Church. 

—Pope Benedict XVI, ‘A Church of All Times and Places,’ God Is Near Us

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The former Vatican nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Viganò, recently wrote an eleven-page letter on the scandal surrounding ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s history of sexual harassment and abuse. It names names among the Curia of those who covered up for the disgraced prelate, a list embracing even Pope Francis himself, and calls on a multitude of them, including His Holiness, to resign their offices.

Archbishop Viganò is a man of unimpeachable integrity, with full access to the information he claims to be testifying about, whose courageous publication is (as he says in the letter) an act of conscience, resorted to after a long series of failed attempts to get a slothful and corrupt Holy See to put a stop to McCarrick’s behavior. Or: Archbishop Viganò is noticeably partisan, gets certain verifiable facts wrong in his letter, has been implicated in abuse cover-ups of his own (involving John Nienstedt, who at the time was Archbishop of Minneapolis), is clearly hostile to the Pope, and certainly took his sweet time in getting conscientious enough to make this information public if he’s been trying to deal with McCarrick’s behavior since 2006. I've heard both accounts of the man and don't altogether know what to think of him.

But I have read His Excellency’s letter. At first I wasn’t going to, being weary of all the … everything, but I eventually decided that I needed to analyze it for myself, especially if I was going to write about it.

His Holiness specifically declined to reply to it, at least for now, inviting journalists to come to their own conclusions about it. This baffling response has been read as everything from a contemptuous sneer at the anguish of the Church, to a gentle confidence that the letter will collapse under its own distortions. I’ve been swept along in the firestorm that’s succeeded the publication, like everybody else on Catholic social media. Even if the Pope is as guilty as the Viganò letter implies, I wonder whether his response is not the wisest—not for him necessarily, but for people in general and to the situation in general.

But, being a loudmouth, I will make the following points. I will leave aside the allegations that have been made against the archbishop himself, since I don’t understand them very well and they have been disputed in any case.

A number of sources in the letter are, well, hearsay. Gabriel Montalvo and Pietro Sambi, the two apostolic nuncios before Viganò himself, are dead; a number of intermediary sources between Viganò and the assertions he makes are cited—Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume, Cardinal Marc Ouellet—but this is precisely a statement that Archbishop Viganò himself was not an immediate witness to the matters he is discussing: there is every possibility of even quite innocent misunderstandings here. There is a constant refrain of ‘I do not know’ and ‘I believe that,’ ‘it is legitimate to think so’ and ‘as seems certain,’ ‘would anybody believe him’ and ‘as if he had already known.’ It all may be grounds justifying an investigation but it is certainly nothing more than that. Without investigation and the evidence that it turns up, what these phrases indicate is not testimony, but gossip and speculation.

Some quite subjective assertions are also put forward. Archbishop Viganò says of His Holiness Francis that he ‘assailed me in a tone of reproach,’ he ‘asked me in a deceitful way’ about then-Cardinal McCarrick, and so on. These things could be true. Or, without even saying that Viganò is lying, it’s also perfectly possible that he misread the Pope’s intentions. He says in so many words that it was his first time meeting the man; is it possible that he misinterpreted his affect? It is legitimate to think so.

Others have noted certain difficulties with the factual claims made by Viganò, especially with respect to the sanctions allegedly imposed by Pope Benedict XVI on then-Cardinal McCarrick. Archbishop Viganò asserts that they were substantially the same as those that have since been imposed by Pope Francis. However, he doesn’t even profess to have learnt this from the Pope Emeritus, either at the time or since; he is repeating what he says Cardinal Re said to him (or at any rate, what he says he learned ‘through’ Re without further specification). Regardless, not only did McCarrick continue to live and work as though no sanctions had been imposed on him at all—which, to be sure, is not totally out of character for a man who so flagrantly violated his priestly and even his simply human obligations—yet he made multiple visits to Pope Benedict, during the time when the pontiff had allegedly banned him from traveling, and concelebrated Mass at the tomb of St Peter during the time when the Pope had allegedly banned him from public celebration entirely. Pope Emeritus Benedict’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, stated today that His Holiness has not (contrary to some reports) confirmed Viganò’s report in any way and will not publicly comment on his letter.

Moving forward, the archbishop does seem to indulge in several pretty boldly personal attacks. Of Cardinal Cupich, he writes that ‘one cannot fail to notice his ostentatious arrogance’; of Fr James Martin SJ that he is a ‘well-known activist who promotes the LGBT agenda, chosen to corrupt the young people who will soon gather in Dublin’; of Pope Francis, that he is ‘certainly not inspired by sound intentions and … love of the Church’ and that ‘It was only when he was forced … on the basis of media attention, that he took action [regarding McCarrick] to save his image’.

Not once is the possibility noted that His Holiness might have heard accusations but, for one reason or another, not believed them, or at least hesitated to believe them. St John Paul II was familiar with the accusations being leveled at Marcial Maciel Degollado, but he disbelieved them, because he was persuaded of Degollado’s sanctity, and took the accusations to be a smear campaign; is it so impossible that Pope Francis thought the same? And no, it doesn’t follow from this that Pope Francis was right—he clearly wasn’t—but Viganò’s apparent decision not to give him even the benefit of the doubt (despite his repeated ‘I do not know, we do not know, I do not know’) is not merely discourteous; it is unjust. It is not wisdom but rashness to leap to the ugliest explanation of someone’s actions.

Similarly, and although I am disgusted by Cardinal Wuerl’s conduct to date, I have to speak in his defense with respect to one of Viganò’s claims. The latter writes about ‘a morally unacceptable event authorized by the academic authorities of Georgetown University … The Cardinal told me that he knew nothing about it. … I subsequently learned that the event at Georgetown had taken place for seven years. But the Cardinal knew nothing about it!’ Well, for one thing, that is not actually so incredible; I imagine a lot of things take place in every diocese that the ordinary doesn’t follow closely, especially when they take place at institutions that, like Georgetown, are autonomous rather than governed by the Church. But all of that aside, we are never informed what this ‘morally unacceptable event’ was, and therefore cannot judge whether or to what extent Archbishop Viganò’s indignation is justified.

But the thing that struck me the most about this letter was how falsely it had been ‘advertised’ to me. Everything I had read said that it alluded to corroborating sources and gave verifying details. It has plenty of details, certainly, but of corroborating sources, I found little to none. A multitude of memos and personal letters are spoken about, but the archbishop never even says whether there are copies, let alone produces them or says where to find them. Dozens of accusations of corruption are made, but no court or ecclesiastical documents are produced in support of them; many charges of arrogance and lies are made, but no way of testing them is offered—except by bring the whole affair to trial, which is perfectly appropriate, but is not what Viganò has done. I dare say his letter could be used as a starting point for an investigation, but, as pure evidence, it’s lousy. Even if the archbishop is telling the truth as far as he knows it (which is perfectly possible; all of these difficulties could be the Rashomon Effect), would anybody believe that he is not motivated at least in part by a distrust of the Holy Father and a general hostility to gay priests, and that these enmities color his judgment?

None of this demonstrates that Pope Francis is innocent. But it is innocence, not guilt, which is presumed in a court of law. And there is every reason to cross-examine witnesses.

The more I look at this letter, the less confidence I have in it. Increasingly, I think that Pope Francis was right (and I find it odd, by the way, that the order of these sentences has been so frequently mixed up):

Read the document carefully and judge it for yourselves. I will not say one word on this. I think the document speaks for itself, and you have sufficient journalistic capacity to reach your own conclusions. It is an act of trust, when time will pass and you’ll draw the conclusions, maybe I will speak, but I’d like that you do this job in a professional way.

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Thoughts on the Correctio Filialis

But I saw not synne, for I beleve it hath no manner of substance ne no party of being, ne it myght not be knowin, but by the peyne that it is cause of; and thus peyne—it is somethyng, as to my syte, for a tyme, for it purgith and makyth us to knowen our selfe and askyn mercy. For the passion of our Lord is comforte to us agens al this, and so is His blissid will. And for the tender love that our good Lord hath to all that shal be save, He comfortith redyly and swetely, menyng thus: It is sothe that synne is cause of all this peyne, but al shal be wele, and al shall be wele, and all manner of thing shal be wele. These words were seyd full tenderly, shewying no manner of blame to me ne to non that shall be safe. Than it were a gret unkindness to blame or wonder on God for my synne, sythen He blamyth not me for synne. And in these same words I saw a mervelous, hey privitye hid in God, which privity He shall openly make knowen to us in Hevyn, in which knowyng we shal verily see the cause why He suffrid synne to come, in which syte we shall endlesly joyen in our Lord God.1

—Lady Julian of Norwich, Revelation of Love, Thirteenth Shewing

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As of this past Saturday, sixty-two Catholics have signed the Correctio Filialis de Hæresibus Propagatis address to His Holiness Francis, the Bishop of Rome. In English, the document’s title is A Filial Correction Concerning Propagated Heresies. Among others, the signatories include Bishop Fellay, head of the Society of St Pius X or SSPX—a traditionalist group whose founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, incurred excommunication upon himself in 1988 for consecrating four bishops without the lawfully required permission, and in fact against the express wish and personal appeal, of the then Pope, St John Paul II. (It’s no secret that I take an extremely dim view of any and all persons who consider themselves to be literally more Catholic than the Pope.)

Nevertheless there can be valid grounds on which to rebuke even a Pope, especially since the conditions of his infallibility are actually fairly restricted. And such rebuke has precedent. Indeed, we have precedent in the first century, when St Paul took St Peter publicly to task for waffling on the discipline of the Judaizers. So it is worthwhile going through the Filialis and judging it on its merits.2

It’s a respectable enough document. It refrains from personal attacks against any person; it distinguishes with appropriate care between consequence and cause; it explicitly states that it makes no judgment about motives and degrees of culpability; and it does, as the title implies, remain filial, stating and restating the Catholic doctrine of the Holy See and asking for the Pope’s blessing at the conclusion. One of my perennial complaints about traditionalists is their readiness to condemn and to place their understanding of dogma ahead of the professed definer of that dogma, i.e. the Church defined by her communion with the Roman Pontiff, and the Filialis (as far as I can tell) avoids these flaws well, which is refreshing and laudable.

The authors assert that Pope Francis, by a combination of acts, words, and omissions, has in effect though not explicitly promoted seven heretical ideas (the text in the Filialis is in Latin, but the authors have also translated them into English):

1. A justified person has not the strength with God’s grace to carry out the objective demands of the divine law; or, God’s grace does not invariably and of its nature produce conversion from all serious sin.

2. Christians who have obtained a civil divorce and have contract a civil marriage with some other person, who live more uxorio3 with their civil partner, and who remain in this state with full knowledge of the nature of their act and full consent of the will, are not necessarily in a state of mortal sin.

3. A Christian can have full knowledge of a divine law and voluntarily choose to break it in a serious matter, but not be in a state of mortal sin as a result.

4. A person is able, while he obeys a divine prohibition, to sin against God by that very act of obedience.

5. Conscience can rightly judge that sexual acts between persons who have contracted a civil marriage, although one or both of them is sacramentally married to another, can sometimes be morally right or even commanded by God.

6. Moral principles contained in divine revelation and natural law do not include negative prohibitions that absolutely forbid particular kinds of action.

7. Our Lord wills that the Church abandon her perennial discipline of refusing the Eucharist and absolution to the divorced and remarried who do not express contrition for their state of life and a firm purpose of amendment.4

Now, as far as 2, 3, 4, and 5 are concerned, I’m bold to say that His Holiness would indeed deny those propositions. Amoris Lætitia emphasizes, repeatedly, that a revision of disciplinary practice is not a question of altering or concealing the Church’s perennial teaching, but of adapting it to particular circumstances, and of realizing that the best a person can manage may not rise to Christian perfection. The phrasing of 2 and 3 illustrates the distinction nicely: if I’m reading Amoris correctly, it’s precisely the ‘full consent of the will’ question that’s at stake, because human frailty interferes with our freedom even after baptism. That’s part of what venial sin means.

Proposition 4 is slightly ticklish, in that, while obeying a divine prohibition is of course not wrong, a person could be so entrenched in sin in some other way that this obedience could be vitiated. I've met people whose commitment to chastity I didn't doubt, but whose bitter, mean-spirited self-righteousness was so unpleasant that I think they'd have sinned less by taking a lover than by being so continually nasty. Given that the great focus of the encyclical was precisely on adapting doctrine to individuals, I think that matters. And that's the whole point of the 'law of gradualness': people can't do everything at once, and Christ does not send people away because of that.

Turning to the rest, I am not altogether sure what denying proposition 1 is supposed to mean, in the light of saints like Augustine and Paul. I don't mean this as a sarcastic remark; I mean I am genuinely unsure.

For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.5

That is, of course, not the whole story. But it is part of the story, and whenever we speak of grace making us strong to obey, we have to mean it in a way that’s compatible with, well, Scripture. We don’t believe in Calvinist impotence,6 but we don’t believe in Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian mastery, either.7

Similarly, denying propositions 3 and 6 has to be done in a way consistent with Scripture. It’s interesting to me that, when the Pharisees took Jesus to task for not preventing his disciples from picking grain on the Sabbath, rather than pointing out that their rule was kind of made up (a way-past-the-goal-post extension of not working on the Sabbath, since picking grain was like doing the work of a reaper), Our Lord instead appealed to another, more direct transgression of the law:

And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him? How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him? And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.8

An even more shocking example, which I’ve often cited here as one of the hard texts of the Bible, is Elisha’s pardoning Naaman for not only past but future idolatry in II Kings 5. These are not general pretexts to violate the laws regulating sacred things (for which, in differing ways, Uzzah and the eight martyrs of II Maccabees 7 died), nor to worship other gods even in pretense. Still less does this amount to the power to change divine law. The point is that the application of divine law to concrete situations is in the hands of Christ—and, accordingly, of his Vicar.

Which casts its own light on proposition 7. I don’t think that Amoris Lætitia says or implies that absolution and consequent communion should or can be granted to those who aren’t repentant; that would make a nonsense of the former, and a sacrilege of the latter, and would have to operate on the assumption that Amoris be read without the whole prior context of Catholic theology and canon law. But as I pointed out above, full consent can be a subtle question, and it’s no insult to divine grace to say so. Yes, God could dispense maximal grace to everybody; but we know, since only one person was immaculately conceived, that he doesn’t. Presumably he has a reason. Certainly we don’t know what it is. And also certainly we must deal with the flaws and weaknesses of mankind as they—and we—are, not only as we logically could be.

All this being said, I do hope that His Holiness replies to the Filialis. The way the criticisms of Amoris Lætitia, loyal and otherwise, are piling up strains the unity of the Church, and the fundamental task of the Holy See is to guard that unity. Pope Francis may be right, but the authors of the Filialis are correct enough to point out that it doesn’t follow that he is wise, and I admit to some worry: not about his teaching but about how he teaches it, and not because of its effect on those outside the Church (who will take anything and run with it) but about the possible mutiny of those within her (who will also take anything and run with it, even though they have a special reason not to, and far more damage comes of such behavior).

Still, eleven out of twelve apostles fell down on the job when their Master was arrested. And that turned out okay.

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1‘But I did not see sin, for I believe it has no kind of reality nor any part in existence; nor could it be known except by the pain it causes. And this pain—it is something, as I see, for a while, for it purifies and makes us know ourselves and ask for mercy. For the suffering of our Lord is strength for us against all this, which is His blessed will. And, for the tender love that our good Lord has to all that will be saved, He strengthens us readily and sweetly, saying: It is true that sin causes all this pain; but all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well. These words were said very tenderly, showing no kind of blame to me, nor to anyone that will be saved. So it would be a great ingratitude to blame or be shocked at God for my sin, seeing that He does not blame me for sin. And in these same words, ah, I saw an astonishing secret hid in God, a secret that He will openly make known to us in Heaven; by knowing it, we will truly see the cause for which He allowed sin to come, and by seeing that we will rejoice endlessly in our Lord God.’ Personally I prefer the passage in Middle English, and it is of course mostly comprehensible, but there’s just enough semantic drift to deceive the unwary reader, which makes the modern revision worthwhile.

2For those interested, the full text can be found here.

3A technical phrase in Catholic moral theology, meaning ‘in the manner of husband and wife,’ i.e. engaging in sexual relations. This is contrasted with couples who live ‘as brother and sister.’

4I have edited these propositions slightly for length, though I believe I have preserved their meaning intact.

5Romans 7.15-19, 21-23.

6I.e., Catholics don’t believe that even after being baptized, we can do nothing good: we believe that Christ’s life is infused into us, not merely drawn across us. Whether and to what extent Calvinists really believe in such spiritual impotence is a difficult question to answer, even as a former Calvinist; I never felt I got a very consistent account of it.

7Pelagianism was a fifth-century heresy which asserted that divine grace, while helpful to final salvation, was merely helpful, not absolutely necessary, and that original sin was nothing more than a bad example set by our predecessors (as distinct from a flawed moral outfit we’re born with). After some controversy, it was condemned at the Synod of Carthage in 418, and this condemnation was ratified at the ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431. Semi-Pelagianism, while agreeing that divine grace was necessary for Christian growth, asserted that men could prepare themselves for and make the initial act of faith on their own resources. This too was condemned at the Synod of Carthage, and again at the Second Council of Orange in 529.

8Mark 2.25-28.

A Belated Response to Cardinal Burke

The blind rulers of Logres

nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue;

the seals of the saints were broken; the chairs of the Table reeled.

Galahad quickened in the Mercy;

but history began; the Moslem stormed Byzantium;

lost was the glory, lost the power and the kingdom.

Call on the hills to hide us

lest, men said in the City, the lord of charity

ride in the starlight, sole flash of the Emperor’s glory.

—Charles Williams, Taliessin Through Logres, ‘Prelude’

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A friend of mine e-mailed me a piece that made my blood boil, but I think I've calmed down enough to write about it. The piece in question quoted something said by Cardinal Burke in an interview late last year with Catholic World Report:

Cd B: There is a very serious division in the Church which has to be mended because it has to do with, as I said before, fundamental dogmatic and moral teaching. And if it’s not clarified soon, it could develop into a formal schism.

CWR: Some people are saying that the Pope could separate himself from communion with the Church. Can the Pope legitimately be declared in schism or heresy?

Cd B: If a Pope would formally profess heresy he would cease, by that act, to be the Pope. And so, that could happen.

CWR: That’s a scary thought.

Cd B: It is a scary thought, and I hope we won’t be witnessing it any time soon.

Now, at first, being ignorant of canon law, I thought these remarks were implicitly heretical. No, the Pope is not always right in his opinions, even his theological opinions; the charism of infallibility takes effect only when the Pope invokes his full authority as the universal pastor of the Church, and, while he may be expected to be right at other times (given the ordinary graces of the teaching office and the theological training he’ll have received as a priest and a bishop), it isn’t inevitable. But to say that a Pope who, fulfilling the conditions for infallibility,1 taught a heretical doctrine, would thereby cease to be Pope, seemed like a hopelessly circular train of thought, and a direct justification for sedevacantism.2 After all, the ‘point’ of the Vicar of Christ is that he provides an objective locus of unity, which is itself useless unless that unity is anchored in completely trustworthy truth; so if the very locus of unity can’t be trusted to be right, then who judges, and why? And how?

Now, full disclosure, I rather dislike Cardinal Burke, but I’ve no wish to be unfair to him. So I did a little research, and got a better understanding of what it is he was talking about in the first place. The 1917 Code of Canon Law states the following, if I’ve translated it rightly:

Ob tacitam renutiationem ab ipso jure admissam quælibet officia vacant ipso facto et sine ulla declaratione, si clericus:

… A fide catholica defecerit.

By committing a tacit renunciation of the right itself, he vacates any and all offices, by the act itself and without further declaration, if a cleric:

… Publicly abandons the Catholic faith.

The more recent Code of 1983 says substantially the same:

The following are removed from ecclesiastical office by the law itself:

… A person who has publicly defected from the Catholic faith or the communion of the Church.3

Now, it must be pointed out that both of those canons are so worded as to give some latitude in what constitutes public defection from the Church; but if I’ve learnt anything about canon law in my time as a Catholic, which I haven’t, it’s that it is hopelessly confusing and literally everyone has a totally different and fanatically held view of each individual canon. Point is, I’m not going there.

But if I’ve understood the Church’s doctrine of infallibility correctly, and also understood the niceties of canon law correctly,4 then the situation is like this. Once a thesis is declared heretical, then any cleric, including the Pope, who publicly espouses that thesis is ipso facto deprived of his office. Before a thesis has been declared heretical, this does not take effect (as is shown in the cases of Nestorius, who was deposed by the Council of Ephesus, and St Cyprian, whose flawed theology of the sacraments was never afterwards held to invalidate his ordaining clergy); for heresy is primarily a refusal of intellectual obedience to the Church, and if the Church has not yet set something forth for the assent of the faithful, they can hardly be blamed for not assenting to it.5

So, for a Pope to teach a doctrine that has already been condemned would be possible—a horrible scandal, but possible—yet it would not conflict with the dogma of infallibility, unless he invoked his full authority to do it and that invocation of full authority was the occasion of his first publicly espousing the heresy. If that were to happen, then the Catholic doctrine of the papacy (if nothing else) would be conclusively shown to be false. Cardinal Burke isn’t talking about that, I don’t think, but about a Pope teaching heresy without invoking his full authority (which Popes don’t often invoke); this would result in his instantaneously forfeiting his office.

So no, no heresy on Cardinal Burke’s part. However, I do think his assertions about Amoris Lætitia, and the dubia which he and three other Cardinals issued in response to it, are totally meshugah. Quoting from the same interview with His Eminence:

CWR: Why do you think Amoris Lætitia Chapter 8 is so ambiguous?

Cd B: The reason for its ambiguity, it seems to me, is to give latitude to a practice which has never been admitted in the Church, namely the practice of permitting people who are living publicly in grave sin to receive the Sacraments. …

CWR: Some critics say you are implicitly accusing the Pope of heresy.

Cd B: No, that’s not what we have implied at all. We have simply asked him, as the Supreme Pastor of the Church, to clarify these five points that are confused … We are not asking the questions as a merely formal exercise, we’re not asking questions about positive ecclesiastical law, that is, laws that are made by the Church herself. These are questions that have to do with the natural moral law and the fundamental teaching of the Gospel. To be attentive to that teaching is hardly legalism. In fact, it is, as Our Lord Himself taught us, the way of perfection to which we’re called.

I’ve written about this before, when the dubia were first issued, and I stand by the opinion I had at the time: Amoris Lætitia is dealing exactly with the positive law of the Church, and applying the same discipline to the altar rail as it does to the confessional; namely, it’s stating explicitly that objective grave sin, even when it’s public, is not the only thing that determines the state of a person’s soul, and pastoral discernment might determine that the best thing for a given person in that state would be confessing and communing, rather than abstaining from those things. To me, that isn’t all that shocking—not a pastoral concession to be lightly indulged, certainly, but Pope Francis has gone out of his way to say as much, notably in Chapter 8 of Amoris Lætitia.

I earnestly ask that we always recall a teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas: ‘Although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects … The principle will be found to fail, according as we descend further into detail.’ It is true that general rules set forth a good which can never be disregarded or neglected, but in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations. At the same time, precisely for that reason, what is part of a practical discernment in particular circumstances cannot be elevated to the level of a rule. That would not only lead to an intolerable casuistry, but would endanger the very values which must be preserved with special care.

… In no way must the Church desist from proposing the full ideal of marriage, God’s plan in all its grandeur … A lukewarm attitude, any kind of relativism, or an undue reticence in proposing that ideal, would be a lack of fidelity to the Gospel and also of love on the part of the Church for young people themselves. … I understand those who prefer a more rigorous pastoral care which leaves no room for confusion. But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a Church attentive to the good which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness, a Mother who, while clearly expressing her objective teaching, ‘always does what good she can, even if in the process, her shoes get soiled by the mud of the street’. … We put so many conditions on mercy that we empty it of its concrete meaning and real significance. That is the worst way of watering down the Gospel.

I think the Holy Father is perfectly right. Not that he needs my support. But, forgive me, the feel of Cardinal Burke’s remarks—and if he is not shy of saying why he thinks His Holiness was ‘vague,’ I shall not be shy of saying why I feel His Eminence is too particular—is precisely the feel of Pharisaism at its best: intelligent, dutiful, exact, clean … just a little too clean for reality, and just a little too moral for God.

For while we are called to a terrible climax of perfection, that perfection is something more and other than moral virtue, which (I feel) is the only thing that Cardinal Burke’s words suggest he has in mind. Because remember, the Pharisees were not primarily wrong about doctrine or wicked in their conduct; indeed, some, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, became Christians. Their error lay precisely in the fact that they attended to the Torah at the expense of men. But the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Moral virtue itself is important as a means, to be whole as human beings, which is itself a lesser good than the uniting of that human wholeness to the Deity. The perfection to which we are called is the perfection of supernatural Love: the darting, fiery, trans-rational, magnificent thing that we occasionally glimpse in the saints, never in the merely virtuous.

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1The conditions of infallibility are that the Pope (so not somebody else), either by making a formal pronouncement of his own or by convalidating the pronouncement of a council (so not speaking off the cuff or giving a mere opinion), must proclaim a dogma pertaining to faith or morals (so not about astronomy, for example), intending that it should be affirmed by all faithful Catholics (so not only giving judgment on a specific situation). A handy mnemonic is POUT: pontifical, official, universal, theological.

2Sedevacantism, from the Latin sede vacante ‘empty chair,’ is the belief that the current line of Popes are impostors and that the Throne of Peter is in fact unoccupied; most sedevacantists consider Bl Pius XII the last genuine pontiff.

3These are §188.4 in the 1917 Code and §194.1.2 in the 1983. It’s much easier to find the 1917 online in Latin than in English, which is why I was obliged to translate; an English version of the 1983 is on the Vatican’s website. The expression by the law itself means that the effect is immediate, rather than one that has to be enacted by a competent authority as a penalty.

4Of course, canon law, which is not dogma and not the same thing as morals (being, rather, the settled application of morals to Church policy), isn’t infallible. So if canon law were flawed, that wouldn’t be a logical crisis for the Catholic faith, though it would certainly be a practical catastrophe for the Church. A more thorough and expert treatment of the subject can be found here.

5This doesn’t mean that truth doesn’t exist until the Church decrees it, which no sane and self-respecting person could believe. Rather, it means that a person can’t be held responsible to profess a truth of faith until it’s been made clear that it is a truth of faith; it’s substantially the same as what St Paul says in Romans 5-8, that sin is not imputed where there is no law; nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, i.e. the consequences of the realities of sin and error were still there, but before the revealing of the Torah, the responsibility of those who suffered under those realities was a different thing.