Category Archives: Pope

Leo the Great

10 Tuesday Nov 2020

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Today is the feast day of St Pope Leo the Great. As we have had some excellent posts recently on the themes of authority and catholicity, this might be an opportunity to say something about the role of Leo the Great in the process of establishing the place of the Papacy in these matters.

It is easy (which is why it is ao often done) to assume that from the beginning the Papacy based itself on the Petrine verses in St. Matthew’s Gospel. The Eastern Orthodox like to point out that those claims were cast in terms of ‘primacy’; they are correct. But what did that much-disputed word mean to those who used it in the early Church? If we are to understand this, we need to understand something about Roman ideas of inheritance and authority – ideas which were shared across the whole Empire – including Constantinople.

St. Leo the Great made two main contributions to the developing understanding of what ‘primacy’ mean. The first amounts to an assertion that the past existed in the present, not just because he was Peter’s successor, but in the form of a direct and present link between the Apostle and the Pope. As he put it in his sermon on 19 September 443 (Sermon 3.4)

Regard him [Peter] as present in the lowliness of my person. Honour him. In him continues to reside the responsibility for all shepherds, along with the protection of the sheep entrusted to them. His dignity does not fade even in an unworthy heir.’

This is what Leo understood by the saying of the Chalcedonian Fathers: ‘Peter has spoken through Leo. (See here also W. Ullmann, ‘Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy’, Journal of Theological Studies 1960, pp. 26-28).

Under Roman jurisprudence, a person was supposed to be present in his legal representative, even as the deceased was in his heir. The same jurisprudence was present in the eastern empire, so to argue that anyone in Constantinople would have been ignorant of this conception of what it meant for Leo to have said what he had said seems to strain credulity. Indeed, as K. Shatz puts it in Papal Primacy From Its Origins to the Present (1996), Leo made ‘the “church of tradition … into the church of the capital city that extends its laws to the whole world.’ (pp. 33-36 for the argument).

On this understanding the Pope was not simply Peter’s representative but his living successor – Peter spoke through him. Thus, Rome’s judgments and decrees were rendered universal because the Holy Apostle was understood to be present in Leo and in the system of justice he administered. As Leo put in in that same sermon on 19 September 443 (3.3):


Persevering in the fortitude he received, blessed Peter does not relinquish his government of the Church. He was ordained before the others so that, when he is called rock, declared foundation, installed as doorkeeper for the kingdom of heaven, appointed arbiter of binding and loosing (with his definitive judgments retaining forces even in heaven), we might know through the very mysteries of these appellations what sort of fellowship he had with Christ. He now manages the things entrusted to him more completely and effectively. He carries out every aspect of his duties and responsibilities in him and through him whom he has been glorified.

So, if we do anything correctly or judge anything correctly, if we obtain anything at all from the mercy of God through daily supplications, it comes about as the result of his works and merits. In this see his power lives on and his authority reigns supreme. This, dearly beloved, is what the confession has obtained [Matthew 16:18]. Since it was inspired by God the Father in the apostle’s heart, it has risen above all the uncertainties of human thinking and has received the strength of a rock that cannot be shaken by any pounding.

It is Peter’s presence that brings about the Christian universalism that Leo envisoned himself exercising. If we look at his letter to the bishops of Illyricium, 12 January 444, placing them under Anastasius, the bishop of Thessalonica, and telling them that serious disputes must be referred to Rome, we see him exercising that power of which his sermons spoke.

The primacy of Rome was not simply the result of Apostolic succession, or of inhertance from St. Peter, but of this very special relationship which ensured that Peter spoke through the Pope. As Leo says in a sermon given on 29 September: [Sermons 5.4]


our solemnity is not merely the apostolic dignity of the most blessed Peter. He does not cease to preside over his see but unfailingly maintains that fellowship which he has with the eternal Priest. That stability which he received from Christ the rock (by having himself been made ‘rock’) has poured over onto his heirs as well. Whenever there is any show of firmness, it is undoubtedly the shepherd’s fortitude that appears.


Leo’s views are set out in fuller form in a sermon preached on 29 June 443 (Sermon 83.1) in which he makes it clear that since Peter exercises the Lord’s power on His behalf, so too does the Pope exercise the powers of Christ Himself, as Peter speaks through him.

This is not a claim made by any other Bishop. It was made in public by Leo in his sermons and letters, and it was based firmly upon Scripture, patristic testimony and the common law of the Empire. Leo deserves to be called ‘the Great’, not only for what he did in his time as Pope, but also for the rich legacy he left us. His sermons are well worth acquainting yourselves with.

Saturday Jess: inclusivity?

24 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Pope

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I see that Pope Francis is in hot water again: first they didn’t like his encyclical on our common home, the earth; then they did not like his encyclical on us all being brothers (and sisters); and now, depending on which mistranslation (or not) you choose to believe, they don’t like his comments on civil unions, or is it civil coexistence? The “they” in question are the super-Catholics on social media who can, literally answer the rhetorical question: ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ with the answer ‘no’!

Now, I ought to admit I have what the English call ‘form’ on this. A few years back when I admitted that, after some thinking about it, I had decided to attend the wedding of a lesbian friend, there were some here who thought that was a bad thing to have done. For me it was an expression of friendship. It may be a generational thing. I don’t know how many people in their sixties and over have friends who are gay or lesbian, but for people my age (“thirty erm something …”) it’s not uncommon, and Abi happened to have been a friend since childhood. I think this was the sort of thing the Pope may have been talking about. It’s not necessarily about his approving gay marriage, I am sure he doesn’t because Roman Catholic doctrine forbids it, it’s probably more about how we react to our gay and lesbian friends in what the Pope calls ‘civil society.’

It’s a good question, and it’s good that he is raising it. Certainly where I used to work, and where my other half works, there are plenty of people who are gay, and it would be invidious, as the Catholic Church acknowledges, to subject them to any form of discrimination in everyday life. That’s separate from the fraught issue of gay marriage, and whilst gay people may feel offended by the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, they know what that teaching is, and just as with other sexual acts which are not ‘open to life’ they make a choice. I suspect if every man who had ever masturbated, fancied a woman not his wife and had sex without benefit of marriage, or without the intention of being “open to life” ceased going to Church, attendance would fall dramatically, and maybe it’s worth remembering that. The media goes on, as gay people tend to, about homosexuality as though the Church taught only about that, it’s teaching on the theology of the body goes much further and covers much more – but we hear little of that. But I lost sight of the last press report banging on about sex outside marriage or contraception. Motes and beams come to mind for some reason.

If the Pope was talking about how we treat each other in civil society, then his words are surely in line with Roman Catholic teaching? If they were what some hold them to have been, then that’s a matter for those in his Church. We Anglicans, after all, have our own problems on this one.

I totally “get” why some get het up on this theme, but gay people are not going to get back in the closet any time soon, nor are they going away, and nor are they all atheists or agnostic. In the long history of Christianity the length of time that gay and lesbian people have been able to be open about their sexuality without legal consequences is a short one, and the Church tends to have time scales rather more lengthy.

There have always been Christians who have been homosexual, the problem seems to be that some Christians were more comfortable when they were in the closet and are uncomfortable now they are out of it. But for Christians who are homosexual, there is a cross to be carried, and they want to be in the Church for who they are, not what their sexual preference is, and indeed, for many, their sexuality is very much a secondary issue, however much it seems to preoccupy some others.

After all, what are we really going to do in the modern world? Are we going to excluded all remarried and divorced people from the eucharist? Are we going to ostracise the money-lenders? Should we think again about stoning? Those lacking in sin, can, of course, be first to begin to lessen the pile of stones. For the rest of us, well we might just want to think about what Pope Francis is really saying, which seems to be that we are all human, all sinners, and that in terms of civil society, let’s not discriminate against people who want to have sex with people of their own gender. Naturally, since there would be zero clickbait headlines in any of that, the MSM prefer to big it up. I do wish they’d stop … but that, as they say, is another story. Enjoy your Saturday!

The end of history?

06 Tuesday Oct 2020

Posted by in Faith, Politics, Pope

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I am grateful to the kind friends who commented on my last post. I thought, and prayed, hard before writing it and publishing it. Aware, as I am, that so many are suffering at this time, I didn’t want it to seem as though I was claiming anything special for myself; we all carry our crosses.
Neo made the point that he did not like the word ‘sustainability’ because it has so often been used as a political tool. I had meant to add some reference to Pope Francis’ words here. Both in Laudato Si! and in more recent speeches, the Pope has spoken movingly of the need to find a better way of our living in this world.

Our hope, as Christians, may be on the world to come, but we are to bear witness to the hope that is in us in this one. Looking around, hope is in short supply. Our political life here, and in America, seems marked by huge chasms

One of the things which we seem to be losing is the sense that we have to live in this world together. What do I mean? Until recently it was not uncommon for politicians and public figures to disagree profoundly without being overly personal about it. There was an acknowledgment that even if our viewpoints were profoundly different, they were held in good faith. That was basic for the sustainability of our democracy. All elections have losers, and if the reaction of the winners is that the losers deserved to lose because they were morally repugnant, then what incentive is there for the losers to accept their fate? Indeed, what incentive is there for the losers to accept the system itself?

Jesus tells us to render unto Caesar the things that are his; but what if he claims all things? If Caesar insists that in terms of public life we ‘keep our religion to ourselves’ and that it belongs strictly to the ‘private sphere’, who is it gets to define ‘private’? Not having made too good a job of this when the Churches had the upper hand, it may seem as though we Christians should just keep quiet, but what’s the use of not learning from experience?

As the churches withdrew from dominating the political sphere, a variety of alternatives emerged, one of which was representative democracy. At times in the twentieth century it seemed to be on the way out, Fascism, or Communism, seemed the wave of the future. Word War 2 saw off fascism and the Cold War ended with the failure of the Soviet Union. It was, some said, “the end of history” and representative democracy was the wave of the future.

That doesn’t seem to have happened. Instead, as the Pope puts it in his new encyclical:

Today, in many countries, hyperbole, extremism and polarization have become political tools. Employing a strategy of ridicule, suspicion and relentless criticism, in a variety of ways one denies the right of others to exist or to have an opinion. 

That’s not a partisan point. If I look here on Brexit, people with my opinion have tended to insult Brexiteers, ridculing them for what seems to us their failures of understanding. At best, we have failed to understand what drove so many people in that direction; at worst we have written them off as stupid, venal or unscrupulous. In turn, Brexiteers have tended to insult “Remoaners” as elitists who are in the pay of the Eurocrats and have no love for our own country. And so, to quote Pope Francis again, the result is that:

Their share of the truth and their values are rejected and, as a result, the life of society is impoverished and subjected to the hubris of the powerful. Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others. In this craven exchange of charges and counter-charges, debate degenerates into a permanent state of disagreement and confrontation.

If we cannot find a better way of conducting ourselves then representative democracy will whither on the vine. It’s a hard thing to do, it requires us to respect each other and acknowledge that the possession of a majority does not give the ruling party a right to ignore other opinions and to ride roughshod. Yet that’s what is tending to happen. If we do lose it then I suspect we will regret it.

As Christians we owe to Caesar what is his, but we owe to God that sense of being equal in his eyes and unless we acknowledge that in the way we treat each other, then we fail at a fundamentla level.

The Church and ourselves

30 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Pope

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What an astonishing institution the papacy is, that it can bring us so intimately close to the people of the seemingly distant 6th century, & allow us to feel a bond of communion with Rome and Italy in a very different period of agony.

Thus, Tom Holland on Twitter a few days ago.

He is of course correct. There is no other institution which can take us back to the days of the Roman Empire. For Catholics it takes us back even further, to St Peter himself. And if the Church is Eternal and bears the imprint of it Founder, Christ, it also bears the mark of its first leader. In that, it brings it closer to us all.

Is it perfect? No more than we are. Is it, like St Peter, sometimes impulsive, sometimes failing to understand the first time? Well, so are we. Does it mean well but fail to follow through at times? Well, in that it is like us. Nor is this surprising. We are not yet what we shall become through Grace, and whilst the Church is protected from mortal error, it is not, in this world, free from erring, any more than was St Peter. The great error of clericalism was to forget that bishops and priests are also like St Peter too; they can err and stray from the way as can we all. It was the failure to face that fact which allowed the abuse scandal to continue for so long.

Some will object here. We all have in our mind’s eye the Church as it should be; perhaps we also have in the same place an image of how we should be: one day it will be so, through God’s Grace. One reason I can’t join in the arguments about the current Pope is that either the Church is what it is, that is founded by Christ Himself, or it isn’t. If it is then we have His promise that even the Gates of Hell will not prevail against it. If it isn’t, then as St Paul put it in a related context, our faith is in vain. There is no middle position.

I find, and always have found, St Peter a reassuring companion. No organization founded by men would have identified such a fallible figure as its first leader; or if it had, it would never have written about him the way the Gospels do. He is hot-headed. He fails to understand what Jesus is saying, He is vainglorious, promising to stand by Jesus whatever befalls Him, and then denying Him when the heat is on. Peter is all of us. Yet despite that, or maybe because of that, Jesus chose him as the leader of His Church.

Jesus did not write a book of instructions, neither did He have an angel dictate His thoughts to the Evangelists who wrote what we recognise as Holy Scripture. What ‘we’ recognise is what the Church has canonised, and we read it in the light of the teaching of the Church. No merely human institution would have proceeded in such a way, but then, although run by human beings, the Church is not merely a human institution. It is of Divine origin and its purposes of those of God Himself.

It is this knowledge which makes us anxious about what happens in the Church. We have, all of us, our views of which parts of our rich heritage matter, and we wish to see that emphasised; being human, we can do that to the detriment of Christian charity. Blind to the beam in our own eye, how quick we can be to recognise the mote in the eye of others. Anxious about the ark of our Salvation, how quick we can be to complain when others seem, in our eyes, to be endangering it. Being human, how quick we can be to forget Christ’s promise about the Church prevailing even against the Gates of Hell.

It is, in its own way, reassuring to see how like St Peter we all are. It is reassuring because, for all his failings, Christ forgave Him and restored him. We know so little about his later life, but a later story about the end of his life on earth has about it the ring of truth.

The Apochryphal Acts of Peter, finds him fleeing Rome during the Neronian persecution; a perfectly sensible thing to do. Then, at a crossroads,where the Appian Way meets the Via Ardeatina, he meets our risen Lord.

“Quo vadis?” Peter asks, to which Jesus replies:

“Romam vado iterum crucifigi.” [I am going to Rome to be crucified again].

Peter then does what we have come to expect of him by now. He turns back to certain death in solidarity with Jesus. To the end he is an example to us all.

The God who is love, the Son who died that we might be saved, the Church which He founded and which is the barque of St Peter want only one thing; that we should turn from sin, repent, and be renewed in Christ Jesus. If this were easy or simple, Christ need not have died for us. If we were capable of doing this without Grace, we should have no need of the Church, we could rely on our reading of the Bible and our feelings. But like Peter and the Apostles, left to ourselves we should err and stray like the lost sheep we are.

Like Peter, we will go astray, but like him, if we listen to the Lord and pay heed to the Church He founded, then we can see the route to our salvation.

During this time of trial each of us has the opportunity, as this Lent draws to an unprecedented close, to decide “quo vadis?” Let us pray for the discernment to behave as St Peter did.

In this time of trial

28 Saturday Mar 2020

Posted by in Faith, Marian devotion, Pope

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Pope 2

Pope Francis has been a controversial figure, at least in Catholic circles; the general public, happily ignorant of the internal strife, has tended to see him differently. After yesterday’s extraordinary “Urbi et orbi” address, perhaps we can lay aside rancour and strife and agree that in this time of trial he rose to the occasion magnificently? I know I was not the only one who, in the viewing of it, was moved.

It has been a long time since I have contributed to this blog, but these are extraordinary times, and for a while, at least, I shall be here.

The “urbi et orbi” address is usually confined to Christmas and Easter, so the delivery of one at this time was, in itself, extraordinary; the circumstances which prompted it, and in which it was delivered, made it even more so.

The usually crowded St Peter’s square was empty. The rain poured down as it can in Rome. As he stood there, with the rain falling, he used the two resources available to the heir of St Peter – words and symbols: together they made a compelling and moving spectacle.

In the beginning was the Word, and the words of the Pope spoke to our hearts:

“For weeks now it has been evening, thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities; it has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that stops everything as it passes by; we feel it in the air, we notice it in people’s gestures, their glances give them away.”

We have all felt this in our daily lives as the depth of the crisis sinks in. The ordinary niceties of everyday life are suddenly rendered exotic: there is no handshaking, no hugs, no kisses; there is something rather like passing by on the other side. Under the bravado lies an understandable fear; people cope with this in various ways; but it is palpable, all the same.

In these circumstance Mark 4:35-41 were especially apposite. As the deluge continued, almost illustrating the Pope’s words, he reminded us of the frightened Disciples at sea who woke Jesus because they feared for their lives amid a strom of the sea of Gallille:

39 Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace,[a] be still!” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. 40 But He said to them, “Why are you so fearful? How[b] is it that you have no faith?” 41 And they feared exceedingly, and said to one another, “Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him!”

Like the Disciples, we are fearful, but the Pope reminded us of something pertinent. The storm exposes:

 “our vulnerability and uncovers those false and superfluous certainties around which we have constructed our daily schedules” and lays bare “all those attempts to anesthetize ourselves”.

In this crisis, our blithe expectation that we could stay well in a sick world looks like what it is – folly. The Christian knows this. We know that only the saving grace of Christ can heal and save us; but how often, amid the hustle and bustle of daily life do we recall this, even to ourselves? Now, as the Pope said, our common humanity is highlighted; in Christ we are one.

We see this, too, in our new everyday reality. For each example of someone behaving badly, we see examples of people doing the opposite. I much appreciated a call from my own church to see if I was “okay” or “needed anything.” Daily acts of such kindnesses bind us back together; they remind us that God is love, and even as He poured His love out for us, we can imitate that example by helping each other.

Some have said that this pandemic is a judgement on mankind. God alone knows what we deserved and need, and not being Him, I leave such things to Him. The Pope, reminding us that Jesus is calling out to us to follow Him, reminded us that there is a judgment to be made – by us. Now is our “time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not.” Faith begins, he reminded the world, “when we realize we are in need of salvation” and are not self-sufficient.”

If we would turn to Jesus then He will do for us what He did for the Disciples. He will calm our fears: “Because this is God’s strength: turning to the good everything that happens to us, even the bad things. He brings serenity into our storms, because with God life never dies.”

His words moved me close to tears:

Jesus’ cross, said Pope Francis, is the anchor that has saved us, the rudder that has redeemed us, and our hope, because “by His cross we have been healed and embraced so that nothing and no one can separate us from His redeeming love.”

“In the midst of isolation when we are suffering from a lack of tenderness and chances to meet up, and we experience the loss of so many things,” he said, “let us once again listen to the proclamation that saves us: He is risen and is living by our side.”

So we embrace His cross in the hardships of the present time, and make room in our hearts “for the creativity that only the Spirit is capable of inspiring.”

The Pope spoke in the presence of that great symbol of suffering and redemption, the Crucifix; but this was a special crucifix. Usually displayed in the church of San Marcello on the city’s Via del Corso, the Crucifix we all saw dates from the fourteenth century as has survived fire and plague. St Pope John Paul II embraced it in the year 2000 to mark the Day of Forgiveness during that Jubillee year.

The other symbol was the ancient icon of Mary Salus Populi Romani – usually housed in the Basilica of St. Mary Major. In 593 Pope St. Gregory the Great carried the icon in procession to stop a plague. And in 1837 Pope Gregory XVI invoked her to put an end to a cholera epidemic. The Pope’s devotion to this icon is well-known, and this act of Marian devotion culminated in a moving appeal:

“Dear brothers and sisters, from this place that tells of Peter’s rock-solid faith, I would like this evening to entrust all of you to the Lord, through the intercession of Mary, Health of the People and Star of the stormy Sea. From this colonnade that embraces Rome and the whole world, may God’s blessing come down upon you as a consoling embrace. Lord, may you bless the world, give health to our bodies and comfort our hearts. You ask us not to be afraid. Yet our faith is weak and we are fearful. But you, Lord, will not leave us at the mercy of the storm. Tell us again: ‘Do not be afraid’ (Mt 28:5). And we, together with Peter, ‘cast all our anxieties onto you, for you care about us’ (cf. 1Pet 5:7).”

In the shadow of the Cross, and through the Grace of Our Lady, the Pope provided a perfect example of Christian leadership. Let us hear his words, and through those words, let us hear again, the Word of God.

In this time of trial there is no other help; nor is there need for any other. As we are reminded in Romans:

38 For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might,

39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Let us pray for one another, and may the peace and love of Christ be with each one of us now and always.

Pharisees & Popes

25 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Pope

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Bolivian President Evo Morales (L) exchanges gifts with Pope Francis during a meeting at Quemado presidential palace in La Paz on July 8, 2015. Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, arrived in Bolivia on the second leg of a three-nation tour of the continent’s poorest countries, where he has been acclaimed by huge crowds. AFP PHOTO/JUAN CARLOS USNAYO

“Three months ago, in a country, in a city, a mother wanted to baptize her newly born son, but she was married civilly to a divorced man. The priest said, ‘Yes, yes. Baptize the baby. But your husband is divorced, so he cannot be present at the ceremony.’ This is happening today. The Pharisees, or Doctors of the Law, are not people of the past, even today there are many of them. That is why we shepherds need prayers.”

Thus Pope Francis at Santa Marta last October.

As presented in the Gospels, the Pharisees were men who cared so much for the letter of the Law that the Spirit of it passed them by; one feels they were the spiritual predecessors of modern Health & Safety experts. Jesus was clear about the importance of not binding the people with extra burdens. Any priest who acted in the manner described by the Pope, should have recognised that his actions were not going to contribute to family stability, or even, perhaps, to the bringing of the cild to baptism. It is hard to know quite what the priest thought he was achieving.

In such circumstances, the ‘rigorism’ condemned by the Pope, seems to stand rightly condemned.

But then when, as last February, the Pope takes the line that rigorism includes priests who tell divorced people that they can remarry, he seems, to many of us, the ignore what the Lord Jesus says in Mark 10:1-12. To accuse any priest who upholds that teaching as a ‘Pharisee’ seems to take the word to that point of uselessness occupied by a word like ‘fascist;’ anyone of whom one disapproves, falls automatically into that category. It is a word for the polemicist, not the apologist.

No Catholic can cavalierly dismiss the insistence on dogma as pharisaism. The Laws of the Church derive from the teachings of Jesus. Yes, and of course, how easy it would have been to have been able to do as the original Pharisees could, and allow divorce on certain grounds; but Jesus was clear on this. We can, as many churches have, choose to caveat His words, and effectively allow divorce; but try as we might, we cannot pretend we are abiding by His words.

All of this is by way of prelude to Fr Thomas Weinandy’s thought-provoking article in In the National Catholic Register. A member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, Fr Weinandy spoke on the theme of the four marks of the Church: “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.” All of these were, he said, at risk, not least from the confusion created by the Holy See itself.

This is a theme we have considered here recently. There is certainly a place of robust discussion and deep questioning, and even for the sort of contrarianism which can make a seminar or lecture go with a swing, but it seems an unlikely role for the holder of the See of St Peter, not least in an age of instant communication. An septuagenarian who, by his own admission, does not read social media, may, perhaps, have an imperfect understanding of how his words are received by millions who do not spend their time in theological controversy. Fr Weinandy has a better understanding, and that gives him cause for concern.

In spite of all the controversy following Vatican II, there was never any doubt over where Blessed Paul VI, St John Paul II and Benedict XVI stood regarding the Church’s “doctrine, morals, and liturgical practice.” But, Fr Weinandy

“Such is not the case, in many significant ways, within the present pontificate of Pope Francis,” Father Weinandy continued. Praising the Pope for his personal holiness and his concern for the young and the marginalised, he goes on to observe:

that “at times” the Holy Father appears to identify himself “not as the promoter of unity but as the agent of division,” and that his desire to — in the Pope’s own words — “make a mess” in the belief that a greater unifying good will emerge, is a cause for great concern.

By doing nothing to calm the doctrinal division and moral discord within the Church caused by some of his own ambiguity, the Pope, Fr Weinandy suggests, may have transgressed has transgressed the foundational mark of the Church – “her oneness.”

It seems hard to counter Fr Weinandy’s thesis. Does that mark him out as a ‘rigorist’? Are there not, as suggested in the opening paragraphs, times when rigor is necessary? I would suggest that Fr Weinandy’s interesting lecture is read by all with a concern for these things. I would further suggest that attempts to write him off as a Pharisee miss the point. Dogma is dogma. doctrine is doctrine, and if one does not like them, then there are plenty of alternative ecclesial communities which will accommodate those of that point of view.

Relatively speaking

16 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by in Blogging, Faith, Pope

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New pope greets crowds in Vatican City

Catholicism poses a fundamental challenge to the contemporary belief that everything is relative (except, of course, the truth that there is no such thing as truth). Truth is the person of Christ, and what flows from that belief. It is precisely for this reason that there is concern when any occupant of the See of St Peter seems not to be giving a clear statement of Catholic belief; if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound … and all that. As an academic I am always happy to stir up thinking by questioning the assumptions my students have about their subject, but what is appropriate in one arena is not in another. I happen to believe that the University where I work is a force for good in the world, and even if I had doubts about some of the things it does (I don’t), I would not raise the issue in public. It remains a mystery to me why Pope Francis cannot follow that simple rule.

One lesson he, and the rest of us, can learn from the postmodernists is that it is not the authorial voice which is authoritative; it is what is heard, as much as what was meant by the author, which counts. If people keep getting a certain impression about what the Pope is saying, that does not mean they are right, but it does mean that those who advise him might point out that greater clarity would be useful.

Of course, there will always be those whose perspective is such that they will misread what is said. One of the things which has concerned me from the start of this Papacy is that from the moment Francis stepped out onto the balcony, there were those who were criticising him. They might want to tell us that everything that has happened since justifies their doubts, even as those who oppose them would tell us that such a reaction os simple self-confirmation bias. From there we descend into the world of ‘fake news’. As with President Trump, those who have no time for him will read everything he does and says as confirmation that they are right. Those on the Right who take the view that such a reaction simply proves the Left will never give Trump a break, might, if they are critical of Pope Francis, like to ponder the irony that in the eyes of the Pope’s supporters, they are doing what liberals do to Trump. As so it goes on.

In all of this, what of the faithful? As with much of our political discourse, it may be a sobering reminder that most people do not follow what obsesses parts of the blogosphere.

The Pope is infallible only in certain matters and on certain issues. If the impression has gained ground over the last thirty years that almost everything the Pope says is to be taken as Gospel, then that certainly would not be the fault of those who spent so much time criticising St Pope John Paul II. The irony of those people now shifting their position to the one they used to criticise is not lost on some of us; nor is the irony of their opponents changing places with them.

Contrary to what is sometimes implied, the Catholic Church has always had a lively intellectual life. How could it be otherwise in a living Church? In a world with 24/7 media this allows more of us access to that process, but we should remember that just as we would object to anyone impugning our good faith in taking up a position, so others will object if we do the same. Tone influences what is heard. From His Holiness down, all who engage in such discussions would do well to remember that.

Pope Francis

10 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by in Faith, Pope, Prayers

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Pope Francis during his weekly general audience in St. Peter square at the Vatican, Wednesday.23 October 2013

Pope Francis during his weekly general audience in St. Peter square at the Vatican, Wednesday.23 October 2013

Of all the topics to approach on my return, that of the present Pope ought, probably, to be the last one. At the moment his reaction to allegations of child abuse in the case of Bishop Barros have raised real concerns about his grasp of such a crucial issue; it is, his critics and supporters (agreeing for once) quite unlike him. But then what would it mean to ‘be like him’?

His critics focus on his reaction to the issue of re-married people within the Catholic Church, rightly pointing to the ambiguity of his stance. If anything is clear in this mess, it is that Francis himself wants to extend mercy to couples he thinks needs it, finds the traditional teaching of the Church an impediment, and is looking to see whether allowing local bishops to make a decision is a way to achieve that objective. In view of the fact that Catholic teaching was formulated to deal with Catholic marriages, and in view of the the fact that many converts contracted marriages in other denominations (whose orders the Church does not recognise) or civilly, there is a case for considering how to deal with a pastoral situation exacerbated by our Society’s inadequate understanding of what a sacramental marriage is; whether Amoris Laetitia is the optimal way of conducting that discussion seems doubtful. But the blunt response that teaching designed to deal with Catholic sacramental marriages has to apply to all marriages, seems worth questioning.

But now the Pope finds himself embroiled in a sex abuse scandal concerning the Chilean Church. Christopher Altieri, a respected Vatican commentator, sums it up admirably in the Catholic Herald:

At this point, there are four possibilities: Collins  [Marie Collins, a former member of the Pontifical Commission on abuse and Cruz [who alleges he was a victim of Fr Karadima’s abuse, and who wrote an 8 page letter to the Pope which she gave to Cardinal )O’Malley] are both lying about the letter; Cardinal O’Malley gravely misrepresented the diligence with which he discharged his promise to deliver it directly to Pope Francis (though Collins has expressed full confidence in him on several occasions); Pope Francis received the letter and did not read it; Pope Francis received it and read it, only to forget about it.

We hear much from the Pope about the rigidity of clericalism, but in all of this there is something of that. It is the echo of the way in which Churchmen of the Pope’s generation deal with these cases as they first came to light, that is within the Church and without regard to external standards of safeguarding. At the very least the Pope needs to clear this up swiftly. But, as with the famous dubia, His Holiness has been swifter to condemn his critics than to answer them. At some point, smelling of the sheep involves deal with them in a transparent way. One can only hope.

Why hope? There is an almost open sense of something like schadenfreude among some of the long-time critics of the Pope at the latest trials, but that is to ignore that, as ever, there are two sides to the story. To say that the Pope has attracted praise from non-Catholics is a double-edged sword to those Catholics who feel betrayed by what they see as his departures from the straight way; but if the Church speaks only to itself in language it alone understands, it betrays its Great Commission. One might feel the Holy Father goes too far in the other direction, but Mission matters. It would be a great shame if yet another Pontificate were to be mired by the enduring legacy of child abuse.

Satan knows his enemy, and he will always target the One True Church. Since the late 50s, at least, we had had what amounts to a Catholic Culture war between modernisers and those who feared that the baby was being thrown out with the bath-water. The fruits of modernisation are meagre, and whilst the German Church maybe extremely rich in cash, thanks to the Church tax, it is, like most other European Churches, poor in vocations and people in the pews.

The Catholic Church is far from alone in fighting this culture war. In my own former Church, the Anglican Church, with a patrimony which has much to contribute to the Catholic Church, a route has been taken which Catholic modernisers can only envy; but they might like to ask themselves whether the current situation there is one they would wish to imitate?

The Catholic Church is identified with the successor of St Peter, and it is a matter of regret that any Pope should become the object of partisan manoeuvrings; but it was, history suggests ever thus, just not so widely known in an era before mass media.

As Lent approaches, each of us can only do what we are taught to do, which is to pray for the Holy Father, our Archbishops, Bishops and Priests, and the Religious. They are the front line of the war against Satan, and they need the support prayer provides.

 

Reformation Day: Prelude

23 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in Faith, Lutheranism, Marian devotion, Pope

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We’re coming up on the 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation, and like the author of this article, I have many Catholic friends (here and elsewhere). What do I want them to know? In this article from The Federalist, Anna Mussmann does a pretty good job of explaining.

[…]In their eyes, our admiration for Martin Luther is as misguided as holding a big party in honor of one’s divorce. They argue the Reformation ushered in a world where each individual’s personal taste in interpretation became supreme, leading to the moral chaos and postmodernism that riddles the cultural landscape today. At best, they see Protestants as limping along without the spiritual blessings God bestows through their church yet, like anorexics, rejoicing in this near-starvation.

I readily concede that the Reformation brought costs as well as benefits. Yet as a Lutheran, I am profoundly grateful for the sixteenth-century return to Scripture that reminded us of Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, and Solus Christus. I deeply appreciate the Lutheran determination, demonstrated in the “Book of Concord, “to find and cling to biblical truth. That is why I want my Catholic friends to know three things about the event I will be celebrating on October 31.

1. It’s Not about Individualism

Secular historians, like secular journalists writing about Pope Francis, often misunderstand religion. Mainstream history textbooks portray Luther as someone who struck a blow for the individual by rejecting the authority of people who wanted to tell others what to believe. As long as these historians don’t peruse his actual writing, they see Luther as a pretty progressive guy by the standards of 1517. My Catholic friends read this stuff and, quite naturally, pick up the idea that Luther’s teachings led to hyper-individualism.

Yet Luther’s actual theological legacy is not conducive to extreme individualism. He intended to participate in a conversation about reforming errors that were harming the Catholic Church. That is because he wanted to point out where individuals were going wrong by failing to submit themselves to the authority of scripture. […]

It’s true, we are just about as hidebound to what Christians have always believed everywhere as the most traditional Catholic. We don’t do novelty (well some of us do). The Rev Dr Luther was essentially what we would call today a whistleblower. I too have taken Catholic friends to church with me, and especially in the LCMS, they are surprised, if anything we are more liturgical than many Catholic parishes. What Old Luther tried to do was to go back to our roots, in the early church. To be sure there are places we disagree.

The Lutheran Reformation was not about making up new traditions from scratch, but about identifying the parts of the historic liturgy that convey the gospel well. One reason it’s so much fun to talk about philosophy and literature with my Catholic friends is that we share a rich sense of history and see ourselves as taking part in a conversation that has been going on for centuries.

However, we Lutherans disagree with Catholics in a highly significant area. They say church tradition is as reliable a guide as scripture, and that one can safely construct theological dogmas on promises and statements that aren’t found in scripture. Thus they accept concepts like the bodily assumption of Mary as doctrine even though the Bible says nothing on that subject.

Now, Lutherans respect church tradition. The Lutheran reformers frequently referenced the writings of the early church fathers. We, too, are grateful for the history that ties us to the church universal throughout time, and we, too, commemorate the faithful saints who have gone before us (although we don’t ask anyone dead to pray for us—the Bible offers no promise that we will be heard that way).

There is considerably more. Do follow the link above.

I do note that Luther believed in the bodily assumption, but it was something that he took on faith, because, well it isn’t mentioned in scripture. We do, some of us anyway, following Luther’s practice, venerate Our Lady, though.

One of the main points that I always make though is that (so does Anna) without Luther, there is no Trent. He was causal in the reform that the Catholic Church needed badly.

In truth, many Lutherans do as she said, refer to our Reformation as a conservative one, in keeping with the traditional definition, keeping the good and reforming the bad. Some of those that followed had different goals, such as being as not-Catholic as they could be. We (and perhaps the Anglo-Catholics) sit firmly in the middle, Catholic but not Roman, Evangelical but traditional.

Occasionally it’s an uncomfortable spot, as we have neither the Pope nor do we get to make it up as we go. For me, it’s the right spot, as it is for many of us.

Is the Pope Catholic?

27 Wednesday Sep 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Heresies, Lutheranism, Pope

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Time for me to post something here, I reckon, and I think might do. The other day a document called “Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis“ (if your Latin is as bad as mine that translates as “A filial correction concerning the propagation of heresies”) was served on the Pope. What that document does is accuse him of teaching seven heresies. Not the kind of stuff that usually happens in the Catholic Church. In fact, the last time it happened was in 1333 to Pope John XXII. He later recanted his errors. I can’t really say that I see Francis doing that. I’m rather glad I’m not the recipient of that 25-page letter though.

Gene Veith over at Cranach spells out some of it, no doubt some of you know more than I do. He talks about the charges (for lack of a better description) and there is a link to the English translation of the document, I’ve only read the summary, so far. It’s copyrighted so I can’t give you much, but it concerns mostly this,  “It lists the passages of Amoris laetitia in which heretical positions are insinuated or encouraged, and then it lists words, deeds, and omissions of Pope Francis which make it clear beyond reasonable doubt that he wishes Catholics to interpret these passages in a way that is, in fact, heretical.”

[Emphasis in the original]

Lots of this has to do, I gather, with giving communion to the divorced and remarried, and beyond that I’m not prepared to go. We’ve discussed this at great length. Search for COMMUNION FOR THE REMARRIED in the search box above if you don’t already know what most of us think. It always leads to much heat and some hurt feelings, so let’s not overly rehash it still again.

The one count that Dr. Veith and I both found a bit amusing is that they are accusing him of being Lutheran, or at least under Luther’s influence. Part of the reason I find that a bit amusing is that so few Lutherans could actually be convicted of that. Dr. Veith adds this,

I tend to have sympathy with the conservative side of theological controversies, though not on this issue.  The sacrament is given specifically to sinners for the forgiveness of their sins (Matthew 26:28), and is not to be reserved only for those in a state of moral perfection. But that is one of the “Lutheran” teachings that Pope Francis has approximated and which the signers consider heretical.

But I still have sympathy for those who wrote and signed this letter.  Conservative Catholics, almost by definition, revere and obey the papacy.  To come to the conviction that the Pope is teaching heresy must be agonizing.

To believe that the Pope has violated the teachings of the Church Universal, that the papacy is not the protector of orthodoxy as has been assumed but a means of introducing innovative and problematic doctrines into the Church, can be a traumatic realization.  And to take a stand on this conviction shows great integrity and courage.

The signers may consider Luther to be a heretic.  But at least they know now how he felt.

Good thing it’s mostly bishops and academics signing this though. Henry VIII burned a few folks for that very thing, before he married one, of course. It was far from the longest marriage of his.

Indeed it must be a horrendous nightmare for any churchman to come to that feeling about any of his bishops, but the Pope! I don’t envy them, but I too admire them greatly. It must take great courage to put your name on that document.

They (whoever they may be) say that “May you live in interesting times” is a Chinese curse. I suspect we all understand why.