Please Call Me a Pascendist

My commentary on Mr. Stephen M. Heiner's recent interview with Bishop Richard N. Williamson, SSPX. The piece below first appeared on Mr. Heiner's blog, True Restoration.

Bhp Williamson: "With me, it's all or nothing,
is it all or nothing with you?
It cain't be in between,
It cain't be now and then,
No half and half romance will do."

Mr Heiner: So, my lord, it all comes down to the flighty girl in "Oklahoma!"?

Yes, indeed, is the answer given by Bishop Richard N. Williamson to Mr. Stephen Heiner's question. I think that these verses provide a fun (and perhaps ironic) starting point from which to examine some interesting elements in Mr. Heiner's interview with Bishop Williamson. For this was an aspect of the interview which particularly struck me: Bishop Williamson's steadfast unwillingness to compromise.

The Society of St. Pius X has been, since the first rumblings of conflict, distinguished by its unwillingness to compromise, about the Mass, about the doctrine of the Church, about the episcopal consecrations. This lack of compromise has both fired its supporters and inflamed the ire of those who either wish it destroyed or wish that it had been long ago regularized.

But of course, one cannot compromise when it comes to the doctrines of the Church and the truths of the Faith; all whom we need be concerned to speak of here should be able to agree upon this point. Yet some bishops of the Society have, in recent interviews, indicated their belief that someone as erudite as well as gifted with the graces of office as Pope Benedict XVI has missed this point. For instance, Bishop Williamson says in the present interview: "Benedict XVI believes that Catholic 'truth' can evolve."

The evidence for this statement is that Benedict refers to "very serious statements of Catholic truth that cannot change, like the Syllabus or Pascendi" as merely "substantial anchorages" in Church doctrine. Bishop Williamson also refers to Cardinal Ratzinger's seemingly uncomprehending stare when a bishop of the Society spoke of restoring the Social Reign of Christ the King.

Now my response to Bishop Williamson's criticisms of Pope Benedict (and, implicitly, many of the leading intellectual and theological lights of the Church today) is twofold. First of all, it is the Pope, the Holy Father, who has the authority to interpret, authoritatively, the Holy Scriptures and the documents of the Church. At the same time, if our religion is to be at all reasonable - and it surely is - the Pope cannot call what is black white. As far as I understand his position, Bishop Williamson is saying that Pope Benedict is calling something which is obviously black, white; e.g., Leo XIII's teaching, throughout many brilliant encyclicals, that the best condition of the State is one in which the Church is not treated as one religion among many, but as the true Faith.

As a layman and as one void of theological knowledge but of moderate intelligence, I can read the encyclicals of Leo XIII and understand their message. But I can little judge whether these are teachings for all time, or merely the prudential judgments of the Supreme Pontiff, to be followed until one of greater wisdom succeeds to the throne or the conditions of the time change so as to require new judgments. Personally, I don't see, for example, how Leo XIII's words can be ignored as though they were locked in the past, in a different world. As with many of the great teaching encyclicals from the 19th and early 20th centuries, they seem only to have become more appropriate with the passage of time.

And here I do enter an area wherein I have a little expertise, philosophy. It seems that in these matters we ought to find some happy medium between skepticism and dogmatic insistence upon our own opinion. In the latter extreme is the danger of protestantism, the departure from the Faith which occurs when we insist upon our private judgment. At the other extreme, however, we would place so little confidence in our ability to understand the import of the words on the page in front of us that we believe whatever "Rome" tells us, even if it is Paul VI proclaiming the glories of the New Mass, even if it is John Paul II lauding, for the one hundredth time, this glorious springtime of the Church. Where do we draw the line between mistrust of our own judgment and insistence upon the powers of the rational faculty which God has planted in each one of us?

I don't know the answer to these questions, but I think that herein lies the key to understanding the intransigence of Bishop Williamson. Everyone of us, inasmuch as we are Catholics, ought to be wildly cheering Bishop Williamson and the SSPX - if they are standing firm in matters where the case, to any rational human being, ought to be obvious. But if Benedict is within his right to reverse the judgment of Leo XIII, and Benedict, if not those before him, certainly has reversed this judgment, for he advocates a secular state with a public square open to religion, then we ought to regard the Society with aversion for insisting upon their private judgment.

"With me it's all or nothing
is it all or nothing with you?"

It must be all with each one of us Catholics, but the "all" being the whole of the Faith, and not the accretions which have come in or remained, as it were, only by my own say-so. This much is obvious, I think, and to be quite fair, it is obvious to both His Lordship and to our Most Holy Lord. But - and this is my second response to Williamson's criticisms of Benedict - I simply do not believe that Joseph Ratzinger, one of the intellectual lights of today's world, is deaf to this point. I don't hesitate to believe that Ratzinger stared dumbly when the Social Reign of Christ the King was mentioned, but this dumb stare could well be for the reason I've explained above, namely that Ratzinger considered such a position prudential - then, of precisely the kind that can truly "evolve" (to use that hated word).

In the Holy Father's recent address at the University of Regensburg, the one which lashed the Mohammedan horde into a frenzy, the primary point was the power of human reason and the nature of God. God is the logos, rational, reasonable, and very much accessible to our intellect, though we must also remember His transcendence above our finite nature. Truth, and especially theological truth, is the great object of the human mind, in God above all else, but in the mundane sciences besides. This truth does not change! Indeed, it is not the nature of truth to change; it is eternal, and, as Bishop Williamson says in this interview, "all truth belongs to Catholics, meaning that Catholics can profit by truth wherever they find it."

And so this was my reaction to Williamson's words about Benedict and the purported evolution of Catholic truth: I cannot believe it of Benedict. Pope Benedict may be wrong in his handling of many issues, he may be acting too slowly and may be too insistent upon consensus and the support of his cardinals, but he is not an idiot. Granted, he was educated and taught in a modern university, but we cannot forget that it was he who for years lamented Europe's ills, and diagnosed the disease of its mind: John Paul may have pointed to a failure of hope, but Ratzinger is pointing to a failure of intellectual courage, of confidence in reason. He is the last person who would indulge in such sloppy nonsense as the evolution of truth, Catholic or otherwise.

I am not judging between Benedict and Williamson; I am only insisting that if Benedict has erred, it is because he has mistaken a definitive, timeless judgment or judgments for prudential, circumstance-dependent judgments. Let us locate the controversy here, and let us think seriously about the confidence we are placing in private judgment.


Photo credit: Mr. Stephen L. M. Heiner, True Restoration



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