Two New Books: Best Canonical Critique of "Traditionis Custodes" to Date; Clearest Account of the Dogma of Papal Infallibility

The inaccuracies, difficulties of interpretation, and problems of concrete application of Traditionis Custodes and the Responsa ad Dubia have raised many questions among canonists, pastors, and institutes whose proper law binds them to the liturgical forms of the Latin tradition.

“Tradition Devoured by the Magisterium”

This essay appeared at the Spanish site Caminante Wanderer on August 14, under the title “La Tradición devorada por el Magisterio.” This translation has been prepared for Rorate Caeli.—PAK

Tradition Devoured by the Magisterium

(from the Spanish blog Caminante Wanderer)

Cancelling Pope Benedict: Reflections on a recent article and the “hermeneutic of rupture”

Rorate has received this excellent essay by “A Concerned Priest” and is pleased to share it with our readers. It is one of the best analyses to date of the impossible theological premises on which Pope Francis has enacted his campaign against the survival of the traditional rites of the Church.

“The Pope’s Boundedness to Tradition as a Legislative Limit: Replying to Ultramontanist Apologetics”—Full Text of Dr. Kwasniewski’s Denver Lecture

The following lecture was given at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Littleton, Colorado, on July 31, 2021. The video has been posted at YouTube; however, the text below features extensive endnotes that contain much important material. My goal, especially in the wake of Traditionis Custodes, is to refute the all-too-plentiful Catholic apologists who—proof-texting magisterial documents the way their Protestant counterparts proof-text St. Paul—maintain that the pope has absolute executive, legislative, and judicial power over the liturgy. I argue, in contrast, that papal power exists within an historical, ecclesial context that conditions and limits its legitimate exercise, and therefore also grounds the right of the faithful to resist egregious violations of immemorial custom and venerable tradition. In short, this is a defense of the very foundations of the traditionalist movement in the Catholic Church.

The Pope’s Boundedness to Tradition as a Legislative Limit:
Replying to Ultramontanist Apologetics

Peter A. Kwasniewski

 

Catholic apologists have done a lot of great work over the decades. They have refuted many a Protestant, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, or the like oddity, and have helped Jews, Moslems, atheists, agnostics, neo-pagans, and members of all manner of false religions to find Christ and to enter His Church. For this, we are all grateful, and long may their work in this vein continue.

But the same apologists do not perform so well when they turn their sights to intraecclesial affairs, particularly when it comes to explaining the nature, purpose, and limits of papal infallibility. Even there, the apologists do well when they are justifying wonderful things like Humanae Vitae, for its teaching is in accord with natural and divine law and the tradition of the Church, and the pope’s job is to uphold all that, regardless of pressures against it. Yet when popes make spectacularly bad decisions or teach that which is ambiguous or male sonans (evil-sounding) or materially erroneous, these apologists are caught flat-footed and empty-handed. They are tempted either to ignore the problem as an embarrassing exception or to appeal bravely to an unthinking ultramontanism, as if sheer bluster will somehow paper it over.

We have seen a great deal of the latter problem ever since the release of the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes. Most commentators, it is true, fall into two more obvious categories: the progressives who gloat shamelessly over the defeat of the nasty trads, and nearly everyone else who sees Pope Francis’s move as unwarranted, malicious, inflammatory, bellicose, unworkable, and—the worst sin after Vatican II—thoroughly unpastoral. But there is a coetus of self-styled apologists who have rushed to make podcasts defending the pope’s supposed right to create, abolish, and modify liturgy nearly any way he pleases.

This lecture will not be an extensive critique of Traditionis Custodes—that can be found in many other places at this point.[1] Rather, I want to explain how we reached a point of such absurdity that a Roman Pontiff can dare, with the stroke of a pen, to consign to the margins and to eventual oblivion an unbroken liturgical patrimony of millennia and to claim that the new rites created by committee under Paul VI are the “only” (unica) lex orandi or law of prayer of the Catholic Church—and the even greater absurdity that there are Catholic apologists defending him and his purported “right” to do so.

150th Anniversary of the Dogmatic Constitution PASTOR ÆTERNUS (Vatican I): Petrine Primacy, Infallibility, and the Strict Limits of Papal Authority

Exactly 150 years ago, on July 18, 1870, as war and social convulsion were about to ravage France (and as the flight of the French forces in the Papal States to defend their country was about to allow for the Fall of Rome to the armies allied with the House of Savoy), the Fathers of the Vatican Council, under the guidance of Pope Pius IX, approved the last major dogmatic Conciliar document in the history of the Catholic Church -- the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, known by its first words "Pastor aeternus".

This major document concentrated on four aspects of the life of the Church of Rome as Mother and Teacher of the Universal Church: the Apostolic Primacy conferred by Our Lord Jesus Christ on Saint Peter -- a primacy above the other Apostles; the perpetuity of this same Petrine Primacy in the Bishops of Rome, the final See of the Prince of the Apostles; the meaning and latitude of the primatial power of the Apostolic See; and last, but certainly not least, the dogmatic definition of the limits of the infallible teaching authority of the papal Magisterium.

Properly read, Pastor aeternus is not the charter of an absolute monarch, but quite the opposite -- it is the reminder of the very limited teaching authority of the Pope. As the Constitution says in one of its central passages,

For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.

Celebrating a great anniversary of a great document, we post below the abridged version including its most important parts.

***

First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ

"PASTOR ÆTERNUS"

Pius, bishop, servant of the servants of God, with the approval of the sacred council, for an everlasting record.

The Doctrine of Papal Infallibility

In the following lecture Prof. John Rao lectures on Vatican I, and gives a lucid explanation of the true meaning of papal infallibility.

Majestic Lecture by Prof. Roberto de Mattei: "Resistance and Fidelity to the Church in times of crisis"

"Resistance and Fidelity to the Church in times of crisis"

Prof. Roberto de Mattei

From a conference given in Florence - October 2, 2016

            

            1.The infallibility and indefectibility of the Church

The Church has been through the gravest crises in the course of Her history: external persecutions like those which characterized the first three centuries of Her life and since then have always accompanied Her; internal crises, such as Arianism in the fourth century and the Great Western Schism. However, the process of the Church’s “self-demolition” “struck by those who belong to Her” which Paul VI spoke of as far back as 1968[1], appears to be a crisis without precedent because of the extent and depth of it.

We say this in a spirit of deep love for the Papacy, rejecting every form of anti-infallibility, Gallicanism and conciliarism; in a word, every error that would diminish the role and mission of the Papacy. We profess with the entire Church, that there is no higher authority on earth than that of the Pope, since there is no mission or office more elevated than his. Jesus Christ, in the person of Peter and his successors conferred to the Roman Pontiff, the mission to be the visible head of the Church and His Vicar[2]. The dogmatic constitution Pastor aeternus of the First Vatican Council defined the dogmas of the Roman Primacy and papal infallibility[3]. The first asserts that the Pope has supreme power of jurisdiction, both ordinary and immediate, over individual Churches, individual pastors and all the faithful. The second dogma teaches that the Pope is infallible when he speaks “ex cathedra”, which is to say when in his function as Supreme Pastor, he defines that a doctrine in matters of faith or morals must be held by the entire Church.

The authority of the Pope has precise limits however, which cannot be ignored. Javier Hervada in his well-known manual on Constitutional Canon Law, writes: “The power of the pope is not unlimited: it is circumscribed within determined limits. The limits may regard the validity or lawfulness in his exercise of power. The limits regarding validity are given as: a) of the natural law: b) of the positive Divine law; c) of the nature and the ends of the Church”[4].

Ten tips on how to survive a calamitous Pope and remain Catholic

Italy, France, Spain... Our readers must have noticed we are quite fond of bringing you news and opinion pieces by Catholic writers from these very ancient Catholic lands, and there is a very important reason for it.

The 2014 Synod and Vatican I, analysis by Roberto de Mattei - Infallibility not Unlimited and Arbitrary Power - All the baptized have right to defend their faith

The 2014 Synod and Vatican I

by Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

November 5, 2014

The historical phase that has opened after the Synod of 2014 demands, on the part of Catholics, not only the willingness to debate and fight, but also an attitude of careful reflection and study on the new problems which are up for discussion. The first of these problems is the relationship of the faithful with a [Church] authority which appears to be failing in its duty. Cardinal Burke in an interview to “Vida Nueva” on the 30th of October stated that: “there is a strong sense that the Church is like a ship without a rudder”. It’s a powerful image but it perfectly corresponds to the general picture.

"Dear Father": Answers for Troubled TimesII - In these times, can I be critical or skeptical of hierarchy pronouncements?

"Dear Father,