Guest-Post: George Weigel and the SSPX

Rorate Caeli ^ | April 28, 2017 | P.J. Smith

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George Weigel, in his most recent column, has decided that the Holy See should not offer the Society of St. Pius X a personal prelature. It appears from statements by Archbishop Guido Pozzo, secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, and Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the Society, that a personal prelature is the current offer. More than that, it seems that the Holy See is not insisting on the Society’s submission to every jot and tittle of every document of the Second Vatican Council. This is wonderful news. Many informed commentators noted that the 2012 negotiations between Rome and the Society were torpedoed at the last moment by the sudden insistence of the Roman authorities on such submission. Archbishop Pozzo has conceded in public interviews that there are levels of authority in the documents of that “pastoral council,” and that total assent may not be necessary. And Weigel is positively hysterical at the prospect.

Of course, one recognizes at the outset that Weigel literally wishes to be more Catholic than the Pope. Pope Francis’s course of dealing with the Society has been marked by his recognition that the Society of St. Pius X is wholly Catholic and entitled to canonical standing. He has, more or less on his own initiative, conferred upon priests of the Society the faculty to hear confessions. He has also provided a process by which Society priests may lawfully witness marriages. While the Society has argued that it has had supplied jurisdiction for these acts, the fact remains that there are now few differences between priests of the Society and ordinary parish priests. (Except, all too often, the Society priests are better formed and more willing to do the gritty work of a pastor.) All of this the Supreme Pontiff has decreed, but George Weigel knows better.

Weigel’s entire argument is this: the SSPX “dissents” from the Church’s teaching on religious liberty, as that teaching is set forth in the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis humanae. He asserts that the Society’s supposed dissent is based upon French politics after the Revolution rather than “a serious account of the history of Catholic church-state doctrine.” Yet his allegation is wholly peremptory and wholly unserious. We have Weigel’s ipse dixit and that is it. It is easier, in fact, to rehearse what Weigel does not talk about in his haste to declare the Society dissenters. For example, Weigel does not discuss Archbishop Lefebvre’s dubia regarding Dignitatis humanae, submitted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which did not receive an authoritative, point-by-point response, but only a vague general reply by an anonymous peritus. Weigel does not mention Mirari vos, Quanta cura, Immortale Dei, Libertas praestantissimum, or any of the other papal pronouncements on religious liberty before 1965. And Weigel certainly does not show any signs of having considered the more recent work on Dignitatis humanae by scholars such as Prof. Thomas Pink.

It is, of course, by no means clear that the Society actually dissents from or rejects Church teaching. Given the text and history of Dignitatis humanae itself, it is not clear what Dignitatis humanae actually means, and, therefore, it is impossible to say what dissent looks like. Even if the Declaration were wholly clear, that would not resolve the question. In 2014, the International Theological Commission issued a very lengthy document, “Sensus fidei in the life of the Church,” which discussed the sensus fidei, “a sort of spiritual instinct that enables the believer to judge spontaneously whether a particular teaching or practice is or is not in conformity with the Gospel and with apostolic faith” (para. 49). The document observes that, “[a]lerted by their sensus fidei, individual believers may deny assent even to the teaching of legitimate pastors if they do not recognise in that teaching the voice of Christ, the Good Shepherd” (para. 63). Given the sharp distinctions between Dignitatis humanae and the teachings of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and other good and holy popes, it seems eminently reasonable to discuss the Society’s position in terms of the reaction of an authentic sensus fidei. With all of this in mind, one must ask whether it is George Weigel who is staking out a position for largely political reasons.

Things go from bad to worse when Weigel explains why it is that the Society’s supposed dissent is such a problem. To recognize the Society and give it a personal prelature would, Weigel frets, embolden liberal dissenters. Because the Society identifies inconsistencies between Dignitatis humanae and the Church’s traditional teachings—set forth in all those dusty encyclicals Weigel ignores—modernists would articulate a case for “faithful dissent” from Humanae vitae and Ordinatio sacerdotalis. Weigel’s claim is as bizarre as it is ridiculous. For one thing, modernists have had no trouble asserting for themselves a right to faithful dissent, even during the years when simply everyone thought the Society was “schismatic.” St. Pius X warned us in Pascendi that dissent and tension are among the most favored methods of the modernists. That great pope has been proved right again and again, notwithstanding the question of the Society that bears his name. There is no reason to believe that granting the Society the juridical recognition that is its right would embolden modernists, if only because it is impossible to believe, in 2017, that the modernists could be bolder.

And Weigel’s argument is beyond ridiculous insofar as he attempts to say that the Society of St. Pius X’s ongoing questions about Dignitatis humanae (among other things) are equivalent to the modernists’ heresies. Consider it like this: the priests of the Society observe that Dignitatis humanae cannot be reconciled easily, if at all, with the teachings of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII and other good and holy popes. They, following their sensus fidei, appeal to the universal magisterium, including the teachings of those popes, and ask for clarification from the Roman authorities. After long decades of hostility and silence from the Roman authorities, Archbishop Pozzo stakes out a position that would go some distance toward clarifying the situation, and additional clarification could take place through careful study. To put this process—a process reflecting true submission to the universal magisterium of the Church—on the same level as the modernists’ clamor for priestesses and blessings for sodomitical unions beggars belief, but it appears that Weigel wants to do just that.

Weigel never really comes to the point. He suggests that giving the Society its long-deserved juridical recognition would hurt ecumenical outreach and the New Evangelization. Weigel apparently does not know that the New Evangelization has been a dead letter since March 13, 2013, when Pope Francis’s election was announced. And it is impossible to imagine how ecumenical outreach could be hurt by the Society when Pope Francis makes extravagant ecumenical gestures at every turn. The only possible explanation for Weigel’s incoherent argument is that he has committed himself to the view that the Second Vatican Council is the most significant moment in the life of the Church since Pentecost. To be sure, a faction in the Church believes just that. And they are a faction with considerable power. Denying the Society juridical recognition—despite its evident Catholicism and the indefatigable pastoral work of its good and holy priests—would, therefore, in Weigel’s words, “reinforce the notion that doctrine is not about truth, but about power.”

P.J. Smith blogs at Semiduplex 

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The only possible explanation for Weigel’s incoherent argument is that he has committed himself to the view that the Second Vatican Council is the most significant moment in the life of the Church since Pentecost. To be sure, a faction in the Church believes just that. And they are a faction with considerable power.

[CharlesOConnell]

Observe the cardinal virtue of temperance. Many of the most seemingly zealous partisans on both left and right are not within the band of temperance. At a typical Trad parish, it takes a generation for large families to start to produce those temperant people. You see very many young people coming up who are obviously very normal. It took a generation of often intemperate people to produce them. Give it time.

[ebb tide]

Temperance in deference to Truth is not a virtue.

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Fortitude is the only one of the cardinal virtues that is also a gift of the Holy Spirit, allowing us to rise above our natural fears in defense of the Christian faith.

[utahagen]

“Temperance in deference to Truth is not a virtue.”

The problem is that emotion can get in the way of persuading people — even people who want to be persuaded. I am deeply sympathetic to the SSPX; I thought George Weigel’s article was thoughtful and made good points; I don't know what the answer is. The tone of the article here threw me off because it seemed to go after Weigel personally. Also, this article seems to give excessive credit to Pope Francis, which is tough to swallow these days. If, for argument's sake, Weigel is off base about the SPPX, I'd's still bet his intentions are purer than this Pope's.

[ebb tide]

It is Wiegel who has shown intemperance. Who made him Pope? And the article sources prior popes and Pozzo, not just Francis.

[ebb tide]

Now, according to Archbishop Guido Pozzo, a senior Vatican official involved in discussions with the Lefebvrists, it may be possible to heal the breach Archbishop Lefebvre created by conceding that the teachings of Vatican II do not all have the same doctrinal weight. On this scenario, the Lefebvrists would be given a pass on the Council’s affirmation of religious freedom, ecumenism, and interreligious dialogue, and would return to full communion through the mechanism of a “personal prelature,” the same structure that governs Opus Dei.This is a very, very bad idea.

Above, Weigel personally attacks Archibishop Pozzo.

[utahagen]

It was not a personal attack. He said his idea was a bad one.

[Bridesheadfan]

Weigel is wrapped up in the idea that VII and its reforms were a great renewal for the Church, although the evidence shows the exact opposite. And such charity, to want to keep brothers in Christ outside the Church’s visible structures.

I know this isn’t a Christian thing to say, but I hope he chokes on a filet of fish sandwich(it being Friday and all).

[iowamark]

I think that the real issue with the SSPX is that they operate as a parallel Church, without any connection to, or approval from, the diocesan Bishop. This is in contrast to the personal prelature Opus Dei. The new marriage procedure may be an attempt to integrate the SSPX with their bishops.

[NobleFree]

“Weigel certainly does not show any signs of having considered the more recent work on Dignitatis humanae by scholars such as Prof. Thomas Pink.”

I wonder if the author - who sees “the sharp distinctions between Dignitatis humanae and the teachings of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and other good and holy popes” - has considered the work of Prof. Pink’s, who sees no such distinctions: “Was Dignitatis Humanae a contradiction of previous doctrine? Not so, in fact. [...] According to Leo XIII, the state should indeed protect Catholicism through law—but only as the Church’s agent, acting on her authority. This duty, an obligation on Christian rulers to the Church based on their baptism, always presupposed that the state was indeed Christian—that it existed, at least in public aspiration, as a community of the baptized. Only if the state had this publicly Christian identity and allegiance would its rulers be morally in a position to lend the state’s coercive power to support the Church. But in the modern world states no longer have this religious identity, and are secular in make-up and aspiration. That means they can no longer act as agents of the Church. But then they must lack all authority in matters of religion, even a borrowed authority delegated to them from the Church. [...] Once it is secularized and detached from acting on the authority of the Church, the state entirely lacks competent authority to coerce us in matters of religion; and so our human dignity gives us a right not to be coerced religiously by the state—exactly as Dignitatis Humanae says.” - https://www.religiousfreedominstitute.org/cornerstone/2016/7/26/xii6em5xd7y1v70gfkc1me7fu1z7wa

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If that’s your opinion, please cite your perceived personal attacks on Weigel.

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There are several bishops who allow the SSPX to operate churches and dispense sacraments in their dioceses.

[utahagen]

I referred to the tone of the article.

[NobleFree]

To attack a person's ideas - whatever the attacker's "tone" - is not to attack the person.

[ebb tide]

What about Weigel’s tone?

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

[piusv]

There is no reason to believe that granting the Society the juridical recognition that is its right would embolden modernists, if only because it is impossible to believe, in 2017, that the modernists could be bolder.

Impossible to believe that they could be bolder?

I suspect there were quite a few who would have said something similar before Francis was elected.

[piusv]

I agree with Weigel that this is a very, very bad idea....but for very, very different reasons.

[ebb tide]

What do you recommend the SSPX do? Go sedevacantist?

[piusv]

Rome must convert first. Period. Otherwise, the SSPX will be in danger of getting gobbled up by it.