Catholic Confusion at the Very Top (Part II)

(Reprinted with permission from NEW OXFORD REVIEW, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706, U.S.A.)

One of the most pernicious errors that plagues the Catholic Church today is creeping universalism. While few will come out and baldly state that no one is damned to hell, the door is left open to that conclusion by writers such as Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved?". We have seen this played out in the pages of the NEW OXFORD REVIEW (Jan. 2001, July.-Aug. 2001, Oct. 2001), as the universalist tendencies of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus have come under scrutiny. And I have encountered any number of relatively prominent Catholic apologists who argue vociferously (although privately) in favor of the veiw that we cannot know for certain, based on Scripture and Tradition, that there are any human souls in Hell.

One finds, unfortunately, that support for this new-fangled notion be found at the very top of the Church's hierarchy. In a general audience of July 28, 1999, the Holy Fater stunned many faithful Catholics when he stated that: "Eternal damnation remains a real possibility, but we are not granted, without special divine revelation, the knowledge of whether or which human beings are effectively involved in it" (emphasis mine). This appears in the official version of the Pope's talks, Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, but without the doctrinally diffucult wording "whether" (se e in Italian). Presumably someone in the Vatican noticed that the words, as they were actually spoken, were problematic and intervened to make sure the official version conforms unambiguously to Chuch teaching. Still, it is the publicly spoken version that has received so much attention. Thus the Holy Father's spoken words appear to deny that the sources of public revelation (i.e., Scripture and Tradition) are sufficient to tell us whether any human souls at all are damned. And yet our Lord says quite plainly that many will fail to attain eternal salvation: "Enter through the narrow gate; for the fate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it" (Mt. 7:13-14; emphasis mine; also see: Mt. 13: 24-30, 36-51; 22:1-14; 25:14; Lk. 10:13-15; 13:23-24; Jude 7). And the entire Catholic Tradition has affirmed that we can indeed be certain that there are human souls damned, although we cannot know specifically which individuals are so affected. Numerous magisterial texts leave no room for a Hell empty of human souls. I will quote but two: "And so Our Predecessor, Benedict XIV, had just cause to write: "We declare that a great number of those who are condemned to eternal punishment suffer that everlasting calamity because of ignorance of those mysteries of faith which must be known and believed in order to numbered among the elect'" (Pope Pius X, Acerbo Nimis #3, citing Benedict XIV, Instit., 27:18). (What is being referred to here is vincible ignorance, not invincible ignorance.) Also, the current Catechism states regarding Christ's descent into Hell on Holy Saturday: "Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, 'hell' - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the redeemer; which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus showes through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into 'Abraham's bosom'.... Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him" (#633). This clearly indicates that there are human souls in Hell who will never escape.

Creeping univeralism has very troubling practical results. Most notably, it dampens missionary zeal and Catholic evangelism. The driving motive behind all the great missionary efforts in the history of the Catholic Church has been the understanding that, without Christ and His Church, human beings are in varying degrees in a disadvantageous situation regarding their salvation. The imperative to go and preach the Gospel, even in the face of torture and death, has been driven by the conviction that multitudes are in danger of eternal damnation if they are not reached. But if everybody will be saved or if Catholics may entertain true doubts whether anybody at all will end up in Hell, then a key motivation for missionary work and Catholic evangelism is subverted.

Agnosticism about the reality of human damnation also stands in large measure behind the collapse of ecclesiastical discipline that plagues the Catholic Church. If a shepherd in the Church truly belived that the souls under his care are in jeopardy of hellfire on account of heresy, sacrilege, and mortal sin (as is taught by innumerable Fathers, Doctors, and popes) then he would act decisively to suppress these things and punish the individuals responsible for spreading them, even to the point of exclusing them from the body of the Church. This is what the entire tradition of the Church (and even her present canon law [see canon 915]) tells him to do.

Could it be that our Holy Father does not exercise his disciplinary authority because he is not convinced that we can know whether there is anyone in Hell? Is it not possible that certains theological conclusions and practical outcomes logically go hand in glove?

It seems, too, that the lack of ecclesiastical discipline in the Church may be the product of other theological and philosophical shifts. Romano Amerio, a peritus at Vatican II, presents this fascnating commentary on the lack of discipline since Vatican II, which he poetically dubs a brevatio manus Domini a foreshortening of the hand of the Lord:

"The external fact is the disunity of the Church, visible in the disunity of the bishops among themselves, and with the Pope. The internal fact producing it is the renunciation, that is, the non-functioning of papal authority itself, from which the renunciation of all other authority derives...

Now, the peculiar feature of the pontificate of Paul VI was the tendency to shift the papacy from governing to admonishing, or in scholastic terminology, to restrict the field of preceptive law, which imposes an obligation, and to enlarge the field of directive law, which formulates a rule without imposing any obligation to observe it. The government of the Church thus loses half its scope, or to put it biblically, the hand of the Lord is foreshortened....

Two things are needed to maintain truth. First: remove the error from the doctrinal sphere, which is done by refuting erroneous arguments and showing that they are not convincing. Second: remove the person in error, that is depose him from officem which is done by an act of the Church's authority. If this pontifical service is not performed, it would seem unjustified to say that all means have been used to maintain the doctrine of the Church: we are in the presence of a brevatio manus Domini....

The origin of this whole brevatio manus lies quite clearly in the opening speech of the Second Vatican Council, which announced an end to the condemnation of error, a policy which was maintained by Paul VI throughout the whole of his pontificate. As a teacher, he held to the traditional formulas expressing the orthodox faith, but as a pastor, he did not prevent the free circulation of unorthodox ideas, assuming the they would of themselves eventually take an orthodox form and become compatible with truth. Errors were identified and the Catholic faith reiterated, but specific persons were not condemned for their erroneous teaching, and the schismatic situation in the Church was disguised and tolerated....

The general effect of a renunciation of authority is to bring authority into disrepute and to lead it to be ignored by those who are subject to it, since a subject cannot hold a higher view of authority than authority holds of itself....

The renunciation of authority, even as applied to doctrinal affairs, which had been begun by John XXIII and pursued by Paul VI, has been continued by John Paul II." (Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth Century)

Amerio cites the amazing testimony of Carinal Oddi, who spoke to a gathering of Catholic United for the Faith in the 1970s. Amerio shows, in his answer, that refusal to exercise discipline in the Church has at its heart a philosophical shift:

The Prefect for the Congregation of the Clergy was insistently asked why the Holy See did not remove those who taught error, such as Fr. Curran, who had for years been openly attacking Humanae Vitae, and who teaches the licitness of sodomy. Why was it that the Holy See did not correct and disavow those bishops, such as Mgr. Gerety, who depart from sound doctrine and protect those who corrupt the faith? The Cardinal replied that "The Church no longer imposes punishments. She hopes instead to persuade those who err." She has chosen this course "perhaps because she does not have precise information about the different cases in which error arises, perhaps because she thinks it imprudent to take energetic measures, perhaps too because she wants to avoid event greater scandal through disobedience. The Church believes it is better to tolerate certain errors in the hope that when certain difficulties have been overcome, the person in error will reject his error and return to the Church."

This is an admission of the brevatio manus... and an assertion of the innovation announced in the opening speech of the council: error contains within itself the means of its own correction, and there is no need to assist to process: it is enough to let it unfold, and it will correct itself. Charity is held to synonymous with tolerance, indulgence takes precedence over severity, the common good of the ecclesial community is overlooked in the interests of a misused individual liberty [and] the sensus logicus and the virtue of fortitude proper to the Church are lost. The reality is that the Church ought to preserve and defend the truth with all the means available to a perfect society." (ibid.)

Here, it seems, is a directclash between the Church's pre-conciliar Thomistic realism and a post-conciliar emphasis on a certain kind of personalism which increasingly looks like a divorce from reality and a rejection of commmon sense. Further, as the years have passed since Vatican II, these now-stock excuses for why the Vatican has refused to discipline renegade priests and bishops have crumbled, one by one. Certainly the many decades over which the crisis has spread have been sufficient to gather the information necessary to judge the erroneous opinions of various priests and bishops accurately and justly. And the "greater scandal" argument - most often formulated in terms of the avoidance of open schism - has now been shown falses in the most recent clerical sex scandals. The Holy Father could have removed many deviant bishops and priests with complete impunity. The other bishops would have not dared defy him on such an issue, especially since those most apt to break openly with Rome tend to have scandalous skeletons in their own closets. With even the secular world rightly expecting tough treatment of such deviancy, who would have dared go into schism over the situation? But has any disciplinary action been taken? Rather, in yet another bow to the novelty of collegiality, the entire problem was handed back to the national hierarchy which, through its own laxity, spawned the scandal in the first place.

For a while there, Sink, I thought you had an honest profession in hardware or software sales/marketing, whatever.

It's beginning to look like you are really a Philadelphia lawyer, transplanted to Dallas.

Your wheezing citation of ONE graph from JPII's book, containing ONE cite of Scripture which is VERY specific, has little to do with the discussion at hand.

I've seen better proof-texting from sophomore Prots on this board.

As to the 'babies' thing--your re-shaping of the argument (again, tiresome and rather off-the-point) is not germane.
You're a big boy, go look up the precise teaching and THEN admit that either you're a material heretic OR that you agree with it.

"it would be better for that man if he had never been born" (Mt 26:24), his words do not allude for certain to eternal damnation.

One could argue that Christ was referring to a LOOOOONNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG time in Purgatory, but that's certainly not clear from the text.

Sink chooses to use this text (found in JPII's "Crossing the Threshold...") and transmogrify JPII's surrounding words to mean that JPII does NOT believe there are necessarily souls in Hell.

I think Sink places more burden on this text than it will bear. The cite clearly refers to a SPECIFIC sort of crime (scandalizing children) and a SPECIFIC criminal (one who scandalizes.)

At face value the cite seems to predict Hell for the criminal, and I think the face value is an acceptable interpretation.

But even in the case that the face value is not 'morally certain' it is clear that for the SPECIFIC criminal with this SPECIFIC crime, Christ foretold horrendous punishment. We know that absent a last-minute conversion, this criminal is going to Hell. What we do NOT know is only about the last-minute conversion.

Otherwise, the doctrine of Mortal Sin is in play.

One could argue that Christ was referring to a LOOOOONNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG time in Purgatory

Even that wouldn't make sense because the person would eventually achieve the Beatific Vision. Certainly such a fate is better than never having been born.

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