Fr. McTeigue hits another one out of the park.
Here’s the line of thought.
Before I get to that, you should know that the present Prefect of the DDF (olim CDF, a respectable office) told the SSPX that the documents of Vatican II can’t be changed. [We’ll let that claim pass for now, though I think it is not true.] That, in spite of the fact that John XXIII and Paul VI said that the Council was “pastoral” and not dogmatic. And “Rome” today seems to be saying that in order to be in full “communion” you have to accept all of Vatican II lock and stock. But… really? Why put that on the SSPX when no one else is held to that standard.
Hence, Fr. McTeigue… and I do not see any “escape” from this problem, even though Father deftly starts out with Harry Houdini.
I’m going to break this down so you can clearly see what he is doing and then REMEMBER it so you can use it yourselves.
Fr. McTeigue begins with the image of Harry Houdini escaping from impossible constraints: straitjacket, chains, barrel, waterfall. This becomes the metaphor for the current ecclesial problem.
The problem is the claim that “full communion with Rome” requires [NB] full acceptance of the documents of Vatican II. [If you are an elected official from Minnesota or from Columbia Heights, that’s not “eleven”…. or Broward County.]
- At first glance, this seems like a simple test: accept Vatican II fully, and one is in full communion; refuse it, and one is outside or in imperfect communion.
- Fr. McTeigue says the matter is less simple, because many people who are treated as fully in communion with Rome may, in practice, reject parts of Vatican II. [Even openly reject!]
- He notes that John XXIII and Paul VI described Vatican II as pastoral rather than dogmatic.
- McTeigue contrasts that with Cardinal Fernández’s claim that the documents of Vatican II [NB] “cannot be corrected.”
- Fr. McT then identifies a tension: how can a pastoral council be treated as requiring uncorrectable acceptance in order to establish full communion?
- His central claim is that almost no one fully accepts all the documents of Vatican II.
- He then moves to Humanae vitae in 1968, which reaffirmed the Church’s rejection of artificial contraception and abortion.
- He argues that Humanae vitae did not introduce a new teaching, but reiterated what Vatican II itself had already taught, especially in Gaudium et spes 51.
- Gaudium et spes 51 condemns abortion as an “unspeakable crime” and also rejects artificial contraception.
- Therefore, Catholics who reject Humanae vitae also reject part of Vatican II.
- Many theologians, clergy, bishops’ conferences, and lay Catholics effectively rejected Humanae vitae after 1968.
- He cites the infamous Winnipeg Statement as an example of episcopal resistance or weakening of the force of Humanae vitae. The Canadian Bishops have never officially retracted the Winnipeg Statement.
- McTeigue then appeals to survey data and demographic evidence, arguing that many Catholics contracept and abort at roughly the same rate as non-Catholics.
- He also points to the steep decline in infant baptisms as circumstantial evidence that many Catholic married couples are not living according to the Church’s teaching on openness to life.
- From this, he concludes that many Catholics de facto reject Humanae vitae and therefore de facto reject Gaudium et spes 51. [“De facto” certainly because 99% of them don’t know and don’t care about any of the V2 documents and don’t know what HV said.]
- [NB:] If full communion requires full acceptance of Vatican II, then, by that standard, these Catholics would also have to be judged as lacking full communion with Rome.
- Father contrasts this with the treatment of Catholics attached to traditional Latin liturgy, who are often pressured, investigated, restricted, or told they must accept Vatican II fully.
- There is clearly an unequal application: traditionalists are scrutinized for Vatican II acceptance, while Catholics rejecting Vatican II’s teaching on contraception and abortion are not treated with comparable urgency.
- He argues that Rome has not issued similar urgent mandates to bring contracepting and aborting Catholics to full acceptance of Vatican II.
- The Houdini metaphor returns: the Church’s current rhetoric about “full communion,” Vatican II, and selective enforcement creates an apparently impossible bind.
- There is a serious inconsistency in how “full communion with Rome” is being defined and enforced.
The difference is that many claim to accept fully VC2 documents, while consciously or unconsciously rejecting the content.
From my position of ignorance I wonder how difficult would be for SSPX to say “I fully accept these documents with this interpretation and not that interpretation.”
Thank you for posting this summary. A few hours before I saw this post I listened to Father McTeigue’s closer look for today and my immediate reaction is this argument must be given a lot of publicity.
After reading your summary, which in my opinion is quite accurate, it occurs to me that another thing critics of the SSPX have in common with them is that by rejecting Humanae Vitae their critics are also disobeying the Pope.
The talk about “full acceptance” of Vatican II is very puzzling to me because in Vatican II and its documents there is nothing to accept, by which I mean, nothing which Catholics are obligated to believe but was not previously stated in earlier Church documents, catechisms, etc. As someone who was born two decades after Vatican II, to me that pastoral council looks like an attempted response to the challenges of a particular era of world history, and as the world has changed greatly since the 1960s, Vatican II now simply seems irrelevant, especially as it has manifestly been of no avail in stopping the world’s religious-spiritual-moral decline, which had begun long before the 1960s and has only gotten worse.
Canada has a collapsing birth rate.
“Fr. McT then identifies a tension: how can a pastoral council be treated as requiring uncorrectable acceptance in order to establish full communion?”
“Acceptance” makes sense to me if it means believing (1) that the Council’s doctrines of faith and morals are true, (2) that its disciplinary decrees, whether wisely or unwisely promulgated, are binding (unless repealed or modified by the Church), and (3) that its other statements (descriptions of the state of society, suggestions, etc.), whether flawed or not, at least do not contain errors in faith or morals.
Does anyone know whether this “acceptance” is required of the Anglican Ordinaries? Or for that matter, the Marionite or Ukrainian Churches for example? Why wouldn’t Pope Leo use the example of the Ordinariate to preserve unity with SSPX?
@Ionathas Gnosis ph. d. this is an intriguing point…What exactly are we to ‘accept’ from the V2 documents that wasn’t already required? Was it the ambiguous statements contained in most of the documents i.e. Dignitatis Humanae, et. al.?
After recently re-reading the V2 documents, something that has really jumped out is most of the documents keep referring to this ‘dignity of man’ & how we live in an age the ‘dignity of the man’ must be recognized. Perhaps this is what we are supposed to accept…
I wonder what the early & later Church Martyrs would think about the ‘dignity of man’. Were they worried about their ‘human dignity’ as they generously offered their life for Our Lord Jesus Christ?
@Ionathas Gnosis ph. d. this is an intriguing point…What exactly are we to ‘accept’ from the V2 documents that wasn’t already required? Was it the ambiguous statements contained in most of the documents i.e. Dignitatis Humanae, et. al.?
After recently re-reading the V2 documents, something that has really jumped out is most of the documents keep referring to this ‘dignity of man’ & how we live in an age the ‘dignity of the man’ must be recognized. Perhaps this is what we are supposed to accept…
I wonder what the early & later Church Martyrs would think about the ‘dignity of man’. Were they worried about their ‘human dignity’ as they generously offered their life for Our Lord Jesus Christ?
Fr. McT rightly points out just one of several inconsistencies in Vatican governance WRT the SSPX, others being its treatment of China, the German Bishops, etc.
Though these inconsistencies are real, they won’t change the Vatican’s behavior vis-a-vis the SSPX because rational consistency is not a desideratum of the powers that be. If it were, inconsistency with what the Church has always taught would be a matter of grave concern to them, and it’s plainly not.
So, if V2 says something like “…care must be taken to ensure that the faithful may also be able to say and sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them,” and in a certain parish or dioceses he vast majority of the people do not even know the Pater Noster, then that bishop / priest / glorified-piano-player “liturgist” are not in full communion with the Church and should be removed from their position of authority (and excommunicated) forthwith. Right?