From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
Father Z., I see you include soon-to-be Bl. Fulton Sheen’s comments on your sidebar:
Don’t rely on popes, bishops and priests.
“He [Satan] will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”
“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”– Fulton Sheen
That makes me think of Galations 1:8-9:
8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again, If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed.
My question is… How can we, as lay Catholics with the responsibility to pass on the true faith to our children and grandchildren, and others, properly apply that admonishment, given the evident heterodoxy coming from high places in the Church?
*sigh*
You are right to connect Sheen’s warning with Galatians 1:8–9.
St. Paul places even himself beneath the Gospel he received and preached. An assertion about the Faith does not become true because a particular ecclesiastic teaches it. He is bound to teach what is true and has been entrusted to the Church. Similarly, something doesn’t become true because a change is made to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You see the proper foundations and arguments in the footnotes which preceded the formation of the CCC: no support, no authority… gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
St. Paul’s words do not make every Catholic his own pope, measuring doctrine by personal judgment, or by the increasingly repeated “lived experience”. The standard is the apostolic Faith handed down in Scripture and Tradition and authoritatively taught by the Church through the centuries (cf. Vincent of Lérins).
When something troubling comes from “high places,” first determine exactly a) what was said, b) in what context, and c) with what authority.
A papal interview, an ambiguous remark, a curial document, a disciplinary decision, and a solemn definition do not have equal magisterial weight.
Confusion, imprudence, ambiguity, and material error must also be distinguished from formal and persistent denial of revealed truth.
The faithful have both rights and duties.
Can. 212 §3 recognizes their right, and sometimes their duty, to make concerns known to their pastors, while preserving reverence and regard for the common good. Parents have a grave obligation to educate their children in the Faith. This requires knowledge of Scripture, the Catechism, and the perennial teaching of the Church rather than dependence upon headlines, edited clips, or social-media personalities.
Catholics should interpret statements as favorably as the words reasonably permit, without pretending that genuinely erroneous or confusing language is sound. Novel claims should be compared with what the Church has consistently taught. Respectful questions, petitions, and corrections can be acts of charity toward pastors and those who might be misled.
Alas, also true is the adage, “Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur … Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the one receiving it.”
Meanwhile, legitimate authority must still be recognized. A bad exercise of authority does not abolish authority. St. Paul “opposed [Peter] to his face” at Antioch when Peter’s conduct endangered the faithful, yet Paul neither denied Peter’s office nor established a rival Church.
Jesus Himself warned against confusing legitimate authority with the personal holiness (and by extension wisdom) of those who exercise it. Of the scribes and Pharisees He said: “The scribes and the Pharisees have sat on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not” (Matthew 23:2–3). Their hypocrisy did not erase the authority associated with Moses’ seat, although it exposed them to severe judgment. Catholics likewise distinguish an ecclesiastical office from the faults of its holder.
Authority deserves obedience within its proper limits, while corrupt conduct and teaching contrary to the received Faith must never be imitated.
Children should therefore be taught neither clericalism (which treats every utterance of a churchman as infallible), nor ecclesiastical anarchism (which obeys only when authority confirms private conclusions).
The sensus fidei belongs to believers – TA DA! – living within the Church, receiving her sacraments, adhering to her perennial teaching, and cultivating humility, prayer, and moral conversion. To have the “sense of the faithful” you have to first be faithful.
Lay Catholics should know the Faith, hand it on faithfully, ask hard questions when necessary, and refuse assent to propositions demonstrably contrary to revelation.
They must do so without rash judgment.
Sheen’s exhortation should be understood in that light.
The laity help “save the Church” by becoming saints, forming strong Catholic families, supporting faithful priests, insisting respectfully upon sound doctrine and reverent worship, and refusing to cooperate in the corruption of the Faith.
Ultimately, Christ alone can His Church.
Our task is to remain faithful instruments in His hands, especially when those charged with strengthening their brethren leave them confused.
The problem with thinking about heterodoxy from above (and it certainly exists) [If it exists, then it must be thought about.] is that there is an overwhelming temptation [Why? Why must there be a temptation at all? Why must that temptation be “overwhelming”?] to set yourself as the real authority on the Church , or at least the most infallible interpreter of its magisterium. [We can freely deny your premise.] Yes the hierarchy can say and do goofy stuff, but we absolutely do not have a counter-Church in Rome currently. [Okay, let’s use your category “goofy”. How much should people just ignore to avoid your “overwhelming temptation”?]
JP II was not the ape of the Church. Benedict XVI was not the ape of the Church. Leo XIV is not the ape of the Church. If you find yourself thinking that he is, might be best to imagine that you are a 15th century Catholic who hears nothing from the Pope except his name, and go faithfully to a non-schismatic mass, meditate on the saints and go to confession.
[What you wrote here is word salad.]
The Second Vatican Council did not define anything new which we Catholics are obligated to believe. The use of words like “not able to be admitted” about capital punishment in the current catechism is meaningless. Most statements issued by bishops are not made with the authority of their whole college under the leadership of the pope, whose words typically do not even come close to an authoritative level. Let us refuse to be bound by that which has no claim on binding us. The Catholic faith continues to be what the catechism of the Council of Trent contained 400+ years ago, and best of all, the Latin version is available online through Google Books for free.
Please pray for my family on this front. We’re prayerfully striving to form our consciences in accordance with the Church’s perennial teachings, especially as you said, Father, in regards to understanding the objective authoritativeness of certain statements and actions. We’re trying to cultivate our sense of the faith to pass it on to our children, praying that God’s grace and guidance will sustain us when our human discernment falls short.
Unfortunately, recent events taught me a hard lesson: many fellow Catholics, including people I had considered well informed or generally charitable, simply don’t care about our earnest attempts to prayerfully navigate the confusion. If a questionable hierarch strikes out using sufficiently severe rhetoric, a large number of otherwise sensible people will instantly side with those in power against the institutionally powerless. All benefit of the doubt disappears.
Some individuals have been very unkind towards my family in recent weeks. It’s made it hard to trust people I used to trust, including myself. I’m praying that Our Lord and Our Lady clear the haze in my life soon. I feel so lost right now.
Fantastic image! Can you tell us more about it, please?
[I asked a “digital friend” to make a image of what Sheen described in the style of Salvador Dali. Sometimes it seems to me like we are living in a Dali landscape.]
@stormfarer – this is a cross many of us are carrying. You’re not alone. It’s been hard watching many whom I thought friends grow cold toward us or abandon us simply because we’ve been deemed “the wrong kind of Catholic” by the Church leaders. It’s a real thing, and one must resist the temptation to give in to anger and spite. They’ll have to answer for their actions at some point, as I will have to answer for mine. If our paths have now diverged, that’s on them. I haven’t and will not be changing directions based on the ire of old men clinging desperately to the halcyon myths of the 1960s.
It has made me that much more thankful for the families that have remained friendly with us, especially in not burdening the friendship of our mutual children with these absurdly petty Church politics.
Don’t lose your hope, your faith, or your trust in God because of the pettiness of the small hearted (even up to and including the pope). And if you start to wane, ask God directly for help. If the prayer, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief” is acceptable, then so is, “Lord, I trust thee, help my doubts” and “Lord, I love thee, save me from a hardened heart” are also acceptable.
In Psalms we read, “Put not your trust in princes: in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation.” The Church has always dealt with heterodox leaders: witness the Arian heresy which many church leaders followed, or the number of church leaders who gave in to the Henry VIII’s break with Rome versus those who stood up for the Church. For me, one of the miracles of the Church is the number of people who remain faithful to the Faith despite its leaders. St. Paul tells us “But prove everything; hold fast that which is good.” (1 Thess. 5:21) In other words, examine everything and keep that which is good. For myself, I try to avoid my feelings about any matter of Faith, but try to look at it rationally. I admit that it is sometimes a struggle, but fortunately, I have writings of the saints to help me.
Vatican II documents, recent encyclicals, witings, papal homilies, etc, all leave me with the same feeling as when I wake up from a dream and I can’t remember what happened. It doesn’t matter how many time I read it. It all has this ethereal, amnesic quality.
Eheu! Iterum libros patrum legam, si res modernas non intellego.
God bless Archbishop Athanasius Schneider, he’s been one of the few voices in the Church hierarchy that have kept me sane. He lives up to his given Christian name.
I am not a philosopher, nor a theologian, but one does not have to be one to see that an argument is not a good one. My very elementary understanding of theological voluntarism is that God wills actions or things to be either good or bad (or perhaps neither). But I do not find this a satisfactory premise. I prefer God says that something is meritorious because objectively it is, or as in because it is objectively evil. But when Jesus tells the apostles (and Peter in particular) that whatever they bind on earth is bounded in Heaven, I get the impression that some think this means barrier methods of birth control, or adultery, or other sins associated with sex are only sins because the Church decided to make them sins.
I recognized this to be a bad argument when I was a high school student and heard adults say the Catholic Church should allow birth control. It did not make sense that something is wrong only because the Church says it’s wrong. I suppose this is why I think the natural law is so important because it shows that what we call sins are objectively evil acts. Perhaps this is why the phrase ”because I say so” is not particularly effective.