Fr. Z's Blog

Over at The Sensible Bond, which I have recommended before, there is a very strong entry about the SSPX and who gets to judge what Catholic doctrine is.

Here is something of what you can find at The Sensible Bond, [edited] and with my emphases and comments.

SSPX methodology: a question for Bishop Williamson

[…]My view is that what Bishop Williamson and the SSPX confuse are the teachings of the Catholic Church and their own theological arguments (which deploy those teachings). […] Indeed, the results of their analysis and the dogmatic premises on which they are constructed are what Bishop Williamson calls ‘Catholic Truth’. When he says that Rome must recognise Catholic Truth and be faithful to it, what he clearly implies is that since there is no questioning of the dogmatic premises on which the SSPX build their criticism of the New Mass, the edifice of their analysis is itself absolutely sound.

But this position is both logically and methodologically unstable.

i) Logically, the authorities on which I base an argument are only part of my final analysis. All the minor premises of my argument must also be sound: my observations, my interpretations of data, the way in which I categorise and conceptualise the problems I am trying to study, etc. In addition, my handling of the major premises must be sound. By way of comparison, Protestant criticism of the Church cannot be justified simply by being based on Sacred Scripture, however Sacred it is. Likewise, the traditionalists can arrive in various ways at a theological view of the New Mass, or of other issues – indeed, one must arrive at the conclusions contained potentially in one’s premises – but they are wrong to treat that view as definitive, however theologically weighty their major premises are. No Council has found the New Mass to be unCatholic; that view is the result of a theological argument. In other words, the fact I bang a big bass drum doesn’t mean there is a brass band following behind me!

ii) Methodologically, this position is also weak because the theologians who have generated it, and their elders who promote it, appear ultimately unwilling to be moderated either by the criticism of their peers (in spite of some contacts in France, are any of the SSPX’s theses being published and discussed in theological journals?) or by the judgment of the Church’s authorities. In the recent doctrinal discussions, there was no sense in which the SSPX took their position to Rome for it to be assessed. They took it to Rome to convince Rome that it was already fundamentally sound, so fundamentally sound in fact that, for the SSPX, it has become the measuring stick for Rome’s orthodoxy (or has put the SSPX in the driving seat, as Bishop Williamson says). Such a conclusion is only possible because the SSPX’s methodology has become, as it were, invisible to the minds of its experts. [Note that.]

We have a crisis in the Church and lots of grave problems. Not everyone agrees with this view, but a lot of sensible people do. The problem is, then: whose reading of the problems should be our guiding light? And which experts can we trust? In the end there is no escaping the conclusion that every expert who is not willing to have his position moderated by Rome is not in fact serving any truth but his own; in the end, it is ironic that making the pastoral Magisterium of the Hierarchy {especially that of the chief pastor} subject to the Magisterium of the Experts involves exactly the kind of modernist assumption that the SSPX has declared itself opposed to. [This is why, HERE, I wryly suggested that the SSPX and Fr. Kung had a lot in common.  That proposal is absurd at first glance, but perhaps not at the third glance.] If Bishop Williamson cares about the Truth, as indeed I believe he does deeply, he must ultimately admit that there is a real distinction in re between the teachings of the Church and the results of the analyses by SSPX theologians. Sadly I see no sign of this distinction starting to dawn on him or on any of his colleagues. Let me hereby challenge him respectfully to address the argument.

Unlike a lot of people, I happen to think there is a place for Bishop Williamson and the SSPX in the mainstream, banging their big bass drums for all they are worth. They just have to realise that the percussion section cannot be a law unto itself, and that moving from a march to a waltz does not constitute the abandonment of rhythm. [Great analogy.]

This says well many of the things I have thought for a long while.

When the talks between the SSPX and Rome were going to begin, I made the observation that both parties had to come into the talks with a good attitude.  While there is no question of these theological discussions being “negotiations” (“negotiations” might be right concerning juridical structures, etc.).  The folks on the Roman side of the table had to be open to discuss points of the documents of Vatican II.  Those on the SSPX side of the table had to give up their position that they were there to instruct Rome.

If there has been a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture when it comes to Vatican II towards the left (in the manner of Fr. Rahner and Fr. Kung), it is also possible to have discontinuity and rupture the other direction as well.

Like The Sensible Bond I have hoped that there would be a place within the mainstream Church for the SSPX.  I have mused that it would be great to see some of these guys elected to diocesan presbyteral councils and going to deanery meetings, sitting on priests personnel boards….

I think that the theological issues which the SSPX and Rome are talking about are so difficult that, the documents of Vatican II being what they are, it is possible to cede to the SSPX a great deal of leeway.  I have in mind how some followers of Fr. Feeney were reconciled with the Church concerning “no salvation outside the Church” without having to abandon their position.  Issues such as “religious liberty” are even less clearly spelled out than the doctrine of “no salvation outside the Church”.  Why could there not be a meeting of minds when it comes to a point like that?  Of course “religious liberty” is not the only issue and that debate touches on even deeper theological questions about the theocentric/anthropocentric starting points of some of the teachings in the documents of the Council.