WE MUST NOT FORGET THE SACRAMENTAL NATURE OF
THE CHURCH
by Douglas Farrow (March 2017)
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| Francis and his fellow heretical "Jesuits" |
“In other words, how
are we to reckon with a situation, nicely timed to the quincentenary of the
Reformation, in which being Catholic begins to look quite a lot like being
Protestant?” (Douglas
Farrow, March 2017.)
“Is the pope Catholic?” used to be an answer, not a question.
Alas, it has become a question; or rather it has become five questions, in the
form of the dubia put to Pope Francis by four of his cardinals. In good Jesuit
fashion, Francis seems to be making his reply by other means—since responding
directly to dubia is apparently distasteful, as even the Prefect of the Holy
Office Gerhard Cardinal Müller has now said. Thus far, the replies (comments
about pharisaical doctors of the law, and that sort of thing) are not very
reassuring. Actually, very little one hears from the Vatican these days
reassures.
This leaves those of us who are struggling with “discernment
of situations” (to use the phrase from Familiaris Consortio that was taken up by Amoris Laetitia) in some perplexity, not so much in
the matter of marriage and family life as in the life of the Church herself.
Reckoning with a pope whose own remarks seem somewhat erratic is one thing. But
how are we to reckon with a situation in which the administration of the
sacraments, and the theology behind their administration, is succumbing, with
his blessing, to regionalism? In other words, how are we to reckon with a
situation, nicely timed to the quincentenary of the Reformation, in which being
Catholic begins to look quite a lot like being Protestant?
The trauma of the two synods on the family, which led to Amoris and to the dubia, is a trauma for
which Francis himself is largely responsible. The ongoing rebellion against Humanae Vitae and Veritatis Splendor is something that he has permitted,
if not encouraged. And the flaws in Amoris are of his making. His unwillingness
to respond directly to the dubia is not, then, a matter of taste only. In any
event, the very fact that the dubia have been put—and they have been well put,
whether or not they should have been put publicly—has carried the whole
difficulty beyond matters of taste. Cardinal Müller’s denial that there is a
doctrinal problem here is unconvincing.
Before I go any further, it is necessary to say something
about the assumptions underlying these remarks. When I first criticized the
synod’s Instrumentum
Laboris in my
online article for First Things, “Twelve
Fatal Flaws,” I did not know how far the pope himself was in
sympathy with the working document. Within a few days that sympathy was
evident, just as it was evident that the synod was divided on important issues
of faith and practice, with some leading bishops clearly concerned about
Francis’s own views, attitudes, and actions. This is hardly the first time in
the history of the Church that such a situation has occurred. Indeed, we
encounter it in Acts. Which is to say: Being Catholic does not mean refusing to
be critical of the bishop of Rome. There are times when one must be critical,
and this is such a time.
By divine providence, the papacy has evolved over the
centuries into a more vital feature of the Church in its daily function than it
was in earlier eras. Modern technology has had something to do with that. But
by the same providence, the papacy has been allowed to fall, at various points,
into the most frightful parody of itself. We may be very thankful that this is
not the case today. It is not merely poor history, however, but a false and
dangerous papolatry—Catholics, not Protestants, should be the first to say
so—to fancy that the Vicar of Christ is somehow above criticism, as if he were
Christ himself.
Certainly the doctrine of infallibility entails no such
thing, whether about the person of the pope or about particular papal
documents. Infallibility is a guarantee regarding the magisterium, of which the
pope, in and between ecumenical councils, is the primary guardian. The pope is
not, however, its master. The Church has but one master, our Lord Jesus Christ.
When on any serious matter one papal statement is in conflict with another, it
is the task of the whole apostolic college to sort things out. As the First
Vatican Council makes clear, this must be done with the pope, not apart from
him, but there is nothing in the deliverances of that council or any other to
the effect that the pope may not need sorting out. St. Peter himself needed
sorting out, from time to time.
Now, there is conflict between the tradition as it appears in
Trent and later councils, in papal or magisterial documents right through to
the previous pontificate, and what is said or implied in Amoris; or rather, there is a conflict within Amoris, which both holds and does not hold to the tradition.
If there were no conflict, there would have been no dubia. Since the conflict
touches on the sacraments themselves, and not merely on pastoral judgment with
respect to the sacraments, it must be resolved, however painful the process.
But, like Francis, a good many bishops lack the will to resolve it. In fact,
some of them have gone altogether soft on the sacraments, or on anything
resembling sacramental discipline, and, sadly, they are appealing to Francis
for justification. If ever a discernment of situation were called for, it is
called for now.
The first of the dubia asks whether “it has now become
possible to grant absolution in the Sacrament of Penance and thus to admit to
Holy Communion a person who, while bound by a valid marital bond, lives
together with a different person more uxorio [in a marital way] without fulfilling
the conditions” laid out in Familiaris Consortio. The burden of the others is to
enquire whether we may now safely set aside the teaching of Veritatis Splendor that neither circumstances nor
intentions can render a bad act good, and that no manipulation of conscience
can do so either.
Some prelates have already answered the first question with a
yes, and are acting upon that answer. Others are saying no, or (like Cardinal
Müller) saying in effect: of course not—the question need not even be asked.
But it does need to be asked, as developments
from the Americas to Malta make clear, and not only in the present form. It
needs to be asked with respect to contraception, for example. Indeed, the
refusal to ask it in that connection has led to the present situation. It also
needs to be asked with respect to suicide and euthanasia, as we are discovering
here in Canada.
I want to dwell for a moment on the Canadian situation. In
Canada, regionalism is, so to speak, in our DNA. I will not go back as far as
the notorious Winnipeg Statement, by means of which our bishops, in response to Humanae Vitae, took the doors to the internal forum
right off their hinges, permitting the faithful to decide freely for
themselves, without any fear of sacramental discipline, whether contraception
is or isn’t a grave sin. I want instead to make clear the current situation, in
which bishops in the eastern provinces have (with a few exceptions) taken much
the same posture toward assisted suicide and euthanasia. The choice of these
newly legal practices is discouraged but not forbidden. To choose them over
natural death is not (or not necessarily) a barrier to participation in the
sacraments of reconciliation, Eucharist, or healing. Much less is it an
impediment to a church funeral.
The contrary stance, which some of us urged upon the bishops
from the outset for the sake of both the Church and the country, has been
rejected by Cardinal Lacroix in Quebec City and by the Atlantic Episcopal
Assembly. The former’s rejection appeared on Facebook during the media
firestorm generated by a document from the bishops of Alberta and the Northwest
Territories—a model guide for clergy that stresses both pastoral readiness to
accompany anyone who desires accompaniment and sacramental discipline for those
who purposefully persist on the path to the mortal sin of suicide. Those
western bishops, to their credit, have taken a similarly clear stance with
respect to divorce and remarriage, while the primate and most of their
colleagues east of Montreal appear to want no part in such countercultural
shenanigans.
For the latter, not much has changed since 1968, apart from
the near-complete collapse of their churches’ political and cultural
relevance—that, and the fact that they can now appeal to the pope, rather than fight against
him. Witness the Atlantic bishops’ “Pastoral Reflection on Medical Assistance
in Dying” (yes, they actually use the preferred political euphemism), which,
while making several sound points about the sacraments and rejecting suicide in
principle, works its way toward this sorry conclusion: “As people of faith, and
ministers of God’s grace, we are called to entrust everyone, whatever their
decisions may be, to the mercy of God. To one and all we wish to say that the
pastoral care of souls cannot be reduced to norms for the reception of the
sacraments or the celebration of funeral rites.”
In other words, the most important thing in discerning
situations is not this principle or that, but, well, discerning situations.
Which is not really very difficult, because in the final analysis there is only
one situation: Whatever your decision, we will commend you to God.
This unprincipled accompaniment forgets divine justice in its
rush to divine mercy. It forgets that God himself, “when giving counsel, is
present with those who attend to moral discipline” rather than with those who
ignore it, as Irenaeus reminds us. It is Winnipeg all over again. There, the
bishops made themselves chaplains to the contraceptive culture; here, to the
culture of death. But here they justify themselves, as they could not there, by
what is perhaps the single most problematic remark by a pontiff given to
problematic remarks: “Pope Francis also calls us to practice this ‘art of
accompaniment,’” they write, “removing our ‘sandals’ before the sacred ground
of the other (cf. Ex 3:5).”
This Levinas-like expression is lifted from Evangelii Gaudium, §169, as quoted by the Synod on the
Family’s final report. Let us stop to think about it.
At the burning bush, Moses fails to discern his situation. He
is told to take off his sandals because, standing in the presence of YHWH himself,
he is standing on holy ground. Now, by way of the doctrine of the imago dei and the link between love of God and
love of neighbor, we can and do arrive at a concept of the sanctity of the
human person, a sanctity derived from the holiness of God himself. This
derivative character, however, is the very thing at stake at present.
When Moses returns to the holy mountain with his people, they
are warned first and foremost to acknowledge no other gods and to make no
idolatrous image. That commandment, together with the commandment against
killing, is broken when we embrace suicide or euthanasia. Why? Because we claim
that our lives are ours independently of God, that we possess them in such
a way as to have the right to their disposal. We do likewise at the other end
of life when we embrace contraception and abortion. We do it in the middle, as
it were, when we claim the right to determine our own “gender identity” or to
“marry” a same-sex partner. Throughout the West, all these actions have now
been approved in law—steered through Parliament, in Canada, under Catholic
prime ministers absorbed in the idolatry of our age.
What irony there is, then, in this appeal to Exodus to
justify the kind of “pastoral accompaniment” that refuses to discipline
sacramentally those who have chosen the path of self-assertion and
self-destruction! It is scandalous (I do not use the word lightly) that an
assembly of bishops should take up this analogy, which transfers the concept of
“sacred ground” from God to man, and use it to deny the clear moral judgment of
the Church against suicide and euthanasia.
The Atlantic Episcopal Assembly’s pastoral statement, it
grieves me to say, reads like a document either entirely ignorant of Veritatis Splendor or deliberately opposed to it. Here,
indeed, “freedom is exalted almost to the point of idolatry” (Veritatis Splendor). Here the focus is on situations
“which are very complex and obscure from a psychological viewpoint,” but “in
such a way that it objectively changes or casts doubt upon the traditional
concept of mortal sin.” Here is an “attempt to adapt the moral norm to one’s
own capacities and personal interests,” even to “the rejection of the very idea
of a norm.” Here it is forgotten that “Christian moral teaching must be one of
the chief areas in which we [bishops] exercise our pastoral vigilance, in
carrying out our munus regale.” Here “the seriousness of what is
involved, not only for individuals but also for the whole of society,” is not
recognized. Here is not that “evangelical simplicity,” that following of
Christ, which leads to “a more genuine understanding of reality” and draws out
“the distinctive character of authentic Christian morality, while providing the
vital energy needed to carry it out.” Here is only scandal, the scandal of
bishop against bishop, and of bishops permitting their priests to offer the
sacraments where mortal sin is being committed.
The pope, for his part, seems untroubled by this scandal.
Perhaps he is unaware of it, or of his own role in it. Or perhaps, since the
bishops are not only using his words but following his example, he thinks it no
scandal. Perhaps he, too, mistaking real compassion for false, thinks Canada’s
western bishops hard-hearted Pharisees. I don’t know. I do know that the Church
has been under extraordinary pressure to compromise the sacraments and, just
so, to change the Gospel that is embodied in them. And that from Rome, as from
our own primatial see in Quebec City, we hear at best an uncertain sound on the
trumpet.
Some are saying that the Church is entering a time of crisis,
the likes of which we have not seen since the fourth century. If they are
right, this removal of apostolic sandals before the autonomous man is just one
indicator of that crisis. Another is the disunity among the bishops over these
matters. That, as Cyril of Jerusalem observes in his fifteenth catechetical
lecture, is a sign of Antichrist and of the second advent. It is “a sign proper
to the Church,” because it goes to the core of the Church.
My own effort to read the signs of the times (along the lines
laid out in my book Ascension Theology) is not entirely conclusive about
the scope of the present crisis or the point we occupy in the history of
salvation. Things have happened in recent days—both a sudden acceleration of
the mystery of lawlessness and a marked increase in fractiousness within the
Church—that impart a new sense of urgency. What is certain is that we are
living in a long period of apostasy and of purification. In St. Peter’s words,
“the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God.”
It can be no surprise, then, that the sacraments are under
renewed attack. For the sacraments are the means by which the Church is ordered
and by which she distinguishes, on a practical level, between good and evil.
(What is the point of forbidding the evil of divorce, if not to uphold the good
of marriage and its witness to the covenant of our salvation? What is the point
of forbidding suicide and euthanasia, if not to uphold the sanctity of life and
the good of honoring the Lord and Giver of Life?) The sacraments, of course,
are much more than that. They are instruments of grace by which God
communicates to us his own life through participation in our Lord Jesus Christ.
They are not rewards for goodness, but the means of sharing in the God who is
good. That is why they are holy sacraments, and it is their very
holiness that makes them the object of attack.
If the sacraments were merely means of moral and ecclesial
order, or rewards for goodness, it might very well be “pharisaical” to deny
them to those deemed somehow disordered, given that we are all disordered, each
in our own way. We might then appeal for greater flexibility in sacramental
discipline, tempering our concern for justice by our concern for mercy. But the
sacraments are not ours; they are Christ’s—just as our bodies are not strictly
ours, but have been reclaimed by God in Christ. We do no justice to the mercy
of Christ, we show no mercy to those who would enter the justice of Christ, if
we change the conditions for reception of the sacraments to conform to private
decisions about good and evil.
The regionalism that we are currently witnessing in the West,
under the rubric of “discernment of situations,” is the result of a failure to
discern both the nature of the sacraments and the situation of the Church. The
old gods, sex, mammon, and death, are reviving and reasserting themselves as
the gods of autonomy. They are beginning to press their hands on the faithless
and the faithful alike. They are groping even for the holy sacraments, that
they might defile them. In this situation, do we really need more talk about
the internal forum and “the sacred ground of the other”?
Surely what we need to hear is that God himself, and God
alone, is the source of our sanctity. We need to hear that God is equally and
indissolubly, without shadow of turning or contradiction, the God of mercy and
of justice, of goodness and of judgment, of love and of holiness. If we do not
know and recognize him thus in the sacraments, we become like those of whom
Irenaeus wrote—those who, by trying to divide God, deprive themselves of the
benefits both of his justice and of his goodness. We fail to discern
our situation.
I, for one, do not hear this from the priest in my own
parish. I do not hear it from the wise men to the East, on either side of the
Atlantic, who seem to imagine that good and evil are one thing here and another
thing there. I do not hear it, at least not clearly, from the Holy Father in
Rome. He seems to be disciplining us, “for a short time, at his pleasure,” and
we must respect him as best we can. But how much more must we respect the
Father of spirits, who “disciplines us for our good, that we may share his
holiness”?
The Book of Hebrews, which the Church has recently been
reading in its daily lections, is all about discernment of situations. At its
climax, in chapter 12, it not only places our Eucharistic feasts in their
proper context, but reminds us of the right response to discipline and warns us
against the error of Esau, that paradigm of failure to discern:
For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than
pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have
been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak
knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be
put out of joint but rather be healed. Strive for peace with all men, and for
the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fail
to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” spring up and cause
trouble, and by it the many become defiled; that no one be immoral or
irreligious like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.
No doubt there is something different, in every sentence of
this paragraph, for each of us to attend to, but its final line stands out as a
query to us all. The sacraments are the birth rites of the Church and the
birthright of Christians. Are they somehow being sold or sold out? And if so,
for what?
It is only just, I think, to invite the Atlantic bishops,
among whom I number at least one friend and father in God, to be the first to
answer.
Douglas B. Farrow is
professor of Christian thought at McGill University. This article was first
published in March, 2017, by firstthings.com.
Please note:
- While we praise Prof.
Farrow’s courage to point out Francis’ errors in this good article (something
which millions of "Catholic" intellectuals out there simply can't
do), it’s also important to point out his flaw—acknowledging a manifest heretic as
pope. Also, his comparing of the scandal of Francis’ “papacy” to the “papacy of
the past” is just ridiculous! (See the article: Why does Father
Paul Kramer still maintain that Francis is not the true pope?)
- One of the Dubia Cardinals, Carlo Cardinal
Caffarra, has written a letter to Francis, signed by the other three cardinals, asking for an audience to discuss
deep concerns over the scandalous "apostolic" exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love.) See: Full Text of Dubia Cardinals’ Letter Asking Pope for an Audience.
