Why We Must Reject All Postconciliar Claims to a "New Understanding" of Dogma

Why We Must Reject All Postconciliar Claims to a "New Understanding" of Dogma

The Vatican Council's Condemnation of the Evolution of Dogmas:
From the Vatican Council's Dei Filius, Ch. 4:

13. For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence, but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated.

14. Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy mother Church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.

May understanding, knowledge and wisdom increase as ages and centuries roll along, and greatly and vigorously flourish, in each and all, in the individual and the whole Church: but this only in its own proper kind, that is to say, in the same doctrine, the same sense, and the same understanding [n. 36: St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium (Notebook), 28 (PL 50, 668)].

...

Canons:

Alcuin Reid Reviews Fr. Cekada's Work of Human Hands

Alcuin Reid Reviews Fr. Cekada's Work of Human Hands

Maybe old news to you, but news to me...

Link to: "Work of Human Hands: A Theological Critique of the Mass of Paul VI, Anthony Cekada."

De Mattei on the Liberals' Hijacking of the Second Vatican Council

De Mattei on the Liberals' Hijacking of the Second Vatican Council

Link to: RORATE CÆLI: Religious "fervor" and the outcome of the First Session of the Second Vatican Council

Garrigou-Lagrange on Pope Pius XII's Condemnation of Modern Theological Errors

Garrigou-Lagrange on Pope Pius XII's Condemnation of Modern Theological Errors

On the 61st Anniversary of the Encyclical Humani Generis

Link to Garrigou-Lagrange "The Structure of the Encyclical Humani Generis."

The Natural Law: Too Strict for Janet Smith?

The Natural Law: Too Strict for Janet Smith?

Janet Smith, a well-known, 'conservative' moral theologian, recently published a scandalous article in First Things (June-July 2011 issue), where she tries to justify, in certain cases, the intrinsically immoral act of lying.   Smith rashly entitled her article: "Fig Leaves and Falsehoods: Pace Thomas Aquinas, Sometimes We Need to Deceive." Much worse and more heterodox theses have been proposed by theologians in the last fifty years, but this one is particularly scandalous because it comes from a woman whose  moral teaching had been considered trustworthy by conservative Catholics for decades.  It is also scandalous due to her being a professor at a major seminary.

And hers is not simply an innocent theological mistake.  She acknowledges that she is rejecting the teaching, not only of St. Thomas, but of the whole theological tradition and of the Magisterium of the Church (she even cites the new Catechism), namely, that lying is intrinsically wrong and, thus, can never be justified.  In particular, the Church teaches that the end does not justify the means; it is for this reason that lying for a good end is never justified.  We would not be surprised if this were just another forgotten traditional Catholic teaching of decades past that had been buried together with all other things pre-conciliar: but it is a standard moral doctrine of the "current" Magisteirum, found the teaching of even the recent popes, John Paul II in particular (in Veritatis splendor, for example), something that even the most "moderate" of Catholics would expect her to respect.

So Smith rejects this doctrine while being fully aware that it is the teaching of the Church, and still, she pretends that all is good and that she is not stepping outside of the bounds of orthodoxy.  Not only that, but those of us who disagree with her are automatically "rigorists."  She calls Aquinas a rigorist, but by extension it follows that everyone else, all Catholic moral theologians and ethicists,  Popes, Bishops, confessors, the faithful, even saints, were rigorists.  (Before 1960 she would have been reprimanded by the Church--and rightly so.)

She ends the article by saying:

It is with trepidation and, I hope, with due humility that I disagree with Aquinas and go on record as defending a practice that many moralists I respect think always wrong. Nonetheless, I also respect the practices of cultures, the intuitions of nearly everyone, and what seems to me to be sound reasoning about the postlapsarian nature of signification.

Seemingly in her mind, the intuitions of (post-Englightenment) cultures and the reasoning of (mostly utilitarian) contemporary moral theologians outweigh the authority of the Church and the consensus of the approved Catholic theologians throughout history.  She acknowledges that she is being theologically audacious, but justifies herself by saying that she is doing so with humility. 

See the interesting comments posted at Rorate Caeli regarding mental reservations.

 

Pope Benedict's Equivocal Position on Judaism (Revised)

Pope Benedict's Equivocal Position on Judaism (Revised)

The Church and the Synagogue

Quaeritur: Would you care to possibly comment on this other excerpt about the Jews from the book The Light of the World.

Respondeo: This is a better example than the condom comment of a point in which "[i]t goes without saying that the Pope can have private opinions that are wrong," as the Holy Father himself admits in his book.  The theologically objectionable point is the claim that the traditional Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews was erroneous because he realized the profound unity of the Old and New Testaments:

"... in such a way that one did not pray directly for the conversion of the Jews in a missionary sense."

The rest seems to amount to an unclear and rather circumlocutious pair of premises that are somehow being offered as support for the above conclusion.  The argument contains little discernible propositional content by way of premises; it rather expresses a theologically misguided desire for ecumenism. (A desire cannot be false in the strict sense, just misguided or disordered.)  But one can perhaps boil all that down to the proposition that there is a natural unity between Judaism and Christianity.  This seems to be the hidden premise of the argument that he uses to get to the conclusion, i.e., the quote above.   Thus, what the Pope offers us is an enthymeme (an implied syllogism), which we can reformulate into an explicit syllogism:

Major Premise: If there is a natural continuity between Judaism and Christianity, then we must not pray for the Jews' conversion in a 'missionary sense' --i.e., that they change from a false religion to the one, true religion.

Minor Premise: There is a natural continuity between Judaism and Christianity.

Conclusion: Therefore, we must not pray for the Jews' conversion in a 'missionary sense' (as the Old Missal does), but for the perfection of their religion (as the New Missal and Pope Benedict's 'proclamation of the Christian faith' does).

For the sake of precision, allow me to express my refutation of his reasoning as a scholastic distinction:

I concede the major.  It is a statement of the self-evident proposition that one cannot convert from religion a to religion b if, in the ultimate analysis, a = b.  Conversion (in the 'missionary sense') involves changing religions that are essentially distinct.

I distinguish the minor (i.e., this premise is true in one sense, but false in another).  That there is a natural continuity between pre-Christian Judaism and Christianity, I concede; but that there is a natural continuity between modern Judaism and Christianity, I deny. The Holy Father's reasoning is faulty insofar as it does not take into account this important distinction. Pre-Christian Judaism, i.e., the religion of the Old Testament, is essentially the same religion as Christianity, the religion of the New Testament: Christianity is the perfection of pre-Christian Judaism. Pre-Christian Judaism prefigures Christianity; Christianity perfects Pre-Christian Judaism--every bit as much as the Old Testament prefigures the New, and the New perfects the Old.

But post-Christian Judaism, and I specifically mean the religion of the Jewish race after the destruction of the Temple, is a new religion distinct from the religion of the Old Testament. Judaism, in other words, underwent a sort of substantial change at that point. Not only was it redefined due to the impossibility of observing the Old Law (no Temple, no sacrifice, no Judaism); but also a new, anti-Christian element came into the definition of this new religion. The core of Jewish belief is no longer merely the awaiting of a Messias, but also the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is NOT that Messias. As a consequence, a modern Jew who thinks that Jesus IS the Messias is not considered a Jew by the Jews themselves. This shows that modern, i.e., post-Christian Judaism and Christianity are not continuous.

In short, pre-Christian Judaism is pro-Christianity, whereas modern Judaism is anti-Christian.

I distinguish the conclusion: That therefore, we must not pray for the pre-Christians Jews' conversion, I concede; but that we must not pray for the modern Jews' conversion, I deny.  Given the distinction of the minor that I made above, the conclusion can only be true in the sense that we don't pray for the conversion of pre-Christian Jews.  But they're all dead, so that's obviously not what the Pope means.  In the other sense, the sense in which the Holy Father means it--that modern Jews cannot convert from their religion to Christianity, and the Old Missal is incorrect in praying for that intention--in this sense the conclusion is false.  


The fact that the argument's conclusion is false can be stated positively: modern Judaism is a false religion and modern Jews, therefore, have the obligation to abandon their errors and accept the true religion revealed by God through Jesus Christ and the Church; consequently, the traditional liturgy does right in praying for their conversion: 

Let us pray also for the perfidious Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish perfidy: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

Caritas non nisi in veritate.

"God Revealing Man to Himself": Nouvelle Theologie and Naturalism in Theological Conclusions

"God Revealing Man to Himself": Nouvelle Theologie and Naturalism in Theological Conclusions

From Greenstock, David, T.O.P. "Thomism and the New Theology" The Thomist 13 (1950), 567-96, quoted at 575-8 (emphasis added and footnotes redacted; submitted by an Ite ad Thomam reader).

St. Thomas’ view of this problem of the relationship between faith and reason which gives rise to the science of theology was both deep and clear and is admirably set out and defended by John of St. Thomas. Theology is a true science, indeed it is the most noble of the sciences worthy in every way of the name of sapientia. The principles upon which it relies in its evolution and in its investigations are those divine facts which have been revealed by God. However, as a science, those divinely revealed principles do not form its proper object, that is the role of the conclusions which are drawn from them with the help of human reason. Such a statement, which seems so clear to us now, was a real revolution when it was first made. The object of the science of theology is the theological conclusion strictly so called. Now, in order to deduce these conclusions from revealed truth there is need of a fitting instrument with which to work. Sometimes this instrument takes the form of another revealed truth, while at other times it is a truth which is known to human reason by its own unaided efforts. Now, obviously, the minor premise which contains another revealed truth will have far greater influence on the conclusion than one which contains a truth known to human reason alone. But, and here is the crux of the whole question, even though the human truth occupies an inferior position, that of a mere instrument, the revealed truth in the major premise does exercise a great influence on that human instrument. That is why St. Thomas speaks of these natural truths which are so used in theology as that “handmaidens” of that science, in the sense that theology, as a true science, makes use of these human truths for its major purpose, which is to explain revealed truth in human language, so far as that is possible.

The position of the new theologians is very different from that of Aquinas. Their idea is that theological reasoning consists in using revealed truth in order to draw out of the full latent content contained in human truths--the contrary, in fact of the Thomist position. This is a logical conclusion which follows from their vitalistic attitude towards truth and especially from their statements that the theological conclusion strictly so called has little or no value. It also follows from their teaching with regard to the evolution, necessarily connected with contemporary history, through which theology must pass if it is to remain alive and to play an effective part in the modern world. As one of the partisans of the new theology expresses it, “L’histoire manifeste donc a la fois la relativite des notions, des schemes ou la theologie et, en mem temps, offer aux regards de la foi l’affirmation absolue, la Parole divine qui s’y est incarnee.” (Henri Bouillard)  Thus, human reasoning, which changes according to the dictates of its historical evolution and the necessities of the times, uses the permanent element, which is divine truth, as an instrument to develop and present its latent content.

Thus the central problem which confronts us here is quite simply one of two contrary ways of considering the relation between revelation and reason. Either reason is the instrument in the development of revealed truth or the revealed truth is the instrument of reason. It is our opinion that, unless the fact which we have mentioned before–of the great influence of the revealed truths on the natural truth which is used as an instrument in their full development–is understood and clearly brought to light, then this fundamental error in the new theology will never be completely overcome. For that reason it is useful to notice that the same conclusion could have been reached by a consideration of the role of the middle term in the theological syllogism, which in one case–that of the major premise–is a revealed truth, and in the other minor premise, a truth of human reason. In order that this middle term in the minor premise may have exactly the same sense as that which it has in the major premise, thus avoiding four terms in the syllogism, it must of necessity have the “approval,” as it were, of the revealed truth. If we examine it carefully we shall see that it is just this approval which gives to the theological conclusion its full force as an element in the expression of divine revelation which also brings to light the role of human truth as an instrument in theology.

We know that, according to St. Thomas, the instrument has a double activity, i.e., its own, which is attributed to its personal activity in the forming of the effect, and also another power which it receives from that cause which uses it as an instrument. Thus, in the theological conclusion we are not dealing with a series of probabilities, but with strict conclusions in the form of judgments which correspond to the ontological truth virtually contained in the revealed principles. This doctrine has been very clearly expressed by John of St. Thomas, when he said: 

Praemissa naturalis consideratur dupliciter. Primo secundum quod praecise naturalis est, et sic ex hac parte non concurrit nisi ministerialiter…Alio modo consideratur praemissa naturalis ut conjuncta praemissae supernaturali de fide, scilicet u tab ea elevator quia approbatur et corrigitur ab ipsa et eius certitudinem participat: et hoc modo etiam praemissa naturalis concurrit non principaliter, et per se, sed sub altiori lumine. (Cusus Theologicus, I, q. 1, a. 6.)

From all these various angles we reach one and the same conclusion, namely that it is the truth of faith which plays the active part in the theological process of reasoning, using the natural truth to develop the latent content in revelation, and using it as a strict instrument in the Thomist sense of that word. For this reason those theological conclusions are more certain than any merely natural truth could ever be, because they are reduced, in their final analysis, to a higher principle than natural reason, one which is supernatural and divine, which colours all that is human in the theological process, giving it a new and a supernatural value. It is this divine element in theology which unifies everything, even speculative and the practical aspects of it. Because the new theology has failed to appreciate this truth with regard to the theological conclusion it has also failed to realize the role of the merely human truth as an instrument of faith.

Quaeritur: What are the Techniques of Neo-Modernism and the Nouvelle Theologie?

Quaeritur: What are the Techniques of Neo-Modernism and the Nouvelle Theologie?

Quaeritur: [In your previous post on the nouvelle theologie], you have named 'resourcement' as an inherently dangerous neo-modernist strategy.  Would you elucidate more such strategies we might encounter equally capable of confounding our understanding and leading us away from the Church?

Respondeo: Yes, ressourcement is a technique that is used (most often) to "raze the bastions," i.e., to destroy the positive foundations of the traditional interpretation of the faith.  But we must distinguish between positive theology and ressourcement.  

Positive Theology vs. Ressourcement Theology.  Positive theology is a perfectly legitimate method mastered by the Fathers of the Church and perfected by the Scholastics throughout the centuries which consists in studying the sources of theology, first in their own native literary context, and then collating them topically, so they may be ultimately used in support for a given thesis. (Nouvelle theologie practitioners often criticize the Scholastics because, supposedly, the Scholastics used the sources merely to formulate "proofs from authority"; but these self-professed lovers of historical theology don't bother to realize that Scholastic proofs were merely the end-result of a much more elaborate study of sources that involved intensive literary courses, the resulting commentaries, along with its sophisticated divisiones textus, consequent florilegia, etc., etc. It was a whole culture of historical and literary awareness of classical sources that modern scholars can only envy and not imitate.) St Thomas was a master in this technique, as is evident, not only from his employment of the fruits of positive theology in the Summa or his disputed questions (for example, whenever he cites Scripture, St Augustine, Aristotle, etc. in support of a thesis), but especially as it is evident from his commentaries on Scripture, Aristotle, and other thinkers, and in particular from his impressive biblical patrology, the Catena aurea. It is important for theologians especially to use this technique, for their conclusions must ultimately be based on the sources of Revelation. And the Scholastics were very aware of this. St Thomas speaks of this theological task explicitly in Summa theologiae I.1.8 ad 2.

Ressourcement, however, goes beyond a mere proof from authority; if it were, it would be nothing new.  Rather, it is a collective attempt by neo-modernist theologians--who are experts in the history of dogma and theology--to replace the traditional understanding of the faith by selectively citing (or re-interpreting) obscure sources and texts to their advantage, in such a way that discredits the traditional understanding of the faith it is  expressed by the overwhelming consensus of Fathers of the Church, of the Doctors of the Church, the approved theologians, the Councils, the Popes, catechisms, and faithful throughout the ages.  Essentially this is the old informal fallacy of special pleading, except glorified by a triumphalistic title that means essentially 'returning to the sources'.  The word is supposed to give us warm-and-fuzzy feelings, the sense of finally understanding the faith the way it was originally meant to be understood, after over a millenium of not getting it, and half a millenium of that horrible old 'Tridentine' religion. 
  
Other Methods.  Now, ressourcement is their chief method, but they employ other techniques as well, most of which are logical corollaries of ressourcement. These methods are applied not only to dogma, but to every area of the Church: Philosophy, Apologetics, Ecclesiology, Fundamental Theology, Morals, Scripture, Liturgy, Canon Law, Homiletics, etc. It is a new theology that is supposed to 'renew' the entire life of the Church, which is now considered to be in its 'Springtime' and in a 'new Pentecost'.  Among these corollaries are (A) the new 'historical' theology, (B) the rejection of Scholasticism, (C) the introduction of false modern philosophies, and (D) the exclusion from their thought of all scientific order.

(A) The new 'historical' theology logically follows from resourcement and its neo-modernist epistemology: if truth is the correspondence of the intellect with our modern way of life (adaequatio intellectus et vitae), rather than with reality, then theology is not the science of God's reality as it is contained in revelation; rather, is no more than a narrative of the different ways in which theological minds have corresponded to the lifestyles of the different times in which they have lived. The value of the great Fathers, Doctors, and Theologias of the Church boils down to the fact they expressed the faith to their contemporaries 'using the categories of their own times'.

(B) The abandonment of Scholasticism also logically follows from this and is simply its negative counterpart. We are to 'return to the Fathers', which really does not mean imitating the Fathers (that would be too traditional) but rather attaining a historical consciousness of patristic thought. But this historical consciousness excludes the supposedly anti-historical (and 'boring'!) mode of reasoning employed in the Scholastic method. Therefore, a good practitioner of the nouvelle theologie must 'return to the Fathers' and bypass Scholasticism altogether. Accordingly, Thomistic philosophy and theology are no longer pursued as sciences that concern God and reality taking inspiration and guidance from the thought of St Thomas, but as a historical narrative of what St Thomas said and believed.

(C) As logical consequence, the role that Thomistic philosophy traditionally played in the Church is neutralized, and in its place, new, vague, existentialist philosophies such as phenomenology and personalism are introduced in order 'justify' neo-modernism (although in really it is impossible to give epistemic justification to a self-referentially inconsistent theory--I shall explain in a later post why both modernism and neo-modernism are self-referentially inconsistent).

(D) The exclusion of scientific order from their thought follows from their existentialist philosophy and is a common denominator they have with their predecessors, the modernists. Here we can quote Pope St Pius X's Pascendi (paragraph 4): 

But since the Modernists (as they are commonly and rightly called) employ a very clever artifice, namely, to present their doctrines without order and systematic arrangement into one whole, scattered and disjointed one from another, so as to appear to be in doubt and uncertainty, while they are in reality firm and steadfast, it will be of advantage, Venerable Brethren, to bring their teachings together here into one group, and to point out the connexion between them, and thus to pass to an examination of the sources of the errors, and to prescribe remedies for averting the evil.

There are lots of other techniques that are used by particular neo-modernists, but these are at least the most commonly used by the movement. Ultimately, however, all of these methods are only means that are subservient to the end of aggiornamento: destroying tradition and establishing a new interpretation of the Catholic faith. They will employ any other method that helps them achieve this end. Resourcement happens to be their favorite (because it is so clever, deceptive, and effective), but it not the only one.

Further Reading.  All of this is already outlined in Ven. Pope Pius XII's Humani generis, and discussed with technical precision in the two Garrigou-Lagrange previously cited:

Where is the New Theology Leading Us?

The Structure of the Encyclical Humani Generis.

An revealing book on the Nouvelle Theologie has been published recently, Nouvelle Thologie - New Theology: Inheritor of Modernism, Precursor of Vatican II.  It is written by Jurgen Mettepenningen, a liberal who celebrates the triumph of modernism through the Nouvelle Theology.  Here is the product description from amazon.com:

This title provides an introduction to the most influential movement in Catholic theology in the 20th century which prepared the ground for the Second Vatican Council. La nouvelle theologie - New Theology - was the name of one of the most dynamic and fascinating movements within Catholic theology in the 20th century. Although first condemned by Pope Pius XII. in 1946 and later in his encyclical Humani generis in 1950, it became influential in the preparation of the Second Vatican Council. The movement was instigated by French Dominican Yves Congar with his Dominican confreres Marie-Dominique Chenu and Louis Charlier and linked with the Dominican academy at Le Saulchouir (Tournai), but soon taken over by Jesuits of the same generation of theologians: Henri de Lubac, Jean Danielou, Henri Bouillard and Yves de Montcheuil. They laid strong emphasis on the supernatural, the further implementation of historical method within theology, the ressourcement (back to Scripture, liturgy and Fathers), and the connection between life, faith and theology. Many of them were participating as periti in the Second Vatican Council, which finally accepted the striving of the new theology. Hence, the original perception of the New Theology as novitas would become an auctoritas in the field of Catholic theology. On the basis of research of archives and literature Jurgen Mettepenningen shows in his book the different theological positions of both Dominican and Jesuit protagonists, the development of their ideas in close relationship with the theological view and the sanctions of the Roman Catholic Church, and the great importance of the generation of the discussed Dominican and Jesuit theologians and their New Theology. He proves that the protagonists of both the first and the second phase of the nouvelle theologie constituted together the generation of theologians necessary to implement the striving of the modernist era within the Church at the time of Vatican II.

Modernism vs. Neo-Modernism: What is the Difference?

Modernism vs. Neo-Modernism: What is the Difference?

The overarching principle of post-conciliar theology is not modernism, properly speaking. Let us get our terms straight.

Modernism is the idea that there are no eternal truths, that truth is the correspondence of the mind with one's lifestyle (adaequatio intellectus et vitae), and that, therefore, old dogmas must be abandoned and new beliefs must arise that meet 'the needs of modern man'. This is a radical denial of the traditional and common sense notion of truth: the correspondence of the mind with reality (adaequatio intellectus et rei), which is the basis of the immutability of Catholic dogma.

No, the post-conciliar theological principle is neo-modernism, and the theology that is based on it is known as the nouvelle theologie.  It is the idea that old dogmas or beliefs must be retained, yet not the traditional 'formulas': dogmas must be expressed and interpreted in a new way in every age so as to meet the 'needs of modern man'.  This is still a denial of the traditional and common sense notion of truth as adaequatio intellectus et rei (insofar as it is still an attempt to make the terminology that expresses the faith correspond with our modern lifestyle) and consequently of the immutability of Catholic dogma, yet it is not as radical as modernism.  It is more subtle and much more deceptive than modernism because it claims that the faith must be retained; it is only the 'formulas' of faith that must be abandoned--they use the term 'formula' to distinguish the supposedly mutable words of our creeds, dogmas, etc. from their admittedly immutable meanings.  Therefore, neo-modernism can effectively slip under the radar of most pre-conciliar condemnations (except Humani generis, which condemns it directly) insofar as its practitioners claim that their new and unintelligible theological terminology really expresses the same faith of all times.  In other words, neo-modernism is supposed to be 'dynamic orthodoxy': supposedly orthodox in meaning, yet always changing in expression to adapt to modern life (cf. Franciscan University of Steubenville's mission statement).  

Take extra ecclesiam nulla salus as a clear example of a dogma that has received a brutal neo-modernist re-interpretation: they claim that the old 'formula' that "there is no salvation outside the Church" must be abandoned; rather it is more meaningful to modern man to say that salvation is not in, but through, the Church;  people who are not in the Church may still be saved through the Church; thus, to them the dogma that "there is no salvation outside the Church" means that there is salvation outside the Church.  Hence see Ven. Pope Pius XII condemning those "reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation." (Humani generis 27).

Yet this mentality of reinterpreting everything anew in order to 'meet the needs of the times' is generally tends to be found in different degrees among different post-conciliar sources:  

It tends to be  (1) rampant in men like De Lubac, Von Balthasar, Congar, etc.: it is the ultimate goal of their writings, teachings, and activities as churchmen.   To achieve this end, they employ the technique of 'resourcement', the neo-modernist strategy of fishing for the few dubious, questionable, or idiosyncratic teachings of some Fathers of the Church and other authoritative writers, and gather them into a massive, heterodox theological argument against the traditional understanding of the faith (which they like to relativize by giving it names such as "Counter-Reformation" Theology, "Tridentine" Theology, or "Scholastic" Theology, instead of just admitting that it is Catholic Theology plain and simple).  This technique accomplishes three things that go hand-in-hand: (a) offers a refutation of traditional Catholicism, (b) defends an interpretation that meets the needs of modern times, and (c) gives it a semblance of being traditional, because it appears to be based in the Fathers et al.  This type of argument is used, for example, by Von Balthasar in his nearly heretical book, Dare We Hope that All Men be Saved? to 'prove', not that Hell does not exist (that is a dogma), but that it is empty.  But this technique and its neo-modernistic underpinnings is not only practiced in almost all of these men's writings; it is also defended in theory by many of them, particularly in Von Balthasar's daring little book, Razing the Bastions, where he demonstrates that "Tridentine" theology must be rejected in our times because it is 'boring'.

It also tends to be (2) present in a more moderate way in the non-binding statements by post-conciliar popes, since they themselves were deeply involved in the developing of the nouvelle theologie.  Just to give one of a million possible examples, see Pope Benedict's evolutionistic re-interpretation of the Resurrection of Our Lord.  Nothing here obviously contradicts  the dogma of the Resurrection (it may be interpreted as a simple analogy, even if a bad one, and nothing more), but it is a novelty that can be easily understood as claiming that the Resurrection is part of the natural development of nature (thus giving credence to some of the nouvelle theologie's pet doctrines, such as De Lubac's heterodox notion of the supernatural and De Chardin's pantheistic evolutionism).   This happens almost on a daily basis in what comes out of the Vatican, not to mention what comes from local bishops.

And finally, neo-modernism tends to be present (3) mostly implicitly or behind-the-scenes in the Council, the Catechism, etc., even though it seldom comes out more explicitly.  Things are done at this level under the pretext of 'aggiornamento', a euphemism for neo-modernism.  That is usually all the justification provided since at this authoritative level, there is no need to justify things theologically.  Hence, Vatican II and the Catechism are not outright neo-modernistic.  Rather, they (like most of post-conciliar doctrine) tend in that direction and/or are inspired by that mentality.  In other words, most of the time these documents do not explicitly teach neo-modernist errors (the kind of errors you hear explicitly from neo-modernist theologians and priests). Rather, they are full of dangerous ambiguities: statements that in a technical sense could be interpreted as being in harmony with the traditional faith, but that, in their natural, non-forced, interpretation are heterodox.  One clear example of this is Dignitatis humanae, par. 2; entire monographs have been written in order to prove that, despite appearances, this document does not contradict previous teaching.  Maybe in fact it ultimately does not, but it is obvious that the prima facie meaning does; otherwise there would be no need to write so many volumes to prove it.

It must be noted that these are general tendencies, and that in some documents (cf. Gaudium et Spes) and every now and then in papal and episcopal statements neo-modernist principles rears come out more explicitly.    

For a more detailed philosophical and theological critique of neo-modernism, and how it is nothing but a re-hashing of modernism, see Garrigou-Lagrange's Where is the New Theology Leading Us? and his The Structure of the Encyclical Humani Generis.

The Oath Against Modernism Betrayed.

The Oath Against Modernism Betrayed.

Link to Catholic Family News article.

Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Oath Against Modernism

Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Oath Against Modernism

THE OATH AGAINST THE ERRORS OF MODERNISM

From the Motu Proprio of Pope St. Pius X

"Sacrorum Antistitum" (1 September 1910)

Ego _________ firmiter amplector ac recipio omnia et singula, quae ab inerranti Ecclesia magisterio definita, adserta ac declarata sunt, praesertim ea doctrinae capita, quae huius temporis erroribus directo adversantur.

I, N .... firmly accept and embrace each and every doctrine defined by the Church's unerring teaching authority and ail that She has maintained and declared, especially those points of doctrine which directly oppose the errors of our time.

Ac primum quidem: Deum, rerum omnium principium et finem, naturali rationis lumine "per ea quae facta sunt" hoc est, per visibilia creationis opera, tamquam causam per effectus, certo cognosci, adeoque demonstrari etiam posse, profiteor. 

In the first place, I profess that God, the Beginning and the End of all things, can be known with certitude and His existence demonstrated by the natural light of reason from the things that are made, that is, from the visible works of creation, as a cause is known from its effects.

Secundo: externa revelationis argumenta, hoc est facta divina, in primisque miracula et prophetias admitto et agnosco tanquam signa certissima divinitus ortae christianae religionis, eademque tenea aetatum omnium atque hominum, etiam huius temporis, intelliegentiae esse maxime accommodata.

Secondly, I acknowledge and admit the external arguments for revelation, namely, divine facts, especially miracles and prophecies, as most certain signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion, and I hold these are perfectly suited to the intelligence of every age and of all men, including our own times.

Tertio: firma pariter fide credo Ecclesiam, verbi revelati custodem et magistram, per ipsum verum atque historicum Christum, cum apud nos degeret, proximo ac directo institutam eandemque super Petrum, apostolicae hierarchiae principem, eiusque in aevum successores aedificatam.

Thirdly, I also firmly believe that the Church, the guardian and teacher of God's revealed word, was directly and absolutely instituted by Christ Himself, the true Christ of History, while He lived among us; and that the same Church was founded on Peter; the prince of the apostolic hierarchy and on his successors to the end of time.

Quarto: fidei doctrinam ab Apostolis per orthodoxos Patres eodem sensu eademque semper sententia ad nos usque transmissam, sincero recipio; ideoque prorsus reicio haereticum commentum evolutionis dogmatum, ab uno in alium sensum transeuntium, diversum ab eo, quem prius habuit Ecclesia; pariterque damno errorem omnem, quo, divino deposito, Christi Sponsae tradito ab eaque fideliter custodiendo, sufficitur philosophicum inventum, vel creatio humanae conscientiae, hominum conatu sensim efformatae et in posterum indefinito progressu perficiendae.

Fourthly, I sincerely accept the doctrine of faith in the same sense and with always the same meaning as it has been handed down to us from the apostles through the officially approved fathers. And therefore, I wholly reject the heretical notion of the evolution of dogmas, according to which doctrines pass from one sense to another sense alien to that which the Church held from the start. I likewise condemn every erroneous notion to the effect that instead of the divine deposit of faith entrusted by Christ to His spouse, the Church, and to be faithfully guarded by Her, one may substitute a philosophic system or a creation of the human mind gradually refined by man's striving and capable of eventual perfection by indefinite progress.

Quinto: certissime teneo ac sincere profiteor, fidem non esse caecum sensum religionis e latrebis subconscientiae erumpentem, sub pressione cordis et inflesione voluntatis maraliter informatae, sed verum assensum intellectus veritati extrinsecus acceptae "ex auditu", quo nempe, quae a Deo personali, creatore ac Domino nostro dicta, testata et revelata sunt, vera esse credimus, propter Dei auctoritatem summe veracis.

Fifthly, I hold as certain and sincerely profess that faith is not a blind religious sense evolving from the hidden recesses of subliminal consciousness, and morally formed by the influence of heart and will, but that it is a real assent of the intellect to objective truth learned by hearing, an assent wherein we believe to be true whatever has been spoken, testified, and revealed by the personal God, our Creator and Lord, on the authority of God, Who is the Perfection of Truth.

Me etiam, qua par est, reverentia subicio totoque animo adhaereo damnationibus, declarationibus, praescriptis omnibus, quae in Encyclicis litteris "Pascendi" et in Decreto "Lamentabili" continentur, praesertim circa eam quam historiam dogmatum vocant. Idem reprobo errorem affirmantium, propositam ab Ecclesia fidem posse historiae repugnare, et catholica dogmata, quo sensu nunc intelliguntur, cum verioribus christianae religionis originibus componi non posse.

Furthermore, in all due reverence, I submit to and fully uphold all the condemnations, declarations and directions contained in the encyclical letter PASCENDI and in the LAMENTABILI, especially as regards what is called the history of dogmas. I also reject the error of those who allege that the faith proposed by the Church may conflict with history, and that Catholic dogmas, in the sense in which they are now understood, cannot be reconciled with actual origins of Christianity.

Damno quoque ac reicio eorum sententiam, qui dicunt christianum hominem eruditiorem induere personam duplicem, aliam credentis, aliam historici, quasi liceret historico ea retinere, quae credentis fidei contradicant, aut praemissas adstruere, ex quibus consequatur, dogmata esse aut falsa aut dubia, modo haec directo non denegentur.

I condemn and reject, moreover, the opinion put forth that a more learned Christian can assume a dual personality, one as believer and another as historian, thus making it permissible for the historian to maintain what his faith as a believer contradicts, or to lay down premises from which there follows the falsity or the uncertainty of dogmas, provided only that these are not directly denied.

Reprobo pariter eam Scripturae sanctae diiudicandae atque interpretandae rationem, quae, Ecclesiae traditione, analogia fidei et Apostolicae Sedis normis posthabitis, rationalistarum comentis inhaeret, et criticem textus velut unicam supremamque regulam haud minus licenter quam temere amplectitur.

I likewise reject that method of determining and interpreting Sacred Scripture which, setting aside the Church's tradition and the analogy of faith and the norms of the Holy See, adopts the principles of the rationalists, and with equal arbitrariness regards textual criticism as a sole supreme rule.

Sententiam praeterea illorum reicio, qui tenent, doctori disciplinae historicae theologicae tradendae aut iis de rebus scribenti seponendam prius esse opinionem ante conceptam sive de supernaturali origine catholicae traditionis, sive de promissa divinitus ope ad perennem conservationem uniuscuiusque revelati veri; deinde scripta Patrum singulorum interpretanda solic scientiae principiis, sacra qualibet auctoritate seclusa, eaque iudicii libertate, qua profana quaevis monumenta solent investigari.

Moreover, I reject the opinion of those who hold that a teacher of the science of historical theology or a writer on the subject must first put aside any preconceived notions about the supernatural origin of Catholic tradition or about the divine aid promised for the continual preservation of each revealed truth; or that the writings of individual fathers must be interpreted solely by the data of science without any reference to sacred authority, and with the same freedom of judgment usually accorded to any profane records.

In universum denique me alienissimum ab errore profiteor, quo modernistae tenent in sacra traditione nihil inesse divini, aut, quod longe deterius, pantheistico sensu illud admittunt, ita ut nihil iam restet nisi nudum factum et simplex, communibus historiae factis aequandum: hominum nempe sua industria, solertia, ingenio scholam a Christo eiusque Apostolis inchoatam per subsequentes aetates continuantium.

Finally, I profess that I am far removed in general from the error of the modernists, who hold that there is nothing inherently divine in sacred tradition; or who - which is far worse - admit it in a pantheistic sense. For them, there would remain only a bare simple fact, like the ordinary facts of history, to the effect that the system started by Christ and His Apostles still find men to support it by their energy, shrewdness, and ability.

Proinde fidem patrum firmissime retineo et ad extremum vitae spiritum retinebo, de charismate veritatis certo, quad est, fuit eritque semper in episcopatus ab apostolis successione, non ut id teneatur, quod melius et aptius videri possit secundum suam cuiusque aetatis culturam, sed ut numquam aliter credatur, numquam aliter intellegatur absoluta et immutabilis veritas ab initio per apostolos praedicata.

Therefore, I most firmly retain and will retain to my last breath the faith of the Fathers of the Church, which has the supernatural guarantee of truth, and which is, has been, and ever will be residing in the bishops who are the successors of the apostles. And this is not to be understood that we may hold what seems better suited to the culture of a particular age, but rather that we may never believe nor understand anything other than the absolute and unchangeable truth preached from the beginning by the Apostles.

Haec omnia spondeo me fideliter, integre sincereque servaturum et inviolabiliter custoditurum, nusquam ab iis sive in docendo sive quomodolibet verbis scriptisque deflectendo. Sic spondeo, sic iuro, sic me Deus adiuvet et haec sancta Dei Evangelia.

All this I promise to keep faithfully, entirely and sincerely, and to guard inviolably, and never to depart from it in any way, in teaching, word or writing. So I promise, so I swear, so help me God and His Holy Gospels.

Professors, are you really Catholic?

Take the oath!

Louis Bouyer: Enemy of Traditional Theology

Louis Bouyer: Enemy of Traditional Theology

Fr. Louis Bouyer, Neo-Modernist, not-quite-ex-Lutheran, Conciliar Peritus, unleashes his neo-modernist hogwash and tells Garrigou-Lagrange, Sertillanges, John of St Thomas, and the rest of the tradition of Scholastic Thomists what St Thomas really taught about God and Revelation.

Taken from Bouyer's The Invisible Father: Approaches to the Mystery of the Divinity, pp. 248-257, with comments by Don Paco in red.

Neo-Thomist Equivocations on Thomism

Let us take as an example one of the most venerable productions of the last Thomist, or rather, Neo-Thomist renaissance {note that the term 'neo-Thomist' is a pejorative one}: the long and great book of Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, Dieu, son existence et sa nature [God: His Existence and His Nature].  In it, the theological teaching of St Thomas is analyzed, carefully taken to pieces and put together again, with a clarity and a fidelity most deserving of praise.  Yet few readers, putting down the book, will have escaped the impression that in it the God of the Bible and the Gospel has been reduced to a caput mortuum [dead head] of frozen abstractions.  And yet its author undoubtedly exemplified in his time that rare combination of theologian and eminent man of the spirit, and it was his constant concern to develop spirituality and theology in tandem.  How then, we must ask, could such a theologian have produced a summa about God frankly so overwhelmingly boring and, more especially, the speculative ramifications of which (practically) never contribute to a genuine enrichment of thought?  {Typical Neo-Modernist critique of everything traditional: "it is boring."  Cf. Von Balthasar, Raising the Bastions.  This is quite telling of their motives and of their unworthiness as theologians or even as churchmen.}

E. Gilson, with such Thomists in mind, was perfectly right in saying that one can’t see the forest for the trees, and that this is an inevitable result of their systematic effort to separate what is philosophical from their master’s theology, so as to reorganize and rebuild it, purportedly, according to its own innate exigencies.  It is at the very least surprising that disciples, beyond the Angelic Doctor, of Aristotle himself should have forgotten that order is of being.  Instead, they imposed an order on Thomas’ thought which was not his own, and thereby turned it into something quite different from his, even if (which is supposing a good deal, given such manipulating) the individual pieces were fully respected.  {Note that the neo-modernist finds Gilson to be on his side.}

It was not in fact by chance that St Thomas never separately systematized his philosophy {never mind about his commentaries on Aristotle!  They don’t count because they do not represent St Thomas’ philosophy, only Aristotle’s...} that he never detached it from Christian theology but always developed it within the latter.  However purely rational philosophical developments should be and remain, for St Thomas it was quite certain that they did not thereby become independent of the situation of the thinker producing them.  If the one philosophizing is a Christian, this will have an effect on his thought, even if, while philosophizing, he uses nothing but rational concepts and procedures accessible, at least in principle, to any and every man even unenlightened by revelation.  {Agreed, but St Thomas's philosophy can be found in his Commentaries on Aristotle exactly in that way: in a non-theological context.  Only there, in fact, does it follow its own properly rational principles.  The philosophy contained in the Summa is formally theology, and only materially philosophical.  This is something that Gilson and his followers are willingly blind to.}

The result is that when John of St Thomas, the first to do this, transformed Thomism by developing philosophy independently of and prior to the theology dealing with the Christian revelation, he inevitably created a different philosophy and a different theology, however careful he was to use nothing but elements taken straight from his master.  Even when he is scrupulously precise in repeating St Thomas’ words and key phrases, they no longer say the same thing.  {Bouyer, on the other hand, can't even use St Thomas' words themselves, because they would prove that he is in error.}

That this is true of “John of St Thomist” theology, {note the audacious ad hominem, a mockery of traditional Thomistic theology} right from its very beginning, is revealed by that theologian’s understanding of what, following St Thomas, he calls a “theological conclusion.”  According to him it is possible, even while adhering to a strict application of syllogistic reasoning, to have two kinds of theological conclusions—one flowing from two revealed premises, the other from one revealed and one philosophical premise.  And this latter kind by its very nature will widen the field, if not precisely of revelation as such, at least of the knowledge we can draw from it.  This may appear at first sight to be a quite innocuous and legitimate development of St Thomas’ idea of a theological conclusion.  In fact, it transforms it to the point of being unrecognizable.  The whole meaning of theological endeavor is at a stroke radically altered, and at the same time even our very conception of revelation.

For St Thomas there are not and cannot be theological conclusions which are not already comprised within revelation.  A theological conclusion is and can only be a revealed doctrinal affirmation of which one has established the logical relationship it has with other doctrinal affirmations of the same species.  The whole of theology moves within faith and so within revelation.  To suppose that it can evade it in order to increase its scope (!) is no longer to understand anything about revelation itself, {thus, pretty much all of post-Tridentine theology, which is founded on this doctrine, is unable to understand revelation} as if theology could ever flatter itself of having gone so far beyond revelation as to be able to complete it.

This in fact supposes that, according to John of St Thomas and those who have followed him, revelation is nothing but an accumulation of externally juxtaposed propositions, to which one can further add philosophical propositions, thus aspiring to enrich revelation by philosophico-theological hybrids.  It is of course this which purportedly justifies the separation of philosophy and of the theology concerned with the revealed datum, and the reconstruction of the first prior to the second, with, consequently, the naive expectation of “developing” the objects of revelation by artificially inseminating them with external philosophical propositions.  {Bouyer, you are disgusting.}  But at this point one is miles away from genuinely Thomist views of theology as the science of God, having its whole basis on his word.  One has in the first place lost sight of St Thomas’ strong sense of revelation as the communication of a single mystery {barf!} that of God himself, an organically coherent mystery {double barf!} which speculation can attempt to inventory, to analyze and synthesize but never exhaust, and even less indulge in the grotesque pretension of adding something to it to complete and develop it {Apparently, Bouyer never read the first question of the Summa: “Hence sacred doctrine makes use also of the authority of philosophers in those questions in which they were able to know the truth by natural reason ... as extrinsic and probable arguments...” ST I.1.8 ad 2}.

Traveling on such a road—and this has been the mentality, more or less of Baroque Thomism, not to mention modern Neo-Thomism—one inevitably comes to prolong this now bloodless religious philosophy into a correspondingly depreciative theology of revelation.  Such a theology ceases to be able to vivify by the vision of faith, and at the same time refine and reform our merely human concepts, and it increasingly tends to yield to the disastrous policy of clearing out the Word of God of everything that cannot be circumscribed by or reduced to pre-formed concepts constructed without reference to the Word.

It is therefore not surprising if such so-called Thomism gives the impression that the philosophico-theological thought of St Thomas is nothing but a gigantic and futile exercise in tautology which, while claiming to explain and develop the statements of the faith, in fact eviscerates and disjoins them.  And it is worth emphasizing that if this can happen in the case of so distinguished a mind and so worthy a  man of the spirit as Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, then how much worse it will be when this kind of philosophy and theology is taken up by some college rector whose chief concern is to bring out the “errors” of his colleagues, and either has no interior life or never dreams (quite rightly!) of nourishing it on his theology!

The Existential Character of Authentic Thomism

Once we have become aware of all of this, and drawn the moral, we are in a position to rediscover St Thomas’ God.  He is not simply that first unmoved mover of the universe, blithely indifferent to it, even disdainfully ignorant of its existence, and who in any case is only capable of referring everything outside and within himself to a hideous egoism or egotism expanded to infinite dimensions.  Such was Laberthonnière’s accusation.  The first thing we must realize is what E. Gilson exposed in a history of the Neo-Thomists, far more devastating than anything Laberthonnière ever wrote {Note: Gilson's critique of traditional Thomism is more devastating than that of a declared enemy of Thomism}, and without making the latter’s mistake of believing the Neo-Thomists when they claimed to be unfolding their master.  This is the fundamental misunderstanding which travesties the whole of Thomism from top to bottom and in particular St Thomas’ theology: that of transposing his thought from the most radical existentialism there has ever been to a deadly essentialism {as always, the critics of 'essentialist Thomism' never define either 'essentialism' or 'existentialism'; instead, you are expected to 'feel' what those terms mean}.  How could the God whose essence is to be precisely “Pure Act,” the very act of existing without any limitation, possibly be summed up by concepts?  {Here you are expected to 'feel' that essentialism has to do with ascribing attributes, or 'concepts', to God...  Ooh, those evil Thomists!}

But to realize, in the deepest sense, the significance of this starting-point, one must see St Thomas’ Metaphysics, not as simple, superficially modified Aristotelianism, but as what E. Gilson, fifty years ago, was so bold as to call “the metaphysics of Exodus,” without himself immediately grasping every consequence of that insight [The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, vol. 1, London, 1950, p. 51].  {So even Gilson was not as bright a Thomist as Bouyer!}

In other words, the point of anchorage and the spring-board for this whole metaphysic is the mysterious saying of the burning bush: “I am who am.”  This must not be hastily translated in the way that St Augustine did in his Soliloquies, still wrapped up as he was in the cocoon of his Neo-platonism: “I am the beinng who is always and forever.”  This is to stay with a platonizing essentialism, even though its contours have been practically pushed out of sight.  {Read: Augustine was moronic 'essentialist' who did not understand God.}  The phrase must be taken as St Thomas took it with a rigor no previous Christian thinker had approached: “I am what I am; I am the only one who can define the infinite, ever actual fullness of his existence.” {Note that this is Bouyer’s own amateurish expression, not St Thomas’.  And it falls desperately short of the Gilsonian existentialism which it tries to convey.  A better rendering would be: "I am he whose essence is to exist."}  This is what St Thomas meant practically every time he spoke of Ipsum Esse.

Yet at the same time one must emphasize the point so few recognize, namely, how laughably illusory {traditional Thomism is laughable now} are all those well-intentioned attempts to introduce more logic into St Thomas {Are you implying, Bouyer, that St Thomas cannot be improved or given more logical rigor?  Are you denying that philosophical and theological thought should develop?}.  We see Sertillanges, for instance, disarmingly doing his open best to expurge from St Thomas’ system any platonic left-overs, especially the theory of ideas...

The facile acceptance, then, of the commonly-used method of exposition introduced a discordance into Thomist theology.  To this we must add the congenital weakness of any theology which allows itself to turn, at least apparently, into a collection of questions, however ingeniously arranged.  {The scholastic method is bad?  Sorry, but I got the opposite impression from Leo XIII, St Pius X, Pius XII, etc., etc.}  It will inevitably come to treat the Word of God or revelation, as it will be called, as a stack of juxtaposed propositions which it will be the whole task of theology to put in logical order.  Experience has shown ad nauseam the effect of such an arrangement on pupils, if not on the master himself.  Docility to it has the disastrous result of dissipating the mystery of God and our freely-given association with his life, or at least of concealing it under a spider’s web of abstractions.  First, these last are superimposed upon the harmonious play of imaged expressions found in the Word of God.  Then, and soon, they replace them in fact, if not in principle...  {Of course, Bouyer could not leave out his Protestant residue: traditional Thomism is no good because it is un-biblical.}