Book Learning
by modestinus
There’s been a considerable amount of guffawing over at Rorate Caeli concerning Archbishop Di Noia’s (V.P. of Ecclesia Dei) semi-open letter to the Society of St. Pius X. (You can read the letter, and the fallout, here.) The combox contains the usual traddie hyperbole and alarmism, along with their typical obfuscations on matters of theology and doctrine. There are a couple of dissenting views mixed in as well. Those, dear reader, are where you should probably invest your reading time.
Some of the controversy over the letter extends from Di Noia’s strong implication that the philosophical-theological education of the Society’s clergy is inadequate or, at least, not adequate to the task of forming clerics who can critically engage with 20th/21st Century Catholic thought (including the documents promulgated at Vatican II). As “elitist” as the charge sounds, it’s not without some merit. Most SSPX clergy, as far as I understand the matter, are drilled in manual Scholasticism and not much else (because, remember, all “else” is modernist, hence evil). There is probably a greater likelihood that they are expected to memorize the encyclicals of Pius XII rather than read the Summa Theologiae. There are exceptions, of course. The first generation of Society priests likely received better instruction due to the fact that they were taught by clergy who themselves had received a top-grade seminary education “back in the day.” But there is always a risk of signal degradation over time, and the hard truth of the matter is that many traditionalist polemics against “modernist” or “neo-modernist” theology is overly simplistic. Too much “trad critique” runs like this: (1) Take a passage out of context from some “modernist” theologian’s 500-plus page work; (2) Compare that passage with a popularized understanding of the theological or doctrinal point it is attempting to expound; (3) Notice that the theologian’s passage isn’t a verbatim restatement of the popular understanding; (4) Declare the theologian’s work heretical. Ta da!
None of this is to say that traditionalists haven’t written some excellent books on numerous problems associated with the Second Vatican Council and the Novus Ordo Mass. Most of these works are historical in nature. As history they are fascinating; as theology, they leave a bit to be desired. And that’s fine, because not everybody is called to the theology table. Still, let’s be frank. Writing a chronicle of how various documents were manufactured at Vatican II is not the same as offering a thoroughgoing doctrinal critique of, say, Gaudium et Spes. Moreover, understanding how a syllogism works is not the same as mastering the corpus Aristotelicum. Tell that to a traditionalist and you’ll be decried as a modern-mad elitist. Oh, the joy of it all!
The problem with the “intellectual culture” of the traditionalists is that it’s so easy to parry their strikes. They might toss a fit over Pope Benedict XVI’s “Hermeneutic of Continuity” when it comes to Vatican II, but can they engage it beyond saying, “Oh, well, Leo XIII never wrote about such-and-such, so it couldn’t possibly be an authentic part of the Church’s Tradition”? (One way to shortcut past all of these problems is to make a few “big bang” claims, like that the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX is infallible.)
I’ll just close this by restating what has been my consistent view with respect to the SSPX: The Catholic Church would be better off having them fully in the fold. The Society should continue to point out difficulties with (if not errors contained within) the texts of Vatican II and the direction the Church has taken over the past 40 years. But in order to do that meaningfully, at some point the Society (and other traditionalists) will have to raise their game a bit. Whether or not that’s possible under present circumstances remains to be seen.
You make some solid points.
It has been a frustration to me in discussions if I reference the Fathers, early or Medieval Church History and the such like they dismiss it as antiquarianism (if it does not agree with their point of view).
Straw men, I see straw men everywhere!
Seriously, though, you have a point and you don’t have a point. Generally, the level of education and reasoning ability of ALL of these people is pretty darn abysmal. You can’t compare the average SSPX priest to the average regular Catholic priest and say that the former is so much less well-formed. I suppose you know priests, and my father-in-law was just ordained a permanent deacon, and I can tell you, they ain’t that smart. Now, does Rome have some pretty intelligent people working for it? Sure. Are they smarter than the smartest SSPX folks? Probably, but I wouldn’t exaggerate. One of my former professors in Argentina wrote a book called, “The Lamp Under the Bushel Basket” (not translated into English yet, as far as I can tell), which if it wasn’t a home run, could not be blamed for a lack of sophistication. In other words, they know way more than they let on, they just don’t care. It’s like trying to blame Maritain and Gilson for not properly understanding Kant; they would claim in turn that they of course understood him perfectly well, they just think he is needlessly chasing his own tail. Personally, their work on the nature and history of the Liturgical Movement made a lot of sense to me back when I was a true believer, and it makes sense to me now just on the basis of pure scholarship. And who are we comparing them to? Von Balthasar? Wojtyla? Teilhard de Chardin? Really, this is the scholarly equivalent to try-outs for some Podunk farm league team.
As for “formation”, as far as I can tell, regular seminarians can’t hold a candle to the boot-camp style formation that being in an SSPX seminary in a Third World country can bestow on a young man. Just having the liturgy in Latin opens your mind to two thousand years of Western civilization. That said, I have never been much of a fan of academia anyway, and the Church’s attempts after Vatican II to make seminary formation reflect trends in academic formation don’t impress me in the slightest. That said, the actual academic experience in SSPX seminary, at least in La Reja, was pretty atrocious. It was basically rote learning and regurgitation. I pretty much hated all of my classes save for Latin and liturgy. And even though I didn’t get as far as theology, all of the stuff was from manuals, all diagrammed, and so on. I basically learned nothing regarding philosophy and theology. All of the Thomism I actually know is self-taught from actually reading Thomas myself. But do I bow before the erudition of the typical priest, or even overly scholarly priest. I have known and lived with clergy who were formed in the “Conciliar” church as well, including my former abbot, who people thought was wise beyond all whatever, and I can tell you, most of those people ain’t too bright, and those who are usually are due to their own scholarly disposition, and not any formation per se.
To be clear, it wasn’t my point to compare the “average SSPX priest” to the “average Conciliar priest.” My point was more aimed at traddie culture in general; the SSPX is just the bedrock. Perhaps I could have reframed the matter better like this: If the best traddie salvo is going to be saying, “One thing ain’t like the other…” when they flip through some clips from Rahner or Balthasar and hold it up to any given encyclical from a 19th C. Pope, it doesn’t take a great deal of sophistication from the other side to go, “Well, ok, but…” And that’s essentially been the artful dodge of the so-called “modernists”: They can claim the other side doesn’t understand them well enough to meaningfully critique them. Sad to say, they have a point, at least some (if not most) of the time. That is why the “Hermeneutic of Continuity” works. There is another to mine in “the tradition” (broadly understood) to link up almost everything that came out of VII with some trend, idea, notion, etc. from Catholic antiquity. Moreover, there is enough “exoticism” in the Christian East (pre-Schism) to make it gel with a surprising number of very contemporary intellectual-philosophical trends. Nobody should be surprised at that. The Orthodox have been playing that game for nearly a century (cf. Bulgakov). But you can’t stop that train if all you’re doing is yelling that it’s coming. Someone has to know how to throw the switch on the tracks in order to successfully derail it.
I think it’s pretty clear by now that I am not unsympathetic to the SSPX. As historical documentarians, they are top notch. The Vatican doesn’t even try to deny the work that they (and other traditionalists) have done with respect to what happened in the Church from around the 1950s onward. But where the “Conciliarists” win is that they can create very plausible narratives of how it wasn’t “that bad” or, more powerfully, how it all “links up” with the Catholic tradition (again writ large). Can the SSPX, or other traddies, break through that? So far, they haven’t. They preach a sermon to the converted. They want the 19th C. back, and it ain’t coming back. Some, I will admit, have come around to that fact. Surprisingly (or maybe not), it’s some of the old guard. Fellay has been around since almost the beginning and he’s moderated his tone considerably over the last 5-6 years. His biggest challenge is not moderating too much to where it causes more of the SSPX to run under Williamson’s flag. It’s not all that different than the acrobatics the late Metropolitan Laurus of ROCOR had to play to pull off the reunification with the Moscow Patriarchate. Only in that instance there were a lot less people “in the know” to worry about. Moreover, Laurus had the authority of being a Metropolitan. The SSPX bishops, by their own admission, are only hierarchs for Sacramental purposes. There is no intrinsic authority attached to their office (or so they say). Even Tissier de Mallerais has come out and said that his status as a bishop in the Church is one without jurisdictional authority. He Confirms Catholics and bestows Holy Orders. He is not, by definition at least, a “leader” in the Society. Fellay holds an elongated elected office, and obviously there is little compunction amongst certain priests within the Society to blow that office off when they privately feel the “state of emergency” so requires.
In the end, Rome can play the long game with the SSPX. All of the bishops are now into their 60s. Statistically speaking, they have a decade or so before Father Time catches up with them. Will any of the three remaining dare to consecrate new bishops and risk setting off another round of “schismatic” charges? Will they risk excommunication again? I don’t think Fellay will, and as long as he’s alive, I don’t think the other two will defect and risk splitting the Society in two (or three) parts. But maybe that’s the end game no matter what. If, God forbid, Fellay departs this earth while B16 is still sitting on the Chair of St. Peter, I suspect a good number of SSPX clergy will rejoin Rome under Ecclesia Dei. The rest (perhaps the majority) will hold out, but I wonder if the newest generation of Society priests are as gung-ho for pariah status as the previous ones were. My guess is that they are not.
Your response makes me think of this image, and the fallacy it is trying to portray. Really, it boils down to you thinking that the Vatican somehow has a more compelling explanatory narrative than the traditionalists or any other faction of the Catholic Church. My point is that they all have their head in the clouds (I am being generous here, since I really think it is in far darker regions), and that you can’t thus make a diagnosis of mental pathologies in an insane asylum. None of them have anything to do with reality. What good is “not denying that the 19th century happened” when the modus operandi seems to be to deny that the second half of the 20th century happened, or happened as it did? To many outsiders (and un-indoctrinated insiders), there is no difference between the insanity of the traditionalists and the insanity of the Vatican. What good is it to condemn the apocalypticism of a Bishop Williamson based on Fatima and other such prophesies when the contemporary Church continuously harps on a “culture of death” for every woman who kills a zygote with a birth control pill? What good is it to condemn the idea of the necessity of a confessional state for being impractical in our context and closed off to the reality of the situation when the Catholic hierarchy condemns gay marriage entirely on the basis of religious principles thinly veiled with a “natural law” no one really believes in anymore? There is a lot of gratuitous moving of goal posts going on here.
Another way to put it would be to invoke perhaps the best pithy characterization of 19th century Papal encyclicals that I have ever read: that they are at the same time monuments to human logic and utter nonsense. One can readily admit that the Popes the traditionalists put on a pedestal exerted their might and sweat in pushing the Sisyphean boulder of modernity up the mountain of time, only to have it roll back down on them in the Second Vatican Council. One can also admit that traditionalist denial is pathological, that it ignores that you can’t turn back the hands of the clock. But there you are in pure Hegelian territory, and the same can be said of the contemporary Church; even if they mouth being “engaged” with the modern world, pretending to deal with only a few aspects of the problem in their own terms is not by any means healthier. If anything, the complete “denial” that the 19th century ever happened would be the most logical, even if it is utter nonsense. With the contemporary church, you don’t even get the logic. How would one characterize an encyclical or talk by Wojtyla or Ratzinger other than being a mess of self-important gibberish based purely on fads and intellectual fancy? When given the choice between utter nonsense plus logic and the alternative, it is no wonder that people romanticize the former so much.
In other words, I don’t buy the idea that the contemporary Church has a compelling narrative of reality that would be more convincing to an unbiased third party, and the proof is in the pudding. Most of Europe is a demographic wasteland for the Church at this point. Religion at the heart of the North American empire is merely the Prosperity Gospel with various accoutrements added or subtracted according to taste, and religion in the developing world is basically a cargo cult of the same (follow the money). It is only in the small, Internet-driven world of confessional purity as well as offices of the Curia where these supposed differences resonate with anyone. Everyone else just thinks that anyone in a pointed hat is nuts.
As for your fandom of the SSPX, I can’t help but think that you are getting everything horribly wrong. I have literally carried Bishop Fellay’s luggage, have been five minutes alone in a room with the guy, and have suffered through many of his sermons and spiritual conferences. I have had less contact with the other bishops, but I know in their heart of hearts that they are all cut from the same cloth, and it is nothing that you would want to hang a hat on. Indeed, Fellay’s last talk that inflicted on myself contained his paranoia concerning how the Freemasons didn’t want a deal between the SSPX and Rome. And maybe they don’t, I don’t know. Maybe he is Napoleon fighting Waterloo with a baguette and mounted on a purple unicorn. All I know is that I am pulling for Team Williamson because I find them more entertaining. Williamson also gave me (in the form of a postcard) the best advice I have ever gotten in my life: to purge my intellectual sins by doing some hard labor. All the same, in the end, I can only discern your advocacy of bringing the SSPX back in the Church as being one of three things: either it converts them to Conciliarism (albeit in its most conservative form), they convert the Church to their own brand of dreary Catholic Franco-integrism (basically a centuries-deferred revenge for the suppression of Jansenism and Gallicanism: careful what you wish for); or that their entrance into canonical regularity will be a Hegelian negation of a negation of modernism, wherein one tarries with the problem of modernity on a higher level. I can assure you that the last option is what the SSPX dreads the most: a sort of Frankenstein version of the Church which is neither fish nor fowl, but some sort of theological platypus that is deemed necessary for the “new situation”. That for them would spell defeat and complete oblivion, and I don’t think many would go along with it.
Your response makes me think of this image, and the fallacy it is trying to portray. Really, it boils down to you thinking that the Vatican somehow has a more compelling explanatory narrative than the traditionalists or any other faction of the Catholic Church.
I do? Where? Sheesh, I always forget that when I argue with you I’m taking on a Community College dropout who picks up philosophical trends from beginners books he finds at the local bus depot.
El Pelon,
Very funny.
El Pelon,
Your comments are only revelatory of your ignorance and your vapid (and hardly subtle) inability to live according to anything besides your idiosyncratic armchair philosophy. What could you possibly mean by “nonsense” when your discourse is awash with the idiom of nonsensicality? As has been said of another bumbling fool, in the blogosphere you are “a stupid person’s idea of a clever person.”
Pathologies abound.
Wow. That, like, really hurt my feelings.
And I thought evagrius and El Pelon were the same people
It’s clear that once “personal” insults are hurled the debate has reached a certain critical area.
Gnothi seauton!
Same to you