The past months up to and including the July 1 consecrations of bishops by the Society of St. Pius X have been filled with all sorts of religious controversy in the Catholic world, and every brand and conceivable permutation of the Faithful, from Sedevacantists to Austen Ivereigh, have weighed in. I have myself cast my two cents in. But a recent Ad Rem of Br. Andre Marie provided further food for thought.
As ought to be well known, the excommunication of Fr. Leonard Feeney for “teaching heresy” is a particularly specious bit of ecclesiastical folklore that would long ago have been put to rest, were it not in the presumed self-interest of several groups in the Church to keep it alive. At the risk of boring those actually acquainted with the facts in the case, Fr. Feeney was excommunicated in 1952, after a long (and now published) correspondence in which he was repeatedly summoned to come to answer “grave charges.” Father agreed to do so as soon as his canonical rights were respected — namely, those of being informed of the charges against him, and given an explanation of what sort of tribunal he would face. The Roman authorities just as repeatedly refused to do so and finally ended the matter by saying he had to appear on this and such a date, and if he didn’t, he would be excommunicated. Fr. Feeney did not, and the threat was carried out — only being lifted in 1972, without any requirement that he abjure or adhere to anything. This would not have been the case had his excommunication been for doctrinal reasons. Of course, one is reminded of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s appeal of his suspension to the Apostolic Signature, only to have Cardinal Villot order the Apostolic Signatura not to hear the case, in a splendid display of ultra vires activity — equaled only by the Court’s acceptance of the order.
Now, on the face of it, this does not mean that Father Feeney was right — just that his opinions were within the range of beliefs permitted to Catholics by the Magisterium. As Br. Andre Marie points out, the Marchetti-Selvigianni letter (often called Suprema haec sacra to give it further weight, in order to make up for its not appearing in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis), did codify the notion of “Implicit Baptism of Desire:”
12. The same in its own degree must be asserted of the Church, in as far as she is the general help to salvation. Therefore, that one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that he be incorporated into the Church actually as a member, but it is necessary that at least he be united to her by desire and longing.
13. However, this desire need not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens; but when a person is involved in invincible ignorance God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God.
Archbishop Lefebvre himself gives an enormous defence of “Implicit Baptism of Desire” in his Open Letter to Confused Catholics, and this is the orthodoxy within the SSPX on the matter.
In 1953, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Humani Generis, which he intended to do for doctrinal errors what he attempt with liturgical ones in Mediator Dei — and with as much success. But in any case, the relevant section (27) reads: “Some say they are not bound by the doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on the Sources of Revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing. Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation.”
Now, the practical application of the notion of “Implicit Baptism of Desire” would seem, both chronologically and logically, to have spawned Fr. Karl Rahner’s “Anonymous Christianity,” whereby everyone belongs to the Church by virtue of being born as part of that Humanity which God Wills to Save. This has become the general belief of the hierarchy and much of the laity, as Benedict XVI explained in 2016. “There is no doubt that on this point we are faced with a profound evolution of dogma. While the fathers and theologians of the Middle Ages could still be of the opinion that, essentially, the whole human race had become Catholic and that paganism existed now only on the margins, the discovery of the New World at the beginning of the modern era radically changed perspectives. In the second half of the last century it has been fully affirmed the understanding that God cannot let go to perdition all the unbaptized and that even a purely natural happiness for them does not represent a real answer to the question of human existence. If it is true that the great missionaries of the 16th century were still convinced that those who are not baptized are forever lost — and this explains their missionary commitment — in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council that conviction was finally abandoned.
“From this came a deep double crisis. On the one hand this seems to remove any motivation for a future missionary commitment. Why should one try to convince the people to accept the Christian faith when they can be saved even without it? But also for Christians an issue emerged: the obligatory nature of the faith and its way of life began to seem uncertain and problematic. If there are those who can save themselves in other ways, it is not clear, in the final analysis, why the Christian himself is bound by the requirements of the Christian faith and its morals. If faith and salvation are no longer interdependent, faith itself becomes unmotivated.”
He went on to say, “Lately several attempts have been formulated in order to reconcile the universal necessity of the Christian faith with the opportunity to save oneself without it. I will mention here two: first, the well-known thesis of the anonymous Christians of Karl Rahner. He sustains that the basic, essential act at the basis of Christian existence, decisive for salvation, in the transcendental structure of our consciousness, consists in the opening to the entirely Other, toward unity with God. The Christian faith would in this view cause to rise to consciousness what is structural in man as such. So when a man accepts himself in his essential being, he fulfills the essence of being a Christian without knowing what it is in a conceptual way. The Christian, therefore, coincides with the human and, in this sense, every man who accepts himself is a Christian even if he does not know it. It is true that this theory is fascinating, but it reduces Christianity itself to a pure conscious presentation of what a human being is in himself and therefore overlooks the drama of change and renewal that is central to Christianity. Even less acceptable is the solution proposed by the pluralistic theories of religion, for which all religions, each in their own way, would be ways of salvation and in this sense, in their effects must be considered equivalent. The critique of religion of the kind exercised in the Old Testament, in the New Testament and in the early Church is essentially more realistic, more concrete and true in its examination of the various religions. Such a simplistic reception is not proportional to the magnitude of the issue.” After touching on de Lubac, the Holy Father concludes “It is clear that we need to further reflect on the whole question.”
Perhaps; the Apostles faced the same dilemma of an unbaptised world, and replied with sacrificing all to evangelise it. But let’s put that aside for a moment. The situation Benedict describes and condemns led directly to the Church hierarchy’s substantial withdrawal from reality during COVID. The Church is not necessary; her Sacraments are not necessary — at least in the minds of many in charge of the Church. But faith being “unmotivated,” one with such a point of view would react to mortal danger as Our Lord predicted: “The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. But the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and flieth: and the wolf catcheth, and scattereth the sheep: And the hireling flieth, because he is a hireling: and he hath no care for the sheep” (John 10:11-13). So it proved during COVID; the hirelings fled — and shepherds ranged from the Archbishop of San Francisco to the priests and bishops of the Ordinariates to innumerable Eastern Rite clerics to a great many individual clerics scattered across the globe to the dreaded SSPX itself. Here we had a definite litmus test for belief.
If a Catholic prelate has an “unmotivated faith,” a hireling mindset, it is hard to see how the Church’s punishments could mean much, given that her graces do not. This is especially true if such a punishment is aimed at “a person [who] wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God.” If such a one then threatens with schism or anything else, it is very hard indeed to believe that he is acting in good faith. His office is reduced to a means of his exerting his personal will to power. While perhaps an exciting exercise for students of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, it will not really interest thinking Catholics. If a man does not believe that Schism endangers a soul, what point is there to launching one, save spite? Moreover, the pointlessness is compounded if the persons so punished believe themselves to be sincere. At the end of the day, if one does not believe Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, he has no business invoking it to punish those who annoy him — he rally cannot have it both ways. If the Archbishopess of Canterbury is worthy of respect by virtue of her office, then who is not? One cannot have it both ways.
Jean-Paul Laurens, Le Pape Formose et Étienne VII (“Pope Formosus and Stephen VII”), 1870.
I offer these considerations to those pondering the current affair; but I do not offer conclusions. It is a deeply worrying affair for those of us who believe all Four Creeds in their entirety. I am also aware that for some this line of thought may lead to their questioning the Papacy and its ultimate Infallibility. Many propose any number of legalisms as a way out of the seeming trap. Not being a canonist, I won’t. But I do think of Pope Stephen VI (d. 897). Put in office by a particular political faction in Rome, he held the celebrated “Cadaver Synod,” wherein he had the corpse of his predecessor, Formosus, pulled out his tomb and set up for a trial. Despite the disgusting nature of the scene (which has ensured its immortality), it was Stephen’s sentence upon Formosus that requires our attention. Formosus was at first the bishop of another city (Porto) — the first time in Papal history that that had ever happened. Stephen declared that this was not possible, and so Formosus had never been valid Pope (which on its face would mean that the Papal throne has been vacant for a very long time). That was one thing; far worse was his declaration that because of that, all of Formosus’ sacraments had also been invalid. This heretical sentence would then be denounced by a successor, upheld by Sergius III, and then struck down once and for all.
For us, this is a vaguely embarrassing incident in dusty books; it may raise difficult questions, but these are basically irrelevant. But at the time, these issues were horrific — and there was really no one to answer them. If the Last Days are not to happen soon, then this present misadventure will join the Cadaver Synod in the long list of such things. What makes this one unique is that you and I are living through it.
What to do? Above all, let us bear in mind that you and I are not the Church, nor are we the Magisterium. We are certainly entitled to our opinions — but so is everyone else. So let us try something in this curious and complicated question that is novel and strange in this brave new world in which we all live. Let us try to exercise charity toward those with whom we differ on these points — and who have no more power over the issue than we do ourselves.
