TIMES OF CRISIS, TIMES FOR FAITH

[TimothyCTX]

I just downloaded this fantastic article from EWTN. Thought y'all might
like to read it as well.

TIMES OF CRISIS, TIMES FOR FAITH
By Prof. Neri Capponi

[Editor’s Note: This article is an edited, condensed version of a lecture
by the same name given by Count Capponi under the auspices of the St.
Joseph Foundation to audiences in six cities in the United States from May
25 to June 6, 1995. Any shortcomings in the article are due to my editing.
CMW.]
“These are the times that try men’s souls.” Thomas Paine
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
Whenever I lecture or write about matters pertaining to the state of the
Church, I believe it is worthwhile to begin by asking you to remember that
just as Our Blessed Lord suffered in his body and human soul for our
redemption, so must His Mystical Body, the Church, suffer until the end of
time to complete, as St. Paul says, that which is lacking in the suffering
of the Lord. Some of you will remember that I began my article, “Keeping
the Faith in an Age of Anarchy,” which appeared in the Christmas, 1993
issue of CHRISTIFIDELIS with these same words. But almost two years have
passed and CHRISTIFIDELIS has many new readers, so it may be worth
repeating.
There was another essential, preliminary consideration in that article
which we also ought to recall. God has entrusted His most precious gift to
us, His Church, not to angels but to men, to us sinners; all of us, be we
pope, bishop, priest or layman. Therefore, we, with our sins and
shortcomings act upon the Church as the executioners acted on the physical
body of Our Lord. This applies to the shepherds as well as to the sheep.
Notwithstanding all this, Our Lord has guaranteed that His Church will
never completely fail; but she has suffered, is suffering and will suffer
from those two evils which beset every society governed by men; human
malice and human error.
After some remarks about the “constitution” of the Church and crises and
suffering in general, I will mention just four specific crises in the
Church (out of many which could be examined) which flowed from these two
evils and occurred between the fourth and eighteenth centuries. Finally,
insofar as space permits, I shall address what I believe is the worst of
all the internal crises with which the Church has ever been afflicted and
one which we are enduring at this very moment.
THE “CONSTITUTION” OF THE CHURCH
The way the Church reacts to all internal crises, past and present, has to
do with the application of the law and exercise of authority, at least to
some degree. Therefore, a brief glance at the fundamental points of the
Church’s “constitution” as given by her Founder will be valuable.
In the first place the Church is not a democracy, i.e., power in the
Church is received from God, not from the people. Even during the first
millennium when bishops, including the Bishop of Rome, were elected by the
clergy and people and confirmed in office by the neighboring bishops,
their power came from God, not those who elected them. The same is true,
of course, of the Holy Father, who receives his power from God, not the
members of the College of Cardinals who elected him.
Second, the power centers as instituted by Christ are two: the Pope at the
center, the bishops locally. Certain theologians maintain that other power
centers (like metropolitan archbishops and local councils) who are, so to
speak, between pope and bishops and could be regarded as belonging to the
divine constitution of the Church because they go back to the immediate
post apostolic age and therefore could claim a generic apostolic
institution. All other power centers are a product of history and human
influences, not instituted by Christ, although, as we know, not all such
influences are harmful and some have been beneficial. For example, there
were human influences which, from the start, have heavily conditioned the
Church’s legal thought, building a complex legal system round the
God-given but sketchy core of the Church’s constitution. It is obvious
that, as the Church was born in the Mediterranean, its rudimentary legal
system was influenced by Jewish law and by Roman law but, as far as the
West is concerned, the Church’s legal system remained nebulous until the
twelfth century.
Third, in the divinely instituted power centers there is no division of
powers: the pope and bishops are administrators, judges and law-givers in
their respective areas of competence.
Fourth, because of the Roman primacy the pope is by divine law the judge
of the universal Church and final court of appeal for all cases.
SUFFERING AND CRISIS
The sufferings of the mystical Body, which is racked not only by the
shortcomings of men but by the intelligent (and sometimes nearly
successful) attacks of the devil acting through sinners, can affect it
from the outside through persecution and from the inside through heresies,
schisms, mismanagement, oppression, injustice and extensive violations of
the moral law. The internal crises of the Church generally, but not
always, coincide with its prosperity. A rich, powerful and self-satisfied
Church is always in danger. When the memories of purifying persecutions
fade in the distance and when the shepherds become rich and powerful the
attack of the devil is not far off. It may be in the form of another
persecution or a tearing asunder of the Mystical Body from the inside.
Now, having made these preparatory observations, we can mention some of
the bad periods of Church history in the last two thousand years. I am
speaking, of course, of inside troubles or of periods of decadence, not of
the persecutions which often actually strengthen the Church although, at
times, they have obliterated whole Christian communities, like the
Churches of North Africa as a consequence of the Muslim invasion.
FOUR CRISES
The darkest hour of the Christian Church in the first thousand years was
the so-called Arian crisis. Indeed, it is quite possible that this was the
worst crisis in the entire history of the Church - until the one in our
own time; so I shall have to say a bit more about it than I will the other
three.
Between 318 and 319 A.D., a priest of Alexandria by the name of Arius
started preaching a new doctrine which stated that Jesus Christ was not
the Son of God incarnate, that there was no such thing as the Blessed
Trinity, that Jesus, if anything, was the incarnation of a super-angel but
certainly not God. Of course all this struck at the very roots of
Christianity. Arius quickly gathered followers round him so that the
bishops started worrying; but when Arius’ followers literally came to
blows with the faithful Christians, the state stepped in to maintain peace
and order. This took the form of an intervention by the Emperor
Constantine, who had freed the Church from persecution and acted as its
protector. Constantine, with the pope’s consent, convened the first
Ecumenical Council at Nicea in 325 A.D. to settle the Arian controversy.
Everything appeared to be decided when the Council declared Arius a
heretic and wrote the first part of the Creed which we say every Sunday at
Mass.
The Arians, however, did not simply give up and go away. They were a
sophisticated, cunning and devious lot who, by a variety of underhanded
tactics such as faked repentance, managed to replace many orthodox bishops
with Arians and won over Constantine’s successor, who started persecuting
faithful Catholics. Eventually, they were able to beguile or intimidate
the bishops of the West into excommunicating St. Athanasius, the heroic
defender of the true faith and, for a time, it looked like Arianism had
triumphed over the true faith.
The success of the Arians can be explained in part by the fact that the
Church had become rich and powerful after the emperor Constantine became
her protector and showered gifts upon her. Suddenly, it was fashionable to
be a Christian and pagans began to convert in large numbers, but not all
of them for the best of motives. Moreover, many of the bishops who had
experienced the persecutions had died and a goodly number of the new
bishops were far more at home at the court of the Roman emperor than
caring for the souls of the faithful.
Clever and underhanded as they were, the Arians forgot about the laity,
who gathered around loyal priests, kept the true faith and assembled for
Mass outside the cities because they would not participate in heretical
rites in their own churches, which had been taken over. The derisive term,
“country Christians”, given them by the Arians became a badge of honor.
The faithful laity and clergy kept the faith and, in 381, the Second
Ecumenical Council was convened in Constantinople, the Creed completed and
Arianism again condemned.
The second crisis took place in the tenth and eleventh centuries and was
triggered by the influence of powerful Roman families, especially the
House of Theophylact, who manipulated and controlled the papacy for their
own benefit. Things got so bad that the period from about 928 to 932 is
known by historians as the pornocracy, or rule of filth. Later, in 956,
the temporal ruler of Rome, whose name was Octavian, became pope as well
and took the name John XII. His misrule and scandalous behavior was so
infamous that even the worldly and cynical Romans became fed up and called
upon the German King Otto I to restore order in 962. Driven from the papal
throne, John XII died in 964; murdered, it is said, by an outraged husband
who found the ex-pope in amorous conversation with the man’s wife.
Trouble broke out again in 1033 when the Count of Tusculum purchased the
papal office for his son, who took the name Benedict IX. Some historical
accounts say that Benedict was ten years old at the time he became pope
and others give his age as thirteen. Whatever the case may be, when he
reached manhood his rule became such a disgrace that the Roman people
expelled him from the city. Benedict did manage a comeback and then
proceeded to auction the papacy three times. Each time he would pocket the
money and stage another comeback so, in 1046, there were three men
claiming to be pope and all three were deposed by the Holy Roman Emperor,
Gregory VII, in 1076.
As a general rule, the result of intervention by secular authorities in
the internal affairs of the Church has not been good. Nonetheless, on the
two occasions referred to here, the effects were beneficial. Over the two
hundred years following the intervention of Gregory VII, we have a
succession of popes, often good, sometimes tolerable and sometimes
saintly.
Things take a turn for the worse again at the end of the thirteenth
century which brings us to the third crisis. The papacy had become very
powerful, it had made the primacy of Rome effective over all the Western
Church, it had started the great bureaucratic machine of the Roman Curia
or central government of the Church, it had consolidated its temporal
power over all central Italy and had presumed to assume the temporal
leadership of the West: from now on one can say that if Rome was in good
health the same went for the rest of the Church, if Rome was in a bad way
the rest of the Church suffered. And suffering was indeed at hand. In 1294
there mounted the papal throne one of the most capable and intelligent men
but also one of the greatest scoundrels of Church history: Boniface VIII.
He had managed, by devious means in pressuring his predecessor, St.
Celestine V, to resign and as soon as Boniface was installed on the papal
throne he had his saintly predecessor imprisoned and probably murdered.
Boniface was to a large extent immoral and probably not much of a
believer. His rule was a disaster. Soon after the death of Boniface, who
died in a fit of rage, the papal see was transferred to the French city of
Avignon, where the popes came under the powerful influence of the French
kings who treated the popes very much as if they were their chaplains.
After the return to Rome from Avignon, in 1378 we have the great schism of
the West with three popes contemporaneously excommunicating each other for
a period of 35 years and dividing the Church amongst them. The
Renaissance, with all its pagan values, extolled also at the papal court,
sees a corrupt clergy, corruption spreading from the center to the
periphery, with often near agnostic popes and prelates occupying the
scene. Alexander Borgia is certainly not the worst pope of this age
because, although a great sinner, he at least was a strong believer. Apart
from the cultural pressure of pagan values of this particular age, the
source of immorality and corruption is always the same: a worldly, rich
and powerful Church enmeshed in temporal affairs not only in the rule of
the papal states but also in the various states of Europe. It is worthy of
note that we do not see a single saint amongst the popes from St.
Celestine in the late thirteenth century to St. Pius V in the late
sixteenth century.
Throughout the fourteenth, fifteenth and part of the sixteenth centuries
the state of the papacy and of the clergy goes from bad to worse. It is
also a period of numerous heresies (repressed by the Church) which
culminate with the Reformation which broke over Europe like a storm in the
sixteenth century and destroyed the unity of Western Christendom.
The next crisis which affected the Church, but not the papacy, happened
during the so- called period of the “enlightenment” during the eighteenth
century. One has again a worldly clergy (mostly prelates, the lower clergy
and the religious orders were less affected) espousing the morals and
ideas of an anti-Christian age which turned human reason into a goddess,
scoffing at anything supernatural. The French revolution, a steadfast
papacy and the attack of a godless world soon cured the Church of its
malady and although from then onward not everything was satisfactory in
the Church there was no direct threat to the spiritual and moral life of
the ordinary faithful. However, there were forces at work which appeared
to be defeated in the early nineteenth century but appeared again in our
own time, the post-Vatican II period, when all Hell was let loose and the
faithful, including those in the United States and Canada, found their
spiritual and moral lives in terrible danger.
THE PRELUDE TO MODERNISM
In the early years of the nineteenth century attempts were made by French
intellectuals, particularly Felicite de Lammenais, Jean Baptiste
Lacordaire and Charles de Montalembert, to “baptize” the revolutionary
ideals of “liberty, equality and fraternity” by incorporating them in some
way into Catholic teaching and practice. If the words “liberty” and
“equality” had meant the same thing to Lammenais and his associates as
they had meant to the soldiers of the Continental Army during the American
revolution, perhaps it would not have been that bad; but in the French
revolution “liberty” meant the license to rampage through the streets and
murder everyone who disagreed with you and “equality” meant a complete
overturning of the social order.
As I said earlier, “baptizing” non-Catholic human elements can sometimes
benefit the Church, as it was when language of Greco-Roman philosophy was
adopted to express Christian ideas. In the circumstance I am about to
discuss, however, the results ultimately proved to be disastrous.
At first, the ideas of these French thinkers were known as “liberal
Catholicism,” which had as its primary objectives the advocacy of
separation of Church and state, freedom of conscience and popular
sovereignty and was condemned by Pope Gregory XVI in the encyclical,
Mirari vos, in 1832. A few years later, Gregory XVI explicitly condemned
the work of Lammenais in his encyclical, Singulari nos. The fundamental
difficulty with liberal Catholicism was its implicit acceptance of the
principle that nothing could be accepted as certain which could not be
verified by scientific analysis. Applied to theology, this would lead to
the conclusion that human experience is the sole source of religious
truth.
A concurrent development which would have profound effects in our own time
was the analysis of scripture by scientific methods. Known as “higher
criticism,” this approach was first seen among Protestant exegetes in the
German universities, but it quickly attracted the interest of Catholic
scholars, notably in France, where Ernest Renan’s controversial work, La
Vie de Jesus, published in 1863, proposed that the divinity of Christ
could not be assured by scripture.
Pope Pius IX, whose reign began in 1846, was a staunch opponent of liberal
Catholicism. Even so, by the time of his death in 1878, the notion had
assumed the essential elements of what we know as modernism, which reduced
religion to a matter of individual and collective human experience, denied
an objective revelation from God on which Christianity is ultimately based
and excluded any reasonable grounds for the plausibility of Christianity
based on miracles or the witness of history.
MODERNISM V. THE CHURCH
Toward the end on the nineteenth century, modernism had attracted among
scholars sufficient numbers of supporters so that a kind of informal
organization began to develop. The individual whose name has perhaps been
most closely associated with the modernist movement was a French priest,
Alfred Loisy, born in 1857 and a student of Ernest Renan. In 1892, Loisy
launched a journal entitled Enseigment biblique and, eleven years later,
published a “modernist manifesto,” L’Evangile et L’Eglise, one purpose of
which he admitted was “calculated to awaken opposition.”
Two other prominent figures in the modernist movement were the English
Jesuit, George Tyrell, and his countryman, an aristocrat with the unlikely
name - for an Englishman, anyway - of Baron Friedreich von Hugel. Tyrell
was critical of the officially sanctioned neo-Thomistic theology
(established as the basis for religious studies in 1879 by Pope Leo XIII
in his encyclical, Aeterni patris) and came to accept and publicize
Loisy’s work. Von Hugel, who was essentially a philosopher, supported
Tyrell and other modernist scholars. With his wealth and connections, von
Hugel played a critical role in forming a network out of what had been the
independent and uncoordinated work of individuals. The resulting spread of
modernism meant that a clash with the Church was inevitable and, in 1903,
a number of works by modernist authors, including five by Loisy, were
placed on the Index of Prohibited Books.
The year 1903 marked as well the beginning of the eleven year reign of St.
Pius X, the first pope to be canonized since St. Pius V and only the
second in the seven hundred years since St. Celestine V. Pius X is
certainly remembered for the measures he took to suppress modernism, but
the significant steps he took in catechetics, liturgy and canon law should
not be forgotten.
The campaign against modernism intensified on July 3, 1907 when
Lamentabili sane, a condemnation of sixty-five modernist errors was issued
by the Holy Office. This was followed two months later on September 8 by
Pascendi Dominici gregis, an encyclical of Pius X describing modernist
doctrines and concluding with strong, specific measures to be taken
against individuals who supported them. For example, “Anyone who is in any
way tainted with modernism is to be excluded without compunction from
these offices, whether of government or teaching, and those who already
occupy them are to be removed” (No. 48). Bishops also were reminded that
it was their duty “to prevent writings of modernists, or whatever savors
or promotes it, from being read when they have been published, and to
hinder their publication when they have not” (No. 50). Vigilance
committees were to be established in every diocese to advise the bishop of
the existence of modernist errors and bishops were directed to send
triennial reports to the Holy See.
In 1910, the anti-modernist oath was promulgated, which required all
clerics to affirm five dogmatic truths and accept the condemnations of
Pascendi and Lamentabili sane upon receiving major orders and taking
specific offices. The oath remained in force until it was unfortunately
abrogated in 1967 by Pope Paul VI.
Loisy was excommunicated in 1908, as was Tyrell, who died in 1909. Most of
the other leading modernists were excommunicated, otherwise disciplined or
had already left the Church. By the end of 1910, it looked as if the
movement had been effectively suppressed. However, losers in theological
controversies could no longer be exiled, imprisoned, or worse, as they has
been in previous times. Loisy lived until 1940 and continued to publish
after he left the Church, as did others, including von Hugel. Moreover,
there were many non-Catholic modernists who could openly publish and
promote their work free of any influence or control whatever by the
Church, while a good deal of unpublished work by Catholics sympathetic to
modernism was circulated surreptitiously in certain circles of Catholic
intellectuals. All this burst forth after Vatican II and plunged the
Church into what I believe is one of the worst crises of Church history,
in a certain sense even worse than the Arian crisis.
When asked why I believe the crisis we now face is worse than Arianism, I
give these reasons: (a) The principle vehicle of the faith, the liturgy,
was untouched by the Arian crisis; (b) whereas the Arian crisis was
precipitated and sustained by the intervention of secular power, the post
Vatican II crisis comes from within the Church and is therefore more
difficult to fight; © in the fourth century, Pope Liberius finally signed
the excommunication of St. Athanasius under duress - in the twentieth
century Pope Paul VI was admittedly taken in and hoodwinked by his
misguided optimism, but there was no duress; (d) the present crisis is not
only one of faith but of morals as well. In addition, today not only one
dogma, albeit a very important one, is denied as with Arianism, but all
dogmas, be it even the existence of a personal God!
A TIME OF CRISIS
The Church in North America has had a great but also an easy history until
today. No real persecution has oppressed you, at least since the First
Amendment became law. There has been sometimes some discrimination but
never as bad as what the Italian Catholics had to suffer at the end of the
last century. Now your time has come to suffer for Christ and the worst
trial of all is to suffer at the hands of one’s own fellow Christians,
especially if they hold office in the Church. I think the cases of St.
John of the Cross and Padre Pio illustrate my point.
There is also a parallel in the history of the United States. During the
darkest days of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine (whose views on
religion I certainly do not endorse) electrified the nation with the
stirring words quoted above. As you know better than I, he went on to say
that it was no time for the “summer soldier” or “sunshine patriot.” In the
same way, now is not the time for summer soldiers of Christ or sunshine
Catholics.
A TIME FOR FAITH
This brings us now to the question of how to keep our own faith and combat
the forces of darkness in the present age when, as Pope Paul VI said, “The
smoke of Satan has penetrated the Church.” Among the many possible courses
of action, in closing I will mention just a few.
The first thing we must do, of course is to keep ourselves as spiritually
strong as we can by prayer, sacrifice and recourse to the sacraments.
These are all important because Satan, the original summit of creation, is
more powerful than any of us and because Our Lord says, “Without me, you
can do nothing.”
Second, we must forthrightly and continually testify to the truth, while
always remembering that the cardinal virtues are four. In the exercise of
justice and fortitude we must not forget prudence and temperance. If
public testimony is not your individual strength, pray for and support the
publications and organizations which are engaged in this essential
apostolate.
Third, a lesson can be taken from the “country Christians” who, as I
mentioned earlier, gathered with their priests outside the towns to
celebrate Mass, where the Arians could not get at them. If the general
idea is right, though, the situation today is different. The enemy does
not appear today as clearly as he did in those days, is often difficult to
grasp and not all that may seem wrong is, in itself, wrong. It is
therefore necessary, when forming groups of Catholics who are of the same
correct persuasion, to avoid open confrontations with legitimate authority
and to avoid turning such groups into sects.
Fourth, when sufficient cause exists, use the legal machinery of the
Church to vindicate your fundamental right to know the truth and to
worship in a proper way, but always without bitterness or undue insistence
and never to promote marginal issues.
Finally, there may be times when we can turn to Caesar when there are
issues which come under the purview of secular authorities, such as those
concerning property or rights of employees. Rather than wearing the crown
of the Holy Roman Emperor, Caesar may wear the black robe of an American
judge. I say this with all due regard for the risks involved and knowing
that, once Caesar enters, we have to know when to show him the door.
May I end by saying that many years of suffering may be ahead for all of
us, although the tide is slowly turning in the Universal Church. It is not
turning at the same pace everywhere and in some countries, including the
United States and Canada, the situation could get even worse before it
gets better. Whatever the case, you have in your hands the great new
Catechism of the Catholic Church and the great theological encyclicals of
Pope John Paul II. We can truly strengthen our faith and oppose the enemy
and his minions if we assimilate these superb documents, which are like
lighthouses in a dark and stormy sea.
Whether this happens in our lifetimes or not I cannot say. But I am sure
that the clouds will start rolling away soon and the present crisis will
go the same way as the others - into oblivion.
Taken from the August 15, 1995 issue of “Christifidelis”. To subscribe to
“Christifidelis”, please contact:
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