August 2010 Print


Like Lambs in the Midst of Wolves

Liberalism and the Second Vatican Council

Fr. Alvaro Calderon

From the political standpoint, the liberal divorce occurring between the Church and States that were once Catholic is usually considered the liberation from Jesus Christ’s easy yoke. But we must go to the ecclesiastical side to comprehend the liberalism that triumphed in the latest Council. This shift in outlook serves for understanding and forgiving it, at least a little.

 

We speak of divorce because the union between political and ecclesiastical power, which is more properly compared to the union between body and soul, can also be likened to the union in matrimony. Political power would fulfill functions similar to a mother’s, tending to the immediate needs of the interior of the home. Ecclesiastical power would fulfill the father’s functions, mindful of the family’s ultimate purpose.

But this has always been a difficult matrimony since the pope—who is like the father of the entire Church as the bishops are for each diocese—has the spiritual powers of truth and grace. Meanwhile the chief of state—the mother—holds the temporal power of money and weapons. In a Catholic nation, spiritual power is so effective that there were popes who came to destitute great monarchs. But political power is very effective over the flesh and continues in force even if the faith is extinguished. St. John the Baptist lost his head for telling Herod that it wasn’t lawful for him to take his brother’s wife, and Our Lord was crucified. The list of martyrs among the first several popes is impressive. No, it was never easy to do good to political leaders or to lend stability to their states. Jesus Christ already warned his Apostles, “I send you like sheep in the midst of wolves. Be, therefore, wise as serpents, and guileless as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils, and scourge you in their synagogues. You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a witness to them and to the Gentiles” (Mt. 10:16-18). The strength of the medieval Catholic kingdoms, united in Christianity under the spiritual authority of the popes, was achieved by blood and preserved through tears.

Don’t ask me why—although it is the main issue—but the history of liberal divorce begins in the 14th century. On November 18, 1302, Boniface VIII was the last pope to demand of sovereigns the duty of obedience to the Church through the Bull Unam Sanctam. But the King of France, Philip the Fair, instead of kissing the hand that threatened him with excommunication, sent his troops and took the Pope prisoner, who died from indignation a month later. From then on a kind of separation began under the same roof. The wife—the States—no longer wanted to obey out of respect for authority, but only when it suited her.

But kings forgot that the well-being of their own authority was based on obedience to the Church. Two centuries later this legal divorce was formalized in half of Christianity through the Protestant Reformation, when many rulers took their people out of the Church. In this way they not only stopped supporting the influence of the Church’s authority over their subjects, indirectly but effectively at any rate, but they could also place the new religious leaders at their service. Let two more centuries go by and the children of this divorce would then cut off Daddy’s and Mommy’s heads. The expression is no longer metaphorical but rather literal. With the French Revolution, heads of kings and priests would fall, and anonymous step-mothers would begin to govern the house, whose faces nobody could see anymore.

But let us backtrack. We left a wife—the States—who no longer obeyed, except as it suited her. What about the husband? Today, unfortunately, many of my readers will know from experience that the husband is going to debate between temptation and duty: the duty to tolerate this humiliating situation in silence for the unity of the family, while waiting for better times. The temptation is to abandon any attempt of an understanding, dividing duties in regard to offspring and thus recovering the freedom of the single state. “If the agreement were good, at least there would be peace.” This is the story of what has happened. For 500 years popes kept silence in long-suffering, but temptation gnawed at them until they fell in Vatican II.

The temptation came from the advisors. Since the marriage, as we have said, was very difficult from the beginning, there were always theologians who advised the complete separation of political and ecclesiastical operations, feeling they would thus achieve the good of peace. His advisors were the ones who pressured St. Peter to abandon Rome during Nero’s persecution: “Let the emperor manage his empire and let the Holy Father save his life in order to govern ecclesiastical things in peace.” But he had gone barely a few steps from the walls of the Eternal City when St. Peter saw Jesus Christ walking in the opposite direction carrying the Cross. “Quo vadis, Domine? Where are you going, Lord?” “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” (A little chapel on the Appian Way commemorates that encounter.) No, St. Peter should not abandon the emperor to his own devices. He should die for him at his own hands. And 250 years later—how few in historical time—one of Nero’s successors was baptized by a successor of St. Peter.

But the temptation was always there and bad advice was never lacking. It became more persistent in the 14th century with Boniface’s misfortune and more sophisticated through theological progress. The preferred argument that began to flourish then was as follows: “The pope should seek the supernatural end, that is, the eternal salvation of souls. And to that end he should use theology and spiritual means such as prayer and the sacraments. Meanwhile seeking the natural end belongs to kings, that is, the temporal well-being of the political society. To that end they should use philosophy and material means.” What good does this division of ends offer? It seemed to outline two realms where both ecclesiastics and politicians could move without bothering each other or being bothered. The pope was still the master of the theological realm, so that neither kings nor emperors could stick their noses into his councils and definitions as had formerly happened. And kings were left to manage the philosophical realm, in light of their natural reason, so they no longer had to consult the pope’s theological Magisterium about anything. If they wanted to be saved, let them attend the theologians’ school. But when they wanted to govern, let them meditate on Aristotle’s Politics.

Dante, who put Boniface in hell in his Divine Comedy and didn’t let many pages go by without mistreating him, echoed this agreement in his treatise On Monarchy. But he was not the first to propose it and wouldn’t be the last; nor was he a theologian or advisor to the popes. The problem was that, fed up with conflicts with rulers who called themselves Catholic but were less so by the minute, important theologians fell into the temptation of applying Solomon’s solution: divide the child (the Catholic States) in half and give the soul to the pope (the ecclesiastics) and the body to the mother (the politicians). The great Dominican humanist Francis of Vitoria, who converted from Nominalism to Thomism, taught this solution to the great Jesuit theologian Francis Suarez, who from a Thomist turned into a Suarezian.

How I would prefer not to speak ill of them, who were worthy ecclesiastics in many ways! But I shall in this concept, which has been the cause of much damage. Since the Jesuits became the popes’ defenders and advisors during the struggle for modern times, this evil advice has resounded in pontifical ears for a long time: “Holy Father, don’t go dogmatizing on political matters. It’s up to rulers to be guided by natural reason. Don’t try to get them to pursue heretics or organize crusades against communism or Islam. At the most, give them a little reasonable advice and they will let us ecclesiastics live in peace.”

Leo XIII was the first pope after Boniface VIII who dared address politicians to remind them of their duty. Then came the above-mentioned advice, although only in what was legitimate: he spoke using apologetics, arguing from the natural order to encourage them to return to the Church of Jesus Christ. Pius XI recalled the basic political truth: that Jesus Christ is King not only of the spiritual order—as Vitoria and Suarez had sustained in their time—but also of the temporal order. He did it through an encyclical addressed not to politicians but to faithful Catholics, with the purpose of instituting the Feast of Christ the King. Didn’t these attitudes involve some weakness? Shouldn’t they have reminded rulers that, just as popes were the Vicars of Christ in the spiritual order, rulers were His Vicars in the temporal order? That they should govern not only as philosophers, but also as Christians, according to Christ and for Christ? The times were already very evil and prudence was necessary: “I send you like sheep in the midst of wolves. Be, therefore, wise as serpents, and guileless as doves.” The teaching of these popes was pure and true, although partial, and it is not up to us to judge.

But—and we finally reach our topic—the liberal temptation had deeply infected the fabric of the Church, and too many theologians and bishops had taken those errors to their origins. After a complex situation created by the condemnation of the “Action Française”1 (French Action), the liberal Catholic doctrine predominated in the highly intellectual church in France, whose spokesman was Maritain with his Integral Humanism. In the very practical church in the United States the same liberal agreement was imposed by the force of events.2 French intelligentsia, Yankee practicality and—I feel I ought to add—the tenacity of the German church, that had co-existed with heresy for too long, ended up imposing on the latest Council the already ancient agreement that promised peace between the Church and the new political order that was rising behind the mask of democracy.

The conciliar version of liberalism comes enveloped in a fog of subjectivism proper to modern thought. It is presented as just another element in the huge package of a “new humanism,” which is made up of a jumble of subtle sophisms having the appearance of a solid system that I have tried to uncover in a new little book about to come out.3 But in essence it is the same agreement that has been proposed since the Renaissance. They have extracted some of its consequences, but not the final ones. The final ones will be coming out all by themselves. Therefore, Benedict XVI is partially correct in maintaining that the Council is in continuity with tradition. It is in continuity with a tradition of middle-of-the-road liberalism. That is, with a toned-down liberalism that already has been in existence for several centuries.

The essence of the agreement is that rulers and everyone who belongs to the political realm must necessarily move in the light of natural reason alone, being incompetent on issues of faith and religion. Therefore—a marvelous conclusion!—they should not declare themselves atheists, nor should they persecute the Church, which would already mean taking a stand on the religious issue. Moreover, a good philosopher such as Kant knows there are things that transcend the reach of natural reason alone, which should leave room for faith. And so, the State should not persecute any religion, but rather give all of them a place to make progress, by proclaiming the law of “religious freedom.” If the State is necessarily a philosopher and intrinsically hindered from believing in Jesus Christ, the consequence that the Council brings forth is coherent.

But the intention of my article was not to accuse the Council or to explain it sufficiently—I suggest my little book for that—but rather to forgive it. I think the main reason that the Council itself has welcomed the liberal agreement, thus denying Jesus Christ (not to use euphemisms), was not the desire for worldly power that moved Caiaphas, or Herod’s lazy sensuality, or Judas’ desire for thirty pieces of silver, although there could have been a little of all the above. I think it was fear—the fear that moved Peter to deny his Master three times, in spite of believing in Him and loving Him.

They have been sent like lambs in the midst of wolves, and fear has made them lose the simplicity of doves to attempt to maintain the guile of serpents. The dove is the Holy Ghost and we already know who the serpent is. Peter, who was alarmed at the maid-servant’s accusation, after Pentecost bore the indignation of the synagogue and the Roman emperor, was scourged, imprisoned and finally crucified up-side down. But since Boniface’s misfortune, fear has been growing again.

Seated at my desk in the tranquility of the seminary, it is easy to see that liberalism is directly opposed to the Faith and that there will be no well-being for the Church and for States until Christ the King is preached once more. But the first bishop who, in the name of Jesus Christ, tells the President what is not lawful for him to do, from then on must be careful when crossing the street or drinking a cup of tea. Who dares repeat the story of Cardinal Mindszenty? What would happen today if Benedict XVI would remind the Jews of the problem they have concerning the Messiah? We have a very recent example among us.

The fear of martyrdom! I think this is the main reason for conciliar liberalism. But Our Lord spoke clearly to his Apostles, “No servant is greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you also” (St. John 15:20). The martyr’s fortitude is a gift of the Holy Ghost, which Jesus Christ secures for us through the sacrament of Confirmation. If anyone does not have the courage for it, I will not be the one to judge him. But then let him not receive the episcopate, since the main condition the Church requires of the bishop is to give his life for the flock: “The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep” (Jn. 10:11). The world abhors Jesus Christ: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before you” (Jn. 15:18), and the only way to overcome that is to be willing to ascend the cross with Him. A worse terror awaits him who dares not face the threat of martyrdom, because the world is ruled by a very cruel prince, whose hate is not extinguished by concessions.

The Council has proposed a pact of peace to the masters of this world: “Leave us in peace, while we declare freedom for every religion, and we will not move religious passion against you; at the most we will make a tiny observation based on democratic grounds.” But the vision of Fatima seems to warn us that this sin of ecclesiastic cowardliness will be purified by a worse persecution than what they wanted to avoid:

Having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he [Our Holy Father] was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, Religious men and women, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels, each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God. 

 

Rev. Fr. Alvaro Calderón, a native of Argentina, was ordained in 1986 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Since then, he has been teaching Dogmatic Theology at the Society of St. Pius X’s Seminary in Argentina.

 

1 Influential right-wing anti-republican pro-monarchic group in early 20th-century France

2 See Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara, “La americanización de la Iglesia Católica [The Americanization of the Catholic Church], Jesus Christus, No. 114.

3 Fr. Álvaro Calderón, Prometeo: La religión del hombre. Ensayo de una hermenéutica del Concilio Váticano II [Prometheus: The religion of man. An essay on Vatican II hermeneutics.)