February 2011 Print

The Crisis of the Terms

Fr. Alain Lorans, FSSPX

Text of the conference given during the latest theological congress of the Courrier de Rome, held in Paris on January 8-10, 2010, on the topic of “Vatican II: A Debate That Should Be Started?”

Part 1

It is my privilege to give the final presentation of this particularly busy day. Obviously I could frighten you and strike you with the coup de grace in this final hour by telling you that the subject that I will discuss, “the bracketing of the principle of non-contradiction,” will make us see the épochè and the oxymoron, and then that we will dwell on the complexity and the unifying principle, asking, of course, whether it should be immanent or transcendent. Along with that, if there are any survivors, I could also tell you that during this talk we will survey the work by Romano Amerio which, as you know, runs to almost 800 pages (Iota Unum, Sarto House, 1996). Now I see you sinking into your chair, retracting your head between your shoulders; you are getting ready to put up resistance! And yet, unlike the talks of my predecessors at this podium, what I have to tell you is extremely simple and easy, because I will take as my inspiration Romano Amerio, an author who writes clearly, and quite frankly I would like to leave you with the desire to read Iota Unum. It is true that one can be somewhat put off upon seeing this book; you think, “I am not going to wade into that; it is enormous.” No, no. I would hope to recall a few pages and, in light of those pages, to illuminate the topic that has been assigned to me. Then you will see how lucid Amerio is.

First, a word about the subtitle, “The bracketing of the principle of non-contradiction.” In Greek, “bracketing” or “placing between parentheses” is épochè (e=poch◊). We could speak even more plainly about the suspension of the principle of non-contradiction. As for the principle of contradiction: like Monsieur Jourdain in the Molière comedy, you use it all the time as he used prose…without knowing it. This is the principle that says that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. To suspend it is tantamount to a contradiction, which we designate by the Greek word oxymoron. There can be no contradiction without falling into anarchy or, if you prefer a more trivial term, into a pointless intellectual porridge in which nothing is grasped any more. So it is then that you have conceptually unusable expressions such as a squared circle, a white crow, or (pace Cardinal Kasper), a “differentiated consensus,” because either there is a consensus or else there is a difference, but “consensual difference” is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Indeed, one may want to suspend the principle of non-contradiction, to rid oneself of it. I can tell myself, “I will not consider this principle as a law of thought, a law of intelligence; I will rise above these logical considerations and purely and simply do without them.” And I will end up uttering an illogical, incoherent discourse. Perhaps you find that very complicated, and so I will put into perspective what I have just said by quoting to you a rather provocative sentence by Fr. Gleize in an article that appeared in the July-August 2009 issue of the magazine Le Courrier de Rome. His statement will show you how the suspension of the principle of non-contradiction works. Do not think that this is a Byzantine squabble; do not tell yourself that “these are bookworms interested in things that have nothing to do with real life.” See for yourselves.

Here we are at the heart of the assigned topic, namely, what sort of debate should be started with respect to the Second Vatican Council. You remember the presentation by Fr. Gleize this morning: can one speak about a living Tradition, isn’t that a contradiction, doesn’t that evolution end up denying Tradition? If one element is negated by another, then we are in effect in an oxymoron. Here is what Fr. Gleize writes: “Like it or not, say the conciliarists, we will have to make freedom of religion, ecumenism and the new ecclesiology part of the common patrimony of the Church.” You know that these are not minor problems, but indeed the problems that are being discussed during the theological dialogues between the Society of St. Pius X and Rome. These are the topics on the agenda as it has been defined by the two parties: religious freedom, ecumenism, the new ecclesiology in the common patrimony of the Church. The question that arises is the following: Can Tradition assimilate that? Or is it a foreign body in danger of being rejected? Is this assimilation by Tradition possible or not? Fr. Gleize answers: yes, it is possible, “at the price of contradiction, or rather, thanks to the contradiction that is set up as a first principle of all theological reflection.” In other words, not simply being content with suspending the principle of non-contradiction and saying “I dispense myself from this obligation to think and to say that a thing is [what it is] and cannot be its contrary at the same time and in the same respect,” but rather exploiting the principle of non-contradiction and using it to make sure that the theories of ecumenism and religious freedom are considered in continuity with Tradition. Fr. Gleize continues: “For if Tradition is living, then its movement is its being, and everything becomes possible…and imaginable.” Being is movement, fieri et esse sunt idem, it’s the same thing. And here an old evolutionist philosophy called Heraclitism reappears, which said “everything is flowing away, everything is becoming, nothing remains, there is no lasting essence.” There is no essence that abides (substat) beneath the changes that occur, the accidents.

Now that the subject has been stated, here is our three-part outline. What is the connection between the question of continuity or rupture in the Church since Vatican II and the principle of non-contradiction? We will study that relationship, first, from a simply descriptive point of view. We will simply describe things as they are. Then we will turn, secondly, to the explanatory perspective. We will try to see whether there is a cause for all that or whether we must endure the facts without seeking to understand the deep meaning of what we observe. And third, we will ask whether the language [discours] that we are using, borrowed in large part from Romano Amerio, with several short digressions into the present situation—whether this language is acceptable to our Roman interlocutors. Can they hear it? Do we have a chance of making ourselves understood? Or if not, let us put it bluntly, the debate cannot be commenced because we are facing a dialogue of the deaf.

I. Continuity and Rupture in the Church and the Principle of Non-contradiction: Descriptive Point of View

What is the connection between the two? Romano Amerio (Iota Unum, par. 318, pp. 710-712) relies on St. Vincent of Lerins (fifth century), in the Commonitorium, where he defines Tradition as “What has been believed everywhere, always, and by all (quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est).” But he tells us: that is not enough. “It is only a rough rule of thumb.” In order to define Tradition we have to go a little further on in the quotation and see what St. Vincent of Lerins adds. “The whole question comes down, basically, to the stability of essences.” Can there be stable essences? Or is it true, as Heraclitus said, that “everything is flowing away, everything passes and nothing lasts”? Amerio recalls that the fundamental question is “the stability of essences which are not changeable, as their accidents may be, which evolve at the mercy of the course of history.” In effect you have accidental changes which do not call into question the substantial perpetuity [i.e., lasting substance].

“The preservation of type is an even more fundamental concept in thought than in biology,” Amerio explains. “The whole question of the present condition of the Church can be summed up as follows: is the essence of Catholicism preserved?” Is it the same Church, is it the same religion, is there a mutation, a substantial change, or is there simply an accidental modification: a little more or a little less incense? What is the exact nature of the “variations introduced” into the Church since the Council? Here variations should be taken in the strong, 17th-century sense that it has in the writings of Bossuet, in his History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches. “Variation” in this case means “change.” That was the characteristic of Protestantism for Bossuet; I will return to this, and it is no coincidence that the work Iota Unum has as its subtitle Studies of the Variations of the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century. Amerio follows the same line as the study by Bossuet. This will be important for the third part, which will again have to do with the Bishop of Meaux.

Amerio poses the fundamental question:

Do the variations that have occurred allow the same essence to continue in existence amidst changing circumstances, or do they turn it into something else? The mere clarification of an idea is not a shift to another idea. Here he recalls that although dogma develops, we always say that it develops in a homogeneous fashion, and not in a heterogeneous fashion; it does not change; it does not say something else. When a dogmatic definition occurs, it only makes precise what had already been contained [in the faith]: we pass from the implicit to the explicit; what was confused becomes clear, but there is no substantial change, and we do not say white then black, because then there would be a substantial change, variation or mutation, and thus a rupture. And hence it would appear to be an oxymoron if one tried to reduce white to black or black to white. That would be a suspension of the principle of non-contradiction, a contradiction in terms, like “differentiated consensus.”

Listen to Romano Amerio:

The mere clarification of an idea is not a shift to another idea: “Let the faithful understand more clearly,” St. Vincent of Lerins says, “There is a clearer understanding of what was more obscurely believed before. Teach those same things that you have learned, and when you put them in a new way, do not say new things.” The Latin is much more striking: “cum dicas nove, ne dicas nova.” Do not say new things, but say the things in a new manner. Noviter, if you wish to use the adverbial form. “A legitimate development of an idea occurs when it expands within itself; a mutation happens when it goes beyond its own limits and moves towards something else.” This is really the problem, formulated well at the simply descriptive level; now you all know that the solution to a problem depends on the rigor with which one has stated the problem. Amerio does so remarkably: It is right, therefore, says St. Vincent, that there should be an increased awareness of the full content of the faith both on the part of individuals and on the part of the Church as a whole at successive historical periods, “but provided it be in its own type, that is, within the same dogma, and with the same meaning and the same content of belief” (eodem sensu eadem sententia). This is the traditional doctrine.

“What is happening today?” Amerio asks in paragraph 319. The innovators try to look at the substance as basically just a manner of speaking, a modality, a mode of expression. Here is what he says:

The innovators who are promoting the cause of a fundamental [i.e., essential, substantial] mutation within Christianity are obliged to uphold the historical continuity of the Church in some way or other; to admit they support a transformation of substance would be equivalent to apostatizing openly, and would confound all their arguments, because their new predicates would have no continuing subject to which they could be attached. They therefore attempt to disguise the leap to a different kind of reality by describing it in other terms... And how does one go about doing that? How can one mask this passage to something else, in other words, how can one make people believe, as the Council said, that we mean to enunciate not new things, but the same things in a renewed manner? Today people talk about “revisiting” traditional doctrine without specifying what they mean, but at bottom is this true or false? Amerio, very strict on this point, says that it is false: They therefore attempt to disguise the leap to a different kind of reality by describing it in other terms, namely in terms of another mode of being. They put forward the view that the new idea of Christianity is only a new mode of existence for the same religion rather than a transition to a different entity, which would imply the disruption and destruction of what previously existed.

And our author gives several examples. “The idea of a purely symbolic presence of Christ in the Eucharist is presented as a new mode of understanding his Real Presence.” This is not a new mode; it is the contrary, it is something else. “The idea that the life of the Risen Christ exists in the faith of his disciples is put forward as a new mode of saying Christ really rose from the dead at a given moment of time, and this notion is alleged to be faithful to Catholic doctrine”: This is not true. Surreptitiously but effectively there is a passage from one essence to another. “The idea of original sin is simply an expression of the solidarity of the human race, which leaves each individual perfectly innocent, is put forward as being in unbroken continuity with the Catholic dogma of the corruption of man’s original condition, passed on by propagation to every human being.”

At the end of a list of examples of this sort, Amerio concludes: “Besides being unsupported by the magisterium of the Church, all these ideas are riddled with logical flaws.” Therefore not only is it a break with the traditional Magisterium, because you will not find it in the constant teaching of the Church, but also it is not even logical. “For example, that saying ‘Christ did not ascend bodily’ is the same as saying ‘Christ ascended bodily.’ The one is no mode of the other; the two are contradictory.” Therefore this cunning maneuver must be exposed and rejected. “Equivalences of this sort can be sustained only by supposing,” Amerio says, and with that we return to the title of our talk, “that the human intellect can make contradictories identical, that is, that it can tell itself that being coincides with non-being. This is...Pyrrhonism.” In other words, skepticism.

This pseudo-rationalism has triumphantly installed itself in post-conciliar theological schools and is tending, by a fatal lack of logical force, to extinguish and annihilate the specifically supernatural character of Christianity.

Amerio’s argument perhaps needs to be illustrated by a more recent, more concrete state of affairs. You can say to yourself, “These are philosophical and theological reflections, but how does that translate into specifics at the present time?” Well then! By this disputatio, this fencing match with capped foil that took place between Fr. Francis Frost, a professor at the seminary in Belley-Ars, in his book, L’Église se trompe-t-elle depuis Vatican II? [Has the Church been wrong since Vatican II?], which was published by Éditions Salvator in response to the study that the Society of St. Pius X had published on ecumenism and the silent apostasy denounced by John Paul II in Ecclesia in Europa. The book appeared in 2007. What do Monseigneur Guy Bagnard, Bishop of Belley-Ars, who wrote the preface, and Fr. Frost object to in this study by the Society?

We must acknowledge first that they had the courage to respond to it, because the silence of the Roman authorities who received this document, namely all the cardinals of the Holy Catholic Church, was deafening. Admittedly there were a few little acknowledgments that the book had been received, but they left it at that. Fr. Frost, on the other hand, deserves credit for trying to respond. It seems to us, he says on pages 80-81, that this defense of the essence of the faith and of dogma undertaken by the Society of St. Pius X “is the essentialism of Duns Scotus (1268-1308) and of other Scholastic writers who followed the impulse that he gave to such a concept, disregarding the analogy of being.” The Letter to Our Fellow Priests which is the original basis for the document entitled From Ecumenism to Silent Apostasy, published in 2004, follows from this Scotist rigidity, this inability to grasp something intellectually with firmness and flexibility. Scotist and Lefebvrist thought (combined into one by Fr. Frost) is fossilized thought. He writes:

This essentialism, starting with laws of being that are thought to be shared in a certain way by God and us, drives the theologian to concentrate all his attention on the deduction by pure logical reasoning of new theological theses starting from revealed truths and thus to enclose himself in a conceptual universe that is cut off from all contact with the historical dimension of a revelation that is also an economy of salvation brought to its completion not by a new philosophical-theological thesis—oh no!—but by a Person, the selfsame Person of Jesus uniting himself with his Body-Spouse-Church. Of course in the sense of atemporal abstractions, the terms “ameliorate” (perfici) and especially perpoliri, “to polish, refine” (in the Encyclical Humani Generis by Pius XII) are well suited to the aim of the authors [from the Society of St. Pius X].

Here is the objection: “You are Scotists and, basically, you are Parmenideans,” in other words, for you nothing changes, nothing budges, you are completely set in concrete. What was the response of Fr. de La Rocque in his Letter to Our Fellow Priests in March 2007? “Monseigneur Frost accuses the Society of St. Pius X of theological fundamentalism. This consists in believing that it is possible, in matters of faith, to formulate conceptual propositions that have a definitive and universal value.” Now we, following Pius XII, are sufficiently backward to believe that there can indeed be definitive and universal formulations of the faith. Now in Fr. Frost’s view, such a pretension is based on an “illusion” (p. 65), because it amounts to “simply setting aside the role of analogy in the elaboration of dogmatic theology” (p. 75). The Society of St. Pius X is therefore accused of “Scotist essentialism” (pp. 80 ff.; 128). Fr. Frost objects to the “doctrinal rigidity” [“fixisme”] (p. 79) by which it “shuts believing intelligence into a conceptual universe cut off from all contact with the historical dimension of revelation.” He accuses the Society of amputating the vital dimension of the faith and thus of excluding “any possibility that believing faith can attain…new conceptual ways of looking at the contents of the deposit of faith” (p. 127).

After summarizing the objection, Fr. de La Rocque responds:

This is a forceful attack. It has nonetheless the real merit of making clear, on an important point, a common analysis of our differences. For if Fr. Frost accuses the Society of St. Pius X of a doctrinal rigidity on the pretence that it allows for the possibility—and the fact—of dogmatic formulas that oblige definitively and universally, that possibility can serve as an indictment of Fr. Frost’s dogmatic relativism.

In other words, the impossibility, in his view, of arriving at fixed, universal definitions. It (the Society) will therefore second Pius XII [against Fr. Frost] when it denounces those who “hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions.” Therefore, Pius XII continues, “they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say.” Now, the pope continues, “It is evident from what We have already said, that such attempts not only lead to what they call dogmatic relativism, but that they actually contain it” (Encyclical Humani Generis, 15-16).

To conclude this first part, I would like to direct your attention to the point of contention between Fr. de La Rocque and Fr. Frost. Actually you have seen that the disputatio is not between the Society and Fr. Frost. No. The debate is between Fr. Frost and Pius XII. This is not our doctrine, these are not our personal ideas, our ingenious inventions. No, this is the heritage that we cannot disregard, about which we cannot say, “Oh, well! Yes, for two thousand years the Church was wrong.” To cite the title of the book by Fr. Frost, one might ask: could the Church have been entirely wrong, not since, but before Vatican II? That is what is at stake in the problem.

II. Continuity and Rupture in the Church and the Principle of Non-contradiction: Explanatory Perspective

After that descriptive view, let us try now to go more deeply into our topic. Let us see how Romano Amerio explains the situation in which we find ourselves. What cause does he assign to it?

Our author says that there is a change in the Church, a substantial mutation, which he calls “secondary Christianity.” In other words, Christianity envisaged in a new and unheard-of fashion. I will let him speak (Iota Unum, par. 328, pp. 741-743). Without any doubt “the Church aided the development of European civilization, as a real but secondary effect of the practice of Christianity; it has also assisted in civilizing much of the rest of the world as well; but at Vatican II,” he tells us, “[the Church] took on the role of directly advancing man’s temporal welfare and has thus attempted to make secular progress part of the purpose of the Gospel.” The Good News is not salvation, but well-being, civilization.

Populorum Progressio develops this line of thought. It claims to be a development of Rerum Novarum, which aimed to reconcile the richer and poorer classes within the ambit of individual nations; Paul VI’s encyclical aims to reconcile rich and poor nations with each other, now that increasing international awareness has led to a stronger and closer sense of fellow feeling and it is hungry races, not hungry individuals, who make demands upon the rich. In a speech to the International Labor Organization, John Paul II has also said that the chief social task of our day is the promoting of a world-wide common good (L’Osservatore Romano, June 16,1982). You see what is happening here: if we take a secondary end as our primary end, there is an inversion in the hierarchy of purposes. And then the Church will no longer direct herself chiefly toward the first end, but will be oriented toward the secondary end, what Amerio calls “secondary Christianity.” And in this secondary Christianity we begin to understand the attention paid by the Second Vatican Council to the world in its temporal aspect, to the world of this time.

Amerio continues:

What is more relevant to our purposes is the change in perspective that tends to undermine Catholic doctrine by making technological progress and an increase in wealth a necessary precondition for man’s spiritual perfection, and for any activity by the Church....It is true that the encyclical presents the goal of development as being “an integral growth,” a humanism destined to be integrated into Christ, thus becoming a transcendent humanism. But all this leaves the connection between man in his humanly developed state and man in his supernaturalized state quite undetermined.

Blaise Pascal would say that we are in two different orders: there is the order of charity and there is the order of the flesh, which is not the same thing.

The thought underlying Pope Paul VI’s encyclical [Populorum Progressio] is really that of Fr. Lebret, who drafted it: the Church’s action in improving the state of this world is not incidental or a side effect; rather, it is essential to the preaching of the Gospel; what the 1971 Synod of Bishops in Rome called “the Church’s mission for the redemption of humanity and for liberation from every oppressive situation.”

This manifests a sustained, intense preoccupation with temporal civilization. We see this summarized even better a little earlier on in the book (Iota Unum, par. 220, p. 503). Amerio writes:

It is indeed true that religion has a civilizing effect, and the whole history of the Church bears witness to the fact; but Christianity does not primarily aim at advancing civilization, that is, at achieving an earthly kind of perfection. Modern society is pervaded by a spirit of independence and self-sufficiency: the world rejects dependence on anything other than itself.

Fr. Alain Lorans, FSSPX, is the editor of DICI, the international news journal of the Society of Saint Pius X. Translated from Nouvelles de Chrétienté, no. 122.