The Etymology of Auctoritas?

𝘈𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘴 derives from augere, “to make grow”. A shared etymological origin ties it to the words Augustus (he who makes grow), auxilium (help provided by a higher power), augurium (also a word of religious origin: a vow made to obtain divine cooperation in growth).

— Augusto Del Noce (@AugustoDelNoce) June 23, 2022

Domingo de Soto on the Two Powers

Domingo de Soto on the two powers https://t.co/ZAxKNdtxla

— The Josias (@josias_rex) May 13, 2021

Two-Pronged Attack

But Latins have already capitulated to feminism; how can they resist the latest from feminists? For too long they relied on institutional scale and now they will suffer the consequences of a church of numbers.

One of the Catholic Church’s most visible nuns has said the push for women’s priestly ordination in the Catholic Church points to a deeper question that needs to be asked and stressed the need to separate ordained ministry from decision-making.https://t.co/1MgjFxK0cC

— Crux (@Crux) February 2, 2021

Just One Man's Opinion

Not universally true, and maybe not even true for the limited cases to which it applies. Pulling Christian teaching from quotes of individual saints is not moral theology, and even what is taken to be the result of the sanctified, connatural wisdom of a saint must be tested against Tradition and a proper moral theology.

“The more contemptible is he who commands, the more pleasing to God is the humility of him who obeys.”

-Saint Francis of Assisi (as recorded by Saint Bonaventure, “De Legenda Sancti Francesci”, ch. 6)

— Fr. Thomas Aquinas Pickett, O.P. (@ThomasAquinasOP) October 30, 2020

Cajetan, Integralist

St. Thomas's greatest commentator: "And since a higher end corresponds to a higher agent, moving and directing; the consequence is, that the spiritual power… moves, acts, and directs the secular power and those things which belong to it to the spiritual end." https://t.co/7Kj4fS9UMn

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) June 30, 2020

Thomas Pink on Latin Integralism

Public Discourse: Philosophy, Politics, Religion and the Public Square by Thomas Pink

Integralism, Thomas Pink writes, "involves a rejection of the metaphysical foundations of most current legal and political philosophy." https://t.co/jGwe2SIcnh

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) May 10, 2020

Brilliant new article by @thomaspink1, explaining why integralism matters even nand especially in our curret, secular age: https://t.co/hkf1ncZfDl

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 10, 2020

Integralism further involves a conception of the church as an authority over religion that replaces the state. The church is a sovereign potestas, with the authority to make laws and enforce these through punishments, just as is the state. Its authority is based not on natural law as is the state’s, but on the revealed law of Christ. Any interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae that denies this conception of the church as potestas over religion runs directly against the interpretation of that declaration given officially at Vatican II by the commission that drafted it. (For more on this, see my “Dignitatis Humanae: continuity after Leo XIII”.)

Latin integralism depends upon and promotes Latin maximalist conceptions of ecclesial authority, especially the authority of the bishop of Rome.

It is tempting to suppose that there are two quite different kinds of state: an integralist state that prioritizes the good of the community, and a liberal state that fosters the autonomy of the individual. But perhaps the better view is that there simply exist states that serve the common good in a way that involves enforcing an ethical consensus.  

The questions that should be asked are: what is the common good, what defines a political community, and is any state, integralist or otherwise, able to bring about the common good. Maybe integralists will have a new response to MacIntyre and Cavanaugh--until they do, they theorizing merely serves statism, and at best they serve as controlled opposition, inconsequential and no threat to the status quo.

Pope, Councils, Bishops, and Synods: Insights from the Order of Preachers for Church Governance

Latin "Integralism"

Tied to a notion of the Papal [ordinary] Magisterium which can make sense only from a maximalist view of the papacy.

The Josias: Coronavirus and Public Masses: An Integralist Perspective by Felix de St. Vincent

In the integralist understanding, the civil authority is subject to the law of the ecclesiastical authority. In Immortale dei, Leo XIII reminds us that nature and reason confirm, “we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will” (Par. 6).

John Cavidini on Co-Responsibility

Church Life Journal: Co-Responsibility: An Antidote to Clericalizing the Laity? by John Cavadini

An attempt at a solution to clericalism.

One of the fruits of the Diocese of Rome’s heightened attention to the pastoral work of the parishes, he says, was that it:

Helped to develop in the parishes, religious communities, associations and movements a consciousness of belonging to the one People of God which, as the Apostle Peter said, God made his own: “that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him”(1 Pt 2: 9).

To cite this verse is to invoke the People of God as a royal priesthood, with each member sharing, on the basis of his or her baptism, in the priesthood of Christ: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” The theology of co-responsibility begins by invoking Vatican II’s rediscovery of the priesthood of the baptized, the mystery of the People of God as a royal priesthood, with each member ordered towards the prophetic, royal and priestly vocation to “declare the wonderful deeds of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light,” that is, to mission, to evangelization. [emphasis mine]

1 Peter 2:4-5 RSV CE

⁴ Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; ⁵ and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 

1 Peter 2:9 RSV CE

⁹ But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,^[a] that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

The Greek:
Πρὸς ὃν προσερχόμενοι , λίθον ζῶντα, ὑπὸ ἀνθρώπων μὲν ἀποδεδοκιμασμένον, παρὰ δὲ Θεῷ ἐκλεκτὸν ἔντιμον, καὶ αὐτοὶ ὡς λίθοι ζῶντες,  οἰκοδομεῖσθε οἶκος πνευματικὸς εἰς ἱεράτευμα ἅγιον, ἀνενέγκαι πνευματικὰς θυσίας εὐπροσδέκτους [τῷ] Θεῷ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.

Ὑμεῖς δὲ γένος ἐκλεκτόν, βασίλειον ἱεράτευμα, ἔθνος ἅγιον,  λαὸς εἰς περιποίησιν, ὅπως τὰς ἀρετὰς ἐξαγγείλητε τοῦ ἐκ σκότους ὑμᾶς καλέσαντος, εἰς τὸ θαυμαστὸν αὐτοῦ φῶς....



The definition of priesthood, it would seem, is tied to sacrifice. Thus the popular might be that the baptized faithful offer spiritual sacrifices while the ordained priests/bishops offer Christ in the Eucharist (in which the baptized faithful also participate). Lumen Gentium §10, cited in this article, can be read as an elaboration of this basic distinction. But how is sacrifice to be understood? What if sacrifice instead is tied to declaring "the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" as a part of the thanksgiving integral to sacrifice, so that this is not to be considered "evangelization" as Benedict XVI and Cavidini are interpreting the words of St. Peter, but rather an elaboration of what it is to be a a priest, remembering the saving works of God and giving thanks to God whether in the assembly of the ekklesia or in private prayers to God?

If this objection holds, does it affect Cavidini's conclusions? Not necessarily. The conclusions may be dependent upon a distinction between the roles (or functions) of the episcopate/presbyterate and that of the Christian laity (as Latins have traditionally used the term), but they may hold even if we have to tweak the distinction only slightly.

In other words, the ordained ministry is not ordered towards itself, but rather it is the priestly people towards which the ordained priesthood is ordered, and that priesthood retains its fundamental character as the share in Christ’s priesthood, which constitutes the Church. On the other hand, when the baptized exercise their royal priesthood in evangelization, it is not just to spread knowledge of the Word of God dislocated from its ecclesial home, for then it is not really a priesthood, since the communion of the Church is communion in Christ’s sacrifice. Evangelization is intended to bring people to the encounter with the Risen Lord which is incorporation into the Eucharistic body through configuration to Christ’s sacrifice.

The priesthood of the baptized, as a priesthood, flows from the one sacrifice of Christ and its exercise is thus intrinsically ordered towards it. That means it cannot be exercised fully apart from the ministry of the ordained, nor is it truly exercised if it tends toward the rupture of communion instead of towards building communion. This would include evangelizing activity that rejected the authoritative teaching of the magisterium, or undertaken in defiance of legitimate hierarchical authority. At the same time, it does not mean permission is necessary: “there is no need of a supplementary mandate from the hierarchy” to exercise the duty to proclaim Christ which comes “by virtue of the grace of baptism” (Torrell, 130). The two priesthoods are mutually inter-related, and thus we have co-responsibility for the being and acting of the Church.

However, I do think it is a mistake to link evangelization to the royal priesthood of the Christian faithful, as if it were the main function of that priesthood, rather than thanksgiving. Cavidini writes later:

The royal priesthood remains primary as the end towards which the ministerial priesthood is ordered: “The Christian minister is not defined uniquely in relation to the Eucharistic body, but also, by this very fact, to its mystical Body, of which he is put in charge at his own level of responsibility” (ibid.). On the other hand, the exercise of the baptismal priesthood is always to promote the spiritual sacrifice to which all people are called, and thus is ordered towards the communion of the Church, effected only through the sacramental ministry of priests. Torrell points out that “The Eucharist is presented not only as the center of the whole sacramental organism, but also as ‘the source and apex of all the work of preaching the gospel,’” as we have seen. “What this means,” he comments later, “is that evangelization is not only ‘launched’ from the celebration of Eucharistic worship, whence it has its fecundity, but that it ‘lands’ there, because it is only by the Eucharist that the full insertion of believers into the Body of Christ is achieved” (ibid. 181).

 As this stands, if there is no further elaboration about what spiritual sacrifice means, it is mostly unobjectionable.

This is another way of saying that a priest whose priestly ministry is obviously and visibly ordered toward the building up of the leadership of the laity in the mission and acting of the Church, and not necessarily towards running it, administering it, organizing it, and supervising it and subordinating it to its own ministry. It also means recognizing it (cf. Nichols, 154).

Such an ordained ministry implies its co-responsible complement, too. The true exercise of the baptismal priesthood is not free lancing independent of the ecclesial community or its communion in the Eucharist for which it is dependent on the ordained minister. Nor is it exercised independent of the authoritative teaching of those in apostolic succession. There is no true exercise of the baptismal priesthood independent of leadership proper to Holy Orders. The two kinds of leadership are co-responsibly related. We can see models of this in some of the heroic leaders leading up to the Council. Dorothy Day, for instance, led a whole new movement in evangelization, completely on her own initiative. Her partnerships with various priests, and Fr. Pacifique Roy, were studies in co-responsibility for the mission and being of the Church,[5] for she centered her movement’s life around the Eucharist and thus the ordained priesthood, and, though she did not ask Cardinal Spellman for permission to operate, she never defied him on matters pertaining to his teaching and pastoral authority, and fostered, rather than broke, communion.

A Church in which the center of gravity has, as it were, shifted, in which the co-responsible leadership of those exercising the priesthood of the baptized was the norm, would be a Church we seem not to have really imagined yet. We have since Vatican II operated with a mindset that has not absorbed its major insights in ecclesiology because, I think, we have decided to analyze the call for lay participation as a call for increased "power" of the laity but in a structure that is essentially intact, one that is excessively clericalized and thus ironically secularized, reduced thereby to a power structure conceived independently of its ordering towards a “mystery of communion.”

It is probably uncontroversial say that Dorothy Day was thea leader of the Catholic Worker movement in the United States, if not the leader. (Fr. Peter Maurin could be considered the other, until his death.) It is also probably uncontroversial to say that she was some sort of feminist, even if she wasn't a suffragette and did not call herself a feminist. An appropriate example of "lay leadership" or co-responsibility, or a politically correct one?

Lay people do have their own sphere of action, the political arrangement where they are to be found. There some may be leaders of others. (Hence "traditional" notions of leadership are incompatible with feminism, though most American academics support it or at least outwardly do so.) But it should also be stated that with respect to the life of the local Church (whether one think of the local Church as the grouping of parishes, or the parish as a manifestation of the local Church), the Christian laity also have a leadership role. While the presbyterate/episcopate have authority as teachers and oversight over certain activities touching upon "faith and morals," there are likely limits to the authority they have with respect to the latter. Oversight may entail only the power of approval or sanctioning an activity, and not necessarily leadership.The limits to the authority of the presbyterate/episcopate with respect to the life of the Church need to be explored further.

Breaking the Monopoly

CWR Dispatch: Relieving Rome’s burdens: A proposal for handling abuse cases by Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille

An Oddity of Latin Ecclesiology

Ignatius Press to keep Benedict XVI listed as coauthor of new celibacy book

On Jan. 13, Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Vatican’s communications office, praised the book.

“Ratzinger and Sarah — who describe themselves as two Bishops ‘in filial obedience to Pope Francis’ who ‘are seeking the truth’ in ‘a spirit of love for the unity of the Church’ — defend the discipline of celibacy and put forth the reasons that they feel counsel against changing it,” Tornielli wrote.

Would any other ecclesial tradition say this about a retired bishop with reference to his successor?

Lay Leadership?

Church Life Journal: Taking the Role of All the Baptized in Church Leadership Seriously by John Cavadini

Does the proposal or will the conference properly address the clericalist structure of the institutional church and the limits to the authority of the bishop? It doesn't seem likely.

King Doesn't Quite Capture It

From 2014: Not Just in Our Hearts: The True Social Kingship of Christ by Steve Skojec
Christ the King and Original Sin by Timothy Flanders

Pius XI, Quas Primas

Pantocrator sounds much better to my ears. Chris is the Ruler of All because he is the rule, God's Law, the word, Divine Wisdom. Rulers do not rule in his place but in Him, participating in Him. If we accept the development of the three-fold office of the laity as a legitimate theological development, then all are kings even if not all share in political governance. They participate in the Divine Law who is Christ, even those who are subject or subordinate to others.

Some nuances are needed to correct exaggerations of the sacred status of authority in pieces such as this: First Things: Sacral Presidency by Peter J. Leithart

Much Ado About...

Latin traditionalists may bemoan the fact that Pope Francis has done away with the reform by Benedict XVI of the rite canonization, using a simpler formula and omitting the petitions before the formula. (See, for example, Fr. Hunwicke.)

Some remarks:
1. Regarding the pope's response to the third petition in the Benedictine reform: "Let us, then, invoke the Holy Spirit, the Giver of life, that he may enlighten our minds and that Christ the Lord may not permit his Church to err in a matter of such importance."

One can invoke God's help, but if the act exceeds the authority given by God, is there any point?

The second petition itself was rather presumptuous:
"Most Holy Father, Holy Church, trusting in the Lord's promise to send upon her the Spirit of Truth, who in every age keeps the Supreme Magisterium free from error, most earnestly beseeches Your Holiness to enroll these, her elect, among the saints."

The Church Universal? No. A few members and representatives of the patriarchate of Rome and maybe representatives of those non-Latin particular Churches which have been Latinized to one degree or another and are still under the captive sway of Rome in their mindset.


2. It is inferred that the papal decree of canonization is an infallible act because it is supposedly an act regarding the Church Universal, and not the way around (e.g. the act must be proper to the pope because it is or needs to be infallible, and only the pope, representing the whole Church is infallible.)

But if it is not properly an act regarding the whole Church, despite what the decrees may say, but regarding only his patriarchate, the urgency of determining whether such an act is infallible is mitigated.

3. Even if the Benedictine reform is "better" at emphasizing certain aspects of the Latin conception of the authority of the bishop of Rome than the simpler formula now being used by Francis, the simpler formula nonetheless in its essence still reflects that same Latin conception, maximalist as it is.

See the document of the Congregation of the Causes of Saints, "NEW PROCEDURES IN THE RITE OF BEATIFICATION":

In the 11th century, the principle that as universal Pastor of the Church the Roman Pontiff alone has the authority to prescribe a public devotion began to gain ground, both in the particular Churches and the universal Church. With a Letter to the King and Bishops of Sweden, Alexander III asserted the Pope's authority to confer the title of Saint and the relevant public cult. This norm became a universal law with Gregory IX in 1234. 

Historical evidence that non-Latin particular Churches were agitating for this? And just because a pope decrees it doesn't make it a universal law.

Canonization is the supreme glorification by the Church of a Servant of God raised to the honours of the altar with a decree declared definitive and preceptive for the whole Church, involving the solemn Magisterium of the Roman Pontiff. 

 And there it is.

Accountability

Structures, traditions, and hierarchical accountability by Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille
Let us not make the mistake of looking to corporations or government bureaucracies.

A Defense of Integralism

Church Life: Integralism and the Logic of the Cross by Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist

Too much favoring of monarchy and the mixed regime that has monarchy at its center? The essay doesn't touch upon what qualifications are necessary for the one to rule, and what is to be done for the unjust ruler.

Necessary Ecclesial Reforms

RealClearReligion: The Catholic Church Needs a Radically Traditional Revolution By A.A.J. DeVille

And yet there will be disagreement about who gets to participate in such governance.

From the Common Good to Public Order (and Back)

Gladden Pappin



Related:
Gerard Wegemer on Shakespeare, the Book of Sir Thomas More, and the Common Good

Much Needs to Be Revisited

None of the autocephalous Orthodox churches have recognized the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, except for Constantinople.

By what authority does an ecumenical council have to establish patriarchates as having a juridical status, if bishops are equal? Was this locus of authority something handed upon by the apostles, or was it established instead by human/ecclesial positive law? And if the latter, was it just? Can it be abrogated or declared null or invalid? On what basis should autocephaly be granted to a grouping of local Churches? (Or a patriarchate be established?) On the basis of nation? Or of political entities?

Watching the Outlaw King I am reminded of the disputes over authority and contests for power. How can the church be free from such struggles without humility and penance?

Two on Synodality

CWR Dispatch: A short defense of authentic synodality by Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille
Prior to the conclusion of Vatican II, synods were not thematic conferences discussing boutique interests of some group or other. Far from it.

Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick reacts to the same essay by Charles Pecknold: Synodality or Supremacy: Orthodoxy and Rome