Looks Good

Only a few more hours before the confer nice kicks off with Mass and the keynote given by Dr. Matthew Levering on "Newman and Döllinger." pic.twitter.com/DqmwGwhgok

— The Sacra Doctrina Project (@sacradoctrina) June 10, 2021

Concilium v. Communio

CWR Dispatch: Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Reformer by George Weigel
(Also published at First Things.)

As I wrote in The Irony of Modern Catholic History, a fissure in the ranks of the reformist theologians at Vatican II began to open up during the Council’s third session, held in the fall of 1964. A new theological journal, Concilium, was being planned by some of the Council’s influential theological advisers (many of whom had been heavily censored in the pre-Vatican II years). A towering figure among them, the French Jesuit Henri de Lubac, began to worry that Concilium would take the reformist project in a deconstructive direction: one that would do serious damage to what John XXIII, in his opening address to the Council, called “the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine,” which Pope John urged “be more effectively defended and presented.”
  
The first several issues of the new journal intensified de Lubac’s concerns. So in May 1965 the most venerable member of its editorial committee quietly withdrew from the Concilium project while continuing his work at the Council itself. As Vatican II drew to a close, others would join him in expressing serious reservations about the tack being taken by their onetime theological allies. And those concerns did not lessen over time.  

The result was what I call in my book “The War of the Conciliar Succession”: the war to define what Vatican II was and what Vatican II intended for the Catholic future. This war was not a struggle between “traditionalists” and “progressives.” It was a bitterly fought contest within the camp of Vatican II theological reformers. It continues to this day. And the question that so concerned Henri de Lubac remains entirely pertinent, 56 years later: Would an interpretation of the Council that effectively set the Catholic Church against “the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine” end up betraying the gospel and emptying it of its power?  

Joseph Ratzinger joined de Lubac and other dissident conciliar reformers in launching another theological journal, Communio, which he and his colleagues hoped would advance an interpretation of Vatican II that was in continuity with the Church’s settled doctrine even as it developed the Church’s understanding of that doctrine. Communio, now published in 14 language editions, has been a creative force in Catholic intellectual life for decades. Like Ratzinger, Communio is not against Vatican II; it has challenged what its authors contend is a wrongheaded interpretation of Vatican II.

Only one group was engaged in true reform, though in a wrong-headed way by employing the council to do it. Would  it be accurate to say the progressives were leaning towards heresy or had embraced it? Or were they guilty of an archaeologistic thinking that reflected a historical reality that existed only in their imagination? (Simplicity, the Eucharist as Last Supper, and all that?)

Dr. Reinhard Huetter on John Henry Newman: Newman’s Contemporary Relevance

Related:


(Part 1 with Andrew Meszaros)

Reinhard Hütter: Development of Doctrine: What it is and Why it Matters

Organic Development and Its Reception by the Faithful

Does organic development of doctrine or of the liturgical rite require that it must be accepted and received by the faithful? If so, then the faithful must understand what is being given to them, should they not? If they do not understand it, how can they possibly judge and decide whether to receive it or not? The Latin answer might be they just need to submit and obey, but is that doing an injustice to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Christian faithful?

Those who create liturgical texts and prayers in Latin use monasteries for the use of the monasteries may not have a problem, provided that the simple monks understand Latin or come to understand Latin through their formation. (A similar point can be made with religious orders, but one can ask whether religious orders have the authority to modify or shape their own liturgical rites.) But what of the non-Latin-speaking faithful?

Regardless of whether the rejection by many Latins of the Pauline Missal and its implementation was objectively correct or not, could we not say that there were acting in accordance with their sensus fidelium, and rejecting what they viewed as not being orthodox (not in the sense of merely right belief but encompassing orthopraxy, right practice, right living or the correct giving or glory to God)?

(Similar points could be made not only with respect to liturgical reform, but Latin dogmatizing in their supposed "ecumenical councils" during the second millenium, to a populace that was ignorant of Latin and mostly ignorant of Scripture and the sources of the faith, if not the Christian faith.)

More on the Development of Doctrine

CWR: The Spirit versus the letter: Responding to a false view of doctrinal development by Eduardo Echeverria

Sergio Centofanti’s recent essay for Vatican News claims that the Church teaches, “It is necessary to follow the Spirit, rather than the strict letter.” This opposition could not be further from the truth.

I am not of course suggesting that there is not development. But there is development without change even when there is reversal in Church teaching. Centofanti completely overlooks the distinctions between development, continuity, change, and reversal. He focuses on examples of reversals (unbaptized babies, the exegesis of 1 Timothy 11-12 regarding the place of woman in the Church, and religious liberty) but never refers to the theological notes that qualify certain teachings as infallible such that they possess the highest degree of certainty. This means that he fails to account for development, clarifications, reformulations, while nevertheless maintaining the stable continuity of fundamental meaning and truth of authoritative dogmas/doctrines. I will return to this point below.

But does Echeverria make enough distinctions between theological opinion (even if it is of the bishop of Rome) and dogma? Let us look at the two examples of reversals: religious liberty and ecumenism. Was religious liberty (or anything pertaining to the political community and the laws that it may or may not issue) part of Divine Revelation? No -- religious liberty, like contemporary Roman Catholic Social Teaching, pertains to moral theology, and so papal theological opinion on this point isn't "reversed" as if it were dogmatic (even if some Latins think it is) but contradicted.

As for ecumenism -- precepts concerning whom to admit to worship, or with whom one can pray is more a human determination that is (ecclesiastical) positive law than a precept of Divine Law, something taking into consideration goods secondary to God Himself. And so in so far as we are dealing with ecclesiastical positive law, that can be changed. As for human judgments as to who is a heretic or schismatic, those judgments can be erroneous and are not protected by an Latin notion of infallibility.

In order for theories of doctrinal development to be taken seriously, we must talk about doctrine, what constitutes doctrines, whether there are levels of doctrine, and if historically what has been understood to be doctrine was mistaken.

Reception by the Faithful and All That

CWR Dispatch: John Henry Newman in Full by Bishop Robert Barron
Buffeting from both sides made almost the whole of Newman’s life difficult, and it is not hard to see why he saw much of his career as a Sisyphean exercise in futility.

Newman was not of the "left" or "liberal" -- he merely sought to reclaim the Latin churches from clericalism, a problem which still infects the patriarchate of Rome now. That some did not understand this and could only put it in political terms of the age shows how blind they were to the problem and their slavish adherence to their notion of hierarchy.

Letters from the Amazon Synod Part 4

First Things: Letters From the Synod–2019: #4 by Xavier Rynne II

We honor the memory of John Henry Newman, this newest of God’s saints, by imitating his courage, and the conviction that underwrote it.

Pope Francis on the Development of Teaching on Capital Punishment

Rorate Caeli: Recent Profane Novelties: A Dialogue on the Death Penalty

John Finnis Responds to the CCC Revision

Public Discourse (via Ed Feser)

Edward Feser on...

First Things: Pope Francis and Capital Punishment by Edward Feser

Robert Fastiggi Responds to Ed Feser

CWR

Fr. Hunwicke: OK, then. So, on to the next question.

Related:
Rorate Caeli: Socci: The Apostolic Exhortation is a turning-point in Catholic Doctrine

Roger Nutt, Does Thomism Offer a Theory of Doctrinal Development?

Nutt refers the reader to Charles Journet's What is Dogma for a Thomistic explication of doctrinal development.

An excerpt: Dogma and Mystery

Here is my initial shot:
As we are unable to give a real definition of God in this life (as we do not know God as He is in Himself), so His essence has not been captured in a single concept. Hence He reveals Himself to us in a way that we can understand, through His actions and attributes (via analogy). Our understanding of what has been Divinely Revealed can be deepened as we apply our reason to it. (But it seems that our understanding can also be deepened in itself through participation in the Divine Life and the life of the Church? - through both experiential reflection and contemplation?)

"The Orthodox Rejection of Doctrinal Development"by Daniel Lattier