The embryo carries the singularity, the uniqueness, the awe-inspiring ineffability of the individuum. — Erwin Chargaff, Serious Quesitons, 1986, p.65.
Friday, October 30, 2015
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."
His schoolfellow and friend, Dr. Taylor, told me a pleasant anecdote of Johnson's triumphing over his pupil David Garrick. When that great actor had played some little time at Goodman's fields, Johnson and Taylor went to see him perform, and afterwards passed the evening at a tavern with him and old Giffard. Johnson, who was ever depreciating stage-players, after censuring some mistakes in emphasis which Garrick had committed in the course of that night's acting, said, 'The players, Sir, have got a kind of rant, with which they run on, without any regard either to accent or emphasis.' Both Garrick and Giffard were offended at this sarcasm, and endeavoured to refute it; upon which Johnson rejoined, 'Well now, I'll give you something to speak, with which you are little acquainted, and then we shall see how just my observation is. That shall be the criterion. Let me hear you repeat the ninth Commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."' Both tried at it, said Dr. Taylor, and both mistook the emphasis, which should be upon not and false witness. Johnson put them right, and enjoyed his victory with great glee.
— Boswell's Johnson
"That's a wonderful pope you've got."
The old sectarian shrieks of "No Popery" had been turned into veneration of the Pope and admiration of the council. Now, it was precisely that – the very cause of his optimism – which had become the principle cause of his depression, along with Archbishop Roberts and episcopal porn. Every day he had to put up with well-intentioned compliments. "That's a wonderful pope you've got. Seen this article? He says we're all Christians together, be we Jews or Muslims. That what I've always believed." "By Jove, Rougham, you've got quite a bright boy in that Cardinal Suenens. He says we marry to have intercourse, nothing to do with bloody brats. Didn't know you Papists were so broad-minded." "Hello, Rougham! You're a Papist, aren't you? Congratulations! Your church has shed the blinkers. I married my daughter to one of yours last Saturday. No dam' nonsense about promises and so on. The vicar did it splendidly in the village church with your chap in attendance. Just right. That's Christian charity for you." "Went to one of your services the other day. A bit Low Church for my taste, but at least one knows what it's about." "Have you read what your pope said yesterday (December 7th, 1965)? 'The religion of God made man has met the religion of man made God…There is no opposition…We, more than anyone, favour the promotion of man.' That's what free-thinkers and humanists have said all along. Shake hands, Rougham, old boy!" "Good show, Edmund! I suppose that now you Catholics have become Protestants, we shall have to become R.C.'s to preserve our independence." And so on and on, day in, day out. It was a cross which the laity but not the clergy had to endure. Can there be a more painful predicament than to have to accept as a compliment what in all the world one most hates? Such was the situation in which the council placed millions of Catholics all over the world. Edmund stuck it until the audience with Paul VI and the disappearance of the crucifix. That was the end.
— Bryan Houghton, Judith's Marriage, 1987, pp. 192–193.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Bishop Forester to Fr. Bryan Houghton, March 13, 1977
To the Reverend Bryan Houghton, Avignon, France.
Sunday, March 13th, 1977.
Dear Bryan,
I do not know if you read the copies of my correspondence or if you merely file them. If you read them, you will notice that yesterday I wrote to Klushko mentioning the Lefebvre affair. It really is a scandalous business. I have never met Lefebvre nor corresponded with him but I took copious notes of whatever was published. Upon re-reading these notes I am so shocked that I intend to inflict the story on you. I hope it does not bore you stiff.
By no means does the scandal stop with the disappearance of the tapes. The Tribunal, you will remember, was composed of Cardinals Garrone, Wright and Tabera. I know nothing about Tabera but I met Garrone when he was Archbishop of Toulouse and from reliable sources have heard nothing but praise of Wright. These last two are quite certainly honourable men and it is out of keeping with their known character that they should deliberately have acted deceitfully. Thus when on January 25th Garrone invited Lefebvre to a chat, this is what he intended. Higher authority must have intervened to turn it into the grilling of February 13th and March 3rd.
Anyway, the Tribunal’s verdict is dated May 6th, 1975. It is not devoid of interest.
In the first place, the sentence was executed before judgment was given. I wonder if this is unique in the history of law. Moreover, it was executed on the authority of Tabera, a member of the Tribunal. Yes, on April 25th, eleven days before the verdict was signed, Tabera wrote to Bishop Mamie of Fribourg “calling upon you to proceed without delay” to the suppression of Lefebvre’s Confraternity of St Pius X. He gives for his authority “the conclusions reached by the special Commission of Cardinals"—but they had reached no conclusions at that date. The only explanation I can think of is that he was forcing his colleagues’ hands, presumably on instructions from higher authority. Bishop Mamie obeyed. On May 6th, consequently on the very day that the verdict was signed and before he could conceivably have received a certified copy of it, he notified Archbishop Lefebvre that he and all his works ceased to exist: “This decision takes immediate effect.”
The verdict of May 6th is a surprising document. The three clauses of condemnation are preceded by a covering letter. This reads like an exercise of dry humour. Here is what it says about the grilling: “We remain most grateful for the friendly atmosphere in which our recent discussions took place, without our differing points of view ever impairing the serene and deep fellowship between us (communion profonde et sereine).” What a joke! The central argument is even more rum: “It is inadmissible that people should be called upon to pass their own personal judgement on orders emanating from the Pope, whether to submit or not: herein lies the traditional argument of the sects who appeal to yesterday’s Pope to avoid obeying today’s.” Surely the Cardinals have their tongues in their cheeks? Inevitably all heretics appeal to tomorrow’s Pope or the future Council, if not more radically to the Holy Ghost or the Second Coming—as do our Pentecostalists, Charismatics and Teilhardists today.
At last we come to the three clauses of the actual verdict. In each clause the operative words are in inverted commas. I need not expatiate on the significance of this astonishing fact. I quote them in full with the inverted commas:
In view of the Cardinals’ verdict and the suppression of his Confraternity by the Bishop of Fribourg, on May 21st Lefebvre appealed to the Supreme Court of the Church, the Segnatura. Its Perfect is one Cardinal Staffa, reputedly a man of principle. Lefebvre’s grounds were threefold: 1. lack of legal form in the suppression of his Confraternity since, under Cn 493, only the Holy See, not the Bishop of Fribourg, could do so; 2. since he, Lefebvre, is condemned in matters of faith, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is alone competent and not Garrone’s Tribunal; 3. a condemnation of his Declaration of November 1974 affects none but himself; it affects neither his Confraternity nor his Seminary. These grounds seem perfectly reasonable.
Ah, the dear old Segnatura! If Rome is hailed as the Eternal City, the Segnatura exemplifies what is meant. No panic, no flap at the Segnatura, all is seemliness and due decorum. When Lefebvre posted his appeal that evening of May 21st, he must have felt that perfect peace was his for at east a twelve-month.
Not a bit of it! His appeal was duly registered at the Segnatura on June 5th; its rejection is dated June 10th. What, overtime at the Segnatura? Impossible! Lefebvre’s lawyer on the spot had a different explanation: Cardinal Villot sent a note in his own handwriting to Cardinal Staffa “directing him to prohibit the appeal.”
On the face of it, this does not look too good: the highest administrative officer in the Church giving directions to the highest judicial officer. This would be worse than Watergate. But, admitting the physical fact of Villot’s intervention, is this exactly what happened? In view of Staffa’s reputation, I suspect not. It is worth looking at the wording of Staffa’s rejection of the appeal. In the name of the Supreme Tribunal he declares himself “incompetent” under Canon 1556. And what says Cn 1556? “Prima Sedes a nemine judicatur—the Primatial See is judged by no one.” This implies rather a lot: that Tabera was right and prior to April 25th the Supreme Pontiff had by personal act condemned Lefebvre and all his works—presumably on the evidence of the vanished tapes; that the inverted commas in the Garrone verdict were quotations from this Papal condemnation and his tribunal was mere window-dressing; that Villot’s note to Staffa was to inform the latter of the Supreme Pontiff’s sentence; that Staffa did no more than record a fact. The trouble with all this is that the essential document is missing: the Papal decree condemning Lefebvre and all his works. One really cannot base public acts on private documents. The whole business is made to look shifty by the constant shifting between a judicial process and the appeal to a secret decree. Small wonder that Lefebvre should pay scant attention to his condemnation. Small wonder that I should lay down conditions to any interview with Klushko or his representative.
This is not quite the end of Act I in the Lefebvre tragedy. There are the two letters addressed to him by the Pope dated July 10th and September 10th, 1975. It is the first which needs to be examined, as the second is little more than a request for an answer. The Pope starts off by assuring Lefebvre that he is well informed of everything concerning his case and the seminary at Ecône. The tapes are not mentioned but I cannot help feeling that he is referring to them. He also shoulders full responsibility for ordering the immediate closure of Ecône—which ties in with Tabera’s letter to Bishop Mamie of April 25th. Then comes the operative sentence demanding of Lefebvre “a public act of submission to the Council, to the post-Conciliar reforms and to the ‘orientations’ to which the Pope himself is pledged (aux orientations qui engagent le Pape lui-même).” These three totally different things are all lumped together and Lefebvre is supposed to swallow the lot. Submission to the Council presents no difficulty. The documents are wordy and ambiguous but are probably all right as far as they go. A legitimate criticism is that they do not go far enough—but that is a different matter. Submission to the “post-Conciliar reforms” needs a lot of clarification. Everyone, including Lefebvre, is doubtless willing to submit to those reforms which have been duly promulgated as soon as we know which they are: the New Ordo, for instance, is certainly not among them. Is Lefebvre supposed to submit to administrative follies which are still to come, apart from those which already exist? But to submit to the “orientations” to which the Pope feels pledged is perfectly preposterous. What a wonderfully vague word is “orientations”: one’s bearings, outlook, point of view, direction, party line. Up to and including the Council, Catholics were bound to believe all defined doctrines and to obey the commands of the Church’s magisterium. Now, apparently, we are expected to submit to an “outlook.” We must all look in the same direction as the reigning Pontiff: “Company, eyes left!” This is giving us blinkers as never before. The new triumphalism is more exigent than the old. The trouble is that in a sense Paul VI is absolutely right: the new look in the Catholic Church is due precisely to the substitution of a human outlook for Divine Revelation. It is consequently largely sociological and political instead of dogmatic and spiritual. Heaven help us!
The end of the letter is no less curious. “You make yourself out to be a second Athanasius; but he was supporting the decrees of the Council of Nicaea whereas you are opposing Vatican II, which has no less authority than Nicaea and in many respects is more important.” Exactly: Nicaea merely defined the Divinity of Christ, whereas Vatican II has given rise to an “orientation,” an outlook. As a matter of fact, of course, Lefebvre is defending the decrees of all Councils, from Nicaea to Vatican II inclusive: he is defending decrees as against “orientations.”
Thus ends Act I. The plot is set. God alone can unravel it.
I hope I have not bored you with all this, but it has helped me a lot to put it down on paper. It was Klushko’s letter which reminded me of Lefebvre. I made some notes on the affair in December 1975. On looking through them now, it seems more important and far sadder than it did at the time.
Now for less lugubrious subjects. . . .
— Bryan Houghton, Mitre and Crook, 1979, pp. 193–197.
Sunday, March 13th, 1977.
Dear Bryan,
I do not know if you read the copies of my correspondence or if you merely file them. If you read them, you will notice that yesterday I wrote to Klushko mentioning the Lefebvre affair. It really is a scandalous business. I have never met Lefebvre nor corresponded with him but I took copious notes of whatever was published. Upon re-reading these notes I am so shocked that I intend to inflict the story on you. I hope it does not bore you stiff.
By no means does the scandal stop with the disappearance of the tapes. The Tribunal, you will remember, was composed of Cardinals Garrone, Wright and Tabera. I know nothing about Tabera but I met Garrone when he was Archbishop of Toulouse and from reliable sources have heard nothing but praise of Wright. These last two are quite certainly honourable men and it is out of keeping with their known character that they should deliberately have acted deceitfully. Thus when on January 25th Garrone invited Lefebvre to a chat, this is what he intended. Higher authority must have intervened to turn it into the grilling of February 13th and March 3rd.
Anyway, the Tribunal’s verdict is dated May 6th, 1975. It is not devoid of interest.
In the first place, the sentence was executed before judgment was given. I wonder if this is unique in the history of law. Moreover, it was executed on the authority of Tabera, a member of the Tribunal. Yes, on April 25th, eleven days before the verdict was signed, Tabera wrote to Bishop Mamie of Fribourg “calling upon you to proceed without delay” to the suppression of Lefebvre’s Confraternity of St Pius X. He gives for his authority “the conclusions reached by the special Commission of Cardinals"—but they had reached no conclusions at that date. The only explanation I can think of is that he was forcing his colleagues’ hands, presumably on instructions from higher authority. Bishop Mamie obeyed. On May 6th, consequently on the very day that the verdict was signed and before he could conceivably have received a certified copy of it, he notified Archbishop Lefebvre that he and all his works ceased to exist: “This decision takes immediate effect.”
The verdict of May 6th is a surprising document. The three clauses of condemnation are preceded by a covering letter. This reads like an exercise of dry humour. Here is what it says about the grilling: “We remain most grateful for the friendly atmosphere in which our recent discussions took place, without our differing points of view ever impairing the serene and deep fellowship between us (communion profonde et sereine).” What a joke! The central argument is even more rum: “It is inadmissible that people should be called upon to pass their own personal judgement on orders emanating from the Pope, whether to submit or not: herein lies the traditional argument of the sects who appeal to yesterday’s Pope to avoid obeying today’s.” Surely the Cardinals have their tongues in their cheeks? Inevitably all heretics appeal to tomorrow’s Pope or the future Council, if not more radically to the Holy Ghost or the Second Coming—as do our Pentecostalists, Charismatics and Teilhardists today.
At last we come to the three clauses of the actual verdict. In each clause the operative words are in inverted commas. I need not expatiate on the significance of this astonishing fact. I quote them in full with the inverted commas:
1. “A letter shall be sent to Mgr Mamie by which is recognized his right to withdraw his predecessor’s approbation of the Confraternity and its Statutes.” The deed has been done by letter from His Eminence Cardinal Tabera, Prefect of the S. Congregation for Religious.
2. Once the Confraternity is suppressed, “no longer having any juridical basis, its offshoots, and notably the seminary at Ecône, cease by the same token to have the right to exist.”
3. It is evident—and we are called upon to give clear notice thereof—“that no support may be given to Mgr Lefebvre as long as the ideas contained in his Manifesto of November 21st, 1974 shall remain the rule governing his actions.”Quite apart from the inverted commas, I love the insertion in clause 3: “and we are called upon to give clear notice thereof—nous sommes invités à le notifier clairement”! Has there ever been another judgement thus to proclaim itself a sham? I know that Cardinals Garrone and Wright have been criticized for signing the verdict. I disagree: honour must be given where it is due. They only signed to what had already been accomplished by Tabera and Mamie—and they say so. They also made it quite clear that the verdict was not theirs.
In view of the Cardinals’ verdict and the suppression of his Confraternity by the Bishop of Fribourg, on May 21st Lefebvre appealed to the Supreme Court of the Church, the Segnatura. Its Perfect is one Cardinal Staffa, reputedly a man of principle. Lefebvre’s grounds were threefold: 1. lack of legal form in the suppression of his Confraternity since, under Cn 493, only the Holy See, not the Bishop of Fribourg, could do so; 2. since he, Lefebvre, is condemned in matters of faith, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is alone competent and not Garrone’s Tribunal; 3. a condemnation of his Declaration of November 1974 affects none but himself; it affects neither his Confraternity nor his Seminary. These grounds seem perfectly reasonable.
Ah, the dear old Segnatura! If Rome is hailed as the Eternal City, the Segnatura exemplifies what is meant. No panic, no flap at the Segnatura, all is seemliness and due decorum. When Lefebvre posted his appeal that evening of May 21st, he must have felt that perfect peace was his for at east a twelve-month.
Not a bit of it! His appeal was duly registered at the Segnatura on June 5th; its rejection is dated June 10th. What, overtime at the Segnatura? Impossible! Lefebvre’s lawyer on the spot had a different explanation: Cardinal Villot sent a note in his own handwriting to Cardinal Staffa “directing him to prohibit the appeal.”
On the face of it, this does not look too good: the highest administrative officer in the Church giving directions to the highest judicial officer. This would be worse than Watergate. But, admitting the physical fact of Villot’s intervention, is this exactly what happened? In view of Staffa’s reputation, I suspect not. It is worth looking at the wording of Staffa’s rejection of the appeal. In the name of the Supreme Tribunal he declares himself “incompetent” under Canon 1556. And what says Cn 1556? “Prima Sedes a nemine judicatur—the Primatial See is judged by no one.” This implies rather a lot: that Tabera was right and prior to April 25th the Supreme Pontiff had by personal act condemned Lefebvre and all his works—presumably on the evidence of the vanished tapes; that the inverted commas in the Garrone verdict were quotations from this Papal condemnation and his tribunal was mere window-dressing; that Villot’s note to Staffa was to inform the latter of the Supreme Pontiff’s sentence; that Staffa did no more than record a fact. The trouble with all this is that the essential document is missing: the Papal decree condemning Lefebvre and all his works. One really cannot base public acts on private documents. The whole business is made to look shifty by the constant shifting between a judicial process and the appeal to a secret decree. Small wonder that Lefebvre should pay scant attention to his condemnation. Small wonder that I should lay down conditions to any interview with Klushko or his representative.
This is not quite the end of Act I in the Lefebvre tragedy. There are the two letters addressed to him by the Pope dated July 10th and September 10th, 1975. It is the first which needs to be examined, as the second is little more than a request for an answer. The Pope starts off by assuring Lefebvre that he is well informed of everything concerning his case and the seminary at Ecône. The tapes are not mentioned but I cannot help feeling that he is referring to them. He also shoulders full responsibility for ordering the immediate closure of Ecône—which ties in with Tabera’s letter to Bishop Mamie of April 25th. Then comes the operative sentence demanding of Lefebvre “a public act of submission to the Council, to the post-Conciliar reforms and to the ‘orientations’ to which the Pope himself is pledged (aux orientations qui engagent le Pape lui-même).” These three totally different things are all lumped together and Lefebvre is supposed to swallow the lot. Submission to the Council presents no difficulty. The documents are wordy and ambiguous but are probably all right as far as they go. A legitimate criticism is that they do not go far enough—but that is a different matter. Submission to the “post-Conciliar reforms” needs a lot of clarification. Everyone, including Lefebvre, is doubtless willing to submit to those reforms which have been duly promulgated as soon as we know which they are: the New Ordo, for instance, is certainly not among them. Is Lefebvre supposed to submit to administrative follies which are still to come, apart from those which already exist? But to submit to the “orientations” to which the Pope feels pledged is perfectly preposterous. What a wonderfully vague word is “orientations”: one’s bearings, outlook, point of view, direction, party line. Up to and including the Council, Catholics were bound to believe all defined doctrines and to obey the commands of the Church’s magisterium. Now, apparently, we are expected to submit to an “outlook.” We must all look in the same direction as the reigning Pontiff: “Company, eyes left!” This is giving us blinkers as never before. The new triumphalism is more exigent than the old. The trouble is that in a sense Paul VI is absolutely right: the new look in the Catholic Church is due precisely to the substitution of a human outlook for Divine Revelation. It is consequently largely sociological and political instead of dogmatic and spiritual. Heaven help us!
The end of the letter is no less curious. “You make yourself out to be a second Athanasius; but he was supporting the decrees of the Council of Nicaea whereas you are opposing Vatican II, which has no less authority than Nicaea and in many respects is more important.” Exactly: Nicaea merely defined the Divinity of Christ, whereas Vatican II has given rise to an “orientation,” an outlook. As a matter of fact, of course, Lefebvre is defending the decrees of all Councils, from Nicaea to Vatican II inclusive: he is defending decrees as against “orientations.”
Thus ends Act I. The plot is set. God alone can unravel it.
I hope I have not bored you with all this, but it has helped me a lot to put it down on paper. It was Klushko’s letter which reminded me of Lefebvre. I made some notes on the affair in December 1975. On looking through them now, it seems more important and far sadder than it did at the time.
Now for less lugubrious subjects. . . .
— Bryan Houghton, Mitre and Crook, 1979, pp. 193–197.
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Bishop to Archbishop
Second letter to Archbishop Klushko, Rome (The first letter is #35.)
Friday, March 11th, 1977.
Dear Archbishop Klushko,
First of all I must congratulate you on your new appointment. Not only does it immediately put you into a key position but, in view of your comparative youth, it means that with a modicum of care you can scarcely avoid becoming a Cardinal. This, I imagine could still be quite fun—although the renewal of the Church in implementing the spirit of Vatican II has abolished the principal attraction of that high office. I refer, of course, to the hat.
I am in receipt of your letter of February 28th and apologize for the delay in answering it. It is most kind of you to invite me to Rome and under normal circumstances I should be delighted to accept. As you know, however, I happen to be dying. It is an inconvenient occupation which makes it difficult for me to move from my base: numerous injections, an impossible diet and inconsiderate bowels.
However, I should not like you to imagine that I am using my imminent demise as an excuse. Were I in the pink of health I should require some assurances and clarifications before accepting your invitation. Your write: “The Cardinal Prefect and myself should now like to discuss with you odd points which cause us some embarrassment as a result of your Ad clerum of January 13th.” Apart from the reference to my Ad clerum, this is word for word the same as Cardinal Garrone’s letter to Archbishop Lefebvre of January 25th, 1975: “nous voudrions nous entretenir avec vous . . .” Diplomatic language, I suppose, follows well worn grooves. The point is, however, that when Lefebvre, all on his own without Canon Lawyer, theologian or secretary, arrived in Rome, he found himself confronted by Cardinals Garrone, Wright and Tabera sitting as a sort of People’s Court in which the accusation is the condemnation. The Court proceedings were duly taped.
Now, I am willing to chat with anyone—presumably Testastorta as I am unable to get to Rome. I am also willing to appear (inevitably by proxy) in front of any tribunal provided that the case against me is properly formulated and I am given due notice; that I am allowed Counsel as I think fit; that I may myself have the proceedings recorded and publish them at my discretion. What I am unwilling to do is to turn up for a chat and come in for a grilling.
I wish to explain why I insist on recording and publishing myself any discussion or proceedings which may take place. You will remember that in the case of Archbishop Lefebvre the discussion of January 25th was duly taped. This was probably less to hear what Lefebvre had to say for himself than to make sure that the Cardinals did the grilling properly. Apparently they did not, so the tough old bird was put under the grill again on March 3rd. This time the Cardinals doubtless said all they were supposed to. Lefebvre asked for a copy of the tape. Garrone had no hesitation: of course, it was his right. That evening Lefebvre sent a person round to the secretary with the necessary machinery to re-record the tape. It was refused. Next day he went himself to get it. No, he could only have a transcript, which would be ready the following evening. The following evening he was told that even the transcript was not forthcoming. It is reasonably obvious that neither Garrone nor the secretary had the tape. It must have been removed by higher authority who refused to part with it. So Lefebvre never got a copy. Then came the crowning insult. Months later—quite recently in fact—extracts appeared in an illustrated French weekly! I lack the humility to lay myself open to such treatment.
Do not tapes remind you of something, my dear Archbishop? I am not wildly interested in politics, but I seem to remember a scandal in the United States about a watergate [sic]. The upshot of it was that the then President was obliged to produce the tapes which condemned him. Surely this was splendid? It proved to the world that the U.S. is a great civilized country, governed in the long run by the Rule of Law no matter how much mud may collect in her watergates. I wish the Vatican had done likewise in the Lefebvre affair. As all agree, justice must not only be done but be seen to be done. Now that you are a distinguished member of the Church’s central administration, I trust that you will exert your utmost influence to secure the re-establishment of the Rule of Law. The sanctuary of the post-Conciliar Church is sufficiently cluttered with corpses without adding to the pile.
I am no less sincerely yours,
my dear Archbishop,
for remaining in indignant opposition,
— Bryan Houghton, Mitre and Crook, 1979, pp. 191–192.
Bishop to Bishop
Third letter to Henry Dobson, Bishop of Hunstanton. (The first is #6 and the second #36.)
Friday, March 11th, 1977
Dear Harry,
It was most kind of you to come and see me. I thoroughly enjoyed your visit. You are always so stimulating. Besides, you save me the trouble of wading through the latest nonsense: you expound it so succinctly and clearly yourself.
I am of course sorry that you will not promise to ordain my men in case of necessity. I suppose that I should not have hoped for more than your favourable prejudice. We humans have an itch to distrust God’s Providence. He will see to their ordination as He has to their vocation.
You know, during the course of conversation I think we touched on one of the basic problems in the Church today. I was holding forth on the fact that the Church is guardian of the Faith and the present crisis arose because what she enjoins and permits in practice is not readily recognizable as an expression of the Faith she guarantees. Hence we could arrive at the absurd situation in which practicers have lost the Faith whereas the faithful refuse to practice. It was your answer to this which seems to me so important. You said: “There is only one object of Faith: the Church. I am baptized into the Church and it is she who gives me Faith. On her authority I believe all other doctrines. She can deal with them as she likes, since she is the only constant. Christ revealed no doctrines but a praxis: His Kingdom of the Church.” We left it at that.
Few people, I think, could formulate the argument as honestly and clearly as you. Nevertheless, I believe it expresses the basic attitude of countless Catholics today, not of the “modernists” but of those who simple obey. It is a very ecclesiastical argument, akin to the patriotism in “My country right or wrong.” But is it true?
I suspect the it rests on two articles in the old catechism:
1. Faith is a supernatural gift of God enabling me to believe without doubting whatever God has revealed. 2. I am to know what God has revealed by the teaching, testimony and authority of the Catholic Church.
If one puts those two articles together, one gets the impression that Faith as a supernatural gift merely empowers a person to believe what the Church teaches and the objects of Faith are provided by the Church. It is therefore the Church which justifies the Faith and not the Faith which justifies the Church. Hence the Church must be obeyed in all things, even if she is quite clearly hiding her light under a bushel. It automatically becomes right and proper that the light should be shaded because legitimate authority in the Church has said so. I do not think that is an unfair or distorted presentation of the case, is it?
But surely it is evident that such an argument is tautological or a vicious circle? I am to know what God had revealed by the authority of the Church. And how am I to know that the Church has such authority? Because the Church says that God has revealed it. It is patently nonsense.
You will notice that you yourself admit it to be nonsense. You said: “Christ revealed no doctrines but a praxis: His Kingdom, His Church.” You thereby concede that there is at any rate one object of Faith logically prior to the Church: the authority of Christ. And once you admit that, all the rest follows. Is His authority divine? Is He God incarnate, the Second Person of the Trinity, born of the Virgin Mary, etc.? Indeed, one of the things which follows from your prior faith in the divine authority of Christ is the authority of the Church. It does not work the other way round: you do not believe that Christ receives His authority from the Church. The Church is the guardian of God’s revelation but not its source. She herself is one of the objects of Faith: I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Therein, it seems to me, lies the crux of the present crisis. I mean the crisis between honest Catholics, such as I believe both of us to be. I am not referring to heretics who have lost the Faith although the Church no longer excludes them. I mean you and me. Faced with the same crisis, we react in diametrically opposite ways. Your immediate reaction, along with the overwhelming majority of churchmen, is to save the Church and the Faith will look after itself. Mine, along with a heavy percentage of the laity, is to save the Faith and let the Church look after herself. We cannot both be right. Indeed, each day the gulf between us is growing wider. If we pursue our ways indefinitely we shall come to the point when the faithful are legal schismatics and the obedient factual heretics.
At this point I can hear you say: “Don’t talk rot, Edmund. It is your metaphor which deceives you. We are not going in opposite directions: we are merely looking at the opposite facets of the same coin. Even if I grant you the logical priority of Faith over the Church, in practice he who defends the Church defends the Faith and he who defends the Faith defends the Church.”
In normal times this would by and large be so. I say “by and large” because history provides plenty of examples of excessive use of ecclesiastical authority. Quite apart from mediaeval excommunications, in our own day some of your friends might feel that Pius XII went a bit far when he demanded internal assent to the Five Ways of proving the existence of God. But at the moment of time it is patently untrue to say that in defending the Church one is automatically defending the Faith and this for two reasons: a) the Faith is ambiguously formulated; b) heretics are no longer excluded from the Church. The fact is that the Faith is exclusive whereas the Church has become inclusive. She has changed Our Lord’s lapidary sentence, “He who is not with me is against me,” into the coward’s whine, “He is my friend who bullies me.”
We do not have to look very far for the result, my dear Harry. Concerning the defence of the Faith, over the past ten years have you promoted priests who refuse the term and doubtless the meaning of “Transubstantiation” and talk of “a Personal” instead of “The Real Presence”? I have. What have you done about clergy who openly preach contraception? A little more, I hope, than I—which is practically nothing. Has your natural chivalry, if not your conviction, led you to defend the Mother of God against those who who “put her in her place”? It has not me. Have you remonstrated with those who refuse to administer the Sacrament of Penance except by appointment but insist on Penitential Services? As a matter of fact I have, but I trust you have done it more firmly. Have you stamped on priests who refuse to give infant Baptism for a variety of specious reasons including the denial of Original Sin? I have done little more than wag a reproving finger accompanied by a rueful smile. Have you even defended the authority of the Papacy and your own against the democratic rights of the People of God? Curiously enough, you probably less than I, which is not saying much. I call a halt to this catalogue not from lack of ammunition but of patience. The fact is, and we know it, that in our own dioceses it is not we who defended the Faith: it has been left to pathetic little groups of layfolk, helped or hindered by a stray priest, to do so.
It is a very different matter when it comes to enforcing the New Outlook. Have you promoted a priest who has stuck to the Immemorial Mass? Of course not and, to my everlasting shame, neither have I. What has been your attitude to priests who mumble that Vatican II failed to face the facts and that post-Conciliar legislation has been disastrous; who refuse to be brainwashed by attending compulsory study-days; who jeer at Bishops’ Collegiality, the National Conference of Priests and the new structures generally; who will not give Communion standing and in the hand; who administer Extreme Unction as of yore; who will still say the Breviary, the Rosary and make their meditation; who . . . ? have you reserved key positions in your administration for such men of probity and principle? No more than I have, Harry. We have looked after the Church all right but not after the Faith.
The crowning example is Archbishop Lefebvre. He has been attacked from all sides, yet nobody has dared impugn his Faith and accuse him of being unorthodox. In fact, if only he would utter the tiniest, wee little heresy, authority could indulge in charity and all would be forgiven. The trouble is that the old devil won’t, so there is nothing to forgive. Thus he gets suspended and threatened with excommunication on the trumped up charge of disobeying ecclesiastical law.
My own case is not without its interest. I do nothing which I have not got a perfect right to do. I endeavour to mend the divisions of my diocese precisely by appealing to the unity of Faith against the “divisiveness” of praxis. This so horrifies authority that it first reveals the fact that I am dying and then will not let me die in peace. I have here on my desk a letter from Klushko summoning me to Rome. Perhaps he hopes that the voyage will kill me! Of course I shall not go. If he is all that keen on a chat, he can come to Stamford.
Somewhere towards the start of this epistle I said that we might end up in the absurd position where practicing Catholics had lost the Faith whereas the faithful refused to practice. We are there already. Although, as a bishop, I am rather cut off from intimacy with the laity, among my personal friends I know a surprising number of people in that position. I shall give you an example. It is one among many but it happened to hurt me quite particularly.
When I was a little boy the only other Catholics in our vicinity were the Fogartys, a very devout and respectable family from Galway. Mr. Forgarty was a cowman on a neighbouring estate. One of the children, Kate, was my age. I have known her all my life and love her dearly. She married an excellent Catholic fellow from Epping. Whenever I had to drive up to London, I tried to arrange to have lunch with Kate and her husband on the way. The last time I did so was in October. I was a bit early and Robert, the husband, had not returned from work. “Oh, Edmund! I am so glad to get you alone,” said Kate. “It’s about Robert. Can’t you say something to him? He refuses to go to Mass, he who was so regular. He slangs the priests for everything. It’s such a bad example for the grandchildren, etc.” Robert duly turned up. Kate retired to the kitchen to serve up lunch. “Glad to get you alone,” said Robert. “It’s about my wife. Can’t you put some sense into her? Madge, that’s my eldest granddaughter, is going out with a non-Catholic. She says he needn’t become a Catholic and they can get married in the Protestant church. She’s put her on the pill, too, getting my Madge into wicked ways. And she’s gone all politics. Communist, that’s what I calls it. She spends her time at meetings and comes home full of hate. There’s no more family Rosary. I say it by myself while they watch the telly. She’s a right pagan, she is. And she takes Our Blessed Lord in her hand as though He were a bit of chewing gum. I can’t watch her: it makes me sick. She says she’s not a Roman Catholic: ‘I’m an Adult Christian.’ is what she says. And it’s all the fault of those bloody priests. They’re not Catholic, they’re devils, breaking up happy homes, that’s what they are.” Etc. . . . At lunch all I was able to do was to verify that both had spoken the truth. Kate practiced but had lost the Faith. Robert was faithful, even devout, but nothing would induce him to practice. How sad! And this is quite common, as you know full well.
Well, I suppose I shall have to answer Klushko. Before I do so, however, I should like to make my position clear.
The visible Church, the Kingdom, the community of the People of God—whatever you like to call it—is not the source but one of the objects of Faith; neither is she the sole nor even the primary object thereof. What she is, on the other hand, the the guardian of Faith by divine authority. As such she is infallible in proclaiming what the Faith is. Being composed of mortal men, however, she is lamentably fallible in putting the Faith into practice. This capacity for practical error is just as present in the Church’s administration as in her individual members. The Church is infallible but not impeccable. Where there is conflict between her Faith and her practice, as is clearly the case today, the faithful have no alternative but to cling to her Faith and discard her practice. My position is surely as reasonable as it is clear: I judge the Church’s fallible practice in the light of her infallible Faith. In theory, my dear Harry, you are either maintaining that the Church is impeccable—which is nonsense—or that one should cling to her practice and abandon her Faith.
Fortunately, however, we none of us live by theories and I know that Harry Dobson is just as good a Catholic as he knows is
His devoted friend,
Edmund Forester.
— Bryan Houghton, Mitre and Crook, 1979, pp. 185–190.
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