ii. a summary of the impossible circumstance in the Roman Catholic Church at the time of the 2025 conclave
[Part II: Intellectual Drift under Pope Francis 2013-2025] a tale of three tribes. only two are happy, only two are honest, only two are now entirely disenfranchised.
Preface: A House Divided: The Origins of the Three Tribes in the Anti-Modernist Controversy and Modernist Triumph at Vatican II
Most Catholics are not aware of this history. But the Roman Catholic Church succumbed to the last heresy it defined in its history. This heresy was called Modernism, and from the late 19th to mid-20th Century this was the primary spiritual battle of the Church. The opening salvo against Modernism was the famous 1864 Syllabus of (Modernist) Errors by Pope Pius IX. But a century later Modernism wasn´t treated like a heresy anymore. Men either previously accused of or sympathetic to modernism played leading roles at the Second Vatican Council. Josef Ratzinger referred to the 1965 constitution, Gaudium et Spes, from Vatican II as itself a sort of “counter-syllabus,“ meaning the anti-modernist teaching of Pius IX had been turned on it´s head. The heart of the change was a shift in posture toward the modern world, the Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pope St Pius X unrelentingly condemned modern errors and Gaudium et Spes proposed engagement with the modern world. No one denies this about face, but few talk about its immense impact.
I give this short preface because the intellectual divisions of the three tribes stems from this controversial triumph of Modernism at the Second Vatican Council.1 The simplest way to clarify Modernism, for our purposes, is that it constituted a rejection of Scholasticism in principle, and rejected Political Integralism and Religious Exclusivism in practice.2 The jettisoning of (1) the previous theological framework opened up (2) conceptual space to justify the practical reforms.3 It is thus in their relation to Modernism´s triumph that each of the Three Tribes defines itself.
Liberals say the the return of Modernism was good and warrants their embrace of the modern world and desire to adapt the faith thereto.
Conservatives say this return of Modernism was good and doesn´t entail a rebellion against Sacred Tradition.
Traditional Catholics say the return of Modernism was unequivocally bad and cannot but lead away from the unchanging faith.
Since Vatican II the Catholic Church has been defined by a conflict between Liberals and Conservatives regarding the teleological direction of the modernist turn at Vatican II4: Liberals see the new modernist foundation as a warrant to an ecclesia semper reformata, while conservatives believe the modernist foundation can be made to heel and conform with the catholic tradition. This is still the problematic and circumstance to this day, a tug of war between liberals and conservatives over how much the church should conform to the world. Both agree that it needed to a little at Vatican II— regarding ecumenism, regarding other religions, exiting the political sphere—here liberals and conservatives agree in contradistinction to tradition. And its to distract from this modernist foundation that conservatives tolerate liberals within the church hierarchy, often men who openly defy church teaching and morality. Thus the return of modernism brought about the occasion and the justification for the 2-party post-conciliar church. Even in the thick of the Arian Crisis or Reformation, there was never a like false peace, reigning between two apparently opposing spirits within the Body of Christ.
Intellectual Drift under Pope Francis 2013-2025
In the wake of Vatican II, there was a preliminary period of contest, chaos or rupture, where everything seemed up for grabs. And this period of internecine conflict continued from about 1965 until 1978 when John Paul II was elected Pope. Then there was a period of stasis for about 45 years under JPII and Benedict XVI, and real progress was made by conservatives in trying to close the gap with tradition. And then in 2013, the election of Pope Francis usured in another period of liberal chaos and rupture from Sacred Tradition. It looks provisionally as if Leo XIV is going to seek to be more of a stasis, John Paul II sort of figure, bringing about stability and order after a period of liberal induced instability and disorder. Regardless, the further this dynamic develops, with liberals changing the faith and conservatives seeking to hit the brakes on a run-away train, the more both groups react with severity to condemn the traditional Catholics politically— for liberals the antagonism is spiritually driven as trads oppose any change most vociferously, and for conservatives the antagonism is intellectual as only Trads can point out their failure to preserve the Tradition.
The ´Hermeneutic of Continuity´ gets a Death Sentence
Excursus Concerning the Intellectual Origin of the Three Tribes and the ´Hermeneutic of Continuity´—»
The principle achievement of Pope Francis in our tribal conflict was to have destroyed the credibility of the ‘hermeneutic of continuity’—i.e. the paradigmatic interpretative doctrine, invented by Josef Ratzinger, saying that dogmatic texts or or Papal activities since the Second Vatican Council should be interpreted, even against appearances, as being in line with Sacred Tradition.5 Basically if it looks a lot like your wife has left you for another man, this hermeneutic says ´don´t interpret things this way its dishonoring of your wife, focus on things that have remained the same and interpret differences with a pre-conceived assumption of her fidelity.´ She smells like another dude, ´must be a strange new male scented perfume!´ says this hermeneutic. In this manner, the Church remains safely “Catholic” and all worry is put at ease. And if you go Trad and say the whole thing stinks—wife and hermeneutic— you forfeit your right to exist in this post-conciliar church.
With his program of liberal reform, Pope Francis threw a wrench into the story that was sustaining the conservative movement—i.e. that things were tending back to normal, that the liberals would die off and conservatives would win the day. This story is no longer remotely realistic. The liberals are dying off, but, at the same time, have never been more entrenched in the institution. And stories are the fuel for ideologies, they put the energy into the machine. Pope Francis´s wrench in the machine itself took definitive shape not just in the hundreds of errant comments off the cuff, but in what was written in stone in Bergoglio´s ordinary magisterium itself, where he taught things directly in contradiction to the perennial catholic faith:
Non-Catholic religions are positively willed by God in the same manner as God positively willed two sexes, or a diversity of races to develop. (2019 Abu Dhabi “Document on Human Fraternity”). [Sed Contras from Sacred Tradition can be found in Footnotes.]6
Contemporary Jews should not be considered members of a different religion than the catholic one and that they live under a valid covenant with God. (Evangelii Gaudium #247-9)7
Each Human Person has an Infinite Dignity as feature of their being Human. (Dignitas Infinita, #1)
The death penalty is per se evil. (2018 Revision to the Catholic Catechism, Fratelli Tutti #263-9)8
Divorced and remarried can return to sacraments without an annulment or separating from an illicit adulterous union. (Amoris Laetitia #305, letter to the bishops of Argentina)9
Homosexual couples can and should be blessed by a priest in a non-liturgical rite. (Feducia Supplicans #31)10
The tridentine rite of mass should not be regarded as proper to the Latin Church. (Traditiones Custodes, Art 1).11
If we consider St John Henry Newman´s criteria for doctrinal development, these do not fit with any of the criteria for acceptable developments of doctrine.12 These contradict and reverse, they do not deepen, develop, or expand upon what was taught before.
These changes constituted a real end to the ´hermeneutic of continuity´—if it will persist likely for decades as an ideology. If you told a catholic priest in 1960 that a Roman Catholic Pope would: (1) promote the blessing of sodomite couples, (2) say all religions are willed by God and (3) that Judaism could not be considered as a separate religion from the catholic one, (4) put an homage to a foreign deity on the altar during Mass at St Peters, they wouldn´t even know how to comprehend this, it wasn´t even in the spectrum of possibility. Yet we are living in a world, not only where that is possible, but where that actually happened. And not only did they happen, there was really no real opposition from any corner of the church. Instead the men tasked with guarding the deposit of faith would praise Francis the catholic things he said, and shove these errors under the rug. The only way to account for this circumstance is a ´hermeneutic of rupture,´ which gives either Liberals or Trads the intellectual high hand to play out in the years to come.
Liberals get the Green Light
The general project of theological liberalism, as with political and economic liberalism, is to subtract normative form in order to increase negative freedom. I call this privationism. Liberalism says less is more—i.e. less law, more freedom. Thus, theological liberalism is always trying to subtract from what needs to be believed or to be done in order to be a faithful obedient catholic. It subtracts from the normative content of Catholicism in the name of renewing or invigorating Catholicism itself. The motto is, you can still be “catholic” but now you don’t need to do x or believe y, or z. In fact forgetting about x, y, and z would make you a better catholic and help others become Catholics. And over the years this project has found various warrants for its longed-for subtractions. The theological rationale coming from Pope Francis tended to be “god´s mercy.” Practicing “mercy,” for him, meant lowering expectations for obedience and fudging the lines themselves as to what is to be obeyed, i.e. we could more “catholic” or “merciful“ by being and insisting upon less obedience or being obedient to less overall.
All of the ramifications of the Francis`s program were in this typical liberal anti-nomian direction, Mercy invalidated all criteria for an invalid confession, it was still “catholic” but now less form was more Catholic. In Germany, for instance, liberals took full advantage by declaring sodomy no longer a sin and claiming women not only could be priests but have always been called as priests. And this German synod set a precedent for all other bishops throughout the world that such things would be allowed and not subject to punishment or censure. With the Pope´s ordinary magisterium and teaching on their side, in parishes, and in seminaries all over the world, this liberal, anti-nomian spirit worked to hollow out the faith.
Beyond having the support of Francis`s specific theological program, Liberals also benefit intellectually because they now have carte blanche do what they please. You already hear it often enough in Germany: “if the magisterium can do an about face on the death penalty, why not with sodomite ´marriage´ or women ´priests.´” There is no good answer. Perhaps the next pope will try to reel back the rate of development but the revolutionary potency has been renewed and cannot be undone. Almost more important for the long term future that Pope Francis´s actual teachings, Liberals can logically justify literally anything: if the antecedent is a contradiction, every possible consequent is logically true. This is the true “spirit of the council” but now again set free with greater velocity by Pope Francis´s temerity to stand in direct contradiction to the faith on things like the death penalty. All the conservatives can do is pretend the contradictions aren’t there or that they don’t matter. Liberals can push their agenda forward now knowing there will be next to no consequence from toothless conservatives. The experiment has already been run for a dozen years.
Thus the remarkable thing about liberals is how little they have made out of this advantageous situation. The opportunity to whitewash dogma could have been a great opportunity for them to push for catholic-orthodox or catholic-protestant reunion, seeing how it is dogma that stands in the way of unity in these cases. If some agreement was reached with Anglicans or orthodox it would irrevocably cement their ideology even more into the fabric of catholic life. If liberals were to develop a robust Lowest Common Denominator ´catholic lite´ option— and were already more than halfway there: e.g. relax priestly celibacy, vigorously promote the charismatic renewal, ditch transubstantiation insist on a vague real presence, etc. Liberals could offer to ordain protestant pastors en masse who wish to convert and consume a deeper historical sense of the faith, men who wish to utilize our beautiful and largely empty churches in the west. Something like this, if carried out by the right sort of charismatic men, could work for the liberals and help solve for their demographic disappearance amongst practicing catholic faithful. Such a bold and vigorous ecumenical movement leading back to concrete visible “ecclesial“ unity would be immensely powerful, and just the sort of thing liberals are free to aim at given their lack of concern about dogma. Yet, rather than pursue spiritual wins most all Christians living in the immanent frame would cheer, Liberals instead chose to focus on their own death drive, on population replacement and normalizing sexual perversion. These are first priority issues amongst the bourgeoise liberal class, but not really for Christians considering becoming catholic.
Conservatives Swap Reasons for Rationalizations
In the face of Pope Francis´s shocking departures from orthodoxy, Conservatives put their own lack of intellectual integrity on full display. They either deny or distort what the Pope says—or meant to say!— to make it conform to their opinion of what a Pope should mean. But this was, from the beginning, the heart of the irrational conservative catholic project, i.e. to accept the basis of liberal or modernist reform starting at the Second Vatican Council and try to steer the consequences of these reforms in the direction of the traditional faith. When they don´t succeed in getting this in reality, then they distort reality to conform with their ideal. Most German conservatives I know insisted the Pope was against the Synodale Weg seeking women´s ordination and gay marriages, despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary—e.g. both leading german Cardinals Marx and Kasper were working closely with Francis in his inner circle of advisors during this synod. Its just one example but I could give so many. Under Pope Francis, conservative priests as a rule basically decided to ignore or convolute Francis´s teaching wherever it contradicted tradition and focused instead on the things he said that conformed to the previous teaching.
The problems with this in praxis are manifold. First, it does not defend the deposit of faith, on the contrary, it defends only the (false) impression amongst conservative faithful that the deposit of faith has not been altered. Second, the “eye is the lamp of the body“ so says Our Lord. And willful blindness in one regard never just stays there. The refusal of conservative eyes to look at, make sense of, or report darkness is perhaps the best explanation for the prevalence of scandal over the past 60 years, as well as its being excused. Third, because the gap between the ideology and reality keeps widening, there is less and less reward for honesty, also for digging into and taking seriously the traditional faith for men seeking ordination. Intellectual honesty and knowledge of Tradition threaten the ability to perform the vocation well overall, which requires minimizing the extent and consequence of liberal reforms and alterations of dogma. This makes anti-intellectualism endemic to the conservative movement, and also means that spiritual abuse will inevitably be employed to question the “faith“ of people asking the right questions about the health of the church overall. Finally, this ideology turns off those who love the truth. The ´hermeneutic of continuity,´ now stretched to defend indefensible things like communion for the divorced and remarried or sodomite blessings, pushes young men to orthodoxy who fear they cannot live out a religious vocation, even in conservative strongholds, because either the cowardice or cognitive dissonance on display amongst conservatives is too great.
One already sees the damage showing up here and there on the fringes of ecclesial life—and by fringes I mean simply alterations in how people talk about the church and the papacy— and I suspect the prevalence of the disease on the fringes will work its way to the heart. Under JP2 or B16, there was room for young men to honestly boast about the Papacy in a triumphalist manner. Only a faint shadow of this confidence remains today and its palpable in even casual conversation with priests, seminarians and now embarrassed faithful. Before Francis a nerdy seminarian could argue that Catholicism was more excellent that Orthodoxy because of the latter’s laxity regarding divorce. Yet twelve years later— after Pope Francis welcomed those in adulterous unions back to communion and encouraged priests to bless gay couples—the argument cannot be made seriously. This may be a small change on the fringe, but it sullies a reason that cuts to the heart of the matter.
Conservative priests and apologists have spent about a decade deflating the claims of the Papacy to justify the unseemly problematics created by a liberal Pope, seeming to forget that the Papacy is the only reason to be catholic and not orthodox. To shrink the magnificence of the Papacy is to shrink the Catholic claim. Within a decade, the elevator pitch for the Papacy went from “the Pope is Infallible, usually an intellectual superstar, and Vicar of Christ” to “the Pope isn´t that important, don´t take too seriously what he says, and never uses his infallibility anyway.” How people explain things to themselves and others matter. The new rationalizations leave these crucial question unanswered: (1) why be catholic if submission to the Pope´s teaching isn´t important or if papal teaching isn´t in any meaningful sense of the term infallible? And (2) what good is infallibility if its only a reason to be held captive to error, rather than a reason to know one is free from it?13 These shifts twisting original dogmatic reasons to situational rationalizations are now undeniable tendencies of the conservative bent of mind. In hindsight, it looks like the willingness of conservatives to alter the doctrine of the papacy to fit with the circumstance rather than vice versa did more to destroy the reputation and health of the church than Pope Francis ever could.14
Rhetorical shifts like this matter a long in terms of the long term viability of an ideology. Reasons move people, and this shift was a rationalization for people, mostly priests, who are already catholic for why they should stay loyal without revolt. But this rationalization isn´t for outsiders, its not for young men discerning a vocation, it´s not for Muslim converts, or gen z inquirers into the various branches of Christianity. None of these groups of people are finding the new rationalizations compelling. In the US hordes of young men are turning to orthodoxy. These development says the conservatives are in trouble long term, men don´t give their lives for rationalizations, but for good reasons, and the conservative cause was robbed of many good reasons over the past dozen years. Grace perfects nature, and the theft of so many good reasons to be Roman Catholic long term will rob conservatives of both the fruits of Christian conversions and of devout members who exit the conservative fold for Traditional Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
The raison d´etre of Conservativism from the beginning was two-fold: (1) to preserve the unchanging Catholic faith and (2) to save the church from the liberals who wished to alter it. Yet, as they keep giving up ground to stay on the playing field, conservatives basically lose their right to justify their existence in terms of (1) the unchanging faith (because the goalposts are moving). Thus they can justify themselves only in terms of a (2) defense against current and future liberal reforms. Yet, with this goal, conservativism proves itself only to ape liberalism in its metaphysical substance as an ideology. The liberal program is defined by a subtraction from Catholic form in the direction of formlessness, and the Conservative program is defined by a subtraction of Liberal formlessness in the direction of, but never quite reaching traditional Catholicism. Conservatives cannot ever have the unchanging faith as thier aim because they accept the basis of modernist change at Vatican II. This acceptance also doesn´t allow them to be strict about dogma, which would call Vatican II itself into question. This dynamic is important because conservatives so often express the sentiment that the church would be good and healthy if only there was an absence of evil, if only the liberals left the church. And I don´t believe them. The absence of evil is not the Good, minimizing liberal gains is not on par with defending and living out Sacred Tradition.
In reality, conservatives can only be relatively less bad than liberals, they cannot be good at all. Conservatives cannot be good because they do not aim at the Good. They don´t aim at total fidelity to Sacred Tradition as it was understood before. The spirit at play is thus privationist in both tribes, where, ideally speaking, good is taken to be a privation of evil, rather than the real Christian metaphysic where evil is a privation of good. This metaphysical basis explains why conservatives, and many faux-trads, are content to simply virtue-signal their opposition to liberals without taking responsibility for the situation and demanding (or forcing?) liberals out. If you ask them why they´d never consider this, they appeal to unity, or reference a fear of schism, which proves that there is a unity of spirit—call it modernism, privationism—upholding and guiding the church today. The question is how anyone could think this privationist spirit is good that unites conservatives and liberals in the post-conciliar church, or how it could be the Spirit of Truth uniting the church by means of indifference to the Truth itself.
Trads Struggle to Capitalize on a Golden Opportunity
Trads were really the greatest potential benefactors from this intellectual drift under Pope Francis and young people, who are still in the process of forming their minds and weighing evidence are gravitating in greater numbers to the trad position on the Council and Mass. Yet, by and large, Trads have failed to capitalize on twelve years of evidence confirming their worries about the Second Vatican Council and New Mass for two reasons: (1) Trads tend to be too negative and reactionary against Liberal reforms rather than positive and forward focused, focused on living the Traditional Faith in the present age, (2) its clear Trads have no clue what to do, or even how to think, about the Papacy and Institutional Church itself. They waste a great deal of energy on account of the wishful thinking, confusion, and frustration poured into this ideological black hole in Trad-world. Without solving for these two problems, Traditional Catholicism will remain on the small fringes of the Catholic world, rather than becoming a booming spiritual movement like the charismatic movement.
The Trad-Pill isn´t Sweet
Firstly, Traditional Catholicism so often gives the signs of being a Red Pill type spiritual phenomenon—i.e. a movement without a positive center being pursued but instead one with a negative center being avoided. By this I mean that Traditional Catholics often seem to have a greater focus on negatives than positives, more on what they are concretely avoiding than pursuing, or that conversion to traditional Catholicism enlightens converts more to the negatives of the novus ordo, or this materialistic, perverse culture overall, than to the great good of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the hope for mercy that He offers. One can pick up on this listening to how Trads talk, and what they like to talk about. They tend to talk like Red Pill right wingers who have become aware of the evil of their previous ideology and wanted out, rather than people who have been touched by Jesus Christ and have to speak of Him and share the Good News. In this way too, the attention of trads can feed on the evil news coming from Rome or horror stories from a Novus ordo parish as bad news gives energy to this sort of ideology. The attention of Trads is also, like woke or red pill groups, sometimes obsessed with correcting others and finding fault in others, rather than the positive transformation of the self by taking responsibility for oneself rather than blaming others. This sort of negative spirit is of course worse when it has replaced the Gospel—i.e. when people who have every reason to have Good News seem to be perversely focused on evil. But its a clear reason why the growth of Trads is largely limited to wierdo-nerd converts (I think I fit safely in this type!) and super-catholic types. There just aren’t very many normie converts in Trad-world like you see in evangelicalism or in the charismatic movement. This is because normal people are looking for positive spiritual life, disciplines and practices, not the best conspiracy theory.
The picture for Traditional Catholics can only be bleak, both in the Church and the World. Yet, for the traditional movement to spiritually take off, and to really spread and reach lost unbelieving people, there has to be a conversion to the Gospel, to good news, to a positive center, to what Jesus Christ is doing in their lives that gives them hope and joy. They don´t have to be optimistic, but Trads do have to learn how to hope. There is beauty vitality and strength in the Traditional Catholic world already, but it lacks the proper intellectual attention and spiritual discipline to become a rapidly growing movement.
You can´t Have Your Pope and Eat Him Too
The other insurmountable intellectual hurdle still tripping up the trads—and the reason they often struggle to hope— regards their inability to make sense of the Papacy and the institutional church. The inability to make sense of their political disenfranchisement and also to have some rational plan for how to rebound, leaves trads frustrated and overly focused on new developments within the institution, which of course tend to be negative developments. Their inability to decide if the Pope is Catholic or not and what that means, inflicts many trads with bad consciences about their disobedience to the Papacy.
The biggest intellectual blind spot of the most dominant trad group the SSPX is that they take a great pride in being “Traditional,” they dont seem to acknowledge that the Traditional Catholicism never existed in a quasi-schismatic state for 60 years. And thus their claim to Tradition itself is tenuous, for how can one be traditional and disobedient to the Pope? Thus, it is the papacy itself is the cause of immense infighting and vitriol within the traditional world and to be honest for good reason. All of the various positions—i.e. sedevacantism, sspx, and trad-novus ordo— are bizarre and pathetic. Sedes think the church will be saved by quitting the field, SSPX think disobedience will save the day, and trad-novus ordos, as best as I can tell, think the church will be saved by almighty complaining (my team! kyrie eleison). Thus if trads are exceptionally good at being intellectually ´right´ they aren´t usually right about being spiritually ´good,´ which cripples the movement overall.
Trads wield an almost unparalleled triumphalism concerning the glory and excellence of the catholic faith and liturgy, yet then struggle to commend the, in their eyes almost apostate, institution to anyone. Its a tough quandry, if you love the Traditional Catholic faith, how can you commend submitting in obedience to the contemporary Catholic Church? The elevator pitch for the Trad Gospel is all too often: You have to become catholic or you will be damned as a matter of principle, this means submitting in obedience to a cohort of freemasonic (i.e. satanist) Bishops under an apostate Pope as a matter of practice. This is a tough sell: either damnation or obedience to Satanic Popes! For those reading who aren´t privy to how weird this world is, this is all-too-often the Trad Gospel that needs to be shared, and its no wonder these communities, on the whole (there are wonderful people in this world), do not seem to be productive of genuine sanctity, gratitude, hospitality, or psychological well being at all proportionate to thier grandiose claims about having preserved the faith. They live in a catch-22 and can only offer the same to others. The Holy Spirit never gets caught in a catch-22, He is always bringing Good out of a bad situation.
The best way to save the catholic claim and the Papacy seems to have been to say that the claims of the Papacy meant that a man like Bergoglio couldn´t be Pope, and he could have been easily removed according to canon law which sentences formal heretics and apostates with automatic excommunication (so he can be judged because he is no longer Pope). It was just the political will wasn’t there amongst the few Cardinals or Bishops who could make a public judgment. Yet this failure shows how Trads themselves refuse to apply the traditional faith to the present circumstance out of a political ploy for toleration, and they aren´t willing to cut the tie, even quasi-schismatic groups like the SSPX wouldn´t condemn Pope Francis as a heretic or apostate officially because of what it would mean for their political hopes. Trad Catholics won´t cut the last political thread with the institution, and the institution is also happy to keep them in a ghetto and silent by means of this final thread. And for Trads giving up on the institution entirely comes back full circle to the huge intellectual problem of trad world: the claim of Matt 16:16 that the church is indefectible, as clarified by the Vatican I´s document Pastor Aeternus. The present situation looks to a Trad like defection from the faith and thus calls Vatican I into question.
For Trads to capitalize on the intellectual high ground, they need, to get a better game plan for what to do about the institution. The situation right now is a downright abusive—”cant live with her, cant live without her”—sort of toxic situation that poisons the Trad movement overall. Maybe consider going no contact…? I am confident if traditional Catholicism converted from the red pill to the Gospel and then stopped being overly bothered by an institution that it doesnt really think has the faith anyway, it would quickly flourish. This doesn´t mean avoiding the institution per se, perhaps it needs to be attended to, evangelized, terrorized, etc—but not through compromise, not through silence, and not through obsessing about intrigues—instead simply realizing it is what it is and engaging with it pragmatically to promote the traditional viewpoint with no fear of reprisals.
Summary and Outlook
We can fill out the intellectual dynamic between the tribes now more clearly.
Liberals have a death drive—i.e. if left to themselves, they will (1a) push towards formlessness and come against the hard reality that (2a) formlessness is not generative of long term spiritual flourishing. Thus (3a) liberals need the conservatives politically to keep their irrational ideology in check, also to appease a more conservative base. The simplest way to call this intellectual framework into account is to ask: when has a dissolution of form produced real spiritual freedom? (It has not and cannot!)
Conservatives can only justify their existence by two self-contradictory claims (1b) to defend the church against the threat of liberal reform, by (2b) seeking to maintain the Catholic tradition. If conservatives were only seeking to preserve Tradition, then they (3b) could have removed the liberals from the Church as was the custom before. They did not because (4b) the foundation itself was built on some liberal or modernist premises (e.g. religious liberty, etc) and thus (5b) the further the conservatives are dragged left by the liberals, the more they are going to have to justify themselves solely in terms of (1b) rather than (2b), which is now impossible. Q.E.D. (6b) the more the liberals get their way, the more the conservatives are dependent upon them to justify their existence. And isn´t that what we just experienced for the past 12 years! The simplest way to discredit the conservative ideology is to ask about (2b) and (3b), if they are serious about winning or defending orthdoxy they could condemn and excommunicate heretics tommorow and purify the church, why not do this? The answer—unity!—always reiterates that (3a + 6b) conservatives are in a co-dependent relationship with liberals in the post-conciliar church and (7) structurally speaking this relationship is going to gradually drift further towards formlessness or Modernism.
Traditional Intellectual Life is dominated by one problem: The Papacy and Institution. Trads should look at this previous dynamic and realize that this ship isn´t turning around, not ever. Trads desperately need a game plan. Here is the dynamic: (1c) the longer they hang around the institutional church drifting leftwards, the more negative trad world gets, and similarly, (2c) the more negative trad world gets, the less equipped they are to imagine life apart from the institution, if need be. The longer trads hold onto the thread connecting them to the institution, and are willing to compromise for this thread, it gives faithful the false impression that the thread is going to work a miracle and pull the wayward ship back to harbor. Foolish hopes such as these turn people negative in the long run. In any case, Trads arent getting the papacy or institution back so they had better learn to thrive without it and evangelize without it. The Trad Intellect can be called to account by asking: do we even have a game plan here? how do we see this working out long term? Are we applying in a principled manner the catholic Tradition, in thought, spirit, and practice to this situation? One step forward and toward applying the traditional teaching to this circumstance is the following: commending taking responsibility by blaming oneself and not others for the crisis in the church.
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Part 3: Pope Francis´s Coup d´Etat: The Liberal Political Triumph
Part 4: Future Predictions: No Optimism, Every Hope and Leo XIV
If you look at the four principle documents, Dignitatis Humanae, Gaudium et Spes, Dei Verbum, Lumen Gentium
This is could be seen as a controversial definition as Pascendi Dominici Gregis defines modernism as ontological agnosticism, epistemological immanentism, and animated by the idea of evolution in dogma. Yet the only way to even make sense of modernism in these terms is if one employs the scholastic philosophical framework, without this, modernism becomes unintelligible, and the leading modernist figures usually refused outright the scholastic mandate of Leo XIII´s aeterni patris. Scholasticism, at least for Leo XIII, was considered a crucial part of the anti-modernist campaign. if you are looking for a litmus test for the sea change, just look at whether the leading theologians of vatican II were scholastic or post-kantian theologians, and you will see why modernism returned at that council.
This relationship is easy to clarify. For instance consider scholastic mereology, the truth is whole, and a bit of falsehood adulterating the truth makes the whole false. This is the background for catholic exclusivism and a refusal to treat heretics like brothers or friends. If you deny this premise, then the entire project can become affirming truth wherever you see it and praising true aspects of false things, like false religions or philosophical doctrines. This is just one of many examples but the jetisson of scholastic philosophy very clearly opened the door for the practical modernist reforms of Vatican II. The best book covering this is “Iota Unum” by Romano Amerio.
When I say vatican 2 is modernist. These are the teachings i am referring to.
the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church. (Lumen gentium #8)
the Catholic Church is like a sacrament effecting the unity of the human race (Lumen Gentium #1).
humans qua human are obliged to know and obey the Truth as it really is or rather only as it is conceived ideally. (Dignitatis humanae #4) (modernist immanentism and subjectivism cannot sustain the scholastic distinction of ideal\real)
the Catholic Religion no longer wishes to be promoted by the state as the highest religious good in the civic order and instead wishes religious freedom to be promoted. Or that religious freedom and the catholic religion could co-exist as supreme principles for the state as regards religion. (Dignitatis Humanae #6) This is only possible if we stop thinking about nature\supernature as a duplex ordo, and modernists deny this distinction.
Muslims worship a merciful God together with us. (Lumen Gentium #16)
Non-baptized can be saved by ignorance\Original sin alone does not make one unworthy of heaven. (Lumen gentium #16)
Divine Revelation was not closed after the death of the Apostles or is a dynamic process in history. (Dei Verbum #8). This is the fruit of classic modernist immanentism, agnosticism
Pope Pius XI “Mortalium Animos” “That false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy…is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially of the Catholic religion.”
Pope Eugene IV “Cantate Domino” (Council of Florence, 1442) “The Holy Roman Church... firmly believes, professes and teaches that the legal prescriptions of the old law, or the Mosaic law... after the promulgation of the Gospel, cannot be observed without the loss of eternal salvation. All... who after that time [the death of Christ] observe circumcision and the sabbath and the other requirements of the law, the Church declares not in any way able to be saved, unless they someday return to that same Church.”
“The Roman Catechism” (Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1566) On the Fifth Commandment “There are instances when it is lawful to kill: as when a judge delivers a sentence of death in accordance with the law... These are not contrary to this commandment, which forbids private individuals from killing.”
Pope Pius XI “Casti Connubii” (1930) This is the most comprehensive pre-Vatican II papal teaching on marriage: “The bond of marriage is by divine law so close and so strong that it can be dissolved by no civil authority. Therefore, those who contract another marriage before the first is dissolved are guilty of a grave sin of adultery.
Pope St. Pius V “Horrendum illud scelus” (1566) This is one of the most direct papal decrees on the subject. In this bull, issued shortly after the Council of Trent, Pope Pius V commanded strict civil penalties (including death) for clergy who committed sodomy: “That horrendous crime, due to which corrupt and obscene cities were destroyed by fire through the sentence of God, fills us with horror and trembling... So that the contagion of this disease, which is to be more feared than any plague, may be driven out from the flock of Christ, and be punished with the utmost rigor, we decree that any priest or cleric who commits such a crime shall be handed over to the secular authorities and punished with the death penalty.”
Pope St Pius V “Quo Primum” (1570) “We order and enjoin that nothing must be added to, omitted from, or changed in this Missal…No one is to be forced or coerced into changing this Missal, and this document cannot be revoked or modified, but remains always valid and has the force of law…If anyone would presume to tamper with this, let him understand that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”
"It is a law of developments that, though the corruptions of doctrine begin in truth, yet they end in error; but that developments which are really such, though they may begin with a novelty, yet end in antiquity." “Development of Christian Doctrine,” Part II, Chapter V, Section 5
as a Roman Catholic, I struggle to defend the idea that infallibility ought only concern ex cathedera pronouncements, and that infallibility protects only against the unequivocably false, rather than the not-entirely true. Both of these together make the current praxis regarding infallibility absurd. Consider the Following Parable:
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It would be strange if a young man brought his girlfriend home to meet his family and he told her that his father was infallible. When his father spouted all manner of non-sense, the boy told her that non-sense didnt invalidate his belief in his fathers infallibilty because non-sense is not false, and the not-false was all that infallibility promised. His father was not bound by the truth. Yet, when his father then spoke unequvicably false things, the boy, unable to make the claim these were not-false, again defended his father and said he was only infallible when he spoke on matters of geometry and theology while sitting in a specific chair in the house. The girl, credulous, asked, “well how often does your father sit in that chair and pontificate about geometry and theology? Id like to hear that!” The boy replies, “well basically never really. Ive never seen it.” The girl summarizes, “so your father can spout all manner of non-sense, even say false things, and you say he is infallible because he would be if he spoke about geometry and theology in a specific chair but never does.” “Yup thats pretty much it, best dad ever, please call him Holy Father” says the boy, “his infallibility is a divine miracle!” “But its never even helpful to you at all? Why would I ever want to join your family with such a father?” protests the girl. “This seems abusive. hes indistinguishable from any other father in practice, and often unusually bad, and your thinking hes infallible seems to only make you defenseless against him bloviating non-sense and falsities.“
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If this is the teaching in practice, as it obviously was for the past 12 years, then why is it good? can anyone explain? and why is this the scope? if we look to the teaching at vatican 1 and thereafter, the majority view was that infallibility concerned all magesterium, ordinary and extra-ordinary. furthermore the standard for infallibility was the Truth, not the not-false. And this is a view i could defend! Because this view would defend us and the sacred mysteries. But not the current retrograde infallibility in circulation.
A perfect example of this sort of intellectual spinelessness is on display from Card. Burke in his interview with Ross Douthat here. Cardinal Burke suggests here that the Pope could be in schism, a contradiction in terms. The definition of schism is to be out of communion or of the jurisdiction of the Pope. The only person who per se cannot be in schism is the Pope. Card Burke says this because applying canon law to this matter would require him to act to declare the pope, a formal heretic, was excommunicated. Which would have been ecclesial suicide for him, so he twists the definitions to accomodate the reality without shame. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/09/opinion/cardinal-burke-douthat.html
This is an excellent article. Thanks and amen!
When discussing Vatican II it must be acknowledged that it was conducted to submit to American hegemony and the post-Nuremberg world order. Too many fail to see this.