Is Heaven a Place?

by Robert J. Siscoe

(This article was published in the May 2012 issue of Christian Order - http://www.christianorder.com/features/features_2012/features_may12.html )



“In my Father's house there are many mansions. … I go to prepare a place for you. And if I shall go, and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will take you to myself; that where I am, you also may be” (John 14:2-3).

Ever since John Paul II’s Wednesday Audience of July 21, 1999, during which he taught that heaven is not “a physical place in the clouds, but a living personal relationship with the Trinity” (1), many Catholics have begun to question, and even doubt, the existence of a literal heaven. One concerned Catholic wrote the following question to Catholic Answers:

“Recently, in our parish Bible study class, the leader stated that heaven is not a place but is in our minds, and he quoted sections 2794–2796 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a source for this opinion. I am deeply troubled by this concept. If heaven is not a place, then why did Jesus ascend into heaven as he left his apostles? Why would he say that he was going to prepare a "place" for them, if one did not exist? Why does the Catechism say heaven is "a way of being"?

Like many others, this Catholic has become confused by what Pope St. Pius X called the “novelty of words” which has become the common mode of speech in the post-Conciliar era.

The confusion over the question of heaven increased with the publication of Benedict XVI’s recent book, Jesus of Nazareth II, in which he wrote the following about the Ascension of our Lord into heaven:

“The New Testament, from the Acts of the Apostles to the Letter to the Hebrews, describes the “place” to which the cloud took Jesus, using the language of Psalm 110:1, sitting (or standing) at God’s right hand. What does this mean? It does not refer to some distant cosmic space, where God has, as it were, set up his throne and given Jesus a place beside the throne. God is not in one space alongside other spaces. God is God – he is the premise and the ground of all space there is, but he himself is not part of it. God stands in relation to space as Lord and Creator. His presence is not spatial, but divine. ‘Sitting at God’s right hand’ means participating in this divine dominion over space. … The departing Jesus does not make his way to some distant star. He enters into communion of power and life with the living God...”. (2)

While it is true that the Blessed Trinity is pure Spirit “whose presence is not spatial, but divine”, the Divine Person of Jesus possesses a physical body, and it is this physical body – united to the Word of God - that ascended into heaven. Therefore, our Lord must have ascended into a place capable of receiving a physical body.

When considering the question of a physical heaven, we must recall that heaven is not simply where the Blessed Trinity dwelled for all eternity, but is something that has been created by God. Commenting on the First Article of the Creed, the Catechism of Pius X says:

“The First Article of the Creed teaches us that there is one God, and only one; that He is omnipotent and has created heaven and earth and all things contained in them...”.

The created heavens are not limited to the atmosphere above - the aerial heaven (the first heaven); or the realm containing the sun, moon, and stars - the firmament (the second heaven); but also include the empyrean heaven - the third heaven spoken of by St. Paul (2 Cor. 12:2) - where the angels and Saints will dwell for all eternity, and where the glory of God is manifest to them as their ultimate reward.

The Blessed Trinity, who is eternal and uncreated, pre-existed the created heavens and as such cannot be contained by them: “God… the heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you” (1 King 8:30). The Trinity cannot be contained exclusively within any created place; therefore, when considering heaven we must make a distinction between what St. Thomas called “the Heaven of the Blessed Trinity” (3), which is the eternal abode of the Blessed Trinity before creation, and the created empyrean heaven, or “the third heaven”, where God “has prepared His throne” (Psalms 102: 19), and where he now dwells, or “subsists”, with the angels and Saints, and where the glorified bodies of our Lord and our Lady – the King and Queen of Heaven – now physically reside.

In the Mystical City of God, Ven. Mary of Agreda is shown the eternal abode of God before the creation of the empyrean heavens:

“I saw the Lord as He was before He had created anything and with great astonishment I looked to see where was the throne of the Most High, for the empyrean heavens were not, nor the lower ones, nor did the sun exist, nor the moon, nor the other stars, nor the elements, only the Creator was, without any of His creatures. All was void, without presence of angels, or men or animals. … I understood, that the Most High was in the quiescent state of his own being, when the three Persons (according to our way of understanding things), decreed to communicate his perfections as a free gift.” (4)

In the next chapter she discusses the works of God ad extra, and distinguishes six instances of creation. It was during the fifth instant that God decreed the creation of the empyrean heaven:

“In this fifth decree the creation of the angelic nature which is more excellent and more like unto the spiritual being of the Divinity, was determined upon, and at the same time the division or arrangement of the angelic hosts into nine choirs and three hierarchies, was provided and decreed… In the same instant was also decreed the creation of the empyrean heaven, for the manifestation of His glory and the reward of the good; also the earth and other heavenly bodies for the other creatures; moreover also in the center or depth of the earth, hell, for the punishment of the bad angels”. (5)

Some of the recent statements from high churchmen fail to distinguish between the eternal abode of God before creation – “The heaven of the Blessed Trinity”, as St. Thomas calls it - which is not a physical place, and the empyrean heaven which was created as the place where the blessed will dwell for eternity, and where our Lord, the King of all Creation, sits upon his throne.

After failing to distinguish between the two, it is then implied that, since the Trinity cannot be contained within a place, heaven itself must not be a physical place, but merely a personal relationship with God. This leaves the thinking person in a state of confusion wondering where the resurrected bodies of the blessed will dwell. The distinction between the uncreated abode of the Blessed Trinity, and the created empyrean heaven where the blessed will dwell for eternity, clears up the confusion.

Canon Ripley describes the created heaven as “a special place with definite limits, outside and beyond the limits of earth”. (6) Blessed Francisco Palau explains that “the throne of Jesus Christ” has been established “in a specially chosen place within the empyrean heaven”. (7)

Heaven was created to be the eternal abode of both angels and men. While an angel is a spiritual substance, man is a body/soul composite, possessing a material body that takes up space. At death, the soul is separated from the body but, at the resurrection, the body and soul will again be reunited to form one unified whole. And contrary to what some modern theologians would have us believe, the resurrection of the body is not simply a “resurrection of the person”, or an “evolutionary leap”, but a resurrection of the physical body – the exact same body that was united to the soul in this life.

The Fourth Lateran Council teaches that men “will rise again with their bodies which they now bear”. (8) In the book of Job, we read: "[I]n the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26). The Catechism of Trent explains the necessity of holding firmly to this doctrine: “[I]t is of vital importance to be fully convinced that the identical body, which belongs to each one of us during this life, shall, though corrupted and dissolved into its original dust, be raised up again to life…”. (9)

The glorified bodies of the risen Saints will be distinguished by four transcendent endowments, or qualities. The Catechism of Pope St. Pius X describes these qualities as follows: “The endowments that shall adorn the bodies of the elect are: 1) Impassability, by which they can never again be subject to evil, nor to any kind of pain, nor to need of food, of rest or the like; 2) Brightness, by which they shall shine as the sun and as so many stars; 3) Agility, by which they shall be able to pass in a moment and without fatigue from one place to another and from earth to heaven; 4) Subtlety, by which without hindrance they shall be able to penetrate any body, as did Jesus Christ when risen from the dead”.

Yet in spite of these transcendent qualities, the glorified bodies will remain physical bodies. As Dr. Ott explains, although subtlety will spiritualize our nature, this “is not to be conceived as a transformation of the body into a spiritual essence or as a refinement of the matter into an ethereal body”. (10) After the resurrection, the glorified bodies of the just will remain physical bodies with flesh and bones. We see this with the risen body of our Lord, who not only allowed the apostles to touch Him, but also ate with them. “See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle, and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet… And they offered him a piece of a broiled fish, and a honeycomb. And when He had eaten before them, taking the remains, he gave to them” (Luke 24:39-40, 42-43).

In The Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, we read the following about the resurrected body. The “body will rise again in complete integrity, free from distortions, malformations and defects. St. Thomas teaches: ‘Man will rise again in the greatest possible natural perfection,’ therefore in the state of mature age (Suppl. 81). The integrity of the body after its resurrection also demands the organs of vegetative and sensitive life, including the differences between the sexes (against the view of Origen; Denz. 207). However, the vegetative functions will no longer take place. Mt 22:30: ‘They shall be as the angels of God in Heaven’.” (11)

Now since heaven was created to receive the resurrected bodies of men, which are physical bodies, heaven must be a physical or corporeal place. This is the teaching of St. Thomas who taught that the empyrean heaven is the highest of corporeal places; the place where the angels were created, and where the just are to be transferred for their final beatitude:

“The empyrean heaven is the highest of corporeal places, and is outside the region of change … the abode of beatitude was suited to the very nature of the angel; therefore he was created there”, while man “was not placed from the beginning in the empyrean heaven, but was destined to be transferred thither in the state of his final beatitude”. (12)

This citation of St. Thomas is interesting because it brings out a further distinction. He teaches that the angels were created in the empyrean heaven, even though, as we know, they did not initially possess the beatific vision (since the vision of God was the reward only of those who passed the angelic test). This shows that the empyrean heaven and the beatific vision are distinct, even though now (after the fall of the angels) both constitute the simultaneous reward of the blessed. Canon Ripley confirms this when he teaches that heaven is “both the happiness and the abode of the just in the next life”. (13) Dr. Ott teaches the same: “Heaven is a place and condition of perfect supernatural bliss, which consist in the immediate vision of God and in perfect love of God associated with it”. (14) This distinction is important because it shows that heaven is both a state of being and a place. It should be further noted that the blessed continue to possess the beatific vision even if they travel outside the place of the empyrean heaven, which is possible (15). For example, when the Blessed Mother appeared to the Children of Fatima, she continued to possess the beatific vision.

The distinction between the place of heaven and the “state of heaven” (the beatific vision) is also taught in Bishop Morrow’s catechism, My Catholic Faith:

Question 83: What do we mean by ‘life everlasting’? “By ‘life everlasting’ we mean that there will be another existence after this present life, and in it the just will be happy for all eternity. In that place the just will dwell in heaven with God, in perfect and everlasting happiness. Heaven is both a place and a state: Our Lord Jesus Christ came down from heaven, and ascended into it. Heaven is a state: even when the Blessed Virgin Mary, for example, appears to men, she does not leave heaven [the state of beatitude], which she carries with her, in the state of her soul. This is why the good and holy have a foretaste of heaven even here on earth, in the peace and joy they possess in their hearts”. (16)

So, while it is true to say that those in heaven are in a state – the state of beatitude, this should not be understood as implying that heaven is not also a created place – a corporeal place capable of receiving physical bodies.

In The Four Last Things, Fr. Cochem, O.S.F.C. warns against those who imagine heaven to be merely a spiritual realm:

“We must not, as some do, picture to ourselves heaven as purely a spiritual realm. For heaven is a definite place, where not only God is, and the angels now are, but where Christ is also in His sacred humanity, and Our Lady with her human body. There, too, all the blessed will dwell with their glorified bodies after the Last Judgment. If heaven is a definite locality, it must accordingly be a visible, not a spiritual kingdom; for a place must in its nature be to some extent conformable to those who abide in it”. (17)

Blessed Francisco Palau explains that the mansions of the blessed – the Church Triumphant - are located in a particular place within the empyrean, which is called the Celestial heaven.

“There is no doubt that the Church materially occupies a place in the empyrean: all of us believe as such. This place is called the Celestial heaven. The Celestial heaven has to be considered as a true body and the pavement of our mansion has to be solid, capable of sustaining our body, apart from its gift of agility, because there we must have the capacity to walk slowly as to soar to that purest region. Since during this mortal life we had been pilgrims and did not have any fixed point because our miseries had overtaken us, it is right then that we will have a fixed point there, a stable place … as the Apostle said, a permanent city in the immense space of the empyrean. And this is what mansion signifies “in my father’s house there are many mansions” [Jn 14,2] and that is what the Apostle said: ‘For here we do not have lasting city; we are seeking one which is to come’ [Heb 13,14]... [T]he Holy Church occupies a place in the Celestial heaven... In addition, this place being the eternal mansion and rest of the blessed, a figure must be given to the matter to indicate this very stability: and there is none better than the city, which denotes the whole Church, and every one of her members a district, neighborhood, street, palace, and mansion. … We have to take the triumphant Church as a city in the material sense.” (18)

Commenting further on the Celestial realm, Fr. Cochem writes:

“If we venture to comment further upon the interior of the Celestial realm, we may assume that the vast, immeasurable space of heaven does not only contain these heavenly cities, but much more besides, all of which enhance the delights of that blissful land. For as kings and princes on earth have gardens and pleasure grounds laid out beside their palaces, where they amuse themselves in the summer season, so, many theologians assert, there are heavenly paradises, that afford increased delight to the blessed.... St. Augustine, St. Anselm, and many other Saints do not hesitate to maintain that there are in heaven real trees, real fruits, real flowers, indescribably attractive and delightful to the sight, taste, smell, and touch, different from anything we can imagine. In the revelation of Saints, mention is made of flowers that blossom there; and we know it is recorded in the legend of St. Dorothea, that she sent Theophilus by the hand of an angel a basket of flowers culled in the garden of the Celestial paradise, of such surpassing beauty that the sight of them led him to become a Christian, and lay down his life for the faith of Christ”. (19)

Ann Catherine Emmerick was granted numerous visions of Heaven, which she described as “a beautiful and well-regulated city”. She explains that “the different degrees of glory, to which the elect are raised, are demonstrated by the magnificence of their palaces, or the wonderful fruit and flowers with which the gardens are embellished. ... In the Heavenly Jerusalem all is peace and eternal harmony… the city is filled with splendid buildings, decorated in such a manner as to charm every eye and enrapture every sense; the inhabitants of this delightful abode are overflowing with rapture and exultation, the gardens gay with lovely flowers, and the trees covered with delicious fruits…”.

Here we see Heaven described as a literal place where the blessed currently dwell. But can spiritual souls, while separated from their body, dwell within a “place”? According to St. Thomas the answer is yes. He writes:

“The empyrean heaven is a corporeal place, and yet as soon as it was made it was filled with the holy angels, as Bede says. Since then, angels, even as separated souls, are incorporeal, it would seem that some place should also be assigned to receive separated souls. Further, this appears from Gregory's statement (Dial. iv) that souls after death are conveyed to various corporeal places. ... Therefore after death souls have certain places for their reception. … And though after death souls have no bodies assigned to them … nevertheless certain corporeal places are appointed to them…”. (20)

It is worth noting that in reply to an objection raised in the same article as to how an angel or separated soul can be in a place, St. Thomas wrote: “Incorporeal things are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place; but they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us”. (21)

In the book Raised from the Dead, Fr. Hebert, S.M., includes a chapter containing stories of souls who have been taken to heaven. “Those whose souls have been allowed to visit Heaven often describe it in terms of figures and scenes familiar to earthly sense faculties. The privileged persons see paradise gardens, hear glorious choirs of Saints,... smell celestial fragrances. They especially see Jesus (in His humanity) and the blessed Virgin Mary in great beauty and splendour”. (22) He then recounts the story of St. Lydwine of Schiedam, whose “visits to the other world were remarkable even among the Saints. She often saw Heaven as a great festal hall in a palace, with crystal and gold goblets. ... [she saw] a beautiful garden of Eden with marvellous trees and flowers. Along the lovely paths the Saints would sing the glories of God as on a beautiful eternal spring morning”. (23)

This confirms that the empyrean Heaven – the third heaven - is a place, one that has been visited by privileged souls who had not yet attained the beatific vision, such as St. Paul, thereby confirming, once again, that the place of heaven is distinct from the ultimate reward of the blessed – the vision of Almighty God.

Conclusion: While it is true that the empyrean heaven is not “in the clouds” (the first heaven), or on “some distant star” (the second heaven), it does not follow that our Lord did not ascend into the empyrean heaven (the third heaven) - the place where He now dwells bodily with His Mother and the angels and Saints. Heaven is more than a “personal relationship with the Trinity”, which is merely, as Bishop Morrow said, “a foretaste of heaven” - something those in the state of grace can possess even in this valley of tears. The created heaven is distinct from the uncreated abode where the Blessed Trinity dwelled before creation. The empyrean heaven, where God has “prepared His throne”, is a created corporeal place where the mansions of the blessed are located, where resurrected bodies of the Saints will dwell for eternity, and where the blessed, having their intellect perfected by the lumen gloriae (24), will see God face to face and thereby be raised and transformed into a state of perfect beatitude.

The doctrines of the Faith are interlinked in such a way that the denial of one will inevitably lead to the denial of others. After one denies the existence of a physical heaven, it won’t be long before they will deny a physical hell (25), a physical purgatory (26), the descent of our Lord’s soul into limbo (27), and even limbo itself. (28) After these are denied, the next to go will be the resurrection of the physical body, and, consequently, our Lord’s bodily Ascension and our Lady’s bodily Assumption. The doctrines of the Faith can be compared to the threads of a tapestry; once one is denied, the whole begins to unravel.

Footnotes
1. “In the context of Revelation, we know that the "heaven" or "happiness" in which we will find ourselves is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity.” (L'Osservatore Romano, July 21, 1999)
2. Jesus of Nazareth - Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection Pg 282-283
3. Summa, Pt 1, Q61, A4, reply 3
4. Mystical City of God, Vol.1, pg 49-50
5. Ibid, pg 59
6. This is the Faith, pg 390
7. Francisco Palau Writings, The Church of God, Pg 724
8. Denzingers 429
9. Catechism of the Council of Trent, pg. 125
10. Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Pg.492
11. Ibid., Pg.491
12. Summa, Pt 1, Q102, A,2, reply 1
13. This is the Faith, pg 389
14. The Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, pg.476. The Pocket Catholic Dictionary of Fr. Hardon, S.J. provides the same definition for Heaven: A place and condition of perfect supernatural happiness.
15. See the Summa, Suppl. Q69, A3
16. My Catholic Faith, pg 166
17. The Four Last Things pg. 174
18. Francisco Palau Writings, The Church of God, Pg 733-734. A portion of the citation was retranslated from the original Spanish by Fr. Rickert, FSSP.
19. The Four Last Things pg. 188
20. Summa, Suppl., Q69, A1
21. For more on this point, see the Summa, Pt. 1 Q52, A 1
22. Raised from the Dead, pg. 237
23. ibid, pg. 239
24. “Scholasticism stressed the absolute supernatural nature of the vision of God, which demands an altogether supernatural elevation of the intellect, the so-called lumen gloria (cf. Ps 35:10; Apoc. 22:5), which makes glorified man capable of the act of the Vision of God”. (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Pg. 477-478)
25. John Paul II: “Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy." (General Audience given on August 4, 1999)
26. John Paul II: “Purification must be complete, and indeed this is precisely what is meant by the Church's teaching on purgatory. The term does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence”. (General Audience given on July 28, 1999)
27. John Paul II: “During the three (incomplete) days between the moment when he ‘expired’ (cf. Mk 15:37) and the resurrection, Jesus experienced the state of death, that is, the ‘separation of body and soul’, as in the case of all people. This is the primary meaning of the words ‘he descended into hell’; they are linked to what Jesus himself had foretold when, in reference to the story of Jonah. He had said: ‘For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth’ (Mt 12:40). This is precisely what the words about the descent into hell meant: ‘the heart or the womb of the earth.’ … If death implies the separation of the soul from the body, it follows that in Christ's case also there was, on the one hand, the body in the state of a corpse, and on the other, the heavenly glorification of his soul from the very moment of his death”. (General Audience given on January 11, 1989)
28. In his book God and the World, Cardinal Ratzinger referred to the doctrine of Limbo as “rather unenlightened” (pg 402). In The Ratzinger Report, he wrote: “Staying with eschatology for a moment: ‘limbo’ has actually disappeared, that intermediate place where the unbaptized children, i.e. those with only the ‘stain’ of original sin, were supposed to go. For example, we find no trace of it in the official catechism of the Italian episcopate. … Personally – and here I am speaking more as a theologian and not as Prefect of the Congregation – I would abandon it…”. (pg 147)

The Unholy Trinity of Modern Errors

Naturalism, Rationalism and Liberalism

By Robert J. Siscoe


(This article was published in the June 2013 issue of Catholic Family News - cfnews.org)

“[T]he obstinate passion of Naturalism is the dethronement of Our Lord Jesus Christ and to drive him from the world. This will be the task of Antichrist and it is Satan’s supreme ambition. … Naturalism strives with all its might to exclude our Lord Jesus Christ, our One Master and Savior, from the minds of men as well as from the daily lives and habits of peoples, in order to set up the reign of reason or of nature. Now, wherever the breath of Naturalism has passed, the very source of Christian life is dried up. Naturalism means complete sterility in regard to salvation and eternal life”.

So wrote Cardinal Pie, the Bishop of Poitiers and great defender of the Social Kingship of Christ, against the error of Naturalism – the root error of our times – which has caused the destruction of Christendom and launched the world into the present Age of Apostasy.

In this article we will examine the errors of Naturalism and its two offspring: Rationalism and Liberalism. We will see that Rationalism is simply the application of Naturalism to human reason, while Liberalism is the application thereof to the human will. Together these errors form an unholy Trinity, within which Naturalism is the father, Rationalism is the prideful son proceeding from the father, and Liberalism is the rebellious daughter who proceeds from both the father and the son.

Naturalism

Naturalism consists in the negation of the supernatural order in one of two ways: either the very existence of the supernatural order is denied, or if it is admitted, it denies “the possibility, or at least the fact, of any transitory intervention of God in nature”. (1) Consequently, it denies the possibility of man’s nature being elevated to the supernatural level by the infusion of sanctifying grace, of his reason being enlightened by supernatural Faith, and his will being perfected by supernatural charity.

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange said Naturalism is a development of Protestantism, and indeed the seeds of Naturalism can be seen in the Protestant view of justification, which denies that the justified soul is elevated to the supernatural level by grace. Luther denied that the justified soul has his sins forgiven through an infusion of supernatural life, and instead claimed that the sin laden soul is merely “covered over with the merits of Christ”, while remaining metaphysically unchanged. According to Luther man is not truly made just, but only declared just.

This error eventually developed to the point where all intervention of the supernatural in the natural order is rejected, including Divine Revelation. According to Naturalism:

“Having no supernatural destiny, man needs no supernatural means — neither sanctifying grace as a permanent principle to give his actions a supernatural value nor actual grace to enlighten his mind and strengthen his will. The Fall of Man, the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption, with their implications and consequences, can find no place in a Naturalistic creed”. (2)

Masonic Naturalism adds a “positive” element by maintaining that man is essentially divine, and can perfect himself without the aid of supernatural grace – a doctrine sufficiently refuted by a Saturday afternoon trip to Walmart.

Rationalism

The object of man’s intellect is truth. Since Naturalism denies the existence of any divinely revealed truth, Rationalism maintains that human reason alone is the source of truth, and therefore the exclusive judge of what is true and false, good and evil. Pope Leo XIII said: “The fundamental doctrine of Rationalism is the supremacy of the human reason, which, refusing due submission to the divine and eternal reason, proclaims its own independence, and constitutes itself the supreme principle and source and judge of truth”. (Libertas)

In his magnificent book, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, Fr. Fahey describes the relationship between Naturalism and Rationalism.

“[T]he formal constitutive element of Rationalism is the principle of the absolute autonomy of reason. The proximate foundation of Rationalism is Naturalism; the remote foundation is Pantheism and Atheism. … [Naturalism] involves the negation of either the existence of the supernatural order of truth and life, or at least the possibility of getting to know that order, even by Revelation. …. Naturalism is often used to signify the same thing as Rationalism, yet, in a strict sense, it rather designates the foundation of Rationalism. Naturalism is, properly speaking, the negation of the possibility of the elevation of our nature to the supernatural order, and Rationalism is the application of that doctrine to human reason, as Liberalism is the application thereof to liberty…”. (Pg. 44)

If the existence of a transcendent First Cause is acknowledged, the intervention of God in the natural order is denied. This is the error of the Deist, for whom “God is only Creator, not Providence; He cannot, or may not, interfere with the natural course of events, or He never did so”. (3) Deism acknowledges the laws of nature, but denies prophecy, miracles, and “the possibility of a Divine revelation imposing any laws other than those which natural religion enjoins on man”.

What all forms of Rationalism have in common is a belief in the supremacy of reason, and a rejection of Divine Revelation.

What is Revelation?

Divine Revelation is a Divine action, essentially supernatural, whereby God speaks to man through means which are beyond the ordinary course of nature, for the purpose of guiding the human race to its supernatural end. Public Revelation came to man first through the prophets in the Old Testament, and lastly through Christ as man. “God, who, at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by his Son…”. (Heb 1:1-2)

The truths God has revealed include not only supernatural mysteries that exceed the power of reason to comprehend, such as the Trinity, but also natural truths that can be known by the power of unaided reason. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange explained that the revelation of natural truths was not absolutely necessary, since these truths do not exceed the power of reason to discover; but it was morally necessary “so that all the truths may be known quickly, with firm certitude, and with no admixture of error by all”. (4) He further explained that Revelation is considered supernatural substantially if the truth revealed exceeds power of created intelligence to comprehend (e.g. the Trinity); it is supernatural modally if the manner of revelation is supernatural, even though the truth revealed does not exceed the power of the human mind to discover, such as the goodness of God or the immortality of the soul. (5)

Man’s intellect was made for truth, but due to its imperfection and the darkening resulting from the Fall, man often errs in his judgment of truth. There are two principles of truth: human reason, which is prone to error, and Divine Revelation which is inerrant. When man assents by Faith to revealed truths, it “frees and guards human reason from many errors, and furnishes it with manifold knowledge”. (First Vatican Council)
Denying Revelation itself, as does Rationalism, is not only contrary to Faith, but also incompatible with salvation, since “without faith no one has ever attained justification; nor will anyone obtain eternal life, unless he shall have persevered in faith unto the end”. (First Vatican Council)

What is Faith?

When we speak of Faith as an object, as the Faith, it refers to the teachings of Revelation; but faith is also a theological virtue and an action. The virtue of faith is necessary to make a supernatural act of faith, and the act of faith is dependent upon the object to be believed. By denying the object itself, the Faith is attacked at its foundation.

The formal object is God revealing; the material object is the truth revealed. The virtue of faith is a supernatural virtue that is infused by God into the human intellect where it habitually abides, the purpose of which is to enlighten the mind and enable the created intellect to believe the supernatural truths God has revealed – “for the intellect of the believer must be proportioned to this object [believed] by a power essentially supernatural”. (6)

The act of faith consists of an intellectual assent to the truths revealed by God, “not on account of the intrinsic truth perceived by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Himself, the Revealer”. (Satis Cognitum, Leo XIII) If a single truth revealed by God and sufficiently proposed by the Church is rejected, the supernatural virtue of faith is lost entirely. Just as all sanctifying grace is lost through a single mortal sin, so too is all faith lost through disbelief in a single dogma; for “he who dissents even in one point from divinely revealed truth absolutely rejects all faith, since he thereby refuses to honor God as the supreme truth and the formal motive of faith”. (Ibid.)

As we have seen, Naturalism undermines all Faith by denying Revelation itself. For this reason, Cardinal Pie said:

“Naturalism is more than a heresy; it is pure undiluted anti-Christianism. Heresy denies one or more dogmas; Naturalism denies that there are any dogmas or that there can be any. Naturalism denies the very existence of Revelation. (…) the greatest obstacle to the salvation of men, as the [First] Vatican Council points out in the first Constitution on Doctrine, what hurls more people into hell nowadays than at any other epoch, is Rationalism or Naturalism…”.

The rapid rise of Naturalism over the past three centuries has been equaled only by the loss of Faith that has followed in its wake.

Fr. Tanquerey explains that Rationalism is rooted in intellectual pride:

“The first form of pride is to regard oneself, explicitly or implicitly, as one’s own first principle. … This is … the sin of Lucifer, who, desiring to be a rule unto himself, refused to submit to God; … the sin of Rationalists, who in their pride of intellect refuse to submit their reason to Faith. This is also the sin of certain intellectuals, who, too proud to accept the traditional interpretation of dogmas, attenuate and deform them to make them conformable to their own views”. (7)

The last category described by Fr. Tanquerey fits the Modernists, who reject the perennial teaching of the Church, and instead attempt to re-interpret the articles of Faith in a new way, according to their own lights.

Modernism

Modernism is a form of Rationalism, insofar as it makes human reason the sole principle and judge of truth. Like Rationalism, it denies the existence of public external Revelation, and instead claims that revelation springs forth from within man – from a divine seminal principle that is part of man’s rational nature.
Modernism blurs the distinction between the natural and supernatural by the doctrine of vital immanence, which essentially “divinizes” human reason, making it the principle and source of revelation. Modernists claim that divine revelation originates within each man, and is “revealed” to him through his consciousness, thereby “making consciousness and revelation synonymous”, as Pius X said in Pascendi. In reality, Modernism reduces “revelation” to the whims and fancies of man and, like Rationalism, undermines the foundation of Faith by denying the object of Faith, namely, public external Revelation.

In the book Liberalism is a Sin, Fr. Salvany notes that there are distinctions in degrees of both venial and mortal sin, and then explains that, with the exception of formal hatred of God, sins against Faith are the greatest of all sins.

“The gravity of sin is determined by the object at which it strikes. (…) With the exception of formal hate against God… the gravest of all sins are those against Faith. The reason is evident. Faith is the foundation of the supernatural order, and sin is sin in so far as it attacks this supernatural order at one or another point; hence that is the greatest sin which attacks this order at its very foundations. To destroy the foundation is to destroy the entire superstructure. To cut off the branch of a tree will not kill it; but to lay the ax to the trunk or the root is fatal to its life. Henceforth it bears neither blossom nor fruit. St. Augustine, cited by St. Thomas, characterizes sin against faith in these words: ‘This is the sin which comprehends all other sins’.” (8)

He then quotes St. Thomas, who said:

“The gravity of sin is determined by the interval which it places between man and God; now sin against Faith divides man from God as far as possible, since it deprives him of the true knowledge of God; it therefore follows that sin against Faith is the greatest of all sins." (I-II Q 10, A 3)

Naturalism and Rationalism – both of which directly attack the Faith - are, therefore, the greatest sins known to man, with the exception of formal hatred of God.

Liberalism

Just as Rationalism is the application of Naturalism to human reason, so Liberalism is the application to the human will. Rationalism denies that man must believe what God has revealed; Liberalism denies that man must obey what God has revealed. Liberalism is to the practical order what Rationalism is to the speculative order. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange said: “From the standpoint of the intellect, Rationalism is opposed to Christian Faith. From the standpoint of the will, Liberalism is opposed to Christian Obedience”. (9)

Liberalism denies the Rights of God and the universal Kingship of Christ over individuals and nations, and seeks to be a law unto itself.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the universal King of all creation, and therefore, as Pius XI taught, “has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence nor usurped, but His by essence and by nature. His Kingship is founded upon the ineffable hypostatic union. From this it follows not only that Christ is to be adored by angels and men, but that to him as man [both] angels and men are subject, and must recognize his empire; by reason of the hypostatic union Christ has power over all creatures. … Christ is our King by acquired, as well as by natural right, for he is our Redeemer … it is a dogma of Faith that Jesus Christ was given to man, not only as our Redeemer, but also as a law-giver, to whom obedience is due”. (Quas Primas)
Since all men have a duty to acknowledge their Creator and submit to Christ the King – the “law-giver, to whom obedience is due” – man will never possess an inherent right to violate the Law of Christ. Just as no one will ever possess an inherent right to violate the Fifth Commandment by procuring an abortion, so too no one will ever possess an inherent right to violate the First Commandment by the practice of a false religion. That’s why Pius IX formally condemned the proposition that: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Syllabus of Pius IX, #15)
Liberals ignore the Rights of God and focus exclusively on a disordered notion of the rights of man, extending them “to many things in respect of which man cannot rightly be regarded as free”. (Libertas, Leo XIII)

Man’s rights flow from his duties, and his duties correspond to the Rights of God. God has the right to enact laws to guide man in his actions. Man has the corresponding duty to acknowledge his Creator and submit to His laws, as well as a right to the means necessary to fulfill his obligations to God. Since man’s rights flow from his duties, and since his highest duty is to obey God, man will never possess an inherent right to do that which God forbids. All men are morally bound to obey the Commandments of the Decalogue and submit to the Law of Christ, and “by the Law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law… but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institution”. (Tametsi, Leo XIII)

Liberalism denies man’s obligation to submit to God’s law. They claim that since man is by nature free, he should be able to do as he pleases, as long as what he pleases does not result in physical harm to another. Pope Leo XIII exposed the fundamental error of Liberalism in the encyclical Libertas, in which he distinguished between natural liberty (free will) and moral liberty. Natural liberty is the capacity to make a moral choice; it is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end. Moral liberty establishes necessary boundaries for our natural liberty in order to guide man to his proper end. Natural liberty is the ability to choose; moral liberty directs the will in what it chooses. The boundaries establishing our moral liberty consist of law, whether known by the natural light of reason, or imposed upon man by God through Divine Revelation.

Leo XIII explains that a thing acts freely when it acts according to its nature. Since man is by nature rational, he acts freely when his actions are according to right reason. A free act is not simply an act that a person freely chooses, but a freely chosen act that is in accord with its nature. On this point, St. Thomas wrote:

“Man is by nature rational. When, therefore, he acts according to reason, he acts of himself and according to his free will; and this is liberty. Whereas, when he sins, he acts in opposition to reason, is moved by another, and is the victim of foreign misapprehensions. Therefore, 'Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin' (John 8:34)". (10)

The two-fold function of the will is to desire and choose, but the will itself is a blind faculty. It always desires the good, since good is the proper object of the will; but it is incapable of discerning a true good from a merely apparent good. Therefore, the will needs something to direct it in its choice. This something is the intellect (or reason), which judges what is truly good, and then enlightens the will so it can choose accordingly. On this point, Pope Leo XIII wrote:

“The will cannot proceed to act until it is enlightened by the knowledge possessed by the intellect. In other words, the good wished by the will is necessarily good in so far as it is known by the intellect; and this the more, because in all voluntary acts choice is subsequent to a judgment upon the truth of the good presented, declaring to which good preference should be given. No sensible man can doubt that judgment is an act of reason, not of the will. The end, or object, both of the rational will and of its liberty is that good only which is in conformity with reason”. (Libertas, Leo XIII)

Now due to original sin, man’s intellect is itself defective and therefore prone to error. It too needs a guide. This is the purpose of the revealed Law of God, which informs the human reason and prevents it from deviating into error. If the reason errs in its judgment, it will misdirect the will in its choice; and the blind following the blind, both will end in the pit. “If the mind assents to false opinions”, wrote Leo XIII, “and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption”. (Immortale Dei) By accepting the truths God has revealed, man’s reason is perfected and thereby safeguarded from error.

Now, since man is by nature rational, and therefore capable of receiving the revealed Law of God, man is morally bound to accept it. On this point Leo XIII wrote:

“Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature. For law is the guide of man's actions; it turns him toward good by its rewards, and deters him from evil by its punishments”. (Libertas)

Just as the will must be subject to reason in order to choose rightly, so too the reason must be subject to God’s Laws in order to protect it from erring. True liberty does not consist in each man doing what he desires, but in each man doing what he ought; for only by doing what he ought will he arrive at the end for which he was created.

All of this is denied by the Liberals, who say to God “not Thy will, but my will be done”, and attempt to put man in the place of God. According to the Liberal Jean-Jacques Rousseau, any man who submits to a will other than his own (which includes the Divine Will) renounces his manhood. He wrote:

“Man is free by nature and nobody has the right to lay down a law for him except himself; no man can be obliged except by himself. A law cannot be imposed on any man except by himself. If any man allows a law to be imposed upon him by any extraneous will, he will renounce his manhood”. (11)

The only boundaries Liberalism places on the will of man are actions that injure another man. For them, each man has the “right” to violate God’s law, so long as in so doing he does not harm his fellow man. There is no concern for the Rights of God; only for the rights of man. This Liberal error is enshrined in Article 4 of the infamous Declaration of the Rights of Man, which reads: “Liberty is the power of doing what we will, so long as it does not injure another”. (12)

Like Lucifer, the Liberals refuse submission to God’s law, and substitute for true liberty, unbridled license. “But many there are”, wrote Leo XIII, “who follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, and adopt as their own his rebellious cry, ‘I will not serve’; and consequently substitute for true liberty what is sheer and most foolish license. Such, for instance, are the men belonging to that widely spread and powerful organization, who, usurping the name of liberty, style themselves Liberals”. (Libertas)

The adherents of Liberalism apply this error both to the individual and to society as a whole - to the individual reason and the social reason - in such a way that individual morality is purely subjective, based solely on the individual reason; while civil law is equally subjective, being derived from the collective reason, or “the will of the people”. Consequently, both the individual reason and the collective social reason are considered sovereign, and therefore “liberated” from the obedience due to the Eternal Reason of God, and from the jurisdiction of the Kingship of Jesus Christ… or so they think. Like the unbelieving Jews who had Christ put to death, the Liberals cry out: “We will not have this man to reign over us”.

“Liberalism … asserts the sovereignty of the individual and the social reason, and enthrones Rationalism in the seat of Authority. … Liberalism denies the absolute jurisdiction of Jesus Christ, who is God, over individuals and over society.

“Morality requires a standard and a guide to rational action (…) In the moral order the Eternal Reason alone can be that principle or fundamental rule of action, and this Eternal Reason is God. In the moral order the created reason, with power to determine its course, must guide itself by the light of the Uncreated Reason, who is the beginning and end of all things. The law, therefore, imposed by the Eternal Reason upon the creature, must be the principle or rule of morality. … But Liberalism has proclaimed the absurd principle of the absolute sovereignty of human reason; it denies any reason beyond itself and asserts its independence (…) Liberalism is radical immorality. (Liberalism is a Sin, Ch. 3)

The “radical immorality” of such crimes as legalized abortion, gay “marriage”, and “same sex unions”, are merely effects proceeding from a cause; and the cause is Naturalism and its two offspring.

Next month we will see how this unholy Trinity of errors has overthrown ‘Altar and Throne’ and launched the world into a New Paganism, thereby preparing the way for the advent of Antichrist.

Footnotes

1) Catholic Encyclopedia, Naturalism
2) Ibid.
3) Ibid.
4) The Principles of Catholic Apologetics, by T.J. Walsh, pgs 144-45. The book is an English translation and re-arrangement of De Revelatione by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange. Therefore, the quotations are being attributed to Garrigou-Lagrange.
5) Ibid. Pg. 105
6) Ibid. Pg. 154
7) The Spiritual Life, Pg. 394
8) Liberalism is a Sin, Ch. 4
9) The Principles of Catholic Apologetics
10) Cited in Libertas
11) The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, Pg. 33
12) Ibid. Pg. 53

Has the Old Covenant been Revoked?

Has the Old Covenant Been Revoked?


By Robert J. Siscoe

(This article was published in the March 2013 issue of Catholic Family News - cfnews.org)

In this article, we will consider the question of whether or not the Old Covenant has been revoked. In order to clear up the ambiguity that has clouded this issue during recent decades, we will distinguish between two different old covenants: one that God made with Abraham (the Promise), and another that God made with Moses (the Law). We will also distinguish between “Israel according to the flesh” (1 Cor. 10:18), and what St. Paul calls “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16). At the end we will examine a troubling rise in what can only be described as a diabolical form of anti-Semitism being promoted by high ranking prelates in Rome.
We will begin by distinguishing between two Old Covenants: an immutable Covenant that was fulfilled and never revoked, and a temporary Covenant that was fulfilled and then rendered null.

The Abrahamic Covenant

The first covenant we will discuss is the Covenant God made with Abraham. This Covenant contains a temporal promise and a spiritual promise.

Temporal Promise

The temporal promise was that God would give to the descendants of Abraham the land of Canaan (Genesis 15:18). The Old Testament records this promise descending from Abraham to his son Isaac (Gen 17:21), and then from Isaac to his son Jacob, and finally through Jacob to all of his posterity (Gen. 28:3-4).

Later in the book of Genesis, we see that Jacob’s name is changed to Israel (Gen. 35:10). This is why the Jews, who are the descendants of Jacob/Israel, are referred to as “the children of Israel”, or simply as “Israel”, or, as St. Paul calls them, “Israel according to the flesh” (1 Cor. 10:18).

The temporal promise God made to Abraham was fulfilled: “And the Lord God gave to Israel all the land that he had sworn to give to their fathers: and they possessed it and dwelt in it” (Josue 21:41).

Spiritual Promise

Unlike the temporal promise, which was given to Abraham’s natural descendants alone, the spiritual promise applied to all the nations of the earth. When Abraham showed his willingness to sacrifice his own son in obedience to God (prefiguring the sacrifice of God’s own Son on the cross), God said to him: “By my own self I have sworn, saith the Lord: because thou hast done this thing, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake: I will bless thee… And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:16-18). In this passage we see that, according to this spiritual promise, “all the nations of the earth” would be blessed by Abraham’s seed.

But what is this seed God is referring to? Is it a reference to all of the natural descendants of Abraham, through Isaac and Jacob? In other words, is this seed that will bless the earth the children of Israel collectively? If so, why did he say "seed" (singular) and not "seeds" (plural)? Or was God referring to a particular seed that would be born from the children of Israel? We find the answer to this question in the divinely inspired words of St. Paul to the Galatians, in which the Apostle explains that the seed God was referring to was Christ: "To Abraham were the promises made and to his seed. He saith not, 'and to his seeds', as of many: but as of one, 'and to thy seed', which is Christ" (Gal. 3:16).

Jesus is not only the natural seed of Abraham, as are all the other children of Israel: He is also the seed of God – God Incarnate – who would save His people from their sins. Jesus, the King and Savior of mankind, is the literal fulfillment of the promise God made to Abraham. St. Paul explains that those who are baptized in Christ become one with Christ, and heirs according to the Promise. He wrote:

“For you are all children of God by faith, in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek… For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you be Christ’s, then you are the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the Promise” (Galatians 3:26-29).

Jesus was the fulfillment of the Promise God made to Abraham, and all who are members of His mystical body are heirs according to that Promise. Therefore, the Covenant God made with Abraham was never revoked, but rather fulfilled in Christ.

The Mosaic Covenant

Between the time God made the Covenant Abraham and its fulfillment in Christ almost two thousand years later, God established a separate temporary Covenant with the children of Israel. This is the Covenant God established with Moses on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19-24) four hundred and thirty years after the Covenant with Abraham (Galatians 3:17). The Mosaic Covenant, which is often referred to simply as the Law, is what the term “Old Covenant” traditionally refers to. The purpose of this Covenant was to signify and prefigure Christ, the Promised One, and the New Testament He would establish. It also served as a temporary “schoolmaster” (Galatians 3:23-25) until God’s Promise to Abraham was fulfilled. St. Paul explains:

“To Abraham were the promises made… Now this I say, that the testament which was confirmed by God, the [Mosaic] law which was made after four hundred and thirty years, doth not disannul, to make the Promise of no effect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise. Why then was the law? It was set because of transgressions, until the seed should come, to whom He made the Promise… (Galatians 3:16-19).

Our Lord lived under the old Law, obeyed its precepts and fulfilled its types, and rendered it null by his death, “fastening it to the cross” (Col. 2:14). He then establishing the New Testament in His Blood, for the remission of sin (Mt. 26:28), replacing the Mosaic Law with “the law of Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21). (1) St. Paul wrote: “And therefore is He [Christ] the mediator of the New Testament, that by means of His death… they that are called may receive the Promise of eternal inheritance” (Hebrews 9:15).

In Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, we read: “On the Cross, Christ consummated the building of the Church. The Old Covenant ceased and the New Covenant sealed with the blood of Christ began”. (Pg 292)

The establishment of the New Covenant was predicted by Jeremiah, who said: “Behold the days shall come, saith the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel… not according to the covenant I made with their fathers” (Jeremiah 31:31). Commenting on this prophecy, St. Paul explains: “now in saying a new [Covenant], he hath made the former old” (Hebrews 8:13).

In Mystici Corporis Christi, Pope Pius XII confirms that by the death of Christ the Old Law was rendered null:

“And first of all, by the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ. For, while our Divine Savior was preaching in a restricted area - He was not sent but to the sheep that were lost of the house of Israel (Mt. 15:24) - the Law and the Gospel were together in force; but on the gibbet of his death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees (Eph. 2:15), fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross (Col: 2:14), establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race (Mt 26:28). ‘To such an extent, then,’ says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, ‘was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom’.” (Mystici Corporis Christi, #29)

There is a fascinating fact recorded in the Jewish Talmud, of all places, which confirms that the old Law was rendered null with the death of Christ on the Cross. I will quote the Jewish convert, Roy Schoeman, who explained it in an interview he gave in December of 2003.

“Most Christians are aware of the many ways in which the Old Testament supports Christianity's claims that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, but few are familiar with the passages in the Talmud — a strictly Jewish "scripture" based on oral tradition and written down several centuries after the death of Jesus — which do the same thing. I discuss about a half dozen of these passages in my book. Probably my favorite is the "Miracle of the Scarlet Thread". Shortly put, the Talmud recounts that when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the sins of the Jewish people were taken away each year on one day, Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, when the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies with a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people for the preceding year. Each year, a scarlet thread was affixed to the entry to the Holy of Holies, and miraculously, when the sacrifice within was accepted, the thread would turn white as a sign that the sins had been forgiven. Well, the Talmud recounts that, for no clearly identifiable reason, the miracle ceased to take place about 40 years before the destruction of the Temple. In other words, after about 30 A.D. the thread never again was turned white! We know, as Christians, that that was precisely when the Temple sacrifices lost their efficacy — at the moment of the Crucifixion, about 30 A.D., when, as a sign of the fact, the curtain in the Temple was rent in two (Matthew 27:51).”

The Council of Florence teaches that not only is the Old Law null and void, but those who seek to be justified by it sin mortally:

“[The Holy Roman Church] firmly believes, professes and teaches that the legal prescriptions of the Old Testament or the Mosaic law, which are divided into ceremonies, holy sacrifices and sacraments, because they were instituted to signify something in the future, although they were adequate for the divine cult of that age, once our Lord Jesus Christ who was signified by them had come, came to an end and the sacraments of the new Testament had their beginning. Whoever, after the Passion, places his hope in the legal prescriptions and submits himself to them as necessary for salvation and as if faith in Christ without them could not save, sins mortally. It does not deny that from Christ's passion until the promulgation of the Gospel they could have been retained, provided they were in no way believed to be necessary for salvation. But it asserts that after the promulgation of the gospel they cannot be observed without loss of eternal salvation” (Cantate Domino).

Pope Benedict XIV taught the same: “the ceremonies of the Mosaic Law were abrogated by the coming of Christ and… they can no longer be observed without sin after the promulgation of the Gospel” (Ex Quo Primum #61).

St. Thomas explains why it is a mortal sin to practice the Old Law:

Question: Whether since Christ's Passion the legal ceremonies can be observed without committing mortal sin?

I answer that, All ceremonies are professions of faith, in which the interior worship of God consists. Now man can make profession of his inward faith, by deeds as well as by words: and in either profession, if he make a false declaration, he sins mortally. Now, though our faith in Christ is the same as that of the fathers of old; yet, since they came before Christ, whereas we come after Him, the same faith is expressed in different words, by us and by them. For by them was it said: ‘Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,’ where the verbs are in the future tense: whereas we express the same by means of verbs in the past tense, and say that she ‘conceived and bore.’ In like manner the ceremonies of the Old Law betokened Christ as having yet to be born and to suffer: whereas our sacraments signify Him as already born and having suffered. Consequently, just as it would be a mortal sin now for anyone, in making a profession of faith, to say that Christ is yet to be born, which the fathers of old said devoutly and truthfully; so too it would be a mortal sin now to observe those ceremonies which the fathers of old fulfilled with devotion and fidelity” (I II, Q 103, A 4).

This teaching of St. Thomas explains why Catholics should not take part in a Seder Meal, which constitutes active participation in a false religious ceremony, and therefore is equivalent to a false profession of faith.

Two Covenants prefigured by Isaac and Ismael

In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul speaks of an interesting allegory in the pages of the Old Testament, which prefigures the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant in Christ. Before considering what he wrote, let us recall the people from the Old Testament that are used in this allegory.

Before Abraham’s wife Sarah bore his son, Isaac, the Patriarch had another son named Ismael with the slave girl Agar (Gen. 16:15). God promised Abraham that He would give him a son (Genesis 15:4); but due to his old age and the apparent sterility of his wife Sarah, she convinced him to marry the slave girl Agar in the hope that she would bear him a son. After Ismael was born to the slave girl, Sarah conceived Isaac who was the fulfillment of God’s promise (Gen. 21:1-2). After the birth of the promised one, Isaac, Sarah said to Abraham: “cast out this bond woman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac" (Gen. 21:10).

Now, in the letter to the Galatians, God explains, through the pen of St. Paul, that these two children prefigure the two Covenants. In the allegory, Isaac (the child of the promise) prefigures the New Covenant in Christ, which includes those who have been baptized in Christ and are members of his mystical body. Ismael (the child of the slave girl) prefigures the unbelieving Jews “according to the flesh” who reject Christ and instead seek to be justified by the Old Law. St. Paul wrote:

“Tell me, you that desire to be under the law, have you not read the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bond woman [Ismael], and the other by a free woman [Isaac]. But he who was of the bond woman, was born according to the flesh: but he of the free woman, was by promise. Which things are said by an allegory. For these are the two testaments. The one from Mount Sina [the Mosaic Law], engendering unto bondage, which is Agar: … Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he, that was born according to the flesh, persecuted him that was after the spirit, so also it is now. But what saith the Scriptures? ‘Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman’. So then, brethren, we are not the children of the bondwoman, but of the free: by the freedom wherewith Christ has made us free" (Galatians 4: 21-31).

The unbelieving Jews who cling to the slavery of the Old Law are compared analogously to Ismael, the child of the slave girl; while the faithful Jews (those who accepted Christ), along with the believing Gentiles, are compared to Isaac – the child of the promise.

The Israel of God

Israel, during the Old Testament, prefigured the Catholic Church in the New Testament. The Jewish religion, which was the true religion at the time of Christ, ceased to be the true religion when its hierarchy rejected Christ. On this point, Msgr. Fenton wrote:

“The rejection of this message constituted an abandonment of the Faith itself. By manifesting this rejection of the Faith, the Jewish religious unit fell from its position as the company of the chosen people. It was no longer God’s ecclesia [Church], His supernatural kingdom on earth.”

The book of Romans explains that the unbelieving Jews have been cut off from the house of Israel, and the believing Gentiles grafted in (11:17-21) – “That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body, and co-partners of his Promise in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 3:6). After the death and resurrection of Christ and the promulgation of the Gospel, true spiritual Israel consists of both Jews and Gentiles who have true Faith in Christ and are members of His mystical body, as St. Paul teaches:

“Know ye therefore, that they who are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham? And the scriptures, foreseeing that God justifieth the Gentiles by faith, told unto Abraham before: ‘In thee shall all nations be blessed’. Therefore they that are of faith, shall be blessed with faithful Abraham. … Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law… That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Christ Jesus: that we may receive the Promise of the Spirit by faith… There is neither Jew nor Greek… For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you be Christ’s, then are you heirs according to the Promise” (Galatians 3).
Today, the believing Jews and the believing Gentiles together embody, what St. Paul calls, “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16).

Diabolical Disorientation

This brings us to our last point. There is, today, what can only be described as a diabolical form of anti-Semitism being promoted by high ranking prelates in Rome, which is masked under the cloak of opposing anti-Semitism.

Due to a heretical “interpretation” of Vatican II (which conflicts with 2000 years of Catholic teaching), and because Vatican II failed to restate the central truth that the Old Covenant is superceded by the New, many misguided prelates are doing all they can to stifle any missionary efforts to convert the unbelieving Jews to Christ, thereby hindering them from becoming heirs according to the Promise and partakers of eternal life. These same men are going further still by claiming that the Jews can be saved by the Mosaic Covenant, which, as we have seen, is not only null and void, but constitutes a mortal sin when practiced. Not to mention the fact that the sacrificial rites of the Mosaic Law, by which the Jews had their sins forgiven, have not been offered since 70AD when the Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple.

While we cannot judge the intentions or motives of these churchmen, there is no question that their words and actions toward the Jews constitute, in their effect, the worst form of anti-Semitism, since they serve as a positive obstacle to the Jews accepting Christ as their Messiah. When we consider that all Jews who die outside of the Catholic Church “will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” (2), we can grasp the truly diabolical nature of this form of anti-Semitism.
Cardinal Lombardi recently said “Anti-Semitism in all its forms is a non-Christian act and the Catholic Church must fight this phenomenon with all her strength”.

Therefore, let us do our part to oppose these misguided churchmen who claim that the Old Covenant “was never revoked by God”, and who do all they can to stifle missionary activity targeting the Jews for conversion thereby hindering them from inheriting eternal life; for as our Lord told the unbelieving Jews of His day: “If you believe not that I am He, you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24).

We can begin now to oppose this form of anti-Semitism by including, as an intention in our daily Rosary, the conversion of the unbelieving Jews. May this small act of true charity on our part serve to counter the effects of the diabolical disorientation that has come over these misguided churchmen.

Let us end with the prayer of Pope Pius XI for the conversion of the Jews: “Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of that race, once Thy chosen people: of old they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Savior; may it now descend upon them a laver of redemption and of life”. Amen

Footnote:

1. S.T. I-II, Q 106
2. [The Most Holy Roman Church] “firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews, heretics, and schismatics can ever be partakers of eternal life, but that they are to go into the eternal fire ‘which was prepared for the devil and his angels,’ (Mt. 25:41) unless before death they are joined with Her” (Council of Florence, Cantate Domini).

The Fruits of the Mass: Are all valid Masses equal?

(From December 2012 issue of Catholic Family News)

The Fruits of the Mass

Are all valid Masses equal?

By Robert J. Siscoe

Traditional Catholics realize that the Traditional Mass is superior to the new Mass, but how do we answer those who claim that all valid Masses are equal? They rightly point out that any valid Mass is a renewal of the Sacrifice of the Cross, which is of infinite value, and then conclude by saying that as long as a Mass is valid it, too, is of infinite worth, and hence equally efficacious for those who participate. They might concede that a scandalously celebrated Mass will have a negative effect on the subjective disposition of those present, which may then lessen the amount of grace they receive, but then insist that neither liturgical abuses, nor an unworthy priest, nor watered down prayers or profane music, per se, will lessen the efficacy of the Mass or the fruit to be derived from it.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Value


When considering the efficacy of the Mass, we must distinguish between the intrinsic value and the extrinsic value. The intrinsic value refers to the Sacrifice itself. Since the Mass is essentially identical to the Sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, which was itself of infinite worth, the intrinsic value of any Mass is infinite. In Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, we read:

“The intrinsic value of the Mass, that is, its peculiar dignity and efficacious power of itself (in actu primo), is infinite, on account of the infinite dignity of the Sacrificial Gift, and of the Primary Sacrificial Priest”. (Pg. 414)

With respect to the extrinsic value of the Mass, we must a make a distinction between the extrinsic value in relation to God to whom it is offered, and the extrinsic value in relation to man for whom it is offered. Since God is an infinite being, capable of receiving an infinite act, the adoration and thanksgiving offered to God by the Sacrifice is itself infinite. (1) But since man is a finite creature who is incapable of receiving infinite effects, the effects of the Mass in relation to man – which are referred to as “the fruits of the Mass” - are limited. In his magnificent book, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Fr. Gihr states that the external value of the Mass in relation to God is indeed infinite, and then adds:

“But the case is different when the Eucharistic Sacrifice is considered in its relation to man. From this point of view it aims at procuring our salvation and sanctification, and is, consequently, a means of grace, or rather a source of grace, bringing us the riches of heavenly blessings. (…) The fruits which the Sacrifice of the Mass obtains for us from God are only finite, that is, restricted to a certain number and determining measure… The Sacrifice of the Mass, therefore, with respect to man can have only a restricted efficacy, and in its fruits is capable of only limited application.” (2)

The same author goes on to explain that the limited efficacy “does not lie in the essence or value of the Sacrifice, since it possesses infinite power for producing every effect”. Rather, “the final and decisive reason for the more or less plentiful application of the sacrificial graces is the will of Christ, in other words, is to be sought in the positive ordinance of God”. (3) While the Mass itself is an infinite source of grace, when it comes to “the distribution of His gifts, God requires our cooperation”. (Gihr)

The Fruits of the Mass


The fruit that an individual derives from a particular Mass is not based solely on their personal piety and devotion, which is only one factor that determines the amount of grace they receive. There are other factors as well that have a bearing on the efficacy of a particular Mass, such as the holiness of the priest, the external glory given to God by the ritual, and even the general holiness of the Church in its members. These external factors affect the amount of grace a person receives, in such a way, that the devout hearing of one mass can derive greater fruits than an equally devout hearing of another mass.

The Holiness of the Church


One factor determining the efficacy of the Mass is the general holiness of the Church in its members at a given time, including the bishops and reigning pope. Regarding this point, the Catholic Encyclopedia says “the greatness and extent of this ecclesiastical service is dependent on the greater or less holiness of the reigning pope, the bishops, and the clergy throughout the world, and for this reason in times of ecclesiastical decay and laxity of morals (especially at the papal court and among the episcopate) the fruits of the Mass, resulting from the sacrificial activity of the Church, might under certain circumstances easily be very small”.

On the same point, Fr. Gihr wrote: “But since the holiness of the Church consists in the sanctity of her members, it is not always and invariably the same, but greater at one period than another; therefore, the Sacrifice of the Church is also at one time in a greater, at another in a lesser degree pleasing to God and beneficial to man”. (4)

Since this factor is based on the moral condition of the Church as a whole, it will have an equal effect on all Masses offered at a given time in history. The next several factors, however, are based on specific circumstances which have a direct effect on the efficacy of individual Masses.

The Priest

St. Thomas teaches that the fruits to be derived from a particular Mass are based, in part, on the holiness of the priest celebrant who intercedes for the faithful, “and in this respect there is no doubt but that the Mass of the better priest is the more fruitful”. (III, Q 82, A.6)

A Mass celebrated irreverently by an unworthy priest, or worse still, by one who violates the rubrics, will be less efficacious, and therefore produce fewer fruits than a one celebrated by a holy priest who says Mass with devotion and follows the rubrics with precision. Hence, as Fr. Gehr notes, “the faithful are thus guided by sound instinct when they prefer to have Mass celebrated for their intentions by an upright and holy priest, rather than by an unworthy one…”. (5) St. Bonaventure said “it is more profitable to hear the Mass of a good priest than of an indifferent one”.

Cardinal Bona (d. 1674) explained it this way: “The more holy and pleasing to God a priest is, the more acceptable are his prayers and oblations; and the greater his devotion, the greater the benefit to be derived from his Mass. For just as other good works performed by a pious man gain merit in proportion to the zeal and devotion with which they are performed, so Holy Mass is more or less profitable both to the priest who says it and to the persons for whom it is said, according as it is celebrated with more or less fervor”.

The Ritual


Another factor determining the efficacy of a Mass is the degree of external glory it gives to God. In this respect, not all Rites are equal; neither does a low Mass have the same efficacy as a High Mass. On this point, Fr. Gihr says:

“The Church not only offers the Sacrifice, but she moreover unites with its offering various prayers and ceremonies. The sacrificial rites are carried out in the name of the Church and, therefore, powerfully move God to impart His favors and extend His bounty to the living and the dead. By reason of the variety of the formulas of the Mass, the impetratory efficacy of the Sacrifice can be increased… also the nature of the prayers of the Mass and even of its whole rite exerts accordingly an influence upon the measure and nature of the fruits of the Sacrifice. From what has been said there follow several interesting consequences. Among others, that, on the part of the Church, a High Mass solemnly celebrated has greater value and efficacy than merely a low Mass. (…) At a Solemn High Mass the external display is richer and more brilliant than at a low Mass; for at a solemn celebration the Church, in order to elevate the dignity of the Sacrifice, manifests greater pomp, and God is more glorified thereby. (…) This grander and more solemn celebration of the Sacrifice is more acceptable to God and, therefore, more calculated to prevail upon Him to grant us, in His mercy, the favors we implore; - that is, to impart greater efficacy to the petitions and supplications of the Church.” (6)

If “the nature of the prayers of the Mass and even its whole rite” have an effect on the fruits of the Mass, it does not bode well for the Novus Ordo, which, to use the words of Cardinal Ottaviani, “represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent” and “has every possibility of satisfying the most modernist of Protestants”. (7)

Even the decora has an effect on the efficacy of a particular Mass: “If we use objects that do not fit the majesty and the exalted nature of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we can actually detract from the extrinsic merit. Ugly things please God less, and thus merit less”. (8)

Conclusion


On Calvary, our Lord offered His Passion and Death to the Father in order to merit our salvation. At the Mass, He offers Himself to the Father and applies the fruits of His Passion to us. But as we have seen, the fruits of the Mass are finite in their application, and contingent on many factors. The holiness of the priest, and the manner in which he says the Mass, will affect the fruits of the Mass. The greater the solemnity and grandeur of the Mass, the greater will be the graces God pours out on those who assist. When we consider the liturgical shipwreck that is the Novus Ordo Missae, and the scandalous manner in which the Mass is often celebrated, is there any wonder why the Church is in the condition it is today?
Let us recall the strange and even ominous words used by Paul VI when he introduced the new Mass to the world in November of 1969. He wrote:

“We ask you to turn your minds once more to the liturgical innovation of the new Rite of the Mass. This new Rite will be introduced into our celebration of the holy Sacrifice starting from Sunday next which is the first of Advent… a change in a venerable tradition that has gone on for centuries. This is something that affects our hereditary religious patrimony, which seemed to enjoy the privilege of being untouchable and settled. … This change will affect the ceremonies of the Mass. We shall become aware, perhaps with some feeling of annoyance, that the ceremonies at the altar are no longer being carried out with the same words and gestures to which we were accustomed… We must prepare for this many-sided inconvenience. It is the kind of upset caused by every novelty that breaks in on our habits. We shall notice that pious persons are disturbed most, because they have their own respectable way of hearing Mass, and they will feel shaken out of their usual thoughts and obliged to follow those of others. Even priests may feel some annoyance in this respect. … we must prepare ourselves. This novelty is no small thing. We should not let ourselves be surprised by the nature, or even the nuisance, of its exterior forms. … We will lose a great part of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual thing, the Gregorian chant. We have reason indeed for regret, reason almost for bewilderment”. (9)

Is it any surprise that a Mass described by the Pope who published it as “a many-sided inconvenience” and “nuisance”, which would cause “the feeling of annoyance”, “regret”, and “bewilderment”, would have a greatly diminished external value, and end in disaster for the Church - something that even Cardinal Ratzinger was forced to admit? In his book Milestones, which was published in 1997, he wrote: “I am convinced that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy.”

Many clear thinking people foresaw, from the outset, the disaster that would result from the Protestantized new Mass. In the Critical Study of the new Mass, signed by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, they wrote: “To abandon a liturgical tradition which for four centuries was both the sign and pledge of unity of worship, and to replace it with another which cannot but be a sign of division by virtue of the countless liberties implicitly authorized, and which teems with insinuations or manifest errors against the integrity of the Catholic religion is, we feel in conscience bound to proclaim, an incalculable error”. They further wrote: “It has always been the case that when a law meant for the good of subjects proves to be on the contrary harmful, those subjects have the right, nay the duty of asking with filial trust for the abrogation of that law”.

Whatever the true motive was for Paul VI publishing the new Mass, and illicitly and unjustly suppressing the true Mass, let us do our duty and request that Pope Benedict XVI abandon the “reform of the reform”, and instead set in motion the abrogation the reform.

Footnotes:
1) Ibid
2) Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, pg 137-138
3) Ibid pg. 138-139
4) Ibid pg. 144
5) Ibid pg. 143
6) Ibid pg 144-145
7) Ottaviani Intervention
8) The Merits of a Mass, Fr. Ripperger, FSSP
9) Pope Paul VI, General Audience, November 26, 1969)

Papal Infallibility and its limitations

Papal Infallibility
And its limitations

(This article was published in the September 30th 2012 issue of The Remnant)

By Robert J. Siscoe

Papal Infallibility was defined as a dogma of the Faith, in the year 1870, during the First Vatican Council. While most people have heard of this dogma, few understand its true meaning and limitations. It is not uncommon to find non-Catholics who believe the dogma extends to the moral actions of a pope, in such a way that he is said to be incapable of sin (impeccability). Most Catholics realize that the scope of infallibility is limited to papal teachings on matters of faith and morals, but they often err by extending it beyond its boundaries; understanding infallibility as if it were a habitual active charism that prevents a pope from erring when he speaks on the subject of faith or morals. This misunderstanding on the part of Catholics in recent decades has resulted in two opposite errors. On the one hand, we have those who erroneously believe that whatever a pope says, regardless of how novel it is and how far it deviates from Tradition, must be accepted as an infallible truth, since “the pope is infallible”. On the other hand, there are some who see apparent errors in the documents of Vatican II and believe that Papal Infallibility would prevent a true pope from ratifying such documents. In both cases, the error is a result of extending Papal Infallibility beyond the limits determined by the Church.

Before proceeding, it should be noted that the purpose of this article is not to assert that Catholics are only bound to accept what has been infallibly defined by a pope or ecumenical council. The late Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton referred to this error, which was condemned by Pius IX (1), as minimism. Catholics must give assent to all that the Church teaches, either by virtue of a solemn pronouncement, or by the teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium. Yet at the same time, Catholics are not bound to give assent to novelties and apparent errors, even if such novelties or apparent errors come from a pope who is not exercising his infallibility. In the chaos that has followed the Second Vatican Council, it is necessary that the faithful have a correct understanding Papal Infallibility, as well as its limitations, lest the understandably confused or scandalized Catholic be led into error in one direction or the other.

The Charism:

Infallibility is a negative charism (gratia gratis data) that prevents the possibility of error. It is not to be confused with inspiration, which is a positive divine influence that moves and controls a human agent in what he says or writes; nor is it to be confused with Revelation, which is the communication of some truth by God through means which are beyond the ordinary course of nature. Infallibility pertains to the safeguarding and explanation of truths already revealed by God. Since infallibility is only a negative charism, it does not inspire a pope to teach what is true or even defend revealed truths, nor does it “make the pope’s will the ultimate standard of truth and goodness” (2), but simply prevents him from teaching error under certain limited conditions. During an address given at the First Vatican Council, Bishop Grasser, who was referred to as “the most prominent theologian at the Council”, said the following:

“In no sense is pontifical infallibility absolute, because absolute infallibility belongs to God alone, Who is the first and essential truth and Who is never able to deceive or be deceived. All other infallibility, as communicated for a specific purpose, has its limits and its conditions under which it is considered to be present. The same is valid in reference to the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. For this infallibility is bound by certain limits and conditions...”.

The conditions for Papal Infallibility were subsequently defined by the First Vatican Council as follows:

“We teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals”.
Here we see that the divine assistance is present only when a pope, (a) using his supreme apostolic authority (b) defines a doctrine, (c) concerning faith and morals, (d) to be held by the universal Church. If any of these conditions are lacking, infallibility is not engaged and error is possible.

The Scope and Object

The scope of papal infallibility is the same as any other organ of infallibility of the Church (such as an ecumenical council): it is limited to doctrinal definitions or final definitive statements concerning faith or morals. Theologians distinguish between primary and secondary objects of infallibility. The primary object consists of the truths that have been formally revealed by God, being contained within the two sources of revelation, namely, Scripture and Tradition, and extends to both positive and negative decisions of a definitive nature. Positive decisions include such things as dogmatic decrees of a council, ex cathedra statements from a pope, and official creeds of the Church. Negative decisions consist of “the determination and rejection of such errors as are opposed to the teaching of Revelation”. (3)

The secondary object of infallibility includes those matters which, although not formally revealed, are connected with and intimately related to the revealed deposit, such as theological conclusions (inferences deduced from two premises, one of which is revealed and the other verified by reason) and dogmatic facts (contingent historical facts). These are so closely related to revealed truths that they are said to be virtually contained within the revealed deposit. With varying degrees of certitude, theologians also list universal disciplines and the canonizations of saints within this category. Secondary objects “come within the purview of infallibility, not by their very nature, but rather by reason of the revealed truth to which they are annexed. As a result, infallibility embraces them only secondarily. It follows that when the Church passes judgment on matters of this sort, it is infallible only insofar as they are connected with revelation”. (4)

It is de fide that the Church speaks infallibly when issuing a definitive and binding declaration on revealed truths (the primary object); but before the First Vatican Council could rule with certainty on whether or not the Church can make an infallible pronouncement on secondary objects, the Council was halted, by the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent invasion of Rome, and never reconvened. Thus, the teaching that the Church can rule infallibly on secondary objects is not de fide (of the faith), but only considered Sententia certa (theologically certain). (5)

To conclude this point, infallibility applies to doctrines concerning faith and morals that have been revealed by God (de fide), and matters that are intimately related to the revealed deposit (sententia certa).

Universally Binding Definitions:

The next condition for Papal Infallibility is the clear intent to define a doctrine to be held by the whole Church. If a pope merely teaches a doctrine, yet does not intend to issue a definitive decision, this condition is not satisfied, and therefore error is possible. One example of a pope teaching error is John XXII (d. 1334), who taught that the souls of the faithful departed would only possess the Beatific Vision after the Last Judgment. He taught this error in a book published prior to his election, and also taught it publicly after being elected pope. The following account is taken from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

“In the last years of John's pontificate there arose a dogmatic conflict about the Beatific Vision, which was brought on by himself…. Before his elevation to the Holy See, he had written a work on this question, in which he stated that the souls of the blessed departed do not see God until after the Last Judgment. After becoming pope, he advanced the same teaching in his sermons. In this he met with strong opposition, many theologians, who adhered to the usual opinion that the blessed departed did see God before the Resurrection of the Body and the Last Judgment, even calling his view heretical. A great commotion was aroused in the University of Paris when the General of the Minorites and a Dominican tried to disseminate there the pope's view. … Before his death he withdrew his former opinion, and declared his belief that souls separated from their bodies enjoyed in heaven the Beatific Vision”.

After the death of John XXII, his successor, Pope Benedict XII, defined infallibly that the souls of the faithful departed, after being purified in purgatory when necessary, do indeed possess the Beatific Vision prior to the Last Judgment. (6) This example proves without question that a pope can err when he teaches a doctrine without the intent of giving a definitive decision.

There is no specific formula necessary for an ex cathedra statement, nor is any type of solemnity required. What is necessary is the clear intention of giving a definitive and universally binding decision. This condition of infallibility applies to the pope whether acting alone, or within the context of an ecumenical council. What this means is that it is within the realm of possibility for a papal encyclical, or a document issued by a general council of the Church that has been ratified by a pope, to contain error, as long as the error in question is not within a doctrinal definition. Infallibility does not necessarily cover an entire document, but only the specific definitions, or definitive decisions, contained within it. The following is taken from the pre-Vatican II manual of dogmatic theology, by Msgr. Van Noort:

“The Church's rulers are infallible not in any and every exercise of their teaching power; but only when, using all the fullness of their authority, they clearly intend to bind everyone to absolute assent or, as common parlance puts it, when they ‘define’ something in matters pertaining to the Christian religion. That is why all theologians distinguish in the dogmatic decrees of the councils or of the popes between those things set forth therein by way of definition and those used simply by way of illustration or argumentation. For the intention of binding all affects only the definition… And if in some particular instances the intention of giving a definitive decision were not made sufficiently clear, then no one would be held by virtue of such definitions, to give the assent of faith: a doubtful law is no law at all”. (7)

Notice that even within dogmatic decrees issued by a council or pope, only the definitions contained within them are protected by infallibility. Furthermore, it is necessary that the intention of giving a definitive decision be made sufficiently clear. Applying this to Vatican II, which was “merely a pastoral council” that “defined no dogma at all”, as Cardinal Ratzinger admitted (8), it is clear that if any of the documents contain error, it would not be contrary to the infallibility of the Church as a whole, nor to Papal Infallibility specifically, since infallibility as such only applies to definitions and definitive decisions.

Since Vatican II specifically avoided defining any doctrines, the only teachings of Vatican II that would be protected by infallibility are those that were defined prior to the Council, as Bishop Butler of England admitted two years after the close of Vatican II. He wrote “not all teachings emanating from a pope or Ecumenical Council are infallible. There is no single proposition of Vatican II - except where it is citing previous infallible definitions - which is in itself infallible". (9)
In the current crisis shaking the Church, we must consider, not merely what is normal, or what is to be expected, but what is possible. What could God in His justice permit, as a punishment for sin, without contradicting a dogma or violating any of His promises? That is what Catholics must consider while attempting to navigate through the post-Conciliar wasteland.

Supreme Apostolic Authority:

The final condition necessary for Papal Infallibility is that the pope teach using his supreme apostolic authority. Two things are to be considered regarding this condition: (a) The pope must be acting in his official capacity as pope; and (b) he must be using his supreme authority at its maximum power. Regarding the first point, Msgr. Van Noort explains:

“[I]f the pope speaks merely as a private individual, or as a private theologian, or as a temporal sovereign, or precisely as ordinary of the diocese of Rome, or precisely as metropolitan of the province of Rome, he should not be looked on as acting infallibly. … What is required for an infallible declaration, therefore, is that the pope be acting precisely as pope; that is, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all Christians so that his decision looks to the universal Church and is given for the sake of the universal Church”. (10)

With respect to the second point, namely, using his authority to its maximum power, the same pre-Vatican II dogmatic manual teaches the following:

“A man who acts in an official capacity does not always make use of his full power, of the whole weight of the authority which he possesses by his very position. … Thus the pope, even acting as pope, can teach the universal Church without making use of his supreme authority at its maximum power. Now the Vatican Council defined merely this point: the pope is infallible if he uses his doctrinal authority at its maximum power, by handing down a binding and definitive decision: such a decision, for example, by which he quite clearly intends to bind all Catholics to an absolutely firm and irrevocable assent”. (11)

So even if a pope, acting as pope, teaches or praises a particular doctrine, or recommends that it alone be taught in Catholic schools, this, in and of itself, would not be considered an infallible decree, unless there was a clear intent to hand down a definitive decision.

Conclusion:

In order for a teaching to be protected by infallibility, each and every condition must be satisfied. If a single one is lacking, infallibility is not engaged. In our day, when there is so much doctrinal confusion coming from those in authority, it is essential to realize that the charism of infallibility, as such, is limited to doctrinal definitions or definitive decisions. Just as it is possible for a pope to err when he is not defining a doctrine, for the same reason it is possible for a general council to err when it does not intend to issue a dogmatic definition – and this applies especially to Vatican II, the only council in the history of the Church that, as Cardinal Ratzinger admitted, “defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council". (12) If it is determined that the documents of Vatican II contain errors, it will not be a violation of the infallibility of the Church, since “the merely pastoral council” specifically “avoided issuing solemn dogmatic definitions backed by the Church's infallible teaching authority” (13), as Paul VI himself admitted.

We will close with the following words taken the dogmatic manual of Msgr. Van Noort:

“The Church surely makes no mistakes when it determines the force and extent of its infallibility, for the greatest harm would result if the Church, by stretching infallibility beyond its limits, could force everyone to give unqualified assent to a matter about which it is liable to be mistaken”. (14)

Footnotes

1) Syllabus, #22
2) Van Noort, Dogmatic Theology (DT), pg 290, published in 1959
3) Fundamental of Catholic Dogma, pg 299.
4) Van Noort, D. T. pg 110
5) According to Van Noort canonization of saints is only considered a “common opinion” (Ibid. pg 117)
6) Benedictus Deus
7) Van Noort, D. T. Pg 104
8) “The truth is that this particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council." (Cardinal Ratzinger, Address to Chilean Bishops, July 13, 1988)
9) The Tablet, 11/26/1967
10) Van Noort, D. T. Pg. 292
11) Ibid, pg 293
12) Cardinal Ratzinger, Address to the Chilean Bishops.
13) Paul VI, General Audience, 1/12/1966
14) Van Noort, D. T. pg 112