Lord Sebastian posted this a few days ago regarding the possible imminent return of the society to communion with Rome. Such a thing is devoutly to be wished, for many reasons. For example, one of the greatest scandals the church gives to non-believers is due to internal disunion. Furthermore, the SSPXers have a very strong sense of the church militant, something that we could use some more of. Finally, and most importantly, those within the Society may be endangering their souls through the schism. For all these reasons, (plus for two others much more personal,) I pray that the Society will indeed return to Rome.
But looking at things within my fallen, human perspective, I am not confident that such a reunion will take place. To understand this, I think we need to go back to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, to come to grips with the psychology involved. Luther, an intelligent but hard-headed man, saw many abuses in the church (whether there actually were any I don't know, but his writing against the Curia is vitriolic), and like a good pastor, began to teach against those abuses. His teaching, however, was infused with a proto-Cartesian philosophy: a radical separation between the substance of the soul and the substance of the body. For this reason, Luther taught that justification lay in the purification of the soul, or in other words, absolute faith, and that works were simply to condition the body so that it would not "war against the spirit." This is all in Luther's
Freedom of a Christian.
The Council of Trent's reaction to Luther was to affirm the
unity of body and soul in the human person, and thus to affirm the importance of merit in justification, even as it granted the absolute dependence of the person upon the grace of God. Thus, the Tridentine liturgy, common enough as I understand it before the council, simply universalized those practices that speak to the human person
as a unity of body and soul, under the conditions of fallenness but sanctified by the blood of the cross, etc.
Jump now to the sixties. Descartes is no longer the spirit of the age, but rather Heidegger. Heidegger's philosophy is a radical anti-Metaphysics, "pure" phenomenology. Heidegger's project is to de-sediment the philosophical concept of 'being' from the layer upon layer of conceptual encrustation caused by 2000 years of philosophizing. Heidegger thus speaks of Dasein (a fancy term for the human) as the ground of the givenness of things. With Heidegger, there is a radical turn to the subject, away from Being qua divine. I think that the "novel" formulations of Church teaching in Vatican II are a result of the Church's attempt to come to grips with this new extraordinary phenomenon. The Church, and especially Pope John Paul II in his implementation of the council, is attempting to formulate the truths of the faith in a way which accepts the truth in phenomenology, while at the same time affirming the possibility and reality of metaphysics and of theology. It seems to me that this is always how it has been with the church: in the early church, Plato; in the medieval period, Aristotle.
Of course, some in the church took this as an opportunity to reject previous church teaching
in toto -- we only need think of contraception, woman's ordination, gay marriage, and so on, not to mention the radical and violent abandonment of the monastery by monks for marriage. This is of course a scandal, but some in the church were scandalized, not just by the abuses, but by the attempt to use the language of phenomenology at all. This is how I characterize SSPX. They are rejecting, not "new" doctrines, but new formulations of old doctrines. They reject the language used, more than they reject the content signified by that language. I suppose that they would not formulate what they do in that way themselves, but that is what they are doing nevertheless.
This has a two-fold problem. First, they do not recognize the value in the new formulations of doctrine. The great advantage of phenomenology is that it reduces everything to experience -- to this extent, I think that all good philosophy is phenomenology. Furthermore, by reformulating the doctrines of faith, the phenomenological method is able to revitalize them and make them present and active within the soul in a powerful and all encompassing way. In other words, the phenomenological formulation of doctrine is in
precise continuity with the scholastic formulations of the Council of Trent in this, that both are concerned to address the person as a whole, as a union of body and soul. Just as Trent glorified the union of body and soul, in its response to Luther, so Vatican II stresses the integralness of the whole person in worship, in the communion of saints, etc. The point I'm getting at is that phenomenology provides the church with a powerful means of understanding the person as a unity, over and against the bifurcating influences of the modern world, thereby providing once again a radical (in the etymological sense) ground for the doctrines of the faith. By rejecting Vatican II, the SSPXers fail to see the good that is in the churches appropriation of phenomenology.
But as a consequence of this, the SSPXers fall into a second and more dangerous error. Because of their insistence upon the
language of Trent, they become legalistic, concerned with words more than with the meaning behind words; concerned with the form of liturgy rather than the spirit in which the liturgy occurs. Because of this, because they insist on the formulations of doctrine and worship which came about as a response to Luther, they
become subject to Luther's own criticism. Luther accused the church of believing that people could be saved by works without faith. SSPXers, psychologically, fall subject to this critique, to the extent that they fail to realize that it is the spirit with which worship occurs which makes worship valid. Let me stress, I do not think that the effects of Vatican II have been positive here in a practical way in many, many churches through out our land. But the point is that by insisting on the Tridentine formulations, of doctrine and of worship, SSPX has lost the spirit that lives within them. They have become a society of works without faith. This is of course in a literal sense true: for they lack faith in the Holy Spirit to guide the church when it meets in an Ecumenical council. But it is also psychologically true: for they lack the ability to think radically (again, in the etymological sense) about their faith.
Lets consider the example I mentioned before on Flyte's blog. Receiving Holy Communion in the hand. I've heard many Society members say that this is an abomination against the Lord. There is of course Biblical support for this. Someone or other (I can't remember who) touched the Arc of the Covenant (not even the Lord, but simply the throne of the Lord) to keep it from falling over, and was immediately struck dead. But let us consider this a bit more fully. It is of course indubitable that in the early church people received Holy Communion in the hand. There is definite textual evidence to support this. If this is the case, then
it cannot be that receiving Holy Communion in the hand is a sin in itself. The church as such cannot permit its members to commit mortal sin! If you don't believe this, you don't believe in the church. But if it's not a mortal sin by nature, then it's only a moral sin by convention. But who has the power to make such conventions? The church. ("What you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, ...") So if the church says that it is acceptable to receive on the hand, then it's acceptable. By asserting that this is a mortal sin, SSPXers demonstrate their inability to think radically about their faith, to think about what worship
is.
What can in fact be adequate to God? God has become incarnate, He sacrifices Himself for us on the Altar daily. Is there anything which is adequate to that mystery? Let's be more explicit. Is there anything external which is adequate to that mystery. "For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (Ps. 51:16-17). What makes the sacrifice of the mass acceptable to God is the spirit in which it is offered. A humble and contrite spirit. That is what justifies every jot and tittle of the form of the liturgy. I can see someone receiving on the hand because they hold the Host to be of little value; I can also see someone receiving on the tongue because they are proud like the Pharisee. Which, on the basis of the externalities, is better? Neither. Both are justified by the spirit in which they are done, and both are an abomination when done in the wrong spirit.
This all finally comes down to obedience. There is a great danger in being more holy than the church. If the church permits something, it is permitted. It is not permitted sort-of, or permitted only for those who would be in moral sin otherwise. It is permitted. To be a member of the church demands that one accept the things permitted by the church as permissible. This is a great test of obedience, for every one of us, not just for the SSPXers.
Why has God allowed the church to permit so many things which seem counter to good prudence to you and I? There is of course no way to answer that question really till the final judgment, but this is how it strikes me. We live in a world which rejects all claims to validity unfounded on evidence. Modern physics is the highest science, precisely because it has the strongest methodological claims to evidentiary support. Reason, and in particular, reason grounded on evidence, is the single judge between the factual and the unfactual. The corollary to this is that all authority is questioned. The modern world admits no authority (of course, it implicitly accepts millions of authorities, like physicists, for example, but it pretends that it isn't).
So here we are, members of a church founded on authority, where the authority figures are making what seems to you and me poor prudential decisions. I take this to be God's way of testing his followers, as we are forced to choose between Him and modern skepticism. Will we choose our reason, our judgments about the way things ought to be, or will we choose to follow the church, even when it seems like things aren't really being worked out all that well? SSPX chose the first; I choose the second.
My mother, drunk or sober, my mother.
