Sun, 5 Mar 2017 | Cover | Page 11

Debating the Relevant Issues…

The Slippery Sede Slope:

Father Brian Harrison vs. Hilary White

First, Father Harrison

Editor, The Remnant: Hilary White’s recent article, "Sawing Off the Branch", accompanied by a smart cartoon, seemed to gain massive reader approval - five stars, no less! That worries me, because I think she is treading on dangerous, incipiently schismatic, ground, and therefore leading many more Catholics along that perilous road. Hilary’s theology strikes me as deficient, and she seems to be on the verge of sedevacantism. She’s clearly straining at the leash, longing for the freedom to raise two clenched fists up to heaven and proclaim to the four winds that Bergoglio is Not Her Pope!

Well, I agree that that feeling of liberation would be deliciously cathartic and euphoric. But sedevacantists don’t have the answer here. Being sheep without a shepherd, they divide endlessly among themselves over various doctrinal and canonical issues, and quickly come to anathematize each other as much as they do the rest of us. Each sede becomes his own little "pope", and the visible unity of the Church is pulverized.

If Miss White’s hypothetical small group of orthodox ("ultraconservative") Catholic leaders were to declare that Pope Francis was in schism from the real Church, by what right would they claim our allegiance? To coin a phrase, "Who are they to judge?" Indeed, schism is by definition "refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff" (CCC, #2089), and it’s clearly nonsense to talk of the Roman Pontiff refusing submission to himself.

That goes against the same basic first principles of logic that Hilary tries to base her case upon.

The great doctors and theologians who have studied these difficult issues have concluded that a Pope might lose office through falling into formal heresy, but not by becoming schismatic. And they have taught that we would need a virtual ecumenical council – an assembly of the world’s bishops minus the pope – to declare that the reigning pope was formally heretical and had therefore lapsed from office. If a mere small group (like the six cardinals who have submitted the dubia) were to declare that Francis had lapsed from office through heresy, and go on to start their own little parallel organization, they would be the ones in schism even if they preserved the True Faith. (By the way, I’m sure those cardinals never will in fact take it upon themselves to declare that Bergoglio is no longer pope, and then convoke a little conclave to elect a new one. Cardinal Burke knows well that that would constitute schism, and he assured me personally, at the Norcia conference that both I and Miss White attended in 2015, that he will never go into schism. He has repeatedly said the same thing publicly.) Miss White seems to be under the impression that as long as a Catholic holds fast to the true (orthodox) faith, he can’t possibly be in schism. But that’s not true. As Aquinas and all the great doctors explain, heresy is a sin against the virtue of faith, whereas schism is a sin against charity. Most schismatics also tend to be heretics as well, but the two offences are essentially distinct, and a schismatic can be perfectly orthodox in doctrine. Miss White also says it doesn’t matter much to her whether those church leaders teaching heresy are malevolent destroyers or just ignorant, because in either case they are erring against the orthodox Faith which she feels sure she is keeping intact. But in fact, it matters hugely whether the Pope’s heterodoxy is culpable or inculpable, because only if it’s culpable will he be a formal heretic and so lapse from office. And I think it would be an act of dangerously rash judgment, at this stage, to declare Pope Francis formally heretical.

In regard to Communion for the divorced-and-remarried, for instance, he has repeatedly stated that he believes his position is in line with the traditional Catholic teaching about diminished imputability, which is, as we know, that for a Catholic to lose sanctifying grace and lapse into mortal sin, his sin has to be not only one of ‘grave matter’ (which adultery of course is), but there also has to be full knowledge that the act is gravely sinful and full consent of the will in doing it.

The Pope’s main argument in Amoris Laetitia is that if either of those last two is lacking – and he believes one or both of them will be lacking "in certain cases" (note 351) – then the sin of those concerned will be less than mortal, in which case (so he thinks) there’s no reason in traditional Catholic moral theology to deny them Holy Communion. Francis, relying on theologians like Cardinal Kasper, probably thinks their exclusion from Communion up till now has been a matter of changeable ecclesiastical law only, not divine law. Alternatively, if he follows the line of Cardinal

Schönborn, whom he has praised as a reliable spokesman, Francis may well think that the only significant change he has effected in Amoris is to finally ‘go public’ with certain exceptions to the "no-Communion" rule which Rome, since way before Vatican II, had already quietly allowed priests to grant in the strict secrecy of the confessional.

Now, I think such arguments are specious and fatally flawed; however, this is not the place to go into details.

I’m just making the point that the theological issues here are more complicated than Hilary White seems to realize, and that nobody, as far as I can see, is at present in a position to affirm with confidence that Francis is stubbornly denying something he knows to be proposed by the Magisterium as a divinely revealed truth (i.e., a dogma of faith). And as long as the competent authority (the remaining bishops) can’t prove beyond reasonable doubt that he’s doing that, then he remains Pope.

And if he remains Pope, it is those who repudiate his authority and organize their religious activities independently who will be in schism, even if they happen to be more doctrinally orthodox than the Pope himself.

Fr. Brian W. Harrison, O.S.

St. Louis, MO

Hilary White’s Response:

I shrug. I’m not a sede. Bergoglio’s the pope. Fr. Harrison is a good man, and I like him. He has my email address if he wants to talk to me about any concerns he has with regards to my spiritual life. But he’s not a traditionalist, and it has been showing. I’m sure the confusion of our time is enough to send good men into spirals, or lead them to wrong conclusions. I’m as prone to it as anyone, but sedevacantism isn’t one

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The Slippery Sede Slope:

Father Brian Harrison vs. Hilary White

Continued from Page 11

I’m heading for. It is the direction taken by Jorge Bergoglio that is creating a schism. He may or may not be called on it during his lifetime, but as Athanasius Schneider said, schism is what it is. And no theologian, no scholar or saint or doctor of the past has ever ruled out the possibility that the pope is as prone to these things as anyone else.

I will not follow Jorge over the edge of the abyss into his heresy. Maybe we could ask Fr. Harrison if he will.

This is the full citation from the CCC: Schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him."

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The note is a citation of the Code of Canon Law which uses the same wording.

I don’t now remember the details of the article that accompanied that cartoon, but my position is taken from other works published by the Remnant, particularly Robert Siscoe’s article about the deposition of a pope. A pope cannot be "deposed". But he can, by heresy, cease to be pope, de facto; by his own action of denial of the Faith. This has to be declared by the competent authority, not just some random collection of a "hypothetical small group of orthodox ("ultraconservative") Catholic leaders."

Modern sedevacantists hold that they can make such a determination privately. This is nonsense. I don’t have the authority to issue any kind of declaration that the pope is a formal heretic. And neither do they. (Nor do I or anyone else have the personal authority to declare that Pope Benedict Ratzinger’s resignation was invalid, which is another blind alley many are going down.) As Robert Siscoe made clear, no one has the authority to depose a pope.

Not even an ecumenical council. But a lawfully convened "imperfect council" of cardinals can issue a "declarative sentence" that, after being presented with his heretical opinions, the pope has fallen into formal heresy. The necessary, logical result of this would be that he is not a Christian, and since no Christian can be pope, that by his own action he had lost the charism of the papacy.

Do I think this has already happened?

Obviously not.

Do I think it likely that it will happen?

No, not really, given that the pope’s clearly manifest heresies are shared by a large majority of the faithful, due to 50 years of diabolical disorientation, including the great majority of bishops.

Do I think that Bergoglio and his crew are manifest heretics who are leading the faithful over the cliff of the mortal sin of apostasy, effectively theologically sawing themselves right off the great oak of the Church?

Most emphatically.

Do I have the slightest qualm about calling this spade a spade, about identifying the evidence of our senses, saying that the pope can be a heretic?

Not at all.

(In case Fr. Harrison or any of our readers are wondering, there is plenty of theological precedent that a pope may fall into heresy. I cite only what Robert Siscoe provided: Pope Adrian VI († 1523) went further by saying "it is beyond question" that a Pope can err in matters of faith, and even "teach heresy": "If by the Roman Church you mean its head or pontiff, it is beyond question that he can err even in matters touching the faith. He does this when he teaches heresy by his own judgment or decretal. In truth, many Roman pontiffs were heretics.

The last of them was Pope John XXII († 1334).") Is this a problem I think I can solve, either privately or by some kind of public declaration of my own, however "cathartic" I might, in his imagination, find it?

Nope.

Is this a problem that Fr. Harrison can solve by calling me unjust names in public?

Nope again.

If Fr. Harrison has a problem with the conclusions in Robert Siscoe’s article, he can take it up with him. Or if he has a problem with Bellarmine, Suarez or Cajetan or any of the other great names cited there, I’m sure he can work it out without calling me unjust names in public.

I know Fr. Harrison does not mean to be unjust and I know I’m being a bit facetious, and I wouldn’t dim his star by accusing him so. But I also know that a great many very good and very doctrinally sound people have not yet been able to bring themselves to accept certain admittedly terrifying facts that we all see before us every day.

I don’t think, however, that anything is to be gained by making unjustified accusations, or by deliberately taking the worst possible interpretations. Nor by pointing the firing squad inwards.

Hilary White Santa Marinella, Italia ■ For further study, please see The Remnant’s: Can the Church Depose an Heretical Pope?