As a second authority on the matter, I want to share a quote from a letter of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Archbishop Antonio de Castro Mayer dated November 21, 1983, addressed to Pope John Paul II, which includes a list of the points the SSPX criticizes:
“The following list provides the statement, but is not exhaustive:”
A “latitudinarian” and ecumenical conception of the Church, divided in its faith, condemned particularly by the Syllabus , no. 18 ( DS 2918).
A collegial government and a democratic orientation of the Church, condemned particularly by the First Vatican Council ( DS 3055).
A false conception of the natural rights of man which appears clearly in the document on religious freedom, condemned particularly by Quanta cura (Pius IX) and Libertas præstantissimum (Leo XIII).
A misconception of the Pope’s power (cf. DS 3115).
The Protestant conception of the holy sacrifice of the Mass and the sacraments, condemned by the Council of Trent, sess. XXII.
Finally, and more generally, the free spread of heresies was characterized by the suppression of the Holy Office.
Again, this is not exhaustive, but a good summary. Each of these could be the object of a separate discussion.
I can start a side by side for the simplest case (simplest conceptually, not necessary simplest to accept, because religious freedom is viewed as a fundamental right in modern liberal democracies, so the traditional teaching of the Church is very counter cultural):
The Second Vatican Council texts (DH 2) read: “The council further declares that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become a civil right.”
But for Catholics this should be a problematic statement. Pius IX in Quanta Cura condemned the following statement: “Liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society.”
Two quotes don’t do justice to the complexity at work here. But these quotes are given here to illustrate the difficulty and opposition in orientation.
Among the other twenty ecumenical councils, one finds numerous pastoral or disciplinary statements and documents that are no longer applicable today (e.g., the decree of the Fourth Lateran Council stating: “If a temporal lord neglects to cleanse his territory of the heretical filth, he shall be bound with the bond of excommunication”) …
Today, however, to be in full communion with the Holy See, one must accept those affirmations and teachings of Vatican II that are pastoral and certainly non-definitive in terms of their magisterial nature. This raises an important question: Why is the unconditional acceptance of the texts of Vatican II presented as a conditio sine qua non for full communion with the Holy See, while no comparable requirement exists with respect to the pastoral, disciplinary, or non-definitive teachings of the preceding twenty Ecumenical Councils?
If after Lateran IV a temporal lord said: “why do I have to cleanse my territory of heretics? Rome doesn’t require me to unconditionally accept all the pastoral statements of Lateran II and Lateran I, does it? How is it fair that it requires me to accept all of the pastoral statements of Lateran IV? I’m going to work with local clergy to setup a society that tolerates heretics within our borders and we’re going to consecrate our own bishops.” - How would you argue against him?
One of the reasons I’m not a KJV-only Protestant is that I recognize that doctrine has to evolve over time as the world changes. Just because the KJV doesn’t explicitly prohibit contraception doesn’t mean that it’s OK to use it. Just because many saints used to consider usury to be any interest doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to have a savings account. Just because older Church documents condemn toleration of heretics or religious liberty doesn’t mean it’s wrong to tolerate them now.
Hi! Thank you for engaging. There are several confusions in your reply. Let me address one of them.
“Religious toleration” is the name of the traditional doctrine of the Church for treating members of the false, non-catholic religions. One of the original preparatory schema for the council was entitled just that: “On Religious Toleration.” But it was tossed out along with all the other preparatory schema, for one called “On Religious Liberty” which became part of the contentious Dignitatis Humanae. Cardinal Ottaviani, was opposed by Cardinal Bea on this, as well as several other issues. There were bitter debates and eventually the liberals (Bea, et al.) proposed putting the doctrine of the Church to a vote… The shenanigans of the council are a history unto themselves.
It’s one thing to say that we can’t force people to believe, and that we often have to tolerate non-believers, it’s another thing altogether to say that all humans have a fundamental right to religious liberty in civil society.
It’s a hard thing to argue that these constitute one and the same harmonious teaching. As Bishop Schneider puts it, this is like squaring the circle, and intellectual honesty requires us to recognize that the council is at least HIGHLY ambiguous.
Let me take another stab at it. Hopefully it will be more on point.
First of all I would categorically deny this. Doctrine doesn’t evolve. Revelation, the deposit of faith, is complete at the death of the last of the apostles. No new outpouring of the Holy Spirit after that. The church must first of all preserve and transmit this teaching. “Evolution of doctrine” was condemned by Pope Pius X in Pascendi.
At most we can speak of a development, which is not about adapting to the world, but about greater clarification, and a clearer unfolding of the significance of the deposit.
The issue in the church today is that we are asked to unconditionally accept non definitive “pastoral” claims, that are not reconcilable with more definitive, prior teachings. (This last part is obviously contentious and should be freely debated to foster intellectual honesty and truth.)
Let me try to rephrase my argument in light of your replies: The Church has consistently and harmoniously taught “religious toleration”. In the past, it has pastorally taught that religious freedom should not be legalized, but now it teaches the opposite. You take issue with this - why? Do you believe that the Church does not have the authority to modify pastoral teachings with the times? If it ordered all rulers to “cleanse heretics” in Lateran IV, is that command now timeless? If that command is not timeless, why is the condemnation of legalization of religious freedom timeless?
It seems to me that neither sets of documents express merely pastoral judgements about what is expedient in the present circumstances. It may well be that a civilly recognized religious liberty is expedient here and now in a given nation, such as the USA. But neither pre- nor post- conciliar pronouncements pertain merely to this level of “here and now” judgments.
Instead, they formulate diverse and opposing ideals. DH2 states that religious liberty ought to be recognized by civil law because this right is based in human dignity. Quanta Cura and the Syllabus, state that, on the contrary, there is no such personal right that ought to be recognized by civil society.
Perhaps (I don’t know) the apparent force of your argument rests on a possible ambiguity in the word “pastoral”. Off the cuff, I think the term might mean: “pertaining to concrete and particular prudential judgements” or it might mean “not claiming full and definitive authority.” DH2 teaching on religious liberty is pastoral in the second sense, not in the first. Quanta Cura might not even be pastoral in the second sense.
I would put the Quanta Cura condemnation under the first meaning (particular to place and time, like Lateran IV), not the second, but this is getting down to personal interpretation. I can easily see it from your point of view. And you can probably see it from mine also?
So what I’m trying to get at is why don’t you choose to give it the benefit of the doubt in order to avoid schism? Don’t you think that someone could similarly personally interpret Vix Pervenit and say that the Catholic Church is in contradiction on usury? If you talk with Protestants online about Catholicism, most of their critiques are simple misinterpretations or misunderstandings. If you look at some of the past schisms in the Church, for example with the Oriental Orthodox and the Eastern Orthodox Churches, they were likewise largely based on issues of interpretation. Don’t you think that this is similar? Why do you think that this disagreement is enough ground to declare an emergency so serious that it can void a papal excommunication? And I get that this is just one of the many doctrinal disagreements you’ve listed, but I’d guess it’s similar issues for the others.
On the other hand, ironically enough, this is what freedom of religion and following your conscience is all about, isn’t it? Because telling someone to “obey, obey, obey” when it goes against his conscience is plain wrong.
Whether the teachings on religious liberty are just here-and-now pastoral statements is part of the controversy. It was the view of Ratzinger that pre-VII teachings on on religious toleration were suitable for their time, but that Vatican II had returned to the purity of the Gospel on this issue. However, the common view at the time of Pius IX and Leo XIII was that their teaching was definitive, and not just a here-and-now prudential statement.
So I really can’t agree that this (and the other difficulties on the list) are merely questions of interpretation. But I could agree that they are secondary doctrinal questions. The “little old lady” in the pews need not have an explicit knowledge of them to be a perfect lover of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Can they then justify a level of resistance that leads all the way to consecrating bishops without mandate? And to what is, on the face of it, a schism?
That question is really a difficult prudential decision, one I never had to make myself. But my short answer is this: these contested errors form a system, a system which is draining the life of the Church like a cancer, and which does undermine our collective, practical belief in the divinity of Christ. Most agree the Church is in a crisis - the SSPX embodies an answer: return to Tradition. The Church is living through an extraordinary crisis, and in this extraordinary context, those who still want to live the life of Christ fully may find themselves in a situation where they have to take extraordinary means. To understand their justification of such a grave act of resistant to the pope it’s also important to know the specific situation of the SSPX: their current apostolate spread across the world, the critical needs for bishops, etc.
Shortly before the excommunications, I read the new encyclical of Pope Leo XVI, Magnifica Humanitas, with an open mind and heart. It was a bit little long… But what deeply saddened me was the near total absence of supernatural spirit. Nowhere could I find the mind of the Church, so well summarized in Rerum Novarum:
“But the Church, with Jesus Christ as her Master and Guide, aims higher still. […] The things of earth cannot be understood or valued aright without taking into consideration the life to come, the life that will know no death.”
Because telling someone to “obey, obey, obey” when it goes against his conscience is plain wrong.