In my previous article, I said the Catholic Church’s biggest problem is the stunning absence of leadership. Just recently, the disunity among the American hierarchy became blatantly public when one bishop implicitly accused a cardinal of heresy. Meanwhile, European events show that the disagreement isn’t limited to the North American continent. The Church in the global North is facing its greatest crisis since the Protestant Reformation. And while we here at Catholic Stand discourage “pope-bashing” and disrespect for the hierarchy, the fact remains that the fault lies squarely with our leadership. Or lack thereof.
Dropping the “H” Word
After finishing the leadership article, I started working on another piece intending to address a reader’s objection about reconnecting with the kerygma. However, it was hard to leave the subject of Church leadership without talking about unity of doctrine. And as it turned out, the issue wouldn’t leave me alone. Even as I was finishing up the piece, I was reading articles expressing unease about the direction that the preparatory discussions for the synod on synodality are taking. Then, as I was wrapping up my follow-up on the reader’s objection, Cdl. Robert McElroy dropped his article in America.
In his article, +McElroy argued that the synod is the perfect opportunity to explore and advocate several changes he feels are necessary to make the Catholic Church more “inclusive.” (This is despite the Vatican publicly taking doctrinal and structural changes off the synod’s table.) Of his suggestions, those concerning the ordination of women have elicited the slightest alarm. Instead, most reactions have focused on his argument that the Church should open the Eucharistic table to not only the divorced and remarried but also the LGBTQ bloc, abandoning almost 2,000 years of Eucharistic theology.
I’ve read commentaries from notables such as Bp. Robert Barron, Bp. James Conley, Abp. Joseph Naumann, and Abp. Samuel Aquila, as well as commentaries from laymen and Fr. Raymond de Souza. Cardinal Blase Cupich supported +McElroy with an essay that took a statement in Pope Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est wildly out of context, not only of the encyclical but of Papa Bene’s entire career. (Phil Lawler and Larry Chapp called +Cupich out on it.) But it took the angel of Springfield, Bp. John Paprocki, to drop the “h” word: heresy.
The Gravity of Heresy
“Heresy” is not a term to cast about thoughtlessly. As +Paprocki explains, it has a specific meaning within Church history and canon law: “the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith” (CIC 751). Not every question about doctrine is a doubt, and not every criticism of discipline entails a denial of dogma. It’s certainly not a label to paste on every Church figure who says or does things you don’t like. Even canon lawyers and theologians should hesitate to diagnose controversial figures as heresiarchs.
However, the fact that heresy has such a precise theological and legal meaning should prevent us from pretentious, sweeping fatuities like “What was heretical in [some lost era] is now today’s orthodoxy.” Geocentricity and the seven-day creation were never as core to the faith as are original sin and the Real Presence. “Heretical” and “controversial” are not synonymous. Much of what the Church teaches about sin and disordered behavior is controversial precisely because it’s orthodox. The standard for orthodoxy is the apostolic tradition, not the preferred sociopolitical narratives of the secular intellectual elite.
Having said the quiet part out loud, +Paprocki has since tried to walk the heresy accusation back a step. In an interview with The Pillar, he claimed that “he did not intend to single out a particular cardinal for criticism,” despite directly quoting +McElroy’s America essay as his starting point. But in the same interview, +Paprocki stated, “… [The] debate [about sexual morality and LGBTQ inclusion] has become so public at this point that it seems to have passed beyond the point of just some private conversations between bishops.” There’s simply no way that +Paprocki can un-ring that bell.
And with that ring, notes Pillar editor J. D. Flynn, “any notion that the U.S. bishops have found some conciliar fraternity with each other should be laid to rest.”
Love Tells Hard Truths
There are many things wrong with the “inclusive” approach to the Church’s moral doctrine, but the crucial point is that it’s misguided compassion. As a comparison: I’ve suffered from obesity for most of my adult years, and part of that suffering has entailed fat-shaming. (“Extra-wide boots for an extra-wide body, huh, Pvt. Layne?”) Even though part of me still burns with resentment, I understand that much of it was well-meant. Obesity is unhealthy. Yet the “inclusive” approach reacts to the fat-shaming by trying to soothe me with lies: “You don’t need to lose weight. You’re fine the way you are.”
Without truth, there can be no justice, and love becomes mere sentimentality. However, the postmodern heresy subordinates everything, including truth, to desired political narratives, agendas, and outcomes. By its very refusal to accept unwelcome truths, this approach condemns itself to eventual failure. And one of those unpleasant truths is that God’s love—real love—is not all warm fuzzies and affirmations. Real love comes with boundaries and obligations more compelling and restrictive than any legal code or contract. Real love tells hard truths, knowing that doing so risks alienating the beloved. Real love can be painful.
Only real love can willingly die on a cross.
Jesus prevented the crowd from stoning the woman taken in adultery. But he also told the adulteress, “Do not sin again” (John 8:11). Jesus associated with sinners, but not to say to them that they were okay the way they were: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32). Nothing in the New Testament suggests that Jesus did away with the notion of sexual sins or disordered behavior; the “silence of Jesus” argument cuts both ways. The hard Gospel truth is that we can exclude ourselves from Heaven by our own refusal to repent.
Silence Gives Consent
Jesus taught that there would be people who would not understand or accept the gospel message and people in whom it would produce no fruit (Matthew 13:3-9, 18-23). For at least the last six decades, many priests and bishops not otherwise ensnared in the progressive heresy have been reluctant to preach the hard truths of the Faith for fear of causing people to leave the Church. But people have been leaving the Church anyway, and not only because of those hard truths. The mainline Protestant communions fully embraced the progressive narrative, only to implode and become culturally irrelevant.
The commission to “make disciples of all nations” can’t be understood as simply an injunction to put more butts in the pews but instead as a command to call more people to repentance and reform. In that sense, the Church is already inclusive—katholikos, “universal”—in that she speaks the gospel message to all humanity. But the decision to repent and reform is always individual. And the Church can’t force people to repent and reform their lives; she can only encourage them. The final decision to refuse repentance and reformation is the choice of self-exclusion.
Can the Church do a better job of reaching out to the LGBTQ bloc? Absolutely. Can the Church do a better job of including women within her institutional life? Agreed once, a thousand times agreed. But replacing the gospel message and the morality it encodes with the elite classes’ preferred narratives isn’t “doing a better job.” It’s a profound abandonment of the task entrusted to us by centuries of saints. For a bishop to advocate this abandonment is a betrayal of the apostolic succession. Worst of all, the heresy betrays the people it means to “include” through false comfort.
Qui taces consentire videtur: “Whoever is silent must be seen to consent.” The bishops must now realize that their silence and false front of unity have been giving indirect aid and comfort to the heresy’s spread. We need more bishops—especially the Bishop of Rome—to begin pushing back, where necessary, deposing and even laicizing those who advocate heresy. Perhaps we need a “Vatican III,” a dogmatic and pastoral council (like the Council of Trent), to reassert authentic Catholic doctrine and initiate genuine reforms. Error as error has no right to exist, let alone spread or displace the truth.
Conclusion: Sounding the Alarm
Edward Peters, a canon lawyer and co-editor of The Pillar, recently tweeted: “The most pressing challenge today is finding how to sound the spiritual alarms so urgently needed without hating those who make them necessary and without disparaging those who, often through no fault of their own, still can’t hear the warnings. I struggle with this every day.” I do, too; it’s one more reason the Church has both saints and confessionals. Nevertheless, the alarms need to be sounded. So, we must thank Bp. Paprocki for releasing a word long confined to the lexicons of right-wing cranks and sedevacantists: heresy.
In my previous article, I argued that unity of command is essential to keeping the Church “on message.” Unfortunately, the absence of that unity has been a fact for many years precisely because our bishops have not been trained for effective leadership. In essence, they’ve forgotten their succession to the apostles. As Dr. Jeff Mirus put it, “the scandal of silence is worse than the scandal of public correction.” It’s time for bishops to remember that they are the apostles’ successors and act to preserve the integrity of the gospel message. It’s time to call out heresy for what it is.
19 thoughts on “Heresy and a Divided Leadership—An Interruption”
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It is only since the internet (I think most of us can recall the days when it didn’t exist) that one could know a whit about bishops other than their own. And your exposure to your own bishop was shaped by what your parish priest said about him.
I don’t think it’s of any real benefit that we can waste time reading and writing about the interactions among the bishops, all the back-room drama and such. It doesn’t make us better Catholics at all.
Anthony S. Layne: There is also our interaction with the Holy Spirit within us. It is called walking in the Spirit. This is how we receive strength over our sin nature (cf. Galatians 5:16-25). We also receive spiritual guidance and discernment when the Spirit is within us. Yielding to God was never taught to me in my Catholic school upbringing even though it is part of Catholic doctrine (cf. Romans 6:13-18). It is the most important aspect of my personal Catholicism.
I think you should allow pope-bashing and disrespect for the hierarchy, when it is apprropriate. They are not little gods walking around on the earth, you know. Even if they act like they think they are.
Lack of charity is never appropriate. That’s as much a reminder to myself as to anyone else. I often find myself echoing the snark and sneer of the rage-farming social media subculture. And I don’t know how reformable that tendency is within me. But I’m trying. Fraternal correction is well within Catholic orthodoxy, but it doesn’t preclude respect and doesn’t authorize detraction.
Anthony:
Thank you for this article. And for your comment to Peter Aiello. I was puzzled by Aiello’s statement regarding the Sacraments. And thought it was confusing and, perhaps, misleading, – though I am sure not intended. Last week’s show on EWTN with Fr. Mitch Pacwa and his guest, a recent convert from Protestantism, discussed Scripture and how it can be quoted to serve an argument not in line with Church teaching. As you aptly point out – “heretics can quote Scripture to their own purposes”.
At least since St Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, we have seen dissent accomplished by simply changing the subject!
Though my wife and I have tried to promote the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of authentic marriage/family, it is the rare priest – whether because of fear or disagreement – who preaches on either topic.
We hear about “love” as though it was a mere sentiment detached from truth. Our children and grandchildren certainly deserve far better!
They do. Among the reasons people are leaving the Church is the fact that they can get their self-images reaffirmed and their politics validated without religious dressing. The indulgent heavenly Grandfather Who lets us do what we like without judgment isn’t robust enough to address the problem of evil. In the end, He isn’t any more substantial or involved than a deist God who does nothing beyond creating and sustaining the universe. By contrast, a God Who loudly insists that we’re screwing up and we need to straighten out our lives (or else) is a God Who truly cares about His creatures.
“ The dissenting opinion of one generation becomes the prevailing interpretation of the next.” Burton Hendrick (1937)
The worse scenario is (another) split fomented by Germany. In the end the orthodox faithful retire to their own thriving communities while those of the ‘elite classes’ focus on bigger fish ( Original Sin ) which is a moot point for intellectuals who believe that one day evolution will win hands down leaving the CC, not on a house made of sand, but one of air. It will take a super Vatican to resolving that corundum; a penultimate test based on Ambrose Bierce definition of his definition of incompossible – unable to exist if something else exists.
I’m not sure the elite classes give a rat’s patoot about original sin, since to the degree that they evince any belief in sin, it resides only in the great crimes that other people commit. Frankly, I believe the countdown clock is ticking on the West and its elite classes with it, and that we’re on the verge of a collapse like the fall of the Western Roman Empire, except broader, quicker, and more devastating.
Oh, sorry, I thought we were taking on theological concepts, not the wishful projection that ‘the end is near’ crowd portrays.
We were addressing theological concepts. Whether my belief that the West is heading toward social and economic collapse is “wishful” is a separate subject. I would be glad to be proved wrong, if I were certain I would survive to see 2100.
In any case, another super great essay that stirs up the pot.
The problem appears to be not that there is no leadership, but you don’t agree with what the leadership is saying.
The Church has finessed internal disagreements before. One can read “conservative” and “liberal” bishops and find agreement, even if the language and temperament is different. Francis might seem rudderless to you but in fact he is letting things take their course. He is aware that often, historically, whenever a Pope decides to “put his foot down”, the result shows that the decision to do so was ill-advised.
“The problem appears to be not that there is no leadership, but you don’t agree with what the leadership is saying.” This would be true if all our bishops said A and I disagreed with it. But you’re not paying attention—or, rather, you’re paying attention only to the bishops who say A, ignoring the ones who say not-A, and discounting the many who are busily saying nothing about it. (Like Sgt. Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes: “I see nothing!”) It reminds me too much of the Evangelical “invisible unity of Christian believers,” which pretends that the all-too-visible disunity is somehow not damaging to the credibility of Christianity.
Certainly, one can find agreement between “liberal” and “conservative” bishops, but only where orthodoxy obtains unfiltered through ideological lenses. It’s precisely when we import ideological imperatives and narratives into the discussion that disagreement appears. Conservatives have their own style of “cafeteria Catholicism.” Heresy begins with the over-emphasis of one or more elements of the gospel to the disparagement of others. For instance, with the emphasis of “Buddy Jesus” over “Christ the Intolerant Master” (or vice versa), both of which ideas insert a separation and conflict between the Christ who loves and the Christ who judges.
As to “finessing,” arguably the Vatican and the hierarchy have been trying to do that for 60 years while the situation ripened. It’s gone past “ripe” to “rotten.” History also shows that occasionally the bishops in union with the Pope have had to put their collective foot down, at places like Nicaea, Constantinople, Florence, and Trent. I haven’t said anything yet concerning Pope Francis, but I expect that his response to the German Synodal Way conference will take some time. However, I don’t think a papal response, even if it came from someone more unambiguously orthodox than Francis, would suffice. That’s why I recommended an ecumenical council.
Outstanding essay!
I am struck by the irony that my little parish in an old and rundown section of my city is packed to the rafters each Sunday with young families. Why? It’s an “orthodox” parish (with both Novus Ordo and Latin Mass) led by a priest who teaches Catholic doctrine very plainly and clearly.
This is the only Way to teach the Truth and the Life!
Thanks, Cindy! It’s been a pleasure editing your “love letters” about the Latin Mass. Look for the next installment Wednesday.
I read quite a bit of testimony about parishes thriving when Catholic orthodoxy is preached and traditional devotions are practiced. While some of that is no doubt due to the skills and sensitivity of the priests, I believe that it’s also partly due to the fact that orthodoxy challenges our culture and demands intentional discipleship.
I think that Scripture needs to be the basis for determining heresy because it also instructs us on how to be guided over and above the letter by the Holy Spirit. This aspect of Christianity needs more attention in the Church because it has been superseded by an emphasis on sacraments rather than the role of the Spirit.
Hi Peter! I don’t think there’s been a preference for the sacraments over the Holy Spirit. If anything, the sacraments have been losing out because they’re treated as mere rituals, especially Reconciliation. Properly taught, we recognize the operation of the Holy Spirit in the sacraments. There’s no real “either-or” here. And while Scripture is a deposit of the faith, by itself, it’s insufficient to teach or understand the faith handed down to us by the apostles. Heretics can quote scripture to their own purposes as well, as St. Vincenet of Lerins observed so long ago (Commonitory 5).