The Church's Constitutional System and the Modernist War Against It

(Partly from a blog post I wrote for OnePeterFive)

We live in a time of Ecclesiastical troubles: The Church's system isn't working, clearly, but what is it, that system, exactly?

The Catholic Church's "constitution" is a three-legged support system, as is the U.S. Constitution's, curiously, except the U.S. Constitution stipulates the three supports of government are specifically designed to counter-balance each other, to be a self-correcting mechanism, whereas the Church's three supports: Holy Writ, Sacred Tradition, and the living Magisterium, are supposed to be MUTUALLY SUPPORTIVE.

Curiously enough, it is plain from the New Testament that the living Magisterium is the oldest of the three: what else is the Council of Jerusalem in Acts except the living Magisterium of that day meeting to decide an important issue? Then came Holy Scripture, written mostly by VIP's in the initial Magisterium: two epistles by St. Peter, head of the Apostles and Christ's Prime Minister of the New Israel (and one gospel by his secretary and amanuensis, John Mark, later bishop of the 2nd largest city of the empire, Alexandria), one by St. James, bishop and presider at the Jerusalem Council, which was held in his city, and the lion's share of the NT books were of course written by St. Paul, another VIP at the Council.

     Rembrandt's Paul the Apostle

It always dumbfounds me – and I grew up among Protestants, mostly rural Methodists and Lutherans – that Protestants just don't get this; apparently Baptists believe as a matter of essential Baptist dogma (haha, BAPTISTS having DOGMA? But they DO!) that the various attendees at the Council were just buddies and followers (or relatives) of the departed Jesus, and had no hierarchy in any sort of actual institutional "Church". But whatever. I make this point because nothing the current pope and the Modernists do is so shocking to me (I mean, what would one EXPECT Modernists to do but such stuff, right?) as how Protestants can call themselves Bible Christians and NOT get this.

Sacred Tradition came last, and is the "Constitutional Case Law) of the Magisterium living the Biblical teachings out over 2,000 years. The difference is: whereas the U.S. Supreme Court is not bound by case law (which is contrary to the original English law system ) the Magisterium IS bound by Sacred Tradition (and the Bible as understood via the decisions of past Magisteriums, i.e., Sacred Tradition).

The whole thing operates as a mutual support system. The living Magisterium has tons of "case law" to guide it and the pope has essentially carte blanc authority to legislate and enforce to support the Bible and Tradition. But naturally, were he to depart from supporting the other two legs of authority, then HIS authority evaporates: oh, he's still "pope" until some validly appoint Council removes him, but who would listen to or trust him?

Now first, I need to talk a little bit in political terms. Catholics (and others) often say they don't want politics and religion mixed, but here I am just talking about the nature of the U.S. Constitution, its Three Branches of Government, and not "politics" per se.

What we're dealing with today in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is that a specialized party (acting very much indeed like a political faction or party – and remember James Madison, author of the U.S. Constitution, LOATHED such!) has been working assiduously for over 100 years now to overturn the entire system. These are the Modernists, so called, also known today as Progressives. They organized originally to try to come up with a solution to a collapse of the Faith in Europe. The Intellectuals left Christianity (Prot or Catholic) in the 18th century, the working masses left if – or began to – in the 19th century for the new Christian heresy of Socialism. And then at the end of the 19th century, the middle classes began to show signs that they were leaving, too; i.e., the lose morals and "free thinking" and "Bohemian living" of the "Gay Nineties" was only put on hiatus by "The Great War" and reappeared in in the 1920s. Again on hiatus because of Fascism and Communism and World War II, it began again in the 1950s (Beatniks) and finally came into full flower in the infamous 1960s.

The Modernist solution to all this was to relax the moral teachings, their idea being that Christianity's moral strictures (Catholic or Protestant, but especially Catholic, which of course wouldn't allow divorce, etc.) was too strict for "Modern Man". They had various roots, often Protestant ones, such as the Tübingen School during the mid-19th century. Their ideas and personalities included:

• Easing off on traditional morals. "Relativism" is a key word to understand their thinking (and remember that Benedict 16 condemned the "Dictatorship of Relativism" before he was forced out of office). "Relativism will keep people in church!" they essentially said. 
• But naturally, to "ease off" on morals, one had to argue for relativism; i.e., everything is relative. To do that, they then had to do a lot of tinkering with the Church's authority structure and the roots of the Church in its origin; basically, all this was soon seen by the hierarchy as quite dangerous, as it could unravel the whole system. 
• If one were to "ease off" on the morals, (relatively, if I may say it that way), for example, then one would have to "reinterpret" Sacred Scripture, and to reinterpret Sacred Scripture, one would have to negate, undo, and generally rewrite Church Tradition! It all would just avalanche out of control, in other words.  
• Charles Darwin was an essential but indirect influence, naturally enough, because science seemed to be saying we were evolved from lower forms, and if so, then we could certainly "evolve" further and further: there could be no "baseline".
• Adolf von Harnack (1851 – 1930) a liberal German Lutheran, was an influence.
• His contemporary, Louis Duchesne (1843 – 1922), a Breton priest, polymath (linguist, archaeologist, historian, etc.) helped to influence the Modernists, and his Early History of the Christian Church was put on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1912. Duchesne was one influence on...
• Alfred Loisy (1857 - 1940) who is considered a founder of the Modernists, and who argued Scriptural elements might be only metaphorically true, not literally true (a Baptist friend is always telling me Catholics read Biblical metaphor literally, for example), and
• The Jesuit-influenced Bollandists, who were refounded about 1845: their research led to a lot of Vatican II ideas on the liturgy (though subsequent scholarship cast doubts on much of their work, Pope Francis still even today finds the time to praise them). 
• Another Jesuit, the Dubliner George Tyrrell (1861 – 1909), is an interesting and sad case of a Modernist, and who sort of encapsulates the whole movement, as it were.

So Modernism had a lot of intellectuals involved in it. But Leo XIII worked to counter it, and Pius X tried to blast is out of existence in 1907. In Lamentabili Sane Exitu of that year (the finely phrased "A Lamentable Departure Indeed"), His Holiness condemned 65 Modernist ideas, and in his famous encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis (or "Feeding the Lord's Flock"), he described Modernism as the "synthesis of all heresies". Then he promulgated Sacrorum antistitum, an anti-Modernist oath all clerics had to take, and which of course the "spirit of Vatican II" abolished in 1967 when the Holy Office of that time, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) rescinded it. (Priests ordained in the Trad Orders often take it voluntarily, however.)

The next pope, Benedict XV, had his hands full because of WWI, and it wore him out. Pius XI, an exemplary pope, tried to combat both Communism and Fascism. So it was the next pope after him, Pius XII, who, after WWII, tried to put the brakes on some budding Modernist-type theologians, such as Henri de Lubac, by putting some of his writings on the Index. It pretty much tells you all you need to know that John Paul II made de Lubac a cardinal!

After that, a series of weak popes simply didn't understand what they were dealing with; however, Pius XII started the earthquake by letting some "liturgical reformers", including the infamous devotee of Ba'al (Hannibal) Bugnini loose in the Vatican's "Deep State"; also, Pius didn't assiduously appoint orthodox, young, highly intelligent cardinals during the last decade of his life: thus, when the Conclave that met in October 1958 to vote on his successor, its cardinals had a very small pool to choose from.

With that, the ball began rolling down the bowling alley toward the long-standing pins of Catholic dogma. "Cry havoc! And let slip the Modernists of War!"

1. Starting with poor John 23, who was honestly too old and not vigorous enough to manage a Council, so the Modernists organized and simply took it from him (this is a well-known, exhaustively researched bit of history, btw)...
2. Then the "Weeping Pope Hamlet" Paul 6, who was trying to be a supporter of the Progs but ultimately horrified at where they wanted to go...
3. Then poor Albino Luciani, who might well have died of fright. 
4. Karol Wojtyla was an amazing Nazi-era survivor and hero against Communism, a wonderful world evangelizer but a prelate who steadfastly held to Vat 2 principles – which were innately bad (the foundational thesis of all Traditionalists is that whatever the merits of Vatican II's documents, their over-all effect and many of their specific teachings are, sadly, actually bad doctrines and need to be excised). Because of JPII's reliance on Vat2, then, and unavoidably – since they're teachings are defective, resulted in his downfall – they left him a very bad Church manager because he "didn't get it"; i.e., I mean that while occasionally he appointed a good bishop, he also steadfastly appointed Progressive Modernists to important sees (can anyone say Cardinal Archbishop Bergoglio? I once read where Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz told JPII to his face that he was appointing bad bishops!) The sex scandal, which grew on JPII's watch, and finally the infamous, depraved debacle of the Legionnaires of Christ, killed him. 
5. And finally we had the deeply intelligent and subtle theologian, Josef Ratzinger. In his early days, he was an ardent Vat2 reformer, but of the "milder" Cummunio faction (along with Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar, and thus an enemy of the rival "Terminator reformer school" known as the Concilium coven...er, school (these two groups were named for competing theological journals that published the papers of the two factions) that consisted of that old fornicator Karl Rahner, and Edward Schillebeeckx, and the infamously hyper-boring Hans Küng. 

So, to sum up: I think Pope Benedict 16 knew VERY well what was going on, but the Modernists' long-term War of Position (i.e., working incrementally and unnoticed to put their own supporters in important places in the hierarchy) left him in a strategically bad place: when they went to an open War of Maneuver against him (and I firmly believe they did so with Obama's help), they brought him down.
I pray that understanding this past and present background can, along with the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, help us to deal as effectively as we can with this ecclesiastical mess we find ourselves in.

An Préachán