NB: The following post was submitted to Rorate Caeli today by His
Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider. We not only allow but encourage
all traditional media and blogs to reprint this post and carry his
critical message far and wide. Also: We know for a fact there are other
prelates possessing both the true Faith and real backbone. You cardinals
and bishops may also take advantage of our global readership by
submitting your defense of the Four Cardinals here on Rorate. We urge you to do so.
By Bishop Athanasius Schneider
Special to Rorate Caeli
November 23, 2016
“We cannot do anything
against the truth, but only for the truth” (2 Cor. 13: 8)
A Prophetic Voice of Four Cardinals
of the Holy Roman Catholic Church
In publishing a plea for clarity in a matter that touches
the truth and the sanctity simultaneously of the three sacraments of Marriage,
Penance, and the Eucharist, the Four Cardinals only did their basic duty as
bishops and cardinals, which consists in actively contributing so that the revelation transmitted through the Apostles might be
guarded sacredly and might be faithfully interpreted. It was especially the
Second Vatican Council that reminded all the members of the college of bishops as legitimate successors of the Apostles of their
obligation, according to which “by Christ's institution and command they have to
be solicitous for the whole Church, and that this solicitude, though it is not
exercised by an act of jurisdiction, contributes greatly to the advantage of
the universal Church. For it is the duty of all bishops to promote and to
safeguard the unity of faith and the discipline common to the whole Church” (Lumen gentium, 23; cf. also Christus Dominus, 5-6).
In
making a public appeal to the Pope, bishops and cardinals should be moved by
genuine collegial affection for the Successor of Peter and the Vicar of Christ
on earth, following the teaching of Vatican Council II (cf. Lumen gentium, 22); in so doing they render
"service to the primatial ministry" of the Pope (cf. Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of
Bishops, 13).
The entire Church in our days has to reflect upon the
fact that the Holy Spirit has not in vain inspired Saint Paul to write in the
Letter to the Galatians about the incident of his public correction of Peter.
One has to trust that Pope Francis will accept this public appeal of the Four
Cardinals in the spirit of the Apostle Peter, when St Paul offered him a
fraternal correction for the good of the whole Church. May the words of that
great Doctor of the Church, St Thomas Aquinas, illuminate and comfort us all:
"When there is a danger for the faith, subjects are required to reprove
their prelates, even publicly. Since Paul, who was subject to Peter, out of the
danger of scandal, publicly reproved him. And Augustine comments: "Peter
himself gave an example to superiors by not disdaining to be corrected by his
subjects when it occurred to them that he had departed from the right
path" (Summa theol., II-II, 33,
4c).
Pope Francis often calls
for an outspoken and fearless dialogue between all members of the Church in
matters concerning the spiritual good of souls. In the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia, the Pope speaks of a need for “open discussion of a number of doctrinal,
moral, spiritual, and pastoral questions. The thinking of pastors and
theologians, if faithful to the Church, honest, realistic and creative, will
help us to achieve greater clarity” (n. 2). Furthermore, relationships at all
levels within the Church must be free from a climate of fear and intimidation,
as Pope Francis has requested in his various pronouncements.
In light of these pronouncements of Pope Francis and
the principle of dialogue and acceptance of legitimate plurality of opinions,
which was fostered by the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the unusually
violent and intolerant reactions on behalf of some bishops and cardinals
against the calm and circumspect plea of the Four Cardinals cause great
astonishment. Among such intolerant reactions one could read affirmations such
as, for instance: the four Cardinals are witless, naive, schismatic, heretical,
and even comparable to the Arian heretics.
Such apodictic merciless judgments reveal not only intolerance,
refusal of dialogue, and irrational rage, but demonstrate also a surrender to the impossibility of speaking the truth, a surrender to relativism in doctrine and
practice, in faith and life. The above-mentioned clerical reaction against the
prophetic voice of the Four Cardinals parades ultimately powerlessness before
the eyes of the truth. Such a violent reaction has only one aim: to silence the
voice of the truth, which is disturbing and annoying the apparently peaceful
nebulous ambiguity of these clerical critics.
The negative reactions to the public statement of the
Four Cardinals resemble the general doctrinal confusion of the Arian crisis in
the fourth century. It is helpful to all to quote in the situation of the
doctrinal confusion in our days some affirmations of Saint Hilary of Poitiers,
the “Athanasius of the West”.“You [the bishops of Gaul] who still remain with me
faithful in Christ did not give way when threatened with the onset of heresy,
and now by meeting that onset you have broken all its violence. Yes, brethren,
you have conquered, to the abundant joy of those who share your faith: and your
unimpaired constancy gained the double glory of keeping a pure conscience and
giving an authoritative example” (Hil. De
Syn., 3).“Your [the bishops of Gaul] invincible faith keeps the
honourable distinction of conscious worth and, content with repudiating crafty,
vague, or hesitating action, safely abides in Christ, preserving the profession
of its liberty. For since we all suffered deep and grievous pain at the actions
of the wicked against God, within our boundaries alone is communion in Christ
to be found from the time that the Church began to be harried by disturbances
such as the expatriation of bishops, the deposition of priests, the
intimidation of the people, the threatening of the faith, and the determination
of the meaning of Christ’s doctrine by human will and power. Your resolute
faith does not pretend to be ignorant of these facts or profess that it can
tolerate them, perceiving that by the act of hypocritical assent it would bring
itself before the bar of conscience” (Hil. De Syn., 4).“I have spoken what I myself believed, conscious that
I owed it as my soldier’s service to the Church to send to you in accordance
with the teaching of the Gospel by these letters the voice of the office which
I hold in Christ. It is yours to discuss, to provide and to act, that the
inviolable fidelity in which you stand you may still keep with conscientious
hearts, and that you may continue to hold what you hold now” (Hil. De Syn., 92).
The following words of Saint Basil the Great,
addressed to the Latin Bishops, can be in some aspects applied to the situation
of those who in our days ask for doctrinal clarity, including our Four
Cardinals: “The one charge which is
now sure to secure severe punishment is the careful keeping of the traditions of the Fathers. We are not being
attacked for the sake of riches, or glory, or any
temporal advantages. We stand in the arena to fight for our common heritage,
for the treasure of the sound faith, derived from
our Fathers. Grieve with us, all you who love the
brethren, at the shutting of the mouths of our men of true religion,
and at the opening of the bold and blasphemous lips
of all that utter unrighteousness against God. The pillars and
foundation of the truth are
scattered abroad. We, whose insignificance has allowed of our being overlooked,
are deprived of our right of free speech” (Ep.
243, 2.4).
Today those bishops and cardinals, who ask for clarity
and who try to fulfill their duty in guarding
sacredly and faithfully interpreting the transmitted Divine Revelation concerning
the Sacraments of Marriage and the Eucharist, are no longer exiled as it was
with the Nicene bishops during the Arian crisis. Contrary to the time of the
Arian crisis, today, as wrote Rudolf Graber, the bishop of Ratisbone, in 1973, exile
of the bishops is replaced by hush-up strategies and by slander campaigns (cf. Athanasius und die Kirche unserer Zeit,
Abensberg 1973, p. 23).
Another champion of the Catholic faith during the
Arian crisis was Saint Gregory Nazianzen. He wrote the following striking
characterization of the behavior of the majority of the shepherds of the Church
in those times. This voice of the great Doctor of the Church should be a salutary
warning for the bishops of all times: "Surely the pastors have done
foolishly; for, excepting a very few, who either on account of their
insignificance were passed over, or who by reason of their virtue resisted, and
who were to be left as a seed and root for the springing up again and revival
of Israel by the influences of the Spirit, all temporized, only differing from
each other in this, that some succumbed earlier, and others later; some were
foremost champions and leaders in the impiety, and others joined the second
rank of the battle, being overcome by fear, or by interest, or by flattery, or,
what was the most excusable, by their own ignorance" (Orat. 21, 24).
When Pope Liberius in 357 signed one of the so called
formulas of Sirmium, in which he deliberately discarded the dogmatically
defined expression “homo-ousios” and excommunicated Saint Athanasius in order
to have peace and harmony with the Arian and Semi-Arian bishops of the East, faithful
Catholics and some few bishops, especially Saint Hilary of Poitiers, were
deeply shocked. Saint Hilary transmitted the letter that Pope Liberius wrote to
the Oriental bishops, announcing the acceptance of the formula of Sirmium and
the excommunication of Saint Athanasius. In his deep pain and dismay, Saint Hilary
added to the letter in a kind of desperation the phrase: “Anathema tibi a me
dictum, praevaricator Liberi” (I say to you anathema, prevaricator Liberius),
cf. Denzinger-Schönmetzer, n. 141.
Pope Liberius wanted to have peace and harmony at any price, even at the
expense of the Divine truth. In his letter to the heterodox Latin bishops
Ursace, Valence, and Germinius announcing to them the above-mentioned
decisions, he wrote that he preferred peace and harmony to martyrdom (cf. cf. Denzinger-Schönmetzer, n. 142).“In what a dramatic contrast stood the
behavior of Pope Liberius to the following conviction of Saint Hilary of
Poitiers: “We don’t make peace at the expense of the truth by making
concessions in order to acquire the reputation of tolerance. We make peace by
fighting legitimately according to the rules of the Holy Spirit. There is a
danger to ally surreptitiously with unbelief under the beautiful name of
peace.” (Hil. Ad Const., 2, 6, 2).
Blessed John Henry Newman commented on these unusual
sad facts with the following wise and equilibrated affirmation: “While it is
historically true, it is in no sense doctrinally false, that a Pope, as a
private doctor, and much more Bishops, when not teaching formally, may err, as
we find they did err in the fourth century. Pope Liberius might sign a Eusebian
formula at Sirmium, and the mass of Bishops at Ariminum or elsewhere, and yet
they might, in spite of this error, be infallible in their ex cathedra decisions” (The Arians of the Fourth Century,
London, 1876, p. 465).
The Four Cardinals with their prophetic voice
demanding doctrinal and pastoral clarity have a great merit before their own
conscience, before history, and before the innumerable simple faithful
Catholics of our days, who are driven to the ecclesiastical periphery, because
of their fidelity to Christ’s teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.
But above all, the Four Cardinals have a great merit in the eyes of Christ.
Because of their courageous voice, their names will shine brightly at the Last
Judgment. For they obeyed the voice of their conscience remembering the words
of Saint Paul: “We cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the
truth” (2 Cor 13: 8). Surely, at the Last Judgment the above-mentioned mostly
clerical critics of the Four Cardinals will not have an easy answer for their
violent attack on such a just, worthy, and meritorious act of these Four Members
of the Sacred College of Cardinals.
The following words inspired by the Holy Spirit retain
their prophetic value especially in view of the spreading doctrinal and
practical confusion regarding the Sacrament of Marriage in our days: “For the
time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having
itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own
passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth
and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure
suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2
Tim. 4: 3-5).
May all, who in our days still take seriously their
baptismal vows and their priestly and episcopal promises, receive the strength
and the grace of God so that they may reiterate together with Saint Hilary the
words: “May I always be in exile, if only the truth begins to be preached
again!” (De Syn., 78). This strength
and grace we wish wholeheartedly to our Four Cardinals and as well as to those
who criticize them.
+ Athanasius Schneider,
Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana
