Fr. McBrien's Interpretation of Benedict XVI is Unhistorical
For the second time in four weeks (columns of February 2 and March 2), Notre Dame's Fr. Richard McBrien takes comfort in Pope Benedict XVI's hospitality toward the one-time poster boy of the New Theology, Fr. Hans Kung. In Milwaukee's Catholic Herald of March 2, Fr. McBrien draws from the Pope's dinner meeting with the Swiss theologian a picture of the new Pontiff as "noncombative, inclusive, and pastorally sensitive." Further, Fr. McBrien sees Fr. Richard Neuhaus disapproving of Benedict's being even too gentle and averse to unpleasantness.
But Fr. McBrien may be failing to detect the strength fidelity can give to even the gentlest of persons, a fact detectable in hosts of martyrs of every age. Both Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher of Rochester were gentle in demeanor and argument. In faith and loyalty to doctrine, however, they were confrontational enough to earn the crown of martyrdom, when the merest bow of conscience in the direction of King Henry's anti-papalism would have saved them.
Another King Henry earlier had badly misjudged the friend of his youth, Thomas a Becket. The king judged him as of sharing a heart and mind, having an unbreakable bond of friendship forged when they were companions in hunting and frolicking. But there was a strength to Thomas the king overlooked — fidelity to heavenly duty. It brought the archbishop of Canterbury's death, and humbled Henry II into public penance.
I mention this because Fr. McBrien recommends to this Pope Benedict the path he sees taken by the earlier one of the 20th century, Pope Benedict XV, a path Fr. McBrien writes was marked out by "a gentle peacemaker, not a confrontational divider."
This is to the liking of Fr. McBrien for he is still living in the illusory mirage that Pope Benedict XVI has called "the spirit of Vatican II," a mirage that led its viewers to create or imagine theological and doctrinal ""whimsicalities." There is no chance that this Pope is going to imprimatur such whimsicalities, regardless of his method of dealing with their promoters.
Fr. McBrien and undoubtedly Fr. Kung are both seeing the pope they would like to have, rather than one given to the Church by the Holy Spirit. And Fr. McBrien's perception of the earlier Pope Benedict is no less subjective than how he sees the present one.
The Pope of the difficult period 1914-1922 undoubtedly was a man with peace as his mission. War during his reign exceeded in scope and devastation all previous ones. Further, the Church itself was still being terrorized by what his Predecessor, St. Pius X, called "the synthesis of all heresies" — modernism. But as gentle and non-confrontational as Pope Benedict XV may have been, he was as unbending concerning modernism as were the many saints called to resist assaults on the Church by errors of their time.
When he was elected Pope on September 3, 1914, it was surely speculated how firm he would be against modernism, as is being asked today regarding Pope Benedict XVI's stance against modernism's resurgence in this 21st century.
Speculators then were as badly off the mark as today's critics will be if they think the present Benedict is going to compromise with the "whimsicalities" that gained considerable acceptance as the true teachings of Vatican II, when they were actually the creation of neo-modernists set on hijacking the council and holding it hostage to their subjective theological musings.
John F. Pollard tells in his work The Unknown Pope that when Archbishop della Chiesa, the future Pope Benedict, was given the See of Bologna, it was rumored, the appointment was prompted by Vatican suspicions he had modernist inclinations. Apparently Bologna was no ecclesiastical plum.
Comments Pollard:
"... He [Archbishop della Chiesa] was emphatically not a modernist, and it is extremely unlikely that any suspicion of modernism on his part ever crossed Pius X's mind."
This was confirmed by passages from the new archbishop's pastoral of 1910:
"When the faithful hear new doctrines, not in conformity with those approved by the Pope, they should not allow themselves to be deceived . . . the Pope has spoken. That is enough."
And there is this statement that Pollard correctly considers "enlightened and progressive," but nevertheless was fully uncompromising and as valid today as many from Cardinal Ratzinger about doctrinal waywardness before his papal election. The earlier Benedict wrote:
"It is far from my intention to condemn every new form of doctrine; indeed I applaud scientific / scholarly progress wherever it is found . . . but I believe that it is increasingly necessary to test every new theory against 'the sense of the Church,' in order to have a secure criterion of acceptability."
Thus, Pope Benedict XV wrote in his first encyclical, Ad Beatissimi, concerning Pope St. Pius X's condemnation of modernism — "That condemnation, venerable brethren, We now renew to the full" (emphasis added).
The earlier Pope Benedict may outwardly have practiced gentleness but there is no evidence that there was any weakness toward the virtue of fidelity treasured in his heart and soul.
On the ordination card of Fr. Giacomo della Chiesa was this prayer, undoubtedly composed by the new priest himself;
"O Peter, Prince of the Apostles, whom we venerate on the throne of Rome, and who illuminates the peoples with the light of truth, give me the strength to maintain your rights sacred and inviolable, and to repel with indomitable heart the unhappy assaults of the enemies of the papacy."
That prayer is as appropriate today as when in 1878 it undoubtedly referred to both revolutionists against papal authority but also those stirring doctrinal revolution against papal infallibility and in favor of substituting a secular magisterium in place of the ecclesiastical one, not dissimilar to what is being promoted today.
I am glad to have Fr. McBrien's recommendation of the present Benedict taking the path laid out by the earlier one, if the Notre Dame theologian means that such way will strengthen the Pope of our time in warnings against assaults on Catholic doctrine being mounted on Catholic campuses and classrooms.
Fr. McBrien himself took the side of those feeling it was proper to starve and dehydrate the late Terri Schiavo. Let Fr. McBrien tell us where on the path laid out by Pope Benedict will be found license for that sort of dismissal of life on the basis on convenience. Did the present Pope's willingness to be gentle with Fr. Kung amount to a recognition of the right to dispatch burdensome handicapped living humans, or allow homicide of any sort?
It would be good to know if Fr. McBrien's recommendation of the path laid out by Pope Benedict XV means there can be found on that path a precedent for Pope Benedict XVI to accept pro-death thinking flowing from some of the most prestigious "Catholic" law schools.
Charles Baron of the Jesuits' Boston College Law School joined an amicus brief defending Oregon's assisted-suicide law. The professor is on the board of the Death With Dignity National Center that successfully propagandized for the Oregon law that has transformed physicians into executioners.
Georgetown University Law Center's Maxwell Gregg Bloche argued in defense of the Oregon law that frees doctors to bring about death, saying that statute recognized "sound and ethical medical practice." Another Georgetown lawyer and ethician, Lawrence Costin, signed the pro-suicide Oregon case brief. Costin is on the executive board of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Let Fr. McBrien tell us if he agrees with all of this moral relativism that insults Catholic doctrine, and if he recommends that Pope Benedict XVI embrace it on the basis he should follow the "nonconfrontational" example the Notre Dame theologian claims to find on the path of the earlier Benedict.
Pope Benedict XV faced with laudable firmness the first outbreak of modernism that argued for an evolving Catholicism in which progress and changed understanding invalidated former beliefs, with contemporaneous ones taking their place. Dr. Eugene F. Diamond, former president of the Catholic Medical Association, gives a chilling picture of what the present Pope Benedict faces today.
The Cardinal Newman Society presents Dr. Diamond's comment on the views of Daniel Maguire, former Jesuit priest on the faculty of Marquette University, Milwaukee: "Maguire has accused Vatican officials of a 'fetishism of life signs,' using any sign of life as a justification for delaying death." (This because of the Vatican's support for Terri Schiavo's parents' battle to keep Terri fed and hydrated.)
Prolonging life isn't the only thing Maguire disbelieves in. He is cited four times in A Brief, Legal Catholic Defense of Abortion for his opinion that abortion can be morally justified. A feature in the April 24, 2005 Milwaukee Journal concerned Maguire's distaste not only for John Paul II but likewise the newly elected Benedict XVI:
"Maguire said he doesn't believe Jesus dies for our sins and that it [that belief] makes God look like a sadistic monster. Jesus died for standing up to the unjust and exploitative Roman Empire, he said."
Jim Stingl, author of the jejune feature article, comments, "You get the idea how far apart his theology is from the new guy [Benedict XVI]." We might add, and how far apart it is from the Catholic Church's doctrine, which is proved even by writer Stingl's appreciative portrait of the moral theologian from Marquette: "He's made news by his pro-choice views on abortion and assisted suicide, support for same-sex marriage and ordination of women, encouragement of free thinking, and disdain for the religious right."
If Fr. McBrien is correct that Pope Benedict XVI is showing signs of escaping any far-right reputation, does that mean he is becoming like Maguire or Fr. Kung? Don't count on it, no matter how gentle and inclusive he may appear.
Seeing history as one would like it to be, rather than as it is, will cause you to drop out of history and into insignificance, which the neo-modernists are doing every time they make the mistake of making public their views.
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