Unity, Magnanimity and Lunacy
by Fr. Roger Landry - February 6, 2009
In his great priestly prayer on the night he was betrayed, Jesus implored his Father that all the disciples would be one as the persons of the Blessed Trinity are one. He said that their unity would be the great witness to the world of the impact of his mission and of the Father's love (see Jn 17).
The day after he became Christ's vicar in 2005, Pope Benedict, in his Latin homily before the college of cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, said that his foremost responsibility was to do everything in his power to seek to restore that unity in the Church for which Christ prayed.
"Catholics cannot but feel encouraged to strive for the full unity for which Christ expressed so ardent a hope in the Upper Room," the Pope said. "The Successor of Peter knows that he must make himself especially responsible for his Divine Master's supreme aspiration. … With full awareness, … Peter's current Successor takes on as his primary task the duty to work tirelessly to rebuild the full and visible unity of all Christ's followers. This is his ambition, his impelling duty. He is aware that good intentions do not suffice for this. Concrete gestures that enter hearts and stir consciences are essential, inspiring in everyone that inner conversion that is the prerequisite for all ecumenical progress."
He said he was conscious of the fact that he personally and each of us will be judged on how we carry out the Savior's supreme aspiration. All of us, he said, "must come before him, the supreme Judge of every living person, and render an account to him of all we have done or have failed to do to further the great good of the full and visible unity of all his disciples. The current Successor of Peter is allowing himself to be called in the first person by this requirement and is prepared to do everything in his power to promote the fundamental cause of ecumenism."
There are many ways that the Holy Father has sought to do this. He has reinforced communal bonds with the Greek and Russian Orthodox. He has invited ecumenical collaborators not merely to observe but to participate in the Synod for Bishops. He has called a Year of St. Paul and said that the "one particular aspect to which special attention must be paid" during the year is the "ecumenical dimension," since St Paul "left no stones unturned for unity and harmony among all Christians." During his Pauline Year catecheses, he has focused on questions of enormous relevance the sons and daughters of the Protestant Reformation in ways that have caused many of our Protestant ecumenical interlocutors to conclude that the central theological dispute of the Reformation, how one is justified, has now been adequately and eloquently resolved. And he has put in overtime to try to fix the one schism that has happened during his lifetime, that of the Society of St. Pius X.
When Pope Benedict loosened restrictions in 2007 on the celebration of Mass according to the 1962 Latin Missal of Blessed Pope John XXIII, he wrote in an explanatory letter that his principal motivation was to come to "an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church." He was speaking specifically about reconciling the members of the Society of St. Pius X, who went into schism in 1988 due to illicit episcopal ordinations of four Society priests by a dying Archbishop Marcel Lefevbre.
"Looking back over the past, to the divisions which in the course of the centuries have rent the Body of Christ," the Pope wrote, "one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church's leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity. One has the impression that omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden. This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to make possible for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew."
Pope Benedict has been, indeed, making every effort. On January 21, he gave permission to the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops to lift the automatic excommunication that the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X incurred by their illicit ordination. This is merely the first step in a staircase leading toward unity — the bishops are still suspended a divinis and the Society still has various conditions to fulfill to be rehabilitated — but it is a big step, one much desired by the leaders of the Society.
In his papal audience last Wednesday, Pope Benedict said that his motivation for lifting the excommunication was fatherly mercy in a hopeful anticipation of a reunited family: "Precisely in fulfilling this service to unity, which determines in a specific way my ministry as the Successor of Peter, I decided some days ago to concede the remission of the excommunication incurred by four bishops ordained without pontifical mandate in 1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre. I have carried out this act of paternal mercy because repeatedly these prelates have manifested their sharp suffering in the situation in which they found themselves. I trust that following from this gesture of mine will be the prompt effort on their part to complete final necessary steps to arrive to full communion with the Church, thus giving testimony of true fidelity and true recognition of the magisterium and the authority of the Pope and the Second Vatican Council."
If the Pope behaved like a politician rather than a father, he probably would not have lifted the excommunications. It was a magnanimous, courageous move fraught with risks. First, many within the Church seem prone to view the possible return of the 1.5 million members of Society with as much enthusiasm as the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son for the homecoming of his wayward sibling. Benedict, however, has the perspective of the father in the parable, which is the only truly Christian frame of reference. There will obviously be issues of reintegration, since many members of the Society have entrenched misunderstandings of what the Second Vatican Council actually teaches and why, not to mention their vehement criticisms of the post-conciliar liturgical, doctrinal and moral free-for-all that the Council never sought nor sanctioned. Benedict probably anticipated that for that reason some would falsely conclude that this move toward reconciliation was a move away from the Second Vatican Council, which it clearly is not. Benedict seems hopeful, however, in the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome these obstacles.
Second, while most of members of the Society are pious, faithful and unknown, the Society does have some notable crackpots — including two of its four bishops — and there was the risk that the lifting of the excommunications would be erroneously perceived by those sympathetic to the Church, or maliciously portrayed by those hostile to the Church, as an endorsement of long list of inanities those crackpots have uttered. The Vatican evidently underestimated this danger, which is why it was caught flatfooted when St. Pius X Bishop Richard Williamson's denials of the extent of the Holocaust started to be broadcast throughout the media. Williamson's revisionist lunacy has brought to the surface the issue of the caliber of leadership among those in the Society, as well as the fact that in some segments of the Society anti-Semitism has not been treated as the sin that it is. One good that has come out of this painful chapter will be that these realities will now have to be on the table as continued discussions toward rehabilitation continue.
A final point. When President Obama proposed lifting the "political excommunication" of Iran to enter into negotiations about its nuclear intentions, no one accused him and the United States of sharing Iran President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad's Williamsonian Holocaust denials or obvious antipathy toward the Jews. Such an accusation would have been ludicrous. Yet when similarly absurd accusations were being hurled that the Pope and the Church deny the Holocaust and hate Jews, many in the media and among certain groups took them seriously. This should lead to a self-examination on the part of those making such accusations.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
