Post by Pacelli on Nov 14, 2018 18:53:51 GMT -5
The following by John Daly was published on the Bellarmine Forums, May 26, 2006.
Hello and welcome Matt! You have asked several interesting questions and I should like to tackle just one of them, when you say “Cardinal Billot and other theologians speak about the fact that universal adherence to a certain man as pope results in an infallible fact that the the man is indeed, pope. Firstly, does such a teaching contradict Cum ex Apostolatus or are we dealing with apples and oranges? Secondly and more importantly, how can one deny that the world has acknowledged the papacy in Benedict XVI and his four predecessors?”
It happens that I had a correspondence a short time ago with an enquirer on the same topic and I am pasting in below the exchange to speak for itself. I am “JD” and my enquirer is “MM”.
JD Yes, if the universal Church with moral unanimity peacefully accept a man as legitimate pope, he must indeed be a legitimate pope. The reason for this is that the pope is the proximate rule of faith. The faithful accept the pope's doctrinal teaching and if the whole Church accepted a false rule of faith, Christ would be exposing His Church to error, which cannot happen.
Thus far I think we are agreed. But notice that, so far are we from peaceful unanimity that in fact practically no-one accepted/accepts Paul VI, John-Paul II or Benedict XVI as his rule of faith! Millions of "fans" went to JP2 rallies where they shrieked ecstatically at his utterances, but as for actually accepting that contraception is necessarily a deadly sin, for instance, hardly anyone did! If JP2 was your rule of faith you had to be against contraception, for religious liberty, against women priests (as theologically impossible) but for the doctrine that Christ is irrevocably united with all men. How many people considered him as pope in that sense? Not the Modernists - they thought him conservative. Not the traditionalists. Anyone?
On the other hand the whole principle on which Billot, St Alphonsus and John of St Thomas base this doctrine is in flat contradiction with the SSPX position. The theologians say that the unanimous recognition of a man as pope proves that he is pope because otherwise the Church would have accepted a false living rule of faith and would be led into error against faith and morals, which is impossible. But the SSPX position actually denies the premise! They cheerfully hold that the pope is not necessarily the proximate rule of faith and that the Church can be and has been led into error by the Vicars of Christ. They are very badly placed to invoke this doctrine against sedevacantists!
[To this I received the following reply with my answers interspersed]
MM In your e-mail you mentioned that JP2's followers who "accepted" him as pope rejected the notion that contraception is a deadly sin. But if that's the case, wouldn't those "Catholics" be outside the Church, therefore making their acceptance of him or not a moot point?
JD Denial of the Church's teaching condemning contraception is not usually considered enough to exclude one from membership of the Church. But supposing it were, you are effectively excluding over 90% of those who constitute the quasi-unanimous consensus recognising the V2 popes. Add those who deny other doctrines - Hell, impossibility of women priests, etc and you reach 95%. Where has your consensus gone? And what kind of a Church is it 95% of whose apparently recognised followers are not even members of her? Certainly not one whose remaining <5% can constitute the peaceful unanimous consensus referred to by John of St Thomas, Billot, St Alphonsus etc. It must after all be extremely uncomfortable giving the "sign of peace" to non-Catholics and elbowing them at the communion-rail (I mean in the cookie-queue) while knowing that they are recognised as Catholics by the Vicar of Christ. Hesitant recognition of a man as a valid though disastrous leader, not to be trusted, during a very grave and manifest crisis of which he is denying the existence...that is not what the theologians mean by peaceful and unanimous recognition.
MM Could it not be said then that those "neo-Catholics" who accept the entire moral teaching of the Church and accept V2 in good faith be the ones who matter as far as universally recognizing a man as pope?
JD To my mind that involves so much adjustment of the Billot doctrine that the result is no more than a private opinion. The neo-Church recognises all the neo-Catholics as her members irrespective of their adhesion to Catholic doctrine. If the consensus is composed by the tiny percentage for whom the teaching of the Catholic Church is the rule of faith and the V2 popes are their proximate rule of faith, it has become invisible and unverifiable.
MM However, does it even matter if in actuality they accept JP2's teachings as long as they recognize in him the papacy (this is only as far as Billot's position is concerned; I'm under the impression that he teaches that what's important is that the man is recognized as pope by Church Universal, and that whether or not they assent to his teachings is irrelevant to this one very particular issue)?
JD No. This is wrong. I tried to make this point clear last time but I probably didn't do a very good job of expressing it. May I ask you to read very attentively the following rather complicated sentence: the reason and the proof of the theologians' teaching that peaceful and unanimous recognition of a man as pope demonstrates him to be truly pope is that the pope is 1. the living rule of faith of the Church's members and 2. infallible, and if the Church adhered unanimously to a non-pope, i.e. a non-infallible rule of faith, she would be liable to be led into error in faith which is impossible. Got that?
Right. Well as you can see, calling a man pope while not recognising him as one's rule of faith simply doesn't have this effect. The teaching of cardinal Billot, John of St Thomas and others on this subject is not a direct teaching of the Church. It is a theological inference made for excellent reasons by theologians and which it would be foolish and rash to disagree with. But this reasoning is based entirely on the fact that Catholics necessarily adhere to the doctrinal teaching of the man they consider to be pope. If the Catholic faith did not in fact require this adherence, the argument would not work and the theologians would never have made the deduction that unanimous recognition is proof of papal legitimacy. It would be a non sequitur.
It would also be a non sequitur if it were possible for the whole Church to err in the faith as a consequence of adhering to the teaching of a true pope. Unanimous adherence to a fallible usurper would not, in that case, be incompatible in itself or in any of its consequences with Catholic doctrine. Claro?
And it would also be a non sequitur for a third reason if the adherence Catholics owe and give to papal teaching were something rare and limited to extraordinary acts like the proclamation of a dogma such as the Assumption. For in that case most popes would not in fact lead the Church to believe anything and if they taught grave and habitual error by their ordinary Magisterium this would not necessarily mean that the Church would follow them.
If you have understood the foregoing you will see that the adherence to the V2 popes of men who did not acknowledge in them their proximate rule of faith has no relevance at all to the principle of recognising papal legitimacy by unanimous peaceful adherence. You will also observe that Billot and the other theologians who use this argument would simply not recognise as the Catholic Church an institution whose members did not have this habitual disposition to recognise papal teaching as their rule of belief.
You will also see that it is the position of non-sedevacantist traditionalists that conflicts with the Billot doctrine, for they consider it possible and even necessary in our days to adhere to a man as pope while not adhering to his doctrinal teaching as their proximate rule of faith - the very point of dogmatic certainty which Billot and the others take as the logical point of departure of their reasoning. For the SSPX to use the Billot argument would involve self-contradiction. They deny the premise (which belongs directly to Catholic doctrine) and cannot therefore reproach sedevacantists with not accepting the conclusion (which doesn't belong directly to Catholic doctrine but which we do accept anyhow).
Ave Maria!
John DALY
It happens that I had a correspondence a short time ago with an enquirer on the same topic and I am pasting in below the exchange to speak for itself. I am “JD” and my enquirer is “MM”.
JD Yes, if the universal Church with moral unanimity peacefully accept a man as legitimate pope, he must indeed be a legitimate pope. The reason for this is that the pope is the proximate rule of faith. The faithful accept the pope's doctrinal teaching and if the whole Church accepted a false rule of faith, Christ would be exposing His Church to error, which cannot happen.
Thus far I think we are agreed. But notice that, so far are we from peaceful unanimity that in fact practically no-one accepted/accepts Paul VI, John-Paul II or Benedict XVI as his rule of faith! Millions of "fans" went to JP2 rallies where they shrieked ecstatically at his utterances, but as for actually accepting that contraception is necessarily a deadly sin, for instance, hardly anyone did! If JP2 was your rule of faith you had to be against contraception, for religious liberty, against women priests (as theologically impossible) but for the doctrine that Christ is irrevocably united with all men. How many people considered him as pope in that sense? Not the Modernists - they thought him conservative. Not the traditionalists. Anyone?
On the other hand the whole principle on which Billot, St Alphonsus and John of St Thomas base this doctrine is in flat contradiction with the SSPX position. The theologians say that the unanimous recognition of a man as pope proves that he is pope because otherwise the Church would have accepted a false living rule of faith and would be led into error against faith and morals, which is impossible. But the SSPX position actually denies the premise! They cheerfully hold that the pope is not necessarily the proximate rule of faith and that the Church can be and has been led into error by the Vicars of Christ. They are very badly placed to invoke this doctrine against sedevacantists!
[To this I received the following reply with my answers interspersed]
MM In your e-mail you mentioned that JP2's followers who "accepted" him as pope rejected the notion that contraception is a deadly sin. But if that's the case, wouldn't those "Catholics" be outside the Church, therefore making their acceptance of him or not a moot point?
JD Denial of the Church's teaching condemning contraception is not usually considered enough to exclude one from membership of the Church. But supposing it were, you are effectively excluding over 90% of those who constitute the quasi-unanimous consensus recognising the V2 popes. Add those who deny other doctrines - Hell, impossibility of women priests, etc and you reach 95%. Where has your consensus gone? And what kind of a Church is it 95% of whose apparently recognised followers are not even members of her? Certainly not one whose remaining <5% can constitute the peaceful unanimous consensus referred to by John of St Thomas, Billot, St Alphonsus etc. It must after all be extremely uncomfortable giving the "sign of peace" to non-Catholics and elbowing them at the communion-rail (I mean in the cookie-queue) while knowing that they are recognised as Catholics by the Vicar of Christ. Hesitant recognition of a man as a valid though disastrous leader, not to be trusted, during a very grave and manifest crisis of which he is denying the existence...that is not what the theologians mean by peaceful and unanimous recognition.
MM Could it not be said then that those "neo-Catholics" who accept the entire moral teaching of the Church and accept V2 in good faith be the ones who matter as far as universally recognizing a man as pope?
JD To my mind that involves so much adjustment of the Billot doctrine that the result is no more than a private opinion. The neo-Church recognises all the neo-Catholics as her members irrespective of their adhesion to Catholic doctrine. If the consensus is composed by the tiny percentage for whom the teaching of the Catholic Church is the rule of faith and the V2 popes are their proximate rule of faith, it has become invisible and unverifiable.
MM However, does it even matter if in actuality they accept JP2's teachings as long as they recognize in him the papacy (this is only as far as Billot's position is concerned; I'm under the impression that he teaches that what's important is that the man is recognized as pope by Church Universal, and that whether or not they assent to his teachings is irrelevant to this one very particular issue)?
JD No. This is wrong. I tried to make this point clear last time but I probably didn't do a very good job of expressing it. May I ask you to read very attentively the following rather complicated sentence: the reason and the proof of the theologians' teaching that peaceful and unanimous recognition of a man as pope demonstrates him to be truly pope is that the pope is 1. the living rule of faith of the Church's members and 2. infallible, and if the Church adhered unanimously to a non-pope, i.e. a non-infallible rule of faith, she would be liable to be led into error in faith which is impossible. Got that?
Right. Well as you can see, calling a man pope while not recognising him as one's rule of faith simply doesn't have this effect. The teaching of cardinal Billot, John of St Thomas and others on this subject is not a direct teaching of the Church. It is a theological inference made for excellent reasons by theologians and which it would be foolish and rash to disagree with. But this reasoning is based entirely on the fact that Catholics necessarily adhere to the doctrinal teaching of the man they consider to be pope. If the Catholic faith did not in fact require this adherence, the argument would not work and the theologians would never have made the deduction that unanimous recognition is proof of papal legitimacy. It would be a non sequitur.
It would also be a non sequitur if it were possible for the whole Church to err in the faith as a consequence of adhering to the teaching of a true pope. Unanimous adherence to a fallible usurper would not, in that case, be incompatible in itself or in any of its consequences with Catholic doctrine. Claro?
And it would also be a non sequitur for a third reason if the adherence Catholics owe and give to papal teaching were something rare and limited to extraordinary acts like the proclamation of a dogma such as the Assumption. For in that case most popes would not in fact lead the Church to believe anything and if they taught grave and habitual error by their ordinary Magisterium this would not necessarily mean that the Church would follow them.
If you have understood the foregoing you will see that the adherence to the V2 popes of men who did not acknowledge in them their proximate rule of faith has no relevance at all to the principle of recognising papal legitimacy by unanimous peaceful adherence. You will also observe that Billot and the other theologians who use this argument would simply not recognise as the Catholic Church an institution whose members did not have this habitual disposition to recognise papal teaching as their rule of belief.
You will also see that it is the position of non-sedevacantist traditionalists that conflicts with the Billot doctrine, for they consider it possible and even necessary in our days to adhere to a man as pope while not adhering to his doctrinal teaching as their proximate rule of faith - the very point of dogmatic certainty which Billot and the others take as the logical point of departure of their reasoning. For the SSPX to use the Billot argument would involve self-contradiction. They deny the premise (which belongs directly to Catholic doctrine) and cannot therefore reproach sedevacantists with not accepting the conclusion (which doesn't belong directly to Catholic doctrine but which we do accept anyhow).
Ave Maria!
John DALY