No one who claims to be "Catholic" can "get along well" without UNITY. Schism (division) is a sin against charity because it rends the unity of the Body. So, the whole premise of his comment explodes as he is literally claiming their can be unity in their diversity as long as one has "the Faith". But disputes about the Faith have/will always arise, so who settles the disputes?
So, there's a failure to distinguish different types of unity and (conversely) disunity. So often various debates end up being people not "clashing" (which is the term they used when I debated at university), meaning that the two sides are disagreeing about two different things, because the definitions are not clear in the beginning, and where the necessary distinctions aren't being made. This is an extremely common problem ... and it has in fact led to disunity among Traditional Catholics AT THE WRONG LEVEL. I'll illustrate that when I distinguish the types of unit/disunity.
So the different types of Unit/Disunity we need to distinguish:
1) Unity/Disunity about the Catholic Faith
2) Unity/Disunity regarding matters of opinion (various positions, etc.)
3) Unity/Disunity of organization, i.e. practical/working unity/disunity.
Unfortunately, the problem among Trads where they can in fact succuмb to schismatic attitudes is when they elevate #2 and/or #3 to the level of #1 ... by failing to distinguish between these three.
So, I don't even think that the problem is with lack of charity here, but rather a failures to distinguish between these different types of disagreements and disunities, and, by conflating them, fallaciously miscategorizing a #2 or #3 as a #1. Not, that's not necessarily the problem HERE (in this case), though there are other ways in which we Trads can be un-charitable.
Examples:
1) Catholics and Protestants obviously disagree at the level of the Faith.
2) Thomists and Molinists disagree at the level of Difference of Opinion or Position. Both are Catholic, as per the decision of the Church, so there's unit at the level above, that of the Faith, but serious disagreement about their theological positions. If a Thomist were to consider a Molinist to be a non-Catholic heretic, he's be schismatic, because he'd be elevating this disagreement on a theological position to a disagreement about the Faith. This is in fact where many Trad groups trip up. Now, with that said, a Thomist could ARGUE that Molinism is heresy (since the Church didn't resolve that), objectively speaking, but must consider Molinists to be fellow Catholics. In fact, those who denied papal infallibility before Vatican I (and there were quite a few), were objectively heretical in doing so, but since the Church hadn't defined the dogma with sufficient clarity yet, they were still to be considered Catholic, and being of one faiith with those who did adhere to papal infallibility.
3) Practical/Working Unity / Disunity (of organization). For various practical reasons, various groups of Catholics may not be able to work together. So, for instance, there may be male or female religious orders, contemplative vs. active clergy, Roman Rite vs. Eastern Rite Catholics, etc. Even though there's no disagreement on Faith or even on specific theological positions that divide them, they just don't work properly together on a practical level. Different religious orders would acknowledge the others as Catholic, even if they didn't care for their spirituality or "charism" (as the Conciliars call it).
Now, in the current Crisis situation, sometimes #2 can result directly in #3. So, for instance, one Trad group might consider another group's Holy Orders to be doubtful, or at least those of some of the "priests" who work with them. So there's a difference of theological position here that leads on a practical level to the group's being unable to work with one another. I, considering NO Orders to be invalid, would show up at an SSPX chapel and have to distribute Communion from a ciborium that MAY have been "consecrated" by an NO priest who had not been conditionally ordained. Now, I don't consider those who believe NO Orders are certainly valid to be non-Catholics, but any kind of working relationshp cannot work. Or, one group might regularly pray for the "Pope" Francis (or whoever) publicly, in their Liturgies, etc. ... whereas another group considers him an Anti-Pope. So, even when the two groups might consider the other group to still be Catholic, and don't have problems with the laity going to Masses on the other side, it just wouldn't work out on a practical level at all ... as it would lead to chaos and all kinds of pragmatic tug-o-war scenarios, e.g. one priest puts up a picture of Bergoglio in the vestibule, but then next week's priest takes it down (just as a more amusing illustration of the kinds of problems, though more serious, that would ensue). So these would be cases where #2 could in fact lead to a #3 ... even though each of the divided groups considers the other to have unit of Faith (#1).
Despite the fact that sometimes two different levels above can co-exist, they're still logically distinct, as any one of them COULD happen without the other two being in play.
Now, where the danger of shism or of schismatic attitude arises, is where one group (or individual) elevates a #2 (usually combined with a #3) to the level of #1 ... illegitimately. Ah, those people in these other groups are heretics/schismatics ... TO THE POINT THAT I would refuse them the Sacraments if I were a priest and they came to my Mass. Again, we distinguish a scenario where you ARGUE and HOLD that a certain position is heretical, which is permissible, so long as you don't impose it on someone else's conscience, effectively considering them non-Catholics for disagreeing with you. And, finally, there are SOME things that HAVE already been defined by the Church with sufficient clarity where one might legitimately consider them non-Catholics for adhering to the position, such as if some Trads decided they didn't really believe in papal infallibility, or decided that Pope St. Pius X had been an Anti-Pope, etc. So this is not to say there can't be SOME things at the level of #1 that cause a true disunity of faith, but in point of fact, the major issue among Trad groups that causes serious danger of schism is when they elevate their own personal conclusions to the level of dogma and consider those who don't accept them to be non-Catholics.
And, the root cause of why some Trads illegitimately elevate #2 to #1 is because they put together some syllogism that does in fact have a Catholic dogma for one of its premises and are SO SURE that their logic is correct, that for them the only way to reject the Conclusion would be if you don't accept the dogmatic premises, thereby making you a heretic for denying the dogmatic premises. Now you may explicitly SAY you accept the dogmatic premise, but in reality, they'll argue, you don't but just pay lip service to it. So, the problem here is that just because ONE premise is dogmatic, there are invariably other premises that are not dogmatic. They may even be certainly, say, morally certain, but if they're not certain with the certainty of faith, i.e. dogmatically certain, the conclusion also cannot be dogmatically certain. In other words, you CAN deny the conclusion by in fact denying one of the NON-DOGMATIC premises. Or else, you may agree with all the premises, but believe there was an error in logic, or some failure to make a distinction, etc. There's a principle of logic that I call the "logical weakest link" principle, in Latin
peiorem partem sequitur conclusio, "the conclusion can't be stronger than any single premise". And very often, the failure to recognize it arises from those who do not try to explicitly compose their argument into a syllogism to have a look at it, where they have various "hidden" premises that they fail to recognize, and therefore think that the dogmatic premises is in fact the same as the conclusion. But, the bottom line is that, unless one practically verbatim denies a defined dogma by adding the word "not" into the definition, it's very difficult to be an explicit formal heretic. You might be very close, "proximate to heresy" or in grave error and, while those are not to be made light of, only heresy in the strict sense removes someone from membership in the Church, not "proximate to heresy", much less the lower notes. And, of course, given the confusion caused by the crisis, there may be some additional allowance for good faith in some regarding grave error, where something that might normally be considered grave error could be adhered to in a certain amount of good faith just due to the individual being so confused as to see no other alterantive.
So, I thnk that much of the schismatic tendency to elevate a position into a matter of faith, thereby considering those who don't agree with you to be non-Catholic heretics, could be avoided by ALWAYS attempting to explicitly lay our or express your position in the form of a syllogism, paying special attention to make every logical step explicit and to avoid various hidden/assumed premises in the argument, and then if one realizes that there are other premises at work other than the dogmatic one(s) to recognize that denying the conclusion doesn't necessarly constite heresy.
So let me take the example that led to Archbishop Lefebvre opening my eyes to about this problem ...
Here's the SV position:
MAJOR: Papacy is guided by the Holy Ghost to prevent the exercise of papal authority from gravely damaging the Church. [Dogma]
MINOR: Paul VI gravely damaged the Church.
CONCLUSION: Paul VI did not have legitimate papal authority.
So, here's the thing. Archbishop Lefebvre explicitly said (to the SVs) that with regard to the MAJOR above, "I agree with you". And, obviously, he also agreed with the MINOR, since that's why he was operating as he did.
So how did he avoid the conclusion. +Lefebvre did end up by saying the conclusion is POSSIBLE. Now, as an aside, not something +Lefebvre called out, but the MINOR above is not actually dogmatic. At no time has the Church dogmatically defined that Paul VI gravely damaged the Church, and so at the end of the day, even if we can be morally certain that the MINOR is true, we cannot be DOGMATICALLY certain, and therefore we cannot be DOGMATICALLY certain that Paul VI was not a legitimate pope. If we're morally certain of the MINOR, however, we can be morally certain of the CONCLUSION.
But, back to +Lefebvre, he did accept both the premises. Well, he started questioning. Is it possible that Montini was drugged? Or that he was insane? Or that he was being blackmailed? He dismissed these as nonsense ... and yet ... and yet in his mind he probably couldn't rule them out definitively enough to claim that the CONCLUSION was even morally certain. I mean, there is some very credible evidence that Montini was in fact a practicing sodomite. Could he have been blackmailed? If he were blackmailed, would anything he did under duress, any docuмents he signed, by legitimate or would they be null and void?
In the above syllogism then, we have to add another qualification:
MAJOR: Papacy is guided by the Holy Ghost to prevent the FREE exerise of papal authority from gravely damaging the Church. [Dogma]
MINOR: Paul VI gravely damaged the Church [... but could it have been under duress and therefore his exercise of authority not free?]
CONCLUSION: Paul VI did not have legitimate papal authority.
So, that extra qualification in the major, adding FREE, and then the question-mark in the MINOR about whether Montini/Paul VI met that additional qualification ... I think it introduces JUST ENOUGH doubt in Archbishop Lefebvre's mind to refrain from definitively embracing the conclusion, injecting just enough of a "reasonable doubt" ... like in a trial by jury, where you may think that the guy is almost certainly guilty, but because there's "a chance", a certain degree of what's called "reasonable doubt", you'd vote to find the defendant not guilty (even if you're 99% sure in your own gut that he did it). That's what +Lefebvre was doing here. I'll find the audio of his speech.
Now, the bottom line is to illustate that one MAY in fact reject the conclusion of the above syllogism WITHOUT rejecting the dogmatic MAJOR, by adding an additional qualification to the syllogism, realizing that there's a non-dogmatic MINOR there, and then having just enough "reasonable doubt" about the MINOR to then have the same doubts about the conclusion. Now, you might say those doubts are NOT reasonable. Well, maybe. But that's, like, your opinion, man. I used to think absurd the theory that Montini was kidnapped, put in a dungeon, and replaced with a big-eared, crooked-nosed double ... but, with the Sister Lucia evidence and then knowing that the Communists (huge agents behind the infiltration of the Church) like to use doubles (it's one of their favorite tactics), I'm less certain now that such would be impossible. And I'm also far less certain that Montini could not have been blackmailed on account of practicing sodomy. I think that it's perfectly licit to entertain some reasonable doubt about what's going on here, as Archbishop Lefebvre did, and that one CAN reject the conclusion that Paul VI (in this example) was not the legitimate Pope WITHOUT thereby necessarily rejecting the dogmatic premise. Unfortunately, however, Archbishop Lefebvre did not sufficiently emphasize this nuance in his thinking (that he explicitly laid out in that speech I'll find again), and therefore did, unfortunately, leave behind a legacy of many R&R followers who do in fact reject the dogmatic premises and have become only very-thinly-veiled Old Catholics as a result. So I spend the time to lay all this out to help various SVs avoid the tempation of becoming dogmatic SVs by confusing the dogmatic premise with the conclusion being dogmatic, and also to help wake up the R&R that they do NOT need to reject the dogmatic premise (and effectively embrace Old Catholicism) in order to avoid the conclusion (since many R&R start by rejecting the conclusion out of hand, thereby begging the question), but they apply their
modo tollentis (backwards rejection) logic to the dogmatic premises, whereas there's plenty of room to apply the questions and doubts to the MINOR premises which are not dogmatic. In other words, you don't have to throw the certain Catholic dogma that the Church is guided by the Holy Ghost under the bus to avoid that dreaded "sedevacantist" position. Also, Father Chazal has proposed a position that also does not labor under the grave difficulty of denying the MAJOR, and so please look at that also. But I appeal to you to wake up, realize what you're doing, and to stop denying the dogma that the Papacy is guided by the Holy Ghost, to be preserved free from any "blemish of error" (at taught by Vatican I), the inerrancy of the Magisterium, etc. YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO THAT in order to avoid the SV conclusion, and if both sides realize this, there could be unity of faith at least among the various Traditional Catholic groups.
Oh, with regard to opinion, the mistake Bishop Sanborn made in his article condeming what he called "Opinionism" is the failure to distinguish the different kinds of certainty. Yes, certainty is opposed to opinion as he says, but there are different types of certainty:
1) dogmatic certainty
2) absolute certainty
3) moral certainty
Unless your "opinion" contradicts a #1 type of certainty (dogmatic), you can deny a moral certainty till the cows come home, and you may be very wrong, but you're still Catholic. (I leave out absolute certainty here since it's not technically relevant to the discussion here.)
Topic: Eleison Comments - Charity 2025 (no. 913) (Read 36911 times)