In 1998 the late Dr. Ralph McInerny of the University of
Notre Dame published What Went Wrong With
Vatican II: The Catholic Crisis Explained.
This was an analysis of what, in his opinion, caused theologians and
others to misinterpret and misapply the Council so egregiously: dissension over
the encyclical Humanae Vitae.
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| Vatican II was grossly misinterpreted. |
With all due respect to Dr. McInerny, however, we do not
think the issue of birth control and disappointment over the Church’s refusal
to change fundamental teaching was the key event that triggered the oddities using
the so-called “Spirit of Vatican II” as justification.
In our opinion, what happened immediately following the
Council was a combination of two things.
One, the egregious and widespread misunderstanding of the social
doctrine of Leo XIII and Pius XI, especially the latter’s breakthrough in moral
philosophy as analyzed by Father William Ferree in The Act of Social Justice (1942).
Two, there was an opportunistic leveraging of the situation by
modernists who had been laying low (so to speak), waiting for just such an
opportunity.
Yes, the issue of birth control was important. It was, however, ultimately just another
symptom of the underlying problem: the shift from reason to faith as the basis
for understanding the natural law. The
theologians who managed to convince so many that fundamental Catholic teaching
or the natural law could be changed, however, were already operating within a
climate of dissent, and had been for more than a century before the Council
even started.
Like the Scopes “Monkey Trial” and Roe v. Wade, the issue of contraception was intended as a stalking
horse, a put-up job to start a domino effect weakening the Church’s moral and
spiritual authority. The theologians
claiming that a change was coming were fully aware that no change was possible.
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| Pius IX concerned about the decline of reason. |
This had been going on for some time. The First Vatican Council in fact, was (in
part) called to bring the Catholic Church back to a reason-based understanding
of the natural law and human society.
This was a concern Pius IX raised in his first encyclical, Qui Pluribus (“On Faith and Religion”)
in 1846, and countless times thereafter, both in his record-breaking
thirty-eight encyclicals and speeches and allocutions.
As we noted previously, the American attack from inside the
Catholic Church appears to have begun in earnest with the revolt of Father
Edward McGlynn and his championing of the agrarian socialism of Henry George in
the 1880s. In spite of the obvious
contradictions and departure from the Aristotelian-Thomism that is the stated
framework for understanding both Catholic theology and social teaching (and the
fact that Father McGlynn fully recanted), modernism became accepted as
unquestioned orthodoxy in Catholic social teaching.
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| Henry George, Agrarian Socialist. |
In the United States, this was largely through the efforts
of Monsignor John A. Ryan at the Catholic University of America, whose social,
political, and economic theories were strongly influenced by georgist socialism
and New Age thought. In this way, the
twin evils of theosophy and socialism became part and parcel of the “standard”
understanding of Catholic social teaching.
Interestingly, Jacob Coxey, whose proposals are often cited
as anticipating the New Deal for which Ryan expressed such enthusiasm, had
theosophical “leanings,” meaning his vague Protestantism was influenced by New
Age theories. “Coxey’s Army,” which
descended on Washington in 1894, demanded government job creation financed by
inflation, among other things.
In Europe, beginning in France, this was primarily due to modernists
using Leo XIII’s openness to working with the anti-Catholic civil authorities
to bring the Catholic Church in that country up to date to be able to address
pastoral issues and social problems more effectively. This was taken as permission to change
fundamental doctrines instead of adapting applications of unchanging and
unchangeable principles of natural law and revelation to meet changing
conditions.
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| Émile Durkheim |
Going overboard, modernists also integrated a number of Durkheim’s innovative
religious and philosophical concepts, e.g.,
that religion and
morality can be explained in purely social terms, and that God is essentially
irrelevant, citing Buddhism as a religion in which the concept of God is of
little importance. This made references
to the spiritual insights of Buddhism a key element of New Age-influenced modernist
Christianity — against which (in common with Chesterton) the Vatican has issued
a number of warnings.
Father
Heinrich Pesch, S.J., corrected the serious flaws in Durkheim’s theories. He did this by reorienting Durkheim’s
theories to conform to Aristotelian-Thomist principles, and removed the fascist
and socialist elements. Pesch also seems
to have studied and been influenced by the “real” Americanism noted in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae (1899), and
taken note (as Leo XIII and, especially, Pius XI also seem to have done) of
Alexis de Tocqueville’s analysis of Jacksonian America in Democracy in America (1835, 1840).
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| Fr. Heinrich Pesch, S.J. |
In
particular, Pesch’s analysis of the role of groups bears a striking resemblance
to de Tocqueville’s description of the role of associations (institutions) in
American life of the day — so important a feature of American life that (as far
as de Tocqueville was concerned), the central government hardly seemed to
govern at all. Pius XI’s act of
social justice (which Pesch failed to discern) that seems to be based in part
on this is an almost infinitely flexible way of applying the absolutely
inflexible principles of individual justice by reforming institutions to meet
human wants and needs.
The problem was, however, in common with Leo XIII, Pesch
identified the problems, and gave a solution . . . but left out a specific
means to bring about effective change: the act of social justice. Further, as an economist, Pesch took the
“past savings assumption” for granted.
That is, he assumed as a matter of course that the only way to finance
new capital formation is to cut consumption below production, and accumulate
the surplus in the form of money savings.
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| The State a "Mortall God" and source of all good. |
This locked solidarism into the same trap as distributism:
sound principles and goals, but no way of implementing the principles or achieving
the goals. That meant an implicit
reliance on the State as the source of all good. As one latter day solidarist declared, “The
State is the sole intercessor available to the poor.” (Dr. Rupert J. Ederer, “Solidaristic Economics,” Fidelity
magazine, July 1994, 9-15.)
Forgotten in this frenzy of State-worship was the fact that
the document many used to justify their position on an increased role for the
specialized (and dangerous) tool of government, Rerum Novarum, stated the opposite in no uncertain terms:
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| Leo XIII: "No need to bring in the State." |
“[M]an, fathoming by his faculty
of reason matters without number, linking the future with the present, and
being master of his own acts, guides his ways under the eternal law and the
power of God, whose providence governs all things. Wherefore, it is in his
power to exercise his choice not only as to matters that regard his present
welfare, but also about those which he deems may be for his advantage in time
yet to come. Hence, man not only should possess the fruits of the earth, but
also the very soil, inasmuch as from the produce of the earth he has to lay by
provision for the future. Man's needs do not die out, but forever recur;
although satisfied today, they demand fresh supplies for tomorrow. Nature
accordingly must have given to man a source that is stable and remaining always
with him, from which he might look to draw continual supplies. And this stable
condition of things he finds solely in the earth and its fruits. There is no
need to bring in the State. Man precedes the State, and possesses, prior to the
formation of any State, the right of providing for the substance of his
body.” (Rerum Novarum, § 7.)
Anyone with a modicum of “what common men would call common
sense” (Chesterton, The Dumb Ox, op. cit.,
145) would, “if it were suddenly propounded to his simplicity” (ibid.), instantly declare that the
Catholic Church demands not an increased
role for the social tool of the State, but a decreased role. A social
safety net provided by the State, yes, but the first recourse is genuine individual
charity, not fake “social justice”:
“[W]hen what necessity demands
has been supplied, and one's standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a
duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over. ‘Of that which
remaineth, give alms.’ It is a duty, not
of justice (save in extreme cases), but of Christian charity — a duty not
enforced by human law.” (Rerum Novarum, § 22.)
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