Thomas Pink, do popes have the authority to change the literature?
Yes, I think they do. And they've often exercised it in the past.
If you look at the reigns of Gelasius or Gregory the Great in the early...
Gelasius I or Gregory the Great in the early church, they made significant changes to the Roman Rite.
There's a more general, and the liturgy seems to have developed after the death of the apostles,
but you'll never know the details probably, under canonical authority.
I mean, aspects of the liturgy develop with at least the bishops and popes at least having
some sort of veto, and there's a general consideration why the pope...
have authority over the liturgy, and it's twofold. First, Leo XIII in Immortale Dei,
which is his encyclical about the constitution of church and state, teaches very clearly that,
as well as there being the two powers of church and state, the duo Protestantes,
The Church, in particular, has authority over everything to do with the worship of God,
which surely includes the liturgy.
And since the Pope is supreme legislator within the Potistas of the Church by Vatican I, Pastor
Aeternus, that would imply authority over the liturgy belonging to the Pope.
And secondly...
The bishops in general, and the popes as sort of supreme bishop in particular, have the
authority to legislate for belief, that's what magisterial teaching involves, it involves
the pope.
or the Pope and bishops more widely,
teaching something either definitively or non-definitively
and accompanying that teaching with a direction
on people that they are to believe it.
With the assent of faith in the case of definitive teaching
and with a submission of intellect and will.
with non-definitive teaching.
But if you can regulate belief and legally require people to believe something,
surely you can legislate for the liturgy which is a rule of faith.
So, the idea that some people have, particularly in the traditional side of the church,
that somehow the liturgy is beyond the legislative authority of the Pope and the bishops.
is very implausible.
I know it would be very nice for some people if that were the case,
but I see no reason to believe it.
What then is your argument against the political reform of 1969 and 1970?
Well, you can have legislative authority to make a law concerning a certain...
The problem isn't that you didn't have the authority to make the law in the first place,
And I think the best way to look at the liturgical reform of Paul VI is that in total,
And I think it was incompetent in a number of ways.
I mean, one of the functions of the liturgy is to foster piety.
virtues through worship and thereby go into worship that's going to be more pleasing to God.
and seem to have had bad effects in relation to piety.
which wasn't formally, I think, required by the new Rite of the Mass,
in large parts of the world, where the Roman Rite was being celebrated.
And the other very bad thing was the ending of the Silent Canon.
removal of almost all the silent prayers, not all of them, but some parts of the offertory
But an awful lot of the mass is now said aloud by the priest facing the people.
which until the 20th century was dominated
where the priest said much of the canon
East facing God and leaving people free to meditate on the life of Christ or
Christ and his passion and resurrection in a way corresponding to to what was
private prayer is something that great saints like Sir Francis de Sales were
of Lay Devotion published over centuries.
that was originally written by a German Jesuit called Wilhelm Nacoten, or Nacotenus,
Multiple copies sold and it's full of devotions for the mass.
I think that Thomas Merton records going into a parish in Brooklyn or Manhattan in the 1940s
piety of the laity at the Mass. Of course, once you have everything being said aloud
people used to do at Mass, done by people including St Francis, they'll just say the
private...
It's as active a form of participation as any. Indeed, I think in terms of the spiritual left
to what the priest is nattering at you. So that's the disturbance of piety.
If you attend a Ukrainian or a Russian or Greek form of Eastern Liturgy,
you'll have very, very similar forms of lay devotion.
that was destroyed for the Roman right by the liturgical form, and is a very importantly destructive act.
And those are very, very important changes in the texts.
So, sort of...
rite of baptism have been replaced by what isn't really an exorcism at all.
could be answered in a number of ways. You could understand it as as a sort of
release that essentially was brought about by the coming of Christ.
the devil to depart now.
And that is very importantly communicating the truth that the world of the unbaptized,
is under practically, not legitimately, but practically under the dominion of Satan,
And that really, really changed the world.
He also teaches by implication that the Church can't live in peace, in dialogic harmony,
Because if it's under the dominion of Satan, you're going to be in a spiritual conflict with it.
I mean, they're not.
convert them, but it means that the spiritual world they inhabit is not a
only place of course where exorcisms are emitted. When natural elements were
they were exorcised and those exorcisms completely disappeared from the liturgy
that left them very uncomfortable with the doctrinal message of all these exorcisms
And her members can live in dialogic harmony with the unconverted world.
And there are lots of other changes, I mean, you know, the prayer for Jewish conversion
And Lumen Gentium section 9 makes it very clear that the Church is the new Israel for Jew and Gentile alike
At a doctrinal level, Vatican II is very clear that the Church has a mission to convert both the Jewish people and the Gentiles.
But if you make anything to do with Jewish conversion go all vague, as the new Liturgy does, unlike the old Liturgy, say, for Good Friday...
or imply that somehow Jew and Gentile aren't called alight to conversion in the same way.
One could go on with lots of other cases of important changes.
at the mass, particularly those for Lent, which
I mean that they embody the same sort of theology of fallen redemption as is familiar to us
Augustine's works. So, you know, you take a very simple
Baptized through concupiscence.
and the need for grace to strengthen us.
So I'm not suggesting the New Liturgy is overtly heretical.
What it does is it omits lots of stuff that used to be very clearly stated.
can imply denial of what's omitted.
second half of the 20th century and continues now where the secular world was becoming ever more
the traditional theology of human fall and redemption.
Now I think it's produced immense problems.
It's meant that modern Catholics tend to think that somehow
the mass, the liturgical form, was intended to change the teaching of the Church.
talking about the new liturgies involving a new theology...
And that produces very serious doctrinal problems,
which foster an abandonment of an awful lot of traditional Catholicism,
but in the current situation at the level of ordinary Catholic life.
How was the situation between Vatican I and Vatican II?
when he formally teaches, can teach infallibly, and those also include conditions under which
which is fairly clearly stated in Numen Gentium. There's a whole...
Well, infallibility is a level of formal teaching, which is taught by Vatican I and Vatican II
Vatican I infallible teaching at the level of the magisterium of that council, and at a very
solemn level, they're probably not infallibly by Vatican II in Lumagensium. So there's that,
and that seems to be still valid teaching, and it's magisterial teaching about magisterial authority.
And this is theological opinion that's very often has been historically proposed by bishops
So it's theological opinion that is kind of church teaching because it's conveyed by office
of magisterial teaching.
teaching claims being issued, truth claims being issued, by officials of the
clear
So there isn't a kind of legislative accompaniment requiring you to believe what they're saying.
So they're just giving you their opinion officially, but they're not binding you to believe it.
everyday parish homily, is an officeholder in the church, a priest, making truth claims to you,
Or you might have a bishop, or even a pope, just saying things.
or as members of the International Theological Commission.
That never comes with a requirement that you believe it.
And much of what bishops...
It doesn't usually come with the communication of a clear intention to bind you to believe it,
at the level of the obligations that lie in you as a baptised Catholic.
and the authority of the Church as a whole, the level of the bishops with the Pope,
A lot of it is actually quite old and well-established official theology.
his name, the well-known Jesuit cardinal at the time of the Counter-Reformation, very
stage.
in the controversies, he'll say what is also said by theologians writing for things like
that go far wider than Vatican I, and they all note that
popes and sometimes popes and bishops
will legislate, because they have the authority to do that, they have a legislative authority
the Pope and the bishops legislate together, they are also teaching when they legislate.
when the Pope and the bishops, alongside him, legislate for the whole Church,
Well, what are they teaching? Well, if it's just a legislative requirement in itself to
and it's not directly legislation to believe something, but it's legislation to use a form
of a liturgy or...
I'll come back to that, or whatever.
First of all, that what your legislative required to do, and we're looking at things other than belief,
is always going to be consistent with faith and morals.
And it's always going to further the good of the Church.
a kind of teaching about faith and morals, and there they want to say the Pope's infernible
In what he, they often use the phrase, teaches indirectly or teaches practically in relation
So he legislates universally, he's effectively, but indirectly teaching infallibly,
but what he requires you to do is going to be consistent with faith and morals.
And this infallibility of papal legislation is taught by Bellamin, it's taught by Suarez,
Theologic chiefs in the 1560s, they're not just Jesuits, even Dominicans who hate Jesuits
So you think legislation is a form of teaching, indirect form of teaching, and when it's done
faith and consistency with faith and morals is being implied.
That's someone like Edmond de Blanchy writing on Eglise, on the church, and our F.I. ability
His articles on these two topics come out in 1911 and then in 1923
taught by all good theologians since 16th century
especially after pastor Aeternus has taught that
of the legislative authority of the church as a whole.
It has very, very important implications because if it were true, it would tie the teaching
to the infallibility of everything implied by all past universal canonical legislation.
Well, one very important area is legislation concerning the conduct of Christians towards
Now, the Jewish people are not bound by canonical legislation, because they're not baptised,
But Christians can be bound by canonical legislation, and they can be bound to behave in certain
If you look at the old pre-1917 code,
Christians basically to ring fence themselves socially, from any social intercourse,
And that will include
It's not a race issue, but people who are baptised and come into the Church from Judaism, they're not a problem.
and particularly who are still practicing post-temporal rabbinical Judaism, are people
So it's defensive, highly defensive.
And one of this expression of defenses is that it's not only you cannot socialise them,
Jews are going to be kept away from you on days of very solemn Christian worship, like Good Friday.
particularly bound by all this legislation are those Christians who are rulers of Christian
obligations under the civil law of the Christian state and they can be bound through the, by way of
ruler who's banned canonically to impose certain civil laws on the Jews. The Jews
to wear identifying dress.
with, an unbaptized practitioner of Judaism.
could entice Christians away, and particularly there's a worry that they will entice away
into Christianity from Jewish backgrounds are not allowed to socialize or can be forbidden to socialize with their own
Lest they be enticed
so this very defensive legislation is
Now, the problem with all this morally is that it's really quite unfriendly towards
to be objects of the mission of the Church.
You could say this is anti-Semitic.
I think what's wrong with this legislation is that it involves hostility towards people
who are the proper objects of the mission of the Church and to whom our approach should
be one of public charity and fellowship.
even before they're baptized. Otherwise, how are you going to persuade them that Christianity is a
How are you going to actually persuade people to convert?
which that it is intensely damaging to the mission of the church.
by refusing charity to, I mean, you know, as Christians we should be loving to all
which we ought to be communicating to them through acts of corporeal and spiritual charity.
and this legislation would have been considered unfavorable?
are local and provincial ones like Toledo Fall and Visigothic Spain.
When they're given backing as part of the corpus aureus canonical
the cancer of the council of Trent as binding on the entire church
dress from memories from Lateran IV, that's the Ecumenical or General Council of the Church.
Jews to attend compulsory conversionary sermons.
through all this legislation forced Jews, Jewish people, to live a part and of
course the extreme point of this was the ghetto legislation for Rome of
someone like Paul IV Carafa where he forced his Jews to live in a ghetto.
When the mission of the church to convert the Jewish people as with the rest of humanity
in again and say you have under Gregor the 13th and until last night a practice of forcing Jews,
I don't know if the Jewish on the afternoon of the Jewish Sabbath initially starts off a rather frequent event
Now I think initially one of the churches used them in Rome is Santissima Trinita de Pevatagrini because it's not a parish church
usually I think it's Dominican priests, to preach on the afternoon of the Sabbath.
A sermon explaining the content of some part of the Old Testament in a Christian sense.
there are policemen and gendarm or whatever to make sure this happens also
book and all this just by come out by
the University of St Andrews, called Christian Spectacle and Rome's Jews, or something like
It's Princeton University Press.
deeply, deeply controversial morally. I mean, until Gregory of 13th Dias sang to Martyr
a big enough community of Jews to fill a synagogue, a local bishop should be organizing this stuff.
Until then, a number of Catholic theologians like Salomon, for example, think you can
This would be highly immoral because these Jews aren't baptized, so there's no spiritual
The authority of a temporal ruler like that of a pope is a temporal ruler of the papal
Can't really extend to forcing someone to listen to sermons about the supernatural end.
Once, of course, you get something like Santa Marta and the Bull of Santa Marta Oclasia coming out in 1584,
And he has a very feeble argument in day-fee day about how this is to preserve the social
if anything it tends to produce disorder, but he's just a bit desperate.
There's only a final paragraph that turns to Catholic Temple rulers about providing backup.
the conduct of private Christians towards the Jewish people,
or the authority of Catholic rulers, that's highly morally dubious.
I don't think it's consistent with faith and morals at all.
I think it's a violation of both natural law and the law of a new government.
So it's one massive lesson.
that can, I think, be a direct violation of the moral law, either at the level of natural law
or at the level of the revealed law of the new covenant.
And you can go on for centuries.
of an infallible, indirect teaching authority at the level of legislation, to put it quickly,
How, what would you say concerning people authorities have the last 70 years towards us?
It'd be interesting whether, I mean, when is legislation universal?
If you just legislate for the Roman right, is that universal?
saying that anyone in the Church who wants to celebrate the Roman Liturgy has got to
Rite community. So it looks kind of universal, at least in one armour.
If it's not universal, even in terms of the old official theology, it's even less protected.
papal legislation on very important issues that really affect the mission of a church
Our conduct towards the Jewish people concerns half the mission of the Church.
that's a colloquialism, that's a very serious...
concerning new liturgy from being complete disaster, from being inconsistent with faith
Whether or not it is, is then an open question to be debated.
Because we've got all this history to show that the question can perfectly well be raised.
What are we making with the authority of Pope Francis?
I don't think that what he's doing is obviously consistent with historical Catholic practice
or in some cases it's not obviously consistent with historical Catholic teaching, though
and ambiguous, it's sometimes hard to tell, but it's going to be very damaging in many
Well, when you have bad laws, and they're laws concerning things that fall within the
of thing, it may be a perfectly valid law.
So, you might well be under a legal obligation to, if you're a priest, to give blessings
obligation to obey the law.
to regulate.
my state and another level of tax on another ethnic community, that's with my authority
to do.
I can run the tax system, but it'd be very unjust.
Some ethnic groups would be very heavily taxed.
There would be monstrously unjust.
well look, we're under a legal obligation to pay these taxes,
Now, you could say the same thing in the Church.
Now, it might or might not be prudent
you might be severely punished, but then of course,
defective that actually you might still, you might, though there's a genuine legal obligation
Ah, you know, I'm not going to say that, for example, priests are under moral obligation
I think that, I don't think it's necessarily that sort of problem.
spiritually to celebrating the old right, and then the Pope came along and said now you celebrate
you were morally bound not to celebrate the old right and take what was coming to you.
Again, if you were asked to give certain people blessings,
under the law of the Church to do that, but you're morally bound to disobey.
these problematic laws concerning the Jews.
I can tell you, if you did that under Paul IV Carapha,
Indeed, you'd probably be in a dungeon somewhere very fast.
So that's more than perhaps Pope Francis will do to you.
Francis' authority, and it's open to question whether you're morally bound by what he requires
of counter-reformation Popes.
like Paul IV Carapha.
tended to be obeyed
they punished people.
the Inquisition, and the population of Rome are so relieved that a mob breaks open the
palace of the Inquisition and knocks down a statue.
Jews, perhaps he had posed in the Jews, stuck on it. They were not happy. So lots
being extremely unhappy with the authority of a given pope is nothing new.
just before our lifetimes, when there were some rather exceptional popes.
And I think it's fair to say.
incompetent legislator and that's before we get to the word salad of his formal
What about the argument that, for instance,
Well, it's not direct magisterial teaching of a formal case because it doesn't contain
But it's clearly a kind of teaching because it implies lots of things about how the liturgy ought to be celebrated,
And if you look at something like Desedario Desideravi, which is a non-definitive magisterial teaching, I think,
requirement to believe some things, and the two sort of documents are rather continuous
It's the same sort of implied teaching.
believe something in both cases.
groundless and indeed, in some cases, it would damage you if you believed it were true.
and you believe bad things about the good work being done by the church before the 1960s.
I think it'd probably be better to lose trust in the present management of it.
And here I would say that you have very bad law, you should not believe the implied teaching.
of belief that's just a bad law you should disobey, not believe it. After all, take any
It's generally agreed to be fallible, but it comes with a legislative requirement for
sin is understood as involving a requirement.
going to say about that if it's fallible then you can have the following state
fallible it could be false
So if you've got a case of something that's false, that's a...
Absolutely a clear case of bad legislation.
Well, it's easy.
as your legislature is required to believe,
You shouldn't get worried about this.
Well, you know, there can be, I suspect, Pope Francis in Amoris Litipsia and other things
And you as a loyal Catholic can say, bad law, paying no attention.