The Long-Desired Lawgiver

The Church this time of year is filled with holy and earnest expectation. We hear, year after year, the sighs of the Bride, the Church, for the presence of the Bridegroom. The calls become louder and more extravagant as we approach the final days before our celebration of the Nativity, with the magnificent “O” Antiphons. Come, Adonai! Come, Radiant Dawn! Come, O Wisdom!

Christmas especially elates the Church because it is the celebration of the presence of her Lord; his first coming fuels her hope for the second, when the fulness of his reign will appear. The title “Emmanuel”, as Isaiah proclaimed, is the sign given to us in the babe of Bethlehem that humanity is not alone, adrift on the turbulent seas of history. But we ought to take note of another title which appears in the Church’s eager yearning for her Savior: “Come, Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver!”

It is natural for many Christians to see in the infant Lord the long foretold Davidic King. Βut perhaps what does not seem as natural is to join such a longing for the reign of that King to the yearning for law. Especially for us Westerners, accustomed to democracy and the separation of powers, historically we are not crazy about Kings and other would-be potentates who accumulate illegitimate power. As C.S. Lewis once opined, democracy is medicine, not cure, simply because human nature is frail, and we need checks on even our best intentions. We have seen, all too tragically in the past years, how easy it is to slide into tyranny, when people in authority act as if they were accountable to no law, and to no voice other than theirs.

This past week, engaged Catholics around the world were aghast to hear the news that one of the greatest Priest-Paladins of the Pro-Life movement, Father Frank Pavone, had been laicized by the Holy Father without any seeming due process or possibility for remediation. Regardless of what one may think about the methods and communication style of Fr. Pavone, I think he still merits our respect for championing such a sacred cause such as the right to be born. Certainly, if anyone has followed his long career with any degree of attention, he and his companions in the fight have had to face a long struggle against various enemies, both external and internal.

I have for years decried in my words and writings the increasing lawlessness which prevails over the contemporary Church, and how we seem to be becoming a Church remote from that Heavenly Jerusalem which is our true home, and instead resemble some of the worst tendencies of the postmodern age, with the hegemony of the bureaucratic class married to an overbearing aristocracy which operates according to its own set of rules. How else ought we to describe what has happened with this laicization? As even Fr. Murray commented, laicization is not a foreseen or just penalty for the sin of blasphemy when committed by a cleric. Moreover, if it were, Fr. Pavone would not be the poster of child of that putative crimen pessimum; good Priests and the lay faithful have been exposed to far worse, and on a near constant basis, from many Priests, who operate without censure or discipline.

The ontology of the Priesthood, ever since the Papacy of Paul VI, has been under near-constant assault, abetted by ecclesiastical authorities which insist upon it when it is convenient, but ignore it when it is inconvenient, both for the Bishops, and the Priests themselves. Thankfully John Paul II put a stop to the hemorrhaging, but the damage was done; thousands of Priests left the Priesthood, never to return. We who remain have had to pick up the pieces of broken promises and the impression, which is very hard to shake, that the Priesthood is just a job like any other. A Priest can exchange a collar for a tie as easily as he puts on his socks in the morning. So much for sacramental character.

For years I have been a steadfast enemy of laicization; I even was against it in the case of Cardinal McCarrack, and stated so publicly. Laicization, historically speaking, is meant to be a penalty which should be, perhaps ironically to borrow from Bill Clinton’s line on abortion, “safe, legal, and rare.” We should not seek laicization for Priests except for the truly grave and incorrigible offenders against Christian faith and morals. If it is to be done as a penalty at all, it must be only after due process, because juridically speaking, laicization is akin to the death penalty; are not we supposedly the Church that now says that capital punishment is now “inadmissible”? Is not the reason for that shift supposedly because of a change in how we view the moral agency of the offender, and the possibility of redemption and conversion? We ought not to forget that for the one laicized, this is not simply a matter of losing a job title or the right to wear certain clothes. Especially if the Priest is aged, to be laicized, unless some sort of ‘severance’ is negotiated, means he no longer has the right to sustenance on the part of the Church: for quite a few, this would mean near-instant reduction to penury. I do not think I need to remind readers what a scary thing it is to be old, without a pension and without some form of medical coverage. I believed that the laicization of Cardinal McCarrick was akin to a public execution, politically motivated and politically carried out. Even though he is, and was, the bestia negra to most conservatives, I believe, like St. Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, in even giving the devil the benefit of the law, for my own soul’s sake. Now the tables again have turned, and now that an orthodox, conservative Priest is on the chopping block, all quarters of the Church should be outraged: because after this, truly, no one is safe.

We are now in the oppressive dog days of a Peronist Papacy, an apogee of tyrannical governance. Although the Holy Father turned 86, there is no indication that is vigor for vindictiveness and double-dealing has been curbed by the burdens of age. For several years, during my private research on the times surrounding the Conciliarist controversy, I have often wondered whether the American Founding Fathers and the English Nobles who produced Magna Carta had more wisdom regarding the nature of fallible man than the Pope and Bishops. Some of our greatest Pontiffs have been the greatest lawgivers, a fact that even civil authorities begrudgingly admit: after all, the face of Innocent III, the great reformer, adorns the hall of the American Congress! Yet it was only in the Middle Ages, comparatively late in our history, that the Holy Father claimed the role of chief lawgiver and judge. For centuries, all sorts of Canon Law was decentralized, the subject of local synods as well as Ecumenical Councils. The contradictions which lie at the heart of having, to use modern terms, the chief judge, executor and legislator in the same man have only multiplied in recent years, as scholars have revisited centuries-old debates. If the Pope ceases to be Pope if he falls into public heresy, how is that determined, if he is the Supreme Judge on earth? If the Pope is incapacitated or otherwise mentally impaired, how is that to be determined? Are the acts of such a Pope null and void?

We are presently reaching the limits of the ecclesiology developed in the Vatican Councils. I am not for a moment suggesting that anything the Councils or the Pope authoritatively proclaimed is wrong. But I am saying, much like St. John Henry Newman, that the “penumbra” of the teachings, to borrow a term from the US Supreme Court, are deleterious, if taken too far. One example of this is the Ultramontanism of the First Vatican Council, which by the end of this Papacy may finally, and lastingly, die. Another example is the Synodality craze now occupying center stage in the current discussion of Church affairs. Originally that was the discussion of a mere sub-committee of Vatican II, of which Joseph Ratzinger himself was a peritus. Now we are subjected to the perplexing absurdity of a Pope who acts like Gregory VII in his Dictatus Papae, but speaks as if he were an Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch at best, and a Presbyterian at worst. How can anyone make heads or tails of such an arrangement?

I have fond of quoting the remark of Hubert Jedin regarding the Conciliarist movement, that the victor in the struggle between Pope and Emperor was the nation-state. Analogously, I would say that the victor in the contest between synodality and ultramontanism will be antinomianism. History is full of bitter ironies. The last Pope to resign before Benedict, Celestine V, was elected precisely because people clamored for a Pastor Angelicus; yet his reign was a disaster. Piety alone is not enough to lead. But at least he was succeeded by Boniface VIII, who, true to his name, did a lot of good to reform the state of the Church. Yet his success, like so many of the medieval reformers, was in their capacity to be true legiferes, law-bearers. This is a difference between governance via motu proprio, the Church’s version of executive orders, and true law-bearing. The work of creating and implementing law is not glamorous and often tedious, yet the rule of law is the cornerstone for any functioning society, let alone the Church.

I know the pious may bristle at this remark, but as important as personal and corporate holiness is for the Church, it is not sufficient to ensure that the Church can carry out her mission effectively. If it were, the Apostles would not have had to call the Council of Jerusalem, or issue decrees. Our times demand a true legifer, and a sober look at the chaos we face as the rule of law in the Church has become so profoundly degraded. Saint Teresa of Avila used to say regarding Priests that she would rather have a learned one hearing her Confession than a holy one, because she suffered so much at the hands of well meaning, but ignorant clergy. I would join her in that assessment, and add: I would much rather have a good lawgiver, than a saint, in the Chair of Peter. Because holiness in the field of ecclesiastical management is not necessarily found in prayer, fasting and almsgiving, but in fidelity to the vocation to teach, sanctify, and, lest we forget, to govern. As we pray the O Antiphons and call for our Lord to come as our true Emmanuel, we pray that our great legifer will also bestow on us the grace needed for our times: for a Church that abides by the rule of law, both divine and ecclesiastical.