This is going to be a somewhat long approach to describing what I see as a significant problem in the Church, both among clergy (especially those at the top) and among lay commenters on ecclesial goings on. Some people might think of this as just a rant, or even a screed. I don't really care. The core issue I'm discussing here really is a problem in the Church. The problem is threefold:
1. A lack of precision in quoting, analyzing, evaluating, and applying the words and thoughts of others--especially of documents coming from the Church.
2. A lack of clarity in expressing one's own thoughts and ideas, including in documents from the Church. (This one is difficult, because it's often impossible to see the various ways ones own words might be misunderstood before publishing them. But starting with clarity and precision of one's own thoughts before expressing them helps greatly in this regard.)
3. A lack of perspective in evaluating what might have been meant behind someone else' words. Some of this would go to softening the intra-Church dramatic effect of the first two problems.
These three problems are present in many corners of the Church and of the contemporary pod-o-sphere (if that's a thing). It's even possible that the first two are somewhat willful on the part of the more progressive elements of the Church, since lack of precision and clarity generally work at the service of progress (at least, progress of the sort that would be hindered by a strict fidelity to the Deposit of Faith.)
I'll use just a single recent example, however, to illustrate my point. I've been unstacking the recent little drama between Catholic youtuber Michael Lofton and Cardinal Joseph Zen. I couldn't help experiencing some degree of frustration with the lack of precision and clarity on all three sides of the drama, as well as the demonstrated lack of perspective on Michael Lofton's part.
"All three sides?"
Let me clear that up, first: I'm including Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez particularly, and the Vatican machinery under Pope Francis generally, as one of the "sides" of the drama. That's why there are three sides, and not two. I might even, as will be seen later, make it four sides by including Pope Benedict XVI.
I'll address the last accusation first: That Michael Lofton demonstrates a lack of perspective. Michael Lofton has that annoying habit of reading the texts of documents released by the pope and by Vatican dicasteries as though they were written with the intention of being received and applied in the most traditional possible reading.
This is one kind of lack of perspective, and to be sure other Catholic commenters are also guilty of this (including me,) but Michael Lofton offers a really good example of it in the event under examination: He claims that the only source of confusion regarding Fiducia Supplicans is the questions and criticisms by traditional-minded Catholic commentators, bishops, and cardinals. In one support of his claim, he cites paragraph 31, seizing on the words "who—recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help—do not claim a legitimization of their own status." He uses this phrase to demonstrate that the document is not only fully consistent with the Church' Tradition in its content, but that the document is "clear" in its fidelity to the Tradition of the Church. According to Lofton, the obvious reading is that the people expected to ask for the blessings that the document discusses are cognizant and (at least to themselves) admitting of the evil of their sinful lifestyles and have no desire, by means of the blessing, to feel legitimized in their sinful relationship.
What Lofton fails to acknowledge is the reality of world and Church in which this document has been promulgated. Lofton acts as thought he's unaware that there are priests and bishops in the Church today who are actively working to get the Church' teaching on homosexuality changed. It's as though he's unaware of priests, like SJ Martin, who promptly upon Fiducia being promulgated, engaged in a blessing precisely of a homosexual "couple"—a couple who clearly accepted the blessing as a legitimization of their own sinful relationship. He acts as though he's unaware that Francis is the most worldly and materialistic pope (in terms of the focus of his magisterial acts) in history. He acts as though it's impossible for a pope to perform magisterial acts out of a motive to "look good in the eyes of the world."
This is all to say that, while Lofton might be on solid ground in his demonstrations (and his trust) that magisterial acts of the successor of Saint Peter are prevented by the Holy Spirit from being unequivocal proclamations of error, Lofton fails to demonstrate the perspective that they can, nonetheless, be contextually dangerous, scandalous, or just plain stupid. (And that, without traditional minded Catholics criticizing or opposing them.) It's one thing to analyze a Church document as part of an academic exercise in defending the infallibility of the Church, but when evaluating such a document—when examining its likely effect on the moral behavior of Catholics and of those whom we would invite to become Catholics—one should not make the mistake of applying a "hermeneutic of continuity" in a contextual vacuum.
Lofton finds in Fiducia Supplicans several phrases that echo of a traditional understanding of marriage and restate the Church' teaching that sexual acts are morally licit only within marriage. He then leverages these to claim a traditional reading of clauses like "here appears the possibility of blessings for couples...of the same sex." I'm not sure what a "traditional" reading of that would be. You can't bless a group qua group without blessing that which makes them a group. You can't bless a baseball team, as a team, without blessing their act of playing baseball together. Similarly, you can't bless a couple, as a couple, without blessing their coupling. This is where Fiducia Supplicans falls down. (Well, not quite: That's only one place where it falls down. It has quite a few other problems with it, as you can read here.) Lofton, however, believes he can find a way of understanding this phrase that does not rupture with traditional Catholic praxis and teaching.
And maybe he's right. But he therefore evaluates the document, in the current Church-historical context, as though those who wrote it intended for it to be parsed and applied in full continuity with the Church' past. Has he even considered What this would look like? What if the entirety of the clerical body of the Church read, understood, and applied Fiducia Supplicans according to this hermeneutic of continuity (more about which later)? If Lofton's evaluation of the document's intentions is the right one, then we should think that Francis and Fernandez fully expect SJ Martin to bless homosexual couples in a manner that undermines rather than reinforces their homosexual commitment to one another. Francis and Fernandez would expect blessings by SJ Martin of homosexual couples to be something along the lines of
May Almighty God enter your lives and lead you to renounce your sinful relationship. Amen. May the Holy Spirit inspire you to live chastely according to your stations. Amen. May the Blood of Jesus Christ, shed for you, be for you a source of forgiveness for your past life together and a source of strength to convert from your evil lifestyle. Amen. And may Almighty God bless you, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Well, you see what I mean. A reading of Fiducia in a hermeneutic of continuity would lead to a result quite different from that seen anywhere that it's actually been applied. Furthermore, we've seen nothing from the pope or Fernandez that indicates that they expect priests to get in line with Fiducia and start blessing "irregular" couples in a manner similar to that above. Lofton has a problem granting Fernandez and Francis the honor of believing that they might have intended the very effect that the document is actually producing in its application.
That's what I mean by a "demonstrated lack of perspective" on Lofton's part. He's not alone. There are other Catholic commenters who, though quite knowledgeable—far more knowledgeable than I am—of Catholic doctrine and history, nonetheless show a similar unwillingness to evaluate the actions, words, and writings coming out of the Vatican in a context of the current realities of the Church. Perhaps such commenters would admonish me that it's not my place (or theirs) to "evaluate" what comes out of the Vatican, but only to accept it, and to do so in a spirit of a "hermeneutic of continuity." Well, that might be the case, but in this particular drama, Lofton is not criticizing me for my evaluation of Fiducia. He's criticizing a cardinal in the Church, and a cardinal (indeed, any bishop) is very much in his lane to evaluate the actions, words, and writings coming out of the Vatican.
But Lofton's perspective isn't the only thing that annoyed me while walking back through the drama. Lofton, Zen, and Fernandez (and even, which I'll get to, Pope Benedict XVI) have all had their problems with clarity and precision.
Since I've been hammering on Michael Lofton, I'll turn the attention of my criticism temporarily to Cardinal Zen.
Here, I need to tread carefully. Zen is considered by many to be (and may very well be) a living saint. His criticism of Vatican goings on, more than any other prelate's in the Church, should be taken with an air of gravity, but also with an air of forgiveness if he may sometimes seem to "go too far" (which I don't think has been an issue.) He certainly has every reason to treat anything that is done in the Vatican with the utmost suspicion and he indeed has good reason to feel a certain personal animosity towards Francis on account of the secret deal with the Chinese government. Whatever that deal entails, one thing is for certain: It threw under the bus all those Catholics who have been persecuted by the Chinese government as part of the underground Church. Of course, I have no idea if Zen feels such animosity. But if he doesn't, it's only on account of his saintliness. Nonetheless (and especially because of his elevated standing among so many Catholics) I think Zen should apply the utmost precision and clarity in his writing and speech about modern and controversial Church topics.
While Zen's blog post in January—the one that prompted Michael Lofton's response, which sparked the drama—is mostly spot on, there are a few points that can invite the kind of obvious criticism that might lead others to dismiss what he says out of hand.
In the blog post, Zen referenced a January 4 follow-up to Fiducia Supplicans. Fiducia itself claimed that no follow-up would be forthcoming, and the follow-up identifies itself as a "press release." Zen wrote this of the press release:
The Holy See understood that it was not possible to allow priests to implement the "statement" for the time being. This meant that the statement of December 18 was temporarily invalid .
In fact, what the press release does is to acknowledge certain parts of the world where homosexuality is simply outlawed. About those parts of the world, the press release states:
The cases of some Episcopal Conferences must be understood in their contexts. In several countries there are strong cultural and even legal issues that require time and pastoral strategies that go beyond the short term.
That's quite different stating that it's not possible to allow priests to implement Fiducia, making Fiducia temporarily invalid.
Fiducia makes reference to the Pope's responsum to an earlier dubium presented by some Cardinals (one of whom, I believe, was Zen). In the typical manner of Francis, the responsum is a windy exercise in prevarication. It contains just enough meat to allow someone to defend him against the charge of being theologically and morally incorrect, while providing enough fluff and qualification to satisfy someone who wants to think it's OK to ignore the Church' moral Tradition. But Zen's characterization of the responsum is not quite precise. He wrote this:
When the Pope (more likely the Minister of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) answered the questions of the five cardinals, he also said that same-sex sexual love and marital love are "similar "!
In fact, the responsum reads thus:
Other forms of union [than marriage, which had been somewhat defined in the preceding paragraph] realize it only in “a partial and analogous way”
To be sure, this is problematic. What the Pope should have written is something like, "While some forms of sexual union between a man and a woman can participate in some of the elements of marriage, same-sex sexual relationships are never comparable in any way to marriage." This would have been a more complete answer, and it's understandable that Zen is dissatisfied with the Pope's phrasing. However, that's not the same as claiming that "same-sex sexual love and marital love are similar."
Regarding Fiducia Supplicans itself, Zen wrote:
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says that same-sex sexual behavior also has its goodness, can "progress" and can "grow".
This understanding of paragraph 31 of Fiducia on a casual reading is understandable, but it doesn't quite say this. What it says is:
These forms of blessing [developed in Fiducia] express a supplication that God may grant actual grace [to the recipients of the blessing] so that human relationships may mature and grow in fidelity to the Gospel.
Don't get me wrong: This is problematic. The context is a discussion of blessings for (among others) same-sex couples. It might give the impression that the sexual relationship of such a couple is something that can "mature and grow in fidelity to the Gospel." And note that it's discussing the maturation and growth, not of those being blessed, but of their "human relationships." When read in context, it's difficult to conceive of an understanding of paragraph 31 that Zen is not right to criticize. However, as with other things, the criticism should be precise and based on the actual text, not on the impression that the text gives.
Well, given the possible unavailability of the documents in question in Zen's native Chinese, and (as I indicated earlier) given the anguish he's had to suffer over recent decisions by the Pope, we can easily forgive Zen for bringing a certain bias to the evaluation of acts from the Vatican. This bias might make him less than perfect in his precision and clarity. Furthermore, this is Zen's blog, and it reads that way—like a blog. A blog entry isn't a research paper or a thesis. It's just a way of putting one's thoughts online, and many people put such thoughts online before those thoughts are fully developed or ratified through deeper examination of a topic or event. Furthermore, those who write blogs are typically not under some standard of journalistic obligation to go back and correct earlier posts, even if one's own insight into some matter has changed. This is all by way of saying that Zen's imprecisions in this particular matter rate pretty low on the totem pole of problems in the online Catholic world—almost in the noise.
Michael Lofton, on the other hand, doesn't have these excuses and for someone who seems to be trying to convey an impression of precision and clarity, he could do considerably better.
In his video in January, criticizing Zen's initial reactions to Fiducia, Lofton says that Zen suggests that Fernandez should resign or be dismissed.
Actually, by way of airing his concerns about the gravity of the matter, Zen is simply posing it as a question. In his blog entry, cardinal Zen summarizes his "reading" of paragraph 31 of Fiducia Supplicans—a reading that is not unreasonable. This reading would seem to indicate (Zen poses it as a question, here, and not a statement) that the document contains heresy. Then he's following the logic of his question further: If the document really does contain a heresy and if the Prefect for the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith actually believes this heresy, then what does that suggest in terms of appropriate courses of action for certain people involved? Should he resign? Should he be dismissed?
But Michael Lofton, ignoring not only the context in which both Fernandez and Zen are writing, even does Zen the disservice of misstating what is in his blog post—turning a hypothetical line of inquiry being posed as a series of questions into something stronger than that.
Another point on which Lofton lacks precision is in his characterization of our Catholic obligations arising from Pope Benedict XVI's Christmas address to the curia, in which he introduced what people today refer to as the "hermeneutic of continuity." Lofton makes quite a big deal out of the "obligation" of Catholics to apply the "hermeneutic of continuity" when interpreting acts of ordinary magisterium by the Church. This claim of an obligation itself is what's imprecise.
For one thing, Benedict never actually defined a "hermeneutic of continuity," as such; however, he did on occasion refer to his "hermeneutic of reform" by the words "hermeneutic of continuity." Even the "hermeneutic of reform," though, wasn't taught (or even proposed) by Benedict as an obligatory way to interpret magisterial documents or acts. Rather, he was identifying a dichotomy of approaches to understanding the Second Vatican Council. He presented this dichotomy itself as as a hermeneutic for understanding why there seemed to be such disparity in the fruits of the council. To be sure, Benedict was claiming that the hermeneutic of reform (and not that of rupture or discontinuity) is the correct way to interpret the council. But the dichotomy was an observation specifically in reference to the Second Vatican Council and not a teaching on magisterial acts, generally.
A second point, however, is that Benedict did not present the dichotomy of hermeneutics as opposing keys to interpreting the documents of the council, but rather as opposing keys to interpreting the council itself. Here is what he said in the Christmas address to the Curia where he introduced the dichotomy:
The hermeneutic of discontinuity asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.
...Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council's deepest intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague.
In a word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim.
Benedict was not talking about how to interpret the texts so much as about how to interpret the council itself, about how to interpret the council's spirit and intentions. But a council itself is an extraordinary act of magisterium, not an ordinary one. Lofton is presuming to make Benedict's analysis of the chaos that has followed an extraordinary act of magisterium into an obligatory mode for evaluating ordinary acts of magisterium.
A third point could be made regarding Lofton's lack of precision in understanding the dichotomy posed by Benedict: Lofton refers to the hermeneutic of rupture as a "hermeneutic of suspicion." Quoting Lofton: "...and what he [Benedict] notes is that we can't read a magisterial documents [sic] with this hermeneutic of suspicion and rupture."
Benedict never actually "noted" any such thing, and he never would have referred to the hermeneutic of rupture as a "hermeneutic of suspicion." Benedict was not referring to those who were criticizing the Second Vatican Council, but rather to those who were fully embracing it the wrong way. The hermeneutic of rupture was being used to describe the reading of the council by those who wanted it to be a rupture and a break from the past.
Indeed, if one wants to turn Benedict's analysis of post-council movements in the Church into a criticism of people reading rupture into Fiducia Supplicans, it would make much more sense to direct such criticism at people like SJ Martin. Martin's reading and application of Fiducia is much more analogous to the "rupture" understanding of the council that Benedict was criticizing.
Lofton challenges Zen about his statement that the document is confusing, and challenges Zen with the question "What have you done?" (Presumably, "What have you done to clarify the document?")
Here, Lofton not only dismisses the context of Zen's writings, including that little detail that he's a cardinal, but fails to recognize that Zen is actually doing Fernandez and Francis the dignity that Lofton himself refuses: That of inviting them to speak more (if they would) to explain what they mean by the document. Indeed, Zen is far more correct in his claim that the document is confusing than Lofton is in his claim that it's clear, because Zen has the clarity to see the contradictions between what may appear to be a few hard, clear-cut statements in the document on the one hand, and Francis' clear ongoing support for SJ Martin's work to create an environment of condonement for same-sex unions on the other.
But if it's somewhat surprising that Lofton would lack clarity and precision in his understanding of Zen's writing, it is wholly unfathomable that Lofton would say of Fiducia Supplicans that it's a clear, non-confusing document. Please read my line-by-line analysis here: https://thegristmill.org/index.php/articles-in-all-categories/catholic/initial-reactions-on-first-reading-of-fiducia-supplicans
The best way to characterize this document is to quote Russell Brandt in a recent (as of this writing) reaction to Kamala Harris. He said "You are not using language to convey concepts. You're doing something else there, it's like--I don't know--like some linguistic painting. It was too abstract." This could describe Fiducia Supplicans.
In the January 4 press release--the one that wasn't going to be forthcoming--Fernandez wrote:
The real novelty of this Declaration, the one that requires a generous effort of reception and from which no one should declare themselves excluded...is the invitation to distinguish between two different forms of blessings: “liturgical or ritualized” and “spontaneous or pastoral”.
As I pointed out in my analysis of Fiducia (before ever laying eyes on this January 4 press release), the "other" form of blessing, to the extent that it's something truly different from the blessings that have already existed in the Church for centuries, is not just a matter of being either "spontaneous" or "pastoral," but rather is a matter of being non-Ecclesial. It's a blessing that anybody can do. It doesn't require the "blesser" to be a priest, or even a Christian. It's difficult to imagine that this is what Fernandez actually intended, but if one does one's best to read the words as written (here, I'm the one doing Fernandez the disservice of ignoring context) then this is where they land. This all goes to show that the current pontifical administration seems to have abandoned language as a mechanism of specificity.
I won't go on more about the lack of clarity from Fernandez, since my thoughts are available in my earlier post. However, there is one other party whose work lacks a clarity and a precision that I would like to point out: It's Pope Benedict XVI in his original development of the "hermeneutic of reform."
Let me explain how I personally have been applying a "hermeneutic of continuity":
First, I have an absolute trust in the Holy Spirit that the Church won't teach error. Therefore, I know that the Church cannot truly teach something new today that conflicts with something that the Church has taught historically. The degree to which this protection of the Holy Spirit plays out in various types or levels of magisterial acts is something I don't believe I need to work out for myself. My approach to a "hermeneutic of continuity" allows me to wait until the Church works that out.
So, what of those cases where there appears to be some discontinuity or ambiguity? I take an approach of humility, and this is how that works:
1. What the Church has taught before is certain.
2. I have a higher confidence in my understanding of older acts of the Church than I do of my understanding of modern acts of the Church. Older acts have had more time to be written about and explained.
3. So, first, I try to find a way of reading the newer act such that it simply means the same thing that the Church already teaches.
4. If I can, then I simply read it that way. Usually, this leads to a conclusion that I can simply ignore the newer magisterial act, since anything of use in it is thereby already present in the existing Tradition.
5. If, on the other hand, I don't see a way to reconcile them, then I simply ignore the newer act, anyway. The Holy Spirit will work it out, and eventually the Church will either abandon the newer act or find a way to explain how it really means the same thing that the Church has always taught. (At which point everybody can just ignore the newer act.)
There's a little more nuance, of course. Obviously, new acts of magisterium can bring insights out of the Deposit of Faith that were previously hidden, or can explain, without altering any part of the Deposit of Faith itself, how to evaluate a new situation in the world. (Typically, such new situations arose from the world ignoring the Church on moral matters, as in the current discussion of what to do with frozen IVF embryos.) In these cases, I'm not suggesting to just ignore everything the Church says going forward. But in any manner of teaching where some moral, theological, Christological, or ecclesialogical explanation or extrapolation appears to be in conflict with the Church' past expression (and intended meaning of such expression, and practices resulting from such teachings), then it's probably safe to ignore the newer expression until the Church finds a way to explain or re-express it.
The one thing that one should never do regarding a matter in which the Church has already established what she believes, either by an extraordinary act of magisterium or by consistent multiple or ongoing acts of ordinary magisterium, is come to the conclusion that the Church didn't quite have it right in the Tradition.
That, for me, is an application of the "hermeneutic of continuity." It's born of an absolute trust in the Holy Spirit and a somewhat humble opinion of my own analytical prowess. As I pointed out earlier, however, the actual phrase that Benedict originally used was not "hermeneutic of continuity" but "hermeneutic of reform." This is where the problem lies, and where Benedict's own imprecision on this matter might invite some unintended misreadings of ambiguous magisterial documents.
In his description of the "hermeneutic of reform," Benedict says this:
It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within. On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change.
Benedict's concept of the hermeneutic of rupture was that it considered the Second Vatican Council to be closing down, as it were, the old Church and creating a completely new one. This would be similar to how people viewed the Constitutional Convention that replaced the Articles of Confederation with what we now have as the Constitution of the United States. (Indeed, there is even academic dispute over whether that event should be read with a hermeneutic of rupture or of reform!) But this leaves open a lot of interpretive ground short of supposing that the council replaced the old Church with a new one.
My point is that, despite Pope St. John XXIII's stated intention that the council "transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion," one could propose almost any novelty one wants in the Church's teaching and claim that the change was really just regarding something "contingent." One could claim that the real continuity is in the Church' commitment to the Gospel message of [fill in your favorite social gospel or liberation theology plank, or whatever malleable phrase about "love" you like]. As a way of understanding the post-conciliar chaos, Benedict's hermeneutic dichotomy is insightful, but ultimately it isn't very useful as a way of interpreting or evaluating individual documents or magisterial actions in today's Church.
This weakness of the hermeneutic of reform concept defined by Benedict seems to be missed on almost everybody who invokes it, both prelate and layman alike. I'm not saying, here, that Benedict was incorrect; whatever he had in mind might very well be exactly what we need today. However, his only explanation of it was in a Christmas address to the curia - not a treatise or a book. What I'm saying is that for us in the Church to use Benedict's "hermeneutic of continuity" as a guiding principle for interpreting magisterial acts going forward, it needed to be more developed. If it really had been developed by Benedict while he was still alive, perhaps it might (when boiled down) look pretty close to the one I described above.
I shudder to think of someone like Francis or Fernandez developing the concept of a hermeneutic of continuity now. If the writings that have come out of this pontificate are any indication, such a development would be a train wreck of half-formed thoughts with no cohesive unity. I suspect that Francis and Fernandez, in spite of the occasional appeal to a constancy in Church teaching, are both closer to the rupture side than to the continuity side in how they want to interpret and implement the Second Vatican Council, anyway.
Well, if the Vatican is not going to exercise precision and clarity, we can't do anything about that. But we should at least try harder to do so ourselves.