Exposing the SSPX’s Rejection of the Hermeneutic of Continuity
John Salza Responds to Fr. Reuter, SSPX – Part I
John F. Salza, Esq.
June A.D. 2022
In Episode 30 of the
Society’s Crisis in the Church series, called “Hermeneutic of
Continuity: Big Word, Big Logical Leap,” Fr. Steven Reuter attempts to explain
why the Society of St. Pius X rejects the approach of interpreting the
documents of Vatican II in light of Tradition, or what Pope Benedict XVI called
“the hermeneutic of continuity,” and instead believes the conciliar documents must
be thrown out altogether. The SSPX’s position is based on the view that the
documents don’t merely contain ambiguous statements that allow for an
interpretation that is contrary to Tradition, but instead are full of teachings
that positively teach error, and or even heresy, and therefore cannot be
reconciled with Tradition, no matter how hard we might try. Consequently, the
SSPX advocates that the documents of Vatican II should be rejected in toto
(as a whole), rather than understood using a hermeneutic (or method of
interpretation) in light of the Church’s prior teaching.
Clearly, the vast majority of the
council Fathers of Vatican II (there were over 2,500 of them) intended to confront
the issues facing modern man while faithfully presenting the teachings of the
Church in light of Tradition, “without any distortion.” While we concede that
the need to employ a “hermeneutic of continuity” highlights an issue with the
council’s documents (i.e., their ambiguities), this does not mean the documents
teach heresy, or even error, which would justify their outright rejection, much
less that a hermeneutic of continuity is itself a defective technique. What
Catholic would reject the concept of interpreting imprecise, pastoral
statements of the Magisterium in light of Tradition? Even the definitions of
dogmatic councils are subject to interpretation, which mandates a hermeneutic
of continuity when interpreting them (e.g., what teachings are considered
infallible according to the First Vatican Council’s Dei Filius?).
Archbishop Lefebvre himself implicitly conceded the legitimacy of interpreting the conciliar texts in accordance with Tradition, since he put his signature of approval on all of the documents of Vatican II.[1] He even warned about the “mistaken interpretation” of the council’s pronouncement on such things as the dignity of the human person.[2] Hence, the SSPX is setting quite a high bar, or should we say, taking a “big, logical leap” in arguing that it is no longer possible to apply a hermeneutic of continuity when interpreting the texts. Indeed, the SSPX’s approach is imbalanced and not Catholic, but presumably one they are forced to take to justify their continued existence outside the juridical structure of the Church.
Fr. Reuter’s Approach is Flawed from the Beginning
Fr. Reuter begins the podcast by claiming that Pope Benedict
XVI invented the hermeneutic of continuity “to shift the blame from the
council” and to “cure some of the abuses.” Thus, Fr. Reuter takes the a
priori position that the hermeneutic of continuity is itself a
flawed approach (which is even more than saying the approach is
legitimate but not possible with the documents of Vatican II). Fr. Reuter even
claims that Pope Benedict (who was a council father at Vatican II), came up
with the approach “to save something he created,” and even suggests that the
Holy Father does not have the humility to recognize his own motivations.
Unfortunately, Fr. Reuter’s harsh indictment of the Pope’s
hermeneutical approach is not at all Catholic, since we are required to
interpret the non-definitive teachings of the Magisterium in light of
Tradition, and especially those of an ecumenical council (is there any other
legitimate way to interpret the documents?). But even if we have misunderstood
Fr. Reuter in this regard, his personal assessments of Pope Benedict, which
attempt to interpret the subjective intentions of the Pope, do not advance Fr.
Reuter’s thesis that ambiguous statements contained within the Vatican II cannot
be reconciled with traditional doctrine. Moreover, Pope Benedict’s efforts
to “shift the blame from the council” based on faulty interpretations of its
texts is precisely the Catholic approach to interpreting ambiguous statements
or teachings, which gives the Magisterium the benefit of the doubt
(certainly something that the SSPX is not willing to do).
The Catholic
approach, affirmed by Pope Pius VI, requires Catholic to interpret ambiguous
texts in the most favorable way (in light of Tradition), and reject the
erroneous interpretation of the text, rather than the proposition
itself. In the words of Pope Pius VI:
In order to expose such
snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every
century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements that
disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one
must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed
to Catholic truth is camouflaged.[3]
The approach of the Society of St. Pius X
is exactly the opposite, and this has always been the approach of the
Church’s enemies. The SSPX calls the Catholic approach of Pope Benedict a
mere tactic to “shift blame” way from Holy Mother Church, in order to accuse
the Church herself of all kinds of error (and without proving that the
documents, in fact, teach error). Contrary to the instruction of Pope Pius VI, the
SSPX assumes that the heterodox interpretations of Vatican II’s
ambiguous texts are the intended meaning of the texts. In doing so, the
Society accuses the Church of positively teaching error, and thus attacks
the Church, just like her enemies have always done (which is certainly much easier
to do when one is not legally part of the Church). Rather than “denouncing the
perverse meaning” (the erroneous interpretation of the proposition) which is
contrary to the Faith, the SSPX embraces the perverse meaning and claims
this is indeed the meaning that the Church intended– which is actually the
Liberal error of the Modernists.
Fr.
Reuter Exaggerates the Assent Owed to Vatican II because He Rejects the Church’s Profession of
Faith
After wrongly denouncing the concept of the
hermeneutic of continuity, Fr. Reuter falsifies the type of assent owed to the
teachings of Vatican II. He says: “It was
held as a super council to which unconditional assent is required.” He
then says: “If you don’t accept it, you are no longer in the Church.” Before
addressing his false assertion on the level of assent, one wonders why Fr.
Reuter claims that those who reject Vatican II are “no longer in the Church,” when
he also claims that the Society, which rejects Vatican II, is still inside the
Church? This is an example of how the SSPX uses exaggerative statements which
often result in inconsistencies and contradictions (it also reveals partiality
to the “two-Church” heresy, which maintains there is a distinction between the
Roman Catholic Church (which recognizes Vatican II) and what could be called the
“Church of Tradition” (which rejects Vatican II).
A better example, however, is Fr. Reuter’s claim that
we owe “unconditional assent” to the teachings of Vatican II. This statement is
patently false. Other than the infallible truths previously taught by the
Church that the council reaffirmed (and, possibly, the council’s teaching on
Collegiality[4]), the non-definitive
teachings of Vatican II do not demand our “unconditional assent.” In fact, Archbishop
Pozzo, former Secretary of the Ecclesia Dei Commission who has been responsible
for attempting to bring the SSPX back into the Church, has publicly stated that
the more contentious documents of Vatican II to which the Society objects (e.g.
Nostra Aetate on interreligious dialogue; Unitatis Redintegratio
on ecumenism; Dignitatis Humanae on religious liberty) are not doctrinal
or definitive teachings and hence are not binding on Catholics.[5]
In fact, Pozzo even went on to say that the SSPX could continue to discuss the non-doctrinal aspects of the documents, even after such time that it would receive a canonical mission from the Church:
They are not about doctrines or definitive statements, but, rather, about instructions and orienting guides for pastoral practice. On can continue to discuss these pastoral aspects after the canonical approval [of the SSPX], in order to lead us to further clarifications.[6]
Pozzo also made clear that allowing debate about the pastoral aspects of the conciliar documents is not a concession granted to the SSPX, but rather one granted by the Vatican II council itself, to all Catholics. He noted:
This is certainly not a [later] conclusion on our part, but it was already clear at the time of the Council. The General Secretary of the Council, Cardinal Pericle Felici, declared on 16 November 1964: ‘This holy synod defines only that as being binding for the Church what it declares explicitly to be such with regard to Faith and Morals.’ Only those texts assessed by the Council Fathers as being binding are to be accepted as such. That has not been [later] invented by “the Vatican,” but it is written in the official files themselves.[7]
On one hand, it is difficult to understand how Fr.
Reuter, who has taught Dogma in the SSPX seminary, could make such a blatantly
erroneous statement, that Vatican II requires our unconditional assent,
particularly when the very point man for the Society’s reconciliation to the
Church (Abp. Pozzo) said just the opposite! Why would Fr. Reuter misrepresent the
Church authorities this way? After all, Pozzo’s statements are public. On the
other hand, however, it is not so difficult to understand Reuter’s error, when
one understands that his error is based upon a greater error, which is his
(and the SSPX’s) rejection of the Catholic Church’s Profession of Faith,
which must be believed by all Catholics in order to maintain their juridical
bond with the Church.
The Profession of Faith is composed of the
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, and “three propositions or paragraphs intended
to describe the truths of the Catholic faith.” The first two paragraphs describe
the unconditional asset owed to truths that the Church teaches are either
formally revealed (to be “believed” with “divine and catholic faith”), or
definitively proposed (to be “firmly accepted and held”). The third paragraph requires
Catholics to “adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the
teachings which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate
when they exercise their authentic Magisterium, even if they do not intend to
proclaim these teachings by a definitive act.” This would include the teachings
on faith or morals of the Second Vatican Council, which were enunciated by the
authentic Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Thus, the SSPX rejected the third
proposition as soon as the Profession was promulgated by the Church in 1989, because
it had already rejected the Second Vatican Council (which closed in
1965), refusing to give it any kind of deference.
As we can see, because the SSPX rejects the
third paragraph of the Profession, which only requires religious submission of intellect
and will (which, by nature, is conditional assent) to non-definitive
teachings, and not the assent of divine faith (which is unconditional
assent) required by the first two paragraphs, the SSPX necessarily, and
incorrectly, claims Vatican II is owed “unconditional assent.” Having rejected
the third paragraph, the Society is forced to erroneously place the teachings
of Vatican II within either the first or second paragraph, both of which
require the unconditional assent of faith. Thus, the Society falsely claims “a
person is supposed to adhere with Faith to teachings that are not
definitive.”[8]
But as mentioned above, the teachings of Vatican II
don’t fall within either of the first two paragraphs, since the council did not
set forth any doctrines to be believed as divinely revealed, or firmly held as
definitively proposed.[9]
Rather, the council’s documents were non-definitive teachings or statements of
the authentic Magisterium, which have always required a mere religious
deference (but not the unconditional assent of divine faith). This shows that
the SSPX falsifies Church teaching, and then publicly attacks the Church for
the (false) teaching, just like the Protestant heretics.
Of course, like all the Society’s errors, this error
originated with Archbishop Lefebvre, who called the third paragraph “very bad,”
“dangerous,” “ridiculous” and “false.”[10]
By having refused to give any deference
at all to the teachings of the council (which no doubt shows a schismatic
mentality), the SSPX ended by rejecting the Church’s Profession of Faith, which
is required for belief in order to be Catholic. This rejection of the Church’s
Profession of Faith is a mortal sin against the faith that merits
eternal punishment. Indeed, the Church has always understood that divine faith
in her Professions was necessary for salvation (and the Church’s traditional
theology always classified as heretics those who rejected Catholic truths to be
believed with divine faith, such as those in Creeds and Professions of Faith).
This is why Archbishop Pozzo, who acknowledged that the SSPX
could continue to question the orthodoxy of certain Vatican II documents, at
the same time also affirmed that it must accept the Church’s Profession of
Faith as a condition for being reintegrated back into the Church. Said Pozzo: “What
is essential, what we cannot give up, is the adherence to the Professio
fidei, and to the principle that the Lord entrusted to the Church’s
Magisterium alone the faculty to interpret authentically, that is, with the
authority of Christ, the written and transmitted Word of God.”[11]
Just
as there is no precedent for rejecting a hermeneutic of continuity when
interpreting ambiguous Magisterial texts, there is also no precedent for
rejecting the truth that we owe the Magisterium religious submission to her
authentic teachings. The SSPX departs from Catholic truth on both counts. And
if the SSPX thought the necessity of religious submission (deference) was a
novelty of Vatican II (Lumen Gentium did teach the proposition), [12] it was also wrong on that count as well. The
truth that we must “hear the Church” are the words of Christ Himself, revealed
in Scripture (Mt 18:17), and was consistently taught in theology manuals long
before Vatican II.
For example, in his Sacrae Theologia Summa (1956), Salaverri taught: “An internal and religious assent of the mind is due to the doctrinal decrees of the Holy See which have been authentically approved by the Roman Pontiff.”[13] Fr. Nicolas Jung, in his classic book, Le Magistère de L’Église (1935), also addresses non-definitive teachings:
He is not required to give the same assent to teaching imparted by the sovereign pontiff that is not imposed on the whole Christian body as a dogma of faith. In this case it suffices to give that inner and religious assent which we give to legitimate ecclesiastical authority. This is not an absolute assent, because such decrees are not infallible, but only a prudential and conditional assent, since in questions of faith and morals there is a presumption in favor of one’s superior...[14]
In The Sources of Revelation (1961), Van Noort
also teaches: “Granted the need for submission to the authentic Magisterium, it still remains true that just as a merely
authentic proposal is by its very nature incomplete and provisory, so, too, is
the religious assent due to it.”[15]
In Wilhelm & Scannell’s Manual of Catholic
Theology (1906), we also read: “Points of doctrine expressed, recommended
and insisted upon in papal allocutions or encyclical letters, but not
distinctly defined, may create the obligation of strict obedience and
undoubting assent, or may exact merely external submission and approval.”[16]
Even the “liberal” Commentary on the 1983 Code of Canon Law acknowledges that the
Church leaves room for dissent on non-definitive teachings based on
preponderant evidence, just like the pre-Vatican II theologians.[17]
Indeed, the SSPX schizophrenically reserves for itself the right to “dissent
from non-definitive teachings” of the Church, while also rejecting the Church’s
Profession of Faith which accommodates this right to dissent![18]
In fact, in Wilhelm & Scannell’s manual we further read: “Modern
Liberalism…is an attempt to conciliate Extreme Liberalism by giving up these
various distinctions [assent of faith vs. intellect], and reducing all
decisions either to formal definitions of Faith or to mere police regulations.”[19]
This means the Society’s rejection of the third paragraph of the Profession of
Faith is a liberal Modernist error. But the SSPX does embrace
many of the liberal errors they condemn the Modernists for, such as the right
to publicly propagate their theological errors, and their claim that they are
part of (or “subsist in”) the Catholic Church, without having any juridical
status in the Church, and that the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from
using their illicit ministry as a means of salvation. Indeed, the errors on the
Left are the errors on the Right.
[1] While
Fr. Reuter claims that “Lefebvre rejected the hermeneutic of continuity even
before it was proposed,” his assertion flies in the face of the fact that
Lefebvre signed all the conciliar documents. If Lefebvre did not believe the
documents could be interpreted in light of Tradition, then why did he sign off
on them? Clearly, Lefebvre did not believe (at least at the time he signed the
documents) that the texts positively taught heresy or error, but rather could
be reconciled with traditional teaching, even if with some difficulty. This
fact directly undermines the SSPX’s ongoing position that the documents must be
rejected outright because a hermeneutic of continuity is not possible.
[2] Lefebvre, A
Bishop Speaks, Angelus, 2007, p. 57.
[3] Auctorem
Fidei, August 28, 1794.
[4] Archbishop
Pozzo, and many other theologians, maintain that Vatican II’s teaching on
episcopal consecrations being the fullness of Holy Orders, and the College of Bishops
in union with the Pope being a subject of supreme authority (Collegiality) as
set forth in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, are binding on
Catholics. This indicates that the Society would have to renounce its error of
rejecting the Church’s teaching on Collegiality set forth in Lumen Gentium
before it would be granted a canonical mission (which demonstrates that the
Society’s doctrinal errors are keeping it outside the Church).
[5] Maike
Hickson, “Abp. Pozzo on SSPX: Disputed Vatican II Documents are Non-Doctrinal,”
August 9, 2016, www.onepeterfive.com.
[6]
Ibid.
[7]
Ibid. In example, Archbishop Pozzo said “Nostra Aetate does not have any
dogmatic authority, and thus one cannot demand from anyone to recognize this
declaration as being dogmatic.”
[8] Cor Jesu,
http://fsspx.asia/sites/sspx/files/cor_jesu-january.pdf
(emphasis added).
[9] As
noted above, some theologians maintain that the council’s teaching on
Collegiality is a definitive teaching.
[10] Cor Jesu,
http://fsspx.asia/sites/sspx/files/cor_jesu-january.pdf.
[11]
“No
Capitulation but what Unity? Pozzo Interview, www.sspx.org.
[12] “This religious submission of mind and
will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman
Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in
such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the
judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind
and will.” No. 5.
[13]
Quote taken from Fr. Fenton, “Infallibility in the Encyclicals,” AER (1953).
Fenton taught the same as did Billot, Jung, Tanqueray, Nau and many others.
[14] Jung,
Le Magistère de L’Èglise, 1935, pp. 153, 154; cited in Clear Ideas, On the Pope’s Infallible Magisterium, SiSiNoNo, January 2002, No. 44.
[15] Van
Noort, The Sources of Revelation, p. 237, Reprint by Arouca Press
(2019).
[16] Vol. 1. Third Edition, Revised,
London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., New York, Cincinnati,
Chicago, Benziger Bros., 1906, p.
85.
[17] John
Beal, James Coriden, and Thomas Green, A
New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), p.
917.
[18] The
very nature of the “submission of intellect and will” is a conditional assent,
because the intellect could have a genuine conflict based on a preponderance of
evidence (unlike the assent of divine faith, which is unconditional).
[19] Vol. 1. Third Edition, Revised,
London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., p. 101.
