(LifeSiteNews) — Successive disturbing news filtering from the Vatican causes observers to paraphrase the saying of the Bard of Avon: “There is something rotten in the state of… the Vatican.” Cardinal Parolin’s recent refusal to join President Trump’s Board of Peace is very revealing. His rejection is in line with the goal of present leaders in the Vatican to reorganize the structure of the Church along a synodal basis, more like the UN, where a multitude of voices—good, bad, and ugly—are mixed together to come up with compromised solutions. The mission of the Church has always been to transform human society into a society built on the Son of God as a cornerstone. The Vatican cites the Spirit of Vatican II as the guide for the new direction that would change the constitution of the Church from a hierarchically ordered society attached to God, to one resembling a democracy.
To try to understand what that guideline is, we can look at the document called Dogmatic Constitution of the Church: Lumen Gentium, published in 1964 by the Second Vatican Council, and search for that spirit of change. It is not there. The document states that it intends to follow faithfully the teachings of previous councils, especially that of the First Vatican Council, under Pope Pius IX, which closed in 1870. It does indeed dovetail with previous councils. The society of the Church, it says, is structured hierarchically, forms a Mystical Body whose organisms coalesce into a unity of divine and human elements. Christ loves the Church as his Bride and formed a society that he commissioned Peter to shepherd. It is not possible to find anything in this document that would call for a change of structure suggested by that Spirit of Vatican II, which is now declared to be unchangeable. The move toward synodality would affect the hierarchy of the Church and the unique role of the pope. To clarify that role, it helps to refer to the work of theologian Matthias Scheeben. He left us some impressive works about the union of the Church with God, notably The Mysteries of Christianity.
The Church is a society unlike any other, says Scheeben. It is extraordinary because it gives to its members a new life, a supernatural character, a destiny of union with God, together with a support system to help them strive toward reaching that destiny.
The Fathers of the Church viewed the Incarnation as a marriage with the human race. It sets up a relationship of unification with mankind which comes to full blossoming in the Church. The Church is united to Christ as a Bride is united to her Bridegroom. The coming together in bodily form—the wedding—happens in the Eucharist, where the partaker of it becomes the bride of the Son of God. This brings out one aspect of the organization of the Church. The priesthood, as segregated from the laity, is an imitation and extension of Mary’s maternity. The priest conceives the Incarnate Son by the power of the same Holy Spirit that overshadowed Mary. The priesthood is for the Eucharistic Christ what Mary was for her son, the Son of God.
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Lumen Gentium recognizes the dignity and role of Mary in salvation and lavishes on her many titles. The union of the Mother with the Son in the work of salvation is mentioned. It says that in no way does Mary impede the union of the faithful with Christ. She is called our mother in the order of grace. It mentions Leo XIII, Pius XI, and Pius XII calling her Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutorix, and Mediatrix in their various encyclicals. Those who refer to Vatican II as the source of their inspiration to put a distance between Mary and Christ must have not read Lumen Gentium.
The other aspect of the Constitution of the Church dealt with in Lumen Gentium that would be affected by synodality concerns the pastoral power regulating the relations between priests, bishops, and the pope. It was willed by God that Peter and his successors should be the single point of contact between Christ and his Holy Spirit and the rest of the Church. Only he can transfer the Holy Spirit from Christ to bishops by the sacrament of ordination, and then bishops can order priests who pass it on to the laity. Christ prayed for him alone to strengthen the faith of his brethren by his own faith. Peter was to act as directly representing Christ—in persona Christi. The pope has a unique position. He receives his orders from above and is mandated to pass them down to the rest of the body. He is the sign of unity of the Church. This mandate to be the sole contact with Christ, the head of the Church, is given to the pope so that a trace of the Trinity could be found in the Church.
The Church is called to image forth the highest unity of all, that of the Trinity. Christ prayed that his followers may all be one like his Father and he are one. In the Trinity there is a single source of divinity, called Father. The Father generates the Son, an exact image of himself that reveals him so truly that whoever sees the Son sees the Father. Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae, says that divine things are best named by our intellect in a way that belongs to created things, because we grasp God through created things (Prima Pars, Q12, A3, ad3). The divine nature, common to the three Persons, belongs to them in a kind of order: the Son receives it from the Father, and the Holy Spirit receives it from the Father through the Son. The power to create is attributed to the Father, the Creator. He creates everything through the wisdom of his intellect, and so we say that all things are created through the Son, the wisdom of the Father. The Father wills that everything he creates be united with himself through the Holy Spirit.
In his Summa, Thomas says that a trace of the Trinity is found in all rational creatures possessing intellect and will (Prima Pars, Q45, A7). The Father sent his Son, through whom the Church was made, to guide it to its eternal goal by the Holy Spirit. The Church, a society present in the world but belonging to God, is created from above, by action of the Trinity. The pope is the representative of Christ, as Christ is the representative of the Father. The pope is to rely on the wisdom of Christ, and pass that wisdom to the Church. He must not rely on the wisdom of the world. He is not to be swayed by the wisdom of the UN. The Holy Spirit has spoken to his predecessors, and previous councils have codified what was heard, and that wisdom cannot be changed. As the designated single representative of Christ and spokesman of the Holy Spirit, the pope must speak and act “in persona Christi” at all times.
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When he writes about the role of the pope and what would happen if he became influenced by any source other than the Holy Spirit, Scheeben does not mince his words (The Mysteries of Christianity, Chapter XIX, section 80). He emphasizes that it would be “an imperfect planned measure of expediency unworthy of the sublime activity which the Holy Spirit unfolds in the Church.” The Church’s “center of gravity would be withdrawn from the direct influence of the Holy Spirit and shifted to a mere natural basis.” The face of the Church would be unrecognizable. These are weighty and ominous conclusions. They deserve careful consideration because of the seriousness of their implication. It means that a pope who accepts the institution of a synodal structure for the Church is stepping away from his responsibility of being a representative of Christ and spokesman of the Holy Spirit, and is in favor of adopting a structure that is not the one given by Jesus Christ.
According to the analysis of Scheeben, a pope who would do that would step into a snare. If by accident, he should immediately step out of it. If it is deliberate, the logical conclusion is that he is willfully abdicating his unique role as pope. Then, there is no reason to continue to pretend to be pope. He was not elected to change the nature of the Church but to preserve it. It is then time to remove the mask, and for all Catholics to become aware of the subterfuge being played on them. He does not wear the personality of Christ anymore. All faithful who love the Church must demand quick and just resolution of this crisis by making him aware of the consequences of his acts. Silence is not an option, as Bishop Strickland has pointed out.
A similar crisis was unfolding when the papacy was transplanted to Avignon and put under the control of the French King. Saint Catherine of Siena was part of the solution and cried out: “We’ve had enough exhortations to be silent. Cry out with a thousand tongues. I see the world is rotten because of silence … Speak the truth in a million voices. It is silence that kills.” She convinced the pope to return to Rome.
The situation confronting us is clear. We have the choice of Christ and his Holy Spirit and the whole tradition of the Church represented by Mary, the Mother of God. The other choice involves those who want to untie the Church from Christ and his Holy Spirit. We have to choose. “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)
