De Mattei replies to Edward Peters on the Buenos Aires letter and the authentic magisterium

By Roberto de Mattei, Corrispondenzaromana.it, 28 December 2017

We publish the reply of prof. Roberto De Mattei to prof. Peters on the crisis of the Church in an article, published only in English on Onepeterfive last December 19th, which deepens the debate arising from the publication in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis of the Criteria set by the Argentine bishops for the interpretation of the AL along with the Papal Letter approval.

Prof. Edward Peters is a scholar of sure orthodoxy who wants to contain the damage of the Post-Synodal Exhortation Amoris laetitia of Pope Francis through the arms of canon law, in particular of Canon 915 of the new Code (I had spoken here), which reads: “Those excommunicated and forbidden are not admitted to Holy Communion, after the imposition or declaration of the sentence and the others who obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin” (cf E. Peters, Three ways to not deal with Canon 915, in “The Catholic World Report”, Jan. 24, 2017 and Some remarks on the de Mattei interview, in “The Catholic World Report”, Dec. 13, 2017 in which he criticizes my “Onepeterfive” interview on 11 December 2017.

To this end, he tries to minimize the “Rescriptum ex audientia SS.mi” of June 5, 2017, making the two documents attached to it practically irrelevant on the theological and canonical level (see “On the appearance of the pope’s letter to the Argentine”) bishops in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, in the Light of the Law – Canon Lawyer’s Blog, Dec. 4, 2017).

I will try to explain why this position, although driven by good intentions, seems to me to be weak and dangerous.

As far as canon law is concerned, I refer to the study of a skilful Italian jurist who is behind the pseudonym of Augustinus Hipponensis . He observes that when Canon 915 mentions “those who persistently persevere in manifest grave sin”, he refers not only to the divorced and remarried, but to a broader category of persons which includes, for example, as Cardinal Burke recalled in one of his writings, even politicians who publicly support legislation on abortion or euthanasia (Canon 915: The Discipline Regarding the Denial of the Holy Communion to Those Obstinately Persevering in Manifest Grave Sin, in “Periodica de re canonica” (2007), pp. 3- 58).

The intention of Pope Bergoglio is not to modify the canon 915 in full, but only to expunge from it a category of persons (the divorced and remarried). To do this it was not necessary, or even logical, to intervene on the general rule. The papal decree intends to act on the particular and specific prohibition (the divorced and remarried) leaving the general disposition intact.

The can. 20 of the new Code in effect, allows the canonical legislator to repeal a previous discipline, even tacitly or implicitly, when the later law is incompatible with the previous one, or when the matter, subject to the previous law, is reorganized from scratch.

In our case it seems undoubted that, from a legislative point of view, the prohibition enshrined in the Familiaris Consortio and the divine right has been dropped already following the exhortation Amoris laetitia. “Today, certainly it is – writes the Italian canonist – expected that the Bishop of Rome, taking over the Criterios básicos (Argentine bishops) and praising them as the only possible hermeneutics of his exhortation, intended to admit the category of divorced and remarried – or as it is said of adulterers – to the Communion, foreseeing for them a gradual admission to the Sacrament. Therefore the prohibition – an absolute time – would no longer be considered so stringent. Of course, as the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts states in the 2000 Declaration, it is a prohibition of divine right. There is no question. And yet, then there is an undoubted conflict between the human and the divine right which must be acknowledged, without trying to elude it by affirming the irrelevance of the two documents and without wishing to draw the logical theological and canonical consequences ».

As for the theological aspect of the question, I would like to define erroneous, or at least minimalist, the conception of the Magisterium of the Church that seems to have prof. Peters. The ordinary Magisterium, exercised day by day by the Church, includes the encyclicals, decrees, pastoral letters and discourses of the Pope and the Bishops all over the globe.

Almost all of Pius XII’s teaching on the subject of birth regulation is expressed in discourses, such as those of obstetricians or Catholic doctors, who should be denied the value of authentic Magisterium if the reductive vision of prof. Peters. The over one hundred ecclesiastical documents collected in the Enchiridion Symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum by Heinrich Denzinger (1819-1883), updated to the present day, include constitutions, bubbles, briefs, motu proprio, decrees, encyclicals, exhortations and letters apostolics of all kinds and, as a whole, constitute the depositum fidei of the Church.

Few of these acts are in themselves infallible. But even the ordinary Magisterium can become infallible when it is universal, in the sense of being continually repeated. The explanatory doctrinal note of the Professio fidei of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of 18 May 1998 (AAS, 90 (1998), pp. 542-551) reiterates that a doctrine is to be understood as infallibly proposed when, although there is no solemn form of definition, “this doctrine belonging to the patrimony of the depositum fidei is taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium” (n.9). Ordinary universal magisterium, as explained by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to be considered infallible must be “understood in a diachronic sense, and not only necessarily synchronic” (ibid., Note 27).

For this reason, “in the Encyclicals Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium Vitae and in the same Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, the Roman Pontiff intended, although not in a solemn form, to confirm and reaffirm doctrines belonging to the teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium. are to be held in a definitive and unequivocal way “(” (Card. Tarcisio Bertone, Concerning the reception of the documents of the magisterium and of public dissent, Osservatore Romano 20 December 1996).

On 2 December 2017, the Vatican announced that on 5 June this year Pope Francis conferred the status of “authentic magisterium” to the letter he sent on 5 September 2016 to the bishops of the Buenos Aires region. The text of the Letter together with the Criterios básicos elaborated by the Argentine bishops was published, in the form of the Apostolic Epistle, in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official register of the Apostolic See (issue 10 of 2016, pp. 1071-1074).

The two documents were promulgated with a rescript ex audientia SS.mi, signed by card. Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, who, in addition to ordering the publication of the two aforementioned acts, qualified them as an expression of the Authentic Magisterium ( Summus Pontifex decernit ut duo Documenta quae praecedunt edantur for publicationem in situ electronico Vatican et in Actis Apostolicae Sedis, velut Magisterium authenticum ).

This document, like the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, certainly belongs to the ordinary Magisterium of the Church. As well known father Brian Harrison, in a text presented by another distinguished scholar, prof. Paolo Pasqualucci, the Apostolic Epistulae are of superior rank to the Litterae apostolicae, to the Motu Proprio and even to the Apostolic Constitutions, such as that with which John Paul II promulgated the Catechism of the Catholic Church. John Paul used an Apostolic Epistle to promulgate what is considered a definition ex cathedra proclaiming an infallible truth of the second category (definitive tenenda); that is to say, that only men can be ordained priests (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 1994).

The infallible character does not derive naturally from the form of the Apostolic Epistle, but from the fact that the teaching of the Pope has confirmed the plurisecular one of the Church. Therefore, not wrongly, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, declared December 5 at the “Catholic News Service”:

“The fact that the pope requested that he be published in the AAS means that His Holiness has given these documents to particular qualifications that elevates them to the level of the official teaching of the church”. “While the content of the pope”, it does point to the interpretations of the Argentine bishops and confirms them as authentically reflecting his own mind, “the cardinal said. “Thus together the two documents became the Holy Father’s authentic magisterium for the whole church”.

The Epistula of Pope Francis sweeps away every “hermeneutics of continuity”, affirming with authority that the only correct interpretation of chap. 8 of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia is the one supported by the bishops of Buenos Aires in their pastoral letter of September 5, 2016 (“No hay otras interpretaciones”). In the art. 6 of this letter, the bishops affirm that “if we come to recognize that, in a particular case, there are personal limits that mitigate responsibility and guilt, especially when a person considers that it would fall into further shortcomings by damaging the children of the new union, Amoris laetitia opens the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist “.
According to Peters the two documents of Pope Francis would not contain statements about faith and morality, but only disciplinary provisions. But a normative act, having disciplinary character in matters of faith or morals, is always an act of the Magisterium. The Denzinger is full of disciplinary or pastoral provisions, such as the responses of Nicholas I (858-867) “Ad consulta vestra” to the Bulgarians of 13 November 866, which must be considered authentic acts of the Magisterium. In the case of the Epistula of Pope Francis we are not dealing with a disciplinary rule, but with a new teaching on the subject of morals, which clearly means admitting adultery to Communion, foreseeing for them a gradual admission to the sacrament.

The “hermeneutics of continuity”, or the attempt to interpret ambiguous or erroneous documents in the light of the Tradition of the Church, has malfunctioned even when a Pope like Benedict XVI promoted it. Is it not an illusion to pretend to use it when it is the Pope himself who proposes the hermeneutics of discontinuity? Is it not simpler and more logical to remember that there can be error even in acts of ordinary non-infallible Magisterium? Authentic Magisterium does not in fact mean “dogmatic” and if the faithful observes, in a reasonably evident manner, a precise opposition between a text of this Magisterium and the divine law of the Church, after carefully studying the question, it may licitly suspend or deny its assent to the papal document.

This doctrine is found in the most authoritative theologians, such as Father Hugo von Hurter (1832-1914), who states:

“If there are serious and solid reasons, especially theological ones, against the decisions of the authentic magisterium [= non-infallible], both episcopal and pontifical, it will be lawful to reject the error, conditionally assent, or even suspend the assent. »(Theologiae Dogmaticae Compendium, Wagneriana-Bloud et Barral, Innsbruck-Paris, 1883, Volume I, page 492).

Recalling the words of St. Paul: “If we ourselves or an angel from heaven would preach to you a different Gospel from that which we preached to you, let him be anathema” (Gal 1: 8), St. Vincent de Lérins comments:

“But why does he say if we ourselves and not even myself? Because it means that even if Peter or Andrew or John or the whole college of the apostles preached to you a different gospel from that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. What a tremendous penalty! To affirm his fidelity to the primitive faith he spared neither himself nor the other apostles “(Commonitorium, chapter VIII, 2).

The possibility of the infidelity to the Tradition of an assembly of bishops, and of the same Peter, however rare, is not excluded. Close your eyes on reality means to get into a dead end. The reason and the sensus fidei impose to resist, even publicly, a Pope who promotes, supports and favors errors and heresies within the Church.

Source: Corrispondenzaromana.it

http://www.robertodemattei.it/2017/12/28/de-mattei-risponde-a-edward-peters-sulla-lettera-di-buenos-aires-e-il-magistero-autentico/