Now approaching the halfway mark in his Fraternal-Apostolic Year of Formation (May 2022 – May 2023), where he has served at our pastoral ministry ~ Assumption Church, in Syracuse, NY, friar Joseph Krondon, OFM Conv., a simply professed student friar of our province, is continuing to live with our friars of St. Francis Friary, while interning as a pastoral minister at the parish’s Food Pantry & Soup Kitchen, and Franciscan Northside Ministries. He has also been serving the parish as sacristan, altar server coordinator, and hospitality minister.
In honor of the 10th Anniversary of the canonization Saint Marianne Cope [October 21, 2012], a special Mass was celebrated on Saturday, October 22, 2022, at our Syracuse, NY pastoral ministry ~ Assumption Church, with a reception to follow at the Saint Marianne Cope Shrine & Museum, a ministry of her Order ~ The Sisters of Saint Francis of the Neumann Communities. The Mass was celebrated by Bishop Douglas J. Lucia. Assumption Church is home to a small shrine honoring Saint Marianne Cope who once walked the streets of the Northside neighborhood providing care and love to all. “Mother Marianne” was a native of Syracuse, NY, who had strong ties to our friars, the people of Assumption Church and the greater community. She made Hawaii her final home and her remains were transported from Syracuse to the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, in Honolulu, in July of 2014. Her Feast Day is celebrated on January 23rd. During the October 22nd Mass, she was hailed as a “living Gospel” by Bishop Lucia who imparted the final blessing with a relic of St. Marianne (see below).
During the Mass in honor of St. Marianne Cope, friar Joe had the privilege of serving Bishop Lucia. He is pictured here as the Bishop blessed those present with a relic of this great saint. [Photo Cred: The Catholic Sun]
For more information on life as a Franciscan Friar Conventual,
contact our Province Vocation Directors,
Fr. Manny Vasconcelos, OFM Conv. and Br. Nick Romeo, OFM Conv.
at vocations@olaprovince.org
or visit FranciscanVoice.org.
CAN I KNOW TRUTH? (Part Ten: INTERIORITY – THE INDELIBLE MARK OF A HUMAN BEING) [1]
12 Days on Pilgrimage in August
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).
Interiority is a golden thread that is present from St. John Henry Newman’s Anglican years through his Catholic years. If it is true that he was an absent father at Vatican II, one undeniable reason is that the development of doctrine which characterized all of the serious discussions during the Council was anticipated by his yet unequaled historical study of seven notes, markers, or tests to discern true development of doctrine.[2] A second reason, his developing Mariology, needs retrieval, not for its apparent severity, but for its truth. (I have written about Newman, the development of doctrine and his Mariology.)[3] A third, Newman’s interiority, is the scope of this reflection, for in interiority he found the influences of his friends, the events of his past, and growth in intimacy with God.
By 1845, privileged with an Oxford education, erudite and a deeply committed Anglican, Newman diagnosed and lamented a new world of assumption that had already dispatched the old belief system and its impact on him and his reform-minded Tractarians. Newman and his Tractarians were critically diagnosing the problem of a particular form of using reason without faith[4] that was leading more and more to the incoherent position he met at Oxford.[5] Real concrete interiority as the indelible mark of a human being is a theme that spans Newman’s work. Interiority became the antinomy to enthusiastic and self-congratulatory modernity that was being driven by belief that it should be reproducing itself. The evacuation of the interiority of the person, a defining mark of rationalism, is the great difference between the rationalists and Newman.
Imagine if the mind were to re-present the world and function normatively as an impersonal calculator of probabilities. Newman’s argument for interiority is based on the convergence of probabilities. The difficulties that continue are the prerogatives of free inquiry and the rights of private judgment as interpreted by modernity as rising above the thinking person. If that person has a religious training about virtue, charity in justice, even holiness, Newman was concerned about the corrosive effect of John Locke’s arguments portraying the mind as static and passive and the person as intrinsically atomistic, a theory that is the opposite of holistic. At stake is the integral development of the whole person, which has implications regarding the responsibility of every person. Newman and his Tractarian friends were making the turn towards the concrete and integral form of interiority, while rationalism in general and rationalist forms of Christianity were advancing an abstract and atomistic version in modernity.
Retrieval of the seventeenth century Anglican divines (Hooker, Bull, Lancelot Andrewes) by Newman and the Tractarians may have held the highest degree of conviction for Newman at that time, because they retain key elements of the pre-Reformation Christian period in England. Newman used all the resources of rhetoric to persuade his contemporaries and us later moderns to know how to critically engage and to call out counterfeits of Christianity. I am limiting this reflection to the claim that the indelible mark of a human being is real concrete interiority and taking for granted that the backdrop of modern ideological forces at work are known, even if not all. The counterfeit of Christianity asserts that human beings are fully explicable in rationalist or naturalist terms. To a Christian who believes in mystery, especially the gift of the Son of God (Jn 1:14) as Savior and Redeemer, the rationalist is eliminating mystery and replacing it with problem. The restrictions put on Christianity by the rationalistic mindset threaten its survival.
Newman’s interiority and Vatican II “call out” Christian counterfeits. Lumen Gentium, an engine driving Vatican II [n. 37], presents the responsibilities of laity with rights to receive in abundance from spiritual shepherds the goods of the Church, via the word of God and the sacraments. The laity help the shepherds without usurping their responsibilities. Another driving engine of Vatican II, The Pastoral Constitution on The Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes,[6] may be a metaphor for the interiority that animated Newman as Anglican and Catholic. “All of the faithful, whether clerics or laity, possess a lawful freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought and of expressing their mind with humility and fortitude in those matters on which they enjoy competence” [n. 62]. No free passes are given to criminal shepherds or to usurpers.
When Pope Saint John XXIII opened the Council in 1962, he began with his preference for the medicine of mercy rather than severity. “Holy Mother Church rejoices by the singular gift of Divine Providence and the help of the virgin Mother of God. The problem from the beginning of the Church remains: people are either with Him and His Church or not.” He knew that it will no longer do to trot out stale old arguments as if they could meet the challenges presented by the emergent secular world that finds them incomprehensible.[7] In 1849, Newman [8] lamented that the Reformers made a concerted effort to have Catholic doctrine on Mary forgotten. They plotted the overthrow of Christian faith in the sixteenth century and found that reviling and blaspheming the prerogatives of Mary would get the world to dishonor the Mother. Newman’s “call out” was to those who would enervate Christianity by dishonoring the Mother. They were missing the consequence that by dishonoring her, dishonoring of her Son would follow.[9] How prophetic! Surprise of surprises, Newman became the greatest Catholic Mariologist of the nineteenth century. “The truth enlightens man’s intelligence and shapes his freedom, leading him to know and love the Lord” (John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth).
[1] C. O’Regan, “Newman and the Affliction of Modernity” in Church Life Journal,McGrath Institute for Church Life University of Notre Dame, (7 October 2022). See the contradictions claiming followers. [2] The seven notes are: 1.) preservation of type; 2.) continuity of principles; 3.) the power of assimilation; 4.) logical sequence; 5.) anticipation of the future; 6.) conserving action upon its past; 7.) lasting vigor. [3] E. Ondrako, Newman and Gladstone, 1994, Rebuild My Church, 2021, Remembering Forward, 2022. [4] See Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, Encyclical Letter, 1998, for his update of Newman’s worry. [5] R. Whately was Newman’s mentor. By 1828, he was drifting dangerously in the direction of rationalism. [6] See The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, ch. 4, n. 37. [7] C. O’Regan, “Newman and the Affliction of Modernity,” 2022. [8] Fr. Fehlner is as direct about the hatred of the Reformers for the thought of Bl. John Duns Scotus. [9] J. H. Newman, Discourses to Mixed Congregations (London: uniform edition, 1849), discourse 17, 18. [10] S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 7, Preface.
Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
Feast Day of Saint Crispin & Saint Crispinian ~ October 25, 2022
Fraternal visit of the Most Rev. Fr. Jan Maciejowski, OFM Conv., Vicar General of the Conventual Franciscan Order
On Oct. 18 – 20, 2022, the Vicar General of the Order, Father Jan Maciejowski, OFM Conv., [3rd from left] visited the friar novices at Saint Francis of Assisi Friary and Novitiate, Arroyo Grande, CA. During his stay at the novitiate, the friar novices were able to ask him questions about the status and the future of the Order. Father Marek Stybor, OFM Conv., the Assistant Novice Director, served as translator, as the Vicar General only speaks his native Polish and Italian. Father Jan also stressed the benefits and the beauty of the Order’s international character as exhibited in a place like Rome, where friars from around the world come to study. On his last day at the friary, he celebrated the Holy Mass in honor of Blessed James of Strepar, the Saint of the Day and one of our Franciscan brothers. In his homily, he highlighted the importance of perseverance in one’s vocation, and the joy to be found in the life of the Gospel as lived in community. Before departing, Father Jan blessed the friars with the Blessing of Saint Francis and expressed his hope to see the novices again in the future.
Pax et bonum! friar Connor Joseph Ouly, OFM Conv. friar Marvin Paul Asuncion Fernandez, OFM Conv.
_________________________
NOTE: friar Connor [3rd from right] and friar Marvin [4th from right] are the two Novices of our province, living in community in the Novitiate in Arroyo Grande, CA with three friar novices of Our Lady of Consolation Province, and two novices of St. Bonaventure Province, under the leadership of Novice Director – Br. Joseph Wood, OFM Conv. [not pictured], a friar of St. Bonaventure Province, and Assistant Novice Director – Fr. Marek Stybor, OFM Conv. [2nd from right], a friar of our province.
On Saturday, October 22, 2022, our friars of our Province’s Immaculate Conception Custody, in Brazil, celebrated the Ordination of Frei Jesus Rodrigues do Amaral, OFM Conv. at the hands of Archbishop Fernando José Monteiro Guimarães, C.SS.R., Archbishop Emeritus of the Military Ordinariate of Brazil (photo below).
Laying on of Hands by the Custódio Provincial ~ Frei Carlos Roberto de Oliveira Charles, OFM Conv.
On October 25, 2022 at our Custody’s Paraíba do Sul pastoral ministry ~ Matriz São Pedro e São Paulo, Frei Jesus celebrated his first Mass of Thanksgiving. The Eucharistic celebration was attended by our Most Reverend Diocesan Bishop Nelson Francelino, who solemnly delivered the homily for the Eucharistic celebration. In addition to the friars of the Convento Santo Antônio dos Pobres, Friar Alexandre do Carmo de Souza (guardian) and Friar Michel da Cruz, OFMConv. (Parish of São Pedro and São Paulo), the Mass was concelebrated by the following priests who are members of the Council of the Provincial Custody of the Immaculate Conception of Brazil: Friar Carlos Roberto de Oliveira Charles, OFM Conv. (Custódio), Frei Fábio Soares, OFM Conv. (Custodial Vicar), Frei Ronaldo Gomes da Silva, OFM Conv. (Definitor), Friar Willian Gomes de Mendonça,OFM Conv. (Definitor), Friar Luís Henrique Nascimento Lima, OFM Conv. (Treasurer and Exactor). The celebration was also attended by the following priests: Friar Lindomar de Jesus Carvalho, OFM Conv., Friar Luiz Gonzaga da Silva, OFM Conv., Fr. Medoro, Fr. Itamar, Fr. Jefferson, Fr. Marcio Xavier. More photos of the October 25th Mass from Focar Regional Notícias e Eventos
Frei Carlos Roberto de Oliveira Charles, OFM Conv. (Custódio Provincial of our Custódia Província Imaculada Conceição with Frei Jesus [Photo Cred: Focar Regional Notícias e Eventos]
Frei Jesus with Frei Ronaldo Gomes da Silva, OFM Conv., who served as Custódio Provincial throughout most of Frei Jesus’ formative years. Frei Ronaldo continues to serve the Custody now as a member of the Definitory. [Photo Cred: Focar Regional Notícias e Eventos]
If you are a young man in Brazil
and would like more information on Vocations with our Custody there,
contact Friar Willian Gomes Mendonça, OFM Conv.,
at despertarfranciscano@gmail.com or sav.conv@hotmail.com
If you are a young man living on the East Coast of North America,
and you would like more information on life as a Franciscan Friar Conventual
of Our Lady of the Angels Province, email our Province Vocation Directors,
Fr. Manny Vasconcelos, OFM Conv. and Br. Nick Romeo, OFM Conv.
at vocations@olprovince.org.
On Saturday,October29,2022, from 6–8:00 p.m., join our friars, staff and volunteers serving at The Shrine of St. Anthony (12290 Folly Quarter Road, Ellicott City, MD 21042) for a family-oriented event in honor of the November 1st Feast of All Saints. The night will be filled with FAITH and FUN, starting at 6:00 p.m. as participants gather in front of The Shrine building to begin a walk through the grounds. Along the way, they will be greeted by some of the most popular Saints with great devotions to the Eucharist, who will tell their stories, and then pass out candy. This year’s event will also include a martyrs track for the older kids! All are encouraged to come dressed as your favorite Saint or Biblical Figure. There will be several varied stations to visit, followed by a Litany of the Saints, and ending with a bonfire. There is no charge, but please bring a bag of candy per 2 children. If you plan to attend A Night with the Saints, please RSVP by Noon on October 29th, by calling The Shrine’s Office at 410-531-2800. If you have any questions, call the office or email info@shrineofstanthony.org.
Ordinary Custodial Chapter – Part II: From October 10-14, 2022, the friars of the Provincial Custody of Blessed Agnellus of Pisa in Great Britain-Ireland gathered at the Our Lady of Fatima Retreat Center in Llandudno, Wales for the second part of their Ordinary Custodial Chapter.
The agenda included the approval of the revised Custodial Statutes, certain motions concerning present and future apostolic endeavors of the friars of the custody, the Custodial Four-Year Plan, and the election of the guardians and the chairmen of the commissions. The Custodial Four-Year Plan was based on the idea of establishing the needed procedures (in the Custody and locally), which will help the Custody to grow toward being a Province, maintaining a vision of what could be in the future and building toward that future. Each of these goals was divided into organizational, spiritual and fraternal elements.
Friar Jude WINKLER, Assistant General for the Conventual Franciscan Federation (CFF)
Over the October 14-16, 2022 weekend, UNC students participated in the UNC Chapel Hill Newman Catholic Student Center Parish – Carolina Awakening 14 Retreat, pictured here with Our Lady of the Angels Province friar ~ Fr. Tim Kulbicki, OFM Conv. (their Pastor and Campus Minister).
One of our province pastoral ministries is also a college campus ministry. Served by our friars since 2013, the UNC Chapel Hill Newman Catholic Student Center Parish is a parish of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh ministering to students, faculty, and staff of UNC and alumni, families, friends, and visitors to Chapel Hill, NC. Our Lady of the Angels Province friars, Fr. Tim Kulbicki, OFM Conv. (Pastor and Campus Minister) and Fr. Bill Robinson, OFM Conv. (Assisting Clergy) currently serve in ministry there.
A bit of history extracted from the ministry’s website:
“The Catholic presence in Chapel Hill dates from at least the 1920’s. In 1922 the newly created St. Thomas More Mission began celebrating Mass for a handful of students in a second-floor room in Gerrard Hall of the University of North Carolina campus. By 1934 the congregation had grown to nearly 200, including some non-students, and Mass moved to the second floor of Graham Memorial. These faithful few pioneers contributed to the conversion of novelist Walker Percy to Catholicism. In 1940 the mission became an independent parish. Its growing size led to Mass being celebrated in the Hill Hall auditorium until a new and proper church was built on Gimghoul Road in 1957.
A separate campus ministry was made necessary by an influx of Catholic cadets to the U.S. Navy pre-flight school beginning in 1942. In 1945 the Diocese of Raleigh purchased the property and “White House” at 218 Pittsboro Street for the Catholic Student Center; a picture of this building can be found near the Pittsboro Street doors of the Church. The continuing growth of the Catholic student population at UNC led the Diocese of Raleigh to demolish the “White House” and replace it with a single-story multi-purpose Church building in 1968; this construction was financed by the first Bishop’s Annual Appeal (BAA). In 1971 Newman was canonically erected as an independent non-territorial parish serving the UNC Chapel Hill community. While it technically bears the title of Mary, Mother of the Church, it remains popularly known and loved as the Newman Catholic Community. Continued growth of the Catholic student population at UNC led in 1999 to an expansion and renovation of the Church building, and in 2013 the next-door Wesley Center was purchased as the Newman Activity Center.” [Read More]
(Part Nine: VATICAN II IS “IRREPLACEABLE”) 11 OCTOBER 1962 – 8 DECEMBER 1965
12 Days on Pilgrimage in August
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).
Vatican II is “irreplaceable.” If one word could capture the quintessence of my experiences of study of Vatican II with Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, OFM Conv., Franciscan theologian, it is that the Council is “irreplaceable.” To him, the Council was thoroughly Franciscan. His claim of the Council as Bonaventurian-Scotistic[1] is anchored in the mystery of the absolute primacy of Christ. Fr. Fehlner’s many works[2] confirm his claim. His life of reflecting, retrieving, and renewing Catholic theology, thought, and practice as a whole was in accord with the mind of the One Teacher of all, Christ Jesus. This is communicated to us and reflected in the living, uninterrupted Tradition of the Church. So far so good. Let us look deeper with love and truth at the controversies which have raged since the Protestant Reformation.
The definition of the reality known as traditio, or in Greek parádosis, belongs to both pre-reformation and post-reformation Catholic theologians. The broad sense of traditio is “a passing on” or “handing over” or “handing down,” the transmission in the Church of the teaching of Christ from the time of the Apostles to eyewitnesses and ministers of the word (Lk 1:2). It is taught by word of mouth or letter (2 Thess 2:15), or conveyed as a command to keep away from any not in accord with the tradition that was received from the Apostles (2 Thess 3:6) and to hold fast to what Paul preached (1 Cor 15:1-11). A narrower sense of traditio distinguishes between word of mouth or written word, as Paul does. This is the uniquely inspired Sacred Scripture.[3]
The Reformation occasioned the formal definition of divine Tradition and its relation to Sacred Scripture and to the teaching authority of the Church, the Apostolic Magisterium. These questions were first taken up comprehensively at the Council of Trent, which took a defensive posture in response to the Protestant Reformers. Continuity in a new tone is with the sessions of Vatican II in respect to the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum. One finds two for one: the Catholic answer in terms of the source or sources of Revelation and in terms of the development of doctrine. Why and how these definitions are a consequence of efforts to rationalize an attempt to reform the Church by the Protestant Reformers turned out to be a particularly disastrous series of events in the western part of the Church. The unity willed by Christ (Jn 17: 20-26) was shattered. At Vatican II, earnest effort toward Christian unity began anew and continues as a difficult yet constitutive post-conciliar issue by devoted participants.
Fr. Fehlner retrieved the all-but-disabled Scotistic tradition by retrieval of the aesthetic character of St. Francis of Assisi in St. Bonaventure’s [4]Major Life of St. Francis, Legenda Major. The reader sees the oral and written Tradition at work. He explicates Bonaventure: “Theology is the study of Sacred Scripture.” Duns Scotus agrees. Caution! Their view might be taken as an anticipation of the Protestant Reformers, or at least, a partial justification for their point of view. There is a mega-difference. When the Reformers deny the unity of a living Tradition which includes two instruments: one oral, one written, they fail to accept that theology, as the study of Sacred Scripture, meaning Scripture read and explained primarily within Tradition in the broad sense. The study of that living oral Tradition, in the strict sense, is never carried out apart from a study of Scripture. Fr. Fehlner adds with characteristic clarity: “studied in this manner, Scripture is a sufficient basis for theology; studied abstractly, or apart from Tradition, it is not.”
TheDogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, chapter eight, “The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the Mystery of Christ and of the Church,” was Fr. Fehlner’s constant reference. Within he found a confirmation of the Mariology of Bl. John Duns Scotus in relation to its sources in the divine Tradition of the Church. Three “thick” reasons are: first, Duns Scotus makes use of Tradition and the recorded instruments of oral Tradition, other than Scripture, as formal aids to memory rather than to teaching or speculation. Second, the Subtle Doctor[5] makes use of these in his Mariology and in relation to those general themes, especially the absolute primacy of Christ and Christian metaphysics, which are most characteristic of them in relation to their scriptural basis (Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and St. John). Third, the way the Oxford theologian[6] understands and uses Tradition in his speculative Mariology has survived without interruption in Franciscan Mariology and Marian spirituality. Development is from Duns Scotus to St. Maximilian M. Kolbe, to Fr. Fehlner. Kolbe is a Scotist.[7]
How the truth of the Christian faith can be recognized, preached and taught, how believers can witness, hand on faithfully, with persuasion, and develop with originality is the dogmatic intention from Vatican II that telescopes Fr. Fehlner’s life and view of “irreplaceability.” In 2015, he was honored as the foremost Mariologist in the United States by the Mariological Society of America.[8] “No one has to think as I do about the Church,” he said. “All my life I have favored the approach to Our Lady by St. Francis of Assisi and his successors.”
The Catholic answer is in terms of the source or sources of Revelation and in terms of the development of doctrine. The Church and Duns Scotus did not have the “development of doctrine” as expounded by John Henry Newman. Vatican II, Dei Verbum did!
[1] Pope Paul VI, Alma Parens, 14 July 1966, is a retrieval of the subtle thought of Bl. John Duns Scotus, 1265 – 1308. See the sonnet, “Duns Scotus Oxford” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. [2] Happily Fehlner’s works are soon to be released in eight volumes. J. I Goff, ed., Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2023), forthcoming. [3] Much more may be exposited about the notion of Tradition with many more distinctions. See P. D. Fehlner, “Sources of Scotus’ Mariology in Tradition” in the Scotus Symposium at Durham in Sept. 2008. [4] E. Ondrako, Rebuild My Church (Hobe Sound, FL: Lectio Publishing, LLC, 2021), 308 – 309 [5] Subtle Doctor identifies John Duns Scotus with unraveling the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. [6] Linking the Oxford theologians, Bl. John Duns Scotus and St. John Henry Newman, suggests more than happenstance. Linking their thoughts might have a significant bearing on the future of Catholic theology. [7] Insemination or incorporation of the mystery of the Immaculate Conception into the Church and every soul means Mary remembers in them and with them what Jesus said and did. (Writings of Kolbe, 486). [8] The John Cardinal Wright Award was given to him in May 2015 and he died three years later.
Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
October 12, 2022
(Part Eight: SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL) 12 Days on Pilgrimage in August
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).
Our Marian Franciscan Pilgrimage brought us to Germany. This reflection is to aid Catholics beyond Germany about the “Synodal Path” of Pope Francis. In sum, on 21 July 2022, a “Declaration of the Holy See” to the Catholics in Germany, clarified that it would not be licit “to initiate in the dioceses, before an agreement at the level of the universal Church, official new structures or doctrines, which would represent a wound to ecclesial communion and a threat to the unity of the Church.”[1] The modality of Vatican II has an optic to help resolve the contours.
On 11 October 1962, Pope St. John XXIII opened the Council beside St. Peter’s tomb: “Mother Church rejoices that, by the singular gift of Divine Providence, … under the auspices of the virgin Mother of God, …. The magisterium (teaching authority) is unfailing and perdures until the end of time. Christ is the center of history. For two thousand years the great problem remains, i.e. people are either with Him and His Church or without Him. Some deliberately oppose His Church and give rise to confusion. History is the teacher of life. Prophets of gloom had not learned from history. He lamented for the bishops who were absent because they were imprisoned for their faithfulness to Christ.[2]
“The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously. …The Christian, Catholic, and apostolic spirit of the whole world expects a step forward towards a doctrinal penetration and a formation of consciousness in faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which, however, should be studied and explored through the methods of research and through literary forms of thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another.”
“The truth of the Lord will remain forever. …Often errors vanish as quickly as they arise, like fog before the sun. The Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity … to meet the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than condemnations. Fallacious teaching, opinions and dangerous concepts… contrast honesty and have produced lethal fruits, that it would seem humanity is inclined to condemn. The Catholic Church has the great duty to work actively so that there may be fulfilled the great mystery of that unity, which Jesus Christ invoked with fervent prayer from His heavenly Father. The mystery of unity animates those who follow non-Christian religions.”
Recall the plan for the Council brought a complex of problems to the center of theological questioning. Long gone is the shift to catholic from focus on Roman at Vatican I (1869-1870). Pope John set out to bring a shift of attention to catholic. The Council began to rebuild a dialogical and fraternal Church imbued with Charity in Truth [3] for the development of every person and of all humanity. The Church’s successes and failures are perforated, not a secret. Pope Francis’ vision of “synodality” requires listening to the Holy Spirit and the Gospel. The credibility of Church authority, including papal authority, Christian anthropology and sexual morality, and the reliability of Scripture are always in the center of theological questioning.
From Pope John, Vatican II, to Pope Francis the Church has never lost sight that her inmost nature is communio, a sharing of and fellowship in the body of the Lord. Developments may have appeared to, yet never contradicted what has been constant in the doctrine taught by the Church before and since John XXIII opened the Council. The Council analyzed Tradition as never a simple and anonymous handing on of teaching, but as linked to a person, a living word, with a concrete reality in faith. Successio and traditio were originally neighboring terms, practically synonymous. Succession is never the taking over of some official powers that are then at the fancy of the office bearer. The official powers are at the service of the word. The person with the office testifies to what has been entrusted. Official power overshadows the bearer, who fades into the background.
In the second century, the anti-Gnostic polemics challenged the purpose of succession. Gnostics contrasted the true apostolic tradition of the Church with the pseudo-apostolic tradition of Gnosis (knowledge). They taught secret information as part of a secret tradition passed down from the apostles. A line can be traced to the communities in which the apostles themselves had been at work or had received letters from the apostles.The head of the community now traces his spiritual ancestors. If there could be any knowledge anywhere of the oral heritage from the apostles, it is found in these apostolic communities. Succession is equal to tradition. Succession holds fast to the apostolic word. Tradition continues the existence of authorized witnesses. The reality of the Word of God and the reality based upon it always makes use of human circumstances to express itself in the community.[4] Hence, Gnostic secret information and traditions (plural) has a Catholic answer: traditio. Tradition is singular.
Peter and the apostles were to preach the word. Sixty years after the start of Vatican II, anxiety in relation to the future seems more pervasive in the West. [5] Agree? Kierkegaard, in a Protestant tradition, saw anxiety everywhere with no exception. His deep reflection is on the demonic as unfreedom that wants to close itself off, which is impossible. Anxiety manifests itself when there is contact with the good. Inclosing reserve is silence. A person will not say what needs to be said. In reply, knowledge of truth-filled love moves Christians from silence.
[1] “Declaration of the Holy See,” Vatican Press Office, 21 July 2022 [2] Examples: we visited the Czech Republic, St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague, where Joseph Cardinal Beran is buried. He was only allowed to attend the Council after 1964. We visited the Slovak Republic where Jan Chrysostom Cardinal Korec, Nitra, Slovakia, was imprisoned until 1969 when the Vatican succeeded in having him released. When he met Pope Paul, the Holy Father wept and gave him his ring and crosier. [3] Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Encyclical on Integral Human Development, 29 June 2009) [4] Pope Benedict XVI, God’s Word (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 20-22. [5] S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 111 – 162. His psychological treatment is a rebelling against the appropriation of Hegel in Danish Lutheranism.
Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
October 12, 2022
October 11, 2022 marks the 60th Anniversary of the Opening of the Second Vatican Council as well as the Feast Day of Saint John XXIII
(Part Seven: What to Think about an Erring Conscience; How it Differs from a Muffled Conscience; How They Relate to Invincible Ignorance and Truth) 12 Days on Pilgrimage in August
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).
In part six I began with Pope Emeritus Benedict’s pastoral clarity about Catholic teaching that a person must follow an erring conscience. I emphatically agree and ask: how can I help a searcher who may or may not understand and identify an erring conscience? The question of an erring conscience is a mega-question. Benedict does not develop the theme of how the voice of God becomes incapacitated in a person with an erring conscience. He knows a longer conversation is needed when he states: “the removal of truth, which took place earlier and now takes its revenge in the form of an erring conscience, is the real guilt that lulls man in false security and ultimately abandons him to solitude in a pathless wasteland.”[1]
I am highlighting Benedict’s “narrative” approach about an erring conscience. Recall his colleague’s theory (see part six of this series) of the justifying force of the subjective conscience with the premise: a firm subjective conviction includes lack of any doubts and scruples. Benedict continues with his colleague: if it is generally true that an erring conscience could lead to salvation, the SS troops under Hitler would have been justified and would now be in heaven. They had committed their evil deeds out of fanatical conviction and without the least disturbance to their consciences. At that, another colleague intervened: “Yes, that is so!” Hitler and his collaborators were deeply convinced of their cause and could not have acted differently. Despite the objective horror of their deeds, they had acted morally, from a subjective perspective.
Benedict did not buy it. If you keep before you the theory of the subjective conscience and that it might lead to salvation; if you have not shut out the memory of World War II that is hard to revisit, then ponder deeply. Clear headed thinkers, from Pope Emeritus Benedict to one’s grandmother and mother, reply. The latter use simpler words than Benedict, yet their thought converges. The theory of the justifying force of the subjective conscience and concept of conscience that leads to such inferences is false, he concludes. To say that one has a subjective conviction without any doubts or scruples does not justify a person.
By using World War II as a symbol, Pope Emeritus Benedict is applying the lessons to our day with deep existential and spiritual gravity. He is awakening the problem of not listening by stirring up guilt feelings that shatter a conscience’s false security. If my existence lacks criticism made by my self-satisfied existence, maybe remembering or experiencing physical pain will wake me up. Several biblical texts (e.g. Lk 18: 9-14) debunk the theory of justification by means of an erring conscience that was put forward by Benedict’s two colleagues. Memory of the lie to neighbor, to self, to nation, the denial of responsibility that information of evil was known and deemed inconvenient truth amounts to: not listening being willed as not listening.
Related speculative problems need a theological cleanup about the erring conscience and how the voice of God in the person becomes incapacitated. Complacency in the modern age interlocks with listening to how we enjoy the gifts of modernity, while simultaneously not listening to one atrocity after another. More than the flag that Benedict has given is needed for a longer conversation. His essays offer a narrative style to decode why a person may never try to get to the truth that is intrinsically correctible. Formation of conscience is a luxury item, in the sense that a genuine conscience has and learns a correct and distinct vocabulary. Modernity pretends that conscience is incapacitated. Modernity rules out that “not willing to listen” is antecedent to inaction that has consequences of devastating evil on the world. Modernity excuses a counterfeit conscience. Modernity dampens down conscience.
A historical cleanup is needed as well. In the early 1990’s, a more peaceful time before the unjust Ukraine war (24 February 2022), Benedict praises the Patriarch of Moscow for lamenting the system of deceit that kept the people who lived in it as having lost much of their powers of perception. “Society had lost the ability to feel compassion, and human emotions had withered away…. We must bring society back to the eternal moral values.”[2] The Patriarch was pleading to develop anew the capacity to hear God’s voice in one’s heart, a capacity he saw as almost extinguished. Pope Emeritus Benedict parsed the Patriarch’s lament: It is only in an initial phase that error, the erring conscience, is comfortable.[3] He praised the Patriarch for drawing attention to the dehumanization of the world and a deadly danger when conscience falls silent and nothing is done to resist it. When I say that this forward looking vision of the Patriarch of Moscow needs a historical clean up, I mean that today Patriarch Kyrill and the Russian Orthodox clergy who are in league with him are complicit in Putin’s unjust invasion of Ukraine. Their plan is to liquidate the Greco-Catholic Church in Ukraine. Forgotten is the Christianization of the Kievan Rus in 988, which includes Ukraine, before Moscow was born.
Pope Emeritus Benedict’s “narrative” style embraces the conversation style of Vatican II. Truth wins because it is truth, with gentleness and power.[4] His critique of the German nation in World War II is for willfully not listening to conscience. By the willful ignoring of conscience, guilt has no excuse. Muffled consciences found truth[5] inconvenient. Nor can America as a winner get a free pass. Most urgently, Patriarch Kyrill once lamented and pleaded to develop anew the capacity to hear God’s voice in one’s heart, a capacity he saw as almost extinguished.[6] Yet now he has agreed with Putin’s invasion. What is the truth to the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kyrill?
[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Values in a Time of Upheaval (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 81. [2]Values, 83. The Soviet Union dissolved on Christmas Day 1991. Putin seeks its reversal. [3]Values, 83. I find this insight of Pope Emeritus Benedict about the erring conscience riveting. [4]Dignitatis Humanae Personae, Documents of Vatican II. [5] Inconvenient truth is a soft word for total evil: what led up to, who were targeted for extermination, when, where, why, realities of transport to slave labor camps, decisions who will live, mass killings, disposal, lies, attempts to cover what few could believe was the truth, etc. Documentation continues to shock. See Ken Burns’ et al documentary: The United States and the Holocaust. My point is: no one gets a free pass. [6] Is the Patriarch acting as Putin’s altar boy? Francis used the image fraternally. Kyrill was to meet Francis in Kazakhstan in September but canceled. Recall their meeting in Havana. Solely theater?
Fr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFM Conventual
Research Fellow Pontifical Faculty of St. Bonaventure, Rome
Visiting Scholar, McGrath Institute for Church Life
University of Notre Dame
60th Anniversary of the Opening of the Second Vatican Council
and the Feast Day of Saint John XXIII – October 11, 2022
