Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

Objections to the Schema on Chastity, Marriage, the Family & Virginity

Taken from here. [Emphasis mine.]

This schema, which explained the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage and related issues in clear, simple and suitably modest terms, caused intense feelings of dismay among the progressivists on the eve of the Council, when the subject was being discussed. Card. Frings, supported by Ratzinger, conveyed a sense of barely concealed irritation in his comment on the schema. He (they) complained about the inclusion of teachings from Pius XI’s Casti connubii (on Christian marriage) in the document, questioning why they needed to be reiterated and even expanded upon.

Transposed into simple terms, intelligible to modern, hedonistic man, it was as if Ratzinger-Frings had said:

“Stop going on about the Sixth Commandment: Ordinary people have no interest in such things. What they want to hear from us is how to get the most out of this life. All that idealistic nonsense is irrelevant to them. Besides, it distracts from the realistic demands of modern life – helping the poor, saving the planet and uniting the human race.”

Card. Frings, collaborated with Ratzinger against marriage

Frings’s next comment ‒ influenced, as we shall see below, by Ratzinger’s theological reflections ‒ is highly revealing because it provides the real reason why Casti connubii posed an embarrassment for the reformers:

“In matrimonial matters (‘ubi de matrimonio agitur’), one must not judge and condemn (‘non ‘judicando et damnando’) but proffer the consolation of the Christian faith by showing respect for the Eastern tradition, as did the Council of Trent which softened its Canon 7 on matrimony so as to avoid giving offence to the Greeks (‘ne Graeci offendantur’).” 1

If traditional Catholics today find these words baffling, it would not be surprising, for they make no Catholic sense. They cannot be explained apart from their historical context, which we shall now briefly outline.

The obscure reference to “the Greeks” points to the presence of members of the Greek “Orthodox” Church residing in territories owned by Venice in the 16th century who believed that the matrimonial bond is dissolved by adultery, with the assumption that there is no barrier to remarriage.

In 1947, the Flemish Jesuit Piet Fransen wrote a dissertation at the Gregorian University entitled ‘On the indissolubility of Christian marriage in the case of adultery: On Canon 7, session 24 of the Council of Trent (Jul-Nov. 1563).’ In it, he falsely maintained that Rome turned a blind eye to the Greek divorce practices for the purposes of “diplomacy” so as to leave open the possibility of future Catholic remarriage after divorce.

The central point of Franzen’s thesis was that Trent did not intend to define the indissolubility of marriage as an immutable truth of Faith, but was prepared to bend the rules in certain cases. The thesis was published in a series of essays in the 1950s, 2 and greatly influenced progressivist theologians, notably Frs. Karl Lehman, Walter Kasper and Joseph Ratzinger who saw its potential for “ecumenism” with the “Orthodox” and Protestant communities.

One never ceases to marvel at the ingenuity with which those who are intent on changing Catholic Faith and Morals find material to try to justify their positions, but the fact remains that when leaders of the Church adopt ideas that are contrary to de Fide Catholic teaching – in this case the very words of Our Lord in the Gospel – the ordinary faithful who have kept the Faith regard their efforts as a sham.

The relevance of this small digression to Frings’s rejection of the original schema on Marriage is its connection to Ratzinger who, at the time of the Council, was determined to put into action what he had learned during his student days from his professor of Moral Theology, Fr Richard Egenter. As we have seen in Part 137, Egenter was one of those liberal theologians who had little respect for the Natural Law concept of morality taught in the Scholastic Manuals. This explains how Ratzinger was so easily influenced by the thesis of Fr. Piet Fransen mentioned above, and had no qualms about advising Cardinal Frings to oppose the original schema on Matrimony.

Ratzinger’s endorsement of Fransen’s thesis was made clear in a 1972 essay in which he stated that “What we here say substantially follows his research,” 3 i.e., that Trent’s Canon 7 did not intend to define the indissolubility of marriage as a truth of Faith valid for all times and places. The main thrust of Ratzinger’s essay was that divorced and remarried Catholics should be admitted to the Sacraments. But here he departed from the Church’s interpretation of that Canon understood in the light of the Introduction to Trent’s Decree on Matrimony which had dogmatically pronounced indissolubility as the immutable, universal law.

This small digression explains Card. Frings’s intervention at Vatican II. But the issue surfaced again when Ratzinger’s essay was republished in 2014 as part of Pope Benedict’s Collected Works. His revised version omitted any mention of Communion for divorced Catholics living in a second marriage, but left Franzen’s original thesis intact, namely, that Trent allegedly left a loophole in the law of indissolubility of marriage.

So, Benedict XVI recommended that the Church should expand the (already out-of-control) annulment process, citing “psychological immaturity” in the consenting parties at the time of their first marriage, as a pretext to allow them to enter into a new contract with someone else. It was not so much a retraction by Benedict of his former error as a subterfuge to achieve the same goal that he had planned at Vatican II via another means.

This, incidentally, was the theme of Walter Kasper’s proposal which was taken up by Pope Francis in Amoris laetitia. Benedict XVI, however, always claimed that he never refuted the indissolubility of marriage in principle. But that is not sufficient to exonerate him for, at the level of praxis, he introduced a proposal for revolutionary change into the Church’s so-called pastoral practice that in certain circumstances would be tantamount to accepting de facto divorce and condoning adultery.

As with a set of Russian dolls, if we lift Frings, we uncover Ratzinger, and if we lift Ratzinger, we find Fransen. And under Fransen lay hidden a can of worms which would give rise not only to an abuse of power by those entrusted with guarding the purity of the Faith, but also a failure in moral authority on their part.


Against the Schema on the Blessed Virgin Mary

At Vatican II, Ratzinger was opposed to the idea of having a separate schema dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary which had been proposed by hundreds of Bishops at the Council out of due reverence and honor for the Mother of God. The following statements made by Ratzinger speak for themselves. The first is from a letter that Ratzinger wrote to Card. Frings in 1962 during the preparatory stage of the Council, and is quoted by his biographer, Peter Seewald:

“I believe this Marian schema should be abandoned, for the sake of the Council’s goal. If the Council as a whole is supposed to be a suave incitamentum [an easy encouragement] to the separated brethren and ad quaerendum unitatem [to achieve unity], then it must take a certain amount of pastoral care…

“No new wealth will be given to the Catholics which they did not already have. But a new obstacle will be set up for outsiders (especially the Orthodox). By the adoption of such a schema the Council would endanger its whole effect. I would advise total renunciation of this doctrinal caput (the Romans must simply make that sacrifice) and instead just put a simple prayer for unity to God’s Mother at the end of the Ecclesiology schema [on the Constitution of the Church]. This should be without undogmatized terms such as mediatrix etc.” 4

Annulments skyrocketed in the permissive decades following Vatican II

But this was a bridge too far for Card. Frings who could not bring himself to vote in favor of Ratzinger’s proposal. Nor had he the courage to vote against it. Ratzinger’s biographer, Peter Seewald, assures us that “Frings’s voting paper lies unused in the files.” 5

The letter is clear evidence that a key aspect of Catholicism, veneration of the Virgin Mary which had a long lineage from the early Church and the time of the Church Fathers, was to be downplayed in order to conciliate “outsiders.” Ratzinger later tried to justify this anti-Catholic development by presenting it as part of a search for “unity” among Christians based on Scripture rather than Tradition:

“It was without doubt an explicitly ecumenical decision when the Council decided in the fall of 1964 to incorporate the schema on Mary as a chapter in the schema on the Church… In the text, which replaced an earlier draft, the old systematic Mariology was to a considerable extent (though not completely) supplanted by a positive and scriptural Mariology. Speculation was replaced by inquiry about the events of salvation history and these have been interpreted in the light of Faith. The idea of Mary as ‘co-redemptrix’ is gone now, as is the idea of Mary as ‘mediatrix of all graces.’” 6

Ratzinger seemed to think that the refusal of the high degree of honor traditionally given to Our Lady was a small price to pay compared with the ineffable delights of “ecumenism” with its endless “dialogue,” “walking together” and joint efforts to “make a better world.” He called this new Mariology “ecclesiocentric” because it placed Our Lady within a general schema on the Church as one of the “People of God.” The obvious message to be taken from this “democratization” was that the Blessed Virgin Mary was no longer venerated in a fully Catholic way, i.e., on account of her singular privileges and prerogatives.

It was only later that Ratzinger began to perceive the negative effects of the new Mariology. He commented in 1980 in the German version of a book that he co-authored with Hans Urs von Balthasar:

“The immediate outcome of the victory of ecclesiocentric Mariology was the collapse of Mariology altogether.” 7

He expressed no regret, however, or sense of personal responsibility, but blamed the majority of the Council Fathers for having “misunderstood” the new approach; they found it “foreign,” he said, because they were immersed in traditional Marian piety. This was a clear admission that he, together with his progressivist colleagues, had undertaken a revolutionary coup in Catholic thinking for the sake of “ecumenism” and adaptation to the modern world.

But what about the traditional Catholic faithful who had never asked for, or been consulted on, the reforms, but nevertheless have had them thrust in their faces – literally in the case of the New Mass ad populum? It is clear that what Frings and Ratzinger had envisaged was not for their benefit at all, but intended for the “outsiders” who were not even interested in coming in.


To be continued


1. Frings/Ratzinger, Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II: Appendix prima, September 1962, p. 76.
2. Fransen summarized the conclusions of these essays in a widely read English essay, “Divorce on the Ground of Adultery ‒ The Council of Tent (1563).” It was published in a special edition of the journal Concilium: Theology in the Age of Renewal, vol. 55, entitled The Future of Marriage as Institution, ed. Franz Böckle, New York: Herder and Herder, 1970, pp. 89-100.
3. J. Ratzinger, ‘Zur Frage nach der Unauflöslichkeit der Ehe: Bemerkungen zum dogmengeschichtlichen Befund und zu seiner gegenwärtigen Bedeutung’ (On the Question of the Indissolubility of Marriage: Comments on the dogmatic-historical findings and their significance for our times), in Franz Henrich and Volker Eid (eds), Ehe und Ehescheidung: Diskussion Unter Christen (Marriage and Divorce: Discussion among Christians), Munich: Kösel, 1972, p. 47.
4. Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life, Volume One: Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927–1965, trans. Dinah Livingstone, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020, p. 379 (first published as Benedikt XVI. Ein Leben,Munich: Droemer, 2020).
5. Ibid. Seewald assures us that “Frings’s voting paper lies unused in the files.”
6. J. Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, New York: Paulist Press, 1966, p. 93.
7. Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar, Maria - Kirche im Ursprung, Freiburg: Herder, 1980; English version: Mary: The Church at the Source, trans. Adrian Walker, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2005, p. 24.