Msgr. Bernard Tissier de Mallerais: Faith Imperiled by Reason - Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutics

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CHAPTER VIII -Christ the King Re-envisioned by Personalism

The political kingship of Jesus is the consequence of his divinity. If this man, Jesus Christ, is God, then he is king. Not only the Church is submitted to him as to the head from whom she receives all spiritual influence, but civil society itself, in the temporal order which is its own, must be submitted to his government. Indeed, Christ does not himself directly exercise this temporal government, but he leaves it to his retainers who exercise it in his name (Pius XI, encyclical Quas Primas, December 11, 1925)


1. Political implications of man’s ultimate end

Well, all human things, spiritual with temporal, are ordained to the only and unique last end, eternal beatitude, otherwise called, because of sin, eternal salvation. And Christ was incarnated and suffered his passion precisely so as to lead men to this ultimate end.

It follows from the singularity of the last end that civil society, or the city, is willed by God, not only so as to assure for men here below ‘the good life according to virtue’ (Aristotle), but ‘so that, by this virtuous life, they may reach to enjoyment of God.’[186] It follows that the temporal common good, the proper end of the State, must be ordained to the last end of man, eternal beatitude. This ordination is only indirect because temporal means are not proportionate for obtaining a supernatural effect. From this ordination follows that the State’s duty ‘of procuring [in the temporal order] the good life of the multitude, according as it is necessary to make them obtain celestial beatitude; that is to say that it must prescribe what leads them there and, in the measure possible, forbid what is contrary to it.’[187] In this consists the State’s ministerial function in regard to the Church, since celestial beatitude, or the salvation of souls, is the proper end of the Church.

Even if the application of these principles depends on the historical conditions of societies, whether unanimously Christian, or religiously plural, or laicized, or non-Christian, the principles remain. They are in particular the foundation of two sentences of Pius IX. The first, in his encyclical Quanta Cura, attributes to the well-constituted State the office of reprimanding ‘the violators of the Catholic religion.’[188] The second, in the Syllabus, does not recognize for immigrants into Christian countries any right to exercise freely their dissident cult (DS 2978). These sentences suppose a Christian state; they are conditioned for that state, but the principles which underlie them are timeless and remain.What will Vatican Council II do?

– Christ the King will also be purified in a historicist and personalist vision. This is no longer existentialism, this French personalism, with Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950) and Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), both Catholics.


2. Religious liberty purified by the help of Emmanuel Mounier

A first revision, postulated by philosophical progress, affects the human person; then a second, postulated by the meaning of history, will affect the State, in the ties that the person and the State have with religion. Let us first consider the person.

– Thesis. Felicité de Lamennais (1782-1864) was condemned in 1832 by Gregory XVI’s encyclical Mirari Vos, for having understood that for each freedom of conscience and of opinions must be recognized, for the advantage of religion, and that the Church must be separated from the State (Dz 1613-1615). In this freedom of conscience was included the freedom of cult for each.

– Antithesis. To Lamennais was lacking the necessary tool for introducing freedom of cult ‘into Christianity.’[189] Gregory XVI, attributing a ‘putrid source of indifferentism’ to this freedom, did not know how to see the Christian root of that same freedom. This tool, which must purify religious liberty from all stench of indifferentism, was procured by Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950): it is the dignity of the human person.

The freedom of cult, Vatican II will say, is one of the ‘values most prized by our contemporaries’; ‘proceeding from the human genius, which is a gift of God, it is very good.’ It is only there ‘to retie them to their divine source’; but ‘tainted by the corruption of mankind, it has been diverted from the requisite order; it thus has need of correction’ (Gaudium et Spes, # 11, § 2).

Joseph Ratzinger took up again this synthesis twenty years later: religious liberty is one of the ‘least tested values from two centuries of liberal culture’[190]; today it may be ‘purified and corrected’ (Congar and Ratzinger), if, in place of making it rest on the moving sand of freedom of conscience, founded on religious indifference, it be founded upon the solid rock of ‘the nature of the person’ (John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, August 6, 1993, # 50). According to Mounier, the person constitutes himself by his free action, responsible ‘by virtue of his own choices.’ According to Maritain, the dignity of the person demands ‘his freedom of exulting in its risks and perils.’

– Synthesis. The result of this correction is the religious liberty proclaimed by Vatican II (declaration Dignitatis Humanae, # 2). The person who, in religious areas, ‘acts according the consciousness of his duty’ or who, in the exercise of his religious cult, is supposed to be in search of truth—even if it is not so in fact—is worthy of respect and consequently has a right for freedom in exercising his cult. This synthesis is the product of a double process: purification of the past condemnation, that supported by Gregory XVI and Pius IX, and assimilation of the present philosophical thesis, that of personalism from the 1950s. This double process of purification-assimilation the same method of hermeneutics, from Dilthey to Gadamer.

It is however evident that for the objective criterion of Christ, the Council has substituted the subjective criterion of the ‘truth of man.’ It was John Paul II who clarified this criterion in Veritatis Splendor, #40. He made reference to Gaudium et spes, #41, which speaks of the ‘essential truth of man’ (§ 1), and which says that ‘the Gospel [...] scrupulously respects the dignity of the conscience and its free choice’ (§ 2). In the end, the moving sand of the conscience remains the foundation.


3. Jacques Maritain’s vitally Christian lay civilization

If we consider now the State in its ties to religion, the same process is applied, thanks to the idea of ‘historic climes’ from the philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), the apostle of a ‘new Christianity’ which would be the modern ‘analog’ to medieval Christianity.

– Medieval Christianity was characterized by the maximum constraint for a theocratic social order, by a univocal application of principles at the cost of the person, an application which lasted fifteen centuries, from Constantine to Robespierre.

– To this past historical ideal must today succeed a ‘new Christianity,’ which will be analogically a Christianity, taking new circumstances into account. This Christianity will be characterized by maximum freedom in service of the person and his ‘freedom for exultation.’ This is the only ‘concrete historical ideal’ of our modern epoch.[191]

– The origin of this thought with Drey and Dilthey is striking.

– On[e] supposes moreover that, just like the philosopher, the State is become agnostic: it does not constitute an instance capable of recognizing the divinity of Jesus Christ.[192]

– It follows that the social reign of Christ can be, must be no more what it has been. Now there must be ‘a lay society of Christian inspiration’ (Maritain). This will be an open, even positive, laity, spiritual animated by ‘the ethical values religions’ (Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae, n. 4; Benedict XVI, December 22, 2005). In a world religiously plural, the dignity of the person appeared already to Mounier ‘the only base adapted to a generous union of good wills.’[193]


4. Sophistic refutations

In adopting this political personalism, the conciliar Church adopts Masonic ideology and renounces the preaching of Christ, king of nations. Man takes the place of God. But the trouble of examining Benedict XVI’s argument is worthwhile.

– The separation of Church and State appears to Benedict XVI to be ‘the new recovery of the Church’s deepest patrimony’ (Speech of December 22, 2005).

– Answer: the deepest patrimony of the Church is the submission of the State to Christ the King.


– ‘In praying for emperors but refusing to adore them, the Church has clearly rejected state-religion’ (Ibid.).

– Answer: it has rejected the false state-religion!



– ‘The martyrs of the primitive Church died for their faith in the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ, and precisely thus they died for liberty of conscience and for the freedom to profess their faith’ (Ibid.).

– Answer: they died for the freedom of the true faith and against liberty of conscience! The Church’s authentic patrimony is not ‘freedom’ but the truth of Jesus Christ and the Church.



– ‘Freedom of religion must be considered [...] as an intrinsic consequence of the truth which cannot be imposed from without, but which must be adopted by man only through the process of conviction’ (Ibid.).

– Answer: although the faith must not be imposed on a person who has reached the age of reason (for the Baptism of children is a legitimate and praiseworthy custom), however, there is one good constraint, that which protects the Catholic Faith against the contagion of error and which preserves the unity of the Christian city in peaceful communion of this faith, communion which is the source of true temporal peace.[194]



– ‘The modern State accords a place to citizens of diverse religions and ideologies, behaving towards these religions in an impartial fashion and assuming simply the responsibility for an ordered and tolerant coexistence between citizens and for their freedom to exercise their religion’ (Ibid.).
This type of modern State, offered by ‘the American revolution’ and by the inspiration of the Enlightenment, would found itself on the separation of the two powers, spiritual (of the Church) and temporal (of the State), according to the words of Christ: ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s’ (Matt 23, 21).

– Answer: however what must not be forgotten is what Caesar owes to God! The distinction of the two powers does not logically imply their separation, but rather their subordination: that Caesar has obligation to Christ, and not to Allah or to Buddha. Otherwise, as well deduce from the distinction of body and soul their separation, and that would be death. What legal implication of Christ and his Church’s truth there must be is the constant teaching of the popes, of Leo XIII, for example in his encyclical Immortale Dei from November 1, 1885:
Heads of State must keep the name of God holy and place among the number of their chief duties that of favoring religion, of protecting it by their kindness, of shielding it with an authority that teaches law, and of decreeing nothing which may be contrary to its integrity.[195]

Then, Leo XIII clarified that by religion he meant ‘the true relation.’ Finally he exposed the doctrine of tolerance: false religions are an evil which one can tolerate ‘in view of a good to be attained or an ill to be prevented,’[196] if necessary by according a civil right to their cult, but without ever recognizing a natural right for them.[197] For this would be to deny the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The conciliar right of the person for religious freedom is thus a lack of faith. In upholding this right, Benedict XVI lacks faith.



Footnotes
[186] Saint Thomas Aquins, De Regno, l.1, ch. 14.
[187] Ibid., ch. 15.
[188] Dz 1689. This passage has been suppressed in editions after the Denzinger.
[189] See Yves Congar, True and False Reform in the Church, Paris, Cerf, 1950, p. 344.
[190] J. Ratzinger, ‘Why the Faith is in Crisis,’ debate with Vittorio Messori, Jesus, November 1984.
[191] See J. Maritain, Integrated Humanism, Paris, Aubier, 1936, p. 134-135.
[192] See the relation Mgr. Emil De Smedt’s discussion on the Council from May 28, 1965; and the debate between Cardinal Ratzinger and Mgr. Marcel Lefebvre on July 14, 1987 (see Mgr. Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Marcel Lefebvre, Étampes, Clovis, 2002, p. 576).
[193] See F. J. Thonnard, Handbook of the History of Philosophy, Desclée, 1966, # 657, p. 1091.
[194] See the schema of Cardinal Ottaviani at Vatican Council II concerning the relations between Church and State (analyzed in The Salt of the Earth 39, winter 2001-2002, p. 74 and sq., notably p. 93).
[195] EPS-PIN, # 131-132.
[196] Ibid., # 154; Dz 1873.
[197] Leo XIII, encyclical Libertas, June 20, 1888, Dz 1932.