Book Reviews

I am reading this book right now from these radical right-wing Catholics. It is criticizing EWTN for not being Catholic enough! The author, Chris Ferrara, is warning people to stay away from EWTN. Even though it the best thing out there that is not good enough. I am not finished with the book yet, but I am pretty sure that this author is upset because it does not televise the Latin Mass, and it submits to Vatican II and the post-Vatican II popes. Frankly, I love EWTN. But let’s say for the sake of argument, that EWTN is not as Catholic as it should be. This author has an all or nothing attitude. If it is not fully orthodox and traditionally Catholic, then we should have nothing to do with it, since that would compromise ourselves to the spirit of the age.

 

The author says that we should avoid it, even if is the best thing out there, because if it is not fully Catholic it is not good enough. It must be all or nothing. But this makes no sense to me. If we are to avoid EWTN because it is not fully Catholic enough, then what about anything else on television? Surely EWTN is at least more Catholic than CBS, NBC, or ABC! So if we are to avoid anything that is not fully, 100% Catholic, then we might as well throw our television sets away! Not only that, but we might as well stop going to the movies. I have not seen anything fully Catholic for the last 20 years except The Passion of Christ. So that means we must isolate ourselves completely from the world. And I must make sure I do not talk to anyone at work, my neighborhood, or even anyone in my family unless that person is fully Catholic. And we might as well not go Mass! After all, we might find some moderate or even liberal Catholics there! We might as well all dwell in caves!

 

Now, maybe that is the intention of the author. Maybe he does want us to all withdraw from anyone or anything that is not fully Catholic. But it seems to go against tradition. Starting with Justin Martyr and through to the Middle Ages, Catholic thinkers were enamored with the writings of the pre-Christian philosophers. Even St Thomas Aquinas had a great affinity toward Aristotle, calling him “The Philosopher”. It is not that they accepted everything these pagan philosophers wrote. They distinguished the good from the bad. Now, no matter how negatively one feels about EWTN, one must at least admit that EWTN is far more Catholic than Aristotle! So if a saint can read Aristotle, then I can watch something that may not be “fully Catholic”. Another example is GK Chesterton, who was a devout Catholic and a prolific writer way before Vatican II. He once wrote in praise of the author Charles Dickens. He must have read him, and he recommended others to read him as well. And yet Dickens was an atheist! But that did not matter to Chesterton. Truth is truth! He could appreciate Dickens writings even though he did not believe in everything that Dickens wrote. No matter how much one feels that EWTN has compromised with liberalism, one must agree that EWNTN is closer to the side of angels than the atheist Charles Dickens was!

 

 

 

So far these are the arguments the author presents:

 

1. Vatican II was not doctrinal, so we do not have to submit to it. Even Cardinal Ratzinger admitted that no new doctrine was added.

 

I looked closely to what the then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote. Yes, he did say that Vatican did not add any new doctrines. But the truth is that NO Council has ever added a new doctrine. For instance, the Nicene Council did not add the doctrine that Jesus was God. That was something that Christians always believed. This goes all the way back to Jesus Christ, who taught that He was God. The Nicene Council articulate it more deeply, but the Church never created new doctrine. It is just faithful to the deposit once delivered to the saints. So if we use the logic of this author, then no Council should be obeyed, since no Council created new doctrine.

 

Some say that that we do not have to submit to Vatican II since it did not resolve any controversy. But where has it ever been declared in the Bible, or by a pope speaking ex cathedra, or by a Council that we do not have to submit to a Council unless it has resolved some controversy? This is merely their private opinion. It is not backed up anywhere in tradition. Tradition tells us that we should always submit to a Council as long as it is with full approval from the pope. There is no indication in tradition that a Council is invalid if it does not add new doctrine, or is only dealing with church discipline and practice, or did not resolve a controversy, or did not issue a list of anathemas.

Then these same people talk that heretical doctrines that came out Vatican II. They accuse Vatican II of indifferentism – that it does not matter whether you are a Catholic or not to get to heaven. But right here they contradict themselves. They argue that Vatican II was not a doctrinal Council, so it does not need to be submitted. But if they believe Vatican II was not a doctrinal Council, how can they then accuse it of heresy? Is not heresy false doctrine? They want it both ways. They want to condemn that doctrine it espoused, and they condemn it for not being doctrinal!

 

But getting back to the accusation of indifferentism – the Church taught BEFORE Vatican II that the non-Catholics could go to heaven. An example of that was Father Feeney, a priest in the 1940’s and 1950’s who said that all non-Catholics were going to hell. He ran into trouble with the Church and was eventually ex-communicated. I once read some old sermons by St Alphonsus Liguori and St John Vianney, who lived centuries ago. I was impressed that they were unwilling to judge Protestants as  going to hell. I challenge these radical Catholics to find any pre-Vatican II saint saying that all non-Catholics will go to hell! True, the church does say that apart from the Catholic Church there is no salvation. But the Church never translated that to mean that all non-Catholics will go hell. Actually, if you want to find a controversy that Vatican II resolved, this would be it! Vatican II, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, clarified what it means that there is no salvation apart from the Catholic Church. People can have a personal, obedient relationship with God and be implicitly part of the Catholic Church although they would be explicitly apart from it.  The Church has always taught that, although we must avoid indifferentism, but we must also not be quick to judge others. Although God’s normative way to save people are through His sacraments, He is not bound to His sacraments. There is no limit to His mercy.

 

The Church has always seen things in the mysterious middle. Heretics wanted to say that if Jesus was fully God then He could not be fully man. Other heretics say that if Jesus was fully man, then He could not have been God. But the Church says that He is fully God and fully man. Calvinists say that our salvation is all from God then there is no free will. Arminians make it by having free will and that there is a limit to God’s power. But the Church teaches that we are all predestined by God, and yet we have a free will. It is a mystery that God has chosen to not reveal to us yet that is how it works out, we just submit to God’s mystery. This is why the Church teaches that we are saved soley by the grace of God, and yet we must also work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We can have moral certainty, but not absolute certainty of salvation. So when Vatican II condemns indifferentism, and yet still offers hope to our non-Catholic friends, it is standing in the mysterious middle, just the Church has always stood for 2,000 years. Vatican II did not teach heresy, it taught a mystery. God is both holy and loving. He is a consuming fire, and yet He is also our loving father.  As Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a book on it, there is truth and tolerance. We must be tolerant, but still stand for the truth.

 

People who are uneasy with the mysterious middle always have a problem with the Catholic Church. Tertullian and his fellow Montanists taught that if a Christian committed a mortal sin just once he could never again receive the grace of God. But the Church taught that a Christian can always come back to God in Confession. The Montanists saw the Catholic Church being too easy. Luther said that if he went to a harlot 100 times in a day, he would still be saved. But the Catholic Church said that without holiness we will not see the Lord. Luther saw the Church being legalistic. The Church has always been in the mysterious middle. The Church is too easy, and yet it is too hard. The Church throughout the centuries has corruption in its member, but has always remained holy – corrupt yet holy. The Church is tolerant and yet demanding.

 

2. Looking at the spiritual fruit after Vatican II shows that Vatican II was a complete failure, and so it was not from God. So we do not have to submit to it.

 

By this standard the Nicene Council was a failure. It convened to combat Arianism, a heresy that taught that Jesus was not God. But Arianism still lasted centuries afterwards. The Council of Trent convened 450 years ago to combat the threat of Protestantism. The last time I checked, Protestantism is still around. So what if Vatican II did not stop Catholics from leaving the Church? People left the Church and became Protestants after the Council of Trent.  The last I look, we still have Protestantism. So does that mean that the Council of Trent was a failure?

 

3. The Latin Mass is part of our tradition. The Council of Trent condemns anyone who ignores our traditions in the liturgy. Since they condemned such action, that mean that it bears the weight of ex cathedra, no subsequent Council or Pope has the authority to change it.

 

There is only one problem here. At the time of the Council of Trent, the Tridentine Mass as we know it it today was not yet established. True, the Latin Mass gradually evolved. But up until this time, all Catholic Churches were not obligated to the Roman missal. But in the Middle Ages, there were different types of rites – the Use of Sarum, the Use of York, and the Use of Hereford. Pope Pius issued the Roman Missal as a result of the Council of Trent. So that means, in actuality, that the Roman Missal at that time was not part of tradition. So when the Council of Trent condemned the ignoring of tradition in our liturgy, it could not have meant the Latin Mass as we know it today. So a future Council has the authority to change it, or to introduce another rite, just as the Council of Trent had the right to universalize the Mass into the Latin. Just as Pope Pius V had the right to issue the Roman Missal, so did Pope Paul have the right to issue the Norvus Ordo. Jesus said to Peter “What you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.” This applies to Peter’s successors, both to Pope Pius V and Pope Paul VI.

 

 

 

 

4. The Norvus Ordo brought all the problems into the church.

 

I greatly enjoy the Latin Mass. I read Latin Mass magazine. I am very excited about Pope Benedict XVI encouraging us to the use the Latin Mass more. But in spite of all this, I still realize that the Norvus Ordo is God’s mass too. The author says that all these abuses are because we abandoned the Latin mass. I disagree. There are abuses because of sin. And if the Church forced every priest to only give Latin Masses, we still would have problems of liturgical abuse, because we still would have a few dissident priests who want to mess things up. Jesus Himself warned us of wolves in sheep’s clothing.

 

So if a dissident priest is giving the Mass, I would prefer him to give the Mass in English. If he gave it in Latin, how would I even know that he is abusing the liturgy? When he hold’s up the host and supposedly says “This is my body” in Latin, how do I know that he is not actually reciting “Mary had a little lamb” as a big joke? At least if he says it in English, I can tell if he is saying the Mass properly. So when a priest says a Latin Mass, the people are putting a lot of trust in the priest that he is doing it correctly. If he is a holy priest, I am willing to trust him. But there are some priests I would not – it is better that they say the Mass in English. So I think that the Holy Spirit guided our Church to the Norvus Ordo. In our times, the laypeople have to be careful that things are done properly. The laypeople cannot be on the lookout for liturgical abuse if they do not even know what the priest is saying.

 

What has brought all the problems in the church is sin. And the remedy for the Church is holiness. The first step toward holiness is humility, especially humbly submitting to God leading through His Church. It is submitting to our bishops, and especially to the pope, the vicar of Christ. The author is picking and choosing when he is going to be submissive and when he is not. He tries to justify this by arguing that he does not have to submit when they themselves are disobeying God. But this is the old Protestant argument. Luther justified his rebellion of the pope by calling the pope the Antichrist. But who determines that the pope is wrong? Well, its Christofer Ferrara and Martin Luther who determined that the pope is wrong. And how do we know that Ferrara and Luther are not wrong? Well, because Ferrara showed that our current popes are going against our tradition, and Luther showed that his pope went against scripture. But how do we know that Ferrara’s interpretation of tradition is correct and that Luther’s interpretation of scripture is correct???

 

Ah, there is the rub! When it comes right down do it, Ferrara think he knows tradition better than the pope, and Luther thinks he knows scriptures better than the pope. But Jesus Christ never gave a charism of infallibility to Ferrara or Luther. He only changed Simon’s name to Rock, and said that upon this Rock He will build his church. To the rest of us, God commanded to trust in the Lord, and lean not on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). But Ferrara would rather lean on his own understanding of tradition, just as Luther would rather lean on his own understanding of scripture.

 

 

Ferrara has a wrong view of tradition. He wrote that the Catholic should always be “against novelties that would undermine  any part of Tradition – either apostolic or ecclesiastical” (p 43). Since we cannot have any novelties, there is no evolution within tradition. But this goes completely against the teaching of John Henry Newman in his book The Development of Christian Doctrine. Obviously, our doctrine of transubstantiation is more developed than that of the Early Church Father. Our doctrine of Mary is more developed now than it was 2,000 years. True, the doctrine was all there in a small seed form, but it has developed since then. Jesus Christ said that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed - which a man took, and cast into his own garden; and it grew, and became a tree; and the birds of the heaven lodged in the branches thereof (Luke 13:19). The church started small and grew. For it to grow, that means the church incorporated novelty. Sometimes novelty is good, and sometimes it is bad. So how do we know when it is good? That is why we have a pope. Christ promised Peter that whatever he bound on earth will be bound in heaven and what he loosed on earth will be loosed on heaven. In other words, Peter and his successors had the authority to introduce novelty to the Church. Look at Acts 1. Peter came up with a novelty on replacing Judas. He had the apostles cast lots. From this they selected Matthias. Jesus Christ never commanded them to cast lots. There was no tradition for them to fall back on how to replace a fallen apostle. Peter, who was given the keys to the kingdom, introduced a novelty. This is not modernism. Our modern age has no desire to submit to the magisterium of the Catholic Church. Submission to the pope is honoring our tradition. Rebellion against the pope is spirit of modernism. So if anyone is falling into modernism, it is Ferrara! It is he who exalts his own individual understanding of tradition over the pope’s understanding. And yet all the way back through tradition, there was the idea that we must submit to our pope – and not just to our past popes, but to our current popes.

 

Ferrara somehow sees the Pope no longer having that authority to bind and loose. To him, we are bound to tradition, and tradition never changes. But that is absurd. The first holy communion we ever had was in an upper room, and the apostles sat around a table. Then there was the novelty of house-churches. But they started to be persecuted. Out of survival, the novelty was introduced to meet secretly in the catacombs. Then when persecution ended, the novelty of cathedrals were introduced. Yesterday’s novelty became today’s tradition. There are bad traditions and good tradition. There are bad novelties and good novelties. The popes and the bishops determine through the Holy Spirit what are the good traditions and what are the good novelties.

 

Ferrara also criticized EWTN for being too soft on non-Catholics. On page 86, he castigates EWTN for only show that being Catholic helps a person’s spiritual life. But he feels that this does not go far enough – non-Catholics should not just turn to the Catholicism because they would be less spiritual. Ferrara says that non-Catholics should be Catholics because unless they do, they will go to hell! But by this, Ferarra is going against the Catholic tradition of absolute certainty versus moral certainty of salvation. The Church has always taught, even before Vatican II, that we do have absolute certainty, but moral certainty. The more moral we are, the more certain we are of our salvation. And the more spiritual we are, the more moral way are. So if a person becomes more spiritual by becoming a Catholic, then he is more certain of his salvation. Ferrara is sounding like an Evangelical Fundementalist, who draws a clear line between the saved and the unsaved. The Catholic Church never saw it that way, even before Vatican II. No one can know for absolute certainty who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. The only one we know for sure is in hell is Judas, and we only know that because Jesus said it would have been better for him never to have been born. Other than that, the Church has never said that a person is definitely going to hell, or is already in hell. The Church never even said that of Martin Luther during the Reformation! So then how can we tell any non-Catholic that he is going to hell? True, the Church has said that apart from the Church there is no salvation. Vatican II did not nullify this, but clarified what this meant. And since the Holy Spirit infallibly guides all Councils, even this one, we can know that this clarification is correct. When it is said that apart the Church there is no salvation, it does not mean that only those who are explicitly members of the Church are saved. When a non-Catholic seeks to please God, that person is implicitly part of the Catholic Church. And so he is saved.

 

Chapter 9 bears an interesting title – Abandoning the Return of Dissidents to Rome. The author says this because it does not take the Protestant Fundementalist motto of “Turn or Burn!” And yet this critique flies in the face of the evidence. One of the programs on EWTN is The Journey Home. This show interviews former dissidents who returned to Rome. So how then can they be accused abandoning this???? A person who is often on the station is Scott Hahn, who is a former dissident who returned to Rome. They have several programs on how to defend your faith and how to evangelize non-Christians. Why would EWTN have shows such as these if they no longer care about non-Catholic coming back to Rome?

 

I remember what it was like when I was a Protestant Evangelical, when I believed that there was a clear line between the saved and unsaved. I was absolutely certain that I was going to heaven because I prayed a formula prayer to receive Christ, and I was absolutely certain that those who did not pray the formula prayer were going to hell. When I talked to a “non-Christian”, the only thought that came into my mind was how I could convert them. My relationship with others became strained and manipulative. I felt a tremendous burden lifted over me when I understood what the Church taught about the outsiders. The Church did not condemn them, but neither did the Church excuse them. We are all judged by how well we obey God and follow His truth. Christ commanded us to not judge anyone. Whether I say to someone that he is going to hell, or I say that he is going to heaven, that is a form of judging. All I know is that the more a person obeys God and follows His truth, the more likely he will make it to heaven. And since I believe that the Catholic Church is the fullness of God’s truth, I believe that this is the best anyone can do to get to heaven. But this does not mean a non-Catholic is not closer to God than I. He very well might be! I try not to compare myself to anyone else. I only compare myself to myself – I compare myself now to what I was before I was a Catholic. And I know I am definitely closer to God now than I was back then – even when I was a minister. And I am confident that anyone who takes that journey back to Rome will be closer to God than they are now.

 

But since I believe that God’s mercy could extend to the Protestant, to the Jew, to the Hindu, to the Muslim, and maybe even to the atheist, who sincerely believes that his belief is the correct belief, and desires to live a life of love as much as he can, it gives me the freedom to love him without nervously looking for the opportunity to hit him over the head with the gospel. As St Francis of Assisi said “Always preach the gospel to everyone, and sometimes, use words”. That is what true evangelism is all about. It is just being a friend to others. By just living your life in obedience to God and loving others, you are preaching the gospel.

 

Everyday EWTN is bringing people back into the Catholic Church. They are not doing it by telling them that they are going to hell. They are doing it by showing their love for God, His Church, and the viewers. They are showing this by their love for the current Church, warts and all! They are do this by not only loving the Church of the past, the Church of Camelot. No, they love the Church today, yesterday, and forever, because it was founded by Christ, who is today, yesterday, and forever. It is still God’s Church, and Christ promised that the gates of death and hell will not prevail against His Church.