Somerset '76, a reader of this blog and an old, friendly sparring partner of mine from many moons ago, has asked me a couple of times to comment on the issue of indefectibility and what light it casts on the SSPX situation. If I have not answered this call until now, it is more from lack of opportunity than anything else. But finding myself for once holed up in a remote, seaside town with little else to do except plough through a pile of tomes on England in the nineteenth century - it's a long story - I find myself irresistibly drawn to the topic. I'm going, therefore, to explain what I understand by the Church's indefectibility, and why I think this is one of the key issues with regard to the SSPX's current situation.
In addition to the principal marks of the Church - one, holy, apostolic, Catholic - the Church enjoys other privileges or powers which are often called its 'notes'. These would include, for example, infallibility (in certain circumstances a property of the Petrine office and of the entire Teaching Church) and visibility (which, I understand to mean that the Church must be visibly the Church; otherwise, we might as well say the Church is also audible).
Now among these notes is that of indefectiblity, a power which ensures that the Church continues until the end of time the threefold mission conferred by Christ: teaching, sanctifying and governing/shepherding. The scriptural evidence for this note is very strong, appearing with the promise of Peter's primacy (And the gates of hell will never prevail against [the Church]) and at the moment of the apostolic commission ('Behold I am with you all days, even to the end of the world'). Not that we need scriptural evidence of course; belief in the Church's indefectiblity is a constant of the Church's teaching and reflection on her own nature. 20th century ecclesiological teaching, notably Pope Pius XII's letter on the Church as the Mystical Body, merely picks up a thread which is found in St Paul, the Fathers and even in St Thomas's question on Christ as Head of the Church. One of the most important truths here is that the Church's indefectibility results from her nuptial union with Christ. The Church must retain the fruitfulness which her teaching, sanctifying and governing missions imply because she is always the spouse of the world's Redeemer. This fruitfulness is guaranteed insofar as the nuptial relationship of Christ and the Church makes of the Church Christ's very own mystical body... flesh of his flesh, so to speak.
Let me add a few words here about these three missions in relation to the current situation. Traditionalist analyses of the problems in the Church are an attempt to get at what went wrong at Vatican II. I have sympathy with many of the points that they make. But I think there are problems in the Traditionalist analyses concerning each of these three missions:
1) The Church's Teaching Mission: the SSPX theologians treat the word 'Magisterium' only in its passive sense of the body of teachings. They almost never refer to its active sense of the Teaching Church (pope and bishops united to him). Ironically, they imply that the magisterium of the pastors is inferior to the magisterium of the theologians. How else could one choose between the theses maintained by Rome and the theses maintained by the SSPX on disputed points of theology?
2) The Church's Sanctifying Mission: every Catholic rite must be read in the context of the Faith of the Church. However, in the traditionalist analyses of the New Rite, this is never allowed. So, it is argued, for example, that the reduction of genuflections in the New Mass diminishes faith in the Eucharist. Yet the same theologians would never argue that in the Old Rite the co-offering of the chalice by deacon and priest during the Offertory diminishes belief in the priest's unique role as alter Christus. The 'symbols' of the liturgy must be read in the context of the faith of the Church, but this principle is never acknowledged in traditional analyses. For the record, I would certainly argue that there is less reverence for the Eucharist in the average mainstream church, but I blame that on the pastors' failure to instruct their people.
3) The Church's Governing Mission: the buck stops here. It has to. There is no charism of impeccability guiding the pastoral role of the Church. And yet if the members of the Church argue over everything required of them, the Church will simply fracture into a thousand pieces: look at the Anglicans. Traditionalism is bordering on ecclesial fission. It's about time this was recognised.
Ahem, where was I? Ah, yes, indefectibility...
History has shown the limitations of indefectiblity which is not, for example, a note of the local Church. Local Churches can, and do, fall out of unity with the Universal Church i.e. they defect. Here, the same logic that applies to the Church's faith (teaching mission) - that in moments of dispute the faith of the Church of Rome provides a reliable rule - can be applied to her sacraments (sanctifying mission) and her unity (governing mission). This is why the last hundred and forty years of papal teachings have underlined the Petrine ministry (the ministry of the Bishop of Rome) as the unifying principle of the Universal Church. It is also why theologians commenting on indefectibility have held that liturgical books of the Roman Pontiff are, ipso facto, sufficient to achieve the Church's mission of sanctifying her members.
We might sum such thinking up like this: the same reasoning that underpins infallibility must underpin the notion of indefectibility, even if indefectiblity has not been solemnly declared as a dogma of the Church. In the same way that the Church cannot achieve her teaching mission without infallibility, she cannot achieve her sanctifying and governing mission without indefectiblity. Indefectiblity is not a personal charism, like infallibility, but then it is impossible to separate indefectiblity from the Church's hierarchical structure - and most particularly from the Church of Rome - without also asserting that the Church is ultimately invisible. The case of Liberius and his approval of a semi-Arian formula concerning the nature of the Son does not contradict such an understanding of indefectibility any more than it contradicts our understanding of infallibility. Liberius was under duress.
What then has all this got to do with the SSPX? I almost hesitate to go into this question for fear of placing yet more sticks in the hands of people who seem intent on treating traditionalists with a savagery which is rarely if ever applied to the opposing wing of the Church. So let me state that my intention is simply to contribute to the discussions on this matter within traditionalist circles and in the wider Church. I don't see how unity can be served in any other way.
When we look at the SSPX we find - for reasons which are serious and well known - a project to maintain what they identify as the authentic Catholic faith, authentic Catholic liturgy and authentic Catholic ecclesial life. I think one can sympathize enormously with that project. At a time when people were more likely to witness barmy theology in Catholic pulpits, banjos and ballons in the sanctury and McDo annulments in the tribunals, there was much to be said for self preservation. My own belief is that when the ecclesial history of our age is written a hundred years from now, historians will be kinder to the archipelagos of traditionalist initiative, random Mass centres and independent priests and congregations, than is currently the case. This is what I see as pragmatic traditionalism, and it is rooted in the common sense of the man in the pew who denounces his priest or bishop for infidelity, like the laymen who famously harangued the heretical Bishop Nestorius in his cathedral.
Yet behind this pragmatic traditionalism has always hovered another ecclesiology. Its roots can arguably be best seen in Archbishop Lefebvre's Declation of November 1974 in which he invoked a distinction between Catholic Rome and Modernist Rome. Its flowering can arguably be best seen in the episcopal consecrations of the 1988.
What do these events represent? They represent many things of course. On the side of the mainstream, one commonly sees the term schism. On the side of the traditionalists, there is talk of 'Operation Survival', an intermediate solution to be adhered to until Rome recovers its senses (a sentiment repeated again by Bishop Fellay in his recent letter to Friends and Benefactors).
Yet I think it can be argued that, theologically speaking, what these events imply is the substitution of individual predestination for ecclesial indefectibility. For the SSPX, the teaching, sanctifying and governing missions of the Church cannot be guaranteed by corporate ecclesial structures but must be substituted for by individual initiative. According to this line of thought, the continuity of the Church until the end of time - THE universal Operation Survival, if you will - is not something inherent to the Church's nature. It is rather the result of the individual predestination of certain members of the Church to continue her mission, even - perhaps, especially - when the visible Church either abandons, or is incapable of, it. In concrete terms, one should say that the gates of hell will never prevail against certain members of the Church; the Church qua Church, one, holy Catholic, apostolic, infallible, visible and unique, guarantees precisely nothing. That, at least, is the implication.
It is true of course that ecclesial indefectibility cannot be achieved without the predestination of certain individuals to particular roles within the Church; indefectiblity and predestination are not opposed. But when the buck stops not with the Church as a visible society but with lone individuals, one has to wonder what has become of Catholic ecclesiology. If we can all float in our own boat, what is the use of an ark?
In principle, of course, Archbishop Lefebvre claimed that he performed the consecrations for the sake of the sacraments. I think this is a crucial remark that reveals the keystone in his position: he was thinking not in ecclesial terms but in sacramental/juridical ones. What he ought to have realised - I beg to submit! - is that the sacramental life of the Church is intrinsically linked to her teaching and governance. Thus the consecrations were always bound to lead to a situation in which these bishops and their priests were really acting not only as surrogate sacramental sources, but as surrogate magisterial and pastoral authorities. The logic of this position existed before the consecrations, but the consecrations embody it in a substantial and potentially perpetual way.
There is nothing in the logic of the SSPX position which would stop it being where it is ecclesially two hundred years from now; for until the pope and the bishops conform to the SSPX's theses (which are, say the SSPX, the authentic expression of the Faith), the SSPX is staying where it is.
In the rightful interests of protecting Catholics, the SSPX has wrongfully asserted a kind of privatised authority over the threefold mission of the Church. Whereas for the Church the guarantees of her indefectible teaching, sanctifying and governing missions rest on visibly manifest and corporate principles - the Teaching Church, the Sacred Liturgy, the Petrine ministry - for the SSPX the indefectible guarantees of Catholic teaching, sanctifying and governing rest with
* traditionalist theological analyses which (a) achieve a rule of faith by contrasting current teaching with previous teaching through a methodology entirely independent of the Teaching Church, and (b) exercise free examination of post-1962 teaching
* the pre-1965 liturgical books; the post 1969 books are treated not as liturgical books of the Church but as illicit and unfaithful interlopers in the Church's liturgical life
* right-minded clerics who invoke supplied jurisdiction for emergency conditions.
A couple of years ago, Bishop Fellay refused the establishment of a 'board of appeal' to deal with expulsions from the SSPX; that, he said, would create a bicephalous (two-headed) organisation.
If only he followed this logic at the level of the universal Church...
Monday, 5 May 2008
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36 comments:
Ches, I appreciate your effort here. By means of quick reaction, let me duplicate what I just wrote Fr. Z in alerting him to this post....
To these considerations I would add the following thought: I am convinced that the status quo between SSPX members-supporters and Rome will persist unless and until (1) the neo-Modernist miscreants are driven from positions of authority and influence and sanctioned appropriately, and (2) the Holy See issues definitive clarifications regarding pre- and [post-]conciliar teaching.
Key to the second point, I'd argue further, is the need to explain to traditionalists (and to me, for that matter) what insights into Catholic doctrine and morals are provided by the schools of personalism and phenomenology that Thomist scholasticism cannot alone provide. For, as you certainly know, the SSPX position is and ever has been that only a full-scale, wholesale return to Thomism in the pronouncements of the Magisterium will be the engine of the resolution of the postconciliar crisis.
I would be delighted to see (1). I think we are in the steady process of seeing (2).
However, I cannot quite agree on the question of Thomism, i.e. I think the SSPX are much more Augustinian in their thinking, especially, for example, with their now blanket rejection of Vatican II because it is - to use the words of Bishop Fellay - poisoned soup. Thomists would surely be attempting to draw out of Vatican II those things they identify as true, would they not? But then, finally, we should remember that for Thomas, the greatest of the magisterial theologians, the 'officium praelationis' prevails over the theologian.
I can only congratulate you Ches on this most informative and fascinating examination of The SSPX.
It is clear to me that you certainly know what you are talking about. It is many years since I studied Thomism but it always made absolute sense to me. As to the neo-Platonism of Augustine, well, nice try, but not really quite good enough!
JARay
As an afterthought, I think that the Orthodox suffer from similar problems in their use of neo-Platonism instead of Thomism. Hence their messing up of Transubstantiation, grace, and even original sin.
JARay
Brian, the visibility of the Church means that she can be observed in any empirical way; i.e. she is “audible” too although you seem to doubt it. A teaching is not limited to writing texts to be read, but in preaching too which can be heard. A worship is in words and music both of which are listened to; in physical contact (kiss of peace, sacraments), in using incense ….. Michael
...and about the Orhodox alleged "messing up of Transubstantiation". John does not know what he is talking about: let him go to their Liturgy. Michael
Ches - I see what you're saying here. The Society's loyalty, more correctly speaking, is to scholasticism — after all, it wasn't the works of St. Augustine but the Summa Theologica and other works of St. Thomas Aquinas we were given to study in our courses. You, by contrast, are here referring to the approach they take, which indeed, is not strictly speaking "Thomistic." They look upon the conclusions of the Scholastic theologians, particularly as distilled in 19th-20th Century manuals, as tantamount to an "auxiliary" depositum fidei — against which they've determined that not only the conclusions but the very orientations and conceptual language of the conciliar documents and post-conciliar acts is fundamentally discontinuous with Tradition.
The irony here is that in their corporate response to the situation as they apprehend it, they've gone in for a considerable amount of original thinking: hence, for example, the stretching of "supplied jurisdiction" to such an extent that they appropriate to themselves functions (like adjudicating the validity of marriages) that would never have been granted to a religious order or pious union in "normal" times.
Like you've said before, I too still see significant obstacles in seeing continuity between pre- and post-conciliar magisterium in many areas. That is why for your argument here to gain any real traction among the more open-minded in the SSPX milieu, Rome needs to do this with the authority that only it has. And driving the miscreants out would be the surest sign that Rome "means business" in terms of its solicitude for the sincerely faithful — which is, really, the only thing that many of the Society's supporters are seeking to be.
But I cannot help but return to my previous question: is the Society right to insist that only the scholastic method is proper to Catholic theology? Are personalism and phenomenology problematic and error-prone as they insist?
I came to understand and accept your argument in disfavor of the Society's positioning when I could distill your message to this essential point: it is one thing to have questions about the continuity of the Magisterium after 1958 ... it is something else to make a positive discernment and thus assert as fact that it isn't there; in view of the doctrine of Indefectibility, it is here that the Society fundamentally overreaches.
Which, accepting this point is correct, forces the conclusion that there's more continuity in the conciliar-era than can be seen through a strictly Scholastic lens: it would have to be there, again per Indefectibility.
Another thought comes to mind. You will remember as I do that while the 1986 Assisi event put the Archbishop in a deeply pessimistic mood regarding the state of the Roman leadership, it was not this that prompted him to decide upon episcopal consecrations, but rather a March 1987 response from Cdl. Ratzinger's CDF to his dubia regarding Dignitatis Humanae that inspired his decision.
As far as I know, the SSPX never publicly released this CDF response. Is it perchance in the Tissier biography you worked on? Or did the CDF ever publicly release it? Having not read Fr. Brian Harrison's tome on the DH subject that came out a year or two later, I wonder if perhaps he got hold of it?
You're quite right. The dubia themselves were published by the SSPX but I have never seen the CDF answer. I wonder if such a document would be made available by the CDF in any case.
Another work on this particular topic is that of Dom Bruno of Le Barroux. It's a five volume effort with a huge number of Patristic sources. I confess I have not read it!
S'76, you'll find my implied criticism of the SSPX's version of Thomism in this article from January:
http://thesensiblebond.blogspot.com/2008/01/straw.html
Thomism was never a monolithic being anyway. Quite why the SSPX thinks it has the monopoly on authentic Thomism is beyond me.
Michael, you misunderstand my point about visibility. My piont was not that the Church is visible to the exclusion of all other sense but that the visibility of the Church must mean that the CHurch is VISIBLY the Church and not just a VISIBLE Church. Put another way, I would say that the visibility of the Church might be termed the 'recognisability' of the Church. That's what I meant.
Oh, the ironies of losing one's short-term memory! So I go back and reread that January post ... yes, you did indeed expound on the fact that "Thomism" was more than just the sum of scholastics' conclusions ... and then, in the comments, you answer a point of mine by citing the very issue I brought up here, the 1987 CDF response to the Archbishop.
Somebody get me some Geritol!
But really, it's curious what an intent loyalty does to one's intellectual acumen. For not once, from then until now, did it hit me that the SSPX never did release that CDF response. You are so right to ask: Why not, indeed? Yet I would think it would serve the public interest if the present Pope, the presumed signatory of that document, were to release it now.
Well, my betting is that if the CDF tried to generate refutations of every theological poisition adopted by critics of the Vatican, they would not get a lot done!
That said, I would, like you, dearly like to see the CDF response.
Brian, I would not argue about the terms used, but let’s clarify the concepts. If your “recognizibility” means my “can be observed in any empirical way”, then it does include the “audible” too. But if the recognizability extends to an abstract knowability without reference to the empirical way I don’t think that it is what the doctrine on visibility is ment to convey. Michael
Of course it must include 'audible'. The point of that remark was that unless 'visible' means 'visibly the Church', there's nothing special about the Church being visible - in other words, it cannot be a note of the Church - and we might as well saw it's audible. Surely what you mean by 'empirical' is not merely 'empirical' but empirically discernible as the Church, i.e. recognisably the Church.
I hope I've got this right! I had beeter have a look at Ott.
Brian, I have to take you on again. The statement that the infallibility is “a property of the Petrine office and of the entire Teaching Church in certain circumstances” isn’t clear. Does it mean that the Petrine office is always infallible, and that of the entire Teaching Church only in certain circumstances, or the phrase “in certain circumstances “ is meant to refer to both. Michael.
I've just made that clearer.
Of course that I mean “recognizably the Church”. In other words: “visibly the Church” in the Original Post is meant to refer to an intellectual visibility (knowability, recognizability, discernibility), based on a material visibility, (perceptibility to the senses). Michael
Surely scholasticism is just a method of reconciling, distinguishing and - if necessary -disapproving of the positions of the church fathers, with the help of mainly Aristotle's logic?
As for philosophy, everyone's an Thomistic Aristotelian, until they pretend to themselves that reality is something other than it actually is, usually as a result of being indoctrinated with nonsense from Descartes onwards..
In other words, every man is naturally Thomistic. If he weren't, he'd sit in a corner, go mad, and die (of starvation).
James.
"For the record, I would certainly argue that there is less reverence for the Eucharist in the average mainstream church, but I blame that on the pastors' failure to instruct their people."
Surely not ONLY that? Isn't there a lack of instruction, so to speak, from the words and actions of the New Mass itself? I grew up in the New Mass, being told by my parish priests about the Real Presence and I believed them, as did many others. But that didn't stop members of the congregation behaving with disrespect and indifference toward the Blessed Sacrament. We weren't told about the notion of sacrifice and the propitiary nature of the re-presented sacrifice at Mass, in other words, the main reason for the Mass. I only found that out when I went to the Tridentine Mass in my twenties. But the point was I didn't learn THAT solely from good pastors' instructions (although, of course, it helped), but from the words and actions of the traditional Mass. There was nothing explicit, or even terribly implicit, in the New Mass to tell me this was Calvary rather than a Last Supper re-enactment to praise God. If there had been I, and I daresay many others, would have started asking questions and responding to the faith clearly set out in the Mass. But it wasn't, so I didn't.
But what if our parish priests HAD told us about the SACRIFICE of the Mass? Well, when I did learn about such things, I looked at the Mass in my parish (and in many others) and couldn't see it in there. I had to rely on (I admit it!) blind faith that it must be there somewhere. Lex orandi, lex credendi. Now that was more than just a lack of pastoral instruction, otherwise why have we been fighting for the old Mass all this time?
My own position on this is that firstly the doctrine of the faith is sufficiently expressed by the New Mass, but that it is done inefficiently with regard to certain elements of Eucharistic doctrine. Secondly, the ars celebrandis commonly seen in the New Mass - which is distinct from the missal - is in serious need of a clean up. This is happening slowly by inexorably.
I'm not, as it happens, an exclusive 1962 supporter.
I realise that this goes back a bit in the dialogue of the comments, but here is a thought on Thomism/phenomenology. As I think others have already said, I found your original post well informed and well considered - thank you.
Since St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) is my favourite saint, I do think phenomenology has a lot to offer... but there is perhaps the need to "return to the sources" of that movement in philosophy, to the realist phenomenology of people like Edith Stein. It is interesting that Edith and her friends at the time saw in this realist phenomenology a "new Thomism"; that many of them were Christian believers prompted Edith's first recognition of religion as being a subject worthy of philosophical study. A significant subject of study was the human person, and the religious nature of the person featured in that.
I feel that a realist phenomenology, as a methodology, can provide the means for the dialogue with secularists and atheists that Cardinal Murphy O'Connor was seeking in his recent lecture. It involves a "stepping back" from any previously held positions (a temporary, methodological neutrality, not a rejection); and it expects human reason to be applied to the full range of human experience (not just the physical sciences!) to determine essentially what those experiences are made up of. Seen as a search for the truth of things - and this is how the early phenomenologists saw it - this then leads to adherence to the truth that has been achieved. Or, to use a religious term, "conversion". In the early twentieth century, the context for this was an anxiety to overcome the gulf between our knowing and the truth of things that was perceived in Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy; in the first years of the twenty first century, the challenge is that covered by the generic term "post-modernism" which gives a similar experience of an unbridgeable gap between our knowing and things themselves
"Since St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) is my favourite saint, I do think phenomenology has a lot to offer"
This simply doesn't follow logically. The fact that person X is a favourite saint, does not guarantee the veracity of their philosophical position.
James.
Ches
I was wondering what you make of the new traditional society called the "Institute of the Good Shepherd"? It seems that this is a society that would hold onto the legitimate views of Archbishop Lefebrve and be allowed to constructively criticize Vatican II documents but without the canonical irregularity?
Ches, to help you to reply to Ottaviani, it all depends on what one means by the legitimate views and the constructive criticism. In principle, a religious assent is due to magisterial teachings which are not proposed infallibly. If one is certain that a particular teaching is erroneous he may withold the assent, but if the assent is known to be due a deliberate nonassent is sinful, more seriously - it is a sinful dissent - if one communicates such nonassent to others encouraging them to share in it. So says Grisez in his manual of moral theology.
Dear Ottaviani,
I have little information about the IBP but I will be in Paris for a week in June and am hoping to get the 'low down' on them at that time.
I would have thought that their status is very attractive in that the objections they have to Vatican II etc., are acknowledged but managed within a theological discipline which does not in principle place itself above the Magisterium.
Daley, I do not know Grisez, but I would have thought that something cannot be said to be Magisterial which does not by that very fact require assent (be it merely religious assent). Religious assent is something that was raised in 'Lumen Gentium' and it is a topic that needs more study. Perhaps I should get around to Grisez, though I suspect Aidan Nichols OP says something about religious assent in his book on the nature of theology.
Ches, I do not see the difference between “assent” and “religious assent” in the context under discussion. The assent due to teachings not proposed infallibly is, for example, in Humani Generis (no. 20 in CTS Do 265) and Ott (p.10, no.6, para 2); and I think that the LG adds the qualification “religious”, to distinguish this kind of assent from the assent of faith which is due to teachings proposed infallibly.
For a view to be legitimate and/or for a constructive criticism of Vatican II one may not go beyond withholding assent in cases when one is certain that the teaching is erroneous. And this withholding must not turn into a deliberate nonassent if an assent is due, still less into a sinful dissent, which is in fact an usurpation of the teaching office.
In practice, only a “competent expert, after a renewed scientific investigation of all grounds” can conclude that the teaching is in error (Ott, ibid.), and withhold his assent.
"Daley, I do not know Grisez, but I would have thought that something cannot be said to be Magisterial which does not by that very fact require assent (be it merely religious assent). Religious assent is something that was raised in 'Lumen Gentium' and it is a topic that needs more study. Perhaps I should get around to Grisez, though I suspect Aidan Nichols OP says something about religious assent in his book on the nature of theology."
Exactly.
As traditionalists, it as much behoves us to beware of intellectually bankrupt, "creeping infallibility" as of modernism.
James.
Ches, what do the traditionalists mean by the "creeping infallibility", James fir example. It is the modernists who use it to dispose with the infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterum.
I assume what James meant was that some people attribute infallibility to ever wider areas of papal teaching, even though (a) it is not clear that such teaching is definitely part of the ordinary magisterium and (b) the conditions of extraordinary infallibility are not fulfilled.
James, coule you clarify?
Ches said:
I assume what James meant was that some people attribute infallibility to ever wider areas of papal teaching, even though (a) it is not clear that such teaching is definitely part of the ordinary magisterium and (b) the conditions of extraordinary infallibility are not fulfilled.
Yes, this is partly right, but what is not touched on here is the tendency of theologians to assume that the favourite of their dreamed-up-theses, with no, or no unambiguous, support from (the moral unanymity of) the fathers, to go and trumpet it about as de fide, or even if not de fide, nevertheless somehow binding under pain of mortal sin.
This also happens on moral matters to: opposition to NFP in toto, or subject to such stringent conditions as to make its use practically impossible. But that's another topic.
(One can readily appreciate from all this the emergence of a kindred error, multiplication of mortal sins.)
James
Going through the earlier comments, I have came across with the Guild Master’s suggestion that the Mass is “Calvary rather than a Last Supper re-enactment to praise God.”
First the Mass – I mean: the Eucharist, which is effected during the Mass – is not the “Calvary” but the memorial of it. The Calvary was one off event, which can’t be repeated. What is made present, re-presented (Trent), perpetuated (Vatican II) is Our Lord’s Sacrifice (the word comes from sacrum facere, make sacred) which is His free acceptance of the Calvary. This acceptance transcends time, it is eternal, and because it is eternal it can be made present, and it is made present on our altars whenever He is made present by transubstantiation.
Second, the Last Supper too was one off event that can’t be repeated but only “memorialised”, and like Calvary, it takes place, as a memorial, during the Mass. In this sense, the Mass (Eucharist) is the memorial of the Last Supper too. What unites the Last Supper, the Calvary, and our Mass (Eucharist) is the same Sacrifice, which, being eternal, was made present at the Last Supper too. In this sense it was present throughout Our Lord’s life because He knew why He has come to this world, and has freely accepted it.
Michael
Michael, I find this explanation loose in some ways.
Firstly, the memorial of the Last Supper and of Calvary (isn't this just metynomy for Christ's sacrifice?) are different in kind. The memorial of Christ's sacrifice is not merely the psychological memorial of the Prots, but - as you said - a making present of Christ's offering to his Father on the cross. The Last Supper, on the other hand, is the institution of the sacred signs which are made in the Eucharistic celebration: taking, blessing, breaking, giving.
So, is it not more accurate to say that the Last Supper is memorialized at Mass in the liturgiological signs ('Do this in memory of me'), whereas Calvary is memorialized
1stly, by being made present again in the priest (Christ), the action (the offering) and the sacred species (Christ the victim)
2ndly, by the nature of liturgical rememberance which makes past events present in some mysterious way
3rdly, psychologically by our thinking on these events?
Ches, the Calvary isn't a “metonymy for Christ's sacrifice”. If it were, the Calvary of one of the robbers would be that man’s sacrifice; and if the analogy is pushed, the slaughter of an animal in the temple would be that animal’s (self-)sacrifice. The Calvary refers to what was done to Him and to the two robbers on that afternoon. Others did it. To put in another way what I said earlier, His Sacrifice refers not to the Calvary as such, but to His free acceptance of it, i.e. the free acceptance of what was to be done and what was done to Him, including death as a consequence. In the NT records this acceptance goes back to His announcement of the Calvary at the latest, but it is already implicit in the Simeon’s prophecy; and it continues in Heaven (Lamb of Revelation, High Priest of Hebrew). Surely, the Second Person accepted it “In The Beginning”; it is eternal.
The Eucharist is a memorial of the Last Supper and of the Calvary - I do not dispute that they are different in kind or that they are not merely psychological. In point of fact, the Eucharist is the memorial of the whole “Christ Event”, to use the fashionable phrase.
“The memorial of Christ's sacrifice is … - as you said - a making present of Christ's offering to his Father on the cross.” I did not say this.
The Last Supper is memorialized, I suppose, by what is said and done with a reference to it during the Eucharistic liturgy in the community of believers which community has an abundant memory of its own continuous life, not merely by the liturgiological signs, if by the latter you mean the Institution.
The Calvary is memorialized by what is said about the Calvary. The priest, the offering and the sacred species ("1stly") are liturgioloical signs of the Last Supper, not of the Calvary. The liturgical remembrance which makes past events present ("2ndly"), and the psychological thinking about the latter ("3rdly"), refer to both the Last Super and the Calvary. The “making present again” of the Calvary, “in the priest (Christ), the action (the offering) and the sacred species (Christ the victim)” suggests a repetition of the Calvary. Do you really mean it?
I think it is essential to distinguish between the memorial “presence” of past and eschatological events: Last supper, Calvary, Resurrection, Ascension, Sitting at the Right Hand, Second Coming from one side, and the making present, re-presentation (not representation, in the sense of showing), perpetuation of Christ’ Sacrifice from another.
And, of course, between the Calvary (past event, what was done to Him) and the Sacrifice (eternal, free acceptance of the Calvary). In the Mass the former is memorialized, the latter is made present, re-presented, perpetuated.
Michael
Glad I found this interesting Blog. I remember some of you from AQ...and its good to see such important topics discussed calmly here.
schoolman
Pursuant to this thread, if anyone has an extra copy of "The Banished Heart: Origins of Heteropraxis in the Catholic Church" by Dr. Geoffrey Hull that they'd be willing to part with (or if anyone knows where I can obtain a copy) please email me at DaveM3791@aol.com
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