February 1982 Print

A Touchstone of Orthodoxy

Michael Davies

It is certainly significant that of the three popes most venerated by traditional Catholics two have been canonized—Saints Pius V and Pius X. It is equally significant that the third, Pope Pius XII, seems certain to be canonized eventually, and there is little doubt that he will be accorded the title "Doctor of the Church." Each year that passes makes ever clearer the profoundness of his teaching and the prophetic nature of his insights. His charism of prophetic insight was never made clearer than in his Encyclical Letter Humani Generis (12 August 1950), in which he exposed some of the most serious trends in modern teaching. Humani Generis has never been more relevant than at the present moment. It is an encyclical which every Catholic who believes that the truth matters should own, read—and read again.

Pope Pius XII begins his encyclical by expressing his regret that "the judgments of mankind in the sphere of religion and morals should be so variable, and so apt to stray from the truth." There is no more apt or horrifying confirmation of the soundness of this judgment than the question of abortion. When this encyclical was written in 1950, abortion was still considered a crime in most, if not all, western countries, not simply by religious men, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, but even by most men of little belief or none. But within thirty years the consensus of opinion in western society has swung to the view that belief in the right to life of the unborn child is an aberrant and eccentric view, confined mainly to the less enlightened members of the Catholic Church. The moral judgments of mankind are variable indeed!

Pope Pius observed: "That such disagreement, such false tendencies should always have been common outside the Christian fold is no matter for astonishment." He adds, with regret that these false tendencies have now found adherents within the Church herself:

Perhaps they are afraid of seeming ill-informed about the progress which science has made in our day. At any rate, they are eager to emancipate themselves from Authority; and the danger is that they will lose touch, by insensible degrees, with the truth divinely revealed to us, leading others besides themselves into error.

The Pope characterizes the basic error of these misguided theologians as dogmatic relativism:

"Some are for whittling away the meaning of doctrines to the utmost possible limit. Dogma must be disentangled from the forms of expression which have so long been accepted...." They first claim that they are presenting traditional dogmas in language which is more accessible to contemporary man, but then proceed to change the meaning of the dogmas themselves. The Pope accepts that it is possible to explain dogmas more clearly, that these dogmas can be traced back to their sources, and that doing so is "the noblest office of theology," but he quotes his predecessor, Pope Pius IX, to the effect that the meaning of dogmas must always be "that in which they have been defined by the Church." In some cases the traditional formulas in which a dogma has been explained "cannot, without impiety, be abandoned." This is particularly the case when they have "been used, and hallowed in their use, by the General Councils."

So numerous they are, and so important, these theological concepts which have been hammered out and polished with the utmost care, in order to express, with ever-increasing accuracy, the truths in which we believe. It is a process that has often cost centuries of labor, carried out by men of no common intellectual attainments, under the watchful eye of Authority, with light and leading, too, from the Holy Spirit. Must they now fall into disuse, be cast aside, be robbed of all their meaning? Are we to substitute for them guesswork of our own, vague and impermanent fashions of speech, borrowed from our up-to-date philosophies, which today live, and will feed the oven tomorrow? That were indeed the height of impudence; the whole of dogma would thus become no better than a reed shaken by the wind.

Pope Pius XII finds one of the most insidious influences upon some contemporary Catholic theologians to be "the theory of evolution, as it is called—a theory which has not yet been proved beyond contradiction even in the sphere of natural science." Some theologians accept the theory "without caution, without reservation." They thus become imbued with "false evolutionary notions, with their denial of all that is absolute or fixed or abiding in human experience." Such notions "have paved the way for a new philosophy of error."

This does not forbid Catholics to investigate or even accept as a working hypothesis the possibility of the evolution of the human body:

Thus, the teaching of the Church leaves the doctrine of Evolution an open question, as long as it confines its speculations to the development, from other living matter, already in existence, of the human body. (That souls are immediately created by God is a view which the Catholic faith imposes on us.) In the present state of scientific and theological opinion, this question may be legitimately canvassed by research, and by discussion between those who are expert in both subjects.

But Pope Pius is adamant that certain inferences based upon the theory of evolution are totally incompatible with the Faith, because they cannot possibly be reconciled with the teaching of the Church upon original sin. Those who accept the theory of evolution must take one of two positions, monogenism or polygenism. Monogenism is the belief that the entire human race is descended from one human pair which evolved from lower forms of life. Polygenism is the belief that more than one human pair evolved in different places at different times, and that mankind today is descended from these different couples. The Pope insists that such theories "leave the faithful no such freedom of debate."

Christians cannot lend their support to a theory which involves the existence, after Adam's time, of some earthly race of men, truly so called, who were not descended ultimately from him, or else supposes that Adam was the name given to some group of our primordial ancestors. It does not appear how such views can be reconciled with the doctrine of original sin, as this is guaranteed to us by Scripture and Tradition, and proposed to us by the Church. Original sin is the result of a sin committed in actual historical fact, by an individual man named Adam, and it is a quality native to all of us, only because it has been handed down by descent from him (cf. Rom. 5:12-19; Council of Trent, session V, canons 14).

The words which have been emphasized are crucial to an understanding of Catholic teaching on the subject of original sin, teaching which is infallible and therefore irreformable. It could not be modified, let alone repudiated, without destroying the entire credibility of the Church as the divinely founded Body through which Our Lord continues His mission in the world. Pope Pius XII cited Romans 5 and Session V of the Council of Trent as authorities for teaching that, "original sin is the result of a sin committed in actual historical fact by an individual man named Adam." Before examining the Tridentine teaching, mention must be made of the principal error currently circulating with regard to the doctrine of original sin. Theologians who attempt to explain away the teaching of the Church state that men have been sinning since the earliest times and that, therefore, we are all born into a sinful environment, which obviously affects us all. This vast accumulation of sin which permeates society is sometimes referred to as "the sin of the world." When a child reaches the age of reason and commits his first deliberate sin, under the influence of his sinful environment, he has become tainted with "the sin of the world." But obviously, until he imitated the sin which he saw around him, he was sinless. Baptism could not, therefore, have been instrumental in removing any taint of sin from him. The sacrament signifies no more than reception into the Christian community.

This very error was anathematized by the Council of Trent which teaches that original sin is incurred not by imitation but by propagation, in other words it is handed down from parent to child in all who are descended from Adam. The essential teaching of Trent is contained in the four canons anathematizing those who refuse to accept the teaching of the Council. The anathemas of General Councils are infallible and irreformable. Canon 1 lists the penalties which Adam incurred personally for his sin. Canon 2 anathematizes those who deny that the sin of Adam "injured himself alone, and not his posterity." Canon 3 teaches that the sin of Adam is "transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation," and that it is taken away only by the "merit of Jesus Christ applied both to adults and infants, by the Sacrament of Baptism rightly administered in the form of the Church."

Canon 4 is so crucial that it must be quoted in full:

If anyone denies that infants, newly-born from their mothers' wombs, even though they be sprung from baptized parents, are to be baptized; or says that they are baptized indeed for the remission of sins, but that they derive nothing of original sin from Adam which has need of being expiated by the laver of regeneration for the obtaining of life everlasting, whence it follows as a consequence that in them the form of baptism, the remission of sins, is understood to be not true, but false, let him be anathema. For that which the Apostle has said: "By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men in whom all have sinned" (Rom. 5:12), is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church spread everywhere hath always understood it. For, by reason of this rule of faith, from a tradition of the Apostles, even infants, who could not as yet commit any sin of themselves, are for this cause truly baptized for the remission of sins, that in them may be cleansed away by regeneration "which they have contracted by generation." For, "unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (John 3:5).

Canon 5 is concerned principally with some errors of the Lutheran heresy.

In many Catholic schools today, the teaching of Trent, which is, and will always be, the only authentic Catholic teaching on original sin, is ignored and often contradicted. Parents who complain about this are assured that their children are being taught in accordance with the new emphasis of Vatican II, the insights of contemporary theologians, or the findings of modern science. The teachers who make these statements are frequently nuns, and there is no reason to suppose that these poor deluded women are not sincere in imagining that the heresy which they have embraced represents the true mind of the "contemporary Church." They heard these ideas at lectures and courses which they attended at the behest of their bishop, from the lips of theologians approved by their bishop. In many cases the theologians who sowed the seeds of heresy have left the priesthood and married—in England, such names as Charles Davis, Hubert Richards, Peter de Rosa, or Nicholas Lash spring to mind. But the nuns they have indoctrinated remain, and all too often cling stubbornly to the heresies which they accepted with such enthusiasm and proclaimed with such conviction. Pride, too, must play a part in their attitude. It is not easy for a person in authority, the headmistress of a high school, for example, to admit that ideas which she has endorsed and propagated with such certainty and superiority are nothing more than heretical nonsense.

But might there not be at least something in what they say? Might not the mind of the Church have developed? After all, since Trent we have had Vatican Council II, and Pope Pius XII has been followed by Popes John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II. What is the opinion of this council and these popes? The short and correct answer is that the teaching of the Council of Trent, reiterated by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis has not been modified in any way whatsoever by Vatican II or by the pontiffs who succeeded Pope Pius XII. Where they have referred to the Tridentine teaching on original sin it has been to re-iterate it yet again. Those who claim that there has been any modification of the traditional teaching should be asked to quote a single statement of the Magisterium to endorse their view. They will not be able to do this. All they will be able to do is cite the opinion of one or more aberrant theologians. The duty of a faithful Catholic is to embrace the official teaching of the Church, and this is represented by the teaching of the Magisterium. No matter how many theologians dissent in the face of a clearly defined teaching of the Magisterium on a matter of faith or morals, their opinion carries no weight whatsoever. The number of theologians who rejected the teaching of Humanae Vitae is probably beyond counting, but it is Humanae Vitae which represents the official teaching of the Church.

There are some who attempt to use Vatican II as an excuse for rejecting the teaching of Trent on original sin, because, they argue, there was at least a change of emphasis as Vatican II did not reiterate Trent's teaching. This argument is nonsensical. There are innumerable important dogmas which were not re-iterated by Vatican II because they did not require reiteration. They had been stated clearly once and for all and did not need amplification or clarification. In his opening speech to the Council, the Pope made the following points:

The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously ... it wishes to transmit the doctrine pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion, which throughout twenty centuries, notwithstanding difficulties and contrasts, has become the common patrimony of men. It is a patrimony not well received by all, but always a rich treasure available to men of good will.

Our duty is not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with antiquity, but to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which our era demands of us, pursuing thus the path which the Church has followed for twenty centuries.

The salient point of this Council is not, therefore, a discussion of one article or another of the fundamental doctrine of the Church, which has repeatedly been taught by the Fathers and by ancient and modern theologians, and which is presumed to be well known and familiar to all.

For this a Council was not necessary. But from the renewed, serene, and tranquil adherence to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness, as it still shines forth in the Acts of the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council, 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 expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modem thought. The substance of the ancient deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another.

The meaning of this statement is so clear that it requires little explanation. Total adherence to the teaching of Trent and Vatican I is professed, and where the documents of Vatican II appear ambiguous they must be interpreted in the light of these Councils. Where the Council attempts to improve the clarity with which a doctrine is presented it has no intention of modifying "the substance of the ancient deposit of faith."

But the Magisterium has by no means been silent upon the question of original sin since the pontificate of Pope Pius XII. Pope Paul VI was gravely disturbed by some of the erroneous interpretations of Catholic doctrine which had followed the Second Vatican Council. He had noted that Pope John's distinction between the substance of a dogma and the way it is presented was being used as a justification for the presentation of dogma in a way that explained away the substance—the same abuse which Pope Pius XII had warned against in Humani Generis. In his Encyclical Letter Mysterium Fidel, issued shortly before the close of the Council in 1965, he warned it would be intolerable to attempt to replace the dogmatic formulas of the Council of Trent, and added that where "a clearer or more obvious exposition" of these formulae might be possible, it must be "with the same meaning as that with which they were employed. This enables the unalterable truth of faith to survive as progress is made in the understanding of faith. The First Vatican Council has taught in the case of sacred dogmas that 'that meaning must always be retained which Holy Mother Church once declared. There must never be any retreat from that meaning on the pretext and title of higher understanding'."

Pope Paul VI returned to the same theme three years later in his Credo of 30 June 1968:

We even see Catholics possessed by what is almost a passion for change and novelty. The Church certainly regards it as her duty never to relax in her efforts to penetrate more deeply the hidden mysteries of God, from which all derive the myriad fruits of salvation, and in like manner to express them to succeeding generations in a way progressively adapted to contemporary understanding. But at the same time the greatest care must be taken that the important duty of research does not involve the undermining of the truths of Christian doctrine. If this happens—and we have unfortunately seen it happen in these days—the result is perplexity and confusion in the minds of many of the faithful.

The Pope's object in issuing his Credo was to remove all such confusion concerning the basic doctrines of the faith. Prominent among the doctrines he referred to in his Credo is that of original sin. Here, then, is the most recent authoritative pronouncement of the Magisterium regarding this dogma:

We believe that in Adam all have sinned. From this it follows that on account of the original offence committed by him human nature, which is common to all men, is reduced to that condition in which it must suffer the consequences of that fall. This condition is not the same as that of our first parents, for they were constituted in holiness and justice, and man had no experience of either evil or death. Consequently, fallen human nature is deprived of the economy of grace which it formerly enjoyed. It is wounded in its natural powers and subjected to the dominion of death which is transmitted to all men. It is in this sense that every man is born in sin.

We hold, therefore, in accordance with the Council of Trent, that original sin is transmitted along with human nature, not by imitation but by propagation, and is, therefore, incurred by each individually .... We believe in one baptism instituted by Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. Baptism is also to be given to infants, who cannot as yet be guilty of any personal sin, in order that, though¹ born deprived of any supernatural grace, they may be reborn of water and the Holy Spirit to divine life in Jesus Christ.

In an address given two years earlier, in July 1966, Pope Paul had warned that:

It is therefore evident that the explanations of original sin given by some modern authors are irreconcilable with true Catholic doctrine. Starting from the undemonstrated premise of polygenism, they deny, more or less clearly, that the sin committed at the beginning of history, from which so many cesspools of evil have come to mankind, was first of all the disobedience of Adam, the "first man."

The traditional teaching on original sin was reiterated yet again in the General Catechetical Directory, published by the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy and approved by Pope Paul VI in 1971. Chapter II is devoted to the basic truths of our faith which would form the basis of any religious education program for children or adults. It re-iterates the traditional teaching that: Baptism cleanses man from original sin and from all personal sins, gives him rebirth as a child of God, incorporates him into the Church, sanctifies him with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and, impressing on his soul an indelible character, initiates him into Christ's priestly, prophetic, and kingly roles." This, to the best of my knowledge was the last official pronouncement of the Magisterium upon the subject of Original Sin.

It is, therefore, absolutely certain, that the teaching of the Council of Trent on original sin has not received the slightest modification during the postwar era in any official statement of the Magisterium. Indeed, as has been stated several times already, it cannot ever be modified without dealing a deathblow to the credibility of the Church. The Tridentine teaching was forcefully reiterated by Pope Pius XII; it received the full and tranquil adherence of Vatican II "in its entirety and preciseness"; it was re-iterated yet again, using the language of Trent itself, by Pope Paul VI in his Credo; it was listed first among the effects of baptism in the General Cathechetical Directory.

Is there, perhaps, a crumb of comfort in the pontificate of Pope John Paul II for those who deny or try to gloss over this fundamental teaching? Far from it. In his Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi Tradendae, 16 October 1979, he expressed the same fears as his predecessors, Pope Pius XII and Pope Paul VI, concerning the extent to which Catholic theologians had been infected with unorthodox ideas. Clearly, the situation has worsened considerably, perhaps catastrophically, since the pontificate of Pope Pius XII—and this is made clear by the alarm the Pope expresses at the extent to which heterodox ideas are affecting the catechetical instruction given to young Catholics:

With regard to the content of catechesis, three important points deserve attention today.

The first point concerns the integrity of the content ... the person who becomes a disciple of Christ has the right to receive "the word of Faith" not in mutilated, falsified, or diminished form, but whole and entire, in all its rigor and vigor. Unfaithfulness on some point to the integrity of the message means a dangerous weakening of catechesis and putting at risk the result of Christ and the ecclesial community have a right to expect from it.... What kind of catechesis would it be that failed to give their full place to man's creation and sin, to God's plan of redemption and its long, loving preparation and realization, to the Incarnation of the Son of God, to Mary, the Immaculate One, the Mother of God, ever Virgin, raised body and soul to the glory of heaven, and to her role in the mystery of salvation, to the mystery of lawlessness at work in our lives and the power of God freeing us from it, to the need for penance and asceticism, to the sacramental and liturgical actions, to the reality of the Eucharistic Presence, to participation in divine life here and hereafter, and so on. Thus, no true catechist can lawfully, on his own initiative, make a selection of what he considers important in the Deposit of Faith as opposed to what he consider unimportant, so as to teach one and reject the other.

Pope John Paul II was equally severe when discussing contemporary catechetical literature. The Pope accepts that "numerous very successful works have been produced" but also:

...articles and publications which are ambiguous and harmful to young people and to the life of the Church. In certain places the desire to find the best forms of expression or to keep up with fashions in pedagogical methods has often enough resulted in certain catechetical works which bewilder the young and even adults, either by deliberately or unconsciously omitting elements essential to the Church's faith, or by attributing excessive importance to certain themes at the expense of others, or, chiefly, by a rather horizontalist overall view out of keeping with the teaching of the Church's Magisterium.

The Pope is adamant as to the duty of catechists where the content of religious instruction is concerned:

They must make a point of giving the whole message of Christ and His Church, without neglecting or distorting anything, and in expounding it they will follow a line and structure that highlights what is essential.

As if to hammer the final nail into the coffin of the contemporary catechist who rejects the teaching of Trent on original sin, and other fundamental dogmas, Pope John Paul II states that catechetical texts must take their inspiration "as closely as possible from the General Catechetical Directory, which remains the standard of reference." He also recommends one other text:

In the Creed of the People of God, proclaimed at the close of the nineteenth centenary of the martyrdom of the Apostles Peter and Paul, my predecessor, Paul VI, decided to bring together the essential elements of the Catholic Faith, especially those that presented greater difficulty or risked being ignored. This is a sure point of reference for the content of catechesis.

More than sufficient documentation has been provided to prove conclusively that the Magisterium of the Church today is totally and unequivocally committed to the Tridentine doctrine of original sin. Those who deny, question, attenuate, or gloss over this teaching are acting contrary to the mind and the explicit and irreformable teaching of the Church, and must be regarded as enemies of the Faith. But in addition to the evidence that has been presented already, there is another reason why the entire credibility of the Church is bound up with the Tridentine teaching on original sin. If this teaching is false then we should indeed eat, drink and be merry—as the Christian religion would be no more than a mockery. This reason, of course, is the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. No theologian who makes even a pretense at being Catholic can deny the doctrine of papal infallibility. But there is a difference of opinion among the theologians as to when the popes have spoken infallibly, with the exception of two dogmas—those of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. In both cases the entire weight of papal authority, the entire credibility of the Church, have been involved. In the Bull Ineffabilis Deus of 8 December 1854, Pope Pius IX committed the Church irrevocably to belief in the following definition:

Since We have never ceased in humility and fasting to offer up Our prayers and those of the Church to God the Father through His Son, that He might deign to direct and confirm Our mind by the power of the Holy Ghost, after imploring the protection of the whole celestial court, and after invoking on Our knees the Holy Ghost the Paraclete, under His inspiration We pronounce, declare and define, unto the glory of the holy and indivisible Trinity, the honor and ornament of the holy virgin, the Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith and the increase of the Christian religion by the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and in Our own authority, that the doctrine which holds the Blessed Virgin to have been, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of Christ Jesus the Savior of mankind, preserved free from all stain of original sin, was revealed by God, and is, therefore, to be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful. Therefore, if some should presume to think in their hearts otherwise than We have defined (which God forbid), they shall know and thoroughly understand that they are by their own judgment condemned, have made shipwreck concerning the Faith, and fallen away from the unity of the Church; and, moreover, that they by this very act subject themselves to the penalties ordained by law, if by word, or writing, or any other external means, they dare to signify what they think in their hearts.

If original sin is no more than a pervasive influence within human society which we contract by imitation, and is not something inherited by each one of us through direct descent from Adam, then not one of us was stained with original sin at the moment of our conception. We did not incur it until we fell under the influence of "the sin of the world" and, therefore, Pope Pius IX proclaimed infallibly that Our Lady was free from something which does not exist. If the Tridentine dogma of original sin does not mean exactly what it says it means, then the conception of Our Lady was no different from the conception of any other human being. In its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council affirms the traditional teaching concerning Our Lady in terms that are clear and inspiring:

Finally, preserved free from all guilt of original sin, the Immaculate Virgin was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory upon the completion of her earthly sojourn. She was exalted by the Lord as Queen of all, in order that she might be the more thoroughly conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and the Conqueror of sin and death.

In this Constitution, Our Lady is presented in her traditional role of the Second Eve, just as her Son is the Second Adam.

Some theologians and teachers claim that we cannot teach the Tridentine doctrine of original sin to young people today as it could result in the Church and the Bible losing credibility in their eyes. But the dogma of original sin is fundamental to Catholic theology which, as Cardinal Newman insisted, must be accepted as a whole or rejected as a whole. The credibility of the Church cannot be damaged by teaching what she has always taught, but it would be destroyed completely if something to which her infallible teaching 'authority had been committed was no more than a mere allegory. The notorious Dutch Catechsim is the source of much of the confusion and error which permeates the teaching of religion in Catholic schools today. Among the corrections which the Commission of Cardinals which examined the book in 1968 commanded should be made was one concerning the dogma of original sin. The Cardinals ordered that in the Catechism the doctrine of the Church must be faithfully proposed. They stated it as follows:

Man in the beginning rebelled against God and so lost for himself and his offspring that sanctity and justice in which he had been constituted, and handed on a true state of sin to all through the propagation of human nature. Certainly those expressions must be avoided which could signify that original sin is contracted only by individual new members of the human family in this sense, that from their very coming into the world, they are exposed within themselves to the influence of human society where sin reigns, and so are started initially on the way to sin.

The Cardinals referred to the Vatican II Constitution Gaudium et Spes, sections 13 and 22, regarding the rebellion of Adam.

Where there is controversy concerning a doctrine of faith or morals the true Catholic has only one option—to accept the teaching of the Magisterium, no matter who may urge him to reject it. This is particularly true where the Church has committed her infallible teaching authority to a particular doctrine. Those who reject the teaching of Trent on original sin "are by their own judgment condemned, have made shipwreck concerning the Faith, and fallen away from the unity of the Church." This is true even if, due to the weakness of those in authority, they still hold some official position within the Church. We must always be vigilant lest these false teachers involve us or involve our children in the shipwreck of their personal faith. When Pope Pius IX defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception there were voices raised against him within the Church, and learned voices at that. They led some less learned Catholics into error with them, men who had more respect for the appearance of scholarship than the infallible judgment of the Church. But soon afterwards Our Lady herself proved how strong our faith should be when the Vicar of her Son makes an infallible pronouncement. She did this by appearing to a little peasant girl at Lourdes, and telling her:

"I am the Immaculate Conception."