The Angelus English-Language Article Reprint

Let your speech be “Yes, yes: no, no”; whatever is beyond these comes from the evil one. (Mt. 5:37)  September 2009

Reprint #88

Romano Amerio and
the Crisis of the Catholic
Church in the 20th Century
The whole of Iota Unum, the
masterpiece of Romano Amerio
and one of the most important
works of Catholic theology in the
20th century, is, in the author’s
eyes, vindicated by one undeniable
fact: the extremely serious crisis
the Church has been undergoing,
a crisis the Philosopher of Lugano
does not hesitate to define as
the most serious the Church has
ever experienced. The attack,
essentially perpetrated by men
who belong to the Church’s
hierarchy, comes from within and
not without.
For Amerio, however, the
crisis of the Catholic Church
is an absolutely obvious fact,
which it would be madness to
deny, and which, moreover, as
is true of every fact, cannot be
demonstrated, but only shown.
It is not a question of deducing it
from a series of logical steps, but
of seeing the reality as it is and of
self-training in intellectual honesty
that allows one to call everything

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by its right name, the name that fits,
expressing a thing’s true essence.
In keeping with the first
principle of his methodology, which
is never to impose one’s own ideas
or personal opinions on reality,
Amerio prefers to rely upon the
words of the Pontiffs who have
on several occasions declared the
gravity of the crisis. Here are the
most famous declarations quoted in
Iota Unum:
In his speech to the Lombard
College in Rome on December 7,
1968, Paul VI said: “The Church
is in a disturbed period of selfcriticism, or what would better be
called self-demolition. It is an acute
and complicated upheaval which
nobody would have expected after
the council. It is almost as if the
Church were attacking herself.”1
In the famous speech of June 30,
1972, he said “that from somewhere
or other the smoke of Satan has
entered the temple of God.” In the
December 7, 1968, speech he went
on: “In the Church too, this state of
uncertainty reigns. It was believed
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that after the council a sunny day in the Church’s
history would dawn, but instead there came a day of
clouds, storms and darkness.”2
John Paul II, at a conference on missions,
described the state of the Church in these terms:
We must admit realistically and with feelings of deep
pain, that Christians today in large measure feel lost, confused, perplexed and even disappointed; ideas opposed to
the truth which has been revealed and always taught are
being scattered abroad in abundance; heresies, in the full
and proper sense of the word, have been spread in the area
of dogma and morals, creating doubts, confusions and rebellions; the liturgy has been tampered with; immersed in an
intellectual and moral relativism and therefore in permissiveness, Christians are tempted by atheism, agnosticism,
vaguely moral enlightenment and by a sociological Christianity devoid of defined dogmas or an objective morality.3

As for the cause of the crisis, Paul VI
unhesitatingly links it to internal problems within
the Church itself: “A great range of these evils do not
assail the Church from without, but afflict it, weaken
it and enervate it from within. The heart is filled with
bitterness.”4 In another passage quoted by Amerio
from Paul VI’s speech of November 16, 1970, the
Pope depicted the unhappy state of the post-conciliar
Church:
It is for everyone a cause of surprise, pain and scandal
to see that within the Church itself there arise disturbances
and unfaithfulness, often on the part of those who ought to
be most loyal and exemplary because of the commitments
they have made and the graces they have received.5

He also mentions “doctrinal aberrations,” “a
casting aside of the authority of the Church,” a general
moral license, a “lack of concern for discipline” among
the clergy.6
Finally, the author quotes an exemplary document
of utmost importance by the one who was then Prefect
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
Cardinal Ratzinger, published by L’Osservatore Romano
of November 9, 1984: “The results of the council,” he
said,

the Church, in particular within its hierarchy, and
by entire episcopal conferences; 2) the attack against
Church doctrine is conducted by clerics who remain
within the Church.
In Iota Unum, Amerio not only bases his
arguments on the words of the popes who have
recognized and denounced the crisis with the greatest
lucidity while trying to understand its causes, but he
also adduces other facts that show the painful state of
the Catholic Church, which we enumerate briefly: 1)
the defection of priests by the tens of thousands, with a
great many priests reduced to the lay state by Paul VI;
2) the unprecedented defection of monks and nuns,
with whole orders, once glorious, drastically reduced
in membership; 3) the collapse of religious vocations
among women; 4) the collapse of regular Sunday Mass
attendance; 5) the referendum on abortion in Rome in
1981, in which only 22 percent of voters opposed its
introduction; 6) the doctrinal crisis revealed in a poll
published by L’Osservatore Romano in November 1970,
in which 50 percent of persons calling themselves
Catholic stated their disbelief in heaven and in hell;
7) the collapse in the number of conversions of
Protestants and Jews after years in which their number
had significantly increased, especially in the United
States.

The Causes of the Crisis in the
Church in Amerio’s Analysis
Iota Unum is not a systematical work: its many
chapters are not organized following a precise
hierarchy of importance or of methodological,
philosophical or theological priority. But there are,
in our opinion, five overarching, closely linked
main themes that can guide the reader: Pyrrhonism,
dogmatic mobilism, the principle of dialogue and
ecumenism, democracy in the Church, and the failure
of authority.

Pyrrhonism

seem cruelly to contradict the expectations everybody had,
beginning with John XXIII and Paul VI: it was expected
to produce a new unity among Catholics, but instead dissension has increased to a point where it has moved from
self-criticism to self-destruction....It was expected to produce
a leap forward, but we have been confronted instead with
a continuing process of decay that has gone on largely on
the basis of appeals to the council, and has thus helped to
discredit the council in the eyes of many people. The result
would therefore seem negative....It is undeniable that this
period has been decidedly unfavorable for the Catholic
Church.7

The theme of Pyrrhonism, named after Pyrrhon
of Elis (c. 365-275 B.C.), the most important Sceptic
philosopher of the Hellenistic Age, is based on
Amerio’s observation of the fact that, starting with
Vatican II, the crux of every aspect of the crisis is
to be found in a general crisis of faith. It is based on
the presence of scepticism regarding the truths of
faith within the members of the Church and even the
hierarchy.
Amerio asserts that a widespread scepticism,
permeating the sentiments of churchmen, is at the root
of crisis:

In addition to the theological and more strictly
doctrinal aspects of the crisis, Amerio never tires of
underlining that the key characteristic of the postconciliar crisis comprises two closely linked elements:
1) the crisis results from an attack led by forces within

Underlying the present confusion there is an attack on
man’s powers of cognition, an attack that has implications
for the metaphysical constitution of being in general and of
primal Being as well, that is of the Holy Trinity. We will call
the attack by its historically expressive name of Pyrrhonism;

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it is something that attacks the very principle of all certainty,
not merely this or that truth of faith or reason, since what it
impugns is man’s capacity to know any truth at all.8

It is Romano Amerio the profound student of
modern thought speaking here. He identifies the
underlying epistemological weakness of modern
thought: Because of its fundamental naturalist
presupposition, it cannot keep the link between
the knowing subject and the object known within
the limits of metaphysical realism, and results in
antimetaphysics, scepticism, immanentism, and
subjectivism. In fact, the Zeitgeist dominating
20th-century philosophical thought for the last fifty
years also pervaded Catholic thinking: this defection
from a strong, realist, rigorous idea of man’s cognitive
capacity (in short, the dislocation of theological
reflection from a firm Thomistic, scholastic conceptual
basis) rendered the Church’s task of teaching
authoritatively much more difficult by enclosing it
within a kind of intellectual ghetto in which teaching
could only be proposed if couched in sufficiently
interrogative or dubitative expressions that lessened its
value and scope.
For Amerio, this is the deepest, most crucial aspect
of the crisis; it can be said that in his analysis all the
other elements of the crisis stem from this first and
decisive weakening, not to say collapse, of a sound
metaphysical vision. In effect, the consequences of
the scepticism that permeates post-conciliar Catholic
thought at every level, from the Popes to simple
priests and faithful, are far-reaching indeed, for the
phenomenon constitutes a dislocation of the Blessed
Trinity.
This epistemological and metaphysical Pyrrhonism
explains, in Amerio’s analysis, the primacy of praxis,
that is to say, of will and action, in modern thought.
Moreover, if doubt about our faculty of cognition is
already, implicitly, a kind of atheism, it is obvious that
Catholic thought cannot accept being contaminated
by modern thought without being corrupted: in other
words, either Catholicism is realist in metaphysics
or else it deviates. If “the root of the confusion in
the world and the Church is Pyrrhonism, that is the
denial of reason,” no “friendship” or “sympathy”
with modern philosophical systems will be possible,
nor any incorporation of these systems into Catholic
theology. In effect, how can the Catholic hierarchy
teach with the requisite firmness if it has internalized
the sceptical doubt proper to moderns concerning
man’s capacity to know?
One of the clearest proofs adduced by Amerio
of the new relativist mentality, and of the sceptical
style employed by the hierarchy, is the way the
catechisms now state the doctrine of the Church:
whereas the Catechism of St. Pius X (or any other
earlier catechism) authoritatively states the articles of
faith to be believed (for example, Art. 104: “How long
will heaven and hell last? Heaven and hell will last
eternally”), the post-conciliar catechisms set forth, not

what must be believed, but what the Church teaches
must be believed (for example, Art. 1035: “The
teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell
and its eternity”). It is unnecessary to underline the
extraordinary difference between these two ways of
expressing the same truth: in the first case an objective
truth is presented as such by expressing the nature of
things; in the second case, the content is presented by
underlining that it is an element of Church teaching,
thus relativizing it and cloaking it, albeit implicitly,
with a patina of scepticism.
Amerio then remarks:
If one denies the capacity of our intellect to form concepts
corresponding to the real, the more the mind is unable to
apprehend and conceive (that is take with itself) the real,
the more it will develop its own operation within itself by
producing (that is bringing forth) mere excogitations. These
latter will be occasioned by something that touches our faculties but is not present in the concept which we form of it.
Hence come all the ancient and modern sophisms that trust
in thought while at the same time lacking any confidence
that we can grasp the truth.
If thought does not have an essential relation with being,
it is not subject to the laws governing being and ceases to be
measured because it becomes itself the measurer.9

Dogmatic Mobilism
One immediate and inevitable consequence of
philosophical Pyrrhonism is dogmatic mobilism: if
nothing can be known with certitude, it is obvious that
even truths long held and taught will not be able to
escape a fundamental scepticism, with modern thought
as its impassable horizon. Since many churchmen
and faithful no longer have the capacity to consult
the depositum fidei–unchangeable dogma–the Church
has passed from the order of certitude to the order of
probability in matters of faith in fifty years. Dogmas
are not formally denied, but interior adhesion, the
assent of the intellect and will, no longer possesses
the radical and absolute character that ought to
characterize the faith of a believer in immutable Truth.
Amerio calls this new attitude of theologians and
the faithful towards the articles of Catholic doctrine
dogmatic mobilism. In modern thinkers, a philosophy of
Heraclitean extraction has emerged, with the primacy
of becoming and history over being; “the mentality that
values becoming more than being, motion more than
rest, action more than the goal,”10 the active virtues
over the contemplative virtues,11 both in theology and
in religious practice.
Citing a great many quotations, Amerio shows
the increasing importance and widespread acceptance
even in the Catholic world of this vision of the truths
of faith and of being in general as a reality in fieri,
going so far as to introduce becoming within God
Himself and to deny the Word, “that is, …that the

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forms of created and creatable things exist eternally in
God.”12
Amerio shows us that the destruction of the very
idea of the immutability of dogma also overturns
the domain of moral theology by opening the door
to the negation, or the progressive subversion, of
the key idea of the Catholic system: the eternity and
immutability of the moral law.
Once dogma has been dissolved in an historicist
vision, once the natural law has been dissolved,
dogmatic mobilism issues in the primacy of praxis,
that is to say, in what could rightly be considered a
form of implicit atheism. The harmonization with the
modern world, which in philosophy is modeled on
Hegelian dialectic, can only lead to a very grave crisis
in the Church because modernity is founded upon
the impossible independence of dependents, on the
finite absurdly taken to be infinite as causa sui. This
deviation is what Amerio calls “the loss or inversion
of essences,” resulting in “a dislocation of the divine
Monotriad,” that is to say, in the conceptual violation
of the Trinity itself.
Among the numerous violations of Catholic
Tradition committed after Vatican II by many
theologians and churchmen, perhaps none has had
more serious consequences than this one, because it
undermines the defense and the transmission intact of
the deposit of faith itself, which is no longer thought
of in light of the immortal principles established by
St. Vincent of Lerins. The historicization of dogma, its
slow erosion and alteration conducted on the basis of
an illegitimate and heterodox hermeneutic, has finally
led to what could be called a faith without dogmas, a
faith increasingly emptied of stable, firm, and certain
doctrinal content. That is tantamount to saying that
the life of many Catholics is henceforth marked by a
relationship with a Protestant-style life of faith, taken
in a sentimental and subjective fashion.
Amerio is categorical: “Within the Church too,
the idea has caught on that changeability is a positive
quality and should be accepted; it has replaced the
ideas of stability and immutability. The religious
injunction remains clear nonetheless: Stabiles estote et
immobiles.”13

The Principle of Dialogue and Ecumenism
Epistemological and metaphysical scepticism:
Nothing whatsoever can be said to be known with
absolute certitude; truth, even in the domain of
religion and doctrine, thus can never be considered
as fully possessed, and everything must be considered
as in a state of becoming, as historical, as precarious
and uncertain: dogmatic mobilism. But if even the
Catholic Church does not possess the truth in a
stable, immutable way; if, on the level of morals,
only the search for truth has value and dignity; and if

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the very idea of the stable possession of truth is, in
general, presented with quasi contempt, it follows
that the only culturally acceptable Church will be a
dialoguing Church, one that is not searching for truth
but incessantly discusses everything, “problematizes”
itself and its constant teaching, and, notably, refuses
to condemn error (for the condemnation of error is
essential to teaching but is excluded from dialogue):
The new-fashioned mentality abhors anything polemical,
holding it to be incompatible with charity even though it be
in reality an act of charity. The idea of polemics is inseparable from the opposition between truth and falsehood. A
polemic is aimed precisely at overthrowing any pretended
equality between the two. Thus polemic is connatural to
thought, since it removes errors in one’s own thinking even
when it fails to persuade an opponent. From the Catholic’s
point of view, the end of dialogue cannot be heuristic, since
he is in possession of religious truth, not in search of it.14

As on every other topic, Amerio abounds in
pertinent quotations on dialogue, and it should
never be forgotten that his file of documentation
stops midway through the 1980’s (when the theme
of dialogue had not yet reached its zenith in Church
praxis).
With his customary linguistic genius, the
philosopher speaks of the “discussionism” that
has entered the Catholic Church and spread with
impressive speed. Although the principle of dialogue
can lay claim to no tradition nor to any support
in Sacred Scripture, but springs from Vatican II,
Amerio shows us that it is henceforth the common
denominator of every ecclesial initiative, to the point
that dialogue with heretics or schismatics seems to be
more important than pastoral action for the sake of
the Catholic faithful (or rather, it is as if the pastoral
dimension has been absorbed by and reduced to the
continual search for dialogue and confrontation with
every kind of heterodoxy), contradicting the word of
the Gospel: “Erat docens eos sicut potestatem habens–He
was teaching them as one having power” (Mt. 7:29).
Teaching, and not dialogue, Amerio reminds us,
is the normal form of the relationship between the
Church and the world, and the notion that dialogue
is but a modern, coded, covert form of teaching, a
teaching under the more benevolent and conciliatory
guise of a serene discussion of opposing themes, is
untenable. In effect, in Amerio’s analysis, Catholic
doctrine is not the equivalent of a philosophy or a
science or a human activity for which it is natural to
search with others by means of a progressive process
of argumentation, dialogue, and refutation, for it is
founded on divine Revelation itself, and it has, in the
person of the Sovereign Pontiff and in the Church, a
guide assisted by the charism of infallibility.
Amerio also points out that dialogue with heretics
cannot be productive for the simple reason that the
two interlocutors do not share the same principles:
Secondly, there is the situation where instead of helping
the participants, dialogue presents them with an impossible
task. St. Thomas envisages the case in which it is impos-

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sible to prove the truth to the person one is addressing
because there is no jointly held principle on which to base
the argument. All that can then be done is to prove that
the opponent’s arguments are not conclusive and that his
objections can be met.15

If it is true that principia negantibus non est
disputandum, Amerio is right to underscore the
fruitlessness of ecumenical dialogue, the impossibility
of its producing concrete results through its unending
process of discussion, which saps the conviction with
which the Catholic people holds its faith (for, how
can one firmly believe what is incessantly subjected to
the heat of critical exchange and dialogue for decades
with those who belong, for example, to a Protestant
sect or some other confession?).
Moreover, Amerio masterfully observes that, for
a Catholic, dialogue implies the fact of his assuming
a position either of real doubt concerning his own
faith or of a pretense of doubt solely for the purpose
of engaging in “dialogue” (since it is impossible to
have an effective inquiring dialogue if one of the
parties takes the position of possessing absolute and
inalienable certitudes). But in both cases, there are
serious consequences:
But the difficulty returns: if the doubt or rejection of
faith is real, it implies a loss of faith and a sin on the part of
the believer. If it is hypothetical or feigned, the dialogue is
flawed by a pretense and rests on an immoral basis.16

In the analysis of the Philosopher of Lugano,
there are particularly moral objections to ecumenical
dialogue, based on the fact that with the choice of
the method of dialogue comes the accompanying
rejection of the attempt to convert persons in error or
heretics; for there is a failure to perform the spiritual
works of mercy that consist in instructing the ignorant
and correcting the sinner:
We may conclude by saying that the new sort of dialogue
is not Catholic. Firstly, because it has a purely heuristic
function, as if the Church in dialogue did not possess the
truth and were looking for it, or as if it could prescind
from possessing the truth as long as the dialogue lasted.
Secondly, because it does not recognize the superior
authority of revealed truth, as if there were no longer any
distinction in importance between nature and revelation.
Thirdly, because it imagines the parties to dialogue are on
an equal footing, albeit a merely methodological equality,
as if it were not a sin against faith to waive the advantage
that comes from divine truth, even as a dialectical ploy.
Fourthly, because it postulates that every human philosophical position is unendingly debatable, as if there were
not fundamental points of contradiction sufficient to stop
a dialogue and leave room only for refutation. Fifthly,
because it supposes that dialogue is always fruitful and that
“nobody has to sacrifice anything” [OR, Nov. 19, 1971], as if
dialogue could never be corrupting and lead to the uprooting of truth and the implanting of error, and as if nobody
had to reject any errors they had previously professed.17

Moreover, it should be noted that in
Amerio’s analysis, the principle of dialogue and
“discussionism” are not envisaged as goals but
as means, the real goal being ecumenism, which,

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THE ANGELUS • September 2009

according to his reading, is the most significant and
most serious development in the Catholic Church
during and after the Council, and which flows directly
from the “loss of essences,” the heart of the newfangled theology.
Amerio’s critique is based in particular on the
magisterial act synthesizing the Church’s traditional
doctrine on relations with non-Catholics: the Instructio
de Motione Œcumenica of December 1949, reiterating
the four principles that must guide Catholics in
this matter: 1) The Catholic Church possesses the
plenitude of Christ; 2) union should not be sought by
way of progressive assimilation or by compromising
Catholic dogma; 3) true union can only occur
per reditum of the separated brethren to the true
Church of God, which is the Catholic Church; 4)
the separated who return lose nothing essential in
entering into the Catholic Church.
If these principles are abandoned, which has
largely happened during the post-conciliar period,
according to Amerio, the aggravation of the evils
afflicting the Church will ensue because ecumenism in
the new sense (the Catholic Church and non-Catholic
confessions are bearers of partial truths and must
converge in the Una Sancta, towards a new Church
of the Spirit, in which they will mutually complete
each other) is the anti-principle of Catholicism, and
in reality of the faith in general, which is the full
adhesion to a truth proposed and affirmed as absolute.
In the sequel to Iota Unum, the work Stat Veritas
published in 1997, Amerio assessed the effects of
ecumenism of recent decades with even more clarity
and firmness:
In order to come to the conclusion that conciliar and
post-conciliar ecumenism is a false, or at least incomplete,
ecumenism, it suffices to notice that the actions of the separated brethren have not been actions that caused them to
advance on the path to Catholicism, but actions that took
no account of the faith, or which contradicted the faith;
some were even actions that excited worldwide interest,
such as the ordination of women. These events contradict
the optimism of all those today who wish to consider that
the ecumenical movement has borne good fruit. It hasn’t
borne any fruit. On the contrary, it has sown confusion
among the multitude of the faithful.18

Besides, how could we fail to recognize the
solidity of the reasons for Amerio’s scepticism? He
emphasizes several times that the problem can be
reduced to the heretic’s habitus–to believe only what
my reason or my feelings consider as worthy of belief;
whereas it is a Catholic principle to believe in virtue
of the Authority belonging to the one who enjoins
me to believe: the Church, and in the last instance,
Christ Himself. It is stating the obvious to recall that
if heretics do not abandon the principle that makes

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them heretics, all ecumenical dialogue, however long,
will be fruitless.

Democracy in the Church
The whole of Chapter XXXIII of Iota Unum is
devoted to the subject of democracy in the Church,
which is closely linked to the subjects analyzed so far.
Pyrrhonism, dogmatic mobilism, and the primacy of
dialogue require as their corollary and culmination
adherence to ideological democratism.
The profound problem is the relationship of the
Church with the French Revolution and the principles
inspiring 1789: liberty, equality, fraternity. Amerio
observes that the basic idea governing the French
Revolution, and in its aftermath modern political
philosophy, is its antimonarchical essence. The
idea that “the exercise by one person of the right to
govern society in accordance with the requirements
of justice, ceases to be a legitimate species or form
of government, and is to be regarded as illegitimate”
has been widely spread and become common; but
naturally it involves a sophism demolished in St.
Pius X’s great encyclical Our Apostolic Mandate on the
Sillon (regarding Christian Democracy and liberal
Catholicism).19
For Amerio, this essentially anti-Christian idea
that democracy would be the only form of legitimate
government, that it would constitute the type of all
legitimate government, penetrated the Church and
infected it at every level of the hierarchical ladder.
But against this democratist deviation, Amerio
observes that the Church as a perfect society of divine
right is a monarchy and will eternally remain such
because it is the form that our Lord Himself wanted
to give it. Iota Unum reminds us moreover that
the attack on the supreme monarchical authority
of the Sovereign Roman Pontiff comes through
the exorbitant role given to the national episcopal
conferences, which hinder, when they do not
completely impede, the autonomy of decision-making
and power of every bishop such that it becomes very
difficult for bishops to act and decide against the
direction set by their episcopal conferences.
Amerio’s critique is developed along a twopronged argument: in the first place, show the
intrinsic weakness and the groundlessness of the
democratic idea as such, by rejoining the Catholic
polemic of the 19th century; secondly, he goes
into detail about the functioning of the episcopal
conferences, and shows that they irremediably alter
the bishop’s traditional role (of divine institution):
The second consequence [of the introduction of episcopal conferences] is the stripping of authority from individual
bishops; they are no longer directly accountable to the
Holy See or to their own people: individual responsibility
is being replaced by a collegial responsibility which is dispersed throughout the whole body and cannot be located

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in any one member. In episcopal conferences, decisions are
taken by two-thirds majorities, but although this may ensure
unity of action, it still leaves the minority at the mercy of
the majority.20

In Amerio’s vision, the acceptance of the
sophisms of modern democracy as normative even
for the Catholic hierarchy has certainly weakened the
unity of the Church, placing more than one episcopal
conference in a pre-schismatic state21 (insofar as papal
pronouncements on matters of faith are continually
discussed, critiqued, subjected to the judgments of
the conferences themselves, as if the validity of a
magisterial act of the pope depended on or required
approbation of the episcopal college). But on the
other hand, democratism and parliamentarism have
weakened authority at every other level, since every
priest, monsignore, expert, episcopal vicar, theologian,
Catholic university professor, abbot, etc., finds his
authority hobbled by a tightly woven network of
councils, synods, meetings, assemblies, encounters,
polls, indications, deliberations, etc., which ultimately
wear, consume, and exhaust the moral and
intellectual qualities necessary for making decisions
(and decision-making being one of the supreme acts
of the intellect and will, that is to say of freedom, that
a man can do, democratism first and foremost breaks
the humanity of the Church’s men).

The Failing of Authority
All the elements analyzed so far have as a
common foundation and outcome one single reality:
the destruction of the principle of authority. We are not
speaking about one more element, but the very
heart of modernity since Luther. If modernity can be
conceived of as revolution, that is to say the European
civil war against Christianitas, its essence consists
precisely in the ideological aggression and practical
destruction of the principle of authority.
Amerio sees—correctly, in our opinion–in this
demolition of the traditional idea of authority as it
had always been conceived of in the Catholic world,
the keystone of the crisis in the Church. In effect, the
Church is hierarchical and founded on the principle
of authority by its very nature, inasmuch as it is
founded, not on man, but on God and His Revelation,
on His Law and His Word. It is from above, from
God Himself, that the Church’s power to govern,
to teach, to educate the nations, to preach, and to
sanctify individuals and nations descends. To attack
the idea of authority and of hierarchy is tantamount
to removing the cornerstone that supports the entire
edifice: a Catholic Church with a Pontiff deprived of
even a part of his authority or who renounces the full
exercise of his powers is wounded to its very heart.
Unfortunately, recent decades of the Catholic
Church’s existence have been deeply affected by the
radical questioning of pontifical authority: the process,
which Amerio several times calls “breviatus manus,”
consisted in the weakening of the Vicar of Christ’s
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power, resulting in the renunciation or practical
impossibility of his pronouncing sanctions, punishing
delicts, reproving or publicly denouncing evil.
But, with great simplicity and his habitual clarity,
Amerio reminds us that a society cannot subsist
without the power to impose sanctions, and the
Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is and remains
a society even if she is divinely founded and assisted.
The failing of authority is the supreme problem
because error, if it is not combatted with the greatest
firmness, can only spread.22 But in the Amerian
perspective, after the Council the very possibility
of defining error as such, and heresy as heresy,
disappeared: the very words used for centuries to
condemn have disappeared, subjected to a kind of
unprecedented linguistic genocide.23 Amerio lists a
few of the “disappeared” terms: orthodox, orthodoxy,
heretic, error, sin, hell, etc. But the list is much longer
and includes dozens of words.
In Iota Unum, the failing of authority is also
closely linked to the problem of the character and
psychology of Montini, or, if you will, to his way of
interpreting his role:
Now, the peculiar feature of the pontificate of Paul VI was
the tendency to shift the papacy from governing to admonishing or, in scholastic terminology, to restrict the field of
preceptive law, which imposes an obligation, and to enlarge
the field of directive law, which formulates a rule without
imposing any obligation to observe it. The government of
the Church thus loses half its scope, or to put it biblically,
the hand of the Lord is foreshortened.24

Amerio cites some exemplary, and rightly famous,
instances of the failure of authority: the opposition to
the Dutch and French catechisms ending with Rome’s
capitulation, and the opposition over Küng and its
very lenient conclusion for the theologian about
whose faith and orthodoxy serious doubts were—and
are—allowed.
Amerio makes the following observations about
the crisis of the very idea of authority and of the idea
of the Roman Pontiff in particular:
The renunciation of authority is not merely a prudent
bending of a principle in the light of contemporary circumstances: it has instead itself become a principle. The Prefect
for the Congregation of the Clergy, Silvio Cardinal Oddi,
admitted as much at a conference of eight hundred members of “Catholics United for the Faith” held at Arlington
in the United States in July 1983. The Cardinal admitted
that there was confusion about the faith and said that many
catechists today choose certain articles of the depositum fidei
which they are going to believe, and abandon all the rest.
Doctrines such as the divinity of Christ, the virginity of
the Mother of God, original sin, the real presence in the
Eucharist, the absoluteness of moral obligation, hell and
the primacy of Peter are publicly denied by theologians and
bishops in pulpits and in academic chairs.25

representatives of the hierarchy, is followed by a
lapidary commentary worth citing:
Charity is held to be synonymous with tolerance, indulgence takes precedence over severity, the common good of
the ecclesial community is overlooked in the interests of a
misused individual liberty, the sensus logicus and the virtue
of fortitude proper to the Church are lost. The reality is that
the Church ought to preserve and defend the truth with all
the means available to a perfect society.26

Conclusion
What is the great lesson given us by Iota Unum
and the exemplary Catholic life of its author? We
can summarize it as follows: on the one hand, in
extreme times of very great crisis such as those in
which we are living, the need of critique, of a vigilant
and attentive, circumspect and prudent life of faith so
as to avoid being devoured by these shepherds who
are not “good,” but who rather are “mercenaries”;
on the other hand, the requirement that this criticoprudential stance be joined to the most intense charity
and sincere fervor: all reflection on the crisis in the
Church that is not animated by an intense desire for
personal sanctification is in vain.
Perhaps the Church, in the disquieting words of
Paul VI, “will be a handful of defeated men”; perhaps
Amerio is right when, in the majestic and terrible
epilogue of Iota, he speaks of the “emptying and
abasement” of the Church, a Church almost back in
the catacombs and reduced to humanly discouraging
existence, a Church condemned to practical
extinction within the limits of the “non praevalebunt,”
and which challenges the faith of even the most
sincere and fervent believers, the most desirous
of personal sanctification, to recognize in its face
disfigured by sin and the treason of many the intact
face of the mystical Spouse of Christ, and thereby
enduring the same trial as that lived by Mary and St.
John on Calvary, recognizing in the disfigured face
of the Crucified the face of the Savior, the face of the
Man-God.
The great lesson given us by Iota Unum is: against
all human hope, to hope; against all incredulity, to
believe; in extreme solitude, to be comforted by the
peace the Lord gives, not as the world gives, but a
mysterious and secret peace that prepares within
hearts the place wherein may shine the steady,
undying light which alone illumines and fortifies.
When will the Church be resplendent once again
in all her strength and purity? We do not know. But
we do know the nature of the seduction that caused
and directed the entire crisis: the seduction that
can be placed in the Amerian category of secondary
Christianity, that is to say, the idea that the Christian

This passage, which is first and foremost a
proof of the fact that Amerio really constructed
his Iota Unum by relying only on statements taken
from the speeches and acts of the most important
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faith derived its legitimacy from its ability to produce
culture and progress on the civil and purely human
level:

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Translated for Angelus Press from the Courrier de Rome, February 2009, pp.1-6.
Romano Amerio, Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth
Century, tr. from the Second Italian Edition by the Rev. John Parsons (1985; Kansas City:
Sarto House, 1996), §7, p.6.
2
Ibid.
3
L’Osservatore Romano, February 7, 1981.
4
Speech of September 1974, Iota Unum, §77, p.173.
5
Ibid., §78, p.174.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid., §324, p.731.
8
Ibid., §147, p.335.
9
Ibid, p.336.
10
Ibid., §161, p.360.
11
Which could be defined as an arrogant return of Americanism.
12
Ibid., p.366.
13
“Be firm and stand fast” (I Cor. 15:58). Ibid., §159, p.361.
14
Ibid., §154, pp.352-3.
15
Ibid., §155, p.354.
16
Ibid, §156, p.355.
17
Ibid., p.356.
18
Romano Amerio, Stat Veritas: A Sequel to Iota Unum (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi Editore,
1997).
19
On democracy, the French Revolution, and the persecution of the Church during the
Revolution, see A. Reyne and D. Brehier, Les martyrs d’Orange: La persécution des
catholiques dans la France jacobine.
20
Ibid., §233, p.525.
21
Ibid. Amerio speaks of “a pre-schismatic state of affairs.”
22
It should be recalled here that the abdication of authority, understood as the refusal to
condemn error, was already implicit and even announced in the John XXIII’s famous
inaugural speech opening Vatican Council II, October 11, 1962.
1

26

For an in-depth study of the theme of the destruction of the language of traditional
Catholic theology, cf. M. d’Amico, “Typologie de la crise présente: Le principe
du dialogue et l’Église catholique–la catastrophe de la raison,” in Les crises dans
l’Église: Les causes, effets, et remèdes, Acts of VII Theological Congress of SiSiNoNo
(Publications Courrier de Rome, 2007), pp.285-356.
24
Amerio, Iota Unum, §65, p.144.
25
Ibid., §68, pp.152-3.
26
Ibid., p.153.
27
Ibid., §299, p.667.
23

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