Some things change, some don’t, and it can be hard to know what to do about it. Wise sayings point in different directions:
“[I] beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.” (Jude 1:3)
“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.” (Galatians 1:8)
But also:
“The old things are passed away, behold all things are made new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. (Times change, and we too change with them.)
So judgment is needed. In religion, for example, we should hold fast to some things, but try to understand them better, and adapt to the circumstances in which they must be communicated and applied. All those things are needed.
With that in mind, current denunciations of “backwardism” and insistence on the need always to be going forward seem surprising. Whatever happened to keeping the faith and being skeptical of novelties? It seems that would sometimes also be fitting.
The difficulty is knowing exactly when to accept and reject change. And here humility is needed. Our understanding of what we’re doing and what we’re dealing with is limited. These understandings can grow—they often have—but the accumulated growth in 2000 years means that the bright ideas we come up with today may be misconceived. They need to be tested before we insist on them.
More generally, we should be cautious about believing our thought and way of living the Faith are better than in the past. Sometimes, in certain ways, they are. They may often be more suited to the present day, for example. But we can also fail to understand and follow the past because it is our teacher, and disciples often fail to understand their master. And sometimes we advance over the recent past by better understanding the more remote past—perhaps by recognizing that recent changes have been misguided.
How do we tell what’s what?
Not much is guaranteed, so the Church has usually avoided lockstep on such matters. She needs tending more than re-engineering. So the usual approach has been to maintain general stability of practice and unity of doctrine but let people like Francis of Assisi try out their ideas with some supervision, encourage them when they work, and step in when they seem to be going off the rails.
Saint Francis and his followers were welcome to do their thing—the Church needed something—but nobody was required to follow them, and when the Spiritual Franciscans became impracticably dogmatic, higher authority intervened.
We see a similar approach everywhere. It took centuries for the Vulgate to become the Latin Bible most commonly used. Canonizations were usually performed well after the saint had died and a cult had developed among the people. And the very moderate and indeed conservative reform of the Mass at Trent was optional for long-established rites like those used by the Dominicans and in places like Milan.
Many, including Saint John Henry Newman, have pointed out that caution regarding change has particularly been the practice of the papacy, which has acted far more as a brake on new developments than their originator.
With all that in mind, and assuming our ancestors in the Faith knew in general what they were about, it’s doubtful backwardism has been a bigger problem in the Church recently than forwardism. We live in an age in which people overestimate their knowledge and abilities, and have lost their understanding of the past and of tradition—the former is now often viewed as a mass of ignorance and injustice, the latter as a collection of “tropes” and “deeply rooted social stereotypes.” If that is the outlook we’re immersed in, why be especially confident in our judgment?
Claims of superior illumination need testing. In the past, they have been rare among responsible Catholic leaders. More often they have been a form of cultish or manipulative behavior—conversation-stoppers that have been used, along with denunciations of “fear of change,” “resistance to the Spirit,” and the like, to silence reasonable concerns. When they appear among the clergy, they suggest extreme clericalism—the idea that the Church is the property of the clergy to do with as seems good to them.
It is not surprising that such claims have often led to heresy and schism. Iconoclasm, the Spiritual Franciscans, and the Protestant rebellion provide examples. Everybody had been doing things all wrong, the idea seemed to be, but the illuminati would tell people what’s what and they had better listen. More recently, an ideology of forwardism guided by assimilation to the modern world has repeatedly led to a radical decline in Protestant groups. They successfully assimilated, and after that no longer had anything of interest to say to the world.
Our own post-Vatican II forwardists are unable to show many successes except an ability to gain power within the Church. The radical and continuing decline in Mass attendance can serve as a sign of what has happened. Growth in Africa and China seems due to something other than post-conciliar changes—for example, population growth, or a general tendency to abandon traditional folk beliefs in favor of Christianity or Islam.
People disagree whether recent troubles in the Church have resulted from the Council itself, mistakes in its implementation, or external circumstances. It seems to me though—perhaps because I am a lawyer—that much of our problem has been less substantive than procedural. Since Vatican II was an ecumenical council and thus a supreme legislative authority, many people viewed anything coming out of it as something like a new constitutional principle that was to be interpreted and imposed on everyone by bureaucrats and hierarchs.
From that point of view, the post-Conciliar period was very different from a new Pentecost. In a Church run by experts and administrators, where is the room for the Spirit that blows where it wills? The piecemeal accumulation of understandings regarding old realities and new situations? The gradual unforced changes and siftings necessary for something like traditional devotions or the traditional Latin liturgy? Or the contributions of an eccentric small-town nobody like Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone—later known as Saint Francis?
True reform in the Church has most often been understood as a return to a past that was purer and less compromised by concessions to human weakness. That past was often idealized, like all guiding visions, and the result was never actual return, but its ideal aspects were nonetheless a useful inspiration for the future.
Francis of Assisi wanted to return to Christ and the way of the Apostles. Monastic reformers have wanted to return to founding principles and disciplines. It seems odd to think of them as forwardists, even though the implementation was necessarily guided by current realities, as well as ideal visions.
The same principle applies, by the way, to the secular world. The Renaissance was to be a return to antiquity, the rising power of Parliament a vindication of the ancient British constitution, the foundation of republican institutions a return to republican Rome. Even Italian opera was intended to bring back Greek drama. None of them turned out as planned, but each made use of ancient models to guide evolving practice.
So what now? Catholics are not slaves. The Church is in a bad way, and each has his own responsibility before God. That responsibility requires him to be as wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove—which is not easy.
In such a setting, it seems good to take the tradition of the Church seriously. That too is difficult, since that tradition is long and complex, but many ordinary believers who are feeling their way forward in difficult times have found help in the devotional and liturgical practices people had long found sustaining before the changes imposed during the last sixty years.
How, then, is it pastoral to call them names and put obstacles in their way? And is a Church that turns her back on her own past—as catchphrases like “backwardism” and “always going forward” seem to suggest—really a model of catholicity?
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Beautifully written.
The Pontiff Francis is the president of the forwardist cult, which offers the road of decay.
Their gospel is this: “We are the branches, the vine is passe. Apart from the vine we will do what we please, and the Church is our personal property.”
It’s effect is to feed and grow as parasite, while The Body it feeds off of is drained away This is its function, as can be seen by observation. It is the actual “Francis-Effect.”
The “clerical-custodians-of-decay.”
Their icon is the ubiquitous clip art of their sociopath sex abuser hero Rev. Rupnik.
About “backwardism” and “forwardism,” such LABELS are especially exploited by all manner of illuminati. For example, a self-appointed Marxist vanguard intent on imposing their particular secret of history—”dialectical materialism” and economic class warfare—surely leading to universal harmony in our fallen (!) world…
The only real “paradigm shift” in all of human history, however, is the Incarnation of the self-disclosing Triune One, at a particular time and place (the Creed’s “under Pontius Pilate”)…About which, ST. AUGUSTINE clarifies for all time: “We can say things differently, but we can’t say different things.”
And, inseparable from which, ST. JOHN PAUL II (in Veritatis Splendor, 1993) explicitly renders our inborn Natural Law—baked into each “transcendent human person”—as an integral part of the Magisterium. The Magisterium: the Deposit of Faith from the beginning, plus the Church’s historically acquired immune system—the Apostolic Succession ever responsive to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost…
And, about the SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL, it was less of a “legislative” body than the “hierarchical communion” (Lumen Gentium) responsible partly for “governance” of a unique institution which is both institutional and charismatic (your good comments about St. Francis). At the time of the Council, Yves Congar wisely distinguished between permanent Tradition (big “T”) and tradition (small “t”). The error or deceit today is in trying too hard to “stretch the grey area,” but while actually diminishing the “white area” of permanent moral clarity. The gifted, inborn and universal Natural Law is not a “small t”. For example, today’s systemic ambiguity and fogginess cannot render “irregular couples” and the homosexual lifestyle exempt from formal and concrete (allegedly abstract) moral theology…
About such conceptual fluidity, the Magisterium clarifies:
“Each of us knows how important is the teaching which represents the central theme of this encyclical and which today is being restated with the authority of the Successor of Peter. Each of us can see the seriousness of what is involved, not only for individuals but also for the whole of society, with the REAFFIRMATION OF THE UNIVERSALITY AND IMMUTABILITY OF THE MORAL COMMANDMENTS [italics], particularly those which prohibit always and without exception INTRINSICALLY EVIL ACTS [italics]” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 115).
With the Second Vatican Council, the current CHALLENGE is how to guide the flock clearly with regard to BOTH (a) the intact interior and sacramental life including personal morality, and (b) the exterior life of now systemic and global evils, together with the capacity for good? Without diminishing either? What ST. JOHN PAUL II meant when by our now “compact” world and the need to replace “structures of sin” (sin?) with more authentic forms of living in community [as] a task which demands courage and patience” (Centesimus Annus, 1991).
About our postmodern age of amnesiac forwardism, this from G.K. CHESTERTON: “[T]he Catholic Church is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.”
Peter B:
Your closing quote from GKC is simply the perfect coda to Mr. Kalb’s essay.
Thank you for recalling that to mind.
Perhaps our Moravian brothers said it best: “in essentials Unity, in non essentials Liberty, in all else Charity”.
I would guess that more than a few of us here are Backwardists.
Catholicism is neither backwards nor forwards. The motto of the Carthusians is worth posting here: Stat crux dum volvitur orbis. “While the world changes, the cross stands firm.”
Rome’s role, until the coupe d’état of 1958, was to ensure the unchanging Truth was carried down the centuries; it is precisely because Rome is in Apostasy that it is possible to speak of backward or forward Catholicism.
But such a notion is simply NOT CATHOLIC just as the copying and pasting from the evil Talmud into the Novos Ordo offertory rite is NOT CATHOLIC.
Persecuted Real Deal Catholicism can still save Rome and Western Civilisation.
“real deal Catholicism …can still save Rome”
Jesus is the real deal and will save us; just follow Him even to the cross, obedient to God and Holy Church.
Seeking Jesus lead me to Real Deal Catholicism. God bless you Edith. Keep seeking His authentic face.
As an historian, with a PHD and two seminarian educations, and well as post doctoral work in the Epistemology of Social Science Inquiry, I still believe that some things to do need not need explanations: the plain words of Jesus recorded in Holy Scripture. Especially, unless you eat My Body and drink my Blood, you have no life within you and love your God with all our hearts and minds and our neighbor as ourselves. I have been studying struggle against modernism by the popes since Clement XII to Benedict XVI. It is clear to me, that attempting use the wisdom of this world to deal with the problems in the Church is a futile enterprise. Apart from the Biblical understanding of reality and the consequences of the fall of creation by the original sin, we miss the true necessity and consequence of Jesus’s death upon the Cross to break the power of Satan. Union with Jesus in His Mystical Body is our only means of salvation.
There is much wisdom and grace in this viewpoint, seems to me. Thanks for writing it.
I just know there is only ONE CHRIST, only ONE TRUTH, only ONE CHURCH lead on by the Holy Spirit in the Mystical Body in Christ through the ages. If the Church is in combat, we have to try even harder to become saints and raise her up together; and not flee to fraternities in disunity and rebellion against the true Church now persecuted from without and within. It is one thing to worship in the Latin rite but quite another to reject the true Church on her path through all ages unto eternity. No, you do not get to make your own church or it will be without the Holy Spirit and charity.
Jesus said the faithful would be persecuted Edith. Lefevbre changed nothing. He continued the same path before during after the “the pastoral council”. He was the good Shepherd who kept the faith. Novos Ordo Catholics have had it diluted to homeopathic fallacy for 60 years. Millions of Catholics have fled the Synodal Superlodge in Germany, fleeing the Novos Ordo shipwreck. This is not the fruit of the Catholic Church but the Prince of this World. I pray many of them will discover the Real Deal, for themselves and their families and not be lost.
Seek and Ye Shall Find.
Cracked nut, I hope that means cracked heart letting Jesus Christ in searching for His Truth. Abp Lefebvre voted against 2012 bishops for the changes of the council to bring back holy simplicity, the rebels of disobedience below forty votes. That extreme consumerism, digital distraction, sexual revolution, came upon us, did effect the Church. Novus Ordo and JP II brought millions of conversions; 500,000 to 1.3 billions of believers. You tout Catholicism; you do know that catholic means universal. Universalistic holy Apostolic Church. American or European is only a small part of the global Church. People confuse ONE RITE (the Latin) the same as the entire Church. Whatever draws you closer to Jesus but do not condemn the true Church because it is Christ Himself. You want to sit back listening to chants and classical music and be passive; the NO is like an everlasting Last Supper to us. The Church is God “A plan born in Father’s Heart” (CCC759). Even in darkness, doubt, loss of faith and sin, the Church keeps alive in Him who is the Church. We are called to raise up the church in penance, offerings, sacrifices, and in love; we are called to be soldiers of Christ and follow Him who felt martyrdom everyday. We do not run away but love and labor in the Church. “In this wonderful exchange, the holiness of one profits others, well beyond the harm that the sin of one could cause others ” (CCC1475). Did St Francis just repair his chapel of did he labor and suffer for the restoration of the whole Church. God bless you, brother in Christ Jesus.
St Francis went out of the City to restore the venerable old and abandoned Sans Damiano to its traditional glory. In so doing he rendered the same praise to God as the Stars and Moon: both the created order and sacred tradition are gifts of Logos.
Bergoglio’s Cancel Catholicism Programme which builds upon Churches stripped of their Holy Sanctuaries is the anthithesis of St Francis’ programme at Sans Damiano. He restored the whole Church from the abandonned chapel out of town…
Blessings sister Edith.
A good sequel to the Book of Lamentations.
To elaborate a bit on a sequel to Lamentations, the Book describes the lament of Israel during the Babylonian captivity, which for us is an analogous form of authoritative captivity during this pontificate for those of us who experience oppression and derision as backwardists [the latest insult]. Attorney author Kalb addresses this backward forward dilemma. Our dilemma is not unlike Israel’s, “It was there that we hung up our harps upon the poplars that grew there. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; And they that held us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” (Ps 137). Analogously we’re hesitant to sing their praises
We hope for deliverance. Cyrus God’s spiritual emissary assumed command of Babylon and delivered Israel from captivity. We await a Cyrus.
thank you Father Morello for all your wise and uplifting comments.
“Those who love Me I also love, and those who seek Me, will find Me” (Proverb 8)
It’s possible to adopt or adapt the practice of always offending the host in order to please the guests. Even non-believers know about this and that it is not mercy. Then you could be doing that not for mercy’s sake but (who am I to judge) for the purpose of endless listening as the way to find the permanent justification for whatever you are doing that will offend the host including always offending the host. Of course, no antidote is to be found. You will insist that the office belongs to you for it to be trusted even as you “progress”!
Truth is, the office does not belong to you or anyone for those dependent on it to place their hopes in presumptions, despairs, envies and resisting truth. Nor may the office assimilate just to make to fit.