Francis’ new encyclical is a classic example of tactic popes warned about

(LifeSiteNews) — Some of Francis’ critics appear to have been flummoxed by his encyclical Dilexit nos on devotion to the Sacred Heart.  

Perhaps in an effort to be “fair” or “charitable” to Francis, some have even rushed to praise it—particularly its use of texts from the pre-Vatican II papal magisterium, saints and doctors.  

Leaving aside the question of the encyclical itself, the situation gives rise to a number of questions:  

• Are we obliged to interpret someone’s heterodox statements in light of other orthodox statements—even if they are very occasional? 

• Can someone’s orthodox statements offset his heterodox ones?  

• Is Catholic orthodoxy a spectrum—perhaps with a “pass mark” at which point one becomes orthodox? 

Some commentators appear to think that the answer to all these questions is “yes”—and that to do otherwise is a kind of hardening of our hearts towards Francis and his fellow travellers.  

They think that when we are faced with someone denying Catholic dogma one moment, and affirming it the next, we must do one of the following: 

• Praise what is good 

• Assume that it counteracts any heterodoxy 

• Treat it as the “hermeneutic” or interpretative key for everything else 

• Retreat into agnosticism about what the person really meant. 

All these options basically require us to give such a person the benefit of the doubt, at least until the Church tells us otherwise through an authoritative condemnation or judgment. It has even been claimed that it is virtuous to read the texts of those who are habitually working against the Church, and to find good in them.  

However, this is not the teaching of the Church.  

Common sense and Catholic authority 

It is right for a charitable interpretation to be a default starting-point when faced with other apparent contradictions. St. Ignatius of Loyola said:  

Every good Christian is more eager to justify than to condemn a statement of his neighbour; and if he cannot justify it, he asks the author for an explanation. If the author explains it ill, he corrects him with charity; and when that is not enough, he endeavours to the best of his power to find an acceptable meaning which will save the proposition.

However, while this may be our starting point, it is necessarily rebuttable by the facts and by reality. It is important to be patient, just and kind, especially to those who err in good faith. But the Church has clearly taught us that at a certain point, presumptions of good faith have to yield to reality.  

This is really just common sense. If we applied these rules in an artificial way to other areas of life, and insisted that we had to believe someone’s obvious lies, despite them being contradicted in words and actions at other times, it would be impossible to function and much harm would result. In such cases, persevering in a white-knuckled “benefit of the doubt” would simply be a voluntaristic rejection of reality.   

Needless to say, rejecting reality is not a duty imposed on us, especially when souls and the faith are at risk. It is unworthy cowardice on the part of creatures with the God-given gifts of faith and of reason. 

However, in addition to this being a dictate of common sense, our obligations to accept these realities and to be on our guard against those who reveal themselves to be the Church’s enemies are also affirmed by several popes and by other witnesses of Catholic tradition.  

These authorities have warned us that heretics, and especially modernists, will affirm some Catholic dogmas, often in eloquent and moving terms, specifically to cast a veil of plausible deniability over their rejection of other dogmas, and as a means of spreading their errors amongst the faithful.  

Far from saying that we are always obliged to give the benefit of the doubt to such heretics, these popes specifically instruct us to notice this tactic in use, and to call it out and condemn it when we do so.  

Pope Benedict XV and the integrity of the faith  

But first, let’s consider the necessity of a full or integral profession of faith.  

In 1914, Pope Benedict XV taught that the Catholic faith must be professed as a whole, in its integrity—such that someone cannot be “more Catholic” or “less Catholic.” They are either Catholic or they are not:  

Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: ‘This is the Catholic faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly; he cannot be saved’ (Athanas. Creed).  

One’s “catholicity,” orthodoxy, profession of faith or membership of the Church are not jeopardized by mistakes made in good faith. This is not what Benedict has in view here.   

Both points are explained by St. Thomas Aquinas when he treats the same point: 

[An] heretic who obstinately disbelieves one article of faith, is not prepared to follow the teaching of the Church in all things; but if he is not obstinate, he is no longer in heresy but only in error.   

Therefore it is clear that such a heretic with regard to one article has no faith in the other articles, but only a kind of opinion in accordance with his own will.  

In some cases, it might be hard to tell whether someone is an obstinate enemy of the Church, or simply a son who is mistaken on a point of doctrine. If a case is ambiguous, then it isn’t relevant to the question of membership. We can give such a person the benefit of the doubt, and treat him with the kindness or firmness needed to help him. 

But ambiguity does not arise simply by someone professing a mixture of orthodoxy and heterodoxy at different times. In fact, this is presumed in the texts above, and is a part of the definition of heresy itself:  

[A]nyone, retaining the name Christian, [who] pertinaciously denies or doubts something to be believed from the truth of divine and Catholic faith.  

There is no requirement that they deny or doubt all such dogmas. Heresy is not apostasy—the total turning away from the Christian religion—and it should not be surprising if a heretic continues to hold many Catholic dogmas as “opinions,” and uses these “opinions” to advance his credibility as a teacher of religion amongst those who are not on their guard.  

Pope St. Pius X and the duplicitous tactics of modernists  

A few years before Benedict XV’s comments, Pope St. Pius X drew attention to the same tactic on the part of the emerging sect of heretics whom he dubbed “the modernists”: 

[T]he Modernists (as they are commonly and rightly called) employ a very clever artifice, namely, to present their doctrines without order and systematic arrangement into one whole, scattered and disjointed one from another, so as to appear to be in doubt and uncertainty, while they are in reality firm and steadfast.  

One result of this tactic was the proliferation of orthodox and edifying texts written by such modernists. He continued:  

In the writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate now one doctrine now another so that one would be disposed to regard them as vague and doubtful.  

But there is a reason for this, and it is to be found in their ideas as to the mutual separation of science and faith.  

Hence in their books you find some things which might well be expressed by a Catholic, but in the next page you find other things which might have been dictated by a rationalist. 

Other theologians writing in the nineteenth century made the same observation. 

Pope Leo XIII, ‘St. Ambrose’ and the drop of poison 

Before Pope St Pius X, Pope Leo XIII expressed the same points in even greater detail. First, he states how the Church viewed those who differed “on any point of doctrine” to her:  

The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. 

He then cited a patristic text, sometimes attributed to St Ambrose, which emphasised what might appear paradoxical to many today, namely that the closer the heretic is to the Church, the more dangerous they really are.   

The full patristic passage bears repeating. The section quoted by Leo is in italics: 

But those who share many things in common with us can easily mislead innocent minds, devoted solely to God, through deceitful association, defending their own corrupt beliefs by appealing to our good ones.   

For nothing is more dangerous than these heretics, who seem to proceed correctly in all things, but with a single word, like a drop of poison, corrupt the pure and simple faith of the Lord, and, through it, the apostolic tradition. 

Therefore, we must take great care not to allow anything of this kind to secretly infiltrate either our understanding or our hearing, for nothing leads to death more than violating faith under the guise of faith itself. Just as gypsum mixed with water mendaciously resembles the colour of milk, so too does an hostile tradition sneak in under the guise of a credible profession of faith.  

For this reason, it is not the outward similarity of the profession of faith that should be weighed, but the intention of the mind by which the profession itself is established.

Following his quotation of the italics above, Pope Leo XIII affirms that the constant practice of the Church, as witnessed by all the Fathers of the Church, was to consider anyone who departed “in the least degree” from her teaching “alien to the Church”:  

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium.

Pope Clement XIII notes the same tactics  

Before Leo, in 1761, Pope Clement XIII drew attention to the same tactic of using orthodoxy to cover heterodoxy on the part of heretics: 

[T]he matter is such that diabolical error, when it has artfully colored its lies, easily clothes itself in the likeness of truth while very brief additions or changes corrupt the meaning of expressions; and confession, which usually works salvation, sometimes, with a slight change, inches toward death. 

Pope Pius VI on how to deal with these tactics  

Perhaps the fullest papal treatment of this tactic is found in Auctorem Fidei of Pope Pius VI. In 1793, he wrote:  

In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous manoeuvres by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner.  

Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation.  

He then specifically exposes their tactic of heretics publishing both orthodox and heretical material as a cover for their real ambitions: 

Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up to the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it.

He condemns this tactic, and points to its use by Nestorius, one of the many heretical patriarchs of Constantinople: 

It is as if the innovators pretended that they always intended to present the alternative passages, especially to those of simple faith who eventually come to know only some part of the conclusions of such discussions, which are published in the common language for everyone’s use.  

Or again, as if the same faithful had the ability on examining such documents to judge such matters for themselves without getting confused and avoiding all risk of error.  

It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor St. Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity. 

But Pius VI did not just point out this tactic. In this Bull, which was addressed “to all the Christian faithful,” he told us that the answer to such contradictions or ambiguity is not to assume the best, but to assume the worst: 

In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements that disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged.  

Amusingly, the pope even adds that any orthodox Catholic should be grateful if any ambiguity or contradiction in his words might be pointed out, which would give them the opportunity to correct themselves and to condemn anything that may endanger the faith of the faithful: 

If they are sound in doctrine, as they wish to seem, they cannot take it hard that the teachings identified in this manner—teachings that exhibit errors from which they claim to be entirely distant—stand condemned. 

Book specifically commended by the Holy Office says Catholics must call out such tactics  

In 1886, during the reign of Leo XIII, the Barcelonan priest Don Felix Sarda y Salvani published a book called El Liberalismo es Pecado (Liberalism is a Sin).   

The liberalizing priest Don de Pazos wrote a reply to it, and both the original and the reply were sent to Rome, in the hope that Sarda’s book would be condemned and put on the Index of Forbidden Books.  

In fact, Fr Jerome Secheri OP, secretary of the Sacred Congregation of the Index, wrote back and strongly commended Sarda’s book and its tone, and condemned those of de Pazos ordering it to be removed from circulation.  

Sarda makes some of the same points which we have already seen—namely, that heresy hides itself under Catholic orthodoxy, and would have no power to ensnare souls without making use of the truth on occasion:  

Appearances may be fair, and the devil may present himself as an angel of light. The danger is the greater as the outward show is more seductive.  

Most heresies which have rent the bosom of the Church have attempted to disguise their errors under an exterior of affected piety.  

However, Sarda also addresses whether and how a layman (or a mere priest) might “tell on his own authority who or what is Liberal, without having recourse to a definitive decision of the teaching Church?”

After all, who are mere priests and laymen to discern whether or not we are faced with real or affected piety; with real or affected orthodoxy? Is this not the role of the pope and the bishops?

Sarda answers this by explaining that in addition to the judgments of bishops, pastors, confessors and theologians, “the judgment of simple human reason, duly enlightened [by faith]” is also “entitled to respect.” He writes:  

Yes, human reason, to speak after the manner of theologians, has a theological place in matters of religion.   

Yes, the faithful are permitted and even commanded to give a reason for their faith, to draw out its consequences, to make applications of it, to deduce parallels and analogies from it. It is thus by use of their reason that the faithful are enabled to suspect and measure the orthodoxy of any new doctrine presented to them, by comparing it with a doctrine already defined. If it be not in accord, they can combat it as bad, and justly stigmatize as bad the book or journal which sustains it. 

We should not underestimate the importance of the judgment of human reason, enlightened by faith. We cannot refuse to make judgments based on the data before us. We do not bring glory to God by extinguishing the light of our intellect and timorously refusing to draw conclusions until authority has told us to do so.   

Sarda notes that the judgment of human reason is not a legal or doctrinal judgment binding on others, but adds: 

[T]hey can lawfully hold it as perverse and declare it such, warn others against it, raise the cry of alarm and strike the first blow against it. The faithful layman can do all this, and has done it at all times with the applause of the Church. Nor in so doing does he make himself the pastor of the flock, nor even its humblest attendant; he simply serves it as a watchdog who gives the alarm. Oportet allatrare canes—’It behooves watchdogs to bark,’ very opportunely said a great Spanish Bishop in reference to such occasions.  

He goes on to say that the Church being the rule of faith presumes that the faithful are able to understand what they are taught and to judge in light of it: 

Of what use would be the rule of faith and morals if in every particular case the faithful could not of themselves make the immediate application, or if they were constantly obliged to consult the Pope or the diocesan pastor? […]  

It would be rendering the superior rule of faith useless, absurd and impossible to require the supreme authority of the Church to make its special and immediate application in every case and upon every occasion which calls it forth.

He describes the contrary view—that Catholics are unable to use their reason to judge liberals and enemies of the Church—as “a species of brutal and satanic Jansenism.” Of this view, he says: 

If this Liberal paradox were true, it would furnish Liberals with a very efficacious weapon with which, practically speaking, to annul all the Church’s condemnations of Liberalism. 

He points out that “the greatest rigorists on this point”—whether Catholics are able to judge these matters, or whether they are obliged to “assume the best” until the Church says otherwise—“are the most hardened sectaries of the Liberal school.” And why is this?  

It is easily explained, if we only reflect that nothing could be more convenient for Liberalism than to put this legal muzzle upon the lips and the pens of their most determined adversaries.  

It would be in truth a great triumph for them, under the pretext that no one except the Pope and the bishops could speak with the least authority, and thus to impose silence upon the lay champions of the Faith, such as were DeMaistre, Cortes, Veuillot, Ward, Lucas and McMaster, who once bore, and others who now bear, the banner of the Faith so boldly and unflinchingly against its most insidious foes.  

Liberalism would like to see such crusaders disarmed and would prefer above all to succeed in getting the Church herself to do the disarming. 

This is precisely what is being asked of Catholics, when we are told that we must give “the benefit of the doubt” to men such as Francis.   

Sarda continued—should we praise what is good? 

Sarda compares the genuinely good work of heretics with the beauty of a promiscuous woman, saying that “the more beautiful, the more dangerous.”  

Nonetheless, should we praise the intermittent good acts of enemies of the Church, perhaps in an attempt to correct bad behaviour with the praise of good behaviour? No, says Sarda: 

Many Catholics, by far too naive (even some engaged in Catholic journalism), are perpetually seeking to pose as impartial and are perpetually daubing themselves with a veneer of flattery. […]  

[T]hey hope to show that it costs a Catholic nothing to recognize merit wherever it may be found; they imagine this to be a powerful means of attracting the enemy.   

Alas, the folly of the weaklings; they play a losing game; it is they who are insensibly attracted, not the enemy! They simply fly at the bait held out by the cunning fisher who satanically guides the destinies of Liberalism. […] 

Heresy under a charming disguise is a thousand times more dangerous than heresy exposed in the harsh and arid garb of the scholastic syllogism—through which the death’s skull grins in unadorned hideousness.  

He gives a list of heretics or promoters of error who have been subject to praise, even mitigated praise, by Catholics, and then asks: 

Shall we, against whom they aimed the keenest and deadliest shafts, contribute to their name and their renown! Shall we assist them in fascinating and corrupting youth! Shall we crown these condemners of our faith with the laurels of our praises and laud them for the very qualities which alone make them dangerous!   

And for what purpose? That we may appear impartial?  

No. Impartiality is not permissible when it is distorted to the offense of truth, whose rights are imprescriptible [inalienable, absolute]. 

Should we not be grateful for such intermittent good acts? No, says Sarda, adding that we should learn a lesson from the enemies of the Church here: 

Shall we praise Liberal books out of gratitude? No! Follow the liberals themselves in this, who are far more prudent than we; they do not recommend and praise our books, whatever they be.   

They, with the instinct of evil, fully appreciate where the danger lies. They either seek to discredit us or to pass us by in silence.  

But should we at least be charitable towards those we think are the enemies of the Church? In the sense of willing their good, their conversion, and their salvation; of course. But this is not what is meant here: what is meant is not defending the Church and to let them get on with their anti-Catholic agenda. We have already seen what Sarda says about that, but on the idea of this “charity” directly, he says: 

Charity in controversy with Liberals would be like taking a serpent to one’s bosom. It would be as if one embraced some loathsome contagious disease with the foolish notion that to court it would secure immunity from its fearful ravages.   

Notwithstanding the plain common sense of the situation and the memorable warning of Our Lord that he who loves the fire shall perish in it, some foolish Catholics join with the Liberals in their cry for a magnanimous display of charity on our part when we wage war against them. 

He ends the chapter in simple terms which recall the other texts we have seen, as well as Pope Pius VI’s instruction on assuming the worst, when it is clearly right to do so:  

‘If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema,’ says St. Paul. Liberal literature is the written hatred of Our Lord and His Church. If its blasphemy were open and direct, no Catholic would tolerate it for an instant; is it any more tolerable because, like a courtesan, it seeks to disguise its sordid features by the artifice of paint and powder?

So no: we should not be grateful that Francis has promulgated an encyclical, no matter how beautiful, traditional or orthodox it seems. We should not imagine that we are being impartial, and taking “the higher ground” by praising good where we find it. We should not be “charitable” in our treatment of this work, if the word “charity” is simply a euphemism for stepping aside and quieting down. 

Such routes are a dereliction of duty. At very least, in the face of “good actions” from those engaged in a long campaign against the Church, we should remember the words of the Trojan priest in the face of the Trojan Horse:   

I fear the Greeks, even when they bear gifts.  

Conclusion  

In the Gospels, Our Lord paints a frightening image:   

Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. 

Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in thy name, and cast out devils in thy name, and done many miracles in thy name? 

And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity. (7.21-23) 

This passage does not just pertain to the eternal destiny of these men. It applies to the days prior to that final judgment, and shows us how we should think about those who profess to recognize Christ as Lord, and who may even do some good things in his name, but are otherwise evidently engaged in deconstructing the Church and the Catholic religion.  

Just before the Gospel passage above, Christ warned us about those who hide their errors under the guise of orthodoxy: 

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 

By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit. (Mt. 7.15-7) 

He does not say “believe that they are sheep, because otherwise you are being uncharitable.” He does not say “it is a spiritual discipline to read their works and try to find some good in them.” 

He says beware. 

Similarly, when he mentions that “Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light”—in the very context of false apostles (2 Cor. 11.13-4)—St. Paul does not suggest that we admire, praise or be thankful for what appears good in Satan’s disguise. 

Nor, when discussing the hypothetical case of apostles or angels from heaven preaching a new Gospel, does St. Paul command the Galatians to search through such teaching, resisting what is new, but otherwise praising what aligns with tradition, putting a “charitable” interpretation on things, and honoring such apostles and angels. 

He said Let him be anathema. (Gal. 1.8-9)  

The idea that the simple faithful or even the clergy are required to behave in the way suggested by some commentators has no foundation in common sense or the teaching or practice of the Church. 

It may be—and we pray for it—that one day Francis does indeed convert to the Catholic faith, begins to preach it boldly, and brings forth genuinely good fruit.  

But Catholic orthodoxy is not a spectrum, gradient or weighing scales. We do not earn the state of grace or salvation by having more good deeds than bad; nor do we become orthodox by saying more true things than false. If the day of his conversion comes, Francis must remove himself from a state of opposition to the Church, and undo and repair the copious harm he has inflicted during his reign. 

It will take time and a comprehensive realignment for Francis to regain the trust of the faithful and of clerics. It is completely normal that a period of distrust will come before such acceptance.   

When that day comes, in the spirit of Pope Pius VI, we could say that—once converted to the Catholic religion—Francis “cannot take it hard” that those whom he has abused with false doctrine for years remain cautious in the face of a real or apparent adoption of Catholic orthodoxy.  

It will take more than the promulgation of a conservative encyclical or strong comments on pro-life or political issues for Francis to establish that he has indeed converted and is willing to exercise an office which he has so evidently rejected.