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Misa de diálogo - CXIII

Se requiere mayor santidad del clero

Dr. Carol Byrne, Great Britain
Como resultado de la nueva teología del Vaticano II, la comprensión tradicional del sacerdocio como una vocación sobrenatural que requiere un grado de santidad superior al de los fieles ordinarios ha disminuido, o ha desaparecido o se ha relativizado.

El Concilio solo menciona la llamada específica a la santidad del sacerdote ordenado en el contexto de todos los bautizados, religiosos o laicos, que tienen la obligación general de luchar por la santidad en sus vidas. Pero se abstiene cuidadosamente de decir si esta vocación “especial” constituye una forma de santidad superior a la requerida de cualquier otro estado de vida en la Iglesia.

La enseñanza papal tradicional de Pío XI
llamó al sacerdote a una mayor santidad

La discrepancia entre el Vaticano II y la enseñanza tradicional se describe claramente en la Carta encíclica a los sacerdotes católicos de Pío XI. Citando a Santo Tomás de Aquino, el Papa afirmó:

“Para cumplir los deberes del Orden Sagrado no basta el bien común; pero se requiere una bondad excelente; para que los que reciben Órdenes y por lo tanto sean superiores en rango al pueblo, sean también superiores en santidad.” (1)

Santo Tomás de Aquino nos dice también que un hombre que está destinado al ministerio más augusto de servir a Cristo mismo en el altar requiere una santidad interior mayor que la que se requiere incluso para el estado religioso no ordenado. (2)

Tomás de Kempis dijo que, como el sacerdote está "consagrado para celebrar la Misa", está "atado a una disciplina más estricta y mantenido en una santidad más perfecta". (3) Este requisito, dicho sea de paso, se aplica en diversos grados a los clérigos de las Órdenes Menores y al Subdiaconado, porque participan de las gracias necesarias para su camino hacia el sacerdocio.

Por eso, el Código de Derecho Canónico de 1917 declaraba que “los clérigos deben llevar una vida, tanto interior como exterior, más santa que los laicos, y serles un ejemplo sobresaliendo en virtud y buenas obras”. (4)

La cuestión, debe enfatizarse, no es y nunca ha sido si un clérigo individual alcanza mayor santidad que un laico individual, sino lo que la Iglesia nos ha enseñado sobre la naturaleza del estado clerical y su relación con la Eucaristía.

Inversión de significados, valores y actitudes

Después del Concilio Vaticano II, la “santidad superior” del clero se convirtió repentinamente en un tema tabú, arrojado a las tinieblas exteriores, para ser reemplazado por el eslogan “la llamada universal a la santidad” que se encuentra en Lumen gentium.

Pronto se vería que esto no transmitía el significado tradicional de que todos los bautizados, sin importar su estatus en la Iglesia, deberían luchar por la perfección en la vida cristiana. En cambio, se usó en el sentido de "igualdad de santidad para todos" y se ponderó en contra de aquellos que tenían más que perder por una degradación de su estatus superior, es decir, clérigos en órdenes menores y mayores.

Invirtiendo la enseñanza recibida y aceptada de la Iglesia sobre la necesidad de una mayor santidad para los ordenados, el Papa Juan Pablo II declaró: “En verdad, el sacerdocio ministerial no significa por sí mismo un mayor grado de santidad con respecto al sacerdocio común de los fieles. ” (5)

Esta declaración es una contradicción explícita del testimonio común de la Iglesia hasta el Concilio Vaticano II que colocaba a todas las órdenes clericales por encima del estado laico en términos de la santidad de su oficio en la medida en que se acercaban más al sacerdocio de Cristo. Viniendo del Papa, es moralmente indefendible porque, al igualar los estados clerical y laico, degradó indirectamente el ministerio petrino por el cual se le dio el título de Su Santidad en reconocimiento a la santidad preeminente de su oficio.

Monseñor Escrivá enseñando a los laicos que tienen vocaciones iguales, abajo, con su buen amigo protector Pablo VI

La idea, sin embargo, de desinflar el estatus superior del sacerdocio no se originó con Juan Pablo II a pesar de que intervino con éxito, como veremos más adelante, en el Vaticano II para introducirlo en la Lumen gentium cuando era un obispo joven. Un peligroso precedente ya lo había sentado el fundador del Opus Dei, Mons. Josemaría Escrivá, que escribió en 1945:

“Tanto los sacerdotes como los laicos, en razón del único bautismo que han recibido, deben aspirar igualmente a la santidad… la santidad a la que son llamados no es mayor en el sacerdote que en el laico, ya que éste no está llamado a ser de una segundo clase cristiana. La santidad, tanto en el sacerdote como en el laico, no es otra cosa que la perfección de la vida cristiana”. (6)

La implicación aquí es que la ordenación no eleva al sacerdote a un rango espiritual o grado de santidad superior al de los laicos. Pero esto es diametralmente opuesto a la enseñanza establecida de la Iglesia, y choca frontalmente con lo que Pío XI había afirmado solo unos años antes en su citada Encíclica sobre el Sacerdocio Católico.

Así que la visión de Mons. Escrivá sobre la Iglesia y su organización no es coherente con la concepción católica del sacerdocio. Fue una construcción intelectual típica de los innovadores teológicos progresistas del siglo XX que querían promover la “participación activa” de los laicos como el principio supremo.

Su insinuación de que el laico era tratado como un “cristiano de segunda clase” en la Iglesia era parte de su proceso de pensamiento revolucionario y está imbuido de un tono neomarxista. Sugiere que las masas no ordenadas son víctimas de una discriminación injusta por parte de los ordenados (los pocos privilegiados). Era una forma disfrazada de “teología de la liberación” que bien podría denominarse “opción preferencial por los laicos”.

Sin embargo, en un mensaje enviado por el Vaticano en 2013 al Opus Dei elogiando la contribución de su fundador a la teología, el Papa Francisco llamó a Escrivá “un precursor del Vaticano II al enfatizar el llamado universal a la santidad”. (7)

El nuevo lema: 'la llamada universal a la santidad'

La Iglesia siempre ha enfatizado la necesidad de que todos los cristianos, sin excepción, trabajen hacia la perfección espiritual, un imperativo basado en la enseñanza de Nuestro Señor (Mateo 5:48). Pero en manos de innovadores teológicos, este pasaje de la Sagrada Escritura se convirtió en un arma ideológica para mantener la fantasía de que no existe una mayor santidad asociada al sacerdocio.

Los sacerdotes ahora se consideran iguales a los laicos; arriba, sacerdotes paulistas en unas vacaciones en bote; abajo, cura del rock popular mexicano 'El Gofo'

Obvias consecuencias negativas surgieron de la amplia difusión de esta consigna en un sentido desfavorable para el clero. Si la Ordenación no eleva al sacerdote a un grado de santidad superior al del estado laical, entonces su naturaleza esencial de ministro de lo sagrado queda degradada al nivel de todos los bautizados.

En otras palabras, el “llamado universal a la santidad” era un eslogan con el potencial de disminuir la reverencia debida al sacerdote al convertir su nivel superior de santidad en una masa homogénea de santidad para todos, permitiendo así que lo particular se sumergiera en la santidad. colectivo y, eventualmente, perdido de vista.

A partir de ahí, solo hubo un paso corto hasta la promoción del Vaticano II de la "participación activa" de los laicos y la revolución litúrgica y eclesiástica de la era posterior al Vaticano II. La intención de los progresistas era que, al menos a nivel empírico, el sacerdocio ministerial no debía distinguirse más del sacerdocio común de los fieles. Como resultado, todo lo que se tenía por sagrado en el sacerdocio ha sido rebajado a un nivel común y profano, para adaptarlo al espíritu mundano de los tiempos.

Lo que alguna vez se creyó sobre este tema por los católicos de siglos anteriores, que una mayor santidad conviene al estado clerical que al laico, se ha oscurecido y eclipsado por las nuevas enseñanzas del Vaticano II. Y, en consecuencia, se censura cualquier intento de reiterar la doctrina tradicional, ya que ahora estaría en desacuerdo con la mentalidad oficial, políticamente correcta, de “igualdad de santidad” para todos.

Continuará...

  1. Pius XI, Ad Catholici Sacerdotii, 1935, § 35.
  2. Summa Theologiae, II,II, q. 184.
  3. The Imitation of Christ, chap. 5.
  4. Canon § 124.
  5. John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores dabo vobis, 1992, § 17.
  6. Josemaría Escrivá, In Love with the Church, Sceptre Publishers, 1917.
  7. These words are translated from a telegram sent in Italian from the Secretary of State, Archbishop Pietro Parolin, to the Prelate of Opus Dei (23 November 2013) on the occasion of an International Symposium on the founder’s theological thought.

Publicado el 10 de marzo de 2022

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Pre & Post Liturgical Movement Attitudes to Minor Orders - Dialogue Mass 109 by Dr. Carol Byrne
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Dialogue Mass - CX

Pre & Post Liturgical Movement Attitudes to Minor Orders

Dr. Carol Byrne, Great Britain
When we compare the traditional view of Minor Orders with the treatment they received at the hands of liturgical reformers in the 20th century, it becomes evident that the two positions stand in dire contrast to each other. To illustrate this point in greater depth, let us turn again to the exposition of Minor Orders made by Fr. Louis Bacuez who modestly introduced his magnum opus as follows:

minor orders

Starting the whittling away of respect
for the Minor Orders...

“This little book is a sequel to one we have published on Tonsure. God grant that those who make use of it may conceive a great respect for Minor Orders and prepare for them as they should! The dispositions with which they approach ordination will be the measure of the graces they receive, and on this measure depends, in a great part, the fruit that their ministry will produce. To have a rich harvest the first thing necessary is to sow well: Qui parce seminat parce et metet; et qui seminat in benedictionibus de benedictionibus et metet. (2 Cor. 9:6)” (1)

Little did he realize that when he wrote these words every vestige of respect for the Minor Orders would be whittled away by the concerted efforts of progressivists with a negative and dismissive attitude towards them; and that the Liturgical Movement, which had just begun when he published his book, would be dominated by influential liturgists discussing how to overturn them.

Long before the term “Cancel Culture” was invented, they presented the Minor Orders as a form of class-based oppression perpetrated by a clerical “caste” and as a form of spiritually empty legalism, and they went to great lengths to make them look ridiculous.

Far from showing due respect, this involves quite a considerable degree of contempt, not only for the generations of seminarians who were formed within this tradition, but also for the integrity of the great institution of Minor Orders that had served the Church since Apostolic times. In fact, so great was their animosity towards the Minor Orders that they could hardly wait to strip them of their essential nature as functions of the Hierarchy and turn them into lay ministries.

A tree is known by its fruits

These, then, were the hate-filled dispositions that inspired the progressivist reform, and would determine the graces received and the fruit to be produced by those who exercise the new lay “ministries” as opposed to, and in place of, the traditional Minor Orders.

Fr. Bacuez, who wrote his book in the pontificate of Pius X, could never, of course, have envisaged the demise of the Minor Orders, least of all at the hands of a future Pope. He was concerned lest even the smallest amount of grace be lost in the souls of those preparing for the priesthood:

blighted fruit

Blighted fruits from a sick tree

“We shall see, on the Last Day, what injury an ordinand does to himself and what detriment he causes to souls by losing, through his own fault, a part of the graces destined to sanctify his priesthood and render fruitful the fields of the Heavenly Father: Modica seminis detractio non est modicum messis detrimentum. (St. Bernard)” (2)

We do not, however, need to wait till the Last Day to see the effects of a reform that deliberately prevents, as by an act of spiritual contraception, the supernatural graces of the Minor Orders from attaining their God-given end: “to sanctify the priesthood and render fruitful the fields of the Heavenly Father.” For the evidence is all around us that the tree of this reform produced blighted fruits.

First, we note a weakening of the hierarchical structure of the Church and a blurring of the distinction between clergy and laity; second, a “contraceptive” sterility resulting in vocations withering on the vine and below replacement level, seminaries and churches closing down, parishes dying, and the decline in the life of the traditional Catholic Faith as seen in every measurable statistic. The conclusion is inescapable: those who planted this tree and those who now participate in the reform are accomplices in a destructive work.

Advantages of the Minor Orders

A substantial part of Fr. Bacuez’ exposition of the Minor Orders is devoted to the inestimable benefits they bring to the Church. These he divided into the following three categories:
  • The honor of the priesthood;

  • The dignity of worship;

  • The perfection of the clergy.
It is immediately apparent that the Minor Orders were oriented towards the liturgy as performed by the priest and his ministers. In other words, they existed for entirely supernatural ends invested in the priesthood.

A significant and entirely appropriate omission was any mention of active involvement of the laity in the liturgy. Fr. Bacuez’ silence on this issue is an eloquent statement of the mind of the Church that the liturgy is the preserve of the clergy.

We will now take each of his points in turn.

1. The honor of the priesthood

“A statue, however perfect, would never be appreciated by most people, unless it were placed on a suitable pedestal. Likewise the pontificate, which is the perfection of the priesthood, would not inspire the faithful with all the esteem it merits, if it had not beneath it, to give it due prominence, these different classes of subordinate ministers, classes inferior one to another, but the least of which is superior to the entire order of laymen.” (3)

toppling statues

Toppling statues has become popular today:
above,
Fr. Serra in central Los Angeles, California

It is an example of dramatic irony that Fr. Bacuez unwittingly chose the theme of a statue supported by a pedestal to illustrate his point. He was not to know that statues of historical figures would become a major source of controversy in the culture wars and identity politics of our age.

Nor could he have foreseen that toppling monuments – both metaphorical and concrete – was to become a favorite sport of the 20th-century liturgical reformers, their aim being to exalt the status of the laity by “active participation” in clerical roles. And never in his wildest imagination would he have suspected that a future Pope would join in the iconoclastic spree to demolish the Minor Orders about which he wrote with evident pride and conviction.

'Don’t put the priest on a pedestal'

However, the revolutionaries considered that esteem for the Hierarchy and recognition of its superiority over the lay members of the Church was too objectionable to be allowed to survive in modern society. The consensus of opinion among them was that clergy and laity were equals because of their shared Baptism, and placing the priest on a pedestal was not only unnecessary, but detrimental to the interests of the laity.

“Don’t put the priest on a pedestal” was their battle cry. It is the constant refrain that is still doing the rounds among progressivists who refuse to give due honor to the priesthood and insist on accusing the Church of systemic “clericalism.”

But the fundamental point of the Minor Orders – and the Sub-Diaconate – was precisely to be the pedestal on which the priesthood is supported and raised to a position of honor in the Church. When Paul VI’s Ministeria quaedam dismantled the institutional underpinnings of the Hierarchy, the imposing pedestal and columns that were the Minor Orders and Sub-Diaconate were no longer allowed to uphold and elevate the priesthood.

The biblical underpinnings of the Minor Orders

Fr. Bacuez made use of the following passage from the Book of Proverbs:

“Wisdom hath built herself a house; she hath hewn out seven pillars. She hath slain her victims, mingled her wine, and set forth her table.” (9: 1-2)

exorcism

An ordination to the minor order of exorcist, one of the seven columns

He drew an analogy between “the seven columns of the living temple, which the Incarnate Wisdom has raised up to the Divine Majesty” and all the clerical Orders (four Minor and three Major) that exist for the right worship of God. In this, he was entirely justified. For, in their interpretation of this passage, the Church Fathers concur that it is a foreshadowing of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass performed, as St. Augustine said, by “the Mediator of the New Testament Himself, the Priest after the order of Melchisedek.” (4)

In the 1972 reform, no less than five (5) of the seven columns were brought crashing down from their niches in the Hierarchy to cries of “institutionalized clericalism,” “delusions of grandeur” and “unconscious bias” against the laity.

To further elucidate the affinity of the Minor Orders to the priesthood, Fr. Bacuez gave a brief overview of the cursus honorum that comprised the Orders of Porter, Lector, Exorcist, Acolyte, Sub-Deacon, Deacon and Priest before going on to explain their interrelatedness:

“These seven powers successively conferred, beginning with the last, are superimposed one upon the other without ever disappearing or coming in conflict, so that in the priesthood, the highest of them all, they are all found. The priest unites them all in his person, and has to exercise them all his life in the various offices of his ministry.” (6)

After Ministeria quaedam, however, these rights and powers are no longer regarded as the unique, personal possession of the ordained, but have been officially redistributed among the baptized. It was not simply a question of changing the title from Orders to “ministries”: the real locus of the revolution was in taking the privileges of the “ruling classes” (the representatives of Christ the King) and giving them to their subjects (the laity) as of “right.”

The neo-Marxist message was, and still is, that this was an act of “restorative justice” for the laity who had been “historically wronged.” For the liturgical progressivists, 1972 was, apparently, the year of “compensation.”

Continued

  1. Louis Bacuez SS, Minor Orders, St Louis MO: B. Herder, 1912, p. x. “He who soweth sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who soweth in blessings shall also reap blessings.”
  2. Ibid., St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Lenten Sermon on the Psalm ‘Qui habitat,’ Sermones de Tempore, In Quadragesima, Preface, § 1: “If, at the time of sowing, a moderate amount of seed has been lost, the harm done to the harvest will not be inconsiderable.”
  3. Ibid., p. 6.
  4. St. Augustine, The City of God, book XVII, chap. 20: "Of David’s Reign and Merit; and of his son Solomon, and of that prophecy relating to Christ, which is found either in those books that are joined to those written by him, or in those that are indubitably his."
  5. These were the four Minor Orders and the Major Order of the Sub-Diaconate.
  6. L. Bacuez, op. cit., p. 5.

Posted December 10, 2021

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