"Defending the Faith against Present Heresies: Letters and Statements Addressed to Pope Francis ... ..."

Fr Hunwicke was one of the signers of the Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis (Latin: "Filial correction concerning propagated heresies") which is included in this book.

From Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment

Part 1

Readers will already have seen notices of this most important book. It is published by a small Canadian Catholic publishing house, Arouca Press, edited by John Lamont, a learned lay theologian who has suffered both personally and professionally because of his principled adherence to the Faith ... and by Claudio Pierantoni. There is a Foreward by Archbishop Vigano. It is proper for me to admit that I had a hand in some of the documents printed in this volume. 

It contains the formal documents concerned, from the Dubia of the four Cardinals and the Filial Correction onwards. And it also contains important contributions to the debate which these documents stimulated.

The significance of this collection cannot be overestimated. It must be the first time since the Counter-Reformation that bodies of competent theologians, orthodox Catholics, have felt compelled to band together and to oppose, resist, and directly criticise a Roman Pontiff. Both the erudite, and ordinary Catholics, will find this an essential resource for opposing the errors currently being propagated from the very highest places in Rome. Every seminarian ... or, at least, every seminary library, should possess this volume!

But I wish today to suggest that it has an even more important role to play than simply the formation and instruction of a laity and a clergy properly armed to resist the Evil One. 

Let me try to explain.

During the period of the Arian conflict, apostasy even reached as high as the man who at that time also occupied the Throne of S Peter. And the parallels with our own times are so significant that we do well to study that self-same period, and to do so through the prism of Saint John Henry Newman. 

I believe that it is important, especially for clerics and seminarians, to take this period and this subject very seriously, because we need some sound anchoring in reality and Tradition and in approved writers. It is not good enough to be angry or upset and to flail helplessly around without having any bearings. So I will now take up again the thought of Saint John Henry Newman which he encapsulated in his bold phrase: the "temporary Suspense of the functions of the Ecclesia docens", or, as we might say nowadays, "of the Magisterium".

Newman used this phrase as a historical describer ("as a matter of fact"). With the falling away of so many bishops from orthodoxy, it was, he meant, a matter of historical fact that their function of teaching the Truth was not being discharged. His words were misunderstood by critics ... he was rarely short of those. Attempts were made to create trouble for him in Rome; as if he were implying that popes and bishops had lost their capacity to function Magisterially: in other words, his statement was taken theologically. He carefully disavowed this dangerous notion, which, if you think about it, does possess some of the features of the modern Sedevacantist fallacy. In fact, Newman carefully distinguished between Suspense of the Magisterium, meaning that the Magisterial officers of the Church were not performing their function, and Suspension of the Magisterium, which in his view would mean that they had lost their function. The latter he would never assert, and neither should we even think of suggesting it.

There is only one pope ... and his name is Francis.

He has not lost any of his authority.

But he has formally declined to use it.

This is an extremely important distinction for us to make today. 

The documents in this book are highly valuable tools for our own edification. But there is something which is even more important than that.

This is the fact that PF declined to answer the Dubia and the questions which were put to him. The fact that four Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church put those questions to him gives his refusal to answer them a formal status. 

In terms of Saint John Henry's analysis, I suggest that Jorge Bergoglio's formal refusal to respond to the Five Dubia constituted his formal entry into a period of  Temporary Suspense of the function of his Petrine Magisterium. 

It is a suspense freely chosen by him which he can end at any moment he chooses by giving the clarifications called for, thus "strengthening his brethren" and "devoutly guarding and faithfully setting forth the Tradition received through the Apostles, the Deposit of the Faith" (Vatican I). 

What the practical consequences are for us of living in a period during which the Papal Magisterium is in Suspense is a question which should engage our prayer, thought, and study, individually and collectively.

During an earlier period of such Suspense, the Church heard the agonised cry of S Hilary, cited by Bishop Schneider, "Anathema tibi a me dictum praevaricator Liberi!"

Part 2

It has always been the role of the Roman Church to resist Heresy and to establish what is, and what is not, orthodoxy. I venture to quote the great Anglican Papalist writer Dom Gregory Dix on this 'rule':

"It is above all as the norm of Christian belief that Rome is the capital of Christendom in [the second century]. It is at Rome and only at Rome, that all doctrinal issues are then finally settled. This is clearly recognised by the non-Roman writers of the second century, from Ignatius of Antioch at its beginning to Tertullian at its close. The former can write to the Roman Church: 'Ye were the instructors of others. And my desire is that those lessons shall hold good which as teachers ye enjoin'. For the latter the Roman Church is the ecclesia authenticae regulae. To Rome comes every second century Christian teacher, intent on securing the approval of that Church for his teachings. To Rome comes Marcion, already under censure in other Churches; but until Rome has condemned him he is still a catholic Christian. It is at Rome that the controversies with the great Gnostic heresiarchs, which fill the latter half of the second century, were primarily thrashed out. It is at Rome that the answer to their claim to a secret tradition and a succession of teachers from the Apostles is elaborated; it is at Rome that the additions to the baptismal symbol which exclude their interpretations of the Gospel are first made; it is at Rome that the incompatibility of their Hellenistic presuppositions with the concrete thought of authentic Christianity is made plain, in a way that it was not plain even to great Churches like that of Alexandria for half a century afterwards. Above all, in the controversy over Montanus, about which we know more than any other in this period, Rome is obviously the centre and focus of the final issue, even though Montanus never left Asia and the Apostolic Churches of Asia were his chief opponents. It is at Rome that the Montanists, excommunicated in Asia, repeatedly seek the communion of the Church; at Rome that Praxeas intercedes against them; at Rome that the Church of Lyons seeks to mediate between them and their opponents; Tertullian the Montanist reserves his wrath, not for the Asian bishops who had excommunicated and sought to exorcise the new Prophets of the Paraclete, but for the Roman bishop whose refusal of communion had finally cut them off from the Church."

PETER! TEACH US! PETRE! DOCE NOS!

When the Four Cardinals issued their Dubia, they begged their Holy Father to resolve the questions they were putting to him And they put their questions into the form of Dubia because that is the formal style in which to ask the Teacher, the Bishop of the Church of the authentic Rule, to give the formal teaching to which, for nearly two millennia, the Church of S Peter has born witness.  

PETRE! DOCE NOS! PETER! TEACH US!

When some of us put together the Correctio Filialis, we put the central doctrinal problems which were troubling us into Latin (English translation accompanies it). We did this to make clear that we were not simply uttering some grumpy journalistic and gossipy criticism of PF. We were, in the formal and precise official language of the Roman Church, putting formally to the Roman Bishop a request for formal teaching on controverted matters. 

We were begging the Successor of S Peter to teach us.

To do this is not to attack the Pope! On the contrary, it is to affirm the centrality to Catholicism of the Petrine Ministry of the Roman Pontiff. 

The people who attack the Pope are the people who imply ... of even state explicitly ... that a Pope can change Catholic Teaching at will. He cannot. As Vatican I infallibly taught, the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter so that, by His revelation, they might publish new doctrine, but so that, with His help, they might devoutly guard the revelation handed down through the Apostles, the Deposit of Faith, and faithfully expound it."(D3070).