Chapter 4: Practice and Belief

Chapter 4 of Dr Edward Schaeffer's new book, A Simple Man’s Case for Tradition, written for the average Catholic in the pew, not a professional "liturgist".

From One Peter Five

By Edward Schaeffer, PhD

Editor’s note: we continue our weekly serialisation of Dr. Edward Schaefer’s new book A Simple Man’s Case for Tradition. This book is an excellent introduction to Traditionalism and provides an easy way for Trads to introduce the movement to fellow Catholics who are seeking deeper answers to today’s questions. Proceeds from the book sale also help promote the Collegium Sanctorum Angelorum, one of only two traditional Catholic colleges in the United States.

Read the Introduction
Read Chapter 1: Equally Valid and Holy
Read Chapter 2: the New Mass
Read Chapter 3: Latin

The year is 1966.  It is spring.  I am in the 9th grade in an all-boys Catholic high school and taking an art class.  The teacher is a priest, an oblate of St. Francis de Sales.  In one of the classes, the discussion of sexual purity comes up.  I have no idea how this topic comes up in an art class, but it does.  Perhaps, it was sparked by a painting we were studying.  In this discussion, the priest says that masturbation is not sinful.

This was a significant moment in several ways.  First, Vatican Council II had just concluded.  EVERYTHING was changing – EVERYTHING!  Whatever the various documents of the Council said was irrelevant.  The Spirit of the Council ruled, and the Spirit was blowing in winds of change – change that was riding, coincidentally, on the back of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Second, as you can imagine, this topic would have been somewhat sensitive and even embarrassing for a 14-year-old boy.  It would have been more appropriately handled in a private discussion between a boy and his confessor, his pastor, perhaps his theology teacher, but not typically between a boy and his art teacher in a class of 20 boys.  It was years before I realized what was going on in that class.  The teacher was one of three priests that either tried to groom me or seduce me outright during that decade.  It was a time of horrible sexual corruption in the Church.

Third, and most importantly, this was an example of a process at that time that began to change practice while maintaining that Church teachings/beliefs were not changing.  In this case, the frame was that sexual chastity and purity were still the teaching of the Church, but that some sexual matters were to be viewed more as natural biological functions than as sins against purity.

This was a masterful and extraordinarily devious strategy of the devil.  During these early post-Council years, everything was “reframed.”  Here are just a few examples:

• Keeping holy the Lord’s Day was, of course, important, but that didn’t have to mean going to Mass on Sunday.  It could be Saturday, too.  In fact, there were discussions in the 1970s about making the obligation any day of one’s choosing.  We didn’t go quite that far, though.
• Fasting, penance, abstinence continued to be important, but that didn’t mean abstaining from meat on Friday.  It could be whatever practice one wanted to adopt.  As a result, practices around fasting and abstinence have all but disappeared.
• Yes, marriage is a life-long bond, but that doesn’t mean that annulments must be so hard to get.  (Between 1952 and 1956, 392 annulments were granted worldwide.[1] In 1968, there were 338 annulments granted in the United States alone.  In 1990, the number of annulments granted in the US grew to 62,824.)[2]  The Church does not teach divorce, but we practice it.[3]
• The beliefs/teachings around the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass remained the same, but the practice of the Mass changed radically.  As a result, the way Catholics view the Mass (a shared meal vs. the sacrifice of Calvary), the reception of Communion (everyone is welcome to the table), and the Real Presence (2/3 of Catholics do not believe in the real presence),[4] have all changed even if the official teaching has not changed.

This process of changing practice but pretending that practice does not influence or change belief/teaching has not only persisted, but it has also expanded.  In the current pontificate, we have seen the push to change practices around

• Marriage, divorce, remarriage, and the reception of communion;[5]
• Contraception or natural family planning with a contraceptive mentality;[6]
• Marriage as a bond between a man and a woman (with blessings now approved for people in “irregular,” that is, homosexual unions).[7]

Indeed, the veil has been lifted finally, and now we are seeing open attempts to change Church teaching:

• Regarding legitimacy of the capital punishment;[8]
• And, of course, now the regarding the legitimacy of the TLM.[9]

The TLM seems to be the final obstacle to the destruction of the “old” Church and the construction of a “new” and very different Church.

Practice and Belief Intertwined

The Church has long known that practice and belief are intertwined.  In the fifth century, Prosper of Aquitaine’s term as ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi (that the order of supplication determines the rule of faith)[10] was, according to Nicholas A. Jesson, generally accepted to mean that “the content of prayer is synonymous with the faith of the one praying.”[11]

Prosper did not, however, believe that prayer can actually determine the truths of faith, rather that it can express those truths in ways that ultimately develop into the doctrinal code of the Church.  Furthermore, Prosper insisted that prayer can assume this role only in so much as it is “founded on scripture and attested by tradition.”[12]  There is a particular subordination of lex orandi to the ultimate truths of revelation, which Prosper assumes to be contained in the Church’s doctrine, or lex credendi.

In the middle of the twentieth century, Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Mediator Dei (1947), developed Prosper’s assumption by actually reversing the wording of the adage: “The sacred liturgy . . . does not decide or determine independently and of itself what is of Catholic faith . . . .  If one desires to differentiate and describe the relationship between faith and the sacred liturgy in absolute and general terms, it is perfectly correct to say, ‘Lex credendi legem statuat supplicandi’ – let the rule of belief determine the rule of prayer.”[13]

In stark contrast to Mediator Dei, post-conciliar writers have emphasized the liturgical practice, that is, lex orandi, as the source of theology, and not vice versa.  Aiden Kavanaugh “observes that: ‘what results in the first instance from [liturgical] experience is deep change in the very lives of those who participate in the liturgical act.  And deep change will affect their next liturgical act, however, slightly.” “This adjustment causes the next liturgical act to be in some degree different from its predecessor because those who do the next act have been unalterably changed.” “It is the adjustment that is theological in all this.  I hold that it is theology being born, theology in the first instance.  It is what tradition has called theologica prima.”[14]

Yves Congar asserts that “It is the sacraments which constitute and structure the Church, and consequently the liturgy constitutes one of the sources of Church law.”[15]  Similarly, he says: “Liturgy is the privileged locus of Tradition, not only from the point of view of conservation and preservation, but also from that of progress and development.”[16]

Nathan Mitchel also observes: “For most of the forty years that have elapsed since the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, we have often (and quite rightly) turned to the liturgy as our principal agent of evangelization.  In doing this, we were acting on a very reliable, very traditional truth of our Christian tradition: Lex orandi, lex credendi, doxology determines doctrines (not vice versa); prayer and praise regulate faith; we learn how and what to believe by first learning how and what to worship.”[17]

However, in response to this approach to theological development, the Sacred Congregation for Sacraments and Divine Worship, in the instructionInaestimabile donum, warns that “Undue experimentation, changes and creativity bewilder the faithful. The use of unauthorized texts means a loss of the necessary connection between the lex orandi and the lex credendi.”[18]  Here the Congregation takes us back to Prosper’s contention that lex orandi must be “founded on scripture and attested by tradition”[19] for it to be a legitimate source of lex credendi.

Despite the disagreements these various theologians have regarding this axiom, they all demonstrate that there is a symbiotic relationship between prayer, or practice, and belief.  Some of these theologians, in particular those of the post-conciliar era, have focused on liturgical/pietistical practice as the primary source of doctrinal development, ostensibly because they know that doctrine can be imposed through the manipulation of liturgical/pietistical practice.[20]  Indeed, this has been their intent from the beginning, and they have been very successful at changing Church teachings/beliefs by changing Church practice.

Conclusion: Practice, Truth, and Tradition

However, while it is possible to change beliefs by manipulating practice, it is not possible to change the truth.  Jesus said, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.”  God is Truth.  Therefore, since God cannot change, the Truth cannot change. 

The Church’s fundamental teachings on doctrine, rooted in Scripture and Divine Revelation, cannot change.  In her wisdom, she has clothed these teachings in practices – most especially her worship, that is, the TLM – that have not changed in any significant way.  In particular, the unchanging nature of her worship (TLM) reinforces our understanding of the unchanging nature of God and the truths that He has revealed through Scripture and the Apostles and that we have preserved through His Church.

These unchanging practices help us to inculcate, to internalize the truths of God’s holy Word and of divine revelation. They are the best way we have in our frail and fallen condition to keep ourselves close to the unchanging Truth, that is, to God. 

Continued next week.