Does This Mean That Non-Trads Are Heretics?

No. They may be misguided, but as Mr Flanders says, "First of all, a Catholic can save his soul and never attend or defend the Latin Mass."

From One Peter Five

By Timothy Flanders

Part I: Traditionalism at Sixty
Part II: What are the Non-Negotiables of the Trad Movement?
Side note: Does this Mean that Non-Trads are Heretics?
Part III: Who are the Clans of Tradition?

Author’s note: this article is a significant obiter dictum to the main series of articles linked above. The point it attempts to make is so important, based on the conclusions of part II, that it seems best to publish as a separate article. Part III will follow shortly. If you haven’t already, please read Part II before continuing to this section.

Does this mean that Non-Trads are Heretics?

No. First of all, a Catholic can save his soul and never attend or defend the Latin Mass. Yes, I agree the New Mass has intrinsic difficulties (if you’re familiar with my work, you know my views on this subject. If not, just read The Devastated Vineyard, written by one of our Trad Godfathers who attended a “Reverent Novus Ordo.”).

But I know too many faithful Catholics who are more virtuous than me to deny the good fruit in their lives. Here I fear for my own judgment of becoming a Pharisee, which is the sin of Lucifer – pride. Against this temptation, I must practice the saying of the Desert Fathers and look at those “Novus Ordo Catholics” and say: “All of these people will inherit the Kingdom of God, and I alone will not. Remember me, O Lord, in Thy Kingdom.” There is a great spiritual danger in thinking too negatively about fellow Catholics who attend a different rite, even if that rite can be objectively shown to be deficient in someway. Therefore let us pray the Prayer of St. Ephraim: “Grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother.”

Again, yes, there’s intrinsic deficiencies in the New Mass. But Eucharistic Miracles have confirmed its validity. And who can overestimate the power of Sacramental Grace in the life of a humble soul? For me, the Sacramental Grace of the Latin Mass is wasted, because I am a prideful Pharisee. As for the humble soul at the Novus Ordo, he becomes a saint.

Second, there are legitimate criticisms that can be made against the Oath against Modernism, the Thomistic theses, and the Crusade thereof, even if one were to agree that every word of the oath is infallible.[1]

Third, there is enough ambiguity in the Pian Magisterium (from Auctorem Fidei, 1794, to the death of Pius XII, 1958) as well as in the Conciliar Magisterium (1958-present), to at least obviate any culpability of error from faithful Catholics failing to vehemently toast the downfall of “Religious Liberty.” First, the term itself is ambiguous, since even Archbishop Lefebvre concedes there is a traditional teaching regarding toleration of religious error.[2] As the “Interfaith Robot Wars” shows, Catholic bishops and their imprimatur catechisms have basically been teaching, prima facie, the error of Religious Liberty – or least some type ambiguous language which allows that error – since 1965. So even if there is some ambiguity on this question before 1958 (and I believe there is – think about Bishop Chiaramonti comments when the French Liberals invaded Italy, or Leo XIII’s ralliement),[3] we cannot fault non-Trad Catholics from claiming that the Church now teaches that religious liberty is a sacred right since Dignitatus Humanae.If by “religious liberty” you mean the traditional toleration of Jews and non-Catholics sects in order to prevent sins against the Fifth and Seventh Commandments, the sacrilege of forced baptism and the general common good – then “religious liberty” is orthodox.

If by “religious liberty” you mean what Lefebvre called “State Atheism without the Name,” and the “secular state” which tacitly rejects Christ as King and proclaims “neutrality” toward all religions whatsoever – in other words, the First Amendment to the US Constitution – this is a heresy or at least an error, according to the Magisterium, as we discussed in Part II.

The difficulty, as seen from “right wing” examples like the Holy Alliance against Napoléon as well as “left wing” examples like Leo XIII’s ralliement, is how does the Church practically preserve the Kingship of Christ in the post-1789 era? This is the complexity of the question, and that’s why non-Trads who fail to condemn Liberalism per se,are not heretics. If they are erroneous, they are erroneous in good faith.

We must recall that Liberalism as an error is actually an overreaction to the opposite error: the Protestant dream of James I: divine right monarchy also known as “tyranny” or “absolute monarchy.” This was a massive heresy in the temporal order which destroyed the Church of France (and stifled the glory of Spain!) long before the French Revolution raised the guillotine. Too often we traditionalists rail against Liberalism and fail to see that there is a deeper root issues which was the cause of Liberalism (in fact, it was a dubium of Trent to define the doctrine of the Two Swords – and so Trent failed in this sense and, historically speaking, God permitted this omission and since then this dual hydra of Tyranny and Liberalism has afflicted the world). But after this long but necessary obiter dictum, let’s return to the main question in this series: our Trad godfathers.

To be continued later today.

[1] For an examination of this period and its excesses, especially as it regards the eastern half of Catholicism, see Flanders, City of God vs. City of Man, 329-430. For a traditional Scotist critique of the Thomistic Theses, see Gideon Lazar.

[2] Again, see his “Summa”: They Have Uncrowned Him (Angelus Press, 1988). Cardinal James Gibbons was already claiming in the 19th century that this traditional doctrine, admitted by Lefebvre, is the same thing as Maryland’s Act of Toleration and the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution (see Gibbons’s Faith of Our Fathers). This claim is true in one sense and false in another, but the point is that his book went through dozens of editions, being approved by episcopal authority before Vatican II. Therefore the doctrinal ambiguity regarding Religious Liberty was latent (tolerated and promoted!) in that powerful and increasingly Catholic country by the time Paul VI approved Dignitatus Humanae. So even if you can correctly indict Vatican II for what Theo Howard calls “a concordat with Liberalism,” we need to also be fair to say that the pre-Conciliar Magisterium did not anathematise Liberalism (and Liberal regimes!) in the way that some Trads think they did.

[3] On this, see Henry Sire’s analysis of this period in Phoenix from the Ashes (Angelico Press, 2015), 128-148.