The Tablet on the Filial Correction

I said some time ago that the instinct of conventional Catholic ‘progressives’ would be to ignore the Filial Correction. It is the strange new brand of Ultramontanist liberal who is writing article after article and tweet after tweet attacking it. Compare the response of John Allen (report it as briefly as possible alongside two unrelated issues) or PrayTell (pretend it never happened) with that of the likes of Walford, Fastiggi and Goldstein, Fagioli, and Buttiglione (see this blog passim ad nauseam).

The old-style liberals have spent a life-time criticising Ultramontanism, and many — there’ll always be exceptions — have sufficient integrity (or at least shame) not to use the simple fact that it is the Pope this time who is supporting their views as a reason to dismiss objections. Indeed, the present crisis has made it clear that most at least of their long-standing opponents have, contrary to the liberal stereotype, never been robotic Ultramontanists mechanically repeating the Party Line, but are actually motivated by serious theological principles, and are therefore worthy of some degree of respect.

This week’s Tablet, the premier dead-wood media liberal Catholic publication of the English-speaking world, has published a feature article on the Correction and the Dubia by Richard R. Gaillardetz, who rejoices in the title of the Joseph Professor of Catholic Systematic Theology at Boston College. This appears to have the function of filling out and making plausible the sketchy response to the Correction The Tablet's editorial page gives in the same edition -- the editorial refers readers to Gaillardetz.

His view of the controversy is rather nuanced:

What we are witnessing today is neither a humble request for doctrinal clarification, nor a stealthily-plotted, mean-spirited assault on the Pope’s integrity. What we are witnessing is the clash of two fundamentally different understandings of how to be a faithful Catholic in the contemporary world and two different understandings of what constitutes the Church’s core mission.

For some, fidelity is ultimately measured more by formal doctrinal assent to the Church’s teaching. These Catholics believe the Church’s mission consists in offering timeless certitudes to a world lost in a sea of relativism. For others, particularly for those who find Pope Francis’ leadership so compelling, fidelity is measured more by the concrete practice of Christian discipleship. For them, the Church’s mission should primarily be directed toward responding to the questions and yearnings of humankind today.
(‘Humankind’: donchalovit?) The implicit claim that taking doctrine seriously is incompatible with ‘discipleship’ and pastoral effectiveness would, I think, have been surprising to everyone of proven discipleship from St Peter to St Maximilian Kolbe via St Francis of Assisi, but let it pass. This is the liberals’ self-understanding. If they admitted to themselves that telling people that they don’t need to be forgiven doesn't often lead them to repentance, there’s no telling what would happen.

What is interesting is that Gaillardetz is not doubting our sincerity or calling for us to be chained up in the Castel San Angelo. He is not saying that we are cruel and wicked people, or even that we victims of pathological rigidity. He seems to be suggesting that we are sincere, consistent, thoughtful, and mistaken.

Over the years The Tablet has been pretty judgemental about those it dislikes. Opposition to females serving at the Traditional Mass, for example, was denounced as misogyny. The Tablet’s opposition to the 2011 translation of the Missal and those who produced or supported it can best be described as ‘spittle-flecked’. Thanks in part no doubt to the change of Editor, when it comes today to a conflict between Ultramontanists who happen to agree with them on matters of substance, and conservatives who do not, The Tablet takes a more eirenic tone. Gaillardetz even calls the former party’s sound and fury ‘manufactured outrage’.

Those pushing the liberalising agenda on Communion for the divorced and remarried may think that Ultramontanism is their strongest card. But actually it cuts two ways. It can be relied on to get the support of senior clergy in Opus Dei, but the liberal Catholic establishment are not riding to their aid. What is even more worrying for them is the fact that, when the official wind starts blowing the other way, as it surely will at some point, Opus Dei spokesmen will without doubt find a way of finessing their position back to orthodoxy. Less flexible partisans of the agenda may find themselves looking rather exposed.

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