The Banished Heart.

Origins of Heteropraxis in the Catholic Church.

- by Dr. Geoffrey Hull;

published by Spes Nova, Sydney, 1995

320 pp., $42.50, postage included.
Available from: the author, Spes Nova league, p.o. box 403, Richmond, N.S.W., 2573.

The 'Latin Heresy'.

Dr. Hull introduces us to certain tendencies which have been regular sources of error
and distortion in the Western or Latin half of Christendom: rationalism and centralism.
The revival of pagan philosphy in the West which began with the Aristotelian revival
of the 11th and 12th centuries led to a redefining of the Church away from the sacramental
and towards the juridical. This coincided with the breach with the Eastern churches. These
continued to adhere to the original sacramental concept of the Church as a communion of
churches united by the same Faith and seven sacraments.
In tandem with rationalising tendencies came an ever stronger centralisation of the
Church upon the Papacy. This was accompanied by a lot of clericalisation and
institutionalisation, which was especially strengthened by the Counter-Reformation, led by
the Jesuits.
In the wake of the Counter Reformation, rationalist tendencies ravaged Church life
from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Various scholarly groups schemed for liturgical reforms
to return the Church's liturgy to conform with the liturgy of this or that idealised era of the
Church's past.
Most notably the Patristic age was revered by the Jansenists of the 18th century who
in their turn had their admirers among leading advocates of liturgical change in the 1950's,
such as Frs. Jungmann and Bouyer.
In vain did Pope Pius XII strongly condemn the work of these liturgical antiquarians
as "a wicked movement" (Mediator Dei, 68).
These rationalist currents however could not triumph in the Church until a Pope was
found willing to impose them. And before any Pope could do any such thing, the Church
had to be totally centralised upon him, and all Catholics then conditioned to follow the
Pope anywhere regardless of tradition.
The replacement of tradition by obedience as the criterion of the true Catholic was the
product of the Counter Reformation.
The Over-Centralisation of the Western Church.
In Chapter 5, Peter's Rome or Caesar's? Dr. Hull outlines how, from Apostolic times,
the Roman church has always been acknowledged in the East as the final court of appeal in
the early Church.
Until the 9th century Roman interventions in Eastern ecclesiastical affairs remained at
the level of answers to appeals by this or that orthodox bishop against a heretical or
immoral adversary.
Pope Gelasius I (492 - 496) however had declared that "the see of Blessed Peter has the
right to loose what has been bound by the decision of any bishop whatever".
This declaration has never been accepted by the Eastern Orthodox churches. These
hold that legislation binding upon the universal church can only be deceed by an
ecumenical council the canons of which have been ratified by the Pope.
It was Pope Nicholas I (858 - 867), whom Hull describes as "the first papal monarch",
who first attempted to absolutise Pope Gelasius' claim for the papacy. In 861 he told the
Byzantine Emperor that "without the Church of Rome there is no Christianity".
Dr. Hull continues this history of the growth of papal power in Chapter 6, entitled
Tightening the Screws. After the chaotic tenth century, a new era dawned when Pope St. Leo
IX (1049 - 1054) and Nicholas II (1058 - 1061) set about the work of centralisation.
Innocent III (1198 - 1216) repudiated his traditional title of Vicar of Saint Peter in
favour of Vicar of Christ, a title first coined by St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
After the unqualified contentions of papal monarchists like St. Gregory VII (1073 -
1085) and Boniface VIII (1294 - 1303) that the Roman Pontiff was not subject to the laws of
the Church, it was only natural that the beleaguered Clement V (1305 - 1314) could convince
himself that he no longer even needed Rome to be fully Pope.
This Pope it was that moved the papacy to Avignon, a location more centrally located
hence better for administrative purposes. Thus began the disgraceful era of the Avignon
papacy (1309 to 1378) and the Western Schism (1378 to 1417).
As papal supremacists drew on the pagan legacy of Roman law with its absolutist
concepts of imperial power, "Papal pride and intransigence", according to Dr. Hull,
undermined the 14th century Conciliarist movement. Nevertheless it was this movement
which finally rescued the Papacy in 1417 and made inter-ecclesial reconciliation possible at
the Council of Constance and Florence (1438 - 1445).
Papal centralism and use of Roman law was readily copied by secular governments. To
such effect that in the 16th century many of these newly centralised governments were able
to impose heresy on whole Catholic populations.
The 'sacramental' ecclesiology of the early Church was remembered only in an East
hostile to an "irremediably centralised Roman communion". "The lessons of Constance and
Florence were all but forgotten when the Latin Fathers gathered at Trent in 1545 to plan the
recovery of what remained of Western Orthodoxy." (p. 84)
In Chapter 8, The Quest for Uniformity, Dr. Hull continues to show how having lost
the valuable Greek counter-balance to its autocratic tendencies, the papacy after 1054 came
increasingly to confuse unity with uniformity, and launched on a career of imposing
Romanisation in the West and Latinisation in the East.
Obedience and the Crumbling of Tradition.
In Chapter 9, From Tradition to Obedience Dr. Hull outlines how in the wake of the
Counter-Reformation, Catholic tradition came gradually to be ousted by the virtue of
obedience as the benchmark and guarantor of true Catholicism.
The Church's debt to the Jesuits can hardly be exaggerated, but it is upon the Jesuits
the blame must be laid for the steady ousting of the heritage of custom and traditions by 16th
century absolutist ideas of the virtue of obedience.
"I must be as a dead man's corpse without will or judgement". Thus did St. Ignatius of
Loyola sum up the Jesuit ideal of obedience.
Where mediaeval royal power had been limited by custom and the law, from the 16th
century onwards absolutist monarchs ruled through an ever stronger army, civil service and
judiciary.
Dr. Hull believes that "Jesuit Counter Reformation absolutism led to a paradoxical
relativisation of the truth". These champion defenders of Catholic truth helped form the
"obedient" (i.e. anti-intellectual and uncritical) Catholic of the mid 20th century who has
been such "easy meat" for the wolves of Vatican II.
In this chapter Dr. Hull also discusses how in the 19th century there developed in the
Church a tendency to attribute not only infallibility but also general inerrancy and even
impeccability to the Pope. This breach with Catholic tradition, a breach indeed with reason
and even the facts of history is known as ultramontanism.
 If not outright heresy, ultramontanism is at least certainly heterodox. It may be the
secret however of how the mass of Catholics jeopardised their faith and their very salvation
by so meekly allowing Protestant forms to be imposed upon them after 1970.
In 1870 the idea that the Pope could rule without reference to Tradition was simply
dismissed by the Council Fathers at Vatican I. A proposed canon that "If anyone says that
the authority of the Pope is so full that he may dispose of everything by his mere whim, let
him be anathema" they rejected as absurd.
Dr. Hull even suggests that 19th century ultramontanism was a forerunner of 20th
century totalitarianism. (p. 131) I think this is a little far-fetched.
More interesting is his discussion of voluntarism - the error which holds that goodness
is not intrinsic but is dependent upon the will of God. Voluntarism says that lying, stealing
and murder are evil not in themselves but because God forbids them.
This error of voluntarism is a feature of the heterodox tradition of Nominalism which
passed from Duns Scotus in the 13th century and William of Ockham in the 14th via Luther
in the 16th and Descartes in the 17th century to our own Pope John Paul II: "...the power to
decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone." (Veritatis
Splendor, 1, 35)
In fact lying, stealing and murder are evils in themselves. They contradict God's own
nature as Goodness and Truth itself, and He is bound by His own nature to forbid them as
such.
In Chapter 10, Reformed Catholicism Dr. Hull recounts how the Counter-Reformation
got underway with a series of bureaucratic measures which paradoxically led, albeit 400
years later, to imposing in the Church the very Protestantism they were meant to avert.
The 1570 codification of the Roman Rite by Pope St. Pius V, from the simple fact that
it was the Church's first ever codification of the immemorial Roman rite of the Mass, could
be used as a "precedent" for the Pauline "reform" of 1970.
In 1588 Pope Sixtus V instituted the ritual centralism of the Counter Reformation by
founding a new Congregation of Rites and Ceremonies. He thereby deprived local bishops
and provincial councils of much of their authority and initiative in cultic matters.
The first Index of Prohibited Books was published in 1559, and onto it in 1661 were
placed, there to remain until 1897, all vernacular translations of the Mass.
Thus with the progress of the Counter Reformation did Catholic life became ever more
dependent upon papal indult rather than upon sacrosanct immemorial custom enjoined by
tradition.
In chapter 11, Respectable Religion, Dr. Hull discusses how popular Catholicism
crumbled before the assaults of "two enemy clerical groups, the Jansenists and the Jesuits".
The Jansenists, as the declared enemies of "superstition" warred against the "pagan"
aspects of Catholic life: "festivals of saints, seasonal processions, confraternities, carnival
celebrations, and pilgrimages..."
Meanwhile the Jesuits killed off Christian Latin by replacing it with Classical Pagan
Latin as an esoteric academic pursuit.
Also, in the 19th century the clergy were heavily involved in the suppression of
dialects and local village traditions.
Dr. Hull spends a bit too much time on this last subject. Nowhere does he seem to have
considerd how the social dislocation caused by the industrial revolution and the beginnings
of modern transportation and communications inevitably made local traditions so much
harder to care for let alone to preserve.
In chapter 12, The Cost of Belonging, Dr. Hull regales us with the woes of the Uniates,
those Eastern Christians who, after making their submission to Rome found themselves
subject to various pressures to Latinisation. Until 1913 Latin Catholics were forbidden to
receive sacraments in Eastern Churches while Uniates were encouraged to do vice versa.
In the Far East, permissions to inculturate - i.e. to use local cultural forms and practices
where these do not contradict Catholic teachings - granted in the early 17th century were
withdrawn in the early 18th century.

Modernism and Americanism.

In chapter 13, A New Law of Belief Dr. Hull examines how Catholic "tradition" over
the past two centuries quietly ceased to be a living mass of inherited belief and liturgical
practice and became instead a "process" of transmission.
(The foundations of Modernism - Kantian idealism and Hegelian dialectic - passed into
the Church through the works of one Fr. Johann Adam Mohler (1796 - 1838).
"Mohlerian vitalism" always emphasises the process of tradition at the expense of its
content. It was Mohler also who introduced the idea that Tradition is subject to evolution
according to the spirit and needs of each age.
(This is the Modernist recipe for disaster.)
Or as Rahner defined it in his Concise Theological Dictionary of 1965: "Tradition...is
the process whereby... Dogma...is transmitted by the Church...and thereby developed; and
the truth thus transmitted." (p. 507)
An idea repeated in 1988 by Fr. Aviary Dulles against Archbishop Lefebvre:
"Tradition is not so much content as process - a process that is, in its own words, living,
creative and community-based. What Lefebvre dismisses as 'Modernist influence' can
therefore be defended ...as a rediscovery of an ancient and precious heritage. (quoted on p.
210)
Even the author of the papal bull, Ecclesia Dei Afflicta in 1988 reflected Mohler's
"living Church" theory of tradition. Archbishop Lefebvre had failed to "take sufficiently into
account the living character of Tradition, which...progresses in the Church with the help of
the Holy Spirit."
What had always been regarded as something essentially old and inherited, and to be
preserved as much as possible, has now become something to be partially recreated in the
present.
What we believed has been quietly replaced by how we believed. In perhaps his most
insightful and useful chapter, chapter 14, entitled Pax Americana, Dr. Hull introduces us to
that fascinating phenomenon called Americanism, the "phantom heresy" the existence of
which hardly anyone in America has ever even acknowledged.
The great tragedy of 1945 was that Europe had not liberated itself from tyranny but
had been liberated from without, by America. Europe was torn between the two tyrannies of
atheist humanism to the East and the infinitely more enticing deist humanism of America.
Europe had been saved from those who preached God's non-existence by those who lived
His irrelevance.
Just as American money rescued Western Europe so did the wealth of the American
church "rescue", or rather buy, the Vatican. The bankrupt Vatican today depends upon
American money. Thus because the U.S. episcopal conference wants a sop for its feminists,
the Vatican is forced to tolerate such an abomination as altar girls.
Vatican II's amazing Gaudium et Spes was full of praise for the contemporary Western
world. Worst perhaps of all was Dignitatis Humanae, the Council's "Declaration on
Religious Liberty", which in honour of its principal author, Fr. John Courtney Murray S.J.,
was dubbed the "American Constitution".
Dr. Hull says that "Americanism historically has proved to be far more lethal to the
Faith than Modernism." (p. 231) A remarkable claim.
A New Western Orthodoxy?
 In his Conclusion Dr. Hull seeks to strike a hopeful note. He hopes that Rome will
abandon the heteropraxis of the past 30 years.
His position is that Traditionalists "while submitting to the doctrinal authority of the
Pope and wishing to remain united to him, (are) bound in conscience to disobey all laws
made by him that are manifestly contrary to orthopraxis." (p. 288)
Meanwhile the position of the Western traditionalists, he argues, has become that of
the Eastern Orthodox which is that "effective communion with the Petrine see cannot be
restored until the Papacy repents of its errors and returns to the fullness of Catholic faith and
practice." (p. 290)
For "What, after all, was the Pauline reform but a legalistic and arrogant clerical revolt
against the liturgical and disciplinary traditions of the Latin Catholic faithful?" (p. 291)
"Without a doubt, the dissident Lefebvrist congregations and the Orthodox Churches
of the East are now more Catholic in their worship and discipline than the Church in union
with the legitimate successor of Peter." (p. 293)
He hopes that some day soon the Pope will give up today's "utopian and futile attempt
to achieve union with Protestants" (p. 294), and call a Council to restore Catholic tradition.
At this Council, hopes Dr. Hull, he will solemnly promise to act ever more like Peter and
never again like Caesar, and thereby reunite a wayward Rome not only with the remnant of
his own Latin traditionalists, but also with the Orthodox Churches of the East.
How anyone could find enough still Catholic Bishops to make up a quorum for such a
Council, I cannot imagine. Besides, the Modernists have for years been calling for a
"Vatican III", if only just to complete the work of Vatican II and finish the Church off
altogether!
The thought that perhaps the Eastern Orthodox have been right all along is a nasty one,
and will be resisted by all of Dr. Hull's potential readers.
But how else can we come to terms with Rome's present abominably anti-Catholic
behaviour?
To sum up, this is a scholar's book which I could only recommend for other scholars. It
contains much which would be useful indeed for ordinary Catholics, plus a lot which would
be better left out as merely confusing and distracting scandal.
It needs trimming down but would trim down to a very useful and popular book
indeed.

by Des Mac Donald