Fr. Gerald Murray, author of the upcoming book, “Calming the Storm: Navigating the Crises Facing the Catholic Church and Society” (Emmaus Road Publishing), joins Crisis Point to discuss the crisis in the Church today and how to respond to it. Specifically, he addresses the issues of Vatican II, the traditional Latin Mass, and the pontificate of Pope Francis.
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• Calming the Storm: Navigating the Crises Facing the Catholic Church and Society
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Eric Sammons:
We all know that the church and the world are in crisis today. How does a Catholic navigate these storms without losing their faith in God? That’s going to be today’s topic on Crisis Point. Hello, I’m Eric Sammons, your host, and the editor chief of Crisis Magazine. Before we get started, I just want to encourage people to like and subscribe to the channel that lets other people know about what we’re doing here. So if you like what we’re doing, make sure you like this episode, subscribe to channel, hit your notifications, all those things that you know what to do. So, okay, let’s go ahead and get started.
Our guest today is Fr. Gerald Murray. He is the pastor of Holy Family Church in New York City. Fr. Murray has appeared as a commentary on religious topics on various television radio outlets, including EWTN, EWTN Spanish, Fox News, Fox Business News, MSNBC, New York One, Radio Maria, Fox News Radio, and the Voice of America. He’s fluent in French, Spanish, and Italian, has a working knowledge of Portuguese. He served in the US Naval Reserve Chaplain Corps from 1994 to 2005. And he is the author and this is what we’ll be speaking about today. He’s the author of the upcoming book, Calming the Storm: Navigating the Crisis Facing the Catholic Church and Society from Emmaus Road Publishing. Welcome to the program Father.
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Thank you, Eric. Good to be with you.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, this is of course perfect for Crisis Magazine because we’re talking about how we navigate these crises. That’s exactly what Crisis Magazine has been trying to do since 1982, when we were first found it. Now, why don’t we just start off immediately with the title, the books is Calming the Storm. So how would you describe the storm that’s raging today, what is the storm you’re talking about?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Well, the storm as the subtitles describes is a storm, crisis facing the church and society. So the storm, in my estimation, basically comes down to a rejection of God and a rejection of his creation. So it’s the loss of faith. And then it’s also the loss of confidence in the intelligibility of the universe, in the rational order of the created world and of man’s ability to both understand the purpose of creation and then put it to good use. So we’re basically a drift in our current social scene in the life of the church, many of the doctrines that the church has taught is being revealed by God are either rejected or ignored by many, including prominent churchmen. So you can say we’ve got a five alarm fire going on in the world and the church, the flames are also unfortunately causing a lot of damage in that area.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Now, what would you say is the root cause that made this happen? Because obviously we know, at least it’s pretty easy to see that we’ve started these crises in the 1960s, but the course there’s a lot of indications of things going wrong before that. What would you say kind of caused our current storm that we’re going to and how do we get to this point that we’re rejecting God, a loss of faith, a loss of sense of sin and all these things?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Yeah. In the book we trace it back, of course, original sin is at the root of all problems in human existence, but the particular manifestations that we’re seeing now, they go back to the reformation, the Renaissance or worldly spirit. And then for our own particular crises in the Western world, that’s the French Revolution. And it is the overthrow of not simply human authority, but also the rejection of divine authority as being, let’s say, the point of reference for all human decision making. Now, the point of reference becomes man and his desires. So what people want is now becoming a reality as opposed to the real order of things. In our own country, the French Revolution did not have as much of an effect. Certainly, over the course of time, the American Revolution is a completely different experience.
But the post World War II era has been unfortunately a time where French revolutionary ideas that were circulating the intellectual world in Europe made a great foothold. And we now basically live in a world of academic skepticism and nationalism. And then unfortunately in the church, a desire we could call it, me-tooism that the church wants to be as modern as the secular society around us. That’s just led to a slew of problems and we can talk about them, but they are intellectually rooted in this rationalistic spirit in which God is no longer the measure of man, man is the measure of everything.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. It reminds me of the Casey versus Planned Parenthood decision where the court said that, I can’t remember the exact wording, but we can define our concept of existence, we can define. And so therefore obviously you can kill babies in the womb because you can just define that, that’s okay. You can define, it’s not a baby, whatever the case may be. And of course we see that really today with the fact that a man can declare himself a woman. And now also that’s what we’re supposed to accept. I mean, a lot of these things go back to this idea where man is the determining factor, not God, is that essentially what you’re saying here?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Oh yes, exactly. And yes, that decision was about at the core of liberty as the ability for each one to determine the meaning of life. You know, so Justice Scalia called it the O suite, meaning of life, O suite mystery of life, jokingly referring to a bit, it’s a completely disreputable idea that the meaning of life depends on what I, or you, or anyone else determines. It’s the other way around. Our life can have meaning if we understand reality as it is being firmly rooted and grounded. And that’s the role of in society, it’s the role of social norms and taboos. That’s certainly the role of the law. Justice Scalia was very clear, the Constitution’s not a living document. Documents are written down on paper. They they’re not living. In other words, they don’t evolve and change. The meaning of the words has to be a understood.
And I think that’s what we’re facing now in the church, we recently had a cardinal in Luxembourg say the teaching of the Catholic church on homosexuality is wrong. Now how any cardinal of the world can say that with self respect for his role as a cardinal. But what he’s saying then means the Catholic church for 2000 years has gotten it wrong on a matter of essential importance. What is moral, what is immoral, that everything’s wrong up till now? Well, there is an example of saying, we get to determine what reality is, and you all have to agree with us and go along with it.
Eric Sammons:
Right? So yeah, let’s focus a little bit then, we know that things are crazy in the world, but let’s really focus on the church because things are crazy in the church too, and what’s going on here. In the book, Calming the Storm, you talk a lot about the confusion going on in the church. And I think sometimes Catholics, faithful Catholics, interpret that to mean, are you kind of giving an out like it’s just confusion. Wouldn’t you say that there’s been, I mean, at times it’s not confusing. For example, what that cardinal in Luxembourg said, he’s simply just stating heresy. I guess what I’m trying to ask is, is there efforts to purposely cause confusion in the church in order to get through things that are heretical, or evil, or things like that, does that make sense?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
No, it does. And let’s say an example of confusion. If there’s a sandstorm, then you’re confused what direction you’re supposed to walk in or where is the house, where’s the street, and where’s the sidewalk. The sandstorm makes causes confusion. Now sand storm is caused by no one. So it’s just a phenomenon. But in the church now we have this bishop, for instance, this cardinal saying that homosexuality is good, it’s not wrong. That causes people to question in their mind. Well, what am I supposed to believe in? Because the cardinal is the one we were taught we’re supposed to listen to. And when a bishop teaches, he’s fulfilling his role. And I guess I have to go along with it. So people get confused.
Other people who want the teaching to be wrong, in other words, those that think homosexual lifestyle is good. They’re going to go around and say, well, guess what folks, your idea about morality has been rejected by the leadership of the church. Therefore you’re free to change your opinions. And in fact, you’re not only free to change it, you got to, because I want you to recognize my homosexual lifestyle as equal and as good as marriage. So yeah, confusion is not simply something that happens like the weather it’s caused by people. And that’s where the serious fault lies right now. And we have to recognize this and not pretend that this is not being caused by some people’s actions and words.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Now there’s debate in the church sometimes about kind of who’s to blame for this. I know a lot of lay Catholics wanted to simply blame the bishops. It’s the bishops’ fault. And I’m sympathetic to that. I’m not going to lie, I’m sympathetic to that point. But then others would say, well, the bishops come out of the laity. Obviously a bishop at one point was a lay person in lay family. So if they’re not being raised properly by a good Catholic family, then they’re going to end up being problematic. Others just would say it’s just a corrupt world, we’re part of it. I mean, where would you say… And I do think, I’m not just doing to lay blame, but in order to fix it in the future, where would you say inside the church, the cause of this confusion, where should we look to first to kind of, to lay blame, to at least try to correct the problem going forward?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Well you have the history of heresy in the church. Right from the beginning, there have been people who deny doctrines of the faith for various reasons. And in the modern age, a lot of the heresy has to do with sexual morality. And that is very unfortunate because if ever there was a time when the world needed a corrective it’s our own. But what’s revealed is that there’s a worldly spirit, which believes in evolving dogmas, dogmas not fixed once and for all in time when it’s written down, it’s meaning it doesn’t stand for the rest of history. No, there’s a group of people out there that say, well, it was true back then when they wrote it, but it’s no longer true now. And they’ll say, if you’re going to be a Catholic who is going to be effective in the modern world, you have to dialogue and engage the modern world on its own terms.
And I’ll be the first one to say, yes, we want to have a relationship with the modern world, but it’s not simply following along with it, we’re here to instruct, admonish, and critique, and then support what’s good because modernity has many good aspects to it and the church doesn’t condemn it as such. But we do condemn this modern spirit that is right now dominant in the media, and academia, in US, which is you can do whatever you want, as long as you don’t hurt someone else. And you can be whatever you think you are, and no one has a right to contradict you. That problem in the church is now located in the hierarchy. The bishop in Luxembourg, the cardinal is not the only one in Europe. Other bishops have gone incredibly off the reservation we could say, but really just abandoning Christ and his teaching because they want to be in line with this modern thinking. This is terrible.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. And I’d say also, so there’s certain bishops like this Cardinal Luxembourg who’s obviously just explicitly saying let’s change unchangeable church teaching, but it seems like there’s a lot of bishops. A lot of American bishops I think will fall into this. That they’re not going to un-saying that they’re probably even personally relatively orthodox, but they seem to be afraid to say anything against the modern world, because we both know if they do, they will get hammered. They’ll get hammered by media. They will get hammered by a lot of Catholics in the pews, frankly. And so what can we do to help the bishops understand that you sometimes are going to have to say things and you’re not going to be popular, but you have to say them because otherwise we just get run over by the heretical bishops and the people outside the church.
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Right. Well, we have to encourage our bishops to be bold shepherds. When the wolves show up, it’s not the job of the shepherd to say, well, they’re only three wolves out there. And most of the pasture land is clear. So we hope they don’t take too many of our sheep. No, we have to fight the wolves. And if the wolves are in shepherd’s clothing, meaning they’re pretending to be transmitting their job as a messenger of Christ, we have to say, unmask them as being essentially fraudulent. If a cardinal doesn’t believe that Catholic moral teaching is obligatory and true he should resign because that’s what he signed up to do. He did not sign up to teach his own opinions. And one of the disappointing things from my perspective is that after this cardinal issue, this statement, which has gotten wide circulation in the Catholic media, very few authority figures in the church have criticized him.
I can think of no bishops conference that has come out and condemned his words. Very few individual bishops seemed to have spoken about it. It’s remarkable. If this bishop had made some kind of statement alleging racist ideology or some other outrageous, horrible idea, I don’t know that it’d be this much passivity. But if you’re going to offend the current false notions about the nature of man and homosexual activity, then suddenly you keep quiet. It’s terrible, it really it’s disheartening to the average layman and priests count on their bishops to be leaders. We need more leadership when it comes to critiquing shepherds who are doing a bad job at what they’re supposed to be doing.
Eric Sammons:
And one of the things this leads to the silence of the bishops in the face of these things is that a lot of the laity have begun to speak out. And that has become controversial in some course, because how far should the lady go? Because when a layperson, maybe a prominent layperson, Catholic layperson says something specifically against the bishop, then they’re hammered. Because like, no, you shouldn’t be saying that about the superiors, the successors to the apostles. But then when they don’t say something, then it just runs rampant. And so I think a lot of lay people, and I get this myself personally, people will criticize me because I will sometimes call out bishops by name or priest by name when they do something like this. But I think, I don’t really know what the answer is because what is the line we’re supposed to draw between, should we say something or should we not? And how far do we go?
Because obviously as successors of the apostles, they deserve a certain amount of respect for their office. But what should lay people look to as far as where they can draw that line or how they should criticize their bishop.
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Yeah. It’s a very good question, Eric. I mean, let’s take the McCarrick case. McCarrick was publicly identified first by the archdiocese of New York, and then by the Vatican as being a sex abuser of minors. He has never admitted his crimes. He’s never begged pardoned for those he offended. He pleaded innocent at his Vatican trial. He was convicted. And after being convicted, he’s still claiming he’s not that bad. Now, he’s facing very soon in March, a criminal trial in Massachusetts. The McCarrick case is emblematic that bishops have counted on the fact that they thought they could do whatever they want and people won’t criticize them because their bishops, there’s nothing wrong with condemning McCarrick in public. And then also asking the question, why was McCarrick allowed all those years to get away with further crimes or hiding his previous crimes, and yet he was protected. Things were kept quiet.
I mean, Pope Benedict made a terrible mistake, in my opinion, in imposing a private penalty on McCarrick, as opposed to the public penalty he got under Pope Francis. Pope Francis did the right thing in having a trial. So I love Pope Benedict, I love Pope Francis, but it’s worth saying if a Pope makes a mistake, it’s an act of charity to say that, not to pretend that popes don’t make mistakes. That’s certainly no one would say that historically and it applies also in the present tense.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Yeah. And I want to talk about Pope Francis in a little bit, but I think McCarrick is obviously an extreme example in one sense. I mean, I lived in DC when he was the archdiocese, when he was cardinal. And I remember there were kind of rumors. I mean, I was just a lay person, didn’t know anything at the time. And I heard, and I just thought, well, that must just be some sour grapes or something like that. But obviously if I, as a layperson, heard some of that, then other bishops and some priests might have heard that. But what about though, like not necessarily a bishop, who’s McCarrick level evil, but just not doing his job. He’s letting things, he’s just not, I mean, can lay people, criticize him as well. And just say your excellency, let’s say, for example, some like Fr. James Martin is speaking at a parish in a diocese. Can we go out and just say “No, you should not allow somebody like this speak.” Where can we draw a line on these bishops that aren’t necessarily evil, but they’re just allowing evil to happen.
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Well Canon 212 of the Code of Canon law says that, there’s a right of all the baptized to make known their concerns, opinions, and evaluations to the hierarchy, and then to their fellow Christians. So there’s nothing wrong with writing to the bishop and then making public your concerns about, let’s say, Fr. James Martin, coming into criticize Catholic teaching on homosexuality and other priests, and sad to say, even bishops now as we heard from this Luxembourg cardinal. It’s good to criticize them. And bishops who have authority should be implored to use it. They have authority. And then when it comes to speaking engagements, if it’s in a parish church we should say parish churches are constructed so that Catholic teaching could be propagated along with all the other aspects, sacramental life, the works of charity.
So if a Catholic parish is being used to promote immorality, heresy, things that are obnoxious to the will of God, the bishop should be informed of it and said, bishop, please take steps to stop this. And let’s just say we’ve had a number of years now where any use of discipline in the church is viewed suspiciously by those in charge. But that’s part of their duty as a shepherd, which is to protect the sheep from the wolves who are out there.
Eric Sammons:
Right. I want to switch to something. There’s a line in your book, Calming the Storm, that just struck me because you’re talking about the Christ in the church, how we react to it, how we can navigate it. And you say the first three vital steps through renewal of the church. So as soon as I hear this, I’m like, okay, this is kind of, here’s an answer right here, but then I will admit, I was very surprised by what you wrote here. Not that I don’t agree with it. I just was surprised that said, one, communion on the tongue, two, communion received kneeling, and three, the priests sang the mass facing east. I think a lot of Catholics and definitely non-Catholic would say, “Wait a second, that is your first three vital sense renewal of the church. Why do you have those three as the first three?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Well, because our essential obligation in life is to worship God, and the whole church exists for that purpose. It is through the worship of God that we then come into this living contact with him, such that grace fulfills us and allows us to carry on works of virtue, to understand the teaching and share it. Reverence is one of the things the modern age is lacking. And certainly in the church, reverence is something that people are desperate for. They’re thirsty for it. That’s one of the reasons why the traditional Latin mass has been growing so much over the last 30 years because people find in a reverential spirit. The reform liturgy of after Vatican 2 did not forbid communion on the tongue, communion kneeling or ad orientem celebration mass. But many of those things were looked upon as being old fashioned need to get away from them. If we have reverence for our Lord Jesus and the holy Eucharist, that’s going to teach us about our position in the world, our relationship to our fellow man, how we should carry on our affairs.
So yeah, for me, it all starts with our relationship with God. And that has to be a relationship, which is based on a loving appreciation of God’s goodness and coming to us, but also his greatness in calling us out of our sins and into this reverential spirit.
Eric Sammons:
You know, as you were talking that made me think that I get now, I get it a little more easily, what you’re saying here, the connection, because you said at the beginning that the problem is we’re putting man in front of God, we’re making man the center of all things, that God’s center of all things. Well, all three of these things receive communion on the tongue communion receive kneeling and the priest celebrating the mass ad orientem. They all take man out of the center, they put God in the center. I’ve told this story before, but one of my daughters, when she was first communion retreat at a parish, which won’t be named, but the lady who was running the retreat said basically like we don’t receive on the tongue anymore, that’s like babies. We receive in the hand.
And I had already taught my kids to receive on the tongue. And I told her afterward, I didn’t say anything during it, but I did talk to the pastor later. But I told my daughter, I said, she’s actually exactly right. When we receive on the tongue, we are receiving like children, like little babies, because that’s exactly what we are in comparison to God. And so that’s why we do that. But I think what you’re saying, though, it sounds to me like these are three practical ways that we can put God at the center again, rather than man at the center.
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Yep, absolutely. And yep, that teacher was right, even though she didn’t like the notion. But at a wedding, what’s one of the highlights cutting the cake. And then it says the bride feeds the groom, the groom feeds the bride. And what do they do? They put the food into the mouth. Well, that’s what the priest who represents Christ the bride groom, feeding the bride, the Christian soul who is now coming into the most intimate and strongest union with Christ through the sacrament of holy communion. Yeah. That’s as a kid, of course, I’m a little older, we had communion kneeling and on the tongue in my first communion. And later on, when they said, well, now you can receive in the hand. I never liked it. I liked communion kneeling because let’s face it, kneeling is a recognition of someone superior and that’s God. And we shouldn’t be uncomfortable with that. I’m amazed people will kneel for hours and end in yoga sessions and all, but somehow they’re offended if they have to kneel in church, this is a big mistake.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. And you also mentioned the ad orientem, and this has become recently a big controversy. I think a little bit, oddly, in my opinion, that we’ve had bishops that are starting to forbid ad orientem in the Novus Ordo mass, we’re not talking about traditional mass. And just the Novus Ordo mass, they’re saying now you can’t celebrate ad orientem. I don’t know. Maybe because it has a whiff of the traditional mass or if it’s, I’m not quite sure. It’s like, they’re claiming it’s a Vatican 2 thing to ban ad orientem. What do you think is really behind what these bishops are doing when they do this?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Yes, number one ad orientem, meaning facing east, meaning the priests face toward the crucifix and the tabernacle, not toward the congregation that was Vatican 2 never forbade that. And the post Vatican 2 liturgical documents never forbade that. In the current missal. It’s assumed because there’re indications in the missal when the priests supposed to turn toward the people. So that’s an indication that the church doesn’t forbid it. Why are some bishops doing it? I think because it’s associated with the tridentine mass because the traditional Latin mass is always said ad orientem. So if the new mass is ad orientem, they say, well, that’s too much like that. It’s a hostility to tradition and antiquity here, but it’s also a profound error because the priest is leading. We’re talk about the image of the pilgrim people of God.
Well, the priest is like Moses leading the people. And Moses is an image of Christ. The priest is the living icon of Christ. So when the priest is leading the people, it’s not because he’s ignoring them, he’s showing them where we’re going, which is, toward the crucifix, which represents of course the incarnate God who gave himself up for us. But ad orientem is related to the resurrection because the tradition of the church is when Christ comes a second time, he’s going to come from the east. And we turn east because Jerusalem’s in the east, that’s where he rose. So it’s not something without merit or value. And for bishops to try to forbid it is a mistake because they’re acting beyond their powers.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Now you brought up of course, Vatican 2. No discussion of the Christ in the church can ignore Vatican 2 and its impact. Now there are a number of different kind of theories about how Vatican 2, the relationship with Vatican 2 to the current crisis. Would you say that Vatican 2, I mean, I think some of the options are it caused the crisis, the implementation kind of caused the crisis, or it just was simply already the crisis was going to happen because the way the world was going. And Vatican 2, some people would say it helped. It would be worse if not for Vatican 2. Others would say, well, yes, things would’ve gotten bad, but back Vatican 2 actually made it worse by pouring gasoline on the fire or the implementation did. How would you interpret the events of Vatican 2 and what happened afterwards?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
That’s a big question. We’ll start with the Vatican 2 itself. So the documents of Vatican 2 are good. There’s no error taught at Vatican 2. There are some doctrines which could be better explained. I think in particularly the religious liberty question, and that’s been written about continuously since it was issued, but it’s not erroneous in what it teaches. I don’t believe any error is taught at the council. Now the council though consisted not simply of the documents it issued, it also signified what St. John the 23rd said we wanted to open the windows and let in the fresh air. So that analogy basically said that there was stale air in the church up to that point. And we had to let some fresh air and meaning new ideas. Well, there’s nothing wrong with new ideas. What St. Thomas wrote in the 12th century was new to a lot of people because his brilliance brought together Greek and Roman and then Christian thought all into a great Suma.
So new ideas per se are not a threat, bad ideas are a threat. And that’s why we need to always be orthodox and analytical from the point of view of what the church teaches. But the new idea thing then became new ways of acting, which meant all ways have to be cast aside. And that’s where we got into the crisis. So I view it as the aftermath of the dynamic of the council, that the council put a series of expectations in people’s minds, that things were going to change. And then people started changing things either with or without approval. And we just descended into a cycle that we saw how many priests left the priesthood? How many nuns left the sisterhood? Why? Well, because the old fashioned way was no good anymore and I’m not happy. And I don’t know whether they’re going to let priests marry, but I want to get married and just on and on and on.
And what did lay people experience after council? Mostly the changes in the liturgy. And a lot of them were unhappy. Many voted with their feet, they just stopped going. And then we saw thank God under St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict in a revival of the old mass so that people could pray in peace. Now that’s only a partial answer to a very long question.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, I think it sounds to me, and I think this is a good way to look at, a lot of people want, on the conservative side, reduce the council only to the documents and say, okay, well, it’s the implementation problem, not the documents themselves. But then others on more liberal side would say, well, we have a old spirit of Vatican 2 and all that. But I do think it’s somewhere in the middle there in the sense that it’s the council event, the documents are part of that event, of course. But like you said, it’s expectations that were set. I mean, a great example of course, is the teaching of birth control, obviously nothing in the council documents themselves said that artificial birth control was okay, but I think the whole event made it so that Catholics thought, well, we’re updating things, we’re letting fresh air in. So, hey, let’s go ahead and allow the artificial contraception to be moral now or whatever.
And of course, Paul VI didn’t allow that. And so I guess, it’s a question I know we can’t completely answer, but there’s a connection between the implementation though and the documents. Like to me, I feel like the documents, I agree with you, there’s no heresy in them. And there’s some that have some definitions like religious liberty, but would you agree with the statement that at least at times there was passages written that were ambiguous enough to satisfy everybody to get voted on and approved, but then also ambiguous enough for lots of miss-shift to happen later?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Well, yes, there are. There’s one document Lumen gentium speaks about out that the church of Christ subsist in the Catholic church, which if understood according to the proper meaning of the word subsistent, it doesn’t mean there’s a distinction between the church of Christ and the Catholic church. But a lot of people took it to mean that, so that there was a higher thing called the church of Christ and the Catholic church was a subset. And that led to were a lot of ecumenical misinterpretations, where you had priests con-celebrating with Protestant ministers and things of this, or which are completely anathema. There was a minimalization often of what it means to be the one true church that it’s not prideful and bold to say to someone, Protestant churches are breakaways from the Catholic church. And while they have elements of sanctification, they lack essential elements that they were rejected at the reformation. Many people say, oh, that’s unecumenical. How can you say that the council never contradicted it, but people took, like the phrasing about subsistence and say, well, everybody’s in the church, it just the Catholic church is the fullest expression.
Yeah. It is the fullest expression, but it’s the only fullest expression. Therefore we say it is the church of Christ. So that’s an example. One of my things I say in the book about the council is I think the spirit of the council often is a religious equivalent to the spirit at the foundation of the United Nations after the second world war. That there was an optimistic spirit that rationality and cooperation would lead to peaceful relations in the world. And I think there was a similar spirit at the council. If we just talk in a new way and act in a friendly manner, we can eliminate the cism in the Western church. We can have Protestants reunited with Catholics, Orthodox too. And those are all good things. I hope they happen. But the result of it is that you get people who become Catholic light. They say the way we can reunite with Protestants is by basically imitating them. And that’s wrong. The council never said that. That’s certainly not what was intended by the fathers gathered in Rome in the early sixties.
Eric Sammons:
Right. I think that idea, the optimist spirit, that’s one of the things that always struck me when I read the documents was it just seemed to be very 1960-ish, a little bit dated, frankly. And it seemed to have too much optimism. Now it’s been almost 60 years since the council was started. It was called of course in 1959, but then started in 1962. So what should we do about the council today? I feel like singing the song. How do you solve a problem like Maria, how do you solve a problem like Vatican 2, in the sense that we’re not saying, okay, declare Vatican 2, invalid, anything like that? I’m not saying that. But at the same time, some people have called for the idea that we should just move beyond Vatican 2 in the sense that it doesn’t really help solve today’s problems. And so we should really kind of forget it, even some have said, or at least maybe just kind of move on from it. How would you say Vatican 2 should be interpreted in the life of the church today? How is it useful today? And if so, how?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Well it’s useful as are all the other general councils? I think we, like Pope Benedict that we should not look at the council as the super council, or it’s bigger than all the other councils that ever occurred. Now, temporarily it’s the closest to us. So we say it’s most important because it’s the one we’ve experienced or at least us older guys who were around, even though I was only a kid when they’ve started, but the answer here would be for me, the practical thing, lay people let’s face it by and large and never going to read the documents. And I don’t think they have to, what I recommend people read as a catechism of the Catholic church. Because John Paul II responded to a request from bishops that an authentic and complete account of the Catholic faith be produced in light of the council teaching, but also in light of the entire patrimony of faith. And that’s what this catechism in the Catholic church is in fact, for me, that’s one of the greatest accomplishments of the pontificate of St. John Paul II.
If you read that, then you’ll understand that the teaching of the church has not changed. It is the same and it’s based on the rich tradition of script interpretation in the church, the council fathers spoke based on the theological wisdom of St. Thomas, St. Augustin, and others, but the modern dilemmas are answered in the catechism. It is a temptation to say after the council, there was a disastrous loss of faith and confidence in the life of the church. The only way to get away from that is to forget about it. And I would say no, theologians, seminarians, priests, interested lay people should read the documents, understand them properly, but then say, look, the challenge we face in the modern world, the council is not the only measure we have to repel it. We have to use the perennial theology and wisdom of the church because we’re fighting here against things. And you’re in the sixties, there was a lot of optimism.
Who in the world in 1960, thought that a man could swim in a women’s swimming event and be called a woman by everybody announcing it. The council never considered that, but that’s what we’ve got now. So we have to go back to Augustine Aquinas, the Bible, Aristotle plate, I mean, find all that goes into human rationality and apply it.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. And I think we also acknowledged not every council is Nicaea in the sense that later five, for example, was a fail council from the 16th century. ladder four. I think that’s the one that basically said that the Jews should like some persecution of Jews in certain ways. I mean, it just was like, we’re not going to follow the exactly what those councils say today. Whereas Nicaea, of course, we’re not going to do anything about Nicaea obviously, but even the disciplinary cannons of ICU, we don’t necessarily have to follow exactly today. So I guess in the idea is Vatican 2 should be put in the perspective of one council among 21, but also three years in 2000 years of history as well. Is that kind of what you’re saying?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Yeah, no. I mean, putting in perspective is exactly what it should happen and that a perspective should include how the council documents were misused and how the let’s say the spirit of invoking a spirit of the council becomes code language for basically Protestantizing the church often. One of the things I talk about in the book is the Protestant principle of private judgment which is clearly taught by the reformers that each believer is given grace by God to understand the scriptures properly himself. And even if it contradicts others, that’s not really a problem because God guides each one. The church has never taught that. The church teaches that the magisterium helps us to properly understand the Bible and the doctrine of the faith and that we have to a judgment when it’s wrong, we have to reject our judgements and submit it to the church.
And yeah, it’s again, the doctrine of the faith, what’s crisis in the church now is not a rejection of Vatican 2 so much. It’s a rejection of essential teachings of the church that we’ve had from the beginning. And that’s really, because when the bishop says, and the cardinal says that homosexuality is not wrong, it’s a good thing. That’s a rejection of Christian anthropology as a whole, which teaches that in the creation, God gave the body a purpose, the nuptial meaning of the body as John Paul II taught. But then we get to the Aristotelian categories of function and purpose and teleology, what something’s meant for, that’s all gone. This bishop wants us to just basically say, hey, you want to do this? Go right ahead. That’s a combination of so many errors. It’s stunning that he would say that.
Eric Sammons:
Right. I want to move now over to another controversy going on in church today. That’s the traditional Latin mass. Now I attend the traditional Latin mass. Now father, do you celebrate the traditional Latin mass?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
I do from time to time. Yes.
Eric Sammons:
Okay. So in general, I guess I just want to ask what’s your opinion of traditional Latin mass?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Oh, I think it’s beautiful. And for me, I was born in 1959, so when I was conscious of going to mass, it was the updated version of the old mass the 65 Missal, I guess it was. And then when I became an altar boy, it was still that. So I remember praying the prayers of the foot of the altar in English, and then it went of the new missal and I didn’t quite understand at all. I knew it was a little simpler and easier, but as I got older, I realized, well, we got rid of a lot of stuff we never should have. So my view of it is that the liturgical reform after the council was unsuccessful because the people in charge of it made bad decisions. The updating that the council fathers intended was not a rewriting of the mass.
And I think the 1965 Missal had the right approach. Readings in the vernacular are a good thing and certain other parts in the vernacular, but maintaining the Latin as a whole and then maintaining the liturgical group or structure as a whole, rather than getting rid of it. So I’m one of those people that thinks we should redo at some point, the church should reexamine the reform of the mass after the council and return to a much more conservative and traditional reform. That was, I think, what the council of fathers intended,
Eric Sammons:
Right. Because with when Pope Benedict issued his Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, that was basically liberalizing the celebration of the traditional Latin mass, making it easier for priests to do so. One of the things he seemed to be saying was he wanted the two ma the two forms as he called them, the extraordinary form, or the ordinary form to infect each other, so to speak, in good ways, in good ways. Infect is probably not the best word, influence each other. Yeah. Influence each other in good ways. And it sounds like that’s somewhat of a saying similar to what you’re saying, like the initial reforms to the mass, like 1965 stuff where you’re basically keeping the traditional at mass as is, but you are maybe adding the vernacular in certain places, maybe doing a few other minor changes and that’s, it, that’s almost what he was looking for.
But now Pope Francis of course has issued Traditionis Custodes because. And it seems like he’s explicitly saying, as I understand, he’s explicitly saying that the ultimate goal should be just the Novus Ordo mass and that’s it. That should be the only form of the Roman right. And what do you think about the Pope efforts to basically squash the traditional Latin mass?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Yes. I regret that the Pope issued Traditionis Custodes because I consider that he made a mistake because he said that the people who attend, or many of the people who attend the mass are often causes of disunity in the church. And therefore the unity, the church is threatened by continuing to have the traditional Latin mass, therefore everyone should return to the new order of the mass. And I think that judgment is just erroneous and my experience, most Latin mass goers that I’ve met are very grateful to Popes John Paul II and Benedict for what they did. And they believe as Catholics, that’s what they’re supposed to do. They did not continue or go to the society of St. Pius the 10th, which is canonically irregular. They go to the fraternity and other parishes. And then I think that’s where we are supposed to be.
And Pope Francis’s concerns have led to people being three did very roughly that their causes of problems in the church and bishops are forbidding the Latin mass completely in their diocese. This is not what Pope Francis said, by the way, even if his long term goal is that he didn’t say that we’re going to stop all these masses now as pleased, the fraternity St. Peter just came out with a press release stating that two of their leading priests met with the Pope. And he said that they are most welcome to continue to be what they are and use all the liturgical books from 1962. So we’re getting mixed signals from the Pope if it’s okay for the fraternity priest to say the old mass and have confirmation and confession in the old, why can’t the diocese and priest also, do it? This is where as a canon lawyer, you begin to get into a discussion about consistency in law and practice.
Eric Sammons:
Right. And it just seems crazy though, the idea that the Pope could say, this mass has to be restricted when it’s a mass that literally millions of people have gone to for hundreds of years. I mean, even going back organically past the time of St. Gregory, the Great. And how can the traditional Latin mass be something that’s considered a bad thing in the Catholic church? How is that even possible?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
I think it was a mistake in judgment. Paul Francis decided to become a priest as a young man when the old mass was being celebrated. That’s how we made his first communion. And certainly it nourished the faith and was not a cause of any harm to the church. The problem is, of course, the liturgical reformers often were influenced by Protestant ideas. And they looked at traditional worship forms as being antiques that need to be cast aside. They didn’t like the use of Latin, they wanted contemporary music. They considered the ad orientem style to be, let’s say, too hierarchical or too mystical. They wanted essentially a Protestant notion of table fellowship. And it’s just, there was a distinct and more Protestantized version of the holy Eucharist that inspired I think, many of the changes, which were mistakes. And having the Latin mass around is a constant reminder that people don’t buy into that.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Now, do you think a Bishop who forbids his priest to celebrate the traditional Latin mass, or even forbids his priest to celebrate the Novus Ordo mass ad orientem, if he’s overstepping his authority, can a priest defy that or are they violating their vow obedience if they defy that and go ahead and celebrate the traditional Latin mass anyway, or celebrate ad orientem when the Bishop says not to?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Right. Well take each one in turn. So the old mass, the traditional Latin mass, the priest does need the permission of the diocese and bishop. And he’s not entitled to disobey. If he’s denied the permission, then he needs to use the canonical recourses available in canon law for priests to feel that their rights or something good is being harmed by an episcopal action. So they should ask the bishop to issue would decree. They should have what’s called recourse, which means that you ask the bishop to withdraw the decree. If he refuses, then you contact the congregation with divine worship in Rome and say, my bishop is unfairly denying me this permission, the stated reasons he gave don’t apply, et cetera. As regards, ad orientem, the bishop doesn’t have the power to forbid that. I know bishops are doing that, but it’s not in their power to do it.
So again, if the bishop tells you can’t do it fine, you say, please issue a decree, informing me of this stating the reasons why you’re forbidding it. And then I’m going to have canonical recourse. And again, go to the congregation in Rome. Now, in the mean, you’re going to have a dispute on whether the fact that you’re making a recourse, suspends, the effective date of these forbidding things. And that’s where you can get into a dispute. In general, it’s good to go along with the bishop until you get vindicated either by him or by the higher level, meaning that you’re going to win the case. But I don’t like disobedient priests because that’s not what Jesus intended the apostles to do, to disobey him or to have the priests under them be disobedient. But you have to use the canonical rights. You have to kind of vindicate when your rights are being stepped on.
Eric Sammons:
So ultimately though, if let’s say you go through all the canonical forms and it goes up to congregation and divine worship, and they say, no, you can’t celebrate, let’s say church, Latin mass. Then you would argue then that the priest, that he’s just going to have to just celebrate the Novus Ordo. And he just can can’t celebrate the traditional Latin mass. Is that basically-
Fr. Gerald Murray:
I would argue that yes, but he can then say, well, I’m leaving this diocese. I’ll go to a place where the bishop will give me permission. I’ll join the fraternity of St. Peter. You can also say, well, I’m going to dedicate my life to continuing to pray and work that this be reversed, this decision by the congregation of divine worship. When something is good in and of itself, the fact that the authority forbids it doesn’t mean that he’s established that it’s wrong and bad. He’s just, he doesn’t like it and he is using his power to suppress it. So stand firm. But I don’t recommend disobedience because that undermines the whole church. And that really is a threat against the unity of the church.
Eric Sammons:
Okay. Let’s move on. One more specific thing I want to talk about is of course is Pope Francis, which we’ve talked about before already. Obviously he’s at the center of this storm in many ways, being the Pope, obviously he is. But I think a lot of people would argue that he’s causing some of the storm. He’s kicking up the sand to use the sand storm analogy. He’s kicking up the sand storm, so to speak. What’s your honest assessment overall of the pontificate of Francis?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Well, Pope Francis’s pontificate has been marked by some troubling actions where he contradicted previous teaching of the church and in particular Amoris Laetitia, he endorses the notion that there are some people who are in invalid second marriages, meaning they’re validly married to someone, but they’re living together and cohabiting with a second person. That those people can be granted the reception of holy communion. That is a complete rejection of the church’s teaching, which goes back to the beginning. This was never an idea anywhere in the tradition of the church, that people who were living in an adulterous union were entitled to receive communion, or that the ministers of the church, the priests should give communion to those people. So the Pope used the occasion of Amoris Laetitia and a famous footnote to state this.
And then people said, well, is it sure that he really meant that, well, then some bishops around the world started issuing documents saying exactly that, that some people in these so-called second unions could be allowed communion. And the Pope endorsed them. Including the bishops in the Buenos Aires region the Maltese bishops issued a document to that effect published in the conservatory Romano. The Argentine document actually appears in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis which is the official publication of the Vatican for magisterial teaching. So that the death penalty is another area. The Pope has said that it’s immoral, and that it offends human dignity. This has never been the teaching of the church. I know it’s not popular in modern world, and certainly in European liberal circles and elsewhere to say that the death penalty is good, the death penalty is good because it’s part of the order that God established.
The God in the old Testament commanded the death penalty for certain crimes, was God offending human dignity. Of course not. We would never say that. And if you look at St. Thomas Aquinas and other writers, they explain the reason why the death penalty is moral. It’s a legitimate use of punitive power for serious crimes. So those are two areas where he caused a lot of problems, in my opinion, and it’s not disrespectful to the Pope to say, holy father, I do not see how your teaching conforms with that of your processors. It may be viewed as offensive and rude, but that’s just a subjective way of looking at it. If anyone can show me how communion for adulterers and the immorality debt penalty is justified in Catholic tradition of teaching, maybe I’ll change my opinion, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. And I think this has caused, those are probably the best two examples. And of course he said other things that on a plane reading seem wrong. I mean, just recently he had the thing where he talked about the apostates and blasphemers are also part of the communion of the saints. And it’s like, I know you can kind of maybe twist some of these to try to make it work. But it seems like to the average Catholic who reads it, hears them, they just take it to mean what it says. And there’s never a clarification given later, either by the Vatican to say, okay, well actually, no, he really meant this, or at least rarely is. Now, because of this, I think there’s been a sizable portion of faithful Catholics who have begun to wonder whether or not he’s even the Pope.
And the reason is, is because there is church teaching in the past that a heretic can’t be a Pope. St. Bellman, some others, but of course, there’s a lot of nuances to that. Just to be clear, so you know, I think Francis is the Pope, but I do think I understand though, talking about confusion again, that clearly what the Pope is saying at times on its plane reading is heretical. And so some people then jump to that to say, well, then the Pope is a heretic. Well, then that means he’s not the Pope. And some people would say Benedict’s the Pope, others would just say, we don’t have a Pope. How would you respond to people who are struggling with this? I mean, clearly he’s contradicting previous teaching. What does that mean as far as his papacy?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Right. Well, no, I believe Francis is the true Pope. The question of whether he’s endorsed heretical views, that’s something we should debate. That’s something that people are debating. On that issue, you brought up where he said apostate’s a part of the communion of the saints. As speaking from a sacramental perspective, any one who’s baptized is always in some way united to the communion of all the baptized. Now you can lose, you lose that union through becoming apostate meaning rejecting Christ, but you can’t unbaptize yourself. So there’s a sense in which you’re always united, even in most tenuous way. Other things have been said, like where he talked about in the Abu Dhabi statement that he signed, that God will, the other religions of the world, the Catholic church rejects that, we say there’s only one true church. It was revealed by God. The savior came into the world.
So now the question is, being the Pope is a juridical reality, in other words, you get elected to it and it’s a public act that’s recognized by the people have the responsibility and law to do that. And he was validly elected Pope. How do you lose that? You either die or resign. Those are the ways of course that you stop being Pope. Can you lose it automatically by becoming a heretic? Well, that would mean you’d be a heretic as recognized canonically as being a heretic, which means you would be obstinate persistence in an error grave error. And that’s an automatic excommunication attached to heresies. But the question is, in church law, that penalty, it can be freely assumed by those who rejoice in the fact that they’re heretics. They say, yes, I do freely reject that. Martin Luther, et cetera, people who are public heretics. Someone who doesn’t believe they’re committing heresy and just think they’re doing a variation on a doctrine. Then it’s hard to say whether they’ve got out the automatic penalty.
And there’s nobody to confirm whether the Pope has gotten an automatic penalty. I mean, just in theory is part from this Pope. Who’s going to confirm that? Now Fr. Fasio asked a question years ago, what if the Pope became a Muslim? Which is ridiculous on his face, but is not impossible in the absolute sense. Well, in that case, it would be clear that the Pope, he would reject that such a thing as a papacy even exists as part of God’s will. So that would be clear, but someone who says that meaning of the church teaching has been poorly understood or not properly applied, that’s more difficult to come up with. But again, it’s an area for discussion and it’s something that’s going to be pursued apart from this pontificate. It’s a canonical question. We treat it in canon law school and the answer given in the classroom, it becomes hard to apply it in the real world.
Eric Sammons:
Right. So there really isn’t, I mean, I sounds like there isn’t really a canonical answer to the question of a situation where a Pope is a heretic, he’s not resigning, he’s not dying. And the it’s very clear the Pope is judged by no one. I mean, that’s been canonical tradition for centuries. Who would actually then be able to declare, okay, he’s a heretic, this Pope is a heretic. Therefore he’s no longer Pope. Would it be the College of Cardinals? Would it be an ecumenical council? Because that sounds like it’s putting them above him, but if he’s a heretic, then maybe he’s not. It sounds like, would you say that there’s not really an answer to that question?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Well, no one can declare it that has theoretical effect, meaning it has a legal effect to depriving of the pontificate. Certainly the cardinals could gather in totality or partially and say, this teaching is heretical. You’ve issued this teaching. Do you understand why it’s heretical, and if you realize your error, we want you to publicly repent, the Pope could say, go get out of here. I don’t agree with you, et cetera, et cetera. The Pope might say you’re right and I’m going to quit the pontificate. I don’t believe there is such a thing. That could happen. But again, it’s theoretical. No one stands in judgment of the Pope because he is the supreme authority on earth.
Eric Sammons:
Okay. I want to wrap it up here, but my last question I want to ask is, do you have advice? Most people who watch and listen to this podcast are just your typical lay Catholics in the pews, they’re not priests, they’re not working for diocese, anything like that. What can they do, what can we do during this crisis, during the storm? What the best things we can do to try to navigate it?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Yeah. Well, number one have a serious prayer life, 10 mass weekly, certainly on Sundays, if not every day. Study the faith. I think every adult Catholic should read the catechism of the Catholic church. I think every Catholic should read the whole Bible starting, I would say, starting with the Old Testament if possible, but if it’s too hard, read the New Testament first and then maybe you’ll be interested enough to go back. But prayer, study and then maintain a calm spirit, which trust in God’s providence. The fact that we have unfaithful shepherds in the church, bishops like that, Cardinal in Luxembourg, that doesn’t mean, oh, I’m out of here. This church can’t be the true church, because we got people like this. No, I mean, meditate on Judas, meditate on one of the closest people to our Lord during the three years of a public ministry with the 12 apostles and Judas was one of them. And what did he do?
And then pray for your bishops and your priests, pray for the pope, because yeah, the answer is not to say I’m out of here. I’m fed up. No. The answer is say, I’m going to double down of being a faithful Catholic.
Eric Sammons:
That’s very good advice. I just want to recommend people. I will link to it in the show notes, but the book is Calming the Storm: Navigating the Crises Facing the Catholic Church in Society from Emmaus Publishing. Like I said, I’ll link to it. Now, I believe it’s not yet out. Do you know what the publication date is?
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Right. It’s not out until April 7th is the Amazon date. Emmaus Road Press also has the website at stpaulcenter.com and you can order it there and they’re offering the benefit. If you pre-order a copy, which will be out hopefully by April 7th, but they’ll send you now the electronic version. So you can get a head start on reading it. But yeah, we certainly by the beginning of April, this book will be out in the public domain.
Eric Sammons:
Great. So if you don’t mind reading on a device then you can get it, you basically, you can start reading it right now. You can order it from St. Paul Center, who runs Emmaus Road Publishing. But then the paperback, or is it-
Fr. Gerald Murray:
That’s a hard cover.
Eric Sammons:
Hard cover. Okay. Hard cover will be available then in April. So I just encourage everybody to pick up the book and thank you Father very much for being part of the podcast.
Fr. Gerald Murray:
Thank you, Eric.
Eric Sammons:
Okay. Until next time everybody. God love you.