{"id":310,"date":"1972-11-02T21:59:43","date_gmt":"1972-11-02T21:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marshner.christendom.edu\/?p=310"},"modified":"2016-08-18T16:32:39","modified_gmt":"2016-08-18T21:32:39","slug":"the-wright-intervention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marshner.christendom.edu\/?p=310","title":{"rendered":"The Wright Intervention"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>THE WRIGHT INTERVENTION<\/h1>\n
W.H. MARSHNER<\/h6>\n

THE WANDERER (Section Two)
\nNovember 2, 1972<\/p>\n

In September of 1971, a \u201cjoint assembly\u201d of priests and Bishops met in Madrid to adopt guidelines on pastoral action. When they were finished, a week later, they had approved a gigantic document, divided into seven parts (ponencias \u2014 an untranslatable word which means both \u201ctheses\u201d and \u201cchapters\u201d). Each part consisted of a long body of texts followed by 50 or so \u201cpropositions\u201d or conclusions, each of which had been voted on separately. The finished document was held to be a milestone in Spanish Church history, and its approval by the full hierarchy of the national conference was thought to be a rubber stamp affair.<\/p>\n

Then, however, Rome intervened. Somehow most of the document had found its way to Cardinal Wright\u2019s Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, where its content produced dismay, and the dismay turned into the stinging text published here for the first time in English. This is the famous \u201cWright Intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n

The American reader will peruse this document with a growing sense of shock and recognition. Every error pointed out in the Spanish joint assembly proves to be commonplace, a cliche \u2014 something said so often and repeated so many places that no one is sure it is heresy any more \u2014 in the Church in America. It is almost as though the same mimeograph machine in the same basement were supplying copy both to the NFPC and to the Spanish assembly, so close is the ideological and even phraseological resemblance. In fact, the only difference is that in Spain this subtle perversion of the Faith is new.<\/p>\n

But there is something else which the American reader will recognize. Cardinal Wright takes the Spanish document to task, inter alia, for 1.) confusing nature and grace, and 2.) reviving the errors of the Synod of Pistoia, a nest of Jansenists. Now what American Catholic weekly does this sound like? We are too modest to say. But what American Catholic journalist and essayist (who is always talking about Jansenism) does this remind you of? No doubt, Mr. Clinton is too modest to say.<\/p>\n

It is little short of providential that this Roman document \u2014 so outspoken, and so carefully researched by theologians for whose credentials Cardinal Wright\u2019s congregation will vouch \u2014 should come into our hands in the Fall of 1972. For this is the season when our attention has turned to the proposed Bishops\u2019 pastoral letter on education (entitled \u201cTo Teach As Jesus Did\u201d), to the \u201cChurch, World, Kingdom\u201d series coming out of Detroit, and to the report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry, chaired by Archbishop Philip Hannan of\u00a0New Orleans. (Not that there are not other curious documents and dubious goings-on which the Wright intervention will shed a new light upon \u2014 far from it. But these three are especially timely and urgent.)<\/p>\n

The proposed pastoral letter on education, despite some good sections on teaching doctrine, really amounts to a benediction of everything the educationist-catechetical establishment has been doing for the past ten years. The fight to scrap this pastoral and replace it with a genuinely critical (or at least neutral) one is now about eight months old, but the Wright Intervention puts valuable new ammunition into the lands of the orthodox.<\/p>\n

Speaking of ferment in the Church, for example, the pastoral says, on page 15: \u201cIt would be a serious mistake to identify institutional forms with essential faith.\u201d For a direct condemnation of this type of ambiguous, dangerous formula, cf. the Wright Intervention, part II, analysis of chapter three, number two. On page 37 the pastoral puts doctrinal orthodoxy and contemporary educational methodology on the same level of importance for successful Catholic education. Things of this sort are a gross symptom of Modernism and a forgetfulness of the supernatural according to the Wright Intervention (cf. part I, section A, and many other passages). On pages 35 , 49, and elsewhere, the pastoral calls precisely for the suffocating sort of \u201ctotal planning\u201d which Cardinal Wright rejects in strong terms (cf. part I, section D, and elsewhere). A dozen more examples could easily be adduced.<\/p>\n

Totalitarian \u201cplanification\u201d (a continental European word which has more precisely bureaucratic overtones than our plain English \u201cplanning\u201d) is also the key feature of the Hannan Ad Hoc Committee Report, with its threat to subject every priest in America to an endless round of self-evaluation studies, tests, and meetings. The report even goes so far as to suggest \u201cevaluation\u201d procedures for Bishops, whose authority it compromises in many other ways as well (see report elsewhere in this issue).<\/p>\n

And as far as the \u201cChurch, World, Kingdom\u201d series is concerned, well: let us say only that there is not a single error denounced by the Wright Intervention which is not somewhere to be found in the CWK documents. Not one.<\/p>\n

These observations, the translator trusts, will whet the reader\u2019s appetite to study the Wright document from beginning to end. This is something we shall be talking about for years to come.<\/p>\n

W.H. Marshner<\/p>\n

<\/a>Document Of The Sacred Congregation For The Clergy<\/a>In Reply To The Conclusions<\/a>And Chapters (Theses) Approved By The General Assembly
\nOf Bishops And Priests Held In Spain, September 13th-18th, 1971<\/h1>\n

Rome, February 9,1972
\nJohn Card. Wright, Prefect
\nP. Pallazini, Secretary
\nComplete text translated from the Spanish by W. H. Marshner<\/p>\n

I<\/h2>\n

<\/a>OVERALL ANALYSIS<\/h2>\n
    \n
  1. The totality of the conclusions and chapters (theses) shows that a large-scale effort was made in trying to confront the principal questions that bear upon the nature and ministry of the hierarchical priesthood, with particular reference to present-day pastoral needs in Spain.<\/li>\n
  2. In general, the propositions approved by the Assembly cannot be considered in isolation from their respective chapters, since in these latter the true sense of the diverse propositions is made clear \u2014 propositions which have been formulated at times in an imprecise and ambiguous way.<\/li>\n
  3. Perhaps it was because of the breadth of the themes dealt with and the short time devoted to studying them \u2014 although the remote preparation was much more careful \u2014 that the whole of these documents turned out to be quite ill-digested, both in content and expression.<\/li>\n
  4. In going through the various documents, one can find propositions and considerations that are very positive, motivated by a noble pastoral concern, and well founded. Among these praiseworthy parts are those which refer to the unity of the clergy and the faithful with Christ through the Eucharist, the necessity of prayer, the need for self-denial and full dedication in order to exercise the priestly ministry properly, etc.<\/li>\n
  5. Nevertheless, there are orientations and basic positions scattered in all the chapters which elicit grave doctrinal and disciplinary reservations. Only if these controlling ideas are well interpreted in the light of the perennial Magisterium of the Church can the totality of the documents of the Assembly be considered a suitable matter for study and application.<\/li>\n
  6. These incorrect, or in various cases clearly erroneous, fundamental ideas and basic positions, which affect in good measure all the documents, can be summarized in the following points:<\/li>\n
  7. The content of the supernatural Revelation which is transmitted through the Sacred Scriptures and the tradition of the Church and is infallibly taught by the Magisterium, is continually put on the same level with the \u201csigns of the times,\u201d for purposes of discovering the truth of the faith and the manifestation of the salvific will of God.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It might seem that this is just a question of accommodating the mode of pastoral action to the changing social, cultural, etc., circumstances of men; but in reality we have here very frequently a matter of unconditionally accepting historicist postulates \u2014 materialistic or idealist, depending on the circumstances \u2014 and the relativism which follows from them (a danger clearly pointed out already in the encyclical Humani Generis; <\/strong>D-S, 3877-3878).<\/p>\n

    This leads, for example, to granting the \u201csigns of the times\u201d the character of a course of on-going Revelation, which did not terminate with the death of the last Apostle (cf. D-S, 3420-3422).<\/p>\n

    Thus an equality is postulated between the \u201cfaith of Mother Church and the ideology of the modern world,\u201d when it is affirmed that one must achieve a synthesis of the two, omitting what is unserviceable and taking what is good, in one as much as in the other. Analogously, the demand for \u201cfaithfulness to Christ\u201d and the demand for \u201cfaithfulness to the world\u201d are put on the same level (the term \u201cworld\u201d being used in a clearly secularist sense). \u201cThe demands of the modern world upon the Church\u201d are understood as \u2018the hour of God\u2019s judgment,\u201d that is, as the divine test of the authenticity of Christian faith.<\/p>\n

    All of this implies a mistaken conception of the Faith, which is considered exclusively as an adherence to God and to the world; an adherence whose content and forms are essentially variable in accordance with the very evolution (historicist and dialectial) of the world. This evolution, moreover, is being encountered now, supposedly, in a moment of \u201cqualitative leap,\u201d with all the heterogeneity and rupture which this involves, with the result that \u201ca fundamental change of man\u2019s religious stance before God\u201d is made necessary.<\/p>\n

    In this way \u2014 given these theoretical presuppositions \u2014 Sacred Scripture, tradition, and the dogmatic Magisterium of the Church are frequently supplanted and always conditioned by the hypotheses, theories and data \u2014 all more or less dubious \u2014 of sociology and psychology, disciplines which, for that matter, are understood and applied here with an obvious dilettantism.<\/p>\n

    In fact, it seems that by the term \u201cmodern world\u201d one continually wants to understand a determined Weltanschauung <\/strong>which was characteristic of certain philosophical currents of the last century and which by penetrating into the sphere of Catholic theology would give rise to the phenomena of modernism and neo-modernism. This vision of the world is surprisingly accorded a universal, irreversible, necessary, and wholly positive character.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Another line, continually present in these documents, is an accentuated, democratic conception of the Church (practically identical to the one which appeared at the Synod of Pistoia and which was condemned at that time; cf. D-S, 2602,2677, etc), with a genuine levelling of all believers (bishops, priests, laymen) \u2014 at least a functional levelling \u2014 by means of ambiguous references to the \u201cone mission of the Church,\u201d to \u201ccollegiality,\u201d to \u201cco-responsibility,\u201d and so forth. Thus it is urged that the priests\u2019 council and the pastoral council have a deliberative character and not just a consultative one; there is an insistent call for the establishment of the pastoral council \u2014 which is considered \u201cessential\u201d and truly \u201crepresentative of all the people of God\u201d \u2014 in all places and at all levels (regional, parochial, diocesan, interdiocesan, national) with decision-making power; there is talk of inserting laymen in all the responsibilities of the Church; there is ambiguous allusion to a certain equality of men and women in ecclesiastical functions, etc. Equally, there is a certain tendency to transfer the responsibility and authority of each bishop in his own diocese to the episcopal Conference.<\/li>\n
    2. The complete \u201csociological\u201d levelling between priests and laymen proceeds from the erroneous affirmation of the \u201cNew Testament\u2019s and the modern world\u2019s definitive overcoming of the distinction between the sacred and the profane.\u201d And so, while a civil job is demanded for priests, a participation in political life, etc., laymen are asked to be inserted in all ecclesiastical structures, to preach sermons, administer the Eucharist, etc.<\/li>\n
    3. In relation to pastoral government, one notes, too, a monolithic and totalitarian tendency: everything should be planned, controlled, organized. Ecclesiastical structures would absorb almost without residue \u2014 and with a suffocating and unprecedented juridicism, despite democratic appearance \u2014 all personal and group apostolic action (of diocesan clergy, religious, lay people) into a concentric organization patterned after certain managerial models or after particular conceptions of the state.<\/li>\n
    4. In all these chapters, and especially in the first, there is a continual tendency to dissolve the mission of the Church into a socio-political action which conditions the \u201cother\u201d pastoral activities. Between all the chapters together, there are some 50 propositions relating to this theme.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Taking off from the thought that \u201cthe Good News brought by Christ is the integral liberation of man\u201d (which includes politico-economic liberation as an essential and constitutive element), the commitment of the sacred ministry \u2014 and of the Church as such \u2014 to this political-economic liberation is postulated as essential, admitting in some cases of partisan political activity by priests, activity which can take on from time to time a violent character.<\/p>\n

      The primacy which is constantly attributed to this \u201cliberation\u201d brings with it a collectivist conception of morality and of salvation: the \u201csupreme good\u201d is an ambiguous social \u201ccommunion,\u201d sin is often reduced to the injustices (real or presumed) of the politico-social order.<\/p>\n

      Consequently, one arrives at a markedly horizontalist vision of the priest\u2019s mission, in which service to men (expressed in this-worldly and collectivist terms) takes precedence over worship (when it does not simply make worship superfluous or accidental) and over the strictly spiritual ministry (faith, sacraments, etc., which in turn tend to appear as instruments at the service of politico-social action, economic action, etc.).<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. An important characteristic of these documents in the negative sense is a constant ambiguity. When the basic orientations that we have been mentioning crop up, the documents try to unite them or attenuate them with general affirmations of sound doctrine. For example, when one is about to present an all-absorbing and monopolistic planification of pastoral action, one will say immediately beforehand, \u201calways respecting legitimate diversity;\u201d but one is speaking of a diversity which in practice is already emptied of content. Such seeming doctrinal correction and some well-weighed affirmations scattered about from time to time (avoid radicalism, etc.) necessitate a painstaking study of the documents in order to be able to distinguish the truly controlling ideas. The wording is often so vague and sloppy that a reading which is not quite attentive might miss the unacceptable points while simultaneously the reader is lead insensibly toward perspectives which involve an utter ruin of the capital points of the Church\u2019s faith, morals, and discipline.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        II<\/h2>\n

        <\/a>DETAILED ANALYSIS
        \nOF THE CHAPTERS<\/h2>\n

        Chapter I<\/h3>\n

        (Church and World In the Spain of Today)<\/h3>\n
          \n
        1. In the 60 conclusions of this chapter the following points, among others, are encountered: exercise of the mission of the Church in the context of the changing modern world; disturbances which these changes produce in the life of faith in Spain; necessity for a renewal; necessity for a greater recognition and a practical realization of the politico-social orientations of the encyclical Pacem <\/strong>in Terris and of Vatican II in Spanish civil society; projection of the Gospel in the political sphere; pastoral action of the Church in that sphere and the priest\u2019s option as a citizen; full independence and cooperation between the Church and the State; rejection of privileges; revision of the present Concordat; elimination of the presence of priests in governmental organs; poverty of the Church and its institutions.<\/li>\n
        2. Although some among the approved propositions are correct from the doctrinal and pastoral point of view, it must be said that the whole chapter and the whole of its conclusions are vitiated at root by the presuppositions or basic ideas which have been mentioned in the \u201cOverall Analysis,\u201d especially those indicated in points A and E: the final result is an inversion and deformation of the nature and ends of the Church and of the ministerial priesthood.<\/li>\n
        3. From a very formal point of view, there is an attempt to create a foundation (for these ideas) in the Magisterium of the Church (as a proof a posteriori, <\/strong>with arguments ex magisterio). <\/strong>This is done by putting together a sort of mosaic of texts from the Constitution Gaudium et Spes <\/strong>(on the Church in the Modern World), from the encyclicals Pacem in terris <\/strong>and Populorum Progressio, <\/strong>and from the letter Octogesima adveniens; <\/strong>these texts, put one after another, outside of their proper context \u2014 from which they receive their sense and bearing \u2014 constitute a particular political program, in whose favor are adduced the well-known Gospel texts which have been abused for this purpose for some years.<\/li>\n
        4. A strong basic argument is taken from sociology, by means of statistics, investigations, etc. (almost always taken from the same source, whose inspiration is obvious), which are heaped up for purposes of \u201cprophetic denunciation of injustices,\u201d faults, defects, etc., of the strictly economic order. It is surprising \u2014 though it is a marginal question \u2014 that, on the one hand, there is nothing but talk of economic questions, of material means, of consumer goods (and not precisely basic necessities: automobiles, televisions, washing machines, refrigerators, etc.) and, on the other hand, that the Spanish people are accused of materialism, of having no other aims beside material well-being: one gets the impression that what is being lamented is a certain diffusion of the capitalist mentality (this materialism is mentioned explicitly) by taking sides with a socialist materialism (which the text wants to present as a noble aspiration for justice which must be accommodated). The indubitable defects of capitalism are considered the ultimate sin, the origin of almost all social and personal evils, while there is not a word of reprobation for Marxism, atheism, etc.<\/li>\n
        5. Another presupposition by which a pretense is made of justifying such a deformation of the nature and ends of the Church, of the Christian faith, of the ministerial priesthood, etc., is the very characteristic of modernism and neo-modernism: the \u201cradical change\u201d of the modern world, a change which is considered as an absolute, univocal and irreversible value. From this idea an alternative is posed: either the Church adapts herself \u2014 in her doctrine and in her life \u2014 to this new situation, assumes this new \u201cvalue,\u201d abandoning, in turn, everything which is not compatible with it; or else she ceases to be \u201ccredible,\u201d becomes \u201csidelined,\u201d unfaithful to her mission of evangelical ferment and liberating presence, etc.<\/li>\n
        6. Continually demanded \u2014 with all kinds of motives, including those which are apparently supernatural and evangelical \u2014 is the necessity of radical separation from the established order, from the temporal power, etc., while equally continually there is proposed \u2014 as a principle function of the Church, of the priest and of the hierarchy \u2014 the office of being the \u201ccritical conscience of society,\u201d of giving \u201cprophetic denunciation of socio-political injustices,\u201d of having \u201cpolitical commitment,\u201d etc. Thus it appears that what is being called for is a total independence from the present civil power in Spain in all aspects; but the text ends up implicitly maintaining that the civil power \u2014 social and political life \u2014 should be dependent on the clergy, through the control of religious motivations, of moral decisions, and through elucidation of the faith of the people (\u201cChristian\u201d judgment upon concrete situations, formation of conscience, etc.).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
            \n
          1. Also patent in this Chapter I, in a special way, is the tendency indicated in point F of the \u201cOverall Analysis.\u201d Therefore, it is not a question of rejecting or correcting individual expressions or propositions; it is the very basis of the document which turns out to be unacceptable. Nevertheless, certain specific examples may be given below, which allow this basic drift to be seen more clearly:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n