Dr. Peter Kwasniewski’s Confused Ecclesiology

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski recently shared his rationalizations for remaining a papist on the Roman Catholic blog OnePeterFive in a post titled “Why Remain Catholic, in Spite of Everything.”  His post was in response to a concerned reader who, out of a sincere concern for his spiritual welfare, asked Dr. Kwasniewski to explain how he could remain in communion with the official Roman Catholic church "if Vatican II was faulty and the popes from John XXIII on have all been Modernists in varying degrees, as you and others convincingly argue; if full-blooded true Catholicism is found elsewhere."

Dr. Kwasniewski’s entire post is steeped in Romanism and offers much to contend with from an Orthodox perspective. In the name of brevity and simplicity, we’ll focus solely on the main thrust of Dr. Kwasniewski’s article: that of discerning where the “true Catholic Church” exists, what it consists of, and how traditionalist Roman Catholics can be sure they are in communion with it.  Afterwards we will offer the much clearer Orthodox vision of what constitutes The Church.

Dr. Kwasniewski opens with quoting 2 Timothy 1:12, “Scio cui credidi…” “I know in whom I have believed,” and connects this profession of faith with placing the focus of his faith on the Church and its Holy Mysteries.  All good and well if one is Orthodox.  Being a papist though, he immediately begins to stumble.  In the second paragraph he declares fealty to a quote by Martin Mosebach: “The liturgy IS the Church—every Mass celebrated in the traditional spirit is immeasurably more important than every word of every pope. It is the red thread that must be drawn through the glory and misery of Church history; where it continues, phases of arbitrary papal rule will become footnotes of history.”

The liturgy is the Church?  In Orthodox ecclesiology, the Liturgy is a very important part of the Church and partaking of the Holy Eucharist is the height of the act of worship.  The universal Church is present at every Divine Liturgy, with the Church Militant and Church Triumphant being united in this most holy and reverential act of worship.  For the Orthodox though, the Liturgy is not literally The Church.

If meant literally, Dr. Kwasniewski’s ecclesiology would be shocking to any Orthodox Christian.

 What does he mean here?  Is he being hyperbolic, or waxing poetical, for effect? Is he merely engaging in an emotive or rhetorical argument to convince his reader that the liturgy is of utmost importance?  Whether he is being literal or not, the effect is the same upon the reader: confusion.  If being poetic or playing fast and loose with metaphysical terminology, the reader is still left with no clear answer to a serious question: where can one find the 'true Church' if not in the official, visible, Vatican II church?

If being literal, then is it true that the Roman liturgy itself is the Church?  Are believers and practitioners not 'The Church' when they are not participating in the Roman liturgy? Outside of the Roman liturgy, then, what are the people? What about all the other sacraments, are they not a part of the Roman church? Perhaps he is speaking metaphorically, as if the liturgy was the 'source of life' for the Roman church?  

No, Dr. Kwasniewski is not speaking metaphorically nor waxing philosophical or poetic.  The quote he uses is speaking literally, as proven by the statement, “every Mass celebrated in the traditional spirit is immeasurably more important than every word of every pope.”

  This is a clear and undeniable declaration of Authority.  It is a clear and straightforward declaration of an authority of the liturgy over and above that of any Pope, even a valid one.  Not only that, but of all the popes, “every word of every pope.”  

This does not fit with the Vatican I definition of Papal Infallibility.  Even if one subscribes to the extremely narrow interpretation of 'infallibility' only applying to ex-cathedra statements, then the above quote rejects any word uttered by any pope that might oppose 'the liturgy.'  This means that the authoritative power of the liturgy supersedes the teaching authority of the Papal Throne.  It rejects the ultramontanist views of the Papacy that stretch back to at least medieval times.  

And what of the liturgical reforms by popes?  They are numerous.  By changing the liturgy, were these men overstepping their bounds and actually changing the Roman church itself?  Does this mean all the liturgical changes or reforms made by popes are invalid?

This statement opens a can of worms if applied to the Papal system. He is rejecting centuries of official Roman theology and teaching, which state that the Pope is the source of all authority and teaching, not the liturgy.  

If this is not enough to create confusion, he adds the extremely subjective and abstract concept of “every Mass celebrated in the traditional spirit.”  What does “traditional spirit” mean? Who decides when someone is following this “traditional spirit” and how does one know if one is feeling, following, or worshipping in this “traditional spirit.”  Back to what time period or date should a traditionalist Catholic root or backdate this “traditional spirit”?  To the 16th century?  The 12th?  The 5th?

It is clear from many centuries of Roman doctrine that within the Papal system the Pope decides what is Tradition.  Dr. Kwasniewski seems to be inverting this and saying that the traditional Roman liturgy dictates to the Pope.

If popes must submit to the authority of the Roman liturgy, then why were popes attempting to suppress or review the Mozarabic Rite in Spain?  Why were liturgical changes made time and time again by popes throughout the centuries?  Why the fetish with imposing Vulgar Latin upon the nations when older, more traditional forms of the liturgy existed in the vernacular?

Dr. Kwasniewski continues to add confusion with, “As the foregoing already suggests, I am not one of those who assumes that the Church is to be equated with popes, bishops, and councils. They obviously play a role in articulating the content of the deposit of faith and condemning errors that threaten her members, but it is a supporting role, not the star of the show.”  



Now he is implying that the liturgy is not the Church but rather “the star of the show.”  He admits that the popes, bishops, and councils are not ‘the Church’ but that they also “play a role.”  But if the Roman liturgy is 'the Church', what need have you of popes, bishops, and councils?  If the entire Roman church is contained within the Roman liturgy, what need do you have for anything at all outside of the liturgy?

As to which liturgy constitutes the true Roman church, he continues, "The sacred liturgy is, for me, not just theoretically but quite practically the font and apex (fons et culmen) of my life as a Catholic—and by this, I mean the traditional liturgy, since I can no longer recognize in the Novus Ordo a legitimate liturgical rite of the Roman Church, even if it is sacramentally valid..."

Here Dr. Kwasniewski engages in some intellectual tap dancing, some fancy footwork that TradCats consider delightfully clever, when in actuality it is merely legalistic sophistry used to avoid a stark reality.  You will hear this 'legitimate but invalid' argument often, and it makes no sense at all except as a last-ditch attempt to protect their beloved Papism from the obvious modernism and universalism promulgated by the Papal Throne through the Second Vatican Council.  It is a last-ditch effort to hold on to Papism by using word games to deny that the Papal Throne has officially apostatized from the Christian Faith.

At this point the discerning mind will ask, “What clarity is Dr. Kwasniewski bringing to his reader?”  Clearly none. 

Dr. Kwasniewski is terribly confused as to what constitutes a visible, true church within the Roman system.  This stems not merely from the controversies of Vatican II, as the traditionalist would have it, but also from an incorrect Christology.  

Christology affects ecclesiology.  With the adoption of the Filioque, the rejection of the energy-essence distinction during the Barlaam-Palamas debates, and the adoption of Aquinas’s natural theology, the Roman Catholic church unwittingly adopted monadism, thereby rejecting Trinitarianism.  The consequences of doing so reverberated through its ecclesiology, resulting in Papism and its aberrations.

Dr. Kwasniewski’s problems and difficulty with discerning the 'true Church' within the papal system do not stem merely from Vatican II muddying the waters.  Rome’s problems are much deeper and go back much further in history.

In contrast to the confusion of Rome, Orthodox ecclesiology is clear.  We offer the explanation of the venerable and recently reposed primate of the Local Serbian Church—His Holiness Patriarch Irinej:

The Church isn’t just the bishops, it’s not just the priests. The Church is the people. It’s only in communion with the people that we make up the Church. The Church is one body, a spiritual body, the Body of the Church, and, for relations to be spiritual, sincere, intimate, parental, brotherly, we have to be this way before God. The people should know and sense that an atmosphere of spiritual harmony and spiritual relationships reign in the Church, so we would ask not “Who is greater?”, “Who is more important?”, but who can do more for the development of the Church with his own personal development in the spiritual life. The clergy and the people are our co-laborers. The priests are the most direct co-laborers with the people, and the people are the spiritual field where the seed—the word of God—is sown. There should be harmony in this.

In Holy Orthodoxy, the Church is the people.  The Church is the bishops, the priests, the laymen.  The Church is one body, a spiritual body, the Body of the Church.  The Church is the entirety of right-believing (‘ortho-doxy’), right-worshipping (‘ortho-doxy’), right-practicing (‘ortho-praxis’) people who co-labor all day and every day, in prayer, in their secular lives and duties, and in their acts of worship and participation in the Holy Mysteries.  All who strive earnestly within the Body of the Church to become Christ-like and achieve Salvation.

For further reading on Orthodox ecclesiology:

Khomiakov, The Church is One: https://pages.uoregon.edu/sshoemak/325/texts/Khomiakov/Khomiakov%20The%20Church%20is%20One.htm

Khomiakov, On the Western Confessions of Faith: http://archangelsbooks.com/articles/east_west/WesternConfessions_Khomiakov.asp

Alfeev, The Orthodox Understanding of Primacy and Catholicity: https://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/HilarionPrimacy.php?/articles5/HilarionPrimacy.shtml

St. Nektarios of Aegina, Sacred Tradition is the Church:
https://orthodoxethos.com/post/sacred-tradition-is-the-very-church

Mr. Dimitrios Tselengidis, The Function of the Unity of the Church and the Fallacious Theological Presuppositions of Papal Primacy:
https://orthodoxethos.com/post/the-function-of-the-unity-of-the-church-and-the-fallacious-theological-presuppositions-of-papal-primacy