Traditionalists-as-Jansenists: A Misplaced Charge – Part 2

A Needful Distinction

Though there exists disagreement among certain traditional Catholics concerning the precise status of the Second Vatican Council and the doctrinal orthodoxy of numerous teaching documents that have emanated from the Church over the past six decades, the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) has consistently called attention to where these pronouncements deviate from the deposit of Faith. Religious liberty, collegiality, and ecumenism—all teachings of Vatican 2—have come under careful scrutiny from the Society and other traditionalists. This critical stance, which has always been taken in defense of the Catholic Faith, is not tantamount to constructing a rival magisterium within the Church; it is done in service to the Church to remind the faithful of what she professed clearly before the advent of modernism.

It is not surprising then that Blanchard and Yoder turn a significant amount of their attention to the Society, including its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Recalling the Archbishop’s famous “1974 Declaration,” the pair apparently see a Jansenist spirit in this statement—before having to confess that this proclamation of fidelity to Catholic Tradition actually has nothing to do with Jansenism proper. 

Indeed, the distinction is much more profound. For the Jansenists, who initially found themselves embroiled in a theological dispute over grace and predestination, their loyalty largely settled on one historic figure: St. Augustine. It is Augustine’s theology—or at least the interpretation of that theology as found in Bishop Cornelius Jansen’s mammoth Augustinus—that animated the Jansenist cause. Eventually, the Jansenists would draw on sources beyond St. Augustine for their spirituality. Yet they remained dubious toward many orthodox theological and spiritual developments, including Scholasticism, an expanded calendar of saints, and the Sacred Heart devotion. Traditional Catholics, including those who follow the SSPX’s positions, are radically less narrow than the Jansenists. Rather, they look to the entire history—the entire Tradition—of the Church for nourishment rather than absolutizing any one theologian or churchman.

Traditionalists Are Not Like “Gallicans”

In another strange move, Blanchard and Yoder accuse traditionalists of being “Gallicans.” When Rome started to crack down on the Jansenists, they appealed to the authority of their French bishops over that of the Pope, as if the teachings of a national church could override, locally, the rulings of the Vicar of Christ. For our authors, certain traditionalists who confronted the late Pope Francis directly engaged in the same type of behavior. They discuss, for example, the dubia submitted by four cardinals concerning Francis’s controversial exhortation Amoris Latetitia before admitting that the decision of these prelates to “operate[] within the ultramontane paradigm” is distinct from the Jansenist’s preferred mechanism for papal correction. The two should have gone even further by noting that the dubia sought clarification from Pope Francis; it did not purport to nullify any of his teachings.

Returning to the SSPX, the Society has continually sought clarification from Rome regarding certain aspects of the Second Vatican Council and other post-conciliar statements. Archbishop Lefebvre, for instance, delivered his own dubia (since translated into a book under the title Religious Liberty Questioned) regarding Vatican II’s novel teaching on religious liberty, to which he only received an inadequate response from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Similarly, the Society’s extensive dialogue with Rome concerning doctrinal matters, including changes to the liturgy, sought clarification on how these deviations from Tradition could be regarded as orthodox. While the SSPX, like other traditionalists, have presented extensive examples of where contemporary Church teachings break with what the Church had professed unequivocally before Vatican II, that is not tantamount to believing they have the inherent authority to abrogate the magisterium. 

None of this is to say there are not tensions between the SSPX and Rome. Even to this day, one of the most common and misplaced charges against the Society is that it is “in schism” despite the fact it has never purported to have established a parallel church with a hierarchy that exercises the power of jurisdiction over the faithful. While the history of the Society and Rome’s fraught relations are beyond the scope of this article, it is enough to say that neither the SSPX nor any other traditionalist organization has repaired to the type of conciliarism endorsed by the Jansenists—one that would invariably place a council over a pope and come into direct conflict with the teachings of the First Vatican Council.

A Few Closing Remarks

In addition to these missteps and those stated in the previous article in this series, Blanchard and Yoder spend the middle portion of their article making shallow comparisons between certain facets of Jansenist history and “trends” they detect in traditionalism. Jansenists who believed they were living in the end times because of what they perceived to be the Church’s collapse into heresy may share commonalities with an extreme minority of Catholics who make similar dire predictions on social media, but they hardly represent the vast majority of traditional Catholics. Certainly, these apocalypticists can find no support in the official positions taken by the SSPX. Perhaps Blanchard and Yoder’s piece would have been better served by comparing the Jansenist end-times mentality with the perennial temptation for Christians—since the earliest days of the Church—to ignore Our Lord’s instruction that none know the hour of His return (Mt. 24:36). Alas, these writers appear more concerned with landing polemical shots than wrestling with a larger historical reality.

This decision to go toe-to-toe with traditional Catholics by comparing them to Jansenists is rendered even more odd by the article’s closing paragraphs where Blanchard and Yoder provide a litany of important differences between Jansenists and traditionalists. The two correctly note that traditionalists do not endorse the Jansenist view on grace and predestination, just as traditional Catholics have not endured state-sponsored suppression at the behest of the Vatican. Noting this does not stop Blanchard and Yoder from pointing to certain traditionalists who have taken umbrage with modern political trends, but calling attention to the immorality of abortion, the antihuman nature of gender ideology, and public policies that constrain the rights of the Church are hardly extreme positions. Rather, they are all keeping in continuity with divine and natural law, which every Catholic should uphold.

Even after Blanchard and Yoder’s screed is long forgotten, there will likely be new voices accusing traditional Catholics of being Jansenists simply because they stand witness to a more spiritually rigorous and doctrinally healthy period in the Church. This is little different from those who continue to accuse the SSPX of being in schism or believe that attachment to the Latin Mass is a sign of rebellion. This uncharitable posturing is unfortunate, but it bears a far greater resemblance to the spirit of Jansenism than Catholic traditionalism ever will.