Dom John Chapman's mistaken account of infallibility

Some of the greatest minds of the Church, in what appears to be a sign of desperation to preserve what they perceive as infallibility, end up coming to firm conclusions that are frankly ridiculous and that should have been held tentatively. Most of that is because infallibility was poorly defined until relatively recently (even as late as Vatican II with respect to the obsequium religiosum), and a number of these theologians just didn't have a clear grasp of how infallibility was supposed to function. The most glaring example that I've found is in the brilliant historian Dom John Chapman's defense of infallibility, in which he ends up saying things (mostly in a footnote) that are just hard to read with a straight face. (Ironically, it was published by the Catholic Truth Society in 1907.) Specifically, Fr. Chapman says the following of Honorius's letters:

It was natural for the Byzantines, therefore, to treat it as giving the Roman view, natural that it should be followed by Sergius (whom in fact it bound since it was addressed to him), natural that it should remain a tower of strength to heretics until it had been authoritatively declared by Rome to be no embodiment of her tradition. Such a disavowal had become absolutely necessary as the complement of the Roman condemnation of the ecthesis and the typus, which had both been founded on Honorius, as we saw.

But once disowned by Rome, the words of Honorius were harmless against Rome. They were instantly reduced to their true value, as the expression of his own view.*

(* Infallibility is, as it were, the apex of a pyramid. The more solemn the utterances of the Apostolic See, the more we can be certain of their truth. When they reach the maximum of solemnity, that is, when they are strictly ex cathedra, the possibility of error is wholly eliminated. The authority of a Pope, even on those occasions when he is not actually infallible, is to be implicitly followed and reverenced. That it should be on the wrong side of a contingency is shown by faith and history to be possible, but by history as well as by faith to be so remote that it is not usually to be taken into consideration. There are three or four examples in history. Of these the condemnation of Galileo is the most famous, and the mistake of Honorius makes a good (or rather bad) second. But in this case the mistake was rectified within a few months, and after that, no one followed Honorius in good faith.)

The infallibility of the Pope is for the sake of the Church. Wherever his fall would necessarily involve the Church in the same error, he is infallible. Therefore he is infallible whenever he binds the Church by his authority to accept the ruling, and only then. It is a matter of history that no Pope has ever involved the whole Church in error. It is a matter of history that Pope after Pope has solemnly defined the truth and bound the Church to accept it. It is a matter of history that Pope after Pope has confirmed Councils which decided rightly and wrongly. It is a matter of history that Rome has always retained the true faith. If this was wonderful in the 7th century, it is more wonderful after thirteen more centuries have passed.

At this point, Fr. Chapman's view of infallibility is completely unprincipled, and it's because he is, at least in this case, a bad philosopher. Adherence to error is never natural; in fact, it's exactly the opposite. The idea that obedience to the Pope binds one to error is therefore a metaphysical impossibility. Fr. Chapman here is watering down infallibility to the point of triviality in order to preserve it, but infallibility needs to be far more robust than this from a philosophical standpoint to function effectively. For example, Fr. Chapman's assertion that one can correctly believe that a statement is binding only to find out a few months later that the statement has been reduced to its "true value" would be a manifest absurdity. It would require conditional assent, rather than the assent of faith, to papal teaching. The position that Fr. Chapman defends here would make papal authority senseless for purposes of divine revelation, for exactly the same reason that Scripture does not function as divine revelation without inerrancy.

The distinction that Fr. Chapman identifies, however, is a correct one: that the Pope is infallible "whenever he binds the Church by his authority to accept the ruling." But he makes the frankly ridiculous assertion that this is the case only "[w]hen they reach the maximum of solemnity, that is, when they are strictly ex cathedra." This is the same position taken by the liberal German bishops in the 1960s and all of the progressives that have since followed them, and it is absurd. Cardinal Franzelin pointed out that there are numerous instances where the Pope offers some kind of a definitive judgment from a disciplinary standpoint that does not amount to the kind of doctrinal definition required for an ex cathedra statement. Such commands are therefore infallibly safe to obey and can never lawfully be resisted. Thus, the pyramid Fr. Chapman describes is not a continuum; it has layers. At the apex are ex cathedra statements, which are infallibly true; at the next layer are those definitive disciplinary judgments that bind the entire Church in a human way, which are infallibly safe; at the next layer are private opinions that are to be "implicitly followed and reverenced," the deference to which is subject only to prudence.

One can rightly question the prudence of any judgment by the Pope, even of ex cathedra statements. One can plead for clarification or (where appropriate) reversal. What one cannot do is to question the authority of such statements, including the suggestion that the Pope himself has denied the faith or has led (or attempted to lead) the flock into heresy by such authoritative action. Fr. Chapman is correct that Pope Honorius was offering a private opinion along with his binding direction on how Sergius was to proceed (i.e., to adhere to the Chalcedonian faith), but Sergius was never bound (nor was anyone else) to Pope Honorius's private opinions. To say that there was binding but erroneous teaching in the letters is a contradiction in terms. What was condemned in the letters was never binding and never should have been followed.

Articles on Pope Francis and Church Authority

To understand my view on how Church authority operates in the context of divine revelation, please read my article Divine revelation as normative authority from April 2023. Other articles on this subject include the following:

Why Amoris Laetitia is back in the news (September 2022)

Can I venially murder? (November 2022)

A quick note on methodology (April 2023) (Relates to my apologetics approach for justifying Church authority)

The right way to recognize and resist (April 2023) (On permissible dissent from authority)

Scripture dysphoria (April 2023)

Prospective mitigation: the Trojan horse in Catholic moral theology (May 2023)

Does Amoris Laetitia dogmatize progressive moral theology? (July 2023)

Amoris Laetitia and Reconciliation (September 2023)

The infallible security of papal non-definitive teaching (October 2023)

What infallibility actually means for Catholics (October 2023)

What exactly does Pope Francis have in mind? (November 2023)

Justification as Quality

I saw an appearance on Parker's Pensées by the Calvinist philosopher Guillaume Bignon that was intended to clarify the discussion on justification between Protestants and Catholics. At the end of the discussion, he asked for feedback, and that is the spirit in which I offer this article.

I do think that Bignon helped to explain the difference between initial justification and progressive justification. But in my view, it still missed some fundamental differences in unshared assumptions. First, Bignon's discussion did raise a critical point: that when Catholics speak of works being a part of justification, this refers to progressive justification, where the interesting question is about how justification is obtained and retained, which is what Protestants mean by justification. The real question is "what must I do to obtain eternal life?" While the discussion was quite helpful to bring some of those unshared assumptions forward, especially the distinction between possession of justification (saving grace) and growth in justification, I believe that he did not give enough attention to the underlying concept that distinguishes the views, namely, that justification/righteousness is a quality in Catholic theology and a legal declaration in Protestant theology. That unshared assumption strikes me as the most significant reason for Catholics and Protestants talking past each other.

I. The Analogy to Physical Strength

To illustrate what I mean, I will use another quality: physical strength. Let's say that we define "strong" as being able to bench press the bar with no added weight. If you are capable of that, you are qualitatively "strong," which is to say, you have the quality of strength. Otherwise, you are not qualitatively strong. There are no qualitative degrees in terms of having the quality or not, but there are quantitative degrees of strength. One person can be stronger than another, in terms of being able to bench far more weight, but that quantative difference does not deprive even the weakest person meeting the qualifications from having the quality "strong."

In Catholic theology, sanctifying grace, with its aspects of righteousness and eternal life, is called a supernatural quality of the soul. This can be understood by analogy to the quality of physical strength that I described above. It can quantitatively increase, so that one has more grace, becomes more righteous, and is more alive. But qualitatively, one either has it or doesn't. We refer to that as a "state of grace," but the state in this case is not something other than possession of the quality.

This is fundamentally different from the Reformed view, which understands justification and eternal life as achieved legal states, as opposed to possession of qualities. From the Reformed perspective, to the extent there is an increase, it could only be toward perfection of the state, as opposed to an increase in a quality. To put it another way, a state is either instantaneous or the end of a process of perfection. In Reformed theology, for example, this is an instantaneous process -- the regeneration of the sinner by the Holy Spirit the produces faith. From that perspective, any kind of process in becoming justified (regenerated), especially a contribution of works to that process, must be a Judaizing or Pelagian view. But, of course, believing that about Catholics would be a mischaracterization of the Catholic view based on confusing progressive justification with the possession of justification. Bignon points out that this misconception on the part of Reformed Christians is part of why the dialogue becomes confused, since Catholics do not believe that works contribute to the possession of justification, only to its increase. (One might legitimately query whether the Reformed idea that perfect obedience is pleasing to God is itself a version of Pelagianism, but we will leave that aside in this discussion.) 

To articulate the explanation in terms of quality further, the Catholic view likewise distinguishes bare possession of the quality with the degree of the quality. This is the sense in which possession of the quality is described as "initial" justification, not in the sense of "the first time" but in the sense of simple possession being the initial condition. It is the zero point on the scale of justification from which increase in justification is measured; in my analogy to physical strength, it is being able to lift the bar with no added weight. In terms of the possession of the quality, both the Catholic and the Reformed views hold that it is given purely by grace and the sovereign election of God. For the Catholic, the ordinary course of grace will be by receipt of the Sacraments of baptism and penance, but because it is by grace, nothing prevents God from providing the same grace outside of the ordinary course. The grace-inspired works that we perform while in possession of that quality are in no sense a completion of that possession. Possession of the quality alone, by grace alone, suffices for salvation.

To restate this, the works performed by the justified person and the graces subsequently received to quantitatively increase righteousness and eternal life do not relate to the qualitative possession of righteousness and eternal life, which is either present or not. Pelagianism is the belief that the qualitative possession of righteousness and eternal life is by works and not grace. Pelagius believed that it was the faith demonstrated in the request for grace and not the grace itself that was justifying. The Judaizing belief condemned in Scripture was that performing the works of the Law was this basis for obtaining the quality. Neither is acceptable in Catholicism; both are condemned.

In analogy to physical strength, the Catholic understanding of sin is based on the durability of this quality as against injuries. A venial sin is the equivalent of some minor injury that temporarily impairs the ability to exercise the quality but does not permanently disable the quality. It is reparable by the spiritual equivalent of physical therapy in a variety of ways. Purgatory is essentially the afterlife rehab to allow the quality to return to its proper function. Mortal sins are those that permanently disable the quality, like injuries that remove the ability even to lift the bar. In that case, the Sacrament of Penance is like spiritual surgery to restore the quality, which can also serve a rehabilitative purpose in the same way any grace can.

II. Justification as Declaration

It's helpful at this point to skip ahead to the end of Bignon's presentation [around 1:20:00] to illustrate why something has been missed. Bignon offers the interpretation of the question of justification by faith alone as follows: "are we legally acquitted [Protestant view of justification, P-justification] by faith alone [Protestant view of faith as notitia + assensus + fiducia, P-faith]?" This is, in Bignon's view, restating the question "what must I do to obtain eternal life?" But it also obscures a distinction about what we mean by legal acquittal, and that seems to be the core difference.

Let's then turn back to what we mean when we say that the Reformed view views justification as a legal state. Bignon talks about forensic justification [at 8:00] as a legal acquittal before "the tribunal," but given the context of the discussion, what is meant here is the judgment at death. So now we've got another distinction within P-justification based on whether it's possible for faith to be lost. The standard Calvinist position is that the justification received by faith, the legal status, is irrevocable: once saved, always saved. Lutherans (and most other Protestants) believe that apostasy is possible, so the legal status is revocable. That creates a distinction between PR (Protestant-Reformed)-justification and PL (Protestant-Lutheran)-justification.

What this distinction highlights is that the question is even more complicated, because there is a difference between the legal declaration associated with possession of faith (which could itself be P-faith or C-faith) and the postmortem judgment. There may be a tendency at this point for people to just throw up their hands, because slogans like "works-salvation" against Catholics or "antinomianism" against Protestants are much easier to learn and to cast thoughtlessly at one's enemies. But Bignon and I are both opposed to that sort of lazy thinking, so in that spirit, I will not throw up my hands but instead firmly grasp the distinctions that need to be made.

So before we get into what the declaration is, let's start with what we mean by "possession of faith" in this context. We actually all agree on this, and what Bignon calls C-faith (intellectual assent) is not what Catholics mean when we discuss our own possession of faith. That is instead a Catholic caricature of what Protestants mean by faith, and we should all agree that this is just wrong. What we all mean by faith in terms of "saving faith" is faith situated in a complex of mental dispositions that naturally leads to obedience to God and love of neighbor. Protestants call that overall disposition fiducia; Catholics call it fides caritate formata (faith formed in charity).

We can quibble about the exact metaphysical nature of saving faith and whether it can be sustained in the absence of charity later, but for our purposes, it doesn't matter. The Protestant definition certainly doesn't exclude the presence of charity in the Catholic sense; Calvin even interprets James 2 as requiring that good works will be present (I'll discuss this in greater detail below). So let's just use what Bignon calls P-faith as the common term, since this is the kind of faith that we all consider saving faith. The declaration, whatever that means, is associated with the possession of P-faith. And in that since we all can say that we are justified, in the sense of receiving the declaration, by P-faith alone. That is to say that no works are required for the possession of P-faith and the associated declaration.

That seems like it would simplify things, yet it turns out we immediately diverge on how P-faith is associated with a legal declaration and what the legal declaration is. We can start with the declarations, and I will use the same lettering C-, PR-, and PL- lettering here. (I am using "Reformed" here to mean Calvinist; Arminians are in the Reformed tradition, but they follow the PL- approach.)

C-declaration: A permanent declaration that one has been adopted as Son and moved from the kingdom of Satan to the Kingdom of Christ, that all sins committed before this declaration will never again be counted under the law (acquittal of prior sins), and that one will thereafter be judged by the law of the Kingdom of Christ (the law of love)

PR-declaration: A permanent declaration that one has been adopted as Son and moved from the kingdom of Satan to the Kingdom of Christ, so that one's legal status is thereafter that of Christ and no sins, whether past or future, will ever be counted against the person

PL-declaration: A revocable declaration that the person has faith and therefore will not have sins counted against the person, which declaration is revoked if the person loses faith.

Then each system has a corresponding understanding of judgment:

C-judgment: Does the person possess the quality of righteousness?

PR-judgment: Has this person been declared to have the legal status of Christ? (Everyone who does not have this legal status fails the judgment, because that person is descended from Adam and/or has committed at least one sin.)

PL-judgment: Does this person have saving faith at the time of death?

What this has illuminated is that the PR- and C- views have more in common that the Protestant PL- view. So what Bignon has identified is a way that the Reformed tradition is in a specific sense "more Catholic" than the rest of Protestantism, and that proximity specifically consists in the permanent quality of the first such declaration. That means we can focus on the difference between the PR- and C- views, which are the closest, but we should also keep in mind what we have learned from the PL- view: that there might in principle be multiple such declarations.

III. PR-Declaration, C-Declaration, and Double Justification

Perhaps the most instructive lesson on the difference in PR-declaration and C-declaration is the failure of the Regensburg Colloquy in 1541 to obtain agreement between the two camps. Given that this was the immediately prior context for the Council of Trent, which unequivocally committed Catholics to denying imputed justification as a matter of dogma, there is little doubt that this was an important milestone in the realization of the difference between the two. Bignon correctly identifies Anthony N.S. Lane as one of the clearest expositors of Calvin's doctrine of justification, and his summary of that doctrine, titled "The Role of Scripture in Calvin's Doctrine of Justification," is to be highly commended for its clear explanation of the Regensburg concept of double justice (duplex iustitia). Understanding this concept is essential for understanding the difference between PR-declaration and C-declaration.

What Lane's explanation highlights is that the question "what must I do to obtain eternal life?" is actually a question of "what must I do to be pleasing to God?" The answer to that question in Reformed theology is "to render perfect obedience to His commands," referring to having perfectly obeyed those commands at every moment of one's life. Sin refers to any failure to do so at any time. Imputed justification is what is necessary to make up the gap between perfect obedience and the obedience that one has rendered, which is injustice.  Since it is clear in Reformed theology that Christ's passive obedience in sufficient to cover that gap for us, we need not consider whether there is also an active component in terms of Christ's having done what we failed to do. 

Reward, viewed strictly in terms of whether or not we receive it, is then based on the degree of our actual conformity to the perfect standard. In terms of the degree of reward, our degree of conformity is used as proxy for the degree of actual unity with Christ's own perfect righteousness. Given the regeneration by the Holy Spirit and faith itself is the means by which one is united to Christ and receives the declaration of righteousness, it is impossible that one has no degree of resemblance to Christ, so there will always be some degree of reward for the regenerate, which includes eternal life. This inevitability is established by the fact that the declaration itself is received only by grace based on the decree of election, so one's possession of the declaration in no way depends on the subsequent works performed. Those can change the degree of reward, but not whether one receives a reward.

The similarities between the Catholic and Reformed views on this point should be apparent, which was the basis for the agreement at Regensburg. Unfortunately, this papered over a real disagreement, which is the reason that Protestantism ends up being condemned at Trent. The relevant Tridentine teaching is that "the alone formal cause [of justification] is the justice of God, not that whereby He Himself is just, but that whereby He maketh us just, that, to wit, with which we being endowed by Him, are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and we are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are, just, receiving justice within us, each one according to his own measure, which the Holy Ghost distributes to every one as He wills, and according to each one's proper disposition and co-operation." That last statement "according to each one's proper disposition and co-operation" is the one that is routinely misinterpreted to suggest that works are somehow part of justification, but Bignon has correctly concluded that this is a mistake. What it shows instead is that the formal basis for both imputation and infusion is identical, and while that is expressed in Aristotelian terms, it is fundamentally just a description of what is pleasing to God.

In that respect, what the PR-declaration contemplates is that obedience to God's commands is pleasing. The C-declaration considers the quality of righteousness pleasing. The PR-declaration has in view extensive perfection, having always done everything perfectly. The C-declaration considers intensive perfection, whether one is capable of displaying supernatural virtue in individual acts and to what degree. These have corresponding accounts of why sin is displeasing; the PR-declaration contemplates that it spoils perfect obedience in an irreparable way, while the C-declaration considers it deleterious to retaining the fundamental quality (in the way that injuries are incompatible with the quality of physical strength). They have corresponding accounts of the fallen human nature; the PR-declaration considers all fallen humans to have failed in perfect obedience by association with Adam and to lack the capacity to render pleasing obedience, while the C-declaration contemplates humanity to be unable to develop the quality of righteousness without God's gracious intervention.

This difference in turn leads to a difference on imputation, i.e., what it means for sins "not to be counted against" someone. As the double justice approach at Regensburg illustrates, both the PR-declaration and the C-declaration involve imputation in terms of non-imputation of sins. So in the PR-declaration, this must be non-imputation of every failure to render perfect obedience. This means that Christ's own perfect obedience (justification before God) must be imputed to us, since He is the only man who has ever done what God commanded perfectly in order to achieve that legal status. Yet our regeneration means that we can do some things that are pleasing to God. This means that we are not completely vitiated (as is the case in total depravity) but that we will have rendered pleasing obedience in some partial way by being sanctified in union with Christ, by faith alone if nothing else. As per N.T. Wright, that partial obedience is what acts as the proxy for reward, including the reward of eternal life, following the legal acquittal for imperfect obedience. In other words, once we withstand the acquittal and negative judgment, the positive reward is based on what partial obedience we have rendered as the real-but-partial manifestation of our legal status.

Following Regensburg, we've now identified real similarities. Both the PR-declaration and the C-declaration involve imputation by God in order that past sins are not counted. Both involve a permanent and irrevocable legal declaration at the moment one is first justified by faith. But the Catholic view maintains that this is all based on possession of the quality of sanctifying grace, while the Reformed view is that faith is the mechanism by which one is incorporated into the mystical Body of Christ through which the declaration is made.

IV. Legal Fiction

With that as background, we can clarify an issue that is frequently confused in discussions on this point: the accusation that the Protestant doctrine of justification is a "legal fiction." In the first place, all that a legal fiction means is that the legal status is made by a legal declaration. Legal fiction is not narrative fiction in the sense of a made-up story contrary to the facts. When one is adopted, for example, one is truly the child of one's adopted parents under the law. To say that an adopted child is not "really" (or "ontologically") the child of his new parents is to deny the natural role of law and society in humanity. There are good reasons grounded in human nature for why one's normative legal and social obligations would be transferred to another parent, similar to the way one's legal and social obligations might be transferred to a new sovereign when one becomes a citizen of a different country than the country in which one was born. The legal fiction, the status created by the law, is a very real aspect of the society.

What is really at the heart of the criticism is not that imputation is a legal fiction but that it is an unjust legal fiction. The grounding of law in human nature is based on justice. There are plenty of reasons why it is just to move one's obligations to new parents or a new sovereign. Indeed, the entire idea of Christianity is to restore the good order that prevailed in Eden, in which human nature was rightly ordered to God and to creation. But there can also be unjust legal fictions, such as when one has the ability and obligation to make restitution to the victim of one's wrongdoing but the obligation is dispensed. So the question is how to address the obligations to God, which are clearly singular, in a just manner.

So the real criticism of the PR-declaration is not that it is a legal fiction but that it is an arbitrary legal fiction. This ties into my previous article on the Calvinist view of God as an earthly sovereign. God's commands would in that case be demands about what He wants from creatures, as opposed to inherent expressions of His eudokia (good will) for creatures. If the natural purpose of man is to live in relation to God, then both the commandments and their dispensation can be understood in the context of man achieving his end in God.

So the real distinction is in the retributive justice of God. Although retribution is commonly understood as punishment, depriving the criminal of something he possesses (such as freedom or life) in satisfaction of an obligation to the sovereign's justice, this cannot be applied identically in the case of God, because earthly sovereigns are not immanent in all of creation. It does apply metaphorically, and it is the misinterpretation of this metaphorical sense in an anthropomorphic way that creates the problem.

The principle of retribution is literally just giving back to someone what is the person's due. In ordinary retributive justice, the idea is that the offender has done something to disturb the peace of society and is obliged to yield something back toward that end. This giving back is traditionally called propitiation. The related idea is expiation -- removal of the evil from the society. The person's act of giving back also entails a rejection of the evil he has done, although this is frequently a compelled sufferance (punishment). These concepts are applicable in the divine context, but not univocally. For one thing, everything we have belongs to God, so we have nothing to offer to Him in satisfaction.

Thus, the modification of the concept specifically relates to the purpose of the created order, and this is an area where Reformed and Catholic theology has specific differences. Although both sides agree that God created for His own glory and to demonstrate His own divine attributes, they could not be farther apart in terms of how they interpret those concepts. In Reformed theology, this is a revelatory display to us and in us, very much akin to the revelatory purpose of Israel writ large for all of humanity. This is likewise related to a nominalist understanding of divine attributes in terms of the names put onto God based on human experience. In Catholic theology, it is a demonstration of God's absolutely unique relationship to creation as Creator, one of complete independence characterized solely by love and eudokia towards creation. The divine attributes are understood in the context of this fundamental ontological relationship, which makes them distinguishable according to either virtual (Dominican) or formal (Franciscan) distinctions. (The Palamite school of Eastern Orthodoxy would say that this is based on the essence/energies distinction, such that these divine attributes are associated with the divine energies.) Hence, the idea of satisfaction and atonement is based on Christ's unique offering, since He alone could freely give Himself as a sacrifice, and our real participation in His saving work.

To illustrate the contrast, I explained in a previous article why Reformed theology is nominalist and voluntarist, so the divine unity is resolved exclusively into the harmony and self-consistency of the divine will as an explanatory principle. Even the unity of the Persons in God is reduced to harmony of will (koinonia) among them. Likewise, union with Christ is harmony of will with Him. God's relationship with creation is reduced to one of divine command, which is why perfect obedience becomes the exclusive category for legal standing. One has either obeyed all of the divine commands at every point in his life, so as to have perfect harmony with the will of God, or one has not. Even categories of divine attributes, such as wrath or mercy, are grounded in divine command theory; they reflect decrees of the divine will toward creation. And because natures are explained only in terms of divine will, the legal category of the federal head becomes the basis of our unity in Adam or Christ, so that our legal status is primarily a question of our federal membership.

By contrast, the Catholic view of all of these matters is grounded in natural law, which is to say that everything legal is an expression of the more fundamental Creator-creature relationship in nature (the eternal law, in scholastic terminology). Since the purpose of man is union with God, the real presence of that union, sanctifying grace, is the basis of the law. The point of divine commands is not to establish that relationship by acts of divine will but only to demonstrate it in a certain way. And it is this demonstration that makes obedience not an end in itself but an instrumentality. One way to play music intentionally is to play specific notes and specific chord progressions, but it is also possible to play intentionally by knowing how to play the instrument and the sounds that it makes. The former is like the Mosaic Law, which includes learning an extensive "music theory" about the relation to God, while the latter is the natural law accessible to Gentiles. In either case, the goal of learning to play is to make the skill of playing connatural to the person, and this is how faith is understood in Catholicism, as the habitus of the soul like virtues or skills.

This means that the C-declaration is not simply arbitrary but that it is grounded in the quality of righteousness that the person has simultaneously been given. This is likewise grace, but the two forms of grace (the legal declaration and the infusion of supernatural virtues) are not separated. But it is possible for someone to act inconsistently with this state of grace and thus to lose it, meaning that the declared legal status then stands as a judgment against the reality of the person's manner of life. In that case, the original declaration that one is a citizen of God has remained irrevocable; God has never repented of the C-declaration admitting the Christian to the Kingdom. But under the new standard of the law of Christ, that citizen would be judged a criminal.

So it is not the question of "legal fiction" that separates Reformed and Catholic views of justification; both admit that the citizenship in the new Kingdom is a legal status, a creation of law. The question that separates the views is "what is divine law?" Reformed theology views conformity with the law as perfect obedience to every command directed to the person by God, which is a voluntarist account of the law that contradicts natural law. With respect to the Mosaic Law, the purpose of those commands was to uniquely illustrate Christ as the only one capable of performing divine commands perfectly, so that they have not been abrogated so much as fulfilled after having served their purpose. But with respect to the moral law, those commands are eternal and unchanging, so they continue to require perfect obedience, although the lesson of Christ shows that no human being will be able to attain them. We even agree that there is a retributive aspect of sacrifice in the sense that something must be given back to God to atone for what was done with His gifts that man has no capacity to give.

Despite all of this agreement, the fundamental difference is that Reformed theology has no metaphysical category to account for how the sacrifice of Christ is imputed to us. Lacking any robust account of theosis outside of union of will, what Reformed theology asserts as being "in Christ" lacks any account for why Christ having assumed the human nature can have an effect with respect to individual sin. This does not allow any distinction between the legal declaration that one is a citizen of the Kingdom and ontological participation in Christ, since the mode of union with Christ just is the legal declaration of being in the Kingdom of Christ. The nominalism of the Reformed view thus excludes the category of theological virtue and the account of justification as a metaphysical quality of the person. Yet this ontological basis is required for the justice of the imputational account. So Reformed theology uses the same terms as Aquinas and Bonaventure, but their conceptual structure is entirely alien. There can be no no real sacrifice, no real atonement, and no real salvation in such a model, since there is no theosis based on our consubstantiality with Christ.

Lutheran theology, by contrast, does not involve this fundamental denial of the unity in the basis of salvation in Christ. This is why, unlike the failure at Regenburg, the Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church were able to achieve a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification that highlights a fundamental agreement between the two sides on this subject. In both Catholic and Lutheran theology, the real participation in Christ (albeit articulated in nominalist terms in Lutheran theology) is the single basis for justification. As the Joint Declaration 4.2 maintains, "[w]hen persons come by faith to share in Christ, God no longer imputes to them their sin and through the Holy Spirit effects in them an active love. These two aspects of God's gracious action are not to be separated, for persons are by faith united with Christ, who in his person is our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30): both the forgiveness of sin and the saving presence of God himself." This is not to say that Catholics and Lutherans agree on the means of participation; there, Luther's nominalism continues to be an obstacle, which leads to philosophical errors like (purely) imputed righteousness and the genus majestaticum in Christology. But that philosophical error does not amount to an outright denial of essential soteriology as it does in Reformed theology. So even though the PR-declaration and the C-declaration have more in common in terms of the legal declaration itself, this similarity between Catholic and Reformed theology masks a fatal disagreement on the legal basis of salvation itself (possession of the quality of righteousness vs. perfect obedience). So even though the apparent similarity with Calvinism on justification may appear greater, the PL-declaration view is far more similar to the Catholic account of union with Christ.

V. Conclusion

Ultimately, Protestants do not agree with Catholics (or the Fathers, for that matter) on the nature of union with Christ in Christ's saving work; this is the point that I made in my debate with Fr. James at William Albrecht's Patristic Pillars. In that respect, pertaining specifically to justification as quality, Reformed theology is farther off the mark than Lutheran theology. But if we look specifically at the legal declaration and the concept of legal fiction involved in justification, we do find that this aspect of Reformed theology is more similar to the Catholic view than the Lutheran view.

Did Theodoret's Nestorianism lead to denial of the Filioque?

The argument for patristic denial of the Filioque, which has never struck me as particularly strong, relies quite heavily on an argument from silence concerning St. Cyril's response to John of Antioch. In particular, it asserts that Theodoret of Cyrus made an accusation against Cyril of disagreement with what Theodoret perceived to be the patristic tradition that the Spirit derived his existence from the Father alone, and that Cyril's lack of response to the charge confirms that he accepted the validity of Theodoret's critique. The use of the argument is summarized nicely by Brian Duong at 29:00 of this video, but I believe that there may be an even worse problem in relying on Theodoret's position: it is based on Theodoret's Nestorian philosophy.

Ed Siecienski presents a much-cited account of this argument at p. 49 of The Filioque, so let's use his version. First, let's start with his background on the situation. 

Yet in none of these passages, or anywhere in his writings, does Cyril say that the Spirit proceeds (ekporeuesthai) from the Father and the Son. Rather he consistently maintains that the Spirit progresses or flows forth (proienai, procheitai) from the Son, which is something rather different. That Cyril intends to retain an important distinction between the two concepts becomes clear in his exegesis of John 15:26, where he writes:

"Jesus calls the Paraclete 'the Spirit of Truth,' that is to say, his consoling Spiriti, and at the same time he says that He proceeds from the Father [para tou patros ekporeuesthai]. Thus as the Spirit is naturally proper to the Son, who exists in Him and progresses through him [di autou proion], yet he is at the same time the Spirit of the Father." [quoting the Commentary on John]

This distinction between ekporeuesthai and proienai allows Cyril, like Gregory of Nyssa before him and Maximus after him, to establish both a temporal and eternal relationship between the Son and the Spirit, yet one that does not involve the Son in the Spirit's ekporeusis. In Cyril's theology the Spirit proceeds from the Father [ekporeuetai ek tou Patros] but [from the Commentary on John] "is not a stranger to the essence of the only Son because he progresses naturally from him [proeisi de physikos ex autes]." Even if he never fully explicates the exact nature of this progression, Cyril is clear that the Spirit does not derive his ekporeusis or personal existence from the Son, a fact that becomes apparent in his debate with Theodoret of Cyrus.

There is actually nothing in Cyril's writings to support this distinction. The same is true of Gregory of Nyssa or Maximus, but Cyril is acknowledged in the scholarship for his interchangeable use of these terms. First, there is Brian Duong's citation of Epistle 55 that uses ekporeusis as a synonym of procheitai. This use is synonymous with how Latins use the term procedere for the Spirit. Moreover, Siencienski's own source on Cyril's pneumatology, The Theology of Cyril of Alexandria, also shows Cyril using ekporeuesthai in the same way as procedere. In interpreting Cyril's use of ekporeutai for the Son in the Commentary on John, Brian Daley in his chapter "The Fullness of the Saving God":

Cyril seems to be deliberately using the now-canonical terminology for the Spirit's origin to denote the Son's origin, as well, so as to identify both in terms of unity of substance and equality of status within the divine Mystery. In doing so, he shows concern about the negative implications of what would later be called a 'monopatrist' position on the origin of the Spirit: in the terms of the debates in which he was engaged, it could be taken to suggest that the Son and Spirit participate in different degrees in the one saving Mystery of God, which flows from the Father.

...

While not being a 'filioquist', then, in the precise sense of the later controversies, Cyril does show a tendency, unusual in the Greek theological tradition, to stress the Son's role, alongside that of the Father, in being genuinely the source of the Holy Spirit. The reason for this role of the Son, Cyril often repeats, is his unity of substance with the Father, a fully divine status which the Son himself received in being begotten. Nor is it helpful to apply to Cyril's thought a distinction often found in Greek theology since Photius: that the Spirit can rightly be said to come 'from the Son' with regard to his mission in sacred history. As we have seen repeatedly here, Cyril avoids and even outright rejects any way of thinking or speaking that might appear to drive a wedge between God's being in itself and God's action in history, through Christ and the Spirit, to create, to save, and to sanctify.

I follow Fr. Thomas Crean in concluding that Daley's assertion here that Cyril is not a "filioquist" is simply wrong. But we don't even need to reach that issue in order to show that Siecienski is mistaken in his assertion about the technical use of ekporeusis. Cyril has been shown to have used ekporeutai in exactly the same way that Latins use procedere: to broadly indicate procession and not as a technical term for the Spirit's mode of procession. Furthermore, he specifically seems to have used the term in this broader way to respond to Nestorian monopatrism. Even if you believe, as Daley and Siecienski do, that Cyril believes in some sort of eternal relation other than a relation of origin between the Son and the Spirit (which I believe to be completely wrong), the point is that Cyril considers the Nestorian denial of this relationship to be at least dangerous if not outright heretical.

But Siecienski, by contrast, seems to think that Cyril is conceding Nestorian monopatrism. Siecienski says the following:

Cyril, in his ninth anathema against Nestorius, had stated that the Spirit was Christ's own Spirit, which led Theodoret to question whether Cyril was advocating the idea that "the Spirit has his subsistence from the Son or through the Son" (ex Yiou e di Yiou ten hyparxis echon). For Theodoret this idea was both "blasphemous and impious ... for we believe the Lord who has said: 'the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father.'" Cyril denied that he held this teaching, leading Theodoret to confirm the orthodoxy of Cyril's trinitarian theology, since the Church had always taught that "the Holy Spirit does not receive existence from or through the Son, but proceeds from the Father and is called the proprium of the Son because of his consubstantiality."

Siecienski seems to have absolutely no idea what Theodoret is actually saying here, because he doesn't understand Nestorian philosophy, which is evidenced here by the technical term proprium. That philosophy is helpfully summarized in Vasilije Vranic's dissertation "The Christology of Theodoret of Cyrrhus," which updates Paul Clayton's magisterial work on the same subject. Proprium in Nestorian philosophy is used to establish a distinction between hypostasis and prosopon, as Vranic explains (pp. 94-96):

P. Clayton argues that the fact that Theodoret used the term prosopon to indicate distinction in the Holy Trinity does not necessarily mean that he used it as a synonym for hypostasis, but that the Antiochene tradition preferred this term "insofar as it indicates the outward perceptibility of the concrete reality being referred to. In the case of the Trinity's distinctions, this is pointed to in the earlier use of God as 'known' in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." Clayton concluses that "the probable metaphysical assumption" underlying Theodoret's Trinitarian theology is the Stoic doctrine of being. "Inasmuch as prosopon is the outward countenance of a hypostasis, and is thus that by which human sensibility experiences the hypostasis, it would have been easy for this Antiochene to use the former as a term of preference for indicating distinctions within the Godhead."

Clayton is right to suggest that it would be an error to equate Theodoret's understanding of the term hypostasis with his understanding of the term prosopon. The two are not interchangeable, since, like the Cappadocians before him, Theodoret understood hypostasis to be a set of individuating characteristics belonging to a prosopon. However, Clayton's understanding of Theodoret's use of prosopon to mean "an outward countenance of of a hypostasis" reduces it to a mere mask, which sits very uneasily with how it is used in Chapter 3 [of the Expositio rectae fidei]. There the term hypostasis designates only a part -- the personal characteristics -- of a prosopon. Thus, hypostasis functions as a pars pro toto for a hypostasis. At the end of chapter 3, Theodoret says that the term "unbegottenness," "begottenness," and "procession" define the hypostasis of each of the persons of the Trinity. Theodoret affirms that each term designates only the property (to idikon) of the person (prosopon). Had Theodoret, in his Trinitarian theology, used the term prosopon for the merely outward expression of a hypostasis, as Clayton argued, it would be hard to see how he could escape a charge of Modalism, i.e., of teaching that the three prosopa in the Godhead are not actually three distinct personal entities but a single divine prosopon, while the differentiation among the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit is a mere outward countenance, a mask. Such a blunder surely would not have escaped the attention of an astute theologian such as Cyril of Alexandria.

Vranic is, it seems to me, correct both in his metaphysical assessment of Theodoret and in his later assessment that the terminology originates from the Cappadocians. In other words, he is correct to say that what Theodoret means by prosopon is not the mere appearance (parsopa in Syriac). But he is demonstrably wrong if he tries to find the "part for whole" (mereological) account of hypostasis in the Cappadocians (pp. 118-19, inaptly citing Prestige and Turcescu concerning the definition of hypostasis). It is clear that the Cappadocian understanding of hypostasis in this sense was purely conceptual, while the reality of the hypostasis and the prosopon were the same thing, which I believe is what Andrew Louth, (who was also cited for his disagreement with Vranic) was actually saying. That real identity between the two is clearly the basis of the subsequent phrase "hypostasis or prosopon" in Greek and Latin theology. There is one reality, viewed as hypostasis, tropos hyparxeos, or prosopon conceptually, but they are not three things or parts in the metaphysical sense, but rather one individual or concrete existence.

The fact that Theodoret has a real distinction between hypostasis and prosopon seems clear enough from the Expositio rectae fidei 3:

In fact, they say, how - if what begets and what is begotten are differentiated, and what proceeds from that from which it proceeds (for the Father is uncreated, from whom the Son was begotten and the Spirit proceeded) - does the Son and the Spirit are the same as the Father? Because “uncreated”, “generated” and “proceeding” are not expressions of the essence, but rather modes of existence; The modes of existence characterize these expressions. For the manifestation of the essence is indicated by the name "God", since there is a difference between the Father and the Son and the Spirit according to the mode of existence, but they are the same by the definition of the essence. For by this the Father has being uncreated, the Son generatedly, and the Spirit proceedingly, the characteristics arising from the differentiation being visible; on the other the essential being of its substance is indicated, and is implied by the common name of “Divinity.” What I'm saying would be clearer this way. He who reflects upon the existence of Adam, the manner in which he was brought into being, will find that he was not begotten, for he was not born of some other man, but was formed by the divine hand. But the formation shows the mode of existence, since it indicates in what way he was created. In the same way, conversely, the mode of existence characterizes formation, since it is equally evident that it existed when it was formed. If you investigate the essence of him, by which he is united in common with the [men] who [have arisen] from him, you will find that the foundation of him is a man. For as the formation shows the mode of existence, the mode of existence characterizes the formation, and the definition of the essence shows that the foundation is a man, so we will also recognize it in God and Father. For if you inquire into his mode of existence, seeing that he has not been created by anyone else, you will call him “uncreated”; If you consider the name “uncreated”, you will recognize that it expresses the mode of existence. If you also wanted to know the very essence, by which he is united in common with the Son and the Spirit, you will explain it with the name of “God.” As “uncreated” and the mode of existence make each other known, the “God” is an indicator of the essence. For as Adam, although he had no birth, is united in common by the same essence with those who were begotten from him, in the same way no argument will be able to separate the communion, on account of his being uncreated, from the essence of the Father with the Son and the Spirit. Because “uncreated”, “generated” and “proceeding” are not indicators of the essence, but are designations of the substances; distinguishing the Persons and, particularly, showing the substance of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is sufficient for us. For just as we said that the uncreated directly distinguishes the substance of the Father, so, when we hear the designation "begotten" we understand it as a sign of the Son, and on the other hand, by means of the sign "proceeding" we recognize the particular Person of the Spirit. And these things are sufficient to demonstrate that “uncreated,” “generated,” and “proceeding” do not indicate the essence itself, but are distinctions of substances (hypostatic being, hypostaseon einai), and thereby also indicate the mode of existence (hyparxeos tropon).

Theodoret is associating the hyparxeos tropon within the individual existence, the prosopon, which is "also" indicated by the part (the hypostasis or hypostatic being). But the hypostasis is not the identical reality with the prosopon, as it is in Cappadocian theology. Rather, it is the composition of hypostasis (the individuating mode) with qnoma (the expressed nature) that produces prosopon. While Theodoret is using the terminology of the Cappadocians, the underlying concept seems to come from his predecessor Theodore of Mopsuestia (translated by Fr. Thomas Crean in Vindicating the Filioque at p. 207):

The Spirit Himself bears witness, who proceeds from the Father. For if by the word "proceed" he had understood not a natural procession but some external mission, it would have been uncertain about which of the many spirits who are sent in mission he was speaking, concerning which the apostle Paul says: "Are they not all ministering spirits, who are sent in mission?" But here he notes something proper,  from which he can be known to have alone proceeded from the Father.

[Commentary on John 15:26]

...

We believe in the Holy Spirit, who is from the substance of God, who is not a Son, who is God by substance, being of the substance of which is God the Father, from whom according to substance he is. "For we have not," he says, "received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God," separating him from all creation and joining Him to God, from whom he is in a proper manner beyond that of all creation; we consider creation to be from God not according to substance but by a creative cause; and we neither consider him a Son, nor as taking His being from the Son [oute dia Yiou ten hyparxis eilephos].

[Creedal statement attributed to Theodoret around the Council of Ephesus]

What Theodore seems to have in mind for "substance" here is the Syriac qnoma, the "real" existence of the nature as expressed, as contrasted with the abstract nature kyana. But he distinguishes this from the existence (hyparxis) of the prosopon, which is taken from the Father alone. So we see here the same composition between hypostasis (the idiomatic mode with its propria) and qnoma to produce prosopon, where the hypostasis/hyparxis/proprium comes from the Father alone. Nonetheless, the Spirit can properly be described as the proprium of the Son on account of the common qnoma from the Father, but not from [ex] the Son, since the Spirit does not receive existence from the Son.

The reason for the ambiguity between Theodoret's interpretation of the Cappadocians and the Cyrillian tradition seems to be what Johannes Zacchuber points out in The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: concrete existence was barely even a subject of interest in pagan philosophy. As Zacchuber observes of the Cappadocian account, "[i]t also leaves unexplained the relationship between the 'substantial' and the 'accidental' component of the individual" (p. 69). It is that ambiguity that causes Theodoret to posit his own mereological account in which the hypostasis (propria) is a part of the prosopon, which is in turn composed of the hypostasis plus the concretely expressed nature (qnoma in Syriac, rather than parsopa). The hypostasis functions a bit like the property of haecceity in Scotist metaphysics, but it differs in including individuating characteristics (propria), which is unique to the Nestorian metaphysics.

In that respect, I think Vranic's attempt to exonerate Theodoret from the charge of Nestorianism is in vain; there can be no strict identity between hypostasis and prosopon required by Cyrillian Christology as endorsed by Chalcedon. If there is a real distinction, a real non-identity, between the hypostasis and prosopon, Nestorianism is unavoidable. I do believe that this error is philosophical rather than dogmatic, as evidenced by the Common Christological Declaration between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East. But the denial of the real identity between hypostasis and prosopon as the concrete existence of both divine and human natures cannot be consistently maintained with orthodox Christology.

Yet this distinction between hypostasis and prosopon is exactly the basis by which Theodoret asserts that "the Holy Spirit does not receive existence from or through the Son, but proceeds from the Father and is called the proprium of the Son because of his consubstantiality." It is not even coherent to say that the Spirit proceeds from the Son according to essence (ousia) (as Cyril affirms) but not according to existence unless one accepts this distinction between the qnoma of the prosopon and the hypostasis (hyparxis). It is exactly this distinction that Chalcedonian orthodoxy rejects, so both the anti-filioquist argument and the assertion that Cyril was not a filioquist are based on Nestorian philosophy. For that reason, the rejection of the filioque based on Theodoret requires the implicit adoption of a Christological heresy.

What exactly does Pope Francis have in mind?

Larry Chapp just wrote an excellent piece on Pope Francis's motu proprio on theologians, titled Ad Theologiam Promovendam. Dr. Chapp's article is titled "New papal document read like a conclusion in search of an argument," and it correctly summarizes the sentiment that more or less any Catholic student of the ressourcement and the theology of Pope St. John Paul II would naturally have. But I think there is a more parsimonious explanation for Pope Francis, who himself canonized the Polish Saint.

First, here is Dr. Chapp's position:

Again, this is a conclusion in search of an argument. And lurking behind it all is the clear desire to utterly dismantle the theological legacy of Pope John Paul II. People of a certain age simply cannot fully appreciate the depth of antipathy that the Catholic Left had for John Paul II. He was their great white whale and they did everything that they could to undermine his papacy. They loathed and hated him. Why? Because he had almost single-handedly put the brakes on their attempt to utterly Protestantize and secularize the Church. They hated Ratzinger/Benedict XVI for the same reasons. And so now we get the Motu proprio which reads like Tucho Fernandez’s revenge on what he probably views as the “anti-Vatican II” reign of terror of the previous two popes.

At this point my usual popesplaining critics will roll their eyes and say, “There goes hyperventilating Chapp again unfairly attacking the Pope.” But I would ask all of them to ponder a few simple questions.

Why was this Motu proprio needed at all? What motivated it? What problems in theological method does it really think are out there and in need of remedy? Exactly what kinds of theology is it really disinviting from the table and which kinds of theology is it inviting to the table? You don’t write Motu proprios without good reason. If this document is just a big “nothing burger” in total continuity with previous pontificates, why was it written at all? If there is “nothing new here so everyone can just keep moving along” then what is its point?

And if the popesplainers merely repeat the explanations given in the document, then they too will be guilty of an uncharitable and empirically false caricature of the theological achievements of the past 100 years and of the previous two pontificates in particular.

This is the Pope’s post-Synodal shot across the bow about what he wants to see happen before the next Synod in 2024. It is blunt and brutal in its own quiet, avuncular way. Kind of like the Pope himself. Tastes like honey. Laced with arsenic.

But I think the answer is that Dr. Chapp and Pope Francis are talking past each other, and this is because Pope Francis is actually coming from a completely different cultural context. What I believe Pope Francis is trying to do is to share what he considers to be the genius of the specifically Argentinian theological method -- the People's Theology -- with the entire Church. While Cardinal Fernandez himself is very likely more progressive than Pope Francis, their shared commitment is to the uniquely Argentinian approach of the People's Theology. Once this is understood, it is much easier to explain why this is not in any sense about substantive theology, progressive or not, at all, and it makes much more sense of why Pope Francis himself, while he himself rejects no doctrines, nevertheless insists on this populist methodology that involves essentially no doctrinal discipline.

The best summary I have found of Pope Francis's theological background is a remarkable article by Silvana Martinez and Juan Aguero titled "The Pope Francis' philosophy and the social work values." Relevant excerpts for this discussion include the following:

Pope Francis is recognized as a world leader for his values and social compromise. These values are linked to their life simplicity, their capacity for dialogue and ecumenism, their political perspective on social reality, their option for the poor and popular movements, and their deep compromise with the social justice. These values and convictions come from his life philosophy and his theological formation. The ideas of the theologian Juan Carlos Scannone, one of the founders and ideologues of the Liberation Philosophy and Theology and People’s Theology, exerted an enormous influence on Pope Francis. Liberation Philosophy and Theology developed in the 1960s and 1970s and influenced the whole Latin America. They are based on a profound critique of the structures of domination and oppression of the people and on a critique of the Church for its self-referential gaze and for being away from the suffering of the dominated and oppressed.

People’s Theology is a genuinely Argentine creation derived from the Liberation Theology. It puts the accent on the people conception, on popular culture, on popular knowledge, on people solidarity, and on popular movements. It has connections with the Justicialism’s philosophy, a political movement created in the 1940s by Juan Domingo Perón. The guiding principles of this movement are social justice, political sovereignty, and economic independence.

People’s Theology differs from the theology of liberation by taking as central categories not only the people but also the popular culture, moving away from the Marxist conception of popular vanguard that leads the praxis of liberation. For Juan Carlos Scannone (1978), the category "town" is historical-cultural. It is a symbol category that designates all those who share a historical liberation project. It is a cultural category because it aims at the creation, defense, and liberation of a cultural ethos or human style of life. It is a historical category because only historically can be determined in each particular situation, who and to what extent can we truly say people. It is a symbol category for its summoning and significant wealth. This conception of the town of Scannone is also shared by Lucio Gera (1974).

For these authors, liberation exists in historical and specific cultural molds of the different peoples. Every project of liberation is concretized in the sociopolitical and must bear in mind the history and idiosyncrasy of each town. The theology of the people is totally different at this point not only from the theology of liberation but also from the Marxist conception of socioeconomic class identified with the proletariat or the peasantry.

...

The Pope Francis’ thinking has a strong link with the social work values. His social vision condensed in the ideas of Earth, Roof, and Work expresses the great values supported by social work such as social justice, democracy, human rights, citizenship, sustainable development, wealth distribution, solidarity, freedom, emancipation, among others. The International Federation of Social Workers and International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) included these values in the current Global Statement of Social Work Ethical Principles. This statement was approved in 2018. We next refer to some of these principles. One of them is the recognition of the inherent dignity of the human being.

...

Another principle is the promotion of the human rights.

...

There is also the social work principle of promotion of the social justice.... Social justice implies above all the equitable access of all men to resources and fundamentally the just distribution of wealth.

...

Another ethical principle supported by the Global Social Work is the right to self-determination that every human being and every people has.... International Social Work also has an ethical principle the right to participate in decision-making when it affects a social group.

...

Finally, the principle of the holistic view of the human being as a multidimensional and historical being. Social workers recognize the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives and understand and treat all people as whole persons.... Faith in God in the thought of Pope Francis is a faith embodied in history and in the nature with which every human being is constituted.

Pope Francis and the Church

Based on the justicialist approach that Francis has in mind, the number one concern he would have is the notion of power being lorded over the people, especially those already suffering under structures of domination and oppression. His view of the Church is not one without doctrine, in the sense of doctrinal truth, but one in which there are no doctrinal enforcers. One can think of this approach as almost Socratic: the student of theology must be allowed to come to the realization himself. But in this case, it is a collective populist approach in which dialogue around the common good will, if domination is excluded, result in agreement around what is good. It is not that there is not any inclination toward sin, but that this populist approach is inherently incompatible with the selfishness that is the root of sin.

Thus, if there is success in forming the Church as a justicialist society, a "town" writ large, then the principle of supernatural charity will naturally flourish. And it is this concept that Francis has in mind for the synodal Church, where each level of Church jurisdiction functions as the "town" and even the Church as a whole follows the pattern. The faith and doctrinal truth in this case serves as a supernatural analogue to nationalism in the justicialist system: a principle of loyalty around which the collective populist action is built, one that is not enforced but rather reinforced by the populist focus on the common good. In some ways, this concept of faith as allegiance is actually more Biblical; see Matthew Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone. 

For Francis, then, the purpose of church discipline is solely to prevent this selfishness that leads to domination, not itself to serve as "church discipline" over doctrinal matters, which he himself sees as oppressive. Rather, the role of the leader is to advocate for the essential role of the people, especially the poor and oppressed, in the political process, which is precisely why such leaders are beloved. I say this the following in complete seriousness: it is worth listening to "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" from Evita to get a sense of this connection between the people and their political leaders. An idealized version of peronista politics built on servant leadership, a kind of supernatural Argentina, seems to be the Pope's vision for the synodal Church. Moreover, I believe that this is his understanding of why the Holy Spirit chose a South American, and specifically Argentinian, Pope at the present time and why Pope Francis has in turn selected Cardinal Fernandez as his most preferred adviser.

It seems clear to me that he puts this political vision of the Church far above any specific doctrinal priorities, since his belief is that in such a populist structure, discipline is an outmoded strategy of domination. His attacks on traditionalism are existential; he see traditionalists as a separatist elite that prevents true populism, and he sees bishops who encourage them as operating contrary to the populist unity. It is not an attack on the Latin Mass itself, then, but the elitism and separatism that prevents them from fellowship with other Catholics, and this approach is consistent with the one he has taken with respect to the Syro-Malabar Rite concerning liturgical schisms. He believes that discipline should only be used in defense of his populist vision of unity without separation, which he sees as threatened by traditionalists particularly but also conservatives to a lesser extent by their emphasis on authority and discipline, especially in curial positions. 

The conservatives, for their part, seem to be openly challenging Pope Francis in order to provoke a confrontation, one that they seem to believe will show him that some level of discipline and authority will be required. It is axiomatic, at least for those of a more European sensibility, that discipline is a necessary feature of the episcopate. But Francis seems particularly keen not to take the bait, even for those as hostile as Archbishop Vigano, because he wants to show that he will let anyone speak who is not actually exerting power over anyone. It is this openness to everyone, even those with whom he disagrees, that distinctly characterizes his populist vision. The liberals and conservatives are all allowed to have a voice, so long as they do not cultivate separation, exclusion, or elitism.

In my opinion, it is this deeply Argentinian vision of the Church based on the People's Theology that is alien to the European culture of the Church at large. This vision is confused with that of the Western Left, especially given the remote origins of the People's Theology in Marxist liberation theology, but the politics are purely Argentinian. The Pope is a peronista, not a leftist, and his vision of populism is not anything like the class revolution of Marxism. Indeed, it has much in common with the populism of Pope St. John Paul II, which I suspect is why Pope Francis canonized him. (One might note that the Polish Pope was himself criticized for his failure to discipline doctrinal dissent.) It is based on a concrete unity and solidarity, exemplified by the "town," in which all work for the good of everyone. If we consider Pope Francis's view of the "town" in this sense in terms of John Paul II's own use of subsidiarity and solidarity, it might be easier to see the continuity, even though the Peronist political system is not at all familiar to that of Western democracies.

In any case, it is my sense that people are missing something important about Pope Francis in simply lumping him in with European leftists or progressives. I hope that this explanation will help to understand both his intolerance for liturgical separatism and curial authoritarianism but his tolerance for dissenting views of both the progressive and conservative stripes.