Part I: Vatican I and Vatican II
“From Leo XIII to Leo XIV, remember, even if it is a glory to trial, clarity to confusion, the papacy remains part of the divine plan, but it is not always a sign of approval. Sometimes it is a test, and sometimes it is a crown of thorns. Hold fast.”
“O Lord Jesus Christ, Eternal High Priest, Thou hast permitted Pope Leo XIV to ascend the Chair of Peter at a time of great confusion and suffering for Thy flock. We place him into Thy Sacred Heart, praying that he may be conformed ever more deeply to Thee, governed not by the spirit of the age, but by the Spirit of Truth.”
– Bishop Joseph E. Strickland1
When addressing the College of Cardinals after his election, Pope Leo XIV explained his reason for choosing the name Leo, indicating that he was inspired by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, the Church’s response to the social problems of the modern world. In addition to social doctrine, Leo XIII also left an immense body of other teaching, and an important part of this concerned the nature of the Church.
Leo XIII’s pontificate followed that of Blessed Pius IX, the pope of the First Vatican Council in 1869-1870. A document had been prepared for that Council on the nature of the Church, but it was not promulgated because the Council was not able to complete its work. However, an English edition of documents of the Magisterium published by the Jesuit Fathers stated: “…the draft may be said to reflect the mind of the teaching Church at that time. Its theological value is further attested by the conformity evident between it and later papal pronouncements….”2
It was Leo XIII who developed this doctrine about the nature of the Church with his encyclical Divinum Illud, in which he taught that the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is the Soul of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. This doctrine was further explained by Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis, where he repeated the teaching that the Holy Spirit is the Soul of the Mystical Body, adding that the Catholic Church alone is the Mystical Body on earth. In contrast to this teaching, the principal document of the Second Vatican Council on the Church, Lumen Gentium, in the opinion of well-known French theologian Father Louis Bouyer, “completely ignores the Holy Spirit!” Father Bouyer explains his observation in this way: “…if the ecclesiology of the Council is strongly Christological, it gives practically no place to the Spirit, despite a few preliminary statements in the first chapter of Lumen Gentium.” 3 Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, in a conference at his seminary in Ecône, Switzerland on February 15, 1979, also cited this observation of Father Bouyer.
To put this interpretation of the Second Vatican Council in perspective, however, one must turn to Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on the Holy Spirit of May 18, 1986, Dominum et Vivificantem. After stating in the first paragraph that the Church “has proclaimed since the earliest centuries her faith in the Holy Spirit,” he adds the following in the second paragraph: “In the course of the last hundred years this has been done several times: by Leo XIII, who published the Encyclical Epistle Divinum Illud Munus (1897) entirely devoted to the Holy Spirit; by Pius XII, who in the Encyclical Letter Mystici Corporis (1943) spoke of the Holy Spirit as the vital principal of the Church, in which he works in union with the Head of the Mystical Body, Christ; at the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, which brought out the need for a new study of the doctrine on the Holy Spirit, as Paul VI emphasized….”
What is acknowledged in these observations of John Paul II is that it was only after Vatican II that the Holy Ghost was more extensively studied, whereas He was not sufficiently taught by the Council itself. But this theological development began from a perspective different from that of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XII after Vatican I and before Vatican II. Eleven years after John Paul II’s encyclical, the Theological-Historical Commission for the Great Jubilee Year 2000 issued a document stating regarding Our Lady’s role in the Incarnation: “Mary, by giving birth to Jesus, engendered, in a certain sense, all of humanity.” And then it added: “Christ, in fact, from the first moment of his earthly existence ‘recapitulates’ in himself all humanity and, in a special way, all the baptized.” 4
The emphasis and doctrinal development represented by the popes from Leo XIII until Pius XII was on the unique presence of the Holy Ghost in the Catholic Church, and therefore among its baptized members, the Mystical Body to which “all of humanity” was being called. Therefore, Our Lord Jesus Christ “recapitulates” in Himself these members, not merely “in a special way,” but in the fundamental and primary way that constitutes His Mystical Body on earth. Because Pope Leo XIV has now spoken of the “sensus fidei,” the sense of the faith, as a principle to which the Church must adhere, he gives hope to traditional Catholics that there will be a return to the more complete doctrine about the nature of the Church as taught before the Second Vatican Council.
It was during the last full year of the pontificate of Leo XIII that Cardinal Merry del Val, the future Secretary of State under Pope St. Pius X, published his book The Truth of Papal Claims,5 in which he clearly affirmed the traditional papal doctrine about the nature of the Church. Earlier during Leo XIII’s pontificate, the pope had a vision of a terrible assault against the Church and against the Chair of Peter, which is reflected in the Exorcism and the Prayer to St. Michael that he wrote after receiving that vision.6 By taking the same name as his predecessor Leo XIII, Pope Leo XIV provides historical context from which to address a crisis in the Church that his predecessor had foreseen more than a century ago.
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1 Bishop Strickland: ‘From Leo to Leo: the Passion of the Church and the unchanging crown’ https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/bishop-strickland-from-leo-to-leo-the-passion-of-the-church-and-the-unchanging-crown/?utm_source=most_recent&utm_campaign=usa
A Prayer for Pope Leo XIV https://bishopjosephstrickland.substack.com/p/a-prayer-for-pope-leo-xiv
2 The Church Teaches: Documents of the Church in English Translation (St. Louis and London: B. Herder Book Co., 1961), p. 87.
3 “Louis Bouyer of the Oratory, The Church of God: Body of Christ and Temple of the Spirit (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1982), p. 172, from the French edition of 1970.
4 The Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of Life (New York: A Crossroad Herder Book, 1997), p. 86.
5 The Truth of Papal Claims (Boonville, New York: Preserving Christian Publications, 2012).
6 Pope Leo XIII and the Prayer to St. Michael (Boonville, New York: Preserving Christian Publications, 2018).
The Truth of Papal Claims
https://pcpbooks.org/products/the-truth-of-papal-claims
A Reply to "The Validity of Papal Claims" of F. Nutcombe Oxenham
by Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val
“The Truth of Papal Claims, by Raphael Cardinal Merry del Val, which Preserving Christian Publications has recently reprinted….is a worthy edition of an important Catholic work. I am most grateful to have a copy of the book.” – Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
2012 xvi 129 pages + 15 page appendix [reprint of 1902 ed.] hardback $18.00 #55743
Pope Leo XIII and the Prayer to St. Michael
https://pcpbooks.org/products/pope-leo-xiii-and-the-prayer-to-st-michael-second-edition
by Kevin J. Symonds
From the foreword of Bishop Athanasius Schneider:
“In his book Pope Leo XIII and the Prayer to St. Michael Mr. Kevin Symonds presents a very careful and competent historical research about the origin and the circumstances of the publication of the prayer to St. Michael....Furthermore he gives also a rich spiritual reflection on the Divine truth about the Holy Angels, the fallen angels and the reality and necessity of the spiritual battle. Mr. Symonds’ book is indeed very relevant for our times. May this book become widespread and raise to many Catholics—especially the clergy—a new awareness of the necessity to use the spiritual means which God and His Church have given us in order to fight against the infiltration and attacks of the evil spirits.”
2018 [2nd edition enlarged] ix + 242 pages IL hardback $18.00 #55990