Preview: "Catholics are . . . not papists but Christians" (Cardinal Müller)

On the Crisis Magazine website, I had to stop and read an opinion piece with the word "Papist" in the title. Since the word "Papist" rang my English Reformation bells, I asked Anna Mitchell on the Son Rise Morning Show if she'd like to use our Monday morning segment on January 29 to discuss the Cardinal's use of that word. She said yes, so we'll do it at our usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

The headline for an exclusive Q&A interview with Cardinal Gerhard Müller begins with the quotation "The Catholic Church is not the Pope’s Church and Catholics are therefore not papists but Christians" as an edited pull quote from a longer sentence in the Cardinal's response to the second question ("What has the Church traditionally taught on the limits of papal authority? ")

 . . . The approach to a Catholic ecclesiology is important. In Lumen Gentium, Vatican II did not begin with the Pope because, contrary to what traditional Protestant polemics believed, the Catholic Church is not the Pope’s Church and Catholics are therefore not papists but Christians. Christ is the head of the Church and from Him all divine grace and truth passes to the members of His body, which is the Church. This is also what Vatican II says with the highest authority in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei verbum (Art. 10). (emphasis added0

Papist is a pejorative term for Catholics: it was commonly used through the long English Reformation and even used when Parliament began passing Acts allowing Catholics more religious freedom (cf ,The Papists Act of 1788,  18 Geo. 3. c. 60). Therefore, I found it interesting that Cardinal Müller used a term so associated in my mind at least with the English Reformation and the long-lasting fear of and prejudice against Catholics in England and her Colonies.

Cardinal Müller is denying that Catholics have ever been Papists. This pejorative term, traditionally used by Protestants against Catholics does not reflect true Catholic identity, according to his answer. We are Christians, not Papists. We should not let others define our identity, based on sixteenth century Protestant tradition handed down through the centuries.

Its first use as a noun in England occurred in 1528 (as in, "He is a Papist") according to Merriam-Webster; as an adjective in 1562 (as in, "He has Papist loyalties"). 

In 1528, William Tyndale had written and published The Obedience of the Christian Man, which advocated Caesorapapism (the monarch's control of the church in his realm) and the Divine Right of Kings. Anne Boleyn persuaded Henry VIII to read the book and he was influenced by it. In 1532, the Convocation of Bishops agreed to the Submission of the Clergy, abdicating their rights to make ecclesiastical laws to the king and Sir Thomas More resigned as Lord Chancellor, because he would be responsible for enforcing the laws Henry VIII made.

The opposition cited by this term by English Protestants was between the English monarch (Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth I, James I, Charles I, etc., etc.) and the pope at the time (many popes, from Clement VII, to Pope St. Pius V, to Gregory VIII, to Leo XI, to Blessed Innocent XI, etc., etc.): the issue was: what divided loyalty between secular ruler cum supreme governor of the Church of England and the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, could be allowed on either side?

When Pope St. Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I and took the further step of declaring English Catholics not bound to loyalty to their monarch (in belated support of the Northern Rebellion) in 1570 (Regnans in Excelsis), he merely intensified the conflict. His successor, Pope Gregory XIII tried to dial it back by separating loyalty and obedience to the Papacy and the Catholic Church in religious matters from loyalty to the monarch and country in civil matters. Although Queen Elizabeth stated that she wanted no window into men's souls, she still wanted their total loyalty, body and soul.

The Appellants late in Elizabeth I's reign tried to reach an agreement with the queen on the grounds of those separate loyalties, and James I also tried to craft a compromise, but the conflict of loyalties remained. An emblem of these failures would be the martyrdom of Blessed Robert Drury: he was one of the signers of the loyal address of 31 January 1603 which acknowledged the queen as lawful sovereign on earth, but maintained their loyalty in religious matters to the Pope. After the Gunpowder Plot discovery, James I required the Appellants to sign a new oath which acknowledged his authority over spiritual matters. Robert refused, and was arrested in 1606 for the crime of being a priest. He was offered his freedom if he would sign the oath; he declined. Martyred by being hanged, drawn, and quartered on 26 February 1607 at Tyburn, London England. He--and Blessed Roger Cadwallador, another former Appellant signatory, martyred on  27 August 1610--is one of the Eighty-five Martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Saint Pope John Paul II in 1987.

And a survey of the many martyrs of the long English Reformation shows that it was issue of authority and loyalty between the monarch and the pope at the time that mattered, especially during the early part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, because of Regnans in Excelsis. Nevertheless, most of the missionary priests considered martyrs were found guilty under laws that made it illegal for them to even be present in England, and the laity considered martyrs were found guilty either of assisting the priests, attending Mass, obdurate recusancy (refusal to attend Church of England services), converting to Catholicism, etc. That's why many of the martyrs made statements on the scaffold saying they were loyal to the monarch in all civil martyrs, but followed their consciences to practice the Catholic Faith, especially by celebrating and attending Holy Mass. It is, however, also true that some of these Catholic martyrs upheld the Pope's authority to depose a monarch, although how that would be actionable in sixteenth or seventeenth century England is difficult to see.

We should also note that the Catholic Church would not and has not beatified or canonized any of those priests and laity who were involved in any plot to kidnap, depose, or assassinate a monarch--or blow up Parliament.

Skipping a few centuries, Cardinal Müller also alludes to the Kulturkampf of Chancellor Bismarck in Prussia after the First Vatican Council in 1870:

The German bishops, with the approval of Pope Pius IX, declared to the German Chancellor Bismarck, who wanted to misuse Vatican I to justify the destruction of the Catholic Church in the “Kulturkampf”: “…the infallible magisterium of the Church is bound to the content of Holy Scripture and Tradition as well as to the doctrinal decisions already given by the ecclesiastical magisterium” (Denzinger-Hünermann no. 3116).

And we know that Saint John Henry Newman responded to William E. Gladstone's over-reaction to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.
 

The term travelled across the Atlantic Ocean to the British American Colonies, of course, thus a couple of recent books including the term, Papist Patriots: The Making of American Catholic Identity by Maura Jane Farrelly and Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1574-1783 by Robert Emmett Curran. The fear of Papal authority influenced politics throughout the 19th century: the Know-Nothing Party, the State-by-State Constitutional Blaine Amendments, etc. 

In 1928, when Al Smith ran for President, he was called a Papist! and we know that in 1960 candidate John F. Kennedy faced, and mollified, to some extent, fears that he would obey the Pope instead of the U.S. Constitution.

It's fascinating to consider how this term "Papist" either as a noun or adjective, has a divisive tradition from the sixteen to the twentieth centuries.

All images public domain:

Top image: William Tyndale

Bottom image: An anti-Catholic cartoon shows Cardinal Francesco Satolli, who was appointed in 1893 as the first Papal Delegate to the United States, casting a shadow (looking a like Pope Leo XIII) across the country.