Guest
Peter Kwasniewski earned a B.A. in liberal arts at Thomas Aquinas College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America. Since 2018, Dr. K has been a full-time writer and speaker, contributing to blogs, magazines, and newspapers. He has published over twenty books and his work has been translated into at least twenty languages.
Links
- Unresolved Tensions in Papal-Episcopal Relations (book)
- Ultramontanism and Tradition (book)
- Bound by Truth (book)
- Does Traditionis Custodes Pass the Juridical Rationality Test? (book)
- True Obedience in the Church (book)
- Are Canonizations Infallible? (book)
- Flee from Heresy (book)
Transcript
Eric Sammons:
The reign of Pope Francis has revealed a crisis in the relationship between bishops and the Pope, from the sacking of Bishop Strickland to the Vatican micromanagement of diocese and even parishes. What is the proper relationship between Peter and the other apostles? That’s what we’re going to talk about today on Crisis Point. Hello, I’m Eric Sammons, your host, editor in chief of Crisis Magazine. Before we get started, smash that like button, subscribe to the channel, let other people know about it.
Our guest today needs no real introduction, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski. He is the man who writes or edits a book every week. The one we’re going to be mostly referring to today is called Unresolved Tensions in Papal Episcopal Relations, Essays Occasioned By the Deposition of Bishop Joseph Strickland. I have it right here, wonderful book. I’ll make sure I put a link to it so people can buy it, can get to it quickly. We’re not really talking about the book today as much as we’re talking about the issues related to the book and how they apply to what’s going on today. Obviously, the book, as it says in the subtitle, was occasioned by the sacking of Bishop Strickland, but there’s been so much tension between the papacy and the episcopacy over the past number of years. There’s a lot we can cover here.
So first of all, just welcome, Peter. I appreciate you coming on.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Thank you, Eric. Always a pleasure.
Eric Sammons:
Why don’t we first just start, though, with the sacking of Bishop Strickland? It happened last November. I had his excellency on a couple of weeks ago and just talk about what was so crazy about that. A lot of people, Catholics, think, “Oh, well, the Pope’s in charge. He can fire and hire bishops, so no big deal.” But really, it was a radical move. So explain to us why that was so radical.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yes. Basically, what we have to understand is that the church teaches, and teaches consistently, that the bishops, no less than the pope, are successors of the apostles. That’s a big deal right there. Just let that sink in, successors of the apostles. They are the apostles in our midst. And that the bishops rule by a kind of divine rite. I don’t mean that in the Protestant divine rite of king sense, but they’ve been appointed by the pope and they have to be consecrated, but once they’re in possession of that episcopal office, they rule and they teach and they sanctify with a rite proper to them.
They’re not like branch managers hired by the CEO of a corporation who can hire and fire at will. That’s not the way the church has ever thought about it. In fact, throughout church history, some of the points of tension, which have arisen from time to time between the episcopacy and the papacy have precisely to do with an overreach, either on the part of the one or on the part of the other.
So sometimes it’s the bishops who overreach. For example, you have this phenomenon called conciliarism, which is a heresy. It’s been condemned. Conciliarism is the view that the supreme authority in the church is a council of bishops, of which the pope would be a member, but he has no special status. That’s conciliarism. There’s also the error of Gallicanism, which is a quasi-political error, because it sort of means the bishops of a national area like France, Gall, in the old way of speaking, that they would be the supreme authorities within their own territory. Unfortunately, we’ve seen some of that returning with the Germans all the way. The German bishops are basically acting as if they were Gallicanists. We’re in charge of our local church.
But the popes have also overreached at times. There have been times when popes have tried to dictate to bishops, “This is the way you’re going to rule your diocese. You’re going to establish or disestablish this religious community or this monastery. You’re going to appoint my favorite nephew into one of your posts.” The bishops have had to say, “No, with all due respect, Your Holiness, this is going too far. You don’t have the authority to do whatever you want.”
So I think that, in a way, what we’ve seen in history is a growing awareness that the Pope, he is a monarch, but he’s not an absolute monarch. He’s a constitutional monarch. I like that expression. That’s the way Martin Mosebach puts it. What he means by that is, the pope is subject to the constitution of the church. There are certain rights and responsibilities, duties, obligations that the pope has, given the nature of the Church of Christ, that he can’t simply sidestep because he doesn’t feel like it. He’s not omnipotent. He’s not absolute in that sense.
Eric Sammons:
Let me just be clear about when you say constitution, because I think some people might think you’re just saying canon law. But I think what you’re saying is not really just strict, because of course, the pope could change canon law. So what do you mean when you say a constitution of the church?
Peter Kwasniewski:
Exactly. What I mean there is the divine constitution of the church. What our Lord, Jesus Christ, wills for His church. In terms of what her common good is, what her sacramental structure is, what is the role of tradition in the church, this is also part of the divine constitution of the church, and I don’t just mean scripture and tradition as revelation, as divine revelation, but I also mean the normative value and function of tradition of, “I hand on what I have received,” that very important principle which is fundamental to Catholicism.
So that’s what I mean. I don’t mean a human constitution. In fact, Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, made this very clear when he said on one occasion, this was December 22, 2005, I think it was. He said, “The church doesn’t just give itself a constitution the way, say, a revolution can happen in France and suddenly, we’re writing up a new constitution. Or as it happened in the constitutional convention of the United States, or what would become the United States. No, the church can create laws, human laws for itself, for smooth governance, but there’s a divine law and there’s also natural law that are prior to human law.”
In fact, St. Thomas says human law must be based on those prior laws, must be an expression of them or else it’s invalid. That also means, by the way, and this is very important. It comes up in one of the most important chapters in this book that we’re sort of talking about, at least peripherally. There’s a chapter in here by Philip Campbell called, In What Sense is the Pope Above Canon Law? What he shows there, using some very important canonical authorities that everybody would acknowledge as authorities, that the pope is above canon law in one sense, but not another.
He’s above it in the sense that he can modify it, but when it exists, and as long as it exists, he is bound by it. He’s bound by it simply for the sake of the good of the society. You can’t have a ruler who’s just flagrantly and flippantly violating law. That’s terrible for the good of the community. That gets us to Bishop Strickland.
Eric Sammons:
Just real quick. He also couldn’t modify canon law in a way that contradicts divine law, as well. Correct? If he wanted to add some canon that, I don’t know, that a woman could be a bishop or something like that, he couldn’t actually do that.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Exactly. Maybe it’s more relevant to talk about deacons.
Eric Sammons:
Right, exactly.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yeah. But with Bishop Strickland, there are many problems and the book goes into them in some detail. It has a really fine essay by Father Gerald Murray who, as a canonist, just calmly, you know how calm he is, he calmly shows that the entire procedure that is outlined in canon law for the disciplining or punishment of any cleric, especially a bishop, was not followed at all. In fact, it was violated in repeated ways. There was never a documented accusation of, “These are the things you’ve done wrong. These are the reasons why we think you ought to step down or why we’re going to make you step down.”
There was never a trial. There should be a canonical trial. There’s a whole setup, just like there is in secular legal codes. All of that was run roughshod over by Pope Francis and his department heads at the Vatican. They basically just simply yanked him out. It was an exercise of exactly that kind of absolutist, arbitrary authority that is rightly protested against.
Eric Sammons:
Now, in the case of Bishop Strickland, if I remember correctly when it happened, you were pretty much publicly saying that you thought Bishop Strickland just simply should not obey that deposition, that he shouldn’t go quietly into the night, so to speak. Let’s talk practically, then. Obviously, I think we both acknowledge we’re sidelined here, making commentary. We’re not the actual bishop himself, so we’re just simply saying what we think would be the best way forward. Neither of us are acting like we’re know all or anything like that.
But at the same time, what do you think practically he should have done? And what would have been the actual consequences if he had just said, “No, because I haven’t gotten a canonical trial, I’m just simply not going to leave.”
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yes. That is something, in this book, the last three appendices are pieces in which I argue what you’re summarizing. I put them in appendices because they’ve been published elsewhere, but they were important to include because all the other essays in the book, all the other authors refer to them in one way or another, so it seemed like a convenient thing to put them there and to have the cross references.
But my argument basically boils down to this. As I said before, although the pope appoints bishops, he’s not the origin of their authority. God is the origin of their authority. Just like, by the way, the church teaches that if there’s a democracy that elects a ruler, they don’t endow him with the power, the authority of ruler ship. God does, once they’ve chosen him. The teaching of the church is, all authority comes from God. That’s St. Paul in the letter to the Romans. We won’t go into that. That’s a political philosophy question.
The argument that John Lamont makes here at great length against Jose Antonio Oreta, there’s a dialectic in this book. There’s disagreements among the authors and I’m only taking one position. But John Lamont argues that because the successors of the apostles have their authority by divine rite, the pope cannot arbitrarily take it away. He doesn’t have the authority to do that and such an act would be null and void. That is, Bishop Strickland would still be the bishop because there was a violation of justice done, and if he had remained in his office, then basically, he would have said, “I’m still the bishop here and I’m the bishop of Tyler, Texas and people report to me. I’m still in governance of this and until and unless there’s a documented case and a canonical trial, I’m remaining in my place.”
Now, of course, that would create a mess. There’s no question about it. But the popes make a mess.
Eric Sammons:
That’s right. He said he wants us to make a mess. Real quick, I want to take one step back, though. I feel like I’m not as well read on this as you are, but I feel like I have read Catholic theologians in the past, pre-conciliar, who have argued that bishop’s authority does come through the pope. Aren’t there some Catholic theologians who have argued that in the past, that basically it does come through the pope? It’s not just a matter of the pope appointing him, but actually, they’re more exercising the authority of the pope in a certain area?
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yes. Well, yes and no. The first point you made is true. The majority opinion, in fact, of Catholic theologians, is that the pope’s supreme jurisdiction endows him with the power to appoint others to the jurisdiction of whatever diocese he chooses for them. On that theological opinion, which is the majority one, he is not the source of their authority once they’re installed, but he’s the one who grants them the jurisdiction. So he has to grant them the jurisdiction. It’s like saying, “Okay, I send you to this diocese. I authorize you to rule this diocese.”
But once you’re there, the bishop is actually ruling in his own name as the shepherd of that diocese. That’s where I’m disagreeing. He’s not simply a vicar of the pope who’s representing the pope like a papal nuncio. That’s something that Vatican II and other sources reject, that the bishops are just vicars of the pope.
So that is true, but as with the question of canonizations, I just want to make a quick parallel here, I headed to the book called, Are Canonizations Infallible, which is another collection of-
Eric Sammons:
It was excellent. I liked that one a lot.
Peter Kwasniewski:
And again, that book has some representatives in it of the majority position, Father Thomas Crane.
Eric Sammons:
That’s what I liked about it. I didn’t have a strong opinion one way or the other going into it, and I actually still kind of don’t. I lean one way, but reading both sides, and that’s what I think this book, the book we’re talking about now, the Unresolved Tensions does. It tries to give a fair hearing.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Exactly. With the Canonizations book, some of the authors just acknowledge, and I do, too, that the majority opinion is that canonizations are infallible. But that’s not solemnly taught by the church, and there is therefore, a debate that can be had between the majority and the minority positions. The minority’s saying, “Canonizations are not infallible.”
In my opinion, the minority arguments are stronger in that case. There’s a wonderful piece in there by Brunero Gheradrdini, who is a great Roman theologian, died just a few years ago, in which he lays out the case for the non-infallibility of canonizations. I think personally, this is a very important question because there are a lot of Catholics who are really struggling with certain canonizations.
Eric Sammons:
Right.
Peter Kwasniewski:
We don’t need to get into that, but that’s just to say that similarly, in this question of the jurisdiction of bishops, there is a majority position that the pope is the one that has to grant the jurisdiction, and there’s a minority position, which Lamont argues here, I think very well, at least in a way that would challenge people, would provoke people to rethink the question, wherever they fall. The minority opinion that the pope can choose the bishop, but Jesus Christ is the one who gives him the jurisdiction.
Eric Sammons:
Interesting.
Peter Kwasniewski:
What makes this even more interesting, the plot thickens here, is that Vatican II appears to teach this minority position, which was espoused by theologians like Congar. We’re in this funny situation right now, where traditionalists generally have a very negative view of Vatican II. Yet, it’s the traditionalists in the church who are getting hammered by this arbitrary, absolutist papal governance right now, given who is the pope and his agenda.
So suddenly, the positions that people like us used to argue when John Paul II was pope, or Benedict the XVI, we were just like, “Rally to the pope! Everybody must obey the pope!” We were all hyper papalists back then, in a way, or at least ultra-Montanists. I think that we’ve been chastened by experience. I think we’ve been really forced to step back and say, “Is it healthy, basically, to have an absolute monarchy like this? Wouldn’t our Lord have planned better for the church knowing that, every once in a while, there’s going to be some kind of renegade pope?”
Whether it’s a morally renegade pope, of which we’ve had quite a few, unfortunately, or even a doctrinally unreliable pope like Honorius or Vigilius. Anyway, it seems like our Lord, He must have provided in His divine constitution, a way to survive bad papacies. I think part of that is just recognizing the genuine authority of the bishops as shepherds of their own flocks who can defend the needs and the rights of their flocks. The bishop can say, “I know my sheep. I know my sheep. They don’t deny that the Second Vatican Council was a legitimate ecumenical council. They don’t deny the validity of the Novus Ordo. They believe that trans substantiation happens there. They’re a peaceable people. They’re not making trouble. They’re actually flourishing and vigorous and I want them in my diocese and I’m not going to hammer them. So I’m going to protect them. That’s my duty as the shepherd, to protect them from the wolves, even if, tragically, that wolf is the pope.”
Eric Sammons:
Right. Let’s move on to the traditional Latin Mass, because right now, we’re in the midst of rumors, very strong rumors, that there’s going to be a further crackdown on the traditional Latin Mass. The possibility now is that, that’s most talked about is that it will basically be 100% banned outside of the Ecclesai Dei community, so fraternity, St. Peter, Christ the King. So if you go to a TLM, diocesan priest, or even a religious order priest that celebrates outside of those institutes, then it will be shut down.
Also the rumor is that bishops will not be allowed to celebrate the Latin Mass. They won’t be able to give indults to anybody. So how is this? A lot of people have talked about this, just the rumors and stuff. But how does this directly relate to what we’re talking about with the episcopal papal relationship and how bishops should react to it if it happens?
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yes. I just want to mention some really wonderful things I’ve been reading in this new book from Bishop-
Eric Sammons:
You already got a copy of it? I haven’t gotten a copy yet.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yes.
Eric Sammons:
Come on!
Peter Kwasniewski:
Is it for sale yet?
Eric Sammons:
No, but if you get a promotional copy. It comes out next month.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Oh, okay. So this is an advance copy that I have, Flee From Heresy.
Eric Sammons:
You know the right people, Peter.
Peter Kwasniewski:
A Catholic Guide to Ancient and Modern Errors. There are some really striking things in this book.
For example, to answer your question, he has a question here. What powers do bishops have in their own dioceses? Bishop Schneider answers, “They hold full legislative, administrative, and judiciary power. That is, they have, within their respective dioceses the same direct complete and personal power that the pope exercises over the whole church, although they cannot eliminate, omit, or change what has been promulgated for the universal church.”
Then he gives a quotation from lumen gentium. Then he also points out elsewhere, he has a question, “Is the pope obliged to maintain the church’s traditional liturgical rites?” He answers, “Yes. The early medieval papal oath affirms, ‘I promise to keep in violet the discipline and the liturgy of the church as I have found them and as they were transmitted by my holy predecessors.'” The papal oath decreed by the Council of Constance, Session 39, ratified by Pope Martin V, echoes, “I will follow and observe in every way the rite handed down of the ecclesiastical sacraments of the Catholic Church.”
Then finally, “Can a pope abrogate a liturgical rite of in memorial custom in the church?” Bishop Schneider answers, “No. Just as a pope cannot forbid or abrogate the Apostle’s Creed or Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, or substitute a new formula for them, neither can he abrogate traditional, millennium old rites of Mass or the sacraments or forbid their use. This applies as much to eastern as to western rites.”
That, at least partway, answers your question. I consider, as you know from my book, True Obedience, and from my book, Bound by Truth, I have argued exhaustively, and so have many others, that the Pope simply does not have the authority to abrogate an in memorial venerable liturgical rite of the Catholic Church, either eastern or western. It’s simply not within his remit. It’s completely outside of his remit.
When you look at what popes have said over the centuries about the importance of handing on what the church has passed down and the importance of opposing heretics who have attacked the liturgy of the church, you realize, this is very much outside the remit of the pope, to abolish or forbid a traditional, liturgical rite. It’s up for discussion whether a pope has the authority to institute new rites. I mean really new rites, not a new blessing for automobiles, but something more like the Novus Ordo.
I think that’s a controversial question. I think it hasn’t been evaluated nearly enough, but it’s starting to be. I think Pope Francis is agitating that. It’s one thing to create a new rite. It’s another thing to abrogate or abolish a traditional one. That’s not done. That’s never been done. It’s never even been attempted. Paul VI didn’t do it, although he made everybody feel as if they couldn’t use the old missile, but he never abrogated it. Just fast-forwarding, Benedict XVI said, in Summorum Pontificum, it has not been abrogated and neither could it be forbidden or declared harmful.
I think here, we’re dealing with a serious case of arbitrary papal overreach in a way that’s very damaging to the common good. Can you imagine these flourishing dioceses and parishes with hundreds of Catholics, so many families, so many vocations in many cases, and they’re just told, “No, you can’t worship the way that your forefathers worshiped, the way that the saints worshiped. You can’t do that anymore. That’s illegal.” It’s absurd. It’s absurd on the face of it.
This is why I argue, and many others in this book, Unresolved Tensions, argue that the bishops need to put their foot down and say, “Not in my diocese.” If you say … Okay, I’ll just leave it at that.
Eric Sammons:
We’ll get to that in a second, what we think would happen if they did that. What kind of liturgical control does a bishop have in his diocese? I want to give a few different examples and then you could explain what you think could be done or couldn’t be done. For example, can a bishop make changes to the Novus Ordo, for example? Could he say, “We’re going to change these prayers a little bit? We’re going to maybe add this additional something to it, a prayer to it,” or something like that. Could he say, “I’m going to actually create a new rite for my people because we have a unique situation. We’re going to write up a new rite from scratch.” Could he say, “I’m going to let the traditional Mass go,” even if they continue to celebrate, even as the Vatican says, “No,” or, “I’m going to abrogate it,” even if the Vatican says you can continue to do it.
You see where I’m saying, what are the delineations of authority a bishop has over the liturgy? Because he is, I know on some level, he is the, I don’t want to say the master of liturgy because that’s the wrong word. He’s a servant of it, but he is the liturgical leader, so to speak, of his diocese. So how does that work out?
Peter Kwasniewski:
No, it’s a great question. I think what we have to remember is two things. First of all, when we speak of the hierarchy of the church, we use that expression because it is a hierarchy. The lower members do have to remain in union in the right way with the upper members. So if there’s anyone in the church who has authority to make laws about the liturgy, it would be the pope more than the bishops. If the pope makes a universal law that’s within his remit, then the bishops do have to follow that. That is to say, they can’t just be rogues or renegades who say, “We don’t like the Novus Ordo, so we’re going to invent a local enculturated rite, the Rite of Cincinnati, or whatever and it’s going to be our own thing with bongo drums and we’re just going to do it.” They can’t do that. They can’t create a new rite. If the pope can’t create a completely new rite ob ovo ex novo, a bishop can’t do that, either. He has much less authority than the pope has, in that sense.
But the other principle, I said there were two principles. One is hierarchy. The other is tradition. Tradition is good. It’s amazing that we live in a time, just as it’s amazing we live in a time where we have to say there are men and women and men are men and women are women and a man can’t be a woman and a woman can’t be a man and only a man and a woman can get married. We’re at the ABC level. We’re in a world of imbeciles and mad men and we’re saying ABCs, trying to get them to read ABC.
Well, similarly, it’s amazing that in the Catholic Church, we should have to say tradition is good. Tradition is good, worthy of protection, worthy of reverence, worthy of transmission, inherently worthy of it. It’s not something that has to be studied carefully and you have to figure out, “Is it really okay to kneel for Holy Communion and receive on the tongue?” No, we’ve been doing that for over 1,000 years and for all kinds of good reasons. Of course, it’s a good thing.
So when you bring the principle of tradition in, that’s the other break, so to speak, on the velocity of this vehicle, whether papal or episcopal. That’s why you can’t just abolish the old rites. So if the pope says, “Respect tradition,” that’s what he’s supposed to say, then the bishop can’t say, “I don’t like tradition. I’m not going to respect tradition.” No, he has to follow it. He has to follow the tradition and he has to follow the pope urging him to do that.
But if you get to, there are some gray areas here. How much can a bishop legislate regarding the liturgy of his own diocese? Well, at very least, he has to legislate within the boundaries of more authoritative legislation. For example, a bishop couldn’t remove readings from the Mass. He couldn’t add John Denver instead of the responsorial psalm. He can’t do that kind of thing. It’s against the universal rules, called The General Instruction of the Roman Missile, if we’re talking about the Novus Ordo. He has to follow the general instructions.
Incidentally, though, bishops have been trying. The bad bishops have been violating liturgical law all over the place. For example, you have somebody like Blasé Cupich in Chicago telling his priests they’re not allowed to celebrate ad orientem.
Eric Sammons:
Right.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Well, says who? The general instruction, as I proved in an article called The Normativity of Ad Orientem Worship in the ordinary form. It’s from several years ago, a new liturgical movement. I proved that, according to the missile itself, the Novus Ordo Mass is to be celebrated ad orientem. It’s done versus populum basically by custom. So if there’s anything a bishop ought to legislate, he ought to legislate that everyone do it ad orientem and not versus populum.
This is the kind of thing where, once you get into the weeds, you can see that you have to really be knowledgeable about the whole library of liturgical legislation and it’s a big library. I’ve got it in my basement, here.
Eric Sammons:
I think a lot of the errors we see among Catholics about this come across from a very, sometimes it’s a very American, literalist, legal tradition. You see it among Protestants with the way they interpret sola scriptura and things like that. It’s like, “Okay.” Because what you just said makes sense, but I think I could hear them saying, “Well, you just said a bishop can’t violate the universal norm. Well, what if the pope makes a universal norm that the novus ordo is the only Roman rite? You can’t celebrate anything else. You just said that they can’t violate that. Yet, you also say that a bishop can’t abrogate, he has to allow it still or he should disobey that.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but as I see it, it’s that key point you mentioned, which was tradition, which isn’t always a written down set of rules. The reality is, is that the church has celebrated what we call today the traditional Latin Mass as it is, essentially, for over 1,000 years.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yes.
Eric Sammons:
That fact alone is actually a law, in a sense. I know it’s not the right term, but it should be seen as a law, as a break, at the very least of, okay, that very fact means it just can’t be something that’s discarded by a pope or a bishop. But that’s not written down anywhere. It’s not like there’s, I know you have Pious V, I think it was, who said it’s an immoral sacrifice, whatever, that liturgy.
But the point is, it’s not actually written down strictly as, “This can never be abrogated because it’s been around for 1,000 years.” That’s just a Catholic sense that we have. Just like you couldn’t ban the rosary. I know you’ve used that example before, that it’s not like there’s a rule. In canon law it says, “We must allow Catholics to pray the rosary.” It’s just simply, because it’s been prayed by millions of Catholics over 1,000 years now almost, that it simply is now, it just can’t be abrogated. The pope has no authority to say, “You can’t pray the rosary.”
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yes.
Eric Sammons:
If he did that, you could just say, “Well, I’m not going to do it.” Does that make sense, what I’m saying? Is that what you’re saying?
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yes, it does, but I think we need to recognize also that it’s not just an unspoken rule or a kind of sense that we have. There’s a big paper trail on this question, both in papal writings and also in the evidences of the Universal Ordinary Magisterium of the Church. This is a concept, it sounds very technical. The terminology itself comes from the 19th century. But basically, the Universal Ordinary Magisterium is what all the bishops of the church have taught throughout all the history of the church.
How do you find out what that is? Well, there isn’t a handy dandy directory that tells you, “This is all the Universal Ordinary Magisterium.” You have to look for signs of it. You have to look for evidence. One of the evidences is that they’ve never taught otherwise. Or if somebody has taught otherwise, he’s been condemned for it.
Another great piece of evidence, and really the most concrete one of all, is to look at the history of catechisms, all the different catechisms that have been issued. There’s this amazing product, Tradavox-
Eric Sammons:
Right behind me.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Right, exactly. Being published by Sophia Institute Press, edited by Aaron Tsang, our good friend. The reason it’s important to look at catechism is that you have hundreds of catechisms going for hundreds of years from hundreds of different bishops that all teach the same thing. They all teach, for example, that the death penalty is legitimate.
Eric Sammons:
Right.
Peter Kwasniewski:
That is evidence of the Universal Ordinary Magisterium, which is, guess what, infallible.
So the validity and legitimacy of the death penalty is part of the Catholic faith. It’s actually a part of divine revelation as Ed Feser and Joseph Bessette demonstrate. Therefore, Pope Francis is simply wrong about the death penalty. I bring that up because it’s such a glaring example, where somebody would say to you, “Pope Francis has changed the catechism and we all have to fall in line with this and dignitatis infinita says that the death penalty is always against human dignity.” No. Sorry, that’s wrong. Error. Out of bounds. Try again. That’s the attitude of a proper Catholic.
Eric Sammons:
It’s not Peter Kwasniewski saying it. That’s the key. There’s, “Oh, you’re just thinking like a Protestant.” You’re putting your personal judgment over the pope’s. So what you’re saying is, no. You have hundreds of catechisms that tell you that this is what the church teaches. The same thing applies, in a sense, to the traditional Latin Mass, how it’s been practiced over the centuries.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yes, and it’s interesting, by the way. I have to refer to this Bishop Schneider book again. He asks at one point, this is page 100, can a laymen’s sensus fidei, sense of the faith, ever lead him to reject a teaching of the clergy. Great question.
Eric Sammons:
Right, yeah.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Answer, “Yes. Alerted by his sensus fidei, the lay faithful may deny ascent, even to the teachings of legitimate pastors when these appear evidently contrary to right faith or morals, or undermine their integrity. St. Paul warned even of bishops who would teach error as ravening wolves, Acts 20:29, formulating this principle for both clergy and lay faithful. Even if we or an angel from Heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be a curse. As we have said before, so now we repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be a curse, Galatians 1:8-9.”
Then his next question is exactly what you said. Isn’t this sinful disobedience, dissent from the Magisterium and a form of Protestantism? That’s the next question. And he answers, this is a short answer, “No. Rather than treat oneself as the ultimate criterion of truth, which is a form of Protestantism, the faithful Catholic, faced with a disturbing, yet ‘authorized’ teaching, merely defers to the superior authority of the universal perennial traditional teachings of the church, rejecting what departs from it.”
Now obviously, there’s more that we would have to discuss about that. But it seems to me, getting back to this Universal Ordinary Magisterium, you also find innumerable testimonies to the veneration that we should have towards our traditional, liturgical rites and our duty, our obligation to gratefully receive them and pass them on. That’s not something that we’re just making up, that triads are just making up since the 1960s. It’s not the case.
I also wrote this thing called The Boundedness of The Pope, The Pope’s Boundedness to Tradition. It’s an essay. It’s online. People can find it. I’ll send you a link later. Where I give many, many documentary witnesses to this attitude and the theologians of the church have also enforced this attitude or said, “This is part of the Catholic faith.” It’s definitely something very deep in our tradition that the pope cannot treat the liturgy as his personal toy, to use Bishop Mutsaerts’ memorable expression.
Eric Sammons:
This actually leads me now to the next question because we’re talking about a lay person saying, “Sorry, Your Holiness, but you’re wrong,” on the death penalty or something like that. Let’s say we’re in a situation where the traditional Latin Mass, the rumors are all true and they happen and now there’s no traditional Latin Mass available to some faithful. There’s no fraternity nearby. There’s no institute or whatever.
But he finds out, okay, there is a priest who is going to celebrate it underground. In this scenario, your bishop has said, “Yes, we follow the pope on this. No traditional Latin Masses are allowed in my diocese.” So now you have the universal pastor, your own pastor, and the bishop saying, “We can’t have it.” But you find out about this underground, so to speak, Mass being celebrated and it’s underground. Now, I know people like to compare it to England in the 16th century. There are some parallels, but it’s not the state. I think every Catholic would agree. If the state says you can’t go to Mass, you can still go to Mass. Obviously, you should.
But here’s a case where your legitimate pastor, the legitimate universal pastor is saying, “No, you can’t go to this.” But you find out, should you go? And what is your defense of going or not going to it? Also for my hypothetical, not a sedevacantist priest, something like that, they’re going to mention Francis and your bishop in the canon, all that.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yeah, thank you for that clarification.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah.
Peter Kwasniewski:
If this happens, if this document happens, and it could happen because Pope Francis is so unpredictable and he’s so volatile and he goes back and forth and he does all kinds of things. But he did, unfortunately, Traditionis Custodes, if you read it three years ago, he said he was going to phase out the old Mass. We are upset because we should be upset, but we shouldn’t be surprised that this is in the works, whether it happens or not.
So if it happens, it is going to lead to a terribly messy situation. There’s no way around that. Basically, what I’ve described in my book, Bound By Truth, and what you can read in something like Eve Sharon’s History of Traditionalism, which is a fascinating book. The traditional movement exists because of what I would call material disobedience to unlawful orders or directives from the hierarchy, but formal obedience to Catholic tradition in its fullness, which the popes always used to defend and used to pass on.
The reason why there was an indult under John Paul II is because these pesky traditionalists would not go away, and they wouldn’t give up, and they wouldn’t stop, and they kept doing their Masses, even in basements and in barns and in abandoned churches and whatever they could find. The reason why there was Summorum Pontificum is because Benedict IVX, who had lived through all of this and had thought about it deeply, he realized there is something wrong with this picture. We need to let these Catholics have the liturgical tradition. We should not penalize them for it. We shouldn’t treat them as second class, second tier citizens in the church. We should just acknowledge that what they love is worthy of love and worthy of respect and worthy of transmission.
It’s also going to benefit the whole church because we took a turn too far. This is Ratzinger’s thinking, not mine. But his thinking is, there was a turn too far away from tradition after Vatican II and we need the gravitational force, we need the anchoring effect of, the presence of tradition in the church to revitalize the Novus Ordo. That’s exactly what he thought and this is exactly what happened with the young clergy. They took up the ball. They learned how to celebrate the old Mass. Then, when they came back to the Novus Ordo, you know I’m not a fan of the Novus Ordo. I think it shouldn’t exist. But when they came back to it, they wanted suddenly to do Gregorian chant and they wanted to do some Latin and they wanted to do it ad orientem and with incense and with all kinds of beauty. Okay, smells and bells, they’re not everything, but they’re something. They’re certainly part of Catholic tradition, too.
I think this was the program of Benedict IVX. It was patient. It was prudent. He was trying not to cause another revolution by changing too much, too fast. So long story short, yes. I think that Catholics should find, if they’re already going to the Latin Mass and they recognize it for what it is and its importance in their lives and in the life of the church, they should keep going to it, whatever that takes. Whether that means the Society of St. Pius the 10th, whether it means an underground or independent chapel, as long as it’s not sedevacantist. Whatever that means, they need to do what the original traditionalists did in the ’70s. Otherwise, we’re not going to have a Summorum Pontificum 2.0.
If somebody says to me, that sounds like you’re saying that people should do evil so that good may result, no. I don’t think that they’re doing evil. I think the ones who are doing evil are the pope and the bishops, in this case.
Eric Sammons:
Right.
Peter Kwasniewski:
As far as all the messy questions that arise, like absolution and marriage, and so on, I go into those things in Bound By Truth in more detail. We’d be here forever if we tried to cover every one of these questions.
The other thing, of course, that people can do if their conscience bothers them about following a diocesan priest into a kind of exile. I understand why some people would be bothered by that. In my opinion, it would be that they haven’t seen, yet, what’s at stake and how important it is for us to support our clergy in holding onto the traditional Mass. But they could go to an eastern rite, an eastern Catholic rite. I love the Byzantine rite. It’s not my rite. It’s not my preference, but it’s valid and it’s traditional and it’s beautiful and it’s very nourishing, so you could do that.
Obviously, if you had the Anglican ordinariate, that’s also not my cup of tea, so to speak, but again, I would go to that if it was a choice between that and the Novus Ordo. Or they could, this is easy to say and hard to do, but they could think about relocating to a friendlier place, a place with a fraternity parish or an institute parish or even a society parish.
For me, the number one principle is that we, as Catholics, need to adhere to our traditional lex orandi lex credendi lex vivendi. We have to do that. That is, and if we see what’s at stake, we realize it’s not just about a liturgical preference. It’s about the entire religion. Everything is connected to this. If people want to see why that’s the case, they should just check out my book, The Once and Future Roman Rites. That’s really where I make the case most fully.
I just want to say one last thing. I’m sorry I’m going on here, but there’s so many important points here. You asked earlier about, what do you say to somebody who says, “Shouldn’t we just obey whatever the pope hands down?” One of the most basic principles of law, of any law, including canon law, is that law has to be rational. It has to be reasonable. There’s the brilliant little treatise on this topic by Father Rivoire, called Does Traditionis Custodes Pass the Legal Rationality Test? Okay, it’s not a best-selling title. It’s a short book by a canon lawyer where he demonstrates that traditionis custodes violates rationality. It’s not a reasonable set of laws and he shows all the reasons why that’s the case. Therefore, it’s not a law at all. It has no force.
Law has to be rational or reasonable in order to go into force and to have binding force on us. That’s another point here that we have to bear in mind. When Pope Francis says, “The Novus Ordo is the only form of the Roman rite, the unique form of it.” That’s false. That’s a falsity. It isn’t even the Roman rite. That’s what my book, The Once and Future Roman Rite demonstrates. There’s the Roman rite and then there’s the modern rite of Paul IV and they’re not the same rite. They’re two different rites. That can be shown by all of the criteria that liturgists use to define rites.
Eric Sammons:
One thing I want to say on the topic of finding an underground Mass or whatever the case might be, I think the fact is, if the rumors become true, it’s going to be a mess, as you said. One thing I think is important is, personally, at least for me, I’m not going to attack, people who attend them now, I’m not going to attack them almost no matter what they end up doing in the sense of, if they decide they’re going to continue going to their same parish that now celebrates the Novus Ordo and maybe the priest does it way better than your typical Novus Ordo because they’ve been influenced by the traditional Latin Mass, or if they find a society chapel, or they go move, find a fraternity or institute, or if they go to an underground one that is not sedevacantist.
All those options, I’m not going to judge you for it. In the sense, I think there’s no purpose in attacking somebody for saying, either on one hand, you’re either a semi-trad. You’re not even really a trad because now you’re going to this Novus Ordo. I don’t know your full situation. I don’t know what options are available to you. Maybe there’s not an underground one available to you. Maybe you can’t move. You’re taking care of your elderly parents or whatever the case may be.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Exactly.
Eric Sammons:
I’m also, though, at the same time, though, the person who finds the underground Mass and goes to that, I’m not going to say anything against that, either, because clearly that’s not an immoral choice. I do want to say this last thing, though, is, and I don’t want to say it’s tongue in cheek, actually, I do mean it. If you do end up in the situation that you’re going to an “underground Mass,” please be prudent. Don’t be an idiot and put it on social media and out the priest or anything like that, because we live in an age where we want to tell everybody what we do all the time.
I remember back in the day when I was doing a lot of activist pro-life work, we would do rescues where we’d get arrested and stuff like that. We always had to keep things very quiet beforehand because we didn’t want the police to find out about it or anything like that. It’s a similar attitude here. Don’t advertise. I know, for example, during COVID, there were Masses being said and God bless the people who went and kept their mouths shut. It’s got to be word of mouth to only trusted people because you don’t want to get this diocesan priest in trouble for doing the right thing and he’s taking a big risk. Don’t then go blabber about it on social media.
Peter Kwasniewski:
No, I agree 100%. I was in touch with, I’m in touch with a lot of people, but there was this older Czech lady from the Czech Republic who wrote to me during the COVID period and it was the most heartbreaking e-mail, in a way. It had a hopeful side, but also a heartbreaking side. She described to me how there was a priest who secretly was celebrating the Latin Mass in a particular chapel when officially, the country’s Masses had all been shut down and no one was allowed to go. The bishop said, “You all have to stay home. You’re all dispensed, et cetera.” We know what that was like. It happened everywhere. Which by the way, is so bizarre and so apocalyptic, but that’s another topic.
So this priest was doing it and they had a system whereby any trustworthy person, one trustworthy person would be told and that person could tell another trustworthy person. It had to be by word of mouth. No telephones were used. No e-mail, no trail in that sense. Then they would show up at the church and they’d have to nonchalantly walk over to it, one at a time, look around, make sure nobody was watching, and then slip in through the side door. They all had to do that until they had gathered, and then Mass began.
What she wrote to me, this was the heartbreaking part. She said, “This reminds me of my childhood under communism. This is the way it was like. This is what it was like, exactly like this.” Well, I’m afraid that, that’s what we might be looking at in this regard, as well. I was just looking on Facebook at this post. It was photographs from a 1987 event in France.
Eric Sammons:
Oh, I saw that.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yeah. Where there was a priest celebrating the Tridentine Mass. Of course, he had been forbidden to do so. But they went into this church, which I don’t think was being used for any other purpose, and they were having Mass. The diocese sicked the police on the priest and dragged him out by force. You can see the photographs of him in his vestments being dragged out by the police. The police drove out the men, women, and children that were in the church and then barred it, barred the door and put up a concrete wall or something. It was just crazy, over the top.
You know what? A week later, for Palm Sunday, the faithful came back. They busted through the door. They took over the church and they never left. That is the heroic spirit of Catholic traditionalists. They never left and years later, the parish was entrusted to the Institute of Christ the King. So that story has a happy ending. The resiliency, the stubbornness, the holy stubbornness, the “I will not budge,” attitude of those French traditionalist, and there were hundreds of them in Port Marley eventually reached a peaceful resolution and all the paperwork was set right and everything that was irregular was set right and now they’re a flourishing institute parish today.
I know of other examples like that. I know of another institute parish in New Jersey and then a fraternity parish in New Jersey, both of which started as independent chapels and then were later, if you will, reconciled by a bishop who actually just had a pastoral heart and said, “I want these people fully in communion with me or fully regularized.” I think they already were in communion with him, but I’m just using the terminology.
That’s why I say to people, don’t worry so much about, certainly don’t worry so much about canonical niceties because that is not the most important thing in this case. Don’t worry about the future, either. Let God take care of the future. You just take care of yourself, your faith, your family, and your bond with tradition. That’s what you need to take care of and God will take care of the rest.
Eric Sammons:
Amen. Okay. We’ve gone for a while, but I hope you have time because I want to ask you about a completely different subject.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yeah.
Eric Sammons:
That is, how does all this discussion about episcopal and papacy roles, how does it apply to the case of Archbishop Vigano? I bring this up because it’s a controversial topic within traditional Catholicism.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yes. Yes.
Eric Sammons:
Where you have good, holy, or at least sincere, good people who have a legitimate disagreement about this. So I just wanted to hear what your thoughts on it are.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Sure. Just to start back further in the past, it seems to me that everybody should acknowledge Vigano as a hero for being a whistleblower. As Taylor Marshall Tweeted the other day, let’s all acknowledge that without Vigano, McCarrick would still be … At this point, he’s too feeble, but he would not have been punished. That’s just a fact. Vigano’s the one who blew the whistle on that and got the ball rolling. I think that the expose of not just McCarrick, but the connections, all kinds of connections there, I think was an important moment of illumination and also a healthy disillusionment that all of us needed to realize that actually, no, the abuse crisis has not been dealt with by the hierarchy of the church. In spite of all their hot air, it has not been dealt with. I think that’s still true. There’s still a network in the Rupnik case. It’s the billboard version of that. We don’t care. We hate your guts, Catholics. We think you’re stupid. That’s the way it is.
I think Vigano was very helpful, but I myself, I soured on him after about 2020, when he started becoming more and more politically involved, more and more involved in Trump rallies. I voted for Trump twice. I’ll vote for him again. But the way that he was getting politically involved and the sort of American political Messianism, which then morphed into Russian and Putin Messianism, something is off there. Something is very odd. Then the apocalyptic ramblings, which sometimes make sense and sometimes don’t make sense, and say very extreme things in sometimes a very rude way. To my mind, something has snapped with Vigano or with his ghost writer. I think there’s a ghost writer that’s writing most of this stuff. I think Roberto De Mattei pretty convincingly proved that on Style and Metric grounds. If you look at his article from a few years back, even though Vigano denied that. Try to refute De Mattei’s case. It’s a watertight case.
I think that I do see Vigano as somebody that we shouldn’t be following. We can admire his heroic stance on certain issues. We can say, “Yes, he’s right to call out modernism. Yes, he’s having,” but the problem is, there’s just a vacuum of leadership. That’s the reason why people rally to Vigano. There’s a vacuum of leadership. There’s also been an enforced ban on discussing Vatican II in a serious way, and reevaluating it, and talking about its errors the way Bishop Schneider does.
I think that Vigano was doing all the things that many other bishops ought to be doing and are not doing or not talking about. As a result, people have put him on a pedestal and that’s why he’s become such a hero. But if the other bishops and cardinals were doing their jobs well, then Vigano would be, he’d be yesterday’s news, if you will. That’s why I think he’s so popular. I wish that traditional Catholics would realize that if you are following him, you’re following somebody who has a lot of strange, and I would say incoherent positions. Just because basically it’s almost like, you know I don’t have a problem with conspiracy theory in general. A lot of conspiracies are true. History is full of conspiracies. But it’s almost like Vigano picks every possible conspiracy theory and then connects them together as if they’re all just one thing and as if it’s obvious. I think it leads to some very weird places.
So long story short, I don’t think he should be excommunicated for the reasons that Bishop Schneider gave which is, it’s just going to sew more chaos and division at a time when that’s the last thing we need. It would, I don’t know. The problem is, Vigano is so stubborn. If Rome had summoned him to say, “We’d like to have a conversation with you. We’d like to try to work out our difficulties,” he would have spurned them. He would have said, “I’m not coming. I’m not going to darken your door.”
So in a way, it seems like he’s almost like the kid on the playground who’s saying, “I dare you to hit me. I dare you to hit me.” Right?
Eric Sammons:
Right.
Peter Kwasniewski:
I don’t see why, that’s not a good stance to have towards any authority, “I dare you to hit me.” Well, they’re going to get peeved at a certain point and they’re going to hit you. Is anybody really surprised about that?
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, I’m with you on that. Basically, I’m in complete agreement on that. I just think it is unfortunate. I agree with Bishop Schneider that I don’t think he should be excommunicated. But at the same time, here’s a case where I think that the Vatican, regardless of what we think of the occupants right now there, like Cardinal Fernandez who’s very involved with this, and of course, Pope Francis, we do recognize they do have authority. So they do have authority to tell a bishop who is literally saying, “The pope doesn’t have any authority. He’s not really the pope.” To say, “You’re not really in communion with us anymore.” Whether or not they should or should not do that is beside the point if we’re improving that point. But from an authority standpoint, I don’t see how they don’t have that authority to do that.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yes. That’s correct. I think that what makes this whole situation so aggravating is, to my mind, not that Vigano would be called on the carpet for saying outrageous things, but that so many other people are not being called on the carpet for saying outrageous things. What about the German bishops? They just keep getting slaps on the wrist and they keep going in their synodal way. They’re just going to go off a cliff of modernism at some point and become another Lutheran Church. No serious disciplinary action is ever taken.
You can multiply the examples I mentioned. Father Rupnik, who shouldn’t be Father Rupnik, I mentioned Father James Martin. I didn’t mention him, but I could mention him. There are so many examples. Cardinal McElroy has actually spouted heresy. There’s no question about it, but he’s just fine. I think there’s such a hypocrisy going on right now that, that just makes it even more irksome to us when we see particular people getting nailed.
Eric Sammons:
Right. It doesn’t make Vigano right, but what it does is, it shows how wrong and how, frankly evil, a lot of the actions of the Vatican is.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yeah. Well, it shows a kind of favoritism. Everybody hates prejudices and favoritisms that are not based in reality, that just seem like, “These are our petty grievances. We hate everybody who is in any way traditional and we’re just going to come after you,” almost like the Stasi. We’re just going to keep knocking on doors until we find all the Jews and round them up and take them away.
I just want to make another point along these lines and that is Traditionis Custodes is, I think, the biggest exercise in cynicism in the history of the church. The reason I say that is, it opens up with this grandiose language about how the bishops are the custodians of tradition and they’re in charge of the liturgy in their dioceses. It belongs to them to decide who’s going to use the 1960s Roman missile. It says that explicitly. It’s up to the bishop to decide. He’s supposed to establish designated locations, et cetera, et cetera.
Then what happens? Well, the bishops don’t fall in line, so then the responsa ad dubia from December 18, 2021 comes down saying, “Actually, bishops, just kidding. You’re not really in charge. We’re completely in charge. You can’t do X, Y, Z, P, D, Q, none of that stuff. You’re basically peons. You’re like pawns in this chess game.”
Eric Sammons:
I think there’s a chance. I think when Traditionis Custodes came out, I think Francis, and Fernandez, and whoever, they actually thought all the bishops were behind them on this. I think that’s why lay are there like, “Oh, crap. There’s a bunch of bishops who actually don’t back us. They’re not like traditionalists. They don’t even celebrate the traditional Latin Mass, but they’re like, this is clearly just stupid. I’m not going to do this.”
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yes.
Eric Sammons:
I think that’s why they were like, “Oh, well. That language we used was with the assumption you guys all agree with us. If you don’t agree with us, we’re going to do it differently.”
Peter Kwasniewski:
True. I think you might be right, but it seems like they never learn. Because after the responsa ad dubia, of course, some bad things happened, but most of the bishops still didn’t clamp down as they were supposed to. Then the pope issued desiderio desideravi, solely in one of the most beautiful expressions in the Gospel of Luke. He issued that in June of 2022, again doubling down. That, as far as I can tell, had no effect. He also said the Novus Ordo should be celebrated reverently with no abuses and so on. Good luck finding a real legislative teeth behind that.
Then, of course, they came out with fiducia supplicans, which met a much bigger resistance on the part of the hierarchy, including most of the continent of Africa, for goodness sakes. They haven’t learned their lesson. I think it’s almost like this. The people in charge at the Vatican right now, either they don’t care that they’re not popular with a lot of people or, I don’t know. They don’t care. They want to do as much damage as they can while they can, almost like a version of Samson in the Old Testament, who just pulls down the whole structure on top of himself. I’m going to just take down as many people as I can. That’s what Roach, Fernandez, these people, they want to do as much damage as they can. They want to homosexualize as much of the church as they can. They want to Novus Ordorize as much of the church as they can.
They must know at some level that they will not be completely successful, but it’s like, “I’ll take down as many as I can until they shoot me,” principle. It’s sick. It’s sick and it’s tragic that we have to be governed by such men right now.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. The response to fiducia supplicans was beautiful, frankly. I’m hoping, my hope and prayer is, is that bishops around the world saw, “Wait a minute. We actually don’t have to go along with this nonsense because we didn’t go along with that.” All the Africans didn’t, and eventually what happened? The Vatican caved because you see, the pope’s saying, “Oh, I never said that you could bless homosexual couples,” which of course, he did explicitly.
Because he realized there was such a big pushback even he had to say, “Oh.” And he saw Fernandez trying to beg the cops or something to go along. They’re just like, “No, we’re not on board with it.”
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Sammons:
So my hope is, is that if the rumored document does come out about the TLM, the bishops see that, remember the response to fiducia supplicans and be like, “We’re just not going to.” Which comes back to, which probably is a good way to end this because it’s the point of your book that you edited, Unresolved Tensions in Papal Episcopal Relations, which basically talks on a very deep level about how bishops can react to papal commands and vice versa.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Mm-hmm.
Eric Sammons:
Well, this has been great, Peter. I know we could go for two more hours, but I’m going to cut it here, I think. I covered the most important topics.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Yeah.
Eric Sammons:
Thanks for all you’re doing. I know you’re going to send me some links and I will put them in the show notes. Obviously to the book, but also some of the other things that you referenced during our discussion.
Peter Kwasniewski:
Great. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Eric.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. Okay. Until next time, everybody. God love you.