We should almost thank the fundamentalists. By sending, on May 14, their Declaration of Faith to Pope Leo XIV to justify their desire to consecrate bishops themselves without a pontifical mandate, the members of the Society of Saint Pius Drawing the Church that they call for, they reveal, implicitly, the one to which we belong.
By chance of the calendar, only a few weeks separate this text from the first encyclical of Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, made public on May 25. However, this, which brings to the fore the social commitment of Christians and updates the social doctrine of the Church in the age of new technologies, constitutes a remarkably clear response to the fundamentalist vision.
The Declaration of Faith of the Society of Saint Pius She presents her assertions as non-negotiable. The text follows a classic architecture: from Christ to the Church, then to the liturgy, to morality and finally to the social order. Each step constitutes an implicit refutation of Vatican II (ecumenism, freedom of conscience, liturgical reform), without the council ever being explicitly named.
A radically different conception of the Church
But beyond the sole criticism of Vatican II, the issue is deeper. What appears here is a radically different conception of the Church, its mission and its relationship to the world.
The paper’s conclusion is revealing. The authors affirm that “the moral law contained in the Decalogue and perfected in the Sermon on the Mount” is “the only practicable one to obtain the salvation of souls”. Everything else – particularly what is based “on respect for creation or on the rights of the human person” – would be “radically insufficient”.
This is the real disagreement. The refusal does not only concern the Council, it targets the entire evolution of the Church more broadly. By reducing Christianity to an immutable moral truth, independent of historical developments, fundamentalists offer an essentially legal and formalist vision of the Church: a perfect society, closed in on itself, which has nothing to learn from the world.
Revelation is not a fixed heritage
However, it is precisely the opposite that Leo XIV recalls. In his encyclical, he affirms that the Church must allow itself to be challenged “by everything that touches the existence of men and women today”. It cannot remain foreign “to the dynamics which shape the face of society”. She bears responsibility for the way in which social relations are constructed.
Revelation, the Pope writes, is not a fixed heritage. It constitutes a “living criterion” making it possible to clarify concrete choices, to encourage personal and community conversions, to inspire structural reforms and to renew Christian witness in public life.
History is therefore not a danger from which we should protect ourselves. It is the place where the Church experiences the fruitfulness of the Gospel, deepens its understanding of the human person and develops its teaching in the service of the dignity of each person and the common good.
“No one can demand of us that we relegate religion to the secret intimacy of people, without any influence on social and national life, without concern for the health of the institutions of civil society, without expressing ourselves on the events which interest citizens”, affirmed Pope Francis in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium.
The heritage of social doctrine
This intuition is not new. It runs through the entire history of the social doctrine of the Church. When Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum in 1891, he did not break with Tradition; on the contrary, it shows how it can respond to the upheavals in the industrial world. By integrating the notions of personal dignity, fundamental rights and social justice into the magisterium, it demonstrates that fidelity to the Gospel also requires a careful reading of historical realities.
Taking into account a social and historical construction of faith constitutes the point of rupture with the fundamentalist vision. This point is absolutely not marginal, because it concerns the way of reading the incarnation and the work of the Spirit in the world.
Maintaining a combative Christianity
The fundamentalist vision is, on the contrary, part of the last attempt to maintain a combative Christianity inherited from the 19th century. Faced with modern States and democratic regimes, part of the Church then chose to define itself above all as a legally perfect society, leaning on its authority and suspicious of any developments in the world.
Social doctrine, for its part, proceeds from an exactly opposite movement. It arises from the gap between the Gospel and historical realities. It consists neither of blessing the world as it is, nor of condemning it without appeal. It invites discernment. She trusts in human freedom to seek, in each era, paths to the common good in the light of the Gospel.
This is why Leo XIV gives it a central place today. The principles on which it is founded – the inalienable dignity of every person, the preferential option for the poor, the universal destination of goods, concern for the common good – do not constitute an optional supplement to the Christian faith. They are an essential expression of it. They have shaped an entire tradition of Catholicism engaged in society, for centuries, which has thus been able to carry out acts of humanity.
In this sense, perhaps the strongest response to the Fundamentalist Declaration of Faith is not further condemnation. It is the encyclical of Leo XIV herself.
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