Flirting more and more with heresy…
Peter Kwasniewski Laments Heretical Book Denying Papal Infallibility Is Out Of Print
The liturgical scholar and retired philosophy professor Dr. Peter Kwasniewski continues on his unholy theological trajectory that will eventually take him to an explicit denial of the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) and worse. In a recent social media post, the prolific professor indirectly promoted an explicitly heretical book by lamenting its out-of-print status.
The work in question is Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150-1350 by English medieval scholar and historian Brian Tierney (1922-2019). It was first published by E. J. Brill in the Netherlands in 1972. Not only does the book lack the ecclesiastical printing permissions known as the nihil obstat and imprimatur, it in fact advances claims that are nothing short of heretical.
On the very last page, the author concludes as follows:
There is no convincing evidence that papal infallibility formed any part of the theological or canonical tradition of the church before the thirteenth century; the doctrine was invented in the first place by a few dissident Franciscans be- cause it suited their convenience to invent it; eventually, but only after much initial reluctance, it was accepted by the papacy because it suited the convenience of the popes to accept it.
The doctrine of papal infallibility no longer serves anyone’s convenience — least of all the pope’s. The papacy adopted the doctrine out of weakness. Perhaps one day the church will feel strong enough to renounce it.
(Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150-1350: A Study on the Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty and Tradition in the Middle Ages [Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972], p. 281)
Although clearly heretical and therefore to be avoided by all Catholics, Prof. Kwasniewski had nothing better to do than to inform the internet of the existence of this work. On July 26, 2024, he put up the following post on Facebook:
In case the image won’t display, Kwasniewski shared a large scanned image of the title page, adding: “It’s absurd that this book is out of print.” He also tagged an acquaintance of his, one Alexandros Barbas.
Dr. K’s post might seem harmless at first sight, but let’s not kid ourselves. The simple fact of the matter is that by publishing this post to his roughly 12,000 followers — many of whom no doubt admire him and greatly respect his reputation as a scholar — , Kwasniewski is drawing their attention to this heretical book, a work most of them would otherwise probably never even hear about.
Moreover, the fact that he calls its out-of-print status “absurd” indicates that he wishes it were easily available and considers it unfortunate that it is not. This, in turn, shows he approves of the work at least to a significant extent (significant enough to wish it were more widely accessible). The fact that he fails to include any kind of disclaimer concerning the book — which, again, is heretical and therefore morally forbidden for Catholics to read, at least generally speaking — underscores that he sees nothing wrong with making the book known and giving it at least the appearance of an endorsement, allowing his readership to draw their own conclusions.
But let’s take his comment at face value…. Is it really “absurd” that this book is out of print? Not at all. In fact, if the Church weren’t currently eclipsed by the nefarious doings of her enemies, it is obvious that Tierney’s Origins of Papal Infallibility would be on the Index of Forbidden Books. Yet Kwasniewski deplores it is out of print!
On the Novus Ordo Watch Facebook page, we called Kwasniewski out on this indirect endorsement of a most dangerous book, to which he replied in the comments as follows:
Seems an awful lot to conclude from my comment, which was an expression of exasperation that a scholarly book – however wrong it may be on certain points (as in the screen shot, which is obviously wrong) – is out of print and thus inaccessible.
(Source)
We quickly fired back thusly:
Your post was a de facto promotion of the work, and you know it. You made countless people aware of the existence of this heretical book, and it’s not rash to suspect that that was precisely your intent, otherwise you would have kept your exasperation to yourself.
(Source)
Here is the corresponding screenshot:
Dr. K’s reaction seems disingenuous. It’s not the case that this book simply “may” be “wrong” on “certain points”. The title alone is an affront to Catholic dogma and implicitly heretical, and of course the conclusion is heresy pure and simple. In other words, we are not just talking about a generally orthodox book with an unfortunate heretical footnote or two. (Whether it be scholarly or not, is irrelevant.)
There is simply no excuse for blasting a public post to all of one’s followers that effectively advertises a book attacking Catholic dogma and undermining people’s Faith, especially when no disclaimer or warning is included. What purpose does his post serve besides making known the existence of this work? Is the man really so vain that he could not keep some exasperation to himself?
After what Dr. Kwasniewski has been publishing the last few years, it seems clear the man is prone to thinking of Sacred Theology as his personal intellectual playground which allows him to advance this or that thesis before a worldwide audience, even to the point of contradicting and mocking pre-Vatican II magisterial teaching.
The following Novus Ordo Watch posts provide a critical review of some of Kwasniewski’s most egregious errors:
- Too Traditional for Tradition? Peter Kwasniewski vs. Pope Saint Pius X
- Against the ‘New Papacy’ of Peter Kwasniewski
- Rethinking Peter Kwasniewski: A Sedevacantist Critique of his Anti-Papal Traditionalism
- “Rethinking” the Papacy? A New Narrative for the Semi-Trads
- No Jekyll-and-Hyde Magisterium: Against the Theological Sophistry of Peter Kwasniewski
- Still Lost in Blunderland: Refuting Peter Kwasniewski’s Latest Specious Attack on Ultramontanism
- Why still be a Catholic? A Critique of Peter Kwasniewski’s Answer to a despondent Novus Ordo Seminarian
- The Battle for the Catholic Ethos: Peter Kwasniewski tries to save Recognize-and-Resist
- Clueless Kwasniewski cranks out another Load of Howlers on the Papacy
Tragically, Kwasniewski’s gradual defection is becoming more and more pronounced each day, and that is no exaggeration. We can see his trajectory, for example, in a number of recent articles he published.
For example, when in 2021 he published a grandiosely-entitled response to a disheartened Novus Ordo seminarian, who was asking, essentially, what the point is of remaining Catholic if the Vatican II Church is the Catholic Church, none of the reasons he gave had anything to do with the Vatican II Church. All of the reasons he gave were tied to the pre-Vatican II, true Roman Catholic Church:
What this means is that Prof. K unintentionally confirmed the validity of the seminarian’s crisis of Faith: There is no reason to be a Catholic if the Vatican II Church is the Catholic Church! Kwasniewski couldn’t — or at least didn’t — offer a single reason for why one should be a Catholic that was based on the reality of the “Catholic Church” today. Nevertheless, he at least made an effort to base his reasoning on true Catholicism.
Fast-forward to early 2023. In a write-up for One Peter Five, attractively entitled “Abandoning the Church Has No Appeal for Traditionalists” and published on Jan. 4, 2023, Kwasniewski enumerated five reasons explaining why he’s not tempted to become Eastern Orthodox. The trouble is that none of the reasons he provided had anything to do with the falsity of the Eastern Orthodox religion, nor with the objective evidence that the Catholic religion is the only true religion, founded by Christ. Instead, all reasons had to do with personal attachment, subjective appreciation, or some similarly insufficient reason.
We can summarize the five reasons given by Dr. K as follows:
- I am attached to the Roman/Latin rites, not to the East
- I like St. Thomas Aquinas
- I like the sacred music of the West better than that of the East
- I wouldn’t know which Orthodox church to join — there are too many options!
- I feel at home in the Roman Catholic Church
These are the reasons he gave last year for not becoming Orthodox! All of them, with the possible exception of the fourth one, are subjective and based on personal preference rather than objective truth! How long does anyone think these will last? (Although, admittedly, we suspect that the first reason given may indeed keep him from ever formally embracing Orthodoxy, while perhaps nevertheless spouting its heresies under the label of ‘Catholic Tradition’ or ‘rethinking the Papacy’.)
In a similar article published about five months later, Kwasniewski went even further. He had the audacity to state:
I do not think there is any absolutely decisive and unobjectionable “proof” that one must be in union with the Catholic Church centered in Rome, such that it would be impossible to resist it with counterarguments or contrary experiences [sic] that point in another direction; but, for the same reasons, neither is such a proof available for any Church of the East. If anything, the arguments of the East for its autocephalous status are far weaker than the arguments for the papacy as a center of unity. What we do have, in any case, are many converging signs that the Latin and Greek churches have preserved their sacramental-liturgical-dogmatic identities (in spite of individual deviants who cause scandal) and that each has, with God’s grace, preserved certain truths or features better than the other has done.
(Peter Kwasniewski, “A Wanderer Asks Questions about Church Membership”, One Peter Five, June 21, 2023; italics given; underlining added.)
This was written by a man who enjoys the admiration and following of a lot of people who think he is just about the gold standard of what it means to be a traditional Roman Catholic today! How frightening!
So at this point Prof. Kwasniewski, supposedly an authority on traditional Catholicism, asserts that there is no conclusive proof that the Catholic Church is the true Church and not the Orthodox church. Certainly, he says there is more reason to accept the Catholic Church, but ultimately, you can’t prove it’s the true Church. It’s not that difficult to figure out where this man is heading.
At the end of last year, by the way, Dr. Kwasniewski promoted a quote by Fr. Adrian Fortescue (1874-1923) on Facebook that referred to Pope St. Pius X as an “Italian lunatic”. When we called him out on it, he switched into damage control mode: “Is there anyone else in the world who assumes that quoting someone’s striking, private, and piqued words from 113 years ago equates to agreeing with all of them or even praising them? But when you are dealing with sedes, you are dealing with an alternate dimension of reality”, the prolific professor opined.
So even though he had shared Fr. Fortescue’s disdainful and insulting words against the Pope under the label of “oldie but goodie”, without any caveat or disclaimer, the retired philosopher wanted us to believe that it was just the juicy personal insults against the Pope he happened to be in disagreement with, eh? But no, he didn’t even say as much. In fact, he merely asked a rhetorical question about what one should reasonably assume. That’s a rather evasive answer where a clear one would have been necessary.
And so here we are in mid-2024, and Kwasniewski has promoted expressed his displeasure at the unavailability of a heretical book, and he just needed to do it in public for all of his devoted admirers to see.
But why, if he simply could not help making known his frustration, did he not say something like, “I realize this is a heretical book, and for that reason I condemn it, but for academic research purposes I wish it were more easily accessible because it also contains much good information not found elsewhere”? This way, he could have expressed his ‘exasperation’ while at the same time warning everyone of the work’s heretical content. While even that might have crossed the line of what’s permissible, at least it would have made Kwasniewski’s excuse sound more believable.
Oh, by the way: Just the other day on Facebook, Dr. K endorsed the recently-deceased Wolfgang Smith (1930-2024), who was an esotericist and Perennialist (see also these posts here). Smith’s book Christian Gnosis: From St. Paul to Meister Eckhart was released by the Gnostic Angelico Press (just look at what they’ve published by or about Valentin Tomberg!), a publisher Kwasniewski recommends, perhaps because it also carries a number of his own titles.
St. John the Apostle warned us: “Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits if they be of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 Jn 4:1).
People follow Peter Kwasniewski at their own risk.
Image source: composite with elements from Facebook and Archive.org
Licenses: fair use
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