[Grem] Interjú J.Seifert katol.filoz-sal az Amoris Laetitiáról és az autentius katolikus etikáért folyt-ott harcról

[Emoke Greschik]

 Interview: Josef Seifert on his Dismissal, Amoris Laetitia, & The Fight
For an Authentic Catholic Life Ethic
[image: Maike Hickson] <https://onepeterfive.com/author/mhickson/> Maike
Hickson <https://onepeterfive.com/author/mhickson/> February 2, 2018
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*Editor’s Note: The following interview with Dr. Joseph Seifert, founding
rector of the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein
& President of the newly founded John Paul II Academy for Human Life and
the Family was conducted by Dr. Maike Hickson on behalf of OnePeterFive. *
------------------------------

*Maike Hickson (MH): At the end of August of 2017, Archbishop Javier
Martínez Fernández, of Granada, dismissed
<https://onepeterfive.com/spanish-archbishop-fires-professor-seifert-for-amoris-laetitia-critique/>
you from your Dietrich von Hildebrand Chair at the International Academy of
Philosophy. You decided to take some legal steps against this unjust
treatment which was justified by the Diocese with your public criticism of
Amoris Laetitia. How is now your own situation with regard to Archbishop
Martínez, after he dismissed you from your Chair and you resisted that step
with legal means?*

Joseph Seifert (JS): Yes, after my dismissal (first, in 2016, on the basis
of my article <http://aemaet.de/index.php/aemaet/article/view/35>;  from my
teaching some courses in the Seminary, as Professor in the *Instituto de
Filosofía Edith Stein*; and in 2017, after the publication of my second
article <http://aemaet.de/index.php/aemaet/article/view/44>, from my
Dietrich von Hildebrand Chair at the IAP-IFES – a new Campus of the
International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality Liechtenstein
together with the Instituto de Filosofía Edith Stein, created by archbishop
Martínez), I defended myself against a declaration and action which I
considered a grave violation of truth and of justice.

Following the advice of a Cardinal whom I hold in the highest respect, and
who told me that also for the sake of a just treatment of other Professors
and for the good of the Church, I should not leave this action
unchallenged, I took two legal steps. One was an ecclesiastic “
*remonstratio*”, according to Canon Law (which also upholds free expression
of thought and academic freedom, and demands that before taking any
punitive action one has to give the alleged trespasser the right to defend
himself); the other one a civil complaint based on Spanish law. Since the
content of the two complaints were almost identical, and I did not
unnecessarily want to enter into a long drawn-out legal dispute with an
archbishop and personal friend, I withdrew the ecclesiastical suit and made
several offers for extrajudicial peaceful agreements in order to end the
civil suit as well, before it would come to a judgment of the tribunal,
foreseeably against the diocese and IFES. In my “peace-propoals” I offered,
among other things, to withdraw any demand to be re-instituted as professor
in my chair.

I am happy to inform you that after 4 1/2 months an extrajudicial agreement
that ended the legal proceedings was recently signed by both parties. While
the diocese never retracted, as I had asked for, the grave (and in my
opinion completely unfounded) public charges (that I confounded and damaged
the faith and morals of the faithful, undermined papal authority, and did
not serve the Church but the world), this agreement gave me and, I believe,
did so in truth and justice, the confirmation that I was not forced to
retire “normally” according to a Spanish retirement law for University
Professors, but dismissed on the basis of my articles on *Amoris Laetitia*,
and that this dismissal was done against justice and law.

*MH: What is the content of that peaceful agreement, and how did it come to
such a peaceful agreement? Will you be able to return to your previous
position?*

JS: I am not free to reveal the specific contents and conditions accepted
by both sides in the agreement, because we both signed a  clause in the
agreement that we would not divulge these to the press. The same discretion
prevents me from answering your questions about the exact ways through
which this agreement came about. As I, before proposing this agreement
through my lawyer, freely abandoned any claim to return to my previous
position, and did not pursue the legal suit to its end (which would have
demanded the nullity of my dismissal and reinstatement in my chair), I am
unable to return to my previous chair in the Institute (IAP-IFES).
However, I have good chances to be offered a research Institute and
Research Professorship in another University and at present explore four
such possibilities.

*MH: Being an Austrian, have you ever contacted Cardinal Christoph
Schönborn, whom the Pope has named as best interpreter of Amoris Laetitia,
to ask him about the actions of archbishop Martínez and his response to
your articles critical of Amoris Laetitia that he so strongly defends?*

JS: Yes, I had recently a long telephone conversation with Cardinal
Schönborn, who is an old acquaintance and friend of mine (we have been
colleagues in the 1980s as professors, as regular visiting professors, in
the John Paul II Institute for the Studies of Marriage and Family at the
Lateran University in Rome). As is well known, this Institute has been
founded by the holy Pope on the day on which the assassination attempt was
made against him May 13, 1981. (I lived this horrible and unforgettable day
with his friend, his former student and successor in the chair of Ethics at
the Catholic University of Lublin and co-director of the International
Academy of Philosophy in Texas, the ancestor Institute of the IAP in
Liechtenstein: Professor Tadeusz Styczeî in Krakow in Poland, where both of
us had been invited for a lecture.)

I did not contact Cardinal Schönborn in order to ask him about my situation
in Granada, but because the Vice-Rector of a University Institution under
his tutelage had contacted me to ask whether I would perhaps accept a chair
in this Institute. Knowing that Cardinal Schönborn had been named by the
Pope the highest authority in the Church to interpret *Amoris Laetitia*
correctly as being in line with the magisterium of the Church, I expected
him to be wholly opposed to the possibility of my professorship at this
Institute and totally in support of Archbishop Martinez’s action against
me. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised and greatly pleased that he
neither was opposed in principle to a professorship of mine in this
International Institute, nor in support of my having been dismissed for my
articles about AL in Granada. While he certainly thinks similarly to
archbishop Martínez on *Amoris Laetitia*, he expressed astonishment and
some bewilderment about the way of my having been treated in Granada and
observed that in his opinion the only way to approach such differences of
opinion would be an academic response and dialogue and not a disciplinary
action.

*MH: Were there some high-ranking prelates of the Church, or even close
collaborators of Pope Francis involved in this peaceful solution?*

JS: Not as far as I know of.

*MH: What do you think is the possible effect of the resolution of your own
unjust dismissal for other orthodox scholars in the Catholic Church with
regard to a well-reasoned and faithful criticism of papal documents?*

JS: I greatly hope that my unjust dismissal and the peaceful resolution of
the conflict with Archbishop Don Javier Martínez (who treated me up to my
articles on *Amoris Laetitia* always as a friend, whom I admire for many of
his actions and to whom I owe much gratitude) will encourage other
philosophers and theologians to express, according to the judgment of their
conscience, the truth even when it means some criticism of papal documents.
It is likewise my hope that my “case” will free many others from a false
papolatry, so as if a Catholic would not ever be permitted to criticize
something a pope said. I think such an attitude, possibly fostered by the
great and holy popes we had during the last 150 years, is not at all
Catholic, as the splendid examples of Saint Athanasius, Saint Catherine of
Siena and others show. The pope neither is the lord over truth nor the Lord
of the Church, but their servant.  Finally I hope that others will be freed
by the happy outcome of my legal complaint from the kind of fear that
reigns now in the Vatican and elsewhere in the Church, as Cardinal Müller
impressively explained in an Interview. For such a fear, especially if it
paralyzes us in the defense of truth, is unworthy of a true Catholic, who
should be ready to give his life for the defense of the truth, and does
great damage to the Church and its credibility.

*MH: What are the underlying principles, in short, for a Catholic
academician, to conduct a critical examination of Church documents, for
example of the post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia?*

JS: Professor Pierantoni, many others such as Professor Spaemann, doctors
of the Church, and also myself explained these principles in different
articles (I may refer here to two articles and an Interview of Church
historians and to an interview with bishop Athanasius Schneider:

   - De Mattei: First reflections on a catastrophic document – *Amoris
   Laetitia*
   <http://cfnews.org/page88/files/7d8edade9700c31473df93d12f2c34dc-566.html>
   - Josef Seifert, Pure Logic, And The Beginning Of The Official
   Persecution Of Orthodoxy Within The Church
   <http://www.aemaet.de/index.php/aemaet/article/view/46/0>
   - Catholic Scholar: Official Persecution of Orthodoxy Within the Church
   Has Begun
   <https://onepeterfive.com/catholic-scholar-official-persecution-orthodoxy-within-church-begun/>

Of Bishop Athanasius Schneider see:

   - Bishop Schneider on Prof. Seifert, Cardinal Caffarra, and the Duty to
   Resist
   <https://onepeterfive.com/bishop-schneider-prof-seifert-cardinal-caffarra-duty-resist/>
   - See also my first article on AL: *Amoris Laetitia*: Joy, Sadness And
   Hopes <http://aemaet.de/index.php/aemaet/article/view/35>

A Pope is absolutely protected against errors and heresies only when he
pronounces dogmas and speaks “ex cathedra”. Therefore it does not
contradict in any way the Catholic belief in the infallibility of the pope
if a true pope (or a false pope, of whom the Church had a few) commits
errors, such as pope Liberius whom Saint Athanasius resisted, or if a pope
even is condemned as heretic like Pope Honorius I, or stricken from the
list of Popes such as John XXIII (not the Saint of the 20th century but the
earlier one who was asked by a Council to resign and actually resigned
during the Council of Constance 1414-1418). This shows that a pope is
absolutely not quite generally exempt from error and therefore each
Catholic is free and even obliged to reverently but courageously examine
also papal utterances in the light of Divine Revelation and the Perpetual
Church Teaching. As soon as even an utterance of the apparently “ordinary
magisterium” of the Church contradicts the *depositum fidei* and the
perpetual Church teaching, it has to be rejected.

*MH: The Pontifical Academy for Life just posted an article
<http://www.academyforlife.va/content/dam/pav/documenti%20pdf/2018/01_Hoever_pdf.pdf>
on their website
<http://www.academyforlife.va/content/pav/it/the-academics/activity-academics/hoever--amoris-laetitia.html>
which speaks about “a weak point in the traditional moral-theological
doctrine of the ‘intrinsically evil action'” in light of Amoris
Laetitia. **Would
you comment on this line of argument, also and especially in light of your
own concern about the possible undermining of the moral absolutes as it is
laid out in Amoris Laetitia?*

JS: First, Gerhard Höver has published this article originally in German.
He has recently published an article
<http://www.katholisch.de/aktuelles/aktuelle-artikel/schutz-des-lebens-bis-zuletzt>
on human dignity and physician-assisted suicide in which he presents
excellent reasons against any compromise through laws that permit
physician-assisted suicide in some cases. Therefore the last sentence of
the abstract of his article and his claim in the article that the teaching
that there are intrinsically evil acts is “too narrow” is surprising,
because Höver seems to state in the other article that any direct assault
on human life is intrinsically evil. Professor Gerhard Höver is Professor
emeritus of the University of Bonn, Germany. From the way he cites Franz
Böckle’s *Fundamentalmoral*, I assume he was a student of Professor Franz
Böckle, who was also Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Bonn
and a fervent champion of the enemies of *Humanae Vitae* and of the
teaching that there are intrinsically evil acts. Höver published several
books jointly with Böckle: Ja zum Menschen : Bausteine einer Konkreten
Moral (München: Kösel, 1993), and Franz Böckle
<http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3ABöckle%2C+Franz.&qt=hot_author>;
Gerhard
Höver
<http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3AHöver%2C+Gerhard%2C&qt=hot_author>;
Ludger
Honnefelder
<http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3AHonnefelder%2C+Ludger.&qt=hot_author>,
Der Streit um das Gewissen,  (München: Kösel, 1995). The teachings of the
avalanche of Catholic moral theologians who, like Böckle, opposed *Humanae
Vitae* and introduced a proportionalist ethics that denies not only the
intrinsic moral wrongness of contraception, but any intrinsically evil
acts, was forcefully and, I would say, gloriously refuted and
condemned in *Veritatis
Splendor*.

Secondly, because PAV puts a caveat at the end of Höver’s article: “*The
article we publish does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the
Pontifical Academy for Life…*” ,  we cannot directly attribute this article
to PAV, while I would certainly not agree that our new John Paul II Academy
for Human Life and the Family, whose President I am, publish such an
article on our website, because this can only either suggest consent
(despite the caveat) or confuse the reader.

Thirdly, I would say that this article expresses, in my opinion, an
extremely illogical and weird conclusion from a somewhat obscure
explanation of the difference of Bonaventure’s and Aristotle’s notion of
time and the assertion that “time is greater than space”. This latter
affirmation certainly has some good sense if we recognize that space is
only the medium in which physical reality is located and moves, while time
also encompasses purely spiritual creatures, such as angels, who have a
beginning in time (only God is beginningless), can change in time (Ezekiel
28: 11 ff. reports that Satan was a beautiful  and noble angel in paradise
and only at a later time fell, seduced by bis pride), and whose higher form
of temporality was called aeon by St. Bonaventure and other philosophers.

After going into this distinction and the medieval notion of the aeon as
being in some ways different from the time of physical movement, but still
including time, and after he affirmed the superior greatness of time over
space, Höver jumps, in a short phrase, into a moral-theological conclusion
against the existence of intrinsically evil acts that has nothing, but
absolutely nothing, to do with St. Bonaventure’s and Ratzinger’s
reflections on time. The author asserts, in his abstract:

“The expanded concept of time, which is theological in the truest sense of
the term, also shows us a weak point in the traditional moral-theological
doctrine of the ‘intrinsically evil action’, which has its background in
the Aristotelian concept of movement and is thus based on a restricted
concept of time. Accordingly, the principle that ‘Time is greater than
space’ demands both a correction and a constructive development.“

In his longer article he explains that Pope Francis as well rejects in *Amoris
Laetitia* the teaching of the ordinary magisterium of Pope John Paul II,
solemnly declared in *Veritatis Splendor*, as ·too narrow,” saying:

The Pope warns directly: ‘By thinking that everything is black and white,
we sometimes close off the way of grace and of growth, and discourage paths
of sanctification which give glory to God’ (AL 305) This makes it clear
that the principle that ‘time is greater than space’ takes on a
moral-theological significance that refers to the level of norm structures
and affects the previous teaching about ‘intrinsically evil actions.’ It is
not without reason that some have requested further clarification on this
point.

The doctrine in Thomas and Thomism about “intrinsically evil actions”
contains the axiom *bonum ex causa integra, malum ex quocumque defectu*,
that is to say, “goodness” and (in this sense) also “regularity” exist only
when all the factors that constitute the ethical quality of an action form
an integral unity; if even only one element is defective, the consequence
is “badness” and (in this sense) also “irregularity.” If one looks more
closely at the Aristotelian background, one sees that the theorem is based
on the contrary opposition between form and lack (*privatio*, “absence”) as
a model for the explanation of movements of change in space. According to
Bonaventure’s conception of time, however, this means that the theorem is
based on a *coarctata temporis acceptio*, and this means that the
definition of that which is “intrinsically evil” is also affected. It seems
that theological reasons lead Pope Francis to refuse to go on accepting
this restriction.

In this regard, Höver, in an obscure German language and based on a wholly
unrelated metaphysics of time, supports Father Chiodi’s
“interpretation of *Humanae
Vitae* in the Light of *Amoris Laetitia*” that stands in direct
contradiction to *Humanae Vitae* and *Veritatis Splendor*. Chiodi proposes
that contraception is not only NOT always forbidden, as *Humanae Vitae*
teaches, but can even be obligatory. Against these claims, see the newly
discovered and published speech
<https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/exclusive-pope-john-paul-iis-prophetic-warning-in-defense-of-humanae-vitae>
of Pope John Paul II. See also my critique
<https://onepeterfive.com/professor-seifert-comments-fr-chiodis-re-reading-humanae-vitae/>
of Chiodi.

While Father Chiodi pretends that his interpretation of AL proposes a “new
moral theological paradigm” I will show in a new book to be published this
year that this allegedly new moral paradigm is, on the contrary, an old
moral-theological heresy condemned most outspokenly and clearly by Saint
John Paul II and therefore to be condemned again by Pope Francis, given the
unity of Church Teaching.

*MH: You are the President of the newly founded John Paul II Academy for
Human Life and the Family (JAHLF). Could you describe to our readers the
goals of this new academy? What do you think is the role and importance of
JAHLF in a time where we have Vatican institutions such as the PAV
publishing articles which put a doubt on essential concepts of the moral
teaching, such as “intrinsically evil acts”?*

JS: The task of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family is
the same that the original PAV has been designed for. We want to put the
whole range of philosophy, theology, science, etc. into the service of
defending and clarifying those fundamental truths about human life and the
family that are under attack from countless sides. We believe that many of
these truths, for example those taught in *Humanae Vitae* or in *Veritatis
Splendor* about intrinsically bad acts, are also accessible to human
reason. Therefore we wish to explain these truths also by means of
philosophy, thus aiming at a synthesis between *fides and ratio* with
respect to human life issues. That the PAV itself again and again attacks
these truths (see Höver’s and Chiodi’s writings) is nothing new that would
have begun only under Pope Francis. The truth about life had to be, during
a number of years under the Presidency of Mons. Fisichella, and also under
that of Mons. Carrasco, also defended under Pope Benedict XVI against some
events organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life and some publications
of its members and even Presidents. As member of PAV, I wrote two open
letters at that time, deploring the direct contradiction to *Evangelium
Vitae* in an article by Mons. Fisichella in *L’Osservatore Romano*, and in
a PAV-organized symposium on infertility treatement in which a large
majority of speakers directly opposed fundamental moral teachings of the
Church. And even in the golden times of PAV, under the PAV Presidency of
Mons. (now Cardinal) Sgreggia, its president defended opinions about “brain
death” which all members of JAHLF consider deeply erroneous. Thus the John
Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family should have been founded a
long time ago. But perhaps this part of our mission, to defend the truth
even against The Pontifical Academy for Life, is today more relevant than
ever, as can be seen when we just think of the articles of Chiodi and
Höver. To this end, we just published a JAHLF statement
<https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breakingnew-laity-led-academy-for-life-corrects-vatican-on-what-church-real>
on a recent conference presented under the auspices of PAV.

The Academy sees it is an especially urgent task, projected as theme for
the first General Assembly Meeting and public Congress planned for later
this year, to present an in-depth analysis and defense of the
encyclicals *Humanae
Vitae* and *Veritatis Splendor*. Having presented a critical analysis of
Father Maurizio Chiodi’s re-interpretation of *Humanae Vitae* in the light
of *Amoris Laetitia*, an article that constitutes a frontal attack on *Humanae
Vitae* and a negation of the central content of *Veritatis Splendor* – the
teaching of intrinsically evil actions (see this article
<https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/professor-rebukes-new-academy-for-life-members-disastrous-approval-of-contr>)
– I wish to publish a large book on the topic, in German, in 2018, on the
theme: “New moraltheological paradigm or old moraltheological heresy?”, and
enlist the work of a number of members and corresponding members of our new
Academy to present these eternal truths which Chiodi denies (under the
title of a new moral theological paradigm he attributes to Pope Francis).

Thus I do think the JAHLF has a great mission in serving the Splendor of
Moral Truth and in dispelling the darkness that threatens to throw its
shadow, even in the Catholic Church, over Truth’s eternal splendor. May the
Holy Spirit prevent this!
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