"Even if the Pope were Satan incarnate, we ought not to raise up our heads against him, but calmly lie down to rest on his bosom": A reasonably faithful pastiche

"Even if the Pope were Satan incarnate, we ought not to raise up our heads against him, but calmly lie down to rest on his bosom. He who rebels against our Father is condemned to death, for that which we do to him we do to Christ: we honor Christ if we honor the Pope; we dishonor Christ if we dishonor the Pope. I know very well that many defend themselves by boasting: 'They are so corrupt, and work all manner of evil!' But God has commanded that, even if the priests, the pastors, and Christ-on-earth were incarnate devils, we be obedient and subject to them, not for their sakes, but for the sake of God, and out of obedience to Him."

     St. Catherine of Siena, as quoted by Michael Warren Davis in "Pray for the Pope," First things, 10 December 2018, and often (and earlier) elsewhere, but without a reference.
     My current sense is that this is authentic, but a pastiche.  At the moment it looks to me like this comes from two separate passages in Letter 17 (Dupré Theseider =28 Tommasèo =191 Gigli) to Bernabò Visconti of Milan plus two somewhat more closely contiguous passages in Letter 68 (Dupré Theseider =207 Tommasèo =198 Gigli) to the Signori of Florence.  To see this you need the original Italian, which I've taken from the edition edited by Tommasèo and inserted into the standard Noffke translation:

"Even if the Pope were Satan incarnate, we ought not to raise up our heads against him".  Noffke, vol. 1, p. 69:  "Even if that vicar [of Christ] were a devil incarnate, I must not defy him but always humble myself [(io non debbo alzare il capo contro a lui, ma sempre umiliarmi)] and ask for the blood [of Christ] for mercy’s sake."  Note that "io non debbo alzare il capo contro a lui" (from Tommasèo, vol. 1, p. 119) would be, more literally, "I must not raise my head [(alzare il capo)] against him."

"calmly lie down to rest on his bosom".  Noffke, vol. 1, p. 71:  "I would have us humbly rest our heads on the lap of Christ in heaven [(Umilmente voglio che poniamo il capo in grembo di Cristo in cielo)] by our affection and love, and [on the lap] of Christ on earth (his deputy) by our reverence for the blood of Christ, to which he holds the keys."  Note that "grembo" (from Tommasèo, vol. 1, p. 121) can be translated, out of modern Italian at least, as "lap, womb, bosom".

"He who rebels against our Father is condemned to death, for that which we do to him we do to Christ: we honor Christ if we honor the Pope; we dishonor Christ if we dishonor the Pope."  Noffke, vol. 1, p. 214:  "whoever like a gangrenous limb rebels against holy Church and against our father, Christ on earth [(alla santa Chiesa, e al padre nostro Cristo in terra)], has fallen under the sentence of death [(è caduto nel bando della morte)], because whatever we do to him we are doing to Christ in heaven, whether it is reverence or dishonor."  Italian from Tommasèo, vol. 3, p. 251.  This match is less clear than the other three considered as a quotation (rather than a paraphrase), and especially when one considers how often St. Catherine repeats herself.

"many defend themselves by boasting: 'They are so corrupt, and work all manner of evil!'  But God has commanded that, even if the priests, the pastors, and Christ-on-earth were incarnate devils, we be obedient and subject to them, not for their sakes, but for the sake of God, and out of obedience to Him."  Noffke, vol. 1, 215:  "they defend themselves by saying [(dicendo)], 'They are bad, and they are doing all kinds of evil.'  But I am telling you that God wills, and has so commanded [(Dio vuole, e ha comandato così)], that even if the pastors and Christ on earth [(pastori, e Cristo in terra)] were devils incarnate (rather than good kind fathers), we must be submissive and obedient to them—not for what they are in themselves but out of obedience to God, because they take the place of Christ, who wants us to obey them."  Italian from Tommasèo, vol. 3, p. 251-252.

Pseudo-Bonhoeffer: "One can't be a Christian and a nationalist at the same time."

     Jean Lasserre, War and the gospel, trans. Oliver Coburn (London:  James Clarke & Co. Limited; Scottsdale, PA:  Herald Press, 1962 [1953]), 34:

Nothing in the Scriptures gives the Christian authority to tear apart the body of Christ for the State or anything else.  Do we believe in the Universal Church, in the communion of Saints, or do we believe in the eternal mission of our country?  One cannot believe in both at once; one cannot be a Christian and nationalist.

Of the translation in the header Mary Bonsanquet (The life and death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York:  Harper & Row, 1968), 89) may be the source.  Yet even she is clear that it wasn't Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said this, but rather Lasserre.  Nor does she claim that she is doing anything more than quoting the book by Lasserre first published in French in 1953 (La guerre et l'évangile (Paris:  La Réconciliation)), long after Bonhoeffer had already been executed by the Nazis.  Note also that her English is more faithful to the original French (and the French context) as reproduced below.  Bonsanquet:

'Do we believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, or do we believe in the eternal mission of France?  One can't be a Christian and a nationalist at the same time.'

Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer:  a biography, rev. ed. (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2000), 154, citing the English translation given above (though, again, Bosanquet is clearly closer to the original French):

'Do we believe in the Universal Church, in the communion of saints, or do we believe in the eternal mission of our country? . . . one cannot be Christian and nationalist.'

Jean Lasserre, La guerre et l'évangile (Paris:  La Réconciliation, 1953), 41-42, as quoted in Frédéric Rognon, "Pacifisme et tyrannicide chez Jean Lasserre et Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Seconde partie:  l'interprétation des incidences théologiques," Études théologiques et religieuses 80, no. 2 (2005):  165 (159-176):

Rien, dans l’Écriture, n’autorise le chrétien à déchirer le corps de Christ au nom de quoi que ce soit.  Croyons-nous la Sainte Église universelle ? le communion des Saints ? ou bien croyons-nous en la mission éternelle de la France ? On ne peut pas croire les deux à la fois ; on ne peut pas être en même temps chrétien et nationaliste.

 

"an elevation of the [original] sense of the text"

"Over against this [recent exegetical trend] stands the dogmatic heritage of church history [(der dogmengeschichtliche Befund)], according to which the doctrinal pronouncements of the Church on the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (Ineffabilis Deus (Pius IX in 1854); Fulgens corona (Pius XII in 1953)) and the Bodily Assumption (Munificentissimus Deus (1950)) recognized the Protoevangelium as [a] biblical argument independently of the reading ipsa and without [an] authoritative ruling as to the [(ohne Festlegung auf)] literal or typological sense [of Gen 3:15], but rather under [the impact of an] immersion in the proof from the Fathers [(allerdings unter Einfügung in den Väterbeweis)] and in consideration of the prevailing certainty of faith [(der vorwaltenden Glaubensüberzeugung)] (the factum ecclesiae).  According to Munificentissimus Deus the Assumption has thus its fundamentum in Scripture, which wants to signify not a formal being-contained [therein (ein förmaliches Enthaltensein)], but yet functions in a more than merely supportive way.  There is in this sense no independent proof from Scripture, but an elevation [(Erhebung)] of the meaning [(Sinnes)] of the text in the light of the complete whole that is the Church’s confession of faith [(des integralen Glaubensbekenntnisses der Kirche)], which the historical-critical method is incapable of [either reaching or] representing [(zu repräsentieren)], just as it is fundamentally incompetent to decide concerning credenda [(das zu Gaubende) in general].  It is on the grounds of this faithfully ecclesial [(gläubig-kirchlichen)] interpretation that one is referred to the sensus plenior and/or to the sensus spiritualis [of Scripture].  But with reference to this there exists between exegesis and dogmatics [at present?] no agreement."

     Leo Cardinal Scheffczyk, "Protoevangelium," in vol. 5 (1993) of the Marienlexikon ed. Remigius Bäumer and Leo Scheffczyk for the Instititutum Marianum Regensburg (St. Ottilien:  EOS Verlag, 1988-1994), p. 343, underscoring mine.

Newman on Mary

"It was not enough in accordance with that heresy to proclaim Him as having an ineffable origin before all worlds; not enough to place Him high above all creatures as the type of all the works of God’s Hands; not enough to make Him the King of all Saints, the Intercessor for man with God, the Object of worship, the Image of the Father; not enough because it was not all, and between all and anything short of all, there was an infinite interval.  The highest of creatures is levelled with the lowest in comparison of the One Creator Himself.  That is, the Nicene Council recognized the eventful principle, that, while we believe and profess any being to subsist in a created nature, such a being is really no God to us, though honoured by us with whatever high titles and with whatever homage.  Arius or Asterius did all but confess that Christ was the Almighty; they said much more than St. Bernard or St. Alphonso have since said of the Blessed Mary; yet they left him a creature and were found wanting. . . .  The votaries of Mary do not exceed the true faith, unless the blasphemers of her Son came up to it.  The Church of Rome is not idolatrous, unless Arianism is orthodoxy."

     John Henry Cardinal Newman, An essay on the development of Christian doctrine I.iv.2.8, underscoring mine.

"a greater hope"

Yale Divinity School

"Not everything can or should be made Christian, but too many peoples never got the chance to do that discerning work before everything was shattered into pieces.
     "Some have always worked to turn these fragments against the faith in hopes of finding what was lost and securing a vision of a world fortified against the formation of a Christian and freed from its derogatory logics and suspicious gazes.  These fragment workers believed against Christianity, not within it.
     "I have watched many a student become converted to this quest while in the midst of their theological education, become secret agents for the fragment, looking and hoping for ways to put together an alternative to a Christian world or an alternative Christian world to the Christian one that they had inherited.  This is the perennial struggle at the site of this fragment work. . . .
". . . Yet I wanted for them all a greater hope than only restoring a sense of indigenous worlds now in pieces.  I wanted a drawing of those pieces together, a throwing of them into the air, an allowing of the Spirit of the living God to take those pieces and fit them together in new and life-giving ways that would be familiar, singing familiar songs, remembering people and lands, struggles and hopes, but also new, with new songs, new futures that would mark a path toward what Christianity could be at the site of fragments."

     Willie James Jennings, After whiteness:  an education in belonging (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2020), 37-39 (chap. 1, Fragments), underscoring mine.  One might argue that this is precisely what Aquinas—though roundly criticized for it on pp. 30-31—was (and some, if indeed not many, "missionaries" were) doing, when he sought to reconcile Graeco-Roman insight into "human grandeur" with Christian humility, arguing that "there is no competition between man's grandeur and the humility he must have in relation to [the Christian] God."  I would stress also that the ultimate object of Christian theology is hardly a "fragment," however dimly it sees and partially it knows him.  No, "in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily" (Col 2:9; cf. Heb 1:1-3a, as interpreted by St. John of the Cross and Simone Weil (she of the no small change); and many other passages as well).  And that this is no mere quibble, given that the ultimate object of theology is not this or that theology, not even [1] "the [very] fragment formed by faith itself," every trace of which is said to be available to us "in slices and slivers" only (32), but the triune God.  Etc.
     But I did like this, at least.

A profoundly counter-cultural implication of Chalcedonian Christology

     "Second, in personal realities all nature terms must be interpreted in a way that is in conformity with, but also not in opposition to, personal identity, and vice versa.  There’s never a dialectic or a distinction of co-extensivity between personhood and nature.  Negatively speaking—what am I excluding here?—negatively speaking, it’s a great mistake to oppose natural identity, for example being human by nature or being a biological animal, for example, with personal identity, as if one must either advocate for an ontology of persons or an ontology of natures.  One way to make this error is to claim that a serious study of human nature does away with personhood and [that] personal dignity is a mere folklore concept from pre-modern culture.  Another way to do so is to claim that the acknowledgement of human personhood and of personal freedom requires that we delimit or deny the reality of nature as a normative concept for free human action or thought, as if the personal agent could or even must determine or mutate his nature in a plastic fashion in the service of his personal freedom or will to power.  In reality, all personal acts of knowledge and love are also intrinsically natural acts stemming from the natural principles of human knowledge and free will."

     Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., "Chalcedonian Christology and the concept of pure nature," 21:30 and following, a lecture delivered on Friday, 3 December 2021, at the Inaugural Pinckaers Chair Conference "Grace and nature:  contemporary controversies," The Angelicum Thomistic Institute, Rome, underscoring mine.

"a man has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow confines of his own individual concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

     Martin Luther King, Jr., "The three dimensions of a complete life," New Covenant Baptist Church, Chicago, Illinois, 9 April 1967, often bowdlerized as (for example) "An individual has not started living until they can rise above the narrow confines of their individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."
     Apparently, though, King preached this sermon more than once, as (for example) already here at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama on 24 January 1954 (?):  "No man has lerned to live until he can rise out of his mere concern for self to the broader concern for others."