Michael Davies an Evaluation

MICHAEL DAVIES AN EVALUATION “To the best of my knowledge, no one has been able to point out a theological error in any of my books.” (Michael Davies, The Angelus , March 1984) “All my writing is governed by one criterion only, the truth.” (Michael Davies, The Remnant , 30 th November 1988) “I have now written four books, fourteen pamphlets, and countless articles, exposing the deficiencies of the post-Vatican II liturgical revolution. No one has, as yet, been able to point out any factual or doctrinal error in any of them.” (Michael Davies, The Remnant , 15 th May 1989) MICHAEL DAVIES AN EVALUATION NEW EDITION JOHN S. DALY First edition 1989 This edition © copyright John S. Daly 2015 ISBN 978-2-917813-52-2 TRADIBOOKS ROUCHAS SUD 47180 SAINT -SAUVEUR DE MEILHAN , FRANCE http://www.tradibooks.com – [email protected] CONTENTS CONTENTS V II INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW 2015 EDITION IX INTRODUCTION XI I. DAVIES’S ATTITUDE TO AUTHORITY 23 II. SHOCKINGLY SLIPSHOD SCHOLARSHIP 55 III. THE VACANCY OF THE HOLY SEE 92 A PPEN DI X : SUAREZ ON THE HERETICAL PO PE 148 IV. DISHONESTY, INCONSISTENCY AND ARROGANCE 164 V. WHICH SIDE IS MICHAEL DAVIES ON? 191 VI. MISCELLANEOUS DOCTRINAL ERRORS 255 VII. THE SOCIETY OF ST. PIUS X 273 VIII. DAVIES AS AN ANARCHIST 290 IX. ERRORS OF SACRAMENTAL THEOLOGY 314 (A) THE O RDERS OF A RCHBISHOP LEFEBVRE 316 (B) THE 1968 NEW R ITE OF O RDINATION 355 (C) VALIDITY AND “S IGNIFICATIO EX A DJUNCTIS ” 396 (D) VALIDITY OF THE NOVUS ORDO MIS S Æ 409 X. THE ALLEGED FALL OF POPE LIBERIUS 427 XI.SALVATION OUTSIDE THE CHURCH? 482 XII. DOCTRINAL EVOLUTION? 537 XIII OPEN LETTER TO MR. MICHAEL DAVIES 553 ALSO BY JOHN S. DALY 585 INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW 2015 EDITION he book you have before you is a considerably revised version of Tthe original edition published in 1989. The passage of precisely half of its author’s lifetime with its attendant progress in study, thought and approach, together with the death of its subject, Michael Treharne Davies (1936-2004), have made it appropriate that Michael Davies – An Evaluation should be republished, but inevitable that the new edition should require revision. I have made no attempt to bring the book up to date in the sense of analysing Davies’s later writings, but I have added a great deal of new information and sources on the subjects already covered, verified my theological and historical authorities, weeded out any irrelevancies, toned down some youthful excesses, and, as a rule, preferred under- statement to any risk of its opposite. Doubtless some traces of callow- ness remain from the first edition,1 but, as Gustavo Corção has observed, quod scripsi scripsi 2 is the harsh law of the irreversibility of the written word once committed to the presses. I am often asked whether Michael Davies ever made any answer to this Evaluation and in particular to the “Open Letter” which comprises its final chapter, which has struck many readers as its most devastating part. The answer is No. Moreover, in a letter of 30 th June 1990 to an enquirer Davies said “I have done no more than glance through the first few pages of the Daly diatribe.” And challenged in person on the subject by philosopher Dr. David S. Oderberg, Davies stated that he still had not read it but, under pressure, vaguely undertook to do so when he should retire, though there is no sign that he ever did so. 1 I was twenty-six when it appeared. 2 “What I have written I have written.” X MICHAEL DAVIES – AN EVALUATION Two postgraduate students who had visited Davies and discussed with him a number of the issues raised in the Evaluation wrote to him after- wards in the following terms: Neither of us will deny that, at one time, we valued your writings very highly indeed. Concerned for truth, for the authentic voice of tradition, we naturally gravitated to your works, recommended to us as they were by people of equal good will and fervour for the truth. Neither of us can say this now. All we can do is urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to address yourself to the Open Letter addressed to you by Mr. Daly at the end of his Evaluation . If, as you say, its contents are spurious, then your refutation of the allegations in it should require a minimal expenditure of time and of intellectual effort. 3 But no amount of pressure, even from persons whose intelligence and status did not allow them to be easily dismissed, ever induced Davies to depart from the line he had taken of ignoring rather than evaluating or answering. Michael Davies himself is now beyond the reach of any help save our charitable prayers for his soul, but it not too late for his disciples. If they deign to read they will swiftly see that the entire edifice of traditional Catholicism as erected and championed by Davies is built on falsified facts and falsified theology. Once the facts and the theology are corrected, a synthesis very different from the one they are accustomed to imposes itself. Michael Davies – An Evaluation remains not only an unanswered in- dictment of Davies as a Catholic scholar, but a standing refutation of the entire ecclesiology of those who believe it possible for an ortho- dox Catholic to reject the doctrinal errors and reformed rites spawned by Vatican II without calling into doubt the legitimacy of recent papal claimants and the validity of the new sacraments. John S. Daly Feast of St. Andrew , 2015 3 Letter of 13 th January 1991. INTRODUCTION f a random group of traditional Catholics were asked to name the Imost important English-language periodicals defending the Church against the Modernist onslaught, the answers would probably be diverse. No doubt The Remnant , Christian Order , The Angelus , Ap- proaches/À Propos and The Roman Catholic would all get a mention. By contrast, if such a group were asked to name the most important English-language author on the anti-revolution side, there can be no doubt that the name of Mr. Michael Davies would top the ballot by a large margin and that even many who disagree with his position would vote for him. That is a measure of his significance. Another, perhaps even more telling, gauge of Mr. Davies’s influ- ence would be to tot up the total number of copies of each of his works printed in England and America. 1 The result would compare very favourably, not only with the publication figures of any other author in the traditional Catholic movement, but also with those of most of the leading lights of what Mr. Davies calls “the liturgical revolution”, despite the fact that, thanks to the adulation of the media, many of them are much better known to the general public than he is; and it is not unfair to conjecture that each copy of Mr. Davies’s books and pamphlets is probably read on average much more than those written by his opponents who favour the “revolution”. Nor, I suggest, is even this a sufficient gauge of the importance of Mr. Davies’s writings: for it should not be overlooked that for many thousands of his readers Mr. Davies’s books constitute more or less the only serious theological literature they have ever read. Many of those who swell the ranks at “traditionalist” Mass centres on Sundays have reached their convictions concerning the present state of the Church 1 Even disregarding the translations of his works into languages such as Spanish and French. XII MICHAEL DAVIES – AN EVALUATION largely because they have come across the writings of Mr. Davies in periodicals or in book form and have allowed him to sort out for them the reality underlying what they had recognized only by instinct as a series of “changes in the Church” that jarred with their Catholic instinct. Their knowledge of the history of the Catholic liturgy and of the theological facts needed to defend their stance has been derived almost exclusively from his works. It is upon him that they rely for their views on the significance of Paul VI’s liturgical changes or the status of the decrees of Vatican II. It is upon him that they rely as they insist to their traditionally-inclined fellow-parishioners that the con- stitution Missale Romanum did not abrogate the bull Quo Primum , and as they berate their harassed parish priests for not being able to distin- guish between the “substance” of a sacrament and its essential form, or for failing to state correctly the Church’s position in relation to “per saltum ” Ordinations. And of course it is upon him that they rely for their authority in resisting the not infrequent temptation to wonder whether the Johns and the Pauls have really been popes at all. I do not think that any of this is an exaggeration. Before the Coun- cil very few laymen had studied the niceties of sacramental theology, and the fact that a large proportion of the traditional Catholic movement now knows more about that subject than the clergy that run their respective parishes must be due more to the writings of Mr. Davies than to any other single cause. It is therefore true to say that, for a by no means insignificant number of people, Michael Davies has something approaching a theological monopoly. The writings of the heavyweight theologians are open to the great mass of traditional Catholic layfolk only to the extent that Mr.

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