[Claud]

Nice. Yeah, take a post from a theology grad school student on a public Catholic forum as an authoritative treatment of the Canons of Orange. I frequently debate my laying hens on Calvin's Institutes.

Orange was ratified by Boniface II and thus enjoys ecumenical authority. It is not a purely local synod. And the Tridentine Fathers had the decrees of Orange in front of them.

I went back to the Latin on this Council because I was seeing some strange variation in translations used to buttress the argument of contradiction. VERY different implications here.

Canon 8: "the free will of all men has been corrupted" [some have "weakened"].

Canon 13: "The freedom of will that was destroyed in the first man can be restored only by the grace of baptism". [Yikes!..didn't Trent say anathema to those who said the free will was destroyed?]

Conclusion: "the sin of the first man has so impaired and weakened free will that no one thereafter can either love God as he ought or believe in God or do good for God's sake, unless the grace of divine mercy has preceded him"

Check the Latin yourself. Free will in Orange is:

Canon 8: "esse vitiatum" = was damaged
Canon 13: "infirmatum" = weakened, enfeebled
Conclusion: "inclinatum et attenuatum" = bent/changed/diminished and reduced/weakened

You know why we still insist on Latin? This is why. So we don't get people trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes with massaged translations. Orange said exactly what Trent repeated 1000 years later.

[HarleyD]

Yeah, take a post from a theology grad school student on a public Catholic forum as an authoritative treatment of the Canons of Orange.

One does not have to go to a theology grad school student. I have found these comments on Freepers.

As for your Latin I would suggest a study of the entire canon, not just one tiny section that I can't match. For example, you say:

Canon 8: "the free will of all men has been corrupted" [some have "weakened"].

Whereas Canon 8 says:

CANON 8. If anyone maintains that some are able to come to the grace of baptism by mercy but others through free will, which has manifestly been corrupted in all those who have been born after the transgression of the first man, it is proof that he has no place in the true faith. For he denies that the free will of all men has been weakened through the sin of the first man, or at least holds that it has been affected in such a way that they have still the ability to seek the mystery of eternal salvation by themselves without the revelation of God. The Lord himself shows how contradictory this is by declaring that no one is able to come to him "unless the Father who sent me draws him" (John 6:44), as he also says to Peter, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 16:17), and as the Apostle says, "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3).

Now I'm not sure what part you're refering to but the scripture is very clear unlike the Council of Trent that used no scriptural references. The entire point of the canon is that no one can come to the Father unless the Holy Spirit calls them.