Scalfari: Pope Francis Denies Bodily Resurrection of Jesus

Church Militant ^ | November 7, 2019 | Jules Gomes

[armydoc]

I should have put it this way: as I read it,de facto, he's a heretic: he has professed heretical errors, he knows they have gone public, and he has not denied them.

A de facto heretic has placed himself outside of the Church, correct?

[Gil4]

That used to be a good rhetorical question. Now it’s just a good question.

[Gil4]

I actually am coming to the belief that he is the Anti-Christ and we are witnessing the final apostasy.

He's more likely to be the false prophet, the second beast of Revelation 13:11.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I actually don't know how to answer that.

It is possible to espouse an objective error --- to hold and express an erroneous religious conviction --- without knowing it IS an error. That would be objective heresy (I think they call it "material" heresy) but it wouldn't be subjectively culpable if you were truly ignorant.

On the other hand, you are guilty of "formal" heresy only when you realize that what you believe is truly against and incompatible with a dogma of the Church, but you obstinately refuse to set your erroneous opinion aside.

I don't know if "material" heresy is enough to put you outside of the Church. I know "formal" heresy is.

It raises epistemological problems too, which just make my head go around and around. I actually am convinced that objective truth is "knowable" and that the rules of logic apply (like that elegant "Rule of Non-Contradiction") but --- is it possible that there are people whose thinking processes are so screwed up, they can't actually tell if they are contradicting themselves or not?

I might never have thought so, but I once met a maddening woman, a poet and mother of seven, whose method of thinking was so wafty-lofty and-- um, screwball--- that... oh well...

And Pope Francis' verbal style baffles me in somewhat the same way. If ambiguity is your habitual way of thinking and speaking, are you even mentally equipped to commit a clear-cut heresy?

I think the former top theology guy, Fr. Tom Weinandy, who got run off his job at the USCCB for saying in print that Francis is a problem pope who causes constant confusion, also once mused that Pope Francis may be paradoxically "untouchable" as far as formal heresy is concerned, because he seems to be incapable of constructing clear-cut declarative sentences. :o(

[Mrs. Don-o]

I realize my answer is probably too convoluted to be useful.

But that's the vexing thing. There are supposedly intelligent people out there, who keep maintaining that Francis is OK because everything he says can be interpreted in an orthodox way.

If you squint real hard and look at it sideways.

Due to that all-purpose ambiguity.

I'm torn between thinking he's either a paranoid schizophrenic, or a g@%%@$^%& Peronist.

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

We don't even know, at this point, whether Bergoglio said anything that Scalfari put in quotes.

Yes we do. Scalfari keeps imputing to Francis heretical and ugly statements. The Vatican keeps telling us Scalfari is old and goes by memory, but then follows that up by giving him yet another interview for more heresy to come out.

This is a game and the evidence is clear that Scalfari isn't lying.

[Lurker]

“If he’s a heretic, he’s outside the Church , per definition.”

An excellent example of circular logic. According to the RCC the Pope is infallible on matters of Doctrine. He therefore can not be “outside” of it.

I’d be happy to be shown where I’m wrong.

Thanks.

L

[ebb tide]

An excellent example of circular logic. According to the RCC the Pope is infallible on matters of Doctrine. He therefore can not be “outside” of it.

A legitimate pope is infallible only on matters of faith and morals when preached to the universal Church.

It is obvious that Jorge Bergoglio has neither faith nor morals.

[Lurker]

“A legitimate pope....”

Is chosen by the College of Cardinals who declare him to be the Pope. That’s as legit as it gets according the RCC doctrine.

L

[ebb tide]

Not when the election rules were violated.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"According to the RCC the Pope is infallible on matters of Doctrine. He therefore can not be “outside” of it."

Glad you asked. Here's where you're wrong. Doctrine is determined by Scripture and Tradition-with-a-capital-T, which means "What the Church has consistently taught."

As for Scripture, that is Public Revelation and that ceased with the death of the last Apostle, approx. 100 AD.

As for Big "T" Tradition (Sacred Tradition, not just local, temporary, or customary stuff like "Green is the liturgical color for the Sundays in Ordinary Time"), the Nicene Creed is a good example of Tradition, and as you will see, it is an authoritative interpretation of Scripture. The Trinity, The Incarnation and so forth.

A pope is not infallible in matters of Scripture unless he is speaking ex cathedra and ---here's where the logical Law of Non-Contradiction comes in--- without abrogating or reversing any or all of the dogma that was there already.

Since 1950, no Pope has claimed to make an infallible statement. Francis has never claimed it.

There are many questions that may arise from the above, and if you want to ask them, go right on ahead.

Bottom line is that some goofball thing coming out of the Pope's mouth is, at best, an opinion (theologoumenon ) and a worst, papal heresy.

That's not an oxymoron, like "giant shrimp."

[Lurker]

Thank you for the explanation. I’ll freely admit my ignorance on these matters and I appreciate your effort to educate me. Often that’s not an easy thing to do.

Best,

L

[armydoc]

I think there's a third option: 3) a faithful Catholic dissenting with a Papal view which is not de fide. That is to say, I am not obliged to submit to the Pope except when he is either (a) speaking ex cathedra, or b) repeating something that has always been part of the Deposit of Faith (Public Revelation, which has not changed since Apostolic times)

The problem I see with your 3b option is that the "Deposit of Faith", defined by the CCC as Sacred Scripture and Tradition, is a huge body of doctrine that has never been precisely defined by the CCC (the undefined element being Tradition, of course). Therefore, if a lay Catholic presumes to judge the Pope's statements against this standard, massive interpretation must be applied; interpretation of both the Pope's ambiguous statements and thousands of years of Tradition. Tradition which Church Scholars and Canon lawyers spend their lives debating and coming up with different opinions. Tradition, which from this Protestant's perspective, has been often contradictory. I understand you would dispute that, but at the least, the sheer volume of that body of doctrine and the subtleties ingrained therein make the concept of a lay Catholic judging a Pope, in the absence of formal action by the courts of the Church to be, well, not "Catholic". Look at it this way. If you judge that the Pope's statements conflict with the Deposit of Faith and therefore feel freed from submission to him, you are taking an action that the Magesterium has not seen fit to take. That would seem to reflect your opinion of the Magesterium more than anything else. It also makes you a de facto sedevacantist, it would seem to me.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Your views of things, or or views somewhat like them, can be heard all over the Catholic world these days. I don't quite know what to make of it, since we'd properly go back in our history to look for precedents, and we've never been in quite this situation before.

Nowadays everyone identifies the rule of Francis as in some sense Peronist. The Catholic Church explicitly does NOT teach that a pope is an oracle of God and a fount of new doctrine or religious knowledge. The Church explicitly identifies a pope as a conservator of the Deposit of Faith, seen as a stable thing, which indeed can develop (be deepened, be made more elaborate as its inner logic is applied to new situations or to answer new questions)--- but which cannot be self-contradictory.

But as mentioned before, Jorge Bergoglio runs the papacy like a Peronist, a man who is entirely free to contradict Scripture, or Tradition, or his predecessors or even himself. This is not at all what Catholicism means by the Papal Magisterium.

It's chaos. The cat's run wild.

But who will bell the cat?

It seems to me that one of three things will have to happen. Papal authority being what it is, Francis' heresies must be denounced by either a past pope, the present pope, or a future pope.

A past pope: obviously I have only one man in mind,Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. He could either reveal something that proves his own abdication was invalid; or the conclave that elected Francis was invalid; or that Francis has fallen into unambiguous, persistent and obstinate heresy somewhere in his pontificate.

The present pope: Francis could repent of his heresy; or he could abdicate; or maybe he could be pressured into abdicating by an open revolt by the Cardinals: that wouldn't have the authority to depose him, but he might self-depose if he saw he could in practice no longer govern.

A future pope: whoever gets elected after Francis could denounce him posthumously. It's happened before.

Christ will get this sorted out as He always has in the past: by raising up saints. Things were pretty desperate during the Great Western Schism (1378-1417) --- but it took 40 years to sort it out.

So we may have extended pain ahead.

So long as my parish has a valid Mass and my bishop is in communion with Francis, I guess that makes me in Communion with Francis, de jure. Can't chase me out with a stick.

THis will get sorted out. But as the Western Schism should have taught us: it will be in God's time, not necessarily ours. Patience conquers all ("La paciencia todo lo alcanza", St. Teresa of Avila).

And as the esteemed Doctor of the Church Teresa also said: "All times are dangerous times."

[Campion]

Tradition, is a huge body of doctrine that has never been precisely defined

A big part of it has been "precisely defined" -- that's what ecumenical councils are good for. We can further look at "what the church has always taught" versus "various specific heresies through history".

Teaching that Christ was not bodily raised from the dead is Docetism, not Catholicism. There is no vagueness or ambiguity or lack of precise definition about it.

[Zionist Conspirator]

I don't know why Catholics keep fooling themselves and pretending that none of this is in any way due to the long ago rejection of total Biblical inerrancy and literal young earth creationism--while at the same time adopting radical nineteenth century Protestant Biblical criticism. Yet they do. Catholics (and Orthodox, and Miaphysites, and Nestorians) have sat back for a century and laughed at the stupid American Protestants who thought total inerrancy from the very beginning of the Bible was important and that rejecting it would lead to all the things that disturbs conservative Catholics today.

Many times Catholics/Orthodox/etc. do this in order to prove they aren't Protestants, attributing total inerrancy to American Protestants as some sort of recent innovation. and they still claim this. If all this is to put daylight between themselves and Protestantism, then why adopt the historical Biblical criticism that Protestants invented? Why engage in ecumenical activity with the most radical Protestants in the world (such as lesbian Lutheran and Episcopal "bishops")? Why are the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and (I assume) the "Nestorians" all members of the National and World Councils of Churches? They evidently have no problem with the most radical Protestants in existence and object only to American Fundamentalist Protestants.

It's disgusting to hear all this anti-Protestant rhetoric used against total inerrancy, traditional authorship, and literal-historical interpretation when the people who use it are practically in bed with mainline Marxist Protestants!

I'm sorry. You all deserve every bit of this. You've asked for it. You've been asking for it for over a hundred years. When liberals engaged in the most bigoted ethnic slurs against the group with whom total inerrancy and literalism are most associated you were either silent or joined them. How stupid to believe the dinosaurs died because they didn't get on the ark! Oh really? What about your own anti-scientific doctrines like the virgin birth, the resurrection, the loaves and fishes, the "real presence," and all the innumerable miracles attributed to your "saints???" If the uniformity of nature rules out a literal interpretation of Genesis, then it rules out all these beliefs as well. If Adam could only have come into existence the way everyone else is born today, then the same applies to J*sus. You never have an answer to this. You just dismiss it as ridiculous. Well then . . . pardon me if I enjoy this.

All chrstianity is in free fall. Stick a fork in it; it's done. Mainline Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Miaphysitism, Nestorianism, Anglicanism--even Evangelicalism is turning liberal. All you can do is invoke the glories of European civilization and imply that every American is supposed to have the same religion as George Washington. There is only one reason to believe any religion, and that is that it is true--not whether or not it is (in the worlds of lefty indigenists) "de ways of our pipples." Some conservatives invoke heritage and history so often I wonder if they even believe the actual doctrines of chrstianity at all.

All that is left of real belief in chrstianity is the "heretical cults" (like the J Witnesses), the trailer parks, and the Old Regular Baptists of the Appalachian mountains. The latter will still be here when all the rest of you have merged into a global syncretic monstrosity.

That leaves only the sincere Fundamentalist Protestants, who can only remain chrstians by telling themselves that the original "true" version disappeared almost immediately and had to be restored centuries later via a sort of theological archeology. If chrstianity is so pathetic that it disappeared for twelve hundred years and had to be "restored" time and time again . . . then what do you see in it? All I can guess is that it's the only religion that offers free salvation at no cost whatsoever and prevents you from having to spend your lives tightrope walking over the flaming pits of Hell. But however unpleasant it may be, Constantine did not suddenly introduce "baptized heathenism" in 313, at which point all the Southern Baptists in Ethiopia and southwestern India suddenly morphed into monastics. There is not one ancient chrstian community in existence that was ever remotely Protestant or "sola scriptura" (one reason being that the NT was still being written and couldn't be invoked or quoted by anyone).

Finally, for all the talk about "chrstianity or chaos," chrstianity is chaos: Ephesians and non-Ephesians, Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians, Orthodox, Catholics, Reformation Protestantism, radical Protestantism, and all the "newly restored" version which absolutely no one can prove one way or another.

I know you can't reason someone out of a position he didn't reason himself into, but you're all going to have to make a decision: whether or not to simply admit you were all wrong and accept the religion that has been there from the beginning and whose authenticity almost no one disputes. I am sorry if in trying to make this point over the years I have alienated any of you. But until you understand that the Torah came first and that the claims of chrstianity have to be submitted to the judgment of the first Revelation, as long as you accept Genesis and the "old testament" only because J*sus endorsed it one thousand years later . . . your minds will remain resolutely closed. You'll all simply continue to refute each other's versions of chrstianity (which you've all done a zillion times).

I'm sorry for my stridency (due to frustration), but I sincerely that someone out there will give this some thought.

[smvoice]

Speaking of “the chair of Peter”, why didn’t he intervene when Paul was imprisoned in Rome? Why didn’t he at least visit him in prison? I’ve never understood that.

[Mrs. Don-o]

As far as I know, Peter and Paul were in chains roughly contemporaneously. They were both imprisoned in Rome under the persecution of Nero, and were martyred in 64 AD. LINK