Pope Francis: ‘Rigid… this or nothing’ Catholics are ‘heretical’ and ‘not Catholic’

Life Site News ^ | June 9, 2016 | John-Westen

[ebb tide]

The stunning introduction to today’s official Vatican Radio report on Pope Francis’ morning homily reads: “Pope Francis warned on Thursday against an excessive rigidity, saying those within the Church who tell us ‘it’s this or nothing’ are heretics and not Catholics. His remarks came during the morning Mass on Thursday celebrated at the Santa Marta residence.”

The specific section of the homily referred to in the opening is as follows:

This (is the) healthy realism of the Catholic Church: the Church never teaches us ‘or this or that.’ That is not Catholic. The Church says to us: ‘this and that.’ ‘Strive for perfectionism: reconcile with your brother. Do not insult him. Love him. And if there is a problem, at the very least settle your differences so that war doesn’t break out.’ This (is) the healthy realism of Catholicism. It is not Catholic (to say) ‘or this or nothing:’ This is not Catholic, this is heretical.

Jesus always knows how to accompany us, he gives us the ideal, he accompanies us towards the ideal, He frees us from the chains of the laws' rigidity and tells us: ‘But do that up to the point that you are capable.’ And he understands us very well. He is our Lord and this is what he teaches us.

Interpreting what Pope Francis is saying in a precise way has always been difficult. However, there has been a consistent theme in his remarks against what he refers to as ‘rigid’ Catholics who hold steadfastly to the ideals proposed by Christ and to absolutes. “Fundamentalism is a sickness that we find in all religions,” said the Pope in November while flying home from Africa. “Among Catholics there are many, not a few, many, who believe to hold the absolute truth,” he added. “They go ahead by harming others with slander and defamation, and they do great harm… And it must be combated.”

In his most recent Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis criticized the Church for often proposing, “a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage.” He added that conscience can “recognize with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response which can be given to God, and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal.”

An accusation of rigidity or heresy by Pope Francis against those who would insist on the ideal of Christ’s teaching such as marriage, would fall heavily on Francis’ own predecessor, Pope St. John Paul II, whom Pope Francis himself declared a saint. In the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, John Paul taught: "It would be a very serious error to conclude... that the Church's teaching is essentially only an 'ideal' which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities of man, according to a 'balancing of the goods in question'.”

The same condemnation of heresy against “this or nothing” Catholics would seem to target the author of God or Nothing, Cardinal Robert Sarah, who Pope Francis appointed to head the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. In God or Nothing, Cardinal Sarah forcefully rejected the notion of watering down the teaching on the indissolubility of marriage with pastoral leniency. “The idea of putting magisterial teaching in a beautiful display case while separating it from pastoral practice, which then could evolve along with circumstances, fashions, and passions, is a sort of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology,” he wrote.

Cardinal Sarah also issued a warning to prelates who would seek to alter doctrine by altering the practice of the Church regarding marriage. “Men who devise and elaborate strategies to kill God, to destroy the centuries-old doctrine and teaching of the Church, will themselves be swallowed up, carried off by their own earthly victory into the eternal fires of Gehenna,” he said.

Pope Francis says that Christ “tells us: ‘But do that up to the point that you are capable.’” The Bible however, records our Lord’s words differently in the Gospel of Matthew concluding the 5th chapter where He teaches the hard truths about divorce and adultery. “Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect,” said Jesus.

[daniel1212]

Third, you yourself mentioned the very reason many Protestants do have the sentiments I described: Their churches have descended into even worse chaos than the Catholic Church.

The solution to which according to RCs is submission to the pope. Yet the charge of worse chaos than the Catholic Church much relies upon a definition of unity of belief as based upon mere membership, not core beliefs, and a definition of "Protestant" that is broad that RCs would protest if it were applied to them. Indeed, the very charge that even the pope may not be a "real" Catholic while defining liberal churches as "Protestant" even though they manifestly reject even the most fundamental belief of the Reformation, that of Scripture being the accurate and wholly inspired authorative word of God, examples a double standard.

And those that most strongly profess belief in the Scripture as being the above are yet the most unified in basic beliefs (significant) religious group in the West, in contrast to Catholics overall, whom Rome counts and treats as members in life and in death. And as what one truly believes is Scripturally determined by what they do and effect, (Mt. 7:20; Ja. 2:18) this Catholic unity.

Meanwhile, those RCs who sit in judgment on the pope and bishops, like as those who dissent from V2 in part based upon their interpretation of what historical RC teaching is, are called "Protestant" by some of their own brethren. And which manifest just one example of the variegated beliefs of RCs, with all professing unity in a church which holds even proabortion public figures as members in life and in death along side the most fervent devotees of the fabricated Mary of Catholicism and the deformation of the NT church.

Either "the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors" as said in the above post, or RCs must be like evangelicals in ascertaining the validity of teaching by examination of the warrant for it. While the unScriptural, cultic looking to a man as the supreme authority is the easiest means of unity, it also means that when popes and leadership goes largely South, then the flock is left confused and scattered.

Referring to the schism of the 14th and 15th centuries, Cardinal Ratzinger observed,

"For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective form--the true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought outside the institution.

"It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation. (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for the Church of Rome, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) p.196). http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/13/whos-in-charge-here-the-illusions-of-church-infallibility/)

[Gamecock]

Well then!

[daniel1212]

First of all, present-day Protestants are not personally involved in the animosity that was rife 500 years ago.

Thus once again your definition of Protestant is one that is contrary to even the most basic distinctives that historically resulted in believers being called "Protestants." And thus, holding to Scripture as the accurate and supremely authorative wholly inspired word of God, evangelicalism historically has contended against "Protestants" such as deny basic beliefs Catholics also profess, as well as against her traditions of men, and of liberalism. And thus true Prots do so today.

Even the Popes who were rapists, sodomites, murderers, etc., never publicly spewed un-Catholic nonsense, which this Pope does daily in homilies, speeches, and documents.

Well, some of your fervent RC brethren disagree: http://www.traditionalcatholicmass.com/home-m240.html

[Elsie]

Pope Francis: ‘Rigid… this or nothing’ Catholics are ‘heretical’ and ‘not Catholic’

OUCH!!!

[Elsie]

This (is the) healthy realism of the Catholic Church: the Church never teaches us ‘or this or that.’ That is not Catholic.

 

The Church says to us: ‘this and that.’ ‘Strive for perfectionism: reconcile with your brother.

 

Do not insult him. Love him. And if there is a problem, at the very least settle your differences so that war doesn’t break out.’

 

This (is) the healthy realism of Catholicism. It is not Catholic (to say) ‘or this or nothing:’

 

This is not Catholic, this is heretical.

[Elsie]

The Ten Vague Guidelines

---

Here is MORMONism's own creed:

---

 

 

Articles of Faith

The Articles of Faith outline 13 basic points of belief of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Prophet Joseph Smith first wrote them in a letter to John Wentworth, a newspaper editor,
in response to Mr. Wentworth's request to know what members of the Church believed.
They were subsequently published in Church periodicals.
They are now regarded as scripture and included in the Pearl of Great Price.

 

THE ARTICLES OF FAITH
OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS
History of the Church, Vol. 4, pp. 535—541

 

 

1. We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.
   
2. We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression.
   
3. We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.
   
4. We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.
   
5. We believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.
   
6. We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth.
   
7. We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, and so forth.
   
8. We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.
   
9. We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.
   
10. We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.
    
11. We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.
    
12. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.
    
13. We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

Joseph Smith

 

[Elsie]

Just curious about all the angst and anger.

"One indeed is the universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved, in which the priest himself is the sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine; the bread (changed) into His body by the divine power of transubstantiation, and the wine into the blood, so that to accomplish the mystery of unity we ourselves receive from His (nature) what He Himself received from ours."

--Pope Innocent III and Lateran Council IV (A.D. 1215)

[Elsie]

When there is a bad Pope—and this one is...

MY my!

So judgemental!!!

Just WHAT about Doctrine has he taught wrongly?

[Elsie]

This is a distortion of Jesus’ teaching of Matthew 18:15-17 imo.

Oh?

In what way??

---

Matthew 18:15-17 King James Version (KJV)

Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.

[Elsie]

So will he finally take all the anathemas down from the Council of Trent?

Why not???

Didn't another pope PUT THEM UP?

[Elsie]

But he’s not nearly as smart as a Pope ought to be.

What's WITH all you FR Catholics??

Love the man and PRAY for him!

Doesn't that Matthew verse I just posted mean ANYTHING to you guys??

Hebrews 13:17 Douay-Rheims Bible

Obey your prelates, and be subject to them. For they watch as being to render an account of your souls; that they may do this with joy, and not with grief. For this is not expedient for you.

[ealgeone]

So all the Catholics fussing about Francis are being bad catholics. Wonder if that rises to the level of “mortal sin”??

[Arthur McGowan]

List the un-Catholic nonsense, if you would, please.

https://en.denzingerbergoglio.com/

[Zionist Conspirator]

I truly believe that the Bible is the Word of God. All Catholics believe that. Why wouldn't they?

Because they're evolutionist higher critics who believe the Bible is mythology???

[Campion]

St. Catherine of Siena rebuked a Pope -- respectfully, but it was still a rebuke.

St. Paul rebuked a Pope "to his face" and was upfront about it in Galatians.

Were they bad Catholics? No, of course not.

[RinaseaofDs]

Are you referring to the fact that Paul and Peter didn’t get along?

[RinaseaofDs]

Good post.

[daniel1212]

St. Catherine of Siena rebuked a Pope -- respectfully, but it was still a rebuke. St. Paul rebuked a Pope "to his face" and was upfront about it in Galatians. Were they bad Catholics? No, of course not.

Singular instances, by souls of substance, not what we see here, and your argument is not with me.

[daniel1212]

So all the Catholics fussing about Francis are being bad catholics. Wonder if that rises to the level of “mortal sin”??

No, as along with papal teaching of what the one duty of RCs is to follow their pastors, even beyond formal doctrinal teaching, there is also teaching that allows for internal dissent - but not public - of non-infallible teaching that calls for "religious assent" (ordinary assent: religious submission of will and intellect). And that in any case one must follow his conscience, even if he may be wrong.

However, since RCs can disagree on just what magisterial level many teachings fall under as well as their meaning to varying degrees, this still leaves much room for disagreement among RCs, besides the great liberty they have to interpret Scripture in order to support Rome.

[MHGinTN]

"The Ten Commandments are still in force." cloudmountain Is cannibalism now permitted, and encouraged?