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To: ultima ratio; ninenot; GirlShortstop
I don't think I am strident at all. Stridency, like beauty, is probably in the eye of the beholder.

My statements as to Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11 are my opinions. JP II's Ecclesia Dei excommunicating your heroes and declaring your movement schismatic is not mere opinion. That document is authoritative unlike any of yours or mine or of dead and excommunicated Marcel or of excommunicated Fellay or excommunicated Williamson for that matter.

Your opinion as to whether JP II is just or not is irrelevant. I happen to think he was far, far too charitable toward this nasty little schism. That's my opinion and it is not relevant either. JP II's opinion is relevant. God's opinion of JP II is quite relevant. Fact or fantasy, you have nothing to say to well-catechized Catholics. That you are in a permanent hissy-fit against His Holiness and against papal authority does not command my allegiance to your curious grab bag of schismatic opinions.

You are owed NOTHING by His Holiness, whatever it may please you to imagine. Ecclesia Dei is what you earned and what you deserved.

384 posted on 07/14/2004 12:34:51 PM PDT by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline of the Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Club)
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To: BlackElk

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. You state Ecclesia is authoritative. Fine. The only problem is that it is in direct conflict with a more authoritative document--Canon Law. Canon 1323 allows for a subject to disobey if he fears a state of necessity. It says nothing about whether such a state must exist or not. The canon is only concerned with the interior state of the subject and how he perceives a situation. If said subject sincerely believed there was a state of necessity which forced him to disobey, no penalty is incurred according to canon 1323. The Archbishop evoked the canon--legally and honestly.

But this is not all. Not only does a canon allow for disobedience under certain conditions, but another canon stated that even if the individual were WRONG about such a state of necessity, as long as he sincerely believed there was an emergency, no penalty is incurred. How much clearer can this be? It was not up to the Pope to decide what was in the Archbishop's mind when he "disobeyed", it was the Archbishop's call, not the Pope's.

If the Pope had wanted to prove that the Archbishop was culpable, he ought not to have relied on a latae sententiae decree, but on a formal tribunal, the traditional route for disciplining high churchmen. Such a tribunal would have called witnesses, allowed for a full airing of the dispute, and rendered a fair-and-square verdict, ferendae sententiae. He didn't do this--probably because this would have given the Archbishop the right to defend himself. It would have meant bringing up embarrassing conflicts regarding matters of faith in which the papacy was at loggerheads with the Church's own Tradition. So the Pope did an end-run and used the pretext of an automatic latae sententiae to falsely charge the Archbishop with excommunication and schism. \

As for what the Pontiff owes me or doesn't owe me--that is a ridiculous point to bring up. I am not important--but the faith itself is. The Pope owes explanations not to me, but to millions like myself who expect more from a pope than poetry. We expect a vigorous defense of the traditional faith--not novelties that have nothing to do with the faith. We want faith-affirming Masses and clearly Catholic catechesis for our children. We want bishops who are devout and orthodox not corrupt and apostate. It is all well and good that he is so worried about Buddhists and Jews and Muslims. But his own Catholic sheep are starving. He needs to follow Christ's injunction to feed his lambs and his sheep before he attends to the Hindus.


399 posted on 07/14/2004 6:22:47 PM PDT by ultima ratio
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