Worse than deja vu all over again: Vatican caves

The Remnant ^ | March 31, 2004 | Thomas Drolesky

[ultima ratio]

It has never been established that any pontiff has the right to do change the liturgy in substantive ways, let alone banish one and invent another.

[ultima ratio]

Wrong again. While liturgical rubrics may not be a matter of faith and morals, the liturgy itself most certainly is. Nothing could be more intimately connected to the faith than the way we worship God. The notion that the liturgy is exclusively a matter of discipline is another crackpot Novus Ordo notion designed to reduce legitimate criticism.

[pascendi]

"Can you find "thousands and thousands" of judgments which look like your two cited dogmas?"

You're switching terms. You are now using the term judgments. But before, you specifically said infallible definition:

"Therefore Lumen Gentium §21 contains an infallible definition."

[gbcdoj]

A dogmatic judgment of the Pope is an infallible definition, in the sense that Bp. Gasser is using it. He's responding to a proposal to require a formula for ex cathedra pronouncements.

[ultima ratio]

You are right. He knows what's going on. And it is my belief He wants us to oppose the Pharisaic forces in our midst. His own ministry was all about this--chastizing the hypocrisy of religious leadership. This is why he told his disciples to "Beware the leaven of the Pharisees." They thought he was talking about bread. He was talking about the danger of religious power to become slowly corrupt.

The truth is, we're in a war for the soul of the Catholic Church. Its identity has been so effaced and protestantized that it is safe to say that almost every single outward expression of the faith has been changed radically in a short span of forty years. Not a sacramental remains as it was; even the Rosary has been altered. Pick up a book published before Vatican II and it reads like the text of a different religion. The new theology is totally unlike anything that had preceded it. Nothing remains as it was. This threatens the salvation of many souls and MUST be resisted.

Remember, it is not change per se that traditionalists oppose, it is revolutionary change that is not only unwarranted and foolish, but deeply pernicious as well.

But ultimately, you're right. I wish there were a way to argue without arousing anger and vindictiveness.

[ultima ratio]

A dogmatic judgment is not infallible if it does not expressly bind the universal Church. This pope has made many such statements--none of which were infallible.

[pascendi]

"A dogmatic judgment of the Pope is an infallible definition, in the sense that Bp. Gasser is using it. He's responding to a proposal to require a formula for ex cathedra pronouncements."

An infallible statement is what Vatican I says it is, which basically, is what the church has always understood about the excercise of the supreme magisterium.

An infallible statement will always contain only what the church has always understood as having already been divinely revealed. No infallible statement, at the time which it occurs, is news to anyone at that time who knew their doctrine well.

[pascendi]

A speculation: leading up to the time of Pope Saint Pius X, the modernists loved to use the question everything strategy. So long as it wasn't clearly dogmatic, the move was on to suppress belief in favor of the so-called enlightened mind. After Pius X scattered the modernists in his own time, he did warn that after he was gone, they'd be back. They did come back, and it seems to me that their strategy is nearly a polar opposite: make everything look infallible such that by appearances, every novelty and every deviation from doctrine would seeminly have the Holy Spirit as its author.

[pascendi]

"Prayer is the ultimate weapon..."

This is the absolute truth. A favorite quote from St. Francis De Sales:

"Directly that your worldly friends perceive that you aim at leading a devout life, they will let loose endless shafts of mockery and misrepresentation upon you; the more malicious will attribute your change to hypocrisy, designing, or bigotry; they will affirm that the world having looked coldly upon you, failing its favour you turn to God; while your friends will make a series of what, from their point of view, are prudent and charitable remonstrances. They will tell you that you are growing morbid; that you will lose your worldly credit, and will make yourself unacceptable to the world; they will prognosticate your premature old age, the ruin of your material prosperity; they will tell you that in the world you must live as the world does; that you can be saved without all this fuss; and much more of the like nature. My daughter, all this is vain and foolish talk: these people have no real regard either for your bodily health or your material prosperity. "If ye were of the world," the Saviour has said, "the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you."

Prayer will unite the Church; Ave Maria.

But... we can't be excused from refraining from telling the truth. =)

[pascendi]

I've suddenly and inexplicable become bored.

Maybe I'll go do something else now. It's been fun.

Keep the Faith whole and undefiled; God bless you and yours.

[ultima ratio]

All that you say is true only to a point. It is also true that it would be a sin of omission not to answer lies with truth, and not to oppose corruption in any way we can. Many young people will lose the faith because of inertia on the part of pious people who prefer the comforts of doing nothing and remaining silent, foolishly hoping for the best, rather than opposing wrongful authority by speaking out. These superficially pious people are culpable, in my opinion, if they do not speak out at some point, since by not doing so they enable those in high office to continue doing harm to others, especially to the young who are being robbed of their Catholic patrimony. At the very least they should get out of the way of those who do insist on telling the truth--that the emperor has no clothes. Instead, they heap abuse on those who resist.

Remember, there is no real conflict between prayerfulness and forceful action. Jesus Himself told his disciples that the Children of the Light must learn from the Children of Darkness. His point was that we must learn not to be pushovers, naively letting others walk all over us. Remember the story of the wily steward? Jesus did not mean we were supposed to go around cheating people. He meant we had to learn not to be doormats for those who would take advantage of our decency; we had to be just as foxy as they when it was necessary--and even take some unpleasant action. We are expected, in other words, to oppose the world forcefully at times, the way Jesus did when He saw that His Father's Temple had been made into a den of thieves.

[nika]

Vatican II today stands in a twilight. For a long time it has been regarded by the so-called progressive wing as completely supassed and, consequently, as a thing of the past, no longer relevant to the present. By the opposite side, the 'convervative' wing, it is, conversely, viewed as the cause of the present decadence of the Catholic Church and even judged as an apostasy from Vatican I and from the Council of Trent. Consequently demands have been made for its retraction or for a revision that would be tantamount to a retraction ... Over against both tendencies, before all else, it must be stated that Vatican II is upheld by the same authority as Vatican I and the Council of Trent, namely, the Pope and the College of Bishops in communion with him, and that also with regard to its contents, Vatican II is in the strictest continuity with both previous councils and incorporates their texts word for word in decisive points. ...

Whoever accepts Vatican II, as it has clearly expressed and understood itself, at the same time accepts the whole binding tradition of the Catholic Church, particularly also the two previous councils. ... It is likewise impossible to decide in favor of Trent and Vatican I, but against Vatican II. Whoever denies Vatican II denies the authority that upholds the other two councils [ "Vatican II, after all, was a failed council." --ultima ratio ] and thereby detaches them from their foundation. And this applies to the so-called 'traditionalism', also in its extreme forms. [ this would be ultima ratio and pascendi --nika ] Every partison choice destroys the whole (the very history of the Church ) which can only exist as an indivisible unity.
--Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, On the tenth anniversary of the close of Vatican II

All the arguments which go to prove the infallibility of the Church apply with their fullest force to the infallible authority of general councils in union with the pope.
--GENERAL COUNCILS, Section VIII. INFALLIBILITY OF GENERAL COUNCILS, Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910

"John Paul II is the legitimate Successor of Peter."
--ultima ratio

[ultima ratio]

1. While all councils are potentially infallible in their declarations, not all councils necessarily exercise this power. Vatican II did not, in accordance with the strictures of Paul VI. Nothing it said was therefore infallible EXCEPT for what it repeated regarding the perennial doctrines of the Catholic Church. But these declarations were not new definitions; the content of such teachings were already binding on all Catholics. I would be the first to agree with the Cardinal that insofar as Vatican II repeats past infallible teachings of the Church, such teachings are to be obeyed.

2. But Vatican II also made many ambiguous declarations which are problematic and which do not bind and can never bind any Catholics intellectually. In objecting to these passages in conciliar documents, traditional Catholics have legitimate reservations about how they are to be interpreted. It is, after all, impossible to give intellectual consent to an argument that may be interpreted as contradicting past Church teachings, one that is simultaneously subject to two opposing interpretations, one traditionally Catholic and one opposed to Catholic tradition. It is owed to all Catholics that such decrees be clear and unambiguous. Anything less cannot demand assent.

3. I never argued Vatican II was not a legitimate council. I said it was a failed council--which is nothing less than the truth. Saying the council is legitimate is not the same thing as saying it was successful. Legitimate authority can make all kinds of foolish statements and mistakes in judgment--and has done so many times throughout Church history. Who would argue this--or pretend that Vatican II has not actually failed, plunging the Church into a host of unprecedented crises instead of renewing the Church as expected? The Holy Spirit, after all, has not been promised to protect authority from foolishness, only from error when a council formally defines something as binding on the Church. In other words, the Holy Spirit may well leave councils and popes to suffer the consequences of their own lack of wisdom.

4. As for the final quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia, we've been through this over and over. You can quote a hundred more such passages--but this wouldn't make you any less wrong. All this encyclopedic passage says is that popes and councils have Divine protection. But this is given only UNDER CERTAIN VERY PROSCRIBED CONDITIONS. Not everything Church authority does or says is infallible. Some popes and councils may choose to NEVER exercise this ability--as Vatican II did not. So, for the thousandth time, if you think Vatican II has issued some new definition which is binding on the universal Church--I challenge you again to tell me what it is. I've been waiting for a week now for you to come up with a single example of an infallible teaching--one which does not merely repeat the infallible teachings of other popes or councils. Yet you neve do.

[pascendi]

Non-substantive.

[pascendi]

"It is unfortunate that you turn the discussion to judgments of the piousness of others. I don't know the "they" that you are referring to who are "superficially pious" and "heap abuse" but this sort of conversation will bear no fruit, and so it is here that I will leave you to it."

Gee, I wonder if it might be people who express, or support expressions, such as some of nika's comments above. The one you thanked for the quotes that didn't prove anything? That one. Who knows; maybe in this thread nika gets by with a little help from some friends in providing the paradigm. nika:

"This because you aren't really a traditional Catholic. You are a heretic."

I thought it belonged to the Church to make such judgments, not the laity. God forbid we should act beyond our scope such that we become holier than the Pope... ha. But when challenged, nika takes a hike obviously because this statement is completely unsupportable. Shortstop mysteriously exited the conversation as well. All charges are drawn from the thin air; when questioned, they've gotta go or something. This is like old hat; what's ultima's heresy? [silence.] There is none; ultima knows what he's talking about. Clearly, nika does not. If you think your statement is supportable, nika, let's drag it out; I'm all over it.

"In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."

This is way too easy: return to sender.

I particularly like this one:

(nika to me): "Believe me, I can tell it's not where you get your doctrine from. Official Church councils aren't where you get your doctrine from either. Neither is traditional Catholicism. You guys do your own thing. You refuse to submit to the authority of the Church, making your own private and incorrect opinions your ultimate authority. You make yourselves Pope. Are you really denying the authority of Church Councils when they are in union with the Successor of St. Peter? Obviously, you are either intellectually dishonest and cowardly, or are all bluff and don't really know anything about Catholicism -- or both. So keep blathering on and whatever the case may be will soon be evident to all."

lol, because you know better. Take the conciliar stance, and defend it if you can. The outcome is preordained.

NeoCatholics are guilty of everything they claim traditional Catholics are guilty of. There's a name for that. It's called hypocracy.