Replies

against forced conversions, which reaffirms Leo XIII's teaching in Libertas and the continuous ordinary magisterial teaching. Also, it affirms the right of the Catholic Church to promulgate its doctrine in any government, as well as securing the right for individuals NOT to be coerced against their will to accept any religion. There is also a teaching on "civil rights" of religious liberty, but I would not say this is above level 4 teaching at best. It also may be a practical decision based on the "signs of the times" to allow the Catholic Church to teach anywhere and everywhere.

The mention of Pope Leo XIII called to mind this particular statement of his:

"There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the entire cycle of Catholic doctrine and yet, by a single word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by Our Lord and handed down by Apostolic Tradition ... For such is the nature of the Faith that nothing can be more absurd than to accept some of the things and reject others. If, then, it be certain that anything is revealed by God, and this is not believed, then nothing whatever is believed by divine Faith ... But he who dissents even onone point from divinely-revealed Truth absolutely rejects all Faith, since he therefore refuses to honor God as the Supreme Truth and formal motive of Faith. In many things they are with me, in a few things they are not with me, the many in which they are will not profit them. And this, indeed, most deservedly, for they who take from Christian doctrine what they please lean on their own judgment, not on Faith ... and they obey themselves more truly than they obey God ... We are absolutely bound to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will ... You who believe what you like and do not like of the Gospels believe yourselves rather than the Gospels.

And this one:

Those who acknowledge Christ must acknowledge Him completely and entirely. The Head is the only-begotten Son of God; the Body is His Church. All who dissent from the Scriptures concerning Christ are not in the Church, and all who agree with the Scriptures concerning the Head but who do not communicate in the unity of the Church are not in the Church. They can in no way be counted among the children of God unless they take Jesus Christ as their Brother and, at the same time, the Church as their Mother ... Consequently, all who wish to reach salvation outside the Church are mistaken as to the way and are engaged in a futile effort ... Christianity is, in fact, incarnate in the Catholic Church; it is identified with that perfect and spiritual society which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and has for its visible Head the Roman Pontiff ... This is Our last lesson to you: receive it, engrave it upon your minds, all of you: by God's commandment, salvation is to be found nowhere but in the Church."

My mind is still smoking from the engraving process.

At any rate, what do you make of these statements in light of the current ecumenical endeavor?