Posted on 11/29/2004 11:33:53 PM PST by Sean O L
"And you seem to think you have authority to declare whether or not the Pope is in compliance with Divine Law and Canon Law"
Try rereading my post. I said ALL popes, not just JPII, must obey Divine Law. To say this is not to wield any kind of authority, but simply to state a fact that people like you seem unaware of--that popes can sometimes abuse authority by acting unjustly. When they do, their actions have a legal, but not a moral effect. In other words, the victims of papal injustice would still be legally behind the eight ball--but morally they would be innocent and inculpable in the eyes of Heaven.
"What you claim for the excommunicated schismatic you follow is quite different from the facts..."
Once again, you get it wrong. Here you confuse the griping of a sedevacantist priest who was expelled from the Econe, with the "facts." These are not "facts", not by a long stretch.
The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) was founded in 1970 by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre under the jurisdiction of Msgr. Charriere in the Diocese of Fribourg, Switzerland.(on a 6 year expiremental basis )
Its first seminary was established in Econe, Switzerland.In 1975, after an investigation by Rome, Lefebvre was forbidden to ordain any additional priests and was told to close the seminary and disband the Society. The Archbishop refused, claiming that he had been made victim of an irregular canonical procedure. After illicitly ordaining some priests in June of 1976, he was suspended a divinis (from all priestly functions) by Pope Paul VI. From this point on he and his priests acted without faculties (contrary to what the Lefebvrites say).
*Again, the facts about Lefevbre are quite different that what his followers claim they are. He obeyed when he wanted to and he disobeyed when he wanted to - just like his followers. He - and his followers - are the ultimate authorities. They judge for themselves what they will obey and when they will obey. In that, they are no different than protestants.
You can't be serious. In all of history not one pope has ever abused his authority or acted unjustly. /sarcasm ; )
Seriously now, why is it believed that the current Holy Father is immune to this possibility? It's almost as if some people believe that each and every word and action of his are directly inspired by The Holy Ghost.
What about the abuse of authority by failing to use it when necessary?
You are proving the truth of my statement you posted. (Although you don't seem to realize it)
It is undeniably true the facts about the man you follow are radically different from the mythology about him you promote
If you look at the life stories of some of the more extreme traditionalists and sedevacantists in the church, such as Fr. Lucian Pulvermacher for example, one is faced with a conundrum. Reading his web site and those of others, one's first reaction is to laugh. However, behind the apparent farce of what is happening is a genuine human and spiritual tragedy.
When I read the story of his early life it appears, if I take it at face value, that he is a man with a genuine vocation and a man who had a genuine concern for the savation of souls. Moreover, he appears to have suffered badly at the hands of the modernists and liberals and to have undergone genuine hardship for the good of the faith. I think one can see certain parallels here with Archbishop Lefebvre, who can also be said to have experienced similar situations.
However, at some point-I'm still not sure what, when or how-something goes wrong. Badly. One thing leads to another and now Fr. Pulvermacher is up in the mountains of Idaho or Montana or somewhere claiming to be Pope Pius XIII. Tragic.
Similarly with Lefebvre. I have no reason to doubt the service which he gave to the Church during his time in Africa, nor that he had a genuine desire for the salvation of souls, nor that he suffered at the hands of modernists. However, at some point, something went wrong and the next thing he's consecrating bishops.
Salvation history is littered with the stories of people who lived dissolute lives only to find grace and forgiveness at the 11th hour. Sadly, it also seems to contain stories of people who labored in the vineyard for years but then went and threw it all in the dumpster.
"It is undeniably true the facts about the man you follow are radically different from the mythology about him you promote"
The mythology is the nonsense you spew. The truth about Archbishop Lefebvre is very little spoken of these days--that he was missionary priest living in poverty in Africa for most of his adult life, that he above all had been responsible for the burgeoning of Catholicism on that continent for the better part of the twentieth century, that he was a favorite of Pius XII who accepted his counsel and respected his achievment on behalf of the Church. None of this is mentioned much anymore. Instead everything is done to besmirch his reputation--just as the Pharisees did to Christ.
Tertullian (QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS FLORENS TERTULLIANUS).
Ecclesiastical writer in the second and third centuries, b. probably about 160 at Carthage, being the son of a centurion in the proconsular service. He was evidently by profession an advocate in the law-courts, and he shows a close acquaintance with the procedure and terms of Roman law, though it is doubtful whether he is to be identified with a jurist Tertullian who is cited in the Pandects. He knew Greek as well as Latin, and wrote works in Greek which have not come down to us. A pagan until middle life, he had shared the pagan prejudices against Christianity, and had indulged like others in shameful pleasures. His conversion was not later than the year 197, and may have been earlier. He embraced the Faith with all the ardour of his impetuous nature. He became a priest, no doubt of the Church of Carthage. Monceaux, followed by d'Ales, considers that his earlier writings were composed while he was yet a layman, and if this be so, then his ordination was about 200. His extant writings range in date from the apologetics of 197 to the attack on a bishop who is probably Pope Callistus (after 218). It was after the year 206 that he joined the Montanist sect, and he seems to have definitively separated from the Church about 211 (Harnack) or 213 (Monceaux). After writing more virulently against the Church than even against heathen and persecutors, he separated from the Montanists and founded a sect of his own. The remnant of the Tertullianists was reconciled to the Church by St. Augustine. A number of the works of Tertullian are on special points of belief or discipline. According to St. Jerome he lived to extreme old age.
*Any time anyone starts thinking they have the authority they do not have, trouble comes in waves.
Blessed are they who never have authority :)
Archbishop Lefebvre never "went too far." He adamantly refused to step over the line and reject the papacy of JPII. That said, I don't think people like Fr. Pulvermacher or people like him should be judged too severely. Of far greater culpability are those who drove these good men to the wall. Some went to far indeed. Others, like Archbishop Lefebvre, kept their equilibrium--and resisted the great forces which were arrayed against them--and against the true faith itself.
This said, I think it's even funnier how you don't seem to think the Pope himself "went too far" when he poured out libations to the Great Thumb or when he asked John the Baptist to bless Islam or when he had a naked woman read the epistle at one of his papal Masses. Funny how you think Lefebvre "went too far" because he refused to be complicit in the destruction of the traditional Mass, but don't think Paul VI "went to far" by destroying the Mass that had evolved over two millenia--in favor of a concoction that turned off millions of Catholics and began the precipitous decline in Mass attendance that followed. Funny how you don't think JPII "went too far" when he gave the red hat recently to a couple of German heretics, one of whom had openly doubted the Resurrection.
Then again, funny is as funny does these days. Archbishop Lefebvre did nothing really funny--except practice the ancient faith of our forefathers and preach the Gospel straight and undiluted--for which he suffered persecution by Vatican surrogates for two decades. JPII and his predecessor, on the other hand, did lots of funny things--indefensible things--shocking things--that nobody dares to blame them for openly and honestly. But we should.
Why bring up Tertullian? Dante placed six popes in Hell, one of them his own pontiff. Catholics appraised things more honestly back then. They used a simpler yardstick--who did or didn't defend the faith.
"They judge for themselves what they will obey and when they will obey. In that, they are no different than protestants."
Careful now, you may be excommunicated for harbouring such a thought. We are now all God's creatures belonging to churches of equal merit without distiction in the ability of being saved. Enter the spirit of Vatican II and Assisi and put aside your prejudices, embrace the ideas of that great spiritual humanist, Karol Wojtyla, and let us all go forward to the promised land. Sin and obedience is now redundant owing to the death of principle.
"...So this 'mass' of Paul VI, they tell me, is what Lefebvre celebrated at the tomb of St. Pius V, at Econe until talked out of it, and when in hospital at Bogota (concelebration with Aulagnier)...
* So, celebrating the N.O. is St. Peter's is ok when he wants to do it but it is wrong for others to do it....hmmmmmmmmmm :)
"Twenty Years of Struggle," during a retreat in 1986, the Archbishop anxiously argues his rights: "But we did not stop there [ordaining priests] with our apparently illegal actions with regards to the particulars of the law, such as the hearing of confessions, [or] the blessing of marriages performed in our presence in the dioceses. Many of the things which we have accomplished are of themselves and strictly speaking against the letter of the law, but why do we do these things? Quite simply because we believed that which was undertaken against us was illegal and that they did not have the right to suppress our Order."
.... Lefebvre writes a letter to the editor of the Journals Itineraires and Present:
"The plan announced in the documents of the Masonic Alta Vendita and published on Pius IX's orders, is becoming a reality day by day beneath our very eyes. Last week I was in Rome, at the summons of Cardinal Gagnon, who handed me the enclosed letter [from Ratzinger, quoted above]. A very well organized network is in control of all the Curia's activity, inside and outside the Curia itself."
"The Pope is an instrument of this mafia which he put in place and with which he sympathizes. We may hope for no reaction to come from him, on the contrary. The announcement of the meeting of world religions decided on by him for the month of October in Assisi, is the culminating imposture and the supreme insult to Our Lord. Rome is no longer Catholic Rome. The prophecies of Our Lady of LaSalette and of Leo XIII in his exorcism are coming about: Where the seat of blessed Peter and the chair of truth was set up for a light to enlighten all nations, there they have established the throne of the abomination of their wickedness so that having struck the Shepherd they may scatter the flock in turn...."
"You will see, in the reply to our letter [again, that reply of Jan. 20 quoted above], that Cardinal Ratzinger is striving once more to make Vatican II into a dogma. We are dealing with people who have no notion of Truth. We shall from now on be more and more obliged to act on the assumption that this new Conciliar Church is no longer Catholic." (Letter to Mr. Madiran, Jan. 29, 1986)...
In 1974, he had told a confidante (now an ex-Lefebvrite priest) that he would never consecrate a bishop, "for this would mean I would do what Martin Luther did, and I would lose the Holy Ghost."
....
But by 1983 he was in the United States, sounding out his priests on the possibility of consecrating bishops. He asked each in turn for his view on the subject. Those Society superiors who had objected to what he and they knew would be a formally schismatic act, in a year's time were all removed from their positions. They were replaced by those priests who had gone along with the idea.
The groundwork was carefully laid among believers. At St. Mary's Academy in St. Mary's, Kansas every child and adult underwent a mandatory new "catechism" under the auspices of Society priests 1.5 years before the consecrations. They learned that following a false authority was evil; that the pope had lost any legal authority; that the schism and excommunication that were sure to follow the consecrations were not really schism and not really excommunication. How far-reaching was this new "catechism?" If variations of it were imposed on all believers in 1986 and 1987, it would account for the fact that so few people left the Society in the summer of 1988. On May 5, 1988, Lefebvre signed an accord with Rome that in principle gave the Archbishop most of what he wanted. He could have a bishop and thus provide for the Society's continuance after his death. The Society priests could say the Tridentine Mass. The suspension was lifted, and the Society could once again legally ordain its own clergy. Once again Lefebvre accepted the Vatican Council, "as interpreted by tradition," and the New Mass as "valid" if not welcome.
..
Some time around the May 5-6 disaster, Lefebvre had presented the names of potential bishops, and Rome had demurred. The selection of bishops is a touchy subject. With papal approval, it is perfectly legitimate. Without papal approval, it is a schismatic act and an excommunicable offense.
The real problem of the bishops, in this instance, was not when, but who? Who would be acceptable to the pope? Presumably the priests who eventually were chosen as bishops were on the list presented by Lefebvre.
Rome knew who these men were, and knew they held the same views Lefebvre did in his more incautious moments: the New Mass is blasphemous, the Council is heretical the popes that approve the Council are heretical, and maybe they are not popes at all.
Another revelation of what went on in and around the secret negotiations of 1988: at one point Lefebvre demanded as part of the accord that an the world's Catholic traditionalists (those who wanted the old Mass) would have to become members of the Society. It was an absurd demand, impossible to fulfill even if it had been granted, but it speaks to the condition of Lefebvre's (now feverish?) mind. Apparently in the last few years of his life Marcel Lefebvre was not always clearheaded. He was unmercifully manipulated by his lieutenants, Fathers Franz Schmidberger (superior general of the Society), Richard Williamson, and the others. When he returned from Rome after signing the May 5 accord, these bishops-to-be, perhaps seeing their bishoprics about to go down the drain, told the Archbishop that if he did not repudiate the accord with Rome the Society would split apart at the seams. There were too many in the Society (meaning Williamson and Company) who simply had no trust in Rome at all. Under that pressure, the Archbishop changed his mind and hardened his position against all possible future diplomacy with the Vatican.
This was his state of mind in mid-June: "I entered these negotiations because Rome's reactions in the second half of last year had raised in me a faint hope that these churchmen had changed. They have not changed, except for the worse. Look at Casaroli in Moscow! They have spiritual AIDS, they have no grace, their immunity defense system is gone. I do not think one can say that Rome has not lost the Faith. As for an eventual excommunication, its disagreeableness diminishes with time." (Private talks quoted in Williamson's Letter from Winona, Aug. 1, 1988)...
Among Pius X defenders, it is now common to refuse to admit that Lefebvre had gone into schism, or that he had really been excommunicated. Lefebvre historian Michael Davies, who at first denounced the June 30 consecrations, now defends them in a disappointing article (Angelus, December 1990). It is disappointing because Davies, for all his knowledge and intellect, descends to a swamp of special pleading to convince readers that 1) there was no schism, and, 2) there was no excommunication.
Sliding around the facts of schism and excommunication are typical for defenders of a group in schism. The same arguments were heard in the Schism of Utrecht, in the establishment of the Old Catholics, and during the creation of Protestant churches in the 16th century. Always a higher law is appealed to so that a specific law can be circumvented:
According to Martin Luther, "These [church laws] hold good only so long as they are not injurious to Christianity and the laws of God. Therefore, if the Pope deserves punishment, these laws cease to bind us, since Christendom would suffer."
According to Marcel Lefebvre, "In the Church there is no law or jurisdiction which can impose on a Christian a diminution of his faith. All the faithful can and should resist whatever interferes with their faith.... If they are forced with an order putting their faith in danger of corruption, there is an overriding duty to disobey."
... According to Martin Luther, "The Church of Rome, formerly the most holy of all churches, has become . . . the very kingdom of sin, death and hell; so that not even the Antichrist, if he were to come, could desire any addition to its wickedness."
According to Marcel Lefebvre, in his Aug. 29, 1987. letter to the four bishops-to-be, "The See of Peter and posts of authority in Rome being occupied by Antichrists, the destruction of the Kingdom of Our Lord is being rapidly carried out even within His Mystical Body here below."
The point of such anathemas is that attempts to reform the Church from inside are futile; it is too late: and so we (Luther, Lefebvre) must go our own way and build our own true Catholic Church.
.... If Lefebvre was a saint, he was crafty and vacillating as well. He was crafty in polling Pius X superiors around the world and then getting rid of those who opposed the idea of his consecrating bishops. He was crafty in delaying the consecrations a year for mercenary reasons. It seems that Richard Williamson's new seminary in Winona, Minnesota, was just getting off the ground, and Williamson warned Lefebvre that the benefactor about to purchase the property for the seminary would withdraw his offer if he knew about any projected consecrations.
The benefactor was apparently one of those conservative Lefebvrites, who was no schismatic and would not risk "losing the Holy Ghost." So Lefebvre agreed to delay the consecrations a year until the property was secured.
Was Lefebvre a sede vacantist?
... In 1980 he wrote to the Holy Father and protested, "I have no hesitation regarding the legitimacy or the validity of Your election. I have already had to condemn these ideas and I continue to do so in the face of some seminarians who allow themselves to be influenced by ecclesiastics outside the Fraternity." ...
.. in the preface of his 1987 letter to the four bishops-to-be. Here he calls the pope an Antichrist, which is a vivid way -of saying the papal seat is empty. Moreover, there exists an audiocassette tape of a Lefebvre sermon given shortly after John Paul II's 1986 Assisi peace convocation. Basing his charges on that ecumenical gathering, the archbishop says, "I think that when a Pope or bishop honors God in this non-Catholic way, they have the intention of going to God as a non-Catholic, thereby renouncing the Catholic faith. Never has it happened in the Church before that he who sits on the throne of Peter has participated in the cult of false gods. Are we then obliged to believe that this Pope is not Pope? Because it seems impossible that a Pope could be a public and formal heretic."
The sede vacantist question brings us back to the United States. Three previously Lefebvrite priests, Fathers Cekada, Dolan and Sanborn, have now split from the Pius V Society, which Fr. Kelly had formed when he broke with Lefebvre, to become involved in varying degrees with the cult at Mount St. Michael, whose pretense to Catholicism rests on its connection to the Bishop Thuc (of South Vietnam) lineage. As Lefebvrite seminarians proposed for the priesthood back in the 1970s, these three encountered opposition because of their openly expressed sede vacantism. A delegation of American priests warned Lefebvre. But the Archbishop. knowing their standpoint ordained them anyway.
Then, in 1983, Lefebvre used that excuse, sede vacantism, to kick Fr. Kelly and the others out of the Society. The accusation must have rung hollow, given Lefebvre's own leanings. Especially since Richard Williamson, openly a sede vacantist as a seminarian at Econe, was later made bishop for North America.
... the strange doctrines coming from the mouth of Richard Williamson....
In his December 1, 1991 Letter from Winona "Rome cannot help keeping watch on the Society, or on any coherent group with large numbers of Catholics keeping the faith. The reason is not hard to find, such groups are the main obstacle to the advance of the Antichrist.... The One Worlders owed it to themselves to infiltrate Rome and harness it to the purposes of the anti-Christ. This with Vatican II they largely succeeded in doing.... To sweep all Catholics into the clutches of the One World Government, to switch them from followers of Christ into followers of the Anti-Christ, Rome, must deceive them....In this process. it is vital that the people should be persuaded that Catholicism is only what Rome says it is . . . [but] another form of Catholicism than that of 'Rome' is, after all, possible."
...Williamson from his early days in Econe has been a sede vacantist, that he has often said "there is no pope," and that today, in Winona, he teaches that the real Society position is that there is no pope, "but that because of the controversy this issue causes, we deny this position in public." If there is no pope and Rome's program is the program of the anti-Christ, and only the SSPX keeps the faith alive, then another Williamson teaching follows: "If you are not in the Society, you are not in the Church." This is also taught to the seminarians at Winona and the faithful at St. Mary's. Moreover, since Williamson holds the literal interpretation of the doctrine that there is no salvation outside the Church, it follows that there is no salvation outside the Society.
.... Williamson's salvation doctrine is even narrower than that. "Fr, Abel" has often heard the bishop claim that women are only good for drudge work and breeding, and that no woman can be saved. Hearing women's confessions is therefore a waste of time.
Retreats for women are worse than useless. There can be no forgiveness for the daughters of Eve. "What about the Virgin Mary?" asks "Fr. Abel. "That's her problem," says Bishop Williamson. If Williamson's salvation doctrine is a little cockeyed, his doctrine concerning the Jews is also. ...According to Richard Williamson's February 1, 1991, Letter from Winona, "Until [the Jews] re-discover their true Messianic vocation [by conversion to Christ], they may be expected to continue fanatically agitating, in accordance with their false messianic vocation of Jewish world-dominion, to prepare the Anti-Christ's throne in Jerusalem. So we may fear their continuing to play their major part in the agitation of the East and in the corruption of the West. Here the wise Catholic will remember that, again, the ex-Christian nations have only their own Liberalism to blame for avowing free circulation within Christendom to the enemies of Christ.... Remembering also that Annas and Caiaphas induced but never obliged Judas to betray Jesus, and that the Apostle's betrayal was a crime far worse than the Jews deicide, he will look at the state of the Catholic Church today and see why the enemies of Christendom are being given so much power...."
In 1989, Williamson ... In Sherbrooke, Quebec, "there was not one Jew killed in the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies. The Jews created the Holocaust so we would prostrate ourselves on our knees before them and approve of their new State of Israel.... Jews made up the Holocaust, Protestants get their orders from the devil, and the Vatican has sold its soul to liberalism."
Later ....
A Letter from Winona (Nov. 3, 1991) quotes from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a scurrilous document purportedly written by Jews, describing a Jewish master plan to take over the world. The document keeps popping up in Jew-hating circles as if it were a newly discovered proof of Jewish malice. It is actually a piece of disinformation written by a Russian in the employ of the Czar's Secret Police, and has been known to be a fraud by all serious historians for nearly a century.
Along with many crack-pot historical revisionists, Williamson subscribes to the big lie that Hitler had no intention, nor much success if he did have the intention of exterminating the Jewish race in Europe. To believe that, you would have to believe in an impossibly far-ranging conspiracy of U.S. Army soldiers and officers; French and English soldiers and others; numerous investigating commissions, hundreds of thousands of faked reports, faked death camp records; faked photographs; faked testimonies; and faked dead bodies. It is an insane hatred that causes such fervid denial of historical fact, and which bestows an utterly superhuman power on diabolical conspirators (Jews, Illuminati, Masons) thought to be responsible for everything that has gone wrong in the history of the world.
.... The first American priest ordained into the Society of St. Pius X was one Father Gregory Post. One day, he took a plane flight and arrived at the San Jose, California, airport dressed in the fun regalia of an SS German army officer, complete with helmet, boots and swastika arm band. San Jose Pius X members who picked him up at the airport were indignant, and the then district superior of the society had to fly out to San Jose to reprimand the priest and cool off the situation.
There is a virulent sickness of hatred and Hitlerism running through the traditional Catholic movement. Why these folks have taken on the clothes of the very devil they detest is a matter for God to sort out. The strain runs through the Society of St. Pius X in France, whose priests see Marshall Petain as a hero and his pro-Nazi Vichy government of World War II as a paragon of virtue.
Catholic traditionalism as a whole in France is imbued with extreme right-wing politics. On the one side is the historical dream of a restored Catholic Monarchy, allied with pro-Hitler, anti-Semitic fascism. On the other side is Communism, liberalism democracy, the French Revolution, the Resistance and the Free French of World War II, and Charles de Gaulle. And this odd alliance of past Catholic glory and present right-wing extremism in politics finds a home in the special education program offered at St. Mary's Academy.
...most are so imbued with a hatred for Rome that they seem content to remain forever in schism. They don't realize it, but they have found their identity as new Protestants.
Williamson suggests the way in a bulletin of October 1, 1989: "In the 1970s He [God] inspired an archbishop [Lefebvre] to give the laity a fresh start of priests, and in the late 1980s fresh bishops. There is no way all these can give themselves a new Pope, but if they stay with the Truth, God will finally give them a Pope of Truth. Within the Truth is within the Church, and without the Truth is without the Church."
It will have been a meteoric rise for the Englishman. A student of languages at Cambridge, he was baptized at Econe in 1973. Three years later he was ordained a priest, and in 1988 he was consecrated a bishop. Will he soon join the club of anti-Popes that decorate the lunatic fringe of Catholicism?
*Declaring the Pope is the AntiChrist, Rome has lost the Faith and placing a Sede in power are examples proving, again, your mythology about lefevbre is contrary to all the facts
As long as it was in the body, it lived; separated, it forfeits its life. So the Christian is a Catholic as long as he lives in the body: cut off from it he becomes a heretic-the life of the spirit follows not the amputated member" (S. Augustinus, Sermo cclxvii., n. 4)
Lefebvre ... incurred the grave penalty of excommunication envisaged by ecclesiastical law."
Whosoever is separated from the Church is united to an adulteress. He has cut himself off from the promises of the Church, and he who leaves the Church of Christ cannot arrive at the rewards of Christ....He who observes not this unity observes not the law of God, holds not the faith of the Father and the Son, clings not to life and salvation" (S. Cyprianus, De Cath. Eccl. Unitate, n. 6).
THE CREED Revised Edition of the BALTIMORE CATECHISM No. 2
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine 1941 158. Why is the Catholic Church catholic or universal?
The Catholic Church is catholic or universal because, destined to last for all time, it never fails to fulfill the divine commandment to teach all nations all the truths revealed by God. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world, for a witness to all nations. (Matthew 24:14)
159. Why is the Catholic Church apostolic?
The Catholic Church is apostolic because it was founded by Christ on the apostles and, according to His divine will, has always been governed by their lawful successors. And I say to thee, thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18)
161. What are the chief attributes of the Catholic Church?
The chief attributes of the Catholic Church are authority, infallibility, and indefectibility. They are called attributes because they are qualities perfecting the nature of the Church.
162. What is meant by the authority of the Catholic Church?
By the authority of the Catholic Church is meant that the Pope and the bishops, as the lawful successors of the apostles, have power from Christ Himself to teach, to sanctify, and to govern the faithful in spiritual matters. On behalf of Christ, therefore, we are acting as ambassadors, God, as it were, appealing through us. (II Corinthians 5:20)
165. What is meant by the indefectibility of the Catholic Church?
By the indefectibility of the Catholic Church is meant that the Church, as Christ founded it, will last until the end of time. And, behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. (Matthew 28:20) 169. Why is the Catholic Church called the Mystical Body of Christ?
The Catholic Church is called the Mystical Body of Christ because its members are united by supernatural bonds with one another and with Christ, their Head, thus resembling the members and head of the living human body. Again, he is the head of his body, the Church. (Colossians 1:18)
169A. What conditions are necessary in order that a person be a member of the Mystical Body in the full sense?
In order that a person be a member of the Mystical Body in the full sense, it is necessary that he be baptized, that he profess the Catholic faith, and that he neither separate himself from the Mystical Body nor be excluded by lawful authority.And if he refuses to hear them, appeal to the Church, but if he refuses to hear even the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican. (Matthew 18:17)
169B. How does a baptized person separate himself from full incorporation in the Mystical Body?
A baptized person separates himself from full incorporation in the Mystical Body by open and deliberate heresy, apostasy or schism.
169E. When does a baptized person separate himself from full incorporation in the Mystical Body by schism?
A baptized person separates himself from full incorporation in the Mystical Body by schism when he openly refuses obedience to the lawful authorities of the Church, particularly to the Pope.
A. The attributes of the Church are three: authority, infallibility, and indefectibility.
123. Q. What do you mean by the authority of the Church?
A. By the authority of the Church I mean the right and power which the Pope and the bishops, as the successors of the Apostles, have to teach and govern the faithful.
Authority is the power which one person has over another, so as to be able to exact obedience. A teacher has authority over his scholars, because they must obey him; but the teacher need not obey the scholars, because they have no authority over him. God alone has authority of Himself and from Himself All others who have authority receive it from God, either directly or through someone else. The Pope has authority from God Himself, and the priests get theirs through their bishops. Therefore, to resist or disobey lawful authority is to resist and disobey God Himself.
"Do not allow yourselves to be deceived by the cunning statements of those who persistently claim to wish to be with the Church, to love the Church, to fight so that people do not leave Her...But judge them by their works. If they despise the shepherds of the Church and even the Pope, if they attempt all means of evading their authority in order to elude their directives and judgments..., then about which Church do these men mean to speak? Certainly not about that established on the foundations of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone
"Wherefore we teach and declare that, by divine ordinance, the Roman church possesses a pre-eminence of ordinary power over every other church, and that this jurisdictional power of the Roman pontiff is both episcopal and immediate. Both clergy and faithful, of whatever rite and dignity, both singly and collectively, are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, and this not only in matters concerning faith and morals, but also in those which regard the discipline and government of the church throughout the world." (Session 4, Chapter 3, n 2)
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