Posted on 05/03/2006 2:03:34 PM PDT by pravknight
St. Catherine of Siena, a woman reknowned for her sanctity, first contacted the pope at his request when she served as the informal Florentine ambassador to the Holy See in Avignon. And all this occurred after her correspondence (through secretaries) with papal legates who consulted her.
If the Pope actually invited pravknight or some other Internet malcontent to meet him and solicited his advice you might have a point.
In other words, if I had heard that Mother Angelica in a visit to the Vatican had taken the pope aside and privately expressed some concerns to him I would see an analogy between such an incident and the work of St. Catherine.
The ultra-traditionalist picture of St. Catherine as a random layperson walking up to the Pope and screaming at him that he was a heretic is a myth, actually.
My view of the Papacy is not exaggerated - it is the traditional, orthodox acceptation of the papacy.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, English translation, paragraph 882: The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter's successor, "is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful." "For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered."
There's nothing in there about being a moderator or some mere first among equals.
Nor is there anything in there about random anonymous Internet malcontents having some kind of jurisdiction over him or some authority to judge him.
So what makes the fact you seem obsessed with the letter of the law a matter of bigotry?
Another sidestep. "You Latins" is, of course, the marker of your bigotry.
"You Mexicans", "You Jews", "You Negroes", "You Latins" - the bigot's usual way of addressing an entire class of people he has unjustly stereotyped.
In the Byzantine mind prayerfulness and liturgical orthodoxy is first and the law is secondary.
That's your own idealized picture of your own liturgical community. It would be nice if it were true, but Byzantines put their pants on one leg at a time just like we poor benighted Latins do. Sorry.
That's the error of the West.
LOL! Now the entire West is in error! All Latin Rite Catholics are heretics now!
You seem so overcome by your own personal pride to see this in yourself.
The man who proclaims himself equal to Saint Paul and entitled to judge Popes, a man who has the power to declare that the sin of detraction is not actually a sin, says that I am prideful.
I'll take that comment with as much respect as it deserves.
The fruits of the Vatican II era have been rotten to the core, and if you can't see that you're blind.
We've already established that I'm blind because I acknowledge that the Pope is my pastor and that he actually has just authority over me as my pastor.
If anything is lacking in you is a spirit of charity.
Says the man who characterizes Popes as authors of scandal and all obdedient catholics as "blind" and "papolators." Please, o charitable one, teach me the way of your charity!
Threatened aren't you.
If the even the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Barque of Peter, trust me, I'm not too worried about you.
Filled by hate, aren't you.
The man who begins a thread spewing insults feels that others are filled by hate? Fact: you move me to pity. Again, iatre, therapouson seautou.
My prayer is that Pope Benedict XVI will remove the barriers to the licit celebration of the Old Rites
That would be wonderful. I'd love to see the Tridentine Rite have a wider application. I attend it myself every Sunday and Holyday.
and that he will disband the office for interreligious dialogue.
Why would you want to do that? Are you (shudder) filled by hate?
Stop playing your "The King can Do No Wrong" game.
Yet another straw man. The question is not "can the Pope do wrong?"
Of course he can.
The question is whether or not you are entitled to treat your pastor like garbage if he says or does something that rankles your own personal sensibilities.
The answer, to a Christian, is obviously no.
You treat your pastor with respect, you give him the benefit of the doubt and you take a charitable attitude.
You certainly do not denounce him as a heretic because you are not educated enough to read what he actually wrote in the language he promulgated it in.
Because they worship God while not understanding Him or His nature, while we worship Him understanding His triune nature because Jesus Christ revealed Him to us.
Imagine that a close personal friend of yours whom you grew up with was a musician and wrote a song about the childhood experiences that you and he both enjoyed. Someone finds a copy of the song and likes it, doesn't know who wrote it - but slaps a pseudonym on it and markets it.
Then imagine that you were in some foreign country and heard it playing on the radio. A stranger says "This is a great song! I love [pseudonym]!"
He's correct. The song is excellent and your friend is a great songwriter. But the foreign listener still does know a single thing about your friend, or who he really is or what the song is about.
But you both admire your friend's songwriting talents.
Wow.
In pointing out an apparent exaggeration, you yourself are making an exaggeration.
In 1827 the French Ultramontanist philosophers and political activists Lamennais and Lacordaire began a journal entitled L'Avenir which advcated a theocratic democracy in France based on the authority of the Pope. They went to Rome in 1831 hoping the Pope would support their program. The Pope refused to discuss politics with them and after they left wrote a letter to the Polish revolutionaries whom L'Avenir supported, informing them that it was immoral to conspire against the Czar even if they were conspiring to establish a Catholic monarchy in Poland. The Pope condemned the ultramontane policies in this letter as being detrimental to the Church's ability to exercise its pastoral ministry.
L'Avenir was disbanded soon after in response to the rejection of the Ultramontanist program by the Holy See.
Neither of the men were ever condemned as heretics or accused of holding heretical opinions.
Nope, inasfar as they derive their authority from Christ. Such is an innovation that was unknown in the early centuries.
Thanks for the nod to the primitivist fallacy.
However, the bishops of the early centuries, not just those of today, recognized that a consecrated individual has no authority over anyone unless he is in communion with the Universal Church.
The pope is not the sum of the Church my friend
No one ever said he was. That's the straw man talking, not a person.
The patriarchs have their authority by divine right too. No council can be ecumenical without their assent, not just the pope of Rome's.
Wrong.
As far as the Melkite Church is concerned, the reservation to Vatican I stands.
Because the Pope kindly permits it to.
I believe the pope has jurisdiction, but I don't believe it is or should be as exalted as you might think.
It's one or the other. Either the Pope has direct and personal jurisidiction over every single member of the universal Church or he doesn't. You can't hedge on this one.
With regards to the Eastern Churches, let the pope mind his own business unless we happen to screw things up so badly we can't put things back together without him.
The Eastern rites of the Church are the pope's business. He has jurisdiction over them.
The pyramidal Medieval structure of the papacy is an innovation that had no place during the 1st millenium, and it should have no place now.
LOL! Reread paragraph 822 of the Catechism again.
How can you prove that this is mythical? What source do you have except an almost worshipful exaltation of the papacy?
It is up to you to prove that Gregory II was telling the truth. He claimed that Pius IX physically mistreated him, yet no witness - and there were plenty of witnesses - corroborated his story.
Why should we take his word for it, especially if he stood to profit from the story?
Says who, you?
Paragraph 2477 of the Catechism expalins the difference for you. I'll quote:
Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty:
- of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor;
- of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another's faults and failings to persons who did not know them;
- of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.
Besides, who are you to judge me?
I'm not. You may have an impaired conscience that prevents you from seeing that you are objectively engaging in rash judgment and detraction. As I said, you may not be culpable because of defect.
Of course, it's kind of silly for you to ask, since you are judging Popes.
There is a perfectly good reason why rebuking Paul VI and John Paul II is necessary, they have been destroying the Catholic Church for 40 years between the two of them.
Of course, of course. Good thing you aren't self-righteous and judgmental like I am.
If only you could read what you write from a normal person's perspective.
Perhaps you had a course or two in scholasticism, but it doesn't make your judgment infallible or even right.
I didn't claim to be either infallible or right. I pointed out the flaws in your Tuttlean arguments.
Scholasticism should be relegated to the junkyard of Catholic history.
Just because you are incapableof understanding something doesn't mean it should be thrown away.
Byzantine Catholics are not Scholastics.
A false and meaningless statement.
Latinism and Catholicism are not synonymous.
No one said they were. That's your paranoia.
You are blind.
What a brilliant argument. Such subtle reasoning - are you sure you're not really one of those evil, devil-worshipping Scholastics?
Perhaps I am. But I have had a near-apoplectic "traditionalist" shout at me that JPII was a heretic and that I was a heretic and that he was resisting us both to the face just like St. Paul and St. Catherine.
So my respeonse was colored by that mental image of a lout screaming at me in his words "just like St. Catherine."
Let's call it a truce here and try dialoguing with each other instead of talking at each other.
While it may be Catholic dogma that the pope has universal power and authority as it has developed over the centuries.
How that power is exercised and the relations of the other local churches to the Pope's universal authority is still open for debate and discussion.
The Latin Church and Latin Catholics have always seemed obsessed with the letter of the law an externals rather than internal matters of spirituality. I see that primacy of law in how theology, canon law and liturgics have been approached since the Advent of scholasticism.
I didn't accuse Latin Catholics of heresy. I merely stated that I felt the Scholastic approach to theology inadvertently creates a dualism between theology and spirituality.
I see that in the nice little categories that scholastic theologians love to place everything, not to mention canon law. For example mortal and venial sin, the categories of grace, superogatory works, the approach to justification as opposed to the Eastern approach of theosis.
My theological training has been in the Byzantine approach to theology, not the Latin approach.
The Byzantine Church, by contrast, begins with pneumatology and looks at canonical matters almost as an afterthought. I am happy to see that Pope Benedict XVI is finally working to develop a more balanced approach to theology.
Frs. Meyendorff and Affanasieff have had a profound impact upon his theology and it shows. Deus et Caritas was in some respects more Byzantine than Latin.
I did not declare myself equal to St. Paul, you are putting words in my mouth. Besides, it's not Catholic dogma that it is a sin or improper to criticize the popes when they do things that create confusion in the minds of the faithful.
I pointed to St. Paul as an example of how he as an inferior to St. Peter rebuked him when he was wrong. St. Bruno stood up against Pope Paschal II almost 1,000 years ago when he backed lay investiture, and he was both a simple monk and a saint.
Paul VI had the legal right to promulgate the Novus Ordo, and I do not deny that. However, I believe his decision to suppress the ancient Roman rite, which in its essentials is traceable back to the time of St. Gregory the Great in the 6th century was a grave mistake.
Many others, who aren't in schism, have come to the realization that Paul VI's suppression of the traditional Roman rite was a mistake. I have no memory of the 1960s or 1970s, but it was shear iconoclasm from what I have heard.
Like a good general who accepts responsibilities for errant subordinates Paul VI should have done likewise when he lost control of the liturgical "reforms." He did nothing of the sort.
He also created an unnessessary additional issue with the Orthodox on an ecumenical level.
Saying that the pope made a mistake here is no different than what St. Bruno did when Pope Paschal II went off the deep end sanctioning lay investiture.
You began this mockery, and you were the one who judged me with the supposed sin of detraction. Faithful dissent is not a sin, when no matter of heresy is involved.
Instead of having a discussion on the merits of the arguments, you launched into a tirade of ad hominem assaults. If I lost my cool, I apologize.
Scripture and Tradition both say pagans, Jews and heretics are to be converted to the truth, not prayed with.
Schismatic groups such as the Orthodox and the SSPX, etc. need to be dealt with charity, so that we can work together for reunion.
The Vatican has to stop promoting and tolerating phony ecumenism. It's shear Liberalism, not Catholicism.
Extreme ecumenism in the form of the Assisi conferences is nothing but scandal that spits against Christ's command to
convert the nations.
The Office for Interreligious Dialogue is an affront to every missionary martyr the Catholic Church has ever produce. St. Isaac Jogues comes to mind or the Martyrs of Japan.
If dialogue has a missionary aspect, I say fine. If it's I'm you, your me then I have a problem because it betrays Christ.
Social ecumenism, however, is another story when it comes to protecting matters of morality or even feeding the poor.
I cited St. Catherine of Sienna as an example of an inferior who judged the misbehavior of the pope of her day and rebuked him.
When she did what she did, she was a nobody.
I am not judging any pope's motiviations, but the fruits of their actions: confusion.
If what I have read was a myth prove it with citations, and from several different authors.
It is the same God but Muslims just have an incomplete knowledge of Him. That is why we must pray for their conversion.
Would you consider Fr. Fessio and those calling for the Reform of the Reform disloyal or disobedient?
Fr. John Parsons A Reform of the Reform?
"Fallibility of Prudential Judgments
This is the paragraph that sank a thousand missals, and more than a thousand years of unity in the Roman Rite, which had been one of the principal factors in the emergence of a unified western civilization.
There is the famous story of how the Dominican Cardinal Browne urged the Council Fathers to beware of allowing the vernacular, lest Latin vanish from the liturgy within ten years or so. He was laughed at by the assembly, but as so often, the pessimistic reactionary proved to be more in touch with the flow of events than the optimistic progressives.
The Council Fathers' incredulous laughter at Cardinal Browne helps to remind us that a general council, like a Pope, is only infallible in its definitions of faith and morals, and not in its prudential judgements, or in matters of pastoral discipline, or in acts of state, or in supposed liturgical improvements. It is thus false to assert that a Catholic is logically bound to agree with the prudential judgments a council may make on any subject. It is still more illegitimate to extrapolate from the negative immunity from error which a general council enjoys in definitions of faith and morals, to belief in a positive inspiration of councils, as if the bishops were organs of revelation like the Apostles, and their prudential decrees inerrant like the Scriptures. It is only a false ecclesiology and a false pneumatology that can lead to the exorbitant assertion that a council is "the voice of the Holy Spirit for our age". Are we really obliged to believe that the Holy Spirit demanded the launching of a Crusade at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215? And must we hold that in 1311 the Holy Spirit dictated the Council of Vienne's rules regulating the use of torture by the Inquisition? And is it de fide that when Alexander IV ordered those suspect of heresy to be tortured to confess their guilt, this was what "the Spirit was saying to the churches" on 15 May 1252? If so, are we to condemn the Catechism of the Catholic Church of 15 August 1997, which comes to us on the same papal and episcopal authority and which condemns the use of torture to extract confessions of guilt, and openly says that "the pastors of the Church" erred on the matter?
As to the liturgy, is it mandatory to believe that in 1963 the Holy Spirit wanted the abandonment of the principle of the weekly recitation of all 150 psalms, on which the Office of the Roman Rite has been based from its very beginnings prior to Saint Benedict? And is it de fide that God wanted the Hour of Prime suppressed from January 1964? No, this doctrine of the Infallibility of the Party Line simply will not do. It is not Catholic teaching that the Church is infallible in pastoral or prudential judgements. We are therefore logically free to hold that any council can be ill-advised when making these kinds of decision, and thus ill-advised in allowing the conversion of the liturgy into the vernacular, even if that had taken the form of a direct translation of the 1962 Missal."
http://www.christianorder.com/features/features_2001/features_bonus_nov01.html
I hope this means that I am no longer going to be accused of worshipping men.
While it may be Catholic dogma that the pope has universal power and authority as it has developed over the centuries.
There is no "may" and there is no "development." Christ personally designated Peter as the Rock on which He built his Church and gave him full authority of his flock. End of story.
How that power is exercised and the relations of the other local churches to the Pope's universal authority is still open for debate and discussion.
If it pleases the Pope to discuss with those under his authority how he can serve them better as their pastor, certainly. But only the Pope has the authority to initiate debate or discussion on these matters.
The Latin Church and Latin Catholics have always seemed obsessed with the letter of the law an externals rather than internal matters of spirituality.
I'm sorry, but that is a profoundly false statement and a profoundly insulting one.
You speak of St. Catherine of Siena - read her. Read her dialogue. Read Bl. Angela of Foligno. Read St. Theresa of Avila. Read St. John of the Cross. Read St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Read St. Bonaventure. Read St. Francis de Sales. Read Dietrich von Hildebrand. Read Romano Guardini. Read the works of the Carthusians. Learn about St. Francis of Assisi.
I see that primacy of law in how theology, canon law and liturgics have been approached since the Advent of scholasticism.
The Byzantines were the Church's legalists from the time of Justinian down to the fall of Constantinople. It was the study of the Greeks that reintroduced Roman law into the West and inaugurated the era of the canonists in the 11th century - before the advent of Scholasticism.
Scholasticism is nothing other than using tried and true Aristotelian common sense principles to describe and analyze theological phenomena.
Scholasticism is not about law - it is about reason.
And as far as legalism is concerned, the Byzantines are very partial to their canons as well.
Such argumentation is bare, unsubstantiated prejudice.
I didn't accuse Latin Catholics of heresy.
You said that the entire West was in error.
I merely stated that I felt the Scholastic approach to theology inadvertently creates a dualism between theology and spirituality.
I'll stipulate that that's what you were thinking.
I disagree that involving the mind with the heart and the soul in one's spirituality creates dualism, even inadvertently.
Christ calls the whole person, including the intellect, not just the heart. I feel that some Byzantines create a dualism by excluding intellectual analysis from the spiritual life and disparaging such analysis.
I see that in the nice little categories that scholastic theologians love to place everything, not to mention canon law.
Christ placed things in categories as well.
For example mortal and venial sin,
"If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it." That's St. John the Apostle, not Thomas Aquinas.
the categories of grace,
"As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God." - That's St. Peter, not Thomas Aquinas.
superogatory works,
"And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." I trust you know who said that.
the approach to justification as opposed to the Eastern approach of theosis.
Take that one up with St. Paul.
My theological training has been in the Byzantine approach to theology, not the Latin approach.
Mine has been in Catholic theology - not Latin or Byzantine.
The Byzantine Church, by contrast, begins with pneumatology and looks at canonical matters almost as an afterthought.
I assume you mean Rite, not "Church." As a Catholic I start with the Gospel and proceed from there.
I am happy to see that Pope Benedict XVI is finally working to develop a more balanced approach to theology.
That's a patronizing sentiment. I would hope that Eastern Rite Catholics would start studying Western theological distinctives. No serious Western theologian hasn't read Chrysostom, Basil, John of Damascus, Maximos Confessor or Gregory of Nyssa. But it is rare to find an Eastern theologian who has bothered to read Thomas, and many of them have even ignored Augustine.
Frs. Meyendorff and Affanasieff have had a profound impact upon his theology and it shows. Deus et Caritas was in some respects more Byzantine than Latin.
Interesting, since his sources for that Encyclical are Thomas, Aristotle, Augustine, the evil John Paul II and the satanic Second Vatican Council - though he does cite the legalistic side of the Eastern Rites, specifically the canon law of the Eastern Rites (not only Westerners are canon lawyers after all!)
Meyendorff and Afanasieff were not cited - though they are indeed excellent theologians.
I did not declare myself equal to St. Paul, you are putting words in my mouth.
You equated your critical attitude toward your pastors with St. Paul's disagreement with St. Peter. You do not hold the same collegial relationship with the Pope as St. Paul did with St. Peter.
St. Bruno stood up against Pope Paschal II almost 1,000 years ago when he backed lay investiture, and he was both a simple monk and a saint.
St. Bruno died in 1101. Paschal II fought against lay investiture from 1099-1111, until he was imprisoned. St. Bruno was a Carthusian monk, but he was also a papal advisor to Paschal's predecessor Urban II and present at all important curial functions from 1090 at Urban II's invitation. Paschal II was a simple monk too, by the way.
There is no record of St. Bruno rebuking or chastising the Pope, he was close personal friends with both Urban II (who was his pupil) and Paschal II. Unless there is some other St. Bruno the monk who is associated with Paschal II that I'm not aware of.
Paul VI had the legal right to promulgate the Novus Ordo, and I do not deny that. However, I believe his decision to suppress the ancient Roman rite, which in its essentials is traceable back to the time of St. Gregory the Great in the 6th century was a grave mistake.
I don't think it was a prudent decision either. The solution is to ask Pope Benedict to fix it, not to condemn Paul VI.
Many others, who aren't in schism, have come to the realization that Paul VI's suppression of the traditional Roman rite was a mistake. I have no memory of the 1960s or 1970s, but it was shear iconoclasm from what I have heard.
Some very evil people took advantage of the instability in the Church to do some very vile things. They will all have to account for them in the end.
Like a good general who accepts responsibilities for errant subordinates Paul VI should have done likewise when he lost control of the liturgical "reforms." He did nothing of the sort.
Paul VI attempted to right the ship - he is famous for acknowledging the presence of the "smoke of Satan" in the bosom of the Church and he tried to modify the radicalism of the so-called "reformers" with little success. Neither Paul VI nor John Paul II were gifted adminstrators, but I do not believe that Paul VI willingly did damage to the Church and refused to try to remedy it. From reading some of his letters, I'm not sure if he was aware of the extent of what was going on, nor did he know how to stop what he had inadvertently set in motion.
He also created an unnessessary additional issue with the Orthodox on an ecumenical level.
The strategy behind the Novus Ordo was to improve relations with the mainline Protestants (Anglicans, Lutherans) - I don't think Paul VI or others realized how disedifying the liturgical upheavals would be to the Orthodox.
Remember, that one of the reasons given for abandoning Latin was that the Orthodox celebrated the liturgy in various local languages.
Saying that the pope made a mistake here is no different than what St. Bruno did when Pope Paschal II went off the deep end sanctioning lay investiture.
Again, I think you have the facts wrong here. During the two years that Paschal II was Pope while St. Bruno was still alive, Paschal II was a lion against lay investiture.
You began this mockery, and you were the one who judged me with the supposed sin of detraction. Faithful dissent is not a sin, when no matter of heresy is involved.
???? You started this thread with its disgusting charges of "papolatry." Let's be serious now.
There is no such thing as "faithful dissent." Unless the pope commands people to sin, he is to be obeyed whether we think he's making the right decision or not. If you have concerns, express them measuredly and respectfully - not with an attitude of condemnation.
Accusing Popes of heresy as if you had the authority to make such a pronouncement is simply not a Catholic thing to do.
Instead of having a discussion on the merits of the arguments, you launched into a tirade of ad hominem assaults. If I lost my cool, I apologize.
You did lose your cool, and I accept your apology.
Scripture and Tradition both say pagans, Jews and heretics are to be converted to the truth, not prayed with.
St. Paul and all the Apostles prayed with Jews. Acts says that Peter and John went to the Temple every day and then celebrated the Eucharist afterwards, and that St. Paul went to the synagogue in every town he visited.
While it is impossible to pray with pagans, since they are either prsying to nothing or to a demon, there are heretics who attend Catholic churches every day and while they are not welcome to communion, they are welcome to pray with us and always have been.
Schismatic groups such as the Orthodox and the SSPX, etc. need to be dealt with charity, so that we can work together for reunion.
They already are dealt with with incredible forbearance and charity, despite the hatred and insanity of the Williamson individual and the pettiness of the Patriarch of Moscow.
And that forbearance and charity should continue.
The Vatican has to stop promoting and tolerating phony ecumenism. It's shear Liberalism, not Catholicism.
Which phony ecumenism is that, exactly? I see certain bishops promoting phony ecumenism, but I don't see the Pope - the author of Dominus Iesus - doing so.
Extreme ecumenism in the form of the Assisi conferences is nothing but scandal that spits against Christ's command to convert the nations.
the format and conduct of the Assissi conferences in the past were clearly poorly done. That has stopped.
The Office for Interreligious Dialogue is an affront to every missionary martyr the Catholic Church has ever produce. St. Isaac Jogues comes to mind or the Martyrs of Japan.
I disagree. The Church should communicate with all people. The issue is not dialogue, the issue is compromise under the guise of dialogue.
If dialogue has a missionary aspect, I say fine. If it's I'm you, your me then I have a problem because it betrays Christ.
Well said.
Social ecumenism, however, is another story when it comes to protecting matters of morality or even feeding the poor.
Well said.
There is a difference between someone randomly screaming at the Pope and a Pope directly asking a woman known for her sanctity for her advice.
She told him exactly what she thought, just as he asked her to do.
When she did what she did, she was a nobody.
She was an ambassador from the citystate of Florence to the Holy See by the Pope's personal request. Before she had that role she was famous for her sanctity throughout Northern Italy and plenty of prominent persons well known to the Pope had sought her out for advice and prayer. She was not a stranger and she was not a nobody and when she advised the pope she did so firmly but with respect.
I am not judging any pope's motiviations, but the fruits of their actions: confusion.
You implied otherwise with your utter lack of respect.
If what I have read was a myth prove it with citations, and from several different authors.
You're asking me to prove a negative. Reputable authors don't write books about what didn't happen, but what did happen. Gregory II had a meeting with Pius IX. He made claims about that meeting that no witness, no author and no subsequent historian other than those dependent on Gregory II's account make. There is no transcript of the meeting and no allegations by anyone else than Gregory II that Pius IX did anything immoral.
Gregory II claimed that a man he had never met before, a man who was known by all who encountered him to insist upon the most elaborate forms of protocol and politesse in official meetings and unofficial ones, physically stomped on his head.
Sorry, but I'm going need far more than Gregory II's word to believe that about a beatified Servant of God.
Of course not. They actually know what they are talking about, they don't throw around scurrilous accusations and they treat their pastors with respect.
They have every right to respectfully suggest ideas that would improve the liturgical life of the Church.
Okay. I would say that I am in agreement with the Reform of the Reform movement because they advocate a more organic liturgical reform unlike what came out of the Consilium.
Msgr. Gamber, who the current pope held in high esteem during his lifetime, said Paul VI made a mistake and that he erred in judgement when he promulgated the Novus Ordo in the form he gave it.
Reading Abp. Bugnini's "Reform of the Liturgy" turned my stomach because he explicitly said parts of the liturgy needed to be changed because they did not fit the "sensibility of the modern age." I am quoting from memory because it has been about 4 years since I checked it out of the George Mason University Library.
Okay. I would say that I am in agreement with the Reform of the Reform movement because they advocate a more organic liturgical reform unlike what came out of the Consilium.
Msgr. Gamber, who the current pope held in high esteem during his lifetime, said Paul VI made a mistake and that he erred in judgement when he promulgated the Novus Ordo in the form he gave it.
Reading Abp. Bugnini's "Reform of the Liturgy" turned my stomach because he explicitly said parts of the liturgy needed to be changed because they did not fit the "sensibility of the modern age." I am quoting from memory because it has been about 4 years since I checked it out of the George Mason University Library.
Saints weren't impeccable during their lives. They sinned and did so greatly at times, but their humility with their sins distinguishes them from ordinary people.
Some saints such as St. Meletius of Antioch were schismatics, relative to the Roman papacy.
For goodness sake, JP2 even recognized the Russian Orthodox Church's canonization of St. Seraphim of Sarov in his book "Crossing the Threshold of Hope," referring to him as such in the same breath with St. Francis of Assisi.
St. Nicholas of Myra punched Arius at the Council of Nicaea according to legend, for example.
So why do you deny Gregory II's credibility?
Papal power is a given that we both can agree on, but I think we disagree upon how or when that authority should be exercised. From my perspective, it should be exercised no differently than it was exercise prior to the Great Schism between East and West.
What do you think of Jaroslav Pelikan's reliability as a historian?
How do you reconcile JP2's and Vatican II's statements about other religions with the pre-Concilliar statements condemning Judaism, Islam and pagan religions?
Leo XII UBI PRIMUM (On His Assuming the Pontificate)
"The current indifferentism has developed to the point of arguing that everyone is on the right road. This includes not only all those sects which though outside the Catholic Church verbally accept revelation as a foundation, but those groups too which spurn the idea of divine revelation and profess a pure deism or even a pure naturalism. The indifferentism of Rhetorius seemed absurd to St. Augustine, and rightly so, but it did acknowledge certain limits. But a tolerance which extends to Deism and Naturalism, which even the ancient heretics rejected, can never be approved by anyone who uses his reason. Nevertheless—alas for the times; alas for this lying philosophy!—such a tolerance is approved, defended, and praised by these pseudo-philosophers."
Pius XI Mortalium Animos
".. These pan-Christians who turn their minds to uniting the churches seem, indeed, to pursue the noblest of ideas in promoting charity among all Christians: nevertheless how does it happen that this charity tends to injure faith? Everyone knows that John himself, the Apostle of love, who seems to reveal in his Gospel the secrets of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and who never ceased to impress on the memories of his followers the new commandment "Love one another," altogether forbade any intercourse with those who professed a mutilated and corrupt version of Christ's teaching: "If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him: God speed you."[18] For which reason, since charity is based on a complete and sincere faith, the disciples of Christ must be united principally by the bond of one faith. Who then can conceive a Christian Federation, the members of which retain each his own opinions and private judgment, even in matters which concern the object of faith, even though they be repugnant to the opinions of the rest? And in what manner, We ask, can men who follow contrary opinions, belong to one and the same Federation of the faithful? For example, those who affirm, and those who deny that sacred Tradition is a true fount of divine Revelation; those who hold that an ecclesiastical hierarchy, made up of bishops, priests and ministers, has been divinely constituted, and those who assert that it has been brought in little by little in accordance with the conditions of the time; those who adore Christ really present in the Most Holy Eucharist through that marvelous conversion of the bread and wine, which is called transubstantiation, and those who affirm that Christ is present only by faith or by the signification and virtue of the Sacrament; those who in the Eucharist recognize the nature both of a sacrament and of a sacrifice, and those who say that it is nothing more than the memorial or commemoration of the Lord's Supper; those who believe it to be good and useful to invoke by prayer the Saints reigning with Christ, especially Mary the Mother of God, and to venerate their images, and those who urge that such a veneration is not to be made use of, for it is contrary to the honor due to Jesus Christ, "the one mediator of God and men."[19] How so great a variety of opinions can make the way clear to effect the unity of the Church We know not; that unity can only arise from one teaching authority, one law of belief and one faith of Christians. But We do know that from this it is an easy step to the neglect of religion or indifferentism and to modernism, as they call it. Those, who are unhappily infected with these errors, hold that dogmatic truth is not absolute but relative, that is, it agrees with the varying necessities of time and place and with the varying tendencies of the mind, since it is not contained in immutable revelation, but is capable of being accommodated to human life. Besides this, in connection with things which must be believed, it is nowise licit to use that distinction which some have seen fit to introduce between those articles of faith which are fundamental and those which are not fundamental, as they say, as if the former are to be accepted by all, while the latter may be left to the free assent of the faithful: for the supernatural virtue of faith has a formal cause, namely the authority of God revealing, and this is patient of no such distinction."
Pius VIII TRADITI HUMILITATI
"4. Among these heresies belongs that foul contrivance of the sophists of this age who do not admit any difference among the different professions of faith and who think that the portal of eternal salvation opens for all from any religion. They, therefore, label with the stigma of levity and stupidity those who, having abandoned the religion which they learned, embrace another of any kind, even Catholicism. This is certainly a monstrous impiety which assigns the same praise and the mark of the just and upright man to truth and to error, to virtue and to vice, to goodness and to turpitude. Indeed this deadly idea concerning the lack of difference among religions is refuted even by the light of natural reason. We are assured of this because the various religions do not often agree among themselves. If one is true, the other must be false; there can be no society of darkness with light. Against these experienced sophists the people must be taught that the profession of the Catholic faith is uniquely true, as the apostle proclaims: one Lord, one faith, one baptism.[4] Jerome used to say it this way: he who eats the lamb outside this house will perish as did those during the flood who were not with Noah in the ark.[5] Indeed, no other name than the name of Jesus is given to men, by which they may be saved.[6] He who believes shall be saved; he who does not believe shall be condemned.[7]"
Pius IX Syllabus of Errors
"III. INDIFFERENTISM, LATITUDINARIANISM
15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.—Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862; Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.
16. Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation.—Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846.
17. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.—Encyclical "Quanto conficiamur," Aug. 10, 1863, etc.
18. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church.—Encyclical "Noscitis," Dec. 8, 1849."
etc.
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