Posted on 08/27/2010 11:45:13 AM PDT by Hank Kerchief
The ultimate intention of Catholicism is the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire. That has always been the ambition, at least covertly, but now it is being promoted overtly and openly.
The purpose of this article is only to make that intention clear. It is not a criticism of Catholics or Catholicism (unless you happen to think a Catholic dictatorship is not a good thing).
The most important point is to understand that when a Catholic talks about liberty or freedom, it is not individual liberty that is meant, not the freedom to live one's life as a responsible individual with the freedom to believe as one chooses, not the freedom to pursue happiness, not the freedom to produce and keep what one has produced as their property. What Catholicism means by freedom, is freedom to be a Catholic, in obedience to the dictates of Rome.
The Intentions Made Plain
The following is from the book Revolution and Counter-Revolution:
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"B. Catholic Culture and Civilization
"Therefore, the ideal of the Counter-Revolution is to restore and promote Catholic culture and civilization. This theme would not be sufficiently enunciated if it did not contain a definition of what we understand by Catholic culture and Catholic civilization. We realize that the terms civilization and culture are used in many different senses. Obviously, it is not our intention here to take a position on a question of terminology. We limit ourselves to using these words as relatively precise labels to indicate certain realities. We are more concerned with providing a sound idea of these realities than with debating terminology.
"A soul in the state of grace possesses all virtues to a greater or lesser degree. Illuminated by faith, it has the elements to form the only true vision of the universe.
"The fundamental element of Catholic culture is the vision of the universe elaborated according to the doctrine of the Church. This culture includes not only the learning, that is, the possession of the information needed for such an elaboration, but also the analysis and coordination of this information according to Catholic doctrine. This culture is not restricted to the theological, philosophical, or scientific field, but encompasses the breadth of human knowledge; it is reflected in the arts and implies the affirmation of values that permeate all aspects of life.
"Catholic civilization is the structuring of all human relations, of all human institutions, and of the State itself according to the doctrine of the Church.
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Got that? "Catholic civilization is the structuring of all human relations, of all human institutions, and of the State itself according to the doctrine of the Church." The other name for this is called "totalitarianism," the complete rule of every aspect of life.
This book and WEB sites like that where it is found are spreading like wildfire. These people do not believe the hope of America is the restoration of the liberties the founders sought to guarantee, these people believe the only hope for America is Fatima. Really!
In Their Own Words
The following is from the site, "RealCatholicTV." It is a plain call for a "benevolent dictatorship, a Catholic monarch;" their own words. They even suggest that when the "Lord's Payer," is recited, it is just such a Catholic dictatorship that is being prayed for.
[View video in original here or on Youtube. Will not show in FR.]
Two Comments
First, in this country, freedom of speech means that anyone may express any view no matter how much anyone else disagrees with that view, or is offended by it. I totally defend that meaning of freedom of speech.
This is what Catholics believe, and quite frankly, I do not see how any consistent Catholic could disagree with it, though I suspect some may. I have no objection to their promoting those views, because it is what they believe. Quite frankly I am delighted they are expressing them openly. For one thing, it makes it much easier to understand Catholic dialog, and what they mean by the words they use.
Secondly, I think if their views were actually implemented, it would mean the end true freedom, of course, but I do not believe there is any such danger.
The fact is Honorius was convicted of heresy and excommunicated.
I don't put much stock in the "retroactive" definitions you are so happy to use.
I seem to have heard that statement before... :)
The way I read this is the caring Priest would pay no attention to "Catholic Teaching" and speak to comfort that mother.
A few misconceptions are noted here:
NL is not the Catholic Church.
Everyone else is not always wrong.
NL has never said he is never wrong.
NL is not required to admit he is wrong about anything.
(Neither is metmom).
The words of ordinary human beings are never written in stone. However, Scripturally, they are duly recorded by the Lord.
Yes, it is tough trying to live perfectly in an imperfect world. That’s why our eyes are on the finish line-—life on high with Christ Jesus in heaven.
It must be tough being so perfect living in such an imperfect world.
You could probably speak to that; I don't recall you ever admitting being wrong about anything. As a matter of fact, my recollection (though I may be wrong) is that you insist that you are correct unequivocally.
Meant to ping you
Of course it’s just ‘pretend’ to act as if the most spiteful among the elect (in their own eyes at least) were concerned about truth. I’m developing the theory - well, conjecture, that they really are proto Nietzchians (no, I can’t spell that) who are really focussed on conquest.
I think to be reckoned a martyr one has to die because your killer hated your being an Xtian. Am I right?
I think you are definitely onto something!
With a little bit of effort, one can debunk nearly everything. The benefit is one has to make very few commitments and has few responsibilities. The penalty is one is left with little to believe in -- which is only a problem if it turns out that believing is the first step toward knowledge of that which makes eternal life worth living.
Of course your criticism of my use of the Catholic encyclopedia, once admitted, works both ways. No source NOT Catholic could possibly understand the issue well or have the love of truth necessary to pursue the matter down to its den.
It is of course just as silly to criticize papal infallibility by arguments irrelevant to the definition as it is to criticize transubstantiation because the consecrated elements do not look like flesh and blood. You are in the ridiculous position of saying, "If you'd said what I want you to have said, you'd have been wrong."
Yeah. Okay. I'll concede that.
But we didn't say the false thing you wish we had said so that you could call it false. And according to what we DID in FACT say. Honorius's posthumous verdict of heresy simply does not touch on the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. So the persistent, albeit boring, effort to trap us in some inconsistency once again fails -- unless you get to write the rules, rules which have nothing to do with reason.
Well the chaplain at Mercy Hospital in Buffalo NY baptized my 17mo old grandson in the ER where he was dead on arrival ....never say never Wag, I was there, the priest put the baptismal record in my hand... and I dutifully took it to his Catholic grandma ..
Please know that you have my sympathies. I cannot begin to imagine how horrible that must have been.
I was reminded that priests will sometimes baptize immediately after natural death based on the fact that we don’t know for a certainty when the soul leaves the body and baptism is for the soul. However, I do not believe that they are ever done for stillborns.
Prior to the solemn definition of 1870, Pope Pius IX, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Roman Catholic bishops,
After Pius IX insisted on having himself declared infallible in 1870, Cardinal Henry Newman, his cause up for canonization, wrote: 'We have come to a climax of tyranny. It is not good for a pope to live twenty years. He becomes a god, has no one to contradict him, does not know facts and does cruel things without meaning it.'
Many people don't realize how novel the idea of infallible popes is. It was only proclaimed at the instigation of Pope Pius IX at the First Vatican Council in 1870, about whom his private secretary, Monsignor Talbot said:
'Theology was not Pius' forte.' and 'As the Pope is no great theologian, I feel convinced that when he writes, his encyclicals are inspired by God.' Complete ignorance was no bar to infallibility, he said, since God can point out the right road even by the mouth of a talking ass.'
It was Pope Pius IX (pope from 1846-78) who initiated the infallibility movement. Pope Pius IX called Vatican I Council which met 93 times between December 8, 1869, and September 1, 1870. He was Machiavellian in his approach. In pursuit of the enactment of the doctrine, he violated the very tenet of Christian ethics: “The end never justifies the means." The realization that the end of Roman Catholic domination over the government of the worlds and their citizens was coming to an end. Theologian Hans Küng: "Pius IX had a sense of divine mission which he carried to extremes; he engaged in double dealing; he was mentally disturbed; and he misused his office." (For his critique, his license to teach theology in the name of the Catholic Church was revoked in 1979.)
“...So repressive were the agenda and official procedures; so one-sided and partisan were the selection of main theological experts and the composition of both the conciliar commissions and the conciliar presidium; so numerous were the means of pressure (moral, psychological, church-political, newspaper campaigns, threatened withdrawal of financial support, harassment by the police) to which the bishops of the anti-Infallibilist minority and the Infallibilist majority were exposed; so varied were the forms of manipulation applied, at the pope's behest, to advance the definition before, during, and after the Council that...as painful and embarrassing as it may be to admit, this Council resembled a well-organized and manipulated totalitarian party congress rather than a free gathering of Christian people.”
"How the Pope became Infallible: Pius IX and the Politics of Persuasion- 1979." Father August Bernhard Hasler, Catholic priest, historian, and former staff member of the Vatican's Secretariat for Christian Unity . In his book, Hasler described Pope Pius IX:
"* Insane, dishonest* Used coercion (financial pressure on the bishops) and intimidation, slave driver (“bullied the bishops directly, “drove the bishops mercilessly”
* The council was not permitted to postpone or recess under any circumstances, despite meeting in the harsh summer heat and in the middle of a malaria epidemic which caused a number of bishops to fall seriously ill. Upon learning of the spreading disease among the ranks of his bishops, Pius reportedly declared "Che crepino pure" (Let them croak)
* Pius stacked the council. (There were 96 consulting positions, and among them 59 were filled by Italians (his biggest supporters) and just 37 to officials from other countries. Out of those last 37, a mere 6 had any prior experience working with the Vatican.) * “Other bishops, like Bishop Henri Manret, openly called Pius IX a liar, so the charge was not at all unusual or suspect.”
* “Cardinal Gustav von Hohenlohe told a friend:” ‘In my entire life, I have never met a man who was less particular about the truth than Pius IX.” “He never admitted to the things he had done in his efforts to have infallibility declared an official Church dogma.”
* “Bishop Felix Dupanloupe wrote in his diary: "I'm not going to the Council anymore. The violence, the shamelessness, even more the falsity, vanity, and continual lying force me to keep my distance." * “Bishop Lecourtier from France, who was so discouraged that he threw his notes into the Tiber river and simply went home only to have his bishopric taken away for his trouble, complained:
An imposing minority, representing the faith of more than one hundred million Catholics, that is almost half the entire Church, is crushed beneath the yoke of a restrictive agenda, which is contradicts conciliar traditions. It is crushed by commissions which have not been truly elected and which dare to insert undebated paragraphs in the text after debate has closed. It is crushed by the absolute absence of discussion, response, objections, and the opportunity to demand explanations; by newspapers which have been encouraged to hunt the bishops down and to incite the clergy against them.
* “Pius had the council convened in Saint Peter's Basilica. What's wrong with that? Well, that place has some of the worst acoustics possible, making it incredibly difficult for anyone to actually hear what was going on, especially for the more elderly members.
Bishop Hefele wrote on this: "I now sit right next to the Secretary's desk, in the immediate vicinity of the cardinals...but often I can't hear what is being said from the speaker's platform."
* “...the pope exacerbated it by refusing to allow any copies of the speeches to be printed, preventing the cardinals from actually taking the time to study them carefully. Moreover, small group discussions in which issues could be debated and collectively reviewed were expressly prohibited - later, even large groups were banned. ...Finally, only committee members were given permission to reply to a speech immediately after it had been given - coincidentally, all committee members supported infallibility.”
If the pursuit of papal infallibility were within the scope of scientific research, the use of a flawed "methodology" would have dictated a rejection of the results of the “study”. In fact, the empirical evidence listed in the cases in Section D below of this Section illustrates that the conclusion achieved by Pius IX would be undeniably null and void. Hans Küng, The Catholic Church, A Short History p.113 Remarkably, this time saw the creation of the doctrine of papal infallibility which is not to be found in the Decretum Gratiani, in Thomas Aquinas, or in the words of the anonist popes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries... The assertion of papal infallibility was to bind all subsequent popes once and for all to the decree by Pope Nicholas III in favor of the Franciscan order. But this early doctrine of the infallibility and irreformability of papal decisions, at first not taken particularly seriously, was finally condemned in a bull of John XXII in 1324 as the work of the devil, the father of all lies, to be warmed up again only by the conservative publicists and popes of the nineteenth century.
When the fathers of Vatican I defined the pope's infallibility, they showed a contempt for history, preferring their own fables and fantasies. As if dogma is able to rise above the stone facts of history. As if dogma can fashion its own history. 'The very first thing dictators do, ' said Gerald Stern, 'is to efface memory.' Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four, my choice of the most brilliant novel of the 20th century, 'The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.'
http://www.catholicshaveachoice.com/Against%20Papal%20Infallibility.htm
Is the Westminster Confession of Faith part of your church’s doctrine?
Thanks Wag,...I have observed that I understand the biblical quote about weeping and gnashing of teeth.. because that is what the ER sounded like as our families mourned that baby ... But I do trust I will see him again ... Christ gives us all that hope..
My personal belief is that our Lord desires us all to be with Him and would not damn anyone for something that they had no control over and I do not think that is inconsistent with Catholic teachings. It makes no sense to me to assume that the absence of Scripture should be interpreted in the most negative way imaginable.
The Magisterium is not the sort of thing that has meetings and writes books. That's why it hasn't written one.
This may be hard to believe, but also the Vatican is too humble and too aware of its proper role to write a theological rule book or authoritative text.
I'd venture to say that theology as such arises in the context of dispute. Certainly that's the case with most conciliar acts. Trent only 'defined' the OT because your side was advocating a problematic definition.
Then more in the Spirit of the so-called "enlightenment" than in any other Spirit, your side decides in needs systematic works and statements to anticipate subsequent problems and disputes.
We, as a body, are happy to bumble along worshipping God and rejoicing in His Love and whatnot, UNTIL somebody raises an issue. THEN we respond.
Encylicals and whatnot are in a certain sense "occasional." The pope knows he is, in a way, writing for the ages. But it is the current state of thought, either academic or popular, or a current social problem which prompts the encyclical.
And I think that's completely reasonable. I simply cannot imagine "the last word" on Faith and Reason. But I can see the usefulness and helpfulness of a new look at the matter.
I believe that God is sovereign over life and death..ya have to wonder why God did not want that work finished??
Well God is sovereign and yet there seems to be a war on "out there." And God's sovereignty and our understanding why what happens happens are two different things. The events taking place right now and around us are certainly indications of God's plan. But to think that the infinitesimally small fraction of the totality of what's happening right now is enough to give us an insight in to the Will of God is to court madness. It becomes a "projective technique," an inkblot splattered across current events from which we read not what's out there but what's in us.
It's not clear and I would hesitate to say that God killed Aquinas. But it's also at least the legend, told with varying details, that he had some kind of apparition or vision when he was celebrating Mass, and afterwards his output declined steeply. I think there was a certain "passing the torch" quality to the whole thing.
I think that even when he's wrong, Aquinas's thought is so clear that you can see where he went wrong and why. Luther singled him out for special ridicule.
I think most of his detractors have not even tried to read him sympathetically (I havenot read nearly so much as i would like) and most of them also have the problem of ending up in the position of sawing off the branch they are sitting on -- they try to use reason to debunk reason and to draw conclusions from reason's debunking.
No one of average prudence would presume to evaluate this 14th century deprecation by John the xth (such that x is less than 23) without knowing the minutest detail.
I'm entirely serious. Having myself enjoyed the heady rage which comes from denouncing "Rome," I know its attractions.
But really, if we are going to be serious, we need to look at the documents and to go over them calmly. Reaching the verdict before we know the details is not exactly the highest of human functioning.
Somehow I have never felt "pride" in my salvation because I KNOW I didn't do anything. I thought this as a synergist and I'm more convinced of it as a monergist. How a Christian can truly feel pride in their salvation, either way, is a foreign concept in my way of thinking.
It is not a diminishment of God’s power if He wishes real relationships with real people who come to him of their own choice.
God's power is not diminished. It is our preception of His power and our understanding of God that is diminished. The synergistic view of God is a false doctrine that leads to just about every Christian and non-Christian error there is. A person cannot honestly understand and explain the Gospel of John, Romans or the Old Testament where God chose a nation out of the people of the earth to be His testamony. Instead these books become nothing more than moral teachings.
Just ask yourself the question, where does your faith come from-from God or from man? I will confess, it baffles me that Christians cannot give the obvious answer to this question.
I think this is Gods business not mine.. So I trust Him to be just and loving..
It could not have been "an innovation unknown to the Church" if it was an Augustinian notion. If Calvin and others picked up on it (which they did) it was through the teachings of Augustine, a prominent western Church father. Truth is, this was the teaching of the western Church for many years. The eastern Church followed John Cassian's teaching, a student of the heretic Pelagius.
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