Delicious.
Posted on 12/05/2014 10:02:26 AM PST by NKP_Vet
VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis has urged the Catholic Church's top theologians to listen to what ordinary Catholics have to say rather than just making their own pronouncements on hot-button issues.
Francis, whose near-disdain for theologians is well-known, told the International Theological Commission on Friday that they must "humbly listen" to what God tells the church by paying attention to how ordinary Catholics live out their faith.
The Vatican's orthodoxy and theology watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has long been assailed for issuing critiques of Catholic academics without even consulting them or advising them that they were under investigation.
Francis said theologians must "open their eyes and ears to the signs of the times."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I am a Southern Baptist, but I don’t think that we can discount any and all church hierarchy. After all, the New Testament has much to say about elders, deacons and bishops, even. It’s just that if any of them teach anything that contradicts Scripture, then they are not legitimate in their authority.
Maybe he didn’t read the job description ...
Beinst that all of the "modernist" changes that torpedoed into the Church post-Vat 2 were foisted on the faithful by "theologians" who knew better than the "benighted laitythentic, consulting the laity may not be a bad thing.The faithful Catholics are more conservative that the kind of theologians who are "... just making their own pronouncements on hot-button issues" (FTA).
The gibberish in the middle of this paragraph (posted by me) is where a huge chunk was deleted by my computer. I know not how: dern technoogy may be demon-infested. Anyhow, wha I wanted to say was this:
Beinst that all of the "modernist" changes that torpedoed into the Church post-Vat 2 were foisted on the faithful by "theologians" who knew better than the "benighted laity," asking ordinary faithful rosary-and holy-card-Catholics what they consider to be auhentic, unchanging Catholic doctrines could yield some heartening results. It wasn't laity marching and chanting in 1968 that brought us the hugely destructive scandal of dissent on Humanae Vitae: it was the despicable Fr. Charlie Curran and the faithless faculty of Catholic University of America. So consulting the laity may not be a bad idea. Ruffing off of the famous Buckley quote, I would rather be schooled in Catholicism by the fiirst 50 people through the doors for 7:00 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Daily Mass than by the Catholic Theological Society of America.
I don't know what kind of world you live in, but in mine, something that is "always correct" IS divinely inspired. Unless you believe that human beings are capable of perfection, which I don't (at least not while remaining human beings, by definition).
As for something free from error being not prudent or the best possible teaching, that concept is clearly Jesuitical. So who watches the watchers? Who determines how much deviation from correctness is correctly allowable for a given situation? Is such a thing the proper role of religion, or is it political expediency hiding as religion? Jesus said "let your yes be yes and your no be no." I guess He, and the great many who died obeying that teaching, just weren't hip to modern needs. Bummer, dude.
Delicious.
Thanks. I was scratching my head trying to figure out how something in matters of faith and morals is preserved free from error and not always correct.
"Infallible" tells you only what something doesn't say; it doesn't attempt to definitively teach heresy. The charism doesn't claim to provide anything more than that.
You used the term "always correct," not me. I would not say that infallibility guarantees that something is "always correct".
Trick question: if infallibility extended to trigonometry, what is the lowest score the Pope could receive on a trig test? The correct answer is "zero": he could fail to answer every question.
Please provide Catholic teaching on this assertion.
Define “perfect” as you are using it.
That was my adaptation. The way Buckley said it was, “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard.”
Infallibility must be carefully distinguished both from Inspiration and from Revelation.
Inspiration signifies a special positive Divine influence and assistance by reason of which the human agent is not merely preserved from liability to error but is so guided and controlled that what he says or writes is truly the word of God, that God Himself is the principal author of the inspired utterance; but infallibility merely implies exemption from liability to error. God is not the author of a merely infallible, as He is of an inspired, utterance; the former remains a merely human document.
An infallible document cannot teach error on a doctrine of faith or morals. It could contain an error in fact or use of evidence, or a clumsy argument, or it could simply not be stated as clearly or elegantly as it could have been, etc.
That is the kind of thing I mean when I say it is not necessarily "perfect" or "always correct". Inspired documents, OTOH, are perfect and always correct.
OK, I think I see what you’re getting at. You are referring to the non-essentials (those things not referring to faith and morals).
If I thought that’s what he meant - or the type of laity he had in mind - I’d be happy. But I don’t think that, unfortunately.
Vatican II was imposed mainly by the power of a tiny group in the Vatican. They crushed priests and bishops right away, because they had direct authority over them.
And while the laypeople seriously objected to many of the changes, particularly to the Mass and the calendar, they were not very unified - blogs and bulletin boards did not exist, and there was little way of communicating, either with the clergy or with other laypeople. But things have changed, and I think the “progressive” forces in the Vatican may be surprised this time around.
Amen.
"We teach and define that it is a dogma Divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the Divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church irreformable." [Catholic Encyclopedia - http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05677a.htm]
Oooops.
I keep saying it and it keeps getting reinforced. Catholic double speak.
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