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To: annalex
I don’t know who told you what and on what particular matter of consent.

Your fellow Roman Catholics have told us that numerous times.

But as has been seen unanimous means different things to different people in Roman Catholicism. A lot seems to come down to which dogma they're trying to defend.

From catholiconvert.com

The Unanimous Consent of the Fathers (unanimem consensum Patrum) refers to the morally unanimous teaching of the Church Fathers on certain doctrines as revealed by God and interpretations of Scripture as received by the universal Church. The individual Fathers are not personally infallible, and a discrepancy by a few patristic witnesses does not harm the collective patristic testimony.

The word “unanimous” comes from two Latin words: únus, one + animus, mind. “Consent” in Latin means agreement, accord, and harmony; being of the same mind or opinion. Where the Fathers speak in harmony, with one mind overall—not necessarily each and every one agreeing on every detail but by consensus and general agreement—we have “unanimous consent”. The teachings of the Fathers provide us with an authentic witness to the apostolic tradition.

St. Irenaeus (ad c. 130–c. 200) writes of the “tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome’ (Against Heresies, III, 3, 2), and the “tradition which originates from the apostles [and] which is preserved by means of the successions of presbyters in the Churches” (Ibid., III, 2, 2) which “does thus exist in the Church, and is permanent among us” (Ibid., III, 5, 1). Unanimous consent develops from the understanding of apostolic teaching preserved in the Church with the Fathers as its authentic witness.

St. Vincent of Lerins, explains the Church’s teaching: “In the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense “Catholic,” which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors” (Commonitory 2). Notice that St. Vincent mentions “almost all priests and doctors”.

540 posted on 08/25/2018 7:11:58 AM PDT by ealgeone (SCRIPTURE DOES NOT CHANGE!)
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To: ealgeone
t. Vincent of Lerins, explains the Church’s teaching: “In the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.

And as Newman (known for his labor in the Roman art of Development of Doctrine due to lack of “unanimous consent ” of the fathers - while making use of forgeries ) confessed,

It does not seem possible, then, to avoid the conclusion that, whatever be the proper key for harmonizing the records and documents of the early and later Church, and true as the dictum of Vincentius must be considered in the abstract, and possible as its application might be in his own age, when he might almost ask the primitive centuries for their testimony, it is hardly available now, or effective of any satisfactory result. The solution it offers is as difficult as the original problem. — John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., reprinted 1927), p. 27.

This required what even the Orthodox criticize as justifying regards certain RC extremes (for the Orthodox themselves teach many Catholic distinctives that certainly were not "believed everywhere, always and by all" in the NT church of Scripture, but are unseen in the inspired record of it):

Roman Catholicism, unable to show a continuity of faith and in order to justify new doctrine, erected in the last century, a theory of "doctrinal development."

Following the philosophical spirit of the time (and the lead of Cardinal Henry Newman), Roman Catholic theologians began to define and teach the idea that Christ only gave us an "original deposit" of faith, a "seed," which grew and matured through the centuries...

On this basis, theories such as the dogmas of "papal infallibility" and "the immaculate conception" of the Virgin Mary (about which we will say more) are justifiably presented to the Faithful as necessary to their salvation.

Yet this development of doctrine did not stop there, but attempts to justify everything from prayer to created beings in Heaven (nowhere seen or taught in Scripture - except by pagans - despite approx. 200 prayers recorded under the Spirit inspiration) to the Roman Caesario-papacy to the making of graven images for religious purposes and bowing down to them, and more. Newman again:

"...the rulers of the Church from early times were prepared, should the occasion arise, to adopt, or imitate, or sanction the existing rites and customs of the populace , as well as the philosophy of the educated class..."

"We are told in various ways by Eusebius [Note 16], that Constantine, in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred into it the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their own. It is not necessary to go into a subject which the diligence of Protestant writers has made familiar to most of us."

"The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holydays and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison [Note 17], are all of pagan origin , and sanctified by their adoption into the Church.." {374} "The introduction of Images was still later, and met with more opposition in the West than in the East." (John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Chapter 8. Application of the Third Note of a True Development—Assimilative Power; http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter8.html)

The reality is that to be deep in history is to cease to find the Catholic church as being that of the NT church, and thus RCs argue that faith in Rome is necessary to both know what Scripture consists of and means, which is contrary to how the NT church began. For under the Catholic basis for veracity, RC belief and submission is not a result of first examining Scripture (or seeing manifest Scriptural substantiation in word and in power) and therefore believing Scriptural Truth, and rejecting as doctrines that the NT church did not manifestly teach, but that church teaching is to be believed because The One True Catholic Church® taught it, and if challenged, then Scripture (as its servant) must be compelled to support it.

Thus as Cardinal Newman affirms,

“Christians have never gone to Scripture for proof of their doctrines until there was actual need, from the pressure of controversy...” — Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey" contained in Newman's "Difficulties of Anglicans" Volume II, Dignity of Mary; http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/newman-mary.asp

.“...there are doctrines which transcend the discoveries of reason; and, after all, whether they are more or less recommended to us by the one informant or the other, in all cases the immediate motive in the mind of a Catholic for his reception of them is, not that they are proved to him by Reason or by History, but because Revelation has declared them by means of that high ecclesiastical Magisterium which is their legitimate exponent.” — John Henry Newman, “A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation.” 8. The Vatican Council lhttp://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section8.html

Which is akin to what another Anglican convert to Rome who preferred a king to NT leadership, Henry Edward Manning, who incredibly asserted,

“It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine. ”

"I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves.... The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour. — Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation,” (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228."

For Rome has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares.

Which is cultic, not Christian.

562 posted on 08/25/2018 4:30:08 PM PDT by daniel1212 (Trust the risen Lord Jesus to save you as a damned and destitute sinner + be baptized + follow Him)
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To: ealgeone

On “certain doctrines” the consent is indeed unanimous.


615 posted on 08/27/2018 5:49:19 AM PDT by annalex (fear them not)
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