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To: Unam Sanctam
No, you are incorrect, not I. Dogmas are doctrines of the Church--but not all doctrines of the Church are dogmas. We say someone is unorthodox who teaches or follows unsound doctrine. Heresy, on the other hand, always involves a break with dogma, which is much more serious.
42 posted on 01/21/2004 10:16:48 AM PST by ultima ratio
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To: ultima ratio
No, you are incorrect, not I. Dogmas are doctrines of the Church--but not all doctrines of the Church are dogmas. We say someone is unorthodox who teaches or follows unsound doctrine. Heresy, on the other hand, always involves a break with dogma, which is much more serious.

Nonsense. Your definition of heresy is much too narrow. Scripture and tradition contains plenty of teaching forming the deposit of faith that has never been dogmatically defined in a precise formula. Heresy is the teaching of unsound or unorthodox doctrine contrary to the deposit of faith. We know something is part of the revealed truth if it is a dogmatic definition of an ecumenical council or a pope, or if it has always and everywhere been taught in the Church (the Vincentian canon definition of orthodox belief or the "ordinary and universal magisterium). Dogma is merely a verbally defined doctrine. The Pope has not taught in contradiction to any dogmatic definition of an ecumenical council or a pope or in contradiction to the ordinary and universal magisterium. He is therefore not unorthodox and does not teach or follow unsound doctrine. Your statement is therefore false and calumniatory. Your complaints relate to prudential matters, or perhaps reformable ordinary magisterial matters not part of the ordinary and universal magisterium (although I won't concede that unless you want to discuss specific issues). They do not show that the Pope is unorthodox.

BTW, I wish to correct myself. After some etymological research, I see that the Greek root behind both the words orthodox and dogma is "dokein" meaning "to think". Thus orthodoxy is a matter of correct thought, not correct teaching. However, that does not change my analysis materially. The word dogma, as you can see from the online Catholic Encyclopedia discussion, means "opinion", and by extension "decree", on doctrinal matters, e.g., like an "opinion" of the Supreme Court or a "fatwa" of an ayatollah.

Finally, I did not mean to say that you were Marxist in philosophy, but only your tactics, e.g., abusing the meaning of words and making them mean what you want them to mean.

44 posted on 01/21/2004 10:33:11 AM PST by Unam Sanctam
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