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To: dsc
If there is any authority superior to the Holy Father, short of the Holy Trinity, it is the Church itself.

This is precisely Luther's heresy and the heresy of the major Protestant Reformers. If you truly understood what you were writing and meant it, then with these words you have explicitly abandoned the Catholic faith. I will assume rather that you did not realize what you were writing.

Others have responded to detail when it is legitimate to disobey on a matter of discipline. Even in matters of unjust discipline, in most instances Catholic theology asks the victim of unjust discipline to suffer in silence. The stories of the lives of saints are replete with cases where a truly holy person was falsely accused and did not defend himself but waited for God to vindicate him. When the injustice causes scandal to others for whom one is responsible, then it may be necessary to defend oneself.

But disobedience in doctrinal matters is another thing altogether and the ordination of priests and bishops belongs not merely to discipline but to doctrine, given the Catholic claims about Christ instituting the sacrament of Orders. Luther claimed that he had to disobey the pope for the sake of the Church, the true Church. Identifying the "true Church" as somehow separate and in opposition to the office of Peter is the Protestant heresy. Please say you did not mean it.

101 posted on 08/17/2005 7:17:01 AM PDT by Dionysiusdecordealcis
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To: Dionysiusdecordealcis

Thanks, I was going to answer that and you already have and said it so much better than I could have.


136 posted on 08/17/2005 11:15:36 PM PDT by tiki
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