As the Fourth of July approaches (otherwise known as Independence Day here in the U.S.) I feel compelled to offer the following commentary largely taken from a column that I wrote for Catholic News Agency last year (i.e., before they decided that my writing, including the following which is no longer available on their website, is incompatible with their mission of self-preservation; one that includes cheerleading for the current pope and walking on eggshells in fear of upsetting the bishops, and this no matter how offensive their words and deeds may happen to be to Christ; the countless souls thereby placed in jeopardy be damned.)
Let Freedom Ring? Let Jesus Reign!
Flipping around the radio dial a few weeks ago, I made a 90 second pit stop on Mark Levin’s program, about as long as I can stand most conservative talking heads lately.
It’s not that we don’t share similar objectives (e.g., the defense of marriage as one man and one woman, an end to the evil of abortion, a government that doesn’t mandate despicable practices, etc.); it’s just that they’re always hawking a remedy that’s destined to fail.
The clarion call to change the station on Levin came when he referred to those on the right side of the issues as “Constitutionalists like us.”
Speak for yourself, Mark.
Constitutionalists place their faith in the Constitution; and so the remedy they seek when faced with an Administration intent on exceeding the limits of its power is strict adherence to Constitutional precepts.
I’m a Catholic. By contrast, people like me believe in the saving power of Jesus Christ, made available through, with, and in His Holy Catholic Church. As such, we recognize that the remedy for State imposed immorality lies not in pretending that every religious confession is as valid as the next, but in calling to account those who exercise civil authority for their duty to accept what Pope Pius XI called “the sweet and saving yoke” of Christ the King.
Apparently, not all Catholics agree.
The U.S. bishops’ campaign to defend the Church against the objectively immoral demands being made by the Obama Administration’s HHS mandate has, from the earliest days of this battle, included little more than claims of recourse to “our first, most cherished freedom,” a reference to the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights.
In other words, the bishops’ response is very long on Americanism, but woefully short on Catholicism.
Don’t get me wrong, being an American is a great privilege, but that’s not going to get us to Heaven; being a faithful Catholic is what will get us to Heaven. As such, I refuse to ignore the uncomfortable truth that the U.S. Constitution, in particular its approach to religious liberty, is fatally flawed.
How is it flawed?
Put on your Catholic glasses for a moment and take a fresh look at this vaunted “first, most cherished freedom” that we hear so much about these days:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
This, of course, is the First Amendment, and while it may seem harmless enough at first blush, it proposes to treat Jesus Christ, who is truth incarnate, and the Catholic Church, through which He speaks even today, as just one constituency among many.
In other words, the First Amendment grants to those who exercise civil authority license to weigh the words of Christ as though they are no more worthy of consideration in the ordering of human affairs than the ravings of Allah or the quips of Confucius.
It is in this environment that objective religious truth, as given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ, through His Holy Catholic Church, is reduced to just another opinion, leaving the ruling party accountable to no higher power than the electorate as it goes about determining what is, and what is not, morally acceptable in matters of governance.
In short, the First Amendment amounts to the formal rejection of Him who said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
This, of course, is a wholly unsustainable proposition, but based on the bulk email that I recently received from my bishop, Archbishop William Lori, Chair of the USCCB’s Religious Liberty Committee, you’d never know it.
With pressure building to comply with the HHS mandate, the Archbishop announced that the USCCB is re-launching the “Fortnight for Freedom,” calling upon Catholics as a “people who believe in the Constitution” to join the fight.
So, the U.S. Constitution, the same that set the stage for this mess, is now being elevated to an article of faith?
This is our fourth quarter strategy?
Preaching as if the Constitution of the United States was inscribed by the finger of God on a tablet of stone is not the answer. Neither are such inane parish activities as “patriotic sing-a-longs for children, Pancakes for Patriotism, or Fish Fries for Freedom.” (Taken from the USCCB’s “14 Ways Your Parish Can Celebrate the Fortnight for Freedom.”)
The bishops, overcome by the diabolical disorientation of which Our Lady forewarned, appear not to realize that the Church is engaged, not just in a battle over healthcare in the United States at the hands of Barack Obama, but in a war against the forces of evil throughout the world over the Church’s ability to carry out the mission that was given to her by Christ, in the fullness of freedom, which is hers, not simply by constitutional right, but by Divine right.
The reason the bishops’ behavior fails to reflect this immutable truth of our Catholic faith is simple, they’re no longer willing to proclaim the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ; the same that Pope Francis suggests is to be avoided as little more than the ramblings of “triumphalists.”
Unless and until the pope and the bishops in union with him muster up the wherewithal to once more proclaim the Sovereign Rights of Christ the King as proposed so clearly by the popes in a more faithful age, the Church will continue to languish in the adulterer’s bed that her prelates made for her at Vatican II, wherein the mission that was given to her by Our Lord was supplanted in favor of a program of religious diplomacy.
The canonization of John XXIII and John Paul II, and the plans being made to beatify Paul VI – each one an icon of the conciliar renouncement of Our Lord’s Kingship and the mission He gave to His Church – is a sure sign that barring divine intervention the end of this dreadful crisis is nowhere in sight.
“All are welcome” may be the slogan for this “church”, but it is not the slogan at the gates of Heaven. We must pray for these poor misguided souls who are lost sheep without shepherds. Lord, have mercy on us all!
My comment was for the previous post about St. Francis of Assisi church.
Extremely well stated, Mr V.
All true. But we also should realize that a Catholic polity is impossible in gigantic, multi-religious conglomerations such as the United States. Pope Pius IX resisted German Unification, which led to Bismarck’s anti-Catholic Kuturkampf; and of course the Pope opposed the Masonic Risorgimento in the Italy of the same era. He also sent a friendly letter to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, although not endorsing Southern independence.
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And it was Lincoln who drafted Catholic Irishmen just off the immigration boats to be cannon fodder in his unjust war to conquer the independent South, which peacefully would have abolished slavery soon as had every other country in the Western Hemisphere. Since Appomattox, the U.S. centralized regime has metastasized into an atheistic, anti-Catholic autocracy of monstrous proportions that ought to be broken up into its 50 constituent states.
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Part of the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity is decentralization.
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(No, I am not a Southerner and have never lived there, nor did any of my ancestors.)
What evidence is there that the Confederacy would have abolished slavery if Lincoln hadn’t crushed them in the war of southern rebellion?
Americanism had been a bit of a problem with the hierarchy here even before the full-on breakout of the crisis. Of course, it’s much worse now.
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The bishops are doing nothing more than being faithful to DH and the rest of the council – as they see it anyway – those unofficial non-teachings, directly contrary to actual Catholic doctrine (such as that there is no objective right whatsoever to engage in false worship), that continue to wreak havoc within the Church and without.
It is possible that younger Catholics may, subconsciously at least, perceive the doctrine of the Social Kingship of Christ as an “outdated strategy” of past “papal administrations”. If so, it is worth contemplating the first two articles of the Apostles’ Creed, which Creed as the Catholic Encyclopedia explains “has always been held to have the authority of an ex cathedra utterance”. These articles read as follows (all emphases below added):
“I believe in God the Father Almighty Creator of Heaven and earth
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord“.
As all sons of the Church should understand, if God the Father is Creator of Heaven and earth, then His only Son is Lord, not merely of a religious sect, but of all on earth. This point I believe is well articulated in the 1997 Catechism, which reads (in #450):
“From the beginning of Christian history, the assertion of Christ’s lordship over the worldand over history has implicitly recognized that man should not submit his personal freedom in an absolute manner to any earthly power, but only to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Caesar is not ‘the Lord’.”
In Quas Primas, as I am sure Louis has recently written, Pope Pius XI (quoting St. Augustine) merely draws out the logic of this divine sovereignty as it pertains to society as a whole: “since the state is nothing else than a harmonious multitude of men”. That is, the state is no more than the sum of its parts, each part being equally subject to Christ our Lord. This is the saving logic of religion, not politics.
DH doesn’t teach an “objective right to engage in false worship”. DH correctly teaches that people have a right not to be prevented from engaging in false worship within due limits. If you don’t accept that distinction made repeatedly by the authentic magisterium, you are a dissenter.
Amusing. There are more than one reasonable interpretation of the text, but DH *definitely* says more than what you just did.
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“DH correctly teaches that people have a right not to be prevented from engaging in false worship within due limits.”
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Your statement is the correct Catholic teaching that the state can allow false worship if a greater harm would come from disallowing it. However, DH goes much farther: it says that man has an objective right to both hold to and practice error, including false worship, which is something unheard of in the history of the Church. It says that this is an intrinsic right that all men possess, and that a corresponding civil right exists. (It does not, as Fr. Brian Harrison asserts, teach that this right is *only* a civil right; it says that the civil right proceeds from the objective (God-given) right. At least, it seems to, and that is indeed how it is *commonly* interpreted – including by the American hierarchy.
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http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/2009-1115-salza-vaticansspx_discussion.htm
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There is a reason why John XXIII’s personal theologian (Cardinal Ciappi) warned him that his encyclical Pacem in Terris, which uses language similar to DH, contradicted Catholic teaching on religious liberty.
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“If you don’t accept that distinction made repeatedly by the authentic magisterium, you are a dissenter.”
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Since Pope Paul VI told us that the conciliar documents intent to bind the faithful to any specific teaching only when they specifically state to, and DH makes no such claims regarding its novelties, it would seem you are actually the dissenter. You refuse to answer the simplest of questions about the council (“What are its actual, binding teachings?”) yet call those who don’t agree with you dissenters? That’s a serious charge.
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I hold to the actual, defined Catholic teaching – that no objective (that is, God-given; He is the source of all rights) exists, and accept any interpretation of DH that is in harmony with that.
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I encourage you to seek out the articles by John Salza on DH, which do a thorough job of illuminating its issues.
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If you would like to discuss further please start a thread in the forum.
“DH correctly teaches that people have a right not to be prevented from engaging in false worship within due limits.”
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I need to correct myself – I read the statement and responded a bit too quickly. While it is true that no person can be coerced to believe or practice the Catholic faith against his will, in fact it is NOT true that people have any “right not to be prevented from engaging in false worship” – not if you mean an objective right, which is what DH says. That is the same thing as saying that man has a God-given right to practice error, which is false. Instead, what the Church has always taught is that the state has the duty to prevent false (non-Catholic) worship *unless* a greater evil would result by preventing it than allowing it, and that there is no right to false worship. Rather, there is only the toleration of such if the greater good requires it.
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The distinction is critical. If men have a “right” (all true rights originate from God) “not to be prevented from engaging in false worship”, God endorses error. It is that simple. While men have the subjective right to sin, meaning that they have free will, they have no such objective right. For one example demonstrating this, Pope Pius IX condemned the following: “The best condition of human society is that wherein no duty is recognized by the government of correcting violators of the Catholic religion *except* when the maintenance of the public peace requires it” – Quanta Cura – emphasis mine. If the Church had always taught that “people have a right not to be prevented from engaging in false worship within due limits”, this would not be a condemned proposition.
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I realize that such statements often strike modern Catholics as – crazy. This is due to the effect of the council. Yet, this teaching – that men have an objective right to error – undoes the Social Kingship of Christ instantly among its other problems.
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It seems you do not understand Catholic doctrine on religious liberty, which is why you do not see the problems in the document. And the fact that there are problems is self-evident; quoting Salza, “The fact that volumes have been written evaluating whether DH is compatible with tradition demonstrates that the document is prima facie ambiguous, if not problematic. Never before in the history of the Catholic Church has a conciliar document caused so much angst and confusion. That being said, any attempts to reconcile DH with pre-conciliar teaching must ultimately be resolved by the pope who is our final authority on earth.”
There are increasingly more people – not typically identified as “traditionalists” – criticizing DH and the other documents of V2 as well and calling for an *authoritative* interpretation. Msgr. Gherardini is one of them:
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http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt148.html
First of all your argument doesn’t follow. The right not to be STOPPED from doing something is not the same thing as the right to do the thing. This is elementary logic.
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Second, even if your argument made any kind of logical sense, it disagrees with the teaching of the Church as expressed in the Catechism:
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2108 The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error,37 but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty, i.e., immunity, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters by political authorities. This natural right ought to be acknowledged in the juridical order of society in such a way that it constitutes a civil right.
Dear Louie, your words point to the fact that many Bishops and Priests have let all Americans down, by failing to make the elimination of sins against Our Lord, Jesus Christ, the King, the primary object of their work.
Something terrible happened a little over 40 years ago that has made that fact more and more evident with each passing year and left us without the good feelings we remember from our childhoods watching fireworks every 4th of July and singing patriotic songs recalling our history.
It seems to have made a mockery of the reasons our American forefathers declared independence from British tyranny in 1776, and then paid for it with their lives. The Documents that were drawn up were meant to balance the powers of our Law makers, Law interpreters and Law enforcers, as they worked to sustain this as one nation, “under God” preserving Americans’ rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with justice for all.
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But In 1973, The Law Makers let The Law interpreters usurp the powers of God by failing to overturn their decision which declared the existence of a right which never has and never will exist, and letting them go on to enforce it with further rulings creating a worse tyranny than the one from which we first declared our independence.
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Since they declared it legal for mothers and fathers and what passes for healers, to abort the life,liberty and pursuit of happiness of their children in the womb, over 56 million of the most defenseless, among us have been murdered before they could be baptized.
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Let us remember them this 4th of July as well, and pray for an end to this tyranny.
God Bless all Americans with respect for Him and all human life.
@ Indignus famulus,
Not all “Bishops and Priests have let all Americans down. I bring you Father Z.
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2014/07/archbp-sample-consecrated-portland-to-our-lady/
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Holy Ghost taking the fight to the evil one. 🙂
Dear S. Armaticus,
That’s why we purposely said “many”. We agree.
Thanks for the link God Bless 🙂
(1) ‘The right not to be STOPPED from doing something is not the same thing as the right to do the thing. This is elementary logic.’
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The right not to be stopped is just negative affirmation. When the Church declared tolerance to private worship of other faiths, it was not declared in any way, shape or form as a right.
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(2) ‘2108 The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error,37 but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty,’
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You will find it most difficult to defend that element of the Catechism with the entirety of Church History. Even the earliest notions of Liberty such as ‘Liberty of Conscience was condemned by Pope Gregory XVI in his Encyclical ‘Mirari Vos (Paragraph 14)’. Furthermore, there has been severe criticism over the New Catechism such as the notion of the dignity of man which departs from the Traditional understanding.
Ganganelli: Reasons slavery would not have lasted long even if the South had gained independence:
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1. Except for Haiti, slavery peacefully was abolished in every other country in the Western Hemisphere before or shortly after the Civil War.
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2. If the Confederacy had survived, the Fugitive Slave Act would have been defunct. Slaves in the Upper South easily could have escaped to the now separate North, sharply decreasing the dollar value of the remaining slaves. With their slaves gone, the Upper South states would have abolished slavery. The process soon would have repeated itself with the rest of the South.
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3. Industrialization was making chattel slavery economically irrelevant.
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4. The moral arguments against slavery would have remained stronger than ever, resonating among Southern Christians.
“First of all your argument doesn’t follow. The right not to be STOPPED from doing something is not the same thing as the right to do the thing. This is elementary logic.”
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Actually, if we were to write these statements in some logic language, it could be shown that they are equivalent if a couple other conditions were true – if the right not to be coerced proceeded from an objective right to act. And that, actually, is what DH teaches. You need to extent your logic chain a bit further, as we’ll see below.
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(If you were correct that these are incredibly simple topics and that it was crystal clear that anyone capable of understanding even “elementary logic” would have no problems at all reconciling DH with Catholic teaching, we would not see men like Monsignor Brunero Gherardini, canon of the Vatican arch-basilica and director of the international theological periodical “Divinitas”, raise exactly the same concerns.)
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http://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/vatican-ii-must-be-debated-gherardini-2390
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S, let me try again – there are indeed nuances here, and modern Catholics are not used to making distinctions between the subjective and objective, the right to act vs. the right not be coerced, etc.
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First, the problem with the negative right not to be coerced from false public worship is that DH seems to teach that this proceeds from the objective right man possesses to worship as he himself sees fit (after all, this is the Cult of Man we’re bowing to). It is this that contradicts Catholic teaching. DH says that man has the “right to honor the Supreme Being in *public* worship” and that the basis to this right is objective: “The right to religious freedom has as its foundation, not in the subjective disposition of the person, but in his very nature.” Already we are in to difficult territory, for, again, God does not grant the objective right to practice or even accept error to anyone; He is the God of Truth; He is Truth Itself. The fact that DH uses the word “public” demonstrates that it is referring to objective right, in addition to its direct confirmation of that.
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The Church has always taught (references can be provided if you doubt!) that non-Catholics have no right to public false worship. Rather, the state – *any* state, because all states must respect divine law and derive their authority from God (the only valid source of authority) has the duty to curtail public expression of error, which includes public non-Catholic worship, unless doing so would cause more harm than good.
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In other words, the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church, which follows directly from divine law, is that public false worship can, at best, be *tolerated* by the state, but that no man has any objective right whatsoever to such. He has neither the right to engage in public false worship nor the right not to be coerced from doing so: these are, in fact, the exact same right, as long as we’re talking about an objective right that governs the public sphere.
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When one begins to get the Big Picture, one sees quite readily why DH seems to teach what it does. The council told us that rather than Christ being the center of our existence, “all things on earth should be related to man as their center and crown”; Paul VI bragged that the council would usher in the “Cult of Man” and thus would the world be satisfied. And satisfied the Church’s enemies were, of course, as they stated repeatedly in their own vehicles (Masons, Jews, and Communists, that is).
Having shown from the Catechism that the Church clearly does not teach a right to error, we can dispose of your earlier argument and come to the crux of the matter. There is no question that V2 introduced a new teaching. That new teaching is essentially the right not to be prevented from acting according to your conscience in religious matters within due limits. You dissent from this teaching of Vatican II and I do not. It really is as simple as that.
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Having established that you believe that an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church can teach error, and furthermore, that Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope can likewise teach that same error, I do have a piece of advice for the feeneyites that might be reading this exchange.
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When you are presenting the “traditional” teaching that water baptism is necessary for salvation, you are likely to have traditionalists like ATC refer to the Council of Trent’s teaching on baptism of desire. Rather than try to twist the plain meaning of Trent’s teaching in to something it clearly is not, just tell ATC that the Council of Trent was WRONG on the matter. As they believe Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church can teach error, they will have to come up with another line of argumentation.
“… is a sure sign that barring divine intervention the end of this dreadful crisis is nowhere in sight.”
Sorry Louis, there is more hope than that. After the October Synod, the great schism will occur in the Church when finally some (not even half) of the clergy will refuse to accept Francis’ heresies and one world pagan religion. God will send the Warning – Illumination of Conscience – and 6th Seal in the Bible (Rev 6:12-17). Akita, an approved apparition is one prophecy about this schism; “The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, and bishops against other bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their Confreres. The Church and altars will be vandalized. The Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord. ” We have to go through this tribulation to get to the era of peace – the triumph of the Immaculate Heart.
I think it is clearer to say that no person has the right to coerce another to adopt the the One True Faith as espoused by the Catholic Church. Faith is assented to; assent to the Faith necessitates the free operation of the will. The corollary is that a person is free to refuse to assent. It is not a “right”, in the pure, objective Natural Law philosophy interpretation of a right – which is something that is a function of objective moral truth, and is objectively knowable. Freedom to assent to the Faith per se is an objective good which creates an objective duty not to not to impede it in any way.
“But we also should realize that a Catholic polity is impossible.” With God all things are possible.
The Church has never preached ‘coersion.’ It preaches (well, use to) that the True Faith is the only Faith that must have the fullness of liberty. False-faiths should never have a ‘right’ to impose their errors on society because false-faiths believe and act contrary to God’s will. Louie has a bunch of talks on vimeo about religious ‘freedom’ and the timeless teachings of the Church.
“incompatible with their mission of self-preservation.” I think this sums up the Novus Ordoites mission pretty well, it’s not preaching to all the saving Truth, but rather preserving one’s position come hell or high water – this is religious indifference – believing in the ‘inalienable right’ to live wrongly even when we have God’s own revelation through His Church to live rightly by.
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p.s. if a constitution does not confess Christ, Christ is not going to speak up for those deniers in heaven. The new Hungarian Constitution places itself under Christ. They are, as you can imagine, not very popular with the EU.
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“to languish in the adulterer’s bed that her prelates made for her at Vatican II, wherein the mission that was given to her by Our Lord was supplanted in favor of a program of religious diplomacy [suicide].”
What I see is that, by and large, as Catholics, we simply don’t really believe that everything really is under the sovereignty of Christ. We don’t believe that God is capable re-establishing Himself as Head of Nations anymore. Will Christ find Faith when He returns? He will no doubt find scores of Catholics insisting they have the faith whilst constantly denying in words and deeds the Faith they pretend to.
‘Having shown from the Catechism that the Church clearly does not teach a right to error’
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You have not addressed negative affirmation/right, so really you cannot dispose the argument.
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‘That new teaching is essentially the right not to be prevented from acting according to your conscience in religious matters within due limits. You dissent from this teaching of Vatican II and I do not. It really is as simple as that.’
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Which was condemned as early as Pope Gregory XVI.
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‘Having established that you believe that an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church can teach error, and furthermore, that Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope can likewise teach that same error, I do have a piece of advice for the feeneyites that might be reading this exchange.’
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Pope after Pope has established that Vatican II is Pastoral, there is nothing Dogmatic apart from the reiterations of what has already been taught. That means notions such as Religious Liberty are merely Pastoral.
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‘When you are presenting the “traditional” teaching that water baptism is necessary for salvation, you are likely to have traditionalists like ATC refer to the Council of Trent’s teaching on baptism of desire.’
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http://archives.sspx.org/miscellaneous/feeneyism/three_errors_of_feeneyites.htm
‘Having shown from the Catechism that the Church clearly does not teach a right to error’
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You have not addressed negative affirmation/right, so really you cannot dispose the argument.
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‘That new teaching is essentially the right not to be prevented from acting according to your conscience in religious matters within due limits. You dissent from this teaching of Vatican II and I do not. It really is as simple as that.’
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Which was condemned as early as Pope Gregory XVI.
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‘Having established that you believe that an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church can teach error, and furthermore, that Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope can likewise teach that same error, I do have a piece of advice for the feeneyites that might be reading this exchange.’
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Pope after Pope has established that Vatican II is Pastoral, there is nothing Dogmatic apart from the reiterations of what has already been taught. That means notions such as Religious Liberty are merely Pastoral.
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‘When you are presenting the “traditional” teaching that water baptism is necessary for salvation, you are likely to have traditionalists like ATC refer to the Council of Trent’s teaching on baptism of desire.’
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http://archives.sspx.org/miscellaneous/feeneyism/three_errors_of_feeneyites.htm
Do you personally know priests who share your opinion, that a good many of them will not follow Francis in allowing public adulterers to receive the Body of Christ? It would be interesting to know what the “vox populi” among faithful priests is these days.
God Bless.
if VII was and remains non-dogmatic and non-binding on the faithful why on earth has almost the entire church dogmatically bound itself to this mess? Is every Catholic for 60 years that stupid? I don’t believe for a second – anymore – that those millions of catholics a few decades ago felt they had any choice when the new mass turned their worship lives upside down anymore than millions of catholics now feel they have a choice as the new ‘mystical body’ of non-catholics and sundry false-religionists are dissolving Christ in their lives and ‘the church’. What’s the point of a pastor constantly at odds with dogma?
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Every which way it’s looked at, VII and the ‘popes’ who continue to promulgate it appear nothing but evil as the souls slip by.
‘if VII was and remains non-dogmatic and non-binding on the faithful why on earth has almost the entire church dogmatically bound itself to this mess?’
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Well, it can be answered depending upon the amount of Modernists within the Church. Pope Paul VI’s Mass was not Promulgated, and was meant to be in Latin, but apparently the Modernists simply took advantage of the issue.
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‘those millions of catholics a few decades ago felt they had any choice when the new mass turned their worship lives upside down’
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The argument has no weight, simply on the basis of if you look at the events in England around the Schism due to Henry VIII, you will find only ‘one’ Bishop, defied the Schism along with a small number of priests. Most of England simply changed with small pockets of Recusants.
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‘What’s the point of a pastor constantly at odds with dogma?’
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Honorius I was at odds when asserting One Will, what was the purpose of Honorius?
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‘Every which way it’s looked at, VII and the ‘popes’ who continue to promulgate it appear nothing but evil as the souls slip by.’
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Yes, most dangerous, all the more reason to pray for them. Just like the Arian Heresy, but worse.
The summary of what you propose is in no way antithetical to the notion that the Vatican II Council was Pastoral, simply on the basis that the objections that individuals within the Church try to bind themselves to the Vatican Council II does not in anyway negate that Vatican Council II was Pastoral. If an individual tries to bind himself to Vatican Council II, he does so at the negation of the prior councils, Encyclicals and objections that arise which simply cannot be negated. To those who wilfully bind themselves to Vatican Council II at the expense of Tradition are simply Modernists who want to push heresy.
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The second issue that you raise is the problem that a few million Catholics could simply change is really not an objection. Just look at England under the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Count the Bishops who defied the English Monarchs, one who was St. John Fisher. Count the Clergy who defied the English Monarchs, very few. Recusants were small in number while the large portion of the faithful simply attended Anglican congregations. The notion that the few against the many is not a new theme, it is present in the Old Testament, and occurred during the Heretical Reformation. Simply even look at Germany. The fact that Mass attendance is low simply maybe on the principle that the Novus Ordo is too dangerous.
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Finally, Vatican II is dangerous, yes, and the Popes who continue to promulgate that which is contrary to Tradition are not new to the Church. That’s how it has occurred for quite some time, whether the Arian Heresy or Honorius I. Just that now, it’s much more dangerous.
Apologies for the two replies, any reply would be preferable to the second. The reason for the two replies is due to the comment system initially stating that the comment was duplicitous, and would not post, but somehow posted.
Good argument, Chris. Can’t answer it except to say who knew ‘popes’ could be complete bricks? in the mortar of modernism. But who am I to budge? At least I don’t have to figure out new agers – unless they are papal claimants – new agers are the most condemnatory and selective puritans on the planet. Five minutes in the company of one can make ya think God surely can’t be the last word on how worthless one is – and that’s only watching football!
p.s. ‘scuse my ‘worthless’ comment peeps, ’cause of course we are worth the Blood of God to God – I just meant all we have is owed to God but new agers remind me of Black Adders Aunt:
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http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xv6lm8_blackadder-season-02-episode-05-beer_shortfilms
“The bishops are doing nothing more than being faithful to DH and the rest of the council – as they see it anyway – those unofficial non-teachings, directly contrary to actual Catholic doctrine (such as that there is no objective right whatsoever to engage in false worship), that continue to wreak havoc within the Church and without.”
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## And in the process, are denying the Catholic Faith. Logically, DH leads to all the bad stuff JP2 & B16 kept deploring. It leads to Satanic “masses” at Harvard, to contraception, to abortion, euthanasia, IVF, gay marriage, moral relativism.
To anyone not addicted to V2 – IOW, to anyone not a Catholic bishop – this would suggest that it is past time for the CC to stop being force-fed this poison. But the bishops, led by the Popes, are V2 addicts. IMO, the trouble is the Papacy – it is harming the Church by requiring the Church to deny of poisoning; but the Church has to poison itself, in order to stay in union woth Rome. IOW, Rome is misusing its power, in order to rape and kill the Church. The sooner the Papacy is totalled, the better – then we can get back to being Catholic. Under the V2 Papacy, the Church will continue to be corrupted. The Papacy has become the enemy of the Church, and should be cut off like the gangrenous limb it has become. The Church cannot be obliged to commit suicide just to keep Popes happy.
It is essential, ISTM, not to let reverence for the Papacy stop criticisms of it being as severe and hard-hitting as they need to be. If the Papacy won’t face the facts about the state of the Church and about why, then its face must be rubbed in the facts, all of them, until it does face up to them, and stops destroying the Church. There must be no false mercy or reluctance – the Papacy has done immense damage to the Church in the last 50 years, and must be forced to admit it has done so.
deny of = die of
http://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/disputing-vatican-iis-authority-gherardini-2379
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Are Catholics required to give their full assent to Vatican II’s documents? The respected theological author, Msgr. Gherardini. asks this same question that affirms the position of Archbishop Lefebrve and the SSPX.
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On December 2, 2011, L’Osservatore Romano published an article by Msgr. Fernando Ocariz, titled, “On Adherence to the Second Vatican Council on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Its Convocation.” The Spanish theologian, a member of Opus Dei, who was one of the Roman experts during the recent doctrinal discussions between the Holy See and the Society of St. Pius X, means to answer through this article the “questions posed, even in public opinion, on the continuity of certain Conciliar teachings with previous teachings of the Church’s Magisterium.”
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In his latest book published in French, Le Concile Vatican II: un debat qui n’a pas eu lieu [The Second Vatican Council: A Debate That Has Not Taken Place], Msgr. Brunero Gherardini, former professor of ecclesiology at the Pontifical Lateran University and director of the international theological journal Divinitas, wonders:
——
“***How can it be coherent to declare that such a radical overturning of the Tridentine tradition is also perfectly coherent with the preceding magisterium, and constitutes validly infallible, irreformable, dogmatic material? I candidly admit that I do not understand.***”
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Those who cling to the fantasy that the documents of Vatican II do not even *appear* to contradict actual doctrine of the Church should begin schooling academics like Monsignors Gherardini & Ocariz.
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Of course, *even Cardinal Kasper* has told us point-blank that the documents contradict themselves. But those who “cannot believe” that such issues exist, will not believe them.
As for a de-facto denial of even the fact that a grave crisis exists – which obviously includes countless Catholics losing the faith – what of the “silent apostasy” even John Paul II lamented?! What of Paul VI’s “smoke of satan”? These are not idle words.
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(Unfortunately, the pontiffs did not see the logical ends of their beliefs and their praxis. Michael Davies, in Pope John’s Council, discusses in great depth Paul’s philosophy of Integral Humanism; it is pretty apparent where such a thing must lead, which is why the Church had always been “Militant” in its dealings with the world, but it was not obvious to Paul VI.)
“While men have the subjective right to sin, meaning that they have free will, they have no such objective right.”
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## Not a right – a liberty. Specifically, a physical liberty – rather than a moral one. IOW, to sin is a misuse of human freedom, which is of its very nature God-centred, never man-centred. That to sin is an abuse of human freedom , does not however make it impossible to sin; it does mean that to sin is morally & theologically disordered & wrong. We are able to do it – but do wrong in doing it.
“Having shown from the Catechism that the Church clearly does not teach a right to error, we can dispose of your earlier argument and come to the crux of the matter. There is no question that V2 introduced a new teaching. That new teaching is essentially the right not to be prevented from acting according to your conscience in religious matters within due limits. You dissent from this teaching of Vatican II and I do not. It really is as simple as that.”
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First, you’ve now done a 180-degree change of your position: just yesterday, were you not insisting that Vatican II did *not* change the Church’s perennial teaching on religious liberty?
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You choose to assent to a *non-binding* *interpretation* of a document in a liberal fashion, but this is not a mark of pride, but of confusion.
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As I previously noted, since Pope Paul VI told us that the conciliar documents intend to bind the faithful to any specific teaching only when they specifically state to, and DH makes no such claims regarding its novelties, it would seem you are actually the dissenter. Pope Paul VI, general audience of January 12th, 1966, also said: “In view of the pastoral nature of the Council, **it avoided any extraordinary statements of dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility**, but it still provided its teaching with the authority of the Ordinary Magisterium, which must be accepted with docility according to the mind of the Council concerning the nature and aims of each document.”
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Surely you understand that something lacking the mark of infallibility *may* contain error? (That is what infallibility means.) Moreover, the “doctrines” of DH are not at all in the language required for binding definition. I don’t think you are even passingly familiar with any of these critical factors.
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Do you believe that the doctrine (which not all even agree DH actually teaches!) is *true*, or do you just give assent because you believe you need to as a Catholic? You should be able to see that the latter is not the case.
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Among the mountain of evidence I could offer, no less an authority than Dr. Ludwig Ott (author of the seminal work Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma) notes that, “The ordinary and usual form of papal teaching activitiy is not infallible. Further, the decisions of the Roman Congregations (Holy Office, Bible Commission) are not infallible. Nevertheless, normally they are to be accepted with an inner assert which is based on the high supernatural authority of the Holy See (assensus internus supernaturalis, assensus religiosus). The so-called silentium obsequiosum, that is ‘reverent silence’, does not generally suffice. By way of exception the obligation of inner agreement may cease if a competent expert, after a renewed scientific investigation of all grounds, arrives with a positive conviction that the decision rests on an error.”
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Michael Davies (praised by Pope Benedict XVI) notes that, “It is hard to imagine a more evident case of a document than Dignitatis Humanae to which the sovereign pontiff **did not wish to commit himself to pronouncing a conclusive judgement**. It would also be hard to imagine a document which, to a greater extent than Dignitatis Humanae, contained teaching that was ‘an actual novelty or involved a manifest discordance between the pontifical affirmation and the doctrine which had hitherto been taught'”.
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No conclusive judgement indeed – yet you’ve found one to give assent to.
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Respectfully, it is amazing that you believe that the teachings of the faith can change in such a way. Truth cannot change: If God does not give a positive right to error yesterday, He does not do this today. But, you are not alone: it is a mark of the severity of the crisis that we now have Catholics who believe that *doctrine can change*.
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Having established that you believe that an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church can teach error, and furthermore, that Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope can likewise teach that same error, I do have a piece of advice for the feeneyites that might be reading this exchange.
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When you are presenting the “traditional” teaching that water baptism is necessary for salvation, you are likely to have traditionalists like ATC refer to the Council of Trent’s teaching on baptism of desire. Rather than try to twist the plain meaning of Trent’s teaching in to something it clearly is not, just tell ATC that the Council of Trent was WRONG on the matter. As they believe Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church can teach error, they will have to come up with another line of argumentation.
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This is just absolutely amazing stuff – amazing. Even the promulgating pope told you the council could err! Even he.
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I have an actual understanding of how Catholic authority works, rather than a gross oversimplification, which is why I understand why Feeneyism and error and, I think, you do not.
Once again I managed to post in the wrong spot. Here is the reply to this post:
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“Having shown from the Catechism that the Church clearly does not teach a right to error, we can dispose of your earlier argument and come to the crux of the matter. There is no question that V2 introduced a new teaching. That new teaching is essentially the right not to be prevented from acting according to your conscience in religious matters within due limits. You dissent from this teaching of Vatican II and I do not. It really is as simple as that.”
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First, you’ve now done a 180-degree change of your position: just yesterday, were you not insisting that Vatican II did *not* change the Church’s perennial teaching on religious liberty?
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You choose to assent to a *non-binding* *interpretation* of a document in a liberal fashion, but this is not a mark of pride, but of confusion.
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As I previously noted, since Pope Paul VI told us that the conciliar documents intend to bind the faithful to any specific teaching only when they specifically state to, and DH makes no such claims regarding its novelties, it would seem you are actually the dissenter. Pope Paul VI, general audience of January 12th, 1966, also said: “In view of the pastoral nature of the Council, **it avoided any extraordinary statements of dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility**, but it still provided its teaching with the authority of the Ordinary Magisterium, which must be accepted with docility according to the mind of the Council concerning the nature and aims of each document.”
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Surely you understand that something lacking the mark of infallibility *may* contain error? (That is what infallibility means.) Moreover, the “doctrines” of DH are not at all in the language required for binding definition. I don’t think you are even passingly familiar with any of these critical factors.
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Do you believe that the doctrine (which not all even agree DH actually teaches!) is *true*, or do you just give assent because you believe you need to as a Catholic? You should be able to see that the latter is not the case.
—–
Among the mountain of evidence I could offer, no less an authority than Dr. Ludwig Ott (author of the seminal work Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma) notes that, “The ordinary and usual form of papal teaching activitiy is not infallible. Further, the decisions of the Roman Congregations (Holy Office, Bible Commission) are not infallible. Nevertheless, normally they are to be accepted with an inner assert which is based on the high supernatural authority of the Holy See (assensus internus supernaturalis, assensus religiosus). The so-called silentium obsequiosum, that is ‘reverent silence’, does not generally suffice. By way of exception the obligation of inner agreement may cease if a competent expert, after a renewed scientific investigation of all grounds, arrives with a positive conviction that the decision rests on an error.”
—–
Michael Davies (praised by Pope Benedict XVI) notes that, “It is hard to imagine a more evident case of a document than Dignitatis Humanae to which the sovereign pontiff **did not wish to commit himself to pronouncing a conclusive judgement**. It would also be hard to imagine a document which, to a greater extent than Dignitatis Humanae, contained teaching that was ‘an actual novelty or involved a manifest discordance between the pontifical affirmation and the doctrine which had hitherto been taught'”.
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No conclusive judgement indeed – yet you’ve found one to give assent to.
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Respectfully, it is amazing that you believe that the teachings of the faith can change in such a way. Truth cannot change: If God does not give a positive right to error yesterday, He does not do this today. But, you are not alone: it is a mark of the severity of the crisis that we now have Catholics who believe that *doctrine can change*.
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Having established that you believe that an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church can teach error, and furthermore, that Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope can likewise teach that same error, I do have a piece of advice for the feeneyites that might be reading this exchange.
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When you are presenting the “traditional” teaching that water baptism is necessary for salvation, you are likely to have traditionalists like ATC refer to the Council of Trent’s teaching on baptism of desire. Rather than try to twist the plain meaning of Trent’s teaching in to something it clearly is not, just tell ATC that the Council of Trent was WRONG on the matter. As they believe Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church can teach error, they will have to come up with another line of argumentation.
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This is just absolutely amazing stuff – amazing. Even the promulgating pope told you the council could err! Even he.
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I have an actual understanding of how Catholic authority works, rather than a gross oversimplification, which is why I understand why Feeneyism and error and, I think, you do not.
I would agree that “liberty” is a better word for the “ability” to sin. If it were a “right” – it would not possibly incur eternal damnation!
When you are presenting the “traditional” teaching that water baptism is necessary for salvation, you are likely to have traditionalists like ATC refer to the Council of Trent’s teaching on baptism of desire. Rather than try to twist the plain meaning of Trent’s teaching in to something it clearly is not, just tell ATC that the Council of Trent was WRONG on the matter. As they believe Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church can teach error, they will have to come up with another line of argumentation.
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## Trent defined its teaching, and anathematised as errors propositions that were contrary to that teaching. V2 by contrast did not avail itself of such protection. And it defined nothing – it repeated dogmas, but defined no new ones. In addition, it is not free of ambiguities. It has been interpreted in a way that contradicts the Faith as it was before 1962, and if the interpretation is wrong, the Popes have been criminally negligent – if not worse – in failing so abysmally to point that out. If anything, they have gone beyond V2, for V2 at its worst never encouraged the bastardisation & falsification of the Faith that can be seen in the Assisi Abominations & the pan-religious drivel that some Cardinals, following JP2’s example, indulge in. The AAs also go far beyond what Pius XI condemned in “Mortalium Animos”: they can be permissible to Catholics only if “Mortalium Animos” is to be rejected. I for one would rather reject some aspects of 50 years that have seen Papal, Conciliar & episcopal pseudo-Catholicism, denial of Tradition, false Papal & Conciliar teaching, and sins against the Faith by Popes & other bishops, than with them deny & pervert over 1900 years of doctrine, Liturgy, and morals. When they avoid error – I accept what they say; for then they are not abusing their position. But when they forbid or act against or betray the Traditional Faith and Liturgy or those who will not fall away from it, then they are – in the words of St Catherine of Siena – “incarnate devils”, and deserve no more respect than devils do.
Should be “which is why I understand why Feeneyism IS AN error”.
Thanks much – I was just about to begin a post dealing with this.
Good point above, Jimmy – if one is to accept Vatican II’s novelties – even when the promulgating pope told us we don’t actually have to (there’s the Spirit protecting His Church) – one simultaneously rejects, well, essentially the entire pre-conciliar faith! Specifically, certainly large areas of it.
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For many Catholics, this is fine, because they really have no idea what the Church “used to” (still does, officially) teach, and because, well, they want to get along with the world too. How much more comfortable life is when we tell others that we want only “dialog”, not conversion to the true faith; when we claim that everyone has a God-given right not to be prevented from insulting God (objectively; there may be no culpability) with false worship, and so on.
By the NuChurch’s own logic, it cannot rationally & consistently treat its own teaching as beyond correction. Here’s why:
“1. The Oneness of Christ’s Church
One is the Church, which after His Resurrection our Savior handed over to Peter as Shepherd (cf. Jn 21:17), commissioning him and the other apostles to propagate and govern her (cf. Mt 18:18ff.) (and which) He erected for all ages as “the pillar and mainstay of the truth” (cf. 1 Tm 3:15). And this Church of Christ, “constituted and organized in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the Successor of Peter and the bishops in union with that Successor.”(3) This declaration of the Second Vatican Council is illustrated by the same Council’s statement that “it is through Christ’s Catholic Church alone, which is the general means of salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained,”(4) and that same Catholic Church “has been endowed with all divinely revealed truth and with all the means of grace”(5) with which Christ wished to enhance His messianic community. This is no obstacle to the fact that during her early pilgrimage the Church, “embracing sinners in her bosom, is at the same time holy and always in need of being purified,”(6) nor to the fact that “outside her visible structure,” namely in Churches and ecclesial communities which are joined to the Catholic Church by an imperfect communion, there are to be found “many elements of sanctification and truth (which), as gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, possess an inner dynamism towards Catholic unity.”(7)
For these reasons, “Catholics must joyfully acknowledge and esteem truly Christian endowments derived from our common heritage, which are to be found among our separated brethren,”(8) and they must strive for the re-establishment of unity among all Christians, by making a common effort of purification and renewal,(9) so that the will of Christ may be fulfilled and the division of Christians may cease to be an obstacle to the proclamation of the Gospel throughout the world.(10) But at the same time Catholics are bound to profess that through the gift of God’s mercy they belong to that Church which Christ founded and which is governed by the successors of Peter and the other Apostles, who are the depositories of the original Apostolic tradition, living and intact, which is the permanent heritage of doctrine and holiness of that same Church.(11) The followers of Christ are therefore not permitted to imagine that Christ’s Church is nothing more than a collection (divided, but still possessing a certain unity) of Churches and ecclesial communities. Nor are they free to hold that Christ’s Church nowhere really exists today and that it is to be considered only as an end which all Churches and ecclesial communities must strive to reach.”
## The SCDF’s own documents show that certain Popes & Cardinals have obscured the Church’s own teaching. Such men cannot claim (say) that the Church is both Lutheran, & Catholic, without contradicting the very documents they supposedly set such store by. Since they themselves deny their Council’s own teaching by their words and actions, it is hypocrisy of a particularly impressive kind to criticise others for not doing so. The NuChurch itself uses V2 only when it suits it to do so – and it expects Traditionalists to accept it ???
“5. The Notion of the Church’s Infallibility Not To Be Falsified
The transmission of divine Revelation by the Church encounters difficulties of various kinds. These arise from the fact that the hidden mysteries of God “by their nature so far transcend the human intellect that even if they are revealed to us and accepted by faith, they remain concealed by the veil of faith itself and are as it were wrapped in darkness.”(36) Difficulties arise also from the historical condition that affects the expression of Revelation.
With regard to this historical condition, it must first be observed that the meaning of the pronouncements of faith depends partly upon the expressive power of the language used at a certain point in time and in particular circumstances. Moreover, it sometimes happens that some dogmatic truth is first expressed incompletely (but not falsely), and at a later date, when considered in a broader context of faith or human knowledge, it receives a fuller and more perfect expression. In addition, when the Church makes new pronouncements she intends to confirm or clarify what is in some way contained in Sacred Scripture or in previous expressions of Tradition; but at the same time she usually has the intention of solving certain questions or removing certain errors. All these things have to be taken into account in order that these pronouncements may be properly interpreted. Finally, even though the truths which the Church intends to teach through her dogmatic formulas are distinct from the changeable conceptions of a given epoch and can be expressed without them, nevertheless it can sometimes happen that these truths may be enunciated by the Sacred Magisterium in terms that bear traces of such conceptions.
In view of the above, it must be stated that the dogmatic formulas of the Church’s Magisterium were from the beginning suitable for communicating revealed truth, and that as they are they remain forever suitable for communicating this truth to those who interpret them correctly.(37) It does not however follow that every one of these formulas has always been or will always be so to the same extent. For this reason theologians seek to define exactly the intention of teaching proper to the various formulas, and in carrying out this work they are of considerable assistance to the living Magisterium of the Church, to which they remain subordinated. For this reason also it often happens that ancient dogmatic formulas and others closely connected with them remain living and fruitful in the habitual usage of the Church, but with suitable expository and explanatory additions that maintain and clarify their original meaning. In addition, it has sometimes happened that in this habitual usage of the Church certain of these formulas gave way to new expressions which, proposed and approved by the Sacred Magisterium, presented more clearly or more completely the same meaning.
*****As for the meaning of dogmatic formulas, this remains ever true and constant in the Church, even when it is expressed with greater clarity or more developed. The faithful therefore must shun the opinion, first, that dogmatic formulas (or some category of them) cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but can only offer changeable approximations to it, which to a certain extent distort of alter it; secondly, that these formulas signify the truth only in an indeterminate way, this truth being like a goal that is constantly being sought by means of such approximations. Those who hold such an opinion do not avoid dogmatic relativism and they corrupt the concept of the Church’s infallibility relative to the truth to be taught or held in a determinate way.****
[****DH fails these tests – as do many actions of Popes since V2****]
Such an opinion clearly is in disagreement with the declarations of the First Vatican Council, which, while fully aware of the progress of the Church in her knowledge of revealed truth,(38) nevertheless taught as follows: “That meaning of sacred dogmas…must always be maintained which Holy Mother Church declared once and for all, nor should one ever depart from that meaning under the guise of or in the name of a more advanced understanding.”(39) The Council moreover condemned the opinion that “dogmas once proposed by the Church must, with the progress of science be given a meaning other than that which was understood by the Church, or which she understands.”(40) There is no doubt that, according to these texts of the Council, the meaning of dogmas which is declared by the Church is determinate and unalterable.
Such an opinion is likewise in contrast with Pope John’s assertion regarding Christian doctrine at the opening of the Second Vatican Council: “This certain and unchangeable doctrine, to which faithful obedience is due, has to be explored and presented in a way that is demanded by our times. One thing is the deposit of faith, which consists of the truths contained in sacred doctrine, another thing is the manner of presentation, always however with the same meaning and signification.”(41) Since the Successor of Peter is here speaking about certain and unchangeable Christian doctrine, about the deposit of faith which is the same as the truths contained in that doctrine and about the truths which have to be preserved with the same meaning, it is clear that he admits that we can know the true and unchanging meaning of dogmas. What is new and what he recommends in view of the needs of the times pertains only to the modes of studying, expounding and presenting that doctrine while keeping its permanent meaning. In a similar way the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI exhorted the pastors of the Church in the following words: “Nowadays a serious effort is required of us to ensure that the teaching of the faith should keep the fullness of its meaning and force, while expressing itself in a form which allows it to reach the spirit and heart of the people to whom it is addressed.”(42)”
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19730705_mysterium-ecclesiae_en.html
## This too is interesting:
“SACRED CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
Circular Letter to the Presidents of Episcopal Conferences
regarding some sentences and errors arising
from the interpretation of the decrees of the Second Vatican Council
Since the recent successful conclusion of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, many wise Documents have been promulgated, both in doctrinal and disciplinary matters, in order to efficaciously promote the life of the Church. All of the people of God are bound by the grave duty to strive with all diligence to put into effect all that has been solemnly proposed or decreed, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, by the universal assembly of the bishops presided over by the Supreme Pontiff.
It is the right and duty of the Hierarchy to monitor, guide, and promote the movement of renewal begun by the Council, so that the conciliar Documents and Decrees are properly interpreted and implemented with the utmost fidelity to their merit and their spirit. This doctrine, in fact, must be defended by the bishops, since they, with Peter as their Head, have the duty to teach with authority. Many Pastors have admirably already begun to explain the relevance of the doctrine of the Council.
Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged with sorrow that unfortunate news has been reported from various areas about abuses regarding the interpretation of the conciliar doctrine that are taking hold, as well as some brazen opinions circulating here and there causing great disturbance among the faithful. The studies and efforts to investigate the truth more profoundly are praiseworthy, especially when distinguishing honestly between that which is central to the faith and that which is open to opinion. But some of the documents examined by this Sacred Congregation contain affirmations which easily go beyond the limits of hypothesis or simple opinion, appearing to raise certain questions regarding the dogmas and fundamentals of the faith.
It is worthwhile to draw attention to some examples of these opinions and errors that have arisen both from the reports of competent persons and in published writings.
1) First of all regarding Sacred Revelation itself: There are some, in fact, who appeal to Sacred Scripture while deliberately leaving aside Tradition. But they then restrict the role and the strength of biblical inspiration and its inerrancy, abandoning a just notion of the true value of the historical texts.
2) In regards to the doctrine of the faith, some affirm that dogmatic formulas are subject to historical evolution even to the point that their objective meaning is susceptible to change.
3) The ordinary Magisterium of the Church, particularly that of the Roman Pontiff, is sometimes neglected and diminished, until it is relegated almost to the sphere of a mere opinion.
4) Some almost refuse to acknowledge truth that is objective, absolute, stable, and immutable, submitting everything to a certain relativism, with the pretext that every truth necessarily follows an evolutionary rhythm according to conscience and history.
5) The venerated Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ is called into question when, in the elaboration of the doctrines of Christology, certain concepts are used to describe his nature and his person though they are difficult to reconcile with that which has been dogmatically defined. A certain Christological humanism is twisted such that Christ is reduced to the condition of an ordinary man who, at a certain point, acquired a consciousness of his divinity as Son of God. The virginal birth, miracles, and the resurrection itself are admitted only as concepts, reduced to a purely natural order.
6) Similarly in sacramental theology, some elements are either ignored or are not taken into account, especially with regard to the Eucharist. There are some who talk about the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine as a kind of exaggerated symbolism, as though, the power of transubstantiation does not change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but simply invests them with a determined significance. There are those who, when considering the Mass, insist too much on the concept of agape love at the expense of the concept of Sacrifice.
7) Some would explain the Sacrament of Penance as a means of reconciliation with the Church, not expressing sufficiently the concept of reconciliation with God who has been offended. They affirm simply that in the celebration of this Sacrament it is not necessary to accuse oneself of sin, striving to express only the social function of reconciliation with the Church.
8) Some consider of little account the doctrine of the Council of Trent regarding original sin, or explain it in a way that at least obfuscates the original fault of Adam and the transmission of his sin.
9) The errors in the field of moral theology are no less trivial. Some, in fact, dare to reject the objective criteria of morality, while others do not acknowledge the natural law, preferring instead to advocate for the legitimacy of so-called situational ethics. Deleterious opinions are spread about morality and responsibility in the areas of sexuality and marriage.
10) In addition, it is necessary to comment about ecumenism. The Apostolic See praises, undoubtedly, those who promote initiatives, in the spirit of the conciliar Decree on Ecumenism, that foster charity toward our separated brothers and to draw them to unity in the Church. However, it is regrettable that some interpret the conciliar Decree in their own terms, proposing an ecumenical action that offends the truth about the unity of the faith and of the Church, fostering a pernicious irenicism [the error of creating a false unity among different Churches] and an indifferentism entirely alien to the mind of the Council.”
These pernicious errors, scattered variously throughout the world, are recounted in this letter only in summary form for the local Ordinaries so that each one, according to his function and office, can strive to eradicate or hinder them.
This Sacred Dicastery fervently urges the same Ordinaries, gathered in their Episcopal Conferences, to take up this point of discussion and report back to the Holy See as appropriate, sending their own opinions before Christmas of this year.
The Ordinaries as well as those others who they reasonably choose to consult regarding this letter, are to keep it strictly confidential, since obvious reasons of prudence discourage its publication.
Rome, July 24, 1966.
Cardinal A. Ottaviani
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19660724_epistula_en.html
That’s a mess – sorry. I forgot to indicate spaces 🙁 :banghead:
That’s a mess – sorry. I forgot to indicate spaces 🙁 :banghead: – this applies to post 22 and to nothing else
@jimmy: If you continue to quote that Cardinal, I’m gonna turn your microphone off!
I should point out that the positive right to practice error that Gangenelli asserts DH does not teach but the negative right not to be prevented from causing error he asserts it does are the same thing, as has been pointed out: any right can be stated in either negative or positive form..
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Again, if God grants no objective right to practice error – He does not, as the Church teaches – He also grants no right not to be prevented from same. *That* is elementary logic.
I watched the musical “1776” with my family yesterday. I love that they bring up the fact that while slavery was being talked about as a southern problem, the north was very much complicit and that the ships of New England were bringing American goods to Africa in exchange for slaves, which they then sailed to the south.
I have to agree (as a southerner whose family got here after slavery was abolished) that slavery would have died out without the War of Northern Aggression.
I should point out that the positive right to practice error that Gangenelli asserts DH does not teach but the negative right not to be prevented from practicing error he asserts it does are the same thing, as has been pointed out: any right can be stated in either negative or positive form..
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Again, if God grants no objective right to practice error – He does not, as the Church teaches – He also grants no right not to be prevented from same. *That* is elementary logic.
I’ve wished for the ability to edit a comment once or twice myself. 🙂
Just a few comments for now.
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One, we’ve seen ATC forced to abandon his statement that V2 taught against the idea that there is no objective right whatsoever to engage in false worship. I’ve showed from DH itself and the Catechism that this is wrong. There is still no right to engage in false worship. I repeat the statement from the Catechism:
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2108 The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error,37 but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty.
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Shifting his argument, he now says that there is no difference between the right not to be coerced in public worship of false religion and the positive right to error. The Church teaches there IS a difference but he dissents. I go with the Church.
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Finally, even with all their caveats about pastoral councils yada yada, traditionalists are forced to believe that an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and 50 years of papal magisterial teaching is capable of error. Not only can feeneyites pick apart the now capable of error Council of Trent, maybe the Nestorians were right and the Council of Ephesus was wrong. This is devastating to the Church’s claim to infallibility and indefectibility.
‘who knew ‘popes’ could be complete bricks?’
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All the more reason for the Pope to receive the prayers of the faithful.
Sorry, all the more reason for the Pope to have the prayers of the faithful.
Now that is a wall of text…
I would like to invite everyone to participate in the forum discussion on the recently published document “Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church”, as it pertains to issues being raised here.
https://akacatholic.com/topic/itc-sensus-fidei-in-the-life-of-the-church/#post-4325
‘One, we’ve seen ATC forced to abandon his statement that V2 taught against the idea that there is no objective right whatsoever to engage in false worship. I’ve showed from DH itself and the Catechism that this is wrong. There is still no right to engage in false worship. I repeat the statement from the Catechism:’
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False, the negative right is still an objective right and you have avoided addressing the negative affirmation/right yet again.
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‘2108 The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error,37 but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty.’
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Which is basically saying that religious liberty is found as a natural right of the human person. A natural right is an endowment, a part of a constitution which means it has to be God given. It further reinforces A Catholic Thinker’s argument which is basically that Religious Liberty found in DH is basically a negative right.
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‘Shifting his argument, he now says that there is no difference between the right not to be coerced in public worship of false religion and the positive right to error.’
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Where did he say that?: ‘That is the same thing as saying that man has a God-given right to practice error, which is false.’ The very first mentioning of coercion.
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‘Finally, even with all their caveats about pastoral councils yada yada, traditionalists are forced to believe that an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and 50 years of papal magisterial teaching is capable of error.’
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The Council has been reaffirmed as Pastoral, non-binding except that which is already been restated which is Dogmatic.
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A question to you, who is right and who is wrong? Pope Pius VI, Pope Gregory XVI, Pope Pius IX, Pope Leo XIII, St. Pope Pius X, Pope Pius XI, and Pope Pius XII, or DH on the issues of Religious Liberty?
Again, the comment was posted elsewhere.
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‘One, we’ve seen ATC forced to abandon his statement that V2 taught against the idea that there is no objective right whatsoever to engage in false worship. I’ve showed from DH itself and the Catechism that this is wrong. There is still no right to engage in false worship. I repeat the statement from the Catechism:’
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False, the negative right is still an objective right and you have avoided addressing the negative affirmation/right yet again.
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’2108 The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error,37 but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty.’
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Which is basically saying that religious liberty is found as a natural right of the human person. A natural right is an endowment, a part of a constitution which means it has to be God given. It further reinforces A Catholic Thinker’s argument which is basically that Religious Liberty found in DH is basically a negative right.
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‘Shifting his argument, he now says that there is no difference between the right not to be coerced in public worship of false religion and the positive right to error.’
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Where did he say that?: ‘That is the same thing as saying that man has a God-given right to practice error, which is false.’ The very first mentioning of coercion.
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‘Finally, even with all their caveats about pastoral councils yada yada, traditionalists are forced to believe that an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and 50 years of papal magisterial teaching is capable of error.’
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The Council has been reaffirmed as Pastoral, non-binding except that which is already been restated which is Dogmatic.
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A question to you, who is right and who is wrong? Pope Pius VI, Pope Gregory XVI, Pope Pius IX, Pope Leo XIII, St. Pope Pius X, Pope Pius XI, and Pope Pius XII, or DH on the issues of Religious Liberty?
Yes, Jimmy, a liberty, not a right. This is the distinction/point I was making at 10. above.
G,
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Though I would allow that I may not have explained things with perfect clarity initially, this is primarily a matter of you not following (or rejecting) the argument. I think if you would read one or more of the articles I referenced, it would help.
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As has been pointed out several times now, to possess a right to act (objectively) or to possess the right not to be prevented from acting are the same thing, stated in different terms. The Church’s teaching is that while public religious error can be tolerated, no one has any right to such. All objective rights proceed from God who grants no such right.
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Let me try an example: to state that someone has a right to steal or that someone has the *right* not to be prevented from stealing is the same thing: it is the same right, as long as we are indeed talking about an objective RIGHT not to be prevented as opposed to the simple toleration of stealing to prevent greater harm.
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Succinctly, there are two issues with calling out as “dissenters” those who reject this novelty:
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– There is no actual doctrine here; the document doesn’t use language with the intention of definition and external authorities told us there is no such intent.
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– The common interpretation (the one you espouse) contradicts Catholic doctrine, so it cannot be true and cannot bind anyone.
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Michael Davies: “No one, whatever his rank, can compel us to accept an interpretation of moral or doctrinal teaching in a conciliar document which conflicts the previous teaching of the Church. There can be a development of doctrine, but, ***as Newman pointed out, where a new formulation is not faithful to the idea from which it started it is an unfaithful development ‘more properly called a corruption’***. Quoting Bellarmine, Cardinal Newman also reminds us that: ‘All Catholics and heretics agree in two things: first that it is possible for a pope, even as pope, and with his own assembly of councillors, or with a general council, to err in particular controversies of fat, which chiefly depend on human information and testimony.'”
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“Corruption” is indeed what we have here. Again, there is likely no better example extent in the history of the Church. I’m virtually certain of that.
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Other than the plain fact that this novelty contradicts Catholic teaching, rooted directly in divine law, those who reject it generally do so because they love God and His Church more than the respect of the world, which is exactly what this aberration on the part of churchmen is intended to garner.
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(To the world, it has always been the height of hubris that the Church should dare to declare that She and She alone possesses complete truth in religion; the French revolutionaries, for example, cried that they would exile or execute anyone who continued to repeat the dogma extra ecclesium nulla salus. But the Church is divine and this is the simple truth of the matter.)
The above quote from Davies is from p214 of “Pope John’s Council”.
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(As for using him as a source, I quoted him only to quote Newman, more or less; in any case, Pope Benedict XVI said this regarding Mr. Davies: “I had the good fortune to meet him several times and I found him to be a man of deep faith and ready to embrace suffering. Ever since the council he put all his energy into the service of the Faith and left us important publications especially on the sacred liturgy. Even though he suffered from the Church in many ways in his time, he always truly remained a man of the Church. He knew that the Lord founded his Church on the rock of Peter and that the Faith can find its fullness and maturity only in union with the successor of St. Peter.”)
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That should be enough of an endorsement for anyone.
Again, it is the Holy Roman Catholic Church that teaches there is a difference between the negative right not to be coerced and the positive right to profess error. You choose to dissent from that teaching but it is ridiculous to claim that the Church doesn’t make that distinction.
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“That is the same thing as saying…” MEANS that ACT is claiming the negative right not to be coerced is the same thing as the positive right to profess error. The Holy Roman Catholic Church through an Ecumenical Council, an official Vatican produced Catechism, and Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope after Pope DISAGREE. They all agree that it is possible to have the negative right not to be coerced and lack the positive right to profess error.
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You desperately want to make Vatican II some kind of “special” council capable of teaching error because you don’t want all 19 previous councils subjected to the same level of scrutiny you give to Vatican II. You know how devastating to Church teaching on infallibility and indefectibility it would be for traditionalists, feeneyites, and protestants to go back to previous councils and start picking them apart as well. But what does the Roman Catholic Church teach regarding the authority of Vatican II. Please read the following from the First Vatican Council? “All those things are to be believed by divine and Catholic faith which are contained in the Word of God written or handed down and which are proposed for our belief by the Church either in a solemn definition or in its ordinary and universal authoritative teaching.
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Please show me where ANY of those Popes taught that there wasn’t SPECIFICALLY a right not to be coerced? We already know they taught there wasn’t a positive right to profess error so don’t bother reproducing those statements.
ACT,
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I was replying to Christopher when your post came through. I believe my reply addresses the same points you made though so, unless I’m missing something, I don’t think I need to add anything. Cheers!
‘Again, it is the Holy Roman Catholic Church that teaches there is a difference between the negative right not to be coerced and the positive right to profess error. You choose to dissent from that teaching but it is ridiculous to claim that the Church doesn’t make that distinction.’
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Simply because Negative Rights and Positive Rights are fundamentally the guarantee of the same right. The position to proclaim Heathenism, and Heresy as a Right in itself is in accordance to the behaviour that you simply do not restrain it. It’s the same principle of assessing Sin, whether by acts or the lack thereof (the omissions). The very fact that DH stresses that public false worship should not be restricted is even more of a problem than simple private false worship. Nor is it teaching since the DH is non-binding.
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‘You desperately want to make Vatican II some kind of “special” council capable of teaching error because you don’t want all 19 previous councils subjected to the same level of scrutiny you give to Vatican II. ‘
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The reason Vatican II is coming under severe scrutiny is because quite simply, it runs contrary to the previous teachings of the Popes and the Councils of the Church.
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‘You know how devastating to Church teaching on infallibility and indefectibility it would be for traditionalists, feeneyites, and protestants to go back to previous councils and start picking them apart as well. But what does the Roman Catholic Church teach regarding the authority of Vatican II.’
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Vatican II was declared by the very Popes as Pastoral. Pope John XXIII ‘wanted a pastoral Council and one of renovation.’
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Pope Paul VI:
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‘In view of the pastoral nature of the Council, it avoided any extraordinary statements of dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility, but it still provided its teaching with the authority of the Ordinary Magisterium which must be accepted with docility according to the mind of the Council concerning the nature and aims of each document.’
So too did Cardinal Ratzinger, later to be Pope Benedict XVI state:
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‘The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.’
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So Ganganelli, you are at odds with the Traditional teaching, as to the Popes who taught there wasn’t specifically a right not be coerced. The Syllabus of Errors, Pius IX:
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’15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true. — Allocution “Maxima quidem,” June 9, 1862; Damnatio “Multiplices inter,” June 10, 1851.’
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’24. The Church has not the power of using force, nor has she any temporal power, direct or indirect. — Apostolic Letter “Ad Apostolicae,” Aug. 22, 1851. ‘
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’78. Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship. — Allocution “Acerbissimum,” Sept. 27, 1852. ‘
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You will note that Paragraph 15 in particular condemns the ‘Free’ aspect also. The notion of ‘Right not to be coerced’ is again contradictory since Positive and Negative Rights affirm the same thing.
I think this has run it’s course. You believe that positive and negative rights affirm the same thing. The Catholic Church teaches otherwise. You can do what you want but, as for me, I’ll stick with the Holy Roman Catholic Church and the Vicar of Christ His Holiness Pope Francis.
‘’15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true. — Allocution “Maxima quidem,” June 9, 1862; Damnatio “Multiplices inter,” June 10, 1851.’’
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Please address, also address Pope Pius VI:
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‘The necessary effect of the constitution decreed by the Assembly is to annihilate the Catholic Religion and, with her, the obedience owed to Kings. With this purpose it establishes as a right of man in society this absolute liberty that not only insures the right to be indifferent to religious opinions, but also grants full license to freely think, speak, write and even print whatever one wishes on religious matters – even the most disordered imaginings. It is a monstrous right, which the Assembly claims, however, results from equality and the natural liberties of all men. ‘
‘Holy Roman Catholic Church ‘
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The very same Church that has explicitly condemned over and over Religious Liberty as a negative and positive right.
What loyal follower of Pope Francis would disagree with these two statements?
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Let’s take your first quote from Blessed Pope Pius IX. Did you notice that the error came under the title “indifferentism”? When combined with #16 it is clear the Pope here is condemning the proposition that man has a right to profess a false religion. With Pius IX, V2 also condemns the proposition that man has the right to profess a false religion. If my friend tells me that he has founded a new religion based on some kind of heavenly apparition, I do not have the right to profess that new religion. Do I have the civil right not to be prevented from professing that new religion? I do, within due limits.
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And of course Pope Pius VI is equally right in his condemnation of that infamous constitution in France. Notice that he didn’t condemn the constitution for giving jews the rights they have had for 1000’s of years. No, he condemns the constitution because it gives absolute liberty even in the most disordered imaginings. This is completely harmonious with Vatican II’s teaching that the right not to be coerced is not an absolute right but is restricted to “within due limits.
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The Holy Roman Catholic Church is never wrong and stands vindicated once again.
“I’ll stick with the Holy Roman Catholic Church and the Vicar of Christ His Holiness Pope Francis.”: A gross oversimplification of the situation, that, which is what neo-Catholics, once they begin to look into things, tend to resort to. You simply don’t know or don’t acknowledge Catholic teaching enough to see this. Unfortunately everything in life cannot be dirt simple; this crisis certainly isn’t.
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Your insinuation that those who accept the defined teaching regarding religious liberty and thus reject, as is their right as Catholics according to the promulgating Pope of the council, the novelties inherent in [some interpretations of] Dignitatus Humanae, are not “sticking with the Holy Roman Catholic Church” is, of course, nothing but a low-brow insult.
I don’t think you need to add anything either. The conversation is repeating itself, on both ends. However, your statements regarding both DH and the nature of the council are not sensible. You now deny that Vatican II is a “special” council even though that is an objective fact acknowledged by informed parties on all sides: It is the first ecumenical council in the history of the Church that did not either define doctrine or issue anathemas. Pope Paul and Cardinal Ratzinger, among many, have pointed this out.
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Quoting the latter, with emphasis: “The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.”
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Understanding defined Catholic teaching on religious liberty leaves one unable to accept the vague, non-binding pseudo-doctrine of DH; it is that simple. Understanding the nature of truth is all that is necessary to see as well that doctrine cannot “evolve” to contradict itself, as Cardinal Newman points out.
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You previously stated that you refuse to accept that, for example, modern popes have been tainted by modernism, as this would cause you to lose faith (I forget the exact quote but believe that is an accurate paraphrase); I wish I could adequately communicate how the pieces of this puzzle of a crisis fit together such that understanding it actually increases one’s faith in the Church, and love of it, rather than the inverse.
No emphasis was realized, obviously. I guess HTML tags don’t work here. I had intended to emphasize Cardinal Ratzinger’s statement that “the truth is that this particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council.”
I could have left it there but I need to respond to a couple of things
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Obviously, I am not ignorant that V2 was unique in that it did not issue anthemas like previous councils. What I deny is that it’s uniqueness means that it was able to err. There is no evidence for that proposition from the Church. I’ll leave this from Cardinal Ratzinger who you like to quote yourself as I believe it best expresses the problems inherent in traditionalist dissent. It was taken from the Ratzinger Report:
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“It must be stated that Vatican II is upheld by the same authority as Vatican I and the Council of Trent, namely, the Pope and the College of Bishops in communion with him, and that also with regard to its contents, Vatican II is in the strictest continuity with both previous councils and incorporates their texts word for word in decisive points . . .
Whoever accepts Vatican II, as it has clearly expressed and understood itself, at the same time accepts the whole binding tradition of the Catholic Church, particularly also the two previous councils . . . It is likewise impossible to decide in favor of Trent and Vatican I but against Vatican II. Whoever denies Vatican II denies the authority that upholds the other two councils and thereby detaches them from their foundation. And this applies to the so-called ‘traditionalism,’ also in its extreme forms. Every partisan choice destroys the whole (the very history of the Church) which can exist only as an indivisible unity.
To defend the true tradition of the Church today means to defend the Council. It is our fault if we have at times provided a pretext (to the ‘right’ and ‘left’ alike) to view Vatican II as a ‘break’ and an abandonment of the tradition. There is, instead, a continuity that allows neither a return to the past nor a flight forward, neither anachronistic longings nor unjustified impatience. We must remain faithful to the today of the Church, not the yesterday or tomorrow. And this today of the Church is the documents of Vatican II, without reservations that amputate them and without arbitrariness that distorts them . . .
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I see no future for a position that, out of principle, stubbornly renounces Vatican II. In fact in itself it is an illogical position. The point of departure for this tendency is, in fact, the strictest fidelity to the teaching particularly of Pius IX and Pius X and, still more fundamentally, of Vatican I and its definition of papal primacy. But why only popes up to Pius XII and not beyond? Is perhaps obedience to the Holy See divisible according to years or according to the nearness of a teaching to one’s own already-established convictions?
‘Let’s take your first quote from Blessed Pope Pius IX. Did you notice that the error came under the title “indifferentism”?’
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Yes, but please address the choice of words, ‘every man is free’. It’s not accident that those words were chosen. It could simply be that ‘every man can choose is own religion’, but it stresses the notion ‘every man is free’. How can man be free when every man is free is condemnable?
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‘When combined with #16 it is clear the Pope here is condemning the proposition that man has a right to profess a false religion.’
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’16. Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation. — Encyclical “Qui pluribus,” Nov. 9, 1846. ‘ It’s denouncing that man can find salvation in any religion, that is the nullification of the notion that all religions can bring salvation, there is no condemnation of the proposition that man has a right to profess a false religion. Your interpretation is highly problematic.
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‘With Pius IX, V2 also condemns the proposition that man has the right to profess a false religion.’
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But that proposition is nullified when man has an inherent right to a false religion through the immunity from coercion. It places guarantees upon the individual with the fallacy, which is a guarantee of the fallacy and immunity for the fallacy. The Church simply cannot through Tradition place a safe guard on Heresy, on Error. It can only tolerate such, but never proclaim it safeguarded through the individuals who are subject to it.
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‘the If my friend tells me that he has founded a new religion based on some kind of heavenly apparition, I do not have the right to profess that new religion. Do I have the civil right not to be prevented from professing that new religion? I do, within due limits.”
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The Church has the authority to coerce you from that new religion given that you are a member of the Catholic Church. That was how it historically functioned, such as with St. Augustine. As a civil right independent of the Church, it would be contradictory to Church Teaching.
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‘Notice that he didn’t condemn the constitution for giving jews the rights they have had for 1000′s of years.’
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That simply can come under the issue of religious liberty.
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‘The Holy Roman Catholic Church is never wrong and stands vindicated once again.’
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No, The Holy Roman Catholic Church is never wrong, and so neither can Pope Pius VI, Pope Gregory XVI, Pope Pius IX, Pope Leo XIII, St. Pope Pius X, Pope Pius XI, and Pope Pius XII, Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, Cardinal then Pope Benedict XVI in affirming that Religious Liberty is erroneous and that Vatican II is Pastoral which means there is an argument of Continuity on the basis of the Traditionalists which you oppose. On the other hand, your arguments simply do not hold water.
‘But why only popes up to Pius XII and not beyond? Is perhaps obedience to the Holy See divisible according to years or according to the nearness of a teaching to one’s own already-established convictions?’
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It does not stop at Pius XII. Pope Paul VI’s Humane Vitae is the condemnation of contraception of which there is no contradiction with Tradition.
Second paragraph is=his.
SSPX has a response on the Ratzinger Report that you may like to read:
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http://www.sspxasia.com/Documents/Archbishop-Lefebvre/Archbishop_Lefebvre_and_the_Vatican/Part_II/1984-08-15.htm
ACT,
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Maybe you can understand Christopher’s reply…I sure can’t. Now you guys are OK with religious liberty?
But that proposition is nullified when [DH Proclaims that] man has an inherent right to a false religion through the immunity from coercion.
‘Let’s take your first quote from Blessed Pope Pius IX. Did you notice that the error came under the title “indifferentism”?’
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Yes, the error came under the title ‘indifferentism’ but still note the choice of words ‘Man is Free’.
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‘When combined with #16 it is clear the Pope here is condemning the proposition that man has a right to profess a false religion.’
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16 is condemning the notion that all religions bring salvation. It does not condemn the right of man professing a false religion, it simply condemns false religion period since it cannot bring salvation.
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‘‘With Pius IX, V2 also condemns the proposition that man has the right to profess a false religion.’’
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DH proposes that man has an inherent right to the freedom of religion through the immunity of coercion, that is through the expression that Man has that right. It in effect places a safe guard upon that individual’s Heresy because of the guarantee as a ‘right’ of the individual. DH effectively is stating that man has a right, something that ought not to be interfered. That is not the same as tolerance which is the Church’s teaching and which was proposed originally as a Vatican II text.
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‘the If my friend tells me that he has founded a new religion based on some kind of heavenly apparition, I do not have the right to profess that new religion. Do I have the civil right not to be prevented from professing that new religion? I do, within due limits.”
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The Church has the authority to coerce you from that new religion given that you are a member of the Catholic Church. That was how it historically functioned, such as with St. Augustine. As a civil right independent of the Church, it would be contradictory to Church Teaching.
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‘Notice that he didn’t condemn the constitution for giving jews the rights they have had for 1000′s of years.’
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The Jews and the rights to practise their Faith would simply fall under Religious Liberty which was condemned.
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‘The Holy Roman Catholic Church is never wrong and stands vindicated once again.’
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No, The Holy Roman Catholic Church is never wrong. Pope Pius VI, Pope Gregory XVI, Pope Pius IX, Pope Leo XIII, St. Pope Pius X, Pope Pius XI, and Pope Pius XII, have all condemned religious liberty, and Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, Cardinal then Pope Benedict XVI affirms that Vatican II is Pastoral which means there is an argument of Continuity for the Traditionalists which you oppose. That is, Vatican II is not infallible given it is a pastoral council, and Religious Tolerance rather than Religious Freedom is still the dominant teaching.
“No, The Holy Roman Catholic Church is never wrong. Pope Pius VI, Pope Gregory XVI, Pope Pius IX, Pope Leo XIII, St. Pope Pius X, Pope Pius XI, and Pope Pius XII, have all condemned religious liberty, and Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, Cardinal then Pope Benedict XVI affirms that Vatican II is Pastoral which means there is an argument of Continuity for the Traditionalists which you oppose. That is, Vatican II is not infallible given it is a pastoral council, and Religious Tolerance rather than Religious Freedom is still the dominant teaching.”
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It seems among those who believe [not entirely clear and never clarified] “teaching” of DH do so because either:
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a) They want to – again, believing that men have the objective right not to be prevented from public false worship – which is an insult to God and leads souls to perdition – is a far more “reasonable” position. It is what the world wants to hear, and, again, accommodation with the world is exactly what this is about.
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b) Their personal faith is put in shambles unless everything is black & white; a “pastoral” council cannot be dealt with, even when the popes say that’s what it was.
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c) Both.
I don’t mind praying for the conversion of one Jorge Bergoglio lately of Argentina, but I would be praying for a figment of the world’s imagination if i prayed for a Vicar of Christ called Francis I.
Dear rc,
We are dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima, and believe Akita to be a follow-up to it. As both were approved by the Church, there is no danger to the Faithful directly associated with them.
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However, the same is not true of Garabandal which was one of the first to promote the “Warning”. Joey Lamangino died recently without the miraculous restoration of his eyesight long ago “promised” by the Virgin, according to the visionary. He spent his life promoting a false prophet, despite any connection it was said to have to Padre Pio, who was, after all a human and capable of personal error-as unlikely as that seems.
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If your reference regarding the “warning” was from that source, we would like to urge you to think about abandoning it. Fatima’s warnings have already been given and making the First Saturdays, wearing the scapular, praying the rosary daily, and fulfilling your vocation’s duties, along with praying for the Pope, only some of the many things you can urge others to be doing, with certainty that they are not harmful to the Faith.