Posted on 09/07/2004 5:26:29 PM PDT by AskStPhilomena
As to the first question, "Yes, absolutely." He is the number 1 "defender of the regime of novelty." He supports and encourages and promotes every novelty that has come out since Vatican II. And he has contributed several novelties of his own, especially in the area of marriage and family. As to whether he is corrupt, that is a judgment on his soul which no one can make. We can only judge the visible actions.
Outside of those loyal to the Holy Father and the Magisterium are groups of various colors and persuasions.
The Magisterium is the teaching of the Catholic Church of all time. If you do not faithfully hold and defend the truth of the Catholic faith as it has been taught through 20 centuries, then you are not loyal to the Magisterium. Anyone can be disloyal to the Magisterium, even the pope, if they dare to change anything that has been handed down. Our loyalty is to the Catholic faith, and to the men of past generations who guarded and protected it and maintained it intact so that we could receive it from them.
People can CLAIM anything. Doesn't make it accurate.
Yeah, maybe he is a "neo-Catholic".
Then again, maybe he isn't.
Before you go down the dangerous road of pitting your understanding of what constitutes Catholicism against that of the Pope, you need to be really, really, sure of what you're doing and saying and truly understand what he is doing and saying. There's no room here for bar room theology, angry knee-jerk reactions or other whims and fancies. You're placing yourself above him and that is something which should cause any sane, humble person to pause.
A more prudent soul would take the Gamaliel approach. It's the one I like. You'll be familiar with his words to the Sanhedrin about the teaching of the apostles.
I take great comfort from it as it means that God's will, as always, shall be done in the end and time will be the ultimate arbiter on this. If the Novus Ordo for instance, is as great an abomination before Our Lord as you seem to believe, it will ultimately crumble and vanish. On the other hand, if it's God's will that this rite, or some modified version of it continue in the Church, then it will do so and the volumes of angry prose which pollute this forum will count for very little.
Our loyalty is to the Catholic faith, and to the men of past generations who guarded and protected it and maintained it intact so that we could receive it from them.
Almost every group or individual which has taken issue with the Pope and/or the Catholic Church down throught the ages could sign off on this statement. They all believed that they were right and were rescuing the true faith from an errant papacy. Nobody believed that they were in error.
Good advice, certainly. No one could or should ever take such a step without the gravest of reservations and a great deal of qualms. Here is the issue for me: "Are we in a state of crisis or not?" If these are just normal times for the Church, then we can all just be patient let things sort themselves out. But if this is truly a crisis in the Faith, then every man has an obligation to stand up and fight to defend what is the most precious thing on earth.
It's like Burke or someone said about the French Revolution, "Before the Revolution a thousand swords would have leaped from their scabbards at even a hint of an insult to the Queen. But when the Queen was finally brought in the tumbril to the guillotine , all those swords had been silenced." They had been co-opted by equivocation.
A more prudent soul would take the Gamaliel approach. It's the one I like. You'll be familiar with his words to the Sanhedrin about the teaching of the apostles.
But did Gamaliel go to heaven or to hell? He, like everyone else, had to make a choice between the one alternative and the other. While it might have been true from a historical perspective what he said about history settling the question, that would be small comfort to those who failed to choose the side of Christ when they had the chance.
I take great comfort from it as it means that God's will, as always, shall be done in the end and time will be the ultimate arbiter on this. If the Novus Ordo for instance, is as great an abomination before Our Lord as you seem to believe, it will ultimately crumble and vanish.
You are absolutely correct about God's will triumphing in the end, but His will is carried out through the agency of men on Earth.
Almost every group or individual which has taken issue with the Pope and/or the Catholic Church down throught the ages could sign off on this statement. They all believed that they were right and were rescuing the true faith from an errant papacy. Nobody believed that they were in error.
True again, but the problem with heretics like Luther and Arius was not that they disputed the man in charge at the time, but that they disputed the deposit of the Catholic faith. If Luther had only stuck to accusing the pope of encouraging corruption in Rome, he never would have become the arch-heresiarch. But he attacked the substance of the Catholic faith. Who is there today who is similarly attacking the substance of the Catholc faith? Not the traditionalists, that's for sure.
Quote where I mentioned anything about the flock. The flock will pay the price but you take your complaint directly to God about that one. It's not my opinion but that of Scripture and prophecy.
Wrong answer. Where do you get such ridiculous ideas? We are never called to be obedient to error. No priest, bishop or even Pope has the right to command the laity to commit error. That is not a Catholic belief. Catholic belief teaches the faithful to know their faith and RESIST error when it is encountered.
The modernists have made blind, absolute obedience into a false god, a violation of the first commandment.
If you are disobedient to Rome, you are disobedient to the Truth. Anything else is a sin of pride - "I know better than the Magisterium!" End of discussion.
You are gravely mistaken about Catholic teaching on obedience. The Faith as Christ taught is above Rome, the Magisterium and the Pope. The latter three exist to protect the deposit of Faith, not create new doctrine.
Investigate Catholic teaching on obedience BEFORE 1964.
So you're a Protestant? Accusations of manufactured doctrine? Disobedience to Rome? "Separation of Church and faith?"
You should give the Nashville Dominicans a call and tell them to cancel the renovation work they're doing on their motherhouse to try to accomodate their huge classes of novices. After all, they're supposed to be "dying off".
It's easy and fun to tar with a broad brush. The only thing it isn't, is right.
JUAN CARDINAL DE TORQUEMADA O.P. (1388-1468)
"Although it clearly follows from the circumstances that the Pope can err at times, and command things which must not be done, that we are not to be simply obedient to him in all things, that does not show that he must not be obeyed by all when his commands are good. To know in what cases he is to be obeyed and in what not,... it is said in the Acts of the Apostles: 'One ought to obey God rather than man'; therefore, were the Pope to command anything against Holy Scripture, or the articles of faith, or the truth of the Sacraments, or the commands of the natural or divine law, he ought not to be obeyed, but in such commands, to be passed over despiciendus)...." (Summa de Ecclesia [1489], founded upon the doctrine formulated by the Council of Florence and later re-asserted by Pope Eugenius IV and Pope Pius IV)
ST. ROBERT BELLARMINE, S.J. (1542-1621)
"Just as it is lawful to resist the pope that attacks the body, it is also lawful to resist the one who attacks the souls or who disturbs civil order, or, above all, who attempts to destroy the Church. I say that it is lawful to resist him by not doing what he orders and preventing his will from being executed." (De Romano Pontifice, Lib. II, Ch. 29)
FRANCISCO SUAREZ, S.J. (1548-1617)
"If [the pope] gives an order contrary to right customs, he should not be obeyed; if he attempts to do something manifestly opposed to justice and the common good, it will be lawful to resist him; if he attacks by force, by force he can be repelled, with a moderation appropriate to a just defence." (De Fide, Disp. X, Sec. VI, N. 16)
VENERABLE POPE PIUS IX (1846-1878)
"If a future pope teaches anything contrary to the Catholic Faith, do not follow him."
FR. ADRIAN FORTESCUE (1874-1923)
"The Pope has no authority from Christ in temporal matters, in questions of politics.... His authority is ecclesiastical authority; it goes no further than that of the Church herself. But even in religious matters, the Pope is bound, very considerably, by the divine constitution of the Church. There are any number of things that the pope cannot do in religion. He cannot modify, nor touch in any way, one single point of the revelation Christ gave to the Church; his business is only to guard this against attack and false interpretation. We believe that God will guide him that his decisions of this nature will be nothing more than a defence or unfolding of what Christ revealed. "The pope can neither make nor unmake a sacrament; he cannot affect the essence of any sacrament in any way. He cannot touch the Bible; he can neither take away a text from the inspired Scriptures nor add one to them. He has no fresh inspiration nor revelation. "His business is to believe the revelation of Christ, as all Catholics believe it, and to defend it against heresy.... The Pope is not, in the absolute sense, head of the Church; the head of the Church is Jesus Christ our Lord.... The Pope is the vicar of that head, and therefore visible head of the Church on earth, having authority delegate from Christ over the Church on earth only.... If the Pope is a monarch, he is a very constitutional monarch indeed, bound on all sides by the constitution of the Church, as this has been given to her by Christ. (The Early Papacy to the Synod of Chalcedon in 451, pp. 27-28)
In God's Church, things never just "sort themselves out". It may sometimes appear that way, due to the lengthy time frame involved but God guides its healing always. "Stand and fight" often means doing the Peter impersonation. Drawing your sword and lopping off the ear of the perceived miscreant. Which I believe, is what you are doing. Furthermore, I contest the idea that there are such things as "normal" times for the Church. In every age the Church has been confronted by crisis and travail. I suspect you that you mean "pre-Vatican II times". Most of those who precipitated and brought about this "crisis" to use your term, were trained, nurtured and ordained in these "normal times".
Paradoxically, I believe that SSPX, for instance has not stood and fought. It has placed itself in a position where it is outside the battlefield. Let me give you an example of what I mean.
In America today, abortion is legal, pornography is rife and assaults against the family abound. A true crisis. One possible solution could be to leave this country, seek out an island or oasis where sanity is still achievable and leave the abortionists and pornographers to it. Or, I could remain here and attempt to fight those who have caused this mess. Note here, that if I remain, my presence in the US, amongst the abortionists and pornographers does not make me an abortionist nor does it constitute approval or tolerance of their works. This gets back to my original post where I took exception to the terms "neo-Catholic" and "Novus Ordo corruption" used by the originator of this thread to tar the Holy Father and those who are loyal to him. It is those loyal to the Pope who are standing and fighting. Likewise, my presence within the "Novus Ordo" rite does imply approval of everything that takes place within it.
"Damn them all to hell" seems to be the SSPX position and it is not appropriate here.
The SSPX are the only ones who have remained on the battlefield. They fight the good fight. They have not laid down their arms to "dialogue" with the enemy as New Rome has.
As I've said what was on my mind and we're all starting to repeat ourselves, I'll leave it there while things are still relatively civil.
Maybe they're trying to attract new recruits, with a progressive message. No wonder the sisters are going the way of the dodo bird...
This is utter disgusting. Words fail to express my fury that such a thing should happen without swift and certain discipline. But alas I doubt much will happen nor anything soon, they would have to do something really bad to merit action by their Bishop like have benediction, say the rosary or some other Traditional error. (sarcasm/off) Is this a convent of nuns or a coven of witches. Their actions are pure evil and should be described as such. If they have money to to give to pro-abortion groups than they have much more money than they need. I suggest donations reflect this.
I don't claim to be an expert on the Catholic religion, but I'm pretty the basic point is that the Pope and Church Doctrine would be dead set against donating money to abortionists and abortionist advocates.
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