Hi All,
I've been reading for some time and at the urging of a friend find myself needing to throw in some comments.
On the comment:"If the Pope's teachings and decisions are subject to Marra's (or anyone else's) second guessing, simply because there is no invocation of infallible authority, then Marra is the Pope. It's as simple as that."
A person can only infer from a statement like this, that you subscribe to a doctrine of irresistibility to the Pope?
If not, was St. Paul second guessing St. Peter as recorded in Galatians? There is no material difference on the part of St Peter's behavior and St. Paul's rebuke regarding the events at Assisi except for the fact that St. Peter was known to have exhibited humility in accepting Paul's rebuke. Also St. Peter's behavior was on a far smaller scale than JPII's.
If JPII has not been upright in the faith taking the example of Assisi I and II, then, the fault lies with him and not the archbishop. The archbishop was then forced to take steps that St.Paul was not required to but speculatively might have done to maintain the purity of the transmission of the faith.
If one studies the case of the archbishop as well, you will realize that JPII never actually directly ordered the archbishop not to consecrate bishops. He cajoled, appealed and pleaded but never actually commanded.
The names of episcopal candidates are submitted to Rome, and Rome approves them. That's how it's been done for a hundred years, in most every diocese and country of the world.
The fact that JPII never approved a single one of these men indicates that ordaining them was, at the very least, illicit.
Lefebvre knew he was jumping off a cliff with these ordinations.
There is an issue of scale and proportion here. What is being alleged in the modern era is that pope after pope after pope (John XXIII, Paul VI, JPI, JPII) has been in error and if I correctly understand some contributors to this forum, they have been in error in almost every area of their ministry. They are not being accused of doing something wrong. They are being accused of doing everything wrong.
That is unique, I believe. What is being alleged is not mistakes in specific issues but a wholesale hijacking of the Church by successive popes such that it has gone in completely the wrong direction.
To buy into this theory one must go a whole lot further than simply accept the idea that he is not irresistible. One must subscribe to the idea of a complete papal dereliction of duty over decades by different popes.
This is not the same thing as Paul's rebuke of Peter.