Bishop Obeys Government Order to Remove Cahtolic Teaching On Sinfulness of Homosexual Acts

The point in this thread is not what happens in a public school, but in a CATHOLIC school. The public school is a state institution and therefore has a right to determine what can/can’t be taught there. Yes, there is secular indoctrination there, but .... it’s secular.

In a Catholic school, a bishop should be able to determine what can/can’t be taught there. But they do not always do this. In this case, the bishop allowed the State to determine that. The issue is that the Church and the State are intertwined these days and that needs to stop. If that means Catholics fund their schools themselves without government money, then that is what should happen. However, it appears most Catholics will not have a problem with this anyway.

Now I'm going to smooth down my ruffled feathers and try to respond decently: for which I ask your prayers and patience.

(1) I didn't call you any names. If you could show me where I've done so, I will apologize in all sincerity and try to make amends.

You said that pre-Vat II Muslims were called infidels; I pointed out that pre-Vat II you'd be called a reviler. I didn't call you that. I was reporting the common term for a person using public media to incite animosity toward the Sacred Liturgy, the documents of an Ecumenical Council, or the teachings in the Catechism. See Canons 369 and 3373

I personally abstain from the us of terms like heretic, infidel, and reviler, not because those terms can never justly be applied to any person, but because they generally would finish off, rather than initiate, any attempt at correction.

2. I explained to you, personally, elsewhere, and at some length (#72) the distinction between Muslims and Islam. Islam may well be a diabolical religious, inimical to God's plan for salvation (I personally think that Muhammad was either demon-possessed or a knowing, murderous charlatan) but that does not contradict any esteem I show for Muslims as people.

Some Muslim can be virtuous while Islam as a system is false and harmful; some Muslims may be oriented toward obedience to the Creator of All Things, while, still, the vile distortions and lies found in the Koran and the Hadith aare to be exposed and repudiated.

You will notice that all of the passages you dispute in the Council documents and the Catechism are directed toward Muslims (people), not Islam (religious system.) Hence those who think there is an outright contradiction here between pre-Vat II and Vat II teachings, are making a category mistake. The first speaks of Islam-the-system, the latter of Muslims-the-people. We are well advised to hate Islam and love Muslims: if not, how could we lead them to Christ? Not a chance.

3. About participating in non-Catholic prayer assemblies with other Christians: I suspect the answer is that concrete situations have changed.

Maybe in years past a typical non-Catholic prayer assembly would have featured a lot of heretical teaching and preaching which Catholics could not abide in silence. The non-Catholic services I have attended over the past 30 years have almost always been in the context of the Pro-Life movement: I have heard nothing antithetical to Catholicism, and a great deal edifying from a Catholic and prolife point of view.

The only exception I can think of, is that I once attended a Russian Orthodox liturgy in which the priest, a monk, preached that the Catholic acceptance of the filioque was the Sin Against the Holy Spirit.

I had a word with this priest after the Liturgy, and he was somewhat taken aback that there had a Catholic there in the congregation, and was well reproved --- I think -- by my remarks , which were intended to be gently but firmly correctional.

As for you, I call you no name but brother.

(Um, barring the possibility that you're a female. With FReepernames, one never knows.) :o0

Sorry, but you made a point of using me as an example to make your point. Notice that I have yet to use any poster here as an example to make my point. I'm sorry that pointing out contradictions between the New Catechism and pre-Vatican II teachings somehow offends you and others. Having said all of that, I do understand your reactions though because I was once there too when my husband brought all of this to my attention.

Granted, you are trying really hard to defend the current teaching, but if it is not new teaching then you should be able to quote pre-VII teaching that agrees with it. Where is the pre-Vatican II teaching that Muslims (the people) should be held in high esteem?

As to your assertion that the post-Vatican II catechism is only speaking about people and not religion, see paragraph 843 of the New Catechism. It talks about the goodness and truth in other religions.

Now read this in Pascendi by Pope Pius X):

In the conflict between different religions, the most that Modernists can maintain is that the Catholic has more truth because it is more vivid, and that it deserves with more reason the name of Christian because it corresponds more fully with the origins of Christianity. No one will find it unreasonable that these consequences flow from the premises. But what is most amazing is that there are Catholics and priests, who, We would fain believe, abhor such enormities, and yet act as if they fully approved of them. For they lavish such praise and bestow such public honor on the teachers of these errors as to convey the belief that their admiration is not meant merely for the persons, who are perhaps not devoid of a certain merit, but rather for the sake of the errors which these persons openly profess and which they do all in their power to propagate.

Although Pope Pius X suggests these folks are "perhaps" not devoid of a "certain merit" (notice language is very different from "high esteem"), he is pretty clear about the fact that the it is wrong (for Modernists) to suggest that the Catholic Church just has "more truth" than other religions. This sounds like the New teaching that the Catholic Church has the "fullness of the Truth".

With respect to the bolded, it seems to me that Pope Pius X could have been talking to the last 3 popes.

If you will read the whole section of the Catechism which deals with different religions (paragraphs #838 - 843) the theme is what we have in common with non-Catholic (Protestant) Christians; the Orthodox; the Jews; the Muslims; the other religions. It is not a theological critique of other religious systems; it is a sketch of what humanity has in common in terms of our evident orientation toward a Being greater than ourselves. Para 843 ends up this way:

843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as "a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life."

Had the Council Fathers introduced a new doctrine, approving of Islam, they would surely have been guilty of heresy; but they did not. In using friendly and amicable words toward the Muslim people (as they do, also, to the Orthodox, to Protestants, to Jews, and to believers in other religions) they are following the same evangelizing approach that the Apostle Paul did at the Areopagus in Athens (Acts 17:21-31)-LINK

Please do give his a click and read this.

You’ll notice that St. Paul acknowledges that the Athenians are “very religious” and that he has made himself familiar with their shrines. He does not sneer at their shrine “To an Unknown God,” but uses it as an entry-point to the Christian revelation as if to say, “Here’s what you’ve shown you’re looking for.”

He goes so far as to show his respectful familiarity with their own religious poets: he quotes, approvingly, a few verses from pagan poetry (v. 27-28):

“though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ “

---here he’s referencing the poet Epimenides of Cnossos, 6th century BC; and he goes on to quote yet another source, the Phainomenon of Arastus, 3rd century BC:

“We are all His children.”

Why does St. Paul do this? Why doesn’t he address them instead like so:

“Listen here, infidels: I can see you are full of Satanic deception and have public places full of worthless altars and idols; you've filled your heads with erroneous pagan junk. You morons! You’re going to hell! Jesus loves you!”

It’s because he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to make an appeal to them through what they already knew: the truth, yes, of their pagan background, as far as truth be found.

That only paved the way for him to present to them more of the Christian revelation (v. 30-31):

”While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

This is just what the Council Fathers do in the very next section of the Catechism (paragraphs #844 - 845

845 To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son's Church.

No change in doctrine here. It's the launch of an evangelical appeal which is not a novelty in Catholic doctrine, but as old as St. Paul in Acts.

"And yet Paul doesn’t say they have truth in their religion."

Sure he does, Mrs. Pius. (Acts 17:27-28):

"...though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For 'In him we live and move and have our being'
Epimenides of Cnossos, pagan religious writer

and

"We are all His children."
Arastus, pagan religious writer

He quotes these approvingly--- guided by the Holy Spirit, who inspired Paul to make this part of Scripture --- because he sees these words are true.

And to get right to the point, the Catechism notes that the Muslims believe that there is One God who created everything, "a merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."

These are religious truths, and they are believed by Muslims. Historically, they undoubtedly derive from Mohammad's contacts with Judaism and Christianity. At the age of nine, Muhammad went to Syria with his uncle and had interactions with the Nestorian monk Bahira in Bosra. As well, there were Jewish communities on the Arabian peninsula.

If the part quoted is not truth and goodness, I can't imagine what more I could say.

"I’m still looking for pre-VII Church teaching that states attending and participating in non-Catholic services is the way to unity."

I've already addressed this by pointing out that there are different circumstances which can be reasonably distinguished. The 20th and 21st centuries present conditions of possible fellowship which didn't exist in the 16th and 17th centuries when people were still pretty much going at each other with fire and steel.

Are you saying, perhaps, that an Ecumenical Council cannot address new conditions?

Vatican II is an Ecumenical Council, authoritative and Magisterial, whose documents have been affirmed by the last 5 pontiffs. If you really reject all of that, and cannot accept elements of truth and value found in post-1965 Catholicism, I must ask whether you affirm or deny the following:

816 (Link) "The sole Church of Christ is that which our Savior, after his Resurrection, entrusted to Peter's pastoral care, commissioning him and the other apostles to extend and rule it. . . . This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in (subsistit in) the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him."
The Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism explains: "For it is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the People of God."

The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.

Paul does not send a message like this one in Nostra Aetate. He doesn't "revere" their different (false) teachings as a reflection of Truth.

You and I are not going to agree obviously, so it doesn't make sense to continue this. I once defended Vatican II like you. I've learned that it is important to go back to pre Vatican II teaching (most post Vatican II Catholics do not). I have asked repeatedly for support from pre-Vatican II teaching and you have not offered any.

Truth doesn't change. There are no new circumstances that all of a sudden change sin into a praiseworthy action (ie. popes participating in non-Catholic services). There are many indications that the Post Vatican II church is modernist. It's not pretty; I don't like it one bit; but it is. There is a crisis in the Church and this is why.

I pray that God clears up this mess as soon as possible.

"Paul does not send a message like this one in Nostra Aetate. He doesn't "revere" their different (false) teachings as a reflection of Truth."

Please, Mrs. Pius, read Paul again. He is revering these pagans' TRUE teachings as a reflection of the Truth.

That is what Nostra Aetate is doing: sorting out and revering the true teachings. Not the false teachings

This requires very great discernment, because these "other" religions are typically a tangled, knotted mixture of both.

" I have asked repeatedly for support from pre-Vatican II teaching and you have not offered any."

I have been looking, BTW, for a comprehensive list of papal encyclicals online, and the best I have been able to find is PapalEncyclicals.net (Link) --- they have hundreds of them down to about 1740, then rather spotty coverage before that. If you have a better Online resource, I'd be glad if you'd let me know.

I had assumed that St. Paul counted as an authoritative --- very authoritative --- Pre-Vatican II teaching!

As for encyclicals going back to the 13th century or before, I am terribly ignorant on that score, having read no encyclicals in their entirety except for a few in the 20th century. I would have to rely on some sound, orthodox scholar to sort out for me what was infallible dogma, what was reformable doctrine, what was local or temporary discipline. And what was dubious: mere papal opinion. (Several popes -- Siricus and John XXII, if I remember correctly --- denied papal infallibility. What do you do with that?)

I say this because there's a lot there, over the centuries, that's scandalous. I will cite the approval of judicial torture, punitive mutilation, and chattel slavery, only as the most egregious examples.

Truth doesn't change -- I strongly agree --- Truth doesn't change, but circumstances do change. You can find this all through the history of the Church, not just revolving wearily around pre-and-post Vatican II; all through the Epistles of Paul, Peter, James, John and Jude; all through the Holy-Spirit-inspired Prophets of Israel; all through Salvation History back to Genesis.

I join you in sincere prayer that God will clean up all messes: your, mine, and ours.

Come, Lord Jesus.

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