Posted on 02/03/2014 11:37:02 AM PST by ebb tide
She wanted to convert. She listened to Cardinal Ratzinger and died a Lutheran.
Sigrid Spath was the most famous German translator in Rome. She worked in the Jesuit General House, and then in the Vatican, since the days of Paul VI and translated around 70,000 pages of documents from Italian, French, English, Spanish or Polish into German, as well as several texts by Joseph Ratzinger, as Cardinal or Pope, as he also wrote original texts in Italian. The granddaughter of a Lutheran pastor, Spath was born in Villach, Carinthia (Austria), on August 1, 1939 (that is, just one month before the war), and she died this Sunday, February 2, 2014, in Rome.
May she rest in peace.
Now, the information above comes from the Vatican Radio article on Sigrid Spath, from which we have chosen this remarkable excerpt:
Sigrid Spath translated in these cases [documents written by the Pope in Italian] the German Pope into German. One of her favorite books was Ratzinger's "Introduction to Christianity", dozens of copies of which she gave to Protestant students visiting Rome.
As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger charged her personally with the German version of particularly sensitive documents, such as his response to the objections of Protestant theologians to the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification of 1999. It was also Cardinal Ratzinger who, according to her own testimony, advised Sigrid Spath to remain a Protestant, and not to convert to the Catholic Church, as she had considered in a moment of crisis. She could do more for both churches if she remained a Protestant, said the Cardinal. The Carinthian remained in the Protestant Christuskirche in Rome [the Evangelical-Lutheran community of Rome] throughout her life.
Note: Life-changing decisions should be avoided, if possible, in moments of distress and personal crisis, when reflection and meditation are impossible. But the justification presented by the Cardinal for why she should permanently remain a Protestant obviously influenced her in a permanent way, so that she felt compelled to declare it to others openly.
bkmk
So simple yet many will fight regardless....
Yeah, I’m not sure why the SSPX was mentioned either.
Are they the ones who reject anything from the last 50 or so years in regards to the Church?
Thank-you for making my day with that. God Bless.
This Catholic does not call you a heretic, rather a brother or sister in the Lord Jesus via our common baptism.
“This Catholic does not call you a heretic, rather a brother or sister in the Lord Jesus via our common baptism.”
I forgot to include “/auto de fe humor” in my post
The confusion we're living through isn't unprecedented. Regarding Arianism, which was eventually condemned, "In 359, the Arians were able to unite and, at the councils held at Seleucia and Ariminium, they won their greatest doctrinal triumph, of which St. Jerome wrote that it made the "world groan and wonder to find itself Arian."" (Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic History, Matthew Bunson, p. 80).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"... This watered down Christianity is our modern form of Arianism. The cultural context of the heresy and it’s expression is different, but the essence of the heresy is the same as it always was: “Jesus Christ is a created being. His ‘divinity’ is something that developed or was added to his humanity by God.”
The difference between Arius and the modern heretics is that Arius was actually explicit in his teaching. The modern heretics are not. They inhabit our seminaries, our monasteries, our rectories and presbyteries. They are the modernist clergy who dominate the mainstream Protestant denominations and who are too many in number within the Catholic Church as well.
Many of them don’t even know they are heretics. They have been poorly catechized from the start. Their beliefs about Jesus Christ have remained fuzzy and out of focus. They hold their beliefs in a sentimental haze in which they vaguely feel that what they believe is “Christian” but would not want to pin it down too much. This is because they have been taught that dogma is “divisive”. They deliberately keep their beliefs vague, and focus on “pastoral concerns” in order to avoid the difficult questions. They have been taught that dogma is part of an earlier age in the church and that we have matured and moved on from such nit picky sort of questions. “God, after all, can’t be put into a box. He’s bigger than all that…”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2012/01/arianism-today.html
It would be wonderful if more Christians can learn a thing or two from Blessed John Paul II who went out of his way during the early 2000’s to on behalf of the Church make a list of “apologies” to those victimized by those who professed as Catholics in the 2,000 year history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apologies_made_by_Pope_John_Paul_II
God Bless the memory of Blessed, soon to be declared Saint John Paul II.
Christian faith in action:
Faith has to be lived, not just only talked about.
The only "type" he got upset about was Jehovah Witnesses when they went into his former hometown. Since this man could see into the seen and unseen I believe he could tell who had the Holy Spirit. The Witnesses do not believe in 1 John 4 but most protestants do. Also a convert who lived at his monastery whose mother was on her last trip. He told her when she was leaving that the next time he would see her would be in heaven. She died shortly. She was Presbyterian. He had no doubt she was going to heaven.
True, and won't compare at all to what is coming. I'll confess to not hanging on the words of the Pope, but were I a Catholic growing up and being instructed, post Vat II Roman Catholicism would be a weird world when the Pope would speak in such a way and so casually so as to cast doubt upon the dogma of the church. I understand he wasn't speaking infallibly according to Catholicism, but he is speaking and it is in the press, both the Liberal and Catholic if there is a difference at this time. Not every Catholic is a theologian and not every priest a faithful son of the church.
The weirdness is not unique to our times. This article provides some examples from the rogues gallery and includes an extremely apropos quote from Chesterton:
"It may seem odd, on the feast day of the Roman Fact, to discuss the less-than-stellar occupants of the Chair of Peter. I would propose that it is precisely these weak and sometimes sordid men who offer one of the most startling historical and apologetical claims for the indefectibility of the church. Catholics ought not to be reticent or ashamed about such men. A frank analysis of their weaknesses shows that often the Church survives in spite of the papacy, while the office endures as a witness to the seamless garment of Church tradition.
The demerits of some of the popes can be broken down into three categories: the inept, the imprudent, and the immoral. It is astonishing among the 265 holders of the office that so few can be charged with any of these (indeed around a third of all popes are recognized as saints). Nonetheless they are to be found; weaklings who refused to teach when teaching was necessary, spectacularly imprudent miscalculators, and downright seedy and Augean characters."
Chesterton: "When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its corner-stone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward—in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link."
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/lets-raise-a-glass-to-the-bad-popes
Paul was Saul at the time and was an enemy of Christ. He could of 'neither' Peter as well, because Christ Himself was the cornerstone as the scripture testifies. Peter wasn't a weak man as his life showed. Like Paul and the rest of the Apostles as are Christians today and through the ages he was more than a conqueror through Him Who Loved us.
Romans 8:
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
When the chips were down, he denied Christ three times.
Yep, and the rest of the Apostles ran when Jesus was taken. Peter then repented (a sign of strength), spoke boldly for Christ after Pentecost even though Jesus was no longer in Jerusalem (faith). While it is recorded that he made further errors it is likely he made more than those few, he still witnessed of the Risen Lord till his own crucifixion. Sounds more like a hero of faith, not a weak ineffectual man. Mistakes and regrets don’t make a man but how those that will surely come are addressed give the true measure of a man. An Apostle of Christ, not one that should be considered ‘weak’.
"A sinner cannot, by his own strength, repent of his sins as he ought, unless he receive the grace of repentance from the mercy of God. This we have seen above; to which add what St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, attributing this favor entirely to the mercy, grace, and love of God; "God," says he, who is rich in mercy, for the exceeding great charity, wherewith he loves us, even when we were dead by sin, hath quickened us together in Christ, by whose grace ye are saved," Eph. ii.4"
http://www.catholicdoors.com/teaching/book1/1-18.htm
You can not equate those popes with the post VII popes. None of those popes spoke contrary to Church teachings. The post -Vatican II popes do.
This is an unprecedented time in the Church.
No one need suggest that I am sympathetic to "the spirit of Vatican II," the many abuses that are sometimes witnessed at bad renditions of the Novus Ordo Mass, or nonsense from gushy "spirit of Vatican II" clerics or congregants who want to practice pacifism, envirowhackoism, socialism or worse, liturgical innovations for their own sake, etc., etc., etc.
All that having been said, I think you will find that Rome's original objections to the consecration of SSPX bishops in direct defiance of and gross disobedience to orders from John Paul II not to consecrate those bishops has never been resolved in favor of the SSPX. As their bishops die, one by one, they have no authority to consecrate replacements either.
If apostolic succession is not possessed by the SSPX bishops, how valid and how legal can the ordination of their priests by the soi disant SSPX bishops be? If bishops are consecrated without papal permission and approval, any sacramental authority would seem top be stolen goods. I am not a theologian but....
From WHOM do SSPX priests obtain faculties (absent legitimate emergencies of the penitent's imminent death) to licitly hear confessions and grant absolution of sins? Or even to say Mass within the geographical (diocesan) jurisdiction of the legitimate diocesan authorities whom the SSPX cult refuse to recognize? Or to witness the sacrament of matrimony on behalf of the Church against which they rebel? Such marriages may well be valid but the witness of the SSPX priest? Not so much. Husband and wife are the ministers of the sacrament in any event but.....
John Paul II declared SSPX schismatic and excommunicated each and every one of SSPX's bishops which was his unquestionable right as pope. The SSPX reacted by hissing and spitting and denouncing JP II and publicly despising and refusing his authority.
Benedict XVI, as an act of ecclesiastical mercy which was his unquestionable right, lifted the excommunications of those SSPX bishops still living at the time (not Marcel LeFebvre, the then dead arch instigator of the schism and not, IIRC, the dead Brazilian Bishop Castro de Meyer of Campos, an elderly retired bishop when he had joined the schism). The declaration of schism was NOT lifted. The SSPX leaders who are fond of accusing the Vatican and all popes after Pius XII of creating a "new church" in place of what SSPX presumes to call Roman Catholicism (according to their own opinions). Time will tell whether John Paul II or Benedict XVI or both were wise in their respective disciplinary decisions regarding SSPX.
Meanwhile, the SSPX bishops, including Archbishop Bernard Fellay who presumes to lead the cult, while consistently defying the legitimate Catholic authority of the popes, among others, on October 24, 2012, expelled the Holocaust denying Bishop Richard Williamson from the SSPX (this amounts to excommunication of the embarrassing "bishop" Richard Williamson BY the SSPX leadership who reject papal authority but purport to exercise their own cult authority.
The Ecclesia Dei commission, legitimately appointed by Vatican authority and chaired from 2000 to 2009 by Dario Cardinal Castrillon de Hoyos of Columbia, to establish what amounts to diplomatic relations with SSPX with an eye toward restoring them to the Church by submission in obedience to Vatican and papal authority, has been rebuffed continually by SSPX on flimsy excuse after flimsy excuse which amount to a pose that they are "negotiating" with Rome and demand that the Vatican repudiate Vatican II, restore the Tridentine (old Latin) Mass as the only Mass of the Church, abolish the Novus Ordo Mass altogether, and generally surrender to the SSPX cult in all relevant respects. The Vatican is understandably NOT going to let the tail wag the dog in order to bring the rebels back to Holy Mother the Church.
In a letter from the commission in 1998, Monsignor Camille Perl, commission secretary, wrote a letter to an Australian man who inquired as to SSPX and that letter indicated that it is permissible to attend SSPX Masses but that it is not recommended lest the communicant acquire the bad judgmental habits of the cult.
It is time for these SSPX ecclesiastical revolutionaries to knuckle under, man up and fully accept and submit unconditionally to Vatican authority or admit that they are outside the Church and go their own way. They would not be the first and they won't be the last. Many other earlier cults have run their course and been deposited in the ash bin of history despite their pretensions of Catholicism.
The Great Schism with the Eastern Orthodox Churches is more than a thousand years old. The Vatican fully accepts the validity of all Eastern Orthodox sacraments. For the most part, neither the Roman Catholic Church nor the Eastern Orthodox Churches would claim to be the same Church. The Catholics are Catholic and the Orthodox are Orthodox.
For the most part, the Roman Catholic Church accepts as valid the baptisms and marriages of non-Catholic Christians but not Holy Orders, Penance, Extreme Unction, Confirmation or whatever they may be doing that is superficially similar to the Holy Eucharist. The best that can be said for SSPX sacraments is that they are valid but not lawful.
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