Posted on 06/03/2016 8:23:48 AM PDT by ebb tide
Dear Mr. Matt: Thank you for your greetings. I wrote an answer to The Remnant‘s Open Letter, which I send to you in the attachment and you can publish. God bless abundantly you and your apostolate for the Catholic faith. With cordial greetings in Jesus and Mary,
+ Athanasius Schneider
Dear Mr. Christopher A. Ferrara: On May 9, 2016 you published on “The Remnant” website an open letter to me regarding the question of the Apostolic Exhortation “Amoris laetitia”.
As a bishop, I am grateful and at the same time encouraged to receive from a Catholic layman such a clear and beautiful manifestation of the “sensus fidei” regarding the Divine truth on marriage and the moral law.
I am agreeing with your observations as to those expressions in AL (“Amoris laetitia”), and especially in its VIII’s chapter, which are highly ambiguous and misleading. In using our reason and in respecting the proper sense of the words, one can hardly interpret some expressions in AL according to the holy immutable Tradition of the Church.
In AL, there are of course expressions which are obviously in conformity with the Tradition. But that is not what is at issue here. What is at stake are the natural and logical consequences of the ambiguous expressions of AL. Indeed, they contain a real spiritual danger, which will cause doctrinal confusion, a fast and easy spreading of heterodox doctrines concerning marriage and moral law, and also the adoption and consolidation of the praxis of admitting divorced and remarried to Holy Communion, a praxis which will trivialize and profane, as to say, at one blow three sacraments: the sacrament of Marriage, of Penance, and of the Most Holy Eucharist.
In these our dark times, in which Our Beloved Lord seems to sleep in the boat of His Holy Church, all Catholics, beginning from the bishops up to the simplest faithful, who still take seriously their baptismal vows, should with one voice (“una voce”) make a profession of fidelity, enunciating concretely and clearly all those Catholic truths, which are in some expressions of AL undermined or ambiguously disfigured. It would be a kind of a “Credo” of the people of God. AL is clearly a pastoral document (i.e., by its nature of temporal character) and has no claims to be definitive. We have to avoid to “make infallible” every word and gesture of a current Pope. This is contrary to the teaching of Jesus and of the whole Tradition of the Church. Such a totalitarian understanding and application of Papal infallibility is not Catholic, is ultimately worldly, like in a dictatorship; it is against the spirit of the Gospel and of the Fathers of the Church.
Beside the above mentioned possible common profession of fidelity, there should be made to my opinion, by competent scholars of dogmatic and moral theology also a solid analysis of all ambiguous and objectively erroneous expressions in AL. Such a scientific analysis should be made without anger and partiality (“sine ira et studio”) and out of filial deference to the Vicar of Christ.
I am convinced that in later times the Popes will be grateful that there had been concerning voices of some bishops, theologians and laypeople in times of a great confusion. Let us live for the sake of the truth and of the eternity, “pro veritate et aeternitate”!
+ Athanasius Schneider,
Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana ■
Ultramontanism just got a stake through the heart.
Bravo, your Excellency! Bravo!
“pastoral” and “ambiguous”.....where have I heard that before?
We're not speaking about every word of a pope being infallible. What we are discussing is whether you or I or anyone holds and speaks publicly something against the Catholic Faith that he KNOWS is against it. Formal heresy has the same criterion for everyone and is not a respecter of rank.
The infallibility canard tossed into these arguments is immaterial because if one were to employ it, then one would be stating that ONLY a pope can be a heretic, because only a pope has the charism of infallibility.
If Bergoglio or Ratzinger or any other disgusting sorry lot speaks publicly something that he knows is against the Catholic Faith, then that person is a formal heretic, thus not a Catholic by his own act, and thus incapable of holding any office in a Church of which he is not a member.
What do you expect from a document entitled “Gay Love”?
***If Bergoglio or Ratzinger or any other disgusting sorry lot speaks publicly something that he knows is against the Catholic Faith, then that person is a formal heretic, thus not a Catholic by his own act, and thus incapable of holding any office in a Church of which he is not a member.*
Agreed. We must pray like we never have.
This bishop will be at our parish in two weeks! Can’t wait to hear and meet him.
How do you get a bishop from Kazakhstan to come to your parish?? Inquiring minds want to know.
He wants to see the Fraternity parish in Los Angeles. He is a big supporter of the FSSP.
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