Criticizing Pope John Paul II

The Wanderer Press ^ | May 10, 2003 | JOHN YOUNG

[St.Chuck]

Do you keep a list of the pope's errors on hand all the time, or have you repeated them so often that they flow naturally with every thought you have?

[St.Chuck]

Because they count as Catholic anyone who has been baptized.

Yeah they're not Catholics. Real Catholics are the ones wearing the miter as they Freep.

[ultima ratio]

Please tell your friend this: Some people don't like change--for very sound reasons. If you are passing-down truths over millenia of time, tradition is indispensible to assuring their integrity and guaranteeing that they are passed-on intact to succeeding generations.

Failing this, error would unfailingly creep into our faith with every changing fashion and you would end up in chaos--which is what we pretty much have today in the postconciliar Church.

Notice how even bishops are bad-mouthing Mel Gibson for daring to suggest in his film that the Jews had something to do with the execution of Christ. Political correctness is the current fashion--and so even Gospel accounts must defer to it and change, according to people like your friend.

[Maximilian]

Seems simple to me. The soul is not physical. Thus, "place" must be a metaphysical state.

Not so simple. Hell is a place and so is heaven. This is the direct teaching of Jesus Christ Himself in so many instances that it would be impossible to quote them all. To deny this is to deny every fundamental of Catholic dogma, including Scripture, Tradition and the perennial teaching of the Magisterium. Start with the Creed, for one. "He descended into Hell."

[St.Chuck]

By the way, thanks for posting this article. I think this article is spot on.

[Maximilian]

Hell is the non-state of ontological nullity, the "place" from which the omnipresent God is absent. The Holy Father's attempting to recall the faithful to a concept of Ecclesia as existential, a communion of persons whose existence derives from their participation in God's transcendant Be-ing.

Please demonstrate one instance in Scripture, Tradition or the Magisterium prior to Vatican II in which the Church has ever taught an "existential" understanding of Hell. Jesus taught that Hell was a place of fire. Do you think that you know more about the subject than He did?

[Maximilian]

Thanks for this lesson from the wonderful book The Spiritual Combat by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli. This something we all need to be reminded of again and again.

[ultima ratio]

He is not to blame for "everything." I never said that. He is to blame for those things he is directly responsible for. I have enumerated some. Why did he give Cardinal Kasper the red hat, for instance, when he was warned by Cardinal Ratzinger the man was an apostate who publicly doubted the Resurrection? This alone was a shocker.

[ultima ratio]

Sure the list is boring. But it has led to the ruin of millions of souls by encouraging indifferentism and sycretism--both heresies.

[St.Chuck]

How do you know he was warned by Ratzinger?

[ultima ratio]

I'm glad you admit he makes errors. That's a sign of progress. Before you know it, you will stop worshipping him.

[ultima ratio]

Read it somewhere. Look it up.

[St.Chuck]

Sure the list is boring.

Your list, perhaps it would be appropriate to tack it to a chuch door in Wittenburg.

[St.Chuck]

Look it up.

The Remnant, The Angelus, Catholic Family News, or some other schismatic publication. Maybe Williamson wrote it. Nonetheless, it is but another unsubstantiated bit of gossip.

[ultima ratio]

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Die Furche - "How do you understand ecumenism? Does it mean integrating the other churches into the Catholic Church? The more recent documents seem to be walking in this direction…."

Walter Kasper - "The decision of Vatican II, to which the Pope adheres and spreads, is absolutely clear: Today we no longer understand ecumenism in the sense of the ecumenism of a return, by which the others should 'be converted' and return to being 'catholics.' This was expressly abandoned by Vatican II. Today ecumenism is considered as the common road: all should be converted to the following of Christ, and it is in Christ that we will find ourselves in the end. …. Even the Pope, among other things, describes ecumenism in Ut unum sint as an exchange of gifts. I think this is very well said: each church has its own riches and gifts of the Spirit, and it is this exchange that is trying to be achieved and not the fact that we should become 'protestants' or that the others should become 'catholics' in the sense of accepting the confessional form of Catholicism" (Adista, Rome, February 26, 2001, p. 9).
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What is this but indifferentism?

[Romulus]

Maybe you'll be good enough to explain what sort of place hell can be if its entire definition is God's definitive absence.

Jesus frequently teaches in language that's prophetic, which is to say, not literal, but conveying truths distant and hidden that are not apprehensible to the human mind. The everlasting fire of hell is the fire of utter destruction; the fire of the burning bush is a prophecy of the Resurrection.

Do you think that you know more about the subject than He did?

No indeed. Do you think you know more about how to interpret revelation than Vatican II?

[ultima ratio]

Perhaps. But it is not gossip that he elevated a known apostate. The man has even doubted Christ's divinity. What is he doing in the College of Cardinals?

[ultima ratio]

Interesting inversion--ascribing Lutheranism to me when it is the religion of the New Rome and its Novus Ordo.

[Maximilian]

Maybe you'll be good enough to explain what sort of place hell can be if its entire definition is God's definitive absence.

It would be amazing if I could do such an impossibility. But the reality is that God is not absent from Hell. When has the Church ever taught that? Hell is the place of God's justice, which is equal to His mercy. When we see Christ's death upon the cross, and we reflect that God Himself came down from heaven to suffer in this way for us, then we realize the extent of His mercy. To contemplate His justice, and to be reminded that it is just as great as this mercy that He showed us on the cross, is a terrifying thought indeed.

But His justice does not consist of His absence. That would be an impossibility. Satan and his devils are already suffering what we will suffer for all eternity if we end up among the reprobate. But God is not absent from them. They live in God's creation just like all other creatures.

Jesus frequently teaches in language that's prophetic, which is to say, not literal

If that were the case in this instance, then it would not be too difficult to find a source in tradition which supports this non-literal belief in Hell. I challenge you to locate one traditional source among the patristics, Aquinas, the magisterium, etc. which supports your thesis.

The everlasting fire of hell is the fire of utter destruction

Wrong. The definitive teaching of the Church is that the fire of Hell lasts for all eternity and never consumes its subjects.

Do you think you know more about how to interpret revelation than Vatican II?

I can't say that Vatican II's intention was "to interpret revelation." But please cite one passage from Vatican II which states that "Hell is not a place." I'm quite certain that there is no such thing in the documents.

[St.Chuck]

What is this but indifferentism?>

Not necessarily. He does not expressly say that one church is as good as another. It sounds like he is defining ecumenism as not proselytizing. Maintaining decent relationships with other denominations might be his aim here, and there are many benefits to the church that could result from such an approach, including evangelization.