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OK, it’s official. This Benedict guy is no Pope John-Paul

It's awesome. Maybe someday he'll up and reaffirm the Catholic dogma that outside the Catholic Church there is absolutely no salvation. Most people don't know that's defined Catholic dogma. If someone didn't know it was, does their due diligence and finds out that it actually is dogma, and yet obstinately refuses to believe it after working through the matter with eye to sincerely knowing and believing the Catholic truth, they've just lost the Catholic Faith.

It's interesting to take a peek after so long and see that, yes, there are people out there who still believe they understand everything well enough such that they can explain it to you. The infallible interpreters of the way things are persist, God love them. It's also comforting to see the numbers and find out that, hey, hardly anybody is reading their words. Awesome.

God bless by the way, and thank you to Pope Benedict XVI.

"Pope Benedict, like his predecessor, is overwhelmingly a good and wise pope. Indeed, he is a brilliant thinker and a saintly man."

I wouldn't profess to know this, and it is also the truth that no one else really knows these things to be the truth, either. I do know the he, and his predecessor, are or were the Supreme Pontiff, and understand the power and scope of their office. This much I am required to know and profess.

It becomes more precise, imho, when it is claimed that the pontiff or a council are protected from declaring anything to be the truth which is opposition to known dogma, or to demand anything of the Faithful which is sinful by way of the Supreme Magisterium. The term "declaration", of course, having a very precise meanting. This is a far narrower parameter, but far more accurate a claim.

In this way it can be claimed that ambiguity and incomplete statements of truth accurately characterize the Council language without having to claim that the Council itself made any direct statement or demand which was precisely heretical or invalid. If such is the case, and it was the case, it is those people who imagine their own heretical ideas to be supported by the Council who are guilty of heresy, and in this way the authors of the Council can be held harmless from any charge of heresy. The authors, however, can still be said to have been enemies of the Church or have unwittingly facilitated others who were. "An enemy has done this".

It is about as far as the enemy can go in his attack from the Church from within. What we see is all they've got.

"...the Pope is between a rock and a hard place."

Interesting choice of words, being that he is the Rock.

Most people who quote Matthew 16:18 which demonstrates the reality and exercise of the Supreme Magisterium of the Church, often fail to read further in the same chapter where Christ tells him "get behind me, Satan", also demonstrating the non-infallible moments and the human ways of the pontiff. He is capable of declaring and defining infallibly in the exercise of his office, but is also quite capable of major faults outside the exercise of that same office. Unfortunately the average Catholic seems inclined to believe that the pontiff channels the Holy Ghost 24/7, the same misconception Catholic belief held by many opponents of Catholicism.

What you think you see in the documents of the Church, what you think this or that pope said, is so NOT there and has NOT been said.

As such is the case, it becomes clear to many people that the ones who are the accusers are themselves the ones who are actually most guilty of the charges made.

You've done nothing more than claim that your thoughts reflect those of the Churchs, and that you are saying something the Church has said. But neither is the case at all. It's nothing more than personal interpretation on your part.

As to Extra Ecclesia Nulla Salus, because Sentire cum Ecclesia I apprehend the truth of that Doctrine.

You apprehend it? Did you read it its rights before you put it in the slammer?

One more thing: please don't privately interpret the Church's documents.

It wouldn't be as bad a situation as what you do when you pretend that what's been infallably defined isn't required of you to believe.

For instance, when you deny an infallible point of Catholic dogma by using the redundant term "Catholic Christian", when you know full well that it is infallibly defined that there is no salvation outside the Church.

You see, you're helping. People can see through the hypocrisy in all of it. Those who can't are just blind.

Simple.

So it's the 7th day in the week of your work helping people find and live the traditional Catholic Faith. Take a rest. You've earned it.

Have a fantastic Lent.

I want to personally thank you two for all your efforts.

Perhaps everyone should know that you and others are personally reponsible for the creation of and continued success of one of the largest and most successful traditional online forums yet.

It is most amusing to find that lies and bigoted rants about traditional Catholics, read by so few and cared about by even less, can be so easily be turned into thousands of truths of the Catholic Faith being read by people who really care about their Catholicism and really intend to practice it properly. On another site. The score is about a couple thousand to, like, three or something.

So again, thank you for the opposition.

I am giving-up FR for Lent. I desire to walk closer with Jesus and I have a feeling He ain't gonna be leading me back here...

Maybe that'd be best.

It's sad that they are defying Vatican II.

What?

Maybe if the Vatican thinks it is important, you should too.

I wish I had written that article. Why can't that article be my article?

"A Catholic who sits on his hands and doesn't vote on this issue is aiding and abetting the pro-abort machine."

This is incorrect. It is not at all the case that a Catholic who does not vote on this issue is aiding and abetting the pro-abortion machine.

Passive protection of the Holy Ghost.

"Unless before death they are joined with her" seems to allow for some theological debate, it seems to me."

Not at all. The meaning of words here is clear.

"One of two possibilities apply. Either the present Catechism is wrong on its face or the phrases "joined with her", and "not at all in the true Church of Christ" have a meaning somewhat broader and amenable to theological interpretation than the current vernacular."

There is another possibility, which is that the phrases are ambiguous or unclear in such a way as to lead some people to believe that there is a way of salvation outside the Church when there really isn't.

"I rather think the latter. For this reason, I don't see that the points from the Syllabus of Errors necessarily contradict what's written in the current Catechism."

It would probably be more accurate to state "what some people think what's written in the current Catechism, but which the current Catechism does really come out and say clearly".

"For instance, #18 in the Syllabus condemns the idea that Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion. Yet the Catechism does not claim this. It states that "many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside the visible Catholic Church". The Catechism is not claiming that different religions are equally pleasing to God."

Nor does the Catechism state that someone can be saved outside the Church, even though most people claim that's what it said. It's not based on any depth in the document which we are too lowly to understand, but rather, it is based on ambiguous and unclear wording subject to endless interpretation.

"Yet we can't discount the idea that God can use the truths and elements of sanctification present in other faiths to bring about salvation."

But the fact remains that whatever elements there may be of the truth outside the Catholic Faith, for a person, these must culminate in an entrance into the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation. What's more is that there is no sanctifying grace outside the Catholic Church; there are actual graces, a certain prevenient grace which motivates a soul to enter in communion with the Church, but no sanctifying grace outside of it.

When examining the whole indifferentism question, it's necessary to distinguish between the relative merits of different religions and the degree to which they profess the truth and the access to salvation of those, who through no fault of their own profess these other faiths.

According to Catholic dogma, ignorance has never been salvific. It may reduce culpability, but cannot be sanctifying or salvific.

"I'm not sure the "all Jews, Protestants and Orthodox go to hell" line was not simply an extrapolation of some of these misunderstandings, rather than official Church teaching."

They are ex cathedra statements, and no Catholic can dismiss them willfully without shipwreck of the Faith.

"Obviously, the ordinary means of salvation would involve being a Catholic."

It is theologically incorrect to call the Catholic Church the "ordinary means" of salvation, since as murph has pointed out, the Catholic Church has declared and defined that She (not murph, but the Church) is THE means of salvation. That's Catholic dogma. Modernism would dearly love to pretend that this isn't the truth, and that there are "extra-ordinary means" of salvation, but the Church has not stated this, and in fact, has without a doubt ruled it out. Completely. There is, in fact, absolutely and positively no salvation outsdie the Catholic Church according to infallible Catholic dogma.

That statement from the CCC doesn't say that the Muslims can be saved while they yet remain outside the Catholic Church.

Does Karl have a voter's guide for Catholic monarchists?

What are you trying to do, bore the hell out me?