Mrs. Don-o's Letter to Bishop about Catholic Doctrine on the Death Penalty

Thank you for your letter and thanks also to S and D and P and R who have also responded to my concerns: I appreciate this, too.

Centuries ago, faithful Catholics didn't ordinarily need to question their Bishop. If he were an honest Catholic, well and good; but if not, it made little difference to the average pewsitter. Catholic life was what it was, and it did not change. You didn't need to check your basement several times a day to see if the bedrock was still located under the bearing walls. There was no "Traditionalist" or "Modernist," there was only observant or non-observant.

This has not been entirely true for all of my adult lifetime (I was 16 in 1968), but it has been particularly untrue in the past 5 1/2 years. The ground is moving under our feet.

I look at Amoris Laetitia or the daily Google Alert with keywords "Pope Francis," and what I'm seeing is the ongoing demolition of doctrine. This latest contradiction, "Death Penalty is not admissible" vs "Death Penalty is not intrinsically wrong" is just the latest and the gravest. "Is" or "Is not." It's as stark as it can get.

Until quite recently, I thought that you might have noticed this too, and that you might agree that if it comes down to "Catholicism" or "The-Church-of-What's-Happenin'-Now", we should stick with Catholicism.

If it comes down to "The Church of Sts Peter and Paul" or "The Church of Uncle Teddy and ¡Tío Hagan Lío!" ---we'd best stay with Peter and Paul.

Should I take a sabbatical from the parish RCIA team until it's clarified as to whether I am supposed to teach the Old Catechism or the New Catechism, the Old Truth or the New Truth?

But if Pope Francis' new doctrine -- that capital punishment is morally inadmissible --- is true, the entire Church has been wrong on this going back to St. Paul, in fact going back to Genesis. I support what Pope Francis' new doctrine in this case directly contradicts: Scripture, Tradition and the Papal Magisterium.

"Glad to see you questioning that which cannot be questioned..."

Thank you, trebb. But I'm hoping everyone can see the wry paradox here. Yeah, I'm "questioning that which cannot be questioned." But I'm in fact, defending with all my strength that which cannot be questioned: Scripture, Tradition and the Papal Magisterium.

There was a materially-heretical idea that floated around amongst European Catholics called "Ultramontanism". Historically, this was the 19th century Northern and Western European Catholics' tendency to see all truth as coming from the other side of the mountains (in this case, from Italy on the other side of the Alps) --- as if the pope, specifically, were some kind of all=purpose oracle, and his every opinion --- and those of his closest advisors --- was to be taken as dogma.

As I said, this, even when well-intended, was a kind of material heresy: an honest error, not an attempt to deliberately get it wrong. But it was and is an error.

The Pope has no warrant to proclaim anything "authoritatively" unless it's already part pf the "deposit of faith," which means papal authority is largely a "theology of repetition." He can explicate what's already there in Scripture and in the Apostolic Tradition (what the Church believed from Apostolic times) but he can't pull new rabbits out of his papal tiara.

If he does --- if he tries to frame his own fuzzy or erroneous opinions as if they were dogmas of the Church --- the "charism of infallibility" is Christ's promise that he won't be able to pull it off. If "the gates of hell shall not prevail" --- and that's Christ's promise --- it logically entails a key papal inability to make an eternally-binding dogma out of the Opinion of the Day.

Infallibility is the opposite of Ultramontanism: it's a limit on papal authority. It's the Holy Spirit playing defense.

So sometimes you have to oppose papal opinion in order to defend the authentic Magisterium.

That's why I'm trying to do.

Here's a Two-Minute Explanation (YouTube) that might make you laugh out loud.

Thank you for your kind and measured response - i guess I am of the mind that they made it too complex and afforded too much power to the Priests - much as the pharisees were an "elite" group instead of actual teachers.Were told that we are to obey our leaders/rulers too because they are here with the authority of God...not only have they entailed folks like Hitler/Stalin/Lenin/Che/Castro/Idi Amin,Chavez, etc., but how unified is any church against or for our Presidents?

I have trouble believing it needs to be that complicated for one to find/secure salvation - the Bible seems to have sufficient information/instructions and I would love it if more religions would actually teach from it and concentrate on the contrast/import of God transitioning us from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant.

Of course, I also believe that Prayer is most useful as a personal contact relationship with God - I find it hard to believe that He will change His mind and alter what is transpiring in others because x-amount of people pray for some specific event - and even less belief that praying to dead mortals can be preferable to praying directly to God and Jesus.

I have no problem believing that our fears of someone desecrating God/Jesus/Host are a total waste - some things cannot be desecrated/tainted by humans...they can be hated and disrespected, but that harms the humans rather than God - the Holy Spirit can be blasphemed, but it does not suffer from such blasphemy or heresy...the human perpetrators are the ones who suffer.

I choose to live in His Grace - warts and all, because when He admonished Peter for calling unclean, what He had made clean, and when Paul (Galatians 5) admonished those still trying to be justified by their own actions that if they tried to live under some of the law, they then had to abide by the impossible (or Jesus would not have had to die for us) task of obeying the whole law.

I guess that's part of my story and I'm sticking to it.....:-)

God Bless

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