More Roman Catholic Catechism Changes?

Pastoral Meanderings ^ | 08-10-2018 | Pastor Peters (LCMS)

[NRx]

A week or so ago the Vatican announced a change in the Catechism of the Catholic Church which changed the teaching regarding the capital punishment.  It was now deemed inadmissible -- whatever that means -- or no longer moral (though Scripture clearly allows this).  Now another change, perhaps more devious and clandestine than the announced change on the death penalty.  This represents the removal of one sentence and replacing it with something that is completely different, one that fails to acknowledge homosexuality to be objectively disordered and instead sympathetically suggests that homosexual tendency is not at all a choice but a condition natural to their birth.  Perhaps this is how Pope Francis plans to change the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, a few words at a time.  If that is the case, who knows where this will lead and who is checking the catechism on a daily basis to see what changes have crept in.

This is another version of change that comes not openly or by consideration but through the back door -- an attempt to re-define the faith without telling anyone about it.  Lutherans may only be interested in this for curiosity' sake but we would do well to remember the principle.  The most dangerous change comes through the back door and not through open consideration of that change and its debate on the basis of Scripture and the fathers.  

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P85.HTM

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P85.HTM

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

It appears that They do not choose their homosexual condition was in the text until something about 2004 or so when the text was changed to This inclination, which is objectively disordered.  While it may, indeed, be true of at least some that they do not choose their homosexual condition, this is a point unrelated to the issue of objectively disordered.  Children are born with many conditions not of their choice but the result of a sinful world in which brokenness exists not only in material condition but in spiritual and in which desire is tainted by sin as much as act and choice.  Yet, the question remains why changes like this would not be transparent and why there would not be explanation for the change.  Coupled with Pope Francis' words that God made them gay, this represents a distinct softening of the previous stance and a shift away from the very idea that homosexuality is disordered.  If that is the case, then my premise still stands.  The most dangerous changes in the faith are the ones that enter through the back door without debate and not necessarily the ones on which discussion or even a vote is taken.  Too often, the discussion follows the acceptance of change and the vote merely affirms the change already embedded in the hearts and minds of the people.

 

[ravenwolf]

Maybe burning books is not all bad, the cannon, book of mormon,the book the JWs use to prove their point, well hell just burn all of the religious books except the Bible.

[Mrs. Don-o]

You're still not getting the meaning of "Magisterium."

It's not a group word or collective word for "the Pope and Bishops."

It's not a committee or body of people at all. (For instance, you couldn't say "The Magisterium is meeting this afternoon at 1:00 p.m.")

It's the office, the authority of the Popes (plural, going back to Peter) and the Bishops in union with those Popes.

For instance, you could say "The Magisterium is the Pope's limited authority to faithfully transmit the Deposit of Doctrine --- that is, to hand it on without any change in its sense and meaning, and to explain it --- and not to rescind it or oppose it."

And you could say, "If the Pope is writing about Friedman's Market Economics or stellar parallax, his opinions are outside of the Papal Magisterium."

And you could also say,"If the Pope is writing to argue with or refute the teachings of his papal predecessors, his opinions are outside of the Papal Magisterium."

---

Please read these examples of correct usage, and understand that we're talking about an office or authority which has limits and has particular content. We are not talking about particular individuals and their every opinion.

If you ever became a Catholic of a sort, I'd still be disagreeing with you, because you have the makings of an ardent, over-the-top ultramontane Catholic like William Ward.

[ealgeone]

Your example continues to illustrate my statement the Roman Catholic “Tradition “ has, does and will change.

[ealgeone]

You're still not getting the meaning of "Magisterium." It's not a group word or collective word for "the Pope and Bishops." It's not a committee or body of people at all. (For instance, you couldn't say "The Magisterium is meeting this afternoon at 1:00 p.m.")

No. I get what you're saying. But somebody has to articulate this "magisterium"...and that's the pope and bishops of Roman Catholicism.

For instance, you could say "The Magisterium is the Pope's limited authority to faithfully transmit the Deposit of Doctrine --- that is, to hand it on without any change in its sense and meaning, and to explain it --- and not to rescind it or oppose it."

Except, regarding the "Deposit of Doctrine", this has changed numerous times over the centuries....and Rome's own documents attest to that....and if Roman Catholics would objectively evaluate their denomination's history they'd see this.

As a Christian, it's been pretty easy to read Rome's documents objectively and see the changes.

Roman Catholicism continues to labor under the false premise they are "handing down" everything, and nothing more, that the Apostles taught. History shows that just is not the case. The disagreement between just V1 and V2 Roman Catholics illustrates this....as does this current issue with Rome's pope.

And we have on these very threads numerous Roman Catholics, who when confronted when their own documents such as Unam Sanctam, seemingly dismiss them as they don't agree with them. That "magisterium" you're holding up isn't much good is it if Roman Catholics aren't willing to follow their own denomination's teachings.

*********************

Scripture does not change......Roman Catholic "Tradition" has, does and will change again.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Do you get a cookie when you've said that 25 times?

`

`

I think the word you're thinking of is "doctrine," which is related to, but not exactly the same as, "Tradition."

Doctrine develops.

Development is a kind of change in which a thing unfolds its own, proper nature from within, like a zygote which develops into a teenager.

Corruption is a kind of change, in which the original entity is devoured by abnormal growth, like a zygote which develops into a hydatidiform mole.

One wants the former. Not the latter.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Somebody has to articulate this "magisterium"...and that's the pope and bishops of Roman Catholicism."

Quite true. And of Eastern Orthodoxy as well, as the EO's accepted the first Seven Ecumenical Councils where doctrine was articulated and developeded.

And note that when it gets "articulated," it begins to develop a definite form (like the zygote developing into a teenager, which I mentioned before.)

Sometimes one "articulator" or a group of "articulators" might, perhaps inadvertently, start trying to force development into a different body plan. An example would be, the 4th century bishops and theologians who became fascinated by the doctrine of the Alexandrian priest Arius, which became known as Arianism.

Practically all Christian communities now accept a coequal Trinitarianism, by which we know that the Divine Persons of the Trinity are of one essence, are equally omnipotent, equally eternal, equally divine, and united so completely that the Trinity is rightly called "One God."

Arius, reading the same 73 books of the Bible that all of Christendom did, nevertheless came up with a different concept, that only God the Father is "God" rightly so called, and that the other Persons did not exist from eternity, but come into being later: he said "there was a time when the Son was not."

The correct Christology was developed ---worked out --- at the Nicene Council. Yet the Arian idea of the Son and Holy Spirit as some sort of derivative sub-gods or noble creatures, who have none of the distinct characteristics of God's own being, persisted here and there almost until the early 8th century.

You can see how important it is that the whole Church receive and believe the developed (there's that word) Nicaean, Orthodox/Catholic doctrines and definitions of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and ultimately our Salvation by Christ's uniquely sufficient Divine power.

Very likely the eastern Syrian Christians who rejected the Nicene Council (or some of the other Councils,like Chalcedon) and kept some form of Arianism (Nestorianism) in which neither Jesus (the Word) nor the Holy Spirit are held to be God, reached the Arabian peninsula before the time of Mohammad and had a decisive impact on the corrupt development of Islam (there's the contrast, corrupt development) and ended up as a fragment of Islam which holds Jesus to be a mere prophet, and the Holy Spirit to be -- Muhammad!

Or, in the West, this turned into (just as oddly) Unitarianism.

Tagline.

[Marchmain]

Good. This is getting funny.

[Marchmain]

So you believe the “Word Incarnate” is a book?! Gosh, even simpler than I expected. Don’t you have any spiritual mysteries, inexplicable truths, or complex theology? Or is the Bible used like a slide-rule?

[Mom MD]

The Wod incarnate is Jesus Christ and He is incredibly more complex tha I will ever understand. The written Word the Bible is the timeless inspired Truth God has caused to be writing for His people. It in infinitely deeper and more interesting than whatever man made rituals and mysteries your sect has come up with. To say your sect is far more interesting than the boring Book inspired by God puts you outside Christian belief. You can plead your case to the One who caused it to be written. I doubt He will be amused. How’s that for easy?

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Except, regarding the "Deposit of Doctrine", this has changed numerous times over the centuries....and Rome's own documents attest to that....and if Roman Catholics would objectively evaluate their denomination's history they'd see this."

---

You keep belaboring something nobody's arguing with you about.

---

Doctrine legitimately changes in the sense of development. Trinity. Incarnation. Eggs develop into chickens. We already went over that.

Doctrine can also face negative changes which can be corruption or internal incoherence or de-development or imaginative leaps or loss. For instance the

• competing, incompatible forms of Christian chiliasm
  • Historicism,
  • Futurism,
  • Preterism,
  • Idealism,
  • Dispensationalism,
  • Amillennialism,
  • Postmillennialism,
  • Premillennialism,
  • Prewrath Rapture,
  • Posttribulation Rapture,
  • Dispensationalism
• Five Solas (not found in the Bible) including
  • "Faith Alone" (found in the Bible here: "Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only." James 2:24 KJV),
• British Israelism,
• Oneness Pentecostalism,
• Prosperity Gospel,
• Christian Torah-ism,
• Anabaptism,
• Emerging Church movement,
• Seeker-Friendly Church,
• Gay Christian movement,
• Stone-Campbell movement,
• Fundamentalism
  • churches with one Sacrament,
  • Two Sacraments,
  • No Sacraments,
  • Two ordinances
  • No ordinances
  • having female pastors,
  • having female ministers but not pastors,
  • having female elders or deacons but not ministers or pastors
  • infant baptism,
  • adolescent baptism,
  • adult baptism,
  • Baptism of the Spirit,
  • baptism optional
  • and on and on.

"But Scripture doesn't change!"

... he says.

Yeah.

Explain to me why you only have 66 books instead of 73.

[Luircin]

Because the Catholics only had 66 books until Trent?

Actually, it’s more like the Catholics had NO canon until Trent and the 66 ‘Protestant’ books were everything that was commonly accepted among a significant subset of Catholics. Then Rome chose the other canon list for... reasons.

I won’t list the possible reasons because it would prolly come off as overly confrontational.

But the short version is that the Reformers didn’t take books out of the canon because there WAS no official canon until after Trent.

[Al Hitan]

But the short version is that the Reformers didn’t take books out of the canon because there WAS no official canon until after Trent.

Let's assume your statement is true, which it isn't since the Catholic canon was just reaffirmed by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (1546).

If the Catholic canon hadn't been established until Trent, it was still established before the Protestants decided definitively on theirs.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Good Luircin, you might want to reconsider this in terms of historic text research.

Here's a good reference from a Free Republic post a couple years back..

Thanks be to God for protecting Scripture through 20 tumultuous centuries. Think of the inspired, godly men who treasured, hand-wrote, re-copied, distributed, physically preserved and loved these God-Breathed Texts through two millennia, through heroic efforts, generation after generation --- all by the power of the Our Lord the Holy Spirit, Whose guidance they continually sought and continually received.

The notion that a clear and complete NT canon existed from the end of the first century, has no historic support. Both the OT and the NT canon are the result of development spurred by dispute and controversy --- and that is NOT to say that all such controversy died out completely even after the canon of Scripture was determined in the late 4th century.

The difficulty of communication and travel, and the sheer expense of reproducing texts, led individual bishops to draw up their own lists of the inspired books they considered most important, and these were not necessarily considered complete and definitive, though they largely agreed.

But as you can imagine, even in the era of the Empire's persecutions, far-flung churches were still eager to make their collections as complete and correct as possible.

So it didn't take that long. The Synod of Rome in 386 was called by Pope Damasus I and the books deemed canonical in that council are identical to the canon we have today.

At local Synods at Carthage and Hippo, the same books were determined to be canonical. (These were regional councils not binding on the whole church.)

In 405 Pope Innocent I AGAIN affirmed the canon determined by these councils, and that canon has never changed.

This whole 73-book collection, multiple times reiterated, was reaffirmed AGAIN at Trent in the 16th century. So was the 73-book canon somehow "invented" at Trent? Not at all. It was urgently reaffirmed because various Reformers and scholars (divided among themselves, as well) had thrown everything into question in the 16th century.

Luther, I think,considered de-canonizing Hebrews and the Epistle of James; some Reformers wanted to set aside the second and third Epistles of John and Revelation. Some thought the Epistle of Jud was dubious. Some loved Tobit but really hated II Maccabees, etc. It was a wild time. I think it's hard for us to imagine how chaotic things got.

The fact that Trent didn't "evolve", invent, impose, or innovate the Canon is easy to verify because the Eastern Orthodox have the exact same 27-book NT AND the whole OT complete with the Deutero-canonicals, and they split from Rome 500 years before Trent.

Glory be to Our Lord Jesus Christ, the work of God the Holy Spirit, and the Plan of the Eternal Father, forever and ever, Amen.

[Mrs. Don-o]

“Jud” - “Jude”

[Luircin]

I will hold my tongue on what I think of this ‘reaffirming’ considering what the Catholic scholars were saying about the canon of Scripture before Trent.

[Al Hitan]

I will hold my tongue on what I think of this ‘reaffirming’ considering what the Catholic scholars were saying about the canon of Scripture before Trent.

That's probably a good idea.

Ecumenical Council of Florence
Session 11
4 February 1442

Most firmly it believes, professes and preaches that the one true God, Father, Son and holy Spirit, is the creator of all things that are, visible and invisible, who, when he willed it, made from his own goodness all creatures, both spiritual and corporeal, good indeed because they are made by the supreme good, but mutable because they are made from nothing, and it asserts that there is no nature of evil because every nature, in so far as it is a nature, is good. It professes that one and the same God is the author of the old and the new Testament — that is, the law and the prophets, and the gospel — since the saints of both testaments spoke under the inspiration of the same Spirit. It accepts and venerates their books, whose titles are as follows.

Five books of Moses, namely Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; Joshua, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kings, two of Paralipomenon, Esdras, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Job, Psalms of David, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Ezechiel, Daniel; the twelve minor prophets, namely Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi; two books of the Maccabees; the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; fourteen letters of Paul, to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, two to the Thessalonians, to the Colossians, two to Timothy, to Titus, to Philemon, to the Hebrews; two letters of Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude; Acts of the Apostles; Apocalypse of John.

[Luircin]

Yes, I’m aware.

But I am aware of other things as well, such as how, once again, Catholic scholars were allowed to question canonical books all the way into the 1500s.

Until they needed a reason to bash those nasty Lutherans that is.

Much like how some Caths on this board NEVER quote Scripture unless it’s to bash those nasty Christians.

[Al Hitan]

But I am aware of other things as well, such as how, once again, Catholic scholars were allowed to question canonical books all the way into the 1500s.

Did the canon change between the Ecumenical Councils of Florence and Trent?

Until they needed a reason to bash those nasty Lutherans that is. Much like how some Caths on this board NEVER quote Scripture unless it’s to bash those nasty Christians.

I'm sorry you take such a beating.

[Luircin]

Oh come on, Al.

1: Lay off the personal attacks. I know it’s a tough hurdle, but I’m sure you can do it.

2: When Catholic Bibles as late as 1533 were still including books like the “gospel of Nicodemus” and the “epistle to the Ladoceans,” the Papacy seriously has no ground to stand on when accusing the Reformers of messing with Scripture.

3: The books in the canon that you just printed still completely contradict Catholic doctrine anyways.

[kearnyirish2]

I’ve never seen anything in the catechism allowing “Eucharistic ministers” - but the American Church pretends its carved in stone. The “extraordinary ministers” are for emergencies, and allowed on a case-by-case basis.