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bear06
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Well then you must have thought Leo X a really big wimp. Half of the Church left under him.
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TMC
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It is hard to “prove” anything in this realm, as you know, because each person simply adopts his own definitions. Nonetheless I will comment on a few things.
The Canon Laws do not support the SSPX position. My point has consisently been that they do not. You can defend the wisdom of the Canon all you want, but I have not attacked it.
This is the crux of the matter. I think we agree there, don’t we?
LeFebvre’s point of view was that the Traditions of the Church could not survive without the four bishops he had hand selected. I understand that you really believe that. My problem is that believing that the Deposit of Faith was transmitted by LeFebvre to these men, but has not been faithfully retained by the Church meaning by John Paul, the Cardinals, and the other Bishops, is a denial that the Chair of Rome retains Apostolic Succession or the Charism of Truth. What is hard to understand is why anyone that believes that would refuse to admit it.
This is not the Catholic faith. Here is one “policy” difference that is really a teaching. By insisting that the Vatican II documents do not mean what they say, SSPX sidesteps its dissent on the teachings in them.
The Catholic faith teaches that although the Catholic faith is the one true faith and superior to other Christian denominations, non-Catholic Christians can also be saved:
And those non-Christians touched by Christ in their hearts but who have never praised Him with their lips can also be saved:
This is one of those Vatican II teachings that you would like to have reinterpreted. Here is what VII said on the topic in GAUDIUM ET SPES:
I agree that this is about more than the form of the Mass. Why can’t you admit that SSPX followers dissent from core Church teachings on the nature of salvation?
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ThereCanBeOnly1
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Sure
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Therecanbeonly1,
I apologize if I sounded uncharitable. However, I find it uncharitable, as well as ridiculously wrong, when people refer to John Paul II’s works as “navel-gazing.” JP II’s Veritatis Splendor is the preeminent work dismantling modernism! It is a thoroughly Thomistic document. The fact that some say he lacks “metaphysics” or that his works are “navel-gazing” is truly laughable, and leads me to believe that the people who state such things have never even bothered to read the work in question.
I apologize if I sounded uncharitable. However, I find it uncharitable, as well as ridiculously wrong, when people refer to John Paul II’s works as “navel-gazing.” JP II’s Veritatis Splendor is the preeminent work dismantling modernism! It is a thoroughly Thomistic document. The fact that some say he lacks “metaphysics” or that his works are “navel-gazing” is truly laughable, and leads me to believe that the people who state such things have never even bothered to read the work in question.
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bear06
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Let’s see what some of your heroes have said on the issue:
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TMC
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I agree that this issues are related. The Church began to lose some of its grip on the faithful for a variety of interrelated reasons. As a result, some folks began to disregard teachings they were uncomfortable with and to pick and choose what to obey and what to disregard. One of those groups was SSPX.
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ThereCanBeOnly1
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Yes, I understand your frustration.
Dismantling of modernism is a wonderful thing.
God Bless you.
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GerardP
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Actually you’ll find that Bishop Williamson did a brilliant analysis exposing the subtle problems in Veritatis Splendor.
sspx.ca/Documents/Bishop-Williamson/March1-1994.htm
A quick example:
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GerardP
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I would say a stronger case can be made against the conciliar and post conciliar Bishos and Popes. Hardly ever a mention of Hell. Never to my knowledge a clear call to convert to the Catholic faith as the necessary means of salvation.
St. Paul did warn of a great Apostasy. Fr. Vincent Miceli S. J. believed in the early 1980’s that we were already in the midst of a grave apostasy within the Church.
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Sure
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That’s nice. Have YOU read it and can you point to any passages in context as problematic?
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GerardP
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I think they are too liberal on that position regarding EENS. The interesting thing is that it just shows you how far into “reducing dogma to a meaningless formula” that Pius XII warned about in Humani Generis.
The problem that LeFebvre saw was the destruction of the missionary efforts to convert. JPII in Crossing the Threshold of Hope spoke about people being saved “by” the Catholic Church instead of “in” the Catholic Church.
That’s extrapolating an idea till it no longer retains it’s essential meaning. Right out of Von Balthazar and Rahner.
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GerardP
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Canon Lawyers are divided on the issue. The Pope was not a Canon Lawyer instead he chose to ignore Canon Law. That decision will eventually be reversed.
Not at all. LeFebvre responded according to his state of life. The faithful pleaded to him after all attempts at getting Paul VI to do something failed. LeFebvre was obligated to do what he could.
This same dynamic continued through the reign of JPII who did nothing to restore the tradition of the Church and defend the faith.
LeFebvre simply provided a holding action for the souls who requested bread and recieved stones from the rest of the heirarchy.
I don’t know what you mean by “transmitted.” The Deposit of Faith is what it is. The bishops were consecrated as "sacrament machines for ordinations and confirmations. That is why they have no territories and are subject to the General Superior. Bishop Fellay is the only bishop who has been given voluntarily authority over the society by the member priests. But they have no jurisdiction.
That doesn’t hold water with what I’ve heard Bishop Williamson say in his sermons, interviews and classes. He says only the Pope can save the Church short of Divine Intervention.
I think the crux of the problem is that you don’t understand the real position of the SSPX.
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Sure
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Wow. I just read Bishop Williamson’s article and got the distinct impression that the majority of Veritatis Spelndor went significantly over his head. He also seems to have great difficulty creating footnotes or citing page numbers for his citations. I have to tell you if he were to submit this paper in a philosophy class, the grade would not be pretty. He says the Pope is unduly influenced by Kant but provides absolutely no reference to support this assertion.
His attempt to refute the Pope’s section condemning proportionalism is laughable. He launches into an example of a couple using the pill because their “freedom of conscience” says they can??? Apparently, Bishop Williamson missed this statement on what freedom of conscience means:
He seems confused and unable to articulate his points. He constantly refers not to actual text, but to his own summary of the text at the beginning of the paper (a telling tactic, indeed). It is as though he builds his strawmen and then proceeds to knock them down.
Lastly, and I mean this most charitably, I question Bishop Williamson’s depth of study in the subject of philosophy. From his biography it appears as though he only has an undergraduate degree and nothing more???
Maybe you could post a small section (one paragraph perhaps) of Veritatis Splendor and then dissect it for us in order to reveal the errors.
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GerardP
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I wrote:
*The Grace of the Church operates outside of the Church only to draw people into the Church. Not to save non-Catholics. *
Proof of that would be how Vatican II allows the Vernacular but doesn’t say how much. Now we have all-vernacular masses that were never envisaged by the Council itself but they were envisaged by modernists at the Council.
It’s significant and important that a Protestant baby be Baptized legitimately. If they die prior to the age of reason, they will go to Heaven as a baptized member of the Catholic Church.
It doesn’t mean anything more than that and similar examples that were always understood by the Church.
*The Grace of the Church operates outside of the Church only to draw people into the Church. Not to save non-Catholics. *
Yes it is. Read the Athanasian Creed.
The SSPX says the documents are ambiguous and prone to misinterpretation. Bishop Williamson said, “You can drag the language back onto the high ground and present it as Catholic but the very fact that you can put another interpretation on it, shows the problem.”
Proof of that would be how Vatican II allows the Vernacular but doesn’t say how much. Now we have all-vernacular masses that were never envisaged by the Council itself but they were envisaged by modernists at the Council.
One true faith. That means that all others are false faiths.
Here’s where you are misinterpreting the document. “Means of Salvation” can only mean a secondary means by which the Holy Ghost leads them to the primary means of Salvation. (ie. the Catholic Church) Read the collection of Cardinal Bea’s speeches and articles in the book “On the Unity of Christians” You’ll be shocked at how clear he was about the meaning of ecumenism.
It’s significant and important that a Protestant baby be Baptized legitimately. If they die prior to the age of reason, they will go to Heaven as a baptized member of the Catholic Church.
It doesn’t mean anything more than that and similar examples that were always understood by the Church.
That only means what St. Thomas taught. “If necessary God will send an Angel to instruct them.” It doesn’t mean false religions have any merit on their own.
This is dancing around for Ecumenism’s sake. Nothing in there is new and it was all expressed more clearly prior to the Council.
Because they don’t. But the conservatives and liberals deviate from what the Church is actually teaching by extrapolating what the Council said and falling into the traps that the language provides.
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bear06
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bear06
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Who, Lefebvre, Schmidberger and Fellay?
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bear06
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Always, always watch this with radical traditionalists. Footnotes and citations don’t seem to concern them. If they say it, we’re just supposed to accept it as fact. Unfortunately, far too many people fall for this. I’ve seen several of those who realized this come out of the SSPX because they realize the faultiness of the statements.
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Sure
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Yes, surprisingly enough the SSPX rejects the Feeneyite position. Which makes me wonder what their problem is with Unitatis Redintigratio.Who, Lefebvre, Schmidberger and Fellay?
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Sure
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Did you read the link? That paper would be utterly failed by any University professor. I’m sort of embarassed for the bishop, I mean, what must his flock think of him after reading that jumbled mess?
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bear06
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I’m just trying to ascertain if Gerard is referring to the above 3 being liberal on the subject or someone else. I think it funny that he would find them so liberal on a matter so serious and encourage people to follow them.
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