Argument with a priest / heresy / kneeling for Communion

[Cat]

Perhaps a study of recent history, notably the last 40 years, is in order…
Most priests and bishops and even cardinals seem to be at least dissenters, the liturgy is in disarray, catholic teaching which results in >90% of catholic school leavers apostising, traditional Mass, devotions, practices and beliefs suppresses and scorned. In short, the Church is in CRISIS comparable to Arian crisis of the 4th century. Should people have followed the arian bishops then instead of “find[ing] passages that support [their] own beliefs” in the Council of Nicæa?

But maybe I should listen to my bishop… He recently reduced the Traditional Mass to an indult for nostaglic old folks, he advised against frequent Confession, he said Church teaching on the evils of contraception could be wrong and said we can’t teach the youth about salvation! All in the same interview!! Here’s the interview.
Yes, great spiritual leadership!

Last week the Archbishop of Freiburg said that Christ did not die for our sins but to be in “solidarity” with the poor!

Like in the times of Arianism, one cannot trust the bishops or priests to teach or even practice the Faith. The only thing we can trust to come forth is novelty and scandal.

Boldface (mine) above–do you realize exactly what you are saying?

You are saying that the shepherds of the Church cannot be trusted.

Then who IS to be trusted? Who do YOU put your trust in?

Perhaps I am putting words into your mouth, but it seems to me that you are stating that we can only trust ourselves to correctly interpret the teachings of Holy Mother Church and apply them.

And that’s what I grew up hearing in the evangelical Protestant churches.

Is this what you are saying? If not, then who can we trust?

I’m very disturbed by your statement.

 

[Layman]

Bishops and priests are men. They make mistakes.

This doesn’t mean you ‘bash’ them. That’s poor sport, and ignoble. But you can’t be utterly supine, either.

I propose that the current generation of clergy seem to be affected by modernism; an urge to ‘update’ doctrine and discipline, to play down Hell, sin and damnation and to soft-pedal parts of our faith that are ‘unacceptable’ to liberals.

Your priest or bishop won’t be able to stand beside you at your hour of Judgement. Therefore, it is incumbent on every Catholic to make sure they are in good odour with Jesus; by reading the Bible, obeying the Commandments, studying the lives of the Saints, reading your cathecism, searching one’s conscience and attending the sacraments dutifully. If in doubt, go the harder road.

**Obedience is good, as it damps down pride. **You are not required, however, to obey the edicts of clergy that incline you towards sin or heresy.

The Arian heresy is the most glaring example of where the clergy got it wrong. In modern times, some clergy might play down Transubstantiation or say contraception is ok. They are wrong too. You can’t leave your mind at home when you go to church.

We have our conscience, as well as Tradition, the Sacraments, our clergy, the Bible and the help of Heaven and the Holy Souls, to guide us. I propose a good Catholic uses all of these to become righteous in the sight of God, wheras other religions, like Protestantism, have one or more missing, and thus their followers are more inclined to error and suffering.

I read in a book about early Orthodox monks that one stern elderly one was asked *“What is the greatest of all the monastic virtues?”, *to which he replied “Discernment!”. And then added afterwards “Um, and there was something about love”.

 

[Shin]

Boldface (mine) above–do you realize exactly what you are saying?

You are saying that the shepherds of the Church cannot be trusted.

Then who IS to be trusted? Who do YOU put your trust in?

Perhaps I am putting words into your mouth, but it seems to me that you are stating that we can only trust ourselves to correctly interpret the teachings of Holy Mother Church and apply them.

And that’s what I grew up hearing in the evangelical Protestant churches.

Is this what you are saying? If not, then who can we trust?

I’m very disturbed by your statement.

Holy Mother Church is something broader, greater, and deeper than whoever is in office at the current time. And yes you have a personal responsibility in regards to truth and when priest, bishops, and popes fail – and you have previous saints, popes, and clear tradition to learn from that is not something like the esoteric tea leaf reading Protestants do, but is actually, real, clear and precisely defined and expressed.

One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic. The four marks from the Apostle’s Creed. We have clear Tradition, dogma and doctrine.

Trust the saints.

Living in China today, living in England during the Anglican schism where I believe only 2 bishops remained Catholic, the vast majority fell, living during the Arian schism, where the majority of Eastern bishops fell and a saint could be excommunicated, living during the Orthodox schism, living during the Western Schism where there were three declared popes and the real one supported by no cardinals – how would you have reacted during those times? How today?

Catholicism can’t be a reaction against Protestantism, it has to be what it really is because it is the One True Church.

We live in very troubled times. It is reported at the end of time that the mass will be stopped and there will be great apostasy everywhere. We go through types or foreshadowings of this before – Napoleon is a type of the anti-Christ for example, looting the Vatican, imprisoning the Pope. We have to be able to be the Lord’s people in comfortable times and in times of error – the latter of which, like the sin of man, are far more prevalent than any would wish.

I do not want to see people running around in a panic, but people need to be realistic rather than desire to live comfortable lives without their eyes open to how truly difficult these times are.

Our culture today is diametrically opposed to the one of several decades ago, which was not splendid save in relation to this one. Things are commonly taught, done and believed that would have you thrown in jail previously – and that culture before then, was not Catholic either.

If you want to be holy and save your soul, you have to pay attention to the whole teachings of the Catholic Church, not just what is right in front of your nose.

 

[TMC]

Perhaps a study of recent history, notably the last 40 years, is in order…
Most priests and bishops and even cardinals seem to be at least dissenters, the liturgy is in disarray, catholic teaching which results in >90% of catholic school leavers apostising, traditional Mass, devotions, practices and beliefs suppresses and scorned. In short, the Church is in CRISIS comparable to Arian crisis of the 4th century. Should people have followed the arian bishops then instead of “find[ing] passages that support [their] own beliefs” in the Council of Nicæa?

But maybe I should listen to my bishop… He recently reduced the Traditional Mass to an indult for nostaglic old folks, he advised against frequent Confession, he said Church teaching on the evils of contraception could be wrong and said we can’t teach the youth about salvation! All in the same interview!! Here’s the interview.
Yes, great spiritual leadership!

Last week the Archbishop of Freiburg said that Christ did not die for our sins but to be in “solidarity” with the poor!

Like in the times of Arianism, one cannot trust the bishops or priests to teach or even practice the Faith. The only thing we can trust to come forth is novelty and scandal.

I read the interview with your bishop. I liked it, he sounds like a good bishop to me. I think you are putting a bit of “spin” on his words – I didn’t find any error in anything that he said. Is there something specific that he said in the interview that you think goes against Church teaching?

 

[Hesychios]

…

 

[wisdomseeker]

sometimes i just wonder if what the holy father says has been passed on to the priests.
i wonder if the bishops are blocking what the holy father is saying so the priests are not obeying the holy father but the bishops only. things are not what they were any more. we know that each bishop seems to be doing their own thing. i see a lot of pride in the bishop of my area. sad to say this.

 

[japhy]

I hereby refuse to read these various church rubrics documents by myself without the guidance of the ordained Catholic clergy, ever again.

Do you regularly encounter priests and bishops who guide their flocks through these liturgical documents?

The priest in question, if he did say that Christ is just as present in the Eucharist as he is in the proclaiming of the Gospels, is incorrect. Jesus is not substantially present in his body, blood, soul, and divinity in the proclamation of the Scripture. Consider the teaching of the Church as put forth by Pope Paul VI in 1965:
Various Ways in Which Christ is Present

1. … Christ is present in His Church when she prays… He is present in the Church as she performs her works of mercy… He is present in the Church as she moves along on her pilgrimage with a longing to reach the portals of eternal life…
2. In still another very genuine way, He is present in the Church as she preaches, since the Gospel which she proclaims is the word of God, and it is only in the name of Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, and by His authority and with His help that it is preached…
3. He is present in His Church as she rules and governs the People of God, since her sacred power comes from Christ and since Christ, the “Shepherd of Shepherds”, is present in the bishops who exercise that power, in keeping with the promise He made to the Apostles.
4. Moreover, Christ is present in His Church in a still more sublime manner as she offers the Sacrifice of the Mass in His name; He is present in her as she administers the sacraments. …

The Highest Kind of Presence

But there is another way in which Christ is present in His Church, a way that surpasses all the others. It is His presence in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which is, for this reason, “a more consoling source of devotion, a lovelier object of contemplation and holier in what it contains” than all the other sacraments; for it contains Christ Himself and it is “a kind of consummation of the spiritual life, and in a sense the goal of all the sacraments”.

1. This presence is called “real” not to exclude the idea that the others are “real” too, but rather to indicate presence par excellence, because it is substantial and through it Christ becomes present whole and entire, God and man.
   Christ is present in the Eucharist in a way that surpasses all others, case closed.

 

[paperwight]

I read the interview with your bishop. I liked it, he sounds like a good bishop to me. I think you are putting a bit of “spin” on his words – I didn’t find any error in anything that he said. Is there something specific that he said in the interview that you think goes against Church teaching?

I totally agree. For instance, the Bishop didn’t say we can’t teach young people about salvation in the sense the OP implies i.e. that we are forbidden.The Bishop plainly meant we can’t in the sense that a friend might say, ‘You can’t imagine how I felt’. In other words, ‘can’t’ as being ‘not able to’, not ‘forbidden’.

Another example : HV was not an infallible document, so of course it could be changed. Birth control is not mentioned in the Gospels or Epistles. If it were so high in the hierarchy of truths, in other words, if it had to be believed as vital to the Christian message, it would be in the Creeds.

 

[AlanF]

Boldface (mine) above–do you realize exactly what you are saying?

You are saying that the shepherds of the Church cannot be trusted.

Then who IS to be trusted? Who do YOU put your trust in?

Perhaps I am putting words into your mouth, but it seems to me that you are stating that we can only trust ourselves to correctly interpret the teachings of Holy Mother Church and apply them.

And that’s what I grew up hearing in the evangelical Protestant churches.

Is this what you are saying? If not, then who can we trust?

I’m very disturbed by your statement.

I won’t write a long answer because Shin already answered this quite well.

MOST (not all) of the shepherds can’t be trusted, this is quite plain.
The best thing to do is to read catechisms, encyclicals, Bible, Fathers, Saints, Councils etc. These will give us a rather unambiguous education in what we believe, there is no room for many pseudo-catholic sects all claiming to have the true teaching, as is true in Protestantism and you imply would happen to us if we were to be suspicious of modernist bishops.

We don’t just look at what the present bishops say but at the eternal teaching of the Church, this is true even when the Church isn’t in crisis.

 

[Shin]

I won’t write a long answer because Shin already answered this quite well.

MOST (not all) of the shepherds can’t be trusted, this is quite plain.
The best thing to do is to read catechisms, encyclicals, Bible, Fathers, Saints, Councils etc. These will give us a rather unambiguous education in what we believe, there is no room for many pseudo-catholic sects all claiming to have the true teaching, as is true in Protestantism and you imply would happen to us if we were to be suspicious of modernist bishops.

We don’t just look at what the present bishops say but at the eternal teaching of the Church, this is true even when the Church isn’t in crisis.

I empathize with people’s desires to turn over their spiritual lives to whatever spiritual director is in their local area. This desire is normally: A. to excess, and B. exercised imprudently.

Turn to the saints, yes! The catechisms, the Councils!

The ‘Sensus Traditionis’ site below has a series on Ecclesiology which gives a good idea of how fallible and infallible the Church is ordinarily and what respect we owe it – though I do not necessarily agree with the priest’s quibble with St. Robert Bellarmine’s interpretation.

 

[Dempsey1919]

Another example : HV was not an infallible document, so of course it could be changed. Birth control is not mentioned in the Gospels or Epistles. If it were so high in the hierarchy of truths, in other words, if it had to be believed as vital to the Christian message, it would be in the Creeds.

The teachings of Humane Vitae are Apostolic and will never be changed. People who believe that the Church will change the teaching on artificial birth control are wishful thinkers at best, and dissenters at worst.

Humane Vitae is here to stay.

 

[AlanF]

I totally agree. For instance, the Bishop didn’t say we can’t teach young people about salvation in the sense the OP implies i.e. that we are forbidden.The Bishop plainly meant we can’t in the sense that a friend might say, ‘You can’t imagine how I felt’. In other words, ‘can’t’ as being ‘not able to’, not ‘forbidden’.

Another example : HV was not an infallible document, so of course it could be changed. Birth control is not mentioned in the Gospels or Epistles. If it were so high in the hierarchy of truths, in other words, if it had to be believed as vital to the Christian message, it would be in the Creeds.

Oh dear.
I didn’t say he said we are ‘forbidden’ to teach about salvation but what you said, we are apparently not able. This is nonsense, just because the currently don’t teach the faith doesn’t mean they can’t, and experience shows they can get very interested. They must teach about salvation, because without salvation what is the point of Christianity? If we can’t do that, we are failing as a Church.

The stuff about Frequent Confession defies the teaching of all the Popes sinse at least Pius XII, who said we should confess our venial and habitual sins, yet His Excellency dismisses this as saying “there is no conversion”. Well, actually there is conversion, people try to stop but it’s habitual, that’s why they’re confessing it!

He says a lot of things contrary to Summorum Pontificum and the experience of TLMs (the usual things, really), but that’s for another thread.

As for Humanæ Vitæ, it is a repeat of the constant teaching of the Church on this matter. One wouldn’t say, for example, that Church teaching on pre-marital sex, or homosexual sex, or incest or bestiality could be wrong just because they technically haven’t been defined ex cathedra. For him as a successor to the Apostles to say “In the great scheme of things I don’t think it’s high up the list [of whether it matters to disobey this teaching].” The fact is it’s a mortal sin and if you know what the Church teaches and you do it and don’t repent, it will damn you. For a bishop to say that is horrific.

This interview caused dismay among faithful catholics, many unhappy letters in the Catholic Herald, many angry blogs and articles by Pro Ecclesia Et Pontifice; and you say you don’t find anything wrong with it…

Here’s an example of the scandal it caused, a letter sent into the Catholic Herald, published on 9th Jan 2009.

SIR - A big thank-you to Bishop Kieran for the interview he gave to Andrew Brown (Christmastide Supplement, December 19). How heart-warming to hear affirmation of so many of our views. We sometimes worry about our doubts and questionings and it was a real Christmas present to read the encouraging lack of dogmatism and rigidity in his words and the emphasis on loving God and loving your neighbour.

Can you be a Catholic and dissent? Yes, we say - and the bishop didn’t actually disagree. We were two of the three or four people at West Hoathly, in Worth parish, who asked him about the Latin Mass and were so cheered by his reply. Do you remember the old Bing Crosby song “Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative…” Now there’s a rallying cry for the present day Catholic Church.

Yours faithfully,
Hugh and Marguerite Pointer
East Grinstead, West Sussex

 

[japhy]

Another example : HV was not an infallible document, so of course it could be changed. Birth control is not mentioned in the Gospels or Epistles. If it were so high in the hierarchy of truths, in other words, if it had to be believed as vital to the Christian message, it would be in the Creeds.

You know what else isn’t in the Nicene Creed? The Eucharist. The only sacrament is speaks of is Baptism, and it doesn’t even use the word “sacrament”. The Pope’s not in there, nor are bishops and priests. Sexual morality isn’t in there. I could go on and on. For that matter, there are no COMMANDMENTS in the Creed! We’re not told to love one another!

The Creeds are not the be-all and end-all of the faith.

Humanae Vitae, whether or not it contained infallible definitions, it was repeating the constant Magisterium of the Church on contraception. It didn’t teach anything new, that I know of.
14. Therefore We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. (14) Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary. (15)

(14) See Council of Trent Roman Catechism, Part II, ch. 8; Pius XI, encyc. letter Casti connubii: AAS 22 (1930), 562-564; Pius XII, Address to Medico-Biological Union of St. Luke: Discorsi e radiomessaggi, VI, 191-192; Address to Midwives: AAS 43 (1951), 842-843; Address to Family Campaign and other family associations: AAS 43 (1951), 857-859; John XXIII, encyc. letter Pacem in terris: AAS 55 (1963), 259-260 [TPS IX, 15-16]; Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World of Today, no. 51: AAS 58 (1966), 1072 [TPS XI, 293].

(15) See Pius XI, encyc. letter Casti connubii: AAS 22 (1930), 565; Decree of the Holy Office, Feb. 22, 1940: AAS 32 (1940), 73; Pius XII, Address to Midwives: AAS 43

 

[paperwight]

You know what else isn’t in the Nicene Creed? The Eucharist. The only sacrament is speaks of is Baptism, and it doesn’t even use the word “sacrament”. The Pope’s not in there, nor are bishops and priests. Sexual morality isn’t in there. I could go on and on. For that matter, there are no COMMANDMENTS in the Creed! We’re not told to love one another!

The Creeds are not the be-all and end-all of the faith.

([/INDENT]

My apologies. I realise now that my email was clumsily expressed. I should have put an either/as well phrase in there somewhere.

But surely saying that we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, as in the Creeds, implies we believe in what He said? That is, regarding Holy Communion, marriage, baptism and so on, together with loving each other and respect for the Ten Commandments? So there is no need to ‘go on and on’ listing what isn’t covered in the Creeds. The Sacraments and Ten Commandments are alluded to in the Gospels, the Epistles and to some extent, the Acts of the Apostles If we say in the creeds we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, then we are saying that we believe in His reported words.

But did He mention contraception? Surely, if it was so important, He would have?

No, He didn’t. So how can it be the litmus test for His true followers?

 

[AlanF]

But did He mention contraception? Surely, if it was so important, He would have?

No, He didn’t. So how can it be the litmus test for His true followers?

Because His Church teaches it and has since the begining.

Do I detect a hint of Sola Scriptura here?

 

[japhy]

But did He mention contraception? Surely, if it was so important, He would have? No, He didn’t. So how can it be the litmus test for His true followers?

If it’s only what Jesus said as recorded in Scripture that matters, why did he say: “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26) and “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…” (John 16:13)

Why would we need the Holy Spirit to remind us of what Jesus said if it’s all in Scripture? Why would we need to be guided into all truth by a “Spirit” when we can just look it up in a book?

Or are these verses obsolete now that we have the Bible?

When there was controversy in the infant Church about Gentiles and the Mosaic Law, did they just look the answer up in Scripture? (No, that wasn’t possible.) Did they try to remember what Jesus said? (Doesn’t seem like it, since we don’t have a record of him saying anything on the matter.) No, they relied on post-Pentecost revelation from God (cf. Acts 10-11) and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. (cf. Acts 15:28ff)

 

[Paul_Folbrecht]

If your name does not begin with B and end with 16 you are not competent to label anyone a heretic.

From ewtn.com/expert/answers/heresy_schism_apostasy.htm

"The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines these three sins against the faith in this way:

…

"Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; "

So, you see, in order to know if someone is a heretic or not, it is only necessary to be able to (a) read and (b) believe in the authority of the Catholic Church. It is quite as simple as that!

 

[Paul_Folbrecht]

Boldface (mine) above–do you realize exactly what you are saying?

You are saying that the shepherds of the Church cannot be trusted.

Then who IS to be trusted? Who do YOU put your trust in?

Perhaps I am putting words into your mouth, but it seems to me that you are stating that we can only trust ourselves to correctly interpret the teachings of Holy Mother Church and apply them.

18 months or so now, I think, that I’ve been off-and-on frequenting this forum. I see that the same basically illogical and un-Catholic arguments are still being used by those who don’t seem to care for Catholics who take Canon 212 seriously:

“According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.”

So, Cat, your argument is as follows:

If you say you do not trust a cleric or a cleric is not teaching in an orthodox manner, you are disobedient to the Church. You are essentially a Protestant.

Here is the refutation of this argument:

Protestantism has no source of authority other than itself. Protestants are splintered and have no unity because each individual, or at least each ‘denomination’, is essentially a magisterium unto itself.

But this is completely unlike the scenario you’re criticizing - a Catholic pointing out that a cleric is not being faithful to the Church. Because Catholicism does have a universal set of standards and teachings - we have the doctrines and dogmas of the Church. Deciding whether a cleric is teaching orthodoxy is not a matter of measuring that cleric’s teachings against one’s own, but against the Church Herself. To some degree, fine points of interpretation may come into play, but that certainly is not the case of some of the things being discussed by the OP, and many of the things discussed in this forum. To say that the supreme pontiff is one among equals in the college of bishops is heresy. To say that Christ is manifestly present in the written Word in the same manner and degree which He is present in the Eucharist is heresy.

Furthermore, or perhaps even foremost, it is so abundantly clear that the logic you are forming your argument here breaks down so easily. How many times must the Arian heresy be mentioned here before it sinks in to some that there have been periods in the history of the Church where many, even most, of the clergy could not be trusted to proclaim the orthodox faith?

So, at this point, when I see someone putting forth this same argument for literally years on end, I have to conclude one of the following:

• This person is really actually interested in preserving the current state of affairs, that is, the abuses and unorthodoxy brought about by the invalid, incorrect ‘Spirit of Vatican II’. Citing the obedience issue constantly is essentially a smoke-screen.
• The person is more interested in debate/argument than anything else.
• The person is not honestly applying their God-given intellect to the problem.
• The person, for whatever reason, is honestly confused and afraid of a situation more complex than ‘you can trust whatever your priest does/says, essentially no matter way’.

Just an honest brain dump there.

 

[Shin]

I can understand the emotional reaction against the situation, but it normally is based in a false understanding of the nature of life on earth – When you contemplate how terrible a single venial sin is… and how casual sin has always been on earth…

You understand that the penetration of the Church into the world is in a different way than people might think.

You adjust to it and live with it.

 

[Dtmccameron]

…how terrible a single venial sin is… and how casual sin has **always **been on earth…

Umm…always? It’s just, um…Wasn’t there a *very *specific action which sorta brought it about?

Anyhow, and, yes, when one can see the true horrors of sin, and evil, and truly see the … terrible price of heresy, one can come to see… where the Inquisitors were coming from. When you see how very black sin is, how insidious every sin is… But then, you can also see how burning people at the stake is also a futile affectation.

Just meaning to say that, one’s view of the Church and of God, and the Devil becomes different, and the battle seems much more desperate, does it not?