Conversation with SSPX Priest about Vatican 2

[guanophore]

Force conversion was expressly forbidden by the Church.

It is now, certainly. There were plenty of forced conversions, not just limited to the Crusades.

The “State” that enforced the death penalty was a Papally approved and sanctioned authority. Authorities of the Inquisition were well aware that handing over a “recalcitrant heretic” would result in the death penalty.

 

[vsedriver]

It is now, certainly. There were plenty of forced conversions, not just limited to the Crusades.

can you cite a papal document with instructions to force conversions? I am sure that there were forced conversions but I am unsure that they were done at church direction as church teaching.

I think the problem lies more with theocracies than with theology. Did some Catholics and later Christians engage in forced conversion? I’m sure of it. What I dispute is if it was done under direction from the Magisterium of the Church.

Just because a government is papal approved doesn’t mean that everything done by that government is automatically OK with the Church.

 

[guanophore]

can you cite a papal document with instructions to force conversions?

You are asking me to prove a negative? Can you produce one (from the middle ages) that instructs not to do so?

I am unsure that they were done at church direction as church teaching.

Forced conversions are not part of the Church teaching, but that did not stop authorities in the Church, and Catholics in positions of authority from implementing it.

 

[goout]

Hi all,

I was discussing with a SSPX Priest about Vatican 2. There were two points he said via email which I don’t completely understand:

• Religious liberty means that the Catholic Church profess that all religions, true and false, must be given the same civils rights and that the State must profess no State religion. Which is absolutely false and injurious to Christ the King

Ask him to look at a cross, and see exactly who Christ the King really is, and what kind of King he is.

 

[Genesis315]

Updated post about his Religious Liberty explanation

It’s just saying the same thing in different way, as I mentioned, from the perspective of the state. But not only is toleration tolerable, there are times when the state should and must tolerate.

As I demonstrated earlier, the Church still teaches that what limits are placed on false religious activity is determined by the needs of the common good. This is the state’s criterion for its action in this regard.

But the power of the state over man is not absolute, even with regard to sin and error. As I mentioned before, the common good is where its orbit is drawn, that is the limits in which it is contained. Again, as Pius XII mentions in Ci Riesce, in certain circumstances God does “not even communicate the right to impede or to repress what is erroneous and false.” Where the state does not even have the right to impede what is erroneous and false is where that right to be free from the coercion of the state is found.

I think it is important that this “right” is defined in a narrow, limited way and I think it is using this narrow definition, where older documents used a broader one, is where the confusion comes from. It is not a right to err founded on indifferentism, but rather a right to not be coerced by the state so long as the common good is being properly served based on the limits of the state’s power and the fact that revealed truth can only be adhered to freely.

For example, a Communist state’s arbitrary suppression of all religious activity (even false ones), without any consideration of the authentic common good, is outside the bounds of its actual authority. It is likewise wrong for freedom to be granted in an indiscriminate manner without consideration of the common good and objective moral order as if such a freedom were unconditional or absolute.

 

[vsedriver]

You are asking me to prove a negative? Can you produce one (from the middle ages) that instructs not to do so?

the only one I have is older than the middle ages. Matthew 10:14

Forced conversions are not part of the Church teaching, but that did not stop authorities in the Church, and Catholics in positions of authority from implementing it.

I know it may seem like a fine distinction but it is a very, very important one.

 

[goout]

vsedriver:

Force conversion was expressly forbidden by the Church.

It is now, certainly. There were plenty of forced conversions, not just limited to the Crusades.

The “State” that enforced the death penalty was a Papally approved and sanctioned authority. Authorities of the Inquisition were well aware that handing over a “recalcitrant heretic” would result in the death penalty.

It’s good to note:
There is no such thing as a forced conversion.

 

[Genesis315]

It should be noted, with respect to coercion, the Church can use coercion over the baptized, because Baptism subjects a person to the jurisdiction of the Church. This was affirmed at the Council of Trent (Session VII, Canons on Baptism 14 ) and is found in the current Code of Canon Law:

Can. 1311 The Church has the innate and proper right to coerce offending members of the Christian faithful with penal sanctions.

(The “Christian faithful” are defined as the baptized in Canon 204 §1.)

 

[yankeesouth]

Ask him if he’s actually read Vatican II documents.

The ‘spirit’ of Vatican II crowd read the documents and look what they came up with.

Fifty years on and still the fruits of VII are being debated. It would seem to me to be prudent to re-evaluate the documents…sometimes it seems the texts on ecumenism inspire the question…‘so I don’t have to be Catholic to get to Heaven’ more so than the statement… 'where do I sign up!

 

[guanophore]

the only one I have is older than the middle ages. Matthew 10:14

This commandment was given to apostles and evangelists, not kings and queens! In the middle ages, it was thought that all the lives of those in the realm were in the hands of the ruler. And those rulers, after the advent of the Holy Roman Empire, were crowned and supported by the Pope. There were a great many Scriptures left unapplied during that time, one of them being “my Kingdom is not of this world”.

I know it may seem like a fine distinction but it is a very, very important one.

We agree on this point.

It’s good to note:
There is no such thing as a forced conversion.

True, but people did “convert” during the Inquisition, or to avoid inquisition. Moors and Jews in Spain especially. There are descendants in my area of cryptoJews that came her to escape the Spanish inquisition.

 

[guanophore]

sometimes it seems the texts on ecumenism inspire the question…‘so I don’t have to be Catholic to get to Heaven’ more so than the statement… 'where do I sign up!

It was certainly a drastic reframe of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus!

In the US, it also reflects current reality. There are “civil rights” that are clearly opposed to the will of God in Christ.

Was society still considered predominantly Catholic at that time?

 

[Genesis315]

With regard to religious liberty, I think the following intervention from Karol Wojtyła (the future Pope John Paul II) at Vatican II frames it nicely. There was a line in an early draft that had some problematic language about no coercion being able to be exercised against an erring conscience. Cardinal Wojtyła objected to this with the true doctrine. The draft was amended accordingly (as I mentioned, it’s not the clearest and uses less common terminology, but JPII ensured the catechism made the point better in CCC 2109).

Cardinal Wojtyla

“No human being or human power has the right to use coercion on a person who has come to an erroneous conclusion, if this conclusion is not itself opposed either to the common good, or to another’s good, or to the good of the person in error. If it is, in fact, opposed to one or more of these, then certainly legitimate superiors, such as parents or those responsible for the common good, can exercise a kind of coercion on the one in error, lest by following his error he cause proportionately grave evil either to others or to himself” (AS III/3, 768).

(Those responsible for the common good are of course public authority).