Council of Trent Question

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I’ve been reading these forums for a long time, just today decided it was time to create an account and jump in. Thanks to everyone who posts here. I’ve learned so much from the forum and Catholic Answers Radio Show/ Website…

I know the Council of Trent was mainly to address the Protestant Reformation and the resulting religious and social issues of the day.
  1. Where can I find an official Catholic Church English translation of the documentation generated by the Council of Trent?
  2. Several friends have sited the Council’s documents in an effort to show that the Catholic Church teaches that all non Catholics are cursed and damned to hell. Here are a few Trent quotes that they referenced. How does the Catholic Church officially interpret these statements? Was this firmness just a knee-jerk reaction to the trouble brewing in the Church at that time? Does it really mean that all who don’t agree will be cursed?
QUOTE 1:
“If any one denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema.”

QUOTE 2:
If any one saith, that the Presbyters of the Church, whom blessed James exhorts to be brought to anoint the sick, are not the priests who have been ordained by a bishop, but the elders in each community, and that for this Cause a priest alone is not the proper minister of Extreme Unction; let him be anathema.

DEFINITION
a-nath-e-ma (-nath-m)n.pl. a-nath-e-mas. 1. A formal ecclesiastical ban, curse, or excommunication. 2. A vehement denunciation; a curse: 3. One that is cursed or damned. 4. One that is greatly reviled, loathed, or shunned.

Thanks. 🙂
 
Here is a place to start. They should have all the sessions: history.hanover.edu/early/trent.html

As for anathemas, I can’t answer your question definitively, but I believe that alot of them have been “overturned” by later councils and decisions - that goes for the Orthodox Church, too:thumbsup: !

If you want to authenticate or search for more details on the documents, just “google” Council of Trent documents in English. Hope this helps:) !

Prayers and petitions,
Alexius:cool:
 
Frodo said:
I’ve been reading these forums for a long time, just today decided it was time to create an account and jump in. Thanks to everyone who posts here. I’ve learned so much from the forum and Catholic Answers Radio Show/ Website…

I know the Council of Trent was mainly to address the Protestant Reformation and the resulting religious and social issues of the day.
  1. Where can I find an official Catholic Church English translation of the documentation generated by the Council of Trent?
  2. Several friends have sited the Council’s documents in an effort to show that the Catholic Church teaches that all non Catholics are cursed and damned to hell. Here are a few Trent quotes that they referenced. How does the Catholic Church officially interpret these statements? Was this firmness just a knee-jerk reaction to the trouble brewing in the Church at that time? Does it really mean that all who don’t agree will be cursed?
QUOTE 1:
“If any one denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema.”

QUOTE 2:
If any one saith, that the Presbyters of the Church, whom blessed James exhorts to be brought to anoint the sick, are not the priests who have been ordained by a bishop, but the elders in each community, and that for this Cause a priest alone is not the proper minister of Extreme Unction; let him be anathema.

DEFINITION
a-nath-e-ma (-nath-m)n.pl. a-nath-e-mas. 1. A formal ecclesiastical ban, curse, or excommunication. 2. A vehement denunciation; a curse: 3. One that is cursed or damned. 4. One that is greatly reviled, loathed, or shunned.

Thanks. 🙂
Click to expand...
Since the Catholic Church clearly does not teach today that all non-Catholics are damned, there are only three possibilities:
  1. They are lying today and really still believe we are all going to hell. This is what fundamentalists think, but they have no reason to believe this. It makes no sense except in their paranoid, conspiratorial universe. Which fortunately for everyone is not the real universe.
  2. The Catholic Church’s current teaching contradicts its earlier teaching. This is a distinct possibility from a non-Catholic point of view. But in that case Protestants should be glad that Rome has changed its teaching, even if (for whatever reasons) Rome doesn’t want to admit the fact. It makes no sense to accept the former teaching as real and ignore the later, rather than the other way round.
  3. The teachings don’t really conflict–i.e., Trent doesn’t teach what the fundamentalists say it does. (In all fairness, there are traditionalist Catholics who claim the opposite–that Vatican II doesn’t really teach that it’s possible for a non-Catholic to be saved without becoming Catholic. However, they are in a tiny minority and IMHO they are clearly wrong. Certainly most Catholics think they are.)
An “anathema” means that you are a heretic and your views are condemned by the Church. Whether or not you are going to hell depends on whether or not you are sinning with full knowledge and consenst (i.e., you are stubbornly and proudly refusing to submit to the truth) or whether you honestly have no way of knowing any better. This latter category has been interpreted more and more generously by Catholics, so that today it basically includes anyone who honestly believes Catholicism is wrong.

So as interpreted by Catholics today, the anathemas only mean that your views are wrong and that if you were to stubbornly persist in them knowing that the Catholic view was true, you would be damned. (Resisting what you know to be true does very bad things indeed to your soul–that should be obvious.) I should add that even this interpretation is a fairly conservative one–many Catholics would say that non-Catholics are in no spiritual danger whatsoever, at least no more than Catholics.

A final note–as someone else has said, the infallibility of the anathemas is questionable. Insofar as they lay out what is true and what is false, they are official teaching. Insofar as they make a statement about the spiritual condition of those who deny the teaching, they are not.

In Christ,

Edwin
 
For Frodo: The following is an excerpt from this article by Jimmy Akin:

catholic.com/thisrock/2000/0004chap.asp

"With this as background, the absurdity of the things said by anti-Catholics about the anathemas pronounced by Trent and other councils is plain. A number of errors are nearly ubiquitous in anti-Catholic writings:
  1. An anathema sentenced a person to hell. This is not the case. Sentencing someone to hell is a power that is God’s alone, and the Church cannot exercise it.
  2. An anathema was a sure sign that a person would go to hell. Again, not true. Anathemas were only warranted by very grave sins, but there was no reason why the offender could not repent, and those who repent aren’t damned.
  3. An anathema was a sure sign that a person was not in a state of grace. This is not true for two reasons: (a) The person may have repented since the time the anathema was issued, and (b) the person may not have been in a state of mortal sin at the time the anathema was issued.
Anathemas—like penalties imposed under civil law—rest on the judgment of the court, which must make its decision based on the evidence presented. It cannot directly examine the conscience of the individual in question. Thus, while anathemas were imposed on account of gravely sinful behavior, this was not a guarantee that it was mortally sinful. For a grave sin to become mortal, it must be performed with the requisite knowledge and consent, and while an offender might have given every appearance of these conditions, they might not be there in reality—e.g., through a hidden cognitive or volitional impediment
  1. Anathemas were meant to harm the offender. No. Anathemas were simply a major excommunication performed with a special papal ceremony, and, like all excommunications, their intent was medicinal, not punitive. The goal was to protect the Christian community from the spread of evil doctrines or behaviors and to prompt the individual to recognize the nature of his actions. While being deprived of the fellowship of the Church is not pleasant, this does not change the fact that the fundamental orientation of excommunications and anathemas is medicinal, not punitive.
  2. Anathemas took effect automatically. While the Church does have penalties that take effect automatically (latae sententiae), the penalty of anathema was not one of them.
This should be obvious from the fact that a special pontifical ceremony had to be performed as part of the anathema. Obviously, the mere fact that someone utters a heresy in some part of the world does not cause the pope to suddenly stop what he is doing and perform a specific ritual concerning this person.

The anathemas of Trent and other councils were like most penalties of civil law, which only take effect through the judicial process. If the civil law prescribes imprisonment for a particular offense, those who commit it do not suddenly appear in jail. Likewise, when ecclesiastical law prescribed an anathema for a particular offense, those who committed it had to wait until the judicial process was complete before the anathema took effect.
  1. Anathemas applied to all Protestants. The absurdity of this charge is obvious from the fact that anathemas did not take effect automatically. The limited number of hours in the day by itself would guarantee that only a handful of Protestants ever could have been anathematized. In practice the penalty tended to be applied only to notorious Catholic offenders who made a pretense of staying within the Catholic community.
  2. Anathemas are still in place today. This is the single most common falsehood one encounters regarding anathemas in the writings of anti-Catholics. They aren’t in place today. The penalty was employed so infrequently over the course of history that it is doubtful that anyone under an anathema was alive when the new Code of Canon Law came out in 1983, when even the penalty itself was abolished.
  3. The Church cannot retract its anathemas. Anti-Catholics love to repeat this falsehood for rhetorical flourish. But again, it isn’t true. The Church is free to abolish any penalty of ecclesiastical law it wants to, and it did abolish this one."
Also, you can read the council documents and related articles here:

ewtn.com/vlibrary/search2.asp

newadvent.org/cathen/15030c.htm
 
I’ve debated the issue of Feeneyism so many times it’s sick.

Anyway, official English translations? Not sure about it’s officialness, but this public domain translation looks plenty good. Also, check out the Catechism of the Council of Trent.

The Council of Trent slams religious indifferentism, and it condemns the notion (peddled by the Anabaptists of the day) that a water baptism (7th Session, Baptism, Canon II) or baptism itself (7th Session, Baptism, Canon V) are optional for salvation (reducing Christ’s command to baptize by water and the Holy Spirit to “to some sort of metaphor,”).

However, it also affirms, in the 6th Session, Chapter IV, the tradition of acknowledging the efficacy of the desire for Baptism: “And this translation, since the promulgation of the Gospel, cannot be effected, without the laver of regeneration, or the desire thereof, as it is written; unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.”

Relevantly, the Council of Trent also repeats the Church’s ancient tradition of delaying Baptism for adults while they are catechumens, but not for infants (6th session, chapters V, VI). Why? Because, owing to their desire for the graces of Baptism, adult catechumens are not in the same danger of losing salvation that infants are. If there was no baptism by desire, this ancient tradition would be utterly nonsensical.

The Catechism of Trent, which was the authoritative systematic presentation of the Catholic faith for 400 years, is even more clear on this subject:

“On adults, however, the Church has not been accustomed to confer the Sacrament of Baptism at once, but has ordained that it be deferred for a certain time. The delay is not attended with the same danger as in the case of infants, which we have already mentioned; should any unforeseen accident make it impossible for adults to be washed in the salutary waters, their intention and determination to receive Baptism and their repentance for past sins, will avail them to grace and righteousness.”

It was Pius IX who, in a sense, broadened the sense in which this ‘baptism of desire’ is understood. So, don’t like Vatican II? Blame Pius IX.
 
Frodo said:
I’ve been reading these forums for a long time, just today decided it was time to create an account and jump in. Thanks to everyone who posts here. I’ve learned so much from the forum and Catholic Answers Radio Show/ Website…

I know the Council of Trent was mainly to address the Protestant Reformation and the resulting religious and social issues of the day.
  1. Where can I find an official Catholic Church English translation of the documentation generated by the Council of Trent?
  2. Several friends have sited the Council’s documents in an effort to show that the Catholic Church teaches that all non Catholics are cursed and damned to hell. Here are a few Trent quotes that they referenced. How does the Catholic Church officially interpret these statements? Was this firmness just a knee-jerk reaction to the trouble brewing in the Church at that time? Does it really mean that all who don’t agree will be cursed?
QUOTE 1:
“If any one denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema.”

QUOTE 2:
If any one saith, that the Presbyters of the Church, whom blessed James exhorts to be brought to anoint the sick, are not the priests who have been ordained by a bishop, but the elders in each community, and that for this Cause a priest alone is not the proper minister of Extreme Unction; let him be anathema.

DEFINITION
a-nath-e-ma (-nath-m)n.pl. a-nath-e-mas. 1. A formal ecclesiastical ban, curse, or excommunication. 2. A vehement denunciation; a curse: 3. One that is cursed or damned. 4. One that is greatly reviled, loathed, or shunned.

Thanks. 🙂
Click to expand...
(Link Removed by Moderator)

http://www.dailycatholic.org/councils.htm
 
Frodo said:
I’ve been reading these forums for a long time, just today decided it was time to create an account and jump in. Thanks to everyone who posts here. I’ve learned so much from the forum and Catholic Answers Radio Show/ Website…

I know the Council of Trent was mainly to address the Protestant Reformation and the resulting religious and social issues of the day.
  1. Where can I find an official Catholic Church English translation of the documentation generated by the Council of Trent?
  2. Several friends have sited the Council’s documents in an effort to show that the Catholic Church teaches that all non Catholics are cursed and damned to hell. Here are a few Trent quotes that they referenced. How does the Catholic Church officially interpret these statements? Was this firmness just a knee-jerk reaction to the trouble brewing in the Church at that time? Does it really mean that all who don’t agree will be cursed?
QUOTE 1:
“If any one denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema.”

QUOTE 2:
If any one saith, that the Presbyters of the Church, whom blessed James exhorts to be brought to anoint the sick, are not the priests who have been ordained by a bishop, but the elders in each community, and that for this Cause a priest alone is not the proper minister of Extreme Unction; let him be anathema.

DEFINITION
a-nath-e-ma (-nath-m)n.pl. a-nath-e-mas. 1. A formal ecclesiastical ban, curse, or excommunication. 2. A vehement denunciation; a curse: 3. One that is cursed or damned. 4. One that is greatly reviled, loathed, or shunned.

Thanks. 🙂
Click to expand...
These canons are directed towards Catholics. Read them as “If any Catholic denieth, that, in the sacrament …”
 
Frodo,

Hello and welcome to the Catholic Answers Forums. I hope you have a blessed and fruitful time here.
Frodo said:
  1. Several friends have sited the Council’s documents in an effort to show that the Catholic Church teaches that all non Catholics are cursed and damned to hell. Here are a few Trent quotes that they referenced. How does the Catholic Church officially interpret these statements? Was this firmness just a knee-jerk reaction to the trouble brewing in the Church at that time? Does it really mean that all who don’t agree will be cursed?
Click to expand...
Generally the anathemas were aimed at people who denied essential Catholic doctrines–and in particular, people who had accepted these doctrines earlier and should have known better than to deny them. There is a world of difference between somebody who actively left the Catholic Church and somebody whose ancestors ten generations back left the Catholic Church. “Deny” is a stronger term than “don’t agree;” it is possible to reserve judgment.
  • Liberian
 
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