Some of his more tender gibs:
*RE: Authority:
- “If, after appropriate study, reflection and prayer, a person is convinced that his or her conscience is correct, in spite of a conflict with the moral teachings of the Church, the person not only may, but must, follow the dictates of conscience rather than the teachings of the Church.”
“The Pope and bishops are symbols of unity and official spokesmen for the community. The idea that the Pope or the body of bishops could define something or authoritatively proclaim something which is rejected by the overwhelming majority of the faithful is a theological fiction. The Magisterium is not above the community. It exists to provide the community with guidelines for its own self-understanding and to be a channel for the community’s convictions and beliefs”
“. . . there is a great disparity between the theologyof “Catholicism” and its canonical expression. And the principal reason for this disparity lies in the unbiblical and untheological notion of jurisdiction. Canonically, jurisdiction refers to the public power of ruling the Church, and the Code of Canon Law insists that such power is of divine institution . . . And yet in the New Testament there is no basis for the kind of jurisdiction which either the Pope or the bishops currently exercise. The monarchical episcopate simply did not exist, nor did the papacy as an office possessing full and supreme, ordinary and immediate jurisdiction not only over each and every church but even over every pastor and lay person in the Church”
RE:* Munificentissimus Deus
*“Not only was it an unwise gesture (the ecumenical implications were clear enough), but it theologically unjustifiable”
*RE: **Humanae Vitae
- “The college of bishops, in an extraordinary abdication of responsibility, has allowed the Pope to reserve the final decision to himself. But the decision cannot be exclusively his. He must take into account the convictions of the entire Church as well as the convictions of all the bishops who represent various sectors of the Church”
*RE: Heresy
*“In my judgment, the traditional notion of heresy, ossified in the Code, has indeed expired . . . The rigid concept of heresy fails . . . to respect sufficiently the provisional and tentativecharacter of dogmatic statements. … The doctrines of the Church will always be short of the mark. As such, they are always in need of reform and development, and are correspondingly open to varying theological interpretations.”
*RE: The Church
*“Did Jesus intend to found a Church?” " ‘No’ if by ‘found’ we mean some direct, explicit deliberate act by which Jesus established a new religious organization… . The majority of scholars today support the assumption that Jesus expected the end to come soon."
“Similarly the Catholic Church is really composed of many churches: Orthodox, Anglicans, Protestants”
“In summary: no convincing case can be made from the New Testament that all men are called to membership in the Church. All men are, indeed, called to accept and live the Gospel and thereby to create and enter into God’s Kingdom, but the Church and the Kingdom are not one and the same reality”
“Not all men are called to the Church, nor is the Church the ordinary means of salvation”
“There is no advantage to being a member of the Church in terms of ultimate salvation”
RE: Original Sin
“theologians today would probably agree with the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, who refers to the doctrine as a rationalized myth about the mystery of evil.”
RE: The Crucifixion
“it was not a sacrifice of expiation-- just a peace offering”
By his words above and by remaining a priest, he can do more damage and affect more lives sadly. Thanks and God Bless.
I hear ratzinger has an email address. Shall we start a campaign. This guy gives great scandal to the Church.
