Has the Church ever been wrong?

[cassini]

Um, no offense my friend, but Dr. Carroll has credentials. YOU are just pulling up statements from heaven knows where (because you aren’t giving us any links, or any idea from where you cut this ‘The Document Says"), you have exactly what in the line of credentials yourself, and we’re supposed to believe that Dr. Carroll is pulling some vast DECEPTION (your own words) to try to bolster the "Church was not wrong’ kind of ‘conspiracy based on your say-so’?

I don’t think so. . .

No offence taken Tantum ergo. The documents I quote from are the minutes of the Holy Office that recorded word for word the happening during the Galileo case. That good enough for you. Dr Carroll can be contradicted by these same minutes as I have shown.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

How about giving us links to the Gallileo trial so that we can see for ourselves the whole thing, not what you take out of context, bold, italicize, make your own comments (without crediting), etc.?

How about less of the editorializing and the sensationalism, cassini, and more of the actual documents (link)? What makes Dr. Carroll’s work (with all its footnotes etc. that we can actually check for ourselves) ‘lies, coverups, and twisting’ according to you, but the ‘minutes’ (which you leap into, without any kind of documentation, without any authentication, without any context) and which you then ‘leap out of’ to claim, “See, this PROVES my point”! are somehow ‘real?’

Where is the link to what you’re giving us?

 

[Tantum_ergo]

No offence taken Tantum ergo. The documents I quote from are the minutes of the Holy Office that recorded word for word the happening during the Galileo case. That good enough for you. Dr Carroll can be contradicted by these same minutes as I have shown.

And WHERE are these minutes? Where you are reading/copying them from?

No offense either, but I’ve dealt with minutes for various legal and/or medical symposiums, etc. Thing is, you can’t just read off a paragraph or two and say, “See, this proves that there is a vast conspiracy in the world which is out to drive up the price of phamaceuticals and doctors have bought into it because they accept merchandise from the pharm. reps. Therefore, the conspiracy exists and the fact that doctors accept merchandise, which is documented in these minutes, proves it.”

Because the idea that the ‘conspiracy exists’ is not found in those minutes. No, what is found is that, in the course of dealing with a hundred other things, it is noted that doctors did indeed accept merchandise from pharmacy reps. Some did so because, hey, it was free. Some did so because they actually liked the product and they did indeed ‘advise’ patients to take it. Some did so because they could use the samples to help out their patients. But NONE of them did so because they were part of a vast conspiracy to jack up prices."

Now what I object to in your posts is that you have taken the position “The Church is out to claim --falsely–that it has not been wrong, BUT in viewing the minutes of Galileo’s trial I, Cassini, feel that from my personal, fallible, 21st century understanding in which I am no expert in either law, the history of the Church, or even Gallileo, BUT I think from my cursory reading as a layman that to my LIMITED understanding, the Church said X about Gallileo, I think the X is wrong, and I think that the Church’s saying X was an ‘infallible’ saying, therefore I think the Church is and was wrong.”

Dr. Carroll be hanged, says Cassini, I don’t care what the Church says. If Dr. Carroll can make an explanation that shows the Church was not wrong, but CASSINI thinks it was, then by golly Dr. Carroll isn’t making a scholarly judgment by someone with expert knowledge (which could be wrong). . .no, it is a MALICIOUS, a TWISTED ATTEMPT to ‘whitewash the Church.’

IOW, what I object to is that you imply not only that Dr. Carroll is LYING, but that he KNOWS he’s lying, and is doing it anyway.

 

[edwest2]

At last some sense from this poster over Vatican II. Thus the Pope never apologises for the Church which is ‘held, as a matter of faith, to be unfailingly holy’ [Vatican II, *Lumen Gentium

, art 39].

In First Things (November 1997), Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon wrote that “the Pope himself has acknowledged the mistakes and sins of Christians in connection with, among other things, the Crusades, the Inquisition, persecution of the Jews, religious wars, Galileo, and the treatment of women. Thus, though the Pope himself is careful to speak of sin or error on the part of the Church’s members or representatives, rather than the Church in its fullness, that important theological distinction is almost always lost in the transmission.”

How fatuous, after the development of doctrine in Vatican II, and the faithful stewardship of John Paul the Great. Readers should know that:
The crisis in Christ’s Church is due to the modernist errors abroad before Vatican II, whose promoters tried to take over the Council, referred to in Christ Denied TAN, 1982, by Fr Paul Wickens).

But before Vatican II, by May of 1964, the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) had approved the sex education program put forward by 2 Swedish delegates, and the whole sordid conglomerate is exposed in Claire Chambers The SIECUS Circle, 1977. The power structure exerts pressure on local schools and the gullible public for its school sex education program. The network promotes population control, legalised abortion, homosexuality, pornography, sensitivity training and drugs. (p xv). We surely know how dissenters have spread these into the People of God.

The '60’s saw the rise of anarchy in the USA with much that was good in society decried and destroyed with nothing worthy to replace it. The new religion of the so-called Enlightenment was welcomed by selfists.

The degradation of sacred order, at the invitation of nuns, occurred from 1967 in the USA through humanistic psychologists especially Carl Rogers, and I have heard one of his lieutenants, Dr J W Coulson in person, apologising for the grave harm caused. [See *The Emperor’s New Clothes by William Kirk Kilpatrick, 1985, p 149-150]. The destruction of whole Catholic school systems and religious orders occurred.

Then followed the disgraceful public dissent against *Humanae Vitae *by Rahner and numerous dissenting theologians, Richard McBrien’s Catholicism (full of errors), the revolt of the Catholic universities and the bureaucratic/theological tail wagging the episcopal dog so to speak – coupled with lax or dissenting bishops this resulted in a grave crisis, which is worldwide with relativism, selfism and secularism.

How many Catholics know this? The great papal teaching and guidance of popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have nurtured the reform of seminaries and the rejuvenation of the apostolate of the laity, with a resurgence of faith and action among the young, in the midst of the secular chaos of today.

Thank you for that accurate information. The primary falsehood held by too many and spread here is that Vatican II caused changes. It did not. However, it is painted as the scapegoat.

The Sexual Revolution was about sex, not love. Modernists in the media now portray actors as having “just sex” which is divorced from love. 40 years of dripping poison into our veins by gradually exposing us to a little bad, then a little more bad and a little more, has led to the current crisis.

The Holy Spirit has been active and is lifting the Church and the faithful up in the midst of it all.

God bless,
Ed

 

[cassini]

And WHERE are these minutes? Where you are reading/copying them from?

No offense either, but I’ve dealt with minutes for various legal and/or medical symposiums, etc. Thing is, you can’t just read off a paragraph or two and say, “See, this proves that there is a vast conspiracy in the world which is out to drive up the price of phamaceuticals and doctors have bought into it because they accept merchandise from the pharm. reps. Therefore, the conspiracy exists and the fact that doctors accept merchandise, which is documented in these minutes, proves it.”

Because the idea that the ‘conspiracy exists’ is not found in those minutes. No, what is found is that, in the course of dealing with a hundred other things, it is noted that doctors did indeed accept merchandise from pharmacy reps. Some did so because, hey, it was free. Some did so because they actually liked the product and they did indeed ‘advise’ patients to take it. Some did so because they could use the samples to help out their patients. But NONE of them did so because they were part of a vast conspiracy to jack up prices."

Now what I object to in your posts is that you have taken the position “The Church is out to claim --falsely–that it has not been wrong, BUT in viewing the minutes of Galileo’s trial I, Cassini, feel that from my personal, fallible, 21st century understanding in which I am no expert in either law, the history of the Church, or even Gallileo, BUT I think from my cursory reading as a layman that to my LIMITED understanding, the Church said X about Gallileo, I think the X is wrong, and I think that the Church’s saying X was an ‘infallible’ saying, therefore I think the Church is and was wrong.”

Dr. Carroll be hanged, says Cassini, I don’t care what the Church says. If Dr. Carroll can make an explanation that shows the Church was not wrong, but CASSINI thinks it was, then by golly Dr. Carroll isn’t making a scholarly judgment by someone with expert knowledge (which could be wrong). . .no, it is a MALICIOUS, a TWISTED ATTEMPT to ‘whitewash the Church.’

IOW, what I object to is that you imply not only that Dr. Carroll is LYING, but that he KNOWS he’s lying, and is doing it anyway.

The minutes of the Galileo case are fully available to researchers. The originals are held in the Vatican archives and have been copied since the middle of the nineteenth century.

I have read them fully and associated documents such as those of Robert Bellarmine, so am familiar with the complete story of Galileo. Thus I am capable of rejecting all the stories invented since Marini began the coverup in 1846 or thereabouts. Given every account written up within and without the Church differs from the facts of the case as found in the original records, it becomes perfectly obvious that there is a deliberate attempt to hide the fact that it was the pope who defined and declared a fixed sun/moving earth as formal heresy and another pope who defined the 1616 decree as immutible in 1633. I have shown you the parts of the records that prove this. What in God’s name your pharmacy business has to do with all this I do not know for it is a first to be used as a guide to the Galileo case.
Now I am just as capable of reading and understanding the facts of the case as are intellectuals with PhDs so do not try that one with me. Why not just rebut my very clear illustrated arguments with some of you own.

Dr Carrol is not ‘lying’. Marini ‘lied’. Carrol is merely regurgitating what he was taught to say by others before him. But what he says is simply not true. I have proven it is not true but you conveniently ignore this. Indeed you are a typical Copernican, no matter what proofs exist that show a history of perversions of the facts, you will defend your Copernicanism and your Church no matter what. You all want to keep your cake and to eat it. Ask Carrol why he feels the need to undermine the authority of the Holy Office of 1616 and 1633? It is he who asserted a falsehood, I proved that. Go rebut my proof if you want to defend him.Certainly the above rant of yours only shows you have no real arguments just rhetoric.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Yes, my dear Cassini, I am aware that the minutes exist and are available to researchers.

But if, for example, I were myself checking out the transcripts, say from the University of Missouri at Kansas City, I would be able to provide a link, thus:

www.intute.ac.uk/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=2005614-162529

That way, not only could other people not have to rely on my ‘cut-and-paste’ (which might leave out words, sentences, and other contextual material-)-but they could be aware that I was actually utilizing real materials and not just ‘saying’ that document X says Y. And they’d know when and where I might insert my own words and opinions too.

Furthermore, you still have not proven your point. Telling people they ‘aren’t listening’ when they disagree with you, and attempting to imply or even outright labeling them so that you can ‘dismiss’ them as anything from ‘not listening’ to ‘conspirators’ isn’t very helpful to you or to those attempting to ‘listen’ to you.

 

[MarianD]

Spiritually, never.

Politically, yes.

In terms of how Church “staff” (Priests, Bishops, Cardinals, Popes) live their lives, sometimes.

Scientifically, sometimes.

The Church’s infallibility is a Gift from God that only applies to doctrines. God leaves it up to man when it comes to the political aspects of the Church, and He leaves it up to man to suffer from the sins of the Popes the Cardinals elect, sins such as illegitimate children (Rodrigo Borgia/Alexander VI, a man I’d refuse to call Pope). However, when it comes to spiritual doctrines, God grants the Pope infallibility, and the Pope’s teachings on spiritual doctrines must be accepted by all.

 

[Abu]

In post #36 I apologise for the incorrect “1916 decree”, which should read “1615 decree”.

cassini
it becomes perfectly obvious that there is a deliberate attempt to hide the fact that it was the pope who defined and declared a fixed sun/moving earth as formal heresy and another pope who defined the 1616 decree as immutible in 1633. Ask Carrol why he feels the need to undermine the authority of the Holy Office of 1616 and 1633? It is he who asserted a falsehood, I proved that.

You “proved” nothing of the kind, as the authority of the Holy Office does not extend to infallible pronouncements.
There is no “fact” of heresy pronounced by any Pope concerning Galileo.

Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Huxley, “went to Rome and examined the Case, a little more thoroughly than the average humanist, probably intending to use it in his ongoing controversy with the Anglican bishop, Samuel Wilberforce. In a letter written to Mivart in 1885 he concluded, rather disappointedly, I presume – ‘I looked into the matter when I was in Italy and I arrived at the conclusion that the Pope and the College of Cardinals had rather the best of it.’ ”
[Arthur Koestler, *The Sleepwalkers, MacMillan, 1959, p 353; cited in The Six Days of Creation, Br Thomas Mary Sennott, Ravengate, 1984, p185-6].

Galileo was, in the 1633 Decree of the Inquisition, censured as “vehemently suspected of heresy.” No papal declaration of heresy was made.

For a pope to exercise the charism of infallibility, three conditions must be present:
(1) He cannot speak as a private theologian but in his official capacity as vicar of Christ and head of the Church
(2) He must officially define a doctrine relating to faith or morals (unfortunately, the pope is not infallible when it comes to science, politics, weather, and the outcome of sporting events)
(3) The pronouncement must not be directed only to a single individual or particular group of people, but it must be promulgated for the benefit of the entire Church.

What is evident here, is the disregard of Christ who is never disputed as emphatically and resoundingly proclaiming that the gates of hell will never prevail against His Church (Mt 16:18), and giving His Magisterium of popes the authority to bind and loose on earth and in heaven. (Mt 16:19). Yet here we have a mortal rejecting that!

 

[Abu]

MarianD
The Church’s infallibility is a Gift from God that only applies to doctrines

Some clarification here is necessary.

From Vatican I (Pastor Aeternus), for infallibility to be exercised the Pope must teach
(a) ex cathedra (from the Chair of Peter), that is as Shepherd and Teacher of all Christians,
(b) speaking with Peter’s apostolic authority to the whole Church,
(c) defining a doctrine of faith and morals.

So the Pope’s ‘ex cathedra’ definitions may be either of revealed dogma, to be believed with divine faith, or of other truths necessary for guarding and expounding revealed truth. Vatican Council II and the post-conciliar Magisterium have explicitly affirmed that both ecclesial and papal infallibility extend to the secondary doctrinal truths necessary for guarding and expounding revelation. Thus *Humanae Vitae *(Encyclical) against contraception, and *Ordinatio Sacerdotalis *(Apostolic Epistle) on male-only priests, contain infallible doctrinal definitions, to remove all doubt.

Vatican II (Lumen Gentium, 25) reaffirms this teaching: “The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful – who confirms his brethren in the faith (cf. Lk 22:32) – he proclaims in an absolute decision a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals.”

Thus, no dogma has to be affirmed, nor anyone Canon anathematized, nor the word “define” or “definition” be used for an infallible papal teaching – only that the Pope is handing down a certain, decisive judgment that a point of doctrine on faith or morals is true and its contrary false

 

[Rence]

The missing question then comes down to the Catholic view of the Holy Ghost’s part in the day to day activities of the Church. Today the Holy Ghost, or the Holy Spirit, is said to be behind every move they make in Rome these days. FREE WILL has been removed and the impression is that the Holy Ghost wakes the Pope up every morning and dictates to them how He wants them and the Church to change, how He wants to get rid of priests to be replaced by lay-women in His churches for example.

I’ve asked several priests about this. All of them said that FREE WILL is not taken away from the Popes. They still have free will, it doesn’t get taken away from them when the HS is working to inspire the Pope.

 

[catholicgirl201]

Didn’t the Church believe that the Earth was once flat?:lol

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Didn’t the Church believe that the Earth was once flat?:lol

Actually, no. That’s one of the little ‘gems’ that gets tossed around in the kind of “history everybody KNOWS” which is, in fact, incorrect. Since the fact of the earth being ‘round’ had been known even in antiquity (think mathematicians) and was certainly known in the late Middle Ages (Columbus wasn’t a ‘solitary genius’ who stumbled on this 'in the face of KNOWN flat-earth teaching), and since the best known thinkers in the Western world were (Gasp) Catholic Christians, most of them Catholic clergy to boot, the theories about the earth’s shape being other than flat were fairly well known and accepted by many scholars.

But it’s SO easy for people to ‘think’ that the Middle Ages were full of repressive ‘anti-Science clergy out to grab all the power and glory by keeping the populace DUMB and therefore gullible and easy to deceive’ --and to present them as backward and lacking in education themselves.

Because then one ‘chips’ at the idea (hammers, more like) that “LOOK, your clergy were such idjits they believed in a flat earth–how can you TRUST them to be right on anything when they were so STUPID?”

It’s a terrible argument. Even for those who did believe in a flat earth (whether they were clergy or not, whether they were serfs, nobles, men or women), such a belief was not ‘flying in the face of KNOWN FACTS’, and it wasn’t presented as a ‘challenge’ to ‘science or fact’. It was the kind of metaphysical ‘theorizing’ that in fact created a climate whereby people (all people) were encouraged to think, and to wonder. . .without creating the kind of climate in Muslim worlds where "Allah has decreed, we need not know why’. In fact, the people criticizing ‘the Catholic Church’ for its supposed backward thinking in the Middle Ages would be more accurate to direct this ‘charge’ at the Muslim world. Despite earlier Muslim advances in mathematics and science prior to the 11th century, great repression had set in. Knowledge was not pursued for its own sake. So even though Muslim physicians had more general knowledge of the disease process, for example, they didn’t USE that knowledge (the way that Western physicians, when they learned more, WOULD use it) to ADVANCE in techniques of prevention. It was considered, "If Allah wills this, then we cannot do anything against his will’. But it isn’t PC to note Muslim defects in critical thinking when the modern ‘scholar’ wants to use the Muslims to CRITICIZE the West, so we get this kind of ‘ret-conning’ and misdirection to try to make people think that Christianity is just another system–and a horridly flawed one at that–whereas the more ‘forward-thinking’ Muslims are to be admired.

 

[mcteague]

Did the Catholic church once teach that left-handedness was a sign of demonic possession? I believe that up until forty years ago it was common practice in Catholic schools to force students to write only with the right hand

 

[JohnDamian]

Did the Catholic church once teach that left-handedness was a sign of demonic possession? I believe that up until forty years ago it was common practice in Catholic schools to force students to write only with the right hand

Up until the advent of quick drying ink it was impractical to write with a left hand as you smear the ink everywhere.

I have never heard that anyone said it was demonic possession though.

 

[fhansen]

Did the Catholic church once teach that left-handedness was a sign of demonic possession? I believe that up until forty years ago it was common practice in Catholic schools to force students to write only with the right hand

You mean it’s not a sign of possession?

 

[mcteague]

Up until the advent of quick drying ink it was impractical to write with a left hand as you smear the ink everywhere.

I have never heard that anyone said it was demonic possession though.

commonplacebook.com/current_events/politics/did_you_know_th.shtm

This website made that claim.
I just wanted to verify it’s accuracy

 

[The_Exodus]

I am rather an ignorant historian , but I am quite aware of what the doctrine of infallibility implies.

Now, it seems to me, so long as the Pope or any Council does not extend their teaching into the realm of faith or morals, said standard of infallibility doesn’t apply. Otherwise, we would have to suppose every word the Pope uttered was instrinsically infallibile. Similarly, I see no problem with a council claiming that certain teachings are dangerous to the faith, and that, said scientific teachings contradict the interpretation of the fathers. Is not this true? I’m sure it was indeed very dangerous to the unlearned to hear that the earth was not the center of everything, just as it is dangerous to talk to an unlearned person about the subtlties of deadly bacteria or gamma ray radiation.

What would seem to me to have to be the case is that the Church would have to declare, not that a given teaching was dangerous, but that it was wrong; and they would have to declare that it was wrong; not merely say that they think it is wrong. Otherwise, they would not be extending the charism of infallibility. Furthermore, it would have to be the case that said declaration extended to faith or morals, not merely things dangerous to the faith, but the very truth of the faith itself. It is, for example, dangerous to many young believers to talk to them about demonic possession; but just because it is dangerous to discuss such views does not negate their truth.

 

[The_Exodus]

poster:

Didn’t the Catholic church once believe the earth was flat?.

To me this is irrelevant. So long as they never dogmatically taught such a thing, I see no problem. Otherwise, it would have to be the case that the Church was never ignorant about *anything *at all, every truth, since it could not be discovered, since that would imply initial ignorance, would have to be immediately known by the Church. This, obviously, is not what infallibility implies. There is just as much room for scientific discovery with the doctrie of infallibility than without it.

 

[edwest2]

Spiritually, never.

Politically, yes.

In terms of how Church “staff” (Priests, Bishops, Cardinals, Popes) live their lives, sometimes.

Scientifically, sometimes.

The Church’s infallibility is a Gift from God that only applies to doctrines. God leaves it up to man when it comes to the political aspects of the Church, and He leaves it up to man to suffer from the sins of the Popes the Cardinals elect, sins such as illegitimate children (Rodrigo Borgia/Alexander VI, a man I’d refuse to call Pope). However, when it comes to spiritual doctrines, God grants the Pope infallibility, and the Pope’s teachings on spiritual doctrines must be accepted by all.

Science has nothing to say about God or the soul. The Bible tells us we will be led into all truth, not just some truth. As Catholics should know, the Church declares miracles, saints and Marian apparitions as true, actual events and persons. To limit the Church to morals and doctrines does not take into consideration the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, for example.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Abu]

edwest2
Why do you refer to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences?