And your frame of reference for this statement is what?
The problem I have as a Catholic is that I have yet to see a thread where there seems to be general agreement on whether any given teaching is ex cathedra or not.
It sounds like you share the curse of trying to find “absolute” absolutes.
Arguing that a doctrine is de fide catholica is different than arguing that it is de fide definita. TheWhim is arguing the latter, not the former (or, he’s a bit confused).
No. It was always a sin. It was variously understood to be equivalent to murder, and at other times a mortal sin which was not that same as murder (due to various ensoulment theories). However, it was always a sin and never as you assert, “okay within the first month or so.”
No such declaration exists. I suggest you haven’t a clue what you speak of and recommend you study the matter further. The Church declared that those who die in original sin descend immediately to hell. This is still Catholic dogma. However, it never declared that babies who die without sacramental baptism go to hell. If you mean by “baptism” both sacramental and exta-sacramental, then this is correct and still remains Catholic dogma.
Just capital punishment is not intrinsically evil, yet it is ripe for abuse. Thus, the policy of the Church is to oppose capital punishment while at the same time admitting that it can be just depending upon the circumstances.
People’s “view” of reality has no affect on the veracity of reality.
Totally agree.
The question in my mind becomes what we make of the Church and the Popes asserting, at the very least through implication, that that is the case? As with councils, these things seldom receive written documents until someone questions something significantly. These statements seem to follow that pattern, especially given the very forceful manner in which they were presented.
Don’t know that that argument helps since I could just as easily substitute in that he didn’t say that he was sending the Paraclete to teach us not to use contraceptives, or that only men can be priests. Most all of these things are deduced from scripture or tradition just as geocentrism was.More importantly, the Church’s statements didn’t rest on the science, but on the matter of faith as the Church found that science to conflict with scripture.
Fully agree as I noted in my post
If you are looking at the Pope’s statements, I agree. But then using that argument HV has only been around for 30 years and OS less than 10. If you go back to Pius XII, I guess one could say that Popes have been asserting the subject matter for 60 or 70–I don’t remember the exact date. Again though, these types of writings and assertions only seem to appear when there is a challenge which brings out a need to clarify. I’d have to go back and re-read to make sure, but my recollection of the language was that it was similar in stating that this was and had been the teaching of the Church and that it was to be definitively held. If we try to assert that they weren’t teachings until a Pope wrote about them, then we get into all kinds of problems, both with statements like HV and OS, and with the Protestant arguments about the Church “inventing” things at some point along the line. It seems to me that if the Pope asserts in his wirting that something is a matter of faith and has been the teaching of the Church that we have to accept that as such.
I’m on vacation is “sunny” San Francisco so my time online is limited.
The popes never asserted it as infallible dogma, either by the exercise of their solemn/extraordinary magisterium, nor through the exercise of their ordinary universal magisterium. Instead, it was an assertion of the Roman Curia, approved by the pope (which can never be infallible), and a Papal Bull by Alexandria VIII attached to the Index of Forbidden Books, primarily as a “cover letter” for the Index, primarily an exercise of the supreme authority of the pope as judge, not as magister. So, one papal bull and the rest curial and tribunal affirmations in 141 years.
John Noonan’s book has much overwhelming evidence regarding contraception. I await the overwhelming evidence for geocentrism by the early Fathers, synods, councils, popes, and canonists. According to Noonan (who dissented with Humanae Vitae), not one Catholic theologian ever asserted contraception was ok. Of course, that was before Humanae Vitae (1968).
Then let us see the early church on contraception and women priests, hmmmm?
Yes, and popes have erred in the past as to what they deduced from scripture or tradition (cf. John XXII on the Beatific Vision immediately after death). Geocentricity was clearly a teaching of the pope for 141 years, but was it de fide catholica? If so, why? Does the criteria described by St. Vincent de Lerins apply?
But the teaching for both has been asserted since the advent of Christianity, even according to those that oppose these documents.
Yes, and when it was clarified, it fizzled in the case of geocentrism, but not in the case of contraception and women priests, but of which have remained constant in the Church (and yet not geocentrism as an article of faith).
True of the living magisterium. I think your approach is flawed, however, as you seem to want to use sola traditio. Use the living magisterium and tell me what they say about Geocentrism, contraception, and women priests.
Whether something is infallible or not seems to only matter to theologians–for academic reasons–or to dissenters who want to rationalize to themselves the reasons they should not obey Sancta Mater Ecclesia.
"***I say ******with Cardinal* Bellarmine whether***** the Pope be infallible or not in any pronouncement, anyhow he is to be obeyed. No good can come from disobedience...****when he speaks formally and authoritatively he speaks as our Lord would have him speak...therefore the Pope's word stands, and a blessing goes with obedience to it, and no blessing with disobedience**" *(Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, "'The Oratory, Novr. 10, 1867", The Genius of Newman (1914), by Wilfrid Ward, Vol II, Ch. 26)I’ve been reading G.K. Chesterton’s book, St. Thomas Aquinas. What you are grappling with reminded me of the following from Chesterton’s book…
We must never presume that the faith of theologians is what God wants of us. He desires instead the faith of children. As I continue to study theology, it is a sobering reminder that in the history of the Church, heresies and schisms did not begin with a simple obedient believer, but always a learned theologian who came to learn so much that he thought he knew more about Christianity than Sancta Mater Ecclesia.
Therefore, the sun standing still would certainly have been describe as such by people within our century as well.
The introduction of the Copernicus theory was readily accepted as being a potentially superior theory than Ptolemy’s. I think this is an important step in understanding the Galileo’s trial.
Once the Copernicus theory failed to deliver, the Ptolemy’s model was claimed to be superior. Then, biblical passages expressing movements of the sun, as opposed to the earth’s was brought in the arena in order to suppress the Copernicus theory in being accepted simply due to it’s “elegancy”.
Again, at first, Galileo’s persuit to explain(prove) the Copernicus system was welcomed.Although, we see at the same time some opposition were lashing out already against him.
And so, Galileo also failed to deliver proof, and so, with the complication existing in scriptures, Ptolemy’s model was still champion (even on scientific grounds), and did not have the difficulty of certain scriptural references interpretation needed.
This type of immediate support by the church is very important in order to see the whole picture.To continue the article, it’s obvious the battle ground was not between science and religion, but between two different scientific theories.
…because the movement of the earth was not a theological issue.
In 1620, just four years later, the De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium of Copernicus was reprinted at Rome with ecclesiastical permission and containing a monitum addressed to the reader and certain corrections to the text in order that its expressions favourable to heliocentrism should be understood only as a hypothesis proposed on account of its potential practical utility.
The first proposition was heliocentrism; a philosophical and theological theory advanced by Copernicus, which identified the sun as the giver of life and light to humans, and so could be used as a symbol for Christ, the true center of the universe.He therefore “assumed” the sun to be standing still. This may have been regarded as being too close to a type of sunworship and did not have any biblical support.This proposition was indeed regarded as heretical.
However, the second proposition, being the earth’s rotation and revolution around the sun was identified as being