You’re all over the board on the sspx but I want to draw particular attention to the above. None of the items you mention are dogmatic in any way shape or form. They’re pure novelty and as such one does not commit “heresy” for refusing to go along with them.
Not a single jot or tittle of Vatican II can be rejected by any Catholic. Many, if not all, ecumenical councils have dealt with Church discipline as well as doctrine, but the Church made it clear that they were nevertheless to be accepted
in toto. Ecumenism and religious liberty may not be dogmas, but the teachings do require your assent, as they taught via the Ordinary Universal Magisterium. Pope Paul VI made this perfectly clear to Archbishop Lefebvre:
“You cannot invoke the distinction between dogmatic and pastoral in order to accept certain texts of the Council and to refute others. Certainly, all that was said in the Council does not demand an assent of the same nature; only that which is affirmed as an object of faith or truth attached to the faith, by definitive acts, require an assent of faith. But the rest is also a part of the solemn Magisterium of the Church to which all faithful must make a confident reception and a sincere application” (Nov. 10, 1976).
Moreover, ecumenism and religious liberty are NOT novelties. What Vatican II instructed was TRUE ecumenism, not that false “let’s all just get along” nonsense that, unfortunately, has become common in some places. True ecumenism involves helping bring folks to the Church – by dialogue, acknowledging the truths they share with Catholics, etc. and letting them hear our side and having them hear why the Church’s position is right. Many of the saints have dialogued with non-Christians (although in that instance, it’s not ecumenism but religious dialogue – ecumenism refers to other Christian bodies) and Protestants, the goal being their conversion.
"Nothing is so foreign to the spirit of ecumenism as a false irenicism, in which the purity of Catholic doctrine suffers loss and its genuine and certain meaning is clouded” (P****aul VI UNITATIS REDINTEGRATIO)
. Also, remember that we have no more Catholic kings or Catholic armies, and so the Church has to take an alternate route in winning the world for Christ – diplomacy. The goal is still to bring souls to the Church – just in a different manner and without sacrificing doctrine. Although another poster in a different thread on here said that we shouldn’t call true ecumenism “ecumenism” to begin with, as for Protestants ecumenism involves overlooking and watering down differences. I’d say he has a point there.
As for religious liberty, the way you understand
Dignitais Humanae in your private judgment is wrong. Pope Paul VI and John Paul II don’t teach contrary to
Quas Primas or
Quanta Cura, but rather in perfect harmony with them.
Quas Primas and
Quanta Cura were against the Freemasonry idea of religious freedom. That teaching has never changed.
Dignitatis Humanae and Paul VI were against COMMUNIST dictatorships that FORCED their people to be Godless.
Do you remember the time of
Dignitatis Humane? Does the Soviet Empire tell you something? Catholic Poland, Catholic Lithuania, etc. under Communist slavery? Millions of Christians in Ukraine, Vietnam, Cuba, Slovenia, etc under Communist and official atheism tells you something?
It’s extremely easy:
Quas Primas or
Quanta Cura against Freemasonry state, Dignitatis Humanae against Communist slavery that forced their people to live without God.
Have you ever read the Catechism of the Catholic Church 2108 and 2109? Or do you consider it “modernist” and to be avoided? Something tells me you’d view it as the latter. So here it is:
2108 The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error,* (37 Cf. Leo XIII, Libertas praestantissimum 18; Pius XII AAS 1953,799)** but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty, i.e., immunity, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters by political authorities. This natural right ought to be acknowledged in the juridical order of society in such a way that it constitutes a civil right
(Pius XII, 6 December 1953).*
2109 * The right to religious liberty can of itself be neither unlimited nor limited only by a “public order” conceived in a positivist or naturalist manner
(Cf. Pius VI, Quod aliquantum (1791) 10; Pius IX, Quanta cura 3). The “due limits” which are inherent in it must be determined for each social situation by political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good, and ratified by the civil authority in accordance with "legal principles which are in conformity with the objective moral order.”
(cf Pío IX, enc. “Quanta cura”).* So now you can see. The “modernist” Catechism of the Catholic Church goes to
Quanta Cura and keep its teaching alive. There’s no moral freedom to choose a religion. All is about a political freedom so Communist states don’t impose anti-God teaching. “In order to be faithful to the divine command, “teach all nations” (Matt. 28:19-20),
the Catholic Church must work with all urgency and concern “that the word of God be spread abroad and glorified” (2 Thess. 3:1). Hence the Church earnestly begs of its children that, “first of all, supplications, prayers, petitions, acts of thanksgiving be made for all men… For this is good and agreeable in the sight of God our Savior, who wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:1-4). In the formation of their consciences, the Christian faithful ought carefully to attend to the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church. (35) For the Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that truth which is Christ Himself, and also to declare and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origins in human nature itself. Furthermore, let Christians walk in wisdom in the face of those outside, “in the Holy Spirit, in unaffected love, in the word of truth” (2 Cor. 6:6-7), and let them be about their task of spreading the light of life with all confidence(36) and apostolic courage,
even to the shedding of their blood” (
Dignitatis Humanae).
