R
rosetta_stone
Guest
Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors(considered infallible) by Bl. Pope Pius IX specifically condemn religious liberty
- Status
P
Polaris
Guest
So what is DIGNITATIS HUMANAE all about in your world?
vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html
I will post a paragraph.
- This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.
Is this a false teaching?
R
rosetta_stone
Guest
No if interpreted in the light of tradition.
Quotes from the Syllabus of Errors
X. ERRORS HAVING REFERENCE TO MODERN LIBERALISM
- In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship. – Allocution “Nemo vestrum,” July 26, 1855.
- Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship. – Allocution “Acerbissimum,” Sept. 27, 1852.
- Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism. – Allocution “Nunquam fore,” Dec. 15, 1856.
Quote from Quanta Cura - But, although we have not omitted often to proscribe and reprobate the chief errors of this kind, yet the cause of the Catholic Church, and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God, and the welfare of human society itself, altogether demand that we again stir up your pastoral solicitude to exterminate other evil opinions, which spring forth from the said errors as from a fountain. Which false and perverse opinions are on that ground the more to be detested, because they chiefly tend to this, that that salutary influence be impeded and (even) removed, which the Catholic Church, according to the institution and command of her Divine Author, should freely exercise even to the end of the world – not only over private individuals, but over nations, peoples, and their sovereign princes; and (tend also) to take away that mutual fellowship and concord of counsels between Church and State which has ever proved itself propitious and salutary, both for religious and civil interests.1
P
Polaris
Guest
Than show me how no one has a right to religious freedom when it says a person has a fundamental right to it?
R
rosetta_stone
Guest
The things listed in the syllabus are errors being condemned. So Bl. Pope Pius IX is condemning it. Basically the Pope is arguing for the establishment of the confessional state.
So yes a person should not be coerced to become Catholic but it is not full scale religious liberty in that in a confessional state Catholicism would be the state religion.
T
Timothysis
Guest
But doesn’t that apply to “Catholic” countries? Here in the U.S.(as in most Western countries), we have a secular state; therefore, the concept of the error of religious liberty does not apply, doesn’t it?
Also, I’ve often found it odd that religious liberty is considered an error while religious toleration is, no pun intended, tolerated.
Also, I’ve often found it odd that religious liberty is considered an error while religious toleration is, no pun intended, tolerated.
R
rosetta_stone
Guest
Yes that is exactly correct because Catholics are not the majority toleration is accepted. No disagrement here on that point. I am just saying that in majority Catholic countries full religious liberty is not supported.
J
JReducation
Guest
The bold is mine. That is impossible at this point. The four are valid Catholic bishops, even if they are excommunicated. That’s why they were re-communicated. The Holy Father does not want renegade bishops running around consecrating other bishops. This is what happened in the 11th century when many Eastern bishops were excommunicated. They formed their own Church, the Orthodox Church.
Once a man is ordained a bishop, he is a bishop forever, whether he is Catholic, heretic, atheist, Orthodox or becomes a Buddhist monk. The Sacrament of Holy Orders cannot be undone.
Theologically speaking, they do not have to ask for forgiveness or recant anything to remain bishops. It’s either they remain bishops outside the Church or bishops within the Church. Politically, it is better if they are within the Church. That way they can’t lead too many people astray.
Like all good ideas, the SSPX will grow into a schismatic Church with the passing of the years and centuries, as did the Orthodox. Then it becomes for difficult to have a reunification.
Look at the Orthodox. They are no longer excommunicated. Paul VI and John Paul II revoked the excommunications. But they have not been reunited with us, because of many other differences that arose after the separation. This would have been the future of the SSPX and the Catholic Church. This is what Benedict is trying to minimize, but the secular media does not understand.
It is also true, that Benedict is a much more theological pope than a pastoral pope. This cannot be denied. He recognizes that himself. His greatest desire is to teach and write theology, not govern the Church. This job he took out of obedience, because he is a very humble man.
He has made it perfectly clear, even to the laity, that his legacy to the Church when he dies will be theology, not so much pastoral care. That is not his area of expertise. That was John Paul’s area of expertise. It is unfair to expect consecutive popes to be similar. I believe that this is what many in the Church and in the media are looking for. They are looking for another John Paul the Great. That’s not going to be Benedict XVI. He is going to focus on seeing to it that every Catholic who wants to remain Catholic understands the theology of the Church. Just listen to the discourses that he gives to the laity, even the young. They’re theological works of genius.
We have to accept the gifts that people bring to the Chair of Peter.
Fraternally,
JR
L
LeroyCRHP
Guest
I don’t know why you would be making comments about the holocaust.
time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1873855,00.html?cnn=yes
time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1873855,00.html?cnn=yes
J
JReducation
Guest
But we have to remember that religious liberty as defined by Pius IX and religious liberty defined by Vatican II are not the same thing. Vatican II, John XXIII, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI are defending the right of conscience of every human being. They are not defending the right to commit immoral acts against the faith. That’s what Pius IX was writing about. He was writing during the birth of Modernism, promoted man as the center of all things and also promoted a disconnect between man and faith. In essence the real Modernist Movement was a secular movement that promoted many good things such as social change. But it also advocated that man was free of God.
This latter point is heresy. Therefore can be infallibly condemned. What today’s Church is promoting is the right of man’s conscience over that of the secular state that attempts to deprive man of his innate instinct to seek the transcendent, God. Man has the right to seek the transcendent and through it to discover God. When systems such as Capitalism, Communism, and Theocracies state the contrary, then man’s religious liberty is violated, because his right to proceed along a path that may eventually lead to the discovery of the Triune God is impaired. No State should have that authority.
These systems of government and economics were in their infancy during the time of Pius IX. The Council Fathers and the popes who followed had to add to the teachings on religious liberty, what is allowed and what is legitimate for man. Pius IX did not include these in his writings, because they were not real threats to man’s faith at the time. At that time, these systems were considered radical ideas that would go away. I’m not even sure if the decree of Pius IX was actually attributed infallibility by the Church. I know that many lay people do so, but I don’t know if today’s papacy does. I get the impression from the writings of Benedict that he does not interpret it as infallible, except in those areas that are obviously infallible because they come from scripture and natural law.
I hope this sheds some light on the subject.
Fraternally,
JR
R
rosetta_stone
Guest
I have heard several times it is part of the ordinary Magisterium, and I wasn’t criticizing right of conscience but the belief that in majority Catholic countries there should be complete religious liberty.But we have to remember that religious liberty as defined by Pius IX and religious liberty defined by Vatican II are not the same thing. Vatican II, John XXIII, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI are defending the right of conscience of every human being. They are not defending the right to commit immoral acts against the faith. That’s what Pius IX was writing about. He was writing during the birth of Modernism, promoted man as the center of all things and also promoted a disconnect between man and faith. In essence the real Modernist Movement was a secular movement that promoted many good things such as social change. But it also advocated that man was free of God.
This latter point is heresy. Therefore can be infallibly condemned. What today’s Church is promoting is the right of man’s conscience over that of the secular state that attempts to deprive man of his innate instinct to seek the transcendent, God. Man has the right to seek the transcendent and through it to discover God. When systems such as Capitalism, Communism, and Theocracies state the contrary, then man’s religious liberty is violated, because his right to proceed along a path that may eventually lead to the discovery of the Triune God is impaired. No State should have that authority.
These systems of government and economics were in their infancy during the time of Pius IX. The Council Fathers and the popes who followed had to add to the teachings on religious liberty, what is allowed and what is legitimate for man. Pius IX did not include these in his writings, because they were not real threats to man’s faith at the time. At that time, these systems were considered radical ideas that would go away. I’m not even sure if the decree of Pius IX was actually attributed infallibility by the Church. I know that many lay people do so, but I don’t know if today’s papacy does. I get the impression from the writings of Benedict that he does not interpret it as infallible, except in those areas that are obviously infallible because they come from scripture and natural law.
I hope this sheds some light on the subject.
Fraternally,
JR
Quanta Cura
an "insanity,"2 viz.,that “liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way.”
G
GodsGadfly
Guest
Are they? I’ve been wanting to get my hands on the original documents by Pius IX to get his context.
However, there is one thing in favor of Americans: if Pius IX did not favor the kind of liberty preached in America, then why was he such good friends with Jefferson Davis?
Contrary to how Vatican II is interpreted by both the Left and the Far right. When Vatican II addresses freedom of conscience, as you say, it is saying that a person cannot be coerced to do what he or she believes is evil.
To understand this, we need to understand “conscience” in the Church’s terminology, which is: doing what you know to be good. Not the pop culture idea of arguing with an angel and a devil on your shoulders and deciding which one you agree with, but specifically doing what you have been taught is the right thing to do. Freedom of conscience does not mean “making up our own morality.”
We need to know the historical context in Europe, where the American experiment was copied in an extreme form. The French Revolutionaries, and then the Bonapartists, tried to sever all influence of the Church on society.
Of course, the socialists and Communists (which were originally considered interchangeable terms) were also preaching this idea.
And this is the real question. In America, we talk about “freedom of religoin” versus “freedom from religion”; “free exercise” or “wall of separation.” I would contend that, since the statement in the Syllabus of Errors is “Church and state should be separate,” as opposed to “Church and state may be separate,” Pius is condemning the “wall of separation” idea and not the “freedom of religion” idea.
And here you hit the core objection of traditionalists: for 1600 years, give or take, if not longer, the Church taught the importance of having a Christian State.
Now, all of a sudden, the Church turns around and says that it is not proper to have establishment of religion at all (even though many Catholic countries, like Malta, still have Catholicism as an official religion).
But what happens to the idea that the pope speaks infallibly on matters of faith and morals, unless they are areas of prudential judgement? This was not a prudential judgement but an absolute moral statement, condemning what he viewed as a serious heresy.
This would seem to imply that Papal Encyclicals are like presidential executive orders, the way liberals think: just wait for the next pope to come along and reinstate Quanta Cura, then the Pope after him to override it, etc.
I prefer to try to find the “Hermeneutic of continuity.” Let’s take another document from aanother Pius: Quo Primum actually says that the Mass as issued from Rome will always be standarad in the Latin Rite, except Masses over 200 years old when it is written. Nowhere dose Quo Primum deny Rome the right to alter the liturgy; it merely denies local bishops the right to alter the liturgy.
J
JReducation
Guest
Bold is mine. Yes, that’s the way that we learned it in the seminary. Therefore, there are parts of the document that are infallible because they proceed from natural law, the Magisterium, Scripture or Sacred Tradition and there are other parts that are ordinary magisterium because they are the individual pope’s observations and comments on the subject.
Those parts that are part of the ordinary magisterium can be redefined by a succeeding pope, edited, expanded upon or reduced depending on the development of theology at the time and the reigning pope’s understanding of the issue. A pope cannot redefine dogma, but not everything in a decree is dogma, unless it is formally declared as such.
Religious freedom falls into the area of moral theology, not dogmatic theology; though it has to use dogmatic theology as a reference point. But the statement itself does not have to be dogmatic, even though it includes portions of dogma to substantiate it. Another pope can come along and declare that there is another way of understanding the issue.
This is what has happened with the question of religious freedom. The last five popes and the bishops have not changed what Pius IX wrote, but they have elaborated on it in a language that speaks to the situation of today. That can be validly done. It would be very difficult to prove that Pius IX was right and the last five popes were wrong.
You can’t juxtapose popes like that. It doesn’t work. In essence, those of us who are faithful Catholics must believe that the last five popes were as correct in their understanding of religious freedom as Pius IX and that the difference is due to nuance, wording, and different pastoral needs. When looked at this way, we can see that there is continuity, because the Papacy continues to be the Good Shepherd.
Fraternally,
JR
G
GodsGadfly
Guest
In my reply above, I was replying to JR, who defined schism. Schism is basically when a bishop splits from Rome.
A bishop has the sacramental power to ordain bishops. So if a bishop leaves communion with Rome, he can basically start his own “church.”
This is important in understandnig recent documents like Dominus Iesus and the instruction on ecumenism a couple years ago: schismatic churches are “churches” in Catholic terminology, because they have apostolic succession. A bishpo split off from Rome, and then started ordaining his own bishops and priests.
The Great Western Schism was when the college of cardinals split into two groups, each electing its own Pope. The Great Schism is when the Patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople excommunicated each other: Orthodox are the biggets schism.
Anglicanism may be schismatic, but the history is complicated. That’s why Anglican priests who come back to Rome are still required to undergo Roman ordination.
One schism that occasinoally gets headlines is the so-called “Old Catholic Church”. This is the sect of director Kevin Smith of “Dogma” fame. Their trappings are “traditional” because tthey went into schism in response to Vatican I :they reject papal infallibility. So they have a traditional looking liturgy, but they’re doctrinally very liberal. They’ve made headlines in the past for “ordaining” women and other such situations. I believe they’re the ones who “ordained” Sinead O’Connor.
Technically, the SSPX have been considered “schismatic” because they are led by these four bishops, who were validly but illicitly ordained . Technically, the four SSPX bishops could, if they wanted to, illicitly but validly ordain other men to be bishops, which would definitely constitute an all-out schism.
My previous two comments were to the effect that, basically, they’re in schism. If you’re a bishop and you’re separated from the Church, you’re in schism, because that is the literal meaning of the word “schism”: “separation.”
However, just as Rome is afraid to use the word “Heretic” in the kinder, gentler, post-Vatican II era, She is also cautious about shutting off dialogue by saying “schism” in this case, especially when there are so many influential figures in Rome–including Our Holy Father–who are sympathetic to many of the doctrinal and theological challenges the SSPX raise to Vatican II.
G
GodsGadfly
Guest
Did you completely ignore my post?
The matter was settled after 1054.
At first, it was “agree to disagree.” Then the Patriarch of Constantinople made a stink about it. Then some other stuff happened (iconoclasm, etc.), and, in 1054, the Holy Father got fed up and made the excommunication mutual.
Two hundred years later, and again, 200 years after that, Rome lifted those excommunications, but the Orthodox refused to accept the invitation.
Ultimately, the filioque was one minor issue in the Catholic/Orthodox schism, but it’s an easy one to fan the flames of the people over: just like “sola fides” was and is the rallying cry, but not the real motivation of, the Protestant Revolt.
Rome says, “fine. You want to express it as sola fide, go ahead as long as you accept these few conditions.” Protestants say, “We’re not gonna accept them.”
In the case of the Orthodox, the real issue is papal primacy. Rome says, “fine. Don’t say filioque if you don’t want to, but you have to accept papal primacy.” Orthodox say, “No. ‘First among equals’!”
When Orthodox Christians un-schism themselves, they don’t have to take a vow to say “filiioque” or to accept three-dimensional religious images. They just have to take a vow of loyalty to the Pope.
H
hosemonkey
Guest
T
theistgal
Guest
Of course, the flaw in that theory is the OCs can simply point to the history of the Eastern Catholic churches which have been required to say the “filioque” and accept things like statues, stations of the Cross, etc., in their churches, not all that long ago.
One of the good reforms after Vatican II was the mandate for the Eastern churches to “delatinize”. But it may make the EO’s somewhat hesitant about submitting to an authority which might take back that mandate at any time.
G
GodsGadfly
Guest
But I think forced “Latinization” can easily be “chalked up” to a disciplinary, rather than doctrinal, matter.
I can see why that is a major concern of EO people in dealing with the question of Rome; it’s still a huge issue with many Byzantine Catholics. Yet again, one can also point out that the aversion that Eastern Christians have to some Western practices seems a narrow-minded. I’m not saying they should be forced to adopt these practices; one of the main arguments from Eastern Christians is that the Western devotions are often copies of something the Byzantines already have an alternative to…
And many Latin Catholics object balk at the idea of adopting Byzantine devotions. Nevertheless, you will see Byzantine icons in Latin Rite churches. Millions of Latin Catholics now pray the Thrice Holy Hymn, even if they don’t know where it came from.
I can see why that is a major concern of EO people in dealing with the question of Rome; it’s still a huge issue with many Byzantine Catholics. Yet again, one can also point out that the aversion that Eastern Christians have to some Western practices seems a narrow-minded. I’m not saying they should be forced to adopt these practices; one of the main arguments from Eastern Christians is that the Western devotions are often copies of something the Byzantines already have an alternative to…
And many Latin Catholics object balk at the idea of adopting Byzantine devotions. Nevertheless, you will see Byzantine icons in Latin Rite churches. Millions of Latin Catholics now pray the Thrice Holy Hymn, even if they don’t know where it came from.
T
theistgal
Guest
Yes, those are good points. And I’ve also seen the icons in at least one Latin Rite church in Phoenix, AZ (a definite improvement over the banners and balloons that used to be there!
).However, at least in this particular Latin Rite church, they seem to be doing it voluntarily, out of a simple admiration for Eastern spirituality. Whereas in the EC churches, in the past at least, the Latinizations seem to have been done out of a (misplaced) sense that somehow they had to make it clear that they really were in union with Rome - which isn’t quite the same.
I personally would have no problem with returning the kneelers to my BC church, but it ain’t gonna happen!
(Oh, and apologies for derailing the thread. To get this back to the OP, even though I have problems with the way the SSPX conduct themselves, I am glad, for their sake and the Church’s sake, that the excommunications have been lifted, and hope both sides can come to an amicable agreement.)
R
rosetta_stone
Guest
I have not said any of the popes after Pius IX were wrong so I don’t see why you seem to be implying that I said that. I have just been condemning false and modernist interpretations of religious liberty.You can’t juxtapose popes like that. It doesn’t work. In essence, those of us who are faithful Catholics must believe that the last five popes were as correct in their understanding of religious freedom as Pius IX and that the difference is due to nuance, wording, and different pastoral needs. When looked at this way, we can see that there is continuity, because the Papacy continues to be the Good Shepherd.
Fraternally,
JR
This is completely off topic so this will be my last post on this.
- Status