Sacred Tradition

[fcfahs]

To All:

Thank you for so much articulate, educated, and profound (name removed by moderator)ut.

Please know that no one is learning more from these excellent
posts than I am.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

JP I meant he would modify Church’s teachings to allow artificial contraception for some cases

Can you support this claim through actual documentation, or is this just the undocumented opinion of a web page?

 

[abcdefg]

itsjustdave1988:

Can you support this claim through actual documentation, or is this just the undocumented opinion of a web page?

more links than you can read in the wikipedia page. why bother?
If JPI had taught “under some situations, one probably can use ABC” do you think this is logically wrong? I don’t think so, the sentence isn’t wrong according to logic. “one probably can” include “one can’t” thus no logic problems. however “under some situations, one can use ABC” is wrong.

about ET, tradition teaches “ET is wrong” but now it turns into “ET is probably right”
by adding words “probably” “can” any dogma can corrupted.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Here are some relevent excerpts from the Catholic Encyclopedia (1909), written under the papacy of Pope St. Pius X, under the heading “The proper mode of existence of revealed truth in the mind of the Church and the way to recognize this truth,”:

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Tradition and Living Magisterium

… this idea of a deposit [of faith] should not make us lose sight of the true manner in which traditional truth lives and is transmitted in the Church. This deposit in fact is not an inanimate thing passed from hand to hand; it is not, properly speaking, an assemblage of doctrines and institutions consigned to books or other monuments. Books and monuments of every kind are a means, an organ of transmission, they are not, properly speaking, the tradition itself. …

… We are all conscious of an assemblage of ideas or opinions living in our mind and forming part of the very life of our mind, sometimes they find their clear expression, again we find ourselves without the exact formula wherewith to express them to ourselves or to others an idea is in search as it were of its expression, sometimes it even acts in us and leads us to actions without our having as yet the reflective consciousness of it. Something similar may be said of the ideas or opinions which live, as it were, and stir the … spirit of the people.

This common sentiment is in a sense nothing else than the sum of individual sentiments, and yet we feel clearly that it is quite another thing than the individual taken individually. It is a fact of experience that there is a common sentiment, as if there were such a thing as a common spirit, and as if this common spirit were the abode of certain ideas and opinions which are doubtless the ideas and opinions of each man, but which take on a peculiar aspect in each man inasmuch as they are the ideas and opinions of all. The existence of tradition in the Church must be regarded as living in the spirit and the heart, thence translating itself into acts, and expressing itself in words or writings; but here we must not have in mind individual sentiment, but the common sentiment of the Church, [emphasis added] the sense or sentiment of the faithful, that is, of all who live by its life and are in communion of thought among themselves and with her …

Documents of all kinds (writings, monuments, etc.) are in the hands of masters, as of the faithful, a means of finding or recognizing the revealed truth confided to the Church under the direction of her pastors. There is between written documents and the living magisterium of the Church a relation similar, proportionately speaking, to that already outlined between Scripture and the living magisterium. In them is found the traditional thought expressed according to varieties of environments and circumstances, no longer in an inspired language, as is the case with Scripture, but in a purely human language, consequently subject to the imperfections and shortcomings of human thought. Nevertheless the more the documents are the exact expression of the living thought of the Church the more they thereby possess the value and authority which belong to that thought because they are so much the better expression of tradition. Often formulas of the past have themselves entered the traditional current and become the official formulas of the Church. Hence it will be understood that the living magisterium searches in the past, now for authorities in favour of its present thought in order to defend it against attacks or dangers of mutilation, now for light to walk the right road without straying. The thought of the Church is essentially a traditional thought and the living magisterium by taking cognizance of ancient formulas of this thought thereby recruits its strength and ***prepares to give to immutable truth a new expression ***which shall be in harmony with the circumstances of the day and within reach of contemporary minds.

continued…

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Catholicism rejects sola Traditio just as certainly as she rejects sola Scritpura. It is the competence of the living magisterium, which is vested in the current pope and the college of bishops in communion with him to determine what is truly traditional versus what has an admixture of error.

The article continues…

Revealed truth has sometimes found definitive formulas from the earliest times; then the living magisterium has only had to preserve and explain them and put them in circulation. Sometimes attempts have been made to express this truth, without success. It even happens that, in attempting to express revealed truth in the terms of some philosophy or to fuse it with some current of human thought, it has been distorted so as to be scarcely recognizable, so closely mingled with error that it becomes difficult to separate them. When the Church studies the ancient monuments of her faith she casts over the past the reflection of her living and present thought and by some sympathy of the truth of to-day with that of yesterday she succeeds in recognizing through the obscurities and inaccuracies of ancient formulas the portions of traditional truth, even when they are mixed with error. The Church is also (as regards religious and moral doctrines) the best interpreter of truly traditional documents; she recognizes as by instinct what belongs to the current of her living thought and distinguishes it from the foreign elements which may have become mixed with it in the course of centuries.

The living magisterium, therefore, makes extensive use of documents of the past, but it does so while judging and interpreting, gladly finding in them its present thought, but likewise, when needful, distinguishing its present thought from what is traditional only in appearance. It is revealed truth always living in the mind of the Church, or, if it is preferred, the present thought of the Church in continuity with her traditional thought, which is for it*** the final criterion***, according to which the living magisterium adopts as true or rejects as false the often obscure and confused formulas which occur in the monuments of the past. Thus are explained both her respect for the writings of the Fathers of the Church and her supreme independence towards those writings–she judges them more than she is judged by them. … [The Church] is then linked with her past because in this past her entire self is concerned and not any fallible organ of her thought. Hence she still finds her doctrine and rule of faith in these venerable [infallible] monuments; the formulas may have grown old, but the truth which they express is always her present thought.

 

[abcdefg]

itsjustdave1988:

Catholicism rejects sola Traditio just as certainly as she rejects sola Scritpura.

Church also rejects sola CCC
rejection of ET and support of Creationism is backed up both by tradition and scripture. what other authority do you need?

 

[itsjustdave1988]

abcdefg:

more links than you can read in the wikipedia page. why bother? I don’t think so, the sentence isn’t wrong according to logic. “one probably can” include “one can’t” thus no logic problems. however “under some situations, one can use ABC” is wrong.

about ET, tradition teaches “ET is wrong” but now it turns into “ET is probably right”
by adding words “probably” “can” any dogma can corrupted.

I have no idea what you mean by “ET.”

However, I find it odd that one would cite wikpedia. It is authored by the readers. It is certainly not reliable, but more “conventional wisdom” which is often incorrect.

The reason I asked was that I don’t believe I’ve read anything that would suggest that John Paul I “meant” to modify Church’s teachings to allow artificial contraception. I find such a claim dubious at best.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

abcdefg:

Church also rejects sola CCC

Most definitely, which is why we have a LIVING magisterium.

… rejection of ET and support of Creationism is backed up both by tradition and scripture. what other authority do you need?

Don’t know what ET means, but I fully believe God created the universe and all life within it, and that man is the progeny of our first parents, Adam and Eve as Humani Generis teaches.

 

[vern_humphrey]

abcdefg:

Church also rejects sola CCC

The CCC is the magisterium in action. Who rejects the CCC rejects the Magisterium

abcdefg:

rejection of ET and support of Creationism is backed up both by tradition and scripture. what other authority do you need?

The Magisterium, of course! We are Catholics – we don’t interpret by ourselves against the authority of Mother Church!

 

[Ferdinand_Mary]

Let’s keep the charity to a maximum, or posting privileges will be modified.

Mane Nobiscum Domine,
Ferdinand Mary

 

[abcdefg]

To itsjustdave1988: ET means evolution theory. typing that word every time is boring.
vern humphrey:

The CCC is the magisterium in action. Who rejects the CCC rejects the Magisterium

The Magisterium, of course! We are Catholics – we don’t interpret by ourselves against the authority of Mother Church!

I don’t reject or contradict CCC as CCC has no clear stance on the matter. However I can say CCC is badly written on this (though not wrong!).

If a future pope modifies CCC into “Catholics must accept ET and rejects Creationism” OK, you can call me rejecting CCC or a heretic I’m not offended. but wait, you’d better wait until that pope is canonized or declared infallibly with other methods he’s no heretic.
Papal infallibility only applies when the pope isn’t a heretic. Pope Honorius I was declared a heretic and anathematized because with the help of tradition, Church recognized he was against Catholicism. This is an example showing the power of different types of authority.

 

[Catholic_Dude]

abcdefg:

Papal infallibility only applies when the pope isn’t a heretic. Pope Honorius I was declared a heretic and anathematized because with the help of tradition, Church recognized he was against Catholicism. This is an example showing the power of different types of authority.

I dont know what you mean by “he was against Catholicism”?
I have tried looking into what was really said, but I have never found the full letter he wrote. The scaps I have found indicate to me when he made a certain comment (in a private letter) it looked unintentional. That doesnt excuse the fact it was wrong, but it was more along the lines of a careless slip rather than “against” the Church.

 

[Bishopite]

[abcdefg]

Pope Honorius I was declared a heretic and anathematized because with the help of tradition, Church recognized he was against Catholicism. This is an example showing the power of different types of authority.

Pope Honorius I was never considered a formal heretic which is far different from believing a heretical believe that had already been infallibly pronounced. He was duped into thinking monothelticism was correct by Sergius—monotheleticism is Christ had
one soul or as they called them operations instead of two which is the orthodox Catholic position.
And so what if Pope Honorius l did temporarily believe incorrectly, that didn’t make him a formal heretic,because he never formally promalgated monthelticism upon the whole Church, in fact he never even attempted to prolmogate it at all upon the Church.
I’d agree with you that he wasn’t our “best” Pope, yet he never pronounced monotheleticism as de fide dogma, never. Patrick Madrids book “Pope Fiction” goes into this myth but I don’t have my copy with me; I will soon have it and post what Madrid, who thoroughly studied that controversy, says about Pope Hononrius l and monotheleticism.

 

[abcdefg]

If Honorius I hadn’t been a formal heretic, then he wouldn’t have been condemned. just like St Peter isn’t a formal unbeliever when he denied Jesus 3 times.

temporary heresy like what St Peter did isn’t condemned. and quite a few popes that followed confirmed the anathema. remember a suspect only need to be sentenced once to be a criminal. Honorius I’s error probably is far greater than any of us can imagine. Also keep in mind reversing a heretic sentence can mean having supporters of original sentence sentenced as heretics as shown in Joan of Arc’s case

Far from being one of the best popes, Honorius I is one of the worst if not simply the worst. As for Alexander VI who was corrupt enough yet received no official condemnation, we don’t know if he had a deathbed repentance and escaped hell. but Honorius I’s anathema(separate from Christ) came posthumous which means if the verdict stands, he is in Hell.

 

[vern_humphrey]

abcdefg:

To itsjustdave1988: ET means evolution theory. typing that word every time is boring.

I don’t reject or contradict CCC as CCC has no clear stance on the matter. However I can say CCC is badly written on this (though not wrong!).

If a future pope modifies CCC into “Catholics must accept ET and rejects Creationism” OK, you can call me rejecting CCC or a heretic I’m not offended. but wait, you’d better wait until that pope is canonized or declared infallibly with other methods he’s no heretic.
Papal infallibility only applies when the pope isn’t a heretic. Pope Honorius I was declared a heretic and anathematized because with the help of tradition, Church recognized he was against Catholicism. This is an example showing the power of different types of authority.

There it is in black and white. You’ll accept what the Pope says only if he agrees wth you.

You’re a Protestant!!

And you’ve lost the argument on evolution.

 

[thistle]

vern humphrey:

There it is in black and white. You’ll accept what the Pope says only if he agrees wth you.

You’re a Protestant!!

And you’ve lost the argument on evolution.

I totally agree with you.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Catholic Dude:

I dont know what you mean by “he was against Catholicism”?
I have tried looking into what was really said, but I have never found the full letter he wrote. …

Catholic Dude,

abcdefg’s claims about Honorius are flawed. He wasn’t condemned for teaching heresy, but was condemend because of negligence in defending against heresy, and because his writings were used (incorrectly) by heretics to continue their claims.

Yet, any pope can be condemend by their successors. That doesn’t send them to hell, as was suggested. It just says they were in error. The subjective elements of mortal sin would still be judged by God, as the Church has no special insight into a man’s impediments of the will and intellect.

Here’s what Honorius wrote to Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople (AD 634):

… so that truly it may be recognized that by a wonderful design [passible flesh] is united [to the Godhead] while the differences of both natures marvelously remain… Hence, we confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ also… For there was no other law in His members, or a will different from or contrary to the Savior… [Denzinger 251]

Honorius’ successor, Pope John IV explains the meaning of Honorius about Two Wills in his letter seven years later to Constantius the Emperor (AD 641).

…in the dispensation of His sacred flesh, He never had two contrary wills [emphasis added], nor did the will of His flesh resist the will of His mind… we do not preach two contrary wills, of mind and of flesh, as in a pure man, in the manner certain heretics are known to rave. In accord with this method, then, our predecessor (already mentioned) [Honorius] is known to have written to the (aforenamed) Sergius the wills did not exist internally, that is, in His members, since He derived no blemish from the transgression of the first man… So, my aformentioned predecessor said concerning the mystery of the incarnation of Christ, that there were not in Him, as in us sinners, contrary wills of mind and flesh; and certain ones converting this to their own meaning, suspected that He taught one will of His divinity and humanity which is altogether contrary to the truth…" [Denzinger 253]

Honorius was condemened later by Pope Leo II. Why? Not for teaching heresy, but for negligence in his role of protecting against heresy.

In volume two of his monumental work *A History of Christendom, *historian William Carrol explained that Pope Agatho never confirmed the council’s decrees (including its condemnation of Honorius) because he had been dead several months when the news of the council’s actions arrived in Rome. His successor, Pope Leo II confirmed the council’s decrees but redefined its language regarding Pope Honorius, making it clear that Honorius had NOT endorsed the Monothelitism of Sergius, but had failed in his duty to condemn it. Officially, therefore, Honorius was condemend for his negligence, but not for heresy. …To King Erwig [Pope Leo II] wrote that Honorius was condemned for negligence in not denouncing the heresy and for using an expression which the heretics were able to employ to advance their own cause, thereby allowing the Faith to be stained… (citing Warren Carroll, *History of Christendom, *Vol 2., p. 254) (Patrick Madrid, *Pope Fiction, *pg 159-160

 

[fcfahs]

At the risk of returning to the original focus of this thread, Sacred Tradition, I should mention that in restudying the Didache, Pug referred me to in post #3, a piece of 2nd century Sacred Tradition not formally part of Sacred Scripture, I find myself even more in question about the origins of our contemporary Catholic mindset toward infant Baptism and the Eucharistic celebration.

On Infant Baptism: As far as I can see, there are no passages from Sacred Scripture (the Bible) that even allude to baptism before the age of reason, where the one being baptised would at least understand something about the Holy Spirit and the profundity of the vows being made.
Moreover, in chapter 7 of the Didache, which concerns the procedures and rules for baptism, it’s stated that the one being baptised will be ordered to fast one or two days before the event. Now, I ask you, is it even reasonable to believe an infant would be expected (much less be ordered) to fast one or two days?

On the Eucharist: So far, I have found nothing in the Bible which should prompt our belief in the transubstanciation of the Eucharist and church rule of fasting (originally 12 hours) before receipt of the Eucharist. Moreover, even in chapters 9 and 10 of the Didache, on the Eucharist and the prayers said after Communion, there is no reference to the death of Jesus. To be sure, even the very formalistic set of post-communion prayers described in the chapter 10 haven’t the slightest association with the His death or resurrection, let alone His presence in the Eucharist.

It would seem, therefore, that our contemporary Catholic beliefs and practices, concerning baptism and the Eucharist have come neither from our bible of Sacred Scripture nor from the teachings of the Apostles found in the Didache, but rather from the minds and imagination of our later church Fathers.

Any comments on this anyone?

 

[vern_humphrey]

fcfahs:

At the risk of returning to the original focus of this thread, Sacred Tradition, I should mention that in restudying the Didache, Pug referred me to in post #3, a piece of 2nd century Sacred Tradition not formally part of Sacred Scripture, I find myself even more in question about the origins of our contemporary Catholic mindset toward infant Baptism and the Eucharistic celebration.

On Infant Baptism: As far as I can see, there are no passages from Sacred Scripture (the Bible) that even allude to baptism before the age of reason, where the one being baptised would at least understand something about the Holy Spirit and the profundity of the vows being made.

Acts 10, 44-48:

44 While Peter was still speaking these things, the holy Spirit fell upon all who were listening to the word. 19

45 The circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were astounded that the gift of the holy Spirit should have been poured out on the Gentiles also, 46 for they could hear them speaking in tongues and glorifying God. Then Peter responded, 47 “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people, who have received the holy Spirit even as we have?” 48 He ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. The whole household was baptized – children, slaves and all.

fcfahs:

Moreover, in chapter 7

of the Didache, which concerns the procedures and rules for baptism, it’s stated that the one being baptised will be ordered to fast one or two days before the event. Now, I ask you, is it even reasonable to believe an infant would be expected (much less be ordered) to fast one or two days?The Didache is a manual for teaching and converting non-Christians. It naturally focusses on adults, who were the ones being converted.

On the Eucharist:

So far, I have found nothing in the Bible which should prompt our belief in the transubstanciation of the Eucharist and church rule of fasting (originally 12 hours) before receipt of the Eucharist.

Matthew 26, 26

26 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, “Take and eat; this is my body.” 27 Then he took a cup, gave thanks, 16

and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you, 28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins. He very clearly told us that this is His body and blood.

The Miracle of the Mass carries out his command to drink His blood and eat His flesh.

fcfahs:

Moreover, even in chapters 9

and 10 of the Didache, on the Eucharist and the prayers said after Communion, there is no reference to the death of Jesus. To be sure, even the very formalistic set of post-communion prayers described in the chapter 10 haven’t the slightest association with the His death or resurrection, let alone His presence in the Eucharist.

But the Gospels do associate the eucharist with his body and blood.

fcfahs:

It would seem, therefore, that our contemporary Catholic beliefs and practices, concerning baptism and the Eucharist have come neither from our bible of Sacred Scripture nor from the teachings of the Apostles found in the Didache

, but rather from the minds and imagination of our later church Fathers.

Any comments on this anyone?

As I have shown, Catholic beliefs on both infant baptism and the eucharist are from the Bible

 

[abcdefg]

vern humphrey:

There it is in black and white. You’ll accept what the Pope says only if he agrees wth you.

You’re a Protestant!!

And you’ve lost the argument on evolution.

I don’t want to see you suspended, as your involvement in the news forum is appreciated. But calling me Protestant is simply no joke.

About evolution debate, whoever leaves the battlefield is the loser, and it’s not me.