Should liberals leave the catholic church?

[Penny_Plain]

Mijoy2:

But Penny, the Catholic Church believes that matters of Faith and Morals (and I believe that is what we are discussing here) are not proposed by the church Hierarchy, they are sent forth via the church hierarchy by the Holy Spirit.

To take a stand against the church in these matters, is to deny the Holy Spirit. To disobey the Holy Spirit.

This isn’t a matter of, say, being a repulbican who happens to be pro-choice. It’s a matter of disagreeing with God.

Unless of course you do not agree with this fundemental teaching
either.

I agree that matters of faith and morals come from on high and, on things that matter, there are right and wrong answers. (Example of thing that matters: Killing people. Example of thing that does not matter: Head coverings)

(ducks for cover)

I do not agree that the Church has a direct line to on high and can infallibly interpret the will of God in these matters. I am aware that the Church teaches otherwise. Since I don’t believe it to be infallible, I don’t believe that it is infallible in the matter of whether it is infallible.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Penny Plain:

I agree that matters of faith and morals come from on high and, on things that matter, there are right and wrong answers. (Example of thing that matters: Killing people. Example of thing that does not matter: Head coverings)

(ducks for cover)

I do not agree that the Church has a direct line to on high and can infallibly interpret the will of God in these matters. I am aware that the Church teaches otherwise. Since I don’t believe it to be infallible, I don’t believe that it is infallible in the matter of whether it is infallible.

In other words, you reject the Magisterium?

 

[Penny_Plain]

vern humphrey:

In other words, you reject the Magisterium?

What do you think?

Edit: My original answer was overly snide. Let’s say that I view the Magisterium as something that is very, very good to listen to but not infallible. A human institution of devout men with 20 centuries of scholarship, meditation, and prayer behind it, but, at the end of the day, a human institution.

Humans make mistakes.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Penny Plain:

What do you think?

Your profile says you are a Catholic.

I would not accuse any Catholic of rejecting the Magisterium, unless they themselves specifically said they rejected it.

 

[Ahimsa]

Penny Plain:

What do you think?

Edit: My original answer was overly snide. Let’s say that I view the Magisterium as something that is very, very good to listen to but not infallible. A human institution of devout men with 20 centuries of scholarship, meditation, and prayer behind it, but, at the end of the day, a human institution.

Humans make mistakes.

Ah, so you accept the Magisterium like you accept your father: both might claim infallibility, but you respectfully disagree.

 

[Penny_Plain]

Ahimsa:

Ah, so you accept the Magisterium like you accept your father: both might claim infallibility, but you respectfully disagree.

That is fair. Both are wise and learned and entitled to deference, but both are human and therefore capable of error.

 

[rlg94086]

Of course, you may be in error. Nothing personal, but I’ll trust nearly 2000 years of Tradition and Church teaching on the infallibility of the Magisterium over Penny Plain’s gut feeling.
Penny Plain:

That is fair. Both are wise and learned and entitled to deference, but both are human and therefore capable of error.

 

[Penny_Plain]

rlg94086:

Of course, you may be in error. Nothing personal, but I’ll trust nearly 2000 years of Tradition and Church teaching on the infallibility of the Magisterium over Penny Plain’s gut feeling.

Very reasonable on your part. Unless you’re my husband, I never claimed to be infallible either.

 

[Apocrypha]

For Penny Plain & PatG

Though I dont agree with all you guys have said, some of it I do and like a few others on this forum I 100% “think” I understand where you’re coming from and feel much the same way and offer my support to you!

 

[vern_humphrey]

Apocrypha:

For Penny Plain & PatG

Though I dont agree with all you guys have said, some of it I do and like a few others on this forum I 100% “think” I understand where you’re coming from and feel much the same way and offer my support to you!

Do you accept the Magisterium?

 

[Genesis315]

I recently put together this reading list as to why Liberalism is a sin:

Leo XIII, Libertas (On the Nature of Human Liberty) June 20, 1888

Pius IX, Quanta Cura (Condemning Current Errors) December 8, 1864; The Syllabus Of Errors 1864

Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos (On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism) August 15, 1832

Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno (Reconstruction of the Social Order) May 15, 1931

Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (On the Doctrine of the Modernists) September 8, 1907

Pius X, Lamentabili Sane (Syllabus Condemning the Errors of the Modernists) July 3, 1907

More indirectly

John XXIIII, Ad Petri Cathedram (On Truth, Unity and Peace in a Spirit of Charity) June 29, 1959

Paul VI, Populorum Progressio (On the Progression of Peoples) March 26, 1967

John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth - Regarding Certain Fundamental Question of the Church’s Moral Teaching) August 6, 1993

Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum,Dogmatic Constitution On Divine Revelation, 1965.English

Then Cardinal Ratztinger, Dean of the Conclave, homily, April 2006:

http://www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/homily-pro-eligendo-pontifice_20050418_en.html

Other sources:

*Liberalism is a Sin *by Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany, 1888.

This book is published by TAN, but it can also be found here in it’s entirety:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/theology/libsin.HTM

Catholic Encyclopedia article on Liberalism:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09212a.htm

“The Spectrum Virus” by Fr. Ray Ryland

catholic.com/thisrock/2001/0105fea1.asp

 

[Penny_Plain]

Genesis315:

I recently put together this reading list as to why Liberalism is a sin…

I probably should have asked this before, but better late than never.

How do you define “liberalism”? After looking at a couple of your links, I begin to wonder whether we are talking about the same thing.

 

[buffalo]

What is Liberalism?

The principle ramifies in many directions, striking root into our domestic, civil, and political life, whose vigor and health depend upon the nourishing and sustaining power of religion. For religion is the bond which unites us to God, the Source and End of all good; and Infidelity, whether virtual, as in Protestantism, or explicit, as in Agnosticism, severs the bond which binds men to God and seeks to build human society on the foundations of man’s absolute independence. Hence we find Liberalism laying down as the basis of its propaganda the following principles:

1. The absolute sovereignty of the individual in his entire independence of God and God’s authority.
2. The absolute sovereignty of society in its entire independence of everything which does not proceed from itself.
3. Absolute civil sovereignty in the implied right of the people to make their own laws in entire independence and utter disregard of any other criterion than the popular will expressed at the polls and in parliamentary majorities.
4. Absolute freedom of thought in politics, morals, or in religion. The unrestrained liberty of the press.

Such are the radical principles of Liberalism. In the assumption of the absolute sovereignty of the individual, that is, his entire independence of God, we find the common source of all the others. To express them all in one term, they are, in the order of ideas, RATIONALISM, or the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of human reason. Here human reason is made the measure and sum of truth. Hence we have individual, social, and political Rationalism, the corrupt fountainhead of liberalist principles [which are]: absolute freedom of worship, the supremacy of the State, secular education repudiating any connection with religion, marriage sanctioned and legitimatized by the State alone, etc.; in one word, which synthesizes all, we have SECULARIZATION, which denies religion any active intervention in the concerns of public and of private life, whatever they be. This is veritable social atheism.

 

[Apocrypha]

vern humphrey:

Do you accept the Magisterium?

Are you now or have you ever been a communist sympathizer?

Such deep questions I do not respond to with simple yes or nos, thank you. I accept my father as my father but I dont always agree with him. I accept the Pope as the head, but dont always agree with him. And despite all that, to the chagrin of others I proclaim myself catholic and hope one day the church will lighten up on some issues but until then I aint working to try and force anything upon them to do so.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Apocrypha:

Are you now or have you ever been a communist sympathizer? ]/quote]

Am not and never have been.http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon12.gif

Apocrypha:

Such deep questions I do not respond to with simple yes or nos, thank you. I accept my father as my father but I dont always agree with him. I accept the Pope as the head, but dont always agree with him. And despite all that, to the chagrin of others I proclaim myself catholic and hope one day the church will lighten up on some issues but until then I aint working to try and force anything upon them to do so.

You can’t respond with “yes” to “Do you accept the Magisterium?”

 

[Penny_Plain]

Okay. Diagnose me. Am I a liberal?

1. The absolute sovereignty of the individual in his entire independence of God and God’s authority.

Don’t agree with this. Humanity is not independent of God, but it is up to individual humans to discern the will of God and behave accordingly.

2. The absolute sovereignty of society in its entire independence of everything which does not proceed from itself.

I don’t know what this means.

3. Absolute civil sovereignty in the implied right of the people to make their own laws in entire independence and utter disregard of any other criterion than the popular will expressed at the polls and in parliamentary majorities.

Disagree. I agree with the American system, in which the popular will is checked by constitutional principles and an independent judiciary that uses those principles to determine which expressions of the popular will (in the form of laws) are to be given effect and which are not.

I also disagree that the laws of society and constitutional principles should be determined solely by recourse to religious authority, whether that authority is Catholic, Islamic, or something else. That does not mean that principles espoused by religion should not be enacted into law, but they should not be enacted into law solely because they are religious principles.

4. Absolute freedom of thought in politics, morals, or in religion. The unrestrained liberty of the press.

Again, I’m not sure what this means. I think people should be free to choose the religion that best captures their perception of God and allows for the expression of and conformance to his will. That holds true even if the religion is repellent.

Freedom of thought as to morals? Hmm. I think the law regulates actions, and a person should be free (in a legal sense) to think that she wishes that her mother in law would fall down a well, for example. The law draws the line at pushing her in, or maybe at luring her in. The law allows you to think what you like, but it does not allow you to do as you like.

I don’t think anyone argues otherwise.

As for “unrestrained liberty of the press,” I’m pretty sure that nobody in the world argues for that. Even the American First Amendment recognizes there are limits on the liberty of the press – libel, for instance.

As to the other things:

I think people should be free to worship as they please. Don’t you?

I don’t think the state should be absolutely supreme.

I think secular education should not espouse the point of view of any religion, but I think it should give children a basic grounding in the views of all major religions. I think secular education should not be complusory, and it is not.

Marriage is more complicated. I think the State has an interest in determining what is a legal marriage because many important rights stem from that. The state has no business determining what constitutes a sacramental marriage (and it has never tried to, as far as I know, in the US), nor does any religious entity have any business in determining what constitutes a legal marriage.

Am I a “liberal” in the sense of this thread?

 

[vern_humphrey]

Penny Plain:

Okay. Diagnose me. Am I a liberal?

Do you accept or reject the Magisterium?

 

[fix]

Apocrypha:

Are you now or have you ever been a communist sympathizer?

Such deep questions I do not respond to with simple yes or nos, thank you. I accept my father as my father but I dont always agree with him. I accept the Pope as the head, but dont always agree with him. And despite all that, to the chagrin of others I proclaim myself catholic and hope one day the church will lighten up on some issues but until then I aint working to try and force anything upon them to do so.

I always find this line of reasoning perplexing. Either the Church is as She claims or the entire enterprise is false.

 

[vern_humphrey]

fix:

I always find this line of reasoning perplexing. Either the Church is as She claims or the entire enterprise is false.

You are correct – in fact, the rejection of the Magisterium, carrying with it the idea that the individual can interpret the message of Christ for himself is a heresy called Protestantism.

 

[frommi]

vern humphrey:

Do you accept or reject the Magisterium?

What exactly does this mean?

Does a liberal accept that there is a magisterium?

Does a liberal accept the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff?