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rogergosselin
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Why 1958 specifically?
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Abu
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Such a posture is absolutely against the Catholic Church.
**Traditionalist
Question from confused on 08-04-2006:
What is a Traditionalist? And are they in communion with the Pope?
Answer by Catholic Answers (EWTN) on 08-09-2006: **
"Confused–
A Traditionalist is someone who prefers the traditional spirituality of the Roman rite of the Catholic Church, ordinarily found in expressions of the faith usually found in the pre-Vatican-II Roman rite. By this definition, Traditionalists are in union with the Pope.
"However there are some who ally themselves with the Traditionalist movement who have gone beyond mere preference for traditional Roman rite spirituality into challenging the legitimacy of Vatican II and the legitimacy of doctrinal and liturgical development since that Council. To distinguish these people from mainstream Traditionalists, they are sometimes called radical or extreme Traditionalists.
“In this latter group, some are in union with the Pope, some remain in union with the Pope while flirting with schismatic groups such as the Society of St. Pius X, and **some altogether reject the Pope and are known as sedevacantists. Sedevacantists believe that the Chair of Peter is “empty” and that there has been no legitimate pope since Pius XII (the last pope before Vatican II). **Although the canonical status of the sedevacantists is not something I am qualified to determine, it is certain that sedevacantists reject the current Pope’s legitimacy and so cannot be said to be in union with him.”
Michelle Arnold
Catholic Answers
tinyurl.com/ml6f6rl
therealpresence.org/cgi-bin/getdefinition.pl
Fr John A Hardon, S.J., Modern Catholic Dictionary
“In the Roman Catholic Church, heresy has a very specific meaning. Anyone who, after receiving baptism, while remaining nominally a Christian, pertinaciously denies or doubts any of the truths that must be believed with divine and Catholic faith is considered a heretic. Accordingly four elements must be verified to constitute formal heresy; previous valid baptism, which need not have been in the Catholic Church; external profession of still being a Christian, otherwise a person becomes an apostate; outright denial or positive doubt regarding a truth that the Catholic Church has actually proposed as revealed by God; and the disbelief must be morally culpable, where a nominal Christian refuses to accept what he knows is a doctrinal imperative.
“Objectively, therefore, to become a heretic in the strict canonical sense and be excommunicated from the faithful, one must deny or question a truth that is taught not merely on the authority of the Church but on the word of God revealed in the Scriptures or sacred tradition. Subjectively a person must recognize his obligation to believe. If he acts in good faith, as with most persons brought up in non-Catholic surroundings, the heresy is only material and implies neither guilt nor sin against faith. (Etym. Latin haeresis, from the Greek hairesis, a taking, choice, sect, heresy.)”
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IgnatianPhilo
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Would those Historical European Lutherans be in communion and recognise the clergy of those not apostolic-ally ordained?
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Isaiah45_9
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Last day of Pope Pius XII, RIP.
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rcwitness
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Well according to this description, there isnt much in the way of contradicting Catholic view of Scripture.
The Catholic Church has merely claimed, from the beginning and with the basis of Apostolic primacy/supremacy under the chief bishop of succession, that Sacred Tradition delivered to us through written AND oral means is ultimately only defined and interpreted by the Church Magisterium. I understand this as the Church declaring what constitutes authentic Sacred Tradition (whether written or oral) and its binding interpretation over the entire Church.
Therefore, its logical for a reformed church body to exclude this authority from itself and others, because it obviously cannot claim what the Catholic Church does.
Hi Michael,
I’m probably not the best one to answer that, though I would think that if it was not a required belief, I’m not sure how it could be heterodox. Luther, and AFAIK, most of the reformers believed in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Luther’s comment was that she was with Him in Heaven, though we have no way of knowing how this happened.
"There can he no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know. And since the Holy Spirit has told us nothing about it, we can make of it no article of faith… It is enough to know that she lives in Christ."
That, to me, is not a heterodox position, as its the position I hold, as well.
What Lutherans do not do is bind the conscience of the believer on this issue, as we consider it adiaphoron, and not an article of faith.My point to Abu was that it seems unreasonable to accuse Lutherans of holding a heterodox position, when that was the position of the Catholic Church prior to 1870.
Jon
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Abu
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The fact that the doctrine had been expressed by “the Universal Church…many times over the course of centuries…” identifies the “universality of time” as a “sufficient proof of its certainty” which is an additional proof employed by Pope Pius XII which he added to the reality from the fact that he had written to all of the bishops and had received “an almost unanimous affirmative response.”
Defending the Papacy, “Gerard Morrissey”, Christendom Publications, 1984, p 52-3. He is a priest of 20 years using a pseudonym].
The fact that the belief, as so clearly identified above, was declared a dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, raises to the ultimate the reality expressed.
The refusal to follow Christ’s solely established Church in Her dogma, doctrine, sacraments and Holy Mass can be remedied only by personal assent to His Will.
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pablope
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So…Jon…you are saying that you are still stuck to a pre-1870 mindset and the Lutherans have not moved on beyond 1870?
Well…let us say…the LCMS decided to make it an article of faith…would you still be opposed to it?
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pablope
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Do you pray it loudly or not?
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pablope
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Fr. K…you may be the person who can present or provide the answer. I have asked Lutherans here what Luther actually said about or described what SS is?
Can you provide Luther’s description, in Luther’s own words, what SS is?
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rcwitness
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Hey Jon, I too am not one to bring a wealth of information and resource to support the Assumption of Mary being an article of the faith. My main premise would be that I trust the Church and the document that it has been attested to from the very beginning and confirmed through faith as a Sacred(ly) held Tradition throughout the centuries.Hi Michael,
I’m probably not the best one to answer that, though I would think that if it was not a required belief, I’m not sure how it could be heterodox. Luther, and AFAIK, most of the reformers believed in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Luther’s comment was that she was with Him in Heaven, though we have no way of knowing how this happened.
"There can he no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know. And since the Holy Spirit has told us nothing about it, we can make of it no article of faith… It is enough to know that she lives in Christ."
That, to me, is not a heterodox position, as its the position I hold, as well.
I would have to ask who Luther is refering to when He says “we” and “us”? Because there is apparent contradiction in that statement and what the Pope claimed. How much explicit Tradition was used and how much of the Holy Spirit confirming what was the belief of the Church expressed throughout the centuries, I dont know. Martin seems to lump the Church into his “the Holy Spirit has told us nothing about it” as if he is the spokesman of the whole Church. But I realize the position is that of passive and that is how it is projected from Luthernism. That the reformers have no authority to declare a Tradition as Sacred and unable to reject. This is obvious and necessary for any church communion who is seperated from the Apostolic See which has professed this authority from the beginning (though that is obviously debated as to the nature and extent of her authority).
Thanks for sharing Jon
Move on in what way?
I don’t see it as being stuck.
No, precisely because of what Abu has said, its historical place in the Church, eastern and western interpretations notwithstanding. This would be different than those communions that are, for example, ordaining women. That has no historical precedent.
Jon
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KjetilK
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No, mostly because it is a time in mass where the priest prays silently, but mostly because it is not prescribed in the liturgy. It is a personal devotion.
Well, I’m not entirely sure what source would be best. I haven’t read all Luther has to say on the matter, and he didn’t write that formally. So it isn’t easy to find a single text where he clearly lays out his own definition of sola scriptura. Melanchthon might be a better candidate, though he went off the deep end into quasi-Zwinglianism. I cannot find a direct quote, but one interesting sentence can be found in , art I:50Confessio Augustana: “For this reason our preachers have diligently taught concerning these subjects, and have delivered nothing that is new, but have set forth Holy Scripture and the judgments of the holy Fathers.”
But the answer lies more in the practice: If you read Confessio Augustana, or its Apology, you see that Scripture is references constantly, yet never in contradiction to Tradition, especially the consensus of the Church Fathers.
But to understand Luther’s position, it must be said that not only did Luther hold fast to Scripture and plain reason, he also held fast to Tradition, and especially the Apostles’ Creed and, as evident from his adherence to Confessio Augustana, the Nicene and Chalcedonian Creeds (cf. art. I-III). He fameously held that even though there is not a strict example of a child being baptised in the New Testament, we should still hold to it, because the undivided Tradition held to it, the tradition which gave us the Creeds. For those who can read Norwegian, Oddvar Johan Jensen, a Norwegian professor of Church History (with specialisation in the Reformation and Luther studies) at my alma mater in Bergen, Norway, explains Luther’s positionin a feature article in Norwegian Christian Newspaper Dagen, November 29, 2013, p.35. This article was part of a long debate in said newspaper when some students at my Lutheran alma mater was horrified when the teachers wasn’t fundamentalists and/or calvinists. There is an overview of the debate here, with links to the different posts and articles. Unfortunately it is all in Norwegian.
The Professor’s point is that for Luther, Scripture should be read within Tradition. So for Luther, Sola Scriptura was a principle which gave preeminence to Scripture, but which read it through Tradition, in the Church, and with emphasis on reason. The following paragraph (#442) of The Apostolicity of the Church, a study document of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, encapsulates the early Lutheran view of Sola Scriptura:
Catholics and Lutherans agree, not only that Scripture developed historically from a process of tradition both in Israel and the apostolic church, but as well that Scripture is oriented toward a process of being interpreted in the context of ecclesial tradition.
Source: The Apostolicity of the Church, p.190. It is also available online, but without the page numbers of the book.
But the issue that needs to be clear here, and which I find to be surprisingly hard to convey to Roman Catholics, is that Luther doesn’t have any formal authority qua Luther. He doesn’t have any more formal authority for Lutherans than, say, Bellarmine or Karl Rahner has for Roman Catholics.
So it is in fact pretty uninteresting to me what Luther himself believed and taught. What matters to me is the faith once delivered unto the saints, that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.
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rogergosselin
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Not true at all!
Unless you were to deny that Francis de Sales and Robert Bellarmine were saints and doctors of the church:
St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, II, 30:
“A pope who is a manifest heretic automatically (per se) ceases to be pope and head, just as he ceases automatically to be a Christian and a member of the Church. Wherefore, he can be judged and punished by the Church. This is the teaching of all the ancient Fathers who teach that manifest heretics immediately lose all jurisdiction.”
St. Francis De Sales (17th century), Doctor of the Church: "Thus we do not say that the Pope cannot err in his private opinions, as did John XXII; or be altogether a heretic, as perhaps Honorius was. Now when he [the Pope] is explicitly a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church…
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Abu
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“a heretic as perhaps Honorius”. Perhaps???
A little learning is a dangerous thing., especially when it clutches at straws.
Answer by Dr. William Carroll (EWTN) on 10-23-2001:
Pope Honorius never actually taught heresy at all. It was all a misunderstanding, which is explained in full detail, fully documented, in the second volume of my history of Christendom, THE BUILDING OF CHRISTENDOM, pages 252-254.
Answer by Dr. William Carroll (EWTN) on 05-29-2002:
When Pope St. Leo II affirmed a council’s condemnation of Pope Honorius, he specifically declared that Pope Honorius had not taught heresy, but had been condemned for failing to denounce it soon enough.
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rogergosselin
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Unfortunately, rehashing the controversy surrounding Pope Honorius is only serving to distract from the point being made. But, since you brought it up, let me make clear that Pope Honorius is a legitimate Pope, and not a heretic. His letters were condemned by The Third Council of Constantinople, yet Pope John IV still defended him. The Church has found that his error was a result of misunderstanding, not pertinacious denial of the Faith; and thus, not heresy.
Saint Francis de Sales is one of the greatest scholars of the Church. To attribute “little learning” to him is ludicrous. To claim that he was “clutching at straws” betrays a misunderstanding of the underlying complexity of the monothelite heresy and the status of Pope Honorius in this regard. Saint Francis was demonstrating equanimity by using the word “perhaps”, not stating unequivocally that Pope Honorius was a heretic.
Certainly, no Pope has ever taught heresy when speaking ex cathedra! Such a thing is unthinkable. It would undermine the very foundation of the Church.
In the case of Pope Honorius, I believe the letters that were condemned were not addressed to all the faithful, so they do not qualify as being issued from the Chair of Peter.
The quotes from Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Robert Bellarmine demonstrate that it is not unlawful to consider whether or not a Pope has turned to heresy in his private opinion (if warranted, and of course using the utmost caution), and if heresy is in fact the case, the Papal office is temporarily vacated.
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