Fortiterinre:
So all non-Catholic religions should be regulated to prevent them from breaking the first commandment?
Ideally, yes. Ideally, violations of the first commandmend will be forbidden by the State. Let’s phrase it this way: Ideally, human law will reflect Divine Law. That is obviously the goal.
However, in our very imperfect world, human law sometimes “tolerates” that which is contrary to the Divine law. That is obviously not good, but it happnes.
Thus, in our day, when heresies are everywhere, the Church has taught that it is prudent for human law to tolerate that evil which is contrary to the Divine Law: specifically the 1st commandment.
Basically if Saudi Arabia were Catholic, it would be the perfect state?
Let’s say you are against abortion, and you are arguing on a Catholic message board with one who is in favor of it. You explain to him that you believe abortion should be illegal, because it is against the law of God. He then says to you:
"Oh yeah, well Saudi Arabia also says that abortion is wrong; so I guess they are a perfect state, huh?
In other words, just because Saudi Arabia may believe that other religions should be forbidden, does not mean that the basic principal is false. The principal is based on God’s law. The problem is that they belong to false religion so they would be outlawing the true religion and thus in violation of a true “right” of man: The right to worship God in the true religion.
How does doctrine develop without changing at least somewhat? Development by definition involves change.
Not so. Doctrinal developement does not at all mean change. For example, it had always been believed that the Eucharist was Jesus. But the doctrine developed so that we now know exactly how it is Jesus: Through transubstantiation, whereby the substance is transformed into the body, blood, soul, and Divinity of our Lord, while the accidents (that which appears), remains that of bread.
See, no change, just a development.
Boniface VIII said that “every living creature” had to be subject to the Roman Pontiff for salvation; taken without change, this suggests that Lefebvrist schismatics cannot be saved.
Objectively speaking, schismatics cannot be saved. There has been no change there. Schism is a very serious evil. Those who separate from the Church of God, separate themselves from the body of Christ and cannot be saved (unless before death they reunite). Now, subjectively it is possible for a person who attends a schismatic church to be saved, but that is only if they are in reality united to the Catholic Church “outside of which there is no salvation”.
Whether or not the SSPX is truly in schism is another matter. By what appears, they are in schism; but so was St. Athanasius and his followers. They were “outside” of the normal diocese. This was an extraordinary case in an extraordinary time. The situation with the SSPX may very well be the same as that of St. Athanasius. They claim it is. Time will tell.
Gregory XVI condemned railroads as immoral until his death in 1846, when Pius IX was elected and immediately started laying down track throughout the Papal States.
But is this based on doctrine? Of course not. It was probably on the level of Canon law, which does indeed change with the times. For example it used to be forbidden to even work with heretics. Today that would be impractical. Canon law deals with the application of the faith, and can be changed.
Absolute monarchs like Pius IX have very little to excuse them in terms of “following the law.” As an absolute monarch, he should not have followed any law that involved stealing children from their mothers. In fact, he should have dismantled the Roman Ghetto, also a scandal and deeply wrong. The Church has done lots of embarrassing things over the years, and still schism is never the answer.
I agree with what Pope Pius IX did. I think it was a good thing that resulted in a good end. Just because you think it was bad does not mean it was bad. That is just your opinion against the Vicar of Christ. I’ll side with the Pope on this one.
One thing I do agree with is that churchmen (not the Church itself) have done some very embarrassing things. For example John Paul II inviting snake worshippers to the Vatican to violate the 1st commandment at his request was more than embarrassing; and his praising Martin Luther, who was probably the wost heretic in the history of the Church, was also an extremely embarrassing thing.
So, I do agree with you when you say that churchmen have indeed done some extremely scandelous and embarrassing things. But we might dissagree on which things were scandalice and embarrassing.
