The Doors to Ecumenism

[Deacon_Tony560]

There is a famous Fr.Puglisi of Palermo, who is being considered for sainthood after being gunned down in front of his church for making the Mafia mad. Is this priest, discussing ecumenism, related to him?

Deacon Tony SFO

 

[HagiaSophia]

Deacon Tony560:

There is a famous Fr.Puglisi of Palermo, who is being considered for sainthood after being gunned down in front of his church for making the Mafia mad. Is this priest, discussing ecumenism, related to him?

Deacon Tony SFO

Sorry I just found this post now - I don’t know if he is related or not bit it would certainly be an interesting connection if he is.

When you mention the Mafia, I always remember the first time I saw this pope lose his temper and pound the podium. (About a decade ago) We used to get RAI (Italian TV) and he went to Sicily to back up some of his priests there who were confronting this in the pulpit.

He exhorted the crowd to break the “omerta” - to turn these people in - to aid the Italian government in arresting and imprisoning them by giving testimony. Those blue eyes blazed, he pounded the podium with his fist, he denounced them at the top of his voice and I stood there transfixed. I hd heard from somone in Rome about the day Lefevbre arrived but I had never seen him this way - but he really hit’em hard I can tell you.

Shortly after that a priest there spoke from his pulpit when he heard that a fellow priest had just been threatened by finding a lamb with its throat cut on his door step. He repeated everything the pope had said, and then passed out a flyer with a message to the “unknown and unseen” - It was a two word expression which I cannot repeat in the forum - but as far as I know both priests still live and work there. God bless the pope.

 

[HagiaSophia]

Deacon Tony560:

There is a famous Fr.Puglisi of Palermo, who is being considered for sainthood after being gunned down in front of his church for making the Mafia mad. Is this priest, discussing ecumenism, related to him?

Deacon Tony SFO

atonementfriars.org/page/Graymoor_Today_chapel.htm

There is information at this link on the ecuemnical Puglisi but alas, it doesn’t mention anyone but him.

 

[TNT]

Vatican , Jun. 18, 2004 (CWNews.com) - Cardinal Walter Kasper (bio - news), the president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, has said that “Eucharistic hospitality” is licit in some circumstances.

Speaking at a major conference of German Catholics in the city of Ulm on June 18, Cardinal Kasper said that “there are circumstances when a non-Catholic can receive Communion at a Catholic Mass.”

katherine2:

As says the both the Pope and Katherine!!

Sacred Scripture, St. Matthew 7:6:
Give not that which is holy to dogs; neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest perhaps they trample them under their feet, and turning upon you, they tear you.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (III, q. 80, a. 6, ad 1):
Holy things are forbidden to be given to dogs, that is, to notorious sinners. . . .

**Fourth Lateran Council (1215), Constitution #3, on Heretics:
Clerics should not, of course, give the sacraments of the Church to such pestilent people * nor give them a Christian burial nor accept alms or offerings from them; if they do, let them be deprived of their office and not restored to it without a special indult of the apostolic see.
** Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, “Cantate Domino” (1441):
…unity of this ecclesiastical body is of such importance that only for those who abide in it do the Church’s sacraments contribute to salvation and do fasts, almsgiving and other works of piety and practices of the Christian militia productive of eternal rewards; and that nobody can be saved, no matter how much he has given away in alms and even if he has shed blood in the name of Christ, unless he has persevered in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.

** Pope Pius VIII, Traditi Humilitati, 4 (1829):**
Against these experienced sophists the people must be taught that the profession of the Catholic faith is uniquely true, as the apostle proclaims: one Lord, one faith, one baptism.[Eph 4:5] Jerome used to say it this way: he who eats the lamb outside this house will perish as did those during the flood who were not with Noah in the ark. [Epistle to Pope St. Damasus I]

Pope Pius IX, Amantissimus, 3 (1862):
Indeed, they [the Church Fathers] have never stopped teaching that . . . “He who deserts the Church will vainly believe that he is in the Church” [St. Cyprian, de Unit. Ecclesiae]; “whoever eats of the lamb and is not a member of the Church, has profaned” [St. Jerome, Epistle 15 to Damasus].
Canon 731 §2, 1917 Code of Canon Law
It is** forbidden that the Sacraments of the Church be ministered to heretics and schismatics, even if they ask for them and are in good faith,** unless beforehand, rejecting their errors, they are reconciled with the Church.

Oh Contrar to CONSTANT Church Teaching

Canon 844 §§4: New Code of 1983:
§4 …in the judgment of the diocesan Bishop or of the Episcopal Conference, there is some other grave and pressing need, Catholic ministers may lawfully administer these same sacraments to other Christians not in full communion with the Catholic Church, who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who spontaneously ask for them, provided that they demonstrate the Catholic faith in respect of these sacraments and are properly disposed.*

 

[katherine2]

TNT:

Canon 844 §§4: New Code of 1983:
§4 …in the judgment of the diocesan Bishop or of the Episcopal Conference, there is some other grave and pressing need, Catholic ministers may lawfully administer these same sacraments to other Christians not in full communion with the Catholic Church, who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who spontaneously ask for them, provided that they demonstrate the Catholic faith in respect of these sacraments and are properly disposed.

Yes, my dear friend. The current leadership of the Catholic Church all the way down to this humble laywoman, rejoices in this understanding of the Church’s vision of herself.

You and I have a strange, little fraternity, don’t we? You might be unhappy with how the Church has come to see herself, and I might be happy, but at least we both acknowledge what’s what. Others, is seem, like to pretend the Church does not teach and hold what she does teach in hold.

 

[TNT]

katherine2:

Yes, my dear friend. The current leadership of the Catholic Church all the way down to this humble laywoman, rejoices in this understanding of the Church’s vision of herself.

You and I have a strange, little fraternity, don’t we? You might be unhappy with how the Church has come to see herself, and I might be happy, but at least we both acknowledge what’s what. Others, is seem, like to pretend the Church does not teach and hold what she does teach in hold.

Indeed!
So that we know without doubt, the motive of this change:**
John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 46 (2003):**
These conditions, from which no dispensation can be given, must be carefully respected, even though they deal with specific individual cases, because the denial of one or more truths of the faith regarding these sacraments and, among these, the truth regarding the need of the ministerial priesthood for their validity, renders the person asking improperly disposed to legitimately receiving them.

The faithful observance of the body of norms established in this area is a manifestation and…a guarantee of our love for Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, for our brothers and sisters of different Christian confessions – who have a right to our witness to the truth – and for the cause itself of the promotion of unity (aka Ecumenism).

Now, is this Law, before and after, a matter of Discipline, like rubrics, or fasting or head coverings.
Or is it a matter of Faith or Morals, like what we are to believe such as the necessity of the sacraments and their effect, or fornication or putting the excess content of the consecrated Chalice into the toilet, in morals.

Or some other object?

** Teachings of the Church are not true because the Church teaches them; rather, the Church teaches them because they are objectively true.

** If the mutually exclusive Laws above are both correct, then this must be reconciled. They both can’t be objective truth.

 

[Aris]

How should Ecumenism be viewed and practiced?

Does this mean that the Catholic is no longer obliged to convert non-catholics to Catholicism?

Does this mean that non-catholics do not have to convert to Catholicism to be saved?

Does it mean leaving each church to its own idea of worship and religion?

 

[Contarini]

Aris:

How should Ecumenism be viewed and practiced?

Does this mean that the Catholic is no longer obliged to convert non-catholics to Catholicism?

I hope that Catholics are not and never have been expected to convert people, since only God can convert anyone. As a non-Catholic, I expect Catholics to witness to the truth of their faith, and I find that witness extremely powerful. I don’t want Catholics to back down from it one bit, and I don’t think that ecumenism requires any such thing. Ecumenism does hope for communal rather than just individual reconciliation, and some Protestant ecumenists would no doubt like to see a moratorium on individual conversions. There are Catholics who go along with this, but I don’t think you should be expected do.

Does this mean that non-catholics do not have to convert to Catholicism to be saved?

My understanding of the current Catholic position is that if I as a non-Catholic became thoroughly convinced that I should become Catholic, then to disobey that conviction might indeed put my salvation in jeopardy.

Does it mean leaving each church to its own idea of worship and religion?

Certainly not, except insofar as these various particular traditions turn out to be in accord with Sacred Tradition. The problem with both anti-ecumenism and some forms of liberal ecumenism is that they both assume that the whole process is basically one of political negotiation with the goal of everyone getting along. (Hence this form of “ecumenism” is easily confused with interfaith dialogue.) Ecumenism as it’s been taught to me (and while I haven’t studied directly with him except for sitting in on an intro theology class, I have spent years at Duke in the vicinity of Geoffrey Wainwright, who is one of the leading ecumenists of our times) is based on the assumption that there is one orthodox Christian tradition which takes a variety of forms in different churches. That doesn’t mean that we have all got it right. Clearly on some issues doctrinal change may be necessary, and all parties are going to need a lot of repentance and conversion with regard to non-doctrinal issues and also with regard to how doctrines are expressed. Protestant ecumenists such as Wainwright recognize that Catholicism is not going to change on matters of dogma. To a lesser extent, Protestants also have irreducible points on which they are unwilling to compromise. Lutherans, for instance, are never going to say flatly “sola fide is wrong.” But as recent dialogues have shown, some of them at least can be brought to see that they have defined “sola fide” too sharply over against Catholic doctrine. The basic insight behind sola fide (which is an orthodox one–namely that we are righteous in God’s sign on the basis of his gracious forgiveness and not our own merits) can be preserved without necessarily insisting on those points that contradict Catholic teaching.

In Christ,

Edwin