So now you do believe that some traditionalists have disobeyed the law?
What do you mean “now?” Did I not cite Archbishop LeFebvre and the 1988 consecrations in my first post? You keep talking about “these groups” yet you refuse to identify them.
After all, you just got done challenging me to prove that disobedience has occurred.
You keep claiming there are “these groups” the burden of proof on your part is to name them. You claim you are not talking about the SSPX. Yet they are a perfect example of a group punished for not obeying an immoral command.
Since you claim no disobedience did occur, then it would hardly seem necessary to debate about when one is justified in disobeying the law.
I said I couldn’t see any disobedience from what was described on the thread so far.
The need to discuss the justification for disobeying a law in a particular situation was necessary because you claim you are precluded from investigating that particular situation because of a canon law that you haven’t cited.
If you don’t think anyone has disobeyed any law whatsoever, then why are you pointing me to Thomas on justified disobedience?
To ask you how your explanation regarding LeFebvre is not contradictory to St. Thomas.’ You said you wanted to keep thing “general” so, I obliged by starting with basic principals.
I’m not saying all conclusion must be based on law and not reason. Rather, I’m saying that you’ve placed the burden of proof in exactly the opposite spot done by the law of the Church. The law says that if the disobedient act is public we must presume its imputability. Presume doesn’t mean “exclude any possibility of the presumption being overturned,” but it does mean “the burden of proof is on the challenger to overturn the assumption.”
So, are you willing to engage in a discussion on the entire situation in which archbishop LeFebvre found himself from a perspective of moral action? Your previous posts indicated that you didn’t want to go there. (ie. right to the answer you say you are looking for.)
The metaphor of a gate is great. The soldiers at the gate are not required to reflect every time someone comes to the gate and say “can I find sufficient grounds for keeping the gate closed in this particular case?” Rather, they are to obey the ordinarily just order and, when they become suspicious that in this particular case it is unjust, then they ask themselves whether there are sufficient grounds to countermand the order.
No. You mean disobey. Countermand would be an order reversing a previous one. One doesn’t have the power to reverse a superior.
Let’s apply the same analogy as Aquinas to LeFebvre.
A bishop is not ordinarily required to reflect on the requirement for a papal mandate in consecrating bishops. He ordinarily obeys but when he becomes suspicious that in this particular case it is unjust, he has to ask himself whether there are sufficient grounds to disobey the order.
I haven’t disqualified any of your swans because you’ve refused to produce them, claiming yourself that, in this case, black swans do not even exist.
I certainly have. You just refuse to admit it. When I mention the SSPX you don’t want to address them because canonically you claim you are forbidden. When I point out the Crisis in the Church that is manifest in virtually every diocese in the world, you accuse me of being vague.
Yet you claim you are looking for “something” that “they” disobeyed."
The Black Swans:
The trial of Formosus is one and the case of Archbishop LeFebvre is another.
In post #15 you even admitted it.
Well, I’d like to keep things on a more general level, since the SSPX is not the only group out there, but in their particular case, every single priest of the SSPX violates his suspension a divinis every time he celebrates Mass.
I know, then, that they “challenge” their suspensions, but the question returns to: “what were you ordered to do that you could not morally do, thus necessitating doing something that would, in its substance, get you suspended.”** Doing something** to get yourself suspended does, after all, usually entail some sort of disobedience./QUOTE]
This was answered in post #20 by me:
The answer is plainly: Doing what was done licitly for centuries as a means of sanctifying and saving souls. Living the Catholic life in its fullness.
The reality is, that there was an effort to bury every external sign and many doctrinal teachings that were uniquely Catholic.
To promote the Rosary and Devotions.
The use of a rite of Mass that was licit to use.
Promotion of disciplines that had been used before Vatican II and later loosened.
Teaching on the four last things.
There are many more… as you know.
It’s funny how you mention various “somethings” and then accuse me of being vague in your response to post 20.
