Hypocritical to accept the Bible but not the Catholic Church?

[Bill McEnaney]

I like to cite my sources. So here's the one I alluded to when I said Albion seemed to remember a Vatican committee that had no authority to abolish the Catholic Church's teaching about Limbo. I may have pasted the link into an earlier post, but I hope not, since I hate to bore anyone with needless repetition.

Limbo to be Cast into the Outer Darkness?

 

[Albion]

Albion,

I'm very aware of what the Catholic Church teaches, partly because I own several theology books, some meant for priests, books full of Latin.

Yes, but the point is that this is NOT what the Catholic Church teaches. You are referring to what she USED TO teach and may well still have as its official position., a technicality. But she doesn't teach it any longer, or at least not consistently.

Nobody has been trying to change Purgatory into Limbo or Limbo into Purgatory.

That's true, and no one said that she is.

But Limbo has been set aside and Purgatory is being phased out, except that the name will be used for some concept or other so that it can't be said that the decree of a council has been ignored. If you don't know this, all I can do is suggest that you familiarize yourself with it and not reply upon the documents from a bygone era.

 

[Bill McEnaney]

Yes, but the point is that this is NOT what the Catholic Church teaches. You are referring to what she USED TO teach and may well still have as its official position., a technicality. But she doesn't teach it any longer, or at least not consistently.


That's true, and no one said that she is.

But Limbo has been set aside and Purgatory is being phased out, except that the name will be used for some concept or other so that it can't be said that the decree of a council has been ignored. If you don't know this, all I can do is suggest that you familiarize yourself with it and not reply upon the documents from a bygone era.

Albion,

Please read or reread the article I posted. The Catholic Church has a list of degrees of authority a teaching can have, a list you'll find on page 9 in the TAN Books of Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. Although the teaching about Limbo isn't a dogma, it is what Catholic theologians call "sententia certa," a theological certainty. As you do or will know from the article I've posted, some popes have censured the denial of that teaching. The belief that there's a Purgatory is an infallible teaching, a dogma. So its denial is a heresy.

There are progressives in the Catholic Church who would love to see her abolish some teachings, Pope Francis may be one of them. Before he became a pope, Benedict said the he would let Limbo "drop." She may change her mind about Limbo. But she'll never reject her teaching about Purgatory. If she did, the gates of hell would prevail against her, which Our Lord promised they wouldn't do. Please don't think the Church will change her teachings because progressives hope she will. The progressives aren't the Church, even if the think they are. During the Arian crisis, 90% of the bishops became Arians, a council condemned Arianism, and the Church survived. Thank God she's not a democracy.

Women will never be priests, by the way. JPII settled that controversy, and the Church is in herself much more conservative than she may seem to any non-Catholic. The liberal media talked as though John Paul was ultraconservative because he upheld what the Church teaches about abortion, which tells me that they're too ignorant about Catholicism to know the ways he was shockingly progressive. Benedict was no traditionalist either. No one, not even a pope, has the authority to change or abolish any dogma, since a dogma is a divinely revealed truth.

Please read the last paragraph in this document from Vatican I.

http://www.inters.org/Vatican-Council-I-Dei-Filius

Here's a list of grades of theological certainty,

http://subtuum.com/index.php?/topic/93-theological-grades-of-certainty/

 

[Bill McEnaney]

Albion and friends,

In about 1907, my favorite pope, Pope St. Pius X, condemned the Modernist heresy in a brilliant encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Modernism is, for him, the synthesis of all heresies. If you could blend them in a food processor, you'd get that heresy. To sum it up, though, it's the belief that over time, some Catholic doctrines can change to keep up with the times.

Part of the problem is that Modernists are agnostics in St. Pius's sense of the word "agnostic." They believe that empirical knowledge is the only knowledge we can get. They'll tell you that divine revelation comes from inside each of us. God doesn't give it to us from above. To them, truth and change are the same thing. So they'll say that Catholicism, Hinduism, Protestantism, and all other religions are divinely revealed and true, because if they were false, i.e., unchanging, they'd die out.

The idea that the Church can change a dogma or even abolish it is a Modernist idea. Someday some pope may try to change one. Even if one says he's doing that, something will prevent the change. In his book Pope Fiction, Patrick Madrid writes about a pope who spoke a heresy and intended to teach it as a dogma. Instead, he died.

 

[Albion]

Albion and friends,

In about 1907, my favorite pope, Pope St. Pius X, condemned the Modernist heresy in a brilliant encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Modernism is, for him, the synthesis of all heresies. If you could blend them in a food processor, you'd get that heresy. To sum it up, though, it's the belief that over time, some Catholic doctrines can change to keep up with the times.

Part of the problem is that Modernists are agnostics in St. Pius's sense of the word "agnostic." They believe that empirical knowledge is the only knowledge we can get. They'll tell you that divine revelation comes from inside each of us. God doesn't give it to us from above. To them, truth and change are the same thing. So they'll say that Catholicism, Hinduism, Protestantism, and all other religions are divinely revealed and true, because if they were false, i.e., unchanging, they'd die out.

The idea that the Church can change a dogma or even abolish it is a Modernist idea.

That may be, but they still get changed.

 

[Bill McEnaney]

That may be, but they still get changed.

Depends on what you mean by "change." Catholics, including the pope who called Vatican I, believe that doctrine develops. A pope or a council may discover a clearer way to word it, see that it implies something no one knew it implied, find out that some teaching applies to some new circumstance that came about long after the pope or a council defined the doctrine as a dogma. Doctrinal development doesn't produce new doctrines. It shows detail already built into the ones we inherited from Christ through the Apostles, we think.

Let me try to explain with two analogies, one about a blooming rose and another about a microscope. Rose buds open slowly. The farther one opens, the more already-existing detail you see.

You look at a slide with a microscope. The more powerful the objective you use, the more detail the microscope will reveal. But however much detail any objective displays, it doesn't modify the specimen you're viewing. Usually, when I've used a microscope, the objective, the magnifying lens, hasn't even touched the slide.

Here's a link to Pascendi because as always, I like to cite my sources to let you check what I tell you.

Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (08/09/1907)

If you want to read them, that's good. If you don't, that's okay, too. Sadly, too many Catholics misrepresent Catholic doctrine whether they mean to or not. Too many non-Catholics learn about Catholicism from non-Catholic secondary sources by authors who already reject Catholicism. I know because I've read many of those sources. I study Catholicism as voraciously as I do because I've read them.

Here's an article about Limbo by Fr. Brian Harrison. Again, I'm only citing a source.

http://www.seattlecatholic.com/a051207.html

 

[Albion]

Depends on what you mean by "change." Catholics, including the pope who called Vatican I, believe that doctrine develops.

And so it does change.

A pope or a council may discover a clearer way to word it, see that it implies something no one knew it implied, find out that some teaching applies to some new circumstance that came about long after the pope or a council defined the doctrine as a dogma. Doctrinal development doesn't produce new doctrines. It shows detail already built into the ones we inherited from Christ through the Apostles, we think.

That's what is said when changes are made, that's right. Any change can be explained away by one turn of phrase or another, and it's not impossible to make replacing one with another seem like an evolution rather than a refutation of the former or the introduction of something new. We discussed this here earlier and showed that there is no way to argue that, for instance, Papal Infallibility is compatible with earlier Roman Catholic teaching.

 

[Bill McEnaney]

And so it does change.


That's what is said when changes are made, that's right. Any change can be explained away by one turn of phrase or another, and it's not impossible to make replacing one with another seem like an evolution rather than a refutation of the former or the introduction of something new. We discussed this here earlier and showed that there is no way to argue that, for instance, Papal Infallibility is compatible with earlier Roman Catholic teaching.

You'd be amazed at how well progressivists can fool innocent Catholics into thinking that doctrine has changed. You probably know that Vatican II began a roughly 50-year debate because progressivists added ambiguous language that they would interpret as they pleased after the council closed. Benedict XVI kept repeating the phrase "hermeneutic of continuity" when he told the Church and the world that Vatican II's novelties were in harmony with pre-Vatican-II teachings. But as you may already know if you've read the two-part article from The Remanant Newspaper, the council's progressivists intended the novelties to be revolutionary and incompatible with pre-Vatican-II teachings.

But here's the catch. Although Modernist-leaning prelates call Vatican II an ecumenical council, it probably wasn't one. The nature of any genuine ecumenical council gives that council a very specific purpose that it needs to serve to be genuine. It needs define dogma, condemn falsehoods, or do both. But it did neither. That's partly why Vatican II's statements about ecumenism, religious liberty, and collegiality aren't even teachings in any conciliar sense of the word "teaching." Vatican II may have seemed to replaced some teachings with others. But if I'm right about what I'm telling, it didn't change anything. It met to introduce what Fatima's Sr. Lucia called a "diabolic disorientation" that would end when a pope consecrated Russia by name to Our Lady of Fatima's Immaculate Heart. The Blessed Virgin is still waiting for that consecration.

I've already argued here for papal infallibility, So I'll try again. Meanwhile, in a moment, I'm going to quote someone who saw a vision of something much like what's happening now to the Catholic Church.

"I saw many pastors cherishing dangerous ideas against the Church. . . . They built a large, singular, extravagant church which was to embrace all creeds with equal rights: Evangelicals, Catholics, and all denominations, a true communion of the unholy with one shepherd and one flock. There was to be a Pope, a salaried Pope, without possessions. All was made ready, many things finished; but, in place of an altar, were only abomination and desolation. Such was the new church to be, and it was for it that he had set fire to the old one; but God designed otherwise."
--from Life and Revelations of [Ven.] Anne Catherine Emmerich, Vol. 2, pp. 352-353

Here are some prophetic thoughts from Pius XII, thoughts that should remind Catholics of Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and of the new rite of Mass.

http://tradcatholicperspective.blogspot.com/2010/11/pope-pius-xii-on-missing-red-lamp.html

 

[Rick Otto]

I've been listening to what Frank O'Collins has to say about it on YouTube.

 

[Albion]

You'd be amazed at how well progressivists can fool innocent Catholics into thinking that doctrine has changed.

Well, I'm certainly not a "Progressivist" and I have no interest in fooling anyone, but it's certain that the RCC has changed its beliefs (not all of them of course) over the course of time. Even Catholic theologians will admit to this. But if someone wants to deny the obvious, he can always word it so that change sounds like "no change." This can be done by renaming beliefs or elements of them...or it can be done simply by claiming a precedent that never was.

 

[Bill McEnaney]

Well, I'm certainly not a "Progressivist" and I have no interest in fooling anyone, but it's certain that the RCC has changed its beliefs (not all of them of course) over the course of time. Even Catholic theologians will admit to this. But if someone wants to deny the obvious, he can always word it so that change sounds like "no change." This can be done by renaming beliefs or elements of them...or it can be done simply by claiming a precedent that never was.

Nobody said you were a progressivist. But I wondered whether you supported ordination of women when you mentioned it. If you do support it, some progressives agree with you. For me, the idea of ordaining women has has some blasphemous implication we can talk about if you want. For now, I'll stay on topic, though.

What teachings do you mean, Albion? Examples, please. Show us some old teachings and their revised versions, would you? Maybe you remember the grades of certainty I mentioned some posts ago. A seeming teaching may be only a probable theological opinion.

Traditionalists try to remember what St. Vincent of Lehrins suggested in his Commonitory. During a disagreement, believe what the Church has always taught. If she still needs to teach about something or other, believe what the most trustworthy theological experts say about the subject. He doesn't suggest private judgment. He writes that people can misinterpret the Bible when they judge privately.

Encyclicals aren't infallible in themselves, but they are authoritative documents that can include infallible teachings. After enough popes, enough councils, or both have reaffirmed some teaching, that's a reason for Catholics to consider it infallible, even when no one has defined it. The Church's perennial teaching about some subject trumps some's theologian's novel opinion, even when he's is a pope who talks fallibly to the world. Most people probably know how imprecisely Pope Francis talks to interviewers. The Messori (sp?) interview caused enough controversy that the Vatican removed it from the Vatican website. Messori caused part of the problem, too, when paraphrased everything the Pope said. The journalist didn't quote it. Don't mistake Francis's imprecise, off-the-cuff comments for official Church-teachings.

 

[Albion]

Nobody said you were a progressivist. But I wondered whether you supported ordination of women when you mentioned it.

Huh? I of course do not, but where did THAT come from? Or did I miss something in the last post?

If you do support it, some progressives agree with you. For me, the idea of ordaining women has has some blasphemous implication we can talk about if you want. For now, I'll stay on topic, though.

Well, uh, OK. That sounds reasonable.

What teachings do you mean, Albion? Examples, please. Show us some old teachings and their revised versions, would you? Maybe you remember the grades of certainty I mentioned some posts ago. A seeming teaching may be only a probable theological opinion.

Traditionalists try to remember what St. Vincent of Lehrins suggested in his Commonitory. During a disagreement, believe what the Church has always taught. If she still needs to teach about something or other, believe what the most trustworthy theological experts say about the subject. He doesn't suggest private judgment. He writes that people can misinterpret the Bible when they judge privately.

Very well. If the Vincentian Canon were the standard--as apparently you are saying it is--then it is not difficult to compile a list of invented, changed, doctrines that do not meet it but are claimed by the RCC anyway. Some examples are Transubstantiation, Purgatory, Limbo, Papal Infallibility, the Assumption, and Salvation outside the (RC) Church.

 

[LittleLambofJesus]

Hypocritical to accept the Bible but not the Catholic Church?

I've been listening to what Frank O'Collins has to say about it on YouTube.

What does he say about it?



.

 

[Bill McEnaney]

Huh? I of course do not, but where did THAT come from? Or did I miss something in the last post?


Well, uh, OK. That sounds reasonable.


Very well. If the Vincentian Canon were the standard--as apparently you are saying it is--then it is not difficult to compile a list of invented, changed, doctrines that do not meet it but are claimed by the RCC anyway. Some examples are Transubstantiation, Purgatory, Limbo, Papal Infallibility, the Assumption, and Salvation outside the (RC) Church.

Albion, where's rest of your answer to my question? What doctrines changed? I need a list of original doctrines and a list of the ones the changed to. You haven't listed the originals.

Since "Outside the Catholic Church there's no salvation" is still a dogma, I'll do my best to explain it in some detail. Only Catholics are members of the Church, but there are ways to be in it as a nonmember. For example, although you're non-Catholic, you're in the Church if your soul contains the blessedness it would get during baptism. Anyone with that blessedness is in the Church as a member or as a nonmember. For anyone to go to Heaven, that blessedness needs to be in his soul when he dies. Will anyone here go to Heaven? That's up to him and God. I don't know who'll be there. After I die, my soul may fall into the lake of fire.

I forget what you wrote about ordination of women. But I'll explain my why I think that kind of ordination is blasphemous.

The Catholic Church is, for Catholics, the bride of Christ. Since Our Blessed Lord is His Church's groom, and since the priest is His stand-in at Holy Mass, a spiritually marital relationship between the Church and a priestess would be like a same-sex marriage. And we know what the Bible teaches about homosexual acts.

I'm talking about the 73-book canon the Third Council of Carthage published.

 

[Albion]

Albion, where's rest of your answer to my question? What doctrines changed?

See post #92.

You haven't listed the originals.

I'm not intending to write a Master's thesis on this subject when all you asked for was one example. SO OK...before Transubstantiation, the belief was Real Presence. Limbo was the church's teaching for about five hundred years but now it's rejected, denied, apologized for. And I assume that you know that the church long maintained that there was no salvation outside the church and now it's taught (by the Pope, even) that pagans--not just non-Catholics--can be saved without ever hearing the Gospel. Only 9% of Catholics, according to a recent survey, think that they cannot. Compare that to what any pastor would have said less than a century ago.

 

[steve_bakr]

The Church, of course, does not change its fundamental teachings. But certain doctrines have developed over time. The early Church, for example, did not have a developed conception of the Holy Trinity or the Hypostatic Union. These still needed to be developed.

I am not offended by the word change as some Catholics are. Whether something constitutes a change or a development can become quite a complicated theological conversation. But to say that the Catholic Church "invents" doctrines is obviously a polemical point of view.

As far as "change" is concerned, it would be sad if the Church felt so defensive as to not be able to experience self-reflection. Karl Rahner emphasized this by calling her the "sinful Church." And the term "Pilgrim Church" may suggest that she can still discover new things and continue to learn about herself and her role in the world.

 

[Albion]

The Church, of course, does not change its fundamental teachings.

You say "of course" even though the examples of her having done exactly that--changed her teachings--are many. Or is the use of the word fundamental supposed to be the 'escape clause' for numerous non-essential doctrines that nevertheless are taught as true and required?

But certain doctrines have developed over time.

Some yes, and that represents a change. But there are others that didn't develop at all but, rather, were invented long after Christ.

 

[South Bound]

Now don't freak out at me. Read my statements carefully and think before posting. Be open to what I state and be charitable when answering. I really want to know where protestants stand on this topic. Correct whatever statements I've made that are incorrect (fact wise). Make sure you are well informed on the history of Christianity when answering here.

Historically, the Catholic Church used her authority to determine which books belonged in the Bible, and to assure us that everything in the Bible is inspired. This is historical fact. Apart from the decision of the Church, we simply have no way of knowing either truth.

Martin Luther himself admits in his Commentary on St. John (ch. 16), "we are obliged to yield many things to the papists [Catholics]--that they possess the word of God which we received from them, otherwise we should have known nothing at all about it." Luther is admitting that Christians owe their Bible to the efforts of the Catholic Church.

Luther's statement support the argument that without the decisions of the Catholic Church, we would not know which books of the Bible are inspired. St. Augustione says in "Contra Epistolam Manichaei, "I would put no faith in the Gospels unless the authority of theCatholic Church had directed me to do so." St. Augustine recognized that theonly way to determine which books are inspired is to accept the teaching authority of the Cahtolic Church.

Historically, the Bible is a Catholic Book. The official canon of books of the Bible was authoritatively determined by the Catholic Church in the 4th century. Thus it is from the Catholic Church that protestants have a Bible at all.

And here is my main point I would like to see most of the discussion go towards...

Logically, the Church with the authority to determine the infallible Word of God, must have the infallbible authorty and guidance of the Holy Spirit. As we have seen, apart from the declatartion fo the Catholic Church, we have abosulutely no guarantee that what is in the Bible is the genuine Word of God. To trust the Bible is to trust the authority of the Church which guarantees the Bible. It is contradictory for Protestans to accept the Bible and et to reject the authority of the Catholic Church.

Logically, Protestants should not quote the Bible at all, for they have no way of determining which books are inspired--unless, of course, they accept the teaching of the Catholic Church.

I think what Catholics don't get is that our problem is not with what the Catholic Church was at the time the canon was ratified (yes, I know, there's much more to it than that, but for the sake of not boring those folks who aren't Church history geeks to death...) or its authority at that time, but with what the Catholic Church became as it became increasingly more corrupt and heretical over time, the analogy I use with here is that of O.J. Simpson.

If you and I were talking about O.J. Simpson in 1990, then we would all agree that he was one of the greatest running backs in history, that he seemed to have a very personable and friendly personality, and that if we were late for our flight, that we would want to follow him through the airport (I can't be the only one who remembers that commercial, can I?).

But then, a watershed event occurred in the public perception of O.J. Simpson and while his prowess on the football field is still true, nobody remembers him for that. He's no longer O.J. Simpson, legendary football player, but O.J. Simpson, murderer.

In the same way, while the Catholic Church was, at one time, the ecclesiastical authority, the pillar and foundation of the truth, it has since surrendered that authority and position of defender of the Gospel by its own political corruption and theological heresies.

Remember, the Reformers didn't want to break from the Catholic Church, but to call it to repentance and back to the doctrinal truth it once defended and even helped to codify. It was only when the Catholic Church refused that splits and the formation of Protestant Christianity as we know it began (although there were already some regional Protestant groups in existence).

The Catholic Church loves to pretend that they have a corner on Church History, but that simply is not the case, and that is the reason the argument of the OP is specious, at best.

 

[Albion]

I think what Catholics don't get is that our problem is not with what the Catholic Church was at the time the canon was ratified (yes, I know, there's much more to it than that, but for the sake of not boring those folks who aren't Church history geeks to death...) or its authority at that time, but with what the Catholic Church became as it became increasingly more corrupt and heretical over time

That is a good point, but with it we must also make the other correction which is often left unsaid. The church that canonized the Scriptures was not the Roman Catholic Church but the universal church from which all of our major denominations have come since. It was Catholic in being part of the "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church" as opposed to the Gnostics, etc. but it was not (Roman)Catholic to the exclusion of the Eastern Orthodox, the British church, the Arminians, etc.

The Catholic Church loves to pretend that they have a corner on Church History, but that simply is not the case, and that is the reason the argument of the OP is specious, at best.

 

[Rick Otto]

It was never catholic.
That is an ideal that became a myth.