It seems that Francis Catholics like Dave Armstrong and Mike Lewis both appear to believe that Francis's Amoris Laetitia teaching allowing Communion for adulterers is infallible and "ALL" his "statements... are infallible":
Where Peter Is' Mike Lewis in his continued campaign for COVID tyranny called Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò a "dissident cleric" which is an approximate term for a "heretic." [https://wherepeteris.com/catholic-media-and-critical-thinking/]
Might Fratelli Tutti and Amoris Laetitia promoter Lewis be a "dissident" heretic or at least "proximate to heresy"?
Again, Lewis (and his collaborator Armstrong) appear to believe that Francis's Amoris Laetitia teaching allowing Communion for adulterers is infallible and "ALL" his "statements... are infallible."
He seems to think Francis cannot fall into heresy because he is the definitely pope and "ALL" his "statements... are infallible":
Lewis (and his collaborator Armstrong) who are Pachamama apologists seem to think Francis cannot fall into heresy because they think he is definitely the pope because apparently there has never been a anti-pope in Catholic history and,again, "ALL" his "statements... are infallible."
Here is what Vatican I expert Fr. Chad Ripperger, PhD, in his book "Magisterial Authority" says to Lewis and Armstrong who it appears are "proximate to heresy":
"[T]reat[ing] ALL papal statements as if they are infallible... is proximate to heresy because it rejects the precise formulation of the conditions of infallibility as laid out in by Vatican I... by essentially saying that the pope is infallible regardless of conditions."
"... Worse still, those who were to follow a pope who was in error in a non-infallible teaching which is taught contrary to something that is infallible is not, therefore, excused."
(Magisterial Authority, Pages 5-14)
Might Lewis be a heretic?
Lewis has seems to have shown how so-called "conservative" Francis Catholics become first liberal Catholics and finally apparently Modernist heretics.
The answer appears to be that they reject Thomistic realism and it's principle of non-contradiction as applied to the infallible teachings of the Church and believe that Cardinal John Henry Newman's speculations on "Development of Doctrine" as well as his nominalist philosophy which denies the principle of non-contradiction are more infallible than the actual infallible Church teachings against Communion for adulterers and idolatry.
Lewis explains Newman's nominalist thinking:
"Newman himself spoke of the need to understand that doctrine might not DEVELOP [my capitalization] in a way that we can anticipate or in a way that our preconceived notions are prepared to accept."
(Where Peter Is, "The shock of developing doctrine: A response to Fr. Dwight Longenecker, May 22, 2018)
Although, I respect Cardinal Newman as a historian for his chronicling of St. Athanasius as well as the Arian crisis and use his historical work as good history, it appears that there is a problem with his philosophy which make problematic his theological idea of development of doctrine.
According to two scholars, Newman's philosophy appears to be tinted with nominalism.
Cardinal Johannes Willebrands who took part in Vatican II said:
"Newman was in fact a convinced individualist. The individual always supersedes the universal, the individual is the only reality... This doctrine is at odds with the doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas and amounts to nominalism."
(So, What's New About Scholasticism? How Neo-Thomism Helped Shape the Twentieth Century," Last chapter, books.google.com)
Also, scholar Jay Newman wrote:
"When he tells us that common nouns stand for what is non-existing and speaks of the mind's gift 'of bringing before it abstractions and generalizations, which have no existence, no counterpart, out of it.' Newman is letting us know that he has rejected the metaphysical 'realism' of the scholastics in favor of the 'nominalism' of the British empiricist school."
(The Mental Philosophy of John Henry Newman, Page 40)
Nominalism according to Wikipedia is defined as the philosophy that there "is a concept in the mind, rather than a real entity [objective truth] existing independently of the mind."
In terms of truth and Catholic doctrine nominalism means Church teachings can change or GROW that is "DEVELOP," but in Newman's system the growth can't contradict the previous accepted doctrine, but THE BIG QUESTION IS how can one who rejects Thomism as well as realism by being a nominalist then seriously speak of contradiction.
Even more important, "Development of Doctrine" is a speculation that apparently contradicts the infallible teaching of Vatican I.
The important American theologian Fr. Joseph Fenton who did his doctoral dissertation under the great Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange and was a collaborator with Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani explained the problem with this speculation:
"The statement that our Catholic dogma or doctrine is the growth or the development of the seed planted by the Apostles would seem to be seriously objectionable. According to the Vatican Council [Vatican I] the Holy Father has been empowered to teach infallibly, NOT the GROWTH or the DEVELOPMENT [my capitalizations] of the primitive Christian teaching, but the 'revelation delivered through the Apostles, or deposit of Faith' itself."
(American Ecclesiological Review article, 1953)
It appear that the so-called "conservative" and "moderate" Francis Catholics like Lewis by thinking Newman's "Development of Doctrine" is infallible dogma when it is only speculation by someone who was tinted with the false philosophy of nominalism eventually become liberal Catholics and finally Modernist heretics by rejecting the Law of Non-contradiction.
Dante scholar and Editor in Chief of The Catholic Thing Robert Royal explained that Lewis and all Communion for adulterers Francis Catholics need God to "repeal the Law of Non-contradiction":
"Pope Francis... listens to... Cardinals Maradiaga, Marx and Kasper. The last in particular seems more and more incoherent and yet as he tries to explain precisely why marriage is indissoluble and yet those in a second sexual relationship - though not a marriage - may be absolved and return to receiving Communion. The only way that's possible is if God repeals the Law of Non-contradiction. I don't think that's on his to-do list."
(Fr. Z's Blog, "Good comments on Card. Burke and a serious translation error," November 10, 2014)
Also, is Armstrong calling his beloved Francis a liar?
LifeSiteNews reported these words of Francis:
"I would like to say a word about the pachamama statues that were removed from the Church of Traspontina."
(LifeSiteNews, "Full transcript of the Pope's comments on pagan 'Pachamama' statues," October 25, 2019)
The National Catholic Register's contributing writer Armstrong (according to the journalism website muckrack.com) is in a dilemma because either he is calling his beloved Francis a liar or he is saying statues which Francis called "the pachamama statues" are not what he called them, but instead "a strong case can be made that the naked images "represent the [naked] Blessed Virgin Mary":
"There is a strong case to be made that they [the naked images Francis called "pachamama statues"] represent the [naked] Blessed Virgin Mary."
(patheos.com/blog/davearmstrong, "'Pachamama' [?] Statues: Marian Veneration or Blasphemy Idolatry?," November 5, 2019)
How dare the so-called pro-family National Catholic Register have a writer who claims the naked images Francis called "pachamama statues" can by "a strong case... be... [naked images of] the Blessed Virgin Mary."
Maybe someone needs to organize a Catholic boycott of the National Catholic Register.
Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost - Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
- Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
"[T]he Pope... WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See."
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said "the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church."
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]
- "If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html
- "Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html
- LifeSiteNews, "Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers," December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows "sexually active adulterous couples facing 'complex circumstances' to 'access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'"
- On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
"The AAS statement... establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense."
- On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
"Francis' heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents."
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Election Notes:
- Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: "212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted...Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden" [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]
- Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times "Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003": http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Comments
“The Catholic Monitor” Butchers My View of Papal Infallibility (. . . and Has the Impudent Audacity to Attack St. John Henry Cardinal Newman as a Modernist and Nominalist)
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2022/09/the-catholic-monitor-butchers-my-view-of-papal-infallibility.html
Villanova University theologian Jessica Murdoch explains magisterium authority:
"Responding faithfully to the trans-temporal magisterium of the Church (and not just to the magisterium of one's own time) requires holding in view two other principals of interpretation. First, 'the minor gives way to the major.' Second, the 'one gives way to the many.'.. Thus, Amoris Laetitia cannot supersede the encyclical Veritatis Splendor... One must privilege the harmony of the many pontificates in union with each other, and their unanimity with the Fathers and Doctors of the Church over the one seemingly dissonant voice." (First Things, "Creeping Infallibility," 9-27-16)
The article shows that to disbelieve papal teachings that are dissonant from every single magisterium teaching in the history of the Church is the only way not to "call into question the teaching authority of previous popes and the entire fabric of Catholicism."
Resisting such dissonant papal teachings, as Amoris Laetitia, is the only way not to bring about "dissolution, confusion, and death" into the Church.
In the same article, Murdoch said:
"By contrast, doctrinal evolution in which a new teaching sublates and eliminates the earlier teaching in a quasi-Hegelian fashion breeds dissolution, confusion, and death. [https://www.firstthings.com...]
Cardinal Johannes Willebrands who took part in Vatican II said:
"Newman was in fact a convinced individualist. The individual always supersedes the universal, the individual is the only reality... This doctrine is at odds with the doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas and amounts to nominalism."
(So, What's New About Scholasticism? How Neo-Thomism Helped Shape the Twentieth Century," Last chapter, books.google.com)
Also, scholar Jay Newman wrote:
"When he tells us that common nouns stand for what is non-existing and speaks of the mind's gift 'of bringing before it abstractions and generalizations, which have no existence, no counterpart, out of it.' Newman is letting us know that he has rejected the metaphysical 'realism' of the scholastics in favor of the 'nominalism' of the British empiricist school."
(The Mental Philosophy of John Henry Newman, Page 40)
Do you really think Catholic Scholar John Doe and Jane Doe carry more weight than an official letter from Pope St. Pius X? That's simply Protestant private judgment or modernist dissent. It's not Catholic thinking.
"Newman was in fact a convinced individualist. The individual always supersedes the universal, the individual is the only reality... This doctrine is at odds with the doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas and amounts to nominalism."
(So, What's New About Scholasticism? How Neo-Thomism Helped Shape the Twentieth Century," Last chapter, books.google.com)' is a "Catholic Scholar John Doe and Jane Doe" ?
https://excatholicsforchrist.com/cardinal-johannes-willebrands/
Cardinal Willebrands was one of the few select European Catholic theologians that guided or scuppered, whatever your point of view is, the future course of the Catholic Church taken during that period known as Vatican II.
As a protegee of the German Jesuit Cardinal Bea, he moved effortlessly in guiding and shaping the newly formed “Secretariat for Christian Unity” formed in the early 1960s. In fact, the Dutch bishops under Willebrands had started by initiating their own ecumenical conferences in the late 1940s and 50s. (Full details of these meetings were, it is reported, always relayed to Mgr. Bea, then Rector of the German Seminary in Rome, and also the confessor to the then Pope.)