Did Fr. Nix imply that Francis & his Conservative Vatican II collaborators such as "Jesus is merely the 'privileged route to salvation'” Bp. Barron are Arian Heretics?

7 Questions on Vatican II by Taylor R. Marshall

by Dr Taylor Marshall

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7 Questions on Vatican II

Pope Francis recently said regarding Vatican II: “if you do not follow the Council or you interpret it in your own way, as you wish, you are not with the Church.” Here is the full quote in context:

This is magisterium: the Council is the magisterium of the Church. Either you are with the Church and therefore you follow the Council, and if you do not follow the Council or you interpret it in your own way, as you wish, you are not with the Church. In this respect, we have to be demanding, severe. No, the Council is not subject to negotiation in order to have more of these…. No, this is how it is with the council. And this problem that we are experiencing, the selectivity of the Council, has been repeated throughout history with other Councils. It gives me so much to think about a group of bishops that after Vatican I left, a group of laypeople, other groups, to continue the “true doctrine” that was not that of Vatican I. “We are the true Catholics”…. Today they ordain women. The most severe attitude, to guard the faith without the magisterium of the Church, leads you to ruin. Please, no concessions to those who try to present a catechesis that is not in accordance with the Magisterium of the Church.

Pope Francis, Address to Members of Italy’s National Catechetical Office, Vatican.va, Jan. 30, 2021.

Having heard this, I have 7 questions for Pope Francis regarding Vatican 2 as “the Magisterium”:

1. Does V2 fall under extraordinary magisterium? (see quote below)
2. Does V2 bear the mark of infallibility? (see quote below)
3. If Latin is not used, does one not stand with the Church? (see quote below)
4. If Gregorian chant is not used, does one stand with the Church? (see quote below)
5. Must I believe V2 statement on Hindus? (see quote below)
6. Must I believe V2 statement on Buddhists? (see quote below)
7. Must I believe V2 statement on Other Religions? (see quote below)

Seven Quotes regarding Vatican II that correspond to the seven questions above:

1. “In view of the pastoral nature of the Council, it has avoided proclaiming in an extraordinary manner any dogma carrying the mark of infallibility.” Pope Paul VI, Audience of 12 January 1966.
2. V2 is not Extraordinary Magisterium. “But one thing must be noted here, namely, that the teaching authority of the Church, even though not wishing to issue extraordinary dogmatic pronouncements, has made thoroughly known its authoritative teaching on a number of questions which today weigh upon man’s conscience and activity, descending, so to speak, into a dialogue with him, but ever preserving its own authority and force; it has spoken with the accommodating friendly voice of pastoral charity.” Pope Paul VI, Discourse closing Vatican II, 7 December 1965
3. Latin: Sacrosanctum Concilium 36. 1. “Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”
4. Gregorian chant: Sacrosanctum Concilium 116. “The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.”
5. Hinduism: “Thus in Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible abundance of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry. They seek freedom from the anguish of our human condition either through ascetical practices or profound meditation or a flight to God with love and trust.
6. Buddhism: “Again, Buddhism, in its various forms, realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world; it teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination.
7. Other Religions: Likewise, other religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing “ways,” comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. 

No one can tell us that the Sacred Deposit of Faith given by our Divine Lord Jesus Christ to Saint Peter and the Holy Apostles contained these incorrect teachings about Hindus, Buddhists, and Other Religions.

• Hinduism has its origins starting somewhere between 1900 BC to 1400 BC.
• Siddhārtha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism was born in the 5th or 4th century BC. Christ taught nothing about it.
• And other polytheistic and idolatrous religions started as far back as the Tower of Babel.

We cannot rightly believe that our Lord Jesus Christ taught the above teachings to the Apostles regarding these false religions.

– Taylor Marshall

PS: I cover all these topics in a Podcast video:

[https://taylormarshall.com/2021/03/7-questions-vatican-ii-taylor-r-marshall.html]

David Nix appeared to imply that Francis and his collaborator "Jesus is merely the 'privileged route to salvation'” Bishop Robert Barron are Arian heretics:

If Jesus is merely the “privileged route to salvation,” then all religions can be a vehicle to salvation.  However, this notion is no different from Arianism.  Here’s why:  Jesus claims to be God.  Jesus claims to be the only way, truth and life.  If this is not true, then He is not God.  And this is Arianism.  Thus, religious indifferentism encapsulates a thousand heresies, including Arianism.

Notice that belief in the Trinity is inherently linked to the Catholic Faith being necessary for salvation (with implicit desire for baptism occasionally being enough for salvation.) But according to St. Athanasius, the Catholic faith is the One Faith which everyone must keep “whole and undefiled [or] without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.”

The Creed of St. Athanasius begins thus:

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all One, the Glory Equal, the Majesty Co-Eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.

St. Athanasius wrote this against Arius. Notice therefore that the notion that Christ is merely the “privileged route to salvation,” is not only a denial of the necessity of the Catholic faith for salvation, but also a denial of the Trinity. Why? Again, as I wrote above, Jesus claims to be God.  Jesus claims to be the only way, truth and life.  If this is not true, then He is not God.  And this is Arianism. [https://padreperegrino.org/2021/06/privilegedroute/]

Moreover, Bishop Robert Barron like Semi-Arians who supported the Arian heretics uses ambiguity and Catholic sounding "language" as a cloak for his "real sentiment" of promoting a soft "reign of terror" on those who reject the heretical Francis creed of Communion for adulterers and other errors.

Barron is calling for the predator Theodore McCarrick created American bishops to police non-heretical Traditionalist Catholics on social media. This call appears to want to mirror the Arian "reign of terror" on Traditionalist Catholics in the early Church.

 F.A. Forbes in his book "St. Athanasius" on the Arian crisis wrote how the Arians and their allies the Semi-Arians policed Catholics in the early Church:

"[A] new reign of terror began, in which all who refused to accept the Arian creed were treated as criminals."

Now, it appears that Barron wants a "new reign of terror, in which all who refused to accept the" Francis creed of Communion for adulterers and the death penalty being "inadmissible" are "treated as criminals" in the McCarrick American Church

The totalitarian-like Barron cloaks this "sentiment" like the Semi-Arians in Catholic sounding "language" and "eloquent ambiguity."

The Francis teaching that the death penalty is "inadmissible" is contrary to Scriptures and the irreformable teachings of the Catholic Church's ordinary Magisterium is called by Barron "eloquent ambiguity."

In the time of the Arian crisis those with forked tongues who spoke of "eloquent ambiguity" like this bishop were called Semi-Arians or semi-heretics.

St. Athanasius said Semi-Arians, that is semi-heretics, were accomplices and Arians in disguise trying to promote "the Arian madness" through ambiguous statements designed to have "an orthodox and a heretical interpretation."
(The Great Athanasius, page 136 and Bad Shepherds, page 27)

Athanasius said:

"They disguise their real sentiment, and then make use of the language of Scripture... as a bait for the ignorant, that they may inveigle them into their own wickedness."
(The Great Athanasius: An Introduction into his Life and Works, page 136)

Early Church expert Rod Bennett writing of the Arian crisis said:

"[T]he number of episcopal sees that can be shown to have remained in orthodox [Catholic] hands throughout the crisis can be counted on the fingers of one hand."
(Bad Shepherds, page 29)

Finally, the Catholic News Agency headline on December 7, 2013 reported Barron's beloved Francis's supposed ironic focus on "practical atheism":

"Pope: Neglect of human dignity causes 'practical atheism'"

Pope John Paul II in a General Audience on April 1999 said:

"The contemporary era has devastating forms of 'theoretical' and 'practical' atheism. Secularism... with its indifference to ultimate questions and... the transcendent." (Vatican.va>hf_jp_ii_ 14041999)

Francis's primary focus on only earthly human dignity, it appears, could be a form of practical atheism or secularism.

Francis rarely focuses on "ultimate questions and... the transcendent" such as heaven and hell as well as the Last Judgement, but almost always on non-ultimate/transcendent issues that tend to bring leftist pro-abortion politicians into power such as radical environmental issues, leftist economic policies and unlimited immigration.

This form of practical atheism has brought about the Francis's seamless garment teachings which we will see appears to be a form of Kantian practical atheism.

The abortion holocaust in Ireland can, to some extent, be blamed on the Irish bishops following Francis's seamless garment "pro-life" teachings that equates killing innocent human life with pro-abortion politician issues such as the death penalty, leftist economic policies and radical ecology policies.

Even after the abortion referendum was overwhelming lost, to some extent, due to the seamless garment focus as well as inaction by Francis and the Irish bishops, Dublin Bishop Diarmuil Martin had the gall to call for more seamless garment Kantian practical atheism. Martin said:

"Pro-life means being alongside... economic deprivation, homelessness and marginalization." (Crux, "After abortion loss, Irish prelates look to pope's vision of 'pro-life," May 27, 2017)

The seamless garment teachings of Francis and the Irish bishops, to some extent, can be blamed for the coming death of thousands even millions of babies

This teachings come about because of their apparent conscious or unconscious Kantian practical atheism which is this world materialistic and tends to exclude the eternal.

The practical atheist Immanuel Kant while not explicitly denying the existence of God said:

"God is not a being outside me but merely a thought within me." (Fr. Stanley Jaki, Angels, Apes and Men, page 10)

Below is a summary of the type of Kantian practical atheism which appears to be part of the thinking of Francis and the Irish bishops.

In this part of the academic article "Categorical imperatives impair Christianity in culture" by scholar Douglas A. Ollivant it is explained that Kantian practical atheism infiltrated Catholicism and gives a background, to some extent, to why the protection of the unborn ended in Ireland.(July 20, 2010, Religion and Liberty, Volume 13, Number 4):

Historically, Christianity established this religious and moral framework for Western culture. Today, to the extent a larger framework is recognized at all, contemporary advocates, both Christian and secular, tend to rely on human dignity by itself to furnish this greater moral framework. But we must take care to remember that human dignity includes more than just each individual person’s dignity or rights.

Traditional Christian anthropology views human beings as participating in both the temporal and the eternal... historical Christian scholars, such as Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, have striven to understand and apply this Christian anthropology, contemporary Christian scholars seem to have moved in a different direction. In addition to our own sloth-induced forgetfulness, we have Immanuel Kant to thank for this wrong turn.

The Categorical Imperative Surfaces

In his must-read Christian Faith and Modern Democracy, Robert Kraynak introduces us to the concept of “Kantian Christianity.” [1] Kraynak claims that the “Kantian influence on modern Christianity is … deep and pervasive.” 

What he means is that Christian thinkers no longer speak about culture and politics in terms of the more enduring principles of moral virtue, law, and the common good but now focus on social justice, understood as solely the immediate, material rights and dignity of the human person. 

Moreover, they have drastically reduced the role of prudence in politics accepted under the historical Christian anthropological understanding, which has recognized a variety of political regimes depending on the circumstances. This historical understanding also acknowledged the harsh realities of the political realm in a fallen (albeit redeemed) world, and the difficulties and agonies involved in fashioning a just or moral response to contingent events. 

Instead of prudential judgments, Kraynak maintains that we now hear only moralistic pronouncements about peace and justice that severely limit the range of (legitimately recognized) political options.

Kraynak maintains that Kantian Christianity has seeped into the language of contemporary Christians even though contemporary Christians do not seem to have a full understanding of the underlying anthropology that comes with it. 

The rights and dignity of each person replaces moral and theological virtues: rational and spiritual perfection. Further, an emphasis on personal autonomy or personal identity diminishes long-established Christian teachings about the dependence of the creature on the Creator, original sin, grace, and a natural law through which human beings may share or “participate” in eternal law.

Following Kraynak, it is clear to see that in our public life and culture, this language of rights and dignity tends to lead to absolutes in morality, or “categorical imperatives.” Now, Christianity has no problem with moral absolutes (and in fact dictates several), provided they are properly stated. But a proper statement of a moral absolute is made difficult by the anthropology lingering in Kant’s legacy.

Kant’s original categorical imperative, of course, states that one must live in such a manner that one’s actions could form the basis of a universal law. It is the quest for “universal laws,” exclusive of a prudent account of circumstance, that proves troubling.

This universalist language is incompatible with the more prudential approaches to public life articulated by Augustine and Aquinas, which was driven by their much richer understandings of the human person and his or her relation to the physical world and the divine..."

The Authentic Culture of Life

But the most flagrant use of categorical imperatives in our current political culture deals with life issues. It must be stated up front that no practicing Christian disputes that life is one of the most precious gifts that God has given to us. The second century “Letter to Diognetus” bears testimony to early Christians not taking part in the Roman custom of “exposing [or “discarding”] their offspring” – the preferred method of pagan infanticide for the weak or unwanted. [3]

But to speak of a “culture of life” – if used simply to express a “seamless garment” univocal defense against any taking of life – has become a categorical imperative. For instance, the core of what we might call the “Bernadin project” is that Christians (in this case Catholics) must dogmatically oppose and fight against any early termination of human life. But this understanding fails to see that there may be an important, and even a critical, difference between a true culture of life and a “culture of merely life.” The former taking into account the authentic existence of human beings within not only the material realm, but also the immaterial, the spiritual; the latter limiting human existence to the breathing of the air in this temporal world only.

This issue cuts very close to home, as it deals with some of the most controversial politics in our culturally fragmented society: abortion, war, capital punishment, infanticide, and euthanasia. To introduce questions of prudence into these debates is often difficult, but such introductions must take place to prevent the categorical imperative from seeping further into contemporary Christian thought. On issues of great import, no matter whether these issues involve economics, politics, or human life itself, making proper distinctions is always of the essence. To choose perhaps the least charged of these issues, Christians – and particularly Roman Catholics – have been engaging in a debate over the proper limits of state-imposed punishment for some time. 

Led by the personal opposition of Pope John Paul II, the Catholic Church has grown ever more dubious of the appropriateness – and therefore the justice – of capital punishment. Many prominent Catholics in America – some out of deep conviction, others in reaction to the dissolving Democratic party monopoly on Catholic political allegiance – have sought to link opposition to the death penalty with opposition to abortion, having the effect (whether intended or not) of neutralizing any partisan distinctions on “life issues.”

But this categorical language seems to conceal more than it clarifies, for even Pope John Paul II has conceded that the death penalty is a legitimate option “when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society.” Now, a categorical use of this language seems to imply that the state can only take a life when failure to do so endangers other lives. But as Cardinal Avery Dulles has pointed out to us, it may be that:

 When the pope speaks of the protection of society as grounds for using the death penalty, he may have more in mind than mere physical defense against the individual criminal. To vindicate the order of justice and to sustain the moral health of society and the security of innocent persons against potential criminals it may be appropriate to punish certain crimes by death. [4] 

In other words, to insist on categorical language – maintaining that the Church must insist on the continuation of physical existence regardless of the attendant circumstances – may actually be contrary to the “culture of life” that the Church seeks to promote. It is not self-evident that a “culture of life” is promoted by the continuation of human lives that have been tainted by egregious sins against human dignity. By committing the churches to this univocal definition of the culture of life, forbidding any prudential account of circumstances, the lives of the innocent become equated with the lives of the guilty. This inability to make relevant distinctions is indicative of a certain poverty in our contemporary understanding, a focus on the material that implicitly denies access to, and perhaps even the reality of, the transcendent. This univocal focus on pure physical existence does not permit us to assess, to use the Cardinal’s terms, the “moral health of society,” let alone its Christian witness or sanctity. But it does excel in permitting the generation of convenient “categorical imperatives.”

Instead of speaking dogmatically about a “right to life,” it may be that Christians could better promote human dignity by returning to more traditional language, explicitly grounded in a Christian anthropology, that allows for proper distinctions of this sort. 

To quote at length from Kraynak:

 Proclaiming a right to life easily turns into the claim that biological existence is sacred or that mere life has absolute value, regardless of whether it is the life of an innocent unborn child, or the life of a heinous criminal. And the claim that life is a “right” diminishes the claim that life is a “gift” from God: How can a gift be a right? Proclaiming a right to life eventually leads to the mistaken idea of a “seamless garment of life” that is indistinguishable from complete pacifism or a total ban on taking life, including animal life, even for just and necessary causes. It also makes one forget that the good life, not to mention the afterlife, is a greater good than merely being alive in the present world – an unintended but significant depreciation of Christian otherworldliness. [5] 

Christian Life in Otherworldliness, Not Categorical Imperatives

Kraynak forcefully reminds us that in the end the Christian life is about “otherworldliness.” We are merely pilgrims here in this world. A world of “categorical imperatives” seeks to bring about the kingdom of God on earth. This goal is, however laudable in intention, subject to serious abuse, as the totalitarianisms of the past century have so forcefully taught us.