Really, this isn’t hard. When, on a matter of faith or morals, popes speak ex cathedra, or when they simply reiterate what has always been taught by the Church for millennia, they are infallible. When they make novel utterances in a non-ex cathedra context, they can err.
Quote
Replying to @FeserEdward
So the sitting pontiff can teach errors in matters of faith and morals then? I thought that he’s incapable of such feat according to Pastor Aeternus.
Being honest here: either Francis is longer the pope or the gates of hell has prevailed.
Show more
16, 1913, Rome, Italy) Italian prelate who played a notable role in the liberalization of the Vatican under Leo XIII.
"Cardinal Rampolla was the origin even earlier (the Secretary of State of Leo XIII), as he was accused of occult membership when he was elected pope in 1903 and then vetoed. Rampolla was alleged to be a member of the occult sect, Ordo Templi Orientis, although the evidence is not conclusive.[10] Whatever the case, he had guided the moderate (and some might argue, Liberal and Masonic) policies of Pope Leo XIII." [https://onepeterfive.com/the-third-pornocracy-the-current-crisis-in-the-church/] "Cardinal Rampolla assembled the ideas for the [rights] encyclical Rerum Novarum (“New Things”), issued by Leo in 1891" Britannica [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mariano-Rampolla]
"The Human rights ideology is at once universalist and relativist." Ralph C. Hancock (PhD Harvard) is a Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young (Natural Law and Human Rights, page XIX-XX)
Philosopher John Rist wrote that the apparently liberal Pope Leo XIII in a "major break...with earlier Church practice" of "virtues and vices" traditional language seemed to "almost single-handedly... [have] 'invented'... defence of rights" which was "hitherto largely secularist territory" (Infallibility, pages 50-51).
Moreover, in Confusion in the West, Rist speaking of a founder of "rights" language in the Church, Bartholome de Las Casas, who went against tradition: "dating back to Augustine identified all virtues as modes of love [Charity], Las Casas ... made rights a matter of justice." (page 81)
Might Pope Leo's "novel utterances in a non-ex cathedra context" on "rights" possibly be in "err" because he placed "right" not in the domain of loving God first and then secondarily your neighbor as yourself apparently outside of the "mode... of love" virtue of "responsibility" to God and His order as well as to His creation of humanity?
Kirkus Reviews explains the problem with modern "rights" language which seems to have brought us wokeness:
Harvard Law School professor Glendon argues eloquently and persuasively that modern American political discourse, by emphasizing an ever-expanding catalogue of rights to the exclusion of duties and responsibilities, has lost the central role in civic life envisioned for it by the Founding Fathers. Glendon shows that, in American society, both sides in political debates frame issues in terms of individual rights—flag- burning, domestic relations, and human reproduction, for example- -and that this tendency impedes understanding and compromise. Such stark formulations, she says, ultimately lead to coerced, and often unsatisfying, social arrangements. Glendon makes a compelling case that the American political lexicon lacks a vocabulary for expressing normative and moral concepts that individual Americans understand and value highly, and that the legal culture, with its single-minded emphasis on obtaining civil rights (as opposed to cultivating moral norms), has actually contributed, albeit unwittingly, to the debasement of American political and legal discourse. Glendon calls for the inclusion of the ``missing language of responsibility'' and the ``missing language of sociality'' in American political dialogue, and for an increasing emphasis on individuals' responsibilities to [God and] their communities. [https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/mary-ann-glendon/rights-talk/]
Also, scholars Michael D. Greaney
and
Dawn K. Brohawn say:
"Some even asserted that Leo XIII
changed fundamental Catholic teaching due to their confusing the
recommended social program with the mandatory social doctrine." [https://www.cesj.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/C-EconPersonalism_Web-NOblanks.pdf]
Might Pope Leo have started a problematic seemingly poorly defined "rights" language that may have helped bring about the ambiguous Vatican II that in part has lead to the current Francis crisis with his "rights" language instead of the traditional virtue language?
Pope Francis calls for end to anti-gay laws and LGBTQ+ ...
Jan 25, 2023 — Francis's comments, which were hailed by gay rights advocates as a milestone, are the first uttered by a pope about such laws..
Next, let's look at Francis is definitely pope pundit Tim Gordon explain the “weaponized ambiguity” of Vatican II:
This divergence between the two competing forms of Originalism proves especially relevant in the curious case of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), whose sacred constitutions threaten, in many progressive-sounding clauses, to contradict previous Catholic Tradition—which would rupture the Faith. Catholics who believe the Church was not vituperated by the revolutionary intent of Vatican Two’s leading periti became practical textualists in 1965 when the Council’s last constitution was ratified.
After all, the strong majority intent at the Council was, undeniably, radically progressive. The story is well-known even to most non-Catholics. Many revolutionary Council fathers authored the VC2 constitutions with what Monsignor Charles Pope calls “weaponized ambiguity,” constitutional text designed to be radicalized retroactively, as theory turned to practice in the immediate post-conciliar period.
We’ve all watched this catastrophe play out over fifty years. As Edward Schillebeeckx said of his contingent’s tactic: “we knew at the time how we would later interpret the [vaguely written] documents.”
In other words, the sacred constitutions of VC2 prescribed a poison pill of technically sound doctrine to be subsequently fashioned into unsound, unCatholic praxis. The question for Catholics like Vermeule, Arkes, and myself is: does the “real” meaning of Vatican Two reduce to its documents’ intent, or to their ambiguously revolutionary yet (mostly) innocuous original public meaning? Only textualism can capably explain how regardless of the abiding intent of the Council, the result of the actual constitutional documents need not be harmful.
Sacred VC2 constitutions make us think about what a constitution is: a multi-author document expressing the sovereign will of multiple ratifiers at a convention—in this case covenantal agents of the people of God. But a constitution’s meaning is not the vector sum of its authors and ratifiers: its meaning is the binding public signification of its words, as originally ratified. If a constitutional term’s meaning popularly changes a decade after ratification, the ten-year-old meaning of the term remains what was ratified (until formally amended). Ratified meaning is time-stamped and time-sealed.
It is conceivable—as happened at the Second Vatican Council—that a faction of revolutionary authors and ratifiers could embed their revolution within the vaguest clauses of the constitutions as a killswitch to be flipped at a later date. Since the goal of these revolutionaries was heteropraxy and not heterodoxy, little did they care that the (original, public) meaning of their suggestive byplay remained to posterity orthodox, as long as it was received and practiced as the opposite of orthopraxy.
Their benighted progeny two generations later wish that they had articulated the revolution clearly rather than reifying a protection for traditionalists: live by innuendo, die by innuendo. Even an author does not govern the public meaning of his immortalized and ratified constitutional text if it militates against his intent.
Since the close of the Council in 1965, excluding those who welcomed the progressive interpretation, Catholics have divided into two interpretive groups.
The first group, the rupturists, conclude that no continuity exists between the periods before and after VC2. They unknowingly employ the intentionalist jurisprudence, based on the radically progressive intent of the Council’s authorial leftists. Even as they bemoan it, this group runs afoul of the indefectibility of the Catholic Church by announcing the end of a bimillennial doctrinal era and the beginning of a new one. They toil on in dimness and in doubt, believing more or less that the Council constitutions ruptured the One True Faith.
The second group of Catholics (to which I belong) interpreting VC2 concludes that, notwithstanding ostensible tension presented by the Council constitutions, a textualist “hermeneutic of continuity” can counter-weaponize the original, public meaning of even the most troubling, vaguely-penned clauses of the constitutions. “Look at the original, public meaning of the constitutions’ words,” we say, “not the (bad) intents of many of the authors and ratifiers.”
Non-textualists look at VC2 constitutions like Dignitatem Humanae, Lumen Gentium, and Gaudium et Spes, and dejectedly conclude that Roman Catholic indefectibility has been forever broken.
A textualist view of the hermeneutic of continuity duly recognizes ostensible tensions between pre- and post-conciliar Church teaching, then dissolves or collapses that dichotomy by insisting that change cannot be made by mere innuendo: the original, public meaning of the sacred constitutions prevail.
The ruling on the football field (i.e., pre-conciliar tradition) stands unless sufficient evidence to overrule the call (i.e., explicit Conciliar text) has been clearly presented. Cases of opacity and uncertainty—such as unclear VC2 “updates”—must be “lined out” like an arguable challenge to a play-call that fails to meet sufficient evidence to overturn the standing call (i.e. tradition). [https://americanmind.org/salvo/catholicism-textualism-and-republicanism/]
In 2016, Francis's Vatican Archbishop Guido Pozzo who was negotiating with Society of Pius X for Francis agreed with the Traditionalists that the Vatican II ambiguous teaching called Dignitatis Humanae was not defined teaching.
Pozzo said that Dignitatis Humanae "is not about doctrine or definitive statements, but... pastoral practice." (Die Zeit, August 2016, Interview with Archbishop Guido Pozzo)
Dr. Edward Feser gives a brief summary of the history before and after Vatican II of the teaching on this subject and the ambiguity of the document:
"That depends. In the Catholic context, the traditional teaching, vigorously and repeatedly upheld by the 19th century and pre-Vatican II 20th century popes, is that ideally Church and state ought to cooperate. Contrary to an annoyingly common misunderstanding, these popes were not teaching that non-Catholics ought to be coerced by the state into becoming Catholics. Nor were they teaching that non-Catholics should be forbidden from practicing their own religions in the privacy of their own homes, their own church buildings or synagogues, etc. Rather, the issue was whether, in a country in which the vast majority of citizens were Catholic, non-Catholics ought to be permitted to proselytize and thereby possibly lead Catholics to abandon their faith. It was not denied that there can be circumstances in which such proselytizing might be tolerated for the sake of civil order. The question was whether non-Catholics have a strict right in justice to proselytize even in a majority Catholic society. And the pre-Vatican II popes taught that they did not have such a right, and that in a Catholic country the state could in principle justly restrict such proselytizing (even if there are also cases where the state might not exercise its right to such restriction, if this would do more harm than good)."
"This was the teaching which Vatican II seemed to reverse, though the relevant document, Dignitatis Humanae, explicitly taught that it was “leav[ing] untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.” Yet whether the principles set out in Dignitatis Humanae really can be reconciled with the principles set out by the pre-Vatican II popes, how exactly they are to be reconciled if they can be, and which principles are more authoritative and ought to be retained if they cannot be reconciled -- these have all been matters of controversy. They are controversies most Catholics, including conservative Catholics, have avoided. The reason, it seems to me, is that the older teaching is extremely unpopular in modern times, and thus whatever its current doctrinal status, most Catholics are happy to let it remain a dead letter and leave its precise relationship to Dignitatis Humanae unsettled. Yet a question unanswered and ignored is still a real question, and there are scholars who have in different ways attempted to apply to this one a “hermeneutic of continuity,” including Thomas Storck, Fr. Brian Harrison, and Thomas Pink."
(edwardfeser.blogspot, "Liberalism and Islam, January 7, 2016)
One knows a Vatican II document is a disaster when a defender of Dignitatis Humanae (DR) like Fr. Brian Harrison says:
"The effect DR have been much more harmful than beneficial for the Church, the world and most important, the honor due to Christ the King . . . The form in which it presents its truth is so one-sided, so poorly explained, so perilously open to unorthodox interpretation, and so infected with the spirit of liberal humanism, that its promulgation has turned out to be a cause of rejoicing for the Church's worst enemies: freemasonry and all the other forces which seek to promote the ever more total secularization of society, the ever more complete exclusion of Our Lord Jesus Christ from His rightful sovereignty over the public life of nations, and confusion and division within the Church itself." [http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/05Dec/dec14agg.htm]
Christopher Ferrara stated why Dignitatis Humanae brought about (to quote The Catholic Monitor) the "[u]pholding Catholic teaching on paper but not in reality has led to widespread corruption... has required a culture of lies... that allowed men like McCarrick to flourish":
"There is no question that the Popes before Vatican II consistently condemned the modern notion of "religious liberty"-----i.e., that everyone in society must have the right, both privately and publicly, to practice, preach and otherwise manifest the doctrines of the religion of his choice, even if that religion is filled with error and immorality. That such a "right" attacks both public morality and the very foundation of Catholic social order (where it exists) hardly needs to be proved. There cannot, obviously, be any "right" as such publicly to deny the Divinity of Christ or to preach in favor of contraception, abortion, divorce[, homosexuality] and other evils. No one has the right to do or to say what is wrong. A right to commit wrong is utter nonsense. Stated negatively, a right not to be prevented by the State from committing wrong is equally nonsensical. The State might for prudential reasons, as St. Thomas observed, tolerate certain public errors and vices, but there is no question of any right to be tolerated in spreading them." [http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/05Dec/dec14agg.htm and https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/06/vigano-vatican-iis-dignitatis-humanae.html]
Finally, a Francis is definitely pope enabler seemed to be ambiguous, like Vatican II, a few years ago:
In 2019, the Wanderer's Fr. Brian Harrison issued a attack on the 19 scholar heroes by first presenting a straw man then showing his argument:
"Pope Francis has indeed said some things I believe to be heretical... the heretical doctrine of annihilation... [but] Francis is notorious for frequently speaking 'off the cuff'... [was] he/she accurately reported... [but] supposing... [It's] really heretical opinion... Only if he/she remains stubborn and obstinate can the Church declare him/her to be a formal heretic."
(The Wanderer, "Why I didn't Sign the Open Letter Accusing the Pope of Heresy," May 3, 2019)
It is strange that Harrison says Francis has only "said" some things that may be heretical when he knows Francis wrote the Argentine letter that teaches that those committing adultery can receive Communion which was called "authentic magisterium" by the Pope's Vatican and placed in the Holy See's Official Acts of the Apostolic See (AAS).
This means the unorthodox interpretation of Communion for those committing adultery is the official teaching of Francis.
How might Francis and Harrison have known for a long time this teaching is heretical?
First, they just have to read the Ten Commandments. One happens to say that God commands that: "Thou shall not commit adultery."
But, just in case they never heard of the Ten Commandments, way back on December 23, 2016, Dubia Cardinal Walter Brandmuller said:
"Whoever thinks that persistent adultery and reception of Holy Communion are compatible is a heretic and promotes schism."
(LifeSiteNews, "Dubia Cardinal: Anyone who Opens Communion to Adulterers is a Heretic and Promotes Schism," December 23, 2016)
In 2017, Francis made it the official teaching of his papacy that those committing adultery can receive Communion by placing the Argentine letter in the Holy See's AAS.
He did this despite the fact that in 2016 Cardinal Brandmuller said Communion for adulterers is heretical and in that same year three other cardinals joined him to issue the Dubia against Communion for adulterers as well as other issues.
It has now been now many hundreds of days since the Dubia was issued.
Many people say Francis never answered the Dubia.
They are wrong.
He answered the Dubia in 2017 when he made the heretical teaching Communion for adulterers his official teaching by placing the Argentine letter in the Holy See's AAS.
Could he have been anymore "obstinate" in heresy than that Fr. Harrison?
You, Fr. Harrison, say the Open Letter is "disrespectful to the Supreme Pontiff."
Like Paul was disrespectful to the first pope, Peter, when he rebuked him.
Like the disrespectful Catholics of the Middle Ages:
"[T]he Sorbonne's Chancellor, Jean Gerson [even] reached the point of threatening [Pope] John XXII with the stake if he didn't make a retraction" of his heretical teaching on the Beatific Vision.
(Rotate Caeli, "Popes who fell into Heresy," January 28, 2015)
They would not be like you Fr. Harrison in thinking it is "disrespectful" to call on the world's bishops to admonish Francis.
Do you believe that Communion for adulterers it is heretical?
Do you believe that the Ten Commandments are infallible teachings?
If you do believe then start acting like St. Paul or the Medieval Chancellor Jean Gerson.
Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.
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.
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
– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.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
– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1
– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1
What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.
Pray an Our Father now for America.
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