[geocentrism] On infallibility
- From: "Philip" <joyphil@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 07:47:15 +1000
Seeing as much is bandied about infallibility, when I saw this explanation, I
thought it might interest truth seekers. Modernists today would accuse me of
Catholic bashing but what impressed me most about Catholic History is that it
is never biased, hiding nothing, good or bad. Following the example of
scripture no doubt. We cannot sweep Judas under the carpet. Philip.
What about the Old Catholics?
From: Richard
John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890)
In His 1876 Work Certain Difficulties
Wrote the Best, Most Balanced Explanation
Of the Dogma of Papal Infallibility Ever Penned
Dear Fr. Moderator:
Sunday I attended a Traditional Latin Mass, but I learned that it was
celebrated by a priest who was a member of the Old Catholic organization and
who was married. Was this a valid Mass? Was the priest properly ordained? What
is the Old Catholic organization?
Fr. Moderator Replies.
The Old Catholics are in the same situation as the Eastern Orthodox. They are
valid, but formally schismatic, as they reject the dogma of the papacy as
defined by Vatican I. Some of the Old Catholic groups have a married clergy,
just as Newchurch is now starting to introduce this practice.
Vatican I was a contentious council. Pope Pius IX did not want to put the issue
of the papacy on the agenda, but was eventually pressured by the French
Ultramontanists to do so, a group that wanted to see the papacy restored to its
old glory, not only religious, but temporal. Many bishops at the council were
troubled about the debate. It seemed to them that the Ultramontanists, because
of their secular political motivations, were going beyond the Tradition of the
Church in the power that they want to ascribe to the pope, much like the
Papolators of our own post-Vatican II era. (For further information on these
terms, see What Do These Traditional Terms Mean? in the TRADITIO Library of
Files (Traditional Apologetics).
It was an difficult time. The ideas of the Roman Church were under attack.
Revolutionary Italy had confiscated lands long controlled by the popes under
their temporal power. Because the Church could no longer assert its supremacy
in political matters, the Ultramontanists wanted to throw down the gauntlet in
the spiritual realm. The Italian revolutionaries were about to take control of
Rome, and it would have been an embarrassment for the Council to have undercut
the pope once the issue had been placed on the agenda. Rather than vote no and
embarrass the pope, many bishops simply left the council and returned to their
dioceses. Among those who had reservations about the language used on papal
infallibility was John Henry Cardinal Newman, the greatest theologian of his
time, tantamount to a Doctor of the Church.
Because of the intervention of bishops such as Cardinal Newman, the Council's
final definition was carefully balanced. On the one hand, the Council in its
First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ (Pastor Aeternus) "On the
"Infallible Magisterium of the Roman Pontiff" (the Council had specifically
rejected the misleading title "On the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff")
stated:
The Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of
the office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme
apostolic authority he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held
by the universal Church, is possessed of that infallibility with which the
divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed.
The post-Vatican II Papolators incessantly quote this passage from the Council,
but never quote the balancing context in which the Council specifically placed
it:
Neque enim Petri successoribus Spiritus sanctus promissus est, ut eo
revelante novam doctrinam patefacerent, sed ut eo assistente traditam per
apostolos revelationem seu fidei depositum sancte custodirent et fideliter
exponerent. [For the Holy Ghost was promised to the successors of Peter not so
that they might, by His revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by
His assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the
revelation or Deposit of Faith transmitted by the Apostles.]
Unfortunately, Vatican I was never finished. Had it been, there might not have
been the incorrect notions about papal infallibility that survive to our day.
The Italian revolutionaries invaded Rome, and even the pope was forced to flee
for a time. To this day, the Vatican I Council has never been closed, not even
with the intervening Vatican II.
Cardinal Newman did accept the final definition, with its limitation on the
authority of the Roman pontiff, and in 1876 in his book, Certain Difficulties,
wrote probably the best, most balanced explanation of the dogma of papal
infallibility ever penned. Pope St. Pius X, in his 1908 Letter to the Bishop of
Limerick [Acta Apostolicae Sedis XLI], "emphatically approved" the writings of
Cardinal Newman as being "very much in harmony" with his Encyclical Letter
Pascendi against Modernism.
Several prominent Catholics and about 60,000 laymen left the Church over this
issue, and their leaving was greatly lamented at the time. They called
themselves "Old Catholic." Their validity was never in question, of course, but
in that they formally denied a dogma of the Faith, they fell into the same
condition as the Eastern Orthodox. At their Council of Utrecht in 1889, the Old
Catholics laid out the guidelines of their theology. They agreed that the pope
was primus inter pares, but rejected the decrees of Vatican I concerning the
infallibility and the universal episcopate of the Bishop of Rome, which they
held to be "in contradiction with the faith of the ancient Church and which
destroy its ancient canonical constitution by attributing to the pope the
plenitude of ecclesiastical powers over all dioceses and over all the
faithful."
It is an irony of history that the Newchurch, the Church of the New Order, has
essentialy come to agree with the errors of the Old Catholics against
traditional Catholicism. In his 1995 Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint [On the
Commitment to Oecumenism] spoke of changing the constitution of the Roman
papacy to "a new situation" to "acknowledge the oecumenical aspirations of the
majority of the Christian Communities." This was the same Encyclical Letter in
which JPII called for the creation of a "common martyrology" containing
"saints" from the Catholic, schismatic Orthodox, and heretical Protestant
religions and rejected "the outdated ecclesiology of [heretics'] return to the
Catholic Church."
Thus, it is the Novus Ordinarians who have abandoned Catholic Dogma and
Tradition and have tried to cover their abandonment of the Catholic Faith, like
the Modernists whom Pope St. Pius X condemned in Pascendi, by equating
traditional Catholicism with the schismatic Old Catholics. The two are, of
course, quite different. Traditional Catholics, who are true Catholics, accept
the Vatican I dogma on the papacy -- the full dogma, that is, not the
caricature of it promoted by the post-Vatican II Papolators. Even the
sede-vacantists accept that doctrine, whatever their personal opinions on the
factual condition of individual post-conciliar popes may be. The Novus
Ordinarians, on the other hand, de facto reject the dogma on papal
infallibility and consider the pope a figurehead.
Thus, traditional Roman Catholics should treat those associated with the Old
Catholic organization and publicly professing that they are Old Catholics in
the same way as they would treat the Eastern Orthodox. As formally schismatic,
although fully valid, their services should be avoided.
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