In Father Iannuzi's link that Mark posted it provides a definition as follows: a heretic is one who opposes both Divine faith and Catholic faith. So, I am not the one to declare Pope's Francis' signing of a document with the head of the Muslim faith as heresy, but I am 100% sure that Catholic teachings is that there is no Salvation outside the Church, meaning all who are saved are saved through the graces that flows through the Church that Jesus instituted. I am also confident that our Catholic faith does not teach that the diversity other religions are the within the "will of God", as Pope Francis signing declaration states. This is very concerning to say the least. At least we have a few faithful Bishops/Cardinal's speaking out on this latest "gaff" of PF. Where are the rest?
Mark, I just finished your post...as always, very well thought out and written. You go to great pains to provide your reader with well researched material...I really appreciate that Mark. I do see your sincere attempt at explaining/ questioning away the Popes controversies. I will concede that I Do not have any special spiritual insight, knowledge or evidence to conclude that what I feel is 100% valid. This pope is all over the place...perhaps he has been ill advised and surrounded himself with evildoers? Yes, there are so many senerios to consider....and we have....for quite some time. I guess the million dollar question is....how far to we watch our church and faith disintegrate, how long do we remain silent....before something is done? Yes, we need to be charitable...I agree, but our love of our faith transcends protecting any pope, Cardinal, bishop or priest. Silence from the faithful laypeople and clerics allowed the decades of sexual abuse in the church to go unabated...lives destroyed in addition to their faith. Would it have been uncharitable to call out the clerics as unfaithful for ignoring and covering up these scandals? No...i think the chairity needed to be directed to the victims. Too many times and too many remained silent...in charity....among other less virtuous reasons. How can we remain silent now....our entire faith is on the line. I wish that you and other faithful lay leaders would come together to help resolve these issues. As we feel like sheep without a shepherd, that vacuum needs filled by good men like you and Dr. Taylor, Patrick Coffin...etc. leading us through the storm....because we are in it. Please pray about it. If God is taking us to it....He will lead us through it.
This recent scandal has finally provoked high ranking clerics to come out...maybe more will have the courage to do the same. As Mark noted in his column, Akita’s time might have come.... Bishop against bishop..Etc. The storm is here...how we deal with it is the question....
Legalism, as in the pharisaical kind, not legalism in that we should uphold moral law. Sadly, this kind of legalism exists where some, because of their own woundedness or what have you, are unable to meet others with anything other than the law. Fear is at the root of that, I would say...
Hi Beth. How far are we to watch our Church and faith disintegrate? Not at all! I've been evangelizing for over twenty-five years and over three pontificates. I'm not waiting for the pope or anyone else to do what each baptized believer is obligated to do: witness to our life in Christ. As for the confusion... well, I keep countering it as best I can whenever it arises. One way is to actually quote Pope Francis when he's nailing it (and frankly, he often does, but it goes mostly unreported). For example, see this article where Pope Francis confirms pretty much every single aspect of the Faith: Pope Francis On... But people are confused because he says this... and then seemingly contradicts himself with other things. As you say, this pontificate appears "all over the map." But back to my original point. This should not only not keep us from evangelization, but motivate us even more.
For what it is worth Mark I think you're coming around nicely. Not as strident as I would like at times, but you are facing the issues much more head-on than you used to. As I have said before in threads critiquing your articles, you can always go farther, but you can never take back something you have put out there in print, for good or ill. I strongly agree that we as laity should be much more careful about what he ascribe to the Pope's inner motivations, just as we should with everyone. It is clear though that all of this would not be happening without the go-ahead from the very highest echelons of the Church. Heresy, apostasy and evil abound, in fact they are being promoted.
Actually, this is consistent with everything I have written from the first day of his pontificate. Maybe you didn't read all my writings but it's there. If in being strident you mean publically condemning the Pope (when I or hardly anyone has all the facts or proper perspective), then no, not gonna happen. I wouldn't judge your motives let alone the Pope's. This has been my approach to his ambiguities all along: To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way: “Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.” —Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2478 (St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, 22.) People think I've been blindly defending the Pope. Quite the opposite. I've been working hard to give his sometimes ambiguous statements their proper perspective. Take for instance his resistance to "proselytism." I've read many, many Catholics saying, "The Pope doesn't want us to convert others! What a heretic!" Wow, talk about a rash judgment. Because Benedict XVI said the same thing: The Church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by “attraction”: just as Christ “draws all to himself” by the power of his love, culminating in the sacrifice of the Cross, so the Church fulfils her mission to the extent that, in union with Christ, she accomplishes every one of her works in spiritual and practical imitation of the love of her Lord. —BENEDICT XVI, Homily for the Opening of the Fifth General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops, May 13th, 2007; vatican.va So, now we have two popes opposed to evangelization? No, they're opposed to coercion. In its Doctrinal Note on Some Apsects of Evangelization, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith clarified the context of the term “proselytize” as no longer simply referring to “missionary activity.” More recently… the term has taken on a negative connotation, to mean the promotion of a religion by using means, and for motives, contrary to the spirit of the Gospel; that is, which do not safeguard the freedom and dignity of the human person. —cf. footnote n. 49 So yes, at first, the Pope sounds quite contradictory to the Gospel. But in the end, he is not only echoing Christ's own witness, but his predecessors. This is the kind of "defense" of Pope Francis that I have been occupied with—also as a matter of justice.
What about Pope Leo XIII, Pope St PiusX, Pope Pius V, all the Popes who defended the Truths of Catholicism against heresy? They were not Pharisees.
No, by strident I don't mean condemning the Pope. I don't do that either and I do not like the dime-a-dozen blogs that call the Holy Father names and mock him. I think to put the nail on the head, what I and many others, get frustrated by is an assumption that there is a good and Catholic motive behind all of these statements. Yes we cannot judge inner motivations, but we also do not need to make excuses for the statements of those in charge. The faith is being undermined from within in a very clever and purposeful way. There is clear design here. This is not all random. The faith is in shambles. The Church is in shambles. It is due to the Modernists who have seized power in the Vatican. And no in truth I have not read all of your articles, but I read them when they are posted here and I always learn something from them. They are well put together and informative. I think in the days ahead you (and the rest of us) are going to become more and more uneasy with the statements that come out of the Vatican. They are becoming bolder and bolder with each passing month. It will become more and more difficult to "dress" these statements in Catholic clothing.
Defending the truth and legalism are not the same thing. One is rooted in justice, the other is rooted in fear. One is rooted in mercy, the other is rooted in a lack of mercy. One is rooted in service to truth and Our Lord, the other often rooted in pride. Make sense?
Thanks, great reply! For me at least, it's not a matter of making excuses for those teachings of the Pope that are confusing, but trying to understand what he meant. This means following the guidelines of the Catechism: To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way: “Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it.” —CCC, n. 2478 Cardinal Burke said, "The only key to the correct interpretation of Amoris Laetitia is the constant teaching of the Church and her discipline that safeguards and fosters this teaching." One could also say, then, that the only key to the correct interpretation of anything the Pope teaches is to draw it back into Sacred Tradition. Ya, it's exhausting. I mean, even this Declaration with the Imam... there is a sliver of a way to twist it back into orthodoxy under the guise of God's "permissive will", but most people don't do that. They just read what he said, and end up either scandalized or confirmed in their error. Same with "Who am I to judge?" Those words, understood in their context, made sense. But unqualified at the time, they did a lot of damage. So what can we do? Be the voice of clarity and truth!
It is true we must always interpret what comes from the Pope in a Catholic sense. Hence Fr. Z and his article on God's permissive Will being the key to reading the Pope's declaration with the Imam in a Catholic way. Whether that was the Pope's intent though is not necessarily clear. Why did the Vatican not issue a clarifying statement? I think that would be in order. The statements are becoming more and more stretched though to the point where squaring them with Catholic teaching is akin to playing a game of Twister. Josef Seifert, as well as other notable theologians, say that the Pope's statement in that declaration cannot be squared with Catholic teaching and must be retracted. I am not a theologian, so I have no authority to speak on it. All I can say is it doesn't smell good to me.
Yes, it is Catholic Twister (coming to a chapel near you). I think, at the very least, a clarification ought to be forthcoming. Haven't heard much from the CDF for a long time...
Jumping on this thread, I am not surprised at your (MM)take at all. Please tell me, how can liberation theology be condemned by one pope and embraced by the next? How many sins have you confessed for helping create global warming by having such a large family? Whatever happened to "getting the smell of your sheep" and the pope stop condemning catholics in the US for voting for Trump and find out why with his fake mercy? Why doesn't he take down the wall at the vatican, with the likes of Coccopalmerio and set an example for the US? Not jumping ship but am sick of his act.
Not really. Mercy is overused. Those of us who are trying to defend the Truth and reject the heresy of Modernism are labeled as "rigid." And I, for one, am tired of it.
I think those in this forum who have been fortunate to have holy pastors and priest to draw from in the local church or area do not know how bad it is in progressive social justice churches like I have had for the past 30 years. Yes, I have to drive and hour to go to confession and drive out of town to find a priest who will not give pablum, who will genuflect after their consecration, who have no problem with long time parishioners leaving and most stop going to church. I don't blame Pope Francis exclusively for this, but he has not done a whole lot in what he has said or done to bring those "rigid" in the faith back. There is something much deeper going on then just our current pope. We have entered dark days because the world has embraced the errors of communism. This allows for many false teachers and false churches and has brought about the greater errors supported by Freemasonry and its ultimate objective of its leader, the Antichrist. I have my antenna's up for the False Prophet, as he will be a cleric and he will bring about the Antichrist. I am not calling Pope Francis out for this, but he, unlike his predecessors has not spoken to this that I know of. At least not like the past two popes have done. Why?
You are assuming that Pope Francis is referring to you and I. But in Evangelii Gaudium and elsewhere, he appears to be chastising those whom I would call "ultra-Traditionalists." In that regard, I totally agree with him. I have spoken to a lot of people who have been wounded by truly "rigid" folks who treat others like they are second-class Catholics for not attending their rite or following their customs. It would seem that this bunch, who have also wounded the Church by their lack of charity, are whom Pope Francis is targeting. While some statements of Francis are troublesome, yes, others are crystal clear in his defence of marriage, the right to life, the Eucharist, etc. Read Pope Francis On.... After reading that, and his other statements, it becomes much clearer whom he is referring to as "rigid."
