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Poll

What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?

Heretics
5 (12.5%)
Propagators or Error but not heretics
7 (17.5%)
Rash
3 (7.5%)
Other (explain in comments)
25 (62.5%)

Total Members Voted: 40

Voting closed: March 02, 2024, 02:45:27 PM

Author Topic: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?  (Read 14373 times)

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Änσnymσus

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Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
« Reply #15 on: February 11, 2024, 08:13:34 PM »
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    No, the problem with this argument is that, if the popes and the Council of Trent and so on really taught what you think they teach, these theologians would know that too, especially Doctors of the Church.

    But since they read the Fathers and Popes and Councils and everything else that you have read (actually, a vast, vast amount more than you have ever read), and therefore knew and understood all these things better than you do, which is what it means for someone to be a theologian, then they are the ones who are correct when they say that this is part of our Faith and has always been taught and believed so.

    The Feeneyite claim that they understand the Fathers and Popes better than theologians and even Doctors of the Church is false and absurd.
    You are completely wrong.
    First, a real patristic scholar William A Jurgens admitted in volume 3 of faith of the early fathers, that few fathers taught BoD and many outright rejected it.

    Second, St Peter Canisius was at Trent and he never taught BoD in his catechism, this fact is always overlook in the blindness of BoD advocates.

    Third, your claims are false assumptions, there were plenty of heretical pre-vatican 2 theologians, and Fr. Cekada was wrong with his statements about theologians.

    Forth.
    Pope Benedict XIV, Apostolica (# 6), June 26, 1749: “The Church’s judgment is preferable to that of a Doctor renowned for his holiness and teaching.”

    You BoDers do not care for what the Church ACTUALLY teaches, instead you choose to hold on to the opinions of men, refusing to so much as consider the contrary evidence, and then saying that we are prideful 'feenenites'.


    Offline Yeti

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #16 on: February 11, 2024, 08:22:06 PM »
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  • You are completely wrong.
    First, a real patristic scholar William A Jurgens admitted in volume 3 of faith of the early fathers, that few fathers taught BoD and many outright rejected it.


    .

    Let's see, looks to me like that book was published in 1979. So you are quoting some modernist here. :facepalm:

    Quote
    Second, St Peter Canisius was at Trent and he never taught BoD in his catechism, this fact is always overlook in the blindness of BoD advocates.

    Can you please quote where he condemns Baptism of Desire? If he simply omits speaking of it, that proves nothing. What you Feeneyites really need is people who CONDEMNED Baptism of Desire before Vatican 2. I have never seen any Feeneyite ever quote a real theologian -- or anyone who managed to get an Imprimatur at all -- saying something along the lines of, "Baptism of Desire is heretical, and St. Alphonsus and St. Thomas Aquinas taught heresy when they taught it." If Feeneyism were really true, you could give me hundreds of theologians saying this, and yet I have never seen a single one.


    Quote
    Third, your claims are false assumptions, there were plenty of heretical pre-vatican 2 theologians, and Fr. Cekada was wrong with his statements about theologians.


    Like who? And according to whom are they heretics?


    Quote
    Forth.
    Pope Benedict XIV, Apostolica (# 6), June 26, 1749: “The Church’s judgment is preferable to that of a Doctor renowned for his holiness and teaching.”

    The Church's judgment does not condemn Baptism of Desire. If it did, St. Alphonsus and St. Thomas Aquinas would be excommunicated, and Leonard Feeney would be a Doctor of the Church. As it is, though, it is precisely the other way around.



    Änσnymσus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #17 on: February 11, 2024, 09:09:15 PM »
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    Let's see, looks to me like that book was published in 1979. So you are quoting some modernist here. :facepalm:

    This is baseless slander, Faith of the early father's is an excellent work and source for patristic texts, William himself believed in BoD but he was honest enough to admit that few fathers taught it.

    Can you please quote where he condemns Baptism of Desire? If he simply omits speaking of it, that proves nothing. What you Feeneyites really need is people who CONDEMNED Baptism of Desire before Vatican 2. I have never seen any Feeneyite ever quote a real theologian -- or anyone who managed to get an Imprimatur at all -- saying something along the lines of, "Baptism of Desire is heretical, and St. Alphonsus and St. Thomas Aquinas taught heresy when they taught it." If Feeneyism were really true, you could give me hundreds of theologians saying this, and yet I have never seen a single one.

    The Church does not outright condemn every error, the fact that St Peter fails to mention BoD is important because if Trent had taught it he would have mentioned it. Secondly he also quotes St Augustine and Ambrose affirming WATER baptism when referring to the commonly misinterpreted canon of Trent.


    Like who? And according to whom are they heretics?

    I don't have names but the Dimonds have pointed several out on their site in refuting them, also the fact that the Church is in a crisis.

    The Church's judgment does not condemn Baptism of Desire. If it did, St. Alphonsus and St. Thomas Aquinas would be excommunicated, and Leonard Feeney would be a Doctor of the Church. As it is, though, it is precisely the other way around.


    Pope St. Siricius (A.D. 385): 
    "Therefore just as we say that the holy paschal observance is in no way to be diminished, we also say that to infants who will not yet be able to speak on account of their age or to those who in any necessity will need the holy stream of baptism, we wish succor to be brought with all celerity, lest it should tend to the perdition of our souls if the saving font be denied to those desiring it and every single one of them exiting this world lose both the Kingdom and life. Whoever should fall into the peril of shipwreck, the incursion of an enemy, the uncertainty of a siege or the desperation of any bodily sickness, and should beg to be relieved by the unique help of faith, let them obtain the rewards of the much sought-after regeneration in the same moment of time in which they beg for it. Let the previous error in this matter be enough; [but] now let all priests maintain the aforesaid rule, who do not want to be torn from the solidity of the apostolic rock upon which Christ constructed His universal Church.” (Decree to Himerius on the Necessity of Baptism)

    St. Leo the Great at the Council of Chalcedon, St. Leo said the Blood of Redemption can't be separated from the water of baptism.
    "It is he, Jesus Christ who has come through water and blood, not in water only, but in water and blood. And because the Spirit is truth, it is the Spirit who testifies. For there are three who give testimony–Spirit and water and blood. And the three are one. In other words, the Spirit of sanctification and the blood of redemption and the water of baptism. These three are one and remain indivisible. None of them is separable from its link with the others."

    Pope Clement V, The Council of Vienne, 1311-1312: “Besides, only one baptism regenerating all who are baptized in Christ must be faithfully confessed by all just as ‘one God and one faith’ [Eph. 4:5], which celebrated in water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit we believe to be the perfect remedy for salvation for both adults and children.”

    Pope Clement V, The Council of Vienne, 1311-1312: “But since one is the universal Church, of regulars and seculars, of prelates and subjects, of exempt and non-exempt, outside of which absolutely (omnino) no one (nullus) is saved, one is the Lord, one is the Faith and one is the baptism of all.”

    Änσnymσus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #18 on: February 11, 2024, 09:34:19 PM »
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  • and Leonard Feeney would be a 
    Your disrespect is quoted here for the rest of your life, and will be remembered by you in eternity.

    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #19 on: February 12, 2024, 05:50:49 AM »
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  • With so much fighting on the teaching of the late excommunicate Leonard Feeney, it's hard to nail down exactly what their error is.

    Sure, that's because they hold no error.


    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #20 on: February 12, 2024, 05:53:33 AM »
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  • Other: Feeneyites are orthodox Catholics and the maker of this poll ought be not condemned but rather pitied for being a jackass.

    I won't on this nonsense because the question assumes that they should be "condemned."  And of course it's posted by some Anonymous Coward, yet another abuse of the Anonymous forum.

    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #21 on: February 12, 2024, 05:56:28 AM »
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  • Since the Council of Trent explicitly taught that those who desired salvation would be in the state of Grace ...

    This shows that OP has no idea what Father Feeney actually taught, that there could be justification (though no salvation).  Nor does OP have any idea what Trent taught.  There's no mention of a "desire of salvation", but a "desire (bad translation for votum) of Baptism."

    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #22 on: February 12, 2024, 06:02:20 AM »
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  • St. Alphonsus said Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood are de fide, so I'll go with him. I would have to see a higher authority than a Doctor of the Church to contradict him before I changed my position. That's why I voted "heretics".

    Here's what Fr. Cekada explained about this (he was a bit more lenient than me; since he managed to dig out one or two theologians who taught that it was only proxima fidei, he didn't apply the censure of heresy to Feeneyites, but that argument is a bit weak if you have 20 or so theologians on the other side.)

    In any case, Fr. Cekada said that, since every theologian teaches that these doctrines are at least proxima fidei, which it is mortally sinful to deny, being a Feeneyite is at least mortally sinful.

    Yeah, Father Cekada was more "lenient" than you because he had the honesty to admit that only the minority of theologians agreed with St. Alphonsus, and you can't condemn someone as a heretic based on a minority opinion.  St. Alphonsus isn't the Magisterium.

    Apart from that, Father Cekada has promoted the error of (what I have termed) "Cekadism", attributing to theologians an authority they lack.

    Here's what an ACTUAL theologian from before Vatican II had to say, rather than some borderline-flunkee at an SSPX seminary (yes, I was told by his colleagues that he did not do well at seminary except in Liturgy and Canon Law).

    Msgr. Fenton:
    Quote
    Thus, when we review or attempt to evaluate the works of a private theologian, we are perfectly within our rights in attempting to show that a certain portion of his doctrine is authentic Catholic teaching or at least based upon such teaching, and to assert that some other portions of that work simply express ideas current at the time the books were written. The pronouncements of the Roman Pontiffs, acting as the authorized teachers of the Catholic Church, are definitely not subject to that sort of evaluation.

    Unfortunately the tendency to misinterpret the function of the private theologian in the Church’s doctrinal work is not something now in the English Catholic literature. Cardinal Newman in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (certainly the least valuable of his published works), supports the bizarre thesis that the final determination of what is really condemned in an authentic ecclesiastical pronouncement is the work of private theologians, rather than of the particular organ of the ecclesia docens which has actually formulated the condemnation. The faithful could, according to his theory, find what a pontifical docuмent actually means, not from the content of the docuмent itself, but from the speculations of the theologians.



    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #23 on: February 12, 2024, 06:06:00 AM »
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  • IIRC, Fr Feeney was initially for BOD and he didn't come out against it publicly until he wrote his book Bread of Life which was printed after the "Letter" of 1949. This means he was "excommunicated" for a position they didn't even know that he held.?!?!? I think most of the slander against Fr is just fabricated which means it rises to the level of calumny and is not just your regular garden variety detraction. Fools rush in where angels dare not tread.

    Please correct me if I'm wrong,
    JoeZ

    Correct.  Father Feeney was attacked by the spurious "Letter" for actually believing in EENS, whereas his superiors, including the heretic Cushing who called EENS dogma "nonsense" were confirmed in their heresy.  Of course, this "Letter" appears nowhere in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, and, very strangely, Cushing, who evidently had the only copy of it, sat on it for a couple years until the Cardinal who had allegedly signed it died.  Why, when it was very relevant at the time it was already written ... other than to alter its contents somehow?  Only place it appeared was in Cushing's own "Irish Ecclesiastical Review."

    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #24 on: February 12, 2024, 06:09:18 AM »
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  • No, the problem with this argument is that, if the popes and the Council of Trent and so on really taught what you think they teach, these theologians would know that too, especially Doctors of the Church.

    Unlike St. Alphonsus, St. Peter Canisius was in fact a theologian at Trent (spoke twice during the Council and was involved in everything that took place there).  He saw no teaching of "Baptism of Desire" in Trent, and it can be proved a dozen different ways that there was no such teaching.


    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #25 on: February 12, 2024, 06:12:15 AM »
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  • A Saint saying some is de fide doesn't make it so. St Alphonsus version of BoD contradicts Trent on Initial Justification. There is a whole thread on it so I am not going to post the quotes here.

    Right, in summary, St. Alphonsus' version of BoD, where those who are "saved" by BoD do not (necessarily) have all temporal punishment remitted by BoD is in fact a heretical contradiction of Trent, which teaches that initial justification = regeneration, and then defines regeneration (as the term implies) as a complete rebirth, including washing away of all sin and guilt due to sin so that nothing remains in the one so reborn that would hinder his immediate entry into Heaven.  St. Alphonsus was a great saint, but he erred rather seriously on this point.  If someone believes in BoD, he must reject this aspect of St. Alphonsus' position.


    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #26 on: February 12, 2024, 06:22:06 AM »
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  • You are completely wrong.
    First, a real patristic scholar William A Jurgens admitted in volume 3 of faith of the early fathers, that few fathers taught BoD and many outright rejected it.

    Even Karl "Anonymous Christian" Rahner has the intellectual honesty to admit this, even if most BoDers don't.

    I summarized the evidence on another thread, but the Fathers are overwhelmingly against BoD.  We have 5 or 6 Church Fathers who explicitly reject it and only two Fathers who allegedly opined in its favor.

    Of the two, St. Augustine admitted it was pure speculation and not received Tradition, saying that he had gone back and forth on the matter and then tentatively stated "I find that ...".  At no point did he teach it with any authority.  In fact, even as Rahner admits, St. Augustine retracted the opinion, and some of the strongest anti-BoD statements in existence come from his later works.

    As for the other, St. Ambrose, who explicitly rejects BoD elsewhere, in his famous Oration at the funeral of Valentinian did NOT teach BoD but merely expressed hope that, like the unbaptized martyrs, those who had this "desire" (zeal, confession) might be "washed but not crowned".  Crowning refers to entry into the Kingdom.  So this sounds more like a distinction between a type of justification (washing) but not salvation (crowning).

    When the question resurfaces after a 700-year silence, in the pre-scholastics, they universally based their opinion (as did Pope Innocent II) incorrectly on the "authority of Augustine and Ambrose".  And the other Fathers were chopped liver?  Evidently they also did not know that Augustine had retracted his youthful speculation after he had matured his his battles against various heretics, the Donatists and Pelagians, nor did they properly understand St. Ambrose.  That's it for their "authority", the house of cards upon which all BoD theory rests.

    We have two ways of discerning whether something was revealed (and, therefore, whether the contrary is heretical), namely, 1) unanimous consensus of the Church Fathers, 2) where a doctrine derives implicitly and necessarily from revealed doctrine.

    1 is a bit fat negatory as the majority of Church Fathers rejected it, and of the two left, one retracted and the other was misinterpreted

    With regard to 2, NO ONE has ever provided any kind of theological proof for BoD.  Most never even attempt it.  We see only "Augustine and Ambrose", "Augustine and Ambrose", "Augustine and Ambrose".

    In the modern theologians, we see only "Yep, BoD.", "Yep, BoD".

    Only theologian who even came close to making an attempt to prove it was St. Thomas, but it was not so much proof as explanation.  He states that the Sacraments have both a visible and an invisible aspect, and merely states that in BoD you have the invisible without the visible.  But not all the graces of all the Sacraments allow the invisible to occur without the visible, and the two which most prominently do not, Holy Orders and Confirmation (there's no such thing as Holy Orders of Desire or Confirmation of Desire), are both, like Baptism, "character" Sacraments that require the visible/physical administration to receive the character.  So this isn't any kind of "proof".  That one big problem with BoD, its reduction of the character of Baptism to relative meaninglessness, as it's merely some badge of honor that some on Heaven have but others do not.

    St. Robert Bellarmine, admitting that the Fathers were divided on BoD, stated that "it would seem too harsh" to say that Catechumens (to whom he limited it) could not be saved this way.  Not much of a theological proof there either.  It also contradicts his earlier teaching that Catechumens are excluded from the Church due to their non-participation in the Sacraments.

    Änσnymσus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #27 on: February 12, 2024, 06:59:18 AM »
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  • COUNCIL OF TRENT 

    ON JUSTIFICATION
    FIRST DECREE
    Celebrated on the thirteenth day of the month of January, 1547.



    CHAPTER IV. 
    "A description is introduced of the Justification of the impious, and of the Manner thereof under the law of grace. 
    By which words, a description of the Justification of the impious is indicated,-as being a translation, from that state wherein man is born a child of the first Adam, to the state of grace, and of the adoption of the sons of God, through the second Adam, Jesus Christ, our Saviour. And this translation, since the promulgation of the Gospel, cannot be effected, without the laver of regeneration, or the desire thereof, as it is written; unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God."


    http://www.thecounciloftrent.com/ch6.htm


    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #28 on: February 12, 2024, 07:04:40 AM »
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  • COUNCIL OF TRENT

    ON JUSTIFICATION
    FIRST DECREE
    Celebrated on the thirteenth day of the month of January, 1547.

    Great.  Thanks.  We're all aware of the passage.  We don't agree with your interpretation of it.  Remove the English comma before "or the desire thereof" and then you get closer to how we read this.

    Also, this has nothing to do with Feeneyism (as called out by the OP), since Father Feeney rightly points out that this passage is speaking justification and not of salvation.

    And in case you think Father Feeney invented the distinction, there were post-Tridentine theologians who held that infidels, for instance, could be justified but not saved.  St. Ambrose, in the famous Valentinian passage, holds that those who desire Baptism could be "washed" (aka justified) but not "crowned" (aka saved).

    Online Ladislaus

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    Re: What Should Feeneyites be Condemned as?
    « Reply #29 on: February 12, 2024, 07:12:33 AM »
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  • Also, this has nothing to do with Feeneyism (as called out by the OP), since Father Feeney rightly points out that this passage is speaking justification and not of salvation.

    This also calls out the ignorami who consider Father Feeney to have been a "heretic" (while giving the real heretic, Cardinal Cushing, a free pass).  Father Feeney believed in justification by desire, so at no point does he even reject your (IMO incorrect) reading of Trent.

    This amorphous term "Baptism" of Desire doesn't address the effects of said "Baptism of Desire", i.e. whether it pertains to "justification of desire" or "salvation of desire".