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Don't call Protestants "Christian," and don't call anyone "Catholic" who ACTS like a Protestant.

Like Lovers of Error, for example.

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Please, Don’t Call Protestants 'Christians'

Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D.

It is very common today to hear Catholics call a Protestant “a Christian,” or even, “a good Christian.” In the United States, it was already a practice before Vatican II because of the tendency of American Catholics to accommodate Protestantism, whose tonus dominated the social and business spheres. Then, there was the question of adaptation as prominent Protestants joined the Catholic faith, or Catholics entered into marriages with Protestants. It was just easier to call everyone “Christian.” Supposedly it underplayed differences. It was meant to create the impression that Catholics and Protestants were cousins in one big, happy family. Pope Leo XIII condemned this tolerance toward Protestantism under the name of Americanism, the heresy of Americanism, to be more precise.

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Our Lord delivers the keys of His Church to St. Peter
Pietro Perugino, 15th century, Sistine Chapel


After Vatican II, needless to say, the practice of calling Protestants 'Christians' has snowballed, with the official conciliar docuмents assuming this same impropriety. Hence, the Holy See, Prelates and priests have made its use as widespread as possible. Accommodation to Protestantism in our days has reached such a point that some Catholics, to distinguish between Catholics and their Protestant “separated brethren,” call themselves Catholic Christians. A redundancy if I've ever heard one. Only Catholics can be true Christians. No one who dissents from the Roman Catholic Church can be a Christian. The terms are synonymous.

Every time I hear the term 'Christian' used for Protestants, I cringe. Its usage clearly nourishes a trend toward a dangerous religious indifferentism, which denies the duty of man to worship God by believing and practicing the one true Catholic Religion. It is an implicit admission that those who deny the one Faith can nonetheless be 'Christians', that is, be in the Church of Christ. Inherently it leads to the progressivist notion that men can be saved in any religion that accepts Christ as Savior. A “good Lutheran,” a “good Anglican,” a “good Pres-byterian – what does it matter so long as they are good people and sincerely love Christ?

Regardless of who is applying this usage today, I want to stress that it is at variance with the entire tradition of the Catholic Church until the Council. To consider heretics as Christians is not the teaching of the Church.

Before Vatican II, the Magisterium was always very clear: It is not a matter of an individual’s character or traits. No one can be in the Church of Christ without professing the ensemble of the truths of Catholic Faith, being in unity with the Chair of Peter and receiving the same Seven Sacraments. The only Christian is one who accepts Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Church he established. Who can have God for Father and not accept the Church for Mother? (Pope Pius IX, Singulari quidem of March 17, 1856) Who can accept the spouse Christ, and not his mystical bride the Church? Who can separate the Head, the only begotten Son of God, from the body, which is His Church? (Pope Leo XIII, Satis cognitum of June 29, 1896). It is not possible.

In short, only those who profess the one Catholic Faith and are united with the Mystical Body of Christ are members of the Church of Christ. And only those members can legitimately bear the title of honor of Christian.

The Protestant sect started as a revolt, protesting the Church of Christ and, pretending to accept Christ without Peter, the authority He established on earth. With this split, they left the Church and became heretics. This used to be clearly said and understood, without sentimental fear of offending one’s neighbors or relatives: A Protestant is a heretic because he severed himself from the Body of the Church. He is not a 'Christian', and certainly not a “good Christian.”

Scriptures confirm this truth

My friend Jan thought I was being too severe on this topic. “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill,” she said. “Don’t Scriptures teach us to love our neighbor and not be judgmental?”

It is the same old post Vatican II story, claiming that it is “judgmental” to correct bad practices and false teachings and arguing with disputable interpretations of Scriptures.

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Luther and Melanchthon broke with the Church of Christ
Lucas Cranach the Younger


Well, despite these subjective interpretations, the inspired words of Scriptures provide an unambiguous defense that the custody of the vineyard has been committed by Christ to the Catholic Church alone. Let me quote just a few verses:

    “He who hears you (Peter) hears me, and he who rejects you, rejects me, and he who rejects me, rejects him who sent me (Lk 10:16).” It could not be clearer: the Protestant who rejects the head, rejects Christ himself, and should not be granted the name 'Christian'.

    Christ establishes one Church with a single head: "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matt 16:19).

    St. Paul is severe in his condemnation of false teachers, e.g. Protestants: “If any man preaches any other Gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed” (Gal 1: 9).

    In another passage he instructs Catholics to remove themselves from the bad society of non-Catholics: “And we charge you, brethren, in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ that you withdraw yourselves from every brother walking disorderly and not according to the Tradition which they have received of us” (2 Thes. 3:6).

    The Apostle St. John forbade any intercourse with heretics: “If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house or welcome him” (2 Jo 1:10)”

Holy Scriptures are clear on the point that only those who belong to the one Church founded by Christ, the Catholic Church, can rightfully be considered Christians.

Popes reiterate this teaching

The traditional Papal Magisterium was also clear on this topic. Let me offer a few texts by way of exemplification.

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Pius IX: "He who abandons the Chair of Peter is falsely persuaded that he is in the Church of Christ"


Pius XII stated unequivocally: “To be Christian one must be Roman. One must recognize the oneness of Christ’s Church that is governed by one successor of the Prince of the Apostles who is the Bishop of Rome, Christ’s Vicar on earth” (Allocution to the Irish pilgrims of October 8, 1957). How is it possible to be clearer than this about those who can be called Christian?

Leo XIII makes it plain that separated members cannot belong to the same body: “So long as the member was on the body, it lived; separated, it lost its life. Thus the man, so long as he lives on the body of the [Catholic] Church, he is a Christian; separated from her, he becomes a heretic” (Encyclical Satis cognitum of June 29, 1896).

Emphasizing the fate of those who break away from the one Faith, he says: “Whoever leaves her [the Catholic Church] departs from the will and command of Our Lord Jesus Christ; leaving the path of salvation, he enters that of perdition. Whoever is separated from the Church is united to an adulteress” (ibid.). Certainly, they do not share with us the same title of Christian.

Pope Pius IX stated: “He who abandons the Chair of Peter on which the Church is founded, is falsely persuaded that he is in the Church of Christ” (Quartus supra of January 6 1873, n. 8).

In the Syllabus of Modern Errors, the proposition that Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion was specifically condemned (Pius IX, n. 18)(1).

Therefore, there is only one Christian Church, the Catholic Church, and only those who belong to it should rightfully be called Christians.

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Only inside the Catholic Church can true union be achieved
Ottenbeueren Collectarius, 12th century


How to fight [/i]Americanism?[/i]

Many persons ask me: What can I do to fight Progressivism? Others have requested: Give me some specific examples of how I can combat Americanism.

Let me offer one concrete way to fight in yourself the tendency toward accommodation with Protestantism.

When you catch yourself calling a Protestant a “Christian,” stop and correct yourself. Call him a Protestant. It is a way to affirm that you do not accept the Protestant errors and that you acknowledge it for the terrible thing it is: Protestants denied many Catholic dogmas and for this reason caused that first major crack in the unity of the Catholic Church that caused untold damage to Christendom and the perdition of those souls adhering to it.

It is a small thing, but by such small customs we as a people have been walking steadily toward religious indifferentism. It is time to set some roadblocks on that path. We should not veil in ambiguous terms our love for the ensemble of the Catholic Faith. The only true union possible for Catholics with Protestants is by their return to the one true Church of Christ, the Catholic Church. Only with such a return can they rightfully call themselves Christians.

    1. Numerous traditional Catholic teachings on the this topic can be found in Atila S. Guimarães, Aniums Delendi II, Los Angeles: TIA, 2002, pp. 205-217.   See also "Christian Ecuemnism" in Simon Galloway, No Crisis in the Church? New Olive Press, 2006, pp. 1-51.




.............And when someone keeps calling himself a Lover of truth, when he obviously is in love with error, call him "Lover of Error."  And when someone keeps calling himself by the name of a Doctor of the Church, but acts like a fruit salad, call him by the latter......................

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The Americanists are determined to change the dogma on salvation. BOD was never relevant or an issue with EENS but the Americanists made it one and unfortunately today the Americanist error of invincible ignorance as an exception to EENS has spread throughout the Church as to become "Church teaching". The sedevacantists here in CI have elevated the concept into a DOGMA, which not even the conciliar popes have done.

Correct.

And if you go to a CMRI chapel and tell the priest that BoD is not doctrine, don't be at all surprised if he tells you that if you think that way, you're not Catholic, and that you'll have to find somewhere else for the sacraments, even if every church within 50 miles is NovusOrdo.  I know this happens because I saw it happen.

The CMRI is filled apparently with Lovers of Error.  (Not unlike CI threads, actually.)

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. (the ink dried again, as usual)



It ought to be instructive in itself how in 25 hours, only 15 posts have shown up on this thread, while that many show up on the heckling pro-BoD threads in two hours.  

Here, Ladislaus provides a calm, reasoned and sensible depiction of what is going on, and it doesn't get anyone all riled up, but Lover of Error, Ambrosia and other such trolls :gandalf:  continue to foist their hate-mail on CI to its discredit, and it goes on and on and on only losing readership because the whole thing stinks.  IMHO, he could have made a few minor adjustments in the terminology, which I can manage easily here:

Since Lover of Error and others persist in hiding behind the concept of 'Baptism of Desire' and using it as cover for their heresies and their contempt for the Sacrament of Baptism and their contempt for the dogma that there can be no salvation outside the Church and their contempt for membership in the Church, I [thought] it necessary to start a separate thread in order distinguish between a CATHOLIC understanding of Baptism of Desire and their heretical distortion of the same.  They use various forms of obfuscation to hide this and throw a bunch of chaff into the air as distraction.

LoE has admitted that he would personally consider God to be an "arbitrary tyrant" if He required Baptism for Salvation, despite the fact that His Son Our Lord most solemnly declared, "Amen, amen I say to you, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (Jn. iii. 5).

The word, "YOU" refers to the Universal Church, from the mouth of Our Lord Himself.

LoE has contemptuously disparaged the Holy Sacrament of Baptism as "water and words" (in the tone of "smells and bells").

LoE has expressed disdain for membership in the Church and being part of Our Lord's Mystical Body by referring to it as "card-carrying."

These attitudes and this pseudo-theology is precisely what
the Council of Trent was most emphatically addressing and condemning.

Trent DOGMATICALLY taught
the necessity of the Sacraments for salvation,
against the Protestant heretics who had contempt for them
(in the same mindset as LoE).  

Trent CONDEMNED the notion of an invisible Church
and reaffirmed the requirement of membership
in the Church for salvation.

If you look at EVERY SINGLE quasi-authoritative source cited by heretics like LoE and Ambrosia to justify their gnostic/heretical/Protestant ecclesiology (the same ecclesiology, by the way, which led to Vatican II), they ALL view Baptism of Desire as applicable only to those who have all the necessary prerequisites to be Catholic (as defined by the Council of Trent) and lack absolutely nothing to be Catholic except the Sacrament itself.

After Trent, Catholic theologians were careful to state that in BoD people received the Sacrament in voto rather than saying that they were justified without the Sacrament ... out of respect for the solemn teaching of Trent regarding the necessity of the Sacraments for salvation.  

Trent taught that the Sacrament of Baptism is the instrumental cause of justification.  Consequently, in Baptism of Desire, it is STILL the Sacrament of Baptism that acts as the instrumental cause of justification, operating THROUGH the desire, i.e. that the formal OBJECT of the desire and not the subjective desire itself (=Pelagian ex opere operantis salvation) causes justification.  It is the Sacrament of Baptism, the formal object of the desire, which causes justification, with the COOPERATION of the will (i.e. the actual subjective desire).  

To say that the desire itself justifies, entails the two-fold heresy of Pelagianism and rejection of Trent's dogmatic teaching regarding the necessity of Baptism for salvation.

Let's look at the quasi-authoritative sources regarding Baptism of Desire:

St. Augustine -- BoD for CATECHUMENS (later no BoD at all)
SEVERAL Church Fathers -- no BoD whatsoever
Innocent II/Innocent III -- BoD for CATECHUMENS
St. Thomas Aquinas -- BoD for CATECHUMENS
St. Robert Bellarmine -- BoD for CATECHUMENS
Catechism of Trent -- BoD for CATECHUMENS
1917 Code of Canon Law -- BoD for CATECHUMENS

LoE, Ambrosia, and heretics of their ilk want to substitute subjective "good intentions" in place of objective Catholic faith and objective intention to become Catholic and the necessity of the Sacraments.

Why?  Because, by their own admission, they can't stand the thought that only Catholics can be saved.  In other words, this "theology" is born out of their contempt for the Holy Dogma that There Is Absolutely No Salvation Outside the Church.


This ecclesiology IS in fact none other than the gnostic/Pelagian/Protestant "subsistence" ecclesiology of Vatican II from which ALL the errors and heresies of Vatican II proceed.  

Yet LoE, Ambrosia, and others -- quite ironically, mostly the sedevacantists [it's not really so ironic once you realize their common foundation] -- hold the SAME FUNDAMENTAL HERESIES THAT THEY USE TO DECLARE JORGE BERGOGLIO TO BE A HERETIC AND TO HAVE VACATED THE HOLY SEE.

[Directing the stones of their own logic to themselves in their own glass houses, they show themselves to be just as 'unreliable' as the Bergoglios and Ratzingers at whom they hurl their hypocritical and illogical stones.  This is why they refuse to study logic and they refuse to think logically.]

Avoid these heretics on CI like the plague.  If you believe in BoD, JUST MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A CATHOLIC VIEW OF  BOD.  Never say that such as these are justified WITHOUT the Sacrament of Baptism, but rather that they receive Baptism in voto ("in desire") and that the formal object of their desire, the Sacrament of Baptism, remains the instrumental cause of their justification.  

Never say that non-Catholics can be saved;  they cannot.  As the Holy Office under St. Pius X declared, if Catholics are asked whether non-Catholics can be saved, the answer MUST BE A SIMPLE, CATEGORICAL, UNQUALIFIED NO !!!  --Not a five-page dissertation which essentially undercuts the dogma, reduces EENS to a tautology and therefore a meaningless formula, but "NO!!!"

Let your speech be yes, yes and no, no; anything more is of the devil.
 

I don't know if it could be explained any better!

There might be a few more improvements down the line.  Unlike the trolls LoE and Ambrosia whose relentless drivel only serves to discredit CI and chase readers away and drop its name from various reference lists as a "useful" Resistance website, (cf. TheRecusant Issue #18. p. 20), Ladislaus recognizes that he's not speaking infallibly nor does he represent the teaching authority of the Church.  He's a layman doing his darn-dest to keep up with these flaming lunatics like LoE and Ambrosia, which see.  


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Quote from the letter of the Holy Office condemning Fr. Feeney’s teaching:

   That one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that he be incorporated into the Church actually as a member, but it is necessary that at least he be united to her by desire and longing. However, this desire need not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens; but when a person is involved in invincible ignorance, God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wants his will to be conformed to the Will of God. These things are clearly taught in the dogmatic letter which was issued by the Sovereign Pontiff, Pope Pius XII, on June 29, 1943 (Mystici Corporis)... he mentions those who are related to the Mystical Body of the Redeemer "by a certain unconscious yearning and desire," and these he by no means excludes from eternal salvation; but on the other hand, he states that they are in a condition "in which they cannot be sure of their salvation" since "they still remain deprived of those many heavenly gifts and helps which can only be enjoyed in the Catholic Church!" With these wise words he reproves both those who exclude from salvation all united to the Church only by implicit desire, and those who falsely assert that men can be saved equally as well in every religion. (Letter to the Archbishop of Boston, August 8, 1949).

 

Actually, if you eliminate Ambrose and Lover of Truth, there would not be any discussions about BOD in CI past this:

If you believe in BoD, JUST MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A CATHOLIC VIEW OF  BOD.  Never say that such as these are justified WITHOUT the Sacrament of Baptism, but rather that they receive Baptism in voto ("in desire") and that the formal object of their desire, the Sacrament of Baptism, remains the instrumental cause of their justification.  Never say that non-Catholics can be saved (without explicit belief in Christ and the Trinity and an explicit desire to be a Catholic); they cannot.  As the Holy Office under St. Pius X declared, if Catholics are asked whether non-Catholics can be saved, the answer MUST BE A SIMPLE, CATEGORIAL, UNQUALIFIED NO !!!  Not a five-page dissertation which essentially undercuts the dogma, reduces EENS to a tautology and therefore a meaningless formula, but "NO!!!"

 Let your speech be yes, yes and no, no; anything more is of the devil.

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... crickets ...


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Yes, the heretic finally posts and it only backs up the OP.