Author Topic: Fr. hαɾɾιson corrects The Wanderer for their misinterpretation of EENS (Read 15537 times)

Tradycja · « **on:** February 20, 2011, 07:34:24 PM »

The following is a scan from the current issue of the Wanderer (Vol 143, No.7- Feb 17, 2011) in which Fr. hαɾɾιson corrects them for their misinterpretation of Cantate Domino.

I have not seen the previous issue with the Wanderer article where they contradict Cantate Domino. If you have it please let me know. I would like to get my hands on it.

Jehanne · « **Reply #1 on:** February 20, 2011, 08:18:56 PM »

Excellent article. However, pagans, even those who are completely inculpable of hearing the Gospel, will be damned on account of original sin. This is why it is de fide that the sole and only means of salvation for infants and children who die before the age of reason is sacramental Baptism. Saint Thomas was quite explicit about the absolute necessity of explicit faith in Jesus Christ, in particular, the 14 Articles of Faith that comprise the Apostle's Creed.

None of this, IMHO, contradicts what Father Feeney taught who said,

"There is no one about to die in the state of justification whom God cannot secure Baptism for, and indeed, Baptism of Water." (Bread of Life, page 56)

stevusmagnus · « **Reply #2 on:** February 27, 2011, 10:29:51 PM »

BroMo over at CAF says Council of Florence only applied to Catholics, so there you go. Problem solved. Indians are saved. :turban:

Telesphorus · « **Reply #3 on:** February 28, 2011, 09:12:43 AM »

Quote from: stevusmagnus

BroMo over at CAF says Council of Florence only applied to Catholics, so there you go. Problem solved. Indians are saved. :turban:

Listening to those people you would think only Traditional Catholics go to hell.

Raoul76 · « **Reply #4 on:** February 28, 2011, 06:12:38 PM »

Jehanne said:

Quote

However, pagans, even those who are completely inculpable of hearing the Gospel, will be damned on account of original sin.

I have joined the dark side, so here goes --

Theology has moved on past St. Thomas, just as St. Thomas moved on past St. Augustine. This doesn't mean there are new revelations, but what was already revealed with the Apostles has been more fully explained.

Trying to "go back to Augustine" is a recipe for heresy, as was already seen with the Jansenists and the Protestants. Take it from someone who went down that route for a while ( wink ).

Theology doesn't add anything, it doesn't change, but it does become MORE CLEAR. Recall that no one was going around teaching "original sin" until Augustine, he came up with that term, but at the same time, proof of it is clearly in the Gospels. It just took God, using Augustine, to shed more light on it, centuries after the Apostles.

Tread carefully, since a Pope, Pius IX, has spoken of invincible ignorance in an encyclical, and by now it very well may be part of the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium. Very, very few theologians of the last two hundred years would have denied that it is possible for God to save someone with an IMPLICIT FAITH, despite invincible ignorance.

Apart from that, we can have our opinions. My opinion is that very, very few will be saved who have never heard the Gospel, it would be an extraordinary grace. I mean very, very, VERY few.

The last Doctor of the Church is St. Alphonsus, in my opinion, he is the one who must be our guide in this hazy, confusing jumbled modern world. I have prayed to him to help me avoid scruples and I believe he has been most effective.

Raoul76 · « **Reply #5 on:** February 28, 2011, 06:18:47 PM »

Also, just forget Father Feeney. Stop trying to shoehorn him into some kind of plan that you're comfortable with, stop mulling over his statements and trying to make them click. Just trust God, trust the Church, and you can't go wrong.

Yes, Vatican II didn't happen overnight. But that doesn't mean the Church has allowed a heresy to be taught for five hundred years ( if you think implicit faith is a heresy ).

If you have a tendency to intellectual pride, as I do, you are ripe for incipient Feeneyism or some variant thereof. THe devil is ALL over it, trust me. Careful! The most important thing is to read good books, trustworthy sources. St. Alphonsus is accredited a great theologian by everyone; Father Feeney is not.

Raoul76 · « **Reply #6 on:** February 28, 2011, 06:24:46 PM »

Another theologian I would give my total trust is Tanquerey. He taught implicit faith, just like almost all if not all European theologians.

JohnGrey · « **Reply #7 on:** February 28, 2011, 06:33:33 PM »

Quote from: Raoul76

Jehanne said:
Quote
However, pagans, even those who are completely inculpable of hearing the Gospel, will be damned on account of original sin.

I have joined the dark side, so here goes --

Theology has moved on past St. Thomas, just as St. Thomas moved on past St. Augustine. This doesn't mean there are new revelations, but what was already revealed with the Apostles has been more fully explained.

Trying to "go back to Augustine" is a recipe for heresy, as was already seen with the Jansenists and the Protestants. Take it from someone who went down that route for a while ( wink ).

Theology doesn't add anything, it doesn't change, but it does become MORE CLEAR. Recall that no one was going around teaching "original sin" until Augustine, he came up with that term, but at the same time, proof of it is clearly in the Gospels. It just took God, using Augustine, to shed more light on it, centuries after the Apostles.

Tread carefully, since a Pope, Pius IX, has spoken of invincible ignorance in an encyclical, and by now it very well may be part of the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium. Very, very few theologians of the last two hundred years would have denied that it is possible for God to save someone with an IMPLICIT FAITH, despite invincible ignorance.

Apart from that, we can have our opinions. My opinion is that very, very few will be saved who have never heard the Gospel, it would be an extraordinary grace. I mean very, very, VERY few.

The last Doctor of the Church is St. Alphonsus, in my opinion, he is the one who must be our guide in this hazy, confusing jumbled modern world. I have prayed to him to help me avoid scruples and I believe he has been most effective.

Sorry, not buying the "clarity" argument, as it's a favorite of modernists, and Ratzinger in particular, to explain this and that novelty. To be the faith, it must have either:

1.) Been a divine revelation
2.) Part of constant teaching of the Church throughout its history
3.) Solemly proclaimed by Pope, or Council with the Pope's approval

Moreover, any such clarification must not contradict previous expounded dogma. That's my problem with arguing that this is an example of doctrinal evolution. Augustine's works on matter, were never, to my knowledge accepted as being authoritative. The Summa Theologica on the other hand, as I've stated in another thread, was according a place next to divine revelation of Scripture on the altar at the Council of Trent, and moreover was declared by Leo XIII to be the authoritative exposition of Christian doctrine, with no approbation to the necessity for explicit faith, or anything else therein contained. Considering that this comes from Leo XIII, who himself would've been quite aware of his predecessor's work, I find this at odds with the belief that the exploration of implicit faith is binding.

SJB · « **Reply #8 on:** February 28, 2011, 06:40:05 PM »

Quote from: JohnGrey

Moreover, any such clarification must not contradict previous expounded dogma.

True, except you could very well be seeing a contradiction where there is none.

JohnGrey · « **Reply #9 on:** February 28, 2011, 07:06:11 PM »

Quote from: SJB

True, except you could very well be seeing a contradiction where there is none.

I don't deny this is possible; on this matter, I have no particular stance and defer to the guidance of others. I do not, however, think it can be much denied that Thomas is both firm and consistent in his doctrine on the need for explicit faith.

Jehanne · « **Reply #10 on:** February 28, 2011, 09:57:14 PM »

Quote from: Raoul76

Also, just forget Father Feeney. Stop trying to shoehorn him into some kind of plan that you're comfortable with, stop mulling over his statements and trying to make them click. Just trust God, trust the Church, and you can't go wrong.

Yes, Vatican II didn't happen overnight. But that doesn't mean the Church has allowed a heresy to be taught for five hundred years ( if you think implicit faith is a heresy ).

If you have a tendency to intellectual pride, as I do, you are ripe for incipient Feeneyism or some variant thereof. THe devil is ALL over it, trust me. Careful! The most important thing is to read good books, trustworthy sources. St. Alphonsus is accredited a great theologian by everyone; Father Feeney is not.

Implicit faith is a heresy. Was it condemned? I think so:

Condemned Proposition: "A faith indicated from the testimony of creation, or from a similar motive, suffices for justification" (Pope Innocent XI, Denz. 2123).

Note the "from a similar motive..."

Faith in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ must be explicit:

1) Our Lord Jesus Christ's words say so in the Gospels: "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." (Mark 16:16)

2) The Athanasian Creed states so, explicitly, and that was infallibly included in the text of the Council of Florence.

3) Implicit faith makes no sense. How does one believe something "implicitly"? It's like saying that I could be explicitly married to my wife yet, at the same time, be implicitly married to someone else, someone whom I do not even know. If such an absurdity were true, how would I ever "divorce" such an individual? How does someone with "implicit faith" ever get rid of it? Can they apostatize, even if they want to??

As for implicit faith being taught for 500 years, it wasn't. It was De Vega who first taught it, didn't he? So, the idea is around 400 years old, and it was never widely embraced when it first showed-up.

As for Pope Pius IX, in my (humble) opinion, he blew it, big time. He laid the foundation for Vatican II, but notice, none of his successors, until Pope Pius XII, followed in his footsteps. If anything, they tried to correct his ideas. In any case, we can read Pius IX's two statements in light of Tradition, but like Vatican II, one is not required to. And, that's the problem, isn't it?

As for Father Feeney, I think that he was a great priest and theologian. In essence, I think that he got things right, even though he got some of the details wrong.

As for St. Alphonsus, I think that he got some things wrong, which is the claim that you appear to be making about St. Augustine!

Raoul76 · « **Reply #11 on:** February 28, 2011, 10:34:06 PM »

Well, Jehanne, I thought almost exactly like you at one time, and like Richard Ibranyi. I saw the idea of implicit faith as sort of the bridge from the Renaissance right to Vatican II, spanning hundreds of years -- a sort of slow-burning conspiracy theory. I am ashamed of this now, the Church would not let a heresy be taught by almost all of its theologians for this long.

I think the first one to teach implicit faith was Pighius. I don't know about De Vega, but someone named Soto taught it, a Jesuit ( my name is de la Sota, so that was easy to remember ). It then took off like wildfire among the Jesuits, and eventually, became the norm.

I don't know, my panic over this whole issue just lifted one day, as it did with NFP.

Raoul76 · « **Reply #12 on:** February 28, 2011, 10:43:51 PM »

Jehanne said:

Quote

Condemned Proposition: "A faith indicated from the testimony of creation, or from a similar motive, suffices for justification" (Pope Innocent XI, Denz. 2123).

There were arguments about the minimum that's necessary for faith. Just admiring creation doesn't fulfill that minimum requirement, that is what Innocent XI was condemning.

Quote

Belief in God alone seems necessary by a necessity of means, not, however, explicit faith in a Rewarder. ERROR CONDEMNED. Pope St. Innocent XI

Here Pope Innocent XI is saying that it's not enough to believe, for instance, in a God that punishes all men, you must also believe God rewards the good. But that doesn't necessarily mean this is the minimum of what must be believed.

Jehanne said:

Quote

1) Our Lord Jesus Christ's words say so in the Gospels: "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." (Mark 16:16)

He doesn't say they have to believe explicitly :farmer:

Jehanne said:

Quote

2) The Athanasian Creed states so, explicitly, and that was infallibly included in the text of the Council of Florence.

The Athanasian Creed explicitly states the Catholic faith in a nutshell. It doesn't say that to be saved you have to explicitly believe all of this.

Come on, Jehanne, how many illiterate Catholics in the Middle Ages do you think understood what is said in the Athanasian Creed? Do you think they'd know that all three Persons of the Holy Ghost are uncreated, or that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son and the Father and not just from the Father or just from the Son?

So these illiterate Catholics had their own form of implicit faith, and St. Thomas speaks of this, he talks about how certain people are required to know less than others.

Jehanne said:

Quote

3) Implicit faith makes no sense. How does one believe something "implicitly"? It's like saying that I could be explicitly married to my wife yet, at the same time, be implicitly married to someone else, someone whom I do not even know. If such an absurdity were true, how would I ever "divorce" such an individual? How does someone with "implicit faith" ever get rid of it? Can they apostatize, even if they want to??

Here's one way to think of it -- the Immaculate Conception of Mary would have been unknown to most early Catholics, I believe. Yet since early Catholics were still Catholics, they must have believed it implicitly, meaning that IF THEY WERE TOLD, they would have believed it, since their heart was disposed to believe all the Church teaches.

So if there is someone out there who is disposed to believe all that the Church teaches, but he doesn't know about the Church, God sees this, and this would be an example of someone who could be saved by implicit faith.

Raoul76 · « **Reply #13 on:** February 28, 2011, 10:51:48 PM »

R76 said ineptly:

Quote

Do you think they'd know that all three Persons of the Holy Ghost are uncreated --

I meant Holy Trinity, not Holy Ghost, of course.

innocenza · « **Reply #14 on:** March 01, 2011, 12:15:09 AM »

Might a sense of peace, calm, and confidence come from the Devil?