CathInfo.com

I won't deny MHFM's schtick is good.But it's 95% cut & paste Catholic material they use to try  convince us they are Catholic.

Have they actually said or done anything that denies Catholic dogma? Because they are the few that profess EENS.

Have they actually said or done anything that denies Catholic dogma? Because they are the few that profess EENS.

So, the allegation that they deny dogma come from those who exaggerate the scope of papal infallibility, where they consider an offhand comment made by Pius XII in a speech to midwives to be tantamount to a solemn definition such as that of the Immaculate Conception or something, or where they think the same of "Suprema Fake", or from those who decide that Trent taught BoD as dogma, usually because it's what they want to believe, but sometimes because they've been propagandized.

I had been a believer in BoD precisely because of the assertion that Trent taught it.  But when I went to look at and read the text in Latin, it became obvious to me that it was not teaching about BoD, and that the MOST you could claim was that Trent left it open as a possibility, i.e. where you're not a heretic denying the necessity of the Sacrament if you hold that it can be received "in voto".  That is THE MOST you could claim about Trent.  There's no actual positive definition.  Trent listed in the Canons those things it mean to define vs. those things that were merely expository or explanatory.

Even the poster ByzCat3000 caugth on to that on his own (and he's a believer in BoD), where he said that he read it as saying that it's OK to hold that one might receive it in "votum".  I don't agree with that, but it's clear to me that it's the strongest case you can make.

Now, when the Church defines something, she doesn't define a "word" or "phrase".  You can't believe a phrase.  I cannot believe in "Baptism of Desire", but only in various propositions, and the mere appearance of a word in Trent cannot suffice for any kind of definition.  Father Feeney's justification vs. salvation distinction very much factors in.  At most, Trent would be teaching about a justification by desire.  Let you thihk that distinction was made up, post-Tridentine theologians such as the respected Dominican Melchior Cano made the same distinction, where he held that infidels could be justified but not saved.

Once you actually approach the evidence with an open mind, one cannot conclude anything other than that BoD has never been defined ... no way, no how.  Just because theologians by the 20th century had a nearly unanimous "belief" in it, that's not relevant.  Father Cekada made up a theological system whereby that was practically an expression of the OUM, except that a real theologian Msgr. Fenton explicitly rejected this "Cekadism", and we have numerous counter-examples, such as how all theologians adhered to the opinion of St. Augustine regarding the destiny of infants who die without Baptism, for 700 years ... until they didn't, and where now almost none of them do.  That can happen, and neither one is an infallible judgment.

I would ask all the anti-Feeneyite dogmatic SVs how many of them believe that non-geocentrism is proximate to hersey as the Holy Office had taught (and we know that one was fully endorsed by the Pope)?  Or, how many of them believe when the Holy Office rejected Rewarded God theory? ... holding that belief in the Holy Trinity and Incarnation are necessary by necessity of means for salvation.