Catholic Info
Traditional Catholic Faith => Crisis in the Church => Topic started by: Raoul76 on March 12, 2010, 03:05:32 AM
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Yes, Msgr. Fenton clearly falls into the category of those who reduce EENS to a meaningless formula; he completely guts it into nothing.
There's implicit BoD and then there's implicit BoD.
implicit BoD (of St. Thomas & St. Alphonsus): I believe in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation and want to join Christ's Church. You don't actually form the explicit proposition in your mind of "I want to be baptized."
implicit BoD (of the neo-Pelagians): I am doing my duty as an Aztec priest in performing human sacrifice. By following my conscience sincerely, I am implicitly desiring to join the Church and therefore to be baptized.
I don't buy into either one of these, by the way, but there's a WORLD of difference between them.
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Yes, Msgr. Fenton clearly falls into the category of those who reduce EENS to a meaningless formula; he completely guts it into nothing.
On the contrary, he defended the necessity of the Church as a necessity of means against those who would make it merely a necessity of precept.
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I retract saying that Mgr. Fenton was a liar. He might have just exaggerated to make his at least materially-heretical point. But considering that his writings all revolve around trying to prove salvation despite invincible ignorance, due to implicit faith, it is hard not to accuse him of malice aforethought.
Mgr. Fenton always bruited about that he was restoring the EENS dogma, but he taught exactly the same thing as all of those who had rendered it meaningless. That there were many who had rendered the EENS dogma meaningless were the hypocritical words of Pius XII himself, Caminus, in Humani Generis, so if you disagree with me that this is a heresy, how do you explain that your Pope essentially said as much himself in one of his double-minded moments? I say double-minded because Pius XII himself rendered it meaningless by excommunicating Father Feeney instead of any one of the innumerable pestiferous ranks of blatantly heretical theologians who swarmed around at that time, as well as being the first Pope or "Pope" to teach the invincible ignorance idea himself -- hopefully in a fallible capacity.
Caminus said:
"No one has ever asserted that such a man visibly separated from the Catholic Church as a Jews, Muslim, Pagan, etc. can be saved."
Let me guess, you are saying that they are not saved "as" a Jew, Muslim, pagan, etc. but that they are saved despite being a Jew, Muslim, pagan, etc., even if they die in a state where they are rejecting Christ.
If you really have the Catholic doctrine, invincible ignorance people, if your theory is legit and orthodox, why don't you just come out and say it? Why are you ashamed of it? Abp. Lefebvre and Bishop Fellay aren't ashamed of it. They are shameless heretics. I guess it shows a little hope for you that you are obviously embarrassed about your own untenable theories, but it's hard to argue with a shadow that doesn't even know what it believes. And no idea could be more shadowy than that someone is joined in voto membership to the Catholic Church by a desire they don't even know they possess.
Caminus said:
It doesn't even touch the presumption of the judgment according to the external forum. What they are postulating is a theoretical circuмstance prescinding from all other accidental considerations."
When someone dies as a Jew, pagan, heretic, etc. who expresses no desire to be Catholic, whether invincibly ignorant or not, we MUST judge and presume they are damned. That is dogma. I'm not interested in prescinding anything or engaging in casuistry. Any theory that goes beyond that is not permissible, which is why Pius IX said it is not lawful to proceed further in inquiry.
Caminus said:
What Msgr. Fenton referred to was that the doctrine of implicit desire was recognized at the time.
Yes, and that is either a lie or exaggeration because implicit desire was nowhere close to a doctrine at that time, although I see you are trying to diminish the sense of the word "doctrine." You are trying to downgrade "doctrine" to a synonym for "tenet" or "opinion."
No. What Mgr. Fenton SAID was that it was a doctrine i.e. DOGMA that at the time of the Council of Florence that the pagans, Jews, heretics and schismatics Florence refers to could be saved by an implicit desire, thus granting an imaginary exemption from the hellfire promised by that decree. One throwaway comment by St. Thomas does not a doctrine make. Not only that, but Fenton is extrapolating his own modern idea of implicit faith from St. Thomas' idea of implicit baptism of desire, and then forcing it by violence onto the Fathers of Florence, who had a theology utterly alien to Fenton's.
I agree that we cannot read decrees literally as the Feeneyites do, but the sense of the Council of Florence quite clearly does not accommodate invincible ignorance or salvation in false religions, nor was it taken in that sense at the time, as you can see in that the invincible ignorance heresy POST-DATED Florence.
The Fathers of the Church unanimously held that you must hear the Gospel to be saved. This is also what is meant by the various decrees saying that no one is saved outside the Catholic faith. Does someone in invincible ignorance have the Catholic faith? Forget about outside the Chuch there's no salvation; outside the Catholic faith there is no salvation.
Also, Ladislaus correctly shows that the speculation of implicit baptism of desire, which was pretty much limited to this aforementioned one throwaway comment of St. Thomas, IS NOT the same as what people are now calling the doctrine of implicit faith. Fenton and many others yoke the two together, to try to make it look like this is a natural revelation of an idea that can be traced back to the Apostles, which is bunk. Even this limited idea of implicit baptism of desire was by no means a "doctrine" at the time of the Council of Florence. While St. Thomas' theory of limbo took off, who else do you know of that followed him on implicit baptism of desire in the next couple centuries?
St. Thomas' teaching on implicit baptism of desire, if you can even call it that, was an erroneous interpretation of the example of Cornelius, and that's it, which unfortunately a bunch of sentimentalists and/or occult heretics seized on to try to drive open a wedge through which they can save heathens, an offense to the Catholic faith. The Church did not want to openly embarrass the eminent men who taught this error, so they allowed it to rage unchecked -- and now look at where we are. But St. Thomas himself said explicit faith was necessary and would be horrified if he could see how people have distorted his innocent mistake into a plague of epidemic proportions.
Caminus said:
On the other hand, firstly, Newman was referring to the doctrine of invincile ignorance, which is nothing more than a postulate of moral theology. Secondly, what he asserted was that the Pope was the first Pope to teach the doctrine formally and authoritatively. So on two counts your accusations of contradiction fall flat.
What I was trying to show is that Mgr. Fenton is the only theologian I know of who dares to try to yoke together Florence with the modern, heretical pre-VII version of EENS, salvation by implicit faith, by somehow imputing these relatively modern ideas to the Council Fathers at Florence. Yes, he only says that they were teaching "implicit desire" -- ridiculous in itself -- and not implicit faith. But in the context of his book, the two are intertwined.
Newman, on the other hand, knew that these ideas caught fire with certain Jesuits of the 16th century, and hence justified them as a sort of development of doctrine or "modification" as he puts it. Other theologians admit there has been a radical break with the past and with what was taught at Florence, which they pretend was just part of the medieval mindset that has been superseded, rather than a fundamental article of faith.
Fenton knows that this won't satisfy certain Catholic minds who know that dogmas don't change, so he tries to establish a red thread from Florence to Pius XII to make them appear consistent with each other when they are not. That is the whole strategy of his book.
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I shouldn't say "your Pope" to refer to Pius XII because I haven't decided if he is an anti-Pope or not. He does not qualify for the loss of papal office described in cuм Ex Apostolatus, since he became a heretic during his pontificate and not before his election. That a heretic is ipso facto deposed from the papacy is an opinion -- a strong one, but still an opinion. The Feeneyite sedevacantists who harp on Bellarmine to say that the chair is empty think Bellarmine is a heretic! One of the many ironies of our day. CM or David Landry also cites the Code of Canon Law 1917, which he admits is pocked with error.
I had dinner with a CMRI priest the other night and he told me that if I am right about NFP and EENS, that I have to say that Pius XII is not Pope. I shouldn't have taken the bait. There are many, many factors that go into such a decision. I alluded to this when I said he may have taught salvation by implicit faith in his fallible capacity.
What I have come to realize is that many sedes, including myself, have a much-exaggerated notion of papal infallibility. When Honorius was considered by some to be a heretic, no one ever said that he wasn't actually Pope, did they? From what I can tell, Pius XII does cross the line, he did teach error on faith and morals to which assent cannot be given, and I don't think true Popes can do that. But I'm not an expert on exactly when the Pope is infallible.
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You need to demonstrate how the doctrine of implicit faith denies a dogma. Because as it stands, it is rather attempting to affirm the necessity of faith itself. Those orthodox theologians who entertained this opinion based themselves on St. Paul who said that in order to come to God one must at least supernaturally believe that God is and is a rewarder. They deduce from this an implied faith in Christ. Whether or not such a deduction is warranted is another question, but the point is that they were attempting to preserve faith's necessity while inquiring about cases in the extreme. That's all, nothing more. So in light of this, you need to drop the shrill, insulting name-calling of good and holy prelates and theologians and start demonstrating how this affirmation is actually a denial of dogma. Tell us, how is saying that something implies something else is actually a denial thereof, Mr. Double-Mindedness?
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And how you can honestly keep bringing up "NFP" as a legitimate point while totally ignoring rebuttal and correction on the matter is incomprensible.
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Well, let's have it Mike.
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Caminus,
I enjoyed the "diarrhea of the mouth" quip. It is the first time that I have ever seen it. I truly think that Raoul may be traveling down the road to madness.
Andrew
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"... to refer to Pius XII because I have not decided if he is an anti-pope or not"
We are on the edge of our pews waiting for The Pronouncement.
:incense:
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"... to refer to Pius XII because I have not decided if he is an anti-pope or not"
MADNESS
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I enjoyed the "diarrhea of the mouth" quip.
I on the other hand feel that it was completely uncalled for and contrary to fraternal charity.
Could we please stop beating up on Raoul? There's really no need for that. Disagree with him and charitably rebuke him if you must, but the insults serve no purpose either in terms of helping to correct him where he might be mistaken or in terms of building the virtue of charity in your own souls.
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:applause:
Caminus,
Thank you for a true and accurate defense of the faith. Im so sick of mixed up lay theologians that are always name calling and spreading disinfo.
Everyone is wedded to their erroneous opinions, without ever consulting a priest for the right opinion.
I have this friend that started reading these lay theologians opinions:
Now he believes:
No Baptism of Blood or desire
Pope Pius X11 and Pius X1 are heretics
Fatima is a Hoax
Pius X11 errored in his pronouncements on natural family planning.
No valid priests
This all happened because he started reading and listining..........first to Bro Diamond, than Ibranyi, now to a David Landry!
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Consult WHICH priest, Emerentiana? You're oversimplifying the problem. Perhaps if he were to consult the same priest you consult, he might end up with the same positions you hold. Otherwise, there are probably dozens of permutations of opinions on various theological issues among the "priests".
Are you and Caminus (and I) not also acting as "lay theologians" by posting on this forum? Or are we all just trying to find our way in a terrible crisis? Since the shepherd has been struck, the sheep are now inevitably scattered.
You laud Carminus for his "accurate defense of the faith". How is Caminus not also one of these "lay theologians". You praise him because he defends the same positions or theological opinions you happen to uphold. And, in pronouncing his defense of the Faith to be "accurate", you yourself are acting as if you can stand in judgment of what's accurate and what isn't in your own capacity as lay theologian.
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But I'm not an expert on exactly when the Pope is infallible.
Of course you're not any kind of expert. Maybe you should consult a theological manual.
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Consult WHICH priest, Emerentiana? You're oversimplifying the problem. Perhaps if he were to consult the same priest you consult, he might end up with the same positions you hold. Otherwise, there are probably dozens of permutations of opinions on various theological issues among the "priests".
Are you and Caminus (and I) not also acting as "lay theologians" by posting on this forum? Or are we all just trying to find our way in a terrible crisis? Since the shepherd has been struck, the sheep are now inevitably scattered.
This is precisely why one should be quoting theological sources as proof for one's position. Nobody should be doing their own theology here.
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This is precisely why one should be quoting theological sources as proof for one's position. Nobody should be doing their own theology here.
Ah, but quoting a manual doesn't suffice either, since those too could easily be misunderstood, and the manuals themselves do not agree on many of the controversial issues that are debated here. Even BEFORE V2 you could find a range of opinions regarding the scope of infallibility, the true meaning of EENS, what happens in the case of a heretical pope, or the permissibility of NFP, etc.
So it's one thing to cite a manual regarding the commonly-accepted theological understanding of transubstantiation, and quite another to cite a manual on one of these hotly-contested or controverted issues. In the range of those controverted issues, there's a certain amount of latitude we have to "make arguments" and to have different opinions.
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b]Are you and Caminus (and I) not also acting as "lay theologians" by posting on this forum? Or are we all just trying to find our way in a terrible crisis? Since the shepherd has been struck, the sheep are now inevitably scattered.
Yes, I agree about the Shepard being struck, and the sheep scattered. I guess that leaves us with the babbling lay theologians, right? Every opinion can be voiced.
Even if we read theology and the docuмents of the councils, its not up to us as lay people to interpret them :rolleyes:
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What's most interesting is that after making all these bold assertions, Mike refuses to defend them upon cross examination.
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I want to back off a bit on "implicit faith" being a heresy and study it more. But here is why I have such problems with salvation of the invincibly ignorant i.e. implicit faith ( not to be confused with baptism of desire, which I believe in, Emerentiana ):
1) It goes against the universal consensus of the Church Fathers except perhaps St. Justin Martyr.
2) It was never taught before the 16th century, and those who taught it, like Lugo and Suarez, later had many of their propositions censured.
3) Forget "outside the Church there is no salvation" -- how about "Without the Catholic faith none can be saved."
Athanasian Creed:
Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.
Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting Salvation, that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man.
This is the Catholic Faith, which except a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.
Profession of Faith of Trent: "I, N., promise, vow, and swear that, with God's help, I shall most constantly hold and profess this true Catholic faith, outside which no one can be saved and which I now freely profess and truly hold."
Feeneyites often quote decrees out of context, and read them in an unvarnished way. My approach is to read them in context, to ask myself "In what sense was this decree taken by everyone when it was given?" It seems to me undeniable that the "Catholic faith" as described here means the Incarnation and the Trinity. No Jesus, no Trinity -- no Catholic faith. I don't know of anyone for the first 16 centuries of Church history, before things began to slip, who would have thought the "Catholic faith" could ever have been believing in God the creator of the universe alone. That is not the Catholic faith, but an approximation or stepping-stone to the Catholic faith.
4) How can someone have perfect contrition without knowing that Christ died on the Cross for them, how can they truly repent of their sins without knowing that? Is it really enough to be brought to perfect contrition and charity by knowing that there's a God who created the universe? Deists believe that. Freemasons believe that. Muslims believe that.
If simply knowing that there is something "bigger than us out there" is enough to save us, what was the point of the Incarnation? You can say that God makes exceptions in some cases but from the way Christ Himself talks -- "No one comes to the Father but through the Son" -- and the way all the Fathers talked, it certainly doesn't sound that way to me.
This is really my main point. I see a direct attack on the Incarnation in the implicit faith theory, on the very essence of Christ's mission. Why did Christ say "The harvest is indeed great, but the workers are few" if the harvest could be saved by implicit desire, without needing to be taught?
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My position now is that implicit faith is wrong. But what I am coming to realize is that, just because it's wrong, that doesn't necessarily mean it's heresy. More on that later.
People use Pius IX to defend the idea that you can be saved despite invincible ignorance. Pius IX, of course, had said that someone following the natural law on their hearts would not be permitted by God to suffer eternal torments. Those who believe in "implicit faith," like CMRI, believe this proves that someone can be saved despite invincible ignorance. But if Pius IX was saying that, he is a heretic. Because to say you can be saved by the natural law or by your conscience is the very essence of Pelagianism. It's like saying you can be saved by being a good person.
No, following the natural law pleases God who then sends the missionary or angel to the person who is need of instruction. That is what Pius IX meant, what he had to mean, unless he was an anti-Pope ( which I'm not suggesting ). Not even those who believe in implicit faith say that someone can be saved by the natural law -- they say that they are saved by an act of perfect charity.
Unlike most people on this site, who are probably cradle Catholics, I happen to know that it is the truth, that following the natural law predisposes one for grace and faith. After years of being a nominal "Christian," I only became Catholic when I'd finally given up all mortal sins. God even gave me some temptations to overcome, to test me before bringing me in further. The more pure I became, the more God revealed to me.
To say that someone can be saved by implicit faith is like saying someone can be saved without undergoing all these steps. And the reality is, everyone on Earth has implicit faith, because we were all created by God, He is the Father of us all. A woman in an agape class who tries to find God through taekwando yoga still yearns for something higher than herself, to be reconciled with the Absolute, with Pure Love -- the problem is that she doesn't follow the natural law on her heart to get there, maybe she is self-obsessed or a fornicator or doesn't like the idea of kneeling in front of the cross and submitting to Mister Man, or of giving anyone any power over her ( and most people are just this rebellious these days ). Whatever. The point is, she still has implicit faith if she believes in something higher than herself. But who would dare say this woman can be saved in that condition?
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Getting back to my original question, does that mean "implicit faith" is a heresy? I have no answer at the moment. My suspicion is that it is, but I don't feel totally secure saying that anymore, and I don't want to get ahead of myself. Ladislaus might be right that it is "proximate to heresy" or erroneous. I need more time to let all this information settle.
Where it unequivocally crosses the line into heresy is when it is applied to someone who dies in a false religion, like a Jew or Muslim. Bishop Fellay even extended implicit faith to a Hindu. Yet Hindus worship many gods. A Hindu, to be saved even by the loosest definition of implicit faith, would believe in one God and no longer be a Hindu at that point. So sometimes, depending on the wording, implicit faith people are very easy to catch in a heresy.
But the CMRI are extremely cautious. They say you can be saved despite invincible ignorance, but that if such a thing ever happens, you are saved by the Church and a member in voto. When it is phrased this carefully, it sounds almost unobjectionable. But one way that this heresy or error is made to seem acceptable is by referring it to a hypothetical native. The problem is that there is no such thing as a hypothetical native who isn't some kind of practicing pagan. And a practicing pagan who dies in that religion, as a practicing pagan, cannot possibly be said to be saved without stepping into obvious heresy, because no one can be saved in a false religion. For implicit faith to be operative, even by its own lax standards, this pagan would have to separate himself from his community and worship some crude version of God the Father. He'd have to be like one of the Three Wise Men, and even that would not save him according to the Fathers who all say that after the promulgation of the Gospel, explicit faith in Our Lord was necessary.
If this native had some kind of yearning for more, if he attended human sacrifices while sighing inwardly, thinking "There must be more to life than this," is this implicit faith? Because everyone on Earth has this. But God gets the truth to those who are genuinely receptive and who do His will, who He knows and who He has selected beforehand. He says "Seek and ye shall find," not "Seek and I shall leave ye in shadowy doubts."
Lastly, if the Fathers believed explicit faith in Christ was necessary at a time when almost the whole world was ignorant of Christ, what has changed? If they were so harsh that they said all those would be damned who hadn't heard of Christ in 60 AD -- and the vast majority would have had no chance to hear of Christ -- how does the discovery of the Americas in the 15th century change that? However, St. Justin Martyr appeared to have said some things that leave the door slightly open for implicit faith, and if even one father departs from the consensus, it's not a consensus. The question is, was he really reaching implicit faith? St. Paul also said some things at times that seem to allude to implicit faith, but his other statements entirely rule it out.
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The truth lies in pieces on the ground like Humpty-Dumpty and most of these guys are like the "kings' men" who can't put it back together again. So like all of us should or must do, I'm relying on St. Vincent of Lerins and trying to go back to antiquity. What was always believed by all sound Catholics, before the Church began to relax its hold and error began to creep in, which was not in 1958 but more like in 1558?
What is undeniable is that there has been a leftward trend on EENS, the boundaries have been gradually pushed. The Feeneyites have drawn our attention to this, and they have tried to slam the gates on all the heresies in a clumsy fashion by saying that baptism of desire is heresy. I see why they are concerned, but don't agree with their solution. The problem with their approach is that it throws out baptism of blood which has a link to the earliest Fathers of the Church and is pretty near to being de fide, in my view -- it certainly is no heresy. Now, if you can be saved by baptism of blood, then you don't need water baptism at all times. That means that baptism of desire can also exist.
But do you need EXPLICIT FAITH at all times? For sixteen centuries, the Catholic Church said yes with nary a dissenting voice heard anywhere.
To sum up: The idea of salvation through implicit faith looks like it could be the great Trojan horse that brought the invaders down on us.
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The question is, how radically opposed to implicit faith must I be? Is it heresy or error?
IMO it's proximate to heresy, but most people who have this opinion THINK it's based on the teaching of Pope Pius IX and are probably in good faith. I don't think that most Traditional Catholics who hold this opinion should be considered heretics vitandi. I'm sure also that this opinion was extremely widespread even before Vatican II, and you needn't have deprived yourself of Sacraments because of it. It's the Church's responsibility to take care of this heresy, not yours.
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The question is, how radically opposed to implicit faith must I be? Is it heresy or error? Do I have to avoid a Mass because a priest teaches it? In another age, I'd simply switch priests and be done with it. The problem is that there are no more priests with my position -- a position that, not incidentally, St. Alphonsus spoke of as the "more common and more probable one," although he did not say implicit faith was heresy.
I'd say you wouldn't even have to switch priests if in fact the priest were juridically in good standing. There were very few priests who did not hold the implicit faith position in the 1940s and 1950s. St. Alphonsus did rightly call implicit faith neo-Pelagianism, which it clearly is.
I consider it proximate to heresy, but I also believe that almost all the Traditional Catholics who hold to this error do so in good faith (thinking they're following Pius IX).
dogma: EENS
heresy: not EENS
proximate to heresy:
major: EENS
minor: people who have implicit faith really belong to (the soul of) the Church
conclusion: people who have implicit faith can be saved
So holding implicit faith based on the syllogism above removes it a step from being explicitly heretical, since the minor is not explicitly heretical but merely an error. Consequently, because of the "weakest link" maxim (peiorem partem semper sequitur conclusio) the implicit faith theory falls short of being heresy proper or heresy in the strict sense.
That's the point I was trying to make in my "What is heresy?" thread. As soon as you start arguing syllogistically from a dogma, and any of your premises is not strictly heretical, or if your formal logic happens to be flawed, you're not in the strict heresy category that removes you from the Church.
Here's the disagreement I had with CM/fk and also the Dimonds, that they're way too casual about flinging the term "heresy" around.
Yes, this syllogism effectively guts EENS and reduces it to a meaningless formula, so it does great harm to EENS, but it's not heresy in the strict sense and does not therefore by itself remove one from membership in the Church.
To refuse communion with those who hold this opinion actually has the danger of being schismatic, because we are putting ourselves in the position of effectively considering as excluded from the Church those whom the Church Herself has not excluded. So you're much better off holding to your opinion that this is grave error but giving the benefit of the doubt in charity to those who hold the contrary. Leave it to the Church to decide who's Catholic and who isn't. God will not judge YOU for this, but the hierarchs who have tolerated and even propagated these errors. On the other hand, God may judge you for schism if you take it upon yourself to effectively exclude people from the Church based on your own judgment.
I go all the time to Mass offered by priests who believe in implicit faith and I am in no way disturbed by this. I am not their judge; I leave it to the Church to judge them.
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Even BEFORE V2 you could find a range of opinions regarding the scope of infallibility, the true meaning of EENS, what happens in the case of a heretical pope, or the permissibility of NFP, etc.
I've seen a few differing opinions regarding a heretical pope amongst individual theologians. I have never seen anybody produce any manualists who teach significantly different on infallibility or EENS. Usually they just condemn the manuals (as our friend Stephen Hand did a few weeks ago).
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I've seen a few differing opinions regarding a heretical pope amongst individual theologians.
St. Robert Bellarmine himself, whom most sedevacantists follow, cites about five (if I recall) different opinions on the subject.
I have never seen anybody produce any manualists who teach significantly different on infallibility or EENS.
There's a range of opinion regarding the infallibility of the ordinary universal magisterium (in terms of how its teachings can be understood as being infallible, whether it's infallible per se, etc). Yes, the relatively recent "manualists" all accept BoB / BoD, but not all theologians have always held those, nor have all the Church Fathers. People like Father Cekada exaggerate the authority of these manuals, but they should not be discarded as utterly meaningless either. Remember, though, that the modern "manualists" are the same periti more or less who helped usher in and set the theological groundwork for Vatican II.
As of yet, I have yet to see any cogent theological arguments backing BoB and BoD. What you see is a mere statement that these exist, and an explanation of how they are "compatible" with EENS and the necessity of Baptism, i.e. why one CAN believe them, but no compelling reason for why we MUST or SHOULD believe them. Nor do these appear to derive from revealed Apostolic Tradition (based on very few of the Fathers holding to them, and in the case of BoD only a single Father or arguably two).
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St. Alphonsus did rightly call implicit faith neo-Pelagianism
Citation please.
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Remember, though, that the modern "manualists" are the same periti more or less who helped usher in and set the theological groundwork for Vatican II.
I have heard this many times. I have yet to see any proof that it is a valid assertion.
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Remember, though, that the modern "manualists" are the same periti more or less who helped usher in and set the theological groundwork for Vatican II.
I have heard this many times. I have yet to see any proof that it is a valid assertion.
It's an oversimplification. There were traditional theologians at the Council, but did not have enough influence to effect the proceedings. Afterall, the liberals managed to break the rules and literally scrap the original texts of the docuмents. Additionally, it must be kept in mind that they did not have the vantage point of history, the supposition being that they were taking part in a normal Council of the Church. Thus, they probably accepted many things in good faith assuming what any good Catholic would assume with regard to such an event.
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Remember, though, that the modern "manualists" are the same periti more or less who helped usher in and set the theological groundwork for Vatican II.
I have heard this many times. I have yet to see any proof that it is a valid assertion.
It's an oversimplification. There were traditional theologians at the Council, but did not have enough influence to effect the proceedings. Afterall, the liberals managed to break the rules and literally scrap the original texts of the docuмents. Additionally, it must be kept in mind that they did not have the vantage point of history, the supposition being that they were taking part in a normal Council of the Church. Thus, they probably accepted many things in good faith assuming what any good Catholic would assume with regard to such an event.
The charge is that, "the modern "manualists" are the same periti more or less who helped usher in and set the theological groundwork for Vatican II".
That has nothing to do with any traditional theologians being present at the Council. Ladislaus is claiming that the manualists were liberals, just like Kung, Ratzinger, Rahner, DeLubac, ect. were at the Council.
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St. Alphonsus did rightly call implicit faith neo-Pelagianism
Citation please.
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I believe that Raoul cited the passage on a different thread.
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If you can find it, I'd like to take a look at it. I find it peculiar though, that you refer to St. Ligouri as an authority (supposing he said what you say he said) on this matter, yet you imply that he fundamentally erred on baptism of desire/blood and even the most basic interpretation of the words from Trent. Seems like this fact, if you really assert it, would mitigate the force of his authority quite seriously.
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Summa Theologica, II:II, Q. 2, Art. 8
"Whether it is necessary for salvation to believe explicitly in the Trinity?
Objection 1: It would seem that it was not necessary for salvation to believe explicitly in the Trinity. For the Apostle says (Heb. 11:6): "He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and is a rewarder to them that seek Him." Now one can believe this without believing in the Trinity. Therefore it was not necessary to believe explicitly in the Trinity.
Reply to Objection 1. Explicit faith in those two things was necessary at all times and for all people: but it was not sufficient at all times and for all people."
This would seem to completely remove the ground from underneath those who support implicit faith, because St. Thomas perfectly anticipated their objection, that you must only believe two points for salvation: That God is, and that he is a rewarder. It's like he saw how that quote of St. Paul would be twisted out of context and pre-emptively tried to stop it. Suarez and De Lugo called themselves Thomists? St. Thomas is not at all insecure or wavering on this point.
A thought that occurred to me today pertaining to Cantate Domino -- Bishop McKenna, Mgr. Fenton and others take it to mean that Jews, pagans, heretics, schismatics being damned relates only to those who KNOWINGLY reject Christ. But the very use of the term "pagans" gives the lie to this notion. We are not talking of the modern version of pagans here, neo-pagans, New Agers. When the 15th century Church spoke of pagans, how could this not imply those who have NEVER heard the Gospel, those who live in darkness? If Cantate Domino were speaking of only those who had culpably or willfully rejected the Catholic teachings that had been presented to them, I don't think it would have mentioned pagans. When the Church said all pagans would be damned, was it really only speaking of pagans who had rejected an attempt at evangelization? That just doesn't work.
From NadieImportante at AngelQueen I learned about this encyclical for the first time, Sublimus Dei of Paul III. What is notable about it is that, though it doesn't specifically deny implicit faith, or mention it at all, it does directly address the discovery of the Americas and the Indians and assumes that they are all outside the Church until brought the gospel by missionaries. The bull is written against those who apparently considered this a waste of time. To wit --
"The sublime God so loved the human race that He created man in such wise that he might participate, not only in the good that other creatures enjoy, but endowed him with capacity to attain to the inaccessible and invisible Supreme Good and behold it face to face; and since man, according to the testimony of the sacred scriptures, has been created to enjoy eternal life and happiness, which none may obtain save through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, it is necessary that he should possess the nature and faculties enabling him to receive that faith; and that whoever is thus endowed should be capable of receiving that same faith. Nor is it credible that any one should possess so little understanding as to desire the faith and yet be destitute of the most necessary faculty to enable him to receive it. Hence Christ, who is the Truth itself, that has never failed and can never fail, said to the preachers of the faith whom He chose for that office 'Go ye and teach all nations.' He said all, without exception, for all are capable of receiving the doctrines of the faith.
The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God's word of Salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please him, have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West and the South, and other people of whom We have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service, pretending that they are incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith.
We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.
I hope people can see how important this is. It shows that a Pope was aware of the existence of newly-discovered hordes of the invincibly ignorant. It also shows that he never questioned for a second, and took it as a fait accompli, that they would be damned without evangelization. This again is a dagger in the heart of the implicit faith crowd, because they always pretend like the discovery of the Americas changed something, that it necessitated a new approach to EENS.
My instinct practically screams that "implicit faith" is a heresy. But how to explain that St. Alphonsus called it a "sufficiently probable opinion"? How to explain that the majority of theologians have held it since the 18th or 19th century? How to explain that the Popes for 400 years have never condemned it ( now, of course, under Pius XII and his followers, it has reached the papacy itself )?
It's one thing to accept that almost everyone on Earth today is hellbound, and that the last five or eight Popes are rotten or no Popes at all, but to say that twenty or thirty Popes allowed heresy to rampage unchecked for four hundred years? That is extremely hard to swallow. But the alternative is that I deny what was taught exclusively for sixteen centuries, by many more Popes, and embrace the unpalatable ( to my taste ) opinion of some Jesuit Jew who opened the door to Vatican II. Because there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that this opinion is what opened Pandora's box and led, ever so slowly and gradually, to Vatican II. With each succeeding century it became more and more prominent until eventually it swallowed the Earth whole.
More and more, I'm beginning to believe this implicit faith theory is the essence of Anti-Christ. The devastation it has caused is truly unbelievable. Unless, that is, it's an acceptable opinion, in which case I might as well join VII, turn off my mind, relax and float downstream.
St. Alphonsus says in his time it was the minority opinion, but that's not what it seems like to me after perusing Google all day today. Among theologians, it appears to have taken root with vigor almost right away after Lugo and Suarez. But what did the people believe, what did the simple, workaday priests and bishops believe? Have De Lugo and Suarez been raised to some kind of visibility and prominence precisely because of the radical nature of their teachings which gives this -- I want to say heresy -- controversial opinion more credit than it deserves?
The fact remains that Lugo wasn't just speaking of hypothetical natives but of Muslims and Jews being saved, and that this was simply unheard of from a major theologian. How could this not have created a firestorm of controversy? I can only guess that human respect, his high position as a Churchman and theologian, kept him from safe from reproach. Yet by the time the Church got around to censuring him -- and even then, not censuring his worst ideas -- his ideas had spread like wildfire. The ones who finally took up the cudgels against this growing danger were the Jansenists, yet they were the ones who had their propositions condemned, while the other side aired out their dangerous opinion unmolested. If the Jansenists weren't heretics, they would be heroes. Shades of Feeneyism!
Don't people see that "implicit faith" is a practical negation of the Incarnation? I had thought that before ever hearing of Orestes Brownson, yet he says the same thing. It's a matter of common sense -- if you can be saved without ever hearing of Christ, by following the natural law and performing an act of "supernatural faith," what was the point of Christ's sacrifice? Like the Catholic Church under Vatican II, it's not necessary anymore, it just makes things a little easier. Salvation "subsists in" Jesus Christ.
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I said:
"Don't people see that 'implicit faith' is a practical negation of the Incarnation? I had thought that before ever hearing of Orestes Brownson, yet he says the same thing."
Actually, that may not be true. I may have heard of Orestes Brownson first, but it was only today that I learned he said that implicit faith is a kind of attack on the Incarnation.
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As I've stated before, I consider implicit faith to be at least proximate to heresy. Without EXPLICIT faith in at least the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, people cannot be saved. I think that it's very clear from (at least) the Church's ordinary universal magisterium. This notion that Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and other infidels can be saved by following their consciences has completely gutted EENS and has laid the groundwork for nearly all the Vatican II errors. What then is the criterion for salvation? Natural goodness and the faithful following of one's natural lights. It guts the entire Faith and undermines the very notion of Revelation.
Why has God allowed it to take root? Well, it's a test of Faith really. Without this error, there could never have been a Vatican II, with its religious liberty, ecuмenism, and new ecclesiology. Why did God allow Vatican II to happen? For the same reason, to sift the wheat from the chaff. Did Our Lord not ask whether there would be any faith left upon His return? I'm not saying there aren't Catholics materially in the Novus Ordo, but just see how 80-90% of the NO pew-sitters have now drifted into heresy and apostasy.
Oh, plus a person has to have the formal motive of faith. Which in many cases only God can discern. So if some pagan received Baptism after being taught only about the Trinity and and Incarnation, but then would have rejected other teachings proposed to them by the Church's teaching authority, they wouldn't really have had faith. That's why the early Church made such a point of the extended and rigorous catechumenate and did not confer the Sacrament of Baptism lightly.
And then, on another unrelated stream-of-consciousness note, why did God allow even explicit BoD to take root if indeed it's wrong? Well, without explicit BoD, the later heretics would have nothing from which to derive their implicit-faith theology from. These guys use BoD, extend it, redefine it, distort it until it becomes implicit faith. Notice how the infamous SSPX booklets attacking Father Feeny cite St. Thomas, St. Alphonsus, the Church Fathers, etc., to demonstrate that infidels can be saved, when all those authorities actually explicitly rejected that notion. How do they get away with it? They cite their support for BoD and then claim pagans have implicit desire through implicit faith. In other words, they redefine BoD first, then cite passages from St. Thomas supporting BoD, then claim that it proves their redefined version of BoD. It's very dishonest. And the Dimonds point out passages where Father Laisney uses ellipses to drop out key phrases that contradict his point, cite Fathers in support of BoB to prove BoD, etc. etc.
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Ladislaus
This is where you lose me.
You are saying that the Church can produce error? Sedevacantists say that that is the reason why the post-VII popes cannot be popes because the true Catholic Church could never have promulgated such error.
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On this thread, I'm speaking about an error spreading among Catholics, the implicit faith error. That has never been taught by the Church. Raoul in fact posted that docuмent from Paul III rejecting that very notion.
As for in general, no, the Catholic Church as Catholic Church can never teach error. Can Popes make erroneous statements in their teaching? Yes, isolated passing errors can appear in papal teaching when they are not trying to define or pass definitive judgment in a way that must be held by all the faithful. That's why the Fathers at Vatican I defined infallibility the way they did; they found many errors that had cropped up over the centuries in papal docuмents. Popes are not inerrant (like the Sacred Scriptures) but infallible under the conditions defined by Vatican I.
So, yes, many sedevacantists do turn papal infallibility into an all-or-nothing proposition, effectively turning the pope into the same inerrant oracle of the Holy Spirit that the Protestants falsely attack in their straw-man argument. That's why Raoul rejects Pius XII for example, because he argues that, in the thousands upon thousands of pages typed up by Pius XII, every word of them should have been infallible if he were a legitimate pope--which is certainly not the case.
With that said, could the entire papal magisterium have become as thoroughly polluted as it has, and could the pope have issued and promulgated a harmful rite of Mass that cannot be attended in good conscience? You cannot say that without doing great harm to the infallibility, indefectibility, and holiness of the Catholic Church.
But there are many other considerations that make the vacancy of the Holy See less than certain, and without the certainty of faith we cannot begin deposing popes. In a state of widespread doubt, however, we may withdraw from obedience without becoming schismatic.
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I lost the response I typed to this. Maybe it's just as well.
It sounds to me like you are saying that Our Lord would allow the Catholic Church to promulgate error and allow it to take root. Just yesterday I heard a priest say that sanctifying grace can be found outside the Catholic Church. Since when?
You say we cannot know with certainty that the popes aren't popes. If the fact that the Church cannot be trusted the last fifty years to give us the Truth isn't enough to know that the popes aren't popes, what is?
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Alexandria, I think you're missing all the distictions I'm making. No, the Church as a whole cannot promulgate error. Yes, individual popes can make isolated erroneous statements. I do believe Vatican II and the New Mass crossed that line into the "No" category above. But there are other factors that could have come into play. What if Paul VI were not acting freely in what he did? What if others wrote his docs for him and got him to sign them based on blackmail or threats? There's some pretty good evidence that the Russians interfered in the 58 conclave and forced Siri to step down. There's some evidence that the Russians threatened violence if Vatican II were to have condemned Communism. And then even our judgment that Vatican II taught error we do not know with the certainty of faith. I've seen many (though I admit tortured) attempts from Novus Ordo types to show how V2 doctrine does not contradict previous magisterium. We cannot just go around deposing popes without the certainty of faith. We can certainly hold them doubtful, and I do, but at the same time we must defer to the Church's authority with regard to declaring popes illegitimate. Otherwise you get into the issue that whenever a pope teaches something you think is wrong you can just reject it by claiming sede vacante. That undermines the entire magisterium.
So I am of the opinion that the legitimacy of the V2 popes is doubtful, and I patiently await the day when God will put an end to it. I expect the Church one day to declare John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI illegitimate and all their acta null and void. Until that time I hold them in doubt based upon my own personal private-judgment opinion.
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I have no doubt that I am missing the distinctions you are trying to make. Forgive me if I am trying your patience. It's Lent; offer it up.
I still don't understand this. The Church pews are filled with trusting Catholics that will listen to any and every word that the pope says. Our Lord is allowing them to be led astray by error? Certainly not every Catholic is expected to dive into theological manuals nor should any Catholic have to. They SHOULD be able to trust the magisterium.
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When I speak about those 80-90% of NO pew-sitters who have lost their faith, it isn't because they listened to the pope. If you look at the polls, they've lost faith in the Real Presence, use artificial birth control, don't believe in papal infallibility, etc. etc. They did not hear that even from the NO hierarchy. There are a lot of dynamics involved as to why this has happened. But, in essence, no, the Church is NOT filled with trusting Catholics who believe everything the pope says. Quite the contrary. Most of those who are submissive to the pope likely have not lost the faith. Have they fallen into various errors? Sure. But God has allowed this "eclipse of the Church" foretold at LaSalette as a chastisement. And in this chastisement, He's separating the wheat from the chaff. I'm certain that just before V2 the pews were filled with lax Catholics who towed the line just because, and who would have towed the line in the opposite direction just as easily--and it turns out many or most of them did exactly that when "liberated" at Vatican II.
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I always laugh to myself about those polls. Did they ask you? They didn't ask me either.
My point still is that those in the pews who do have the faith are trusting in the Church. Therefore, they will believe and think right whatever comes out of the Vatican because they are trusting that the Church will not lead them astray. That is the point I am trying to make. And I find it hard to believe, if these popes are true popes, that Our Lord would let their trust be in vain and allow them to be duped because they can't grasp the nuances of theological error.
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Most people do not become Traditional Catholics due to subtle theological arguments, but they see the horrible fruits of the Novus Ordo, the heresies, blasphemies, sacrileges, etc. My dad was a 7th-grade dropout with very little formal education, and he's a Traditional Catholic. He just smells that there's something WRONG with the NO. So the question is how strong their sensus Catholicus is. I was very young (and knew absolutely nothing about Catholic theology or even dogmas due to horrible NO catechesis) when I saw the Tridentine Mass on a video. My teacher was mocking it, denoucing the unintelligible "babble" and priest turning his back on the faithful. I just sat there in awe watching it as his voice receded into the background, eventually becoming an unintelligible drone. I've known a few people who were converted to the Church, others who became Traditional Catholics, just from seeing a Tridentine Mass.
And those who are truly of good faith in the Novus Ordo, God will take care of them. We cannot know, as I've repeatedly said in other contexts, why some people receive certain lights and graces and others do not. We do not know why God sometimes punishes the world, and even the good have to suffer.
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How about the religious who have not lost faith? I know a monastery of cloistered nuns who, while most others were losing their heads, they kept theirs. Very little has changed. They break their sleep at night, work very hard in their stifling traditional habits, eat very little, and whatever the Church and the Holy Father says or does is gospel. They are devoted Brides of Christ. Do you think that's any way for Our Lord to reward His Faithful Spouses? By letting them be led astray by error? Is their "Catholic Sense" amiss? They've sacrificed their lives for Him. I lived with them, so I know what I'm talking about and not as an outsider looking in.
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Oh dear, look at the nonsense Mike is writing now, attempting to "correct" the greatest Thomistic theologian of the 20th century. When will it ever end? When will you shut your trap and listen for once? You demonstrate in almost every sentence composed an astounding lack of comprehension.
Now, I ask again, for you or Lad:
You need to demonstrate how the doctrine of implicit faith denies a dogma. Because as it stands, it is rather attempting to affirm the necessity of faith itself. Those orthodox theologians who entertained this opinion based themselves on St. Paul who said that in order to come to God one must at least supernaturally believe that God is and is a rewarder. They deduce from this an implied faith in Christ. Whether or not such a deduction is warranted is another question, but the point is that they were attempting to preserve faith's necessity while inquiring about cases in the extreme. That's all, nothing more. So in light of this, you need to drop the shrill, insulting name-calling of good and holy prelates and theologians and start demonstrating how this affirmation is actually a denial of dogma. Tell us, how is saying that something implies something else is actually a denial thereof?
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Alexandria, there is another form of invincible ignorance besides the one I'm talking about. That is invincible ignorance for people INSIDE the Church, or who think they are. Not every Catholic is expected to know every detail of theology or to hold every dogma.
Sorry I haven't responded to your notes yet, I am essentially obsessed with this implicit faith question. I am staying away from Mass right now because of this and NFP. If there is any reason that I don't have to do that, I want to find it.
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Augustine's Revenge, Pelagius -- I mean Caminus.
Caminus said:
"Tell us, how is saying that something implies something else is actually a denial thereof?"
If you read my post, you would see I'm not yet sure that teaching implicit faith is always a heresy. If it is, it is because it betrays the sense in which Cantate Domino was given and received.
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Shall I rip to shreds your enlightening commentary on Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange?
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Alexandria, there is another form of invincible ignorance besides the one I'm talking about. That is invincible ignorance for people INSIDE the Church, or who think they are. Not every Catholic is expected to know every detail of theology or to hold every dogma.
Sorry I haven't responded to your notes yet, I am essentially obsessed with this implicit faith question. I am staying away from Mass right now because of this and NFP. If there is any reason that I don't have to do that, I want to find it.
Mike, that is just plain ignorance, not any kind of invincible ignorance. The invincible ignorance usually spoken of is an ignorance of the duty to join the Catholic Church. Members of the Church implicitly hold the dogmas of which they may be ignorant.
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Yes, Caminus, please do. I don't think anyone has anything to fear from the truth, should you possess it. If you can, try to show how St. Thomas ever taught what G-Lagrange is suggesting that he taught, that faith, remission of sins and charity are all given to someone who performs some vague act associated with the natural law. Because that is what he's saying.
Notice that he doesn't give any examples of what kind of action might constitute a salvific observance of the natural law ( unless he is really saying that the child who decides to stop lying can be saved that way! ) That is because it would be impossible to provide one that isn't simple humanistic altruism, and any example would bring this fact into the glaring light of day. That is why he remains "mystical," hypnotic and vague.
That is also why everyone you will ever meet who tries to prove "implicit faith" to you will come off sounding incoherent and foggy and unclear of what they're saying. The theory simply doesn't work, it doesn't make sense. And don't tell me that I'm just incapable of understanding it, like it's some rarefied gnostic knowledge, SJB. I am capable. I have been reading about this until it is pouring out of my ears. You are saying that someone can have supernatural faith despite invincible ignorance, and that supernatural faith predisposes to charity, which remits sins and makes you a member of the Church in voto. Okay? I get it. I'm not sure you would agree with Lagrange that there is an equivalence between the natural law and supernatural faith, though. You would probably be more on the axis of Mgr. Fenton, more prone to say that belief in God as a Rewarder is the minimal supernatural faith that is necessary for someone in invincible ignorance. That is another kettle of fish, just as vague, but harder to deny. I will just point out that the Church was not unaware of invincible ignorance before De Lugo or my namesake Soto, except back then it was considered a punishment for sin, while now it's considered an unfortunate happenstance that God can choose to overlook. Which Magisterium am I to follow here? Which consensus of the theologians? Is this a heresy, or is it something like limbo, an acceptable revelation of what certain Fathers had implied? The problem is that I can't find a single Father of the Church who said that after Pentecost, someone could be saved without knowledge of Christ.
Getting back to Lagrange, acts of altruism can help someone attain to supernatural faith, but they can never be, in themselves, supernatural faith. If G-Lagrange actually gave an example like "Giving up one's wealth to help the poor" you would instantly see that this is not enough to give one supernatural faith, as a Hindu who deeply believes in Shiva the Destroyer, Vishnu and the rest of the gang could give up his wealth to feed the poor. There simply is no example he could give of an observance of the natural law that would prove that the one observing it has supernatural faith. He would be forced back into saying "Well, God knows the man's heart, so he knows which acts of obedience are enough to save and which aren't -- we, on the other hand, don't know anything." If that is his theology, he might as well never have bothered to waste so much ink. Hey, maybe God will save someone who's an atheist but a really good foosball player, because God has a secret love for foosball, we don't know, because God is God and his ways are not our ways.
The natural law in itself is not salvific. Protestants, not to say Japanese heathen, can be monogamous, or perform noble actions, and adhere to even the most self-abnegating aspects of the natural law on many points, but they are still outside the Church. Can anyone explain how Garrigou-Lagrange can completely sever the natural law from divine revelation, making the natural law a sort of equivalence of revelation that renders the latter unnecessary, and remain Catholic?
Following the natural law doesn't bring you sanctifying grace, but it predisposes you for sanctifying grace. It is not an equivalence, but a preparation. I've observed this in my own life, being an adult convert. Once you clean up your act, God takes your hand and guides you to where you need to be.
I don't know if implicit faith is heresy or not, but I sure as heck know it's wrong. It destroys the beauty of the Catholic religion almost completely. St. Paul, by this logic, never needed his Damascus moment. Mary Magdalene could have ignored that pesky Jesus character, kept sinning, and then had some kind of vague deathbed conversion to the Great Whatsit. I never needed my conversion. Granted, a complete, explicit conversion makes salvation much, much more secure, but it is no longer strictly NECESSARY, do you see? What a depressing theology for anyone who knows how the light of grace has completely changed them, reversed their former ways. That just cannot happen without knowledge of Christ's sacrifice, the Trinity, the Holy Ghost. Believing in "God the Rewarder" will not produce any Magdalenes or Augustines. It could make you clean up your act a little bit, but could it make you truly sorrow over your sins, the way that knowing about Christ dying for you makes you sorrow over your sins? Could it really give you charity?
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The concept of implicit faith, besides being depressingly vague, is also illogical. St. Paul may say that those who work justice are pleasing to God, but why do people assume this means that those who follow the natural law are already saved? Someone who works justice ( keeps the natural law ) will please God so much that God will reveal the Gospel to him, such as by sending Peter to Cornelius.
It's one thing to desire baptism and not attain it. Even with so-called "implicit baptism of desire" we can know with certainty that someone who has been taught by a priest about the fundamentals of the faith, and who has accepted these truths with zeal, but who has not yet been told about baptism, would desire it if he knew about it. But implicit faith severs the cord of all logic, and claims that someone can desire something that he doesn't even know exists.
Tonight I had Ukranian bread for the first time. Since it was fairly tasty, in the future, I may desire more Ukranian bread. But before knowing about the existence of Ukranian bread, I did not desire Ukranian bread, implicitly or otherwise. I might have implicitly desired something tasty and unique, something out of the ordinary, as a break in the routine, but was that really the implicit desire for Ukranian bread specifically? And can someone who has a vague longing for something outside his religion, or his lack of religion, who aspires to knowledge about a Higher Power, really be said to have the implicit desire for the true God?
If you say it's enough to believe in one God who is a Rewarder, this covers the Freemasons and Deists. Okay, not Satanists, as I once said, since Satanists do not say that Lucifer created the universe, as far as I know. But it does cover Jews and Muslims, not to mention Masons and Deists. This is where we really run into problems.
P.S. SJB, I thought I'd heard the term "invincible ignorance" applied to Catholics who or more or less ignorant of certain dogmas, but maybe not.
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How about the religious who have not lost faith? I know a monastery of cloistered nuns who, while most others were losing their heads, they kept theirs. Very little has changed. They break their sleep at night, work very hard in their stifling traditional habits, eat very little, and whatever the Church and the Holy Father says or does is gospel. They are devoted Brides of Christ. Do you think that's any way for Our Lord to reward His Faithful Spouses? By letting them be led astray by error? Is their "Catholic Sense" amiss? They've sacrificed their lives for Him. I lived with them, so I know what I'm talking about and not as an outsider looking in.
There are SSPX, sedevacantist, and NO religious who all could fit your description above. Now, by the principles of non-contradiction, God has allowed some of these to be in error. But we know that God is all good and all merciful, and cannot begin questioning His goodness. We do not know why God allows some people to be in error and gives the light of truth to others. Only God can know that. So let us just chalk this up to mystery. God gives to some the grace of being born into a devout Catholic family and allows others to be born among animists.
Of course, I'm sure that most of the religious who fit your description are Catholic and have Catholic faith.
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Catholics who are ignorant of or have a false understanding of Catholic teaching would be in "material" ignorance, because they implicitly and formally believe all Catholic teaching by virtue of being in a state of submission formally to the Church's teaching authority.
Those who on the other hand have no knowledge of the Church at all would be in "formal" ignorance because they lack the formal motive of faith completely.
I've seen this distinction somewhere in the writings of St. Pius X, and it absolutely makes sense.
Now, it's hard to say that Catholics can be in "invincible" ignorance, since usually their ignorance could be remedied by simply picking up a catechism. But Catholics can very well be in purely material (vs. formal) error. And the nuns in Alexandria's example (assuming they were not also of bad will) would qualify as being in material error.
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Faith is by definition supernatural, and no natural goodness can supply for or constitute faith. That's why belief in at least some of the revealed supernatural content of the faith is necessary, i.e. the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, since these are mysteries of faith and can be believed only by supernatural faith accepted on the authority of God.
So believing in God as a rewarder is a natural truth that flows from philosophical considerations and does not in and of itself suffice for supernatural faith.
Without supernatural faith it is impossible to please God.
If I believed in this implicit faith nonsense (aka Pelagian heresy), then I would at once accept Vatican II as having taught the truth and would renounce my schismatic lack of submission to the V2 popes. I still would gravitate towards the Tridentine or Eastern Rite liturgy, but my theological objections to the V2 establishment would immediately cease.
I would accept the existence of "separated brethren" living among the heretics and schismatics and only materially separated from us. I would seek "full union" with those from whom we are partially (materially) separated. I would accept their right to religious liberty, since they please God by faithfully following their consciences and seeking to do what they think is right.
It's as plain as the nose on my face that the errors of Vatican II all hinge on implicit faith and this Pelagian naturalism.
I don't care if Garrigou Lagrange or some angel from heaven were to teach implicit faith, let them be anathema. It's clear that the Church Fathers universally rejected any notion of implicit faith. If the early Church rejected implicit faith but now it's to be considered something that Catholics must accept, then Ratzinger's development of doctrine hermeneutic must be considered the correct one.
Dear Lord, will there be ANY faith left when You return?
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[duplicate post deleted]
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I don't know if implicit faith is heresy or not, but I sure as heck know it's wrong. It destroys the beauty of the Catholic religion almost completely.
It's at least proximate to heresy, which means close enough. This implicit faith not only destroys the beauty of the Catholic religion but completely guts the entire content of the Faith as well.
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Accordingly if we consider, in faith, the formal aspect of the object, it is nothing else than the First Truth. For the faith of which we are speaking, does not assent to anything, except because it is revealed by God.
I answer that, The articles of faith stand in the same relation to the doctrine of faith, as self-evident principles to a teaching based on natural reason. Among these principles there is a certain order, so that some are contained implicitly in others; thus all principles are reduced, as to their first principle, to this one: "The same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time," as the Philosopher states (Metaph. iv, text. 9). On like manner all the articles are contained implicitly in certain primary matters of faith, such as God's existence, and His providence over the salvation of man, according to Hebrews 11: "He that cometh to God, must believe that He is, and is a rewarder to them that seek Him." For the existence of God includes all that we believe to exist in God eternally, and in these our happiness consists; while belief in His providence includes all those things which God dispenses in time, for man's salvation, and which are the way to that happiness: and in this way, again, some of those articles which follow from these are contained in others: thus faith in the Redemption of mankind includes belief in the Incarnation of Christ, His Passion and so forth.
Accordingly we must conclude that, as regards the substance of the articles of faith, they have not received any increase as time went on: since whatever those who lived later have believed, was contained, albeit implicitly, in the faith of those Fathers who preceded them. But there was an increase in the number of articles believed explicitly, since to those who lived in later times some were known explicitly which were not known explicitly by those who lived before them. Hence the Lord said to Moses (Exodus 6:2-3): "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob [Vulgate: 'I am the Lord that appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob'] . . . and My name Adonai I did not show them": David also said (Psalm 118:100): "I have had understanding above ancients": and the Apostle says (Ephesians 3:5) that the mystery of Christ, "in other generations was not known, as it is now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets."
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If it is not impossible that any man, here and now, can be saved by God, then we may inquire as to how that might come about. To reduce something to an essential requirement, in extreme cases, does not necessarily vitiate the object in question. After all, it has been conceded that "explicit faith" requires a mere belief in the Incarnation and Trinity. If we follow your standard of judgment, then must we not also accuse you of "destroying the beauty of the Catholic religion" and "gutting the contents of faith"? What becomes of the rest of revelation according to your opinion regarding the bare essence of "explicit faith"?
But it would be unreasonable to do so, because you are merely searching the extremes of a given case, not asserting such a bare necessity in the course of normal life which is the lot of most men.
Yet, you cannot afford great theologians even the most basic consideration in this matter because you are confusing two distinct categories, that which pertains to the ordinary way of sanctity and that which could theoretically occur in extreme cases absent from our eyes and knowledge.
If you press the matter and claim that such speculation involves a necessary acceptance of the Vatican II Council, I beg to differ because those theologians who speculated on the matter in no way referred salvation and goodness to false religions which would be a blasphemous venture. Nor does such speculation necessarily imply the ecclesiology of the Council which asserted an "invisible unity" among "believers" (sic). There is a vast difference between considering a theoretical event in the abstract and extrapolating the matter in the concrete subjective order.
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Wow...
That's all I've got.
Will there be any faith left indeed when Our Lord returns?
Caminus, you really need to go back through and read Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio. Vatican II is nothing more than implicit faith taken to its logical conclusions.
Can God save an infant who dies before Baptism? Well, the way in which He might save that soul would be to arrange matters according to His Providence so that he would receive Baptism or not die in infancy. To state that God cannot save someone without there being implicit faith is utterly absurd.
This notion of implicit faith absolute guts Catholic doctrine, just as Vatican II did.
What has happened to the faith of our fathers? Try reading large volumes from the Church Fathers (as I have). They did not believe in implicit faith. But I guess they were unenlightened primitives compared to the glorious theologians of modern times.
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SJB, that article from St. Thomas isn't talking about implicit faith in any way. St. Thomas is talking about how certain articles of faith are contained implicitly in others. He elsewhere writes that explicit faith in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation are the minimal (material) requirements to be able to have supernatural faith.
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Lad, why don't you simply respond to what I say rather than grandstanding?
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Do you concede that there is a difference between postulating a theoretical possibility in the abstract, reducing something to its essence, e.g. like you might with the requirements of explicit faith, and affirming as an actual fact that this or that man, here and now, in the concrete, has met this ideal?
Do you concede that there is a moral difference, supposing that theoretical threshold has been attained, between someone at the extreme of life, as opposed to the same case considered over the span of an ordinary lifetime? The first is attempting to fulfil his duty and it confronted with circuмstances outside of his control, whereas the later has obviously neglected his duty and thus, though he may profess a religion, even a religion that retains "belief" in the Incarnation and Trinity, he will be punished for eternity, precisely because he could have removed his ignorance and embraced the Catholic faith.
Do you also concede that even though one were to accept the notion of implicit faith, it in no way mitigates against the presumption that all those outside of the Catholic Church are presumed to die outside of Her because such a presumption rests upon visible, ascertainable facts? And on the contrary, the new ecclesiology inverts this presumption and thus posits a contradiction?
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Do you also concede that even though one were to accept the notion of implicit faith, it in no way mitigates against the presumption that all those outside of the Catholic Church are presumed to die outside of Her because such a presumption rests upon visible, ascertainable facts? And on the contrary, the new ecclesiology inverts this presumption and thus posits a contradiction?
Let me try answering this one while I attempt to digest and understand what you're trying to say in the first two paragraphs.
EENS is no "presumption", for the dogmatic definitions do not read that those outside the Church are presumed lost or probably lost. Vatican II would then become little more than a change in emphasis. Whereas the pre-V2 Church emphasized the negative (the low probability), V2 emphasizes the positive (the possibility). What we have then is a pastoral change.
Canons of the early Church presumed unbaptized catechumens lost (refusing any Christian burial services) whereas the 1917 Code presumed them saved (vis-a-vis granting them Christian burial).
So a change in presumption or, rather, emphasis hardly constitutes error. In fact, the more theologians talked and wrote about the possibility of salvation for those outside the Church, the more the possibility came to the forefront of people's thinking. In fact, you could hardly find a treatment of EENS that did not spend more ink discussing all the exceptions rather than the dogma itself. And therefore the possibility became emphasized until great hope was enkindled for the salvation of those outside the Church. V2 is just a natural progression.
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That "progression" is purely an accident of history, there is no "logical" link per se. I agree with you that the emphasis and the irresponsible treatment of the question has left the wrong impression, but the doctrinal shift at Vatican II is in no way related to theological speculation on sparse exceptions to "explicit" faith in Christ.
I just reviewed Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange's work on the theological virtue of faith. It's an excellent summary of the question. He, along with St. Thomas, rejects the opinion that explicit faith in Christ is one of mere precept or even less according to the laxists. He upholds the opinion of the medial necessity of explicit faith in Christ per se, but adds a distinction which is appropriate, that even though it is per se a medial necessity, per accidens, where there are due circuмstances, exceptions can occur and an implicit faith could justify.
If you have the work, I would recommend reviewing it again.
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With all due respect to Father Garrigou-Lagrange, I need to know what makes this true, other than his saying so and applying Aristotelian/Thomistic terminology to it. I'd like to see a single papal teaching or statement from the Church Fathers that backs up implicit faith. (Pius IX has been grossly misinterpreted on this subject by the way).
I'm afraid that I do not have that particular work of his.
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Caminus said:
Do you concede that there is a difference between postulating a theoretical possibility in the abstract, reducing something to its essence, e.g. like you might with the requirements of explicit faith, and affirming as an actual fact that this or that man, here and now, in the concrete, has met this ideal?
Yes, and I'm not saying those who die without showing any overt signs of explicit faith should be judged, as something may have taken place in their souls before death, between themselves and God. I just say explicit faith is necessary, whether it is demonstrated publicly or not.
I realize that, when we speak of someone saved by implicit faith, we are talking about a theoretical, exceptional case, and that is why I am not one of those who are against the concept of implicit faith because it supposedly dulls the missionary spirit. That is not my problem with it. Does it really dull the missionary spirit to say that maybe, once in a while, there is a miracle and some jungle savage who manages to keep the natural law AND stay out of mortal sin is granted supernatural faith and can be saved? Hardly.
What disturbs me about implicit faith is, primarily, that it undercuts the Incarnation itself. If the "One God who is a Rewarder" is enough to save someone, Jesus Christ, the foundation stone of the Church, is not necessary except implicitly. And if knowledge of Jesus Christ can ever, even in one single case, be nugatory or inessential, then it almost makes the Incarnation seem inessential, like it was a "better way" rather than the only way. I don't know about you, Caminus, but I'm not comfortable with that.
I think the earlier theologians seized on this instinctively when they drew a distinction between those who could be saved before the time of Christ, who had to anticipate Christ with -- yes -- an implicit faith in the future Savior, and those who lived after Christ, who had to know explicitly that the Savior has come, past-tense.
I have heard the argument, I can't remember where, that this logic means that the coming of Christ actually made things worse, because as soon as He came, everyone who didn't know about Him was in the way of damnation until they did know.
But again, these people deny God's complete foreknowledge. The Jєωιѕн faith was in rubble, it was dwindling, guttering out. It was like the faith of most Catholics in Vatican II. The rest of the world was heathen. You could say that faith had already practically disappeared. So Christ wasn't taking away anyone's salvation by giving them a new law to follow. All those who were disposed for it, heard about it, as we can see by the example of Cornelius.
Secondly, there is no denying that implicit faith, if taken to its logical conclusions, makes it possible to be saved in the worship of a false monotheistic God, in Jєωιѕн or Mahometan sects. Can there ever be an invincibly ignorant Jew? It seems unlikely, considering Jesus is blasphemed in their тαℓмυd. But even to posit that a Jew can be saved in a situation that probably will never happen and has never happened feels like a violation of EENS. Can a heresy or error be based on pure imagination, or do real heresies have to have actual consequences?
Yes, there is a distinction between saying that sects are a means of salvation, like Vatican II, and that someone can be saved BY implicit faith IN the Catholic Church while participating through invincible ignorance in a sect. But just because the former is worse than the latter, doesn't mean the latter is perfectly orthodox. Before De Lugo, my namesake De Soto, or Pighius, all the forefathers of implicit faith, the theologians knew about invincible ignorance as a concept, and while many suggested that it would be some kind of mitigating factor on the Day of Judgment, no one supposed that you could be saved in that condition. Augustine clearly states that ignorance is punishment for sin. And who can deny it? The concept of implicit faith really falls apart when you consider that God damns babies for original sin, an unpalatable truth we all must admit, but yet an adult can somehow escape this? Who is more invincibly ignorant than a baby?
It would be one thing if invincible ignorance were an all-new concept of the 16th century that shed new light on an old controversy, but it wasn't. Some people act as if the discovery of the Americas changed soteriology -- why is that? When the Apostles were preaching, there were all kinds of areas, like China, where the Gospel could not yet be heard, for various reasons. The Apostles knew this, but they never suggested salvific "implicit faith." Many nations were in darkness during the same long ages that ours was.
What is it about the Americas that necessitated a whole new theology of salvation? It seems more likely to me that the discovery of the Americas as well as a sort of incipient fatigue with the strictures of Catholicism, an incipient ecuмenism if you will, made people ripe for this kind of sentimentality.
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I am studying the Jesuits and the Jansenists now and from what little I know so far, it is beginning to look to me as if the Jansenists tried to put a stop to all of this dangerous EENS speculation and perhaps were smeared by their liberal opponents. From what I understand, many of the Jansenists denied that they ever held the heresies condemned in Auctorem Fidei. So far all I have read by and about Arnauld, Pierre Nicole, and Pascal makes me feel like I am in the company of kindred spirits. Should this scare me? Could it be that the Jansenists were like Joan of Arc, unjustly accused, unjustly maligned? Why do we presume that the Church couldn't err in condeming them, when the same Church once excommunicated Athanasius? Popes are not infallible when making political decisions of this sort. Certainly the errors assigned to the Jansenists are heretical and worthy of censure, but what if it is true that they never taught those errors?
Their ambition to bring the Church back to its Augustinian roots was entirely laudable. The return to a moderated Augustinianism is actually the answer to all our troubles right now. This is something that has been brewing in my head for a while, long before I'd given any deep thought to the Jansenists.
Perhaps they didn't carry out their new Augustinianism correctly, and perhaps they went too far, like the Feeneyites. I don't know enough to say for sure yet. But they were at least partially on the right track. I just have this hunch that the key to my dilemma is in the 17th century, in France, in this strange interlude between the Jesuits and Jansenists.
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What disturbs me about implicit faith is, primarily, that it undercuts the Incarnation itself. If the "One God who is a Rewarder" is enough to save someone, Jesus Christ, the foundation stone of the Church, is not necessary except implicitly. And if knowledge of Jesus Christ can ever, even in one single case, be nugatory or inessential, then it almost makes the Incarnation seem inessential, like it was a "better way" rather than the only way. I don't know about you, Caminus, but I'm not comfortable with that.
There is a distinction between means of salvation which are intrinsically necessary, and those which are necessary only by divine institution. The latter were not necessary at all times, because they did not exist until Christ's coming.
This really has to do with the necessity of being within the Church, not with any "salvific" invincible ignorance, which is nonsense.
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SJB, that article from St. Thomas isn't talking about implicit faith in any way. St. Thomas is talking about how certain articles of faith are contained implicitly in others. He elsewhere writes that explicit faith in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation are the minimal (material) requirements to be able to have supernatural faith.
Yes, and he also dealt very specifically with the infant-raised-in-the-woods scenario. This was answered by St. Thomas; if such a person truly strives to serve God by obedience to the natural law, God will send an angel, a missionary, or His own direct inspiration to enlighten him in the truths of the Faith necessary to salvation; thus coming to the knowledge of the truth. "God wills that all men be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth" (I Tim. 2:4).
You admit that this is possible, I believe. His supernatural faith would be explicit, not implicit.
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SJB, that article from St. Thomas isn't talking about implicit faith in any way. St. Thomas is talking about how certain articles of faith are contained implicitly in others. He elsewhere writes that explicit faith in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation are the minimal (material) requirements to be able to have supernatural faith.
Yes, and he also dealt very specifically with the infant-raised-in-the-woods scenario. This was answered by St. Thomas; if such a person truly strives to serve God by obedience to the natural law, God will send an angel, a missionary, or His own direct inspiration to enlighten him in the truths of the Faith necessary to salvation; thus coming to the knowledge of the truth. "God wills that all men be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth" (I Tim. 2:4).
You admit that this is possible, I believe. His supernatural faith would be explicit, not implicit.
Yes, that would be explicit faith, and it's the same argument essentially that I was making, that we cannot say that God is bound by impossibility in terms of endowing people with explicit faith.
As Raoul stated, if for instance a Protestant dies, we presume that he has been lost, but it's hypothetically possible that he received some graces and lights before his death. In that case, he died a Catholic, with explicit faith. So we cannot know in the case of any given individual whether God gave him some lights and graces at the very end. But that's not the same as saying that a person can die without ever having heard of Jesus, the Holy Trinity, and the Incarnation and by virtue of some natural good will or dispositions be saved.
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Let's define our terms a little bit also. By implicit faith we're talking about the idea that supernatural faith can somehow be implicit in natural beliefs, virtue, and good will, not that a person who has the formal motive of faith and the minimal material requirements for faith (typically understood as belief in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation), actually believes in everything that the Church teaches by virtue of having the formal motive. And of course only God can judge whether it's truly the case. If somoene were to baptize a pagan just before he died, after his acceptance of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, and yet this pagan would have rejected other truths of the Catholic faith, i.e. the pagan didn't really have true supernatural faith--only God can judge that.
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No one has claimed mere natural belief suffices. Implicit belief in the Messiah was contained in the prime credibles "God is and He is a Rewarder." This belief must necessarily be a supernatural faith. It has been conceded that this kind of implied faith could have been sufficient at times in the old dispensation, ergo, you have conceded the entire point. The difficulty today is whether this supernatural implicit faith suffices to justify after the coming of the Messiah.
Per se, no it does not, because the new covenant demands the perfection of what was only implied before, when revelation was veiled. Thus explicit faith is necessary. But per accidens, i.e. in some accidental circuмstances, all else being equal, this "implied" faith may suffice. Since, contrary to the nouvelle theologians and the modernists, no one knows who this may apply to, the opinion that explicit faith is always and per se necessary stands untouched. Analogously, the human hand per se has five fingers, but per accidens, under abnormal circuмstances, it may have four or six.
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Quod gratis affirmatur, gratis negatur.
This idea that extraordinarily per accidens supernatural faith can be implicit in some kind of natural virtue is nothing but pure speculation. Throwing an Aristotelian-Thomistic term at it to dignify it and make it sound more authoritative and scientific than it really is does nothing to prove it. On the face of it, it's contrary to the unanimous consensus of the Church Fathers, the ordinary universal magisterium, and some definitions of the solemn magisterium.
This speculative theology does nothing good for the faith and serves only to undermine and uproot it, as we've seen with Vatican II.
Yes, Vatican II is a logical progression of this theology, with perhaps an imprudent overemphasis of the possibility of salvation among those materially separated from the Church.
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Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio reiterate Catholic teaching that the Church is one but teaches that we are divided from our separated brethren.
So how can the two assertions, that the Church is one and at the same time divided, not violate the logical principle of non-contradiction? By making a distinction. Formally the Church is one, but there are those who formally belong to the Church while being materially divided from Her.
Then those docuмents start enumerating the various things that we materially hold in common, various valid Sacraments, certain articles of belief, etc. Vatican II decided to change the emphasis or approach from that of pointing out our differences by way of condemnations to pointing out what we materially hold in common. Vatican II was a "pastoral" Council that tried to put a more positive spin on Catholic teaching rather than emphasizing condemnations.
So the Church of Christ exists fully (formally and materially) in the Catholic Church. So the Catholic Church constitutes the visible core of a Church that extends beyond her visible boundaries to those who belong to her formally but not materially, i.e. to the soul of the Church. So the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church.
Now, people save their souls and please God by following the lights of their own consciences. People have a right to save their souls and to please God. People therefore have right to follow their consciences. People have a right to religious liberty.
So if I believed in this implicit faith nonsense, then I would drop all theological objections to Vatican II. Vatican II makes complete sense in light of implicit faith theology. And at best it was imprudent to emphasize what we have in common with other groups and to cease condemning error.
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This idea that extraordinarily per accidens supernatural faith can be implicit in some kind of natural virtue is nothing but pure speculation.
I didn't make this up, St. Thomas stated that it was true in the old dispensation. Obviously, nothing natural can attain a supernatural end, ergo.
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Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio reiterate Catholic teaching that the Church is one but teaches that we are divided from our separated brethren.
So how can the two assertions, that the Church is one and at the same time divided, not violate the logical principle of non-contradiction? By making a distinction. Formally the Church is one, but there are those who formally belong to the Church while being materially divided from Her.
Then those docuмents start enumerating the various things that we materially hold in common, various valid Sacraments, certain articles of belief, etc. Vatican II decided to change the emphasis or approach from that of pointing out our differences by way of condemnations to pointing out what we materially hold in common. Vatican II was a "pastoral" Council that tried to put a more positive spin on Catholic teaching rather than emphasizing condemnations.
So the Church of Christ exists fully (formally and materially) in the Catholic Church. So the Catholic Church constitutes the visible core of a Church that extends beyond her visible boundaries to those who belong to her formally but not materially, i.e. to the soul of the Church. So the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church.
Now, people save their souls and please God by following the lights of their own consciences. People have a right to save their souls and to please God. People therefore have right to follow their consciences. People have a right to religious liberty.
So if I believed in this implicit faith nonsense, then I would drop all theological objections to Vatican II. Vatican II makes complete sense in light of implicit faith theology. And at best it was imprudent to emphasize what we have in common with other groups and to cease condemning error.
You are confounding the per se with formal and per accidens with material. It is precisely this blasphemous notion viz. the material consideration of the "good" in false religion which so utterly violates the principles involved in this discussion of explicit faith.
But if you press the matter, this could equally be turned against you for you have already conceded that mere belief in the Trinity suffices for justification. What then happens to the rest of revelation? The grounds upon which you object to the doctrine concerining implicit faith equally negates your own opinion. By your standard of judgment, a man must explicitly believe all the articles of faith lest one impugn the beauty and veracity of the Catholic faith itself.
You need rather attack those on the grounds that make explicit faith a matter of precept alone.
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By implicit faith we're talking about the idea that supernatural faith can somehow be implicit in natural beliefs, virtue, and good will...
Look, I have said consistently that supernatural faith AS supernatural faith is required to achieve salvation, a supernatural good. It seems impossible that something supernatural could be implicit in something merely natural.
Again, supernatural faith and charity have been required for all people and at all times for salvation.
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As Raoul stated, if for instance a Protestant dies, we presume that he has been lost, but it's hypothetically possible that he received some graces and lights before his death.
The real question is whether he died within the Church, with true supernatural Faith and Charity. This case should not be assumed to be a common one, as actual membership of the visible Church remains the ordinary means of salvation, and the ordinary channel of those graces and helps to salvation which men commonly need. It should not be easily conceded that God bypasses the economy of salvation which He has established and promulgated.
Invincible ignorance of the duty to join the Church, understood properly, is in no way consistent with what has been taught after Vatican II.
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But if you press the matter, this could equally be turned against you for you have already conceded that mere belief in the Trinity suffices for justification. What then happens to the rest of revelation? The grounds upon which you object to the doctrine concerining implicit faith equally negates your own opinion. By your standard of judgment, a man must explicitly believe all the articles of faith lest one impugn the beauty and veracity of the Catholic faith itself.
Materially, belief in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation are minimally required. Formally, one has to hold these truths with the formal motive of faith, the authority of God revealing as proposed by the Catholic Church. Reread my posts; I made this quite clear. It's in the latter formal motive that implicit acceptance of all the truths comes from. So such a one would accept every truth taught to him because of having accepted the Church's teaching authority. So, for instance, if a Catholic then taught this person about the Immaculate Conception and the person rejected that, then the formal motive is now clearly demonstrated not to be absent. I recall, for instance, myself having the wrong understanding about the Immaculate Conception (due to poor NO catechesis). When someone told me what the Church taught, I immediately and unhesitatingly accepted it simply on the authority of the Church. That's the formal motive of faith. Orthodox do not have that. Protestants do not have that. Infidels do not have that. Consequently, they cannot have supernatural faith. Period. End of story.
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You are confounding the per se with formal and per accidens with material. It is precisely this blasphemous notion viz. the material consideration of the "good" in false religion which so utterly violates the principles involved in this discussion of explicit faith.
I am confounding nothing. Orthodox and Protestants believe in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. Those are materially the same beliefs as Catholics hold, basically the same propositions. They do not formally believe them, i.e. with the proper formal motive of faith.
I bet that 90% of Traditional Catholics have never even read the docuмents of Vatican II.
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I know this blog follows after Vatican II, but I want someone to post their thoughts about this:
St. Thomas Aquinas on Salvation by Implicit Faith
http://outsidethechurchnosalvation.blogspot.com/2009/06/st-thomas-aquinas-on-salvation-by.html
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So, Caminus and SJB, could there be people currently living as Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and other infidels who are really Catholics?
Could there be people currently living as Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and other infidels who, if they died this instant, would be saved?
Let's get to the heart of the matter, why don't we.
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I know this blog follows after Vatican II, but I want someone to post their thoughts about this:
St. Thomas Aquinas on Salvation by Implicit Faith
http://outsidethechurchnosalvation.blogspot.com/2009/06/st-thomas-aquinas-on-salvation-by.html
This blog entry sees St. Thomas as teaching that justification can happen through implicit faith but salvation only through explicit faith--in other words, the Father Feeny justification vs. salvation distinction. I'm not sure I understand the exactly meaning of the first few quotes from St. Thomas.
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This case should not be assumed to be a common one, as actual membership of the visible Church remains the ordinary means of salvation, and the ordinary channel of those graces and helps to salvation which men commonly need. It should not be easily conceded that God bypasses the economy of salvation which He has established and promulgated.
I would be the first to agree with you on this. Such a situation would most likely be incredibly rare. That's why we should presume those people lost. If you look at the accounts of the lives of St. Francis Xavier and the North American Martyrs, they categorically and unequivocally told the natives that their ancestors were lost--not that they were probably lost or most likely lost and without appending all kinds of its, ands, or buts to it.
So this speculative theology regarding whether catechumens can be saved, whether Protestants can be saved, whether infidels can be saved, it serves no other purpose than to undermine the Faith and should be immediately banned.
EENS, and baptism is required for salvation--further discussion or speculation on this subject should be absolutely and strictly forbidden. If Catholics are asked about whether non-Catholics can be saved or whether a particular non-Catholic was saved, the answer must be a simple and firm "No", without the hem-hawing, ifs, ands, or buts.
As Father Feeney points out, if you say that it's no longer Baptism that's necessary minimally for salvation, but the desire for Baptism, then does the desire for the desire of Baptism suffice? In other words, the firmness of that desire for Baptism depends entirely on how necessary you believe it to be for salvation. So we've come to a point where Bishop Sanborn in one of his articles went so far, in listing the requirements for justification, to not even mention Baptism; he merely listed the resolution to receive Baptism as being required for justification.
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It seems we're just talking past each other.
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This case should not be assumed to be a common one, as actual membership of the visible Church remains the ordinary means of salvation, and the ordinary channel of those graces and helps to salvation which men commonly need. It should not be easily conceded that God bypasses the economy of salvation which He has established and promulgated.
I would be the first to agree with you on this. Such a situation would most likely be incredibly rare. That's why we should presume those people lost. If you look at the accounts of the lives of St. Francis Xavier and the North American Martyrs, they categorically and unequivocally told the natives that their ancestors were lost--not that they were probably lost or most likely lost and without appending all kinds of its, ands, or buts to it.
Incredibly rare means possible. Incredibly rare is EXACTLY what the Baltimore Catechism says. What it does is explain a man who lives a life of virtue, obeying the commandments, without necessarily condemning him. Does that mean he gets a Catholic Funeral? No. Fenton explains this quite well, that it is not our place to speculate on these cases. Just as in the case of the infant raised in the woods, God sends him the graces necessary, if he cooperates with those graces, he would be saved. It is also true that ALL men receive sufficient grace to be saved. ALL men. What you are saying is that the infant raised is the woods simply cannot possibly be saved unless he is seen stepping foot into a Catholic Church. Of course, you will likely now say that I am saying the Church is not necessary for salvation. I am not. I am saying that one may be invincibly ignorant of the duty to join the Catholic Church. I believe that you (and Raoul76) are simply on and off denying that anybody could be invincibly ignorant of the duty to join the Church.
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EENS, and baptism is required for salvation
Yes, and this requires some explanation doesn't it? You're talking in circles, Ladislaus.
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It is also true that ALL men receive sufficient grace to be saved. ALL men.
So then you're claiming that infants who die without Baptism can be saved? God in His Mercy sometimes witholds graces from people knowig that they would reject them; thus their sin and their eternal punishment becomes less.
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GRACE ACTUAL AND HABITUAL V
A DOGMATIC TREATISE
By Rev. Joseph Pohle
Pg. 167:
ARTICLE 2
God's will to give sufficient grace to all adult human beings in particular.
In relation to adults, God manifests His saving will by the bestowal of sufficient grace upon all.1 The bestowal of sufficient grace being evidently an effluence of the universal voluntas salvifica, the granting of such grace to all who have attained the use of reason furnishes another proof for the universality of grace. God gives all men sufficient graces. But He is not obliged to give to each efficacious graces, because all that is required to enable man to reach his supernatural destiny is cooperation with sufficient grace, especially with the gratia prima vocans, which is the beginning of all salutary operation.
Pg. 170:
Some of them (the early Church Fathers), it is true, when combating the Pelagians and Semipelagians, defended the proposition that "grace is not given to all men,"11 but they meant efficacious grace.
The book (and all volumes of this set) are open domain, here:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=dogmatic%20treatise%20pohle
You will download them faster if after clicking the link you see "PDF" on the left hand side you right click that and select "Save Link As".
Downloading the book as a PDF is merely a preference of mine.
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You will download them faster if after clicking the link
That would be the link of each book in particular.
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It is also true that ALL men receive sufficient grace to be saved. ALL men.
So then you're claiming that infants who die without Baptism can be saved? God in His Mercy sometimes witholds graces from people knowig that they would reject them; thus their sin and their eternal punishment becomes less.
We know for certain that an infant requires the sacrament of baptism in order to obtain the beatific vision. An infant is incapable of a human act, not having the use of reason.
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It is also true that ALL men receive sufficient grace to be saved. ALL men.
So then you're claiming that infants who die without Baptism can be saved? God in His Mercy sometimes witholds graces from people knowig that they would reject them; thus their sin and their eternal punishment becomes less.
We know for certain that an infant requires the sacrament of baptism in order to obtain the beatific vision. An infant is incapable of a human act, not having the use of reason.
Then how would this be consistent with your assertion that God gives everyone the opportunity and sufficient grace to be saved? Aborted babies clearly never had a chance.
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ARTICLE 2
But He is not obliged to give to each efficacious graces,
God is not OBLIGED to do anything, thus the term grace.
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It is also true that ALL men receive sufficient grace to be saved. ALL men.
So then you're claiming that infants who die without Baptism can be saved? God in His Mercy sometimes witholds graces from people knowig that they would reject them; thus their sin and their eternal punishment becomes less.
We know for certain that an infant requires the sacrament of baptism in order to obtain the beatific vision. An infant is incapable of a human act, not having the use of reason.
Then how would this be consistent with your assertion that God gives everyone the opportunity and sufficient grace to be saved? Aborted babies clearly never had a chance.
The point is that it is true. I see no inconsistency.
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You guys can just keep churning on this if you want, but the Church says what She means and means what She says. Holy Mother Church has defined the dogma that outside the Church absolutely no one at all can be saved. Period. End of story.
This speculative theology can serve no other purpose than to undermine the Catholic Faith. Simple Catholics should not have to digest 50-page scholastic treatises to understand a Catholic dogma--which, oh by the way, spend almost their entire time on defining all the exceptions when the Church used some very strong language llike "absolutely no one at all" can be saved.
I believe that no one outside the Church can be saved, because that's what Holy Mother Church teaches.
All this other BS about per accidens this and per accidens that are nothing but speculative nonsense. Show me where this has been revealed (held by all the Chuch Fathers) or how it derives from other Church dogmas. It's pure speculation, and nothing more. All I have to go on is Holy Mother Church's teaching that absolutely no one at all outside the Church can be saved. So you guys go ahead and churn, pretending that you're doing a service to Catholic teaching when in fact you do nothing but undermine it. You are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Your theology leads straight to Vatican II, even if you try to take a minor step backwards because the fruits of it in practice are so horrific.
This speculative theology should be completely banned. It filters down to your average Catholic, who can't read or understand the 50-page scholastic tracts, as that there are exceptions. That's why in practice when non-Catholics ask (even Traditional) Catholics whether anyone outside the Church can be saved, the answer is never just "No."; it's always, "Well, what that teaching REALLY means is this." For shame.
So proceed to amuse yourselves. I know that only members of the Catholic Church can be saved. That's all I know, and that's all I care about.
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Your theology leads straight to Vatican II, even if you try to take a minor step backwards because the fruits of it in practice are so horrific.
You wish to prove your (above) thesis about Vatican II. That blinds you, Ladislaus. As I said before, there is a distinction, and the same one made in the Holy Office letter, between means of salvation which are intrinsically necessary for salvation, and those which are necessary only by divine institution. The latter, clearly, were not necessary at all times, because they did not exist until Christ's coming.
I also pointed out that the Baltimore Catechism (1908) that I am looking at says the same things that you have said here as far as the unlikely possibility of salvation for one who is not a formal member of the Church.
I'm not going to convince you of anything here, so I'll retire from this discussion.
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That's right. He asserts a connection without attempting to demonstrate the alleged link between conceding that an "implicit faith" suffices now, in certain strange circuмstances, for the ground of justification and the most audacious claim that what is good in other religions unites men corporately to the Body of Christ forming a presumed invisible unity. As was pointed out before, he alleges justification can occur when bare faith in the Trinity is present, ergo removing himself from the problem one step. He attempts to save himself by inserting the need for a formal motive, but fails to consider that such a motive is presupposed in all cases and does not explain or touch upon the actual material reduction to the "least common denominator." Either through haste or frustration, he must in fact posit an illicit inference in order to justify a linkage.
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I've pointed out that different rules applied in the old dispensation. I've shown and spelled out in great detail the theological linkage between implicit faith and Vatican II. You just ignore it.
Both of you refused to answer my questions:
So, Caminus and SJB, could there be people currently living as Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and other infidels who are really Catholics?
Could there be people currently living as Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and other infidels who, if they died this instant, would be saved?
Let's get to the heart of the matter, why don't we.
I'm guessing you refused to answer these questions because you know full well I could lead you directly to statement Vatican II teaching.
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I've shown and spelled out in great detail the theological linkage between implicit faith and Vatican II.
It must have been so detailed that it was just too small to see. Can you point out this detailed analysis?
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So, Caminus and SJB, could there be people currently living as Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and other infidels who are really Catholics?
Could there be people currently living as Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and other infidels who, if they died this instant, would be saved?
Let's get to the heart of the matter, why don't we.
Objectively no. A Protestant qua Protestant is hell-bound. The same for all non-catholics. Outside the Church there is no salvation.
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So, Caminus and SJB, could there be people currently living as Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and other infidels who are really Catholics?
Could there be people currently living as Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and other infidels who, if they died this instant, would be saved?
Let's get to the heart of the matter, why don't we.
Objectively no. A Protestant qua Protestant is hell-bound. The same for all non-catholics. Outside the Church there is no salvation.
This case should not be assumed to be a common one, as actual membership of the visible Church remains the ordinary means of salvation, and the ordinary channel of those graces and helps to salvation which men commonly need. It should not be easily conceded that God bypasses the economy of salvation which He has established and promulgated.
I would be the first to agree with you on this. Such a situation would most likely be incredibly rare.
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So, Caminus and SJB, could there be people currently living as Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and other infidels who are really Catholics?
Could there be people currently living as Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and other infidels who, if they died this instant, would be saved?
Let's get to the heart of the matter, why don't we.
Objectively no. A Protestant qua Protestant is hell-bound. The same for all non-catholics. Outside the Church there is no salvation.
I'm not talking about anything qua anything. We'll get to the qua part in good time. Are there people today who attend Protestant (or Orthodox or whatever) services who hold to false Protestant (or Orthodox or whatever) beliefs who if they died this instant would be saved because they are really (anonymous) Catholics?
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No contradiction, SJB. I'm talking about someone who was interiorly converted to the Catholic Church, only in a manner that we didn't know about--e.g. lived his life as a Protestant but then had a sudden conversion to the Catholic faith in his mind before he expired which could never be publicly manifested. That person would be Catholic simpliciter.
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I'm not talking about anything qua anything. We'll get to the qua part in good time. Are there people today who attend Protestant (or Orthodox or whatever) services who hold to false Protestant (or Orthodox or whatever) beliefs who if they died this instant would be saved because they are really (anonymous) Catholics?
I'm talking about someone who was interiorly converted to the Catholic Church, only in a manner that we didn't know about--e.g. lived his life as a Protestant but then had a sudden conversion to the Catholic faith in his mind before he expired which could never be publicly manifested. That person would be Catholic simpliciter.
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That's why I added "this instant", Caminus, meaning without having such a conversion experience prior to expiring. You're really trying way too hard not to answer a simple Yes/No question.
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Of course he wouldn't be saved then. That's what I just said.
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No contradiction, SJB. I'm talking about someone who was interiorly converted to the Catholic Church, only in a manner that we didn't know about--e.g. lived his life as a Protestant but then had a sudden conversion to the Catholic faith in his mind before he expired which could never be publicly manifested. That person would be Catholic simpliciter.
I wasn't pointing out a contradiction.
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Of course he wouldn't be saved then. That's what I just said.
Yeah, you're going back to the Protestants qua Protestants thing, but won't answer my real question.
You're trying to say that if they die and are saved then they're really Catholic. I'm not talking about what they "really" are. Are there people who appear to be Protestants, go to weekly Protestant services, who are in fact truly Catholics and part of the Catholic Church?
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I wasn't pointing out a contradiction.
Then I'm not sure what your intent was in juxtaposing those quotes.
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So, Caminus and SJB, could there be people currently living as Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and other infidels who are really Catholics?
Could there be people currently living as Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, and other infidels who, if they died this instant, would be saved?
Let's get to the heart of the matter, why don't we.
This case should not be assumed to be a common one, as actual membership of the visible Church remains the ordinary means of salvation, and the ordinary channel of those graces and helps to salvation which men commonly need. It should not be easily conceded that God bypasses the economy of salvation which He has established and promulgated.
I would be the first to agree with you on this. Such a situation would most likely be incredibly rare.
You ask the question to Caminus and me in a way that needs further clarification. Incredibly rare means possible. You believe it is possible, yet you ask the question in a way that is unclear ... like a set-up type question.
We are speaking of people who have the virtues of supernatural faith and charity but are invincibly ignorant of the duty to join the Catholic Church.
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Of course he wouldn't be saved then. That's what I just said.
Yeah, you're going back to the Protestants qua Protestants thing, but won't answer my real question.
You're trying to say that if they die and are saved then they're really Catholic. I'm not talking about what they "really" are. Are there people who appear to be Protestants, go to weekly Protestant services, who are in fact truly Catholics and part of the Catholic Church?
You've already conceded the subjective possibility so I don't see your point. The only difference being that you state that explicit faith is now always and in every possible case necessary for salvation where as the other opinion is that under some circuмstances implicit faith suffices.
At most it is a theoretical error that proposes it can be sufficient sometimes or an error of fact in stating that in this or that theoretical case such a man would have implicit faith. The weight of theological authority is that explicit faith is per se necessary after the coming of Christ. I hold to this doctrine as well while admitting at the same time the remote possibility that in a given case, implied faith i.e. a faith that contains the same object that is demanded to be explicit, suffices at least to enter into a state of justification, all else being equal.
I believe that there is no salvation outside the Church, but at the same time, I recognize that a man can by mystically united to Her outside the purview of our senses, though such a man could not labor in such a condition for very long without either falling from grace or joining Her. On the other hand, I do not know who this may be, contrary to the bold, presumptuous and equally erroneous assertions of the new theologians who claim to know this objectively (based upon the supposed good in false religions) and subjectively (those who sincerely adhere to any religion at all, or in JPII's case, even the atheist).
You're in the same boat, Lad since you admit the reduction of explicit faith to merely two doctrines. You'll also have a difficult time refuting the teaching of Aquinas, et. al. who stated that an implied faith justified prior to the coming of Christ. If you accept this doctrine, then you would have to admit that this all comes down to whether or not it is now sufficient. You say never, I say sometimes maybe.
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Neither of you will directly answer the question I posed because you know full well where it leads.
You both would state (based on your implicit faith theology) that it's possible that someone who's a practicing Protestant could in fact REALLY be a Catholic. So he's Catholic in some respects and Protestant in others. (Protestant qua Catholic and Protestant qua Protestant). He would be a Catholic formally but a Protestant materially.
You absolutely KNOW that this leads straight to V2 ecclesiology, which is why you're refusing to answer the question.
I recognize that a man can by mystically united to Her outside the purview of our senses
That's a vague response. I'm not talking about just our senses. I'm talking about whether someone could be a convinced and practicing Protestant (independently of our "senses") and still be saved. And I don't want the [qua] distinctions here. I'm talking about your typical concrete Protestant, someone who goes to Protestant services, thinks that the Catholic Church embodies a false pagan religion, believes in sola Scriptura, etc. -- you know, your average run-of-the-mill Protestant. Can some of these really be Catholic?
like a set-up type question
You know where this is going, so you won't answer the question. In the quote you cited from me, SJB, I was talking about someone who has an interior conversion experience that we never know about. That person would be Catholic simpliciter and not qua anything. That's not the kind of case I'm asking about here.
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I've read somewhere that it is necessary for a person to belong to the soul of the Church in re and the body of the Church in voto, but at least an implicit desire. Some theologians were saying that people could belong to the soul of the Church without belonging in anyway to the body. I think this was an error condemned by Pius XII, that the soul of the Church could be more extensive than the body.
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You know where this is going, so you won't answer the question. In the quote you cited from me, SJB, I was talking about someone who has an interior conversion experience that we never know about. That person would be Catholic simpliciter and not qua anything. That's not the kind of case I'm asking about here.
No, the "question" is unclear. You had already answered (the question I initially thought you were asking) in the affirmative. So the real purpose of the "question" must be something else.
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You know where this is going, so you won't answer the question. In the quote you cited from me, SJB, I was talking about someone who has an interior conversion experience that we never know about. That person would be Catholic simpliciter and not qua anything. That's not the kind of case I'm asking about here.
No, the "question" is unclear. You had already answered (the question I initially thought you were asking) in the affirmative. So the real purpose of the "question" must be something else.
I have two separate issues going here. I say that it's possible (though extremely unlikely) that someone who lived as a Protestant may have received some special graces of conversion on their deathbed and actually died Catholic even though we wouldn't have known about it. So let's put this question aside.
Take your average next-door-neighbor Protestant, who goes to Protestant services, believe in sola Scriptura, thinks that the Catholic Church has it all wrong, etc. He drops dead right this instant, without such a conversion experience. Is it possible that because he's sincere in his beliefts that he's actually a Catholic and would be saved?
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Of course he wouldn't be saved then. That's what I just said.
Yeah, you're going back to the Protestants qua Protestants thing, but won't answer my real question.
You're trying to say that if they die and are saved then they're really Catholic. I'm not talking about what they "really" are. Are there people who appear to be Protestants, go to weekly Protestant services, who are in fact truly Catholics and part of the Catholic Church?
Ladislaus, this is like asking if a catechumen who, patiently awaiting the date of his acceptance into the Church and his baptism, and dies before the appointed date, is a member of the Church. No, he is not. It is at his death, that he is saved, if he is infact saved. He is never really a member of the Church Militant, only, possibly, the Church suffering or Church Triumphant.
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I've read somewhere that it is necessary for a person to belong to the soul of the Church in re and the body of the Church in voto, but at least an implicit desire. Some theologians were saying that people could belong to the soul of the Church without belonging in anyway to the body. I think this was an error condemned by Pius XII, that the soul of the Church could be more extensive than the body.
Right, and that's exactly the theology I'm trying to get at. And I'm not talking about the explicit desire of a catechumen here. I want to prescind entirely from that issue here.
I've been using the example of a Protestant, which perhaps complicates this issue a tad, because they have been baptized and typically believe in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. Perhaps we could speak of some infidel, say, a Muslim.
So the question I'm trying to answer is whether Caminus and SJB believe that there could be people who materially practice another religion who are formally part of the Catholic Church because of some implicit faith.
If so, and most implicit faith theologians would hold this to be the case, those people are Catholic in some ways (formally) and non-Catholic in other ways (materially). They are Catholic, but not fully Catholic due to a material separation from the Church. So, in other words, they are formally part of the one true Church but materially separated from it.
And that is how Vatican II can reaffirm that the Church is indeed one and undivided (formally) and yet divided (materially, with some formal members of the Church being materially divided from Her). And that's how V2 can say that the Church is both one and divided without violating the principle of non-contradiction, i.e. by making a distinction between the (formal) unity and the (material) division.
They can be then in a partial communion with the Church and can rightly be called our "separated brethren", brethren because they are actually Catholics but separated due to their material separation from the Church.
And so the visible Catholic Church constitutes the material core of a broader Church that embraces people who live outside her visible boundaries, and that's the notion of "subsisting" rather than simply "being".
Take as an analogy the progression of Greek philosophy, where the philosphers struggled with how the universe could be both one and many at the same time without contradiction--until Aristotle came along and showed how both could be true at the same time (by making logical distinctions).
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Is it possible that because he's sincere in his beliefts that he's actually a Catholic and would be saved?
When have I, or anyone else here, ever said that being "sincere in your beliefs" was sufficient for salvation?
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So the question I'm trying to answer is whether Caminus and SJB believe that there could be people who materially practice another religion who are formally part of the Catholic Church because of some implicit faith.
Let's quote Pius XII
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P12MYSTI.HTM
22. Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed.
I believe in Fr. Fenton's book he stated that it is possible to be part of the Church without being a member. I don't think there is anything like an "implicit member", so I don't think such people are called "members by desire" either.
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After the promulgation of the encyclical of Pius XII, there is no question that this:
they are really members of the Church without knowing it.
cannot be held, as he has stated those who are only to be counted as members of the Church.
We're back again to Fr. Fenton's saying that it's possible that a person can be a part of the Church without being a member.
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Ah, just caught it:
(2) firmly believes the religion he processes to be the true religion
I typed the wrong word, should be professes.
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And so the visible Catholic Church constitutes the material core of a broader Church that embraces people who live outside her visible boundaries, and that's the notion of "subsisting" rather than simply "being".
Well putting it like that, that's actually really scary. Do you believe that saying the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church is to distinguish 2 different entities? From what little I know of God subsisting in Himself, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I had somewhat of an understanding that each divine Person subsists in the Others.
John 10:38 the Father is in me, and I in the Father.
John 17:21 That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee
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Is it possible that because he's sincere in his beliefts that he's actually a Catholic and would be saved?
When have I, or anyone else here, ever said that being "sincere in your beliefs" was sufficient for salvation?
I haven't really even gotten to this point yet.
HOWEVER this happens and whatever the mechanism might be (to be resolved later), do you believe that someone you see going to Protestant services, believing sola Scriptura, etc., if he were to die right now before being disabused of these beliefs somehow, COULD any such person be saved?
Obviously my answer to this is simply no.
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Of course he wouldn't be saved then. That's what I just said.
Yeah, you're going back to the Protestants qua Protestants thing, but won't answer my real question.
You're trying to say that if they die and are saved then they're really Catholic. I'm not talking about what they "really" are. Are there people who appear to be Protestants, go to weekly Protestant services, who are in fact truly Catholics and part of the Catholic Church?
Ladislaus, this is like asking if a catechumen who, patiently awaiting the date of his acceptance into the Church and his baptism, and dies before the appointed date, is a member of the Church. No, he is not. It is at his death, that he is saved, if he is infact saved. He is never really a member of the Church Militant, only, possibly, the Church suffering or Church Triumphant.
Your formula, that people are united to the Church only at death, and never to the Church Militant, has been condemned by one of the EENS dogmatic definitions which declared explicitly that we must become part of the Church "before death". Your formula reduces EENS to a tautology, i.e. to a "meaningless formula".
But I'm not speaking about catechumens here, nor about explicit baptism of desire.
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Is it possible that because he's sincere in his beliefts that he's actually a Catholic and would be saved?
When have I, or anyone else here, ever said that being "sincere in your beliefs" was sufficient for salvation?
I haven't really even gotten to this point yet.
HOWEVER this happens and whatever the mechanism might be (to be resolved later), do you believe that someone you see going to Protestant services, believing sola Scriptura, etc., if he were to die right now before being disabused of these beliefs somehow, COULD any such person be saved?
Obviously my answer to this is simply no.
No one disagrees with you. From our point of view and the Church's, we judge according to the external forum. But at the same time you must admit that nothing is impossible with God in regard to interior conversion. It's as if you demand that we must limit the power of God in order to affirm Catholic doctrine. You traverse from the objective to the subjective within the same question and demand that we answer without making the necessary distinction. This is simply a dishonest tactic. We assent to the same dogma to which you assent, but then you turn and demand that we negate every and all possibilities with regard to the secret working of grace, a grace indeed that one could never presume, but nevertheless, such a case remains in the realm of theoretical possibilites. That's just obnoxious. I think you're getting this tendancy from the sick Dimonds.
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AH, stupid code!
***START QUOTE***
HOWEVER this happens and whatever the mechanism might be (to be resolved later), do you believe that someone you see going to Protestant services, believing sola Scriptura, etc., if he were to die right now before being disabused of these beliefs somehow, COULD any such person be saved?
Obviously my answer to this is simply no.
***END QUOTE***
Well, as it has already been stated if they don't have the necessary conditions they go to Hell. Invincible ignorance only excuses a person, it does not justify them.
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And so the visible Catholic Church constitutes the material core of a broader Church that embraces people who live outside her visible boundaries, and that's the notion of "subsisting" rather than simply "being".
Well putting it like that, that's actually really scary. Do you believe that saying the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church is to distinguish 2 different entities? From what little I know of God subsisting in Himself, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I had somewhat of an understanding that each divine Person subsists in the Others.
John 10:38 the Father is in me, and I in the Father.
John 17:21 That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee
Well, if one accepts that people can belong to the "soul" of the Church without being part of the "body", i.e. formally belong to the Church while being materially separated, then there are people who belong to the Church partially, or not fully, i.e. in some ways, but not in others.
That's where this "subsistence ecclesiology" of Vatican II comes from.
So these people who belong to the "soul" but not to the "body" are partially united and partially separated. They are then our brethren, part of the Church, yet separated in a way.
Thus the notion of "separated brethren" and partial union, etc.
I'm jumping ahead then. So Vatican II then decides in Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio to say that the Church is one and yet divided at the same time (obviously applying a distinction). Then Vatican II decides to emphasize what we materially hold in common with other groups.
So, for instance:
Orthodox --
valid holy orders [check]
valid Mass / Divine Liturgy [check]
belief in Holy Trinity and Incarnation [check]
belief in Mary as Mother of God [check]
Protestants --
fewer checks
etc.
rather than pointing out the differences or errors (thus a new "pastoral" emphasis)
So with ecuмenism, we'll use as a starting point the things we have in common and have dialogues rather than unilateral condemnations of error. Let's accentuate the positive, focus on that.
So that's a tactical approach.
Then we get to Religious Liberty (which is a couple more logical steps, so I'll stop here for right now).
But the ENTIRE V2 ecclesiology rests on this idea that there are full visible members of the Church (formal and material) as well as incomplete, partial members (formal only).
And Vatican II does indeed stop short of saying that the Churches as Churches have partial communion. Ratzinger in a later theological work speculates that these conventicles of the heretics have "somehow changed"--without really defining it--given that many of their members are only material heretics (since they're a few generations removed from the original formal heretics). But V2 itself doesn't go there.
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Well, as it has already been stated if they don't have the necessary conditions they go to Hell. Invincible ignorance only excuses a person, it does not justify them.
That's where we'll eventually get. What are these necessary conditions? I don't want to go there just yet.
People say that Protestants can be merely-material heretics. I dispute that. But we'll get back to that later.
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People say that Protestants can be merely-material heretics. I dispute that.
I agree with Bishop George Hay that people living in the vicinity of Catholics cannot possibly be invincibly ignorant.
Edit-- And add in the internet today... and you get the point.
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Ok, I know, Raoul76 says Protestants can't possibly be invincibly ignorant because they're protesting against the Catholic Church. I'll type up an extract from Van Noort in several minutes.
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Of course he wouldn't be saved then. That's what I just said.
Yeah, you're going back to the Protestants qua Protestants thing, but won't answer my real question.
You're trying to say that if they die and are saved then they're really Catholic. I'm not talking about what they "really" are. Are there people who appear to be Protestants, go to weekly Protestant services, who are in fact truly Catholics and part of the Catholic Church?
Ladislaus, this is like asking if a catechumen who, patiently awaiting the date of his acceptance into the Church and his baptism, and dies before the appointed date, is a member of the Church. No, he is not. It is at his death, that he is saved, if he is infact saved. He is never really a member of the Church Militant, only, possibly, the Church suffering or Church Triumphant.
Your formula, that people are united to the Church only at death, and never to the Church Militant, has been condemned by one of the EENS dogmatic definitions which declared explicitly that we must become part of the Church "before death". Your formula reduces EENS to a tautology, i.e. to a "meaningless formula".
But I'm not speaking about catechumens here, nor about explicit baptism of desire.
Except I very specifically gave the example of a catechumen. Is he a member of the Church? No. Yet outside the Church there is no salvation. Explain that for us Ladislaus.
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...we must become part of the Church "before death"
Yes, because belonging to the supernatural society of the Church is a necessity of means. That is why the traditional terminology is "in the bosom and unity of the Church", which is obviously "not outside Her".
If you carefully consider the declarations of the Popes and councils, they do not in so many words require membership in the Church. What they require is not being "outside the Church".
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Ok, I know, Raoul76 says Protestants can't possibly be invincibly ignorant because they're protesting against the Catholic Church. I'll type up an extract from Van Noort in several minutes.
Dogmatic Theology, The Sources of Revelation, p. 374:
A person validly baptized as a child receives the infused virtue of faith. And he retains that virtue so long as he does not commit some formal sin of infidelity. if such a person, raised among non-Catholics, and blamelessly ignorant of the nature of Christ's church, should cling to some heretical sect, he will still produce an act of supernatural faith in all the revealed doctrines which the sect still professes. As for the non-revealed doctrines which he may admit along with the sect, those remarks hold true which we have made above (see above 305). With good reason observes the erudite Brouwer:
If, after a [serious] doubt has arisen about the truth of his sect, he should neglect to search for the truth, he will sin seriously; still, he will not always lose the habit of faith. Such serious negligence does not always imply deliberate doubt or denial of divine authority, neither does it necessarily expel the sincere will to believe--the will by which he is prepared to give an assent to faith to truth when sufficiently proposed to him. A fortiori, the habit of faith is not expelled if he begins a serious inquiry about the truth, even if in the meantime, while in doubt as to which is Christ's true Church, he suspends the assent of faith, but is ready to believe just as soon as the truth becomes sufficiently known to him.
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That doesn't really answer your objection, but I haven't even finished reading a single volume out of these three volumes. So it's not like I can just quickly look and find the perfect answer. The index helps though.
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Perhaps if you download the dogmatic theology manuals I posted (Pohle) specifically vol 1 of the sacraments (concerns baptism) and the one volume on grace, there is certainly a lot more that is said that I just didn't paste, then you can post your thoughts on them.
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Since this thread is, after all, about Fr. Fenton here are many of his articles:
http://www.strobertbellarmine.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=746
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Oh man!
This article:
http://www.strobertbellarmine.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=645
P. 290 (p. 4 of the PDF)
The things Fr. Fenton are quoting from this guy sound exactly like Vatican II:
We cannot say that any dissident Christian body whatever is a member of the Una Ecclesia. Nevertheless, it would seem to the present writer that the various dissident Christian bodies, each in a very varying degree, may be regarded in some fashion as elements of the Church.
(...)
We may admit therefore, that while Protestant communities are but "elements" of the Church . . . the Eastern Orthodox communities have a true though incomplete ecclesiastical reality and can be in a sense called churches.
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And so the visible Catholic Church constitutes the material core of a broader Church that embraces people who live outside her visible boundaries, and that's the notion of "subsisting" rather than simply "being".
Well putting it like that, that's actually really scary. Do you believe that saying the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church is to distinguish 2 different entities? From what little I know of God subsisting in Himself, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I had somewhat of an understanding that each divine Person subsists in the Others.
John 10:38 the Father is in me, and I in the Father.
John 17:21 That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee
Well, if one accepts that people can belong to the "soul" of the Church without being part of the "body", i.e. formally belong to the Church while being materially separated, then there are people who belong to the Church partially, or not fully, i.e. in some ways, but not in others.
That's where this "subsistence ecclesiology" of Vatican II comes from.
So these people who belong to the "soul" but not to the "body" are partially united and partially separated. They are then our brethren, part of the Church, yet separated in a way.
Thus the notion of "separated brethren" and partial union, etc.
I'm jumping ahead then. So Vatican II then decides in Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio to say that the Church is one and yet divided at the same time (obviously applying a distinction). Then Vatican II decides to emphasize what we materially hold in common with other groups.
So, for instance:
Orthodox --
valid holy orders [check]
valid Mass / Divine Liturgy [check]
belief in Holy Trinity and Incarnation [check]
belief in Mary as Mother of God [check]
Protestants --
fewer checks
etc.
rather than pointing out the differences or errors (thus a new "pastoral" emphasis)
So with ecuмenism, we'll use as a starting point the things we have in common and have dialogues rather than unilateral condemnations of error. Let's accentuate the positive, focus on that.
So that's a tactical approach.
Then we get to Religious Liberty (which is a couple more logical steps, so I'll stop here for right now).
But the ENTIRE V2 ecclesiology rests on this idea that there are full visible members of the Church (formal and material) as well as incomplete, partial members (formal only).
And Vatican II does indeed stop short of saying that the Churches as Churches have partial communion. Ratzinger in a later theological work speculates that these conventicles of the heretics have "somehow changed"--without really defining it--given that many of their members are only material heretics (since they're a few generations removed from the original formal heretics). But V2 itself doesn't go there.
I've already explained why this alleged "logical linkage" is pure hogwash. You have to ASSUME AS TRUE AN ILLICIT INFERENCE in order to make it work, that is, deducing an objective, ascertainable unity from a singular, subjective, individual possibility. You must ASSUME their grand lie that these "true elements" actually unite corporately, the evil that vitiates the good notwithstanding, thereby justifying novel terms such as "separated brethren." We have stated over and over that we do not know who these people are that may benefit from the internal workings of grace, yet you persist in trying to put us in the same camp as those who pretend they do know. You try to group us together with those who invert the order of judgment and presumption based upon external facts claiming one leads to the other when it manifestly does not. The only way it could is one were to hold in contempt the distinctions we have made, which is what apparently and in actuality unites YOU and the nouvelle theologians.
This has nothing to do with traditional catholicism, this has everything to do with your pet opinions.
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Next you'll be asserting that the old doctrine concerning political tolerance logically leads to modern religious liberty because the material outcome is exactly the same while totally ignoring the formal motives behind the two different doctrines.
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Oh man!
This article:
http://www.strobertbellarmine.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=645
P. 290 (p. 4 of the PDF)
The things Fr. Fenton are quoting from this guy sound exactly like Vatican II:
We cannot say that any dissident Christian body whatever is a member of the Una Ecclesia. Nevertheless, it would seem to the present writer that the various dissident Christian bodies, each in a very varying degree, may be regarded in some fashion as elements of the Church.
(...)
We may admit therefore, that while Protestant communities are but "elements" of the Church . . . the Eastern Orthodox communities have a true though incomplete ecclesiastical reality and can be in a sense called churches.
That's a great find. Thank you. Yes, Congar could almost have written V2's Lumen Gentium. Interestingly, V2 never called the Protestants sects elements of the Church, but just said that elements of the Church exist outside of her visible boundaries.
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With regard to invincible ignorance, invincible ignorance can only be exclupatory and not salvific. Consequently, we would still have to identify the mechanism by which Protestants or animists living in a jungle might be saved. So we need supernatural faith, which requires certain minimal material requirements (at least) and the formal motive of faith.
I do not believe that Protestants have the formal motive of faith and as such are no different than animist natives growing up in a jungle.
People refer to the possibility that Protestants might be only material heretics. I dispute that.
Here's a material heretic:
Catholic believes Mary was conceieved in Original Sin (based on the Scripture that "all men have sinned") and thinks that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception refers to Christ. Someone points out to that Catholic that the Church teaches Mary was conceived without Original Sin. Catholic immediately rejects the former erroneous opinion out of a supernatural belief in and acceptance of the Church's teaching authority. In other words, this Catholic has the formal motive of faith.
That same formal motive of faith as described above is completely lacking in the Protestant (who has attained the age of reason). So it matters not whether one has actively and consciously sinned against the formal motive of faith or whether it's merely absent.
Formal heretics become such precisely because they at least implicitly reject the formal motive of faith, the Church's teaching authority. Protestants simply lack that formal motive of faith altogether. Certainly the sin of the former would be greater, but while the Protestant may not be guilty of the same sin, the Protestant still objectively lacks that formal motive of faith, and as such simply cannot have supernatural faith.
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From Van Noort:
http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/6341/dscn0384rk.jpg
http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/6241/dscn0385n.jpg
http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/7360/dscn0386ft.jpg
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nvm
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Note that Caminus and SJB both refuse to answer my original question. That shows a complete lack of honesty, refusing to answer a question simply for fear of where it may lead.
It's a very simple question.
There's a Bible-believin Protestant who attends Protestant services, believes that the Catholic Church has it all wrong, and accepts, among other things, sola Scriptura and sola fide. Of all the Protestants in the world who fit that description, if they died without being disabused of these beliefs, could any of these be saved?
Make all the appropriate distinctions you want later. I'm talking about a very concrete person; you probably know many people just like this. Can ANY of the be saved if they died without being disabused of their false Protestant beliefs? Let's make it more concrete. If Pat Robertson died today without changing his current beliefs in any way, is it at all possible that he might be saved?
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The CMRI/SSPV/SSPX would all respond in the affirmative of such a possibility.
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The CMRI/SSPV/SSPX would all respond in the affirmative of such a possibility.
Yes, they would. As would Bishops Sanborn and Dolan and associates.
So I'll just answer for Caminus and SJB. Yes, it's possible that a Pat Robertson, or someone like him, could be saved. Let's assume, then, for the sake of argument that Pat Robertson died and is saved.
So, then, because of EENS, Pat Robertson was really inside the Church when he died.
Is Pat Robertson, then, not one of our "brethren", being inside the Church and therefore part of the Mystical Body of Christ? And, yet, is not Pat Robertson in a way separated from us, since he doesn't attend a Catholic church, hold the same beliefs (at least materially) that we do, receive the same Sacraments, etc.?
So is not Pat Robertson then one of the "separated brethren"? Is there, then, anything theologically wrong with the term "separated brethren"? Seems legit to me--if one assumes that Pat Robertson could be saved.
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So let's look at the Church now. So in the Church we have people like you and me who accept Catholic teaching and then we have a number of Pat Robertsons.
People like you and me are fully Catholic, whereas the Pat Robertsons are only partially Catholic. We and the Pat Robertsons are only in a partial and imperfect communion with one another.
We and the Pat Robertsons are formally united with one another but are materially divided. So, in one sense, formally, the Church is one and united; in another sense, materially, divisions remain among those inside the Church.
And so the Church can be said to subsist in the Catholic Church, because the visible Catholic Church forms its integral core, where the Church exists both formally and materially.
So here we have the notions of "separated brethren", partial communion, imperfect communion, and subsistence ecclesiology. So here we can understand how Vatican II can state both that the Church is one (formally) and that there are regretful divisions in the Church (materially).
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Pardon me for intruding with this silly remark, but wouldn't you put the novus ordo catholics who, in reality, pretty much think like Pat Robertson, in the same category?
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Pardon me for intruding with this silly remark, but wouldn't you put the novus ordo catholics who, in reality, pretty much think like Pat Robertson, in the same category?
There are NO Catholics who clearly have faith, and there are many (probably the majority) who don't. So, the ones who think like Pat Robertson, i.e. are basically Protestant or in some cases even worse, yes, they would be in the same category. It's not a silly remark.
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The CMRI/SSPV/SSPX would all respond in the affirmative of such a possibility.
It's possible for ANY man to be saved by God. You move from the exterior to the interior, from objective to subjective within the very same question.
The simple answer is NO since we normally speaking objectively.
So I'll just answer for Caminus and SJB. Yes, it's possible that a Pat Robertson, or someone like him, could be saved. Let's assume, then, for the sake of argument that Pat Robertson died and is saved.
If you are implying that it is subjectively impossible for any man to be saved you are limiting the power of God.
So, then, because of EENS, Pat Robertson was really inside the Church when he died.
That's a false assumption, you cannot move from the objective to a concrete particular. The judgment of the external forum still stands.
Is Pat Robertson, then, not one of our "brethren", being inside the Church and therefore part of the Mystical Body of Christ? And, yet, is not Pat Robertson in a way separated from us, since he doesn't attend a Catholic church, hold the same beliefs (at least materially) that we do, receive the same Sacraments, etc.?
This is the lie of the nouvelle theologian of Vatican II and apparently Lad himself which is based on the aforementioned false assumption as can be clearly seen. I'm not sure why you are failing to address this point.
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Ladislaus said:
Note that Caminus and SJB both refuse to answer my original question. That shows a complete lack of honesty, refusing to answer a question simply for fear of where it may lead.
It's a very simple question.
There's a Bible-believin Protestant who attends Protestant services, believes that the Catholic Church has it all wrong, and accepts, among other things, sola Scriptura and sola fide. Of all the Protestants in the world who fit that description, if they died without being disabused of these beliefs, could any of these be saved?
trad123 said:
The CMRI/SSPV/SSPX would all respond in the affirmative of such a possibility.
They would say he has to be invincibly ignorant. Ladislaus is talking about someone who is culpably ignorant. If CMRI did say he could be saved, they would somehow twist the sense of "invincibly ignorant" to let this Protestant off the hook. For instance, that he is invincibly ignorant because he has been prejudiced against Catholicism by his parents. I am meeting with their priest again soon and I'll ask him some questions to see how far they take "invincible ignorance."
Like Ladislaus, I do not believe invincible ignorance is exculpatory, and I believe in St. Augustine's definition of those outside the Church as the massa damnata, all those who have never heard the Gospel.
Ladislaus, you say believing in the Catholic Church itself and what it proposes for belief constitutes the formal motive of faith. Do you have any backup for that?
I understand where you're coming from because that ends all confusion. If belief in God revealing is the formal motive of faith, and God can reveal outside the Church, then this could lead you to adopt a stance similar to Garrigou-Lagrange, where simply believing in and following the natural law in one instance is enough to prove supernatural faith in God. Is this simply rationalism and Pelagianism cloaking itself with the term "supernatural faith," as I said earlier, or, since obedience to the natural law requires actual grace, is supernatural faith involved after all?
A compromise can be reached. Someone who obeys the natural law CAN have supernatural faith -- since they are corresponding with prevenient grace, which comes from God. But more than that is required for justification. An act of supernatural faith does not result right away in charity, perfect contrition and the remission of sins.
The question then arises as to when justification occurs. Ordinarily, it is at the moment of baptism. If Ladislaus is right and the formal motive of faith is not just God revealing as "the universal God," the God of nature, but God revealing as the Catholic God, the God of the Church, then it is as the moment that one commits himself to believing everything the Catholic Church teaches, it is at the moment one decides to become Catholic that he becomes eligible for justification.
This of course opens up new problems, because some will say "What if someone is instructed by Protestants and knows about the Trinity and Incarnation and baptism, but not the Catholic Church -- can they be saved?" No. So much for that problem.
This is by no means a dogma, but it actually makes sense, and it eliminates many difficulties. Not to mention that it is fully consonant with my experience. I was a sort of wavering "Christian" for two years, but everything began to click when I committed myself to becoming Catholic. It is from that moment that I believe I can trace my new self as having emerged, rather than from the moment that I began to believe in Jesus Christ, but in a confused and disorientated and corrupted way. I had a girlfriend and saw nothing wrong with it, I just believed in my incorrect version of Jesus Christ.
But for now, I have decided that the Church has left this question -- "What is the minimum amount of knowledge required for justification?" -- open. If we accept what Pius XII and the VII Popes teach, it is not open for speculation, and implicit faith can save. Luckily, I do not accept what they teach. But I am giving ground in that I no longer will accuse those who teach diferently than me, so far, of heresy on this matter, depending on how they define "implicit faith." For instance, Bishop Fellay spoke something close to heresy when he said a Hindu could be saved, because Hindi don't believe in one God but several. Bp. Fellay didn't specify that this Hindu, to qualify for his version of implicit faith, would have to believe in one God who is a rewarder, at which point he would have ceased attending Hindu services ( if they have any ). If pressed to explain himself, perhaps Bp. Fellay would have mentioned that.
I do not believe that believing in one God who is a rewarder is enough to save, but how can I call it heresy when this opinion has been circulating for four hundred years and was never specifically condemned? If God is going to punish me for wimping out and saying that implicit faith isn't heresy, I will tell him that ( a ) I didn't believe it personally and ( b ) His Church never condemned it. But until then, I concur with Ladislaus that this theory of implicit faith is only proximate to heresy, rather than with the Feeneyites or Richard Ibranyi that it is heresy.
When Gregory XVI reproved those who believe you can be saved in any religion whatsoever, I tried to convince myself this was directed against the implicit faith idea. But that was wishful thinking.
Summo Iugiter Studio, Gregory XVI
"Finally some of these misguided people attempt to persuade themselves and others that men are not saved only in the Catholic religion, but that even heretics may attain eternal life."
I find it hard to believe that he would dismiss this whole centuries-long implicit faith controversy with one throwaway comment. If that were his intent, he would be much more likely to have written a formal denunciation. The sense of his comment is clearly aimed at those who say "You can be saved as a Protestant" or "You can be saved as an Orthodox" -- those who say, in effect, that other religions are means of salvation.
Those who explain implicit faith carefully ( no, not you, Abp. Lefebvre ), say that those who are saved IN another sect are saved IN the Catholic religion. This is probably why Mgr. Fenton is considered by Caminus to have upheld the EENS dogma -- while to people like me he seems to be busting it apart -- because he was very, very meticulous about how he defined implicit faith. He punctiliously "informs" his readers that someone who is invincibly ignorant can be a member by desire and thus IN the Catholic Church. He objects to those he considers less careful, who say such a person is joined to the soul of the Church or is not a member in any way. He objects to this because such formulations make the implicit faithers easy to attack.
As for Cantate Domino, it says that pagans, Jews, heretics, schismatics will go to hell unless they are JOINED TO THE CHURCH before the end of their lives. Those who teach implicit faith carefully, like Mgr. Fenton, do make sure to specify that those who are eligible for salvation by implicit faith are joined to the Church.
Yeah, they may have found a loophole, and maybe they are quibbling with words -- deal with it. It's just like St. Thomas and limbo. To avoid teaching the Pelagian heresy, he came up with the ludicrous concept of a happy place in hell. And it worked. He avoided heresy. He is still surely wrong on this one, but not a heretic.
Mgr. Fenton was wrong when he said that the Church has always taught implicit faith, but the wording of the Church decrees doesn't rule it out either. There is a case that can be made that it is not a development of doctrine, but a revelation of what was always latent. The reason is that the early Church Fathers spoke of those who could have been saved by implicit faith before the coming of Christ, which leaves the door open for speculation about implicit faith after His coming. Until the Church says something like "The idea that you can be saved in another sect by implicit faith -- CONDEMNED," then I'd have to say people are free to speculate, as distasteful as that is for me to admit. I am like St. Augustine waking up after a long slumber in a new semi-Pelagian world, but what can I do?
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Your responses are utterly incoherent, Caminus.
I am NOT talking about whether God can possibly save this person. I am talking about whether "it's possible that it's the case that" the deceased Pat Robertson in my example was saved, and NOT whether God has the power to save Him.
Am I limiting the power of God in saying that it's not possible that an infant who dies without Baptism is saved? No, I'm just reiterating something taught by the Church. God revealed something here about His economy of salvation. God could save the infant by rescuing him from this untimely death, having him live long enough to receive Baptism. But for some reason known only to Him, He chose not to give the grace of salvation to this soul.
So you are actually the one mixing apples and oranges here.
Stop this nonsensical "limiting God's power" argument.
Clearly trad123 understood what I was asking. You and SJB just froth and churn and equivocate. It's almost as if you kicking against some goad.
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Also, regarding my last post about the Jansenists, although I'll eventually open another thread about this ( probably many of them ) let me make it clear I don't agree with infrequent communion or that the Church has to go back to harsher methods of penance or anything like that. Nor do I agree with the heresies attributed to Jansenius. All I'm saying is that the Jansenists appeared to have seen the danger all around them, the danger that led to Vatican II, the liberalism and laxism, the bending of the Church to meet the world rather than the other way around. I see them as a very flawed advance guard who tried to nip this in the bud, but went too far -- exactly like the Feeneyites, but much more sympathetic, in my opinion.
I'm only beginning to study this era of history, so I won't say anything more about it in this thread except that I take back my praise of Pascal. I've read some excerpts of his Provinciales and found it smug and superficial.
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The CMRI/SSPV/SSPX would all respond in the affirmative of such a possibility.
You smugly agreed as if that were wrong. You're the one not making any sense. You're all over the map. Read my last post very carefully and try to digest what I'm saying.
This is directed at Lad.
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No, I'm just reiterating something taught by the Church. God revealed something here about His economy of salvation.
SO AM I!!!!! That's why I keep referring to the "judgment of the external facts." According to what has been revealed, what the means of salvation are and according to the external forum we must say that they are not saved. If you want to avoid further confusion, drop the word "possible" because that term immediately brings the question into a different realm.
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Ladislaus said:
So you are actually the one mixing apples and oranges here.
Stop this nonsensical "limiting God's power" argument.
Clearly trad123 understood what I was asking. You and SJB just froth and churn and equivocate. It's almost as if you're kicking against some goad.
It's not almost like that -- it's exactly like that! Their posts make me think of misty tendrils of vapor that dissipate as soon as you try to grasp them. But SJB strikes me as good-willed, and Caminus more bad-willed, though that is just my hunch or impression, not a judgment.
In the case of SJB, this is just because he believes in implicit faith which is pretty hard to make coherent. But I have done a better job of it than he has, frankly. Those who believe in it are the ones who are the most loath to talk about it -- perhaps because of how illogical it sounds? The CMRI priest I met with hemmed and hawed and beat around the bush, just like you have seen SJB and Caminus doing.
Caminus is a more confusing case. He seems to live to fight, but I'm not sure about what. I think he goes to SSPX but he acts more like a recognize-and-resister -- actually, he defends Vatican II more than they do. As do you, Ladislaus, except in your case, somehow, I see where you're coming from. You are saying that the VII docuмents are possibly saved by ambiguity but you admit it is likely that the VII Popes are not Popes.
I don't think discussions with Caminus get anywhere so I'm pretty much talking to myself, you, and invisible lurkers in this thread.
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They would say he has to be invincibly ignorant. Ladislaus is talking about someone who is culpably ignorant.
In the line of questioning I'm taking, I'm actually not even worried about how or why or with what distinctions Pat Robertson could be saved. I'm just asking Caminus and SJB whether it's possible in any way that he's saved. And I'm not talking about a last-minute interior conversion either.
Ignorance doesn't have to be culpable either for someone not to be saved. Culpability pertains to the degree of sin and punishment due for infidelity. Invincible ignorance is not salvific, merely exculpatory.
Ladislaus, you say believing in the Catholic Church itself and what it proposes for belief constitutes the formal motive of faith. Do you have any backup for that?
I'll have to try digging up an old theology manual. I heard this from a seminary professor, that the "formal motive of faith is the authority of God revealing as proposed by the Catholic Church". We have to submit ourselves to an authority or a rule of faith in order to have faith. So, for instance, the Protestants claim that the Bible is their rule of faith, but they in effect interpret the Bible to whatever they want it to mean, ultimately setting themselves up as the rule of faith. So they're not subjecting themselves to the authority of God.
That's why people who reject Church dogma are "formal" heretics; we say that in rejecting one dogma, they're rejecting them all. That's because in rejecting even one dogma they're rejecting and repudiating the formal motive of faith. Now, even these heretics still claim that they're following the authority of God. I've never heard of a formal heretic who said, "I'm rejecting the authority of God revealing." They ALL believe and are convinced (or convince themselves) that they're following God's authority.
Now rejecting the formal motive of faith or merely lacking it makes no difference except from the standpoint of culpability. If it's missing, it's missing. Period. And without it there can be no supernatural faith.
I understand where you're coming from because that ends all confusion. If belief in God revealing is the formal motive of faith, and God can reveal outside the Church, then this could lead you to adopt a stance similar to Garrigou-Lagrange, where simply believing in and following the natural law in one instance is enough to prove supernatural faith in God.
And I think that theology is nonsense. There's absolutely NOTHING there being accepted on the authority of a revealing God. Believing in a rewarder God is a natural truth, about which certainty can be attained by natural reason alone. That's why most theologians held that one must have explicit faith in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, because these are the core supernatural (beyond nature) truths of the faith which can only be known through revelation.
Remember also that Garrigou-Lagrange was the teacher of Yves Congar whose theology is reflected in turn by Vatican II's Lumen Gentium--thanks to that citation from trad123. So here's an actual historical link between the theology of a Garrigou and Vatican II--in addition to the logical link I have been trying to demonstrate.
Is this simply rationalism and Pelagianism cloaking itself with the term "supernatural faith," as I said earlier, or, since obedience to the natural law requires actual grace, is supernatural faith involved after all?
I don't think that obedience to the natural law requires actual grace. But, yes, I think that this is in fact a semi-Pelagianism.
A compromise can be reached. Someone who obeys the natural law CAN have supernatural faith -- since they are corresponding with prevenient grace, which comes from God. But more than that is required for justification. An act of supernatural faith does not result right away in charity, perfect contrition and the remission of sins.
I think that supernatural faith requires a supernatural object (i.e. revealed supernatural truths), so that obedience to the natural law doesn't even come close.
This of course opens up new problems, because some will say "What if someone is instructed by Protestants and knows about the Trinity and Incarnation and baptism, but not the Catholic Church -- can they be saved?" No. So much for that problem.
That's a tough one. I think that there's a way for this formal motive of faith to be inchoate or incipient or implicit in a general belief based on the authority of God, in a very brief and narrow transitional window. But as soon as a false rule of faith starts to emerge, the formal motive of faith can disappear or be lost. So, for instance, if a Protestant comes across some natives in the jungle, teaches them about the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, and baptizes them, they would be accepting these truths on the authority of this Protestant, who claims to be speaking with the authority of God. But the minute this Protestant starts telling them about how the Bible is the authority, and starts spouting nonsense about faith alone saves, regardless of how sinful one might be, my gut tells me that those people no longer have supernatural faith, even if they had it momentarily before it was polluted.
This is by no means a dogma, but it actually makes sense, and it eliminates many difficulties. Not to mention that it is fully consonant with my experience. I was a sort of wavering "Christian" for two years, but everything began to click when I committed myself to becoming Catholic. It is from that moment that I believe I can trace my new self as having emerged, rather than from the moment that I began to believe in Jesus Christ, but in a confused and disorientated and corrupted way. I had a girlfriend and saw nothing wrong with it, I just believed in my incorrect version of Jesus Christ.
And that's what I was getting at earlier with my examples of material heresy, the Catholic material heretic vs. the Protestant material heretic. These are NOT the same thing. I just don't think it's possible for there to be true Protestant material heretics.
But for now, I have decided that the Church has left this question -- "What is the minimum amount of knowledge required for justification?" -- open. If we accept what Pius XII and the VII Popes teach, it is not open for speculation, and implicit faith can save.
I don't believe that Pius XII ever taught that.
Luckily, I do not accept what they teach. But I am giving ground in that I no longer will accuse those who teach diferently than me, so far, of heresy on this matter, depending on how they define "implicit faith." For instance, Bishop Fellay spoke something close to heresy when he said a Hindu could be saved, because Hindi don't believe in one God but several. Bp. Fellay didn't specify that this Hindu, to qualify for his version of implicit faith, would have to believe in one God who is a rewarder, at which point he would have ceased attending Hindu services ( if they have any ). If pressed to explain himself, perhaps Bp. Fellay would have mentioned that.
Ah, the SSPX is really bad on this issue, and their promotion of their bad ideas regarding EENS actually undermine and contradict their objections to Vatican II--as I've been trying to show on this very thread.
I do not believe that believing in one God who is a rewarder is enough to save, but how can I call it heresy when this opinion has been circulating for four hundred years and was never specifically condemned? If God is going to punish me for wimping out and saying that implicit faith isn't heresy, I will tell him that ( a ) I didn't believe it personally and ( b ) His Church never condemned it. But until then, I concur with Ladislaus that this theory of implicit faith is only proximate to heresy, rather than with the Feeneyites or Richard Ibranyi that it is heresy.
I don't think that Feeneyites per se called it heresy, but the Dimonds do.
As for Cantate Domino, it says that pagans, Jews, heretics, schismatics will go to hell unless they are JOINED TO THE CHURCH before the end of their lives. Those who teach implicit faith carefully, like Mgr. Fenton, do make sure to specify that those who are eligible for salvation by implicit faith are joined to the Church.
Bingo. And this distinction leads RIGHT to Vatican II--as I've explained above.
I disagree with you that people are or should be free to speculate--as I've written above. I think that all speculation should cease immediately. It serves no other purpose than to weaken and undermine the faith. Why is it that the Church defined a dogma that no one who's not Catholic can be saved and 50-page treatises are required to explain its TRUE meaning. What if a simple Catholic just takes the dogma at face value? In fact, what's been done by all the speculation is to reverse the dogma. Whenever even Traditional Catholics are asked by Protestants whether it's true that only Catholics can be saved, their answer isn't "Yes, absolutely.", but it's almost always, "Well, what that dogma means is really this, that yes you can in fact be saved outside the Church." etc. etc.
It's this kind of abominable speculation that has led to religious indifferentism and Vatican II--and all their lovely fruits.
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Also, regarding my last post about the Jansenists, although I'll eventually open another thread about this ( probably many of them ) let me make it clear I don't agree with infrequent communion or that the Church has to go back to harsher methods of penance or anything like that. Nor do I agree with the heresies attributed to Jansenius. All I'm saying is that the Jansenists appeared to have seen the danger all around them, the danger that led to Vatican II, the liberalism and laxism, the bending of the Church to meet the world rather than the other way around. I see them as a very flawed advance guard who tried to nip this in the bud, but went too far -- exactly like the Feeneyites, but much more sympathetic, in my opinion.
I'm only beginning to study this era of history, so I won't say anything more about it in this thread except that I take back my praise of Pascal. I've read some excerpts of his Provinciales and found it smug and superficial.
It often happens, Raoul, that a legitimate reaction to a very real error or evil leads to an overreaction in the other direction--for the devil is very adept at working people by way of these false "dialectics".
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Ladislaus said:
Invincible ignorance is not salvific, merely exculpatory.
Oops, I'd written that it isn't exculpatory, thanks for the gentle correction. I mean, it doesn't excuse them from the blame of original sin and whatever other sins they have. They are only excused from the sin of willful heresy or schism, IF they are invincibly ignorant their entire life.
Ladislaus said:
"Now rejecting the formal motive of faith or merely lacking it makes no difference except from the standpoint of culpability. If it's missing, it's missing. Period. And without it there can be no supernatural faith."
This may be another gentle correction, and if so it is well-deserved. Despite how it may have appeared in my longer post, I do not believe that following one instance of the natural law is evidence of supernatural faith. Maybe I did when I wrote the post, carried away by my own train of thought, I can't remember. I think what I wanted to show is that even if following one instance of the natural law WERE proof of supernatural faith, per Garrigou-Lagrange, that it still wouldn't suffice for charity, perfect contrition, and justification. But as you say, it doesn't suffice for supernatural faith either.
I don't think that obedience to the natural law requires actual grace.
Obviously there are times someone follows the natural law for the wrong reason, like someone who saves a drowning swimmer because he wants to be considered a hero. It is definitely nonsense that ONE action in conformity with the natural law suffices for supernatural faith and salvation! Garrigou-Lagrange is one of the few to go this far.
What the majority of the implicit faith crowd would say is that an action in conformity with the natural law, in conjunction with belief in the one true God who is a Rewarder, would be enough for supernatural faith. And it must be admitted that that was enough before the first Pentecost. But that was because the Old Testament time was one of anticipation, while our time is one of revelation. And in a time of revelation, one cannot be saved except those to whom God has revealed Himself. It's just unthinkable to me that Christ could die on the Cross but that, after this event, the central event of all human history, people could be saved the same way they were before, through vague expectation, as if it had never happened.
I think that any action we take in conformity with the natural law is like a nudge from God in the right direction. But it is not even close to being arrival. Being an adult convert I've experienced this personally. Certain sins of my pre-Catholic life left me feeling guilty and ashamed but I'd block this out. I'd continue sinning, but perhaps scale back on the grotesqueness of the sins a little. I adopted that form of relative morality so commonplace among pagans. It wasn't until I'd entirely given up the habit of mortal sin that I was given the sudden impulse to be baptized in the Catholic Church. For a two year period before that I was in no real hurry to be baptized and considered myself "Christian," meaning all Protestants and Catholics were okay. Strangely enough, I was against the Novus Ordo even during this murky period of my life, where I was more concerned with Jews and cօռspιʀαcιҽs than with faith.
My conversion was extremely Magdalene/St. Paul/St. Augustine like -- another reason I hate implicit faith, as it completely spoils the inspiring example of those conversions. Implicit faith makes it possible they could have been saved without the EXPLICIT conversion. Not probable, mind you, but still possible, and that is enough to ruin the beauty of being truly born again. Anyway, it's no coincidence that I share Augustine's view of explicit faith being necessary, because both of us know what it is to be radically converted, to literally become the opposite of what you used to be. That does not happen with "implicit faith."
Ladislaus said:
"That's why most theologians held that one must have explicit faith in the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, because these are the core supernatural (beyond nature) truths of the faith which can only be known through revelation."
You mean most theologians ( actually all ) before Pighius. Most theologians of the last two centuries hold the opposite view. Today it is nearly impossible to find a priest who believes what was believed universally for fifteen centuries.
Implicit faith of course opens the doors to salvation for Jews and Muslims in their sects, depending on if you believe they worship the one true God, and this is where the heresy comes in. Thanks, De Lugo, for making a complete mess out of theology. Trying to stop this hemhorrage of loose EENS theology is like trying to shovel your guts back into your stomach after being hit with a mortar blast.
Ladislaus said:
"Remember also that Garrigou-Lagrange was the teacher of Yves Congar whose theology is reflected in turn by Vatican II's Lumen Gentium--thanks to that citation from trad123. So here's an actual historical link between the theology of a Garrigou and Vatican II--in addition to the logical link I have been trying to demonstrate."
I didn't know that. Garrigou-Lagrange, though, like many 19th-20th century theologians, strikes me as a dangerous mystic. He is balanced somewhere in between Aquinas and Hans urs von Balthasar -- almost like the missing link between them, which is pretty scary.
Ladislaus said:
"I disagree with you that people are or should be free to speculate--as I've written above. I think that all speculation should cease immediately."
I have said in this thread that if I were Pope I would forbid speculation under pain of automatic excommunication. What I mean about being free to speculate for now is that no Pope has specifically condemned the implicit faith idea, despite having five hundred years and counting to do so. Although Pius IX did say that it would be wrong to keep speculating on this. When the CMRI priest quoted that at me, I was flabbergasted. He was accusing ME of being the one who was speculating! I told him "That's what you're doing!" and he said "No!!!" He believes that Pius IX taught that someone in invincible ignorance can be saved, so from his perspective I was disobeying him ( Pius IX ) by denying this.
While my impulse is to wage unrestrained war on the implicit faith crowd, a la Richard Ibranyi, the moderate, Polish side of my personality is overtaking the Spanish side, so for now I have to agree with you that it's only proximate to heresy. No matter how bleak my outlook, it's hard for me to say the Church permitted actual heresy to spread like wildfire for four hundred years. Granted, it's not much better to say they allowed grievous error to spread unchecked for four hundred years, is it? Hey, they didn't paint over the Sistine Chapel ceiling in all that time either. But it's better and less injurious to the Church to say that for now this is allowable speculation.
I just read in a book called "All Can Be Saved" that theologians discussed things like invincible ignorance amongst themselves but kept these speculations from the flock, knowing they'd be confused. I wonder when that changed. I mean, that is what theologians are here for, to speculate. It is the Pope's job to rein them in if they go too far. So we appear to be dealing with a massive failure of omission on the part of many, many Popes -- a hard nut to swallow.
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Correction of the last line: "So we appear to be dealing with a massive omission on the part of many, many Popes -- a hard nut to swallow."
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Correction of the last line: "So we appear to be dealing with a massive omission on the part of many, many Popes -- a hard nut to swallow."
In my opinion, God allowed this "omission", i.e. not explicitly condemning some of these theories, as a way to sift the wheat from the chaff, as a test of faith. Popes are moved at times to condemn errors when they feel the need to to protect the Faith. Without these errors, there wouldn't have been a Vatican II, and God wanted to allow all this to happen--for whatever reason.
Here's perhaps a nice bottom line. We don't need to trouble ourselves too much about the theological complexities. God doesn't require us to be theologians to understand Church teaching.
When someone, Catholic or non-Catholic, asks me whether any non-Catholics can be saved, I simply respond "No". Sadly, most Traditional Catholics, if asked that question, immediately begin to dance and equivocate. I teach my children that non-Catholics cannot be saved. I am not going to go into a long dissertation about how Protestants qua Protestant cannot be saved. They don't need to understand any of that, and they wouldn't get it anyway. What am I supposed to do, hand them a 20-page Msgr. Fenton treatise? Or, alternatively, should I boil it down in the other direction and teach them that, well, sometimes Protestants are really Catholics? That would actually harm their simple faith. When the Church defines dogmas like EENS, She does so in a way that they can be accepted and understood by ALL the faithful. Our Lord didn't deliver two-hour dissertations on all the exceptions that might exist. He taught simply, that unless we are born again of water and the Holy Spirit, we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He didn't then launch immediately into distinctions.
And what's sad is that many Traditional Catholics would consider me impious and somehow damaging the Faith for simply answering "No" and repeating Holy Mother Church's dogmatic definition verbatim. And Novus Ordo Catholics might even call me a heretic for saying so. Perhpas the Church Herself was impious for defining it that way without further explanation? Absit. Until the Church defines otherwise and adds additional clarification, I am content with what She has defined and need to inquire no further. To take a page out of your book, Raoul, if I were pope, I would reiterate EENS and forbid any further inquiry into the subject. It's as Father Feeney said, if people start believing that the resolution to receive Baptism suffices, then their resolution to receive Baptism actually can be undermined. Hypothesizing about exceptions serves no other purpose than to undermine the Faith and lead to religious indifferentism. And that's what happened at Vatican II. V2 came about as a direct result of undermining EENS.
So, to answer your original question, what the Church has defined already regarding EENS should be enough for us and is enough for us.
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They would say he has to be invincibly ignorant. Ladislaus is talking about someone who is culpably ignorant. If CMRI did say he could be saved, they would somehow twist the sense of "invincibly ignorant" to let this Protestant off the hook. For instance, that he is invincibly ignorant because he has been prejudiced against Catholicism by his parents. I am meeting with their priest again soon and I'll ask him some questions to see how far they take "invincible ignorance."
I already said they are conditions, I would never agree about those culpably ignorant, and neither would they.
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I believe those who live among Catholics cannot be invincible ignorant.
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Wondering whether this such and such person is invincible ignorant is just a waste of time really as those who are in such a state need the help of God to get out of such ignorance. How many people have internet access--LOTS. Their vincible ignorance can dissolve away with a quick Google search.
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Well damn, thinking it over, the teaching they'll be exposed to would in MOST cases would be Vatican II teaching. Forget then, I'm not saying who's in vincible or invincible ignorance.
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Baltimore Catechism No. 3 Father Connell's Confraternity Edition
167. What do we mean when we say, "Outside the Church there is no salvation"?
When we say, "outside the Church there is no salvation," we mean that those who through their own grave fault do not know that the Catholic Church is the true Church or, knowing it, refuse to join it, cannot be saved.
(a) "Outside the Church there is no salvation" does not mean that everyone who is not a Catholic will be condemned. It does mean that no one can be saved unless he belongs in some manner to the Catholic Church, either actually or in desire, (my emphasis) for the means of grace are not given without some relation to the divine institution established by Christ.
168. Can they be saved who remain outside the Catholic Church because they do not know it is the true Church?
They who remain outside the Catholic Church through no grave fault of their own and do not know it is the true Church, can be saved by making use of the graces which God gives them.
(a) Those who are outside the Church through no fault of their own are not culpable in the sight of God because of their invincible ignorance.
(b) Persons who make use of the graces God gives them, even though they are not members of the true Church, actually have the desire to become members inasmuch as they wish to use all means ordained by God for their salvation.
(c) We should pray and try to persuade others to investigate the teachings of the Catholic Church because charity obliges us to do all we can to lead others to salvation. We should also pray for Catholic missionaries and help them in their work of bringing the faith to those outside the Catholic Church.
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"Outside the Church there is no salvation" does not mean that everyone who is not a Catholic will be condemned.
Oh, really?
Persons who make use of the graces God gives them, even though they are not members of the true Church, actually have the desire to become members inasmuch as they wish to use all means ordained by God for their salvation.
Here are the very seeds of Vatican II, folks, right before our eyes. So the criterion for salvation becomes subjectivized. Anyone who "wishes to use all the means ordained by God for [his] salvation" are now inside the Church (although they are not members and not Catholic, per what's above). So following one's own lights becomes the criterion for salvation. Thus you get religious liberty.
And within the Church you have members and non-members (i.e. non-Catholics)--ergo the subsistence ecclesiology, that the Church subsists in the Catholic Church but has within Her folks who are also non-Catholic non-members.
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http://www.traditionalmass.org/images/articles/CommunArt.pdf
Page 12:
He (Cardinal Billot) goes on to say that the defect of adherence in re can be supplied by an adherence in voto. This point is of extreme importance, namely that one cannot detach interior justification from adherence, in some way, at least in voto, to the body of the Church. For one cannot divide the body and soul of the Church; they are distinguished, but not separated.
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"Outside the Church there is no salvation" does not mean that everyone who is not a Catholic will be condemned.
Oh, really?
Persons who make use of the graces God gives them, even though they are not members of the true Church, actually have the desire to become members inasmuch as they wish to use all means ordained by God for their salvation.
Here are the very seeds of Vatican II, folks, right before our eyes. So the criterion for salvation becomes subjectivized. Anyone who "wishes to use all the means ordained by God for [his] salvation" are now inside the Church (although they are not members and not Catholic, per what's above). So following one's own lights becomes the criterion for salvation. Thus you get religious liberty.
And within the Church you have members and non-members (i.e. non-Catholics)--ergo the subsistence ecclesiology, that the Church subsists in the Catholic Church but has within Her folks who are also non-Catholic non-members.
(a) "Outside the Church there is no salvation" does not mean that everyone who is not a Catholic will be condemned. It does mean that no one can be saved unless he belongs in some manner to the Catholic Church, either actually or in desire, (my emphasis) for the means of grace are not given without some relation to the divine institution established by Christ.
This is not Vatican II.
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Here are the very seeds of Vatican II, folks, right before our eyes.
I find these demogogic pronouncements to be highly disingenuous considering that you persist in ignoring my posts explaining the manifest differences.
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114 Q. Which are the means instituted by Our Lord to enable men at all times to share in the fruits of the Redemption?
A. The means instituted by Our Lord to enable men at all times to share in the fruits of the Redemption are the Church and the Sacraments.
115 Q. What is the Church?
A. The Church is the congregation of all those who profess the faith of Christ, partake of the same Sacraments, and are governed by their lawful pastors under one visible head.
*121 Q. Are all bound to belong to the Church?
A. All are bound to belong to the Church, and he who knows the Church to be the true Church and remains out of it, cannot be saved.
Anyone who knows the Catholic religion to be the true religion and will not embrace it cannot enter into Heaven. If one not a Catholic doubts whether the church to which he belongs is the true Church, he must settle his doubt, seek the true Church, and enter it; for if he continues to live in doubt, he becomes like the one who knows the true Church and is deterred by worldly considerations from entering it.
In like manner one who, doubting, fears to examine the religion he professes lest he should discover its falsity and be convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith, cannot be saved.
Suppose, however, that there is a non-Catholic who firmly believes that the church to which he belongs is the true Church, and who has never--even in the past--had the slightest doubt of that fact--what will become of him?
If he was validly baptized and never committed a mortal sin, he will be saved; because, believing himself a member of the true Church, he was doing all he could to serve God according to his knowledge and the dictates of his conscience. But if ever he committed a mortal sin, his salvation would be very much more difficult. A mortal sin once committed remains on the soul till it is forgiven. Now, how could his mortal sin be forgiven? Not in the Sacrament of Penance, for the Protestant does not go to confession; and if he does, his minister--not being a true priest--has no power to forgive sins. Does he know that without confession it requires an act of perfect contrition to blot out mortal sin, and can he easily make such an act? What we call contrition is often only imperfect contrition--that is, sorrow for our sins because we
fear their punishment in Hell or dread the loss of Heaven. If a
Catholic--with all the instruction he has received about how to make an act of perfect contrition and all the practice he has had in making such acts--might find it difficult to make an act of perfect contrition after having committed a mortal sin, how much difficulty will not a Protestant have in making an act of perfect contrition, who does not know about this requirement and who has not been taught to make continued acts of perfect contrition all his life. It is to be feared either he would not know of this necessary means of regaining God's friendship, or he would be unable to elicit the necessary act of perfect contrition, and thus the mortal sin would remain upon his soul and he would die an enemy of God.
If, then, we found a Protestant who never committed a mortal sin after Baptism, and who never had the slightest doubt about the truth of his religion, that person would be saved; because, being baptized, he is a member of the Church, and being free from mortal sin he is a friend of God and could not in justice be condemned to Hell. Such a person would attend Mass and receive the Sacraments if he knew the Catholic Church to be the only true Church.
I am giving you an example, however, that is rarely found, except in the case of infants or very small children baptized in Protestant sects. All infants rightly baptized by anyone are really children of the Church, no matter what religion their parents may profess. Indeed, all persons who are baptized are children of the Church; but those among them who deny
its teaching, reject its Sacraments, and refuse to submit to its lawful pastors, are rebellious children known as heretics.
I said I gave you an example that can scarcely be found, namely, of a person not a Catholic, who really never doubted the truth of his religion, and who, moreover, never committed during his whole life a mortal sin. There are so few such persons that we can practically say for all those who are not visibly members of the Catholic Church, believing its doctrines, receiving its Sacraments, and being governed by
its visible head, our Holy Father, the Pope, salvation is an extremely difficult matter.
I do not speak here of pagans who have never heard of Our Lord or His holy religion, but of those outside the Church who claim to be good Christians without being members of the Catholic Church.
These catechisms were burned in many places after Vatican II.
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Here are the very seeds of Vatican II, folks, right before our eyes.
I find these demogogic pronouncements to be highly disingenuous considering that you persist in ignoring my posts explaining the manifest differences.
Your posts explain nothing. You refused to answer my simple question because you know that your answers lead to Vatican II.
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These catechisms were burned in many places after Vatican II.
I would burn them too, for different reasons. St. Pius X is reported to have taken the old Catholic Encyclopedia and slammed it to the ground when it was presented to him.
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This is not Vatican II.
You're right. Vatican II made no mention of this, in wishing to emphasize the positive. But the passage I quoted above is precisely what Vatican II is based on.
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Here are the very seeds of Vatican II, folks, right before our eyes.
I find these demogogic pronouncements to be highly disingenuous considering that you persist in ignoring my posts explaining the manifest differences.
Your posts explain nothing. You refused to answer my simple question because you know that your answers lead to Vatican II.
I in fact did answer your question, several times now. Either you are blind or are lying. Now why don't you actually deal with what I say?
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Now why don't you actually deal with what I say?
Because you say nothing, with a lot of words.
You gave an answer, but it was not to the question I asked.
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These catechisms were burned in many places after Vatican II.
I would burn them too, for different reasons. St. Pius X is reported to have taken the old Catholic Encyclopedia and slammed it to the ground when it was presented to him.
What you might do is really not relevant. Why did they burn them?
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This is not Vatican II.
You're right. Vatican II made no mention of this, in wishing to emphasize the positive. But the passage I quoted above is precisely what Vatican II is based on.
Yes, that is your opinion. You have failed to show why it should be considered a valid opinion.
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I'm sure I don't have to mention why many traditional catholics equivocate and dance around this issue. Here's my own examples, and both of them were baptized catholic.
I have a brother and a sister both in their sixties. My brother has had so many strokes that he is like a seven year old. Since he was about eighteen, he considered himself an agnostic. Before he lost his grip on reality, he was dabbling in pagan stuff - you know, the goddess diana bit. My sister lost her faith in college thanks to a communist professor. She regained it briefly in the early nineties only to let it lead her to the new age nonsense. She is a real intellectual - what her brilliant mind cannot comprehend she dismisses. Funny how she will accept that diabolical book "A Course In Miracles" but will dismiss the New Testament as pious tales. Funny, too, how satan has a way of doing that with all of us. He always double crosses his stooges.
Now, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
These are my examples. Many here must have relatives who are not Catholic. No one wants to even think of anyone going to hell. Faith is a gift, isn't it?
On the other hand, if what this invincible ignorance stuff, (which has been really been brought to ridiculous extremes this day and age) is true, why be Catholic? Why be anything? "Just whistle a happy tune and let your conscience be your guide. "
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I'm sure I don't have to mention why many traditional catholics equivocate and dance around this issue. Here's my own examples, and both of them were baptized catholic.
I have a brother and a sister both in their sixties. My brother has had so many strokes that he is like a seven year old. Since he was about eighteen, he considered himself an agnostic. Before he lost his grip on reality, he was dabbling in pagan stuff - you know, the goddess diana bit. My sister lost her faith in college thanks to a communist professor. She regained it briefly in the early nineties only to let it lead her to the new age nonsense. She is a real intellectual - what her brilliant mind cannot comprehend she dismisses. Funny how she will accept that diabolical book "A Course In Miracles" but will dismiss the New Testament as pious tales. Funny, too, how satan has a way of doing that with all of us. He always double crosses his stooges.
Now, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
These are my examples. Many here must have relatives who are not Catholic. No one wants to even think of anyone going to hell. Faith is a gift, isn't it?
On the other hand, if what this invincible ignorance stuff, (which has been really been brought to ridiculous extremes this day and age) is true, why be Catholic? Why be anything? "Just whistle a happy tune and let your conscience be your guide. "
Many people are manifestly lacking supernatural faith and charity. Many are manifestly NOT invincibly ignorant of their duty to join the Church. These people will be lost.
I think the problem for many traditional Catholics is that they think they must assume that all non-Catholics are invincibly ignorant.
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Are you saying then that there is a good chance that my brother will go to hell?
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Are you saying then that there is a good chance that my brother will go to hell?
The possibility is admitted that a person in invincible ignorance with the other necessary conditions can be saved. Only the possibility is admitted, good hope for such a person and their salvation? absolutely not.
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Ah, let me restate that, there is no good hope that a person may be in such conditions.
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Are you saying then that there is a good chance that my brother will go to hell?
Does that thought shock you? Even Catholics who are living in manifestly sinful situations will be damned if they do not amend their lives. Our duty is to pray for them and sacrifice for them; many times this is all we can do.
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But he never was invincibley ignorant since he went to Catholic schools - he just thought that "organized religions" were unnecessary.
Just give it to me straight. Are you (plural) saying that someone like my brother's fate is sealed by his condition which leaves no human hope of final repentance?
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Now why don't you actually deal with what I say?
Because you say nothing, with a lot of words.
You gave an answer, but it was not to the question I asked.
Pure evasion.
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There is always hope that a person may repent and believe before they die, but prayer is a means of obtaining grace. I'm pretty sure Our Lady of Fatima said most people go to Hell because no one prays and makes sacrifices for them, also because most people don't pray themselves.
St. Alphonsus said that a person who does not pray will certainly be damned, but that is also if no one prays for them.
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But he never was invincibley ignorant since he went to Catholic schools - he just thought that "organized religions" were unnecessary.
Just give it to me straight. Are you (plural) saying that someone like my brother's fate is sealed by his condition which leaves no human hope of final repentance?
Except we have more than human hope. Nobody's fate is sealed...there is always hope for their conversion and to die a holy death.
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People are always forgetting the power of prayer, penance, sacrifice, devotions etc. for sinners.
Prayer can cause miracles to happen. We just don't always know exactly how our prayers and sacrifices are used by Heaven.
So I don't know how God will answer the prayers for your brother's soul, but I do know we'd all better pray harder for sinners, many of whom go to Hell because there is nobody praying for them.
EDIT: a lot of us are thinking the same thing at once! :pray: :pray: :pray:
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On the other hand, if what this invincible ignorance stuff, (which has been really been brought to ridiculous extremes this day and age) is true, why be Catholic? Why be anything? "Just whistle a happy tune and let your conscience be your guide. "
From the Summa Theologica:
Although those things which are beyond man's knowledge may not be sought for by man through his reason, nevertheless, once they are revealed by God, they must be accepted by faith. Hence the sacred text continues, "For many things are shown to thee above the understanding of man" (Sirach 3:25). And in this, the sacred science consists.
Of course, you're only obligated to if you desire to enter Heaven, but then you'll be forced to descend into Hell upon your death if you don't. In the same manner, no one is obligated to eat and drink, but you'll be forced to die if you don't.
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I believe those who live among Catholics cannot be invincible ignorant.
so, merely living with people somehow enlighten them...is it not possible that the Catholics you note were poor exmaple and possibly, live like pagans.......how then do they enlighten and inspire to the Faith?
if a prot lived next door the the Peℓσѕι's, what example is he getting? what theology? Likely, a fundamentalist would be more Catholic per se than Nancy Peℓσѕι......
your comemnt holds no water logically.......
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These catechisms were burned in many places after Vatican II.
I would burn them too, for different reasons. St. Pius X is reported to have taken the old Catholic Encyclopedia and slammed it to the ground when it was presented to him.
um.would ask for proof but liekly would age quicker.....anyway, so? what did he not like about it? why? heresy in it? poor grammer? what????
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Their vincible ignorance can dissolve away with a quick Google search.
so, head knoweldge would lead them to truth? This is rather prot thinking..
so, they google "Catholic" and are isntantly converted? you mean like articles against priest scandals. How about a google search that leads to jack Chick, Catholics for Christ, Former Catholic for Christ, Bart Brewer and the list goes on and on of anti-Catholic sites that attack and try to debunk the faith...
If what you say is true, then liberal Catholics would all be trads in a week or less.
another unrealistic comemnt without any logical truth.......
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I believe those who live among Catholics cannot be invincible ignorant.
so, merely living with people somehow enlighten them...is it not possible that the Catholics you note were poor exmaple and possibly, live like pagans.......how then do they enlighten and inspire to the Faith?
if a prot lived next door the the Peℓσѕι's, what example is he getting? what theology? Likely, a fundamentalist would be more Catholic per se than Nancy Peℓσѕι......
your comemnt holds no water logically.......
I realized that not very long afterwards as seen by my post, 3rd in number after that. I was merely trying to iterate what Bishop George Hay had taught, but it's more complicated then that.
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"Outside the Church there is no salvation" does not mean that everyone who is not a Catholic will be condemned.
Oh, really?
Persons who make use of the graces God gives them, even though they are not members of the true Church, actually have the desire to become members inasmuch as they wish to use all means ordained by God for their salvation.
Here are the very seeds of Vatican II, folks, right before our eyes. So the criterion for salvation becomes subjectivized. Anyone who "wishes to use all the means ordained by God for [his] salvation" are now inside the Church (although they are not members and not Catholic, per what's above). So following one's own lights becomes the criterion for salvation. Thus you get religious liberty.
And within the Church you have members and non-members (i.e. non-Catholics)--ergo the subsistence ecclesiology, that the Church subsists in the Catholic Church but has within Her folks who are also non-Catholic non-members.
Pius IX taught some people were invincibly ignorant, so too Baltimore Cath, so I guess we can credit Pius IX for sowing seeds for V2....planning to invalidate him??
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I believe those who live among Catholics cannot be invincible ignorant.
so, merely living with people somehow enlighten them...is it not possible that the Catholics you note were poor exmaple and possibly, live like pagans.......how then do they enlighten and inspire to the Faith?
if a prot lived next door the the Peℓσѕι's, what example is he getting? what theology? Likely, a fundamentalist would be more Catholic per se than Nancy Peℓσѕι......
your comemnt holds no water logically.......
I realized that not very long afterwards as seen by my post, 3rd in number after that. I was merely trying to iterate what Bishop George Hay had taught, but it's more complicated then that.
Hay was a good fellow, but again, someone merely living around a Kennedy or Peℓσѕι would likely get a very distorted picture of Catholicism and the noted Fundie would likely be far better example for he uninitiated seeker.
and it is a tad more complicated than "thats what it says, thats what it means" interpretations.....
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Here's another question related to this.
Where does that leave all of us who may be on the "wrong side of the fence" during this horrid crisis?
Also, SJB, you asked if that shocked me. Yes, after almost forty years of continually hearing about the mercy of God, yes, it did shock me.
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There's a Bible-believin Protestant who attends Protestant services, believes that the Catholic Church has it all wrong, and accepts, among other things, sola Scriptura and sola fide. Of all the Protestants in the world who fit that description, if they died without being disabused of these beliefs, could any of these be saved?
answer-it is up to God, who alone knows the mind and the heart of the Prot....it would be form of Calvinist double predestination for us to say that your Prot that was rasied all his life to beleive the RCC was evil and bad, taught false beliefs from day #1, when before the Throne, God would say'too bad, so sad" and throw the fellow into Hell......how was he supposed to know the truth if it was never taught to him and he viewed Catholicism as the Babylonian Whore,etc??
again, to merely say, he died not in the Faith, he goes to Hell 100% of time, would be DP Calvinism.....
where does he go? up to God, who, again, knows the heart and mind of the man.......
question for you-why is it that for yrs and yrs, Trad priests have told us to pray for the dead, all the dead, without distinction and esp around 11/1 go to Prot ceemtaries as no one prays for them? Why do we waste time praying at all then for non-Catholics, if automatically 100% of the time we believed that non-Catholic= Hell??? whay do we waste the time??
Me thinks, there might at least be a sliver of chance of avoiding Hell, elsetwise we would be instructed from day #1 not to pray, at all, for dead non-Catholics........
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HWhere does that leave all of us who may be on the "wrong side of the fence" during this horrid crisis?
For anyone on the "wrong side of the fence" we can only hope they err in good faith.
Also, SJB, you asked if that shocked me. Yes, after almost forty years of continually hearing about the mercy of God, yes, it did shock me.
Perhaps the reason would be because preachers have more or less been omitting the justice of God.
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I do not believe that Protestants have the formal motive of faith and as such are no different than animist natives growing up in a jungle.
um, yeah there is-Prots accept Christ, but with partial truths, lies and fables, heresy in other words.
animists worship rocks, trees and vague gods at best.....
is it me, or is SJB, Caminus and I (and a few others) the only ones really using any logic?
the rest seem to suspend logic all together and resort to the Prot technique of grabbing a written work, thumping it and saying "thats what it says, thats what it means" and going no further......
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And how you can honestly keep bringing up "NFP" as a legitimate point while totally ignoring rebuttal and correction on the matter is incomprensible.
Mike is obsessed with sex and NFP-simply......he demurs sex as ugly and dirty at one time, but me thinks he actually feels the opposite and is struggling with purity.......
NFP=all the worlds problems to Mike....
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Here's another question related to this.
Where does that leave all of us who may be on the "wrong side of the fence" during this horrid crisis?
Also, SJB, you asked if that shocked me. Yes, after almost forty years of continually hearing about the mercy of God, yes, it did shock me.
God judges hearts/minds to know our disposition and intents...despite some that are, as I noted before, somehow slipping into DP thinking.....
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What is "DP thinking"?
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What is "DP thinking"?
DP=double predestination
there are some on here that are going to such extremes they are starting to sound more prot......
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What is double predestination?
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What is double predestination?
http://www.gotquestions.org/double-predestination.html
"Answer: Double predestination is the belief that God creates some people whose purpose in existence is to be sent to hell"
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12376b.htm
Heretical Predestinarianism received a new and vigorous impulse at the outbreak of the Reformation. Luther having denied the freedom of the will in sinful man as also freedom in the use of grace, logically placed the eternal destiny of the individual solely and entirely in the hands of God, who without any regard to merit or demerit metes out heaven or hell just as He pleases. Zwingli endeavoured to obviate the grave consequences that this principle necessarily produces in the moral order by the vain excuse that "just as God incited the robber to commit murder, so also He forces the judge to impose the penalty of death on the murderer" (De provid. Dei, in "Opera" ed. Schuler, IV, 113). Melanchthon taught expressly that the treason of Judas was just as much the work of God as was the vocation of St. Paul (cf. Trident., Sess. VI, can. vi, in Denzinger, n. 816). Calvin is the most logical advocate of Predestinarianism pure and simple. Absolute and positive predestination of the elect for eternal life, as well as of the reprobate for hell and for sin, is one of the chief elements of his whole doctrinal system and is closely connected with the all-pervading thought of "the glory of God". Strongly religious by nature and with an instinct for systematizing, but also with a harsh unyielding character, Calvin was the first to weave the scattered threads which he thought he had found in St. Paul, St. Augustine, Wyclif, Luther, and Bucer, into a strong network which enveloped his entire system of practical and theoretical Christianity. Thus he became in fact the systematizer of the dread doctrine of predestination. Although Calvin does not deny that man had free will in paradise, still he traces back the fall of Adam to an absolute and positive decree of God (Instit., I, 15, 8; III, 23, 8).
Original sin completely destroyed the freedom of will in fallen man; nevertheless, it is not the motive of the decretum horribile, as he himself calls the decree or reprobation. Calvin is an uncompromising Supralapsarian. God for His own glorification, and without any regard to original sin, has created some as "vessels of mercy", others as "vessels of wrath". Those created for hell He has also predestined for sin, and whatever faith and righteousness they may exhibit are at most only apparent, since all graces and means of salvation are efficacious only in those predestined for heaven. The Jansenistic doctrine on redemption and grace in its principal features is not essentially different from Calvinism. The unbearable harshness and cruelty of this system led to a reaction among the better-minded Calvinists, who dreaded setting the "glory of God" above his sanctity. Even on so strictly Calvinistic a soil as Holland, Infralapsarianism, i.e. the connexion of reprobation with original sin, gained ground. England also refused to adhere to the strictly Calvinistic Lambeth Articles (1595), although in later years their essential features were embodied in the famous Westminster Confession of 1647 which was so strenuously defended by the English Puritans. On the other hand the Presbyterian Church in the United States has endeavoured to mitigate the undeniable harshness of Calvinism in its revision of its Confession in May, 1903, in which it also emphasizes the universality of the Divine love and even does not deny the salvation of children who die in infancy.
Comment-have seen Calvinists that state only they go to Heaven, Catholics automatically go to Hell......no matter ignorance, deceit,etc taught to them, Catholic= hellbound....no grace and mercy of God considered....
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Here's another question related to this.
Where does that leave all of us who may be on the "wrong side of the fence" during this horrid crisis?
17. "On account of the distinction as explained [between sedes and sedens], in so far as the Apostolic See can never fail in its permanence by divine right and law, but the individual occupants [sedentes], being mortal, fail at intervals, the APOSTOLIC SEE ITSELF, as the necessary foundation and center of unity of the Church can never be called in doubt without heresy; but it can happen sometimes, in great disturbances, and it is evident from history that it has happened, that many men, while holily keeping the Faith and veneration towards the Apostolic See as true Catholics, without their own fault are not able to acknowledge the one seated in the Apostolic See, and therefore while in no way falling into heresy, slip into schism, which however is not formal but only material. Thus in the lamentable disturbance throughout forty years, from Urban VI until Gregory XII [the Great Western Schism], Catholics were split into two and then three obediences, as they were then called, while all acknowledged and revered the divine rights of the Apostolic See; nevertheless, not acknowledging the right of the one seated in the Apostolic See, from invincible ignorance of the lawful succession [i.e. as to which claimant was the lawful successor] and thus adhering either to no one, or to a pseudo-pontiff. Among these, even saints such as St. Vincent Ferrer for a time, and his brother Boniface, a Carthusian Prior, were implicated in material schism." (Ibid. p. 223-4)
Also, SJB, you asked if that shocked me. Yes, after almost forty years of continually hearing about the mercy of God, yes, it did shock me.
There is a time for meditation on the four last things, death, judgment, heaven, and hell. There is also a time to consider God's infinite mercy. It is an error to exclude the consideration of either one.
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Thank you, Belloc.
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well said!
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Baltimore Catechism No. 3 Father Connell's Confraternity Edition
167. What do we mean when we say, "Outside the Church there is no salvation"?
When we say, "outside the Church there is no salvation," we mean that those who through their own grave fault do not know that the Catholic Church is the true Church or, knowing it, refuse to join it, cannot be saved.
(a) "Outside the Church there is no salvation" does not mean that everyone who is not a Catholic will be condemned. It does mean that no one can be saved unless he belongs in some manner to the Catholic Church, either actually or in desire, (my emphasis) for the means of grace are not given without some relation to the divine institution established by Christ.
168. Can they be saved who remain outside the Catholic Church because they do not know it is the true Church?
They who remain outside the Catholic Church through no grave fault of their own and do not know it is the true Church, can be saved by making use of the graces which God gives them.
(a) Those who are outside the Church through no fault of their own are not culpable in the sight of God because of their invincible ignorance.
(b) Persons who make use of the graces God gives them, even though they are not members of the true Church, actually have the desire to become members inasmuch as they wish to use all means ordained by God for their salvation.
(c) We should pray and try to persuade others to investigate the teachings of the Catholic Church because charity obliges us to do all we can to lead others to salvation. We should also pray for Catholic missionaries and help them in their work of bringing the faith to those outside the Catholic Church.
Guys, Vatican II ecclesiology is RIGHT HERE in the Baltimore Catechism. They speak of a Church which is bigger than the Catholic Church, since one does not have to be Catholic in order to belong to it. So at the core we have the Catholics, the "members", and other people who are not Catholic and not members who are glommed onto the Church somehow.
They who remain outside the Catholic Church ... can be saved ...
Heresy ! Here you have a word-for-word rejection of EENS.
They create a Church that's broader and bigger than the Catholic Church. In fact they even use the term "true Church". Vatican II stated that the "true Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church."
Right here you alread have Vatican II ecclesiology. Wake UP !
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Alexandria, because anyone can have a last-minute conversion that goes unseen, we hardly ever know if anyone is truly in hell unless he commits ѕυιcιdє like Judas ( in which case it was truly said that it would have been better for him if he had never been born ).
For instance, as someone slips into a coma, unable to speak, he could say "If God gives me another chance I'll be Catholic," while all that his family sees is that he died professing atheism. Something like this is probably extremely rare, but not impossible, since the fear of death is more powerful than any other motive to turn to God and the truth. But if from external evidence, if all we see is that the person died unrepentant, they can't have a Christian burial -- if such a thing even exists in our time.
There is certainly no "good hope" that someone who dies externally unrepentant will be saved. In fact, the chances are infinitesimal. But think about the Good Thief -- God does work miracles, and while that may not give you good hope, it should at least keep you from despair.
As for how God will judge us if we choose the wrong side of this crisis, that is the greatest of mysteries. I like to think that he has given each of us particular abilities, and that while some will choose a BETTER way, all those who are of good will will find an appropriate way. If my position is correct, my crown will be greater than that of a priest in SSPX. But hopefully God will take mercy on that priest. And vice versa -- if I'm wrong, I hope He'll take mercy on me.
But He knows His own, and if there is something twisted in my spirit, or in the spirit of an SSPX priest, He sees it. I don't feel my salvation is in any way assured. All I know is that the more you mistrust yourself, the safer you are.
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P.S. Today I learned that it is considered by some to be a deadly sin to call a priest a liar. Of course, the title of this thread calls Mgr. Fenton a baldfaced liar. In my defense, when I wrote that I considered invincible ignorance to be a heresy ( I go back and forth on that ) and Mgr. Fenton to be essentially not a priest and to be a proto-VII type.
Nevertheless, I'd appreciate it if people would take the implicit faith discussion into the Mystici Corporis Christi thread or a new thread of their own choosing, and to let this one die. At any rate, I'm not posting in it again.
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Guys, Vatican II ecclesiology is RIGHT HERE in the Baltimore Catechism. They speak of a Church which is bigger than the Catholic Church, since one does not have to be Catholic in order to belong to it.
No, they do not.
(a) "Outside the Church there is no salvation" does not mean that everyone who is not a Catholic will be condemned. It does mean that no one can be saved unless he belongs in some manner to the Catholic Church, either actually or in desire, for the means of grace are not given without some relation to the divine institution established by Christ.
This is not a denial of the dogma of EENS. It does not say the Church is "bigger" than the Catholic Church.
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Ladislaus
I have a book - a biography of a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart - who was stationed at Manhattanville College. She was a good friend of John Courtney Murray, S.J. who used to come there in the late nineteen thirties and during the nineteen forties and talk to them about religious liberty. It said in the book that after Vatican II, she was "delighted" that the entire Church caught up with him.
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Raoul
Now you have me more confused than I normally am. Are you saying that you now are a proponent of invincible ignorance?
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Here's a quote on "Error has no rights" from a Novus Ordo reference book: after correctly explaining the phrase, viz. the rights of a sincere but erroneous conscience are in no wise equal to the rights of sincere and correct conscience, it succinctly says,
"The Second Vatican Council rejected this thinking in its Declaration on Religious Freedom (n.3)."
The other related articles are long hymns of praise to the heretic John Courtney Murray.
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Guys, Vatican II ecclesiology is RIGHT HERE in the Baltimore Catechism. They speak of a Church which is bigger than the Catholic Church, since one does not have to be Catholic in order to belong to it.
No, they do not.
Indeed they do, SJB. They EXPLICITLY state that not everyone who's saved is Catholic, that it is not only Catholics and members of the Church who can be saved, but other people, non-Catholics, non-members of the Church who are nevertheless somehow attached to the Church based on their "wish" to follow whatever lights God gave them. That's precisely the Vatican II Lumen Gentium "subsistit" ecclesiology. They're saying that the true Church consists of Catholics AND non-Catholics.
Then I quoted their WORD-FOR-WORD denial of EENS.
You guys are in complete denial; it's righ there in front of your faces.
Have you even read V2's Lumen Gentium? It's proposing this exact same ecclesiology.
And making this "wish" to follow one's conscience the criterion for salvation leads directly to Religious Liberty.
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Pius IX taught some people were invincibly ignorant, so too Baltimore Cath, so I guess we can credit Pius IX for sowing seeds for V2....planning to invalidate him??
Pius IX taught that invincible ignorance was exculpatory, not salvific. By its very nature it simply cannot be salvific.
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Indeed they do, SJB. They EXPLICITLY state that not everyone who's saved is Catholic, that it is not only Catholics and members of the Church who can be saved, but other people, non-Catholics, non-members of the Church who are nevertheless somehow attached to the Church based on their "wish" to follow whatever lights God gave them. That's precisely the Vatican II Lumen Gentium "subsistit" ecclesiology. They're saying that the true Church consists of Catholics AND non-Catholics.
Catechumens are not members, yet they can be saved.
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Indeed they do, SJB. They EXPLICITLY state that not everyone who's saved is Catholic, that it is not only Catholics and members of the Church who can be saved, but other people, non-Catholics, non-members of the Church who are nevertheless somehow attached to the Church based on their "wish" to follow whatever lights God gave them. That's precisely the Vatican II Lumen Gentium "subsistit" ecclesiology. They're saying that the true Church consists of Catholics AND non-Catholics.
Catechumens are not members, yet they can be saved.
So you say. If they are saved, then they are members.
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Indeed they do, SJB. They EXPLICITLY state that not everyone who's saved is Catholic, that it is not only Catholics and members of the Church who can be saved, but other people, non-Catholics, non-members of the Church who are nevertheless somehow attached to the Church based on their "wish" to follow whatever lights God gave them. That's precisely the Vatican II Lumen Gentium "subsistit" ecclesiology. They're saying that the true Church consists of Catholics AND non-Catholics.
Catechumens are not members, yet they can be saved.
So you say. If they are saved, then they are members.
22. Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. "For in one spirit" says the Apostle, "were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free." [17] As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one Baptism, so there can be only one faith. [18] And therefore if a man refuse to hear the Church let him be considered -- so the Lord commands -- as a heathen and a publican. [19] It follows that those are divided in faith or government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they be living the life of its one Divine Spirit.
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Then catechumens can't be saved unless they are baptized, which is my position, since one cannot belong to the soul of the Church alone (in the same Mystici Corporis). Or you could argue that they have been baptized in desire.
In any case, that's a nice attempt to distract from the point which is
1) a word-for-word denial of EENS in the same catechism (therefore, heresy)
2) saying people belong to the Church by virtue of their wish to follow the lights given them by God.
And the conclusion is that there are degrees of belonging to the Church. People may be pagan, or Protestants, and Orthodox and still belong to the Church. There are both Catholics and non-Cathlics in the Church, according to the Baltimore Catechism. That's precisely the Vatican II ecclesiology in a nutshell.
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You are utterly deluded if you think that Vatican II happened in a vacuum, that it was a sudden dramatic rupture with all previous theological thought, that no traces of Vatican II ecclesiology had polluted theologians before Vatican II. All theologians were pefectly orthodox and then something magically happened at Vatican II. Perhaps the devil materialized and just wrote the docuмents himself.
Pius IX had to condemn religious liberty and religious indifferentism. Pius XI had to condemn false ecuмenism. Pius X stated that the pollution had run so deep that the Church was already in his day "naturally speaking, finished".
So you cannot just cite a theologian from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, etc. without caution and a grain of salt.
And what is the core Vatican II error? It's that of a false ecclesiology. What are the theological and historical antecedents to this false V2 ecclesiology? It's a gradual erosion and dismantling of EENS, and a new ecclesiology based on implicit faith belonging to the Church for salvation.
Yves Congar, who could have written V2's Lumen Gentium was a student of Garrigou-Lagrange. He was just taking Garrigou's ecclesiology to the next logical step in this process of decline.
You need to get to the root theological problem of Vatican II. By believing in implicit-faith belonging to the Church and implicit-faith salvation, yet rejecting Vatican II, you are in contradiction with yourself. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too. You either need to look back and reject the false pre-V2 ecclesiology or else accept V2.
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Then catechumens can't be saved unless they are baptized, which is my position, since one cannot belong to the soul of the Church alone (in the same Mystici Corporis). Or you could argue that they have been baptized in desire.
In any case, that's a nice attempt to distract from the point which is
1) a word-for-word denial of EENS in the same catechism (therefore, heresy)
2) saying people belong to the Church by virtue of their wish to follow the lights given them by God.
And the conclusion is that there are degrees of belonging to the Church. People may be pagan, or Protestants, and Orthodox and still belong to the Church. There are both Catholics and non-Cathlics in the Church, according to the Baltimore Catechism. That's precisely the Vatican II ecclesiology in a nutshell.
I'm not trying to distract you from anything. You are distracted, for sure, but by your own ideas.
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This Fr. Connell's Baltimore Catechism is written a lot like the VII docuмents. It has always troubled me.
For instance, question 166 deals with the obligation of belonging to the Catholic Church in order to be saved. It then proceeds, in a litttle explanatory note, to say that no one can be "saved without sanctifying grace, and the Catholic Church alone is the divinely established means by which grace is brought to the world and the full fruits of Our Lord's Redemption are applied to men."
Maybe it's me, but I find the above deceptively written. You get the impression that sanctifying grace can be found ONLY in the Catholic Church but that's not explicitly what he is saying. In any event, what's the purpose of the Church if in the following questions and answers the necessity of belonging to the Church for salvation is dismantled?
Please correct me if I am wrong.
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You are utterly deluded if you think that Vatican II happened in a vacuum, that it was a sudden dramatic rupture with all previous theological thought, that no traces of Vatican II ecclesiology had polluted theologians before Vatican II. All theologians were pefectly orthodox and then something magically happened at Vatican II. Perhaps the devil materialized and just wrote the docuмents himself.
Pius IX had to condemn religious liberty and religious indifferentism. Pius XI had to condemn false ecuмenism. Pius X stated that the pollution had run so deep that the Church was already in his day "naturally speaking, finished".
So you cannot just cite a theologian from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, etc. without caution and a grain of salt.
And what is the core Vatican II error? It's that of a false ecclesiology. What are the theological and historical antecedents to this false V2 ecclesiology? It's a gradual erosion and dismantling of EENS, and a new ecclesiology based on implicit faith belonging to the Church for salvation.
Yves Congar, who could have written V2's Lumen Gentium was a student of Garrigou-Lagrange. He was just taking Garrigou's ecclesiology to the next logical step in this process of decline.
You need to get to the root theological problem of Vatican II. By believing in implicit-faith belonging to the Church and implicit-faith salvation, yet rejecting Vatican II, you are in contradiction with yourself. You're trying to have your cake and eat it too. You either need to look back and reject the false pre-V2 ecclesiology or else accept V2.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. What was done after Vatican II is the real problem. This was done by Paul VI and his successors.
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This Fr. Connell's Baltimore Catechism is written a lot like the VII docuмents. It has always troubled me.
For instance, question 166 deals with the obligation of belonging to the Catholic Church in order to be saved. It then proceeds, in a litttle explanatory note, to say that no one can be "saved without sanctifying grace, and the Catholic Church alone is the divinely established means by which grace is brought to the world and the full fruits of Our Lord's Redemption are applied to men."
Maybe it's me, but I find the above deceptively written. You get the impression that sanctifying grace can be found ONLY in the Catholic Church but that's not explicitly what he is saying. In any event, what's the purpose of the Church if in the following questions and answers the necessity of belonging to the Church for salvation is dismantled?
Please correct me if I am wrong.
This is a catechism. I don't find it deceptive at all.
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This Fr. Connell's Baltimore Catechism is written a lot like the VII docuмents. It has always troubled me.
For instance, question 166 deals with the obligation of belonging to the Catholic Church in order to be saved. It then proceeds, in a litttle explanatory note, to say that no one can be "saved without sanctifying grace, and the Catholic Church alone is the divinely established means by which grace is brought to the world and the full fruits of Our Lord's Redemption are applied to men."
Maybe it's me, but I find the above deceptively written. You get the impression that sanctifying grace can be found ONLY in the Catholic Church but that's not explicitly what he is saying. In any event, what's the purpose of the Church if in the following questions and answers the necessity of belonging to the Church for salvation is dismantled?
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Of course you're not wrong. Even if you think Father Feeney may have overreacted to the problem, the problem itself was very very real, and it set the stage for Vatican II.
We know that the enemies of the Church first attacked the Catholic institutions of higher learning. And the Jesuits controlled most of those. Once you get to the theologians, stuff gradually filters down to Miss Smith's kindergarten class and catechism. Same thing happened with evolution in the secular world. You get a hold of the college professors and evolution filters down into the elementary school textbooks and eventually comes to be presented as if it were unquestioned fact.
Some Traditional Catholics appear to think that the world would magically turn into this Catholic utopia of orthodoxy and piety if we could only time-warp back to 1962.
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The Roman Catholic Church in the United States has always been diluted. I have read a lot about the nineteenth century in this country and there were always problems. Seems to me that no one then, as now, had the backbone to proclaim the true Faith - back then, for fear of the protestants - today, for fear of, well, pick one.
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You get the impression that sanctifying grace can be found ONLY in the Catholic Church but that's not explicitly what he is saying.
It then proceeds, in a litttle explanatory note, to say that no one can be "saved without sanctifying grace, and the Catholic Church alone is the divinely established means by which grace is brought to the world and the full fruits of Our Lord's Redemption are applied to men."
What do you think he is saying then?
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Some Traditional Catholics appear to think that the world would magically turn into this Catholic utopia of orthodoxy and piety if we could only time-warp back to 1962.
Nobody thinks this. But 1962 was much, much better than 1972 ... and 82 ... and 92... etc.
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He says "divinely established means" which infers to me that there is another means.
If I had not had the most distasteful experience of listening to what purports to be Catholic radio for several years, I wouldn't think twice about the statement. But I have learned how they get around things, so much so that, I'll say it again, they render the Church pointless and useless. Rules and regulations only for Catholics and everyone else gets a free ride.
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And I've brought that argument up as well. You have a Catholic who's too lazy to get up for Mass one Sunday, thereby commiting a single mortal sin, then dies a couple days later in a car accident. He's lost.
Then you have a Protestant who thinks he's saved by waving his hand around saying "Jesus"; he commits adultery left and right, never goes to services, sleeps in every Sunday to keep the day holy by watching football, etc.--and is saved if he's doing what HIS lights tell him he must ("accept Jesus as his savior").
So the Catholic Church would become an obstacle to salvation. Which would be blasphemous.
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And I've brought that argument up as well. You have a Catholic who's too lazy to get up for Mass one Sunday, thereby commiting a single mortal sin, then dies a couple days later in a car accident. He's lost.
Then you have a Protestant who thinks he's saved by waving his hand around saying "Jesus"; he commits adultery left and right, never goes to services, sleeps in every Sunday to keep the day holy by watching football, etc.--and is saved if he's doing what HIS lights tell him he must ("accept Jesus as his savior").
So the Catholic Church would become an obstacle to salvation. Which would be blasphemous.
This has to be the most ridiculous thing you've ever said, Ladislaus.
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What was done after Vatican II is the real problem. This was done by Paul VI and his successors.
I never thought I'd see that day when a sedevacantist implies that Vatican II itself may have been OK, that only the aftermath was bad. Maybe that's why you're so upset.
I guess you'd rather do that than ever admit that there might have been problems in the sacrosanct catechisms and theology manuals in circulation before Vatican II. So, yes, you do imply that 1962 and before was this utopia and golden age of Catholic orthodoxy.
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What was done after Vatican II is the real problem. This was done by Paul VI and his successors.
I never thought I'd see that day when a sedevacantist implies that Vatican II itself may have been OK, that only the aftermath was bad. Maybe that's why you're so upset.
You still haven't seen the day.
The Church is a society governed by real living people, it is not a set of docuмents that we interpret for ourselves. The proximate rule of faith for a Catholic is the preaching of the Church, which is done by real people.
I guess you'd rather do that than ever admit that there might have been problems in the sacrosanct catechisms and theology manuals in circulation before Vatican II. So, yes, you do imply that 1962 and before was this utopia and golden age of Catholic orthodoxy.
I'm just saying that post V2, they got rid of all those catechisms and theology manuals. They had to get rid of them, Ladislaus. That means they were orthodox, not that they were perfect.
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I'm just saying that post V2, they got rid of all those catechisms and theology manuals. They had to get rid of them, Ladislaus. That means they were orthodox, not that they were perfect.
orthodox?
Like this little nugget? (a word-for-word contradiction of EENS):
They who remain outside the Catholic Church ... can be saved ...
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I'm just saying that post V2, they got rid of all those catechisms and theology manuals. They had to get rid of them, Ladislaus. That means they were orthodox, not that they were perfect.
orthodox?
Like this little nugget? (a word-for-word contradiction of EENS):
They who remain outside the Catholic Church ... can be saved ...
(a) "Outside the Church there is no salvation" does not mean that everyone who is not a Catholic will be condemned. It does mean that no one can be saved unless he belongs in some manner to the Catholic Church, either actually or in desire, for the means of grace are not given without some relation to the divine institution established by Christ.
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EENS says that those who remain "OUTSIDE" the Church cannot be saved. Baltimore Catechism states that people can somehow "belong to" the Church without being inside. So this "belonging to" does not in any way change the fact that the BC explicitly states that outside the Church there can be salvation.
So you claim that the BC must be orthodox because it was issued by Catholic bishops and yet these same Catholic bishops can bring us Vatican II? Oh, that's right, they weren't really bishops. But then what says they were already not bishops well before Vatican II? At what point did they cease being bishops?
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As you just pointed out, BC states that both Catholics and non-Catholics can belong to the Church--which, once again, is precisely the V2 ecclesiology.
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EENS says that those who remain "OUTSIDE" the Church cannot be saved. Baltimore Catechism states that people can somehow "belong to" the Church without being inside. So this "belonging to" does not in any way change the fact that the BC explicitly states that outside the Church there can be salvation.
So you claim that the BC must be orthodox because it was issued by Catholic bishops and yet these same Catholic bishops can bring us Vatican II? Oh, that's right, they weren't really bishops. But then what says they were already not bishops well before Vatican II? At what point did they cease being bishops?
As I noted before, if one carefully considers the declarations of the Popes and councils, they do not in so many words require membership in the Church. What they require is not being "outside the Church" (extra Ecclesiam exsistentes), submission to the Supreme Pontiff, and persevering "in the bosom and unity of the Church."
Baltimore Catechism states that people can somehow "belong to" the Church without being inside.
No, it does not. I agree that the wording of the BC should have been changed. That is my opinion.
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You wish to prove your (above) thesis about Vatican II. That blinds you, Ladislaus. As I said before, there is a distinction, and the same one made in the Holy Office letter, between means of salvation which are intrinsically necessary for salvation, and those which are necessary only by divine institution. The latter, clearly, were not necessary at all times, because they did not exist until Christ's coming.
I also pointed out that the Baltimore Catechism (1908) that I am looking at says the same things that you have said here as far as the unlikely possibility of salvation for one who is not a formal member of the Church.
I'm not going to convince you of anything here, so I'll retire from this discussion.
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Wow, I had forgotten about this one. I think I may have apologized for this already. But since I no longer think invincible ignorance is a heresy, of course I repent of saying Mgr. Fenton was a liar. His is one of the most accurate explanations of what "outside the Church there is no salvation" really means.
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Wow, I had forgotten about this one. I think I may have apologized for this already. But since I no longer think invincible ignorance is a heresy, of course I repent of saying Mgr. Fenton was a liar. His is one of the most accurate explanations of what "outside the Church there is no salvation" really means.
You are going to have to expand your signature line! ;) Is this the "Raoul apology tour" ala JPII? j/k :wink:
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Wow, I had forgotten about this one. I think I may have apologized for this already. But since I no longer think invincible ignorance is a heresy, of course I repent of saying Mgr. Fenton was a liar. His is one of the most accurate explanations of what "outside the Church there is no salvation" really means.
Mike, you have been quite a prolific poster on the forum. Are you reading through all your old posts?
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Wow, I had forgotten about this one. I think I may have apologized for this already. But since I no longer think invincible ignorance is a heresy, of course I repent of saying Mgr. Fenton was a liar. His is one of the most accurate explanations of what "outside the Church there is no salvation" really means.
:cheers: