Why do you suppose that we should 'defend' Assisi if we take John Paul and Benedict as valid Popes?  

So you are saying that by this prayer meeting, John Paul formally renounced the Christian religion?  How does that work?

In other words, explain how that amounts to a profession of Judaism or Islam or Naturalism or Rationalism.  I trust you won't find any such profession, but what you will find is a novel understanding of religions in light of Vatican II.  This novel understanding holds that the religions are good insofar as the agree with or express an affinity with Christianity.  This is a grevious error that leads to heresy and apostasy.  But something that leads to something else is not the thing itself.  The aggravating circuмstance is not that he was a usurper, but rather that he was the Roman Pontiff.  Only a Roman Pontiff could cause that much damage in the Church.

DeMaistre, are you back in the fold?  

Caminus, no, this has gone well beyond just saying that other religions have "good aspects."  They have said the Old Covenant with Jєωs was never rescinded and that Jєωs still have the faith.  Yesterday I found a quote from then-Cardinal Ratzinger where he said that Jєωs can convert people to the one God and help them out of the darkness.

Saying Jєωs can convert people to the true faith = Denial of Christ and His Church as the only means of salvation.  You are not going to be able to scare even kids like DeMaistre for much longer.  It's so obvious now.  

I'm almost beginning to feel sorry for you because the whole edifice is crumbling.  Why do you keep digging yourself in deeper and deeper?  Don't you know you can't win on the side of the Father of Lies?

  Don't feel sorry for me, friend.  Feel sorry for yourself.  When you are ready to take a look at your position, let me know.  And frankly, all this talk of how "obvious" things are only serves to discredit your position as it stems from a severe over-simplification.  You seem to think that incessantly saying to people how "obvious" it all is relieves you from presenting actual evidence.  

When speaking about concrete facts, upon which you claim to rest, I detect more dishonesty and simple unwarranted inferences.  Sorry, that's how it looks to me and you ain't doin' much to remove these accusations, in fact, you are seriously compounding them.  

no, this has gone well beyond just saying that other religions have "good aspects."  They have said the Old Covenant with Jєωs was never rescinded and that Jєωs still have the faith.

No it hasn't, it is the direct result of thinking about these religions in the best of terms.  All sorts of bad things happen because of this very small change in principle.  A small error in principle leads to very big problems in conclusions.  That's a basic philosophical principle.  

Now, if they identify modern Jєωs with the Jєωs of old, then the talk of having "faith" makes sense.  But you and I both know there's a problem with making such an identification.  A very big problem indeed no doubt.  But on the other hand, listen carefully, this problem does not touch upon the faith itself.  It is a factual error with very dire consequences.  With regard to the "revocation" issue, you'll have to consider the Abrahamic Covenant when trying to discern their meaning.  And that is a primary point, trying to discern their meaning, not what you inject and infer from their words.  You ought to try it sometime.

Yesterday I found a quote from then-Cardinal Ratzinger where he said that Jєωs can convert people to the one God and help them out of the darkness.

And this is a direct result of looking at religions in the way they do, it perverts other things indirectly.  But that is what theological and errors about concrete facts do: they injure and diminish other things, up to and include the faith itself.  Your primary problem is that you confuse the intellectual order of things and the direction of the succession of ideas.  Take for example your ridiculous treatment of Lumen Gentium.  You interpret it in such a way that has the Fathers of the Council asserting that they worship false gods.  

This reading turns the whole thing on its head; it is an act of injustice in order to further your opinion.  To think that the Bishops, the majority of whom were orthodox, intended or even implied such a thing is a stupendous mistake.  So outrageous is your forced reading that it seems you have totally disqualified yourself from an objective critical analysis.  For anyone with even a remote sense of understanding will see that the statement asserts that Muslims, right or wrong, worship the same God as we do, not the other way around.  The correctness of this statement needs to be assessed on its own merits, not your absolutely unfounded, ridiculous, unjust imposition of meaning.

 

"With regard to the 'revocation' issue, you'll have to consider the Abrahamic Covenant when trying to discern their meaning."

Who are you, anyway, are you a Vatican II 'priest'?  They are the only ones who suggest we must try to "discern the meaning" of Vatican II.  The last I recall, Christ said "Let your answers be yes, yes, no, no, anything else is from the devil."  Not "contradict yourself deliberately, be orthodox one day and heretical the next so people become worn-out and apathetic."  

Why would I spend my time trying to "discern the meaning" of apostates?  When I read their writings, I read them in order to study their methods of lying, like a police officer watching a suspect squirm in his seat as he keeps digging himself in deeper and deeper with conflicting accounts of where he was at 7 PM last night.  

Anyway, I know their meaning very well.  The Popes before Vatican II and writers like Henri DeLassus put us on our guard against it.  And before becoming Catholic I read lots of philosophy, garbage like Emmanuel Levinas and his talk of the "Other" -- meaning the Jєω.  Ratzinger uses PRECISELY the terminology of this Judaizer to speak of Jєωs.  I know this whole early 20th century strain of nihilistic/New Age/Jєωιѕн gobbeldygook like the back of my hand, it's from Adorno and Heidegger and Rahner all jumbled together.  

Do you want me to write you an essay on Charles Tournemire's "L'Orgue Mystique" and how this reflects the underside of the new liturgy, with its purposeful vagueness, and the way this plays on Jungian dream-states?  Would that establish my academic credentials?  I know exactly what they are trying to do in Vatican II, my friend.  I have traced it to its root.  

Luckily since my fortuitous reading of Lumen Gentium I don't have to bother with even this anymore.  Lumen Gentium is open heresy.  You may think I am too obvious with my obviouslies -- I will continue to think you are ridiculous with your that's-ridiculouses.  What part of this don't you understand?  "Together with us Muslims worship the One True God."  Boom.  Basta.  Out of the Church.  Heretic.  Mikey doesn't need to play anymore.  And what part of JPII's "The Old Covenant has never been revoked" don't you understand?  

I know I touch your sore spot.  I don't complain about spectacles like Assissi because those do not touch the main body of Catholics, but call them out for what you people don't want anyone to know about -- their dogmatic idolatry and enforced sins against the First Commandment FROM THE MAGISTERIUM.  

You want me to be like the others and pretend that the thieves are too subtle to be caught, that they have protected themselves through cloudy, Heideggerean mumbo-jumbo and that I have to twist my mind into a pretzel to discern the few shreds of Catholic truth within that verbal swamp-gas.  But they have not protected themselves.  They have been caught dogmatically teaching heresy and eliminating themselves from Holy Mother Church along with all those who serve them, unless they repent of their errors.  Anyone reading what I say can now go take a look at Lumen Gentium, there are no excuses left.    

Great threads on this subforum!

In the last few weeks Cathinfo has become the hottest Catholic forum on the net. On no other forum do they even allow these things to be discussed.

Carry on!

Good point, SJT. Hard to believe, I was banned from AQ for posting critical comments about Benedict XVI. It's a different world at CathInfo, that's for sure.

But on the other hand, listen carefully, this problem does not touch upon the faith itself.

Does worshiping with Animists in Lake Togo "touch upon the faith"?  If NOT, what possibly COULD?

"...cogitatione, verbo, et opere..."

Btw, Mortalium animos clearly spells out that such behavior (and the mere SUPPORT of such) is - not approaches, leads to, etc., but IS - apostasy.

"...Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little, turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, IS altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion..." [My emphasis - g_v]

That last bit is a concise definition of apostasy - and is being applied to those who merely support such activity.