So Ladislaus, why then, according your version of reality, was St Paul not "out of the Church" for resisting St. Peter to his face? And where, pray tell, does it say it is de fide to obey a pope who tells you to commit sin? And the state of emergency — obviously you're okay with Koran-kissing and sacred beach balls and popes bowing to Mecca in a mosque and clown masses, and and and... no state of emergency, nothing to see here folks, move along...
Was St. Peter a modernist?
Yeah, the "Faith is greater than obedience" thing is one of the biggest. This is not an issue of resisting a positive command that is harmful to the Faith. We are talking about the MAGISTERIUM. If we have to resist the Magisterium in order to maintain the faith, this then undermines the very raison d'etre of the Magisterium and uproots everything that makes us different from Protestants. To say that we must reject and "resist" the Magisterium in order to keep our faith is to say that the Magisterium has defected, that the Church has defected.
Obedience in itself is neither good nor bad. Its character is determined by what and to whom obedience is given. Obedience is one of the several subsidiary virtues of Justice. The first duty of Justice is the virtue of Religion and it is the virtue of Religion which determines if an act of Obedience is a virtue or not. The virtue of Religion consists of specific acts many of which can be directly observed and measured and are listed in any text on moral theology. There is not a single act of the virtue of Religion that has not been trampled upon since Vatican II by Catholics by their submission to a false obedience which they were morally obligated to resist.
We all owe obedience to the Magisterium if we are to save our souls so it is imperative that we understand what we mean by “Magisterium.” The word is not univocal but has what I understand to be three distinct and different meanings. One is the infallible teaching authority of the Church, the second is the teaching of churchmen by their grace of state, and the third refers only to the office itself as in “authentic (or authorized) magisterium” which is more related to authority of the office than to any specific teaching. These are not distinctions of degree but of kind.
St. Pius X in Pascendi says “every society needs a directing authority to guide its members toward the common end, to foster prudently the elements of cohesion, which in a religious society are doctrine and worship; hence, the triple authority in the Catholic Church, disciplinary, dogmatic and liturgical” (emphasis his). The purpose of the “directing authority” (i.e. disciplinary) is to direct the Church “toward the common end” which are “doctrine” (dogmatic) and “worship” (liturgical). The Church is God’s. He established it and endowed it with three primary attributes: Authority, Infallibility and Indefectibility. These three correspond to the three primary duties of the Church: to govern (to do), to teach (to know), and to sanctify (to be). The Magisterium to which obedience is always unconditionally due is that which is grounded upon the attribute of Infallibility that God has endowed His Church to teach without the possibility of error. These constitute the truths of our Faith and the purity of liturgical worship to which all the faithful are subject regardless of any office they may hold in the Church whatsoever. All other forms of obedience are necessarily conditional.
The 1989 Profession of Faith which Pope Benedict XVI and, more recently, Archbishop Guido Pozzo, said is the one and only unconditional requirement for the regularization of the SSPX. The problem is that this Profession of Faith contains a non-dogmatic proposition, that is, the third paragraph added to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, that calls for unconditional submission of the “will and intellect,” or as Lumen Gentium calls it, submission of the “soul,” to the “authentic magisterium” which essentially identifies the actual the papal office.
What is more, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which
either the Roman pontiff or the college of bishops enunciate when they exercise the authentic Magisterium even if they proclaim those teachings in an act that is not definitive.
Donum Veritatis, on religious vocation of theologians which references
Lumen Gentium, Cardinal Ratzinger said that the “religious submission of will and intellect... cannot be simply exterior or disciplinary but must be understood within the logic of faith and under the impulse of obedience to the faith” and indicates the “indissoluble bond between the ‘sensus fidei’” and the “religious submission of the will and intellect.... to the (authentic) magisterium.” This is indistinguishable from the submission that every faithful Catholic must give to articles of divine and Catholic Faith and constitutes a form of idolatry in that it calls for men to give to men what can only be given to God.
I believe that Bishop Fellay has already made this Profession of Faith.
If Rome were interested in regularizing the SSPX it should require nothing from the SSPX and could be done even without their consultation. What +Fellay could have done and should have done, and by not doing betrayed ever Faithful Catholic, was to demand from Rome that the infallible Magisterium be engaged to definitively answer directly the questions of Faith and purity of worship that have been undermined or corrupted by the authentic magisterium of Vatican II and the authentic magisterium of the post-conciliar popes.
As Catholics we must always submit to the Magisterium of the Church and resist any exercise of the “authentic magisterium” exercised by churchmen who employ the ordinary magisterium in a manner that undermines in either word or deed the truths of our faith or the purity of worship that is due to God.
Drew
Topic: Those Who Reject The Popes And Are Out Of the Church (Read 8681 times)