Do There Exist "enemies Of The Church"?

[Perigrina]

Well I apologize if I hurt you P.

I don't think that it's a personal attack though to state we've got too much document quoting in the Church. I'm just speculating but I think some of the highest authorities would agree with me! The teaching authority of the Church is not founded on its documents but on the Second and Third persons of the Holy Trinity.

Also can one of the mods please do something about the post above P's. I'm trying not to draw attention to it, but please?

 

I accept your apology.  However, I think we need more document quoting if we are going to to talk about Church teaching on religious freedom.  Most people assume that this means accepting the "Enlightenment" understanding of the concept and it really is not the same.  Anyone who wants to talk about this needs to read Dignitatis Humanae the Vatican II document on religious freedom in order to understand what the Church means by it: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html

 

The context of the document is the Cold War and much of it is best understood as referring to Communist persecution of Catholics.  There is nothing in this document against having a Catholic state.  This document explicitly states that it does not affect previous teaching.

 

Religious freedom, in turn, which men demand as necessary to fulfill their duty to worship God, has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society. Therefore it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.

 

And, while there is recognition of the role of conscience in this document, it also says: 

 

In the formation of their consciences, the Christian faithful ought carefully to attend to the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church.(35) For the Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that truth which is Christ Himself, and also to declare and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origins in human nature itself. 

 

There is no new interpretation which supercedes an older ones.  Church teaching is the same because truth does not change.

[Perigrina]

A personal attack is "you're so ignorant." Maggie's talking about people being obsessed with documents in general, to the point where they forget that we're talking about people and their lives here, not just a scholarly exercise in consistency. Feeling offended doesn't always equal a personal attack. I've had to learn that the hard way a few times on here.

 

Quoting documents can be helpful in the right situation, but here it's not getting anywhere. I get how quoting a document can seem like (and often is) a slam-dunk for an argument from authority. But the reality is that shoving a document in someone's face is the least effective way to get them to agree with you, especially on the internet. If you want to up your apologetics game and get someone to agree with you, you've got to address their argument directly. Documents don't speak for themselves, even if it seems like they do to you.

I think there's something to be said for taking care to not make perfect intellectual consistency into some kind of idol. Our understanding of the Truth grows over time. We all know that. Part of that understanding means that things are going to look different, especially now that we live in an age where for the first time in history, the average lay person can look up a whole library of Church documents from every era. The Church in the year 314 looked different from the Church in the year 1054 and different from the Church in 1962. To say that nothing has ever changed is disingenuous.

 

Since Maggie has apologized and I have accepted her apology, there is no reason to discuss your opinion on whether there was a personal attack.

 

Quoting documents is how we discover what the Church actually teaches about a topic, so we are not merely throwing personal opinions back and forth.  The Church does have an authority that none of us as individuals do.

 

Obviously, practical application of the truth can change, as well as which aspects need to be emphasized in an given situation.  But basic principles cannot change.  Some things are contingent on circumstances, but doctrinal truth cannot change. 

[CatherineM]

I just don't like being looked down on by other Catholics for not quoting 500 or 1000 year old texts and insisting that the Latin mass is better. I get attacked by Catholics ten times more often than by atheists or evangelicals.

[Maggyie]

P there's great work by Fr Brian Mullady on this topic that could maybe clarify this for you. Let me see if I can find it.

To be honest I wonder how the masses of Christians in the past discovered what the church taught given their illiteracy made quoting documents back and forth to each other impossible. Basilisa makes a great point about things looking rather different. Are we more faithful in the modern era because of our easy access to these documents? Is salvation more easily obtained now than it was then? When did the church enjoy greater success in fidelity of its members and evangelizing the unbaptized? How important do you think documents were in the ministry of St Peter and St Paul?

[Perigrina]

I just don't like being looked down on by other Catholics for not quoting 500 or 1000 year old texts and insisting that the Latin mass is better. I get attacked by Catholics ten times more often than by atheists or evangelicals.

 

I have seen my fair share of obnoxious trads.  I don't doubt that you have had some unpleasant encounters.  And I concede that documents can be abused.  Nevertheless, they can be valuable and helpful. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. 

[Maggyie]

Ah I found it:


http://www.thomist.org/jourl/1994/941aMull.htm

Father says, "In this article, then, I would like to examine the question of whether the teaching of the church has really changed or not. Is this development truly homogeneous or heterogeneous (change)? If the former is true, then the teaching of the Second Vatican Council should be viewed not as a conformity to the spirit of this age, but rather as an application of the same traditional teaching of the church looked at from a different point of view to correspond to new problems found in the signs of our times. In other words, we may have always taught the same teaching as Vatican II about religious freedom, but may not have emphasized this part of the truth because of other moral problems in other times....

"One of the difficulties in discerning this truth comes from the historical problem of the confessional state. John Courtney Murray makes a good examination of this problem from the point of view of jurisdiction in law. I believe that this is the only basis on which the problem of the confessional state need be discussed. In other words, the union of throne and altar is a practical problem truly limited to one particular epoch in history and really has little to do with the problem discussed in this paper. "

The issue is that some traditionalists do not fully grasp that the face-value interpretation of the Syllabus of Errors is related to a specific epoch in history, the context of which no longer exists. They literally believe that a union of throne and altar is required under Catholic teaching. It's not.

[Maggyie]

Also can more people please report the post I mentioned earlier? It's freaking me out a little that it's still up there.

[Perigrina]

To be honest I wonder how the masses of Christians in the past discovered what the church taught given their illiteracy made quoting documents back and forth to each other impossible. Basilisa makes a great point about things looking rather different. Are we more faithful in the modern era because of our easy access to these documents? Is salvation more easily obtained now than it was then? When did the church enjoy greater success in fidelity of its members and evangelizing the unbaptized? How important do you think documents were in the ministry of St Peter and St Paul?

 

The documents used in the ministry of St. Peter and St. Paul eventually became what we call the New Testament.  I'd say they were and continue to be pretty important.

 

There is no question that illiterate people can have great faith, but I question how relevant that is to those of us who can read.  Each Christian is called to follow God according to his own state of life and circumstances.  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength."

 

Everything we have, every dimension of our being, is for loving God.  For me, giving my mind and my ability to read to God, means I try to use Church documents to grow closer to God through forming my mind to think with the Church.  It is up to you to discern what God wants you to do with your mind and ability to read.  If that does not include Church documents, that's fine.  But that does not mean that you get to make pronouncements about documents being useless in general.

[Perigrina]

Ah I found it:


http://www.thomist.org/jourl/1994/941aMull.htm

Father says, "In this article, then, I would like to examine the question of whether the teaching of the church has really changed or not. Is this development truly homogeneous or heterogeneous (change)? If the former is true, then the teaching of the Second Vatican Council should be viewed not as a conformity to the spirit of this age, but rather as an application of the same traditional teaching of the church looked at from a different point of view to correspond to new problems found in the signs of our times. In other words, we may have always taught the same teaching as Vatican II about religious freedom, but may not have emphasized this part of the truth because of other moral problems in other times....

"One of the difficulties in discerning this truth comes from the historical problem of the confessional state. John Courtney Murray makes a good examination of this problem from the point of view of jurisdiction in law. I believe that this is the only basis on which the problem of the confessional state need be discussed. In other words, the union of throne and altar is a practical problem truly limited to one particular epoch in history and really has little to do with the problem discussed in this paper. "

The issue is that some traditionalists do not fully grasp that the face-value interpretation of the Syllabus of Errors is related to a specific epoch in history, the context of which no longer exists. They literally believe that a union of throne and altar is required under Catholic teaching. It's not.

 

If you think this is in conflict with anything that I have written, then you have not understood me.  (Or possibly, you have not understood the quote. Or maybe both.)

[Maggyie]

Hmmm. I think it's that you don't understand where most traditionalists are coming from when they go document diving. They are coming, most of them, from a restorationist or integralist point of view.

[CrossCuT]

If people want to view the world as filled with enemys then whatever, your choice. But please remember that all humans regardless of what they believe, say, or do are all children of God; made in his image and deserving of love and dignity. Do not allow labeling them as enemies to dictate your thoughts an actions to hatred. That happens too much among Catholics and I find this whole topic really counter productive.

 

We do have an enemy, he is Satan. Satan uses sin THROUGH us to bring the church down. Love the sinner, hate the sin. 

 

But I know you all will have your reasons to think in this way but I honestly feel that it is Satan putting this seed down for us to look for reasons to find emeneys among us. Silly.

[Dr_Asik]

You don't to look very hard to find people actively trying to undermine the Church's activities. Richard Dawkins tried to have Benedict XVI arrested on his visit to England and spends most of his energy trying to convince people that God doesn't exist (using mostly laughable arguments, but still).

[Credo in Deum]

Richard Dawkins tried to have Benedict XVI arrested on his visit to England and spends most of his energy trying to convince people that God doesn't exist (using mostly laughable arguments, but still).

 

I've always wondered if Dawkins spends the same amount of time being anti-leprechaun, Sandman, or Cow Jumping over the Moon.  

[CrossCuT]

Organized Naturalism, Synagogue of Satan, Radical Feminists and Homosexuals, Schismatics, Heretics, to name a few...

 

Not all feminists and homosexuals are out to get you

[Maggyie]

Organized Naturalism, Synagogue of Satan, Radical Feminists and Homosexuals, Schismatics, Heretics, to name a few...

Since this doesn't seem to be removed yet, I'll point it out. For those who don't know, "synagogue of Satan" is a white supremacist, anti Semitic book by Andrew Carrington Hitchcock. Although the phrase is used in the book of Revelation, most people use it in the same breath with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Illuminati etc.