CATHOLIC APOLOGISTS INDICATE POPE PIUS XII WAS 'FALLIBLE' : VATICAN'S NEW POLICY ON JEWS AGREES WITH THEM

Apologist Mark Shea in a feature on InsideCatholic.com, Can Non Catholics be saved? (24.10.2009) states that Fr. Leonard Feeney was excommunicated for heresy.

He writes,' Rev. Leonard Feeney was excommunicated for insisting that only people in visible communion with the Catholic Church could be saved.’ This is the message of Mark Shea and Patrick Madrid. Also the late Fr. William Most on the Eternal Word Television Network (ETWN).

 Fr. Leonard Feeney taught that defacto everyone needs to enter the Catholic Church through Catholic Faith and the Baptism of water to go to Heaven and avoid Hell and there were no exceptions.

This was the dogma of the Council of Florence and the Bull Sanctum of Pope Boniface. This was the ex cathedra dogma of Pope Innocent III, Lateran Council IV (AD 1215), Unam Sanctam, Papal Bull of Pope Boniface VIII, 1302, Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441. According to Ludwig Ott, this teaching has been solemnly defined by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and affirmed by the Union Council of Florence, by Popes Innocent III, Boniface VIII, Clement VI, Benedict XIV, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius XII and many other popes

So Fr. Leonard Feeney affirmed the dogma. He said that de facto everyone needs to enter Catholic Church, with no exception to the baptism of water, to avoid Hell and go to Heaven. If they did not enter the Church he would say, and so did the dogma, they would be oriented to Hell. So how could he be in heresy, as alleged, for affirming an ex cathedra dogma which Pope Pius XII called ‘infallible’.

So if Fr. Leonard Feeney was allegedly excommunicated for heresy then Pope Pius XII who approved of the excommunication as it is reported, would be in heresy and error. It would mean he was fallible on this faith-issue.

Yet the apologists, and the late Fr. William G.Most on the EWTN website, state Fr. Leonard Feeney was excommunicated for heresy and there has been no denial from the office of Cardinal Ratzinger or the Vatican.

Is this statement based on a new Revelation in the Catholic Church?

It could not be Vatican Council II since Ad Gentes 7, is in agreement with the dogma and Fr. Leonard Feeney.

If Fr. Leonard Feeney was in heresy then it must have been a new interpretation of the dogma.

But how can a dogma change?

When did this change happen?

I think the change happened when the Vatican and Boston’s secular newspapers were told that the dogma is now being re-interpreted. It is being changed they were told.

The Vatican was informed in the 1940’s that de jure (in principle) Fr. Leonard Feeney and the St. Benedict Center do not believe that there could be exceptions to Catholic Faith and the Baptism of water, for going to Heaven.

The Vatican (Holy Office/CDF) was told that some professors at Boston College and the St. Benedict Center of Fr. Leonard Feeney, in principle do not teach that the baptism of desire and implicit salvation exists.

Then-the secular newspapers were told, or allowed to think, that Fr. Leonard Feeney and the St. Benedict Center were teaching that de facto, everyone with no exception, needs Catholic Faith and the Baptism of water to go to Heaven and avoid Hell-so they were excommunicated.

The Archbishop of Boston did not  realease,for three years, the Letter of the Holy Office (1949) to the media which affirmed ‘the dogma’ of extra ecclesiam nulla salus. The Letter referred to the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus as the ‘infallible’ teaching. This point was in favor of St. Benedict Center which had been placed under interdict by the Archbishop of Boston. Imagine having to tell the Press that the Letter supported Fr.Leonard Feeney!

Neither did the cardinal-archbishop of Boston issue a clarification when the newspapers reported that the Catholic Church has changed its teaching on the dogma. The newspapers instead said no more does every one have to convert to avoid Hell.

This  was when ‘the dogma changed’.

So when apologist Patrick Madrid was asked a call-in question on EWTN radio, if non-Catholic’s need to convert to go to Heaven-he gave the de jure answer from the Catechism and Vatican Council II.

It was correct (de jure) but false - de facto.

Non Catholics with the baptism of desire and implicit faith can be saved( we accept in principle) but de facto everyone needs to enter the Catholic Church with no exception, as the thrice defined dogma taught.

So the confusion still continues on a wide scale among Catholics.

If one says de facto any non Catholic can be saved in invincible ignorance or with a good conscience it is heresy. It is rejecting an ex-cathedra teaching like the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady. It would also mean rejecting the Church teaching on the infallibility of the pope which is a dogma defined in the First Vatican Council of 1870. It would also mean rejecting the teaching that a dogma is irrevocable and unchanging.

It would also be contradicting the saints like Maximillian Kolbe and Francis Xavier. If Fr. Leonard Feeney was in heresy then it must have been a new interpretation of the dogma. Imagine St. Francis Xavier before the natives in Old Goa, saying to them, “Many of you must convert to go to Heaven and avoid Hell. But not all of you. Those of you who have a good conscience or are in invincible ignorance can be saved. So stay where you are!"

Unthinkable?! But this is what many good Catholics are saying, including apologists.

Now the Vatican supports them with its new official teaching on the Jews. Inspite of the Gospel of John saying that Jews need to convert to avoid Hell the Vatican states they do not . Also new theologies are being provided to support this heresy.

Judaism

I must say that from the first day of my theological studies, the profound unity between the Old and New Testament, between the two parts of our Sacred Scripture, was somehow clear to me. I had realized that we could read the New Testament only together with what had preceded it, otherwise we would not understand it. Then naturally what happened in the Third Reich struck us as Germans, and drove us all the more to look at the people of Israel with humility, shame, and love.

In my theological formation, these things were interwoven, and marked the pathway of my theological thought. So it was clear to me – and here again in absolute continuity with John Paul II – that in my proclamation of the Christian faith there had to be a central place for this new interweaving, with love and understanding, of Israel and the Church, based on respect for each one’s way of being and respective mission[. . .]

A change also seemed necessary to me in the ancient liturgy. In fact, the formula was such as to truly wound the Jews, and it certainly did not express in a positive way the great, profound unity between Old and New Testament. For this reason, I thought that a modification was necessary in the ancient liturgy, in particular in reference to our relationship with our Jewish friends. I modified it in such a way that it contained our faith, that Christ is salvation for all. That there do not exist two ways of salvation, and that therefore Christ is also the savior of the Jews, and not only of the pagans. But also in such a way that one did not pray directly for the conversion of the Jews in a missionary sense, but that the Lord might hasten the historic hour in which we will all be united. For this reason, the arguments used polemically against me by a series of theologians are rash, and do not do justice to what was done. - Benedict XVI, “Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times”, Ignatius Press, 2010. (From the website La Chiesa)(Emphasis added)

Cardinal Tarcisco Bertone, Vatican, Secretary of State has also denied the ex-cathedra dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus. In a front page article in the L’Osservatore Romano (April 4, 2008) a statement was issued to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel to prevent war and to resume dialogue. The report said that Jews in the present times do not have to convert.

The pope and the Vatican Curia are contradicting Pope Pius XII, whom the pope wants to beatify, and who called the ex cathedra dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus an 'infallible' teaching. It also means that the three popes who infallibly taught extra ecclesiam nulla salus are wrong according to the Vatican. This is the rejection of another dogma of the Church, the infallibility of the pope ex cathedra.It is a contradiction of most of the Gospel of St.John  which says Jews need to convert to be saved from Hell.