Saturday, July 29, 2023

Rorate Caeili and Roberto dei Mattei have posted another report in which they interpret Vatican Council II irrationally and not rationally.


Rorate Caeili and Roberto dei Mattei have posted another report in which they interpret Vatican Council II irrationally and not rationally.So they remain politically correct with the Left. Mattei stays in good standing with the Catholic Church in Italy.

 

 

“Complexities and paradoxes in the history of the Church”: Vatican II, John XXIII, Ottaviani, and the Tucho Fernández challenge- by Roberto de Mattei

                                                                                                           July 26, 2023


The appointment of Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández as prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has a symbolic weight of great import. In a certain sense, it represents the culmination of the pontificate of Pope Francis, who has meant to send a clear sign to those he referred to, at his meeting on 24 November 2022 with the members of the International Theological Commission, as the “backward-looking” of the Church.

Lionel : This is not the culmination.Mattei accepts Vatican Council II interpreted irrationally. So he is safe. But those orthodox Catholics who reject Vatican Council II, irrational , which is heretical and schismatic will be labeled ‘radical fanatics’, as noted on the website of the Jubillee 2025.

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Another signal in this direction is the appointment of 21 cardinals — including Fernández himself — for the consistory in September, which will precede the opening of the Synod on synodality. Francis wants to ensure that the direction in which he has steered the Church will not be changed by his successor, since “there is no going back”.

Lionel : If cardinals and bishops announce that they interpret Vatican Council II, with LG 8,14,15,16,UR 3, NA 2,GS 22 etc, as referring to hypothetical cases only, the Church returns to the past.

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So, are they in the right who are convinced that Pope Francis’s latest selections are the expression of a radical break with the pontificates that preceded his? Is Francis the worst pope in history, or perhaps, as some think, even an antipope?

Lionel : This is all meaningless once you start interpreting Vatican Council II rationally. 

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For the historian, the reality is more complex. In the last sixty years, the points of departure from the Tradition of the Church have been many, but the first and most eloquent reversal of perspective dates back to the 11 October 1962 address Gaudet Mater Ecclesia with which John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council.

Lionel: He had accepted the 1949 Letter of the Holy Office(CDF) to the Archbishop of Boston which made an objective mistake and so created a New Theology which says outside the Church there is known salvation, there are visible exceptions for the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus. 

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Pope Francis’s letter to the new prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith, in its language and content, has much which resonates with that document. In the central passage of Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, John XXIII explained that Vatican II had not been convened to condemn errors or formulate new dogmas, but to present the Church’s traditional teaching in language suited to the new times. John XXIII affirmed that: 

“[A]s for the present time, the Bride of Christ prefers to use the medicine of mercy instead of taking up the weapons of rigour; she thinks that she must meet the needs of the day, presenting the value of her teaching more clearly rather than condemning… In fact, the deposit of Faith is one thing, that is, the truths that are contained in our venerable doctrine; the way in which they are announced is another, but always in the same sense and with the same acceptation. Great importance must be granted to this method, and if necessary, it must be applied with patience; that is, one must adopt the form of exposition most in keeping with the magisterium, the nature of which is predominantly pastoral.”

 Lionel: ‘always in the same sense and with the same acceptation’?. With the Irrational Premise of the 1949 Letter of the Holy Office there was a new theology with new doctrines. They were accepted by Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI and the popes who followed.

Now, among those things which the Church has always preached and will never cease to preach is contained also that infallible statement by which we are taught that there is no salvation outside the Church.

However, this dogma must be understood in that sense in which the Church herself understands it. For, it was not to private judgments that Our Savior gave for explanation those things that are contained in the deposit of faith, but to the teaching authority of the Church.

Now, in the first place, the Church teaches that in this matter there is question of a most strict command of Jesus Christ. For He explicitly enjoined on His apostles to teach all nations to observe all things whatsoever He Himself had commanded (Matt. 28: 19-20).

Now, among the commandments of Christ, that one holds not the least place by which we are commanded to be incorporated by baptism into the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church, and to remain united to Christ and to His Vicar, through whom He Himself in a visible manner governs the Church on earth.

Therefore, no one will be saved who, knowing the Church to have been divinely established by Christ, nevertheless refuses to submit to the Church or withholds obedience from the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on earth.

Not only did the Savior command that all nations should enter the Church, but He also decreed the Church to be a means of salvation without which no one can enter the kingdom of eternal glory.

In His infinite mercy God has willed that the effects, necessary for one to be saved, of those helps to salvation which are directed toward man's final end, not by intrinsic necessity, but only by divine institution, can also be obtained in certain circumstances when those helps are used only in desire and longing. This we see clearly stated in the Sacred Council of Trent, both in reference to the sacrament of regeneration and in reference to the sacrament of penance (<Denzinger>, nn. 797, 807).

The same in its own degree must be asserted of the Church, in as far as she is the general help to salvation. Therefore, that one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that he be incorporated into the Church actually as a member, but it is necessary that at least he be united to her by desire and longing.- Letter of the Holy Office 1949

https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/letter-to-the-archbishop-of-boston-2076

 So they rejected the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus. They chose to interpret Magisterial Documents with Cushingism instead of traditional Feeneyism. There was new ecclesiology which was being pastorally implemented.

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John XXIII attributed a specific pastoral character to the Council that was opening. 

Lionel: Yes. They had agreed that since Pius XII had not objected to the 1949 Letter of the Holy Office and neither defended Fr. Leonard Feeney of Boston, the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus (EENS) was obsolete. There were objective exceptions of the baptism of desire and being saved in invincible ignorance for EENS. Pastorally Tradition was obsolete. There was a new ecclesiology which had to be implemented. Vatican Council II was to be a liberal, leftist attack on EENS.

Pope Paul VI lifted the excommunication of Fr. Leonard Feeney without affirming Feeneyite EENS. The Jesuit priest did not recant. He cited the Athanasius Creed and still the excommunication remained lifted.

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Historians of the school of Bologna have defined the pastoral dimension of Vatican II as “constitutive”. This pastoral dimension became the form of the Magisterium par excellence. At first this was not evident to all, but in the following months and years, it became clear that John XXIII’s allocution was the manifesto of a new ecclesiology. And this ecclesiology, according to progressive theologians, was supposed to be the foundation of a new Church, opposed to the “Constantinian” one of Pius XII. A Church no longer militant, no longer defining and assertive, but itinerant and in dialogue: a synodal church.

 Lionel: The Bologna School interprets Vatican Council II irrationally like the popes and Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani. We now have a choice. Alberto Melloni and Massimo Faggioli are not Catholic when they interpret Vatican Council II and the Creeds and Catechisms irrationally.

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In this new perspective, the Holy Office, which for centuries had been the Church’s bulwark against the errors that attacked it, no longer had a reason to exist, or in any case, had to change its mission.1

Lionel: The Holy Office (CDF/DDF) made an objective error in the 1949 Letter of the Holy Office. It was political.They projected the baptism of desire (BOD) and being saved in invincible ignorance (I.I) as exceptions for EENS. As if there known and visible cases of the BOD and I.I. This mistake is still not corrected by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.Cardinal Ratzinger supported the invisible-visible confusion. He did not correct it. Dominus Iesus and Redemptoris Missio are Cushingite and not Feeneyite.

Pius XII in Mystici Corporis did not point out the difference between a rational and irrational interpretation of the baptism of desire and being saved in invincible ignorance.

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On 8 November 1963, the cardinal archbishop of Cologne, Josef Frings (1887–1978), asked to speak and, to general surprise, launched a violent attack against the Holy Office, directed by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani (1890–1979). In front of all the bishops of the Church gathered under the presidency of the pope, Frings denounced the “immoral methods” of the Holy Office, stating that its procedure “no longer suits our age, harms the Church and is an object of scandal for many”.

 Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani replied with a vibrant speech in which he defended the mission of the Holy Office:

 “I feel obliged to raise the highest of protests against what has been said against the supreme Congregation of the Holy Office, whose prefect is the Supreme Pontiff. The words that have been spoken demonstrate a grave ignorance — I abstain, out of reverence, from using another term — on what is the procedure of the Holy Office.”

Lionel: The Supreme Pontiff and the Holy Office (CDF/DDF) were interpreting Magisterial Documents irrationally, since they interpreted the baptism of desire and being saved in invincible ignorance irrationally. So when the Creeds and Catechisms refer to BOD and I.I there is confusion. There is also confusion now with LG 8, LG 15, UR 3, NA 2, GS 22 etc. They can be interpreted in two ways.We have two interpretations of Vatican Council II, Feeneyite and Cushingte. There are two interpretations of extra ecclesiam nulla salus, Feeneyite and Cushingite. There are two interpretations of the Nicene Creed, Feeneyite and Cushingite, there are two interpretations of the Catechisms etc.

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 The clash between Frings and Ottaviani was, according to the historian Mgr Hubert Jedin, “one of the most emotional scenes of the whole Council”.2 Josef Frings was not only the archbishop of Cologne; he was the president of the German Bishops’ Conference and one of the most authoritative representatives of the alliance of Central European bishops that opposed the conservative side. Cardinal Ottaviani was the most eminent member of the Curia, at the head of a congregation — called, due to its primary importance, “la Suprema” — of which the pope and not Ottaviani was the prefect. But Paul VI did not publicly defend the Holy Office and gave de facto credence to Frings’s position.

 Lionel: If Pope Paul VI chose to interpret LG 8,14, 15,16,UR 3, NA 2, GS 22 etc rationally as only hypothetical cases, the Council would have been traditional in 1965.

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Three years later, in 1968, Cardinal Frings led the contestation of the Central European bishops against the encyclical Humanae Vitae of Paul VI. Fr Joseph Ratzinger, who had been the inspirer and ghostwriter of Cardinal Frings at the Council, as Archbishop Victor Fernández has been of Pope Francis, at that time began to distance himself from the more progressive wing of the Church, founding the journal Communio in 1972, with Hans von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac and Walter Kasper. In 1981, having been appointed archbishop of Munich and cardinal, he was appointed by John Paul II as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which he directed for 24 years. Cardinal Frings’ theologian became the head of the congregation that Frings had publicly attacked at the Council.

 Lionel: Cardinal Ratzinger brought his progressivism to the heart of the Church. The CDF was no more conservative. It was teaching error on Vatican Council II and the 1949 Letter of the Holy Office. It was not Magisterial or apostolic. It also made the same error in the Joint Declaration with the Lutherans on Justification, the Balamand Declaration etc.Cardinal Ratzinger was constantly interpreting the Council irrationally and condemning Feeneyite EENS.

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After Paul VI closed the Second Vatican Council on 8 December 1965, the “reform” of the Curia was the first initiative to implement the conciliar revolution launched by John XXIII. The curial edifice, built up by previous popes over the centuries, was systematically demolished by Paul VI. What was needed, for starters, was a symbolic event: the transformation of the Congregation of the Holy Office, which on the eve of the closing of the Council was also given a new name with the motu proprio Integrae Servandae. On the afternoon of 6 December 1965, L’Osservatore Romano published the decree that abolished the Index of Prohibited Books and turned the Holy Office into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stating that “it now seems better that the defence of the faith should take place through the effort to promote doctrine”.

 Lionel: The ‘conciliar revolution’ was based upon Vatican Council II irrational and not rational.There could be no reforms if the Council still affirmed Feeneyite EENS.

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Paul VI appointed the Belgian theologian Charles Moeller (1912–1986), a champion of ecumenist progressivism, as undersecretary of the Congregation, pending the anticipated resignation of Cardinal Ottaviani, which came on 30 December 1967. “Moeller,” Fr Yves-Marie Congar wrote in his Diary, “is 100% ecumenism, he is openness to man, interest in his pursuits, in culture. He is dialogue.”3

 Lionel: With Vatican Council II rational supporting Feeneyite EENS there could not be any new ecumenism or new ecclesiology.

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Congar himself, on two occasions (in 1946 and in 1954), urinated on the door of the Holy Office, as a sign of contempt for the supreme institution of the Church.4 On 26 November 1994, he was made a cardinal by John Paul II. This, no less memorable than the appointment of Archbishop Fernández by Pope Francis, demonstrates how complex and sometimes paradoxical history is — rich in events, on a symbolic level.

Lionel: Congar like Victor Manuel Fernandes are obsolete on Vatican Council II.We are obligated not to follow them. Fernandez does not qualify to be aq cardinal. Since a cardinal must interpret the Council honestly. He must also affirm Church teachings and doctrines in their original meaning. Fernandez and my interpretation of the Creeds are different. We do not have unity on the Catechisms. He has to reject the Fourth Lateran Council since he is a Cushingite. I don't have to do this.      

-Lionel Andrades


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