Brother André Marie, Prior, St. Benedict’s Centre, Richmond, N.H, USA wrote a letter to the Keene Sentinel stating that the Church has not changed its stance on condoms as reported by that newspaper. According to Bro. Andre the church cannot change its teachings on condoms and contraceptives and so it was wrong of the newspaper to suggest it.
The newspaper did not publish Bro. Andre’s letter or delayed it so he posted it on the website of the St. Benedict Centre.
So much of attention has been given otherwise too, by many Catholics, to the confusion over the pope’s statement on condoms as reported by Peter Seewald.
The pope mentioned a hypothetical case when a condom was being used.There is no change in the general policy of the Church on contraceptives. This is clear!
However the book by Seewald does mention a major change in the Catholic Church’s teaching on Jews and no one is mentioning it. Not even Bro. Andre who represents a community of Fr. Leonard Feeney. No one!
We would not expect the leftist newspapers to mention it. They even ignored the pope’s positive statement on the burqa.However no Catholic priest,bishop or cardinal is even talking about it.
Pope Benedict XVI is my pope and I pray for him however for the first time ever in writing, he has said that Jews do not have to convert in the present times. This is contrary to the Gospel all informed Catholics know this -and no one is talking or writing about it.
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)
'I modified it in such a way that it contained our faith, that Christ is salvation for all' said the pope to Seewald. This is a wound for Catholics. This is also a straw man. The issue is not whether Christ is the salvation for all but does every non Catholic need to enter the Church for salvation? The pope has given us a theological de-coy.
1. The Bible says Jews need to convert for salvation.
2. The ex cathedra dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus,thrice defined by three Councils, also says that everyone with no exception needs to formally enter the Catholic Church for salvation.
3. Pope John Paul II’s Dominus Iesus 20 also says everyone with no exception needs to enter the Church for salvation.
This has been an apostolic teaching that the Church has maintained for centuries and which the pope is denying in public.
Why are Catholics not talking about it?
The St. Benedict Centre has been recognized recently by the Diocese of Manchester and they have a chaplain appointed for them. That the Diocese recognizes a community which upholds the rigorist interpretation of extra ecclesiam nulla salus is meaningless in the sense that it also approves the Paulist Fathers with their ‘theology of religions’.
Doctrines and dogmas no longer seem important to the pope, Ecclesia Dei and all the others…
The pope tells Seewald ‘That there do not exist two ways of salvation,’. This is another decoy. The pope has never directly affirmed the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus and in an interview with the Times claimed that it was relevant only for the time it was issued. So when the pope says that 'there do not exist two ways of salvation' he means that all salvation comes from Jesus and the Church and so Jews are saved in general through this one means of salvation and so THEY DO NOT HAVE TO CONVERT. If they do choose to, fine. However according to the pope and contrary to Catholic teaching, Jews do not have to convert in general to avoid Hell.
It’s all there in black and white.
Doctrine and dogmas traded in the name of expedience and survival.
CDF CLARIFIES COMMENT ON CONDOMS BUT NOT JEWS : POPE CONTRADICTS BIBLE http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.com/2010/12/cdf-clarifies-comment-on-condoms-but.html#links
CDF CLARIFIES COMMENT ON CONDOMS BUT NOT JEWS : POPE CONTRADICTS BIBLE http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.com/2010/12/cdf-clarifies-comment-on-condoms-but.html#links
________________________________________________
Brother André Marie December 12th, 2010
Ten days ago, on December 2, I sent the following letter to the Keene Sentinel. They’ve not seen fit to publish it yet, so I decided to put it here on our web site. The original L.A. Times column was headlined, “The condom conundrum,” but the Sentinel called it “What the Pope said about condoms.”
To the Sentinel:
Tim Rutten’s December 1 Op-Ed column, “What the Pope said about condoms” was terribly off base. It is absurd for him to claim that Pope Benedict’s comments about condoms “push church [sic] doctrine a good bit further than traditionalists want to acknowledge.” The Holy Father’s comments “pushed” Church doctrine exactly nowhere. The Church’s teaching remains now what it always has been. The Pope did not, and cannot, change infallible Catholic dogma on this or any other subject. Contraception is a grave offense against the Law of God and its deliberate use constitutes mortal sin. One mortal sin is sufficent to damn someone forever to hell.
Pope Benedict was discussing the morals of a prostitute. Now, along with the entire Church, the current Vicar of Christ certainly regards prostitution as morally reprehensible. Specifically, the acts associated with it constitute grave matter which, if unconfessed and unrepented of, will lead one to hell. Firmly grounded in this traditional doctrine of the Church, the Holy Father went on to speculate about the psychological dispositions of one deeply entrenched in a life of sin. For such a one, the Roman Pontiff speculated, the use of a condom “can be a first step in the direction of a moralization.” He did not call condom use “justified,” “permitted,” “sanctioned,” “allowed,” or even “tolerated.” He reiterated that its use is immoral. Similarly, murderers, robbers, rapists, and other violent criminals might have a certain first glimmer of moral reckoning even while they continue to commit serious violations of the moral and civil law. This faint dawning of a moral sense does not justify their criminal acts, but it could mark the beginning of a complete reform of life.
Mr. Rutten’s claim that the Church’s teaching on contraception constitutes a “moral disaster” is a perfect example of what Isaiah the Prophet condemned as “calling evil good and good evil.” The real moral disaster is the hedonistic attitude the world takes toward sex, as exemplified in Mr. Rutten’s championing of contraception. God gave us our sexual powers to be exercised exclusively within the context of matrimony, which is a sacrosanct bond between one man and one woman, so that loving parents might bring forth offspring with whom they will share their love. Those who violate this order of things voluntarily bring upon themselves all manner of maladies, spiritual, psychological, and medical.
On this issue as on so many, the Catholic Church alone upholds both God’s Law and the true happiness of the human person.(Catholicism.org)
________________________________________________
Also from the website Catholicism.org
1. “There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved.” (Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215). Ex cathedra.
2.“We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” (Pope Boniface VIII, the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302.).Ex cathedra.
3.“The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.” (Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441.) Ex cathedra
Posts
