Fr.Peter Scott on this same website told SSPX members to avoid supporters of Fr.Leonard Feeney.Since for him the baptism of desire was visible and an exception to the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus. The SSPX bishops and priests accepted the modernist,secular interpretation of the Letter of the Holy Office 1949. Then they condemned other traditionalists who were faithful to the dogmatic teaching..
Now they are criticizing Archbishop Muller since they do not realize that there are no exceptions to the dogma in Vatican Council II.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith needs to announce that we cannot see the dead saved.This could end the continuing analysis of Vatican Council II with this false premise.-L.A
part 2. Is the SSPX heretical ?
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Understanding the concepts of “integral magisterium”, tradition and papal infallibility
In the first part of the article entitled “Is the SSPX heretical”, we gave the background of Archbishop Mueller’s statement expressing that whoever embraces the ‘hermeneutic of rupture’, whether liberals or traditionalists (like the SSPX), follows a heretical path.
Lionel: The SSPX assumes that we can see the dead saved in invincible ignorance and the baptism of desire. This is heretical.It is the rejection of the defined dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
The SSPX also assumes that we can see visibly, implicit salvation cases mentioned in Vatican Council II which are exceptions to the dogma and the Syllabus of Errors. This is a heretical interpretation of Vatican Council II.
We also mentioned that the SSPX’s superior general explained the mystery of the Passion present in the Church crisis we are currently experiencing, which can be traced back to the mystery of the Church itself, both divine (and therefore divinely efficient) and human (and therefore deficient).
Before we address the question of the value of Vatican II as an act of magisterium (as we will see in part 3 regarding the minor of the argument), we need to presently examine the theological concepts at stake here: tradition, magisterium, infallibility and continuity (regarding the major of the argument). Only in their light can we elucidate a proper understanding of the issues. First, let us recall the argument used by Archbishop Mueller in a simple form:
(Major) Whoever does not accept the integral magisterium of the Church is heretical.
Lionel: The 'integral Magisterium of the Church' has said that there is no salvation outside the Church, the SSPX assumes that there is salvation outside the Church. They imply this based on the false premise of being able to see the dead who are saved and are alleged exceptions to outside the church there is no salvation and the Syllabus of Errors.
So the SSPX does not accept the integral Magisterium of the Church.
(Minor) But the SSPX refuses Vatican II, part of the integral Church teaching.
Lionel: There can be a Vatican Council II with the false premise of the dead being visible or there can be an interpretation without this premise.The SSPX has not addressed this issue.
(Conclusion) Therefore, the SSPX is heretical.
Lionel: Any Church document would be interpreted heretically if implicit salvation is assumed to be explicit.
Second, let us remark that, aside from the reference to Vatican II, we agree totally with the anti-progressive statement of Archbishop Mueller:
Lionel: The progressives are also using the false premise.
This interpretation (of a magisterial act in continuity with the past) is the only one possible according to the principles of Catholic theology, in consideration of the indissoluble link between Sacred Scripture, the complete and integral Tradition and the Magisterium” (my emphasis).
Lionel: Being able to see the dead is not a continuity with the Magisterium over the centuries. This errror has continued only since the 1940s.
We completely agree with this proposition and also affirm that whoever denies it is heretical - but do we have the same understanding of the terms? We need to closely examine these terms otherwise we run the risk of falling into either the modernist or sedevacantist trap.
Lionel: The relevant term is the visible dead saved.Modernists, sedevancantists and the Vatican Curia are using it.
1. What is tradition? see True Notion of Tradition >
Tradition is the act of passing on - tradere - the teaching received from someone else. Our Lord is the first “traditionalist” since He tells His Apostles: “My doctrine is not my doctrine, but that of My Father”, and “As the Father has sent Me, so I also send you.” This incidentally teaches us that Jesus Christ as a man did not invent the truth. Nor could He have ever contradicted truth by affirming that Our Lady was with original sin or that St. Peter was impeccable. Rather, Christ was a seer whose duty was to reveal to us the Father and the whole economy of salvation.
Lionel: Like the dogma of the Immculate Conception there is the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus. The SSPX websites assume there are known exceptions in the present times to this dogma.The 'exceptions' are invincible ignorance and the baptism of desire. These cases of implicit salvation are assumed to be explicit and this error is extended to Vatican Council II.
But prior to leaving earth, He had to found an institution to prolong the work of the Incarnation in time and space. So, the Church - Christ’s Mystical Body - has been endowed with the same work of tradition, i.e., of transmitting, what Christ the man had Himself received, Divine Revelation and the means of salvation. Thus the Church’s mission is to pass on the Revelation of the Word of God to be believed by all the faithful under the pain of eternal damnation. This mission could not be fulfilled fittingly unless the Church was endowed with the means of preserving this Divine Revelation, this Deposit of the Faith, intact through all ages. This means is called the charisma of infallibility.
Lionel: The popes infallilbly issued three defined dogmas on salvation which do not mention the baptism of desire etc. Since common sense tells us that these cases are known only to God and so are not relevant to the dogma.
2. What is the scope and expressions of infallibility?
It is important to notice that the property of Church infallibility is correlative to its proper object. Church infallibility is as inseparable from Divine Revelation as the trunk is from the elephant. This applies to the Church teaching or magisterium, of which we shall have to speak at length. This magisterium can be infallible in two ways: either extraordinarily or ordinarily.
The extraordinary magisterium is proper to the pope alone or to the pope in union with an ecumenical council. Vatican I defined the limits of infallibility in Pastor Aeternus:
...when the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church…
But Dei Filius (the other decree of Vatican I) gives another means of infallible Church teaching:
By divine and Catholic faith, all those things must be believed which are contained in the written word of God and in tradition, and those which are proposed by the Church, either in a solemn pronouncement or in her ordinary and universal teaching power, to be believed as divinely revealed.
The solemn pronouncements refer to the extraordinary magisterium. The other called “ordinary and universal” must be understood in the words of Pius XI in Tuas Libenter referring to “the Church spread in the universe”, or as the reporter of Dei Filius explained, “the magisterium of the Church dispersed through the globe.” The rationale behind this is that dispersion is a criterion of infallibility because, when different doctors from all places agree on the same thing, they must be united by a definite teaching which dates back to the apostles. This excludes radically the judgment of councils which by definition are gathered in a given place. This will have some importance when we raise the question of the ordinary infallible magisterium to Vatican II.
Lionel: Without the false premise Vatican Council II does not contradict the 'intgral mgisterium' of the Church.
3. What are the limits of papal infallibility?
For what we have seen above, Vatican II defined most precisely the scope of papal infallibility. Pastor Aeternus at Vatican I explains the papal role: “in order to preserve faithfully and declare infallibly” (Dz 3020), or “in order to preserve saintly and expose faithfully” (Dz 3070). So the pope’s duty is not to invent the truth, anymore than Peter invented it, but to pass on what he has received from above. We know of popes who have been misleading the Church, out of weakness like Liberius in the time of St. Athanasius, and Pope John XXII out of ignorance (whose theory that saints do not see God until judgment day was condemned as heretical by the next pope, Benedict XII). Here are a few more quotes to pinch the dreamlike state of some Catholics who would obey men rather than God when the pope errs as a man:
At Vatican I, it was considered satirical to even propose a canon stating: “If anyone says that the authority of the pope in the Church is so full that he may dispose of everything by his mere whim, let him be anathema.”[1]
Cardinal de Torquemada (Grand Inquisitor): “Were the pope to command anything against Holy Scripture, or the articles of faith, or the truth of the Sacraments, or the commands of the natural or divine law, he ought not to be obeyed, but in such commands is to be passed over (despiciendus)."[2]
St. Robert Bellarmine: “As it is lawful to resist the pope, if he assaulted a man's person, so it is lawful to resist him, if he assaulted souls, or troubled the state, and much more if he strove to destroy the Church. It is lawful, I say, to resist him, by not doing what he commands, and hindering the execution of his will."[3]
Archbishop Kenrick (quoted By Cardinal Newman): "(the pope’s) power was given for edification, not for destruction. If he uses it from the love of domination scarcely will he meet with obedient populations."
Lionel: If the Magisterium says that we can see all the dead saved with the baptism of desire etc in 2012 then this would be false. We reject it.
4. What does magisterium mean?
There are three main ways to speak of ‘magisterium’ or teaching of the Church. It means either the teachers (the magistri or masters who teach the faith); or the act of teaching (the catechism class being taught by the 1st grade teacher); and finally the doctrine itself being taught (the Incarnation is part of the magisterium of the Church). Whereas the first and second meaning refer to the subject (the teacher and his actual teaching), the third meaning refers to the object of teaching, the material being taught. The latter is the objective sense whereas the former are subjective.
This distinction becomes important when Roman authorities today affirm the primacy of the “living magisterium” over the past magisterium [see the quote marked * below for a quote from Pope Benedict XVI]. Here, the term ‘living’ means the ongoing exercise of the authentic magisterium, and refers to the subjective magisterium. It does not apply to the third and objective sense of magisterium, namely the doctrine itself. The problem arises when one gives de facto exclusivity to the messenger and hides or falsifies the message. This is counter-productive to the purpose of the Church as being a transmitter of revealed dogma.
This is because Church doctrine is not subject to change. If there is progress, this is not in the dogma, but in the understanding of the dogma by the faithful, who are better protected against the assaults of error. If the object of our faith was itself ‘living’ in the modernist sense of evolving, it would no longer be the faith. If, to live, the faith in the Trinity had to grow into believing in the ‘Quaternity’ of God, this would not be the same faith! There would be a difference in kind, as between apples and pears.
Lionel: The visible dead saved is a new doctrine.
The relativist and living aspect of the magisterium has been condemned by a cloud of witnesses, especially during the modernists’ and neo-modernist assaults
If anyone says that it is possible that the dogmas proposed by the Church be given sometimes, due to scientific progress, a sense different from that which the Church has understood and still understands, let him be anathema.
Lionel: The SSPX has interpreted the Letter of the Holy Office 1949 as a change in the traditional understanding of the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
So says the Anti-Modernist Oath of St. Pius X, which had been sworn to by all the Second Vatican Council Fathers during their lifetime:
Fourthly,… I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. I also condemn every error according to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given to the spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a philosophical figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort and will continue to develop indefinitely.
As a priest, Pope Benedict XVI, would have sworn this oath, nonetheless many of his writings present a relative and changing view of the Church’s past teaching. For example, he speaks of understanding more practically past Church decisions on Liberalism and free interpretation of the Bible, and the decrees against modernism. (July 10, 1990; December 22, 2005).
5. What does ‘continuous magisterium’ mean?
It is typical of the modernist strategy to use traditional words while gutting them out of their content. Such is the term ‘continuity’ as frequently used in the phrase ‘hermeneutic of continuity’. The Church teaching must be continuous as we have said all along. But for the modernists, it means primarily the subjects, the doctors, leaving aside the object, the doctrine. This magisterial continuity, meaning the prolongation of Church teaching, demands not so much the unity of the truth as contiguity in time among the teachers. As long as one teacher succeeds another on the chair, sayGregorian University, there is continuous teaching and we should all be happy, regardless that the second doctor is a heretic contradicting the previous orthodox teacher. Truth does not convey unity any longer. Now, ‘unity’ (a false sense of it) makes the truth! Thus it is no longer truth itself which unites and falsity which divides. Now, curiously the only heretic is he who does not get along. At that rate, the ecumenical rabbi is more in the truth than the lonely Archbishop Lefebvre!
Lionel: The Gregorian University professors are making the same mistake as the traditionalists.
For Benedict XVI (December 22, 2005), speaking about it says:
*…renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.BLK
Conversely, he adds immediately afterward, “The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church.” Here, clearly continuity means the prolongation of the series of Church doctors, and, by opposition, rupture means the Church divided into two subjects. There is no reference whatsoever to doctrine, whether true or false. At that rate, contradiction means simply division of groups regardless of the doctrine being taught. To slightly caricaturize we might say: “The message of Revelation is of no importance; what counts is to get along.”
Final observations
It takes an in-depth study to uncover the subtle modernist mask but this has become necessary in our time since, truly, “There is something rotten in the State of Denmark.” But, once the terminology has been properly sorted out, the sophistry of Archbishop Mueller becomes crystal clear. But his first statement (the major) is rock solid taken in a Catholic sense:
This interpretation (of a magisterial act in continuity with the past) is the only one possible according to the principles of Catholic theology, in consideration of the indissoluble link between Sacred Scripture, the complete and integral Tradition and the Magisterium.
Lionel: Once the false premise is removed in the interpretation of Vatican Council II the Council has only one interpretation and it is a continuity with Tradition.
For the words of Archbishop Mueller are a formal condemnation of any rupture in the Church teaching, of modernism and its offspring of historicism and relativism which after being condemned by St. Pius X and driven underground, sprung up anew in the mid 40’s and 50’s. Archbishop Mueller’s words echo the famous Apologia of Cardinal Newman who still unconverted, understood that the validity of the Anglican Credo could only rest on its apostolicity. He had to give it up when he realized that the Church Fathers already upheld the Catholic creed with no interruption. Or as Bossuet eloquently said “It is, so to speak, in this always that appears the force of the truth and of the promise, and we lose it entirely as soon as we find an interruption at any point.” Hence, Archbishop Mueller is right, one hundred times right, when he says: the true Faith and the true Church must rest on this uninterruptedness or else it has collapsed. With him, we believe firmly that whoever denies it is heretical, but against him, we believe that this must be understood with the Catholic and not the modernist understanding of the terms.
Lionel: It is time for the SSPX to address the issue of the visible dead saved interpretation of Vatican Council II.
-Lionel Andrades
To be continued…
http://www.sspx.org/sspx_and_rome/is_the_sspx_heretical_2_12-5_2012.htmPart 2
Part 3
Understanding the concepts of “integral magisterium”, tradition and papal infallibility
In the first part of the article entitled “Is the SSPX heretical”, we gave the background of Archbishop Mueller’s statement expressing that whoever embraces the ‘hermeneutic of rupture’, whether liberals or traditionalists (like the SSPX), follows a heretical path.
Lionel: The SSPX assumes that we can see the dead saved in invincible ignorance and the baptism of desire. This is heretical.It is the rejection of the defined dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
The SSPX also assumes that we can see visibly, implicit salvation cases mentioned in Vatican Council II which are exceptions to the dogma and the Syllabus of Errors. This is a heretical interpretation of Vatican Council II.
We also mentioned that the SSPX’s superior general explained the mystery of the Passion present in the Church crisis we are currently experiencing, which can be traced back to the mystery of the Church itself, both divine (and therefore divinely efficient) and human (and therefore deficient).
Before we address the question of the value of Vatican II as an act of magisterium (as we will see in part 3 regarding the minor of the argument), we need to presently examine the theological concepts at stake here: tradition, magisterium, infallibility and continuity (regarding the major of the argument). Only in their light can we elucidate a proper understanding of the issues. First, let us recall the argument used by Archbishop Mueller in a simple form:
(Major) Whoever does not accept the integral magisterium of the Church is heretical.
Lionel: The 'integral Magisterium of the Church' has said that there is no salvation outside the Church, the SSPX assumes that there is salvation outside the Church. They imply this based on the false premise of being able to see the dead who are saved and are alleged exceptions to outside the church there is no salvation and the Syllabus of Errors.
So the SSPX does not accept the integral Magisterium of the Church.
(Minor) But the SSPX refuses Vatican II, part of the integral Church teaching.
Lionel: There can be a Vatican Council II with the false premise of the dead being visible or there can be an interpretation without this premise.The SSPX has not addressed this issue.
(Conclusion) Therefore, the SSPX is heretical.
Lionel: Any Church document would be interpreted heretically if implicit salvation is assumed to be explicit.
Second, let us remark that, aside from the reference to Vatican II, we agree totally with the anti-progressive statement of Archbishop Mueller:
Lionel: The progressives are also using the false premise.
This interpretation (of a magisterial act in continuity with the past) is the only one possible according to the principles of Catholic theology, in consideration of the indissoluble link between Sacred Scripture, the complete and integral Tradition and the Magisterium” (my emphasis).
Lionel: Being able to see the dead is not a continuity with the Magisterium over the centuries. This errror has continued only since the 1940s.
We completely agree with this proposition and also affirm that whoever denies it is heretical - but do we have the same understanding of the terms? We need to closely examine these terms otherwise we run the risk of falling into either the modernist or sedevacantist trap.
Lionel: The relevant term is the visible dead saved.Modernists, sedevancantists and the Vatican Curia are using it.
1. What is tradition? see True Notion of Tradition >
Tradition is the act of passing on - tradere - the teaching received from someone else. Our Lord is the first “traditionalist” since He tells His Apostles: “My doctrine is not my doctrine, but that of My Father”, and “As the Father has sent Me, so I also send you.” This incidentally teaches us that Jesus Christ as a man did not invent the truth. Nor could He have ever contradicted truth by affirming that Our Lady was with original sin or that St. Peter was impeccable. Rather, Christ was a seer whose duty was to reveal to us the Father and the whole economy of salvation.
Lionel: Like the dogma of the Immculate Conception there is the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus. The SSPX websites assume there are known exceptions in the present times to this dogma.The 'exceptions' are invincible ignorance and the baptism of desire. These cases of implicit salvation are assumed to be explicit and this error is extended to Vatican Council II.
But prior to leaving earth, He had to found an institution to prolong the work of the Incarnation in time and space. So, the Church - Christ’s Mystical Body - has been endowed with the same work of tradition, i.e., of transmitting, what Christ the man had Himself received, Divine Revelation and the means of salvation. Thus the Church’s mission is to pass on the Revelation of the Word of God to be believed by all the faithful under the pain of eternal damnation. This mission could not be fulfilled fittingly unless the Church was endowed with the means of preserving this Divine Revelation, this Deposit of the Faith, intact through all ages. This means is called the charisma of infallibility.
Lionel: The popes infallilbly issued three defined dogmas on salvation which do not mention the baptism of desire etc. Since common sense tells us that these cases are known only to God and so are not relevant to the dogma.
2. What is the scope and expressions of infallibility?
It is important to notice that the property of Church infallibility is correlative to its proper object. Church infallibility is as inseparable from Divine Revelation as the trunk is from the elephant. This applies to the Church teaching or magisterium, of which we shall have to speak at length. This magisterium can be infallible in two ways: either extraordinarily or ordinarily.
The extraordinary magisterium is proper to the pope alone or to the pope in union with an ecumenical council. Vatican I defined the limits of infallibility in Pastor Aeternus:
...when the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church…
But Dei Filius (the other decree of Vatican I) gives another means of infallible Church teaching:
By divine and Catholic faith, all those things must be believed which are contained in the written word of God and in tradition, and those which are proposed by the Church, either in a solemn pronouncement or in her ordinary and universal teaching power, to be believed as divinely revealed.
The solemn pronouncements refer to the extraordinary magisterium. The other called “ordinary and universal” must be understood in the words of Pius XI in Tuas Libenter referring to “the Church spread in the universe”, or as the reporter of Dei Filius explained, “the magisterium of the Church dispersed through the globe.” The rationale behind this is that dispersion is a criterion of infallibility because, when different doctors from all places agree on the same thing, they must be united by a definite teaching which dates back to the apostles. This excludes radically the judgment of councils which by definition are gathered in a given place. This will have some importance when we raise the question of the ordinary infallible magisterium to Vatican II.
Lionel: Without the false premise Vatican Council II does not contradict the 'intgral mgisterium' of the Church.
3. What are the limits of papal infallibility?
For what we have seen above, Vatican II defined most precisely the scope of papal infallibility. Pastor Aeternus at Vatican I explains the papal role: “in order to preserve faithfully and declare infallibly” (Dz 3020), or “in order to preserve saintly and expose faithfully” (Dz 3070). So the pope’s duty is not to invent the truth, anymore than Peter invented it, but to pass on what he has received from above. We know of popes who have been misleading the Church, out of weakness like Liberius in the time of St. Athanasius, and Pope John XXII out of ignorance (whose theory that saints do not see God until judgment day was condemned as heretical by the next pope, Benedict XII). Here are a few more quotes to pinch the dreamlike state of some Catholics who would obey men rather than God when the pope errs as a man:
At Vatican I, it was considered satirical to even propose a canon stating: “If anyone says that the authority of the pope in the Church is so full that he may dispose of everything by his mere whim, let him be anathema.”[1]
Cardinal de Torquemada (Grand Inquisitor): “Were the pope to command anything against Holy Scripture, or the articles of faith, or the truth of the Sacraments, or the commands of the natural or divine law, he ought not to be obeyed, but in such commands is to be passed over (despiciendus)."[2]
St. Robert Bellarmine: “As it is lawful to resist the pope, if he assaulted a man's person, so it is lawful to resist him, if he assaulted souls, or troubled the state, and much more if he strove to destroy the Church. It is lawful, I say, to resist him, by not doing what he commands, and hindering the execution of his will."[3]
Archbishop Kenrick (quoted By Cardinal Newman): "(the pope’s) power was given for edification, not for destruction. If he uses it from the love of domination scarcely will he meet with obedient populations."
Lionel: If the Magisterium says that we can see all the dead saved with the baptism of desire etc in 2012 then this would be false. We reject it.
4. What does magisterium mean?
There are three main ways to speak of ‘magisterium’ or teaching of the Church. It means either the teachers (the magistri or masters who teach the faith); or the act of teaching (the catechism class being taught by the 1st grade teacher); and finally the doctrine itself being taught (the Incarnation is part of the magisterium of the Church). Whereas the first and second meaning refer to the subject (the teacher and his actual teaching), the third meaning refers to the object of teaching, the material being taught. The latter is the objective sense whereas the former are subjective.
This distinction becomes important when Roman authorities today affirm the primacy of the “living magisterium” over the past magisterium [see the quote marked * below for a quote from Pope Benedict XVI]. Here, the term ‘living’ means the ongoing exercise of the authentic magisterium, and refers to the subjective magisterium. It does not apply to the third and objective sense of magisterium, namely the doctrine itself. The problem arises when one gives de facto exclusivity to the messenger and hides or falsifies the message. This is counter-productive to the purpose of the Church as being a transmitter of revealed dogma.
This is because Church doctrine is not subject to change. If there is progress, this is not in the dogma, but in the understanding of the dogma by the faithful, who are better protected against the assaults of error. If the object of our faith was itself ‘living’ in the modernist sense of evolving, it would no longer be the faith. If, to live, the faith in the Trinity had to grow into believing in the ‘Quaternity’ of God, this would not be the same faith! There would be a difference in kind, as between apples and pears.
Lionel: The visible dead saved is a new doctrine.
The relativist and living aspect of the magisterium has been condemned by a cloud of witnesses, especially during the modernists’ and neo-modernist assaults
If anyone says that it is possible that the dogmas proposed by the Church be given sometimes, due to scientific progress, a sense different from that which the Church has understood and still understands, let him be anathema.
Lionel: The SSPX has interpreted the Letter of the Holy Office 1949 as a change in the traditional understanding of the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
So says the Anti-Modernist Oath of St. Pius X, which had been sworn to by all the Second Vatican Council Fathers during their lifetime:
Fourthly,… I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. I also condemn every error according to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given to the spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a philosophical figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort and will continue to develop indefinitely.
As a priest, Pope Benedict XVI, would have sworn this oath, nonetheless many of his writings present a relative and changing view of the Church’s past teaching. For example, he speaks of understanding more practically past Church decisions on Liberalism and free interpretation of the Bible, and the decrees against modernism. (July 10, 1990; December 22, 2005).
5. What does ‘continuous magisterium’ mean?
It is typical of the modernist strategy to use traditional words while gutting them out of their content. Such is the term ‘continuity’ as frequently used in the phrase ‘hermeneutic of continuity’. The Church teaching must be continuous as we have said all along. But for the modernists, it means primarily the subjects, the doctors, leaving aside the object, the doctrine. This magisterial continuity, meaning the prolongation of Church teaching, demands not so much the unity of the truth as contiguity in time among the teachers. As long as one teacher succeeds another on the chair, sayGregorian University, there is continuous teaching and we should all be happy, regardless that the second doctor is a heretic contradicting the previous orthodox teacher. Truth does not convey unity any longer. Now, ‘unity’ (a false sense of it) makes the truth! Thus it is no longer truth itself which unites and falsity which divides. Now, curiously the only heretic is he who does not get along. At that rate, the ecumenical rabbi is more in the truth than the lonely Archbishop Lefebvre!
Lionel: The Gregorian University professors are making the same mistake as the traditionalists.
For Benedict XVI (December 22, 2005), speaking about it says:
*…renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.BLK
Conversely, he adds immediately afterward, “The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church.” Here, clearly continuity means the prolongation of the series of Church doctors, and, by opposition, rupture means the Church divided into two subjects. There is no reference whatsoever to doctrine, whether true or false. At that rate, contradiction means simply division of groups regardless of the doctrine being taught. To slightly caricaturize we might say: “The message of Revelation is of no importance; what counts is to get along.”
Final observations
It takes an in-depth study to uncover the subtle modernist mask but this has become necessary in our time since, truly, “There is something rotten in the State of Denmark.” But, once the terminology has been properly sorted out, the sophistry of Archbishop Mueller becomes crystal clear. But his first statement (the major) is rock solid taken in a Catholic sense:
This interpretation (of a magisterial act in continuity with the past) is the only one possible according to the principles of Catholic theology, in consideration of the indissoluble link between Sacred Scripture, the complete and integral Tradition and the Magisterium.
Lionel: Once the false premise is removed in the interpretation of Vatican Council II the Council has only one interpretation and it is a continuity with Tradition.
For the words of Archbishop Mueller are a formal condemnation of any rupture in the Church teaching, of modernism and its offspring of historicism and relativism which after being condemned by St. Pius X and driven underground, sprung up anew in the mid 40’s and 50’s. Archbishop Mueller’s words echo the famous Apologia of Cardinal Newman who still unconverted, understood that the validity of the Anglican Credo could only rest on its apostolicity. He had to give it up when he realized that the Church Fathers already upheld the Catholic creed with no interruption. Or as Bossuet eloquently said “It is, so to speak, in this always that appears the force of the truth and of the promise, and we lose it entirely as soon as we find an interruption at any point.” Hence, Archbishop Mueller is right, one hundred times right, when he says: the true Faith and the true Church must rest on this uninterruptedness or else it has collapsed. With him, we believe firmly that whoever denies it is heretical, but against him, we believe that this must be understood with the Catholic and not the modernist understanding of the terms.
Lionel: It is time for the SSPX to address the issue of the visible dead saved interpretation of Vatican Council II.
-Lionel Andrades
To be continued…
__________________________________________________________
Friday, March 30, 2012
SSPX ASK MSGR.NICOLA BUX OF THE CDF A BASIC QUESTION ON CATHOLIC DOCTRINE
http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2012/03/sspx-ask-msgrnicola-bux-of-cdf-basic.html
March 31, 2012
Mnsgr.Nicola Bux the SSPX in reality accepts Vatican Council II
http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2012/03/mnsgrnicola-bux-sspx-in-reality-accepts.html
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