www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West What does the Pope mean by this?

The idea of "let your conscience be your guide" bothers me because it is the individual who has to live with his/her conscience, thus it is easy to rationalize behavior, that is, sin.

This Pope's aversion to dogma is a problem--every person relying on their own conscience is nothing but Protestantism, or relativism. But this is typical of modern modernist Rome. There must be objective right and wrong. "Outside the Church there is no salvation." This we must assume because we have received it from ancient tradition. If God chooses to be merciful, so be it, but we must not be presumptuous about God's mercy, especially when speaking for the ears of non-Catholics, as Francis certainly does.

As addendum to my last post, the author of the doctrine "Always let your conscience be your guide" was Jiminy Cricket, that is, Walt Disney; eugenicist, UNICEF enthusiast, Freemason and an early proponent of a New World Order. I doubt if even Martin Luther would have made so unqualified a statement. Oh well, Pope Francis doesn't claim to be a theologian, but he must have watched the Mouseketeers, no? :grin:

Dear Orthodox Catholic,

"I was shocked he could say that. I don't believe my relative committed a sin. I wanted to move away from him, but the principal kept giving me these unholy stares "

I assume that this happened pre V2. Then (and now, strictly speaking,) the official position of the Universal Catholic Church is that the Orthodox are in schism. It is simply a fact. However, I must admit that some post V2 bishops (Pope?) are Marxists, and would not now praise your relative had he refused to "convert" to the Soviet church and accepted martyrdom, which that bishop that you had to sit with apparently thought your relative should have done. It a sign of diabolical activity when things get turned upside down, as they have been since V2 in Rome.

I hesitate to post this. I don't wish to offend. As a child you didn't understand, but surely now you understand why the bishop made that comment?

It is not the purpose of the Church to make the world a better place. Its purpose is to save souls, which it was founded by Christ to do.

"The poor you will always have with you..." Jesus said to Judas, the false humanitarian.

In this article, Cardinal Ratzinger says conscience is "infallible," as opposed to "super-ceded" pre-conciliar authority.

Sorry, but that is not even Catholic. The Faith and authority of the Church in the 1900 years before the disastrous Council are in no way abrogated. Ratzinger denies the infallible Magesterium of the past 500 years with such a statement.

If these Conciliar churchmen want to found a new Protestant sect they should admit as much, instead of trying to subvert received and traditional Catholic teaching, and attempting to destroy the Church from within. They are trying to create no less than a humanitarian, Freemason type of religion that anybody can belong to, in good conscience according to the Jiminy Cricket doctrine, using the worldwide structure of the Church, and counting on the meek obedience of Catholics.

When he called Lumen Gentium a "counter-syllabus" it was clear then that Ratzinger had lost the faith. Why should any Catholic want to convert anybody to the Modernist Vatican 2 sect?

Conscience is relative, Truth is objective and timeless. Pre-conciliar Popes simply set down authentic Catholic teaching with no apologies to neo-modernists like Ratzinger, John Paul 2 or Papa Bergoglio. The last decree from Rome that qualified under papal infallibility was Humanae Vitae of Paul VI., which was certainly not what the V2 modernists wanted to hear. Ratzinger's reputation as a "conservative" is totally undeserved.

The idea that conscience is the final arbiter of morality is completely Protestant private judgement, and has been anathamatized for all time by Pope Pius IX in the very Syllabus of Errors that Ratzinger so disdains.

The Pope's duty is to defend and to pass on the Deposit of Faith within the Church, not to make the world a better place or to propose novel ideas, much less ideas that have been previously condemned. The Church and the World are at enmity, and the world will bite her heel while She crushes its head. There has been no mention of Original Sin in all this discussion of Francis and conscience. Without the grace of God that flows through the Church founded by Christ the conscience is incapable of being true to God's will.

I really can't believe that Ratzinger calls conscience "infallible." I didn't realize he was so far from Catholic Truth in his own thought.

Yes, and this is a painful subject for all of us. For more information on this subject, I suggest reading Unitatis Redintegratio, Ut Unum Sint and Orientale Lumen (and there have been some good discussions on this topic on this forum as well).

When Liberation Theology (or "Christian Marxism") had gotten to be a major problem in Latin America, one person who took a hard stand on it was Pope John Paul II; another was Jorge Mario Bergoglio--the future Pope Francis. You might fault Pope Paul VI for not cracking down on this movement sooner, but he was certainly not a Marxist.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

Roman refugee,

"Pre-conciliar Popes simply set down authentic Catholic teaching with no apologies to neo-modernists like Ratzinger, John Paul 2 or Papa Bergoglio."

Around here hierarchs and saints are referred to by their proper title, so that would be Pope Emeritus Benedict, Blessed John Paul II, and Pope Francis. And that is not a suggestion. Failure to adhere will result in discipline.

Fr. Deacon Lance, moderator

Fr. Deacon Lance,

My apologies. It won't happen again.

However, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was Cardinal Ratzinger at the time he gave the speech under consideration, and the use of the title "Papa" combined with a Pope's natural surname has always been an affectionate way to refer to the Holy Father, I always thought. A cultural quirk, perhaps? No offense to anyone was intended, only an opinion on the topic. I shall stick to the New York Times copybook rules.

To Epiphanias,
As far as I know, there is no full communion yet between the many Orthodox national churches and Rome. My Byzantine priest once told me that the Orthodox are now permitted to receive Holy Communion in Catholic churches of the Eastern Rite (and, I don't know, but I'd bet in the new Roman rite as well.) Then he said that, should I try to take Communion at an Orthodox church, it might not be taken well by them if they knew that I am a Catholic. This is really all I have learned about current relations between the two that is of a practical nature.

I know also that John Paul II and the Patriarch of Constantinople withdrew each Church's excommunication of the other, but somehow that doesn't seem to have changed things out here "in the trenches." I confess that I don't understand why things are as they are, but I am certain that I can find some enlightenment by reading further into this excellent forum.

Reading history, the actions of the Pope's delegate in Constantinople seem very unjust and incredibly rude. The story goes that he barged into Santa Sophia while a Liturgy was in progress and slapped an ex-communication order on the altar, all because of Charlmagne's insistence on the Filioque. It is as unjust as Pope Paul VI's ex-c0mmunication of Bishop Lefebvre, even more so. Popes have never been immune to the abuse of power.

Vatican II documents and the Encyclicals and/or Apostolic Constitutions of Pope Bl. John Paul II, of happy memory, have never carried the weight of dogma, since the declared purpose of the Council was "pastoral" and indeed expressly to avoid declaring doctrine. The documents that you cite often take both sides of the questions that they deal with in alternate paragraphs. No matters of Catholic doctrine are definitively defined in any Vatican II document, nor has any document published by Pope Bl. John Paul II carried the words "We declare, define and promulgate, etc" or words to that effect, and so we can say that those documents are "pastoral" in nature also and not infallible definitions of doctrine.

Certainly, it must be a "touchy" subject, and probably a subject that someone brought up in the pre-conciliar Roman rite such as I was should not talk about here. I shall simply "listen." I am way out of my league when it comes to Catholic-Orthodox matters.

Deacon Richard, (Epiphanius)

I'm sorry, I discussed your reply to my post on the same post that I used to reply to the Moderator about my lax use of proper titles. You can find my gibberish there.

I just wanted to add that of course, Marxist is too harsh a term for the economic beliefs of any Pope ever. My using the term was a rash overstatement. And yes, Pope Bl. Paul VI did not seem to be aware of the diabolical destruction happening in the Church until it was too late for him to stop it, given his famous quote about "the smoke of Satan." To his credit, he did make several important interventions during the Council.

How I wish Pope Francis (or any future Holy Father) would one day proclaim that he is a Distributionist, which is the true Catholic economic and social teaching, and refers to a system in which the means of production are distributed into as many hands as possible. It is the middle way between Western monopoly capitalism and European welfare state socialism, and would foster small business, home ownership and general prosperity of the kind we saw briefly in America after World War II. This is the system taught by the great popes of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Pius XI, Benedict XV and Leo XIII.

BTW, Ven. Pius XII published an excellent Encyclical on the Eastern Churches as well, "Orientales Omnes Ecclesias."

As G. K. Chesterton said (or was it C.S. Lewis?), and I quote loosely, "...the problem is not that Christianity has been found wanting, but that it has never seriously been tried." He doesn't mention the thousand year Christian civilization of Constantinople,but he makes a good point, IMHO.

Many Years
Charlie

That is correct.


It was Pope Paul VI who met with Patriarch Athenagoras on January 5, 1964 on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. The following year, the anathemas of 1054 were formally rescinded by both sides. At the time, many thought that action meant the end of the schism, but it turned out that there had been numerous actions--formal as well as informal--on both sides since 1054 that had served to deepen the wound, which meant that it would take a long time to heal. That healing is still going on, with results that sometimes look promising, sometimes not.


As I understand the story, A papal delegation had been sent to Constantinople to discuss a number of issues with the Patriarch (not the least of which was the recent closing of all Latin churches in Constantinople) and try to work out a solution. Apparently, Patriarch Kerularios refused to even grant them an audience--a gesture of no little significance, since it indicated a state of enmity between himself and the Pope.

It goes to show how answering rudeness with rudeness doesn't acccomplish anything good.


The only Church document I'm familiar with that even comes close to that description is Sacrosanctum Concilium, and that can be explained--at least partly--by the fact that the council fathers had spent two of five planned sessions working on only one of sixteen documents. (Yet, SC is still a good document, and embodies a number of liturgical principles that have long been considered important in the East.) Of the three I mentioned, I think Ut Unum Sint is the most significant.


You seem to be saying here that only dogma is important, and everything else is relatively insignificant. Let me just say that I don't agree.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

Deacon Richard,

Thank you for your informative and detailed replies. I am learning much from you.

Regarding my apparent reliance on doctrine, I feel that, in these times of an unabashedly Modernist Rome there is a true crisis in the Church, probably worse than the Arian crisis. All kinds of shocking statements and actions come from the hierarchy these days, and I feel that Pope Francis is further confusing what a Catholic is actually required to believe (submit the intellect to,) and so to be on the safe side, I go with the clearly stated doctrine of pre-consiliar days against the ambiguous and contradictory general tone of the post-conciliar Church, which, since I have spent time as a reasoning adult during both of these periods, I perceive as being pretty much a new religion. Though this result was never the intent of the Council Fathers, there was a great deal of dissimulation and abuse of power after the close of the Council. To paraphrase Archbishop Lefervbe, I follow Eternal Rome with all my heart but resist Modernist Rome with all my strength.

It's just my point of view, and I hold no ill will toward anyone who disagrees with me. It is simply the perspective on the Faith that I feel the most comfortable with.

But I don't want to talk about Rome all the time. I came to the Eastern Church to get away from all that, hence my username.

Peace back,
Charlie