www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology On the syllabus of errors

Glory to Jesus Christ!

I am a new member and am currently in conversation with a rad trad SSPX type of Roman Catholic. He is making the argument that parts of Vatican II contradict the Syllabus of errors and Pascendi.

My question is on the nature of papal encyclicals themselves. Are they infallible or fallible? Dogmas are infallible and must be believed, but I have been led to believe Roman doctrines (encyclicals, bulls, etc) are fallible. Is that correct?

You can tell him for me that Rome is filled with errors just to watch his head explode. After the smoke disappears, ask him to find any of the following in the writings of the Early Fathers:

Immaculate Conception
Treasury of Merit
Withholding the Eucharist from infant children
Papal Infallibility
Papal Supremacy
"Dead Bread" in the Eucharist
Baptism by Sprinkling

Then watch him give you some of the worst eisegesis and misquotes of the Early Fathers you will ever see.

PS Would someone PLEASE now take the words "IRISH RUTHENIAN" out of my name tag!>!>!>


I
AM
ORTHODOX!!!!!

Christ is in our midst!1

WanderingPilgrim,

Welcome to the forum. We hope your time here is spiritually fruitful.

Pray for "rad trad SSPX people." They are not Catholic because they have broken communion with the Church. If you want to do yourself a BIG favor, avoid arguments with these people. No spiritual benefit is to be had by doing so.

Bob
Moderator

We've had this discussion before so there is no need to repeat it: Re: Reconciling my Latin mind and several of the posts that follow it. It is my position that anyone whose theological vocabulary includes '"Dead Bread" in the Eucharist' is not looking for a respectful discussion -- or the truth -- but polemics. Reading those former posts we exchanged, I say in all charity: Do not let the hatred of your former self diminish your new-found peace in Orthodoxy.

John 13:35 "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

That's why I turned back from Orthodoxy when I felt the urge to dox. I quickly became bitter, prideful, and a purist. The Orthodox church I was attending was so much purer and holier and more authentic then my ruthenian church (so I thought at the time). And for a short period it gave me peace of heart and I felt that I was moving closer to Christ. Then the war in Ukraine hit and everything changed. How quickly my Orthodox worldview turned upside down. Russia and the Greeks were already breaking away from each other, perhaps irrevocably. Now Ukraine was disintegrating and falling away. I could see plain as day that the kgb plant Kiril was a heresiarch and puppet of the state and yet the Antiochians were throwing in with him (for political reasons I'd wager). And just like that the mask was off. Underneath was a deep, ugly, spiritual rot.

And in charity I must point out that I am not referring to any individual orthodox Christian. But orthodoxy in general and taken as a whole. With that painful realization I began to see that the "imperfect" ruthenian parish where I came in to the byzantine way of life wasn't actually as bad as I first perceived it. That a lot of its latinizations and shortcomings, while still problematic, were not insurmountable barriers like what I realized was firmly in place in the Orthodox phronema.

So I have returned to the ruthenian church after a short time away as a humbled and broken sinner.

Indeed, the conversation took a turn for the worse when I did not accept his opinion as dogma simply because he said so and copy and pasted bits of a papal encyclical.

Though I would say, charitably, that the SSPX "are" Catholic. They are not wholly separated from the church like sedevacantists are. The SSPX are canonically irregular but Rome does recognize them as being in the Church.

It's still a terrible position to be in and I do pray for all apostates, heretics, and schismatics (or in the case of the SSPX, schismatic-minded) to return to the Catholic communion of Churches.

Didn't Jesus Himself use unleavened bread at the Last Supper? I know I've heard that argument before but couldn't tell you where or if it was credible.

Also theres at least one eastern Catholic church that has only ever used unleavened bread, long before Rome or Byzantium (much less Moscow) became established in the faith.

No, Tradition says otherwise. He took bread, not matzo, according to the accounts of Scripture and Tradition.

You may be referring to the Armenians who use an unleavened bread. But history says they were influenced by the Crusaders and came to this practice very late.

The Church of the East, for another example, keeps what they call "Holy Malka" (sp?) on their altars. This leaven has been passed from generation to generation from their earliest evangelization. So to make a claim for unleavened bread in the first millennium takes a stretch. The Western Church came to this practice over a concern for crumbs about the time that the Chalice was reserved for the clergy.

While the Armenians did adopt several Latin customs from the Crusaders, Unleavened bread was not one of them. The Greeks and Armenians were fighting about this long before that.

Christ is Risen!!

Father Deacon Lance,

I stand corrected. Thank you. My source was mistaken.

Several layers of questions and factors need to be addressed. Some may seem obvious for those of the Tradition, the Way (John 14:16; Acts 9:2, Acts 16:17, Acts 18:25, Acts 19:9, 23, Acts 24:14, 22), but there are issues raised especially by heterodox views. For some points of discussion:

1 What did Christians, the Church, do? (There are some who would question if there ever was such a Church).
1.1 Did Hebrew (oriented) Christian practice differ from Gentile Christian practice?
1.2 What was their understanding -- de facto theology -- of their Eucharistic bread?
1.3 How did these Christians view a yearly observance of Pascha -- Christian Passover-- relative to the Hebrew Pesach/Passover?

2. What did Jesus do?
2.1 Was the Last Supper the Nisan/Aviv 14 (Torah) Passover meal? (There are at least three scenarios, Nisan/Aviv 14 on our Wed, Thur, or Fri.)
2.2 If the Passover, did/would Jesus use unleavened bread?
2.3 If the Passover, did/would Jesus have use leavened bread (on purpose)?
2.4 How are Hebrew Matztzot and Greek artos and azumos used in Scripture, OT (MT and LXX) and NT?

3. What does the Church do (today)?
3.1 The History of the Holy ‘Bread of Easter’ [thepriest.com]

Whatever the meal as recorded in the Gospels on the night He was handed-over, Passover or not, the Feast of Unleavens on the 15th day -- often conflated with the Passover meal itself that culminated the 14th day -- the Feast of Unleavens lasted for 7 days.
Also

The "first day of the week ... the third day since this took place", was either Nisan/Aviv 17 (Synoptics) or Nisan/Aviv 16 (John). The two disciples appear to be Jews: "we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel." This meal, the first post-resurrection Eucharist, offered by Jesus Himself, took place during the Feast of Unleavens (MT: chag ha-matstsot; LXX: heortē tōn azumōn] as specified by Leviticus.

The two disciples, corroborating witnesses*, did not recognize Jesus in the flesh, nor in the scriptures that Jesus Himself explained but " he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread," in the Eucharist, even as we, the Church, His disciples, do to this day as He commanded.

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* Deut.17:6, Deut. 19:15, Matt. 26:60, 2 Co. 13:1, 1 Tim. 5:19, Heb. 10:28, Rev. 11:3; especially Matt 18:16 ... that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.