Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 4:56am

PopeWatch: Heresy

Father Z does his best to clear Pope Francis from the charge of heresy:

 

I have recently paid as little attention as allowable to most of what is coming from the pens of Rome.  However, this needs some attention.

Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahamad al-Tayyib, signed a document on “Fratellanza Umana per la Pace Mondiale e la convivenza comune… Human Fraternity for world peace and living together”.

The document presents some affirmations and aspirations. It contains the following head-scratching statement. Emphases mine…

Freedom is a right of every person: each individual enjoys the freedom of belief, thought, expression and action. The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings. This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives. Therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected, as too the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept;

Do you get that?  “The pluralism and diversity of religions” is “willed by God”.

We must seek a way to understand this without it sounding like heresy. 

Go here to read the rest.  Father Z does his best by drawing a distinction between the active will of God and the permissive will of God.  God allows a multiplicity of religion without actively seeking a multiplicity of religions.  It is a bravura effort, and PopeWatch is sure not at all how the Pope intended this passage to be interpreted.  The Pope has made a Golden Calf for the false God of diversity, and so much the worse for Catholicism being the True Faith.

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Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, February 6, AD 2019 4:48am

Fr Z could also have expounded on the antecedent and consequent will of God.

According to St Thomas, “Whatever God wills absolutely, is done (otherwise He would not be omnipotent), although what He wills antecedently (or only conditionally) may not be done,” (Ia, q. 19, a. 6 ad I) for in this instance God permits the opposite evil for the sake of a greater good; thus He wills antecedently that all the fruits of the earth come to maturity, but He permits that many actually do not reach this maturity. It is similar in the matter of the salvation of men. St. Thomas goes on to explain this in the same article (ad I): On consequent or unconditional will. “The will is compared to things according as they are in themselves; but in themselves they are individual. Hence we will something absolutely inasmuch as we will it considering all its individuating circumstances; this is to will consequently.” Thus whatever God (omnipotent) wills absolutely is done; although what He wills antecedently may not be done.
Antecedently God wills a thing according as it is good in itself, for example, that all men be saved, that all His commands be ever fulfilled; but at the same time He permits to some extent the opposite evil for the sake of a greater good, and thus “what He wills only antecedently or conditionally is not done.”
Hence it is said in Psalm 134:6: “Whatsoever the Lord pleased He hath done, in heaven, in earth.” And the Council of Toucy (PL, CXXVI, 123) adds: “For nothing is done in heaven or on earth, except what God either graciously does Himself or permits to be done, in His justice.”

Leon Berton
Leon Berton
Wednesday, February 6, AD 2019 7:34am

The problem with trying to relate Francis’ comments to antecedent and consequent Divine Will is that Francis in NO way made said distinction.

Rather, he suppressed the truth and suggested the false.

c matt
c matt
Wednesday, February 6, AD 2019 10:39am

So what did he mean by “diversity of . . . sex”? Francis is the very model of a modern major modernist. By not making distinctions (i.e., speaking clearly and precisely), he allows each to interpret as suits their agenda. Makes Slick Willie look like an amateur.

David WS
David WS
Wednesday, February 6, AD 2019 2:03pm

“a distinction between the active will of God and the permissive will of God”
– best explanation for this Pope I’ve seen.

David WS
David WS
Wednesday, February 6, AD 2019 2:07pm

“a distinction between the active will of God and the permissive will of God”
– the very best explanation of this Pope I’ve seen.

c matt
c matt
Wednesday, February 6, AD 2019 3:10pm

The problem with Fr. Z’s interpretation is that if diversity of religious belief is permissive, then it is tantamount to calling it evil. God’s permissive will is only necessary for things that are not good. So under Fr. Z’s approach Frankie admits Islam is evil. Should we ask ol’ Frankie for confirmation?

c matt
c matt
Wednesday, February 6, AD 2019 3:22pm

To follow up on the above, Fr. Z puts Francis in the following pickle: Either diversity of religion is part of God’s active will and therefore Francis is a heretic, or it is part of God’s permissive will and therefore Islam is evil.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Wednesday, February 6, AD 2019 3:43pm

The problem with Fr. Z’s interpretation is that if diversity of religious belief is permissive, then it is tantamount to calling it evil.

Not necessarily. Islam could be punitive or corrective.

Should we ask ol’ Frankie for confirmation?

D’ya think he’d give an answer?

Mark
Mark
Wednesday, February 6, AD 2019 11:01pm

I’ve stopped waisting time and brain cells deciphering Francis’s Jesuit-speak.
The man will never defend the Faith. He is uncomfortable with much of his Faith and flock.
This type of agreement fits the Francis agenda perfectly. There is no need for any mental or theological gymnastics to figure this out.

Grammy
Grammy
Thursday, February 7, AD 2019 5:03am

Saying diversity of religion is willed by God is the same thing as saying Jesus’s death on the cross was not necessary. That pierces my heart.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, February 7, AD 2019 6:36am

My short essay about this on FB:

THE HERESY OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

Amici, Americani, Compatriotae,

Once again Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis) has done the idiotic. He has signed a statement with Muslim clerics during his visit to the United Arab Emirates which asserts in part the following:

“Freedom is a right of every person: each individual enjoys the freedom of belief, thought, expression and action. The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings. This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives. Therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected, as too the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept….”

Father Zuhlsdorf at his blog tries to put a positive spin on this by saying that there is God’s perfect will of one and only one Faith in Christ Jesus, and God’s permissive will wherein people have freedom to choose what faith to believe. Father’s effort is admirable. But this episode is merely a continuation of all the other nonsense that has come out from Jorge Bergoglio’s horrible Pontificate.  

Father Hunwickie in the United Kingdom discusses this whole issue at his blog, Mutual Enlightenment, where he quotes what Blessed John Henry Newman said in the 19th century:

“For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion. Never did Holy Church need champions against it more sorely than now, when, alas! it is an error overspreading, as a snare, the whole earth … Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion, [that] revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and [that] it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.”

There are some things we authentic Christians need to grasp, whether we are Catholic, Protestant or Eastern Orthodox:

(1) The ONLY true religion is the Christian one, and yes, it is a religion – a binding together in Christ as the original Latin word (religare = to bind) means.

(2) Islam and all the rest of the world’s religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, etc. are false.

(3) God wants everyone to come to the saving knowledge of the truth; He does NOT will false belief.

St. Paul addressed this whole issue in his sermon on the Aeropagus in Athens as Acts 17:22-31 records:

22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; 26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ 29 Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. 30 Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, 31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

Now some people in a fit of misunderstanding will say that the Pope is supposed to be infallible, so how can this happen? Vatican Council I back in the late 1800s addresses this as follows:

“For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.”

Pope Francis for the entirety of his Pontificate has been shooting off his mouth about stuff in which he has no expertise, no knowledge and certainly no charism (or gift) (e.g., climate change, economics, gun control, immigration, etc.). A great deal of what he has said and done has been contrary to Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Therefore, what Vatican Council I states more than 100 years ago applies: he is NOT infallible (just the opposite in fact) when he contradicts Sacred Scripture and 2000 years of Judeo-Christian Tradition. I do not base what I just said merely on my own interpretation of Sacred Scripture contrary to what 2nd Peter 1:20-21 states:

20 First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, 21 because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Rather, I base it on the continuous Tradition of Holy Mother Church from the early Church Fathers in the first four centuries after Christ. Do we for a second imagine that St. Ignatius of Antioch (the man who was taught by St. John the Apostle) believed in the legitimacy of a plurality and diversity of religions when he refused to offer incense to Caesar and Caesar’s gods and goddesses, preferring instead to be eaten by lions in the Coliseum? He even said, “I am the wheat of God and am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.” Would that man say as Pope Francis did, “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom?” I think NOT!

Pray for Pope Francis, that the Holy Spirit will take the baseball bat of common sense and hit him straight across the head with it so he’ll wake up and fly straight.

OrdinaryCatholic
OrdinaryCatholic
Thursday, February 7, AD 2019 7:40am

I think Pope Francis IS the baseball bat that the Holy Spirit has struck the Church upside the head with calling all of us, clergy and layman alike to fly straight. When Israel strayed from God it was not just the clergy that strayed from God but the whole nation. We may not like it but we are part of the problem. Our voices were mostly silent after Vat.II when the uncomfortable changes began in our Church. We are all being slammed with the bat. Time to get on our knees and beg for his mercy and strength through this purge.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, February 7, AD 2019 7:46am

I agree with you, Ordinary Catholic.

c matt
c matt
Thursday, February 7, AD 2019 11:21am

Not necessarily. Islam could be punitive or corrective.

Muslims may be punitive or corrective (i.e., the many times Israel was struck by enemies when it strayed), but not Islam. The Babylonians, the Romans, etc. may have been used for correction/punishment, but their false idols/religion were not.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Thursday, February 7, AD 2019 1:22pm

I see the distinction C MATT. I don’t see how that make Islam evil. Wrong, sure, but not evil. Like taco pizza is wrong, not evil.

OrdinaryCatholic
OrdinaryCatholic
Thursday, February 7, AD 2019 2:14pm

Islam does deny the divinity of Christ or the Three persons of the Holy Trinity do they not? And that does not make Islam evil? I mean, denying the King of Heaven his rightful place? I have to think about that…

Mary De Voe
Thursday, February 7, AD 2019 2:53pm

GRAMMY
“Saying diversity of religion is willed by God is the same thing as saying Jesus’s death on the cross was not necessary. That pierces my heart.”
The other gods did not love us perfectly so they did not bother to redeem mankind

Mary De Voe
Thursday, February 7, AD 2019 3:04pm

ORDINARYCATHOLIC
“Islam does deny the divinity of Christ or the Three persons of the Holy Trinity do they not? And that does not make Islam evil? I mean, denying the King of Heaven his rightful place? I have to think about that…”
Allah has no son to love nor to love him. therefore, Islam does not love.

OrdinaryCatholic
OrdinaryCatholic
Thursday, February 7, AD 2019 3:16pm

Yes Mary!!! diversity of religions DOES mean His death was not necessary. If all religions are equally valid then we have been lied to since the beginning.

Petrichor
Petrichor
Friday, February 8, AD 2019 8:17am

Some saint (can’t remember which) said the greatest punishment God can visit on the world is bad priests. I see the one on the Chair of St Peter and say, “Amen”.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, February 8, AD 2019 8:50am

Islam does deny the divinity of Christ or the Three persons of the Holy Trinity do they not? And that does not make Islam evil? I mean, denying the King of Heaven his rightful place? I have to think about that…

That makes Islam wrong, not necessarily evil.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, February 8, AD 2019 8:52am

It just occurred to me that I’m using evil in the colloquial sense of malevolent rather than the Thomistic sense of a deprivation of a good. So maybe we’re hair-splitting?

c matt
c matt
Friday, February 8, AD 2019 4:06pm

You can call it wrong instead of evil. But it seems to me evil is not the incorrect way of describing it. We are not talking about some accidental miscalculation on an arithmetic test, or proposing economic theories and practices that may in fact have doubtful outcomes. We are talking about an ideology that intentionally and expressly denies Truth, and forcefully so. I grant an individual Muslim could be “wrong” rather than “evil” in the sense of less personally culpable due to propaganda, upbringing, etc., but it is not incorrect to call Islam itself evil.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, February 8, AD 2019 4:22pm

Lets just call Islam diabolical, since it’s likely originated in a gnostic Christian heresy of some sort or other, and Muslims misguided.

Except for Jihadis. Because those f—s are evil.

Cheers

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