I'm Right Because I Talk Directly To God, And You Don't...

[sleigh]

Pope Benedict XVI's version of 'forward progress' seems to be a return to a Medieval Catholic Church. His latest bit of 'progress' is to release a Doctrine of Faith stating unequivocally that the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches are 'defective' and that all other Christian denominations (i.e., every Protestant church) are not "true" churches.

I'm sure that's a stance that's likely to help the Vatican's relationships with other faiths. And gee, Pope Benedict, if all the other Christian churches are false churches, then what are churches that aren't even Christian? I'll bet you can't wait to hear all those heathens screaming and writing in the eternal flames of hell, you kindly old man, you.

This reverses a ruling by the Second Vatican Council which met in the mid-60s under Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI in an effort to drag the Roman Catholic religion (kicking and screaming) into the 20th Century and a 'modern' world. (Those damned liberal popes!) Last Saturday, Benedict had revived the old Latin Mass, which had been replaced by 'secular' masses by the Second Vatican Council.

Next week, no doubt, he'll do what no one expects: bring back the Spanish Inquisition. Hide your comfy chairs!

Evidently in his infallible conversations with God, the former Cardinal Ratzinger has learned that God has changed His mind (because Ratzinger's god is most definitely male) and now wants to dismantle all those crazy liberal ideas that He had back in the 60s. (Hey, we all did crazy things back then, and God's pot must be absolutely, well, heavenly. No wonder He was confused at the time.)

In my opinion, the previous pope, John Paul II, had been one of the lesser popes in history due to his staunch conservatism and lack of vision, and had done great harm to the church's standing in the world. Benedict appears poised to become one of the most destructive popes in history... and hey, these guys rule for life. My bet: the Roman Catholic Church's already declining status in the world is going to undergo a crisis under this pope. I wouldn't be surprised to see a separate American Catholic Church after this fool's through.

Comments

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

What's been 'repealed' by Benedict, from what I understand, is Unitatis Redintegratio, which begins with this statement: " The restoration of unity among all Christians is one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council. Christ the Lord founded one Church and one Church only. However, many Christian communions present themselves to men as the true inheritors of Jesus Christ; all indeed profess to be followers of the Lord but differ in mind and go their different ways, as if Christ Himself were divided.(1) Such division openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages the holy cause of preaching the Gospel to every creature..."

The full text of that decree can be found at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Oops, and then I noticed that you'd linked to the text yourself.... :-)

[alces2.livejournal.com]

The reason I was a little confused, even though I had read that first paragraph was that the second document, which I give a wikipedia references, seems to do some similar things. Here's what the wikipedia entry says about The Catholic-Orthodox Joint Declaration of 1965: "It withdrew the exchange of excommunications between prominent ecclesiastics in the Roman see and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, commonly known as the Great Schism of 1054. It did not end the schism but showed a desire for greater reconciliation between the two churches, represented by Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I." With respect to Unitatis Redintegratio, it would seem (through my quick skimming as opposed to actually reading and studying the document) that they are saying the Catholic church should be friendly to and help those other communities that follow Christ and work toward a union of all to one church. I was looking through it and trying to find someplace where they say we're all equal and everyone can have their own way of worship and we're not the only ones with the true vision. I didn't find something that clearly and definitively said that. However again, skimming can cause one to easily miss what is clearly there. Admittedly the current Pope seems to be indicating a statement or viewpoint against this friendliness and open cooperation. Of course, I haven't read his complete statement either (hm, wonder if it is in English). After re-reading
another of your replies it does seem that you're agreeing that the church was simply moving "to a less isolated and superior position" and it would seem the current Pope is moving the church right back to their superior position. Such fun . . . .

With respect to an American Catholic Church, I also wonder whether it will be North or South America which will lead the efforts toward separation. I think it is obvious that North America has a greater proportion of very liberal Catholics but I think I've heard that South and Central America may not be so happy that they are not more represented within the upper echelons of the Catholic Church since I think their numbers may actually be growing or, at the very least, not decreasing.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

The reason you didn't find what you were looking for was because it was not there. The Catholic church has had a reputation as being tolerant and accepting of other faiths for two reasons: 1) the desire to reunify the Christian faith under Rome and 2) the Church does not rule out the possibility of a non-Catholic or non-Christian being saved. Most protestant Churches will go right ahead and tell you everyone but them is going to hell. The Catholic Church's official stance is that we don't know, and that has not changed. You will not find anything saying that all Christian faiths are equal in any Catholic documents because that is not a teaching of the church and never has been.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

The Second Vatican Council did make an attempt to soften that tone of righteousness. Certainly up until John XXXIII there was no pretext of anything but that the Roman Catholic Church was the only true church and everyone else was going to hell. But Unitatis Redintegratio, while still maintaining the view that Rome was the original (and therefore correct) seat of the Church, did make concessions that would have been unthinkable before. Look at clause 3:

"The differences that exist in varying degrees between them and the Catholic Church-whether in doctrine and sometimes in discipline, or concerning the structure of the Church-do indeed create many obstacles, sometimes serious ones, to full ecclesiastical communion. The ecumenical movement is striving to overcome these obstacles. But even in spite of them it remains true that all who have been justified by faith in Baptism are members of Christ's body,(21) and have a right to be called Christian, and so are correctly accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church.(22)"

There's the admission that, hey, if you've been baptized you are part of Christ's flock, regardless of which church did the Baptism. That's quite a concession... and it's also what Benedict is now saying is wrong, wrong, wrong -- since according to him, Rome is again the only true church.

As to faiths other than Christian... The big document for that one is Dignitatis Humane (http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html), which asserts that "the human person has a right to religious freedom." Not Christian religious freedom, just 'religious' freedom...

Benedict will probably go after that too.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

"There's the admission that, hey, if you've been baptized you are part of Christ's flock, regardless of which church did the Baptism. That's quite a concession... and it's also what Benedict is now saying is wrong, wrong, wrong -- since according to him, Rome is again the only true church."

It used to be that the Catholic church would rebaptize Christian converts, and you are right--that practice did change. Now any baptism that includes the words, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," and a pouring of water three times, is a valid sacramental baptism in the Catholic church and would not be repeated upon conversion. Benedict has not changed this. Benedict's statement changes nothing, actually, because everything he is saying is totally standard church doctrine and has never changed before or since Vatican II. If Benedict's statement is interpreted as you said, then the Vatican would have issued new rules regarding RCIA--the rite of Christian initiation for adults--saying that only Catholic baptism is valid, and all others are invalid. Furthermore, literally millions of people baptized in other churches and now practicing the Catholic faith would become "unbaptized."

What perhaps has changed is an attitude of tolerance towards religious syncretism or permissiveness toward nondoctrinal belief, and I can't say I disapprove of that. People do have a right to religious freedom. If they believe that every way to heaven is equally as good as another, they don't belong in the Catholic church--they should be a Unitarian. I see a lot of people at church who reject almost everything the Catholic church stands for. What are they doing there? Why are they sitting in the pews? What do they want from the Church if they DON'T want its truth?

What's interesting is that the Pope can make waves by reasserting old, standard rules of the Church. The Catholic Church is the one true Christian Church which Christ himself established! Gasp! Nobody told me that when I got my Catholic membership card! *faint* This is only what the Church as been saying for centuries. Why is this surprising anyone? That is what I'd like to know.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I've certainly been too long away from the Catholic church to know the details of current belief structures. While I remain fascinated by religions and mythologies, I lost any personal faith in a god or gods decades ago in high school, and nothing I've read or experienced in the intervening years has given me any inclination to change my mind.

But I do remember the time of the Second Vatican Council, especially since I actually investigated entering a seminary after grade school; good thing I didn't... :-) There was a definite sense at the time that Rome was moving toward tolerance toward and integration with other versions of Christianity and possibly even other faiths. To that extent, I have to quibble with your statement that "... everything (Benedict) is saying is totally standard church doctrine and has never changed before or since Vatican II." That certainly wasn't the perception of people within the church at that time, nor of many of the clergy. (Nor did all Catholics embrace this change; I vividly remember furious arguments over the the changes proposed and instituted.) But the feeling of rapid change and modernization didn't last long -- Paul VI allowed a lot of compromise in his sessions of Vatican II, and in '68 with "Humanae Vitae" and its condemnation of birth control, showed that he was going to drag the church away from John XXIII's liberal path and back to the center...

It would have been interesting to see what Vatican II might have produced had John XXIII not died in mid-'63 and been alive for all four sessions of Vatican II instead of only the first, and had he survived as pope for more than a bare four years.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

I think you are combining two things here. One is doctrine and one is the sort of interfaith PR. The Catholic Church has been involved in the goal of Christian unity for some time, but it has never compromised doctrine in the pursuit of that goal, and has never given ground on any of the fundamentals of faith and morals, which are infallible doctrine. Christian unity has always been more important to the Catholic Church than to any protestant church, which is sort of obvious when you think about. All protestant churches have embraced at least one of the following ideas: 1) that apostolic succession is irrelevant and only the teachings of the bible matter to true Christianity or 2) that apostolic succession is important, but the Catholic Church went astray at some point and only their specific group has valid succession. The meetings the Catholic church has hosted with other faiths have been primarily oriented toward bringing other denominations back into the fold of the Catholic faith. Secondarily, ecumenical negotiations have sought to iron out doctrinal differences, hopefully to allow intercommunion with some other denominations. It does not seem to me that Benedict has given up at all on these goals, but he is changing the tone of the conversation.

I wasn't alive during Vatican II, so I can't comment on the feelings or moods in the church at that time. The church moves slowly. It took a good four hundred years after the protestant reformation to decide exactly what was and was not a valid christian baptism. It didn't change the truth. It is not that all protestant baptisms before a certain point were invalid, and all those after were valid. It was simply that the church decided that those other baptisms were valid all along. Similarly, some conservative Catholics make what are essentially false claims about church doctrine, and then there is the appearance of "change" when the pope or magisterium come to a decision. One example is the priesthood of women. The official reason that the church does not ordain women is because there were no women among the apostles of Jesus. Does this mean that Jesus intended only men to be priests? No one knows for sure. It could mean that, or it could be a sampling error on Jesus' part. However, many conservative Catholics make much stronger claims than the church itself. They claim that God definitely intends women not to be priests. Thus, if at some future point, it is revealed by the pope that it is okay for women to be priests, it will be seen as a change, when in fact it is only the result of more than 2 millennia of waffling. And really the question has only come up since the modern sexual revolution. If it took four hundred years for the Church to make a decision on protestant baptism, the I don't think we should look for women's ordination any time soon, and if it does come about, it will not be because of protesting or lobbying on the part of the faithful, but through prayer and direct revelation to the pope and/or magisterium. I think the most that human action can accomplish is that as newer leaders move up in the church, they will have grown up with women in the workplace and in positions of authority, so they will be more open to...shall we say...any nudgings of the Holy Spirit in that direction.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

(continuing...)

From that standpoint, Benedict XVI is not the pope who is going to give us women's ordination. He is the product of another time and I seriously doubt he is spending any time at all in discernment of this particular issue. But it's not because he is wrong and someone else is right. It is the proper role of the church leadership to be very very cautious about modifying doctrine or practice in any way. The doctrine of infallibility promises that no one will be led astray by the Catholic church. That means when in doubt, take the most conservative position.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

And another 'Oh!..." to P's point. The Catholic Church -- back when I was an altar boy in the late fifties -- definitely declared itself the "one true church." But that attitude was modified with the Second Vatican Council, which moved the church to a less isolated and superior position in regard to other faiths and religions.