Nazianzen

Thread of threads John XXIII declining to rule the Church by law x.com/RealNazianzen/… Texts on John XXIII's revolution twitter.com/RealNazianzen/… The New Church doesn't govern by law x.com/RealNazianzen/… A Dissertation on papal law from 1954 x.com/RealNazianzen/…

It’s hard not to be angered reading this passage every year in Gueranger. In fact, St. Agnes’ name would not be echoed until the end of time because of some liturgical “experts.”

@grok My screen shot taken in portrait mode.

Were Honorius' letter to Sergius private? Dom Chapman, cited by @klautaum, says no. But Chapman is wrong. Nobody really knew about the letter until it was produced at the council. Also: St Robert Bellarmine – Doctor of the Church – says that “all that Honorius is accused of [is] that he fostered heresy in private letters.[37a] He does not hold him to have expressed or taught heresy, nor even to have fostered it as accused. In fact, he praises him for the prudence in advising silence, “For then it was the beginning of this heresy, and nothing on these terms was yet defined by the Church." St Alphonsus Liguori – another Doctor of the Church – writes in The History of Heresies that “he only wrote them as a private doctor, and in no wise stained the purity of the faith of the Apostolic See” and also, “there is no open heresy in the private letter of Honorius to Sergius.” Cardinal Franzelin is so clear on the private nature of Honorius’s letters that he uses them as an example of a pope acting as a private person. Fr (later Cardinal) Hergenröther – the great historian who refuted the historical theology of the excommunicate Döllinger in his work Anti-Janus – cites another writer (Habert) approvingly, saying that “the letters of Honorius were private letters.” Fr Bottalla said “[The letters] were not intended for the instruction of the whole Church. Far from this, they were not even destined for circulation among all the Bishops of either East or West; still less were the Bishops required to sign them. […] No record whatever exists from which we learn that the letters of Honorius were communicated to the Oriental Bishops. Sergius, who was principally interested in the matter, did not put them in circulation, nor did he even mention them in the Ecthesis, which was his own composition.” Cardinal Manning, Petri Privilegium, quotes a similar argument from another bishop. The letters “were not published, even in the East, until several years later,” and Sergius had managed to keep his letter concealed for eight years, even from the Emperor – and this was “probably because its contents, if published, would not have suited his wily purpose of secretly introducing, under another form, the Eutychian heresy.” Manning concludes that “his letters were not addressed to a general council of the whole Church and were rather private, than public and official.” Berry states that the letters were “not issued for the universal Church.” They were “private letters” and were “merely a matter of personal advice requested by Sergius.” “But,” he observes, “even as such they contain no error of doctrine.” Dom Prosper Guéranger describes the events between Honorius’s death and his condemnation, referring to the various saints and prelates that appealed to Rome for aid against the monothelitist heresy. He writes: "In all these letters [engaging in the Monothelite controversy after Honorius’s death], there is not the slightest mention of Honorius, nor of his having forbidden reference to one will, or of two wills. Everywhere the same confidence in the unbreakable fidelity of the See of Rome to the true faith, everywhere the conviction that this See has not yet pronounced on the question." What can we conclude from this apparent ignorance of Honorius’s letters, Guéranger asks? "Honorius’s letter to Sergius remained unknown in the Church in its capacity as a private writing; or that if it was known to a certain extent, no one recognized in this document the characteristics of an apostolic judgment. [It] was not addressed by him to the Church [and that] it never had any other character than that of a private writing." He concludes that “those conditions which would take the letter out of the character of a private writing and elevate it to the importance of a general law […] are totally lacking here.”

This is an effect of the office of the Roman Pontiff. It's quasi-miraculous in that a vacant office would usually be thought to be entirely ineffectual. Yet it's an observable fact.

...profession of faith, the effect is only produced by those who believe that the Council of Trent, for example, promulgated by the Roman Pontiff, still binds them. This isn't true of most in the Novus Ordo, but it's true of many, and of course it's true of all trad Catholics.

Mass attendance fell, then attendance at Protestant services. The office of the papacy remains and still has the effect described by @Dragodi

Mass attendance fell, *then* attendance at Protestant services declined. The office of the papacy remains and still has the effect described by @dragodimitrov but it's much diminished as one would expect. Instead of a living voice actively attending to the outward...

@barnes_law @BretWeinstein The end cannot justify the means, agreed. The Catholic Church has been immovable on this forever and the broad departure from it since the Protestant Revolt only demonstrates its truth. Hiroshima was justified on the utilitarian principle. Absolutely anything can be.

@BretWeinstein Rule utilitarianism can provide a way out, in theory, of the problem created by utilitarianism itself.

We need to have a frank conversation about utilitarianism. In general, the greatest good for the greatest number is not a bad guide. BUT there is NOTHING it can’t be used to justify. Slavery, genocide, deadly violations of informed consent—every type of atrocity is on the table if we surrender to this dangerous logic.

@Vim5347 @kennedyhall That is St. Augustine's constant theme.

@kennedyhall To be ordered or atleast be of good will they should really change that to 'What I have Lord I want it for them too'

This is the impression I often get from the triad of Vatican II bros, Sedes, and Prots online (I know it isn't representative of all): "The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men..."

@mfjlewis @FeserEdward You can't cite any laws can you? You've just abusing language exactly as politicians always do in this exact way.

The remarkable irony of the highlighted quote is that you have no problem being an "the isolated individual" who decides "to judge [Church] laws, find them wanting, and justify disobeying them." In this way, you "undermine the coherence of Catholic teaching."

Churchmen today tend to emphasize aspects of Catholic teaching that seem to echo respectable political opinion, and soft-pedal or ignore those that do not. (The people who will object to my saying so are the same people who routinely accuse churchmen of past ages of doing this.)

@lumasimmsEPPC To what laws are you pointing? Be specific. x.com/RealNazianzen/…

"It practically canonizes the isolated individual’s decision to judge laws, find them wanting, and justify disobeying them. This undermines the coherence of Catholic teaching. It makes an unjustified exception to a Catholic’s responsibility to obey legitimate laws, suggesting an anthropology that asserts that the only dignity at stake is the individual’s. This marks a departure from Catholic tradition, which accords dignity to the valid expression of a collective community will embodied in duly adopted laws."

We trads have nothing for which to apologise or justify. We are bound by, and cheerfully obey, the laws of the Church, liturgical and doctrinal. Let the rebels and their defenders prove their case if they can. They can't, of course, which is why they use gaslighting instead.

Like so much of modern discourse everything has been inverted so that we have revolutionaries accusing placid subjects of rebellion, and many of those those gaslit subjects thinking that they have to defend their non-existent rebellion.

No, it wasn't "recognise and resist," it was law. A text isn't law until it's promulgated. If a ruler prevented promulgation in his realm the law didn't apply there. All canonists accepted this as reality and so did Rome. Our Modernists don't govern by law at all, so...