tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20548538201117298662024-03-15T09:30:08.996+01:00The Radical CatholicRadical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.comBlogger423125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-83135199454327345852019-11-27T12:09:00.001+01:002019-11-27T12:27:22.008+01:00On Catholicism and Nationalism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's no secret that identity politics have entered the Church in a big way. It seems that very public Catholics from all sides are talking about it: Dawn Eden Goldstein, Sohrab Ahmari, Matthew Schmitz, Faith Goldy, Nick Fuentes, etc.</div>
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We see a lot of denunciations and counter-denunciations, disavowals and counter-disavowals. What we don't see much of is serious, articulate discussion of the ideas upon which the issues rest.*</div>
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In the hope of facilitating such discussion, I'd like to propose a list of questions. They're obviously heavy on the theoretical side, and this is intentional. I'm not particularly interested in practical applications until universal principles have been sufficiently clarified. As I've said before, a society can endure disagreement in its members with regard to the means whereby the end of society, i.e., the common good, is to be achieved. But where there is fundamental disagreement as to the nature of the end itself, there is, in fact, no society at all. And this is particularly true in the present case.</div>
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That is to say, without clarification of these fundamental issues, debate among Catholics over the current political situation becomes pointless and even counter-productive.</div>
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I think it's high time for those who enjoy engaging in these issues to get down to brass tacks and tell us exactly what they think the Catholic position is or should be on these questions.</div>
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Questions regarding Catholicism and Nationalism</h3>
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<li>What is the Nation? What is the State? What is the People?</li>
<li>How does the Nation differ from the State?</li>
<li>How does the Nation differ from the People?</li>
<li>What is Nationalism? What is Civic Nationalism? What is Ethnic Nationalism? </li>
<li>How does Nationality differ from Nationalism?</li>
<li>Is Nationality a natural good? If so, when is the State obliged to respect it? To defend it? To supress or intervene in it?</li>
<li>Does Catholicism have a preferred State model with regard to Nations and/or Nationality?</li>
<li>Is Nationality an obstacle or an asset to the proper functioning of the State? To the life of the People?</li>
<li>What is the Catholic understanding of the Nation-State?</li>
<li>To what extent, if any, is the modern Nation-State a manifestation of the demise of Catholic Christendom?</li>
<li>What is the Catholic understanding of the Multinational or Plurinational State?</li>
<li>To what extent, if any, are Civic Nationalism, Plurinationalism, and Ethnic Nationalism at odds with each other? To what extent are they compatible?</li>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*NB: I exclude Dr. E. Michael Jones from this accusation. Unfortunately, his work is so politically charged - in the age of political correctness, one can say "toxic" - that few public Catholics are willing to seriously and thoughtfully engage with it, and are instead happy to summarily dismiss it as "fringe," "cranky," or "antisemitic." Their loss, frankly.</span></div>
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-65722759001702077292019-04-16T11:51:00.000+02:002019-04-16T11:51:47.965+02:00Humble yourself, or be humbled<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-52246904673244161462017-04-25T23:23:00.000+02:002017-04-27T04:28:11.517+02:00Not Traditionalist, Simply Catholic: An Interview with Fr. Bernhard Gerstle (FSSP)<div style="text-align: justify;">
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The Society of St. Pius X should be known to many. But the Fraternity of St. Peter? In this interview, Father Bernhard Gerstle, German District Superior, speaks about the objectives of the Fraternity.</h3>
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<i>Over at </i><a href="http://www.onepeterfive.com/fssp-superior-distinguishes-fraternity-from-sspx-eschews-traditionalist-label/">OnePeterFive</a><i>, Maike Hickson provides a few choice quotations from a recent interview with Fr. Bernhard Gerstle of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP). For those who would like to learn the context of the various statements quoted in Hickson's report, I provide a full translation of the original article below, without comment. - RC</i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fr. Bernhard Gerstle, FSSP</td></tr>
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Q.: Fr. Gerstle, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) arose by breaking away from the Society of St. Pius X. You were directly involved. What exactly happened? </div>
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A.: I entered the Society seminary in Zaitzkofen in the Fall of 1985, and hoped that there would be a reconciliation with Rome as soon as possible, as there were favorable indications at that time. A shift occurred in 1986 as a result of the interreligious summit at Assisi, which Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre rejected. Efforts were made on the part of Rome, especially by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to prevent the unauthorized episcopal consecrations of 1988 and come to a mutual understanding. This was almost achieved via a written agreement, which was signed but then rejected by Lefebvre shortly thereafter. I think the whole thing came about due to a lack of trust toward Rome.</div>
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Q.: And you, as well as other members of the Society, didn't want to go along with the coming break?</div>
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A.: The decision was clear to me from the beginning: in case of a break with Rome, I would stand on the side of the pope. Many of my confrères desired reconciliation with Rome, but didn't risk taking the leap. Thus, it was only a few priests and seminarians who then left the Society. The foundation and ecclesial recognition of the Fraternity of St. Peter - which came about largely as a result of the efforts of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger - was unforeseeable at that time.</div>
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Q.: In what ways does the FSSP distinguish itself from the Society of St. Pius X?</div>
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A.: First, one has to recognize that there are different currents within the Society. One must distinguish between the moderates and the hardliners. There exists a larger number of moderate priests, especially within the German-speaking region, who want to avoid a permanent break with Rome and are interested in an agreement. Then there are the hardliners who largely reject the Second Vatican Council - for example, freedom of religion or ecumenism - and of these, there are some who even doubt the validity of the new liturgy. The Fraternity of St. Peter, on the other hand, agreed to undertake an impartial study of the documents of the Council and has come to believe that there is no break with earlier magisterial teaching. Nonetheless, some documents are formulated in such a way as to give rise to misunderstandings. Since then, however, Rome has issued relevant clarifications, which the Society of St. Pius X should recognize.</div>
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Q.: Are there any additional differences?</div>
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A.: It is for us a matter of course that the 1983 Code of Canon Law is normative. It appears to me that, for the Society of St. Pius X, there remains here a need for additional clarification. Also, phrases such as "Institutional Church" (<i>Amtskirche</i>) or "Conciliar Church" (<i>Konzilskirche</i>) are to be avoided. We reject them not only because they suggest a kind of distance, but also because, for us, there is no "pre-" and "post-Conciliar" Church. There is only the one Church, which goes back to Christ. Additionally, our apostolate always operates with the consent of local bishops and priests, and we work to maintain good relations. Almost everywhere we are active, our priests have a good relationship to the local ordinaries. We do not want to polarize or divide; on the contrary, we attempt to convey an ecclesial attitude to the faithful in the communities we serve. This means that, while those grievances and abuses which undeniably take place in the Church must be addressed, this must be done in a differentiated and moderate manner.</div>
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Q.: Nonetheless, the FSSP, like the Society of St. Pius X, is described as "traditionalist." Do you like hearing that?</div>
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A.: I don't like hearing the term at all. We are not "traditionalists;" we're simply Catholics. And as Catholics, we treasure Tradition. But not in the sense that we completely block ourselves off from organic adaptations and changes.</div>
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Q.: What are the core objectives of the FSSP?</div>
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A.: First and foremost, the celebration of the liturgy in the Extraordinary Latin Form. To strive for the reverent celebration of Holy Mass combined with faithful preaching is an important service in the interest of the Church. Concern for salvation of souls, as Pope Francis is fond of stressing, must remain our central objective. We must once again communicate to people that eternal life is at stake, which is decided here on earth. Especially the message of Fatima, where the Mother of God appeared a century ago, should be brought to the fore in the minds of the people. Unfortunately, the Last Things have been pushed into the background by matters of secondary concern over the past few decades, such that many Christians no longer understand what life is about. This has led to a downplaying of sin and a large-scale collapse of the discipline of confession.</div>
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Q.: Do you reject the new liturgy?</div>
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A.: We recognize the new liturgy as valid and licit. But we do not close our eyes to the fact that the liturgical reform brought with it many developments which have taken on a life of their own and which lead away from the meaning of the Mass according to the Faith of the Church. The sacrificial character is frequently pushed into the background, or there is a lack of reverence shown toward the Blessed Sacrament. We are very thankful that Pope Benedict XVI pointed out these negative developments. For example, celebrating <i>ad orientem</i> and the reception of Holy Communion kneeling and on the tongue are barely practiced today. The question poses itself whether the changes made to the external form have facilitated a rather protestantized understanding of the Mass among priests and laity.</div>
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Q.: This wouldn't have happened if we had retained the "Old Mass," in your opinion?</div>
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A.: Presumably not to this extent. Surely, this isn't to be attributed solely to the changes in the liturgy. The training of priests today must also be reconsidered. But the liturgy is an important part of the whole - after all, it is the visible expression of the Faith. It is precisely the many signs of reverence and adoration prescribed by the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, as well as its prayers, which make explicit the sacrificial character of the Mass and express the great Mystery taking place on the altar.</div>
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Q.: The Council called for a more active participation of the faithful. How can this be realized in the old liturgy when the priest is more or less the sole actor and the Latin language represents an obstacle to conscious engagement?</div>
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A.: One must examine the conciliar document on the liturgy, <i>Sacrosanctum Concilium</i>, very closely. One observes significant discrepancies in comparison to what was later put into practice. For example, the text never mentions that the Latin language should be abandoned, merely that the local vernacular should be given due place. And this is something that we actually practice insofar as, for example, the readings in our Masses are recited in German. Nearly all the faithful who come to us have a German-Latin missal, and they manage quite well. I don't see language as an obstacle to conscious engagement in the Mass.</div>
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Q.: But what about the active participation of the faithful?</div>
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A.: In my opinion, the Council didn't intend for as many laypeople as possible to serve as liturgical actors within the sanctuary. Rather, that the faithful should be drawn more intensly into the unfolding of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. This does not mean activism, but rather that they participate through reaping greater spiritual fruits. In the past, many simply prayed the Rosary during the Mass. The Council wanted to put a stop to that and motivate the faithful to a more conscious participation in the Mass.</div>
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Q.: With his Motu Proprio <i>Summorum Pontificum</i>, Benedict XVI granted a general allowance for the celebration of the old liturgy. Are things supposed to go back to how they were before the reform of the liturgy?</div>
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A.: I realize that we can't simply re-introduce the old liturgy in parishes everywhere and, as it were, impose it upon the people. That just won't work. As I see it, Pope Benedict intended to set a standard for the Reform of the Reform. Both forms of the Rite should enrich each other mutually. I am convinced that certain elements of the old liturgy could improve the new, and also that elements of the new liturgy could enrich the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite: I'm thinking, for example, of the broader lectionary, or a period of quiet reflection after the reception of Holy Communion. Likewise, the calendar for the Extraordinary Form should be updated in the foreseeable future.</div>
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Q.: So, you're expecting a new liturgical reform?</div>
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A.: I don't think this is an issue at the moment. Pope Francis is not as concerned with the liturgy as was Pope Benedict. He has other priorities. Nonetheless, it should be noted that interest for the old liturgy, especially among younger clerics, is growing. An increasing number of priests celebrate the Mass in the Extraordinary Form at least occasionally. This, in turn, influences the manner in which the new Mass is celebrated, so that the Sacred becomes more apparent.</div>
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Q.: In the German Church, dwindling vocations are a big problem. Does the FSSP share this concern?</div>
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A.: Of course we are impacted by the problems of the age. After all, we don't live in isolation. Though, we did have a total of 16 priestly ordinations last year. Both of our seminaries - in Wigratzbad in Allgäu and in Denton in the US - are filled with over 100 seminarians. The average age of our priests is currently 37 years. All in all, we're doing quite well, but it's not as though we are drowning in vocations.</div>
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Q.: What about the number of faithful?</div>
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A.: In the German-language region, we have 23 branches or houses through which other apostolates are conducted. The number of faithful varies considerably. In the larger communities, between 100 and 180 faithful attend Sunday Mass. The trend, however, is upward. Moreover, all age groups are represented, though in our communities, the average age of the faithful is considerably younger than in other parishes.</div>
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Q.: Why is that? Do young people feel attracted to the old liturgy?</div>
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A.: In a certain sense, the old liturgy <i>is</i> the new liturgy for young people. They read about it on the internet and become interested. They come to our Masses out of curiosity, and are often fascinated by the atmosphere of the sacred. Of course, this has to be followed up with good catechesis and pastoral services. When that happens, then people come to see that we can offer them the spiritual food that they need.</div>
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Q.: Rumor has it that an agreement between Rome and the Society of St. Pius X is on the horizon. How is the relationship between the Fraternity and the Society today, and what does the future hold?</div>
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A.: Recently, there have been multiple indications that an agreement with Rome is coming. It cannot be overlooked that there has been a certain opening on the part of the official leadership of the Society over the last few years. Some of their priests are also strengthening their contact with us. The moderate wing is apparently ready for an agreement, which is being energetically pursued by Rome and the current pope. Still, the hardline wing remains. The Society has to accept the possibility of significant losses, perhaps even an internal split. I think that the current Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, will have to decide between unity with Rome and unity within the Society. The realists among the leadership will hopefully recognize that there is no alternative to reconciliation with Rome.</div>
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(Original [German]: <a href="http://www.katholisch.de/aktuelles/aktuelle-artikel/keine-traditionalisten-sondern-einfach-katholisch">katholisch.de</a>)</div>
Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-8761539037577323172016-07-16T11:12:00.000+02:002016-07-20T20:19:53.079+02:00On Vacation<div style="text-align: justify;">
Today is the feast of Our Lady of Carmel. It also happens to be my birthday, as well as the first day of my children's summer vacation. I shall be taking some time off - perhaps as much as a few weeks - to spend with my family, to refocus my prayer life, and to decompress from the recent events in the Church and the world. If you've enjoyed and/or benefited from this little blog-shaped effort, please consider saying a short prayer for its editor, a sinner.</div>
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<br />Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-71511920879729576472016-07-13T12:28:00.000+02:002016-07-13T12:49:11.639+02:00#ShariaRape<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Last week, the good people at <i>OnePeterFive</i> were gracious enough to publish an article I wrote entitled <i>Pornography and the Prophet: Islam, Feminism and the Myth of the "Willing Whore."</i> In the article, I discuss the very real threat that unregulated immigration from Muslim countries represents to European women. If you haven't read it, you can do so <a href="http://www.onepeterfive.com/pornography-and-the-prophet/" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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I admit that, after having done a fair amount of research for the article, I have become more sensitive to the issue than I was before. But I don't go scouring the internet for stories which might substantiate my findings. Nonetheless, when they pop up in my news feed or Twitter timeline, I pass them along. Today, I started re-tweeting them with the hashtag #ShariaRape. This made me aware of just how many cases there are right now. These all appeared within the space of an hour:</div>
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Police and BBC ‘hushed up sex attack on 14-year-old girl by gang of Syrian migrants’ <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ShariaRape?src=hash">#ShariaRape</a> <a href="https://t.co/tM6BXFGxQM">https://t.co/tM6BXFGxQM</a></div>
— Radical Catholic (@RadicalCath) <a href="https://twitter.com/RadicalCath/status/753156807707811840">July 13, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Mom of Idaho rape victim: ‘We’re being treated as criminals’ <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ShariaRape?src=hash">#ShariaRape</a> <a href="https://t.co/nBPhcmYEK8">https://t.co/nBPhcmYEK8</a> via <a href="https://twitter.com/worldnetdaily">@worldnetdaily</a></div>
— Radical Catholic (@RadicalCath) <a href="https://twitter.com/RadicalCath/status/753157420306796544">July 13, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Germany Updates Its Rape Laws <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ShariaRape?src=hash">#ShariaRape</a> <a href="https://t.co/44F2PVLNHF">https://t.co/44F2PVLNHF</a></div>
— Radical Catholic (@RadicalCath) <a href="https://twitter.com/RadicalCath/status/753157919286386688">July 13, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
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Leftist Refugee Activists Worry Anti-Rape Laws Will Hurt Muslim Migrants <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ShariaRape?src=hash">#ShariaRape</a> <a href="https://t.co/79vpSalIUr">https://t.co/79vpSalIUr</a></div>
— Radical Catholic (@RadicalCath) <a href="https://twitter.com/RadicalCath/status/753158502156210176">July 13, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
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Norway: 5 Migrants Arrested For Rape After Dragging Girl Into House Near Asylum Centre <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ShariaRape?src=hash">#ShariaRape</a> <a href="https://t.co/OJhiiYKz5c">https://t.co/OJhiiYKz5c</a></div>
— Radical Catholic (@RadicalCath) <a href="https://twitter.com/RadicalCath/status/753164982620155904">July 13, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
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(German) Mass Sexual Harassment > 30 Migrants chase down 3 German Girls <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ShariaRape?src=hash">#ShariaRape</a> <a href="https://t.co/RhLkRwTtDM">https://t.co/RhLkRwTtDM</a> via <a href="https://twitter.com/kn_online">@kn_online</a></div>
— Radical Catholic (@RadicalCath) <a href="https://twitter.com/RadicalCath/status/753167171849752576">July 13, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-54914835939770731442016-07-13T09:37:00.000+02:002016-07-13T09:37:42.522+02:00Christian Initiation in the Third Century<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Reading N°56 in the History of the Catholic Church</i></div>
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<b>Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.</b></div>
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In the third century, initiation into the Christian life was by Baptism, preceded by the catechumenate, and immediately followed by Confirmation and participation in the Holy Eucharist. When a pagan, disillusioned from the mysteries of his religion or touched by the courage of the martyrs or by the example of Christian virtues, comes to the bishop to ask for a share in the Christian mysteries, the bishop first makes him undergo a probation, vaguely mentioned by Hermas<sup>[1]</sup> and St. Justin,<sup>[2]</sup> clearly organized in the time of Tertullian,<sup>[3]</sup> and called the catechumenate. For several days, the postulant remains at the entrance to the Christian meeting during the celebration of the mysteries, for, right after the first prayers, the deacons exclude the catechumens. But the Church gives him instruction apart.<sup>[4]</sup> She then requires that he "renounce the devil and his pomp and his angels,"<sup>[5]</sup> that he prepare for the solemn initiation by prayer, fasting, vigils, and confession of his sins.<sup>[6]</sup> Such, at least, was the rule at Carthage, as described by Tertullian. He says that the Church is thus exacting with the candidate for Baptism in order to be assured that he will not fall back into sin once he is baptized.<sup>[7]</sup> The Church should be composed only of saints.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqBznjXMHooO970Vr9f0OwSDAW0_Ae2PwjKYSVtlHWtBH5gbq7m95M-HYG8ayKIs4EKWHicyxD3d3u9UhE-dJA3WVQC2s7Hwxggr6ObSqLJ8bMqy5wAqHMtbUNjaz16GG7g9wLXbNZo40W/s1600/3rd+century+Baptism+-+Catacomb+of+Ss+Marcellinus+and+Peter.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqBznjXMHooO970Vr9f0OwSDAW0_Ae2PwjKYSVtlHWtBH5gbq7m95M-HYG8ayKIs4EKWHicyxD3d3u9UhE-dJA3WVQC2s7Hwxggr6ObSqLJ8bMqy5wAqHMtbUNjaz16GG7g9wLXbNZo40W/s320/3rd+century+Baptism+-+Catacomb+of+Ss+Marcellinus+and+Peter.png" width="205" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">3rd century representation of Baptism<br />
Catacomb of Ss. Marcellinus and Peter</td></tr>
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Then comes the day of Baptism, "illumination," "reconciliation," "palingenesis" (new birth) as it is called.<sup>[8]</sup> Regularly the candidate is dipped three times in the water, in memory of Christ's burial; his threefold coming out of the water symbolizes the mystery of the Resurrection. At each immersion, the name of one of the three divine persons is pronounced.<sup>[9]</sup> In case of necessity, however, especially in case of sickness, Baptism was conferred by sprinkling or pouring. Some paintings of the third centtlry depict ceremonies which may go back to the end of the second century, showing the candidate standing in the baptistry, with the water reaching to his knees, and being sprinkled on the head.<sup>[10]</sup></div>
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The days especially reserved for the initiation of the catechumens are the Saturday before Easter and the Saturday before Pentecost, but Tertullian declares that, strictly speaking, Baptism may be conferred on any Sunday or even on any ordinary day.<sup>[11]</sup></div>
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When the baptismal ceremony is over, the new Christian is clothed in a white garment and introduced into the assembly of the faithful. The bishop, seated, presides at the meeting. The priests, at the bishop's side, and the deacons, whose duty it is to maintain order, are the only ones occupying places of honor. The rich are shoulder to shoulder with the poor, the freemen with the slaves. The newly initiated comes up to the bishop. The head of the Church, by the imposition of hands and anointing with holy chrism, confers on him the Sacrament of Confirmation, which makes him a perfect Christian and is looked upon as the complement of Baptism.<sup>[12]</sup></div>
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At length the newly baptized is admitted to participation in the Eucharistic sacrifice. We have already given St. Justin's description of the principal ceremonies of this rite. Passages from Tertullian, St. Cyprian, and the canons of Hippolytus<sup>[13]</sup> enable us to complete the picture. From the middle of the second century, the "breaking of bread" is finally separated from the fraternal meal which accompanied it. The sacred function henceforth appears in all the purity of its rite, free from the abuses that so greatly afflicted St. Paul. We can easily imagille the neophyte's feeling when, for the first time, he was present at the mystery so long awaited.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDeRbJIRcThzLSq-HWh8dFjr1iy0MsbwR2ozJjnOqXG9eKFqWBmU0v5q1ErCGxsuwS6DdXRCM7vV-8V9qOOHxQGJl3GiUTEQlhC_-MIzy6KRQmV3evNo8rm-cscaFyh9yD38bMpPj0-ThI/s1600/3rd+century+Eucharist+-+Catacomb+of+San+Callisto.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDeRbJIRcThzLSq-HWh8dFjr1iy0MsbwR2ozJjnOqXG9eKFqWBmU0v5q1ErCGxsuwS6DdXRCM7vV-8V9qOOHxQGJl3GiUTEQlhC_-MIzy6KRQmV3evNo8rm-cscaFyh9yD38bMpPj0-ThI/s1600/3rd+century+Eucharist+-+Catacomb+of+San+Callisto.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">3rd century representation of the Eucharist<br />
Catacomb of Commodilla</td></tr>
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A movement among the deacons and inferior ministers is a sign that the sacrifice is about to begin. Some go among the assembled faithful to see that each one stays in his proper place and to direct the liturgical acts; the others place on the altar the bread and the chalices prepared for the sacred repast.</div>
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"The Lord be with you all," says the bishop. "And with thy spirit," they respond. "Raise up your hearts," the bishop then says. To which they answer: "They are with the Lord." He continues: "It is fitting and just."</div>
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After several prayers, the chief of which is an invocation to the thrice holy God, the bishop, amid profound silence, slowly pronounces over the bread and wine the mysterious words first uttered by the Savior the night before He died. The mystery is consummated. Christ is on the altar, in the midst of His faithful, under the mystical veils of the consecrated elements. Again the prayer begins, more earnestly, addressed to the God here present, though invisible. Suddenly a deacon's voice cries out: "Sancta sanctis" (holy things are for the holy). "Amen," the people respond. The bishop receives communion, then the priests and deacons, and lastly all those present. The bishop lays the consecrated host in the communicant's right hand, which is open and held up by the left hand. The deacon holds the chalice, from which each one drinks directly. At each communion, the bishop says: "The body of Christ," and the deacon: "The blood of Christ." Each communicant responds "Amen."</div>
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When the communion is over, the deacon gives the signal for prayer. All pray, sometimes kneeling or even prostrate, in sign of humiliation and penance, sometimes standing up, with arms extended and the hands open like Jesus on the cross, to testify that they are ready to endure every suffering. Says Tertullian:</div>
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Thither [toward Heaven] we lift our eyes, with hands outstretched, because free from sin; with head uncovered, for we have nothing whereof to be ashamed. [...] With our hands thus stretched out and up to God, rend us with your iron claws, hang us up on crosses, wrap us in flames, take our heads from us with the sword, let loose the wild beasts on us - the very attitude of a Christian praying is one of preparation for all punishment.<sup>[14]</sup></blockquote>
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Footnotes</h3>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Hermas, <i>Visions</i>, III, vii, 3.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] <i>First Apology</i>, 61.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] <i>De praescr</i>., 41. Tertullian's <i>De poenitentia</i> was addressed to catechumens.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] Idem, <i>De baptismo</i>, 1.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[5] Idem, <i>De corona militis</i>, 3.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[6] Idem, <i>De baptismo</i>, 20.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[7] Idem, <i>De poenitentia</i>, 6; <i>De baptismo</i>, 20.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[8] Clement of Alexandria, <i>Paedagogus</i>, I, 6.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[9] On the triple immersion, see Tertullian, <i>Adversus Praxean</i>, 26.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[10] De Rossi, <i>Roma sotterranea</i>, II, 334.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[11] Tertullian, <i>De baptismo</i>, 19.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[12] On Confirmation, see St. Irenaeus, <i>Haereres</i>, IV, xxxviii, 2; Tertullian, <i>De baptismo</i>, 7f; St. Cyprian, <i>Letters</i>, 73. The Sacrament of Confirmation is sometimes called <i>consignatio</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[13] The authority of Tertullian and St. Cyprian is well known. As to the Canons of Hippolytus, Batiffol says, "we possess no more complete and explicit description of the institutions of the early Church: it is a document of the highest rank." (<i>Anciennes littératures chrétiennes</i>, p. 158.) Save for a few easily recognized retouchings, the Canons of Hippolytus agree admirably with whatever we know about the liturgy in use at the beginning of the third century. (Ibid.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[14] Tertullian, <i>Apol</i>., 30.</span></div>
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***
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-9741897237143090762016-07-12T16:17:00.000+02:002016-07-12T16:41:07.797+02:00The Ghost of John XXII: Prelates, Clerics & Scholars Request Clarification of Amoris Laetitia<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pope John XXII</td></tr>
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During a sermon delivered on Gaudete Sunday, AD 1329, Pope John XXII made a statement - repeated on the Feast of All Saints, AD 1331 - which the pious considered scandalously offensive and the learned deemed potentially heretical: that the souls of those who have died in Christ will not enjoy the beatific vision until after the general judgment at the end of days. The statement might have received less attention than it did had it been made at some other period in Church history. As it happened, however, the Second Council of Lyons had solemnly defined in 1274 that "the souls of those who, after having received holy baptism, have incurred no stain of sin whatever, also those souls who, after contracting the stain of sin, either while remaining in their bodies of being divested of them, have been cleansed [...] are received immediately into heaven." While Pope John XXII's statement was not a direct contradiction of this definition - he did not deny that the blessed departed enter heaven immediately upon death, but merely that they enjoy the vision of the Divine Essence prior to the Resurrection - it came close enough to a contradiction that it raised serious concerns among the faithful. Theologians felt duty-bound to respond, and in 1333 a number of them gathered in Paris to evaluate the question on its theological merits, concluding that the opinion of the pope was, in fact, erroneous. Though John XXII initially attempted to quell any opposition to his view, going so far as to have a Dominican, Thomas of England, thrown into prison for contradicting him, he was eventually brought to his senses and retracted his statement before his death in AD 1334. His successor, Pope Benedict XII, went on to effectively censor John XXII's opinion - uttered not as pope, but as a private theologian - as heresy in his 1336 dogmatic constitution <i>Benedictus Deus</i>.</div>
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While not a particularly glorious moment for the papacy of John XXII, this incident nonetheless represents a victory for the Church insofar as it underscores the fact that all Catholics - including the Pope - are bound to uphold the truth and eschew error, regardless of its source.</div>
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And it is a lesson which bears repeating.</div>
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It cannot be denied that, like John XXII, Pope Francis has a penchant for dropping theological bombs in his sermons. It was, for example, in a sermon that he accused the Blessed Virgin Mary of doubting God, of wanting to say "Lies! I was deceived!" as she looked upon her Son suffering on the Cross. Note that this was not some unfortunate slip of the tongue: he repeated the scandalous claim, almost <i>verbatim</i>, two years later in a talk given to a group of gravely ill children. Though it appears to directly contradict the certain teaching of the Church on the freedom of the Blessed Virgin from all personal sin, this is evidently what Pope Francis, the Vicar of Christ, believes and teaches. A century ago, such a statement would have been unthinkable, and had it been uttered, would have provoked widespread shock and vociferous objection. Today, such things are hardly noticed, and when some poor soul feels obliged to speak up, he's shouted down as an uncharitable troublemaker. After all, we're told, only the weak of faith are scandalized by such things.<br />
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Pope Francis has made so many statements which are offensive to pious ears that one has to wonder whether this is an integral part of his method of evangelization, i.e., to garner attention by making a statement which smacks of heresy but, upon close inspection, merely flirts with it without crossing the line.<sup>[1]</sup> Engaging in this kind of rhetoric has a three-fold effect: (1) it thrills the heretics who are already on their way out of the Church, suggesting to them that they should bide their time as the Magisterium is about to give in to their demands, (2) it provides just enough cover to enable moderate commentators to run interference for the Pope, maintaining the illusion that "everything is awesome," (3) and it frustrates the orthodox while simultaneously rendering them virtually powerless in their efforts to restore doctrinal and liturgical order: if they remain silent, they are seen as giving tacit approval to the implied heresy; if they speak up, they are reprimanded for impugning the impeccable orthodoxy of the Pope and fomenting a "schismatic mentality".</div>
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While many have grown tired of parsing the sloppy theology of the Pope's private sermons and disarming the pastoral zingers he regularly delivers at 30,000 feet, prelates and scholars have remained attentive to the official statements made by Pope Francis wherever they touch upon matters of faith and morals. As done retroactively with John XXII, Pope Francis has been given more or less <i>carte blanche</i> as a private theologian; it is when he speaks in his capacity as Supreme Pontiff that his words are held to the loftier standard of Tradition. Thus, when the Pope issued <i>Amoris Laetitia</i>, the Apostolic Exhortation which followed the 2014-15 Synod on the Family, his words came under an appreciable amount of careful scrutiny by cleric and scholar alike.</div>
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<li>U.S. Jesuit James V. Schall has described key sections of <i>Amoris Laetitia</i> as "an exercise in sophisticated casuistry."</li>
<li>German philosopher Robert Spaemann remarked that "chaos has been turned into a principle with one stroke of a pen. The Pope should have known that he will split the Church with such a step and that he leads her into the direction of a schism - a schism that would be not at the periphery, but in the middle of the Church."</li>
<li>American professor of philosophy and theology Peter Kwasniewski noted that Chapter Eight of <i>Amoris Laetitia</i> poses "a serious problem in moral theology and contradicts not only <i>Veritatis Splendor</i> but the entire framework of Christian ethics that we see in the New Testament, in the [Church] Fathers, in St. Thomas, in [the Council of] Trent, wherever you look."</li>
<li>Bishop Athanasius Schneider, in response to an open letter from the president of American Catholic Lawyers Inc., Christopher A. Ferrara, noted: "In using our reason and in respecting the proper sense of the words, one can hardly interpret some expressions in <i>Amoris Laetitia</i> according to the holy immutable Tradition of the Church."</li>
<li>U.S. philosopher and former dean of the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America Jude P. Dougherty observed: "Authors and telecasters use [equivocation] when they are not sure of the facts. Politicians often employ it in creating legislation that subsequently permits freedom of contradictory interpretation by courts, regulators, and prosecutors. Pope Francis, who never speaks clearly, uses it to such an extent that in doctrinal matters what was certain before has become problematic."</li>
<li>Cardinal Carlo Caffarra recently remarked: "His Holiness realizes that the teachings of the Exhortation could give rise to confusion in the Church. Personally, I wish - and that is how so many of my brothers in Christ (cardinals, bishops, and the lay faithful alike) also think - that the confusion should be removed."</li>
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While each of these men is to be commended for speaking out, it is clear that, as individuals, they can accomplish very little in the way of moving Pope Francis to clarify the true intent behind the words of the Exhortation. Together, however, such critics might have a better chance. It is, therefore, unsurprising to learn that a group of prelates, clerics, scholars and professors have done just that.</div>
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A statement released by Dr. Joseph Shaw yesterday reads as follows:</div>
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A group of Catholic academics and pastors has submitted an appeal to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals in Rome, requesting that the Cardinals and Eastern Catholic Patriarchs petition His Holiness, Pope Francis, to repudiate a list of erroneous propositions that can be drawn from a natural reading of the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation <i>Amoris Laetitia</i>. During the coming weeks this submission will be sent in various languages to every one of the Cardinals and Patriarchs, of whom there are 218 living at present. </blockquote>
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Describing the exhortation as containing “a number of statements that can be understood in a sense that is contrary to Catholic faith and morals,” the signatories submitted, along with their appeal, a documented list of applicable theological censures specifying “the nature and degree of the errors that could be attributed to <i>Amoris Laetitia</i>.” </blockquote>
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Among the 45 signatories are Catholic prelates, scholars, professors, authors, and clergy from various pontifical universities, seminaries, colleges, theological institutes, religious orders, and dioceses around the world. They have asked the College of Cardinals, in their capacity as the Pope's official advisers, to approach the Holy Father with a request that he repudiate “the errors listed in the document in a definitive and final manner, and to authoritatively state that <i>Amoris Laetitia</i> does not require any of them to be believed or considered as possibly true.” </blockquote>
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“We are not accusing the pope of heresy,” said a spokesman for the authors, “but we consider that numerous propositions in <i>Amoris Laetitia</i> can be construed as heretical upon a natural reading of the text. Additional statements would fall under other established theological censures, such as scandalous, erroneous in faith, and ambiguous, among others.” </blockquote>
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The 1983 Code of Canon Law states that “According to the knowledge, competence, and expertise which they possess, they [the Christian faithful] have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful” (CIC, can. 212 §3). </blockquote>
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The thirteen-page document quotes nineteen passages in the exhortation which seem to conflict with Catholic doctrines. These doctrines include the real possibility with the grace of God of obeying all the commandments, the fact that certain kinds of act are wrong in all circumstances, the headship of the husband, the superiority of consecrated virginity over the married life, and the legitimacy of capital punishment under certain circumstances. The document also argues that the exhortation undermines the Church's teaching that divorced and civilly remarried Catholics who have made no commitment to continence cannot be admitted to the sacraments while they remain in that state. </blockquote>
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The spokesman said, “It is our hope that by seeking from our Holy Father a definitive repudiation of these errors we can help to allay the confusion already brought about by <i>Amoris Laetitia</i> among pastors and the lay faithful. For that confusion can be dispelled effectively only by an unambiguous affirmation of authentic Catholic teaching by the Successor of Peter.”</blockquote>
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In a subsequent clarification, Dr. Shaw revealed that, though the names of the 45 signatories have not been released to the public, they are attached to the document sent to Cardinal Sodano and will be known to all 218 Cardinals and Patriarchs of the Church. The reason for this anonymity appears to be less the fear of reprisal and more the fear of causing additional public scandal. As Dr. Shaw noted on Twitter:</div>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
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<a href="https://twitter.com/peregrinator1">@peregrinator1</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/gregorykhillis">@gregorykhillis</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Jahaza">@Jahaza</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/petriop">@petriop</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/EdwardPentin">@EdwardPentin</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/MTMehan">@MTMehan</a> Nothing anonymous. It is a private appeal, not a public denunciation.</div>
— Joseph Shaw (@LMSChairman) <a href="https://twitter.com/LMSChairman/status/752619907469209600">July 11, 2016</a></blockquote>
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It would be naive to assume that this action alone will move the Cardinals to make a formal petition to Pope Francis to repudiate any erroneous propositions contained in <i>Amoris Laetitia</i>. Nonetheless, it is a potentially significant step in that direction, particularly if it contains the request that Pope Francis provide "an unambiguous affirmation of authentic Catholic teaching." Admitting that the document contains error is one thing. Refusing to publicly confirm authentic Catholic teaching, on the other hand, is an altogether different matter. Pope Francis can easily avoid the former; the latter is much more difficult to avoid and, if done intentionally, can be used as evidence of obstinacy - something even Pope John XXII was careful to avoid.</div>
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Footnotes:</h3>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] This is not unlike the popular "shocking statement" meme, of which there are literally thousands of iterations:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">In modern parlance, one could say the Pope is "trolling" us.</span></div>
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-57699370420433171042016-07-11T08:24:00.000+02:002016-07-11T08:24:32.956+02:00The Denial of Hell<i>Fourth in a Series on Hell</i><br />
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by<br />
<b>Fr. François Xavier Schouppe, S.J.</b><br />
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There are some miserable men - let us rather say, fools - who, in the delirium of their iniquity, make bold to declare that they laugh at hell. They say so, but only with their lips; their consciences protest and give them the lie.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGbxmNsnFna58WuwiRu0Or8BcJz9P_ZVbIlC_jXSLqCEUtze1Fzv1aYurCBdjcPgHWirgHB21aER3hZdCCHKxk-ZjEnDQPasmQ5jqdfJbH509ZHCWijQEndJlaDZGYZMUTKDFJmzM6yCcj/s1600/Collot+d%2527Herbois.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGbxmNsnFna58WuwiRu0Or8BcJz9P_ZVbIlC_jXSLqCEUtze1Fzv1aYurCBdjcPgHWirgHB21aER3hZdCCHKxk-ZjEnDQPasmQ5jqdfJbH509ZHCWijQEndJlaDZGYZMUTKDFJmzM6yCcj/s320/Collot+d%2527Herbois.jpg" width="262" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois</td></tr>
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Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois, famous for his impiety as much as for is sanguinary ferocity, was the chief author of the massacres of Lyons in 1793; he caused the destruction of at least 1,600 individuals. Six years after, in 1799, he was banished to Cayenne, and used to give vent to his infernal rage by blaspheming the holiest things. The least act of religion became the subject of his jests. Having seen a soldier make the sign of the cross, "Imbecile!" he said to him. "You still believe in superstition! Do you not know that God, the Holy Virgin, Paradise, Hell, are the inventions of the accursed tribe of priests?" Shortly after, he fell sick and was seized by violent pains. In an access of fever he swallowed, at a single draught, a bottle of liquor. His disease increased; he felt as if burned by a fire that was devouring his bowels. He uttered frightful shrieks, called upon God, the Holy Virgin, a priest, to come to his relief. "Well, indeed," said the soldier to him, "you ask for a priest? You fear hell then? You used to curse the priests, make fun of hell! Alas!" He then answered: "My tongue was lying to my heart." Pretty soon, he expired, vomiting blood and foam.</div>
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The following incident happened in 1837. A young under-lieutenant, being in Paris, entered the Church of the Assumption, near the Toilers, and saw a priest kneeling near a confessional. As he made religion the habitual subject of his jokes, he wished to go to confession to while away the time, and went into the confessional. "Monsieur l'abbé," he said, "would you be good enough to hear my confession?" "Willingly my son; confess unrestrained." "But I must first say that I am a rather unique kind of a sinner." "No matter; the sacrament of penance has been instituted for all sinners." "But I am not very much of a believer in religious matters." "You believe more than you think." "Believe? I? I am a regular scoffer." The confessor saw with whom he had to deal, and that there was some mystification. He replied, smiling: "You are a regular scoffer? Are you then making fun of me, too?" The pretended penitent smiled in like manner. "Listen," the priest went on, "what you have just done here is not serious. Let us leave confession aside; and, if you please, have a little chat. I like military people greatly; and, then, you have the appearance of a good, amiable youth. Tell me, what is your rank?" "Under-lieutenant." "Will you remain an under-lieutenant long?" "Two, three, perhaps four years." "And after?" "I shall hope to become a lieutenant?" "And after?" "I hope to become a captain." "And after?" "Lieutenant-colonel?" "How old will you be then?" "Forty to forty-five years." "And after that?" "I shall become a brigadier general." "And after?" "If I rise higher, I shall be general of a division." "And after?" "After! there is nothing more except the Marshal's baton; but my pretensions do not reach so high." "Well and good. But do you intend to get married?" "Yes, when I shall be a superior officer." "Well! There you are married; a superior officer, a general, perhaps even a French marshal, who knows? And after?" "After? Upon my word, I do not know what will be after."</div>
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"See, how strange it is!" said the abbé. Then, in a tone of voice that grew more sober: "You know all that shall happen up to that point, and you do not know what will be after. Well, I know, and I am going to tell you. After, you shall die, be judged, and, if you continue to live as you do, you shall be damned, you shall go and burn in hell; that is what will be after."</div>
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As the under-lieutenant, dispirited at this conclusion, seemed anxious to steal away: "One moment, sir," said the abbé. "You are a man of honor. So am I. Agree that you have offended me, and owe me an apology. It will be simple. For eight days, before retiring to rest, you will say: 'One day I shall die; but I laugh at the idea. After my death I shall be judged; but I laugh at the idea. After my judgment, I shall be damned; but I laugh at the idea. I shall burn forever in hell; but I laugh at the idea!' That is all. But you are going to give me your word of honor not to neglect it, eh?" More and more wearied, and wishing, at any price, to extricate himself from this false step, the under-lieutenant made the promise. In the evening, his word being given, he began to carry out his promise. "I shall die," he says. "I shall be judged." He had not the courage to add: "I laugh at the idea." The week had not passed before he returned to the Church of the Assumption, made his confession seriously, and came out of the confessional his face bathed with tears, and with joy in his heart.</div>
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A young person who had become an unbeliever in consequence of her dissipation, kept incessantly shooting sarcasm at religion, and making jests of its most awful truths. "Juliette," some one said to her one day, "this will end badly. God will be tired of your blasphemies, and you shall be punished." "Bah," she answered insolently. "It gives me very little trouble. Who has returned from the other world to relate what passes there?" Less than eight days after she was found in her room, giving no sign of life, and already cold. As there was no doubt that she was dead, she was put in a coffin and buried. The following day, the grave-digger, digging a new grave beside that of the unhappy Juliette, heard some noise, it seemed to him that there was a knocking in the adjoining coffin. At once, he puts his ear to the ground, and in fact hears a smothered voice, crying out: "Help! help!" The authorities were summoned; by their orders, the grave was opened, the coffin taken up and unnailed. The shroud is removed; there is no further doubt, Juliette was buried alive. Her hair, her shroud were in disorder, and her face was streaming with blood. While they are releasing her, and feeling her heart to be assured that it still beats, she heaves a sigh, like a person for a long time deprived of air; then she opens her eyes, makes an effort to lift herself up, and says: "My God, I thank thee." Afterward, when she had got her senses well back, and by the aid of some food, recovered her strength, she added: "When I regained consciousness in the grave and recognized the frightful reality of my burial, when after having uttered shrieks, I endeavored to break my coffin, and struck my forehead against the boards, I saw that all was useless; death appeared to me with all its horrors; it was less the bodily than the eternal death that frightened me. I saw I was going to be damned. My God, I had but too well deserved it! Then I prayed, I shouted for help, I lost consciousness again, until I awoke above ground. O, goodness of my God!" she said, again shedding tears, "I had despised the truths of faith; thou hast punished me, but in thy mercy, I am converted and repentant."</div>
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They who deny hell will be forced to admit it soon; but alas! it will be too late.</div>
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[The following video contains a Lenten retreat sermon delivered by a traditional Catholic priest on the subject of Heaven and Hell.]</div>
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-39083187442698040272016-07-06T07:32:00.000+02:002016-07-06T07:33:21.037+02:00The Hierarchy in the Third Century<i>Reading N°55 in the History of the Catholic Church</i><br />
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by<br />
<b>Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.</b><br />
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While Christian apologetics was speaking in tones of confidence, the Church was enjoying comparative freedom. The last six years of Emperor Commodus and the first nine years of Septimius Severus were a time of peace. She profited thereby to develop her hierarchical, sacramental, and liturgical institutions, to complete the organization of Church property, to promote the study of theology, and to give a new impulse to her Apostolic expansion. We have now reached the point where we should take a general view of this internal activity of the Church. And then we shall have to resume the story of her struggles against persecution and heresy.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR4K0YA8INEoCLiUibub1eTkbTXeZKbx1e6m6gvvxC5o3bXkuIafny1_qG8zcBH613H1siJjBxf3BC1l9nZfIUhfCbXh_VNJIoDUm_wYpbzT1g1R4kDzvclkxu3t0vP-qaRO1SO5ojh80B/s1600/Priest+Bishop+Deacon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR4K0YA8INEoCLiUibub1eTkbTXeZKbx1e6m6gvvxC5o3bXkuIafny1_qG8zcBH613H1siJjBxf3BC1l9nZfIUhfCbXh_VNJIoDUm_wYpbzT1g1R4kDzvclkxu3t0vP-qaRO1SO5ojh80B/s400/Priest+Bishop+Deacon.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(l. to r.) Priest, Bishop and Deacon<br />
from the <i>Raganaldus Sacramentary</i>, c. AD 845</td></tr>
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Tertullian's works show us the Church as an essentially graded society. The laity are subject to the deacons and priests, and all owe obedience to the bishop. No longer is there any mention of the presbyterial council. The monarchical episcopate is established everywhere. The lists of bishops which the historian Hegesippus gives in the middle of the second century leave no doubt on this point. The bishop's authority comes from the fact that he is the depositary of Apostolic authority, handed down to him through an uninterrupted series of bishops connected with the Apostles. Unlike the Apostles, the bishop has a limited territory, first called a "parish," later a "diocese."</div>
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The first bishops were chosen and instituted by the Apostles; but at an early date it became the custom to nominate bishops by election. When a see became vacant, the lower clergy of the diocese met and elected one of their number, after obtaining from the people a good testimony in favor of the candidate. Then they presented this candidate to the bishops of the neighborhood, who assembled in the principal city of the vacant diocese to preside at the election and to give canonical institution to the bishop-elect. The documents of the second century and of the early third show us the bishop administering his diocese in complete independence of the lower clergy. Yet in many instances he takes counsel of them and sometimes even asks the advice of the people.</div>
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Simple priests and deacons, unlike bishops, are promoted to Orders only upon the good testimony of the people. They can exercise no function without the approval of the bishop who ordained them; in case of serious fault, they can be deposed by the bishop. They are his helpers in the work of instructing the faithful and in the administration of the Sacraments. At the meetings of the Christian community, they take their places around the bishop - as it were, his crown. While the episcopal see is vacant, they assume charge of the administration of the diocese and render an account of their administration to the new bishop.</div>
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The duties of deacons are: to preach, baptize, and - under the bishop's control - to administer the property of the Church, to serve the bishop at the altar, to announce the meetings of the faithful, to maintain order, to receive the offerings of the faithful and to divide them among the poor.</div>
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Virginity, so earnestly recommended by St. Paul and exemplified by the Savior, His blessed Mother, and the Apostle St. John, is the ideal which the faithful, and especially the clergy, endeavor to approach. But as yet it is not made obligatory upon the clergy by any positive rule. The imperial laws forbidding celibacy placed too great an obstacle in the way of recruiting the clergy if celibacy were made a strict obligation. The only requirement is that, following the precept of the Apostle (1 Corinthians 4:12; 9:7 ff; Acts 20:34) the candidate for the clerical state be not twice married.</div>
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Join the discussion at:<br />
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-7369907605216776382016-07-04T08:05:00.000+02:002016-07-04T08:05:16.309+02:00Apparitions of the Damned<i>Third in a Series on Hell</i><br />
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by<br />
<b>Fr. François Xavier Schouppe, S.J.</b><br />
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St. Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, relates in his writings a terrible fact which, about the middle of the fifteenth century, spread fright over the whole North of Italy. A young man of good stock, who, at the age of 16 or 17, had had the misfortune of concealing a mortal sin in confession, and, in that state, of receiving Communion, had put off from week to week, month to month, the painful disclosure of his sacrileges. Tortured by remorse, instead of discovering with simplicity his misfortune, he sought to gain quiet by great penances, but to no purpose. Unable to bear the strain any longer, he entered a monastery; there, at least, he said to himself, I will tell all, and expiate my frightful sins. Unhappily, he was most welcomed as a holy young man by his superiors, who knew him by reputation, and his shame again got the better of him. Accordingly, he deferred his confession of this sin to a later period; and a year, two years, three years, passed in this deplorable state; he never dared to reveal his misfortune. Finally, sickness seemed to him to afford an easy means of doing it. "Now is the time," he said to himself; "I am going to tell all; I will make a general confession before I die." But this time, instead of frankly and fairly declaring his faults, he twisted them so artfully that his confessor was unable to understand him. He hope to come back again the next day: an attack of delirium came on, and the unfortunate man died.</div>
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The community, who were ignorant of the frightful reality, were full of veneration for the deceased. His body was borne with a certain degree of solemnity into the church of the monastery, and lay exposed in the choir until the next morning when the funeral was to be celebrated.</div>
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A few moments before the time fixed for the ceremony, one of the Brothers, sent to toll the bell, saw before him, all of a sudden, the deceased, encompassed by chains, that seemed aglow with fire, while something blazing appeared all over his person. Frightened, the poor Brother fell on his knees, with his eyes riveted on the terrifying apparition. Then the damned soul said to him: "Do not pray for me, I am in here for all eternity;" and he related the sad story of his false shame and sacrileges. Thereupon, he vanished, leaving in the church a disgusting odor, which spread all over the monastery, as if to prove the truth of all the Brother just saw and heard. Notified at once, the Superiors had the corpse taken away, deeming it unworthy of ecclesiastical burial.</div>
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After having cited the preceding example, Monsignor de Segur adds what follows:</div>
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In our century, three facts of the same kind, more authentic than some others have come to my knowledge. The first happened almost in my family. </blockquote>
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It was in Russia, at Moscow, a short while before the horrible campaign of 1812. My maternal grandfather, Count Rostopchine, the Military Governor of Moscow, was very intimate with General Count Orloff, celebrated for his bravery, but as godless as he was brave. </blockquote>
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One day, at the close of a supper, Count Orloff and one of his friends, General V., also a disciple of Voltaire, had set to horribly ridiculing religion, especially hell. 'Yet,' said Orloff; 'yet if, by chance, there should be anything the other side of the curtain?' 'Well,' took up General V., 'whichever of us shall depart first, will come to inform the other of it. Is it agreed?' 'An excellent idea,' replied Count Orloff; and both interchanged very seriously their word of honor not to miss the engagement. </blockquote>
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A few weeks later, one of those great wars which Napoleon had the gift of creating at that time, burst forth. The Russian army began the campaign, and General V. received orders to start out forthwith to take an important command. </blockquote>
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He had left Moscow about two or three weeks, when one morning, at a very early hour, while my grandfather was dressing, his chamber door is rudely pushed open. It was Count Orloff, in dressing-gown and slippers, his hair on end, his eye wild, and pale like a dead man. 'What, Orloff, you? at this hour? and in such a costume? What ails you? what has happened?' 'My dear,' replies Count Orloff, 'I believe I am beside myself. I have just seen General V.' 'Has General V., then, come back?' 'Well, no,' rejoins Orloff, throwing himself on a sofa, and holding his head between his hands; 'no, he has not come back, and that is what frightens me!' </blockquote>
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My grandfather did not understand him. He tried to soothe him. "Relate to me," he says to Orloff, "what has happened you, and what all this means." Then, striving to stifle his emotion, the Count related the following: "My dear Rostopchine, some time ago, V. and I mutually swore that the first of us who died should come and tell the other if there is anything on the other side of the curtain. Now, this morning, scarcely half an hour since, I was calmly lying awake in my bed, not thinking at all of my friend, when, all of a sudden, the curtains of my bed were rudely parted, and at two steps from me I see General V. standing up, pale, with his right hand on his breast, and saying to me: 'There is a hell, and I am there!' and he disappeared. I came at once to you. My head is splitting! What a strange thing! I do not know what to think about it." </blockquote>
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My grandfather calmed him as well as he could. It was no easy matter. He spoke of hallucinations, nightmares; perhaps he was asleep... There are many extraordinary unaccountable things... and other common-places, which constitute the comfort of freethinkers. Then he ordered his carriage, and took Count Orloff back to his hotel. </blockquote>
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Now, ten or twelve days after this strange incident, an army messenger brought my grandfather among other news, that of the death of General V. The very morning of the day, Count Orloff had seen and heard him, the same hour he appeared at Moscow, the unfortunate General, reconnoitering the enemy's position, had been shot through the breast by a bullet, and had fallen stark dead.</blockquote>
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"There is a hell, and I am there!" These are the words of one who came back.</div>
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Mgr. de Segur relates a second fact, which he regards as alike free from doubt. He had learned it in 1859, of a most honorable priest, and Superior of an important community. This priest had the particulars of it from a near relation of the lady of whom it had happened. At that time, Christmas Day, 1859, this person was still living, and little over forty years.</div>
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She chanced to be in London in the winter of 1847-48. She was a widow, about twenty-nine years old, quite rich and worldly. Among the gallants who frequented her salon, there was noticed a young lord, whose attentions compromised her extremely, and whose conduct, besides, was anything but edifying.</div>
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One evening, or rather one night, for it was close upon midnight, she was reading in her bed some novel, coaxing sleep. One o'clock struck by the clock; she blew out her taper. She was about to fall asleep when, to her great astonishment, she noticed that a strange, wan glimmer of light, which seemed to come from the door of the drawing-room, spread by degrees into her chamber, and increased momentarily. Stupefied at first, and not knowing what this meant, she began to get alarmed, when she saw the drawing-room door slowly open and the young lord, the partner of her disorders, entered her room. Before she had time to say a single word, he seized her by the left wrist, and with a hissing voice, syllabled to her in English: "There is a hell!" The pain she felt in her arm was so great that she lost her senses.</div>
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When, half an hour after, she came to again, she rang for her chamber-maid. The latter, on entering felt a keen smell of burning. Approaching her mistress, who could hardly speak, she noticed on her wrist so deep a burn, that the bone was laid bare, and the flesh almost consumed; this burn was the size of a man's hand. Moreover, she remarked that, from the door of the saloon to the bed, and from the bed to that same door, the carpet bore the imprint of a man's steps, which had burned through the stuff. By the directions of her mistress, she opened the drawing-room door: there, more traces were seen on the carpet outside.</div>
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The following day, the unhappy lady learned with a terror easy to be divined that, on that very night, about one o'clock in the morning, her lord had been found dead drunk under the table, that his servants had carried him to his room, and that there he had died in their arms.</div>
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I do not know, added the Superior, whether that terrible lesson converted the unfortunate lady, but what I do know is that she is still alive, and that to conceal from the sight the traces of her ominous burn, she wears on the left wrist, like a bracelet, a wide gold band, which she does not take off day or night. I repeat it, I have all these details from her near relation, a serious Christian, in whose word I repose the fullest belief. They are never spoken of, even in the family; and I only confide them to you, suppressing every proper name.</div>
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Notwithstanding the disguise beneath which this apparition has been, and must be enveloped, it seems to me impossible, adds Mgr. de Segur, to call in doubt the dreadful authenticity of the details.</div>
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Here is a third fact related by the same writer. In the year 1873, he writes, a few days before the Assumption, occurred again one of these apparitions from beyond the grave, which so efficaciously confirm the reality of hell. It was in Rome. A brothel, opened in that city after the Piedmontese invasion, stood near a police station. One of the bad girls who lived there had been wounded in the hand, and it was found necessary to take her to the Hospital of Consolation. Whether her blood, vitiated by bad living, had brought on mortification of the wound, or from an unexpected complication, she died suddenly during the night. At the same instant, one of her companions, who surely was ignorant of what had just happened at the hospital, began to utter shrieks of despair to point of awaking the inhabitants of the locality, creating a flurry among the wretched creatures of the house, and provoking the intervention of the police. The dead girl of the hospital, surrounded by flames, had appeared to her, and said: "I am damned! and if you do not wish to be like me, leave this place of infamy and return to God."</div>
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Nothing could quell the despair of this girl, who, at daybreak, departed, leaving the whole house plunged in a stupor, especially as soon as the death of her companion at the hospital was known.</div>
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Just at this period, the mistress of the place, an exalted Garribaldian, and known as such by brethren and friends, fell sick. She soon sent for a priest to receive the sacraments. The ecclesiastical authority deputed for thus task, a worthy prelate, Mgr. Sirolli, the pastor of the parish of Saint-Saviour in Laura. He, fortified by special instructions, presented himself, and exacted of the sick woman, before all, in the presence of many witnesses, the full and entire retractation of her blasphemies against the Sovereign Pontiff, and the discontinuance of the infamous trade she plied. The unhappy creature did so without hesitating, consented to purge her house, then made her confession and received the holy Viaticum with great sentiments of repentance and humility.</div>
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Feeling that she was dying, she besought, with tears, the good pastor not to leave her, frightened as she always was by the apparition of that damned girl. Mgr. Sirolli, unable to satisfy her on account of the proprieties which would not permit him to spend the night in such a place, sent to the police for two men, closed up the house, and remained until the dying woman had breathed her last.</div>
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Pretty soon, all Rome became acquainted with the details of these tragic occurrences. As ever, the ungodly and lewd ridiculed them, taking good care not to seek for any information about them; the good profited by them, to become still better and more faithful to their duties.</div>
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[The following video contains a sermon delivered by a traditional Catholic priest entitled <i>We Can't Imagine the Pain of Hell</i>.]</div>
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-37358340603782809322016-07-01T19:16:00.000+02:002016-07-08T01:10:54.726+02:00Responding to the Crisis: A Layman's Guide<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN4TRtDBDYdtepwJv19V_ZkIdUAGu1pElpfYd8ozEu_NcengmfSCO8dq4pmf1kxKQeM8VYtrFWMKTF3fRmW0iAi1fua2XnM1hyphenhyphen0pN_qIMhzg92b_zFVhnFCzCEpX3AWBtEr1F3hxTFXHCQ/s1600/Pius+X+vs.+Pope+Francis.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="580" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN4TRtDBDYdtepwJv19V_ZkIdUAGu1pElpfYd8ozEu_NcengmfSCO8dq4pmf1kxKQeM8VYtrFWMKTF3fRmW0iAi1fua2XnM1hyphenhyphen0pN_qIMhzg92b_zFVhnFCzCEpX3AWBtEr1F3hxTFXHCQ/s640/Pius+X+vs.+Pope+Francis.png" width="580" /></a></div>
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If I've learned anything from my study of the history of the Catholic Church, it's that God is not in a hurry. </div>
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I assume it has to do with His being eternal and all. Our temporal limitations predispose us to become frustrated with a situation rather quickly. We see a problem, we see a solution, and we want it done. Yesterday. The clock is ticking, you know. Tick-tock, tick-tock.</div>
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Not God. It appears His preferred method for resolving conflict is that most tedious, if thorough, of stratagems: inevitability. Painstakingly slow, dust-grinding inevitability.</div>
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Keeping this in mind is important because, due to our limited perspective, we easily fail to see how our brief time on the stage fits into the larger scheme of things. As we see it, the problem started just before we were born, and is reaching its crescendo right about next year - regardless of when we were born or which year comes next. If this isn't solved by lunch time next Tuesday, I'm painting a bull's eye on the roof of my house for the <a href="https://twitter.com/smod2016" target="_blank">Sweet Meteor of Death</a>. Tick-tock, tick-tock.</div>
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Believe it or not, at this point in the morality play that is the crisis currently affecting the Catholic Church, establishing whether or not Pope Francis is a heretic is relatively unimportant. As laypeople, we do not have to prove heresy - or even error, for that matter. That's not our job, thank God. Our job right now is to demonstrate that the pope's many statements are offensive to pious ears (<i>propositio piarum aurium offensiva</i>), that they are badly expressed (<i>propositio male sonans</i>), that they are captious (<i>propositio captiosa</i>) and that they excite scandal (<i>propositio scandalosa</i>). That is to say, we must leave it up to qualified theologians to determine whether any of Pope Francis' statements are temerarious (<i>propositio temeraria</i>), false (<i>propositio falsa</i>), erroneous (<i>propositio erronea</i>), whether opposed to a revealed truth (<i>error in fide ecclesiastica</i>) or the common teaching of the theologians (<i>error theologicus</i>), suspect of heresy (<i>propositio haeresim sapiens</i>), proximate to heresy (<i>propositio heresi proxima</i>) or outright, full-blown heresy (<i>propositio haeretica</i>).</div>
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Luckily for us, to demonstrate that a statement is offensive to pious ears and/or scandalous doesn't require a degree in theology or extensive knowledge of dogmatics. All it requires is authentic participation in the <i>sensus fidei</i> - the sense of the faith - possessed by the Catholic laity.</div>
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What is the <i>sensus fidei</i>? In 2014, the International Theological Commission provided the following definition:</div>
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On the one hand, the <i>sensus fidei</i> refers to the personal capacity of the believer, within the communion of the Church, to discern the truth of faith. On the other hand, the <i>sensus fidei</i> refers to a communal and ecclesial reality: the instinct of faith of the Church herself, by which she recognises her Lord and proclaims His word. (<i>Sensus Fidei</i>, §3)</blockquote>
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The <i>sensus fidei</i> is a supernatural instinct imparted by the Holy Spirit to the Catholic faithful for the purpose of detecting truth and rejecting error in matters of faith and morals. It is a free gift, not the product of academic learning, which can do no more than deepen and intensify the <i>sensus fidei</i>. It enables us to <i>sentire cum Ecclesia</i>, i.e. to "think with the mind of the Church," and is that which prompts the common, unlettered man - perhaps without even knowing why - to reject statements which are false or heretical. In short, the <i>sensus fidei</i> is that which moves us not only to accept the truths of the Faith, but also to take offense when confronted with dubious or erroneous teaching. When we reject something as "offensive to pious ears," it is the <i>sensus fidei</i> which moves us to do so.</div>
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But what prevents heretical or even apostate groups from rejecting the authentic teaching of the Church on the same grounds? Contributors to <i>National Catholic Reporter</i>, for example, <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/synod-members-should-include-sensus-fidei" target="_blank">regularly appeal</a> to the <i>sensus fidei</i> when criticizing or rejecting magisterial pronouncements. They are correct, after all, in pointing out that millions of Catholics reject Church teaching on matters such as contraception. Doesn't this represent a new "communal and ecclesial reality," a shift in the <i>sensus fidei</i> of the Catholic laity? Is the <i>sensus fidei</i> an ultimately subjective criterion of truth? Or are there objective criteria to determine whether or not a person possesses the <i>sensus fidei</i>?</div>
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Fortunately, there are such criteria. They were enumerated in the ITC document <i><a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_20140610_sensus-fidei_en.html" target="_blank">Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church</a></i> (§89) as follows: </div>
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<li>perseverance in prayer</li>
<li>participation in the liturgy, especially the Eucharist</li>
<li>regular reception of the sacrament of reconciliation</li>
<li>discernment and exercise of gifts and charisms received from the Holy Spirit</li>
<li>active engagement in the Church's mission and in her diakonia</li>
<li>acceptance of the Church's teaching on matters of faith and morals</li>
<li>willingness to follow the commands of God</li>
<li>courage to correct one's brothers and sisters, and also to accept correction oneself</li>
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Formal membership in the Church is not enough to lay claim to authentic participation in the <i>sensus fidei</i>; one must be a faithful, orthodox, practicing Catholic. Thus, a person cannot reject one or more points of Church doctrine and then claim they do so at the prompting of their <i>sensus fidei</i>. The <i>sensus fidei</i> inspires us to greater fidelity to Christ and His Church, not to dissent and revolution against them.</div>
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If, therefore, we wish to voice our concerns regarding the many problematic statements being made by Pope Francis - <i>and we should</i> - we must first make sure that our own spiritual life is in order. Are we in a state of grace? Are we saying our daily prayers? Are we properly disposed when we receive Holy Communion? Do we go to confession regularly? Do we follow the Commandments of God? Do we believe all that the Church proposes as objects of divine and catholic faith? Are our actions aimed at increasing the glory of God? If we can answer such questions in the affirmative, then we can get down to the serious business of communicating our objections to our parish priest, our bishop, and even the pope himself.</div>
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But does the <i>sensus fidei</i> entitle us to object to the teaching of our legitimate pastors? Are we not bound to accept their words with docility in a spirit of humble obedience? Not if we, the faithful, do not hear in their words the voice of Christ:</div>
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Alerted by their <i>sensus fidei</i>, individual believers may deny assent even to the teaching of legitimate pastors if they do not recognize in that teaching the voice of Christ, the Good Shepherd. 'The sheep follow [the Good Shepherd] because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run away from him because they do not know the voice of strangers' (John 10:4-5). For St. Thomas, a believer, even without theological competence, can and even must resist, by virtue of the <i>sensus fidei</i>, his or her bishop if the latter preaches heterodoxy. In such a case, the believer does not treat himself or herself as the ultimate criterion of the truth of faith, but rather, faced with materially 'authorized' preaching which he or she finds troubling, without being able to explain exactly why, defers assent and appeals interiorly to the superior authority of the universal Church. (<i>Sensus Fidei</i>, §63)</blockquote>
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When a priest, bishop or pope speaks in a manner which is scandalous and offensive to pious ears, not only does our <i>sensus fidei</i> urge us to resist them, but canon law obliges us to make our objections known:</div>
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According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, [the Christian faithful] have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons. (Canon 212 §3)</blockquote>
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The current crisis has prompted several prelates to underscore this right and encourage the faithful to voice their concerns. Bishop Athanasius Schneider <a href="http://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/2558-bishop-athanasius-schneider-replies-to-the-remnant-s-open-letter-on-amoris-laetitia" target="_blank">has called for</a> the composition of a "Credo of the People of God" to stand in opposition to the "ambiguous and objectively erroneous expressions" contained in the post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation <i>Amoris Laetitia</i>. Bishop Emeritus René Gracida <a href="http://theradicalcatholic.blogspot.ch/2016/04/rise-up-faithful-catholics-bishop.html" target="_blank">went so far as to encourage the laity to stand up</a> - literally and in the middle of a homily, if necessary - and shout down the men spreading confusion from the pulpits of our churches. There is <a href="http://whatisupwiththesynod.com/index.php/2016/06/28/whats-being-done/" target="_blank">some talk</a> that theologians are gathering together the material required to address a formal plea to the pope that he recant his problematic statements and, one can assume, make a profession of orthodox faith. A group of priests has been gathering such data for more than a year, and has produced <a href="https://en.denzingerbergoglio.com/francis-main-innovations/" target="_blank">a lengthly list of detailed briefs</a> contrasting the various utterances of Pope Francis to the perennial teachings of the Catholic Church. Yet, while that list of potentially damning briefs continues to grow on an almost daily basis, it offers little in the way of actionable items. The Modernist heresy is, after all, a notoriously slippery beast.</div>
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What <i>is</i> actionable, however, is scandal among the faithful laity; actionable, not necessarily in the legal sense, but in the moral sense. There are bishops, priests and theologians who want to act, but they need our help and our initiative.</div>
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First, they need us to voice our objections publicly, with both sufficient charity and clarity. This has been stated repeatedly by prelates of every rank. If you have a blog or webpage, consider documenting the ways in which you have been scandalized by this papacy. If you're married, for example, there's a good chance you didn't take Pope Francis' estimation regarding the validity of your marriage very well. Write it down. Are you or someone you love suffering from same-sex attraction, and feel betrayed by the pope's comments regarding homosexuality? Tell your story. If you don't have your own platform, tweet it, comment it on another good Catholic blog, write a letter, anything, just get it out there. It's a drop in the bucket, but little drops add up to big waves. And don't be afraid to name names. These crazy statements didn't fall out of the clear blue sky. They came from the man currently sitting in the Chair of Peter. Say it, and encourage others to say it. It's got to get worse before it can get better.</div>
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Second, they need us to stop playing armchair theologian and canonist. For a layperson to assume the authority to adjudicate in matters of heresy - material or formal - is not merely improper to our station in life, it can actually hinder the correction of the situation, as it gives the subverters license to reject all such objections out of hand. As far as we know, Pope Francis is the legitimate pope deserving of our prayers. Leave the adjudication to the real experts.</div>
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Third, they need our prayers. Not the kind you promise to the woman reporting a lost cat on Facebook, either. They need prayers combined with penance and mortification. The real deal. Consider starting a novena, adding an extra decade of the Rosary, or an extra litany to your daily prayers. Pray the <i>Angelus</i> three times a day. Whatever it is, do it.</div>
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<a href="http://theradicalcatholic.blogspot.ch/2014/11/quare-nunc-domine.html" target="_blank">As I've said before</a>, God chose to put us here at this crucial moment in history for a good reason. We all have a role to play. Make sure you're focusing your precious energy where it counts: on doing what God put <i>you</i> here for.</div>
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-69024234414061383972016-07-01T01:00:00.000+02:002016-07-01T01:00:12.228+02:00The General Council of Ephesus (431)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Fourth in a Series on the History of the General Councils</i></div>
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<b>Msgr. Philip Hughes</b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Ql0USdi6-LhWE_HT8zbviNWewg9_8TUh71VS3AgVb1Z8CWJZvr4yZfITMnGUqx9KMsjqDdRt0pxB9lyP_kaOnKz6ec6yFEMImWwogSb6Ja7FF-VsrB4gdjOSlewRXqdIJlFWug7o80di/s1600/Council+of+Ephesus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Ql0USdi6-LhWE_HT8zbviNWewg9_8TUh71VS3AgVb1Z8CWJZvr4yZfITMnGUqx9KMsjqDdRt0pxB9lyP_kaOnKz6ec6yFEMImWwogSb6Ja7FF-VsrB4gdjOSlewRXqdIJlFWug7o80di/s400/Council+of+Ephesus.jpg" width="500" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Council of Ephesus<br />
Basilica of Fourvière, Lyon (click to enlarge)</td></tr>
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One of the minor activities of the <a href="http://theradicalcatholic.blogspot.ch/2016/06/the-first-general-council-of.html" target="_blank">General Council of AD 381</a> was to provide a new bishop for the see it thought worthy of the second place in the Church - Constantinople - in place of Gregory of Nazianzen who had been forced out. The bishops chose an old retired veteran of the high places of the imperial administration: Nectarius. He ruled for sixteen years, and gave general satisfaction. And it is recorded that, in his quiet and peaceful way, this practiced administrator began to turn the new primacy of honour into something very like a primacy of fact. It gradually became the fashion to send appeals of various kinds to Constantinople, and for the bishop there to deal with them as though to do so were part of his jurisdiction. When Nectarius died, in AD 397, the question who should succeed him was, then, something to interest the whole East.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. John Chrysostom</td></tr>
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The personage who moved immediately was the bishop of Alexandria, Theophilus. He had a candidate, one of his own priests, one of his chief confidants in fact. But the court had a candidate also - the court being no longer the emperor who had called the council in AD 381, Theodosius,<sup>[1]</sup> but the minister Eutropius who governed in the name of Theodosius' youthful successor, Arcadius. The court had its way, and brought from Antioch an ascetic personage, the monk John, famed as the great preacher of the day, known to later ages thereby as Chrysostom, the man with 'the tongue of gold.' He was consecrated, by Theophilus, in February 398. But Theophilus went home bitter, it is thought. Alexandria had failed to place its man in 397, as it had failed on the like occasion in 381, in the time of its late bishop Timothy; and it was only the threats of Eutropius - that there were serious charges on file against Theophilus - that had brought that bishop to accept the appointment of the monk from Antioch.</div>
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A few words about the actual power of the bishop of Alexandria will revive some of the faded colour of the tragic history that is to follow. He was, first of all, more absolutely lord, in all matters of daily life, of the bishops dependent on him than was, at that time, any other bishop in the Church; and of these dependent bishops there were something like one hundred. He chose them all, and he personally consecrated them, the metropolitans no less than their suffragans. He was also, whether himself a monk or not, a kind of supreme patriarch of the monks, in this country where the monastic life had begun - and he thereby enjoyed unique prestige in the whole monastic world. He was immensely wealthy, with revenues coming from such extraordinary sources as his see's monopoly of the right to sell salt, and nitrates and papyrus, and all the various lugubrious paraphernalia needed in funerals. Alexandria, until Constantinople rose to the fullness of its promise, was the wonder city of the whole Roman world, the greatest of all trade centres, the queen of the Mediterranean. And of nothing was the great city prouder than of its see. The bishop of Alexandria moved in an habitual popularity and power that made of him a kind of native king, with mobs willing to demonstrate in his favour at a moment's notice. For forty-five years the see had had in Athanasius a saint for its bishop, a saint whose endless contests with the never much loved imperial government, whose many exiles, and inflexible fidelity to Nicaea, had achieved for his successors a position the like of which has probably never been known. This, in the hands of a saint! But Theophilus was far from being a saint. The saint, now, was at Constantinople, and in a world of Theophilus' kind he was soon to be hopelessly lost.</div>
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The space given to these considerations - and to the story of St. John Chrysostom - in a study of the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon is due to the simple facts that rivalry between the two sees, Alexandria and Constantinople, ceaseless after AD 381, mattered very greatly in the history of these councils; that Alexandria sought endlessly to control Constantinople; that at Ephesus in 431 and again in 449 a bishop of Alexandria was the very willing agent of the deposition and excommunication of a bishop of Constantinople; and that at Chalcedon, in AD 451, the all but impossible happened and a bishop of Alexandria was deposed and excommunicated; and Alexandria - civic, popular Alexandria no less than the clerical world and the monks - never forgot this, and never forgave it. And it being the fifth century and not the twentieth, the more human side of these grave ecclesiastical contentions ultimately brought down to ruin the wealthiest province of the empire.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Key sees involved in the Council of Ephesus (click to enlarge)</td></tr>
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Chrysostom, as he is commonly called, the first effective bishop his see had known for many years, found abundance of employment for his zeal, and inevitably made as many enemies as friends; wealthy enemies and highly placed, clergy among them, and even the young empress. The first occasion of his clash with the bishop of Alexandria was the kind reception he gave to alleged victims of Theophilus' harsh rule. This was some three years after his appointment. On the heels of these fugitives there came other monks, sent by Theophilus, with counter-accusations of heresy. But they failed to prove their case before the emperor and were themselves condemned. And the fugitives brought it about that Theophilus was summoned to answer their charges in person. He arrived (AD 403) with a cohort of twenty-nine of his bishops in attendance, blaming Chrysostom for all that had happened, and swearing openly that he had come to the capital "to depose John."</div>
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And this is what his familiarity with the great world, his political skill and his lavish expenditure, actually achieved. John, when bidden by the emperor to summon a council for the trial of Theophilus, had refused: Alexandria lay outside his jurisdiction. He now, in turn, was bidden by the emperor to take his trial, Theophilus his judge with his twenty-nine suffragans and a chance half-dozen visiting bishops picked up in the capital - the group called the "Synod of The Oak," from the country seat at Chalcedon where these bishops met.</div>
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John again refused to acknowledge an uncanonical jurisdiction. Whereupon, for his refusal to appear, he was condemned and deposed. The ultimate outcome of these proceedings was his exile to the farthest limits of the empire; and his treatment was so harsh that he died of it (AD 407). Theophilus celebrated his victory by composing a book against John filled, it would seem, with all manner of hideous calumnies. And in John's place there ruled one of the priests of Constantinople whom the saint had had to censure.</div>
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These bare facts, which seemingly all writers accept, are sufficient witness to the existence of malevolence at Alexandria, and to the corruption of life at the court of a Christian emperor. The other feature of this story is the action of the pope,<sup>[2]</sup> when the full account of these deeds reached him - letters from Theophilus (wholly misleading), from John (a full account, down to the day he wrote) and the minutes of the Synod of The Oak. This last the pope refused to accept as a council at all. Its sentence on John was mere words. He took John to be still the lawful bishop of Constantinople, and when he was asked to recognise Atticus, put in John's place, he refused, and broke off relations with both Alexandria and Antioch who had recognised him.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emperor Theodosius II</td></tr>
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Theophilus was still out of communion when he died (AD 412). His successor, a nephew, Cyril, began his long career as bishop equally under the ban. Antioch was the first see to surrender and make the symbolic submission, by restoring John's name "to the diptychs" - placing him in the list of deceased bishops officially prayed for. Then Atticus did the same, explaining fearfully to Alexandria that he really had no choice but to do this. Cyril, very young, as self-confident and absolute as was ever his uncle, stubbornly - even passionately? - refused. "You might as well ask to put Judas back in the company of the Apostles," he wrote. Cyril had been with his uncle at The Oak. But in the end, he, too, restored John's name. It was fifteen years or so since these terrible scenes of episcopal vindictiveness. But the saint's body had now been brought back with honour to his cathedral, and in a kind of public <i>amende</i> for the crime of the emperor Arcadius in banishing him, his son, Theodosius II, knelt before the coffin and kissed it. And between Rome and all the major sees of the East there was communion and peace.</div>
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The new troubles came then, as it were, out of a blue sky. Alexandria and Constantinople had long made their peace with Rome. And when Atticus died in AD 424, the new bishop, an elderly civil servant, managed the affairs of the turbulent capital so as to please all parties, his clergy, the monks, and the court. But with the appointment of Nestorius as his successor, in April 428, the peace was suddenly, and very rudely, broken. Like St. John Chrysostom, the new bishop was a monk from Antioch. There he, too, had been a famous preacher, whose appointed task was the public explanation of the Scriptures. And he began his new career with a great oration, in which he called on the emperor to root out the remnants of the many heresies, pockets of which still existed in Constantinople.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pope St. Celestine</td></tr>
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In the new controversy which this sermon heralded, the natural characters of Nestorius and of Cyril of Alexandria play a great part - not more so perhaps than the personalities of such chiefs always play, but for once we are well supplied with evidence about this. As to the precise point on which Nestorius soon fell foul of all his world, he is himself our earliest witness - in two letters to the pope, Celestine I (AD 422-431), written in the early months of his administration. He is explaining to the pope the difficulties he has to face in his war against the heretics, and he proceeds to say that one very serious matter is the unconscious heresy of good Catholics, of monks and even some of his clergy, about the meaning of the belief that Christ is God. They are confused in their minds about the great mystery that Christ is both God and man, and they speak as though what is human in Christ was divine. They talk, for example, of God having been born, and of God being buried, and invoke the most holy virgin Mary as the "God-bringing-forth," the mother of God (using the Greek word that expresses this so succinctly, <i>Theotokos</i>). They should, of course, be more careful in their speech, and say she is <i>Christotokos</i> - the one who brought forth Christ, the mother of Christ. "The Virgin," he told the pope, "is certainly <i>Christotokos</i>: she is not <i>Theotokos</i>." In speaking and acting as they do, these Catholics are reviving, says Nestorius, "the corruption of Arius and Apollinaris," heretics notoriously condemned long ago. And Nestorius speaks feelingly of "the fight which I have to put up over this."<sup>[3]</sup></div>
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By the time Nestorius had written these letters, his public support of preachers whom he brought in to "correct" his ignorant clergy, and his own sermons, his prohibition of the use of the word <i>Theotokos</i> and the punishments he meted out to the disobedient had set the capital in an uproar. And the trouble was crossing the seas. For the news of his ill treatment of the monks had spread to the land which was the centre of the monastic movement, Egypt, and when the Egyptian monks laid the theological problem before their bishop, Cyril - the accusation that the traditional Catholic piety towards the God-man and his mother was heretical - there entered the field the very unusual combination of a first-rate theologian who was also a finished man of affairs and an experienced politician. Cyril wrote, for his monks, a theological defence of the tradition which was necessarily a severe denunciation of Nestorius.<sup>[4]</sup> This was sometime after the Easter of AD 429, and the reply was presently circulating in Constantinople. And Cyril also wrote to Nestorius.</div>
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In the events of the next two years, the natural man in Cyril was to reveal itself fairly often. What of the same in Nestorius? What was it that so suddenly moved him to attack what was not a local piety peculiar to the city where he had just begun to live but, as the event showed (and as Nestorius must have known), a general, traditional way of regarding this doctrine? His own first letters on the subject are a curious mixture of orthodoxy and of novel statements, "startling to pious ears," as a later day would have said; statements capable indeed of being explained as in harmony with the tradition, but until so explained, and especially when set out in criticism of current practice, justifiably causing real suspicion that the speaker was himself a heretic - a man, that is to say, out to propagate a new, personal, anti-traditional version of a fundamental belief. What prompted all this? The vanity of the learned man who has found out something the generality do not know? The possession of key-knowledge that will "make all the difference"? The desire of a gifted man, promoted suddenly from obscurity to one of the highest places in the world of his time, to make his mark, to set all things right? For his point that, although <i>Theotokos</i>, rightly understood, is perfectly orthodox, it is better to use his own new word <i>Christotokos</i>, the suitable place to air this - a first time - might have been a conference of theologians or bishops. But Nestorius chose to do it in sermons to the multitudes that filled his cathedral, and not in terms of learned, anxious speculation, but in blood-and-thunder denunciation of universally practiced piety. There is a levity about the action which, given the gravity of the issue, is itself surely scandalous. And was Nestorius a really honest, straightforward type? In his first correspondence with the pope, when he tells of his problem with Pelagian refugees from Italy, he is even naively devious, and the pope in his reply points this out very bluntly. And once the major forces had been brought in against him, Cyril of Alexandria and the verdict of Rome, he certainly shows himself, in his manoeuvres with the court, a twister of the first order: <i>Trop habile Nestorius</i>.<sup>[5]</sup><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Cyril of Alexandria</td></tr>
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When Cyril wrote directly to Nestorius, in February 430, seemingly, he said how surprised he was that he should disturb the peace of mind of the faithful by such very controvertible statements. Nestorius in return attacked the explanation Cyril had given the monks, called it untraditional, and said explicitly that it was the Apollinarian heresy all over again. Cyril had given him the news that Rome considered his views scandalous, and Nestorius ended his letter with a hint that the court was on his side. Cyril was not unaware that at Constantinople there were clerics from Egypt, gone there with a case against their chief bishop, and that Nestorius was taking care of these enemies. It was with reference to this situation that Cyril wrote to his agents in the capital, about this time:</div>
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This poor fellow does not imagine, surely, that I am going to allow myself to be judged by him, whoever the accusers are that he can stir up against me! It will be the other way round. I shall know well enough how to force him back to the defensive.<sup>[6]</sup></blockquote>
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The temperature is rising rapidly, on both shores of the Mediterranean.</div>
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It was now that Cyril first approached the court on the matter of Nestorius, sending explanations of the point at issue to the emperor, his wife and sisters.</div>
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The next move was a council in Egypt, sometime after Easter 430, and an elaborate report to the pope on the part of Cyril - his answer to the Roman query whether certain sermons that have come to the pope were really Nestorius' sermons.<sup>[7]</sup> Cyril's reply was a "skilfully written letter"<sup>[8]</sup> describing the situation at Constantinople, saying that all the bishops of the East are united in their anxiety about these errors of Nestorius. He is quite isolated in his denial that the Virgin is <i>Theotokos</i>, but flatters himself that he will bring the rest round, "so greatly has the power<sup>[9]</sup> of his see infatuated him." The bishops will not publicly break off relations with Nestorius without consulting the pope. "Deign then to make known to us what seems good to you, and whether we ought either to remain in communion with him or to declare publicly that no one should remain in communion with a man who thinks and teaches so erroneously." The pope's reply, Cyril recommends, should be sent to all the bishops of the East.</div>
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With this letter went copies of Nestorius' sermons (and a Latin translation of them), then the Cyril-Nestorius correspondence, then a list drawn up by Cyril of the errors said to be taught by Nestorius, and a compendium of texts from the classic theologians of the past on the doctrine called in question.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Pope St. Celestine I</i><br />
Bartolomeo Romano</td></tr>
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When this dossier reached Rome, Pope Celestine set it before a specially summoned gathering of bishops, and on August 11, 430, he wrote his judgment. This he sent, in the first place, to Cyril. In this letter, the pope speaks of Cyril's communication as a consolation amid his grief at the sermons Nestorius had been preaching. Already, that is, before receiving Cyril's letter, the pope had handed over these sermons to one of the great scholars of the day, the bilingual John Cassian, to be the basis of a book against Nestorius. But Cyril's letter, the pope continues, suggests how to cure this terrible evil. To the question about remaining in communion with the bishop of Constantinople, the pope replies that those whom Nestorius had excommunicated because they opposed him remain, nevertheless, in full communion, and those who obstinately follow the path that leads away from the apostolic teaching cannot be "in communion with us," i.e., the pope. Nestorius, he instructs Cyril, is to be summoned to make a written recantation of his errors, and to declare that his belief about the birth of Christ is what the church of Rome believes, the church of Alexandria, and the universal church. And Cyril is charged with the execution of this decision. He is to act in the pope's place, and, speaking with all the authority of the pope's see, is to demand this retraction of Nestorius, to be made in writing, within ten days of the notice given. If within this time Nestorius has not complied he is to be declared expelled from the church.</div>
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To the bishops of Antioch, Jerusalem, Thessalonica, and Philippi<sup>[10]</sup> the pope also wrote letters which follow the same line as that to Cyril, but make no mention of the commission to act which the pope had sent him. The pope merely says, with great gravity, "The sentence we pronounce, which is even more the sentence of our master, Christ who is God, is..." and so on, as in the letter to Cyril.</div>
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We possess, besides the letter to Cyril, the letter which the pope wrote, that same day, to Nestorius. In this, Celestine explains that lack of scholars who could translate the bishop's letters and sermons had delayed his reply, then came the dossier sent from Alexandria, which has been studied. The pope tells the bishop of Constantinople that his letters are "full of evident blasphemies." The sermons, for all their obscurity, plainly teach heresy. What a dreadful mistake it was to make Nestorius a bishop! The sheep have, indeed, been handed over to the wolf. And now, those whose lack of foresight brought this about are calling on the pope to help them out of the difficulty. The pope does not point out to Nestorius the particular places where he has gone astray, list any of "your many impious declarations, which the whole church rejects." But, as he tells him, this present letter is a final warning. The bishop of Alexandria is in the right in this controversy. "Brother, if you wish to be with us [...] openly show that you think as we think." "Our sentence is this," and the letter ends with a demand for a written declaration that Nestorius believes the very thing he has repudiated, with a notice of ten days allowed, and a warning that noncompliance means immediate excommunication. Celestine then tells him that all the papers concerning the process have been sent to Alexandria, that he has commissioned Cyril to act in his name and to inform him, Nestorius, and the other bishops what the pope has decided.</div>
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A letter, in much the same terms, also went from the pope to the clergy and faithful people of the capital. But the pope did not write to the emperor.</div>
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What the normal time was for a public letter to go from Rome to Alexandria, in the fifth century, and thence on to Constantinople - a business involving sea-journeys of something like a thousand miles - it is not easy to say. But it is surprising that not until December 7 was Nestorius officially summoned by Cyril to recant. And the bishop of Alexandria did not carry out his task in person - as, presumably, the pope designed. He sent the ultimatum by four of his suffragan bishops. Nor did he content himself with sending the pope's letters of commission, his own credentials in the matter. Before moving, he had called a synod of the bishops of Egypt, and he now sent on to Nestorius their synodal letter condemning his teaching. Finally, to make the expected retractation doubly sure, Cyril had drafted twelve statements about the heresies Nestorius was alleged to support, statements all of which ended: "Whoever believes this, may he be <i>anathema</i>," i.e., accursed. These Nestorius was to sign.</div>
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But in the long interval between August 11 and December 7, much had happened at Constantinople and elsewhere. Nestorius had had a correspondence with the bishop of Antioch, who urged him, in very plain language, to do as he was asked, and not to cause trouble merely about a word he disliked (<i>Theotokos</i>) but which he admitted could bear an orthodox meaning, and to which many saints and doctors of the past had given sanction by themselves using it. "Don't lose your head," wrote the Antiochean:</div>
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Ten days! It will not take you twenty-four hours to give the needed answer. [...] Ask advice of men you can trust. Ask them to tell you the facts, not just what they think will please you. [...] You have the whole of the East against you, as well as Egypt.</blockquote>
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Nestorius, in his reply to this surely good friend, hedged. He gave no explicit answer, merely saying he had not been rightly understood, that if his book forbade the use of the famous word it was because heretics were using it with an heretical meaning. And that now he will just wait for the council,<sup>[11]</sup> which will settle this and all other problems. As to Cyril, it is he who is the troublemaker:</div>
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As to the Egyptian's insolence, it will scarcely surprise you, for you have many evidences of it, old and new.<sup>[12]</sup></blockquote>
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On November 19, the emperor had summoned a General Council of the Church, for certain vaguely described purposes, the summons said, but actually, no one doubted, to settle this controversy between Constantinople and Alexandria and - in the expectation of Nestorius - to be the scene of the trial for heresy (Apollinarianism) of Cyril. The council was to meet at Ephesus, at Pentecost (June 7) AD 431.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbGvCg6roQwzv20QaWfHaIbMOLrHTVhr7sK9adkKkwA7P3NFCSRrGACSdqTCZ7ZaVQGmWVCODvQz-vC7iKj-ELcLUdltkt_kVRtmd8VkBxF0DYKloW4TF40gvKD8EwsYFQP17iFZISwiIK/s1600/Nestorius+of+Constantinople.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbGvCg6roQwzv20QaWfHaIbMOLrHTVhr7sK9adkKkwA7P3NFCSRrGACSdqTCZ7ZaVQGmWVCODvQz-vC7iKj-ELcLUdltkt_kVRtmd8VkBxF0DYKloW4TF40gvKD8EwsYFQP17iFZISwiIK/s400/Nestorius+of+Constantinople.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nestorius of Constantinople</td></tr>
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When Cyril's four bishops reached Constantinople, December 7, Nestorius refused to receive them. John of Antioch, in the letter just mentioned, had passed on to Nestorius copies of the pope's letter condemning him, and also of a letter he (John) had received from Cyril. Long before Cyril's four bishops walked into the sanctuary of the cathedral at Constantinople that December Sunday to hand over the ultimatum, Nestorius had known all about it. And he had not been idle. It was from Nestorius, it is often said, that the council idea had come. And in the emperor's letter inviting Cyril to the council there was much to make it evident that the glorification of Alexandria was no part of the programme. Cyril's writing separate letters to the emperor, the empress, and the princesses was here declared to be an attempt to divide the imperial family, and the bishop was ordered - not invited - to attend the council, under severe penalties.<sup>[13]</sup> On the other hand, the emperor's act had changed the whole situation for Nestorius. In summoning the council, Theodosius had forbidden all and every ecclesiastical change, no matter by whom, until the council had concluded. And when Nestorius now wrote to the pope of the crimes that were to be brought against Cyril when the council met, he made light of the theological controversy, gave not a hint that he knew of the pope's judgment, but wrote that Cyril, he hears, is preparing a "Faith in danger" campaign, in the hope of distracting the council from his own anxieties.</div>
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The pope made no difficulty about the emperor's plan to call a council, nor about the prohibition which - in fact - had called a halt to the summons to Nestorius. And when Cyril wrote to ask whether Nestorius was now to be treated as excommunicated, for the ten days had long since gone by, the pope in reply quoted the Scripture that God wills not the death of a sinner, but rather that he be converted and live. And Cyril is exhorted to work for peace with the rest of the bishops.</div>
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The date of this letter is May 7, 431 - one month before the day appointed for the council, five months from the day Cyril's deputation tried to deliver the ultimatum to Nestorius. And in those five months, the twelve anathemas of Cyril, so to call them, had time to circulate; and - in the vast territories where the influence of Antioch was strong - they had raised issues which now quite overshadowed the differences between Cyril and Nestorius, or between Rome and Nestorius even. In the eyes of these Antiochean theologians, the language in which the bishop of Alexandria had framed his statements revealed him as a pure Apollinarian. And John of Antioch had organised a party to make this clear at the council, and had in the meantime induced two bishops - one of them held to be Cyril's equal as a scholarly writer, Theodoret of Cyrrhus<sup>[14]</sup> - to come out with public refutations of the Alexandrian's "heresies." And this group wrote to the bishops of the West for support, to Milan, for example, to Aquileia, and to Ravenna.</div>
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How much of this was known to Pope Celestine, when he wrote his letter of May 7, we do not know. But he surely knew that minds were inflamed, and as he gave Cyril the news that he was not himself able to make the journey to Ephesus, he urged "the Egyptian" to be moderate, to remember that what the pope wanted was that Nestorius should be won back. We must not, said the pope, again scripturally, be of those "swift to shed blood."</div>
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The day after this letter was written, the pope signed the instructions for the three legates who were to represent him at the council. They were told to act throughout with Cyril and to watch carefully that the authority of the Apostolic See was duly respected. And, finally, the pope sent a letter to the council. It is a moving document, in which Celestine reminds the bishops of the beloved apostle St. John, whose remains lie in the church at Ephesus where they are meeting, and reminds them that they are the successors of the twelve apostles, privileged to preserve what their labours had established. The pope speaks plainly about the Nestorian novelties: they are treason to the faith. He exhorts the bishops to unanimity, and to be courageous in act. Then he presents his legates, who will take part in the council and will tell the bishops, "the things which we decided at Rome were to be done." "Nor do we doubt your assent to all this," the pope goes on, "when it is seen how all that is done has been ordered for the security of the whole church."</div>
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To the legates the pope entrusted a letter for the emperor, announcing that he would be represented at the council by legates, and praying he would give no encouragement to these novel ideas now causing such trouble, the work of men who would reduce the idea of God to the limits of what a finite intelligence could explore. The pope leaves it in no doubt, in this as in the other letter, that Nestorius is already condemned; if the pope consents to the case being discussed once more, this is in the hope that the unfortunate man will retract.</div>
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The emperor had not convoked every single bishop of the empire to the council, but only a certain number from each of the fifty-nine provinces of his own jurisdiction, the choice being left to the metropolitans. In all, something like 230 or 250 ultimately arrived at Ephesus. Cyril came in a few days before the appointed date. He found Nestorius already established. He had been at Ephesus since Easter, with a small group of sympathetic prelates. Cyril had brought with him fifty Egyptian bishops. Sometime after Pentecost the (anti-Nestorius) bishop of Jerusalem arrived with fifteen supporters, and later came news from the Antiocheans, forty-six in all, that they had been delayed by accidents. This last group had chosen to travel by the land route, a thousand miles and more of difficult and - as it happened - famine-stricken country.</div>
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The most numerous group at the council was the bishops of what we, today, call Asia Minor, the nineteen provinces that then made up the (civil) dioceses of Asia and Pontus, and the district called Proconsular Asia which was subject to the emperor's direct rule. It was in this last that Ephesus itself was situated. In Asia Minor there were, in all, something like three hundred sees. It was the most Catholicized territory of all the empire. Something like a hundred of these bishops came to the council. The bishop of Ephesus, Memnon, acted as their leader, and they were to a man anti-Constantinople - the question of the <i>Theotokos</i> apart. The repeated attempts of successive bishops of the capital city, since AD 381, to turn the primacy of honour then voted it into an effective hold on the only territory not already dominated by Antioch or Alexandria made the bishops of Ephesus allies of the foe of Constantinople in all these disputes.</div>
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Meanwhile, the Antiocheans did not arrive, and the bishops waited, for a good two weeks after the appointed day, June 7, in the great city, two hundred of them nearly, each with his retinue, in the scorching latitude of 38 degrees north. Disputes were frequent, fights and riots with the Nestorian minority, in which the town naturally took an interested part.<sup>[15]</sup> But Cyril made no attempt to meet Nestorius. The two prelates avoided each other. Each, to the other, was a wicked heretic, awaiting his trial and deserved condemnation. And while the bishop of Ephesus forbade the churches of the city to Nestorius, Cyril was free to preach on Nestorius as the enemy of truth, the outcast already condemned by the pope.<sup>[16]</sup></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuOkfqZXvJ3k23_BL8QXzEHZnmZYICYWWcLZwKH1ZP-IZSVIlYKzzjvoV3D2xXijw_XL7Wp1nXOMXlGbMzDKbt5W7EgrOqy_oHfEgnxFjCJSu1WSZGpaRT9qtBAEinOhyphenhyphencOte6zyIbBjOi/s1600/Maria+Theokotos+-+Ephesus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuOkfqZXvJ3k23_BL8QXzEHZnmZYICYWWcLZwKH1ZP-IZSVIlYKzzjvoV3D2xXijw_XL7Wp1nXOMXlGbMzDKbt5W7EgrOqy_oHfEgnxFjCJSu1WSZGpaRT9qtBAEinOhyphenhyphencOte6zyIbBjOi/s320/Maria+Theokotos+-+Ephesus.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The ruins of the Basilica of Maria Theotokos<br />
in Ephesus, where the Council convened on June 22, 431</td></tr>
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On June 21, the long wait was broken. Cyril announced that the next day the council would hold its opening session. Immediately there were protests. From the imperial commissioner, in the first place, Count Candidian, who was charged with the safety of the council, under orders to prevent any but the bishops from entering the church where the meetings would take place,<sup>[17]</sup> and with keeping order in the council itself, i.e., to see that every bishop who wished to speak was allowed to speak, and to reply to attacks made on him; also to see that no bishop left Ephesus until the council had ended its business. Candidian demanded a delay until the Antiocheans arrived. So did no fewer than sixty-eight bishops, in a written protestation. And Nestorius, with his party, made their protest too, saying the council was no council until all the bishops were assembled. But Cyril stood to his announcement, and on June 22 the council opened - a memorable first session in which much was enacted, and in which still more lay mischievously latent, <i>suppositos cineri a doloso</i> indeed.<sup>[18]</sup></div>
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The question has been raised by what authority Cyril thus opened the council, acting as though he was its acknowledged president. That the mass of the bishops at the time accepted the <i>fait accompli</i> without any sign of protest - even the sixty-eight signatories - is certain. It was also traditional that Alexandria was the first see of the East. Its bishop being present at a General Council, and neither pope nor emperor having named another to preside, he was surely its inevitable president. Nestorius, in the memoirs he wrote, many years later, says:</div>
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We expected that he who exercised authority (the emperor, through Candidian) would have chosen the president. No one thought you would have taken it for yourself.</blockquote>
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But from the 159<sup>[19]</sup> bishops who were in the church as the day's work began, there was not a sign of objection to Cyril.</div>
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The first, unallowed-for incident was a protestation, to the council this time, not to Cyril, from Candidian. It was the emperor's will, he said, that there should not be any "fragmentary councils."<sup>[20]</sup> He was asked to show his instructions and did so. But the bishops stood firm, and begged him to leave, which he did, after a final plea to wait for the absentees, upon whose arrival Nestorius and his party would join the council.</div>
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The council then settled down to its business. A notary read a summary of the case against Nestorius, told how Cyril had intervened at Constantinople, and then at Rome, and how "the most holy bishop of the church of Rome, Celestine, has written what it behoved." And the notary announced that all the documents were here and at the disposition of the bishops.</div>
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Nestorius was then sent for. Three times - as the Law demanded - he was officially and personally summoned, a deputation going from the council to the place where he lived. He ignored all three citations, and the council passed to the study of his case.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Cyril's Second Letter to Nestorius</td></tr>
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The next act was the reading of the creed of Nicaea, and then of Cyril's letter to Nestorius. Cyril then rose, acknowledging the letter, and to put it to the bishops to vote whether the theology of his letter was in accord with the creed of Nicaea; 125 of the bishops followed him, each making profession of the Nicene faith, and affirming that the letter accorded with Nicaea. A demand was made for Nestorius' reply to the letter. When it was read, and the question put as to its accord with Nicaea, thirty-four bishops had individually answered in the negative when the patience of the assembly gave out. There was a call for a mass vote, and without a dissentient they shouted their views in a series of acclamations:</div>
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Whoever does not anathematize Nestorius, let him be anathema. Curses on him. The true faith curses him. The holy council curses him. We all say <i>anathema</i> to his letter and his views. We all say <i>anathema</i> to the heretic Nestorius. [...] The whole universal church says <i>anathema</i> to the wicked religion taught by Nestorius.</blockquote>
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The bishop of Jerusalem now asked that the pope's letter to Nestorius be read. So far not a word had come from the president to say that Rome had condemned Nestorius already, and looked to the council to ratify this. It was in the name of Nicaea that Nestorius had been condemned. The council - or Cyril - had not merely begun the business before the Antiocheans had come in, but before the arrival of the pope's representatives also. The Jerusalem proposal, so to speak, was adopted and the pope's letter was read - and listened to as a matter of routine, one would say, without a single acclamation. Next was read the letter delivered to Nestorius by the four bishops, the letter of the Egyptian synod. But not the now famous twelve anathemas which Cyril had composed in order to stop every retreat for his wily opponent - or perhaps they were read? Historians do not agree. Then, after an account by one of the four bishops of their mission to Nestorius, the notary read out a long collection of texts from all the classic theologians of past days justifying the orthodoxy of the term <i>Theotokos</i>; and followed this with a long selection of passages from Nestorius that were evidence of his errors. Finally, in a solemn resounding sentence, the council deprived Nestorius of his bishopric of Constantinople and ejected him from the ranks of the episcopate. 198 signatures of bishops were attached to the sentence.</div>
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In all the day's proceedings, not a single voice had been raised to say that the views of Nestorius were what the faith really was. All that long day, crowds had stood round outside the great church, while the interminable routine had slowly worked to its inevitable end, echoes from within making their way to the streets, no doubt, in the more lively moments. When the result was known there were scenes of the wildest joy, and Cyril, in a pastoral letter written on his return to Alexandria, has left a vivid picture of it all.</div>
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The whole population of the city, from earliest dawn until the evening stood around, in expectation of the council's decision. And when they heard that the author of the blasphemies had been stripped of his rank, they all began with one voice to praise and glorify God, as for the overthrow of an enemy of the faith. And as we [the bishops] came forth from the Church, they led us with torches to our lodgings, for it was now evening. Throughout the city there was great rejoicing, and many lighted lanterns, and women who walked before us swinging thuribles.<sup>[21]</sup></blockquote>
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Was the Council of Ephesus now over? No, its history had hardly begun, although, without a shadow of opposition, it had carried out the task for which, in the eyes of all, it had been summoned. And although the justice of what it had done was not questioned, and no move was ever made to reverse the decision. These strange words promise a complicated story. There were to be six more sessions of the council, spread through the month of July, and then, for the mass of the bishops, a long dreary wait of weeks while, at the capital, rival delegations argued before the emperor about the orthodoxy of Cyril. It was late September, three months after this night of triumph, before the council was dissolved, and the bishops free to begin the long journey back to their sees.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPvQW_CJ0ALMhl3ClJecTwxythzn7Y7SWKyH6Ubt8I8M4BsyFpuqOSh-1yb10YhG52fxLuqD4FLphN5eLhdNqlH7ohPnpuQVtQf5vh0vtclAMmxztLLDyti3cTeIbMPWJMuMPs41QF9ZxY/s1600/Council+of+Ephesus+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPvQW_CJ0ALMhl3ClJecTwxythzn7Y7SWKyH6Ubt8I8M4BsyFpuqOSh-1yb10YhG52fxLuqD4FLphN5eLhdNqlH7ohPnpuQVtQf5vh0vtclAMmxztLLDyti3cTeIbMPWJMuMPs41QF9ZxY/s400/Council+of+Ephesus+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fresco depicting the General Council of Ephesus<br />
in the narthex of St. Athanasius church on Mount Athos (click to enlarge)</td></tr>
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The morrow of the celebrations was taken up with the task of notifying the decision to all the interested parties: letters from Cyril and his bishops to the emperor, and to the clergy and people of Constantinople; a report from Candidian to the emperor; and from Nestorius (who had been officially told his sentence at the conclusion of the session) a complaint about the way his friends had been dealt with.</div>
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The next day, June 24, the Antiocheans arrived. They speedily learnt all that had happened, and were soon officially notified of the sentence against Nestorius and ordered, by Cyril, not to communicate with him in any way. Their immediate reaction was to form themselves into a council - along with some of the bishops who had held aloof from the great session of June 22. They gave Count Candidian audience and he, as well as protesting against what was then done, gave a full account of all the events of the week. It was then the turn of those bishops to speak, against whom Memnon had closed all his churches, shutting them out in this way from the liturgy at the great feast of Pentecost. There was speech of Cyril's autocratic conduct, of the heresy which his twelve anathemas contained and, finally, John of Antioch who presided over the gathering proposed a sentence that Cyril and Memnon be deposed as the authors of the heresies contained in the anathemas, the heresies of Arius and Apollinaris, and all the bishops be excommunicated who had allowed themselves to be led away by these chiefs. Notice of this sentence was served on all concerned, and once more the elaborate business gone through of officially informing the emperor and all the ecclesiastical world of the capital.</div>
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When these letters were despatched, whether June 26 or 28, the previous despatches to the emperor can hardly yet have reached Constantinople. His answer to Candidian's report on the session of June 22 is, in fact, dated June 29. It is a severe condemnation of all Cyril's proceedings. The emperor regards all that was done as of no effect, and orders the bishops to meet again, in accord, this time, with the instructions given to the count. None is to leave until this new discussion has taken place. And one of the highest officials of the court, it is announced, is on his way to regulate matters.</div>
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By the time this communication had reached Ephesus, something else had happened: the three Roman legates had arrived, the two bishops Arcadius and Projectus, and the priest Philip. In accord with the instructions given them, ten or eleven weeks before, they joined themselves to Cyril. On July 10, all the bishops who had taken part in the act of June 22 came together once more in session. The difference in the procedure is evident, notable, significant. Cyril presided,<sup>[22]</sup> and the session opened with a demand from the legates that the pope's letter to the council, which they had brought with them, should be read. This was done, and one of the legates then said, "We have satisfied what custom demands, namely, that first of all, the letters from the Apostolic See be read in Latin." They were next read in Greek - a translation brought by the legates.<sup>[23]</sup></div>
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And now there were acclamations from the council. The papal sentence had anticipated the bishops' own vote. The counteraction of John of Antioch against themselves for their support of Cyril, the emperor's gesture of repudiation, were, perhaps, the lighter for this wholehearted confirmation. They called:</div>
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Celestine is the new Paul. Cyril is the new Paul. Celestine is the guardian of the faith. Celestine agrees with the council. There is one Celestine, one Cyril, one faith of the council, one faith of the world-wide Church.</blockquote>
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And then one of the papal legates intervened to point out that what Celestine's letter had said was that it was the council's business to carry out what he at Rome had decided should be done. And another legate, acknowledging the acclamations, said in a terse phrase:</div>
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The members have joined themselves to the head, for your beatitude is not ignorant that the head of the whole faith, and furthermore of the Apostles, is the blessed apostle Peter.</blockquote>
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And then this legate, the priest Philip, asked for the official record of what had been done on June 22, So as to be able to confirm the sentence passed, according to the instructions of "our blessed pope."</div>
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At the session of the following day, the same legate pronounced that the judgment of June 22 had been made "canonically and in accordance with ecclesiastical learning" and "conformably with the instructions of the most holy pope, Celestine," the judgment was confirmed. Whereupon the minutes of the session and the sentence against Nestorius were read, following which the legate Philip made a speech in which occurs this passage, that has never ceased to be quoted since:</div>
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No one doubts, nay it is a thing known now for centuries, that the holy and most blessed Peter, the prince and head of the Apostles, the pillar of the faith and the foundation on which the Catholic Church is built, received from Our Lord, Jesus Christ, the saviour and redeemer of the human race, the keys of the kingdom, and that to him there was given the power of binding and of loosing from sin; who, down to this day, and for evermore, lives and exercises judgment in his successors.<sup>[24]</sup></blockquote>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLqUjJkTEdaSzxtJ12tajvRd51q14z7I4jrfocoeK0MJS0JzkubzyY-waheDuJ4FLmstAtt_RmbxsgF6nywtq4uKVFwb4lY0ROlUysmqA8nLfZlkyP7KVarJjm8bCvHkMgSQCcS4I2fHxN/s1600/Basilica+of+the+Twelve+Apostles+-+Interior.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLqUjJkTEdaSzxtJ12tajvRd51q14z7I4jrfocoeK0MJS0JzkubzyY-waheDuJ4FLmstAtt_RmbxsgF6nywtq4uKVFwb4lY0ROlUysmqA8nLfZlkyP7KVarJjm8bCvHkMgSQCcS4I2fHxN/s320/Basilica+of+the+Twelve+Apostles+-+Interior.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Interior of the Basilica of the Twelve Apostles in Rome</td></tr>
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In the report of these last proceedings made by the bishops to the emperor, the principal part which the Roman see has played in the condemnation of Nestorius, "before the present council was summoned," is stressed, and the fact that Cyril had been charged by the pope to act in his place. But the bishops do not excuse themselves for - once more - ignoring the emperor's commands as to what they shall do and how. In their letter notifying again to the clergy of Constantinople the deposition of their bishop, the next signature, after Cyril's is that of Philip, "priest of the church of the Apostles,"<sup>[25]</sup> then comes that of the bishop of Jerusalem, and next of the other two Roman legates.</div>
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It remained to resolve the council's situation <i>vis-a-vis</i> the Antioch group who, now nearly three weeks since, had declared these two hundred or so bishops excommunicated. John of Antioch and his adherents were now, three times, formally summoned to appear before the council, and upon their final refusal they were all solemnly excommunicated (July 17). And, once again, pope and emperor were formally notified of all that had been done.</div>
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At Constantinople, there were general rejoicings at the news that Nestorius' reign was over. But the emperor still refused to recognise the work done as it had been done. He did not reprove the bishops for ignoring his orders of June 29, and he wrote as though all the bishops then at Ephesus were one body - a single letter addressed to all.<sup>[26]</sup> But he confirmed all three depositions, i.e., of Nestorius and of Cyril and of the bishop of Ephesus. All the other acts he condemned. The faith as defined at Nicaea sufficed, he said. His new envoy, Count John, who brought the letter, would further instruct the bishops about "our divinity's plan for the faith." And the bishops were bidden return to their sees.</div>
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When the count arrived, with this somewhat confused, and confusing, decree, it must have been the beginning of August. He had all the bishops brought together in a single assembly to hear his news, their leaders with them. The effect was a general riot; Nestorius and Cyril had to be removed before order was restored. That evening they, with Memnon of Ephesus, were placed under arrest. "If I see the pious bishops to be irritable and irreconcilable (though what causes their rage and exasperation is a mystery to me), and if I find it necessary to take other measures, I shall as soon as possible give your majesty news of this;" so the count reported to Theodosius.</div>
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There were, of course, protestations to the court from the council. And Cyril, who knew well the world of Constantinople, made immediate use of the vast wealth of his see. "At the court every man had his price, and Cyril did not stop to count the price."<sup>[27]</sup> We have a list of the valuable presents that flowed in, carpets (of various sizes), furnishings, valuable silks, jewels, ivory chairs, ostriches, and good plain golden coin. Of this last, one group of fifteen high personages "touched," between them, the equivalent of nearly a million dollars. "Il est certain que Cyrille a paye tres cher."<sup>[28]</sup> No less effectively, he influenced the monks, and an abbot who in forty-eight years had never left his cell headed a great demonstration, that all the town turned out to cheer as it made its way to the palace. And the abbot solemnly warned Theodosius of the sin he committed when he interfered with the council's action.</div>
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What the emperor decided was to hold a conference, which both sides would attend. Eight delegates from each party came to the palace at Chalcedon, the town directly across the Bosporus from the capital. The legate Philip went with the party of the council. John of Antioch led the other group. Cyril was still under arrest; nor did any pleas on his behalf at Chalcedon overcome the emperor's determination not to see him. The conference began on September 4.<sup>[29]</sup> There were five meetings in all, and we have no record of what took place except what has survived of letters to the bishops still kicking their heels at Ephesus from their friends in the delegations - or rather in the delegation of John of Antioch's party, one of whom was the great Theodoret. The emperor's decision - presuming it was his office to decide - was sensible enough. He refused to condemn Cyril for his twelve anathemas, would not even have them examined; he refused to accept the Antioch policy that no more needed to be said than to repeat the definition of Nicaea; and he utterly refused to reconsider the personal question of Nestorius. "Don't talk to me of that fellow," he said. "He has shown the sort he is." As to the excommunicated John of Antioch and his party: "Never so long as I live will I condemn them," said the emperor in his edict. "When they appeared before me none were able to prove anything against them." Cyril and Memnon were tacitly allowed to keep their sees. The bishops were allowed to go home The great council was over.</div>
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<h3>
Additional Resources:</h3>
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<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/EPHESUS.HTM" target="_blank">Documents of the Council of Ephesus</a></li>
</ul>
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<h3>
Footnotes</h3>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] He had died January 17, 395, the last man to rule the whole Roman world as sole emperor; and he died a man in the prime of life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] St. Innocent I, AD 402-417.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] Batiffol, Msgr. Pierre, <i>Le Siege Apostolique</i>, 359-451, 343.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] Whom, however, Cyril does not name.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[5] Batiffol, as before, 361; also, 343.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[6] Batiffol, as before, 348, n. 5. St. Cyril's Letters, no. X. Also quoted Bardy, <i>Les debuts du Nestorianisme</i>, F. and M., vol. 4, p. 172, n. 2.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[7] Batiffol, as before, 349, n. 1.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[8] Bardy, 172, <i>fort habilement redigee</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[9] The word translated by "power" is <i>dunameis</i>. When the pope passes to state his decision to the clergy and faithful of Constantinople (August 11, 430) and says, "The authority of our see has decided," the noun used is <i>authentia</i> - i.e., supreme authority, where the other term <i>dunameis</i> is "high rank," or "resources."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[10] In the province of Macedonia (and therefore directly subject to the Holy See), 70 miles east of Thessalonica, 240 due west of Constantinople.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[11] Announced since John of Antioch's letter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[12] For this correspondence, Batiffol, as before, 361-62.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[13] Cf. Newman on the emperor, "distrustful of Cyril": "Theodosius disliked Cyril; he thought him proud and overbearing, a restless agitator and an intriguer and he told him so in a letter that has come down to us." <i>Trials of Theodoret</i>, in <i>Historical Sketches</i>, II, 348. It seems safe to date this essay, first printed in 1873, in the 1860s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[14] Whom John had already called in to induce Nestorius to admit the orthodoxy of the use of the word <i>Theotokos</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[15] The leading prelates brought each his own bodyguard; Cyril, sailors from Alexandria, Nestorius, gladiators from the circus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[16] Newman, as before, 349-50.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[17] The great church called Maria Theotokos.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[18] "Beneath ashes deceptively cool." The reference is to Horace's famous warning to historians, <i>Odes</i>, II, 1.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[19] "Round about 160," says Bardy, F. and M., 4, 180. The exact figure is a matter of dispute.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[20] <i>Nolle particulures quasdam synodos fieri</i>. Batiffol, as before, 371.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[21] The text of this letter, Greek and Latin, is printed in Kirch, <i>Enchiridion Fontium Hist. Ecclesiasticae Antiquae</i>, pp. 461-62.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[22] And the official record of the proceedings notes that he does so "taking the place of Celestine, the most holy and most reverend chief-bishop of the church of the Romans."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[23] The term used by the legate for his native Latin tongue is interesting - <i>Romana oratio</i>. Mansi, IV, p. 1288.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[24] Text, Greek and Latin, in Denzinger, no. 112.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[25] The Roman basilica of this title.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[26] To fifty-three, rather, by name, belonging to all parties; to the pope and the bishop of Thessalonica, also, who did not attend the council; and to St. Augustine, dead now eleven months.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[27] Batiffol, Msgr. Pierre, <i>Le Siege Apostolique</i>, 359-451, p. 388.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[28] <i>Ibid</i>., p. 389. See also Bardy, p. 188.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[29] Bardy says September 11, p. 190.</span></div>
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-37201679108458567372016-06-29T06:20:00.000+02:002016-06-29T06:20:40.445+02:00The Question of Apologetics and Tertullian<i>Reading N°54 in the History of the Catholic Church</i><br />
<br />
by<br />
<b>Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.</b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tertullian</td></tr>
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Tertullian, the son of a pagan centurion, was born at Carthage about AD 160. He was carefully educated, made a thorough study of the Greek language and of jurisprudence, and for some years practiced law.<sup>[1]</sup> Shortly before AD 197, he was converted to Christianity, and was soon afterwards ordained to the priesthood. He began at once to display an incredible activity against the enemies of the Church.</div>
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Tertullian was first of all a polemic. He was possessed of a vigorous mind, a rare scholarship, and perfect mastery of Latin, to which he added new words and phrases. He was quick in repartee and sharp in speech; but his reasoning is more dazzling than reliable, and his arguments are often inspired by passion. In one place he writes:</div>
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Unhappily, I am always dominated by the fever of impatience.<sup>[2]</sup></blockquote>
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Like <a href="http://theradicalcatholic.blogspot.ch/2016/06/the-question-of-eucharist-and.html" target="_blank">St. Justin</a>, Tertullian experienced the strength and the weakness of many philosophies before settling down in the Christian faith.<sup>[3]</sup> But, whereas Justin retained some friendly feeling for the systems he had left, Tertullian never finds enough epithets with which to belabor the pagan philosophers, those mountebanks, those despisers of God and man,<sup>[4]</sup> those patriarchs of heretics,<sup>[5]</sup> those animals of glory.</div>
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A recent historian of Tertullian's philosophy<sup>[6]</sup> has been able, by utilizing the researches of Nöldechen and Monceaux, to determine with almost certain assurance the date of the first works of the celebrated African priest. It must have been in AD 197 that he wrote his <i>Ad nationes</i> and his <i>Apologeticus</i>; in AD 197, his <i>Testimony of the Soul</i>; about AD 200, his treatise <i>De praescriptione</i>. The <i>Ad nationes</i> is an apology of the Christian religion addressed to the pagan nations; the <i>Apologeticus</i> is a plea addressed to the provincial magistrates of the Empire; the <i>De praescriptione</i>, his masterpiece, is directed against all heresies. Even in his first works, Tertullian makes known his threefold purpose: to confound paganism, to refute Judaism, and to pursue the last remains of the Gnostic heresy.</div>
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Amid incomparable beauties, his apologetic contains regrettable gaps and dubious rashness. When he looks for a sincere testimony about man, we see that he too disdainfully rejects that of philosophy; but with vigor and penetration he analyzes the deep aspirations of what he calls the soul of the artless man.</div>
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These testimonies of the soul are simple as true, commonplace as simple, universal as commonplace, natural as universal, divine as natural. [...] That which is derived from God is rather obscured than extinguished. It bears testimony to God [its author] in exclamations such as: 'Good God! God knows!' etc. [...] Therefore, when the soul embraces the faith [...] it beholds the light in all its brightness.<sup>[7]</sup></blockquote>
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But it would be wrong to suppose that in proposing a way to lead souls to the faith, Tertullian despises reason. The very center of his whole argument is the divinity of Christ. For this, he appeals to three proofs: the testimony of the Old Testament prophecies, of the Gospel miracles, and of the annals of the early Church. In the paradoxical exaltation of his high-minded fervor, he does indeed boast of the abasements in the Gospel and of the scandal of reason, going so far as to write, if not, <i>"Credo quia absurdum"</i> (I believe, because it is absurd), which is neither his nor St. Augustine's, at least an equivalent phrase, <i>"Credibile est quia ineptum; certum est quia impossibile."</i><sup>[8]</sup> He means that the object of faith is that which reason without revelation would not perceive as something fitting or possible. The fiery apologist is so ardently convinced, and feels his conviction so keenly, that he cannot imagine that the truth, so clear to him, does not appear equally clear to others. Yet he writes this sentence, worthy of a real psychologist:</div>
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Faith, destined to a great reward, is acquired only at the price of great labor.<sup>[9]</sup></blockquote>
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The superb peroration of Tertullian's <i>Apologeticus</i> will illustrate his animated and captivating eloquence.</div>
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Your courts are battlefields where we contest for the truth. Sometimes death ensues. It is our victory over you. Sacrifice, excellent magistrates, sacrifice Christians; the mob will thank you. Torment, torture, condemn, grind; your injustice will reveal our innocence. Therefore does God let you go ahead. When your hand harvests us, we increase; the blood of Christians is a seed (<i>Semen est sanguis christianorum</i>).Your philosophers have made less disciples by their writings than Christians have by their example. People come to us out of curiosity; they join us through conviction; then they long to suffer that they may wash away their sins in their blood; for martyrdom wipes out everything. It is a strange contrast between things divine and things human: when you condemn us, God absolves us.</blockquote>
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In his <i>Ad nationes</i>, in the <i>Testimony of the Soul</i> and in the <i>Apologeticus</i>, Tertullian has pagans and Jews in mind; his <i>De praescriptione</i> is addressed to the heretics.</div>
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With marvelous penetration, Tertullian conceives two ways of refuting heresies: an analytical method, resting on a detailed discussion of texts and points of doctrine; a synthetic method, settling the question as a whole by the simple establishing of a fact. He later uses the first method in defending the idea of God against the dualism of Marcion and the pantheism of Valentinus and the idea of creation against the doctrine of Hermogenes. But first he wishes to show how all heresy, that is, every doctrine resting on individual choice (<i>hairesis</i>), on unrestrained inquiry, may be averted by a preliminary question. Tertullian makes appeal to his knowledge of the law. He knows that before the courts there are nice points of non-acceptance, of <i>exceptions</i> as the Roman law calls them, among which the principal one is <i>prescription</i>, peremptory exception by which a possessor, under certain conditions, without any other procedure, sets aside any claim of a third party to his property. Tertullian pleads prescription against every heresy, whatever it may be.</div>
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He takes his start from a series of undeniable facts, namely, that Christ has entrusted His teaching to His Apostles, that the latter have handed it on to the churches they founded, and that from these Apostolic churches have sprung all the others, like shoots inseparable from their common stock. In other words, the method instituted by Christ for the spread of His teaching is tradition, and the authentic organ of that tradition is the Church, in so far as it is connected with the Apostles by an uninterrupted chain. Hence, no one is allowed to appeal to his own personal interpretation against her. Tertullian says:</div>
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Who are you? When and whence did you come? As you are none of mine, what have you to do with that which is mine? Indeed, Marcion, by what right do you hew my wood? By whose permission, Valentinus, are you diverting the streams of my fountain? This is my property. I have long possessed it. I am the heir of the Apostles.<sup>[10]</sup></blockquote>
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We can scarcely imagine a more overwhelming fervor. This very fervor does at times speak in rough, bitter tones, in which passion has too great a part. In his <i>De spectaculis</i>, which appeared about AD 200, the "severe African" cannot suppress his satisfaction at the thought of the future punishment of the persecutors.</div>
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What a spectacle is that fast-approaching advent of our Lord, now owned by all, now highly exalted, now a triumphant One. [...] What there excites my admiration? Which sight gives me joy? Which arouses me to exultation? - as I see so many illustrious monarchs, whose reception into the heavens was publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest darkness. [...] Governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the Christian name, in fires more fierce than those with which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ! What world's wise men besides, the very philosophers now covered with shame! Poets also trembling before the judgment-seat of Christ. The tragedians, louder voiced in their own calamity, the play-actors, much more 'dissolute' in the dissolving flame.<sup>[11]</sup></blockquote>
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Christian apologetics strikes a gentler note with the <i>Octavius</i> of Minutius Felix and the <i>Epistle to Diognetus</i>.</div>
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Was Tertullian's <i>Apologeticus</i> published before or after the <i>Octavius</i>? Critical study has not yet found a definite answer to this question, but it has concluded that the latter work was written in the last years of the second century. It is in the form of a dialogue. Its author, like Tertullian, was a lawyer and perhaps an African. But there is a contrast between the two. Minutius Felix avoids whatever may be offensive to the prejudices of the pagan scholars he is addressing. He lays stress on the depravity of polytheism and clears Christianity of the calumnies heaped upon it. But to establish his arguments, he appeals to the wise men of Greece and Rome rather than to the sacred writers. The mysteries of the Christian faith are left in the background. The author's aim is not to bring his reader into the interior of the temple, but to facilitate the approach to it. Even when most sharply criticizing the pagan horrors, his words breathe a contagious mildness. Its artistic composition and elegant style have given this little dialogue the title of "the pearl of Christian apologetics." The best profane writers of the second century - Frontinus, Aulus Gellius, Apuleius - cannot refuse the author of <i>Octavius</i> a place in the foremost ranks.</div>
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The same charm of style and the same gentleness are to be found in another small work, written in Greek, by an unknown author and at a date that can be determined only approximately. Probably it should be put at the close of the second century or, as Zeller and Funk think, in the first years of the third. The work is the <i>Epistle to Diognetus</i>.</div>
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The author's principal argument consists in describing the supernatural life led by true Christians, then in showing how the Church, the depositary of the treasure of Revelation and dispenser of grace through the Sacraments, is not merely the divinely organized "economy" for the sanctification of a chosen few, but also, either by the radiant influence of its virtues or by the blessings it draws down upon the world, an instrument of salvation for all mankind. With fine depth of thought, the writer says:</div>
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To speak simply, what the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world. [...] The flesh detests the soul and makes war upon it, because it is prevented by the soul from indulging freely in pleasure; the world for the same reason detests Christians. [...] The soul is confined in the body, and does itself hold the body in check; the Christians are in the world as in a prison, and they restrain the world.<sup>[12]</sup></blockquote>
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<h3>
Footnotes</h3>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] It is doubtful whether we should attribute to him the passages introduced in the Pandects under the name of Tertullian.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] Tertullian, <i>De patientia</i>, Chapter 1.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] <i>Apologeticus</i>, 46.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] <i>Ad nationes</i>, Book 1, passim.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[5] <i>De anima</i>, 3.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[6] D'Alès, <i>La Théologie de Tertullien</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[7] <i>De anima</i>, 5; 41.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[8] <i>De carne Christi</i>, 5.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[9] <i>Apologeticus</i>, 21.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[10] <i>De praescriptione</i>, 37.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[11] <i>De spectaculis</i>, 30.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[12] <i>Letter to Diognetus</i>, VI, 1, 5-7.</span></div>
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***
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-54101940360964273232016-06-27T06:47:00.000+02:002016-06-27T06:47:25.201+02:00Manifestations of Hell<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Second in a Series on Hell</i></div>
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by</div>
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<b>Fr. François Xavier Schouppe, S.J.</b></div>
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The dogma of hell stands on the infallible word of God; but in his mercy, God, to aid our faith, permits at intervals the truth of hell to be manifested in a sensible manner. These manifestations are more frequent than is thought; and, when supported by sufficient proofs, they are unexceptionable facts which must be admitted like all the other facts of history.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6RgZb1OeDtWkh14-_qSnvVAlb2Hqti-OKe17h7C5ckncjHNwwQCDW2ezk0Tavrys4_1D7AfWYnXxt5zh7_myYmTvePveKeIXYxeELTW4YaanFU-nGUvDW1mso7Lxn0aoGX-AqZBk3FpQ_/s1600/St.+Francis+Jerome.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6RgZb1OeDtWkh14-_qSnvVAlb2Hqti-OKe17h7C5ckncjHNwwQCDW2ezk0Tavrys4_1D7AfWYnXxt5zh7_myYmTvePveKeIXYxeELTW4YaanFU-nGUvDW1mso7Lxn0aoGX-AqZBk3FpQ_/s320/St.+Francis+Jerome.png" width="195" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Francis Jerome</td></tr>
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Here is one of these facts. It was juridically proved in the process of the canonization of St. Francis of Jerome, and under oath attested by a large number of eye-witnesses. In the year AD 1707, St. Francis of Jerome was preaching, as was his wont, in the neighborhood of the city of Naples. He was speaking of hell and the awful chastisements that await obstinate sinners. A brazen courtesan who lived there, troubled by a discourse which aroused her remorse, sought to hinder it by jests and shouts, accompanied by noisy instruments. As she was standing close to the window, the Saint cried out:</div>
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Beware, my daughter, of resisting grace; before eight days God will punish you.</blockquote>
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The unhappy creature grew only more boisterous. Eight days elapsed, and the holy preacher happened to be again before the same house. This time she was silent, the windows were shut. The hearers, with dismay on their faces, told the Saint that Catherine - that was the name of the bad woman - had a few hours before died suddenly. "Died!" he repeated, "well, let her tell us now what she has gained by laughing at hell. Let us ask her." He uttered these words in an inspired tone, and every one expected a miracle. Followed by an immense crowd, he went up to the death chamber, and there, after having prayed for an instant, he uncovers the face of the corpse, and says in a loud voice: "Catherine, tell us where art thou now."</div>
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At this summons, the dead woman lifts her head, while opening her wild eyes, her face borrows color, her features assume an expression of horrible despair, and in a mournful voice, she pronounces these words:</div>
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In hell; I am in hell.</blockquote>
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And immediately, she falls back again into the condition of a corpse.</div>
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"I was present at that event," says one of the witnesses who deposed before the Apostolic tribunal, "but I never could convey the impression it produced on me and the bystanders, nor that which I still feel every time I pass that house and look at that window. At the sight of that ill-fated abode, I still hear the pitiful cry resounding: 'In hell; I am in hell'."</div>
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Ratbod, King of the Frisons, who is mentioned in ecclesiastical history in the eighth century, had said to St. Wolfrand that he was not afraid of hell; that he wished to be there with the kings, his ancestors, and most illustrious personages. "Moreover," he added, "later on, I shall be always able to receive baptism." "Lord," answered the Saint, "do not neglect the grace that is offered to thee. The God who offers the sinner pardon, does not promise him tomorrow." The King did not heed this advice, and put off his conversion. A year after, learning the arrival of St. Willibrord, he dispatched an officer to him, to invite him to come to the court and confer baptism on him. The Saint answered that it was too late. "Your master," he said, "died after your departure. He braved eternal fire; he has fallen into it. I have seen him this night, loaded with fiery chains, in the bottom of the abyss."</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Francis Xavier Resurrecting the Son<br />
of an Inhabitant of Cangoxima<br />
Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665)</td></tr>
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Here is another witness from beyond the grave. History avers that when St. Francis Xavier was at Cangoxima, in Japan, he performed a great number of miracles, of which the most celebrated was the resurrection of a maiden of noble birth. This young damsel died in the flower of her age, and her father, who loved her dearly, believed he would become crazy. Being an idolater, he had no resources in his affliction, and his friends, who came to console him, rendered his grief only the more poignant. Two neophytes, who came to see him before the funeral of her whom he mourned day and night advised him to seek help from the holy man who was doing such great things, and demand from him with confidence the life of his daughter. The pagan - persuaded by the neophytes that nothing was impossible to the European bonze, and beginning to hope against all human appearances, as is usual with the afflicted, who readily believe whatever comforts them - goes to Father Francis, falls at his feet, and, with tears in his eyes, entreats him to bring to life again his only daughter whom he has just lost, adding that it would be to give life to himself.</div>
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Xavier, touched by the faith and sorrow of the pagan, went aside with his companion, Fernando, to pray to God. Having come back again after a short time, "Go," he said to the afflicted father, "your daughter is alive!"</div>
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The idolater, who expected that the Saint would come with him to his house and invoke the name of the God of the Christians over his daughter's body, took this speech as a jest and withdrew, dissatisfied. But scarcely had he gone a few steps when he saw one of his servants, who, all beside himself with joy, shouted from a distance that his daughter was alive. Presently, he beheld her approaching. After the first embraces the daughter related to her father that, as soon as she had expired, two horrible demons pounced upon her, and sought to hurl her into a fiery abyss; but that two men, of a venerable and modest appearance, snatched her from the hands of these executioners and restored her life, she being unable to tell how it happened.</div>
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The Japanese understood who were these two men of whom his daughter spoke, and he led her directly to Xavier to return him such thanks as so great a favour deserved. She no sooner saw the Saint with his companion, Fernando, than she exclaimed: "There are my two deliverers!" and, at the same time, the daughter and the father demanded baptism.</div>
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The servant of God, Bernard Colnago, a religious of the Company of Jesus, died at Catana in the odor of sanctity in they year AD 1611. We read in his biography that he prepared for the passage by a life full of good works and the constant remembrance of death, so apt to engender a holy life. To keep in mind this salutary remembrance, he preserved in his little cell a skull which he had placed upon a stand to have it always before his eyes. One day it struck him that, perhaps, that head had been the abode of a mind rebellious to God, and now the object of His wrath. Accordingly, he begged the Sovereign Judge to enlighten him, and to cause the skull to shake if the spirit that had animated it was burning in hell. No sooner had he finished his prayer than it shook with a horrible trembling, a palpable sign that it was the skull of a damned soul.</div>
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This saintly religious, favored with singular gifts, knew the secret of consciences, and, sometimes, the decrees of God's justice. One day, God revealed to him the eternal perdition of a young libertine, who was his parents' heart-scald. The unfortunate young man, after having rushed into all sorts of dissipation, was slain by an enemy. His mother, at the sight of so sad an end, conceived the liveliest terrors for her son's everlasting salvation, and besought Father Bernard to tell her in what state his soul was. Despite her entreaties, Father Bernard did not answer by a single word, sufficiently showing by his silence that he had nothing consoling to say. He was more explicit to one of her friends. This person inquiring why he did not give an answer to an afflicted mother, the religious openly said to him that he was unwilling to increase her affliction; that this young libertine was damned, and that, during his prayer, God had shown him the youth under a hideous and frightful aspect.</div>
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On the 1st of August, 1645, there died in the odor of sanctity, at the College of Evora, in Portugal, Anthony Pereyra, Coadjutor Brother of the Company of Jesus. His history is, perhaps, the strangest furnished by the annals of this Society. In AD 1599, five years after his entrance into the novitiate, he was seized by a mortal malady in the Isle of St. Michael, one of the Azores; and a few moments after he had received the last sacraments, beneath the eyes of the whole community, who were present at his agony, he seemed to expire, and became cold like a corpse. The appearance - almost imperceptible - of a slight throbbing of the heart alone, prevented his immediate burial. Accordingly, he was left three whole days on his death-bed, and there were already plain signs of decomposition in the body, when all of a sudden, on the fourth day, he opened his eyes, breathed and spoke. He was obliged by obedience to account to his superior, Father Louis Pinheyro, all that had passed in him after the last pangs of his agony; and here is the summary of the relation which he wrote with his own hand:</div>
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First, I saw from my death-bed my Father, St. Ignatius, accompanied by some of our Fathers in heaven, who was coming to visit his sick children, seeking those who seemed worthy to be presented to our Lord. When he was near me, I thought for an instant that he might take me, and my heart leaped with joy; but he soon described to me what I must correct before obtaining so great a favor.</blockquote>
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Then, however, by a mysterious dispensation of Providence, the soul of Brother Pereyra was momentarily released from his body, and immediately the sight of the hideous troop of demons, rushing headlong upon him, filled him with dread. But, at the same time, his angel-guardian and St. Anthony of Padua, his countryman and patron, put his enemies to flight, and invited him in their company to take a momentary glimpse and taste of something of the joys and pains of eternity.</div>
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They then, by turns, led me to a place of delights, where they showed me an incomparable crown of glory, but one which I had not yet merited; then, to the brink of the abysmal pit, where I beheld souls accursed falling into the everlasting fire, as thick as grains of corn, cast beneath an ever-turning millstone. The infernal pit was like one of these lime kilns, in which the flame is smothered for an instant beneath the heap of materials thrown into it, only to fire up again by the fuel with a more frightful violence.</blockquote>
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Led thence to the tribunal of the Sovereign Judge, Antony Pereyra heard his sentence to the fire of purgatory, and nothing here below, he declares, could give an idea of what is suffered there, or of the state of anguish to which the soul is reduced by the desire and postponement of the enjoyment of God and of His blessed presence.</div>
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So when, by our Lord's command, his soul was united again to his body, neither the new tortures of sickness, which, for six entire months, combined with the daily help of iron and fire, caused his flesh, irremediably attacked by the corruption of this first death to waste away; nor the frightful penances to which, so far as obedience allowed him, he never ceased to subject himself for the forty-six years of his new life, were able to quench his thirst for sufferings and expiation. He used to say:</div>
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All this is nothing to what the justice and mercy of God have caused me not only to see, but to endure.</blockquote>
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Finally, as an authentic seal of so many wonders, Brother Pereyra detailed to his Superior the hidden designs of Providence on the future restoration of the Kingdom of Portugal, at that time still distant nearly half a century. But it may be fearlessly added that the most unexceptionable avouchment of all these prodigies was the surprising sanctity to which Antony Pereyra never ceased for a single day to rise.</div>
Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-55006182262244911152016-06-24T10:12:00.001+02:002016-06-24T10:12:55.417+02:00Congratulations, People of Great Britain!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-39793370005002035192016-06-24T08:39:00.000+02:002016-06-24T08:39:10.274+02:00The First General Council of Constantinople (381)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Third in a Series on the History of the General Councils</i></div>
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by</div>
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<b>Msgr. Philip Hughes</b></div>
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The second General Council of the Church, which met at Constantinople in the year AD 381, was summoned primarily as a solemn demonstration of the unshaken loyalty of the eastern bishops to the faith as set forth at <a href="http://theradicalcatholic.blogspot.ch/2016/06/the-first-general-council-of-nicaea-325.html" target="_blank">Nicaea</a>, a demonstration that the church of the East had never gone over to Arianism, that the Arians were no more than a heretical faction - had never been anything more, despite their power - and were now finally discredited. Why was such a declaration necessary, fifty-six years after the bishops of the East, with the enthusiastic support of the all-powerful emperor, had condemned Arius as a falsifier of the truth and had provided, in the <i>homo-ousion</i>, a sure touchstone to test the orthodoxy of future bishops? The answer to this question is one of the strangest an most involved chapters in all Church History. The simplest way, perhaps, to set out as much of it as is essential to the story of the General Council of AD 381, will be to list the turning points of the story, and then attempt some explanation of the "why" of it all.</div>
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On the morrow of the Council of Nicaea, three bishops revoked their signatures to the condemnation of Arius - the bishops of the neighbouring sees of Nicaea, Nicomedia, and Chalcedon. They were promptly banished by the emperor, and others elected in their stead (AD 325). In AD 328, the bishop of Alexandria died, and the young deacon Athanasius, who had been his main advisor at the great council, was chosen to succeed him, and despite the active hostility of the Meletian faction, he was consecrated. That same year, Constantine recalled the exiled bishops and reinstated them - why, we do not know; it may have been for personal reasons only. From that moment until his death in 341, the ex-Lucianist, Eusebius of Nicomedia, becomes the leading figure in the movement to undo the work of Nicaea. After the emperor founded his new capital city, Constantinople, Eusebius became its bishop.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglxrhaJGUMCdYkhtbNSlXjj4fcLGLO5hhGeR6mJy_CQq6Yu1DApbleEdYLUoeRRJX30AH2tb7pv5sRYPWtVivdRYmNDUmY0bL4qdw4X7DP1q-3bA7a7uHIFHEy9facU1loBd9TbUDoo_gi/s1600/Eustathius+of+Antioch.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglxrhaJGUMCdYkhtbNSlXjj4fcLGLO5hhGeR6mJy_CQq6Yu1DApbleEdYLUoeRRJX30AH2tb7pv5sRYPWtVivdRYmNDUmY0bL4qdw4X7DP1q-3bA7a7uHIFHEy9facU1loBd9TbUDoo_gi/s400/Eustathius+of+Antioch.png" width="161" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eusthathius of Antioch</td></tr>
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Eusebius never openly attacked the achievement of AD 325. His line was to work for the destruction of the leading bishops who had supported the <i>homo-ousion</i> on the plea that they were heretics, but of a different kind, i.e., men who did not really believe in the Trinity, who by the word <i>homo-ousion</i> meant that the Father and the Logos were one. The first victim of this campaign was the second greatest prelate in the empire of the East, the bishop of Antioch, Eustathius by name. It was, possibly, he who had presided at Nicaea. A carefully chosen council of bishops now met at Antioch, condemned and deposed him. And, once again, the emperor followed up the ecclesiastical judgment by a sentence of exile. Nine other leading bishops were similarly removed in the course of the next year or so (AD 330-332). In AD 332, the intrigue to remove Athanasius began. The agents of this were the Meletians of Alexandria. The point of attack was not the orthodoxy of his belief but his loyalty to the emperor. Athanasius was summoned to the court and cleared himself easily, returning home with a letter of high commendation from Constantine. Two further attempts to disgrace him, in the next two years, also failed.</div>
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Then, in AD 334, Constantine did the most astonishing thing of all - astonishing to us who know, really, so very little of the day-to-day history of these events. He recalled Arius from banishment, and received him at court. And while a council was ordered to "investigate" what we may call "the Athanasius problem" - why it was that the greatest city of the eastern world had never known peace since this young prelate had been its bishop - Arius persuaded the emperor that he was as orthodox as the best, and on the strength of a formula drawn up by himself (in which the <i>homo-ousion</i> did not appear) he was received back into the church in AD 335. As to the council, it was held at Tyre, and it deposed Athanasius; and the emperor, after a personal hearing, banished him to Trier, in Germany, as far almost as a man could travel from Alexandria and still be in the emperor's territory. It was now ten years since the farewell ceremonies at Nicaea.</div>
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In AD 336, Arius died, on the eve of a solemn ceremony of rehabilitation prepared in the cathedral of Constantinople, and in AD 337 Constantine, too, died.</div>
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Constantine's death brought the Arian party a still greater freedom of action. He was succeeded by his three young sons as joint emperors, and to none of these could the upholding of Nicaea be the matter of personal prestige it was to him. Certain it is that it is from this time that the party begins to propose alternatives to, or substitutes for, the Nicaean formula; more or less innocuous substitutes in the first years - had they not been put out by known opponents of the <i>homo-ousion</i>, and by men who were the declared foes of the bishop, Athanasius, who had become the very symbol of all that the categorical test word stood for.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9yYytrBmlC0UJ4UdiJ-dz3W5N8TqsJZZ6WqPUxUJ7vjnNsTkAXx25JIg_XBH95qi6tR6JleQkJeV_cx6pzZxKVE8U3xk6KylNC9bPOwvIw7Xd94prXSwlbDnoG2TTJKqHiGlNe1Wb8Pxd/s1600/St.+Athanasius.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9yYytrBmlC0UJ4UdiJ-dz3W5N8TqsJZZ6WqPUxUJ7vjnNsTkAXx25JIg_XBH95qi6tR6JleQkJeV_cx6pzZxKVE8U3xk6KylNC9bPOwvIw7Xd94prXSwlbDnoG2TTJKqHiGlNe1Wb8Pxd/s640/St.+Athanasius.png" width="424" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Athanasius</td></tr>
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And here it needs to be said that there were many bishops, as little Arian as Athanasius himself, who, nevertheless, had no love for the famous Nicaean word - as there had been many such bishops at Nicaea. These Catholic bishops, supporting the various alternatives of the kind described, played the Arian game of course, albeit unconsciously. Their dislike of the test word arose from the fact that, in the East, as has been said already, the word <i>homo-ousion</i> had a bad history. Its first use, by Clement of Alexandria and by Origen, too (around AD 230-250), was seemingly in the Nicaean sense; and when a bishop of Alexandria, answering heretics, seemed to critics so to defend the distinction of persons in the Holy Trinity that he obscured the truth that there is only one God, it was made a point against him that he had not explicitly said the Logos was <i>homo-ousion</i> with the Father. And this bishop, Denis, explains to his namesake, the pope, in his defence, why he had not used the useful word: it was a word nowhere found in Holy Scripture. This was about the year AD 257, nearly seventy years earlier than Nicaea. But eleven years only after this interchange between the two Denises, when the bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, was condemned (AD 268) for the heresy of teaching that the Father and the Logos are one person, he actually used the word <i>homo-ousion</i> to express this oneness, and so his condemnation gave the word an ill sound in the East.</div>
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Whoever first proposed the use of the term at Nicaea, it was surely not any bishop from the East. To these, it stank of heresy ever since the council of AD 268, even when it had, so to speak, been disinfected by the Council of Nicaea, and given an undoubtedly orthodox employment. Sabellianism, the denial that there is a Trinity, was the great scare heresy of the East to the generation upon which Arianism came, and <i>homo-ousion</i> had been the heresy's shibboleth in eastern ears.<sup>[1]</sup></div>
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Again, there is a first class difficulty latent in the Nicaean council's formal condemnation<sup>[2]</sup> of those "who say that the Son is of another <i>hypostasis</i> or <i>ousia</i> [<i>substantia</i> in Latin] than the Father;" and this was fully exploited in the troublous years after Constantine's death. The latent difficulty is that, to Greeks, these two terms did not necessarily and always mean exactly the same thing, as they did to Latins. <i>Hypostasis</i> to the Greeks came to mean what the Latin call "person;" <i>ousia</i> rather meant "nature." The sentence "The Son is not of another <i>hypostasis</i> than the Father," a Greek might take to mean, "Father and Son are one person;" while the Latin understood by it, "are of the same nature."</div>
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All this is set down to convey something of the causes that held quite orthodox minds in doubt about their practical action during these controversies - a state of doubt which for years played into the hands of the radically unorthodox. This was an especially dangerous condition of things, seeing that it was these radicals - the real Arians - who had the ear of the court, and who stood to the world of officials and administrators for the ideal type of Christian believer, the kind that should be officially supported. For in this first generation that followed the personal conversion of Constantine, the official world was very far from being Christianised in belief. Though the emperor, especially after he had become sole emperor, turned his back very definitely on the pagan rites, these were by no means forbidden. The whole life of official paganism went on as before. And the cult of Sol Invictus and Summus Deus still held very many of its adherents. To these enlightened monotheistic foes of polytheism, the Arian version of the Christian idea of God naturally appealed. On a first view it was simpler, more logical - terms meaning just what they appeared to mean - its language non-mysterious, rational.<sup>[3]</sup></div>
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It is not, of course, suggested that there was a carefully worked out plan in all this on the part of high officials. But the two tendencies existed side by side in these years, and it was this accidental coincidence that did much, so it is suggested,<sup>[4]</sup> to make Arianism the highly dangerous threat it proved to be, and to give it a toughness out of all proportion to the number of its real adherents.</div>
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As to its quality as a danger to Catholicism, let Harnack's judgment be recalled, that Arianism, had it been victorious, must have ruined Christianity completely, emptying it of all religious content, leaving it a mere system of cosmology and ethics. It was, in the circumstances, one of the greatest dangers that true religion has ever had to face, and this despite the fact that, in the critical fourth century, Arianism was never a popular thing.</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The laity, as a whole, revolted from it in every part of Christendom. It was an epidemic of the schools and of theologians, and to them it was mainly confined. [...] The classes which had furnished martyrs in the persecutions were in no sense the seat of the heresy.<sup>[5]</sup></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirOINcwb0Ci9VZA0OqjZ7t-MeQ6k-N9ddPk1vWvpvmLuq3nieWzj-55T5GXkF7hsK5aKzn26mpmPn4iVPnQfhX5DQYSMVpMLGwM-KMkdIJuHaOT6CBBksEpEA7yjGWJ-gIBXlN-FLYKx_f/s1600/Emperor+Constantius+II.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirOINcwb0Ci9VZA0OqjZ7t-MeQ6k-N9ddPk1vWvpvmLuq3nieWzj-55T5GXkF7hsK5aKzn26mpmPn4iVPnQfhX5DQYSMVpMLGwM-KMkdIJuHaOT6CBBksEpEA7yjGWJ-gIBXlN-FLYKx_f/s320/Emperor+Constantius+II.png" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emperor Constantius II</td></tr>
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The only one of Constantine's sons who really favoured the anti-Nicaean party was Constantius II, and once he became sole master of the empire (AD 350), the Radicals really threw off the mask, and Arianism proper - the explicit renunciation of the doctrine that the Logos is truly God - was now propounded in councils and, with great violence and persecution, imposed by the emperor. And it was in these years (AD 350-361) that the heresy was first thrust upon the bishops of the still largely pagan West, of Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul. In council after council, in the west and in the east, whether perplexed by the confusion of the issues, whether terrified by the threats of the emperor and the knowledge that bishops had been murdered who opposed him, whether overcome by the specious argument that it was all, in reality, a matter of ridding the Church of Athanasius, "whom they were taught to consider a restless, violent, party-spirited man, and of his arbitrary formula"<sup>[6]</sup> - in council after council the bishops gave way wholesale, at Arles (AD 353), Milan (AD 355), Sirmium (AD 357), and, most spectacularly, at the simultaneous councils of Rimini-Seleucia<sup>[7]</sup> (AD 359) about the morrow of which St. Jerome wrote a celebrated phrase, that the whole world woke up one morning, lamenting and marvelling to find itself Arian.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK9oBPsXTLnD7BAqGQ3tRE-0hfVCTr1Wo9X0RJLiq2PrDW9FC57PB21IjowautDtiHz92v66S5oVZ8WmqiGnmZfeN5AbBPYLXQlQYkZFXI9vh5bRIkp763RgMGLq90hgjqliK-ArV54xr-/s1600/Coin+of+Valens.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK9oBPsXTLnD7BAqGQ3tRE-0hfVCTr1Wo9X0RJLiq2PrDW9FC57PB21IjowautDtiHz92v66S5oVZ8WmqiGnmZfeN5AbBPYLXQlQYkZFXI9vh5bRIkp763RgMGLq90hgjqliK-ArV54xr-/s200/Coin+of+Valens.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coin from the reign of Emperor Valens</td></tr>
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In 361 Constantius disappeared, baptised (just in time) by an Arian. He was followed by Julian the Apostate, who set about a systematic revival of Paganism. Then came Jovian, a Catholic, and after him Valentinian, a "liberal," with Valens, his brother, co-emperor for the East. Valens (AD365-378) a true Arian of the political type, returned to the policy of Constantius, and a real persecution of Catholics followed. But the cloudiness of the early period had been dissipated. The issue was now clear to the bishops that only by insistence on the <i>homo-ousion</i> could the Church rid itself of the crypto-Arians whose influence meant death. And when to Valens, killed in a war with the Goths (AD 378), a Catholic general, from Spain, succeeded - Theodosius - the way was at last open to a real restoration of the traditional belief. Nicaea, for the first time in fifty years, was to come into full operation in all the sees of the East.</div>
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The General Council of AD 381 is an epilogue to a drama just concluded. It does little more than register a <i>fait accompli</i>, and its essential importance is its demonstration to the world that the Christians of the East, after more than fifty years of continuous disturbance and of oppression on the part of their rulers, remain Catholics, are not Arians; it is a demonstration that the council of Nicaea was no mere ecclesiastical pageant, but a source of strong and unfailing leadership.</div>
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No two general councils follow the same historical pattern - not even when a bare fifty years separates them, and when the matter of their discussions is the same. In this council Rome, the West, was not represented at all - was not so much as invited. The same problems had for years now vexed the churches of the West. The same political revolution - the appearance of sovereigns who were wholeheartedly Catholic - was to be their salvation also. And they, too, demanded a council, and it took place, at Aquileia some weeks after the council we are dealing with. And why the council which met at Constantinople came, in later years, to be regarded as a General Council is something that may puzzle the legists and the theologians.<sup>[8]</sup></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3gT4BAVzjzs7XkGuxqC8qMvEEUcLQzHfoAfE24wf8WzGOIEM0udlLsRr4-LZAFjBoINivznfBXmPcv1k_RGAu64f80kTROzEzF-MwQM1MHoiluHUCfxv5V_5Hq5H8DNa_XK0URQSNa0Yo/s1600/Council+of+Constantinople.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3gT4BAVzjzs7XkGuxqC8qMvEEUcLQzHfoAfE24wf8WzGOIEM0udlLsRr4-LZAFjBoINivznfBXmPcv1k_RGAu64f80kTROzEzF-MwQM1MHoiluHUCfxv5V_5Hq5H8DNa_XK0URQSNa0Yo/s400/Council+of+Constantinople.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fresco depicting the First General Council of Constantinople in the narthex<br />of St. Athanasius church on Mount Athos (click to enlarge)</td></tr>
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The bishops who sat in the council were 150 in all. There were none from Egypt, only half of them from Thrace and Asia. Almost one half of the bishops came from the vast (civil) diocese called "the East," <i>Oriens</i>, whose chief see was Antioch. And it was the bishop of Antioch, Meletius, who presided at the council.</div>
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Once again the crosscurrents and misunderstandings of these much troubled years had borne strange fruit. At Antioch there was a rival claimant to the see, Paulinus. And it was Paulinus whom Rome (and Alexandria also) recognised as the lawful bishop. But the Catholic East was solidly behind Meletius, and this meant the support (among others) of the three great Cappadocian bishops, St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa, his brother, and St. Gregory of Nazianzen, the greatest theologian of the day and one of the greatest preachers of all time.</div>
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Meletius died before the council had been long in session, and it was the last named Gregory who was elected president in his place. The actual business before the council was slight, and now, with the see of Antioch vacant and seventy-one bishops of its jurisdiction already assembled (to say nothing of the no less interested eighty bishops from other provinces ), it is not surprising that the question of the successor of Meletius took the first place in the minds of all. The president of the council had the happy idea that the bishop whom Rome and Alexandria recognised, Paulinus, should be chosen, and so the schism be ended. But of this, the bishops would not hear. And then there arrived the bishop of Alexandria himself, the successor of Athanasius, with some of his suffragans, and he made such a bitter attack on the president because he had consented, being already bishop of Sasima, to become bishop of Constantinople,<sup>[9]</sup> that Gregory, already discouraged by the revelation of what ecclesiastical politics could be at a high level, resigned both his see and his presidency.</div>
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The council closed on July 9. What it had accomplished was, first, to issue a statement of belief which explicitly renewed the <i>homo-ousion</i> definition of Nicaea, and then, naming the many varieties of Arianism, to condemn each and every one of them as heretical. The bishops next published (what has long been lost) a detailed statement of their faith in the consubstantiality of the Divine Logos with the Father, in the distinctness of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity, and in the reality of the Incarnation of the Second Person. These statements about belief involved the condemnation of two other theories related to Arianism, namely, the denial, by Macedonius and his followers, that the Holy Ghost is really God, and the theory of Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicaea, that in the Logos Incarnate - in the God-man, Jesus Christ - the Divine Logos functions in place of a human soul: Christ, who is truly God, is not truly a man. This last heresy was to have a famous history in the next seventy years, to be the occasion of two later General Councils, and, ultimately, in one form or another, so to divide the Catholics of the East as to paralyse their resistance to the assault of Islam.</div>
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There are four canons enacted by this council.<sup>[10]</sup> The first is the declaration renewing the work of Nicaea, and condemning these various heresies. The second, between the lines of which can be read much of the history since that council, forbids bishops to cross the frontiers of another [civil] diocese, or to interfere in another bishop's administration. The bishop of Alexandria, it is explicitly laid down, is to confine himself to Egypt; the bishops of the East (i.e., <i>Oriens</i>) shall confine their joint action to the East, with the reservation that the bishop of Antioch keeps the rights acknowledged at Nicaea; and statements no less explicit restrict the bishops of Asia, Pontus, and Thrace to those three [civil] dioceses, respectively. The bishops are reminded of the Nicaean rule that the affairs of the sees of any given province are to be regulated by a twice-yearly meeting of the bishops.</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGYoI3x3H59BJLk4eZCBaVGYqdAodkAZJY80QEk3UI1olKnUtTthEQWBJTROFFO_l5U9ShPvw8sAw60BPMcGfgPfeuG6L3CR6f-wE1SMJkRM6g2-5enul5JOpsrxwAxKGTQmMAPwnk143-/s1600/St.+Gregory+Nazianzen.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGYoI3x3H59BJLk4eZCBaVGYqdAodkAZJY80QEk3UI1olKnUtTthEQWBJTROFFO_l5U9ShPvw8sAw60BPMcGfgPfeuG6L3CR6f-wE1SMJkRM6g2-5enul5JOpsrxwAxKGTQmMAPwnk143-/s320/St.+Gregory+Nazianzen.png" width="235" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Gregory Nazianzen</td></tr>
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About the time that St. Gregory Nazianzen was invited to become bishop of Constantinople, the efforts of the bishop of Alexandria, Peter II, had brought about the "election" of an Alexandrian philosopher, Maximus, and his unlawful, clandestine consecration. The council (canon 4) now declared that Maximus was not a bishop, and that whatever ordinations he had ever performed were worthless, and the candidates "in truth not ordained at all."</div>
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There remains the third canon, the most famous action, in its historical effects, of this council:</div>
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The bishop of Constantinople shall have the primacy of honour after the bishop of Rome, because [Constantinople] is New Rome.</blockquote>
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Additional Resources</h3>
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<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/CONSTAN1.HTM" target="_blank">Documents of the First Council of Constantinople</a></li>
</ul>
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Footnotes</h3>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Cf. Newman, <i>Tracts, Theological and Ecclesiastical</i>, p. 100: "We cannot be surprised then that the <i>homoousion</i>, which perplexed the Western bishops, should have irritated the Orientals, the only wonder is, that East and West had concurred in accepting it at Nicea."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] As a conclusion to the creed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] See Newman, <i>Tracts</i>, p. 102: "It must be added that, to statesmen, lawyers and military chiefs, who had lately been Pagans, a religious teaching such as Arianism, which was clear and intelligible, was more acceptable than doctrines which described the Divine Being in language, self-contradictory in its letter, and which exacted a belief in truths which were absolutely above their comprehension."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] See Msgr. Pierre Batiffol, <i>La Paix Constantinienne et le Catholicisme</i> (1914), p. 310.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[5] Newman, Tracts, pp. 97-98.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[6] Newman, Tracts, p. 100.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[7] Rimini, on the Adriatic coast of Italy, for the bishops of the West; Seleucia, then the chief city of Isauria, is the modern Turkish port of Silifke on the Mediterranean.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[8] The first stage in the development of its recognition as ecumenical was the unanimous vote of the General Council of Chalcedon, 4th session (AD 451), taking as the rule of faith, "that fixed by the council of Nicaea, and which the 150 bishops of the council assembled at Constantinople by Theodosius the Great confirmed."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[9] A breach of the law enacted at Nicaea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[10] Some record seven canons. On the discrepancy, cf. Hefele, <i>History of the Councils</i>, Vol II, p. 351: "The number of canons drawn up by this synod is doubtful. The old Greek codices and the Greek commentators of the Middle Ages, Zonaras and Balsamon, enumerate seven; the old Latin translations - viz. the Prisca, those by Dionysius Exiguus and Isidore, as well as the Codex of Luna - only recognize the first four canons of the Greek text, and the fact that they agree in this point is the more important as they are wholly independent of each other, and divide and arrange those canons of Constantinople which they do acknowledge quite differently."</span></div>
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-41865876589184297102016-06-22T06:20:00.002+02:002016-06-22T06:20:33.057+02:00The Question of Orthodoxy and St. Irenaeus<i>Reading N°53 in the History of the Catholic Church</i><br />
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by<br />
<b>Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.</b><br />
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Pagan philosophy, with its frontal attack upon Christianity, was one of the great dangers of the Church at the close of the second century. The Gnostic sects, employing the outward expressions and the formulas of the Christian spirit, tended to dissolve it; they were a peril no less serious. A new apologist, St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, saw the peril and averted it.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Irenaeus of Lyons</td></tr>
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The priest, who in AD 177 was chosen to succeed the glorious martyr St. Pothinus in the see of Lyons, was born at Smyrna or in the neighborhood of that city about AD 130. The relations which he had in his youth with Polycarp, the illustrious bishop of Smyrna, and with the venerable Papias, his extensive literary culture, and his lofty virtue soon made him conspicuous among the clergy of Lyons. While Pothinus was bishop, the clergy of Lyons sent Irenaeus to Rome to Pope Eleutherius as their representative to treat of important matters, commending him as "zealous for the covenant of Christ."<sup>[1]</sup> We know almost nothing of his episcopal ministry or his death. In one passage, St. Jerome gives him the title of "martyr." His death must have taken place during the persecution of Septimius Severus in AD 202. But his strife against false Gnosticism, the chief object of his zeal, would suffice to make him illustrious and venerable among all the bishops of old Gaul; his treatise <i>Against Heresies</i> is an imperishable monument. In this book, the entire heretical movement of the second century lives again before our eyes.</div>
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Gnosticism, in passing from the schools of Basilides, Carpocrates, and Valentinus to those of their first disciples, greatly degenerated. Or rather, these latter logically deduced the fatal consequences inherent in the primitive teaching. The fancies of a whimsical metaphysics brought forth the eccentricities of a capricious morality. Secundus, looking for the origin of evil, did not stop with Achamoth; he went back to the very womb of the Pleroma. Marcus introduced into his system the speculations of the Cabbala. The Ophites, in a complicated doctrine that absorbed all the others in the third century, explained the whole system of the world by the conflict between a mysterious serpent (Ophis) and the Creator (Jaldabaoth), so as to bring man nearer to the good and inaccessible God. The Cainites, exalting strength, even in evil, peopled their Olympus with all the scoundrels who had dishonored mankind, from Cain to Judas. Some Gnostics, it is true, tried to stem the movement that was carrying the new sect toward every revolt and depravity. But no great results came of the efforts made in this direction, whether by Ptolemy, a philosopher of clean and exact mind, or by Theodotus and Alexander, whose souls were really enamored of moral purification and asceticism.</div>
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The early Fathers, and St. Irenaeus first of all, compare with the masters of Gnosticism a certain man who had started out from an altogether opposite point of view, but then espoused their theories and even claimed to work out a clearer and more exact system from them. This man was Marcion.</div>
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Marcion was born at Sinope on the Black Sea. After making a fortune at sea, he came to Rome about AD 140 and presented the Roman Church with a large sum of money, two hundred sesterces. Marcion's first idea was to react against that mixture of Christianity and gross Judaism which the founders of Gnosticism professed.</div>
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But since the soundness of his judgment did not equal the warmth of his convictions, his zeal carried him beyond the bounds of moderation and truth. Like Luther, whom he strikingly resembles, he ended by attacking-dogma, on the pretext of wishing to correct an abuse.<sup>[2]</sup></blockquote>
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The antithesis which St. Paul points out between the Faith and the Law, between the Old Testament and the New, Marcion considers a radical antagonism. In a book which he published under the title of <i>Antitheses</i>, he says that from this opposition it follows that the God of the Gospel, the Father of mercies, must be the enemy of the God of the Jews, author of the creation and of the Law. Thus, by an altogether different route, Marcion arrives at the dualism of the Gnostics. He says that certainly the purpose of Redemption is to rescue man from the evil work of creation; but the good God who became incarnate, unwilling to owe anything to the Creator, possessed only an appearance of humanity. By this second notion Marcion, after cursing the Creator and the Law, finally evaporates the Gospel history into an absolute Docetism.<sup>[3]</sup></div>
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These are the doctrines which the Bishop of Lyons unmasks and refutes. We will not attempt to follow this "very exact inquirer into all doctrines," as Tertullian calls him,<sup>[4]</sup> in his inquiries and arguments. In the words of one of his most discerning interpreters, we will give a brief summary of his great treatise. With pliant but close reasoning, Irenaeus shows that the Gnostics are driven to one or other of two final explanations: dualism or pantheism.</div>
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He pursued them into these two last entrenchments. You cut God off from the world, he said, or you confuse God with the world; in either case you destroy the true notion of God. If you put creation outside of God, whatever name you give to eternal matter - Void, Chaos, Darkness - is unimportant; you limit the divine Being. This is tantamount to denying Him. There is no use in your saying that the world may have been formed by angels. Either they acted against the will of the supreme God, or according to His command. On the first hypothesis, you accuse God of powerlessness; on the second, in spite of yourselves you are brought to the Christian doctrine, which considers the angels as instruments of the divine will. If, on the contrary, you place creation in God, in such a way that it is reduced to a mere development of His substance, you enter upon a path even more inextricable. In this case, whatever imperfections and defilements there are in creatures become transferred to God Himself, whose substance becomes theirs. You say that the world is the fruit of ignorance and sin, the result of a failing or a fall of the Pleroma, a progressive degeneration of the Being, or, to use your favorite metaphor, a stain on the tunic of God. But do you not see, in this confusion of the Infinite with the finite, it is the divine nature itself that declines, that degenerates, that is stained with vice or imperfection? Could the notion of God be more seriously altered?<sup>[5]</sup></blockquote>
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But the holy Bishop is not satisfied with refuting the error. Desirous of giving his readers the rule of faith by which every particular opinion must be judged, he then sets forth the whole Catholic doctrine in a great synthesis. In so doing, St. Irenaeus is not merely an apologist, he is also a theologian: in fact, he may rightly be called the father of Catholic theology.</div>
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The rule of faith laid down by St. Irenaeus is clear and sound. Religious truth is found in the tradition of the Church: this is the sum and substance of his doctrine. The genuineness of the faith of the present is proved by the fact that those who now teach it received it from the Apostles. Its absolute infallibility is guaranteed by the indefectible assistance of the Holy Ghost. We quote some of the holy Bishop's own words.</div>
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The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the Apostles and their disciples this faith.<sup>[6]</sup> [...] This is the unchangeable rule we receive at baptism.<sup>[7]</sup> [...] The only true and lifegiving faith, the Church has received from the Apostles and imparted to her sons. For the Lord of all gave to His Apostles the power of the Gospel, through whom also we have known the truth, that is, the doctrine of the Son of God; to whom also did the Lord declare: "He that heareth you, heareth Me."<sup>[8]</sup> The Church is the Church of God.<sup>[9]</sup> Where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God.<sup>[10]</sup></blockquote>
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And the center of that Church is at Rome, "the very great, the very ancient and universally known Church, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, [...] Rome, whose pastors are connected with the chief of the Apostles by an uninterrupted series of legitimate pontiffs; for it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church on account of its preeminent authority."<sup>[11]</sup></div>
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After thus establishing the rule of faith of the Catholic Church, St. Irenaeus, in an ample synthesis, gives the essential content of that faith. The great Bishop's whole theology is inspired by these words of St. John:</div>
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This is eternal life: that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.<sup>[12]</sup></blockquote>
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Assuredly, it is well to insist upon the infinite distance separating us from God; but in exalting His supreme Essence, we must be careful that we do not make of Him the supreme Impotence and the supreme Indifference. By what right may we deny to the infinite Being the power of producing, outside of Himself, a world which, while not being He, depends upon Him in its operations and ill its substance? We must rather hold to this dogma of creation, which, mysterious though it is, contains the only reasonable solution, because, distinguishing what must be neither separated nor confused, it escapes the two shoals of dualism and pantheism.</div>
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But not only did the infinite Being have the power of producing real creatures, He had the power of making Himself known to them, the power of redeeming them from their faults and their wretchedness, the power of raising them even to Himself by a sort of deification. The mediator of all these divine mysteries is Christ. Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God incarnate, truly God and truly man, is the Revealer of God, the Redeemer of man fallen in Adam, and the Deificator of him who abandons himself to His grace. These three ideas sum up the Christology of St. Irenaeus. That revelation, redemption, and deification produce their full effects only after this life, in the kingdom of glory, but in this life, the Eucharist, where God and man meet and unite in an outpouring of unspeakable love, is the divine seal of the work of revelation, redemption, and deification.</div>
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Our exposition of St. Irenaeus' teaching would be incomplete if we failed to mention the large place he gives to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the economy of grace. St. Justin had already mentioned her effective and voluntary participation in the work of the Redemption. St. Irenaeus stresses the part taken by her. As St. Paul contrasted the work of the first Adam with that of the second Adam, Jesus Christ, so the Bishop of Lyons contrasts the first Eve, who brought about the fall, with the second Eve, Mary, who saved mankind. He says:</div>
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The knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. One resisted God's command, the other submitted thereto. Eve heeded the devil's words, Mary gave ear to the voice of the angel. As the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin.<sup>[13]</sup></blockquote>
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We cannot overemphasize the importance of the part taken by St. Irenaeus in the history of the Church. This first of Catholic theologians is the last pupil of the immediate disciples of the Apostles. He who made the first systematic synthesis of our faith had still in his ears the last echoes of the Apostolic teaching. His work is a golden ring joining the spirit of the Gospel to the teaching of the Fathers.</div>
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Footnotes</h3>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Eusebius, <i>H. E.</i>, V, iv, 2.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] Freppel, <i>Saint Irénée</i>, p. 287.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] <i>Ibid</i>., p. 185.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] Tertullian, <i>Adversus Valentinianos</i>, 5.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[5] Freppel, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 357. The exactness of Freppel's summary may be verified by reading the <i>Adversus haereses</i>, Book 2, Chapter 30.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[6] <i>Haereses</i>, I, x, 1.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[7] <i>Ibidem</i>, I, ix, 4.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[8] <i>Ibidem</i>, III, pref.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[9] <i>Ibidem</i>, I, vi, 3; xiii, 5.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[10] <i>Ibidem</i>, III, i, 1.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[11] <i>Ibidem</i>, III, iii, 2.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[12] John 17:3.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[13] <i>Adversus haereses</i>, III, xxii, 4; V, xix.</span></div>
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-76406313341104220182016-06-20T06:55:00.000+02:002016-06-20T16:28:33.200+02:00The Dogma of Hell<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>First in a Series on Hell</i></div>
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by</div>
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<b>Fr. François Xavier Schouppe, S.J.</b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Jüngstes Gericht</i> (detail)<br />
Hans Memling (1430-1494)</td></tr>
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The dogma of hell is the most terrible truth of our faith. There <i>is</i> a hell. We are as sure of it as of the existence of God, or the existence of the sun. Nothing, in fact, is more clearly revealed than the dogma of hell, and Jesus Christ proclaims it as many as fifteen times in the Gospel.</div>
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Reason comes to the support of revelation; the existence of a hell is in harmony with the immutable notions of justice engraved in the human heart. Revealed to men from the beginning, and conformable to natural reason, this dreadful truth has always been, and is still known, by all nations not plunged by barbarism in complete ignorance.</div>
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Hell never has been denied by heretics, Jews or Mohammedan. The pagans themselves have retained their belief in it, although the errors of paganism may have impaired in their minds the sound notion. It has been reserved for modern and contemporaneous atheism, carried to the pitch of delirium, to outdo the impiety of all ages by denying the existence of hell.</div>
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There are, in our day, men who laugh at, question, or openly deny the reality of hell. They laugh at hell; but the universal belief of nations should not be laughed at; a matter affecting the everlasting destiny of man is not laughable; there is no fun, when the question is of enduring for eternity the punishment of fire. They question, or even deny the dogma of hell; but on a mater of religious dogma, they cannot decide without being competent; they cannot call into doubt, still less deny, a belief so solidly established, without bringing forward irrefutable reasons.</div>
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Now, are they who deny the dogma of hell competent in matters of religion? Are they not strangers to that branch of the sciences, which is called <i>theology</i>? Are they not oftenest ignorant of the very elements of religion taught in the Catechism? Whence, then, proceeds the mania of grappling with a religious question which is not within their province? Why such warmth in combating the belief in hell? Ah! It is <i>interest</i> that prompts them; they are concerned about the non-existence of hell, knowing that if there is a hell, it shall be their portion. These unhappy men wish that there might not be one, and they try to persuade themselves that there is none. In fact, these efforts usually end in a sort of incredulity. At bottom, this disbelief is only a doubt, but a doubt which unbelievers formulate by a negation. Accordingly, they say there is no hell. And upon what reasons do they rest so bold a denial? All their reasons and arguments may be summed up in the following assertions:</div>
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"I do not believe in hell." </blockquote>
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"They who affirm this dogma know nothing about it; the future life is an insoluble problem, and invincible, perhaps." </blockquote>
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"No one has returned from beyond the grave to testify that there is a hell."</blockquote>
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These are all the "proofs", all the "theology" of the teachers of impiety. Let us examine:</div>
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<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">You do not believe in hell? And there is no hell, because you do not believe in it? Will hell exist any the less, because you do not please to believe in it? Should a thief be so foolish as to deny that there is a prison, would the prison cease to exist, and should the thief not enter it?</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">You say that the future life is a problem, and hell a perhaps. You are deceived; this problem is fully solved by revelation, and left in no uncertainty. But suppose for a moment, that there was an uncertainty, that the existence of eternal torments is only probable, and that it may be said: perhaps there is no hell. I ask any man of sound reason, would he not be the silliest of men who, upon such a perhaps, should expose himself to the punishment of an everlasting fire?</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">They say that no one returned from beyond the grave to tell us about hell. If it were true that no one has returned, would hell exist the less? Is it the dammed who ought to teach us that there is a hell? It might as well be said that it is prisoners who ought to inform us that there are prisons. To know that there is a hell it is not necessary that the damned should come to tell us; God's word is sufficient for us; God it is who publishes it, and informs the world concerning it. But are you, who claim that no dead person has returned to speak of hell, quite sure of it? You say it, you declare it; but you have against you historical, proved, unexceptionable facts. I do not speak here of Jesus Christ, who descended into hell, and rose again from the dead; there are other dead persons who returned to life, and damned souls who have revealed their everlasting reprobation. Still, whatever may be the historical certainty of this sort of facts, I repeat, it is not upon this ground that we claim to establish the dogma of hell; that truth is known to us by the infallible word of God; the facts which we adduce serve but to confirm, and place it in a clearer light.</li>
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[The following video records the testimony of one Fr. Steven Scheier, a priest who suffered a near death experience and escaped hell only by the intercession of Our Lady. Highly recommended.]</div>
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-17263205939457341082016-06-17T03:18:00.000+02:002016-06-17T03:18:28.433+02:00The First General Council of Nicaea (325)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Second in a Series on the History of the General Councils</i></div>
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by</div>
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<b>Msgr. Philip Hughes</b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQUB_-yxSuBR-2sv-rM4ad1wGaAMhV3hlOutrdgOCQlimhzaLdAzHfVtymcMc_7ZN0amt_nSqSHW6ZZUhkJl8WoL_z6VK8y5KQEc0AImkS9BRJ2WVUQzYqLC9unyEM6r0g8oCNwOrP7Wwf/s1600/Council+of+Nicaea.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQUB_-yxSuBR-2sv-rM4ad1wGaAMhV3hlOutrdgOCQlimhzaLdAzHfVtymcMc_7ZN0amt_nSqSHW6ZZUhkJl8WoL_z6VK8y5KQEc0AImkS9BRJ2WVUQzYqLC9unyEM6r0g8oCNwOrP7Wwf/s400/Council+of+Nicaea.png" width="500" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">16th century fresco of the First Council of Nicaea. (click to enlarge) A great deal of liberty has<br />
been taken by the artist; for example, though shown in the center of the gathered bishops,<br />
Pope Sylvester I was not physically present due to his great age and the difficulty of the journey,<br />
but was instead represented by two priests sent from Rome as his emissaries. The figure in white<br />
beneath the pulpit is in all likelihood the arch-heretic Arius, who was condemned at the Council.<br />
The Emperor Constantine is seated in the lower left-hand corner.</td></tr>
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It is more than sixteen hundred years since the first of the General Councils of the Church met. This is so long ago that the very names of the places connected with its history have quite disappeared from common knowledge and the atlases. They have about them an air of the fabulous; Nicaea, Bithynia, Nicomedia, and the rest. The very unfamiliarity of the sounds is a reminder that, even for the purpose of the slight consideration which is all that these pages allow, a considerable adjustment of the mind is called for. We must, somehow, revive the memory of a world that has wholly passed away, that had disappeared, indeed, well nigh a thousand years already when Columbus and his ships first sighted the coasts of the new continent.</div>
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The business that brought the three hundred or so bishops to Nicaea in AD 325 from all over the Christian world was to find a remedy for the disturbances that had seriously troubled the East for nearly two years. The cause of these disturbances was a new teaching about the basic mystery of the Christian religion.</div>
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We shall let Cardinal John Henry Newman summarise the position, and say what it was that the new leader, Arius by name, had lately been popularising, through sermons, writings, and popular hymns and songs:</div>
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It was the doctrine of Arianism that our Lord was a pure creature, made out of nothing, liable to fall, the Son of God by adoption, not by nature, and called God in Scripture, not as being really such, but only in name. At the same time [Arius] would not have denied that the Son and the Holy Ghost were creatures transcendently near to God, and immeasurably distant from the rest of creation. </blockquote>
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Now, by contrast, how does the teaching of the Fathers who preceded Arius stand relatively to such a representation of the Christian Creed? Is it such, or how far is it such, as to bear Arius out in so representing it? This is the first point to inquire about. </blockquote>
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First of all, the teaching of the Fathers was necessarily directed by the form of Baptism, as given by our Lord Himself to His disciples after His resurrection. To become one of His disciples was, according to His own words, to be baptized "into the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;" that is, into the profession, into the service, of a Triad. Such was our Lord's injunction: and ever since, before Arianism and after, down to this day, the initial lesson in religion taught to every Christian, on his being made a Christian, is that he thereby belongs to a certain Three, whatever more, or whether anything more, is revealed to us in Christianity about that Three. </blockquote>
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The doctrine, then, of a Supreme Triad is the elementary truth of Christianity; and accordingly, as might have been expected, its recognition is a sort of key-note, on which centre the thoughts and language of all theologians, from which they start, with which they end.<sup>[1]</sup></blockquote>
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Examination of a chain of pre-Arian writers, from every part of Christendom, reveals that "there was during the second and third centuries a profession and teaching concerning the Holy Trinity, not vague and cloudy, but of a certain determinate character," and that this teaching "was contradictory and destructive of the Arian hypothesis."<sup>[2]</sup> And from all this literature the fact emerges that, from the beginning, "some doctrine or other of a Trinity lies at the very root of the Christian conception of the Supreme Being, and of his worship and service:" and that "it is impossible to view historical Christianity apart from the doctrine of the Trinity."<sup>[3]</sup></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivx1-toCmvWa6r-Qu58IB7HlsUiMBnYcJhtv8CI3VobVtafKlcTOpErdTutJ0HbXF9EqwufKV5Qn4sbLyfUugoeK-2HnDbs0oWbxQnH_ewVDy3K5NcWjqcGF0_XrA6cPHSviDENqkJ82yv/s1600/Trinity+Icon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivx1-toCmvWa6r-Qu58IB7HlsUiMBnYcJhtv8CI3VobVtafKlcTOpErdTutJ0HbXF9EqwufKV5Qn4sbLyfUugoeK-2HnDbs0oWbxQnH_ewVDy3K5NcWjqcGF0_XrA6cPHSviDENqkJ82yv/s1600/Trinity+Icon.jpg" /></a></div>
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It was round about the year AD 323 that the Arian crisis developed. The struggle between the advocates of the new theory and the Church authorities who stood by the tradition was to continue thence onward for a good fifty years and more. And now, for the first time in the history of the Church, the State intervened in what was, of itself, a dispute about belief. A second point to note is that the State, on the whole, sided with the innovators, and was hostile to the defenders of the traditional truth.</div>
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The history of those fifty-six years (325-41) that followed the Council of Nicaea and closed with the next General Council (Constantinople I) is part of the history of both these councils. And its complexity defies any summary simplification. If we turn to Newman for a clue to the meaning of it all, he will tell us that this long and stubborn struggle is nothing else than a particular passage in the conflict that never ceases between the Church and the secular power.</div>
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The same principle of government which led the emperors to denounce Christianity while they were pagans led them to dictate to its bishops when they had become Christians.<sup>[4]</sup></blockquote>
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Such an idea as that "religion should be independent of state authority" was, in the eyes of all these princes, contrary to the nature of things. And not only was this conflict "inevitable," but, Newman continues, it might have been foreseen as probable that the occasion of the conflict would be a controversy within the Church about some fundamental doctrine. Newman's last remarkable words may usefully warn us that, in Church History, things are not always so simple as we expect.</div>
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Even the full history of a General (i.e., world-wide) Council called in such circumstances, the first council of its kind - which had no precedents to guide its procedure, or to instruct the generality about the special value attaching to its decisions - even this would inevitably present difficulties to minds sixteen hundred years later; minds bred in a detailed, centuries-old tradition about the kind of thing General Councils are, and furnished with definite ideas about their nature, procedure, and authority.</div>
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But we are very far from possessing anything like a full history of this first Council of Nicaea. Of any official record of the day-to-day proceedings - the <i>acta</i> of the council - there is no trace. The earliest historians, from whose accounts our knowledge must derive, were in large measure partisan writers. And of the two writers who were present at the council, the one who was a historian<sup>[5]</sup> was an ally of the heretics and the quasi-official panegyrist of the emperor Constantine who called the council; and the other,<sup>[6]</sup> though he has much indeed to say about the council, does not anywhere profess to be writing a record of its acts.</div>
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Nowhere, of course, is our knowledge of the history of these first centuries of the Church anything like so complete as is our knowledge of, let us say, any part of it during the last eight or nine hundred years. In the matter of Nicaea, as in other questions, scholars are still disputing - and not on religious grounds - whether, for example, certain key documents were really written by the personages whose names they bear. About the details of the history of all these early councils, because of the insufficiency of our information, there is inevitably much confusion, great obscurity. Yet there are compensations for those who study it. </div>
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History does not bring clearly upon the canvas the details which were familiar to the ten thousand minds of whose combined movements and fortunes it treats. Such is it from its very nature; nor can the defect ever fully be remedied. This must be admitted [...] still no one can mistake its general teaching in this matter, whether he accept it or stumble at it. Bold outlines, which cannot be disregarded, rise out of the records of the past, when we look to see what it will give up to us: they may be dim, they may be incomplete, but they are definite; there is that which they are not, which they cannot be.<sup>[7]</sup></blockquote>
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The state, or political society, in which the Arian troubles arose and developed was that which we know as the Roman Empire. This state, for its inhabitants, was one and the same thing as civilization, and not surprisingly. As the accession of Constantine to the sole rulership, in AD 324, found the empire, so it had endured for three hundred years and more. History does not record any political achievement even remotely parallel to this. For the empire took in, besides Italy, the whole of Europe west of the Rhine and south of the Danube and also the southern half of the island of Britain. In the East, it included the whole of the modern state we call Turkey, with Syria also, Palestine, and Egypt, and the lands on the southern shore of the Mediterranean westward thence to the Atlantic.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZp680hszlPBPySf7pfc9rbern-peNy9D92AUnzPl9MMxGMizRmOAwHdGj6Wa948gI61qF8vGYR-cU2N1IPCL4vpzD0zzgo1_V3iwLVL2aLFv1rRs_eyOPJnuRb3IPuIHd0-2dA9lSsKf5/s1600/Roman+Empire+under+Constantine.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZp680hszlPBPySf7pfc9rbern-peNy9D92AUnzPl9MMxGMizRmOAwHdGj6Wa948gI61qF8vGYR-cU2N1IPCL4vpzD0zzgo1_V3iwLVL2aLFv1rRs_eyOPJnuRb3IPuIHd0-2dA9lSsKf5/s400/Roman+Empire+under+Constantine.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roman empire under Constantine (click to enlarge)</td></tr>
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Races as varied as the peoples who today inhabit these lands, with just as little to unite them naturally, lived then for some four hundred years under the rule of the emperors, with a minimum of internal disturbance and in almost entire freedom from foreign war. The stresses and strains of the internal life of the empire were, of course, a constant menace to this marvelous unity. The supreme ruler, with whom lay the fullness of legislative power, who was the final judge in all lawsuits, and the head of the national religion, was the ruler because he was the commander in chief of the army: his very title <i>imperator</i>, which we translate "emperor," means just this. And for the <i>imperator</i>, it was one of the chief problems of government to maintain his military prestige with the vast armies. No man could long rule the Roman world who did not first hold the legions true to himself by his own professional worth. All the great rulers who, in the course of these four centuries, developed and adapted and reformed the complex life of the state, its finances, its law, its administration, were in the first place great soldiers, highly successful generals: Trajan, for example, Hadrian, Septimius Severus, Decius, Diocletian.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKxSgfc22xo4gbCfUjqPL84asNNR_bv3g0g5WlXjXO3TP_OWgtO2O9yvbZh-2ddrRtn307bFg51YTTghdvAWp2TaNIPIeht05aseyjnXbjZEhxCydwOmLe08vT2FOYCS3iAXgu2uoNP9lX/s1600/Emperor+Constantine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKxSgfc22xo4gbCfUjqPL84asNNR_bv3g0g5WlXjXO3TP_OWgtO2O9yvbZh-2ddrRtn307bFg51YTTghdvAWp2TaNIPIeht05aseyjnXbjZEhxCydwOmLe08vT2FOYCS3iAXgu2uoNP9lX/s320/Emperor+Constantine.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emperor Constantine</td></tr>
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And Constantine, the first emperor to abandon the pagan religion and to profess himself a Christian, stood out to his own generation primarily as a highly successful soldier, triumphant in a series of contests with rivals for the supreme place. Such wars, fights between rival generals for the imperial throne, were the chief curse of Roman political life, and especially so in what we reckon as the third century, the century in the last quarter of which Constantine himself was born. He would have been a little boy of nine or ten when the great Diocletian became emperor in AD 284, who, to put an end to these suicidal wars, immediately associated another soldier with himself, as joint emperor, the one to rule the East, the other the West. In AD 293, Diocletian took this devolution of power a step further. With each emperor there was now associated a kind of assistant emperor, with the title of Caesar, the actual ruler of allotted territories and destined to be, in time, his principal's successor. The soldier chosen in AD 293 as the first western Caesar was Constantine's father, Constantius, commonly called Chlorus (the Pale) from his complexion. His territory was the modern countries of Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, and England.</div>
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These details of political re-organisation have a direct connection with our story. The reader knows - who does not? - that one feature of the history of this Roman state was its hostility to the Christian religion. Scarcely a generation went by without some serious persecution. And Diocletian ended his reign with the most dreadful persecution of all (AD 303). This was largely due to the influence of his colleague, the Caesar Galerius who, in 305, was to succeed him as emperor in the East. And of all the territories, it was Egypt that provided most of the victims in the eight years the terror lasted - Egypt which was to be the principal scene of the Arian troubles and, <i>par excellence</i>, of the Catholic resistance to them. In the West, the persecution was, by comparison, mild, and in the domains of Constantius Chlorus there was no persecution at all. This emperor's personal religious history, and his attitude towards the Christian religion, is full of interest. His views were also the views of his son Constantine, and they perhaps provide a clue to the strange and baffling story, not only of the long successful Arian defiance of the decisions of the Council of Nicaea, but of that first Christian emperor's seeming unawareness of the defiance.</div>
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Constantine's own character is, of course, an element of the first importance in the history of the council he convoked; and so also is the kind of thing which his "conversion" to Christianity was, some twelve years before the Arian problem arose. At the time of the council, he was nearing his fiftieth year, and he had been emperor for almost twenty. History seems to reveal him as intelligent, indeed, but passionate and headstrong; a bold campaigner and, as an administrator, "magnificent" in the Aristotelian sense. That is to say, he loved great schemes, supported them always with princely generosity, improvised readily, and delighted to dazzle by the scale of his successes. It was a natural part of the character that he was ambitious, confident of success, and - a less obvious trait - his ambition was linked with a "mystical" belief that he was destined to succeed, and a sure, if confused, notion that the heavenly powers were on his side. Be it remembered here, once more, that this man was omnipotent in public affairs, as no ruler has been even in the recent revolutions of our own time; for the Roman emperor's omnipotence was universally accepted by his millions of subjects as his right, as something belonging to the very nature of things.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX4pcXK1g5irDmLXqVMDiBHHs6z00NWZjSOiJN8mBh0l2S8ce_H0NOXMkx_Mp3f2KlrAnk08dLlfOJCfKGniBKThmNRUo6Q2574fa-EbRC5Z5evyzqrkhRsuv4Y5nOJzN6o4y0mKmnuS52/s1600/The+Battle+of+the+Milvian+Bridge+-+Giulio+Romano.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX4pcXK1g5irDmLXqVMDiBHHs6z00NWZjSOiJN8mBh0l2S8ce_H0NOXMkx_Mp3f2KlrAnk08dLlfOJCfKGniBKThmNRUo6Q2574fa-EbRC5Z5evyzqrkhRsuv4Y5nOJzN6o4y0mKmnuS52/s400/The+Battle+of+the+Milvian+Bridge+-+Giulio+Romano.png" width="500" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Battle of the Milvan Bridge</i> (click to enlarge)<br />
Giulio Romano (1499-1546)</td></tr>
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It is less easy to say exactly what Constantine knew or believed about the religion of Christ, twelve years after he had, as emperor, publicly made it his own. Certainly it would be a gross error to consider the business of his mystical dream on the eve of his victory at the Milvian Bridge (AD 312), that made him supreme master of the West, as parallel to what happened to St. Paul on the road to Damascus. His own personal religion at the time was that of his pagan father, the cult suddenly promoted to the supreme place as the official religion about the time that Constantine was born, by the then emperor, Aurelian (AD 269-75). This was the cult of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), the worship of the divine spirit by whom the whole universe is ruled, the spirit whose symbol is the sun; a symbol in which this spirit in some way specially manifests itself. Under Aurelian this cult was organised with great splendour. The temple of the Sun which he built at Rome must have been one of the wonders of the world. Aurelian's coins bear the inscription "The Sun is the Lord of the Roman Empire." The whole cult is penetrated with the idea that there is a single spirit who is supreme, with the idea of an overruling divine monarchy. Moreover, the cult was in harmony with a philosophical religion steadily growing, in the high places of the administration, throughout this same century, the cult of Summus Deus - the God who is supreme.</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwKez6mETGnCzQ-rCp6NoUoyKi0JA5ocbscwZLcDpFqkmxQ1cUyOQVHS9R55M-xzyS2QVpavSGxdOEc7CKv2rhxHa226Cm0RNXQNIzhEAwsFniAhkoShgS5-M4OnM0Ff5582WMyvig5XW0/s1600/Sol+Invictus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwKez6mETGnCzQ-rCp6NoUoyKi0JA5ocbscwZLcDpFqkmxQ1cUyOQVHS9R55M-xzyS2QVpavSGxdOEc7CKv2rhxHa226Cm0RNXQNIzhEAwsFniAhkoShgS5-M4OnM0Ff5582WMyvig5XW0/s200/Sol+Invictus.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roman imperial silver disk bearing<br />
the image of Sol Invictus (3rd century)</td></tr>
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Constantine's father remained faithful to this cult of Sol Invictus even when his seniors, Diocletian and Maximian, reverted to the old cults of Jupiter and Hercules. And once Constantine - no more than Caesar on his father's death (AD 306) - felt himself really master in the West, Hercules and Jupiter disappeared from his coinage, and Sol Invictus was restored, while the official panegyrics laud "that divine spirit which governs this whole world." This in AD 311.</div>
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What Constantine gathered from his famous dream in September 312 was that this supreme divinity was promising him salvation in this military crisis, had despatched a messenger to assure him of it and to tell him how to act, and that this messenger was Christ, the God whom the Christians worshipped, and that the badge his soldiers must wear was the sign of Christ, the cross. He did not, on the morrow of his victory, ask for baptism, nor even to be enrolled as a catechumen. Constantine was never so much as even this. And not until he lay dying, twenty-five years later, was he baptised.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_swAFnuzkNSWE1YQv39iGO-IiMchmNlFiuoOtBrh_5C5sFwE_hwFOIlITLqNWyRZFO_Bs4yyG-x2_XxgkHpszhmPmCDPLG8RBuNxaalFwsXcYfEsz1cLRg8S1PR7dv9fXJpbNMz1I7fMW/s1600/Edict+of+Milan.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_swAFnuzkNSWE1YQv39iGO-IiMchmNlFiuoOtBrh_5C5sFwE_hwFOIlITLqNWyRZFO_Bs4yyG-x2_XxgkHpszhmPmCDPLG8RBuNxaalFwsXcYfEsz1cLRg8S1PR7dv9fXJpbNMz1I7fMW/s320/Edict+of+Milan.png" width="236" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Orthodox icon commemorating the publication<br />
of the Edict of Milan in AD 313 by Constantine</td></tr>
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It was, then, an all but uninstructed, if enthusiastic, convert who now, with all the caution of an experienced politician, set his name to the Edict of Milan (AD 313), set up the Christian religion as a thing legally permissible, endowed its chief shrines with regal munificence, showered civic privileges, honors, and jurisdiction on its bishops, and even began the delicate task of introducing Christian ideas into the fabric of the law. It was an all but uninstructed convert who, also, in these next ten years - and in the turbulent province of Africa - plunged boldly into the heat of a religious war, the Donatist Schism, with the instinctive confidence that his mere intervention would settle all problems. Between the truce with the Donatists, AD 321, and the appearance of Arius in Egypt the interval is short indeed. What had Constantine learned from the Donatist experience? What had it taught him about the kind of thing the divine society was in which he so truly believed? Very little, it would seem.</div>
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The great see of Alexandria in Egypt, of which Arius was a priest, had for many years before his appearance as a heretic been troubled by schism. One of the suffragan bishops - Meletius by name - had accused his principal of giving way during the persecution; and, declaring all the bishop of Alexandria's acts invalid, had proceeded to consecrate bishops in one place after another, in opposition to him. Nor did Meletius cease his activities when this particular bishop of Alexandria died. In many places, there were soon two sets of Catholic clergy, the traditional line and the "Meletian"; the confusion was great and the contest bitter everywhere, the faithful people as active as their pastors. "It was out of the Meletian schism that Arianism was born and developed," one historian<sup>[8]</sup> will tell us. Arius had been a "Meletian" in his time, but the new bishop, Alexander, had received him back and had promoted him to an important church. And here his learned eloquence and ascetic life soon gave his novel teaching as wide publicity as he could desire.</div>
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The bishop's first act, as the news spread, was to arrange a public disputation. In this, Arius was worsted. He next disobeyed the bishop's natural injunction to be silent, and began to look for support outside Egypt. Meanwhile, the bishop called a council of the hundred bishops subject to his see; ninety-eight voted to condemn Arius; and his two supporters, along with a handful of other clerics, were deposed. Arius fled to Palestine, to an old friend generally regarded as the greatest scholar of the day, Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea. And from Caesarea, the two began a vast correspondence to engage the support of bishops expected to be friendly to the cause, as far away as the imperial capital, Nicomedia.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX8xP7Cz39_YnXX73j0DiBM-xxwAE_1lt1DL89T1Srw6HS4LdidZsW1xqPPzIvv0eUpVPIM7wwQWq8dgruP5VkAPCL5ThMTM7bNqxmg8qmZdXeW93bzYAvrUMwR2MogkR3VJTvYzn7Ac0t/s1600/Lucian+of+Antioch.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX8xP7Cz39_YnXX73j0DiBM-xxwAE_1lt1DL89T1Srw6HS4LdidZsW1xqPPzIvv0eUpVPIM7wwQWq8dgruP5VkAPCL5ThMTM7bNqxmg8qmZdXeW93bzYAvrUMwR2MogkR3VJTvYzn7Ac0t/s320/Lucian+of+Antioch.png" width="236" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lucian of Antioch, the Sacred Martyr</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Already there was a bond between Arius and many of those to whom he wrote. They, like himself, were pupils of the same famous teacher of the last generation, Lucian of Antioch, whose school - and not Alexandria - was the real birthplace of this new theological development. And Arius could address such prelates as "Dear Fellow-Lucianist." Of all those to whom he now wrote, none was so important as a second Eusebius, the bishop of the imperial city itself, and a possible power with the emperor through his friendship with Constantine's sister, the empress Constantia, consort of the eastern emperor, Licinius. The Lucianist bishop of Nicomedia rose to the occasion, "as though upon him the whole fate of the Church depended," the bishop of Alexandria complained. For Eusebius, too, circularised the episcopate generally and summoned a council of bishops, and they voted that Arius should be reinstated, and wrote to beg this of the bishop of Alexandria.</div>
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Arius' bishop, meanwhile, had been active also. We know of seventy letters which he wrote to bishops all over the Christian world; amongst others to whom he wrote was the pope. And since all these episcopal letters were copied and passed round, made up into collections and, as we should say, published, the whole of the East was soon aflame, fighting and rioting in one city after another. Few, indeed, of these enthusiasts could have understood the discussions of the theologians, but all grasped that what Arius was saying was that Christ was not God. And if this were so, what about the saving death on the Cross? And what was sinful man to hope for when he died? When the bishop of Alexandria stigmatised his rebellious priest as <i>Christomachos</i> (fighter against Christ), he clinched the matter in such a way that all, from the Christian emperor to the meanest dock hand in the port, must be personally interested, and passionately.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzA9g2DHvVk_WGc-uTYTnWKwUBMPhCIINjTUYYfNYtptljq6ECRo_OLK5_hbZ6Qx1o5jPmPLcvii-HdKRHxglKPR78PrMi46omlaUmk5RxhqjksTINdqk5zHzbuuM4l9Ftxyfr2QQQh5BC/s1600/Hosius+of+Cordova.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzA9g2DHvVk_WGc-uTYTnWKwUBMPhCIINjTUYYfNYtptljq6ECRo_OLK5_hbZ6Qx1o5jPmPLcvii-HdKRHxglKPR78PrMi46omlaUmk5RxhqjksTINdqk5zHzbuuM4l9Ftxyfr2QQQh5BC/s320/Hosius+of+Cordova.png" width="220" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hosius (Osio) of Cordova</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
During these first months of agitation Constantine had, however, other matters to occupy him, and, to begin with, the agitation was none of his business. At the moment when the great movement began, none of the lands affected came under his jurisdiction. But in that same year, AD 323, war broke out between himself and his eastern colleague, his brother-in-law, Licinius. In July 324, Constantine, invader of Licinius territory, defeated him heavily at Adrianople, and in September he gained a second victory at Chrysopolis.<sup>[9]</sup> Later, Licinius was put to death. When the victor entered his new capital in the ensuing weeks, there was in his household a Spanish prelate who had dwelt with Constantine for some years now, Hosius, bishop of Cordova. It was to him that Constantine, with the new Arian crisis confronting him, now turned.</div>
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Arius, by now, had returned to Alexandria, fortified with the vote of the council at Nicomedia and of a second (more peremptory) council at Caesarea, to demand the decreed reinstatement. His arrival, and the campaign of propaganda now launched, set the whole city ablaze. And Constantine despatched Hosius to make a personal investigation of the affair. When he returned to make his report, Alexander and Arius soon followed. The crisis next moved to the third great city of the empire, Antioch. The bishop there had recently died, and when the fifty-six bishops subject to Antioch came in from Palestine, Arabia, Syria, and elsewhere to elect a successor (January 325, probably), they took the opportunity to notice the Arian development. All but unanimously (53-3) they condemned the new teaching, and excommunicated - provisionally - the three dissidents. One of these was the bishop of Caesarea.</div>
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And now, sometime in the early spring of AD 325, it was decided to summon a council representative of all the bishops in the world. Who was it that first put out this grandiose, if simple, plan? We do not know. Within a matter of months - not indeed simultaneously, but with impressive nearness in time - councils had been held at Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, Nicomedia, in which a good half of the bishops of the East must have taken part, i.e., a good proportion of the vastly more numerous half of the entire episcopate. Whoever it was to whom the idea of a council of the Christian universe first occurred, it was Constantine who decided it should be held, and who chose the place and sent out the invitations to the bishops, offering to all free passage in the imperial transportation service.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ibM4REC6Aebhh55pBNdvmGCIpcAJLZpHuOl5soVxoHRmhixUgThO-c5ZjpQ9fj_eIMUFBVyxR39T0UoixFNs6smAOeKRSeAgAAQ3Q6-Hp9OIKJJZsRkcDeRkN8vQrTRsw2LqNOxqDUv9/s1600/Council+of+Nicaea+Icon.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ibM4REC6Aebhh55pBNdvmGCIpcAJLZpHuOl5soVxoHRmhixUgThO-c5ZjpQ9fj_eIMUFBVyxR39T0UoixFNs6smAOeKRSeAgAAQ3Q6-Hp9OIKJJZsRkcDeRkN8vQrTRsw2LqNOxqDUv9/s320/Council+of+Nicaea+Icon.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Icon of the Council of Nicaea. Emperor Constantine is seated<br />
in the center of the gathered council fathers.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The council opened, in the imperial summer palace at Nicaea, May 20, 325, with something over three hundred bishops present, the vast bulk of them from the Greek-speaking lands where the trouble was raging, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor. But there were bishops also from Persia and the Caucasus, from the lands between the Danube and the Aegean, and from Greece. There was one from Africa and one from Spain, one from Gaul and one from Italy, and, since the great age of the Bishop of Rome forbade his making the journey, he was represented by two of his priests.</div>
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Eusebius of Caesarea, who has described the great moments of the council, was evidently moved, as we too may be, by his recollection of the scene when, the bishops all assembled in the great hall of the palace, some of them lame and blind from the tortures undergone in the persecutions, the Christian master of the whole Roman world entered, robed in scarlet and gold, and before taking his place at the throne, bade them be seated. Constantine came with a minimum of pomp, and in his brief address he did no more than welcome the bishops, exhort them to peaceful conference, and admit that the spectacle of "sedition" within the Church caused him more anxiety than any battle.</div>
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The little we know of the actual history of the council is soon told. The theology of Arius was condemned unanimously - though he is said to have had twenty-two supporters among the bishops. But if it was a simple matter for the episcopate to testify to its belief that the Divine Word was truly God, it was less easy to agree about the best way to phrase a declaration of this faith, i.e., to construct a statement to which no subtlety could give a heretical Arian meaning also. One section of the bishops was anxious that no terms should be used which were not already used in Scripture. But the Scriptures had not been written for the purpose of confuting philosophically minded heretics. It was now necessary to say that the accepted Scripture meant just "this" and not "that" as well. And if this were to be accomplished, the technique must be adopted of coining a special word for the purpose.</div>
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The statement as the council finally passed it - the creed of the council of Nicaea - states: </div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We believe [...] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the son of God, born of the Father, the sole-begotten; that is to say, of the substance of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God; born, not made, consubstantial with the Father [in the Greek original: <i>homo-ousion toi patri</i>], through whom all things were made, which are in heaven and on earth [...]<sup>[10]</sup></blockquote>
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The word <i>homo-ousion</i> is the special non-Scriptural word which the council adopted to characterize the true, traditional belief; a word it was impossible to square with any kind of Arian theory; a test word that would always make it clear that any Arian theory was incompatible with the Christian tradition, and which would serve the practical purpose of preventing any further infiltration of these enemies of Christ within the Church, and defeat any endeavor to change the belief from within.</div>
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Who it was that proposed to the council this precise word, we do not know. An Arian historian says it was the bishop of Alexandria and Hosius of Cordova. St. Athanasius, who was present at the council, says it was Hosius. What seems clearer is that the bishops, solidly determined that the heresy should be rooted out, were yet by no means happy about the means chosen. The word <i>homo-ousion</i> was known to them already. Since long before the time of Arius and Lucian, it had a bad history in the East, as will be explained. But Constantine definitely declared himself in favor of the uniquely useful instrument, and the council accepted it, each bishop rising in his place and giving his vote. Two bishops only refused their assent. With Arius, and a few priest supporters, they were promptly sent into exile by the emperor's command.</div>
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The bishops then passed to other problems. In the first place, the twenty-year-old Meletian schism. Its leaders had appealed to Constantine, and the emperor left it to the council to judge. The bishops supported their brother of Alexandria, but offered the schismatics very easy terms, restoring Meletius himself to his see of Lycopolis. But he was not, ever again, to confer Holy Orders, and all those whom he had unlawfully ordained were to be reordained before again officiating. Moreover, they were to be subject henceforward to the true, i.e., Catholic, bishop of the place. Those whom Meletius had made bishops might be elected to sees in the future, as vacancies arose - always with the consent of the bishop of Alexandria, the traditional head of this extensive episcopate.</div>
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A second practical problem, that had teased the eastern churches for generations, was now finally solved, viz., how the date of the Easter feast should be calculated. "All our good brothers of the East<sup>[11]</sup> who until now have been used to keep Easter at the Jewish Passover, will henceforward keep it at the same time as the Romans and you," so the bishops of Egypt announced in a letter to their people.</div>
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Finally, the bishops promulgated twenty laws - canons - for general observance. Like the solution proposed for the Meletians, they are notable for a new mildness of tone, a quality more Roman than Oriental, it may be said. They are, in great part, a repetition of measures enacted eleven years earlier in the Latin council held at Arles, in Gaul. Five canons deal with those who fell away in the recent persecution. If any such have since been admitted to ordination, they are to be deposed. Those who apostatised freely - that is, without the compulsion of fear - are to do twelve years' penance before being admitted to Holy Communion. If, before the penance is completed, they fall sick and are in danger of death, they may receive Holy Viaticum. Should they then recover, they are to take place with the highest class of the penitents - those who are allowed to hear Mass, though not to receive Holy Communion. Catechumens who fell away - i.e., Christians not yet baptised - are to do three years' penance and then resume their place as catechumens. Finally, the Christians who, having once left the army, had re-enlisted in the army of the persecutor, the lately destroyed emperor Licinius, are to do thirteen years' penance, or less if the bishop is satisfied of the reality of their repentance, but always three years' penance at least.</div>
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There are two canons about the readmission of heretical schismatics. First of all, there are the remnants of the schism begun in Rome by the antipope Novatian, some seventy-five years before the council. Novatian was one of that fairly numerous class for whom the rulers of the Church deal far too mildly with repentant sinners. He ended by denying that the Church had the power to absolve those who fell away in times of persecution; and his followers, self-styled "the Pure," extended this disability to all sins of idolatry, sexual sins, and murder. They also regarded second marriage as a sexual sin. At this time, there were many Novatians in Asia Minor, and the council offered generous terms to those who wished to be reconciled, recognising the orders of their clergy, and the dignity of their bishops, but exacting written declarations that they will regard as fellow Catholics those who have contracted a second marriage and those doing penance for apostasy.</div>
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To a second class of schismatics, the same generosity was shown. These were the sect that descended from the notorious bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, deposed in AD 268 by a council of bishops for various crimes and for his heretical teaching that there is no distinction between the three persons of the Holy Trinity. But these "Paulinians," so to call them, are to be re-baptised. Those who had functioned as clergy may be re-ordained if the Catholic bishop to whom they are now subject thinks fit.</div>
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On various aspects of clerical life, there are as many as ten canons. No one is to be ordained who has had himself castrated, nor anyone only recently converted to the faith. "Yesterday a catechumen, today a bishop," says St. Jerome; "in the evening at the circus and next morning at the altar; just lately a patron of comedians, now busy consecrating virgins." It is the canon itself which speaks of ordination, and episcopal consecration, following immediately on baptism. Bishops are not to ordain another bishop's subject without his consent. No clerics - bishops, priests, or deacons - are to move from one diocese to another. Clerics are forbidden to take interest for money loans, and for this offence they must be deposed.</div>
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Finally, there are two canons regarding three famous sees: Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. The council confirms the ancient custom that gives the bishop of Alexandria jurisdiction over the bishops of the civil provinces of Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis. And likewise the ancient privileges of the see of Antioch and of the chief sees of the other provinces. Jerusalem is a city apart, the Holy City <i>par excellence</i>, and although its bishop remains as much as ever the subject of the metropolitan bishop at Caesarea, he is allowed what canon 7 calls "a precedence of honor," without a hint to say in what this consists.</div>
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All this variety of business was rapidly dispatched, for the council held its final session barely four weeks after it opened, June 19, 325.</div>
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As the date all but coincided with the celebrations that marked the twentieth year of Constantine's reign, the emperor entertained the prelates at a banquet in full imperial style, and as they passed before the guards, presenting arms in salute, they asked themselves, says Eusebius, if the Kingdom of Heaven on earth had not finally come to pass.</div>
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Save for the letter of the bishops of Egypt, mentioned already, and two letters of the emperor, the one general, announcing the new rule about Easter, the other telling the people of Egypt that the bishops had confirmed the traditional belief and that Arius was the tool of the devil, we know nought of what might be called "the promulgation" of the council's decisions. But the breakup of the great gathering was by no means followed by the silence that accompanies peace perfectly attained. The real troubles had not yet begun.</div>
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<h3>
Additional Resources:</h3>
</div>
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<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/NICAEA1.HTM">Documents of the First Council of Nicaea</a></li>
<li><a href="http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/edict-milan.asp">Text of the Edict of Milan</a></li>
</ul>
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<h3>
Footnotes</h3>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Newman, <i>Causes of the Rise and Successes of Arianism</i> (February 1872) in <i>Tracts, Theological and Ecclesiastical</i>, pp. 103-4.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] <i>Ibid</i>., p. 116. For Newman's "examination," pp. 103-11.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] <i>Ibid</i>., p. 112.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] <i>Ibid</i>., p. 96-97.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[5] Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea (ca. AD 265-338).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[6] St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria (AD 328-73); born ca. AD 295.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[7] Newman, <i>The Development of Christian Doctrine</i>, 1st ed., 1845, pp. 7, 5; with one sentence ("Still no one," etc.) from <i>ibid</i>., rev. ed., p. 7.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[8] J. Lebreton, S.J., <i>Histoire de Eglise</i>, vol. 2, p. 343.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[9] The modern Scutari, on the Asiatic shore of the Bosporus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[10] Denzinger, <i>Enchiridion</i>, no. 54, prints the Greek text; Barry, <i>Readings in Church History</i>, p. 85, gives a translation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[11] The word has here a special meaning as the name of the (civil) diocese of which Antioch was the chief city, Oriens: the modern Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Syria, the coast of Turkey thence north and west for a good 200 miles with a vast territory in the interior that went beyond the Euphrates.</span></div>
Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-22895193581743752332016-06-15T12:56:00.000+02:002016-06-15T12:58:04.621+02:00The Myth of Moderate Islam<div style="text-align: justify;">
The following video, produced by <i>Islam Net Video</i>, explodes the myth of "moderate" Islam.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bV710c1dgpU/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bV710c1dgpU?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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This is not anti-Muslim, Islamophobic propaganda. This is a calm and rational demonstration of a simple fact by Muslims themselves: <b>there is no such thing as "moderate" Islam.</b> </div>
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Kicking out a few "fundamentalist" preachers, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-preacher-visa-idUSKCN0Z00F1" target="_blank">as was recently done in Australia to Farrokh Sekaleshfar, the senior Shiite Muslim cleric who preached in Orlando that homosexuals should be murdered</a>, isn't going to accomplish anything. Preachers like Farrokh Sekaleshfar are not the problem. The problem is the people who invited him to speak in Orlando, i.e. observant Muslims.</div>
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Islam is at war with western civilisation.</div>
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Islam is at war with Christ.</div>
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Islam is at war with you.</div>
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-51668613176314834422016-06-15T08:59:00.000+02:002016-06-15T09:55:59.695+02:00The Question of the Eucharist and the Apologetic Writings of St. Justin<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Reading N°52 in the History of the Catholic Church</i></div>
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by</div>
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<b>Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.</b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Justin Martyr</td></tr>
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Nearly all scholarly men of the time of <a href="http://theradicalcatholic.blogspot.ch/2016/04/marcus-aurelius.html">Marcus Aurelius</a> were enamored of philosophy. A few apologists there were who thought they could venture to present Christianity as a "new philosophy." But what connection was there between this and the old philosophies? In what was it separated from them? What were its constituent elements and its tenets? Could a synthesis of it be presented that would be understood by a follower of the Greek philosophers? <a href="http://theradicalcatholic.blogspot.ch/2016/05/st-justin-martyr.html">Justin the Philosopher</a> made it his duty to undertake the formidable task of replying to these questions.</div>
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Justin was a layman, but he had delved into the teachings of the Church. He even opened a sort of theological school at Rome. His noble attempt at a synthesis is not without inexactitudes and even errors, but this first essay of religious philosophy exercised an immense influence over the minds of his and of the next century.</div>
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The publication of Justin's first apology is generally placed at about the year AD 150. The second made its appearance a few years later, about AD 155, and the <i>Dialogue with Trypho</i> some few years after that, about AD 160.</div>
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If we separate the philosophic doctrine from what is purely discussion, arguments <i>ad hominem</i> and claims for actual rights, it can be reduced to this: Christianity is the true religion because it is the universal and absolute religion. Although the Word is fully manifested in Christ, yet the ancient world, everywhere and in all ages, possessed the seed of it. The great day of the Incarnation was preceded by a vast and brightening dawn.</div>
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As a basis for his contention, Justin takes two sacred sayings. One is from St. Paul:</div>
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When the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature those things that are of the law, these having not the law are a law to themselves [...] their conscience bearing witness to them. (Romans 2:14f)</blockquote>
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The other is from St. John:</div>
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[The Word is] the true light, which enlighteneth every man. (John 1:9)</blockquote>
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He says: "All men are partakers of the Divine Word; its seed is implanted in their soul."<sup>[1]</sup> "This germinal understanding comes from the Word; by virtue of it the wise men of old were, from time to time, able to teach beautiful truths. [...] For, whatever good the philosophers and lawmakers said, they owed to a partial view or knowledge of the Word. [...] Socrates, for instance, knew Christ in a certain way, because the Word penetrates everything with His influence. [...] Therefore, too, Plato's doctrines are not altogether contrary to those of Christ, although not absolutely like them, as may also be said of the teachings of the Stoics, the poets, and the historians. [...] So we may say that whatever good the ancients had belongs to us, to us Christians. [...] Besides, all who have lived according to the Word are Christians, even though they have been regarded as atheists: such were Socrates and Heraclitus among the Greeks, and, among others, Abraham, Ananias, Azarias, Misael, and Elias, besides many more. [...] As they knew the Word only in part, they did not have that lofty knowledge, free from all blame, which is our portion. Therefore was the Word made man. [...] It is one thing to possess only a seed of the Word; quite another thing is it to possess the Word Himself, who is communicated to us by His grace."<sup>[2]</sup></div>
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Freppel, after summing up St. Justin's theory of the Word, says: "Such is that enlightening and fruitful doctrine which at the school of Alexandria will presently open those great vistas into which Clement and Origen will rush with daring and not without some danger. It is a whole programme of Christian philosophy, embracing the theory of human knowledge, the intellectual constitution of the ancient world, and its relations with Christianity."<sup>[3]</sup></div>
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Justin considers humanity as a great unit, with its different parts brought together by Christ, who is the center and the soul of it all. Yet he does not hold that natural reason is sufficient for the possession of saving grace, or that it is absolutely sufficient even when aided by interior grace, to the exclusion of any external revelation. No one more forcibly shows the eminent part of external revelation in the genesis of faith than Justin. He even admits a direct influence of the books of Moses upon the teaching of the Greek philosophers and seems to attribute to revealed faith alone whatever truth Hellenic wisdom possessed. In short, his expressions have not all the exactness we might wish. If some of them may be interpreted in the sense of an unorthodox "subjectivism," others seem, on the contrary, to be inspired by a suspect "extrinsicism." In an admirably majestic attempt, Justin wished to include all the objective and subjective elements of a belief to which he clung with loyal submission, without surrendering any of the rights of his philosophic reason. But at times, this proved an impossible task for him, or at least, in the exposition of the Catholic faith he did not find those precise expressions which the Church, aided by the Holy Ghost, was to employ later.</div>
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Some defects of expression and of thought, still more striking and no less explicable, are to be noted in Justin's writings when he speaks of the Trinity, the angels, and the end of the world. He clearly teaches the existence of one only God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Neophytes, he says, are baptised in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit.</div>
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In all the offerings that we make, we bless the Creator of the universe through his Son Jesus Christ and through the Holy Ghost.<sup>[4]</sup></blockquote>
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In these words, Justin merely purposes expressing and professing the faith of the Church, and he is quite orthodox. But when he attempts a philosophical explanation, he, like Hermas, expresses himself in terms which the later decisions of the Church would no longer allow to be used. Between the Father and the Son, he seems to admit a certain subordination, hard to understand, in the perfect unity of will and divine essence. He supposes the angels have an airy body; and he says:</div>
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Although many true Christians think otherwise [...] I am assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead that will last a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be rebuilt.<sup>[5]</sup></blockquote>
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In other words, he professes Millenarianism as a private opinion.</div>
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When Justin speaks as a philosopher, his assertions can be accepted only with reservation. But they should be accepted with the greatest veneration when he speaks as a witness of the faith of the Church. In this capacity, his testimony on the sacrifice of the Eucharist is one of the most precious bequeathed to us by Christian antiquity.</div>
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Until his time, the "Discipline of the Secret," as it was later called, did not permit this holiest of mysteries to be divulged. But Justin, considering it necessary to have the pagans see Christianity with its whole economy of doctrines, ceremonies, and moral practices, could not conceal the fact that the Eucharist was the center of all these. Moreover, the people and even the philosophers had too long believed, or pretended to believe, that the Christians' secret was a cloak for some shameful practices. Justin considered that the time had come to disclose everything.</div>
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The following are the two famous passages in which the Christian philosopher for the first time reveals to the whole public the sacred ceremonies of the Eucharistic sacrifice:</div>
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Having ended the prayers, we salute one another with a kiss of peace. There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water. And he, taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being accounted worthy to receive these things at His hands. And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying "Amen". This word "Amen" answers in the Hebrew language to γένοιτό [so be it]. And when the president has made the eucharist, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us "deacons" give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion. And this food is called among us <i>Eucharistia</i> [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called "Gospels", have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread and, when He had given thanks, said, "This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;" and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, "This is My blood." And He gave it to them alone.</blockquote>
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This is the apologist's first description of the Mass. But, as though he feared not to have sufficiently described this supreme act of religion, he returns to the subject a few lines further on:</div>
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On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together in one place, and the memoirs of the Apostles or the writings of the Prophets are read, as long as time permits. Then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings with all the earnestness of his soul, and the people assent, saying "Amen". And there is a distribution of the consecrated Eucharist to each, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well-to-do and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succors the orphans and widows, and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead.<sup>[6]</sup></blockquote>
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"In this account," says Freppel, "it is easy to recognize the sacrifice of the Mass in all its essential or integral parts: the offertory, the consecration, and the communion. A single officiant with deacons, the reading of a portion of the Old or New Testament, an exhortation to the people based on the passage read, the offering of bread and wine (with water added) as the matter for use in the sacrifice, thanksgiving offered to God by the presiding officer, and hymns of praise in which the whole assembly joins, a lengthy prayer by the celebrant alone, during which he consecrates the offerings by the Savior's own words, the changing of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, again prayers of thanksgiving interrupted by the people's acclaim, expressing by a word their participation in the act performed by the celebrant, the kiss of peace (a public sign of Christian brotherhood), communion distributed to those present and brought by the deacons to the sick and others who are absent, a collection for the benefit of the poor: this whole picture of the Christian liturgy in the middle of the second century is evidently that of the sacrifice of the Mass as it is celebrated today all over the world. St. Justin's description corresponds point by point with the great central act of Catholic worship. It would be difficult to imagine a more impressive condemnation of Protestantism than this testimony by one of the earliest apologists of the Christian religion."<sup>[7]</sup></div>
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We know that Justin's courageous plea did not stop the course of the persecution and did not prevent his own martyrdom. But his work was nonetheless fruitful. Certain calumnies could no longer be repeated against the Christians except by people who were in bad faith. It was thenceforth established that Christian thought could fearlessly enter the domain of philosophy and count for something there.</div>
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<h3>
Footnotes</h3>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] <i>Second Apology</i>, 8.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] <i>First Apology</i>, 46; <i>Second Apology</i>, 8, 16, 13, 14.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] Freppel, <i>Les Apologistes chrétiens du IIe siècle</i>, p. 328.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] <i>First Apology</i>, 61; cf. <i>Dialogue</i>, 56, 60, 126, 127; <i>First Apology</i>, 13.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[5] <i>Dialogue</i>, 80.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[6] <i>First Apology</i>, 65-67.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[7] Freppel, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 304.</span></div>
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***
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-54118795048888191322016-06-13T08:09:00.000+02:002016-06-13T08:09:04.193+02:00Mendacity<i>Forty-Seventh in a Series on Catholic Morality</i><br />
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by<br />
<b>Fr. John H. Stapleton</b><br />
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To lie is to utter an untruth, with full knowledge that it is an untruth. The untruth may be expressed by any conventional sign, by word, deed, gesture, or even by silence. Its malice and disorder consists in the opposition that exists between our idea and the expression we give to it; our words convey a meaning contrary to what is in our mind; we say one thing and mean another. If we unwittingly utter what is contrary to fact, that is error; if we so clumsily translate our thoughts as to give a false impression of what we mean, and we do the best we can, that is a blunder; if in a moment of listlessness and inattention we speak in a manner that conflicts with our state of mind, that is temporary mental aberration. But if we knowingly give out as truth what we know is not the truth, we lie purely and simply.</div>
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In misrepresentations of this kind it is not required that there be a plainly formulated purpose of deceiving another; an implicit intention, a disposition to allow our words to run their natural course, is sufficient to give such utterances a character of mendacity. For, independently of our mental attitude, it is in the nature of a lie to deceive; an intention, or rather a pretense to the contrary, does not affect that nature. The fact of lying presupposes that we intend in some manner to practice deception; if we did not have such a purpose, we would not resort to lying. If you stick a knife into a man, you may pretend what you like, but you certainly intended to hurt him and make him feel badly.</div>
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Nor has any ulterior motive we may have in telling an untruth the power to change its nature; a lie is a lie, no matter what prompted it. Whether it serves the purpose of amusement, as a jocose lie; or helps to gain us an advantage or get us out of trouble, as an officious lie; or injures another in any way, as a pernicious lie: mendacity is the character of our utterances, the guilt of willful falsehood is on our soul. A restriction should, however, be made in favor of the jocose lie; it ceases to be a lie when the mind of the speaker is open to all who listen and his narration or statement may be likened to those fables and myths and fairy tales in which is exemplified the charm of figurative language. When a person says what is false and is convinced that all who hear him know it is false, the contradiction between his mind and its expression is said to be material, and not formal; and in this the essence of a lie does not consist.</div>
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A lie is always a sin; it is what is called an intrinsic evil and is therefore always wrong. And why is this? Because speech was given us to express our thoughts; to use this faculty therefore for a contrary purpose is against its nature, against a law of our being, and this is evil. The obnoxious consequences of falsehood, as it is patent to all, constitute an evil for which falsehood is responsible. But deception, one of those consequences, is not in itself and essentially, a moral fault. Deception, if not practiced by lying and therefore not intended but simply suffered to occur, and if there be grave reason for resorting to this means of defense, cannot be put down as a thing offensive to God or unjustly prejudicial to the neighbor. But when deception is the effect of mendacity, it assumes a character of malice that deserves the reprobation of man as it is condemned by God. And this is another reason why lying is essentially an evil thing, and can never, under any circumstances, be allowed or justified.</div>
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This does not mean that lying is always a mortal sin. In fact, it is more often venial than mortal. It becomes a serious fault only in the event of another malice being added to it. Thus, if I lie to one who has a right to know the truth and for grave reasons; if the mendacious information I impart is of a nature to mislead one into injury or loss, and this thing I do maliciously; or if my lying is directly disparaging to another; in these cases there is grave malice and serious guilt. But if there is no injustice resulting from a lie, I prevaricate against right in lying, but my sin is not a serious offense.</div>
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This is a vice that certainly deserves to be fought against and punished always and in all places, especially in the young who are so prone thereto, first because it is a sin; and again, because of the social evils that it gives rise to. There is no gainsaying the fact that in the code of purely human morals, lying is considered a very heinous offense that ostracizes a man when robbery on a large scale, adultery and other first-degree misdemeanors leave him perfectly honorable. This recalls an instance of a recent courtroom. A young miscreant thoroughly imbued with pharisaic morals met with a bold face, without a blush or a flinch, accusations of misconduct, robbery and murder; but when charged with being a liar, he sprang at his accuser in open court and tried to throttle him. His fine indignation got the best of him; he could not stand that.</div>
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Among pious-minded people two extreme errors are not infrequently met with. The one is that a lie is not wrong unless the neighbor suffers thereby; the falsity of this we have already shown. According to the other, a lie is such an evil that it should not be tolerated, not one lie, even if all the souls in hell were thereby to be liberated. To this we answer that we would like to get such a chance once; we fear we would tell a whopper. It would be wicked, of course; but we might expect leniency from the just Judge under the circumstances.</div>
Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-38374542113864663722016-06-10T09:26:00.000+02:002016-06-10T09:26:32.907+02:00On Councils and General Councils<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>First in a Series on the History of the General Councils</i></div>
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by</div>
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<b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Hughes_(Catholic_historian)">Msgr. Philip Hughes</a></b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia5MNmOVlY2mtH-nM1V97Jb_7kb92mYWQJADBwbgwM9jwtwKB6qkvadDHBoQw5duUrhnGGP02i2qDXucbHCS7Xhepamzg2wzkdsGUXvMqFoWZeorwDAJ1xM1ii39xgaXVMmcvbZgLtyo8X/s1600/Council+of+Jerusalem.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia5MNmOVlY2mtH-nM1V97Jb_7kb92mYWQJADBwbgwM9jwtwKB6qkvadDHBoQw5duUrhnGGP02i2qDXucbHCS7Xhepamzg2wzkdsGUXvMqFoWZeorwDAJ1xM1ii39xgaXVMmcvbZgLtyo8X/s640/Council+of+Jerusalem.png" width="566" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Apostles meet for the proto-council of Jerusalem (ca. AD 48)</td></tr>
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It is hardly possible to write the history of the twenty General Councils as though they were sections hewn from the one same log. They are not a unity in the sense in which successive sessions of Congress are a unity. Each of the twenty councils is an individual reality, each has its own special personality. This is partly due to the fact that each had its origin in a particular crisis of Church affairs, partly to the fact that they are strung out over fifteen hundred years of history, and that, for example, the human beings who constitute the council can be as remote from each other as the victims of the persecution of Diocletian in the fourth century from the victims of Bismarck in the nineteenth. It is not through any mechanical, material similarity of action, then, that the history of such an institution, and its significance, can be understood. Where the total action is spread over such vast spaces of time, and is discontinuous, whoever attempts to relate the whole of the action is faced with problems of a very special kind. And this specialty is, of course, bound up with the fact that the body which threw up this device called the General Council - the Church of Christ - is itself unique in this, viz., its possession of a recorded, continuous activity of nearly two thousand years.</div>
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Some, perhaps superficial, consideration of this vast timetable, 325-1870, may be helpful at the outset, even to the reader who is not, by nature, chronologically minded. Reading the list of the General Councils, we can see immediately two obvious groupings: the first eight were all held in eastern Europe or in Asia Minor; all the rest in western Europe, in Italy, France, and Germany. The eastern councils were Greek-speaking, the others Latin. General Councils are frequent in some ages, and in others the centuries go by without a single one. Thus, for the seventy years 381-451 there are three General Councils, then one every hundred years down to 869. For 254 years there is now not a single General Council; then, in 190 years there are seven (1123-1311). Another century goes by without a council, and in the next hundred years (1414-1512) three are summoned. The Council of Trent is called less than thirty years after the last of these three, and then 306 years go by before the twentieth council meets in 1869 ninety-two years ago nearly.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Locations of the General Councils (click to enlarge)</td></tr>
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Each of these councils has a history and a character all its own. The history of the next council - how matters will go once the bishops meet - can never be foretold from the history of the last. The powers and the authority of the new council are, it is recognised, the same as its predecessors possessed. The procedure may, and will, vary. One thing is never constant: the human reaction of the council's component parts.</div>
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The first General Council met in 325. The Church had then been an established fact for nearly three hundred years. How did councils begin - i.e., meetings of bishops to discuss matters of common interest? When and where did the first church councils take place? And what about the beginnings of the prestige of these councils - that is, of the idea that what bishops collectively agree is law with a binding force that is greater than any of their individual instructions to their own see?</div>
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To begin with the last point, it is a safe statement that, from the moment when history first shows us the Church of Christ as an institution, the exclusive right of the Church to state with finality what should be believed as Christ's teaching is manifestly taken for granted. To bring out a theory of belief or to propose a change in morals which conflicts with what the Church universally holds is, from the very beginning, to put oneself fatally in the wrong. The immediate, spontaneous reaction of the Church to condemn thinkers with new and original views of this kind is perhaps the most general, as it is the most striking, of all the phenomena of the Church's early history, so far back as the record goes.<sup>[1]</sup></div>
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When it was that bishops first formed the habit of coming together in council, we do not know. It is such an obvious act on the part of officials with like problems and responsibilities and authority, that to do this was surely second nature. What we do know is that, as early as the second century (100-200 A.D.), it was the custom for the bishops who came together for a bishop's funeral to take charge of the election of his successor. Here is one likely source, it is suggested, from which came the council of bishops as a recurring feature of ordinary Christian life.</div>
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About the year 190, a furious controversy as to the date at which the feast of Easter should be kept shook the whole Church, and the pope, St. Victor I, sent orders to the places most troubled that the bishops should meet and report to him their findings. And a series of councils were then held, in Palestine, in Asia Minor, and in Gaul. Sixty years later when, with the great career of St. Cyprian, the mists clear away from Roman Africa, we perceive that the bishops' council is already a long-established practice there. The bishops of Africa meet in council, indeed, twice every year. What they decreed on these occasions was law for the whole of Christian Africa. These councils were well attended; in 220 there were seventy-one bishops present, and at another council, ninety. At St. Cyprian's council of Carthage in 256, there were eighty-seven. There was a similar, systematic conciliar action in Egypt and in Syria and Palestine.</div>
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In the early years of the next century, we have records of councils in Spain (Elvira, 300) and in France (Arles, 314) with the names of bishops present and a list of the laws they enacted. The Catholic Church may, indeed, be a Church made up of churches (i.e., dioceses) but never, so this history seems to show, of dioceses where each bishop acts without any reference to the rest.</div>
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When the emperor Constantine publicly became a follower of Christ (312) he was immediately faced with the grave African problem known to history as the Donatist Schism. Necessarily, and in a very brief space of time, he was familiarised with the function of the council of the bishops as an instrument of church government. It was natural, inevitable indeed, that when a few years later the Arian crisis arose, all concerned, the emperor and the bishops, should think of a great council as the first move in the restoration of order. The novel feature in 325 was that not only the bishops of the locality affected were convoked, but the bishops of the whole Catholic world.<sup>[2]</sup> This was to be not a regional or provincial council, but a council for the church in general - a General Council.</div>
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The universal belief that the Church of Christ, in its day-to-day business of teaching the doctrine of Christ, is divinely preserved from teaching erroneously entailed the consequence that (to use a modern terminology) the General Council is considered infallible in its decisions about belief. If the official teachers as a body are infallible as they teach, scattered about the world in their hundreds of sees, they do not lose the promised, divine, preserving guidance once they have come together in a General Council. And once General Councils have taken place, we begin to meet explicit statements of this truth. The councils themselves are explicitly conscious of it when, making their statement of the truth denied by the innovator, they bluntly say of those who will not accept their decision: <i>Let him be anathema</i>. St. Athanasius, who as a young cleric was present at Nicaea, can refer to its decree about Arianism as something final, the last all-decisive word:</div>
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The word of the Lord, put forth by the Ecumenical Council at Nicaea is an eternal word, enduring for ever.<sup>[3]</sup></blockquote>
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Eighty years or so later than this, the pope, St. Leo I, warning the bishops assembled at the General Council of Chalcedon to leave untouched the decisions of Nicaea about the rank of the great sees of the East, speaks of Nicaea as "having fixed these arrangements by decrees that are inviolable," and says:</div>
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These arrangements were made by the bishops at Nicaea under divine inspiration.<sup>[4]</sup></blockquote>
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This was in the year 451. His successor, St. Gregory the Great, writing about 594 to the patriarch of Constantinople, has a reference to the special prestige of the first, doctrine-defining General Councils which equates their work with that of Holy Scripture: "I profess that as I receive and venerate the four books of the Gospels, so I do the four councils," which he proceeds to list: Nicaea in 325, Constantinople in 381, Ephesus 431, Chalcedon 451. These, he says, "are the four squared stone on which the structure of the holy faith arises."<sup>[5]</sup></div>
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Nowhere in these early centuries, in fact, do we find any member of the Church questioning the truth as the General Councils have defined it. What they teach as the truth is taken to be as true as though it were a statement of Scripture itself. The question was never raised, seemingly, that the greater or smaller number of bishops who in response to the summons attended in any way affected the peculiar authority of the General Council; nor the fact that all of these bishops were from the Greek-speaking East.</div>
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How these fundamental, primitive notions developed, how all that they seminally contained matured and expanded through the centuries, this is the very subject-matter of the essays that follow. And here will be found, in its due place, some account of the controversies that later arose as to the relation (the constitutional relation, so to speak) of the General Council to its president, the pope. What the role of the pope has been in the General Council is, necessarily, a main topic of all these essays. But it may be useful to say a word about this here, and something also about the nature of the bishops' role.</div>
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The General Council is, then, a purely human arrangement whereby a divinely founded institution functions in a particular way for a particular purpose. That divinely founded thing is the teaching Church, i.e., the pope and the diocesan bishops of the Church of Christ. The teaching is an activity of the Church that is continuous, never ceasing. The General Council of the teaching Church, in all the sessions of the occasions on which it has met, in the nineteen hundred years and more of the Church's history, has sat for perhaps thirty years in all, at most. It is an exceptional phenomenon in the life of the Church, and usually it appears in connection with some great crisis of that life.</div>
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Ever since the popes were first articulate about the General Council, they have claimed the right to control its action and to take their place in it (whether personally or by legates sent in their name) or by their subsequent acceptance of the council, to give or withhold an approbation of its decisions, which stamps them as the authentic teaching of the Church of Christ. Only through their summoning it, or through their consenting to take their place at it, does the assembly of bishops become a General Council. No member of the Church has ever proposed that a General Council shall be summoned and the pope be left out, nor that the pope should take any other position at the General Council but as its president. The history of the twenty General Councils shows that the bishops - a section of them - not infrequently fought at the council the policies of the popes who had summoned the council, and fought even bitterly. But in no council has it been moved that the bishop of X be promoted to the place of the Bishop of Rome, or that the Bishop of Rome's views be disregarded, and held of no more account than those of the bishop of any other major see. There are, indeed, gaps in our knowledge of the detail of all these events; the mist of antiquity at times, no doubt, obscures our view, but through the mist at its worst the general shape is ever discernible of a Roman Primacy universally recognised, and submitted to, albeit (at times) unwillingly - recognised and submitted to because, so the bishops believed, it was set up by God Himself.</div>
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To the General Councils of the Church there have been summoned, in the last 850 years, as well as the bishops, other ecclesiastics of importance, the General Superiors of religious orders, for example, and abbots of particular monasteries. But these are present by concession. The essential elements of the General Council are, in addition to the pope, the bishops ruling their sees. And the bishops are present as the accredited witnesses of what is believed throughout the Church. This is the traditional, standard conception of their role on these occasions. And for typical modern statements, contained in well-known textbooks used throughout the Church today in hundreds of theological classrooms, this from Fr. Christian Pesch, S.J.,<sup>[6]</sup> may be quoted:</div>
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The bishops do not come together in order to think up something new out of their own minds, but in order to be witnesses of the teaching received from Christ and handed out by the Church.</blockquote>
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And this, too, from Fr. Dominic Prummer, O.P.:</div>
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The bishops gathered in a General Council are not mere counselors of the pope, but real legislators; which is why each bishop signs the <i>acta</i> of the council as follows: 'I, James, bishop of X, defining have subscribed my name.'<sup>[7]</sup></blockquote>
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As to the role of the General Council <i>vis-a-vis</i> any controversy about the Christian Faith in connection with which it may have been summoned, this has never been more luminously stated, in a single sentence, than by John Henry Newman, with reference, indeed, to the first council of the great series, but, as history alone would show, a statement true of them all.</div>
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It must be borne in mind that the great Council at Nicaea was summoned, not to decide for the first time what was to be held concerning our Lord's divine nature, but, as far as inquiry came into its work, to determine the fact whether Arius did or did not contradict the Church's teaching, and, if he did, by what sufficient <i>tessera</i><sup>[8]</sup> he and his party could be excluded from the communion of the faithful.<sup>[9]</sup></blockquote>
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And Newman's own great hero, St. Athanasius, writing only thirty-four years after Nicaea, has a similar thought when he draws attention to the different way the Council of Nicaea spoke when it was making laws about ecclesiastical discipline and when it was facing the problem of Arius.</div>
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The fathers at Nicaea, speaking of the Easter feast, say "We have decided as follows." But about the faith they do not say "We have decided," but "This is what the Catholic Church believes." And immediately they proclaim how they believe, in order to declare, not some novelty, but that their belief is apostolic, and that what they write down is not something they have discovered, but those very things which the Apostles taught.<sup>[10]</sup></blockquote>
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This series of essays has no claim on the reader's notice beyond its purpose to say how each of these councils came to be, and what each achieved. Many questions about General Councils as such, and about particular General Councils, are inevitably not even alluded to. I have no ambition to write a survey course in which everything is mentioned and nothing taught. Nevertheless, there are some serious matters that cannot be omitted, and yet can only be dealt with summarily - the new theories which became heresies, for example, and the orthodox statements of the truth which the theories perverted. In summary accounts of such things, the impression is easily conveyed that these disputes are a mere war of words. Actually, what any study of the voluminous writings on both sides reveals is that the conflicting minds are of the first order, that the points at issue are the fundamentals of revealed truth, and (a very important circumstance that often has escaped the historian's notice) that the contestants are passionately in earnest, not as rivals in scholarship or philosophy, but as pastoral-minded bishops, anxious about the salvation of men's souls. A master mind, reviewing a situation we shall shortly be studying, affords an illustration of this.</div>
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Cyril, it may be, was overharsh in the words he used, words used without enough reflexion. Deep within him his passionate attachment to the truth that Christ is a single being was intertwined with the innermost strands of the mysticism of the East. For the disciple of Theodore of Mopsuestia, as for the disciple of Pelagius, the question of the relations between man and God is, above all, a question of merit and no-merit. In the great book of deserts each man's account is kept in two columns, debit and credit. As a man's merits pile up, as he lessens his faults, so does his situation improve. At the end, God balances the account, and places us according to the excess of credit over debit. Moralism pure and simple, this way of looking at things, and not religion at all. Where, in such a system, does the Incarnation come in? Or the cross of Christ? Here, Jesus Christ is our model, nothing more. Here we never meet our true saviour, our redeemer, He who by His divine presence purifies everything, lifts all to a higher plane, consecrates all, makes divine beings of us so far as the limits of our nature allow this communication of divinity. </blockquote>
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Very, very different is the spirit that gives life to the theology of St. Cyril. Here, Jesus Christ is truly God-within-us. The Christian makes a direct contact with Him, by a union of natures, a mysterious union indeed, under the sacramental veil of the Eucharist. Through this body and this blood he comes to make the contact with God, for these have, in Jesus Christ, a union (equally a union of natures ) with divinity. [...] To the poor peasant working in the fields of the Delta, to the dock labourer at the port of Pharos, Cyril gives the message that, in this world, he can touch God. And that through this contact, whence springs a mystical kinship, he can receive an assurance about the life hereafter; not only the guarantee that he is immortal, but that he will be immortal joined with God.<sup>[11]</sup></blockquote>
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Such can be the practical importance of "abstract theological thought."</div>
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And, with reference to the stormy history of the first eight councils, events of a thousand to sixteen hundred years ago, we may remind ourselves that the actors here are Greeks, Egyptians, Syrians; their natural temperament and sense of nationality was not a whit less ardent than it can show itself to be in their descendants of this mid-twentieth century.</div>
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And now, to bring these introductory remarks to an end, it will perhaps be helpful to draw attention to one feature particularly of the history of the first seven councils. This is not so much the serious differences of opinion as to the interpretation of the basic mysteries of the Christian religion, which is their main concern, but rather the way these differences, at times, seem to turn so largely on different ways of understanding the terms used to express or explain the doctrine. Since all this is likely to be unfamiliar to the general reader, to him I would say some words of the great authority I have already made use of, a writer who all his life was ever conscious that the course of true historical study is strewn with difficulties, Cardinal John Henry Newman:</div>
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First of all, and in as few words as possible, and <i>ex abundanti cautela</i>: Every Catholic holds that the Christian dogmas were in the Church from the time of the Apostles; that they were ever in their substance what they are now; that they existed before the formulas were publicly adopted, in which, as time went on, they were defined and recorded, and that such formulas, when sanctioned by the due ecclesiastical acts, are binding on the faith of Catholics, and have a dogmatic authority. [...] </blockquote>
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Even before we take into account the effect which would naturally be produced on the first Christians by the novelty and mysteriousness of doctrines which depend for their reception simply upon Revelation, we have reason to anticipate that there would be difficulties and mistakes in expressing them, when they first came to be set forth by unauthoritative writers. Even in secular sciences, inaccuracy of thought and language is but gradually corrected; that is, in proportion as their subject-matter is thoroughly scrutinized and mastered by the co-operation of many independent intellects, successively engaged upon it. Thus, for instance, the word <i>person</i> requires the rejection of various popular senses, and a careful definition, before it can serve for philosophical uses. We sometimes use it for an individual as contrasted with a class or multitude, as when we speak of having "personal objections" to another; sometimes for the body, in contrast to the soul, as when we speak of "beauty of person." We sometimes use it in the abstract, as when we speak of another as "insignificant in person." How divergent in meaning are the derivatives, <i>personable</i>, <i>personalities</i>, <i>personify</i>, <i>personation</i>, <i>personage</i>, <i>parsonage</i>! This variety arises partly from our own carelessness, partly from the necessary developments of language, partly from the defects of our vernacular tongue. </blockquote>
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Language, then, requires to be re-fashioned even for sciences which are based on the senses and the reason; but much more will this be the case when we are concerned with subject-matter, of which, in our present state, we cannot possibly form any complete or consistent conception, such as the Catholic doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. Since they are from the nature of the case above our intellectual reach, and were unknown till the preaching of Christianity, they required on their first promulgation new words, or words used in new senses, for their due enunciation; and, since these were not definitely supplied by Scripture or by tradition, nor for centuries by ecclesiastical authority, variety in the use, and confusion in the apprehension of them, were unavoidable in the interval. [...] Not only had the words to be adjusted and explained which were peculiar to different schools or traditional in different places, but there was the formidable necessity of creating a common measure between two, or rather three languages - Latin, Greek, and Syriac.<sup>[12]</sup></blockquote>
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Footnotes</h3>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] For a succinct, popular account of which cf. Hughes, <i>History of the Church</i>, vol. I, chaps. III, IV, <i>passim</i>. For an authoritative, documented account cf. Pierre Batiffol, <i>L'Eglise Naissante</i>. This has been translated into English as <i>Primitive Christianity</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] The Greek word for "the whole world" is <i>oikoumene</i>, whence our modem adjective "ecumenical," which is used with reference to councils of the Church as an equivalent for "general."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] <i>Letter to the Africans</i>, in Rouet de Journel S.J., <i>Enchiridion Patristicum</i>, no. 792.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] <i>Ibid</i>., no. 2185.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[5] <i>Ibid</i>., no. 2291.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[6] <i>Praelectiones Dogmaticae</i> (5th Ed., 1915) vol. 1, p. 313.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[7] <i>Definiens subscripsi</i>. Cf. Prummer, <i>Manuale Theologiae</i>, 5th Ed., 1928, I, p. 119.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[8] I.e. testing token.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[9] "Apostolical Tradition," an article in the <i>British Critic</i>, July 1836, reprinted in <i>Essays, Critical and Historical</i>, vol. I, p. 125.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[10] <i>Epistola de Synodis</i>, par. 5, in Rouet de Journel, S.J., <i>Enchiridion Patristicum</i>, no. 785.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[11] Monseigneur Louis Duchesne, <i>Les Eglises separees</i>, 38-40.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[12] J.H. Newman, <i>On St. Cyril's Formula</i> (1858), reprinted in <i>Tracts, Theological and Ecclesiastical </i>(1874), pp. 287-90.</span></div>
Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-11287275736026352632016-06-08T06:45:00.000+02:002016-06-08T06:47:38.690+02:00The Question of Penance and the Shepherd of Hermas<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Reading N°51 in the History of the Catholic Church</i></div>
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by</div>
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<b>Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.</b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx8qQe_0BrzzASIbiEYnEW4E_L-va7YUL4l66NxkoxOK8I9TflIkwPjcQHZlukWk76D25T45cxxWY45zm7fk0UF8fQOtEU0aDoUcQ7PQlkYZTg-04f-tgm4ZFuDdwYWE3i0K_gbAvsXE4T/s1600/Shepherd+of+Hermas.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img adlesse_been_here="true" border="0" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx8qQe_0BrzzASIbiEYnEW4E_L-va7YUL4l66NxkoxOK8I9TflIkwPjcQHZlukWk76D25T45cxxWY45zm7fk0UF8fQOtEU0aDoUcQ7PQlkYZTg-04f-tgm4ZFuDdwYWE3i0K_gbAvsXE4T/s400/Shepherd+of+Hermas.png" width="500" /></a></div>
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During the latter part of the second century, four great problems claimed the attention of those who belonged to the Church and of those who regarded her with religious curiosity from without: a moral problem, a philosophical problem, a dogmatic problem, and an apologetic problem. Hermas, St. Justin, St. Irenaeus, and Tertullian successively broached these four problems.</div>
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The Church, expanding among the Gentiles, opened her arms wide to the converts from paganism, to converts whose former life was often voluptuous or frivolous. She thus assimilated elements that were less pure than those of her first days. The virtue of the neophytes was not sustained by the enthusiasm which marked that early period. Less frequent and less powerful were the mystical graces which at first Providence bestowed upon the Christians so lavishly. Christian communities now counted in their ranks some criminals, murderers, adulterers, and apostates. Could such offenses be blotted out by penance?</div>
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Two extreme opinions came to light. By an excusable exaggeration, many of the early Christians had imagined that Baptism and the Eucharist conferred a sort of impeccability. Did not God's gift have the power of communicating an incorruptible life? And was it possible that a rational man, permitted to nourish his soul upon his God, would reach such an excess of ingratitude as gravely to offend Him thereafter? Therefore, when these Christians witnessed the first apostasies, they saw only one possible penalty for the abominable defection: exclusion from the Church, malediction, or at least abandonment of the guilty one to God's justice. These Christians took in strict literalness the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews:</div>
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It is impossible for those who were once illuminated [by baptism], have tasted also the heavenly gift [of the Eucharist], and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost [...] and are fallen away, to be renewed again to penance. [...] For the earth that drinketh in the rain which cometh often upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is tilled, receiveth blessing from God. But that which bringeth forth thorns and briers is reprobate and very near unto a curse, whose end is to be burnt.<sup>[1]</sup></blockquote>
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But the harshness of such a solution provoked a radical reaction. Self-styled doctors held that every fault of a Christian should be regarded as indifferent. Did not the disciples of Carpocrates teach that man is saved by faith and charity, and that the rest does not count?<sup>[2]</sup> Did not certain Valentinians declare that once anyone has recognized the rights of the Holy Spirit over the spirit, the flesh should be given its rights?<sup>[3]</sup> These doctrines, slowly trickling into the mass of the faithful, appeared to many to be the true solution.</div>
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As usually happens, the clear declarations and the decisive tone of such teaching made converts among the people, ever ready to prefer a shocking doctrine that is asserted with clearness and force to a prudent doctrine which employs shades of difference in its formulation.</div>
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Weak but sincere souls that had yielded to sin, or feared they might yield, suffered unspeakable agony. From what he had seen with his own eyes, St. Irenaeus gives us a picture of those "who have their consciences seared as with a hot iron. [...] Some, in a tacit kind of way, despairing of attaining to the life of God, others have apostatized altogether; while others hesitate between the two courses, being neither without nor within."<sup>[4]</sup></div>
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Between the years AD 140 and 154, according to the conjectures of the best critics, there appeared at Rome a book that aimed to bring peace to troubled consciences, to refute the two radical doctrines, and to offer a prudent solution to the problem, in conformity with the Gospel spirit of justice and mercy. This book was entitled <i>Poimen</i> (<i>Shepherd</i>), and was written by a brother of Pope Pius I. Its style was simple, figurative, and popular.</div>
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The author first relates his own history. He was born in slavery, sold by his master to a Roman matron named Rhode, later freed by her, and then married. He acquired a large fortune in business, but at the same time lost both faith and virtue. Chastised by God, and stripped of his riches, he had, he says, the grace to bow beneath the hand of the Lord who struck him. But, while he was plowing on a small farm, at the gates of the city, an angel of God appeared to him in the form of a shepherd. This angel gave him certain counsels of morality which he was to communicate to his brethren.</div>
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These counsels are divided into three books: the book of the Visions, the book of the Similitudes, and the book of the Precepts or Commandments.</div>
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Hermas is not a controversialist, but an apologist, in the sense that he wishes to defend the Church and make her loved. What he desires is to confound the hypocrites and the wicked and reject them so that, being thus purified, "the Church of God shall be one body, one mind, one spirit, one faith, one love."<sup>[5]</sup> A single inspiration runs through the whole work - to give hope of salvation to the fallen Christian. Its general subject is "the pardon of sins after a sincere repentance." He says:</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Lord bears no malice against those who confess their sins, but is merciful.<sup>[6]</sup></blockquote>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Every fault is remissible, according to Hermas. Neither murder nor adultery nor apostasy - the three sins that some later on wished to exclude from pardon - is reserved. Yet the author attaches two conditions to the pardon: the penitent, once converted, must afflict his soul, humble and purify himself;<sup>[7]</sup> the penitent can be converted only once.<sup>[8]</sup> Hermas seems to say also that this pardon is only an exceptional grace accorded merely in view of the proximate end of the world.<sup>[9]</sup> This moral doctrine of the <i>Shepherd</i> was received in the middle of the second century as a voice of mercy. Today it seems severe. But, to appreciate it, we must put ourselves in spirit in the times when this work appeared.<sup>[10]</sup> In a period when martyrdom was threatening every Christian, a popular sermon, as Hermas' book really was, without aiming at too great theological exactness, gave Christians to understand that all were required to possess their soul in readiness for heroism.</div>
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Hermas is not theologically precise, either when he speaks of the end of the world, which he supposes to be imminent, or when he discourses on the Trinity, which he seems to grasp but poorly. But he loves and venerates the Church with his whole heart. It is, he says, the first of all creatures; for it the world was made;<sup>[11]</sup> it is established upon the Son of God as upon a rock, and belongs to Him as to a master.<sup>[12]</sup> And it is a hierarchical church, with its various chiefs, bishops, priests, deacons, apostles or missioners.<sup>[13]</sup> Its function is to teach the faithful, to train the elect.<sup>[14]</sup> This sole Catholic Church, superposed upon the local churches and including them all, has a supreme head. When the aged woman who stands for the Church appears to Hermas, she hands him a book; and Hermas is directed to bring this book to Clement, the head of the Church of Rome, who will see that it reaches "the cities abroad."</div>
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The <i>Shepherd</i> of Hermas spread rapidly among the faithful. Its diffusion is attested by St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, St. Cyprian, by several Latin versions, and by an Ethiopic version. Some churches even included it, with the Epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians, in the canon of their sacred books.</div>
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<h3>
Footnotes</h3>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Hebrews 6:4-8.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] St. Irenaeus, <i>Haereses</i>, I, xxv, 5.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] <i>Ibidem</i>, I, vi, 3.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] <i>Ibidem</i>, I, xii, 7.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[5] Hermas, <i>Similtudes</i>, IX, xviii, 4.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[6] <i>Ibidem</i>, IX, xxiii, 4.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[7] <i>Ibidem</i>, IX, xxiii, 5.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[8] <i>Precepts</i>, IV, i, 8; iii, 6.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[9] <i>Visions</i>, I and II; cf. III; <i>Similtudes</i>, VIII, ix, 4.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">[10] A. d'Alès ("La discipline pénitentielle d'après Ie Pasteur d'Hermas," in the <i>Recherches de science religieuse</i>, 1911, pp. 105-139, 240-263) says: "Hermas' work is not an official document, but a private document of very great worth, because it naively reflects the preoccupations of the pastors of the Roman Church in the second century, and the expedients of their zeal. [...] We can understand that it was judged inopportune to enumerate, for catechumens, the opportunities they might have for being reconciled to God, should they fall into sin after Baptism. For Christians who have fallen into sin after Baptism, specifically to adulterers and apostates, or idolaters, the Shepherd offers, for one time, on condition of penance being performed, divine pardon, and also - as is evidenced throughout the book - reconciliation with the Church. At the same time, it took pains to warn them that this favor would not be repeated. For those who fell again after a first reconciliation, we cannot see what the Shepherd offered; but doubtless it did not leave them without hope. Whatever the severities of the Shepherd for the δίψυχοι, one thing stands out clearly in the book, namely, that whoever is willing to do penance can again enter into favor with God."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[11] <i>Visions</i>, II, iv, 1. Cf. I, i, 6; III, iii, 3-5.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[12] <i>Similitudes</i>, IX, xii, 1, 7 f.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[13] <i>Visions</i>, II, ii, 6; II, iv, 3; III, v, 1.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[14] <i>Ibidem</i>, III, ix, 7-10.</span></div>
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Radical Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04135335562951838761noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2054853820111729866.post-42830661591054965412016-06-06T12:43:00.000+02:002016-06-06T12:48:29.650+02:00Catholic Church and Christian State, Pt. 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<h3>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://theradicalcatholic.blogspot.ch/2016/06/catholic-church-and-christian-state-pt-1.html">Part I</a> | </span>Part II</h3>
</div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Power of the Church in Worldly Matters</span><br />
<br />
by<br />
<b>Cardinal Joseph Hergenröther</b><br />
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<h3>
§1. Three Theories on this Point</h3>
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In relation to the power of the Church in temporal matters were formed three systems based upon the notions expressed in the Decree <i>Novit</i>, upon the idea prominent even in the first ages of Christianity that the spiritual power was above the temporal, and upon the theory and practice of the Middle Ages:</div>
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<ul>
<li>the system of the <i>direct</i> power of the Church in matters temporal;</li>
<li>that of the merely <i>indirect</i> power;</li>
<li>that of the merely <i>directing</i> power.</li>
</ul>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify;">
§2. Direct Power of the Church in Temporal Matters (<i>Potestas directa Ecclesiae in temporalia</i>)</h3>
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The main doctrines of this system were as follows: God has given to the Pope, as His Vicar, endowed with the unlimited power of binding and loosing, authority to rule the world in temporal as in spiritual matters, but in such manner that the spiritual power is to be wielded by him in person, while the civil power is to be delivered over to princes, who in reality are merely servants of the Church, receive their power from her, are responsible to her, and - in case of misconduct - may be deposed by her. Thus, the Pope comes to be the supreme head in spiritual and temporal matters, to whom, as Vicar of Christ, the King of kings, all nations and kingdoms are directly subject, and earthly kings must in turn be his representatives.</div>
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This opinion, strongly combated by St. Robert Bellarmine, was held by Henry of Segusia, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, Augustinus Triumphus (1320), Alvarus Pelagius (1340), and others. The learned John of Salisbury (1159), who is in some respects considered as the first defender of this system, has by no means made use of the strong expressions employed by late upholders of this view. His opinion seems to have been shared by St. Thomas Becket.</div>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify;">
§3. Direct Power is Untenable</h3>
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The large majority of theologians have perceived this doctrine to be untenable, and have proved it in detail to be so. They point out that, though Christ is possessed of all power in heaven and upon earth, and though the Pope must be regarded as His Vicar, still this vicariate extends over the religious domain only, and includes no unlimited temporal sovereignty, although the temporal sovereignty of a determinate district has been advantageously united with it. Unbelieving princes do not belong to the fold of Christ (John 21:15 <i>seq</i>.), and the Church has in general no jurisdiction over unbelievers (1 Corinthians 5:12); the Pope would most surely not appoint heathens as his vicars.</div>
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Neither are the keys of earthly kingdoms committed to the Pope, but those of the Kingdom of Heaven; so that Christian rulers, by the acceptance and introduction of Christianity, have not forfeited their sovereign power, and Christ, who bestows the heavenly, does not deprive them of their earthly kingdom. Were the Pope a universal ruler, the bishops would necessarily be everywhere rulers in their own cities and dioceses; the practical consequences of this doctrine prove its absurdity.</div>
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The Popes have never laid claim to any such power, but have, on the contrary, fully acknowledged the jurisdiction of temporal princes. Even Innocent III, to whom men love to attribute the most exorbitant pretensions, distinguished perfectly between his complete and unlimited spiritual jurisdiction and his limited temporal power. The Popes, when claiming the care of the heavenly and earthly kingdom, have never said that the two were subject to them in precisely the same manner; and in maintaining the superiority of the spiritual power they have still never said that temporal power must everywhere and in all cases be subject to it, or that the temporal had its origin in the spiritual. Some are astonished at the saying of Innocent III, that Christ gave to St. Peter the government not of the whole Church, but of the whole world, but in this he surely said nothing more than had been already said by Eugenius III, that Christ had delivered to St. Peter the rights of the earthly and of the heavenly kingdom. The point which Innocent desired to prove was, as the whole context shows, that the primacy of the Pope has no territorial limits. The power of the Pope extends to all Christian lands, not merely on earth, but also in heaven; by this is meant spiritual power only, of which it had been before said: "Power is given to princes on earth, but to priests in heaven also."</div>
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§4. Indirect Power of the Church in Temporal Matters (<i>Potestas indirecta in temporalia</i>)</h3>
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The second system, which has the largest number of followers, teaches that the Church has direct spiritual power, but no direct temporal power; she is appointed to govern the faithful in the supernatural way of salvation; spiritual matters alone are in themselves subject to her, and in worldly matters she takes no part. In so far only as temporal matters are opposed to the supernatural end, or are necessary fur its attainment, has the Church to concern herself with them, and to exert her power. She has in that case to correct and to guide the worldly power and, if necessary, to chastise it when it turns aside from the right path of divine law, hinders the attainment of the supernatural end, and endangers the stability of religion and of the Church. Neither the Pope nor the Church can directly depose a prince, but they can where the highest interests of religion are concerned declare the duty of obedience towards him to have ceased. A prince, bound by oath to maintain religion, who has broken this oath by apostasy or by persecution of the Church, who hearkens to no warnings and despises ecclesiastical penalties, may not be dethroned by his people, for this would strengthen and justify all rebellion; but the people must be declared free from their oath of allegiance by sentence of a General Council or of the Head of the Church.</div>
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This indirect power of the Church in matters temporal in general, and in relation to the dethroning of princes in particular, is not a temporal but a spiritual power. It is exerted in matters temporal only in so far as they intrench upon religion, and in this way cease to be purely temporal. Thus Innocent IV said that the Church passed judgment in a spiritual manner on temporal matters (<i>spiritualiter de temporalibus</i>); and in his contest with Frederick II he declared that he was making use not of the temporal but of the spiritual sword. Some theologians have attributed to the Pope in certain cases power to depose a prince; but the distinction is rather in the words than the matter; they required the same conditions, and merely took the consequences of the act for the act itself; instead of the power of declaring the right of sovereignty forfeited, they supposed him to have the power of deposing (<i>potestas deponendi</i> instead of <i>potestas declarandi</i>). In general, it was held that all things temporal were to be directed towards eternal goods, and that earthly goods were to be used with a view to the heavenly, otherwise they would be merely abused.</div>
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At first, the title "indirect power" appeared to many strange and contrary to the common teaching; and for this reason St. Robert Bellarmine's book putting it forward was placed on the Index under Sixtus V; but before long, the conviction spread that the matter of the book was sound, and that the expression "indirect power" was well-chosen; Urban VII therefore, in 1590, had the book erased from the Index.</div>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify;">
§5. Bellarmine's Teaching</h3>
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St. Robert Bellarmine treats of the indirect power of the Church in a triple application:</div>
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<ol>
<li><i>quantum ad personas</i>;</li>
<li><i>quantum ad leges</i>;</li>
<li><i>quantum ad judicia</i>.</li>
</ol>
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In relation to <i>persons</i> (1), he teaches that in an ordinary way, as <i>judex ordinanus</i>, the Pope cannot depose temporal princes as he can bishops, but can only, in virtue of his right as head of Christendom, dispose of all things necessary to the salvation of souls. All the schoolmen were agreed upon the main point, that in case of threatened destruction to faith and the exercise of religion, or where the preservation of the Church is concerned, this power may be exercised, especially in a case of apostasy from the faith.</div>
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In relation to <i>laws</i> (2), the Pope, as Pope, cannot release from civil laws or abolish the laws of temporal princes except only when it is necessary for the good of souls, or when an existing temporal law is dangerous to salvation, and when at the same time princes refuse its repeal.</div>
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As <i>judge</i> (3) he can pass sentence in temporal matters only when absolutely necessary for the salvation of souls.</div>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify;">
§6. Grounds for this Opinion</h3>
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In further support of this opinion, the following proofs were brought forward: Christian princes form, as is universally allowed, part of the flock of Christ confided to St. Peter (John 21:15); the charge of them consists in so leading them that they may attain eternal salvation. But how can they attain it if the supreme pastor has not the means either of leading back erring sheep to the fold or of hindering the rest from going astray? This he cannot do if he is forced to look on while a prince is raging unpunished against the Church, and leading or forcing the subjects bound to him by oath away from the true religion into error. The Pope must take the necessary steps against him by censures, and if his obstinacy require it, also against those who obey his evil orders, and who have dealings with him in his official position. In case of extreme obstinacy, which is made a condition by all theologians, the Pope may declare the oath taken to a prince to be no longer binding, for the purpose of moving him to amendment. No oath binds in such a way that it cannot be loosed if it endangers the salvation of souls, and no end may be preferred before the highest and last end of man.</div>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify;">
§7. Indirect Power Always Used by the Church</h3>
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The Church, even in the earliest times, exercised an indirect power in temporal matters. How was it else that she forbade the faithful to undertake and administer certain employments and offices prejudicial to the welfare of their souls, and that later, when persecution had ceased and the danger was lessened, she still required ecclesiastical approval for the administration and exercise of such offices and professions, though they were no longer prohibited? Christians who held the post of city duumvirate, and were thus brought into close contact with heathen rites, had to remain away from church during their year of office. Under Constantine, however, the Synod of Arles (314) directed that Christian <i>praesides</i> were to bring with them into their provinces letters of communion from their bishop, and only in the event of their acting contrary to the laws of the Church were they to be cut off from communion by the bishop of the place in which they were holding office. By an exercise of the same power, persons performing public penance were excluded from civil as well as military offices (<i>militia togata et paludata</i>), and even when it was over, these offices might not be resumed under pain of perpetual exclusion from them. It is manifest that the Church has ever had the right of imposing public penance upon Christians, however high their dignity; from the penance it resulted that such persons forfeited their office and dignity; and thus, in an indirect manner, she deprived them of temporal power. The well-being of private persons was not more important in the eyes of the Church than that of Christian princes; she imposed penances upon the one as upon the other, even when they were not voluntarily under one. This is one of the earliest forms in which the indirect power was exercised. Again, in time of persecution, the Church enjoined upon the faithful flight and complete withdrawal from contact with the heathen world; and this flight was permitted even when forbidden by the heathen rulers, and although public burdens were thus avoided ; and in this way she interfered indirectly in the domain of the State. This was indeed only a conditional and provisional measure; but the same is true of all other cases of indirect interference, which only continue so long as the danger exists, so long as the sinner refuses amendment, so long as is required by the all-important end of the salvation of souls.</div>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify;">
§8. Teaching of the Fathers</h3>
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The Fathers laid it down as a rule that all public temporal regulations are to be observed which are not a hindrance to religion or contrary to the commandments of God. In case of danger to salvation, all is to give way, according to Matthew 16:26, 5:29. He who is charged with the guidance of the faithful in the way of eternal salvation must be able to know and to set aside the hindrances to salvation. The preservation and furtherance of spiritual goods, which is the charge of the Church, requires from time to time the sacrifice of some earthly good or interest, and therefore the power entrusted with earthly and temporal interests must give way before the power entrusted with spiritual and eternal interests. Civil society rests upon the observance of natural law, distributive justice, and freedom of intercourse. By an abuse of power, legitimate authorities may become illegitimate; when this happened, nations threw off such authorities in virtue of the judgment of the Church; and what she did was not by her own power to set aside a rightful sovereign, but, when a sovereign had become illegitimate, to declare him to be such.</div>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify;">
§9. Cardinal Turrecremata</h3>
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Cardinal Bellarmine is usually spoken of as the originator of this doctrine; but before his time, the majority of theologians taught the same. Cardinal Turrecremata of the Dominican order (died 1468) states two opinions:</div>
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<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">the Pope has power in spiritual matters alone, and not in temporal, with the exception of that which the Church has acquired by the gift of the faithful or of princes;</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">the Pope, as Vicar of Christ, has full jurisdiction over the whole earth in matters spiritual and temporal.</li>
</ol>
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The cardinal himself holds neither of these opinions, but teaches, in accordance with the system spoken of above, that the Pope has jurisdiction in temporal matters <i>only so far as may be necessary</i> for the preservation of spiritual goods in himself and others, or so far as is required by the needs of the Church or the duty of the pastoral charge in the correction of sinners. If it be objected from Scripture that Christ had no worldly power, and desired none, and that therefore His Vicar has none, the answer is:</div>
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</div>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">that no such power is, in itself, ascribed to the Pope;</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">that to our Savior is given <i>all</i> power in heaven and on earth. He is the King of kings. Lord over all, and this even as man; but He did not avail Himself of His power because He came to be an example of humility and poverty.</li>
</ol>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Before Pilate, Christ expressly declared Himself to be a king; He did not say that His kingdom is not <i>in</i> this world, but only that it is not <i>of</i> this world; He was but declaring the high origin and sublimity of His kinghood. When Christ paid the tribute for Himself and Peter, it was not most surely done because it was due, but to avoid scandal (Matthew 17:26). In driving the buyers and sellers from the Temple, Christ exercised the spiritual power, which extended to earthly things, since He paid no regard to the worldly loss of those whom He expelled.</div>
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<h3 style="text-align: justify;">
§10. This Teaching is the Most General</h3>
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The more closely the ancient theologians are examined the more clear does it become that Bellarmine and the Jesuits - who were moreover especially admonished to keep, if possible, to the common teaching of the theological schools - were not introducing any new doctrine, but were on this point completely in accordance with the other religious orders. The teaching of the great theologians of the Middle Ages - St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas, and others - differs in no essential point from theirs. The Dominicans in the time of Bellarmine taught the same; e.g. amongst others, Francis Victoria (died 1546) says:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
The Pope in matters temporal may not interfere with the civil power, unless where there is danger of grievous loss to souls.</blockquote>
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Precisely the same was taught by theologians of various nations, religious orders, and positions, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the same again in the eighteenth, although these controversies were then shortly supplanted by others of quite another type.</div>
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§11. Attacks upon Bellarmine's Teaching</h3>
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On comparing the expressions of Bellarmine and the Jesuits who succeeded him with those of more ancient theologians, it will be found that, far from seeking to render the prevailing view more strict, these later theologians strove rather to modify it; not only did they, in opposition to the theory of a direct power in matters temporal, defend the merely indirect power, but even to this they put many limitations. Bellarmine was attacked on either side: by some, he was blamed for granting to the Church too little power; by others, especially by Anglicans and Gallicans, for granting her too much. The earlier French writers had disputed the direct power only, as may be seen in the controversy under Boniface VIII, who, as they supposed, desired to reduce France to the condition of a feudatory kingdom; the later writers since the seventeenth century disputed the indirect power also. Until 1615, this was still considered the prevailing doctrine; but the sentence (afterwards revoked) passed by the Paris parliament in 1610 condemning Bellarmine's work, <i>On the Power of the Pope in Matters Temporal against William Barclay</i>, was followed by the censures of the Sorbonne in 1626 on the Jesuit Anthony Santarelli and the Dominican Malagula for the same doctrine; and the first of the four Gallican articles of 1682 rejected altogether any power, whether direct or indirect, on the part of the Church in the civil government of kings and princes.</div>
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§12. Objections</h3>
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Various objections have been brought forward against the indirect power:</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">The highest civil authority was from the beginning a lawful power; it had its origin in God, and could lose nothing of its power by the institution of the ecclesiastical hierarchy: Christ Himself tells us to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's (Matthew 22:21).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Moreover, the early Popes and bishops had no thought of exercising any such power: the Fathers were all in favor of obedience, even to apostates such as Julian, who was obeyed by Valentinian, except in matters relating to the heathen superstition: they excommunicated princes and authorities, but never so much as thought of deposing them.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The system of indirect power brings with it the direct, for which it serves as a mask. All cases would become subject to the Pope, primarily, indeed, heresy and idolatry; but from the eleventh century, simony was called heresy, and covetousness also is idolatry (Ephesians 5:5); incapacity was likewise made a reason for deposition. The rule which held good for princes must also hold good for individuals; and all temporal matters without distinction must be subject to the Pope, since it is easy to make out that any temporal matter has connection with the spiritual end of man.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The consequences of this doctrine are such as to disturb the peace of princes and people, to put an end to security in the administration of justice, and even to endanger the life of the ruler; since, if a deposed ruler desired to regain his kingdom by force, his murder would be considered allowable.</li>
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§13. Replies</h3>
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To these arguments the following replies have been made:</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">The sovereignty, even of heathen princes, may be lawful, and as such even Christians are bound to render it obedience in all things not contrary to conscience. Civil authority is, within its own domain, independent, and may exist without the Christian religion, but never on so true and firm a basis as is given to it by Christianity. The power bestowed by Christ upon the Apostles includes that of feeding the flock, and the power of the keys, under which head must be reckoned the right of excommunication, and the loosing of oaths injurious to salvation.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">It by no means follows that because at a certain time no use was made of a power, therefore the power was not in existence. The Church may have had many reasons for not proceeding against apostates such as Julian: in the first place, the impossibility of effecting any good, and the danger of increasing the evil, for Julian was in full possession of power; then again the short period of his reign, and the at least apparent justice shown by him in the beginning; the fact also that Julian did not himself pass and publicly enforce laws directly contrary to Christianity; that he did not compel its abjuration, and that he did not make the profession of Christianity, but pretended crimes, the pretext of his frequent barbarity. Moreover, Christianity had not as yet penetrated so deeply into the life of society as to have affected the whole of civil legislation. Where censures would fail of their effect - the amendment of the offender - and would even be the cause of evils still greater, it would seem mere prudence to abstain from the most severe punishments, and rather to suffer the existing evil.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Between the two systems, that of direct and that of indirect power, there is the widest distinction: the first gives to the Pope a <i>real sovereignty</i> in temporal matters; the second imparts to his spiritual power in certain cases only a decisive influence, which has certain results within the civil domain. If excommunication brought with it, as a natural consequence, the forfeiture of earthly sovereignty, the Church would have direct power in temporal matters, and not merely indirect; but for this last, it suffices that the Church should act upon the subjects in such manner that loss of power to the ruler ensues; as by release from the oath of allegiance, which does not of itself necessitate the withdrawal of obedience. Moreover, the power of the Pope is primarily restricted to the case of crimes endangering religion, to which class belong all the known historical cases.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">As to the consequences of the doctrine, the Pope can by no means, at his own pleasure and on every occasion, depose princes; he is able only to declare in what cases citizens are released from the oaths taken to them; for such princes as are the cause of extreme danger to religion and the salvation of souls deprive themselves of their rights by their own acts. Since judgment on these points cannot be passed by individuals or by nations, this doctrine rather serves as a safeguard to rulers and a restraint to subjects. The Pope leaves to the dethroned prince, as long as he gives prospect of amendment, the hope of regaining his kingdom; therefore, that this hope may be realized, the Church is bound to protect and defend him against his subjects.</li>
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No theologian has ever ascribed to the Pope power over the lives of princes; and permission granted for their murder is inconceivable. Bellarmine expressly says:</div>
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It is unheard of that the murder of a prince should ever be permitted, even were he a heretic, a heathen, and a persecutor, and even were monsters to be found capable of committing such a crime.</blockquote>
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§14. Teaching of the Jesuits</h3>
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Even those Jesuits who are said to have boldly developed this doctrine to its uttermost consequences have defended the indirect power alone. Louis Molina discusses the question whether Christ, as man, was temporal king and lord of the whole earth, and lays down the following propositions:</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">The Pope has no temporal power of jurisdiction of such kind as to make him lord of the whole earth; the kingly power is altogether distinct from that of the Pope, and in their own sphere kings are independent. Hence, in the ordinary course of things, it does not belong to the Pope to appoint or to depose kings; the Pope has not power directly to decide purely temporal disputes between princes.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Although the Pope has general jurisdiction over the temporal goods of the Church, still he is not lord over them, but administrator and director, and may not therefore dispose of them at will, but only on prudent grounds for the benefit of the Church.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">To the spiritual power of the Pope, bestowed for the supernatural end, is united the highest and most extensive power of temporal jurisdiction over all princes and other subjects of the Church, <i>in so far as if required by the supernatural end</i>, for which the spiritual power was ordained.</li>
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Hence the Pope can, if it be required by the supernatural end, depose princes and deprive them of their kingdoms. He can also decide between them in temporal concerns, invalidate their laws, and amongst Christians order all things, not anyhow, but in the way recognized according to wise judgment as absolutely necessary to the general spiritual welfare, and may enforce his commands not merely by censures, but also by public punishments and by force of arms, like any other temporal prince; although it is for the most part more suitable for the Pope to do this not of himself, but through temporal princes. In this sense is the Pope said to have both swords and both powers, the spiritual and the temporal. This doctrine was based on the ordinary grounds. Again and again was it pointed out that the Pope, as a rule, was to make use of the spiritual power alone, and only where this proved insufficient, or where there was danger in delay - thus only in extraordinary cases - was he to draw the temporal sword.</div>
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The same is taught by Salmeron, who opposes the direct power, defends the indirect, and, like Molina, appeals to Dominicans, such as Turrecremata, Victoria, and Soto. Anthony Santarelli defended the indirect power alone, although in a more emphatic form; the other religious orders, the secular clergy, and the jurists, maintained the same doctrine; it was, moreover, defended by the Sorbonne. It was only on the 8th of May 1663, after many intrigues on the part of the parliament and the court, that a declaration was passed to the effect that the Pope has no authority in the temporal concerns of kings, and that subjects could in no case be dispensed from the allegiance due to the king. This was based upon former royal edicts, sentences of the parliament, and declarations of the Sorbonne, which, however, merely declared the independence of the French crown; and this had been before acknowledged even by the Popes. Shortly after the Declaration of March 19, 1682, on June 10, 1683, the Inquisition of Toledo, in opposition to it, condemned as erroneous and schismatic the proposition:</div>
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The Pope or the Church have neither direct nor indirect power in the temporal concerns of kings, and these cannot be deprived of their dominions; nor can their subjects, upon whatsoever ground, be pronounced free from their oath of allegiance.</blockquote>
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The Dominican Carena pronounced even impious and heretical the opinion of the Calvinists and the Magdeburg Centuriators, who denied to the Pope any power, direct or indirect, in matters temporal. As this was a question of a doctrine universally defended in the schools, the Jesuits, especially in their delicate relations towards the Dominicans, could not, without the gravest reasons, have taken a different view; moreover, they followed always the common teaching of the schools.</div>
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§15. Directing Power of the Church in Temporal Matters (<i>Potestas directiva</i>)</h3>
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Other theologians, as a modification of the theories described, taught that the Church has only a directing power (a guiding but not a constraining power) over civil authorities; that is to say, it is her right and her duty, by doctrinal decisions, by warnings, declarations, counsels, and commands, to enlighten the consciences of princes and people; to remind them of their duty towards God and religion, to instruct them as to the scope and limit of their duties, and in case of a collision of duties to pass judgment as to what is to be done to satisfy God and conscience. Therefore, she must be the judge of human laws which contradict the divine law, she must strive for their improvement when dangerous to salvation, satisfy inquiries in cases of conscience, and when her voice is unheeded she must defend herself to the utmost against the evils arising from this neglect.</div>
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Numerous early examples were brought forward in support of this view: e.g. the conduct of the great Pope Gregory I, who endeavored to obtain from the Emperor Mauricius the withdrawal of a law injurious to the interests of religion. Gregory approved the first clause of the said law (of 592), by which active State officials were not to undertake ecclesiastical offices; the second clause, by which these same officials were not to become monks, he desired so far modified as that they should be obliged first to render account of their service, and in general to fulfill all former obligations; the third clause, by which all military persons were entirely prohibited from taking holy orders, he rejected, as closing to many the way of salvation.</div>
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Looking at it from this same point of view, Bossuet also considered the much-discussed reply of Pope Zacharias as to the accession of Pipin in the light of a counsel given by the Pope, and not a command.</div>
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§16. Relations of this Theory to the Preceding</h3>
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In accordance with the expression of Gerson and Fenelon, this power has been called a directing or guiding power (<i>potestas directiva et ordinativa</i>); but it is a matter of dispute whether Gerson's directing power is not the same as that called by others indirect power. Gerson teaches that the Church is so to restrain her power within limits as to acknowledge also the independence of the civil power, so long as the civil power is not by an abuse made the means of attacking the faith, blaspheming God, and openly oppressing the power of the Church; should such be the case, it becomes the duty of the Church to guide and direct the civil power. But has anything essentially different been maintained by the supporters of the indirect power? Have they placed other limits to the independence of civil authority? And is not this a question rather of words than of things? The word may be better chosen, but the thing is essentially the same. There is, however, a distinction between Gerson and Fenelon: Gerson speaks of a superiority, a dominion, of the spiritual power, in case of abuse of the civil power; Fendlon allows only a directing power, consisting mainly in instruction and counsel. The question remains as to how far this last power may go, and what are its limits. These limits are determined by Fenelon and Gosselin chiefly according to prevailing public law and according to special legal titles, which were frequently united with ecclesiastical titles in the person of the Pope; consequently, the exercise of this directing power must necessarily differ at different times, and regard must be had to contemporary circumstances and legal relations; its expression and its consequences will differ, while its fundamental principle - supremacy in all questions affecting religion - necessarily remains ever the same. The Head of the Church will ever have the right of judging whether, and how far, religion is injured by this or that civil law; thus the principle remains, though the form in which it is carried out may vary with the times.</div>
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In principle, the doctrines of the indirect and of the directing power do not in all points differ widely. Let us consider them under Bellarmine's three heads:</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">In respect to persons (<i>quoad personas</i>): it is universally admitted that the Head of the Church may admonish and correct princes guilty of crime, and, with a view to their amendment, may lay them under censures. As to the deposing of princes in extreme cases, the defenders of indirect power, far from making the doctrine that princes might be deposed stand and fall with their general theory, do not even make this doctrine a necessary and abiding expression of the indirect power; while the defenders of the directive power limit deposition to the one case where the public law of the country in question authorizes it; in such a case both theories agree that the Pope can declare the right of governing to have been forfeited. According to the teaching of both parties, it belongs to the Pope, under certain conditions, to declare non-binding the oath of allegiance, and this in virtue of the rights of the Church, since he is the supreme guide of consciences within her. On this point, however, a controversy exists as to whether the condition of belonging to the Catholic Church, which in the Middle Ages was attached to the election and accession of the sovereign, rested, as the defenders of the indirect power believe, upon the natural law, or only upon the positive human law, as is held by Fenelon and the upholders of the directing power. It would follow from the first of these opinions, that at the present time the deposition of such princes would be justified, even though not absolutely commanded; according to the second, the right of deposing would cease when not sanctioned by the public law of the land in question. Theologians have not yet come to an agreement upon this disputed question.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">In respect to laws (<i>quoad leges</i>): surely in common fairness the Church has at all times the right of declaring any given State law injurious to the interests under her charge; precisely as the civil power may declare the same of a law of the Church. As a matter of fact, and as we now experience, the State not only makes this declaration without real cause, but proceeds to measures grievously injurious to the Church. When civil laws are such as to endanger salvation, the Pope, as Head of the Catholic Church, has without doubt the right to declare them to be such, to denounce them emphatically; and if denunciation be fruitless, to proscribe them as powerless to bind the conscience; he is indeed as much bound in duty to this as were the Apostles and first bishops to prohibit the faithful from taking part in the serving of idols, and from obeying those commands of the State which they could not fulfill without betraying God. However hard it may from circumstances become for the Pope, he is still bound by the sanctity of his office to condemn whatsoever is contrary to the faith and morals of the Church, and to declare with apostolic freedom that the Church, far from justifying such laws, is ever bound to reject them.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">In respect to sentences (<i>quoad judicia</i>): the Church's right of judgment is inseparably united with her right of legislation. The same power which enables her to pass laws within her own domain enables her also to apply them, and to watch over their application. When a question comes before her judgment-seat which has relation to the supernatural end under her charge, she has full power to pass judgment; and temporal matters also fall under her control, when and in so far as they relate to the fulfillment of her great charge. Here again the words of Cardinal Antonelli apply: "The Church has received from God the sublime charge of guiding men, whether as individuals or united in societies, to a supernatural end; thence comes her power and her obligation of passing judgment upon all matters, whether inward or outward, in their relation to the natural and divine laws. But since every action, whether commanded by a higher power, or proceeding from the freedom of the individual, is necessarily invested with this character of morality and justice, it follows that the judgment of the Church, as it is directly concerned with the morality of the action, extends also indirectly to all things with which this morality is bound up. But the Church does not therefore directly interfere in political matters, which by the ordinance established by God, and by the teaching of the Church herself, come within the domain of the civil power, and are completely independent of any other authority."</li>
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§17. Superiority of Ecclesiastical over Civil Legislation</h3>
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If, indeed, Stahl were in the right when he wrote that one or the other must be the case: either the Pope must have indirect power in temporal matters, or princes must have indirect power in spiritual matters: there is no third alternative (which, however, many would by no means allow) - the question may fairly be asked: Which is most supported by Christian and historical principles, which is most profitable to the free development and the highest interests of mankind: the indirect or directing power in matters temporal maintained by the earlier theologians, or else the direct or indirect power of the State in ecclesiastical matters defended by the later legists and regalists? In the present day only one case of practical importance can occur, that of a contradiction between a positive civil law and a law of the Church. In our day, laws are often passed by party intrigue, hastily, intended to last only a short time, with corrupt aims, and often with the sacrifice of general to individual interests; thus in many cases the medieval saying might be applied, by which laws were likened to the behavior of Anacharsis with the cobweb. Is it not plain that the legislation of the Church, based as it is upon high principles, is far superior, and that it might easily become her duty to encounter these modem laws wit' the words, "This is unlawful for thee to do," or "Non possumus"? Or is the Church indeed at one time to approve the French laws of 1789, at another time those of 1793, then the Code Napoleon, then the Prussian Landrecht, and then again the Swiss Federal Constitution as at present revised? In so doing, she would cease to be herself, she would destroy her very being, she would no longer be the Bride of the Lord. But the State, which is only negatively bound to demand from the faithful nothing contrary to conscience, and which has moreover in almost all lands guaranteed liberty of conscience, would contradict itself should it disallow this right of the Church. If, in watching lest the State suffer injury (<i>ne quid detrimenta respublica capiat</i>), civil rulers consider themselves entitled to pass judgment on the laws of the Church, and to subject them to their Placet, they cannot deny that the rulers of the Church are in the same way bound to watch lest any injury be done to souls; and that although they may on their side oppose no Placet to that of the civil power, it is nevertheless the right and the duty of the Church rulers to declare that such and such a State law is contrary to the conscience of Catholics. Can it be that at the very moment in which a dogma of the Church is declared to be dangerous to States, the right of the Church is to be called in question of at any time declaring on her side a law of the State to be dangerous to the conscience of the faithful?</div>
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