A weblog once dedicated to the exposure of the crackpots of the lunatic self-styled 'traditionalist' fringe who disingenuously pose as faithful Catholics.
It is now an inactive archive.
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of those who persistently claim to wish to be with the Church, to
love the Church, to fight so that people do not leave Her...But
judge them by their works. If they despise the shepherds of the
Church and even the Pope, if they attempt all means of evading their
authority in order to elude their directives and judgments..., then
about which Church do these men mean to speak? Certainly not about
that established on the foundations of the apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone (Eph. 2:20)." [Pope St. Pius X: Allocution of May 10, 1909]
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:: Monday, March 06, 2006 ::
"One From the Vault" Dept. (On Cantante Domino and the Synods of Florence)
This is from a discussion list thread circa December of 2004. The parties I was discussing this with shall remain anonymous and their words will be in varying coloured fonts. Any sources cited by yours truly will be in dark blue font.
MMMMM and I had discussed this before. I think that Pope Eugenius IV was merely saying that practicing the Mosaic law as if necessary for salvation or even a 'higher way' than being a practicing Catholic is forbidden. This is the problematic line:
As I am sure you would agree AAA, the line is surrounded with other lines which could lend a hand to discerning the intention. I would argue that the Copts being Alexandria based were probably in close contact with the Alexandrian Jews. The Alexandrian Jews were among the most cultured peoples in the world and probably because of this the Copts were to some extent seduced to a degree into involving themselves in their ceremonies to the point where their observance was viewed as a necessity. That is what the text seems to allude to if we look at the broader context (all emphasis is mine):
It firmly believes, professes and teaches that the legal prescriptions of the old Testament or the Mosaic law, which are divided into ceremonies, holy sacrifices and sacraments, because they were instituted to signify something in the future, although they were adequate for the divine cult of that age, once our lord Jesus Christ who was signified by them had come, came to an end and the sacraments of the new Testament had their beginning. Whoever, after the passion, PLACES HIS HOPE in the legal prescriptions and submits himself to them AS NECESSARY FOR SALVATION AND AS IF FAITH IN CHRIST WITHOUT THEM COULD NOT SAVE, sins mortally. It does not deny that from Christ's passion until the promulgation of the gospel they could have been retained, provided they were in no way believed to be necessary for salvation. But it asserts that after the promulgation of the gospel they cannot be OBSERVED without loss of eternal salvation. Therefore it denounces all who after that time observe circumcision, the sabbath and other legal prescriptions as strangers to the faith of Christ and unable to share in eternal salvation, unless they recoil at some time from these errors. Therefore it strictly orders all who glory in the name of Christian, not to practise circumcision either before or after baptism, since whether or not they place their hope in it, it cannot possibly be observed without loss of eternal salvation...[Pope Eugenius IV: Bull Cantante Domino (c. 1443)]
The language strongly points to observance of these things as an integral part of the faith. Notice the word "observed" and how the decree attempts to frame the practices as "ceremonial, sacrificial, and sacramental" - an obvious anachronism particularly since there had been no Temple sacrifices for fourteen centuries!!!
And of course the gist of the decree is directed towards those who "placed...hope in the legal prescriptions" and "submitted...to them as necessary for salvation" are the foundations on which the judgment in the decree are based. Obviously if someone followed them for other reasons, they would not necessarily be condemned -which raises another interesting point to consider.
Later on in the decree, when the subject arose again, some additional bits may help in situating the previous part as a disciplinary injunction. First of all, the probable contemporary circumstances as I noted with the Copts and Alexandrian Jews would have made a strong denunciation of what they were doing necessary. Obviously the above paragraph does that in a kind of "over the top" characteristic style that is common to Florence's texts. Let us consider more of what that text says later on as perhaps clarifying what we have already looked at (again, all emphasis is mine):
It firmly believes, professes and teaches that every creature of God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because according to the word of the Lord not what goes into the mouth defiles a person, and because the difference in the Mosaic law between clean and unclean foods belongs to ceremonial practices, which have passed away and lost their efficacy with the coming of the gospel. It also declares that the apostolic prohibition, to abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled, was suited to that time when a single church was rising from Jews and gentiles, who previously lived with different ceremonies and customs. This was so that the gentiles should have some observances in common with Jews, and occasion would be offered of coming together in one worship and faith of God and a cause of dissension might be removed, since by ancient custom blood and strangled things seemed abominable to Jews, and gentiles could be thought to be returning to idolatry if they ate sacrificial food. In places, however, where the christian religion has been promulated to such an extent that no Jew is to be met with and all have joined the church, uniformly practising the same rites and ceremonies of the gospel and believing that to the clean all things are clean, since the cause of that apostolic prohibition has ceased, so its effect has ceased. It condemns, then, no kind of food that human society accepts and nobody at all neither man nor woman, should make a distinction between animals, no matter how they died; although for the health of the body, for the practice of virtue or for the sake of regular and ecclesiastical discipline many things that are not proscribed can and should be omitted, as the apostle says all things are lawful, but not all are helpful. [Pope Eugenius IV: Bull Cantante Domino (c. 1443)]
Right after this point, the text goes into the most popular citation of the "trads" viz. EENS but that is another subject altogether.{1} The decree itself recognized that changes in circumstances (in this case the "cause of the apostolic prohibition" from Acts xv) can result in a change in policy. For that reason, the decree itself recognizes implicitly what has happened in subsequent time particularly since the Second Vatican Council where the kind of "uniformly practising the same rites and ceremonies" has been cast aside in light of a greater realization of the diversity of rites and ceremonies in different parts of the universal church.{2}
If a change due to differences in circumstances can happen once, it can certainly happen again when the circumstances change again. The one with the discretion to make these kinds of changes of course is the same authority that can bind what it previously loosed and loose what it previously bound.
Addendum:
I went over the situation with Florence and Cantante Domino in several pieces of writing over the years including a bit in one of the posts to this very weblog dealing with the errors of the late Mike Malone circa mid 2003.
Notes:
{1} And one I have written on a number of times before and thus have no desire to reinvent the wheel in discussing.
[The last time I touched on this subject was in a weblog posting to Rerum Novarum circa July of 2005 - ISM]
{2} And of course the Church's involvement in ecumenical ventures and approval of organizations such as the Association of Hebrew Catholics, allowances for a diversity of languages in the celebration of the sacraments and the liturgy, etc.
:: Shawn 1:45 PM [+] | ::
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