Monday, January 30, 2023

Someone Played Foul


Evidence of bad faith: Not Very Credible · Someones Attacked Pope Michael · Someone Played Foul · Possibly here too: James Martin is Wrong

In this clip, Salza pretends that what a layman did to Nestorius, people could never do again after Constantinople IV. I made the comment, and gave quotes from the English translation to prove it, and the comment somehow got deleted, which I discovered when I tried to add a response comment under it.

Has Pope Francis Lost His Office? w/ John Salza
Pints With Aquinas, 30 Jan. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7cD0pOF2a8


0:44 Salza is here reusing a point I already had heard from Fr Paul Natterer SSPX, with his presentation "wie müssen wir zum Pabst stehen"

St. Robert is on this point simply using the positive canon law.

Note, positive and more precisely human, since it was not in place in Pope St. Celestine I's day.

When a bishop is heretical and normally would lose office, the principle behind what he says is "supplet ecclesia" - what is objectively lacking in his still holding office is supplemented by the Church, so there can be a clear cut at which point his decisions cease to hold legal power over his up to then inferiors.

There is a reason why St. Robert doesn't make use of exactly the same principle in the same way when it comes to Popes falling into heresy.

a) supplet ecclesia means, ultimately, supplet superior;
b) the ordinary or auxiliary bishop of a see other than Rome actually has a superior who can diligently judge him - the legal fiction that the bishop still holds office, backed by the reality of supplet ecclesia, is not harmful, because it does not cause an unreasonable delay in which heresies can destroy souls.

The difference when it comes to a Pope are:

a) superior non supplet quia non est (there is no superior who can supply)
b) when it comes to judging a pope, there is no regular procedure, therefore using the same principle in the same way will inevitably cause unreasonable delay.

So much for that oblique reference to St. Robert. There are more direct ones to when he deals with a pope falling into heresy or a heretic getting pseudo-elected Pope. For the former I am sure, for the latter not.

1:12 "what Bellarmine meant by that is after his pertinacity is established by the Church"

I don't think so.

Paul Natterer didn't think so.

He admitted, that for the position that "John Paul II" was Pope (that's how long since it is I heard him), the FSSPX couldn't appeal to Robert Bellarmine. He appealed to Cajetan.

However, in defending Cajetan's position, he referred to the canon law stating a bishop holds office as long as he isn't condemned for heresy, and may have referred (I think he did) at least in passing to St. Robert saying so.

Now, the format of a question in Bellarmine is, first you ask the question, then you give the positions you reject, then you give the position you favour.

A less serious example is in astrophysics and theology. Riccioli asked why the heavenly bodies move. He first outright admitted no cogent reason could be given for one of the positions or against one of the positions, so that it was necessary or impossible, but then he enumerated the positions: 1) God created a mechanical cause (like magnetism) which moves them; no; 2) God moves them by His own sole act of will; no; 3) the heavenly bodies are alive and move as being alive; no; 4) the fourth and most common one : angels move them. The last one he mentions is the one he favours. And he says so.

That the pope loses office (if falling into heresy, which St. Robert thought a validly elected Pope couldn't) only after getting judged is in fact one of the positions he rejected. For a very obvious reason - if he retained office until judged a heretic, he could never be judged, as the pope has no superior.

St. Robert finally (according to my memory of Paul Natterer) settled for the opinion that the Pope is neither losing office as soon as he commits interior heresy, nor as soon as judged, nor does he retain office despite being a heretic, but he loses office as soon as the material fact of heretical teaching is apparent.

It would for instance not be heretical for someone to say "a Hindu might be in good faith, and might right now be in a state of grace, even if he's still a Hindu", but when you go to "this Hindu is pronably in good faith, probably in a state of grace" that implies practising Hindus generally usually are so, a bit like practising Catholics generally usually are so. Which is heretical.

Or, in a certain private context, it could be a momentary so to speak charismatic hope about him, but that kind of judgements on the spot cannot be made with long preparation and for several participants.

This obviously has a bearing on Assisi 86.

For anyone defending the idea his idea behind inviting Hindus was after all an inspiration of the Holy Ghost (like Samson's suicide), the San Egidio prayer during the Balkan war was basically punished by God allowing Srebrenica, the worst massacre of the war, to happen after that prayer.

And same thing for Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, non-Catholic Christians. Animists and Shamanists.

It was not taken from an inspiration by the Holy Ghost, it was rather a literary inspiration from Und Friede auf Erden by Karl May, which I presume he had read. And Karl May was a liberal Protestant (for back then, even if some of his positions would be Fundie compared to ... the late John Shelby Spong). In other words, the gesture can reasonably be presumed to be heretical. To be in action expressing heresy.

When I converted, I was desensitised by Karl May, whom I was still a great fan of in 1986.

1:19 St. Paul is teaching St. Titus to deal with heretics in his own see, not how to deal with fellow bishops or superiors falling into heresy.

A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid:
Titus 3:10]

An "admonition" is not just any reproach, it is a formal reproach by a superior.

As those cannot be given to popes, and could not by laymen be given to Nestorius, this is no wise contrary to a Pope losing office directly, or to Nestorius (who had no superior within reasonable "within days action" around where he was) doing so as soon as he taught heresy, as per the words of Pope St. Celestine I. And please note, the words are not about the guilt of heresy, but about the teaching of it.

1:32 When it comes to "De Conciliis" and "a Pope is deposed for heresy when he is formally judged by the Church" I am grateful for the context.

This means, in probability, he is not dealing with the theoretical case, but with Honorius and the Vth Ecumenical Council.

The vote claimed (fifty years after his death) he was a heretic. However, Pope St. Leo II only conformed his judgement as for fomenting heresy by non-action.

Indeed, it would be hard to pinpoint Honorius as directly saying Christ had only precisely one willpower, the divine one, so to speak replacing or totally reducing the human one normally there in a man.

So, my best guess (as long as I have no occasion to read St. Robert) is, this is not about what to do immediately if the man seeming to be pope also very clearly seems to fall into heresy.

1:51 The reason why he is not referring to loss of office after the Church judges him as a heretic, is, that position is one of the four opinions he has already rejected.

So far my memory of Paul Natterer. Back then FSSPX priest, I think he may have left the priesthood. The Vortrag series "Wie müssen wir zum Pabst stehen" - and I trust both Paul Natterer and my memory more than Mr. Salza on this point.

3:12 If I had never heard Paul Natterer, I might agree.

But as I have, if this is the correct interpretation, why didn't Paul Natterer cite that Dominican position for declaration?

Also, I do not consider it possible that the Dimond Brothers would be so sloppy as scholars about St. Bellarmine as to miss that kind of thing.

But it is also St. Francis of Sales - on their very shortest video.

"Now when he is explicitly a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church"

Unlike St. Robert Bellarmine he seems to have thought it actually could happen.

There are longer 3 hours and 13 hours videos about the subject.

[Here is the comment that got deleted]

4:11 The IV Council of Constantinople declared "Catholics can not separate from their bishops" ...

Did it? Absolutely not in those words in the official English translation on papal encyclicals dot net.*

I searched "from their" and with 8 hits, none of them was what Salza said.

I have heard this claim earlier, and it was perhaps a bit more precise - naming a canon.

Was it 12? Doesn't say what Salza says:

12 The apostolic and conciliar canons clearly forbid the nomination and consecration of bishops which have come about as a result of the power and intrigues of the civil authorities. Therefore we declare and proclaim, in full agreement with them, that if any bishop has received his consecration through the manipulation and constraint of such persons, he should be deposed absolutely as one who has desired and consented to have the gift of God not from the will of God and ecclesiastical law and decree, but from human beings and through their machinations as a result of the prompting of carnal desire.

Sounds more like a condemnation of someone usurping Siri's papacy, if that happened, than one of six persons meeting for an emergency conclave.

[I tried to extend above comment with a response, this happened:



... which means that the original comment was deleted.]

[not able to add following]

I also find in the beginning of canon 2 this:

Obey your leaders and submit to them; for they are keeping watch over your souls, as persons who will have to give account, commands Paul, the great apostle.

Far from stating that a layman could never in any case ever conclude his bishop was a heretic, the canon applies it to obedience to the council at hand and to papal decions.

* Fourth Council of Constantinople : 869-870
Council Fathers - 869-870 A.D.
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum08.htm

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