Apologia pro Papa Innocentus IV
Dear Heloise,
This is in response to your posts #845 & 849.
Let me begin by saying that I am deeply grieved and pained to see such flagrant and evidently deliberate ignorance, misrepresentation and misunderstanding of the Catholic Faith. In matter of fact, things are so bad, you give evidence of being a radical protestant in your beliefs!
Let me point out that your tactics are classic protestant: In order to whitewash either your sect or your heresiarch, you will 'innocently' drag in some remote and obscure Pope and besmirch his name, portraying him in the blackest of colours so that your sect or the criminal that you are attempting to whitewash seems to be clean by constrast!
It should be obvious to one and all, that what is being done here is not merely an attack upon one Pope, Innocent IV, but on a series of Popes. Thus, in attacking Innocent IV, one attacks his predecessors who set the foundation for his work and his successors who developed it further. Thus the very pages from which the attack against Innocent IV was borrowed, also 'inculpates' the Popes Boniface III, Innocent III, Gregory IX, Alexander IV, Urban IV, Clement IV, Nicholas IV, Boniface VIII, Clement VIII. Nor should this list be considered conclusive. [Apparently, even St. Raymond of Penafort is impugned. And what about St. Dominic, who led the Crusades against the Albigensians and Catharists?]
In fact, what is being done here, though surreptitiously and underhand, is the contra-positioning of all the Catholic Popes to the Neo-Catholic Antipopes, as part of an effort to whitewash the latter group.
Coming to your points:
First of all, it is necessary to be careful with the use of the name 'Christian.'
In the strict, proper sense, only we who are the members of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, are Christians, to the strict exclusion of all schismatics, heretics and apostates, even those who pretend that they are still Christian. That is, the Nestorians, Monophysites, Byzantines, Protestants, Old Catholics, etc., are NOT Christians.
Though in the colloquial and improper / imprecise sense, we call them also Christians, it is not so.
And we are strictly bound to reject as impious and offensive to Christian ears the vicious lie that all those who claim to be Christians are members of a single invisible unity, of which the various factions, schools, sects, churches and communities, etc., are but branches. This is the hateful Branch heresy, which you seem to endorse.
Catholicism has always stressed, and I stress the word 'stressed', that they must simultaneously hate all errors and flee from them, and at the same time, they must love and embrace all men with a prudent, Christian love. That is, we are to hate the errors by which our brethren are deluded, and not our brethren themselves.
But, at the same time, we are strictly, and I stress the word 'strictly', enjoined to avoid under all and any circumstance any joint praying with non-believers. This is true even when a Catholic has non-Catholic family-members.
It is permissible for non-Christians to take part, though only a secondary, passive, in the private liturgies of private Christians, but not in the public liturgies.
Now, it is not true that this attitude is inspired by hatred for or contempt for the non-Christian, such as the protestant, etc.
On the contrary, it is inspired by holiness, by the fear of God, by the commandment of God, from which even the Pope, despite all his powers to loosen and dispense, cannot dispense from.
Thus, we have St. Paul tell us in the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians: 10:14-33
So far is orthodoxy from your notions that the vast majority of the martyrs were precisely martyred because they sedulously and mendaciously refused to give this bad example and commit this evil compromise, not because the gods to whom their persecutors and murderers commanded them to worship were anything, but because, as God by the mouth of St. Paul, for example, taught them that in doing so, they would be culpable of permitting the followers of these false religions to continue to believe that their religions are true, just, good and conducive to salvation.
And this is precisely where the greatest crimes of Wojtyla and the New Religion lies: for if the New Religion is true, then these innumerable martyrs are not martyrs but the most colossal and vain fools, who gave up their lives for nothing! Yet, nothing! And such fools as they are, rather than being hailed as glorious champions, they must be derided and contemned as being the most pitiable fools!
Showing the non-Christian our joy and catechizing them, avoiding both sanctimony and self-pomposity, are integral and cannot be seperated. This is Christ's example.
Urban II, the Pope who called for the Holy Crusades, and others after him, as also the Popes who called for and set up the Holy Inquisitions, believed themselves to be moved by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. And what they did was certainly legitimate according to Catholic theology.
But, on the contrary, even the heresiarchs Roncalli, Montini and now Wojtyla claim that they have been inspired by the Holy Spirit. Indeed they claim more than just ordinary inspiration - their claim, if true, constitutes a New Revelation that radically amends and modifies and supercedes the Catholic Revelations made throught the Patriarchs and Prophets, etc., and brought to completion by the Man-God and His Apostles. For Catholics, (Public) Revelation that is the integral, necessary and fundamental basis of the Economy of Salvation ended with the death of St. John the Apostle; for the New Religion of Wojtyla, Revelation recommenced with the Aggiornomento and the Robber-Council of 'Vatican II'.
One must choose between these opposite and mutually exclusive claims.
I would admonish any against blaspheming and badwording the holy saints of God's Church - who, being moved by the Holy Spirit, called and organized the Holy Inquisitions, to check the spread of heresies and immoralities and to safeguard souls and societies. I would remind that this is NOT about 'hatred and bigotry', and that the Holy Inquisition was NOT about 'forcing people to convert'. The function of the Inquisition was not to bring souls to Christ, whether by force or otherwise, but to check heresies and compell the disloyal to return to their original, professed loyalty. And this is and was always a pious work.
The Christian is forbidden to judge with the Judgeship that belongs only and exclusively to God, for that is usurping His authority when He has not delegated it. But, we can and must, and indeed are obliged to judge in the sense of discernment, for we must know if we are on the path of righteousness or otherwise, whether someone is misleading us or not, and so on. We are obliged to judge, not of what goes on internally, for that is the province of God, but what is external, the visible acts of a man.
And since Holy Scriptures instruct us to flee from the heretics; how are we to know that one is a heretic unless we use our judgement?
Do you not, when eating or dressing, or doing anything, choose to do one thing over another? And do you encroach against the Rights of God to be the Sole and Exclusive Judge when you do so? If a man shall set a cup before you and say that it is poison, would you judge that you must not judge and drink it?
Coming to Wojtyla, let me say that I am touched for your solicitude and urgency, even by your compelling need, to make excuses for him, when he himself has a mouth, a hand capable of writing and a vast and powerful organization to broadcast his leastest views on any subject under the sun, and when moreover he is also perfectly free a man, without any constraints, yet has consistently refused to make the excuses and explanations that you make for him.
I have always said that when I find someone vending these excuses, there is some mischief afoot, some ulterior motive: the desire to mislead souls into the slavery to sin - even to the heresies of Good Old Wojtyla. Am I right?
But your excuses are in vain, for even if we grant this scenario, it still is a strict obligation, and one that is even stricter upon one who purports to be the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, that he avoid giving scandal; and in joining or permitting these functions, he certainly gives scandal.
And your excuses are in vain, for it is not by accidental conjunction, but by deliberate and declared intention, well publicized and therefore utterly incontrovertible, that Wojtyla meets with these folks, with the EXPRESS INTENTION, as declared, of committing with deliberate and considered intent, and moreover with an illconcealed Triumphalism, the Crime of Communicatio in Sacris, as recommended by that impious and execrable Latrocinium of the Vatican held in 1962-62.
And relentless dog that he is, it is furthermore by the same EXPRESS INTENTION and by pre-designment that he holds his annual congresses and annual pilgrimages of vomit, joining together with the votaries of Satan in conjoint prayers and liturgies.
I ask, Is Wojtyla God? Is he greater even than Christ Jesus? Is he greater than the Apostles of Christ? For it is certain, that if this spirit of the New Religion is right, then should not Christ and His Apostles, more than Wojtyla, and long before him, even from the Commencement of Christianity, have done this?
Should not our Lord have summoned inter-religious conferences and conjoint prayers, inviting the pagan Ammonites, Moabites, Samaritans, Edomites, Arabs, Scythians and Greeks of the Decapolis, the Phoenicians, Philistines, the Egyptians, Syrians, Persians and others, not to exclude the pagan Romans? And if this is right, would our Lord have feared the reproach and scandal that the Jews would have taken, who feared them not for their scandal at His claim to be part of the Godhead?
And would it then have been necessary at all for the very large number of martyrs to die a martyr's death if things were really all so nice and cozy? When the pagans demanded that the Christians, who were conspicuous for refusing to worship their 'gods', publicly sacrifice to their 'gods', what good reason would they have for refusing and unnecessarily suffering for their refusal?
When the Manichæans, Arians, Montanists, Monophysites, Monothelites, Iconoclasts and the others — the precursors of the protestants — publicly persecuted the Christians, and demanded that they accept, submit and participate in their 'Christian' rites, what good reason would they have for refusing and unnecessarily suffering for their refusal?
And if these martyrs were all fools and died in vain, why do you still worship in temples dedicated to their memories? Why have churches named after such foolish men such as 'St.' Peter the Apostle, or 'St.' Paul, or 'St.' Thomas Didymas, or 'St.' Sebastian, or 'St.' Maurice, etc., etc. Should you not rather have churches named after those who apostasized, who lapsed from the faith and surrendered to these demands?
Message # 849 Traditional Catholics' Club
From:� H.J.
Date:� Sun�Feb�16,�2003� 5:44 am
Subject:� Re: heresy and heretics and ecumenism
I do not pretend to be a theologian. However, I admit to being confused about the pope question - whether or not JPII is the true pope.
It has been said that it is wrong for him to pray with heretics. Let's turn that around just for the sake of argument. What if we emphasized the fact that THEY are praying with HIM? What if we
emphasized the fact that during his reign, more people view him as the leader of CHRISTIANS (not just baptized Catholics) than any other pope since the Reformation.
Perhaps JPII's actions are similar to those we use among heretics - among family and friends who are not of our faith. We love them, do we not? We want them to know the Truth of the Catholic faith, do we not? We want them to know the love of Our Lord and Lady, do we not? We want them to find peace of soul and salvation, do we not?
Would they be more likely to want to be of our faith if we were loving, accepting of their sincerity of belief, gentle and kind and generous while continuing to be strong in our belief? Wouldn't that make them want to have what we have more than if they saw us as judgemental, self-righteous and lacking in humility?
Aren't we more likely to lead them to the Faith if we spend less time in showing how they are wrong and more time in showing them our joy?
Are we not to follow Christ's example?
Message #845 Traditional Catholics' Club
From:� H.J.
Date:� Sat�Feb�15,�2003� 5:02 am
Subject:� Re: heresy and heretics and ecumenism
One more response, then I will wait for others to write on this subject.
Christ sought out sinners. He prayed for them. He condemned the Pharisees who rigidly followed the letter of the law, but not the spirit - Pharisees who condemned being with sinners and non-Jews.
Are we not to do the same? Are we not to show by our loving and joyous example what it is to be a Catholic? Or are we to show our Christianity by hatred and bigotry?
By condemning others and advocating violence against those who do not believe as we do, we are certainly not following in His footsteps, are we?
Is this how to gain souls for Christ? Do we go back to the Inquisition and force people to convert? Do we JUDGE others, including JPII and state that he has sent souls to Hell?
Do we know who is in Hell? Are we playing God here?