Lutheran Jorge
April 15, 2016
JAMES LARSON discusses an explicit heresy contained in Amoris Laetitia, the recent “papal” exhortation on marriage:
It is not just a “linguistic event” or “stealth reform” or revolution, which is able to fly under the radar of a specific charge of heresy. There is a very explicit heresy, it is the foundation of all the other legitimate condemnations of Amoris Laetitia, and it clearly reveals the agenda which germinates and nourishes all the rest of its errors. It is found in paragraphs 296 and 297:
“The way of the Church is not to condemn anyone for ever; it is to pour out the balm of God’s mercy on all those who ask for it with a sincere heart… For true charity is always un-merited, unconditional and gratuitous.” (296).
“It is a matter of reaching out to everyone, of needing to help each person find his or her proper way of participating in the ecclesial com-munity and thus to experience being touched by an ‘unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous’ mercy” (297).
Clearly, the Pope is here speaking of the individual human person, and the state of his soul which determines whether he is justified or condemned. As a Catholic, whatever he says therefore must be judged in the light of the Council of Trent’s infallible teaching concerning justification. Chapter VII of the Council’s Decree on Justification is titled What the Justification of the Impious Is, and What Are the Causes Thereof. It contains this crucial passage:
“For, although no one can be just but he to whom the merits of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ are communicated, yet is this done in the said justification the impious, when by the merit of that same most holy Passion, the charity of God is poured forth by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those that are justified and is inherent therein: whence, man, through Jesus Christ, in Whom he is ingrafted, receives, in the said justification, together with the remission of sins, all these (gifts) infused at once, faith, hope, and charity.”
For a person to possess justifying charity, therefore, means that he is in an ontological state of being in friendship with God, and ingrafted into Christ. In defining the justifying theological virtue of charity, St. Thomas teaches: “It is written: I will not now call you servants…but My friends. Now this was said by reason of nothing else than charity. Therefore charity is friendship.” (ST, II-II, Q.1, A.1). This is why we rightly speak of the possession of sanctifying grace as “being in the friendship of God”.
To assert, as does Pope Francis, that such charity is unmerited, unconditional, and gratuitous is simply a form of the Lutheran heresy, which views justification, and the perseverance in God’s friendship as totally unmerited by man, and as not requiring the cooperation of man in virtue and the performance of good works. In my article The Dream of Nabuchodonosor, I quoted 21 Canons of the Council of Trent’s Decree on Justification which condemn Luther’s position, and detail at every stage of man’s justification – from preparation for conversion to final perseverance – the absolute necessity of the cooperation of man’s free fill and the performance of good works in the attainment of, and perseverance in, God’s friendship, and the possession of that supernatural charity which we call sanctifying grace. This article can be found here: http://www.waragainstbeing.com/node/62
Larson says Amoris Laetitia should be “flatly rejected.” In other words, the “pope” is not Catholic. From there it follows that Bergoglio is a false pope, a position that Larson rejects.
