Does the Holy Ghost Guide the Synod?
October 23, 2015
“And they call us Catholic!”
PAUL C. writes:
How do you respond to those who say we should not be worrying about the synod in Rome because Jesus will not let anyone change dogma? They say the person would be struck dead.
Laura writes:
Those who say this are oblivious.
Christ has already allowed purported leaders of the Church to change not Catholic dogma, but the dogmas that they believe and that they teach others to believe. He did not strike them dead when they did this.
The men gathered in Rome already reject key dogmas of the Catholic Faith. This is not some delusion of scrupulous cranks. See a list of the heresies of Modernism and Vatican II here. These are not occasional slips. These are firmly established Vatican II teachings. One of the principle heresies is the Modernist idea that truth and morality change over time and must be updated. The Synod embraces this idea simply by submitting long settled moral issues to discussion and debate. As the Rev. Anthony Cekada put it: “Modernists strip the faith of those teachings and practices the modern world deems intransigent, exclusivist, difficult, unenlightened, fanatical or embarrassing.”
The Catholic hierarchy is obliterated if doctrine doesn’t matter because if doctrine doesn’t matter there is no Church.
The Church does not teach, and has never taught, that it is not possible for individuals in the Church to reject the faith and fall outside the Church. Even St. Peter briefly rejected the faith when he denied Christ. Popes, saints and canon lawyers have said that even a pope can become a heretic. Saint Antoninus in 1459 wrote:
“In the case in which the pope would become a heretic, he would find himself, by that fact alone and without any other sentence, separated from the Church. A head separated from a body cannot, as long as it remains separated, be head of the same body from which it was cut off.
“A pope who would be separated from the Church by heresy, therefore, would by that very fact itself cease to be head of the Church. He could not be a heretic and remain pope, because, since he is outside of the Church, he cannot possess the keys of the Church.” Summa Theologica, cited in Actes de Vatican I. V. Frond pub..
Here is Pope Paul IV in 1459:
“Further, if ever it should ever appear that any bishop (even one acting as an archbishop, patriarch or primate), or a cardinal of the Roman Church, or a legate (as mentioned above), or even the Roman Pontiff (whether prior to his promotion to cardinal, or prior to his election to be Roman Pontiff), has beforehand deviated from the Catholic Faith or fallen into any heresy, [We enact, decree, deter- mine and define]:
“— Such promotion or election in and of itself, even with the agree- ment and unanimous consent of all the cardinals, shall be null, legally invalid and void.
“— It shall not be possible for such a promotion or election to be deemed valid or to be valid, neither through reception of office, conse- cration, subsequent administration, or possession, nor even through the putative enthronement of a Roman Pontiff himself, together with the veneration and obedience accorded him by all.
“— Such promotion or election, shall not through any lapse of time in the foregoing situation, be considered even partially legitimate in any way ….
“— Each and all of the words, as acts, laws, appointments of those so promoted or elected — and indeed, whatsoever flows therefrom — shall be lacking in force, and shall grant no stability and legal power to anyone whatsoever.
“— Those so promoted or elected, by that very fact and without the need to make any further declaration, shall be deprived of any dignity, position, honor, title, authority, office and power.” Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio. 16 February 1559.
The Holy Ghost obviously does not protect a gathering of heretics from error.
