www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Papal Infallibility

Dear Alex,
Such a thoughtful post.

Bingo Bro Alex,

For todays RC's to return to and embrace Tradition which is sorrowfully lacking.

Pokoj,
james

Pax Vobiscum to you all!

Alex

"Good post Brother Steve,

Just some of us are infallible in our minds though.

In Christ,
james"

Dear James,

Thank you for your kind words about my post. Now that I've had time to re read it, I need to apologize to Teen Logos and you and to the others who read it. I did not have time to properly edit it.

(I'm not sure that time would have made a difference, but it wouldn't have hurt! :rolleyes: )

I am glad that you found some value in it.

Thanks again,

Steve

Dear Steve,

Yes, there was some value in it . . .

Alex

No problem Brother Steve, and Bro Alex, "Laudetur Jesus Christus".

Slava Isusu Khrystu,
james

Dear Alex,

Thank you for that!

Coming from you that was ... well... it was... almost infallible! Yeah, Yeah, that's it... infallible.

Et cum spiritu tuo.

Steve

Seriously, thanks!

Very funny. Actually - I did chuckle at it. A good one Alex. I had to read it twice.

Actually - no - the opposite is true... it lays charitable guidelines that make it easier to tell the difference between actual heresy and plain old human error. It removes that judgment from being issued out of emotions and ignorance and adds many charitable safeguards. It also keeps a horrible weapon out of the hands of just anybody by reserving to herself alone the right and authority to make such a declaration. Jesus reserves to himself the right to excersice this declaration through the authoritive Church.

We are not Protestants where personal revelation may be placed above the guarentee of the authority of the church.

This is the way Jesus has arranged it and Providence preserves it. God is not dead nor sleeping nor has he been routed by the wiles of men.

All of us are in some degree of error� it is the nature of the beast that we begin in error and progress through enlightenment given by the Holy Spirit. We are not going to understand the church and we are going to disagree with her. It is faith, humility, and hope which allows us to submit our will despite the results of our own intellectual figuring.

But enlightenment by the Holy Spirit is a secondary effect to the purifications that Providence sends us. If we do not cooperate with Providence - there is no purification - and the secondary effects of enlightenment cannot be received. The suns rays do not pass well through a dirty window pane. Purification must always precede enlightenment - while we would have it the other way around because we would like sanctification to follow and be the results of our figuring things out. We would like to rely on our powers of intellect and God would rather have us submit our will first and reward us after.

Along the way - we are going to not understand and we are going to disagree with many things the church presents - simply because we ourselves are not yet purified enough to grasp what She is saying. Alex - you must admit that to be true. Even the apostles were in error when they demanded that new gentile converts take on Jewish ways and traditions. What they did was error - which God used Paul to correct. Apostles they were - but not yet saints and not free from human error. Even a saint - is not free from human error - but he is free from willful intentions and has gained the habit of submitted his intellect to Jesus who speaks through his formal church. God does not demand of us that we be �right� - he demands of us that we be like children who submit without having full intellectual understanding so that He may take us to a promised land of which we do not know the way there.

It is not our part to come along and review matters and say �OK.. I agree what you present - so I will cooperate with you.� We do not become saints that way because we are subconsciously presuming that we already have the capability to intellectually asertain the way there. Hey - we all do this. It is our biggest and our most persistence stumbling block. By it we presume that we begin as saints - and saints who can tell the difference between truth and error - it presumes ourselves to be - error free and intellectually able to recognize the right path - which God assures us we can not do.

Enter stage left - the virtue of humility, simplicity and faith in that which we do not yet understand. Intellectual investigation is not the proper guide to our sainthood. Cooperation with God�s actions hidden by the veil of mundane everyday events - is the way.

Let me further make a bother of myself.

It is a temptation for us to place reliance upon our intellect (figuring things out) as taking first place in our search for God. Prayer - is the �mental activity� which should take first place of any mental activity. Our Lord Jesus did not figure things out and go pray afterward (asking that his Father change thins to work out for the best that Jesus figured out)� he rather separated himself to go pray (a mental �watching� or mental attention �Watch with me one hour� a contemplation in which the intellect rests and does not grind away in activity trying to produce results). Even those of us who pray - tend to pray - and then get up as if we had never prayed at all by replacing that with �figuring things out� as our leader.

The world bestows sainthood upon intellectual powers - God does not.

Please pray for me and may that portion of your prayer be a simple rest of intellect and emotions to give way to a simple awarness of the gift of existing.


-ray

Steve,

You need not apologize for anything; I saw nothing objectionable in your posts!

Theophilos said: If I may, I'll say that, from the Catholic POV, this is the only rational reaction. From the Catholic POV, it's impossible for one to fully understand the "Roman Church" and still stay out of her bounds of communion.

I'm sure the same would go for Eastern Orthodoxy. How, from an Eastern Orthodox POV, can a non-Eastern Orthodox person claim that he knows all about the EO Church? From y'all's view, he obviously does not, or else he would be an Eastern Orthodox himself.

Logos Teen

Why are we wondering at what moment the Pope stops "being" the Pope? What IS the Pope?

This rationale is Existentialistic! Throw it out the window with all of the other philosophical digressions of men. There is only ONE WHO IS. His name is I AM. If His name is I AM and He is THE ONE WHO IS, what does that say about the rest of us, existentially?

If I had trained as a builder, built homes, and then stopped, twenty-five years later may I still say that "I AM A BUILDER?"

We are what we are doing. And even while I was building, I shouldn't have said "I AM A BUILDER" (sounds too much like God speaking), but rather, "I build."

This same existential mess is what causes people to say, twenty-five years after their last drink, "I AM AN ALCOHOLIC." It denies the healing power of Christ. This same person may be wise to say, "I am susceptible to alcoholic addiction," or "I don't drink because its not good for me," but why a permanant state of sickness when God has healed the addiction?

Existentialism: "She is a homosexual." Wrong. We should say, "she has sexual relations with other females" or "she conducts in homosexual relations."

Existential thinking leads one to erroneously believe that one's condition, good (ordination or episcopacy, for example) or bad (see above), is permanent. It is a lie of the devil.

HE IS THE ONE WHO IS.

When the builder stopes building or the drinker stops drinking, their description changes. When bishop or pope stops performing that role according to Christ's law, their description also changes and its time to get a new one to do the job correctly.

View life functionally and you'll be free from the existential traps of the devil.

Sorry for the tirade, but it may help in some way to see where modern thinking has unfortunately taken us.

With love in Christ,
Andrew

Dear RayK,
What you have written seems to make a lot of sense. What you're telling us is to try to be as simple as possible, like kids for example.
By the way if you're having problems with the sun rays passing throught your window pane, permit me to suggest purchasing some window cleaning product that can be found at your nearest supermaret.
Now where did I put my Yo-Yo.
Lauro

Dear RayK,

Yes, you put your finger on a most crucial point with respect to sanctity and even the issue of heresy in the lives of saints.

Fr. Holweck in his 1924 edition of "Dictionary of Saints" writes a fascinating Forward in which he deals with these topics.

A dedicated hagiographer, he wanted to write a compendium of all known saints venerated by ANY Church that admits the doctrine of the veneration of Saints.

He marked those Saints that were "questionable" with an asterisk, but then added that there are so many saints in the Roman calendar itself that were implicated with heresy that it is, by now, impossible to really extricate etc.

The case of Bl. Joachim di Fiore is interesting. He submitted his theological work to the judgement of the Roman Church and said he submits in advance to any and all corrections.

He died before the Church could pronounce on his work and, when it did, the verdict was quite negative!

But since he submitted to her judgement, there is no difficulty with his cult.

The Franciscan Jacopone da Todi is a local "Blessed" but he once signed a petition against Pope Alexander VI - that will mean that he will probably never be canonized.

So you are more than correct. What is "heresy" is defined by the Church and does not necessarily mean the views that we believe directly - we are allowed leeway in our theological musings, but must ultimately submit to the judgement of the Church.

Alex

Dear Reader Andrew,

Yes, we Catholics are talking about the Pope.

If you have a problem with that as an Orthodox, we understand.

But please don't tell us our business.

Alex

Dear Alex,

You know me by now, never wanting to give an unwarranted jab . I apologize if my post is perceived as unwarranted.

I'm just proposing that one of the reasons why it may be so difficult to grapple with the true meaning of the subject "Papal infallibility" is that the language and rationale of existentialism has crept into the discussion and made an office that ought to be functional (i.e. for the glory of God) instead have a life of it's very own.

The Eastern Church has also done this, to a much lesser degree, with the office of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Please, let me put it another way: If the whole of the city of Rome and the Vatican were hit by some catstrophe and disappeared beneath the waves (God forbid, seriously), wouldn't the (Western) Catholic Church still continue to function? Wouldn't they name a new city as the primatial see and continue with the real work of the Gospel? The new see might not have once been the See of Peter. Would it matter? would the new Pope of, let's say, "Paris," automatically be infallible?

I hope that this helps you and others to understand my approach.

With love in Christ,
Andrew

Dear Reader Andrew,

Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?

Alex