National Review blasts SSPX

[charlesh]

Do you really believe we're commanded to sic the cops on heretics? On people who practice contraception? How about people who miss Mass on Sunday? Who fail to call their mothers? What kind of civil sanction should we mete out to adulterers?

Christ forgave the adulteress. He told her to sin no more. He did not commend her to the authorities.

Granted, the authorities of His day wanted to stone her, which is harsh punishment. But stoning was commanded by the Law. Are you telling me if Christ were here today, He'd commend the adulteress to American secular authorities? You don't think He'd have a problem with fining her and caging her in one of America's notorious rape pens?

I urge you to re-examine your position. 

Throwing hysterical sophisms about won't convince anybody. The teaching of the church is clear: religious liberty is condemned, in contradiction to Vatican II. Your first paragraph shows you don't have the slightest grasp on what the Church teaches about religious liberty. Sicking the cops on people for missing Mass? You don't even know what you're talking about. You're grossly distorting and exaggerating Church teaching. Do try to learn and understand. Make an attempt.

[Nicolaus]

Can anyone recommend some good reading on Religious Liberty?

[GottmitunsAlex]

Can anyone recommend some good reading on Religious Liberty?

http://www.sspxasia.com/Documents/Archbi...dix_IV.htm
Religious freedom, religious liberty and V2

Happy reading

[Phillipus Iacobus]

Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. Those remain ever one and the same and are no less changeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity to an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth, may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law

The following were condemned in the Syllabus of Errors of December 8, 1864 (Pope Pius IX)

no. 77. In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.

no. 78. Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship.

no. 79. Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism.

And from this stinking fountainhead of indifferentism flows that absurd and erroneous opinion or rather nonsense, that liberty of conscience must be claimed and demanded for anyone whatever.

For this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, the Church does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good. . . . But if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the common good (and this is the only legitimate reason), human law may or even should tolerate evil, it may not and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake. . . .

But, to judge aright, we must acknowledge that, the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection; and that the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare requires. . . . And although in the extraordinary condition of these times the Church usually acquiesces in certain modern liberties, not because she prefers them in themselves, but because she judges it expedient to permit them, she would in happier times exercises her own liberty. . . .

The duty to suppress moral and religious error cannot, therefore, be an ultimate norm of action. It must be subordinated to which, , permit and may even make it appear that the best choice for promoting is the toleration of error.

Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. Those remain ever one and the same and are no less changeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity to an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth, may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law

[Phillipus Iacobus]

In regards to the Syllabus, when something is condemned, it is evil to believe in it. Thus:

1. It is evil to believe that "in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship."

2. It is evil to believe that "hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship."

3. It is evil to believe that "moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism."

[Phillipus Iacobus]

After reading the Syllabus of Errors, I have had a soft spot for Pope Pius IX. It's not a coincidence that he is my avatar.

[ggreg]

In the writer's conception of the Faith the Church can change it's mind.  One century it can condemn religious liberty and the next praise it as necessary for the dignity of the human person.

Whichever is "true" the fact remains that they both cannot be true.  It is a nonsense to call both states being a Catholic in good standing.  I disagree with your typical pew warming modernist on more things of import than I do an evangelical Protestant.

I would not claim an evangelical was the same religion as me.

Ironically I remember hearing a speech by Bishop Fellay on this issue, where his response the mutable truth was.  "ok,  we will wait", spoken with typical Gaulic snoot.  (Yes I know he is Swiss)

[Phillipus Iacobus]

Whichever is "true" the fact remains that they both cannot be true.  It is a nonsense to call both states being a Catholic in good standing.  I disagree with your typical pew warming modernist on more things of import than I do an evangelical Protestant.

I would not claim an evangelical was the same religion as me.

This.

[Adam Wayne]

Can anyone recommend some good reading on Religious Liberty?

Americanism & the Anti-Christian Conspiracy by Msgr. Henri Delassus

Religious liberty and contraception are weapons by David A. Wemhoff

The End of Dialogue and the Beginning of Unity by E. Michael Jones

[Crusading Philologist]

By the way, First Things has also mocked the SSPX on this issue:

Not that the SSPX document is easy to take seriously, as it comes loaded with so much old-timey, vintage rhetoric deployed with the solemnest of faces. There are invocations of Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (“error has no rights,” readers are reminded), warnings about the dangers of ‘assimilationism,’ and even a rather intriguing, vaguely-conspiratorial reading of American history (in which “America’s original Catholic soul [paid with the blood of first Spanish, then French missionaries]” was forcefully “supplanted” with a Calvinist one).

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstth...on-ground/

Only in America could a magazine devote itself to justifying dissent from Catholic teaching on economics and foreign policy and still be called "conservative."