Regarding 1) whether a pope can be a heretic, 2) if holding such a belief puts one outside of Catholic thought, 3) whether this pope is behind the agenda to admit those living in irregular (i.e., objectively mortally sinful) unions, and 4) whether prior popes considered this agenda "merciful" or an error to be condemned: I Modern Catholics need to be disabused of this false notion; the Church has NEVER taught that a pope CANNOT be guilty of heresy. In fact, quite the opposite. The Church has mused about and talked about such a possibility for centuries. Even a pope has taught infallibly that a pope both can fall into error and be corrected for it: "1. In assessing Our duty and the situation now prevailing, We have been weighed upon by the thought that a matter of this kind [i.e. error in respect of the Faith] is so grave and so dangerous that the Roman Pontiff,who is the representative upon earth of God and our God and Lord Jesus Christ, who holds the fulness of power over peoples and kingdoms, who may judge all and be judged by none in this world, MAY NONETHELESS BE CONTRADICTED IF HE BE FOUND TO HAVE DEVIATED FROM THE FAITH. Remembering also that, where danger is greater, it must more fully and more diligently be counteracted, We have been concerned lest false prophets or others, even if they have only secular jurisdiction, should wretchedly ensnare the souls of the simple, and drag with them into perdition, destruction and damnation countless peoples committed to their care and rule, either in spiritual or in temporal matters; and We have been concerned also lest it may befall Us to see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by the prophet Daniel, in the holy place. In view of this, Our desire has been to fulfil our Pastoral duty, insofar as, with the help of God, We are able, so as to arrest the foxes who are occupying themselves in the destruction of the vineyard of the Lord and to keep the wolves from the sheepfolds, lest We seem to be dumb watchdogs that cannot bark and lest We perish with the wicked husbandman and be compared with the hireling." [Capitals added for emphasis.] - Pope Paul IV in the Apostolic Constitution Cum Ex Apostolic Officio of February 15, 1559 The Church just isn't sure what would happen if a pope is a heretic: http://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/can-pope-heretic Can a Pope Be a Heretic? Excerpt: "Since believing something wrong doesn’t automatically make you culpable for the sin or guilty of the crime, theologians usually make a distinction between people who aren’t consciously and deliberately rejecting the Church’s teaching and those who are: A material heretic is someone who does notrealize that they believe something heretical. Provided that their ignorance is not their own fault, material heretics are neither culpable of the sin nor guilty of the crime. A formal heretic is someone who does realize that they believe something heretical and makes a conscious and free decision to believe it. Formal heretics are culpable for the sin, and can also be penalized of the crime provided that they meet the appropriate conditions (age, awareness, etc.). Can the pope be a heretic? Most theologians would agree that a pope could be a material heretic, just like any other well-meaning but misinformed Catholic. He wouldn’t be culpable for any sin or guilty of any crime. He could, in fact, remain in a state of grace, and, endowed with the virtue of faith, lead the Christian faithful in the faith delivered once for all to the apostles. His material heresy might even appear in his non-infallible teaching, although God gives him special help to avoid that (CCC 892). But Catholics firmly believe that it could never appear in his infallible teaching. (CCC 891) Theologians are divided as to whether the pope could ever be a formal heretic, because they don’t agree on two things: Does the grace promised by Christ to Peter preclude the possibility of a pope falling into formal heresy? If it doesn’t, would a heretical pope lose his office as a consequence of the sin of heresy, or as a penalty for the crime of heresy? There were always some people who believed that God would simply not allow the pope to become a formal heretic, because it would be against Christ’s promises to Peter. But from the twelfth century onwards, a lot of Catholic theologians didn’t. That’s when Gratian, the most important medieval canon lawyer, included in his Decretum a warning to errant popes that he attributed to St. Boniface: "If the Pope, remiss in his duties and neglectful of his and his neighbor’s salvation, gets caught up in idle business, and if moreover, by his silence (which actually does more harm to himself and everyone else), he nonetheless leads innumerable hoards of people away from the good with him, he will be beaten for eternity with many blows alongside that very first slave of hell [the Devil]. However, no person can presume to convict him of any transgressions in this matter, because, although the Pope can judge everyone else, no one may judge him, unless he, for whose perpetual stability all the faithful pray as earnestly as they call to mind the fact that, after God, their own salvation depends on his soundness, is found to have strayed from the faith. (Decretum, Part 1, Distinction 40, Chapter 6)" So, no one can convict a pope of being remiss in his duties, because no one stands above the pope in judgment—unless the pope is a heretic, and then… Then what? Unfortunately, Gratian didn’t fill in the blank. But since Gratian’s Decretum became required reading for theologians and canon lawyers, the question became unavoidable for subsequent generations of Catholic theology. The two most important answers came from sixteenth-seventeenth century Jesuits: Francisco Suarez and St. Robert Bellarmine. Suarez took it as a given that a pope could be a formal heretic. He then considered two possibilities for what happens next: "First possibility: The pope loses his office as a consequence of the sin of heresy, because people who commit that sin cease to be members of the Church, and God deposes a pope who is no longer a member of the Church. (Suarez, De fide, 10.6.2)" Suarez rejects this possibility for two reasons. First, falling out of a state of grace might mean that you aren’t a member of the Church in the way that you’re supposed to be, but it doesn’t mean that you’re not a member of the Church—otherwise you’d be kicked out of the Church every time you committed a mortal sin. Second, if Catholics are supposed to believe that God deposes popes, then Scripture, the Tradition of the Church, and the pronouncements of the Magisterium ought to have said something about it—but they haven’t. Besides, if God deposes popes, you could never be sure if the pope was really the pope—what if he was a secret heretic and God had secretly deposed him? How would you ever know? (Suarez, De fide, 10.6.2-4) "Second possibility: The pope keeps his office if he commits the sin of heresy, but loses his office if he is convicted of the crime of heresy. (De fide 10.6.6)" Suarez thinks that, just like Christ bestows the papacy on the man whom the Church elects, so also Christ takes away the papacy from the man whom the Church convicts (De fide 10.6.10). So, if a pope commits the sin of heresy, all the other bishops of the world have the right to try him for the crime of heresy, even against his will (De fide 10.6.7). If they were to convict him, he could be considered deposed from the papacy by Christ, and the Church could elect another pope. Bellarmine was more hesitant about the whole question. Unlike Suarez, he did not take it as a given that the pope could be a formal heretic. Actually, Bellarmine considered it “probable” that God would prevent the pope from ever being a formal heretic (he says it twice: De Romano Pontifice 2.30 and 4.2). Nevertheless, Bellarmine was willing to consider what would be the case if the pope could fall into formal heresy. If we assume that the pope could be a formal heretic, Bellarmine thinks Suarez’s opinion is wrong. Suarez allows the bishops to judge the pope. But one of Gratian’s basic rules is that no one can judge the pope. Sure, Suarez has Christ carrying out the judgment, but it is only because the other bishops of the Church have pronounced the judgment first. Instead, Bellarmine adopts the position that Suarez rejected: the pope loses his office immediately by committing the sin of formal heresy, because people who commit that sin cease to be members of the Church, and God deposes a pope who is no longer a member of the Church. It’s true that the bishops could still get together and make a declaration that God had deposed the pope, but their declaration would not be a judgment in any real sense, only an acknowledgement of what God had already done. (De Romano Pontifice 2.30)" *****
II The actual teaching of the Church is that no pope has ever been shown to be a manifest or formal heretic. (Though whether prior popes were material heretics is obviously true given these definitions.) It is not the teaching of the Church that no pope has ever been a material heretic, nor that a pope could never commit formal heresy in the future. It has not happened historically that a pope was found guilty of formal heresy, but from that one may NOT conclude that it may never happen. Because it could happen in the future (but has not happened in the past), theologians have debated the subject for centuries, and still do not have a definite answer of how God and the Church will handle it. But to claim it cannot happen in the future is NOT a teaching of the Church (though it is an opinion held and expressed by many). ***** "The Church's moral theology has always distinguished between objective or material sin and formal sin. The person who holds something contrary to the Catholic faith is materially a heretic. They possess the matter of heresy, theological error. Thus, prior to the Second Vatican Council it was quite common to speak of non-Catholic Christians as heretics, since many of their doctrines are objectively contrary to Catholic teaching. This theological distinction remains true, though in keeping with the pastoral charity of the Council today we use the term heretic only to describe those who willingly embrace what they know to be contrary to revealed truth. Such persons are formally (in their conscience before God) guilty of heresy. Thus, the person who is objectively in heresy is not formally guilty of heresy if 1) their ignorance of the truth is due to their upbringing in a particular religious tradition (to which they may even be scrupulously faithful), and 2) they are not morally responsible for their ignorance of the truth. This is the principle of invincible ignorance, which Catholic theology has always recognized as excusing before God." https://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/heresy_schism_apostasy.htm "Material heresy In traditional Catholic theology, the term material heresy refers to an opinion that is objectively contradictory to the teachings of the Church, and as such heretical, but which is uttered by a person without the subjective knowledge of its being so. A person who holds a material heresy may therefore not be a "heretic" in the strict sense. Material heresy is distinguished from "formal heresy", i.e. a heretic opinion proposed deliberately by a person who is aware of its being against the doctrine of the Church." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_heresy The charge of material heresy is already, easily, proven just by this pope's verbal words on marriage and cohabitation. The charge of formal heresy must be limited to where a pope is teaching error on a matter of Faith and Morals in a magisterial document displaying dissent from a dogmatically defined teaching ("off the cuff" remarks, phone calls, media interviews etc don't count). Because of the modern misunderstanding of material vs formal heresy, and the common (but false) notion that anyone accusing a pope of heresy has placed himself outside the Church, the term must be employed with caution and adequately explained when it is utilized with an audience that is likely to misunderstand it's nuances. III This debate is about whether those in irregular unions (by definition living in adultery, fornication, or sodomy, in other words living lives in objectively mortal sin) may be admitted to Holy Eucharist. Kasper (a known liberal dissenter who was disciplined and silence by Saint Pope JPII and Cardinal Ratzinger for promoting this position) was rehabilitated by the current pope from his first Wednesday audience of his pontificate, and was made keynote speaker at the meeting of Cardinals where Holy Eucharist for those in irregular unions was first placed on the agenda. The pope then praised him for his serene theology, and doing "theology on one's knees." Scalfari said the pope told him eventually everyone who asks will be admitted to the Eucharist. The pope's childhood friend visited with him and reported the pope's two goals for his pontificate were admitting those in irregular unions to the Eucharist, and ending priestly celibacy. This pope phoned a woman living in an irregular union who had been instructed not to present herself for Holy Eucharist that "a little bread and wine" never hurt anybody, and to just go to another priest. The same story was essentially repeated with his childhood friend's coworker in Argentina. The conference of bishops of the Philipines said this groundbreaking document, AL, must immediately be placed into pastoral practice; theologians in Europe claim catechisms and other Church teaching documents must be edited to reflect this new thinking in AL. Archbishop Forte claimed that the pope told him: “If we speak explicitly about communion for the divorced and remarried, you do not know what a terrible mess we will make. So we won’t speak plainly, do it in a way that the premises are there, then I will draw out the conclusions.” Cardinal Schonborn has been admitting those in irregular marriage to the Eucharist for 15 years in his diocese. When asked how to interpret AL, the pope said to consult Schonborn's position, who agrees with and promotes this interpretation, and claims AL is magisterial and all preceding Church documents must be read in accord with it. Now the Vatican newspaper itself has run an editorial promoting and defending the interpretation of AL that would permit those in irregular unions to receive the Holy Eucharist. This is plainly the pope's agenda; anyone arguing otherwise has zero credibility. It's the worst kind of modern Pharisaicalism. This is obviously a gross violation of Jesus's plain words of Scripture, and 2000 years of magisterial teaching. It is heretical, scandalous and blasphemous. No emotion laden appeals to situational ethics ("mercy") can make it otherwise. VI The following Vatican document was published when Kasper publicly pushed this agenda in the early 1990s (in case anyone still holds the mistaken notion that this agenda can be squared with orthodoxy). It was a direct response by Pope John Paul II, by way of Cardinal Ratzinger, to Kasper's promotion of these errors: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_14091994_rec-holy-comm-by-divorced_en.html There's a good summary of the situation here: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/scholars-no-benedict-xvi-doesnt-support-kasper-in-synod-debates-35882/ Excerpt: The issue re-emerged in 1993, when Kasper, then Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, as well as two other German bishops, wrote a letter referring, according to Healy, to the teaching of Familiaris consortio as “a general norm that, while true, cannot regulate all of the very complex individual cases.” The following year, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a letter to bishops, reminding them that “if the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God's law. Consequently, they cannot receive Holy Communion as long as this situation persists.” The letter, written by Cardinal Ratzinger and approved by St. John Paul II, moreover stated that “members of the faithful who live together as husband and wife with persons other than their legitimate spouses may not receive Holy Communion … pastors in their teaching must also remind the faithful entrusted to their care of this doctrine.” Cardinal Ratzinger and his congregation followed up on that letter, which “was met with a very lively response,” by studying several of the more significant objections to it. The cardinal's follow-up letter, published in 1998, noting that while varying from the “oikonomia” practice of the Eastern Orthodox and the opinions of a few among the Church Fathers, the practice of the Catholic Church “recovered … the original concept of the Church Fathers,” which prohibits a “more varied praxis” regarding Communion for the divorced and remarried. Finally, after his election as Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger wrote Sacramentum caritatis, the concluding document of the 2005 Synod on the Eucharist, which noted that “where the nullity of the marriage bond is not declared and objective circumstances make it impossible to cease cohabitation, the Church encourages these members of the faithful to commit themselves to living their relationship in fidelity to the demands of God's law, as friends, as brother and sister; in this way they will be able to return to the table of the Eucharist, taking care to observe the Church's established and approved practice in this regard.” BRIAN KOPP
Folks still claim that, despite three years of irrefutable evidence, the "Communion for those in irregular unions (Kasper proposal)" is not the pope's agenda. Of course the Vatican has had ample opportunity following all the events outlined above to publish a clarification that despite all impressions, this is NOT the pope's own agenda, but all we hear is crickets. Yet advocate for a return of ad orientam worship, as Cardinal Sarah recently did, echoing Pope BXVI, and the Vatican is capable of publishing a "clarification" (demonstrably incorrect) within 48 hours. Strange, that.
The short answer to the question heading this thread is NO. Other wise, the twelve Apostles would have been told what Judas was up to and there would probably have been a punch up at the end of the Last Supper. Because I simply can not imagine Saint Peter sitting back and not punching the lights out of Judas, before he could betray Jesus. Just my opinion. I am convinced Jesus wants us to be like Saint John, and 'keep watch, and pray.'
I wonder if we will live to see a Cardinal or Bishop of the ilk of Saint Peter, rolling up his holy cuffs and getting into hand to hand combat with those he disagrees with, rightly or wrongly. I think there are a few posters on the forum who God has not placed in the hierarchy just to prevent such a solution. Keep watch and pray. Keep faithful to Holy Tradition. Let God deal with those who appear to have lost the plot.
Yes! Keep Watch and Pray we have been told and that's good advice in all times .... but .... the Question is" "Watch for What"? Danger? Enlightenment? SIGNS? Second question: When Ya see "Something": What Ya gonna do about it? Ominus SIGNS are EVERYWHERE! I don't know if Pope Francis is playing the role of Peter or Judas but I do believe that he is reading the "Script" that The Lord has given him and doing his "Part", know it or not, so that The Storm unfolds as The Father directs! Sooo .... Question #3: What's your part in this Divine Play called The Storm ...Eh!?? What assets do YOU have that will further Jesus the Shepard's Mission in seeing to the needs of The Flock ..... Eh!!?? GOD SAVE ALL HERE!!
I remember St Padre Pio was asked by a top industrialist from Milan what he should do about the Communist worker who were causing chaos in his car plant. 'Should I take a stick to them?', the Factory owner asked the saint. 'Put nails in it first', said the saint. I would say a stick with nails in it would be far too easy for a heretical Cardinal. St Pope Pius X , when he was a Parish Priest very famously got stuck into Freemasons with his fists when they disrupted a Parish Porcession he was holding...they say he did quite a bit of damage, bless his saintly, Pontifical heart. He publically encouraged people to beat Modernists with their fists. I would concur and if they ever meet up with Modernist heretical Cardinals to stick the boot in as well and to beat a bit of sense into them with anything heavy that comes to hand. Plus if you have dogs, set them on them. Use your imagination. Be creative. Make an impact. Don't be shy. http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/new...who-urged-modernists-to-be-beaten-with-fists/ St Pius X: the son of a village postman who urged modernists to be ‘beaten with fists’ by Spiritual Life posted Wednesday, 22 Aug 2012 ‘A man of God who knew the unhappiness of the world’ St Pius X (August 21) had a saintliness that no one who knew him doubted Pius X (1835-1914, pope from 1903) is often remembered today as the pontiff who led an uncompromising crusade against modernising theologians such as Alfred Loisy in France and the Irish Jesuit George Tyrrell. Such thinkers, Pius believed, were undermining the objective supernatural character of the Church and reducing religious faith to a matter of individual taste. In July 1907 the Pope’s decree Lamentabile Sane Exitu formally condemned 65 modernist propositions. Subsequently all the clergy were required to take an oath against them. Unquestionably Pius X pursued his quarry with animus. “They want to be treated with oil, soap and caresses,” he said of his antagonists. “But they should be beaten with fists. In a duel, you don’t count or measure the blows, you strike as you can.” Latterly, the Society of Pius X, founded by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1970, has helped to keep alive the image of that pope as an intransigent obscurantist. In fact, no leader of the Church since the Council of Trent had inspired so many important changes in Catholic life. Those who knew Pius X at close quarters never doubted his saintliness, as “a man of God who knew the unhappiness of the world and the hardships of life, and in the greatness of his heart wanted to comfort everybody”. Giuseppe Sarto was born at Riese, near Venice, the second of 10 children of the village postman and his seamstress wife. After 17 years as a country curate and parish priest he directed a seminary at Treviso, before becoming Bishop of Mantua in 1884 and Patriarch of Venice in 1893. As pope, Pius X strongly encouraged the frequent reception of Holy Communion, which, he made clear, should be available to young children. His many reforms included the codification of canon law, the reorganisation of the Curia, the reform of seminaries, the restoration of plainsong and the rearrangement of the breviary psalter so that all the psalms should be recited. He also revived the theology of St Thomas Aquinas and established a commission of Benedictine scholars to restore the original text of the Vulgate. Abroad, he sternly resisted state secularisation in France, not least in education, and refused to acknowledge the Associations Culturelles appointed to control ecclesiastical buildings in that country. Rather than submit to Republican bullying the Church gave up its property in France. Ever conscious of the Church’s exclusive mission to the world, the Pope refused to receive Theodore Roosevelt after the former American president had lectured to a Methodist congregation in Rome. Pius X suffered a stroke in 1913. Having long warned against the danger of European conflict, he died just after the outbreak of the First World War. Celebrated as a miracle-worker, he was canonised in 1954.
I believe if we keep the Faith of our Fathers. Not be ashamed of who we are 'Practising Catholic's, especially with family, friends and those we meet, even if they happen to be Priests, Bishops or Cardinals. We will succeed in doing what for example the Irish did when the English banned the practise of the Faith in Ireland years ago. We will succeed in doing what other countries did when the Faith was silenced in the more recent past, even in some countries today. The Church has the promise of Jesus, 'the gates of hell will not prevail against us.' And I am naïve enough to still believe Jesus is in charge. If we keep sorting out God's Church for Him, He will continue to do what any parent would do if a stubborn child tries to do things for himself; God will wait until we admit we can't fix it and ask Him to help. I think. In the name of God, let go, let God. Trust Him. I think He is testing all of us, and I don't want to make Him any angrier than He must be right now.
................. but there comes a time, as all of Human History demonstrates, that People of Faith will have to "Take Up Arms" to defend Life, Home and Church. It has always been so and we must prepare for that time such as was the case that Churchill spoke of in 1940! A Time when he had nothing to offer but "Blood, Sweat, Toil & Tears"! I truly believe that That Time is upon us again .... and I wish I was 30 years younger!! GOD SAVE ALL HERE!! View attachment 5176
This is what i use for my pictures on social media. Most of my friends haven't figured it out yet. But it does says a lot. Great minds think alike View attachment 5177
The answer requires a lot of prayer, and a lot of work to put this together. There is no short answer. And if anyone bothers to read the thread they will realize the answer of the Church, even a pope in infallible teaching, is yes.
"The normalcy bias is strong in this one." Normalcy Bias and Papal Positivism Excerpt: Occam’s Razor So although it is praiseworthy to desire to defend a pope from attack, there comes a point when the evidence is so overwhelming that Occam’s Razor should apply: among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. If we are doing mental gymnastics to make a papal statement mean something that it clearly does not, this is no service to the truth. Nor to the pope, for that matter. We should ask ourselves, if I heard another prelate, say, perhaps the Archbishop of Chicago, state the same things, would I try to make excuses for him and explain that he didn’t really mean what his words in their plain sense mean? Would I try to dismiss his words as a product of his culture? Or should I simply take him at his word? Our Lord said that we should let our ‘yes’ mean ‘yes’ and our ‘no’ mean ‘no’ (Matthew 5:37). A corollary to this is that we should accept the words of others, including the pope, at face value. We should assume they mean what they plainly say. To overcome normalcy bias, we must reposition what we think of as “normal.” If you live in a war-zone and you hear a loud noise in the distance, you will most likely assume that you heard a bomb explode. That would be “normal.” But if you hear the same noise in your quiet suburban neighborhood, you might assume it is the neighbor’s teenage son messing with firecrackers. Catholics of every age, however, live in a “war-zone,” not a quiet, safe neighborhood. For the devil is constantly on the attack. He attacks in ways both subtle and obvious, but he always attacks. So we should never assume it is normal for Church prelates – at any level – to be holy and orthodox. Instead, we should assume they are under vicious attack. So when a Church prelate – again, at any level – says something contrary to the Faith, we recognize what it is: a victory for the devil. Excusing or even defending it does no one any good.
Crewdog, please don't be mistaken and think I am a pacifist. No regrettably I am a bit of a fighter. I have made it my business to make sure all my family and some friends and people I know get the Holy Mass intentions from our Lady of Mount Carmel, Aylesford each year for over 30 years now, not all these people are believers. Padraig +MOG members and families are en bloc included last year and this year, you included old soldier. I share the Faith by printing and distributing little holy miraculous true stories. I have been told recently this is called evangelisation. I defended the Faith in my workplaces over the years when the chance presented itself. Even slipped a holy story into a magazine when I worked for an international company, and that company was very muslim. The story was in the form of a poem called 'The Masters Hand'. And shared miraculous testimony from workplaces in previous posts. The Faith has been my holy fight for years. The recent crisis in the Church is not the first crisis of Faith in my lifetime. The first was the Church forbidding the use of contraception. I found out as a very young person what was what and kept faith with Holy Father. The second was the explosion of the Latin Mass supporters in my late twenties. I kept Faith with the instruction of a Holy Priest and stayed with the Pope. Now we have a crisis of Trust in God while He permits church men to show their true colours. While He permits what has been hidden for a long time to be brought into the light. Then, the scandals in the Church are a cause for prayer and supplication for God to have Mercy andheal the offenders and have Mercy and heal those wounded by failures on the part of Pastors, Parents and Teachers in the formation of youth. Yes, we are all in this together, Priests and people. We were in a fight for the Faith for forty or fifty years that I can remember; just at different levels, and I am still convinced we can trust God, and Our Lord Jesus Christ as far as the Church is concerned, as long as we hold fast to the Faith of our Fathers, we will be ok. Yes, I have put by a bit of survival food and water. Yes, I have shared the warnings about what we may be facing with my children and adult grandchildren. The younger ones might ignore me; but I've done my best. It all comes back to my original post, we can only pray, fast and trust God. But be very careful about making judgements about His Priests and Ministers. We are insulting God when we pass judgement on His chosen servants. And He will be most harsh on them for their failures. Surely we have to be not found wanting in charity. Yes, if we are face to face with a clergy man who is denying the Faith, we should defend our beliefs; but not an internet assault. That is what scares me, how God must feel when we do this in the public square so to speak. Like yourself I am past the fighting stage mostly these days; but there is still fight in the old Irish dogs too. But we can't attack the Lords anointed.
The question I responded to was, have we the right to CALL the Pope a heretic. I say NO we do not have a right to do this. I believe we are free to agree or disagree with anyone including the Pope; but we do not have a right to pass judgement or call names at those we disagree with.
When you've gone the "survivalist" route, then realize that because of life changes, even to the point of facing death, the effort is moot, it might change one's priorities from temporal preparations to focusing on God and loving Him and defending His Eternal Truths.
We have a right and a duty. Eternal souls are at stake. We're not "calling names." We're not "attacking the pope." We're simply defending the Faitth. And those who should speak are silent, fulfilling prophecy. "But Jesus answered, "I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!"
BrianK, so you are appointed spokesman to fulfil prophesy. Dish out sentence on God's anointed. Whose eternal soul does that put at risk.
I don't think that we have the right to say "the Pope is a heretic". We do have a duty to defend the faith and speak out against heresy or the facilitation of heresy in pastoral practice. It was a Palestinian monk who defended the faith when Pope Honorius was persuaded by a bishop to facilitate the spread of heresy rather than cause schism.
No, the cardinals and bishops who should speak up and correct are silent. That is the fulfillment of prophecy, like it or not, agree with it or not.
