DICI, Zuhlsdorf and My Five Cents

DICI:*

All changes introduced at the Council and in the post-Conciliar reforms which we denounce, because the Church has already condemned them, are confirmed. With the difference that, from now on, it is said, at the same time, that the Church does not change…[sic], which means that these changes are perfectly in the line of Catholic Tradition.

Fr. Zuhlsdorf:*

[Hmmm... I wonder what the position of some of the SSPXers is on the thought of Ven. John Henry Newman concerning development of doctrine. I honestly don't know. This might be an interesting point of discussion, below, if it can be civil.] ... [The SSPX wants, it seems, a total repudiation of the Second VAtican Council? Partial? D'ya think that's going to happen? Papa Ratzinger has written that perhaps it would have been better for some Councils in the past never to to have been held. That, however, doesn't mean that we repudiate them entirely. We put them in proper perspective and then move on. But what if your view of the Church and of doctrine doesn't alow for "moving on" or "development". This is why I asked that question, above.]

Now to my five cents:

• A) A dogma is a dogma.
• B) A valid decision of an Ecumenical Council is dogma.
• c) What Councils are Ecumenical and how an Ecumenical Council decides are or have at least long been not dogmas, but "dogmatic facts".
• D) Whether these facts are dogmatic or not, there has been divergence about them.
  • i) Vth Ecumenical Council had a Pope signing a Condemnation of the Three Chapters of Ibas and Bishops Voting a Condemnation of Origenist positions, fourteen of them I think, including Apocastasis ton panton. If vote decides, Origenism is condemned already back then as most people or maybe all of them subsequently thought. If Papal signature decides, then Three Chapters of Ibas were condemned back then, and Origenism was condemned later by people thinking it had already been condemned - if you admit Innocent III and Eugene IV had the powers to make decisions on Councils like Latran IV and Florence.
  • ij) VIIIth Ecumenical Council of 869 was repudiated by Pope Zacharias who held what some hold to be the real VIIIth Council in 879.
  • iij) It seems - regrettably so to me - that Benedict XVI has not been faithful to the decisions of Council of Vienne, 1312-1313. Notably as concern Templars.

This much I had written when a black man, possibly or even probably Muslim, sitting next to me in the Library of Georges Pompidou Centre taunted me about my fast and therefore energetic and loud typing. I mean he was typing his comments under a picture as if he were doing a painting, and good luck to him, but it really pisses me off very much to have people interrupting my work in order to comment about my way of doing it. So I forgot what I was going to say. Mind blank.

What John Henry Cardinal Newman stated in Grammar of Assent, I do not know. I have not read it. I do however know that in History of the Arians of the IVth Century, any conciliar condemnations before Nicea condemning "consubstantialis" had been not in Ecumenic Councils, therefore not directly dogma. And he states that those statements were mostly condemning Patripassianism and Modalism, a heresy opposite to Arianism and in some ways even worse. Therefore also condemned earlier. I do also know that when it came to one kind of opposition to it which was clearly a real oppposition, namely Paul of Samosata, an Arius before Arius so to speak, John Henry Newman very clearly called him heterodox. An innovator even if not yet a condemned heretic.

So, I have a problem with anyone seeing as fully Ecumenic Councils both Lateran IV (enjoining a war on heresy, and not just the real baddies, the Albigensian heresy) and Vatican II (calling religious liberty a basic human right).

I have equally a problem with anyone seeing as fully Ecumenic Councils both Florence (enjoining something very close to feeneyism) and Vatican II (which does not directly repudiate feeneyism in so many words, but at least encourages a neglect of it).

But as for anyone saying "an Ecumenical Council cannot be removed from the number of Ecumenical Councils", that is impossible for the Papal theology shared by Patriarch Photius of Constantinople and the latter day Roman Catholics.

A dead Pope can also be repudiated: we know Popes during all the Middle Ages abjured the Heresies of Liberius and Honorius, and we know Pope Formosus was dug up and laicised and tried and burnt and his ashes were thrown into the Tiber.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
locus ut dixi
11th Sunday after Pentecost
Memory of St Clare
12-VIII-2012

*DICI quoted on blog of Fr Zuhlsdorf with comments: link here.