Pastoral discipline and dissent from papal teaching

Controversial Pope + Catholics attacking their own so called infallible pope continued

Normally the Roman Catholic Church requires assent to all her teaching, whether that teaching comes from the universal episcopate of all the bishops or from the head of the bishops, the Pope, the Bishop of Rome.
With regard to papal teaching, the Catholics must adhere to all of it according to the Pope’s intention in giving it to the people, his “manifest mind and will.”

Can. 754 All the Christian faithful are obliged to observe the constitutions and decrees which the legitimate authority of the Church issues in order to propose doctrine and to proscribe erroneous opinions, particularly those which the Roman Pontiff or the college of bishops puts forth.

 Throughout history, there have always been Catholics who have wanted to dissent from the teaching of the popes. Anytime a cleric was accused and proved of heresy, it necessarily resulted in the break of communion, excommunication, deposition, or at least the removal of one’s name from the sacred diptychs. In the past new denominations came to life because of those not agreeing with the pope of Rome, getting followers behind them and as such creating a new 'church'.

Today, we can find theological “liberals” who do not like some of the “old fashioned” teaching of the Church, particular with regard to sexual matters, but at the same time we can find very conservatives who find there is too much liberty now and do not agree with a lots of sayings of this present pope, Francis I.
Some people find that the pope said wrong or even distasteful things with regard to pastoral discipline for those in irregular “marriage” unions as well as his recent teaching on the death penalty.  Some theologians have argued that dissent from papal teaching in certain circumstances is allowed by the Church. One of the main magisterial documents they have appealed to is a document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called Donum Veritatis (“On the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian”)

Throughout history the Roman pontiff has passed more than ones judgement on scientists, bishops and on people who had other ideas than him. Several popes went so far to call others to kill those who did not agree with the Roman Catholic church or did not want to accept the Roman popes power.

Those who were accused of heresy could fear the 'army' of the Catholic Church.

It is impossible to think popes are infallible when they agreed to have crusades and inquisitions as tools to gather power  and material treasures. 

Bishop Athanasius Schneider is saying that the Pope of Rome is untouchable, however much we can disagree with him, and that formal judgments and anathemas on a heretical Pope would have to be left to successors of future Ecumenical Councils (themselves ratified by the Pope).

The Roman Catholic teaching is said to rest on theological conclusion that Christ founded his church, not on himself, but on Peter; that Peter was the first pope of the Catholic Church. Though nowhere can they proof that Peter would have been infallible and that his (so called ) authority and infallibility would be passed from Peter to successors. That early tradition and Church history support the claim in principle; that these conclusions are confirmed by this terrible sanction imposed by the Church:

“All who refuse to assent to her teaching are threatened with eternal damnation.”

This way the Roman catholic church could have power and control over a lot of people.

The dogma of infallibility was proclaimed by the Vatican Council in 1870 over violent opposition from within the ranks of the Hierarchy itself. Prior to the assembly no less than 162 bishops signified they were opposed to the proclaiming of such a dogma, and after the assembly was called more than two months were consumed with heated debates over the issue.

 “Scarcely in any parliament have important matters ever been subjected to as much discussion as was the question of papal infallibility in the Vatican Council.”

Today, more than half a century after the second Vatican council, announced by Pope John XXIII on Jan. 25, 1959, as a means of spiritual renewal for the church and as an occasion for Christians separated from Rome to join in search for reunion, the world saw first the newer popes breaking away what Pope John XXIII had established as a progressive pope. After Pope Benedict XVI wanted to step down the conservative bishops had hope the South American bishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio would continue the conservative direction.

The year 2013 was annus mirabilis (a “wonderful year”) for the Roman Catholic Church. On February 28, 85-year-old Pope Benedict XVI, in a decision that stunned the world, resigned from the papacy. On March 13, following the conclave of 115 cardinals who gathered in the Sistine Chapel and elected Benedict XVI’s successor, a bespectacled and smiling Jorge Bergoglio, S.J., cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires, appeared before the cheering crowd in the square outside St. Peter’s Basilica to be presented to the world by his new name: Pope Francis. The moment marked four historic firsts: the first papal resignation in modern history, the first non-European pope in 1,272 years and the first ever from the Americas, the first of the 266 popes in history to take the name Francis (after St. Francis of Assisi), and the first pope from the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). {Encyc. Britannica}

Francis first maintained the traditional views of the Church regarding abortion, marriage, ordination of women, and clerical celibacy, but left some opening for Anglican ministers who where married to come into the Catholic church to work there as a priest too.

Opposing consumerism and overdevelopment, he wanted to show he too was willing to live abstemious, having St. Francis as his example.

Since 2016, Francis has faced increasingly open criticism, particularly from theological conservatives, on the question of admitting civilly divorced and remarried Catholics to Communion with the publication of Amoris laetitia and on the question of the alleged cover-up of clergy sexual abuse. 

Voices are growing wanting others to believe the world would have a heretical pope during the term of his office.

to be continued

Renewed Catholic-Jewish relations still with a blemish

It is a good sign we may find some trials of the new pope, Francis I, to bring the monotheist faithgroups Jews Christians and Muslims closer to each other again.

The Jews of Antwerpen (Photo credit: CharlesFred)

Catholic-Jewish relations for sure need some boost now we can see many fundamentalist groups trying to undermine such relations and trying to bring more extreme right-wing thoughts in the forefront. In Western Europe we might see again a growing anti-Semitism and a growing hate against Muslims. That hate is mostly triggered by fundamentalist faith-groups giving their 'religion' a bad name.

The world should always remember that the minority faith where people only wanted to honour Only One God Who created heaven and earth, suffered centuries of persecution. The world was warned already in the old days, many centuries before Jesus was born, that those people were the chosen people of God, but would also have to suffer much because of their choice. Also Jeshua, the Nazarene Jew warned his followers they should know when they would like to follow him, they would be a target of spot and bullying. Followers of Christ would in case they originally did not belong to the People Israel, also be taken up in the Family of God. But that would mean they also as part of the Body of Christ, would be part of God's people and would have to suffer likewise. though they may become protected more than those who did not accept the Messiah.

The Jews would have to live in ghettos and face the horrors of the Holocaust. Christians were persecuted but Jews were more and still are persecuted and shunned.

It is a pity the Jews have one distorted picture of the Christians, because they always see the majority of them being Trinitarians often raging against Jews. It is true when they say Christianity began as an offshoot of Judaism, because Jeshua (Jesus Christ) was a Jew, who never intended to make an other religion. After the church leaders of followers of that Jew made a bond with the men in power they took on the Greek-roman cultur with its many gods and holy days. they made Jeshua part of a three-une god like in the pagan cultures and as one bigger group they formed Christendom that became the main religion across Europe. It was that group which treated the tiny minority that did not follow Jesus as a tri-une god with persecution, exclusion and expulsion. Many Christians and Jews found their death as other people who did not want to confirm to the doctrines of that church.

Archbishop Angelo Roncalliin Worl War II was using his wartime post as Vatican ambassador in Istanbul to run a network of nuns, diplomats and other people to issue forged visas and baptismal and immigration certificates to Jews from the Balkans to get them to Turkey and then to British-mandate Palestine.
Later as Pope John XXIII he modernised the Roman Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), whose landmark document "Nostra Aetate" (In Our Times) repudiated the 2,000-year-old concept of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus.

Rabbi David Rosen, International Director of Inter-religious Affairs of American Jewish Committee, said:

"Nostra Aetate ushered in amazing changes in Catholic-Jewish relations around the world, even if the degree to which it was internalized depended on whether Catholics and Jews lived side by side." 

Today we can see a lesser nice site of that Roman Catholic Church which got several of its members really helping Jews out of love for the children of God. But some of them also could have taken action and used the situation to 'win more souls' for the 'good faith'.

Harold Pollack writes:

A great many individual Catholics, priests, nuns, bishops, and others acted heroically to save Jews and to oppose Hitler. To pick one example among many, Archbishop Jean-Geraud Saliege of Toulouse bluntly declared that ”the Jews are our brothers, like so many others, and no Christian can forget this fact.” The Archbishop said this from the pulpit, in 1942, in the middle of occupied Europe. He was not alone in such heroism.

Unfortunately, as an institution the Catholic Church, particularly Pope Pius XII, spectacularly failed. The Church bears general responsibility and (in many cases) specific guilt both its failure to intervene and for particular actions taken against Jews.

Not many Catholics shamed themselves for certain actions taken by their church against people of other faiths. Several Roman Catholics became right wing fighters against those who did not want to come to the real faith of the god son Jesus. All others where considered blasphemous, and the Jews traitors to God. Many in charge of that Roman Catholic Church did not want to react against the way some of their flock were thinking. For years the West could see what was going on in Germany, but not many reacted against the genocide taking place.

Pope Pius XII called Pastor Angelicus, was the most Marian Pope in Church history. Bäumer, Marienlexikon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As head of the Chruch you would think Popes Pius XI and Pius XII could do something against the Nazi doctrine, but they failed to plainly condemn Nazism and specific genocide against Jews (and others). From historical sources we know that diplomats representing France, Poland, Brazil, the United States, and Britain approached the Vatican more than once with the request that the Pope specifically denounce Nazi crimes against Jews. British diplomat Francis D’Arcy Osborne, wrote:

A policy of silence in regard to such offences against the conscience of the world must necessarily involve a renunciation of moral leadership and a consequent atrophy of the influence and authority of the Vatican…

Terrible was it when after the war the Catholic Church did not enough to bring the Jewish kids back to their family or did not allow them to keep their faith. Instead they tried to keep them away from their faith.

Harold Pollack  in his article The Pope at Yad Vashem writes:

Some misdeeds continued beyond the war. Jewish children were hidden in Catholic homes or religious institutions during the war. When children were baptized, the Church sometimes deliberately obstructed their return to surviving Jewish relatives. As one notorious 1946 memorandum directed:

1) Avoid, as much as possible, responding in writing to Jewish authorities, but rather do it orally.

2) Each time a response is necessary, it is necessary to say that the Church must conduct investigations in order to study each case individually.

3) Children who have been baptized must not be entrusted to institutions that would not be in a position to guarantee their Christian upbringing.

4) For children who no longer have their parents, given the fact that the Church has responsibility for them, it is not acceptable for them to be abandoned by the Church or entrusted to any persons who have no rights over them, at least until they are in a position to choose themselves. This, evidently, is for children who would not have been baptized.

5) If the children have been turned over by their parents, and if the parents reclaim them now, providing that the children have not received baptism they can be given back.

It is to be noted that this decision of the Holy Congregation of the Holy Office has been approved by the Holy Father.

This stain can not be wiped out. It is a blot on the Roman Catholic Church its escutcheon. Trying to keep the children away from their original family and original faith, this intentionally done, is a sin. You may say the Church had a responsibility to those who it could save from the horror of the Nazi's, but it did not give them the right to take away all the grounds to restore their original faith.

To claim those children who lost their family and who were baptised, was not respecting the will of the deceased family members. The parents would have loved to see their children saved in the faith, not given them over to an other religious group to have them unwillingly be reformed in that other faith.

Naturally it would be wrong to take Pope Francis I accountable for what happened in the 1930s -1960s. He bears no personal stain for actions undertaken almost seventy years ago.

Some Christians do not seem to like what he is doing the last few weeks, which shows how there are still too many Christians who do not want to see their connection with the Jews, and how many still consider a whole people guilty for what some of their folks did. It would be the same as the Jews would consider all Christians guilty for killing so many Jews. The same with the Muslims, too many Christian are generalising the Islamic community, equalising them all with those lunatic fundamentalists. You also could say it would be the same if we all would consider the Christians on the same line as some freaky fundamentalist Christians like the Westboro Church a.o.

We should welcome Pope Francis I his efforts to helpfully mediate the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis even at a time when still a debt remains unacknowledged and unpaid.

Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s director of international interreligious affairs and former head of the IJCIC, welcomed the Pope’s speech as conciliatory.

“Pope Francis is a very good friend of the Jewish people, and we rejoice in the fact that he will continue to advance the path of his predecessors in deepening the Catholic-Jewish relationship.”

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The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation promotes Pope John XXIII

This Monday June the 3°, the church marked a half-century since the death of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli – Blessed Pope John XXIII.  In the Catholic liturgical year he is remembered on October 11,the day that the Second Vatican Council began. He was beatified (made a saint) on September 3, 2000.In the Anglican calendar he is remember on his death day, June .
Within minutes after the Pope’s death Vatican Radio announced:
“It is with profound sorrow that we announce the death of our beloved Pope John XXIII. His Holiness, whose kindness and humility have won the admiration and affection of all mankind, died peacefully and serenely in his apartment in the Vatican apostolic palace at 7:49 p.m. this evening, the third of June 1963.
Pentecost, Monday, June 3, was a day which the church would never forget for it marked the day when one of the most beloved popes of all times died.
Never before had a pope’s final agony been followed so closely and with such deep and sincere sorrow, not only by Catholics but by men of every creed and circumstance on the face of the earth.




The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation has been working relentlessly to honor Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli,  and to spread his magnificent legacy.

Roncalli was a remarkable man who epitomized courage, passion for justice and a strong spirit of reform. His record as Pope John XXIII is well documented and widely known. In 1961, he commissioned the drafting of the revolutionary Decretum de Judaeis (“Decree on the Jews”) which served as a basis to Nostra Aetate (Our Age), a declaration of the relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, which was promulgated in 1965 by his successor, Pope Paul VI, after Roncalli’s death.

Many other anecdotes surrounding his Papacy clearly show his innermost feelings towards Jews. One of them relates to his famous statement: “I’m Joseph, your brother”, referring to his middle name “Giuseppe” (Joseph, in Italian), in clear Biblical allusion of what Joseph said to his brothers in Egypt.

Before his papacy he also demonstrated his unconditional love for the Jewish people and for the State of Israel. Back in the 1940′s, during the dark days of the Holocaust, Angelo Roncalli served as Apostolic Delegate in Istanbul and in this position he went out of his way to save as many Jews as possible. His door was always open to the Jewish Yishuv leaders involved in the rescue efforts, especially Haim Barlas, who documented the aid he got from Roncalli.

 The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation promoted the naming of streets, schools and a kindergarten after him, the erection of busts and monuments, the creation of educational programs and so forth.
Back in 2011, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation submitted a massive file (the Roncalli Dossier) to Yad Vashem, with a strong petition and recommendation to bestow upon him the title of Righteous among the Nations. 

The foundation has some good news:

A few weeks ago we learned that the city of Ashdod was favorably considering the possibility of naming a street after him and we continue our campaign with other cities and have asked Minister Gilad Erdan to contemplate the possibility of a special stamp issue bearing Roncalli’s semblance.

We are very happy that one of our first members, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (better known nowadays as Pope Francis), who has always been very supportive of our mission to keep alive the legacies of the rescuers, is likely to follow the same path set by Angelo Roncalli, fostering a brotherly dialog between Christian and Jews.

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was a remarkable human being – a role model to whom we all owe a debt of eternal gratitude.

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