"Progressive" Catholicism

[peregrinator]

he believed it was impossible for a Pope to teach heresy

Citation needed

He certainly held that the impossibility of a Pope teaching heresy was an allowable opinion, and maybe the best opinion; but as far as I know he held it to be an opinion, not a definitive teaching of the Church. And after all, we've had a Pope condemned by an ecumenical council for heresy.

[peregrinator]

It is possible to suggest that some Vatican II reforms weren't a good idea without being a bad Catholic. Doubly so with respect to changes that followed Vatican II that weren't what the Council asked for, and in some places went directly against it (e.g., the near complete eradication of Latin).

Based on my research, the Vatican II directives on what the reform of the liturgy would look like were directly and explicitly overridden by Paul VI. They eradicated Latin altogether because those were his instructions, also, the original 1970 ICEL translation of the Novus Ordo was bad because Paul VI told them not to closely follow the Latin but to translate very loosely.

It's correct that St. Paul VI expressed the desire that Latin and Gregorian Chant would go away, I wouldn't call it explicit instructions (it was at a Papal audience about the imposition of the Bugnini liturgy, I mean, """changes""" to the Mass).

[Doom]

Well, they knew what he wanted anyway. They certainly weren't renegades, their work had an official or quasi-official Papal blessing. Pope Paul's bizarre crusade against traditional liturgy is inexplicable.

[peregrinator]

Well, they knew what he wanted anyway. They certainly weren't renegades, their work had an official or quasi-official Papal blessing. Pope Paul's bizarre crusade against traditional liturgy is inexplicable.

I've been reading Yves Chiron's biography of him and yes, while Paul VI's crusade (apt word) against traditional liturgy is inexplicable, it's not something that came out of the blue.

One of the more interesting episodes in the book (unrelated to liturgy) was when Jacques Maritain was France's ambassador to the Holy See after WWII, and he went to then-Abp. Martini with the request that France be allowed to dismiss their entire episcopacy and appoint new bishops. Martini dutifully took the request to Pius XII who responded absolutely not, it's never been done, it's "inadmissible" (there's that word).

[Doom]

In his biography of Paul VI "The First Modern Pope," Peter Hebblethwaite details just how extreme some of the views he held in his youth were. For example, he advocated the Pope moving out of the Vatican entirely to live a life as an itinerant preacher with no home. He wanted the Papal election process to include not just the cardinals but all the bishops and even the laity. As Pope, he did indeed defy tradition in many ways, such as his extensive world travels, his disenfranchisement of cardinals 80 and older, and his decision to renounce the Papal tiara by leaving it on the altar and walking out of the room at the end of Vatican II but these were modest gestures compared to what he advocated in his youth.

A more recent (2022) biography has been published Paul VI: The Divided Pope by Yves Chiron but I haven't had a chance to read it yet.

Hebblethawaite focuses on the radical nature of his pontificate, while based on the title it seems Chiron focuses on his legendary indecisiveness, his instincts I think were with the progressives, but he ended up upholding tradition more often than not, but due to his internal conflict even as he upheld tradition he ended up encouraging the progressives, the most famous of this is his refusal to flat out condemn "transsignification" and "transfinalization" as heretical attempts to replace Transubstantiation, issuing an ambiguous encyclical which tried to spilt the issue saying that the terms were fine as long they weren't intended to deny Transubstantiation, which is EXACTLY what they were intended to do.

[Riverboat]

I remember when dissenting books like Christ Among Us by Anthony Wilhelm, Catholicism by Richard McBrien, and the infamous Dutch Catechism seemed to be everywhere, but it has now been years since I've seen a copy.

My take is that the Catechism of the Catholic Church promulgated by St. John Paul II has displaced the compendia of errors foisted on the faithful who asked for bread but got a stone and who asked for fish but got a snake.

The last place I saw any of those other books was in the Half-Price Bookstore. Someone put them in the "Catholic" section by mistake instead of "Fantasy."

[Doom]

he believed it was impossible for a Pope to teach heresy

Citation needed

He certainly held that the impossibility of a Pope teaching heresy was an allowable opinion, and maybe the best opinion; but as far as I know he held it to be an opinion, not a definitive teaching of the Church. And after all, we've had a Pope condemned by an ecumenical council for heresy.

False, he was condemned for subscribing (under duress by the way, that fact is kind of important in this discussion) to an ambiguous formula because he believed it could be interpreted in an orthodox way. He was never called a heretic until the Protestant Reformers wanted an example of the "errors" of Rome to justify their actions.

[peregrinator]

False, he was condemned for subscribing (under duress by the way, that fact is kind of important in this discussion) to an ambiguous formula because he believed it could be interpreted in an orthodox way. He was never called a heretic until the Protestant Reformers wanted an example of the "errors" of Rome to justify their actions.

No, he was condemned for heresy by Constantinople III and this condemnation was confirmed by Pope St. Leo II.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

This pious and orthodox creed of the divine favour was enough for a complete knowledge of the orthodox faith and a complete assurance therein. But since from the first, the contriver of evil did not rest, finding an accomplice in the serpent and through him bringing upon human nature the poisoned dart of death, so too now he has found instruments suited to his own purpose–namely Theodore, who was bishop of Pharan, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, who were bishops of this imperial city, and further Honorius, who was pope of elder Rome, Cyrus, who held the see of Alexandria, and Macarius, who was recently bishop of Antioch, and his disciple Stephen — and has not been idle in raising through them obstacles of error against the full body of the church sowing with novel speech among the orthodox people the heresy of a single will and a single principle of action in the two natures of the one member of the holy Trinity Christ our true God, a heresy in harmony with the evil belief, ruinous to the mind, of the impious Apollinarius, Severus and Themistius, and one intent on removing the perfection of the becoming man of the same one lord Jesus Christ our God, through a certain guileful device, leading from there to the blasphemous conclusion that his rationally animate flesh is without a will and a principle of action.

He was not condemned as a heretic, as I read it.

[peregrinator]

The Catholic Encyclopedia disagrees with you

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

But I quoted the exact words (well, in translation, but I don’t think that’s an issue here) of the council.

[peregrinator]

But I quoted the exact words (well, in translation, but I don’t think that’s an issue here) of the council.

Yes, I'm saying that the author(s) of the relevant article in the Catholic Encyclopedia (as well as at least one authority they cite that I recall) read it differently.

[Jack3]

The sheer idea that people who want to hold fast to the Deposit of the Faith and Divine Revelation are a "danger" is patently absurd.

You are characterising traditionalists by their best intentions and ignoring their worst excesses.