Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Loftus denies the Unity of the Church

IMG_7839
Jesus is stripped and his clothes are divided among the soldiers. But his seemless
garment is not torn: it is a symbol of the Unity of the Church.
From St Augustine's, Ramsgate.
Basil Loftus, Catholic Times 29th June 2014
... the Catholic Church no longer sees the goal of Church unity as being the absorption into the Catholic Church of all other denominations.
...
Given the contemporary 'take' on the goal of Christian unity as no longer being one of absorption into Catholicism of every other Christian body on earth, ...


Dominus Iesus (Instruction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Cardinal Ratzinger). The passage is about the Orthodox churches, the point it makes obviously has universal application.
17 Therefore, the Church of Christ is present and operative also in these Churches, even though they lack full communion with the Catholic Church, since they do not accept the Catholic doctrine of the Primacy, which, according to the will of God, the Bishop of Rome objectively has and exercises over the entire Church.


Any baptised Christian who does not accept the authority of the Pope is making a mistake: he fails to grasp the doctrine of the Primacy of the Pope. It is the teaching of the Catholic Church that the Pope has primacy over all baptised Christians. If Protestants all accepted that doctrine, and all the other doctrines of the Catholic Church, their sects would, of course, disapear, since their members would become Catholics. Saying the sects themselves would be 'absorbed' is perhaps misleading, but what Loftus is denying is that the Church wants to see an end of the wound in the Unity of the Church which their existence implies.

Only the other day Pope Francis spoke of the disunity of the Church as a 'scandal' in an Angelus address:
“We know that Christ has not been divided; yet we must sincerely recognize that our communities continue to experience divisions which are a source of scandal and weaken our witness to the Gospel.”

It is a scandal - a problem - which he urged us to pray and work to overcome. Mgr Loftus, presumably, has not heeded that call. As usual, he is not really listening to Pope Francis. His own agenda, preserved in his yellowing notes from the 1960s, is far more important.

IMG_4995
Bishop Egan giving the Blessing at the end of the Traditional Mass in his Cathedral:
the bishop is the bond of unity.

2 comments:

  1. Basil Loftus, Catholic Times 29th June 2014
    ... the Catholic Church no longer sees the goal of Church unity as being the absorption into the Catholic Church of all other denominations.

    Lionel:
    He is contradicting Vatican Council II ( Ad Gentes 7).

    Therefore, all must be converted to Him, made known by the Church's preaching, and all must be incorporated into Him by baptism and into the Church which is His body. For Christ Himself "by stressing in express language the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mark 16:16; John 3:5), at the same time confirmed the necessity of the Church, into which men enter by baptism, as by a door.-Ad Gentes 7.

    And hence missionary activity today as always retains its power and necessity.

    By means of this activity, the Mystical Body of Christ unceasingly gathers and directs its forces toward its own growth (cf. Eph. 4:11-16). The members of the Church are impelled to carry on such missionary activity by reason of the love with which they love God and by which they desire to share with all men the spiritual goods of both its life and the life to come.

    Finally, by means of this missionary activity, God is fully glorified, provided that men fully and consciously accept His work of salvation, which He has accomplished in Christ.
    -Ad Gentes 7, Vatican Council II

    __________________________





    Fr.Fehlner has to accept the Batman-Version of Vatican Council II : Franciscans of the Immaculate are still receiving threats on doctrine
    http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2014/06/frfehlner-has-to-accept-batman-version.html#links

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  2. Here is Dominus Iesus 20 saying that the Church is needed by all for salvation.This would also include the Orthodox Christians.

    Above all else, it must be firmly believed that “the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5), and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door”.77 This doctrine must not be set against the universal salvific will of God (cf. 1 Tim 2:4); “it is necessary to keep these two truths together, namely, the real possibility of salvation in Christ for all mankind and the necessity of the Church for this salvation”.78

    The Church is the “universal sacrament of salvation”,79 since, united always in a mysterious way to the Saviour Jesus Christ, her Head, and subordinated to him, she has, in God's plan, an indispensable relationship with the salvation of every human being-Dominus Iesus 20


    'Therefore, the Church of Christ is present and operative also in these Churches,...'

    Yes in ways known only to God.Dominus Iesus like Lumen Gentium 8 ( subsistit it) is not saying that these cases are exceptions to Dominus Iesus 20, Catechism of the Catholic Church 846 and Ad Gentes 7. The Magisterium does not contradict itself here.For them to be exceptions they would have to be visible and known to us in 2014.

    We do not know any one saved as such or who is going to be saved through ' the Church of Christ present and operative also in these Churches' This is hypothetical and known only to God.

    Vatican Council II and Dominus Iesus are traditional on this issue.The text of these documents support Tradition.

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