Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Skojec and Burke on the significance of Amoris Laetitia

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Ecce sacerdos magnus: Cardinal Burke enters St James', Spanish Place, to confer the
sacrament of Confirmation last November, in a service organised by the Latin Mass Society.
It is hardly surprising that the Exhortation Amoris laetitia has provoked a range of responses, but I was struck by the unhappiness expressed by Steve Skojec on One Peter Five about the response of Cardinal Burke - Skojec expressed great disapointment that it was not more strongly-worded. Skojec would perhaps have the same thing to say about the response of the British Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, of the canonist Edward Peters, and of my own response. These, as a group, certainly contrast with Skojec's response, the responses of Antonio Socci and of Prof de Mattei published on Rorate Caeli, the response of Voice of the Family, and many others from a Traditional Catholic or conservative perspective, as they do with the response of avowed liberals. Readers can populate the categories with further examples for themselves.

The liberals are telling us that the Communion for the divorced and remarried is now allowed.

The group I will call Skojec's, for want of a better label, is telling us that the Exhortation is a 'disaster' because the liberal reading is a natural one.

What Cardinal Burke and his group are saying is that, if you look carefully at the document, and in particular at the key passages the liberals appeal to, it turns out that it makes no attempt to establish new teaching, or even make formal changes to discipline, for example by changing Canon Law.


As I have just characterised them, the Skojec reading and the Burke reading are not necessarily in conflict. It can be true that, from a logical, theological, and canonical point of view, the Exhortation doesn't make any difference, but also true that it is going to be hard to argue against the liberal contention that it makes a big difference in practice. This is in fact frequently the case with Church documents.

Here is a relevant question, however. My longstanding concern has been with the situation of priests under pressure to give Holy Communion to public sinners, something they cannot in conscience do: a group well represented by the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. They haven't been skewered, in this Exhortation, in quite the way widely predicted, but liberals are celebrating as if they have been: as if they have been ordered by the Pope to act against their consciences and the tradition of the Church. The question is: is it more helpful to priests in this situation to agree with the liberals that, 'practically speaking', or 'on a natural reading', they have been ordered to do this?

No, it is not helpful, and not for reasons of presentation or politics, but because these priests' subjective moral situation is not changed by any such 'practically speaking', 'natural reading' of the document. On many matters, though not this one, it would be changed by a properly formulated papal command, or a change in Canon Law, but that is not what we have here.

What Skojec is, perhaps, saying, is that we have a situation like King Henry II shouting out, in 1170, 'Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?' Henry wanted his knights to kill St Thomas Becket, but did not want to order them to do so. He wanted to be able to deny doing so; he knew that, even if he'd attempted to put his command into formal language, it would have been legally invalid, since he did not have the legal or moral authority order extrajudical killings. The knights weren't exactly wrong in their interpretation of the King's words; where they were woefully mistaken was in imagining that these words gave them any kind of warrant, legal or moral, to carry out the King's wishes.

In this situation it does not become irrelevant that the King failed to issue a proper decree, or that he did not have the authority to issue such a decree anyway. No: it becomes a matter of supreme importance. What we need to emphasise is that the King's outburst makes no legal or moral difference. This seems to be something Skojec and others have missed.

Supposing the King had issued a decree. Suppose the Pope had changed Canon Law. Then I would have felt the obligation to point out - as I already have hypothetically - that whatever Canon Law said, priests remain bound by Divine and Natural Law on this subject. It may be that Cardinal Burke, the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, and others in this group, would have felt the same. I wonder if that was what Cardinal Sarah had in mind when he said that there were things that the Church in Africa would not accept. Perhaps that's what Cardinal Pell was thinking of when, according to reports, he warned the Holy Father that certain options would lead to schism. At any rate, a lot of people would have felt obliged to go into battle in a whole new way if that had happened. Well, we have avoided that, thanks be to God. Perhaps it was never going to happen; perhaps we were a hair's breadth away from it happening: I don't know. The significance of it not happening is completely lost on the liberals, who have long ago given up on the concepts of Divine and Natural Law, and neither understand nor care about Canon Law. But it is of fundamental importance.

Cardinal Burke and those who think like him don't necessarily have to disagree in substance with what Skojec and others are saying about the tone of the Exhortation, the dangers it contains, the way it is likely to be applied and so on. Skojec and his ilk ought to see, however, that what Burke is doing is necessary and supremely valuable. He is placing the Exhortation, and whatever negative outcomes it may, in practice, cause, into the correct category: not as a schism-causing event, not as a case of a Pope teaching heresy, but as a non-magisterial, non-legislative document which points out, when you get down to line-by-line analysis, that people are often in very complicated situations and should be treated with charity.

There is a very important difference between the position taken up by Cardinal Burke, and those like him, and an extreme Ultramontanist position, the position which says the Pope is always right. One difference is hypothetical: what would have happened if the Exhortation had been different. But there is another very important difference. Cardinal Burke lays great stress on interpreting Church documents in light of the whole tradition of the Church. This is of huge importantance, and it is something the Ultramontanists fail to do. This is frequently going to lead Catholics with a lively sense of tradition to read documents in a different way from others. It doesn't mean that we blind ourselves to the practical implications, the perspectic of the secular media, and so on. What it means is that we don't, like Ultramontanists, feel we have change our entire world-view every time there is a new Pope with a new set of priorities or way of expressing himself. And nor do we have to become sede vacantists.

To reiterate what I've said a few times, Traditional Catholics, or at least those of us trying to engage with the hierarchy, magisterial documents, and the currently 'officially approved' theology, have become very used to this situation. A liberal says to us: the Church now allows Communion in the Hand, and the natural way of reading this is about us being adults, whereas in the past we were treated as children: ergo, the traditional practice is theologically defective. We say: if that were true, it would be a breach with the constant teaching and practice of the Church. Let's look at the relevant documents: well, what do you know, Paul VI explicitly denied the liberal interpretation ('The [traditional] custom does not detract in any way from the personal dignity of those who approach this great sacrament'). The liberal may protest that no-one takes any notice of that, but it is there. But then again, even if Pope Paul had gone mad and condemned the old practice as actually defective, then the weight of the tradition would be enough to show that it was legitimate. 

We can go on to infer, from the very fact that we are having this conversation with the liberals, that there is a problem with Communion in the Hand, since it is causing confusion and cutting people off from the wisdom of the Church's tradition. What we can't do is to see the official permission for the new practice as condemning the old one. The new practice may be a mistake, but it is not a case of Rome falling into heresy.

This is not dishonest, and it is not cowardly. We are deeply interested in setting out our case in way which is comprehensible to mainstream Catholic theologians and people in the Roman Curia, and appeals to things they recognise have weight, but we are under no illusions that our views will make us popular. Our approach is, in fact, about looking at facts squarely in the face. These facts include the way the document is going to be understood by liberals and by the media. They also include the precise theological and canonical assertions a document is and is not making, and the light shed on the issues by the Church's whole teaching and tradition. Ignoring any of these facts cripples one's ability to deal rationally and appropriately with the situation.

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Cardinal Burke distributing Holy Communion at the Latin Mass Society's
annual Requiem in Westminster Cathedral.
Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

29 comments:

  1. Although your first "preliminary conclusion" was very finely argued, your thoughts here are a more difficult to follow.

    To take up your point about communion in the hand, whilst it might be very useful to argue with liberals by quoting Paul VI back at them, it doesn't address the fact that allowing communion in the hand diminishes the respect shown to the Blessed Sacrament and encourages a poor understanding of the Real Presence amongst the faithful. And even if the defence of the traditional pratice is "there", it doesn't change the fact that in practice, tradition has been at best undermined or in actual fact trodden under foot. At some point, we have to engage with practice as well as theory.

    Following your use of analogies from the liturgical sphere, it is all very well arguing, for example, that the Missal of Paul VI is designed for celebration ad orientem in Latin with all the decorum of the traditional rite etc etc, but that argument bears no relation to how that liturgy is celebrated on 99% of the altars of the world.

    Bringing this back to the world post Amoris Laetitia, although the document may effect no change to canon law, rubrics or even in a very narrow sense doctrine (and at least for the last point I would echo the remarks made by others elsewhere that it is difficult to argue that a post-synodal exhortation is not magisterial particular given that Familiaris consortio is too) the fact is that it appears to give those who want to go against the Lord's teaching and the traditional teaching of the Church the leeway to carry on doing so. Again, to borrow one of your analogies, the risk is that Thomas Beckett is murdered; arguing about whether or not he is murdered at the direct command of the king is perhaps interesting for working out the king's guilt, but it doesn't spare Thomas from death.

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    1. Gregory, I don't argue like that about the 1970 Missal. I never have and I never will. In fact, I argue in the opposite way, and have done so repeatedly on this blog: Latin ad orientem Novus Ordo is not what was intended.

      So I'm a bit baffled by your criticism of this post, which doesn't address those issues anyway.

      What I say in the post is, inter alia, that we can't and shouldn't ignore the practical consequences, the way it will be used and so on. I say this more than onece. But you seem to have read over those bits.

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  2. You are correct in your analysis. Fr. Antonio Spadaro S.J., the mastermind, is far, far too clever. He is a master of deliberate ambiguity. The massive, massive problem with AL is its deliberate ambiguity.

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  3. I am not a traditionalist,just an orthodox Catholic, a term from Prof. John Haldane of St Andrews University .
    The frustration of Skojec and the others is understandable Times are difficult. Cpl Jones' advice not to panic must be heeded!

    Remember Chesterton,

    “ fallacies do not cease to be be fallacies because they become fashionable ”

    A.L. Is a non-infallible document by a Pope and must be treated with respect and consideration. It is in no way binding on informed Catholics. In fog and confusion, ( stressful business, my background ), it is good to start from remaining certainties and work outwards.

    So, no one in a state of mortal sin may receive Holy Communion. That applies to casual Mass attenders, and contraceptors and (it would seem ??) serious tax evaders. Oh, yes,and adulterers, nearly forgot those. I can think of one or two other but not here.

    Burke is right in that the Pope did not change Catholic doctrine. He cannot. He does not have the authority. He could scream it from the top of the dome of St Peters and it would mean nothing!

    What the Pope hasn't done is to condemn someone who has declared a change of Catholic doctrine.

    Now that is another matter!

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    1. That is how it all begins.... and then when ten years later when we see things going berserk thanks to the lack of condemnations and ambiguity, these same Catholics will start talking about how its too late to change anything and disputing how we got there.

      Pretty much the same thing happened with Vatican II and its aftermath. All of this just shows that we as Catholics have still not learned.

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    2. Ten years from now we will have had two further Popes and be arranging Council to sort out the mess. By that time Catholics will have gathered their wits and be reacting more quickly. So don't despair!

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  4. Are Cardinal Burke's comments on AL magisterial or non-magisterial?

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  5. I think, it really comes down to what you were expecting. As Catholics, traditionalists would (rightly) argue that we cannot see a Pope officially change Catholic teaching. If such an event were to transpire, the correct thing would be to ditch Catholicism altogether anyway.

    So the real danger from a Papacy can only take the shape of a Pope teaching ambiguously, allowing attacks on Catholic teaching and morality to continue, and so forth. This is exactly what has happened with Amoris Laetitia.

    I think what has happened now is that you (and Cardinal Burke) were expecting something very devastating. Since your expectations were of something ultra-bad, this is starting to look relatively like a nice outcome. Or at the very least, nothing to fuss over or be vocal about.

    This is where the mistake lies. Many trads have lived through enough to see that problems begin, not by an official document or canon changing teaching with clarity. No, it begins with an ambiguous couple of lines within a chunky document.

    So naturally, they feel disappointed that some people do not understand it after all that we've been through. I think they are right, for what ever its worth.

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  6. How has the document in question done its work if the only reaction it generates among the sundry factions is for them to further strain to maintain their positions?

    How do the dispensation liberals react? More dispensations.
    How do the Trent form change condemning traditionalist react? More condemnation.
    What are the fall on your sword ultramontanists up to? They are reaching for another sword.
    What are those generative of subtle distinctions doing? Generating ever more subtle distinctions.

    The situation is not resolved if all parties just dig in deeper.

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  7. You state: 'What Cardinal Burke and his group are saying is that, if you look carefully at the document, and in particular at the key passages the liberals appeal to, it turns out that it makes no attempt to establish new teaching, or even make formal changes to discipline, for example by changing Canon Law.'

    This identifies the error of Cardinal Burke et al. They are not denying that the exhortation succeeds in altering the divine teaching on marriage, or that it succeeds in altering what Catholics are required to believe about this teaching. Of course, it cannot do this; no papal action can. This is recognised by Skojec, so it is unjust of you to say 'What we need to emphasise is that the King's outburst makes no legal or moral difference. This seems to be something Skojec and others have missed.' The fact that the Pope cannot change what divine law and divine revelation actually are is the whole basis of their criticism. That criticism is that the Pope and his supporters are through this document attempting to deceive people about divine law and divine revelation, by making think that something that is taught and commanded by divine law and divine revelation need not in fact be followed.


    Burke et al. on the other hand are denying that the document attempts to establish new teaching or to make changes to Church discipline and canon law. That is obviously wrong. It is shown by the actions of the Pope at the synod, where he backed the ecclesiastics who oppose this divine teaching. It is shown by the words of the exhortation itself, such as the ones you discuss here - http://www.lmschairman.org/2016/04/amoris-laetitia-is-it-possible-to-keep.html#more - which in their normal meaning are a rejection of Catholic teaching on the divine law. Your reference to formal changes to discipline and canon law misses the point, because the clear intention of the document is to change discipline and law without a formal alteration to the law. Such a change can effectually be produced by the law's no longer being enforced, and that is what the document openly sees to bring about.

    Your worry about priests is not entirely clear, but it is in any case not a principal concern under these circumstances. Your worry about priests should bear upon those priests who are not that strong who are not very well formed or educated in theology, and who are liable to deny the truth about marriage and the Eucharist as a result of pressure put upon them. These priests are the ones who will go to hell and bring many souls with them as a result of this document. The priests who know this to be wrong, refuse to do it, and suffer accordingly are just doing their jobs.

    T-C is quite right.

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    1. With that, we have to look at history and how things actually turned out. This is not our first turn around the bend. Look at Humanae Vitae. It was strong, but disregarded. No one backed the Priests sticking to Church teachings. So breaking the law became the norm. And here we are today.

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  8. Here is a pertinent remark from Laurence England:

    'It is chilling because cleverly disguising your true intentions through deceptive means isn't just what politicians do, it is what liars do, what thieves do, what con-men do. It is, in fact, what the Devil himself does. Jesus called him a liar and a murderer, a murder from the beginning. He is not, in fact, a murderer of men's bodies. He is a murderer of men's souls."

    This is an accurate description of the exhortation and its authors.

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    1. Laurence England is spot on. Why would he or they risk changing doctrine when it would immediately make him, I believe, a formal heretic? As the article itself says "Perhaps that's what Cardinal Pell was thinking of when, according to reports, he warned the Holy Father that certain options would lead to schism. At any rate, a lot of people would have felt obliged to go into battle in a whole new way if that had happened. Well, we have avoided that, thanks be to God."

      How can anyone think it good that this denial of Christ's teaching is going to persist and flourish because now many people will not be bothered to go into battle for Christ's sake, simply because it hasn't been written in stone, so to speak? Talk about passing by on the other side while Christ lies bleeding. Better to keep quiet and hope He picks Himself up. It's amazing how many people are using all sorts of arguments to avoid saying the obvious: This document isn't Catholic.

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  9. How about para 123 which reads:

    "The lasting union expressed by the marriage vows is more than a formality or a traditional formula; it is rooted in the natural inclinations of the human person. For believers, it is also a covenant before God that calls for fidelity: “The Lord was witness to the covenant between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant… Let none be faithless to the wife of his youth. For I hate divorce, says the Lord” (Mal 2:14-16)."

    It is interesting to read the rest of Malachias about what will happen if we do not keep the covenant e.g. "a day is coming that shall scorch like a furnace..."

    I wonder if Cardinal Schonborn has read it.

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    1. Thank you for this, Nicolas, because I didn't know it. I will read further.

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  10. It's amazing and amusing to watch "traditional" Catholics twist themselves into intellectual knots to avoid this inconvenient truth: Pope Francis is a heretic.

    http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=5695

    St. Thomas (II-II:11:1) defines heresy: "a species of infidelity in men who, having professed the faith of Christ, corrupt its dogmas."

    Pertinacious adhesion to a doctrine contradictory to a point of faith clearly defined by the Church is heresy pure and simple, heresy in the first degree.

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  11. Here is a pertinent remark from Laurence England:

    'It is chilling because cleverly disguising your true intentions through deceptive means isn't just what politicians do, it is what liars do, what thieves do, what con-men do. It is, in fact, what the Devil himself does. Jesus called him a liar and a murderer, a murder from the beginning. He is not, in fact, a murderer of men's bodies. He is a murderer of men's souls."

    This is an accurate description of the exhortation and its authors.

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    1. http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3011.htm

      Falsehood is contrary to truth. Now a heretic is one who devises or follows false or new opinions.

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  12. I'm a huge fan of Cdl. Burke. But doesn't he risk jeopardizing other papal documents with his argument that it isn't strictly magisterial? Familiaris consortio is also a post-synodal apostolic exhortation.

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    1. The good Cardinal is 67-year-old Prince of the Church. The institutional church is all he knows, and Princes of the Church live comfortable lives. If the good Cardinal were to come right out and speak the truth--and nothing but the truth--about Amoris laetitia, the Pope would likely throw him out into the street. Is that a factor in the good Cardinal's calculations? Does that give him pause? Is that motivation for the good Cardinal tying himself in knots to avoid publicly acknowledging that Amoris laetitia is riddled with heresy? What do I know? Who am I to judge?

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  13. Is it too much to ask of the Pope that he let is yes be yes, and his no no? This document is Orwellian, it uses weasel words, and hence the unending debate of what it really says. But one thing it clearly does do, is devolve responsibility away from the Magisterium and onto -- well, you name it: the bishops' conferences, the individual parish priest, and of course the individual conscience. And so out the window goes the note of catholicity that the Church is held to possess. And isn't Amoris Laetitia a ringing endorsement for situation ethics?

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  14. On the Rorate blog we have just been reminded that according to the traditional criteria AL is a piece of authentic magisterium, and, therefore, catholics are “bound to give it assent of the intellect.”

    http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2016/04/amoris-laetitia-is-non-magisterial-not.html

    If so then both card. Burke seems to be wrong to label AL as non-magisterial and those who criticize AL, too, are wrong (Mattei, Socci, but also Shaw and Peters), as they display the lack of assent.

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    1. You have misquoted here or at least omitted the important caveat. The end of that document also states "one thing at least is clear: It was indeed intended as at least authentic papal magisterium, to which Catholics NORMALLY would be bound to give assent of the intellect. A “catastrophic document indeed".

      Personally, I have no knowledge of these Church 'legalities' etc but I do recognize non-Catholic documents and anti-Catholic doctrine arguments and teaching when I see it, and nobody is bound to obey a Pope who is teaching, formally or informally, heresy. On the contrary, it should be resisted by both clergy and laity.

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    2. Sorry, it was not a misquotation. The quote was not the one you here cited fully, but the one four paragraphs above (where the anonymous author quotes the Salaverri's book). The word "normally" is, however, from the author himself, and probably not to be found in the books of approved theologians. How can we, poor creatures, know when the situation is "normal" and when it is not?

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    3. No need for an apology! Well, we can't always know, (I can't tell that mr and mrs over the road in their adulterous second marriage are in a state of grace because they're now living as brother and sister) but we can certainly judge when something is blatantly abnormal because it is coming from the Vatican but openly contrary to church teaching!

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  15. The "turbulent priest" reference is interesting, and reminded me of HJS Sire's account of the introduction of the Novus Ordo.

    The Traditional Rite was mandated for use by means of a bull with legal weight, which could only have been countermanded by a document of equal weight expressly superseding it.

    Instead, Paul VI released the Novus Ordo with a much less forceful document which allowed the NO for use, but didn't repeal the existing bull.

    Then followed various appeals to the relevant Curial offices seeked formal clarification of whether the Old Rite was now prohibited, whether the new one was compulsory etc., which were never responded to (at least, not until Benedict XVI became Pope).

    Essentially it was Paul VI's strong personal desire to replace the Old Rite with the new, but his desire never had the force of law.

    Sire seems to be of the opinion that Roman Rite priests are therefore still bound by the bull which required the celebration of the Old Rite and can take or leave the NO, which I suppose is one way of reading Summorum Pontificum...

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  16. "In this situation it does not become irrelevant that the King failed to issue a proper decree, or that he did not have the authority to issue such a decree anyway. No: it becomes a matter of supreme importance. What we need to emphasise is that the King's outburst makes no legal or moral difference. This seems to be something Skojec and others have missed."

    It makes a massive difference because the logical conclusion following on from your previous paragraph is that BOTH King and knights were guilty of murder; the latter literally, the former by intention and by proxy and by making the comment he also sought to offload the guilt onto his knights. Both king and pope are in practice guilty, one of murder of the body and the other of murder of the soul (including those of many of his Priests.

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  17. The exhortation has poison mixed in with the honey and everyone knows the infamous paragraphs and footnotes but what is so deeply depressing is that nine Catholics know that the way of Synodalism, with its desire to question settled Doctrine and Dogma, is the way of heterodoxy and heresy and that way was condemned in the 4th century but we are being told that this exhortation is really no biggie...

    (Pope) St. Gelasius 1 492-496 A.D.

    Denzinger's 161 (1) [For] it has been reported to us, that in the regions of the Dalmatians certain men had disseminated the recurring tares of the Pelagian pest, and that their blasphemy prevails there to such a degree that they are deceiving all the simple by the insinuation of their deadly madness. . . . [But] since the Lord is superior, the pure truth of Catholic faith drawn front the concordant opinions of all the Fathers remains present. . . . (2) . . . What pray permits us to abrogate what has been condemned by the venerable Fathers, and to reconsider the impious dogmas that have been demolished by them? Why is it, therefore, that we take such great precautions lest any dangerous heresy, once driven out, strive anew to come [up] for examination, if we argue that what has been known, discussed, and refuted of old by our elders ought to be restored? Are we not ourselves offering, which God forbid, to all the enemies of the truth an example of rising again against ourselves, which the Church will never permit? Where is it that it is written: Do not go beyond the limits of your fathers [Prov. 22:28], and: Ask your fathers and they will tell you, and your elders will declare unto you [Deut. 32:7]? Why, accordingly, do we aim beyond the definitions of our elders, or why do they not suffice for us? If in our ignorance we desire to learn something, how every single thing to be avoided has been prescribed by the orthodox fathers and elders, or everything to be adapted to Catholic truth has been decreed, why are they not approved by these? Or are we wiser than they, or shall we be able to stand constant with firm stability, if we should undermine those [dogmas] which have been established by them? . . .

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