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| 23/04/26 9:06pm | [ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, [3] ] |
| Subject: VATICAN II COUNCIL | |
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Author: Forum Admin |
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Date Posted: 11:26:28 05/02/02 Thu For years, many Catholics have laboured under the mistaken notion that they must accept the pastoral Council, Vatican II, with the same assent of faith that they owe to dogmatic Councils. This, however, is not the case. The Council Fathers repeatedly referred to Vatican II as a pastoral Council which dealt not with defining the Faith, but with implementing it. The fact that Vatican II is inferior to a dogmatic Council is confirmed by the testimony if Council Father, Bishop Thomas Morris, which at his request , was not unsealed until after his death: "I was relieved when we were told that this Council was not aiming at defining or giving final statements on doctrine, because a statement on doctrine has to be very carefully formulated and I would have regarded the Council documents as tenative and liable to be reformed." At the close of Vatican II, the bishops asked the Council's Secretary General, Archbishop Pericle Felici, for that which theologians call the "theological note" of the Council, that is, the doctrinal "weight" of Vatican II's teachings. Felici replied: "We have to distinguish according to the schemas and the chapters those which have already been the subject of dogmatic definitions in the past; as for the declarations which have a novel character, we have to make reservations." After the close of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI gave this explanation: "There are those who ask what authority, what theological qualification the Council intended to give to its teaching, knowing that it avoided issuing solemn dogmatic definitions engaging the infallibility of the ecclesiastical Magisterium. The answer is known by whoever remembers the conciliar declaration of March 6, 1964, repeated on November 16, 1964: Given the Council's pastoral character, it avoided pronouncing, in an extraordinary manner, dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility....." In other words, unlike a dogmatic Council, Vatican II does not demand an unqualified assent of faith. Vatican II's ambiguois statements are not on a par with dogmatic pronouncements. Hence, Vatican II's novelties are not unconditionally binding on the faithful. Catholics may "make reservations" and even resist any teachings from the Council that would conflict with the perennial Magisterium of the centuries. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/j.caughey [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |