http://www.movieweb.com/tv/TE25X368VILt57/HUduReiicP28ge

My point is that these anathemas must be interpreted through the whole of Catholic teaching. You cannot simply talk about Trent as this it is the end of Catholic teaching when it represents a stage along the way.

Please let me know where the anathemas of Trent or officially “untaught”. I’d love to know.

Vatican II does not deal with the doctrine of justification, which is why you’ll find Trent quoted often in the CCC on that particular point. You can’t read Trent in light of Vatican II on justification because there is nothing there to read. So, I don’t think your point holds on what I said.

What, forced celibacy, for the Mother of God? Not on the Rev. Paul’s watch. :-)

Frank,
(comment #3)
Sounds good to me. :0

Paul,
Cult of Mary? Didn’t Martin Luther accept Mary’s perpetual virginity? Has Lutheranism changed in this regard?

Except, of course, when the Church infallibly decided which books belong in Scripture?

I think the question many Protestants are grappling with is something like, “How can there be a ‘development of doctrine’ when the Catholic Church claimed authority THEN and also claims authority NOW?” Can there be a binding claim to authority, in other words, when doctrinal statements can develop and be modified through the history of the Christian faith?

This is also why many Protestants (not the ones writing here, I think) flee into the false security of “That’s why we believe the Bible only, not how anyone ‘interprets’ it.” (This is not a slam against sola fide–see above for that–but a statement about a certain form of biblicism.) EVERYONE interprets. The question is, where, under the Holy Spirit, is the authority?

If Trent meant “condemned” when it said “anathema”, and clearly it did, then either it was over-turned by Vatican II, meaning it had no authority in the first place, or Vatican II was trying to speak to issues it had no right to speak to.

Either way, this whole issue makes one of two things plain. Either the Vatican cannot condemn anyone as a heretic, or the idea that the Vatican represents an unbroken chain of apostolic authority from Peter (or any other time) up to now, is a fallacy.

Certainly this would demonstrate that no one can be certain of anything the Vatican teaches, that cannot be found in Scripture, cannot be called trustworthy, until the very end of the world, at which time we’ll all be able to see exactly how much eventually has been overturned.

Who knows? Perhaps Vatican III or IV will come along and name the Marian dogma’s as heretical and wrong. Then what?

Doesn’t that translate to “You need to be willing to read it anachronistically”?

On the term anathema, I would tend to say that the doctrinal positions condemned are still condemned. This does not necessarily imply that those who hold such positions are also condemned.

As they say in my corner of the internet, “AHA!”

For example, Trent actually says, “Si quis autem libros ipsos integros cum omnibus suis partibus, prout in Ecclesia catholica legi consueverunt, et in veteri vulgata latina editione habentur, pro sacris et canonicis non susceperit, et traditiones praedictas sciens et prudens contempserit, anathema sit.” I realize this is a lost art, but “anathema sit” means “let he/she/it be anathema”, and the antecednet of “sit” will tell us if there is an “it” anathematized (like a doctrine) or a “he/she” anathematized (like a person”.

“Quis” is a person — the subject of the sentence, that is the pronoun “who” or “whoever”.

These are persons who are anathematized.

“The Lutheran Confessions are quite plain-spoken about the evils that result when you coop men up, who are men with all their sexual desires intact, and make them all act as if they have been given the special gift of celibacy, which Christ our Lord is said only given to a few.”

it seems to imply that the priest abusers would have been normal, heterosexual males had they only had wives (which would be odd, given that about 80% of the abuse has involved adolescent males). On the other hand, statements like,

‘The root cause of many of the problems the Roman Church has experienced is to be found precisely in the fact that there has been constructed a haven for homosexuals who think they can “escape” into celibacy. It is not working.’

seem to indicate that you think celibacy short-circuits recruiting, attracting disordered men rather than making healthy men disordered. There’s a huge difference between saying that a celibate priesthood makes straight men into homosexual molesters and saying that it leads to recruiting already unhealthy individuals. Is the problem intrinsic (i.e. related to celibacy) or extrinsic (i.e. related to the social perceptions/ behavior created by an expectation of celibacy)?

Also, you might be interested in Philip Jenkins’ research on the question of priest abuse:
http://www.zenit.org/article-3922?l=english

I think the Henry VIII argument is ridiculous; I think the question of whether celibacy is fit for ministers of the Gospel is settled by Paul in 1 Cor — and he says “yes, it is.” The question is whether it ought to be mandatory, and whether there is some harm in that.

Also on the record:

I think the essential issue in the scandals Rev. McCain has pointed out here is not enforced celibacy — it is the failure to enforce moral accountability in the ranks of alleged ministers of the Gospel.

Listen: evil men will creep into the roles of ministers. It is inevitable. What the church (local church, if I must point that out) must do is hold its ministers accountable to the moral standard of “blameless”, as in Titus 1.

The irony, if you ask me, is that the standard of celibacy has been violated in these cases, and not in some common way as if they got married off the books. These men are not celibate, yet their actual crimes have been covered up rather than adjudicated.

That is a far more damning issue: that somehow the keeper of the keys to the kingdom will let loose the unmentionable sins of its clerics and cover them over rather than seek justice for the innocent and uphold the highest standards of morality for its ranks.