A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Some quotes from Church Fathers espousing Church Doctrine May 6, 2013

I have written on a number of occasions that knowledge of the beliefs and practice of the early Church is fatal to protestant belief.  For the early Church constantly put forth the same views, the same Doctrine, as the Catholic Church of today.  What they believed, we believe. What they practiced, we practice.

A trifecta of short quotes address some items of prime interest to Catholic-protestant relations.  The first deals with the Primacy of Peter. Protestants, starting with the former Father Luther, totally reject the idea of an authoritative Church on earth, with formal Doctrine coming down from both Sacred Tradition, and Scripture.  In fact, almost all protestant sects totally reject the idea that there could be ANY foundation to the Christian Faith outside the Bible. But this is ludicrous, it took about 300 years to determine which books actually make up the Bible (and protestants threw out many books, like 1-2 Maccabees, because they provided great support for Catholic beliefs that did not fit into Luther’s very strange belief system), so what guided the Church in those formative years, when much of the Bible was in doubt?  It was Tradition. We see the dread effects of the lack of Authority in the protestant sects today, with tens of thousands of competing groups, each believing slightly differently (or very differently) from the others, each claiming its own interpretation is sacrosanct, each, in effect, condemning the others, at least to one degree or other. It is this rejection of Authority, and the Truth that guides it, that is at the heart of our cultural collapse today, where almost all persons, including devout protestants, believe that “truth” is up to the individual reviewer of Scripture (this was in fact Luther’s original concept, but when people started getting too crazy even for him, he clamped down with very-Catholic like structured beliefs for his particular sect), and that each person’s inalienable “right” to determine their particular “truth” can never be criticized, much less condemned, by another. 

Without Authority, there is NO unity. No unity of belief, and no unity in practice.  Thus, we have pro-abort evangelicals and pro-sodomite marriage anglicans, to name just two of hundreds or thousands of such deviations.  Sadly, the Catholic Church, in its recent attempts to be “ecumenically” appealing to the protestants, has imbibed and even informally espoused much the same mentality.

In the latter half of the 4th century, St. Optatus of Milevis wrote the following, regarding the Primacy of Peter:

You cannot deny that you are aware that in the city of Rome the episcopal chari was given first to Peter; the chair in which Peter sat, the same who was head……of all the Apostles; the one chair in which unity is maintained by all.  Neither do other Apostles proceed individually on their own; and anyone who would set up another chair in opposition to that single chair would, by that very fact, be a schismatic and a sinner. [that is exactly what the protestants have done, in rejecting the Authority instituted by Christ for His Church in the person of the Pope] It was Peter, then, who first occupied that chair, the foremost of his endowed gifts…[St. Optatus then goes on to list all the successors of Peter to that point in time]……….I but ask you to recall the origins of your chair, you who whish to claim for yourselves the title of Holy Church.

Another huge area of difference between protestants and Catholics is the need for Sacramental Confession – confessing one’s sins to a priest, acting in persona Christi.  Protestants say they can just “confess their sins directly to God.” I wonder how many actually do this?  When I was a protestant, I may have sort of done this a little, but not with much thought, and never in so many words. God instituted the Sacrament of Confession in order to demonstrate the gravity of sin (it never being easy to tell someone else your failings), to show how seriously one must prepare for the Sacrament, to provide a very visible and salutary act of forgiveness for our sins, often stirring great spiritual advances, and to reinforce the priest’s role, through Christ, in the economy of salvation (among many other reasons).  Suffice it to say, knowledge of sin and repentance for same is very frequently glossed over in many protestant sects, if not totally ignored.  Once again, we have seen a protestantizing influence in the Church in the past several decades, with vast swaths of Catholics never availing themselves of this vital Sacrament.  The sacrilege these Catholics regularly engage in by receiving the Blessed Sacrament in a state of mortal sin must be heartbreaking to Our Lord.

In the late 4th century, St. Pacian of Barcelona wrote the following:

Certainly God never threatens the repentant; rather, He pardons the penitent. You will say that it is God alone who can do this. True enough; but it is likewise true that He does it thorugh His priests, who exercise His power. What else can it mean when He says to His Apostles: “Whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven?” (Matt 16:19, Jn 20:23) [You can also add James 5:15-16]  Why should He say this if He were not permitting men to bind and to loose? Why, if He were permitting this to His Apostles alone? Were that the case, He would likewise be permitting them alone to baptize, them alone to Confer the Holy Spirit, them alone to cleanse the pagans of their sins; for all of these things are commissioned not to others but to the Apostles. But if the loosing of bonds and the power of the Sacrament is given to anyone in that place, either the whole is passed on to us from the form and power of the Apostles, or nothign of it can be imparted to us by whatever decrees…….If, then, the power of both Baptism and Confirmation, greater by far than charisms, [I hope protestants, and Neo-Catachumenal way and other "charismatic" Catholics, get this]  is passed on to the bishops, so too is the right of binding and of loosing.

The final subject I wanted to address in this post is that of works being meritorious of salvation.  This was something Luther totally, violently rejected. Father Luther held the deformed view that man is irredeemably corrupt, that we are so totally fallen and depraved by Original Sin that all our works, even done in cooperation with Grace in the state of Grace, are totally worthless. Only “faith” could save us, with the “grace” that comes from this “faith” being totally gratuitous and totally unrelated to any of our works. Luther used the analogy of snow covering a dunghill to show how this graciness worked.  James chapter 2 completely repudiates Luther’s view, so Luther wanted to eliminate that book from the New Testament, but his followers convinced him that was a step which would drive people away from him in vast droves, so he kept it. But, Luther did go so far as to modify Romans chapter 3 to support his view (adding the word alone to St. Paul’s phrase “we are saved by faith”).  This view of “saved by faith alone” has severely deformed Christianity, so that we have people who claim all one must do is make a one time act of faith to merit eternal salvation. Is it any wonder so many professing Christianity are so devoid of virtue?

Catholics, of course, have always believed that our works, if done in a system and the state of Grace, are meritorious of salvation. [I want to add that this does not mean that Catholics believe that our works alone can save us. But works are necessary for salvation.  They must be done in the state of Grace to be meritorious, which state requires reception of the Sacraments, avoidance of sin, and cooperation with God's Will] This view is abundantly supported by Scripture and Tradition, and is simply sensible by reason.  But Luther also had no place for Thomist reasoning, which he detested. He in fact stated that sin was no big thing, provided one had faith to offset it. He even counseled to sin boldly, provided one also believed boldly. How one correlates this with Christ’s dictum not to sin, His constant mention of hell, and how Christ counseled to take up His Cross and follow Him, is rather difficult to explain. Even more, isn’t having faith a work of sorts?  Luther struggled with this final question, and the Calvinists rose up, partially, in response to it. They believed that faith was something that just happened to the very small number of the elect, the predestined. If there was every an ideology that taught people, in effect, not to give a damn, it’s Calvinism.

Repudiating the above, 1200 years before Luther was born, was St. Ambrose of Milan, Doctor of the Church, in a letter sent to Bishop Constantius in AD 379:

Each of our merits will hang in the balance, and it is often inclined to this side or that by the superior weight either of our good works or of our degenerate crimes. IF evil deeds turn the scale, alas for me! But if good, then pardon is at hand. No one is free of sin; but where good works prevail, sins are lightened, overshadowed, and covered up. On the day of judgment either our works will assist us or they will plunge us into the abyss, as if dragged down by a millstone.

I will try to post more quotes from Church Fathers related to various doctrinal matters as they come up.  I pray you found this at least a little edifying.