A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Once you reject some Doctrine of the Faith (commit heresy), you cease to be Catholic July 11, 2013

The post title may not seem like a particular revelation to you, my good Catholic readers, but such is apparently beyond the comprehension of millions who call themselves “Catholic.”  Hence, the terrible need to hyphenate the term (liberal Catholic, traditional Catholic, etc), or create insulting new words (catholyc).

As St. Vincent of Lerins notes below, those who embrace error – who reject what the Church has doctrinally/dogmatically defined – cease to be Catholic.  In fact, embracing heresy for a Catholic is the very worst thing possible, short of dying outside the state of Grace, which these heretics who embrace abortion, contraception, divorce and remarriage, and the like, most tragically, most likely, will do.

Along the way, St. Vincent also destroys Sola Scriptura, refuting another major heresy, 110o years before it manifested itself in Luther’s Germany (from Faith of the Early Fathers Vol 3 pp. 262-3):

With great zeal and closest attention, therefore, I frequently inquired of many men, eminent for their holiness and doctrine, how I might, in a concise and, so to speak, general and ordinary way, distinguish the truth of the Catholic Faith from the falsehood of heretical depravity.  I received almost always the same answer from all of them, that if I or anyone else wanted to expose the frauds and escape the snares of the heretics who rise ujp, and to remain intact and sound in a sound faith, it would be necessary, with God’s Grace, to fortify that faith in a twofold manner: first, of course, by the authority of the Divine Law  [St. Vincent is referring to Sacred Scripture] then, by the Tradition of the Catholic Church. Here, perhaps, someone may ask: “If the canon of the Scriptures be perfect, and in itself more than suffices for everything, why is it necessary that the authority of ecclesiastical interpretation be joined to it?” Because, quite plainly, Sacred Scripture, by reason of its own depth, is not accepted by everyone as having one and the same meaning. The same passage is interpreted in one way by some, in another by others, so that it can almost appear as if there are as many opinions as there are men…….. [Little wonder then the tens of thousands of protestant sects littering the ecclesiastical landscape today]

…….And thus, because of so many distortions of such various errors, it is highly necessary that the line of prophetic and apostolic interpretation be directed in accord with the norm of the ecclesiastical and Catholic meaning. In the Catholic Church herself every care must be taken that we may hold fastg to that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all. For this is, then, truly and properly Catholic. That is what the force and meaning of the name itself declares, a name ath embraces all almost universally. This general rule will be correctly applied if we pursue universality, antiquity, and agreement. And we follow universality in this way, if we confess this one Faith to be true, which is confessed by the whole Church throughout the whole world; antiquity, however, if we in no way depart from those interpretations which, it is clear, our holy predecessors and fathers solemnized; and likewise agreement, if, in this very antiquity, we adopt the definitions and theses of all or certainly of almost all priests and teachers.

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St. Vincent notes three characteristics of belief in order to insure doctrinal integrity: universality, antiquity, and agreement.  And thank God for all three, for without them, we would be lost (save for the glorious overwatch of the Holy Ghost!).  Today, universality is lost due to massive heresy, even apostasy, among those who claim the name “Catholic.”  Agreement is thus lost, too.  Thus, we can often not trust modern sources that are disconnected from the Faith of yesteryear. Faithful Catholics frequently have to “reset,” to a prior time, in order to find sources espousing those doctrines which were held universally, in line with the constant Tradition of the Church stemming from apostolic times, and in which agreement dominated.

What is so often forgotten by modernist exegetes who pretend to espouse novel “doctrines,” is that they are disconnecting themselves from that universality which occurs not just in space but also across time.  They are cut off, voluntarily, from the constant belief of the Chuch.  That is not to say understanding of Doctrine cannot develop, but it does say that things which were false yesterday cannot be true today, and vice versa.  And things which were evil yesterday, cannot be good today.

Thus, the whole panoply of sexual sins which modernists have used to break soul’s union with the Faith through erroneous, confusing situational “ethics” and denial of clear truth, are revealed for what they are: simply the same evils they have always been, sadly foisted on badly formed Catholics who, given our fallen natures, are all too eager to embrace them.  As our Blessed Mother clearly revealed at Fatima, more souls fall into hell over sins of lust than any other reason – and if this was true for Our Lady and the children of Fatima 95 years ago, it is true today.

Pray for those lost in error! Errors of intellectual pride are the very hardest to break, according to many Saints including the Moral Doctor St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori!  Only prayer can save these souls!  Have mercy on them!