Last edited Mon Dec 1, 2014, 10:56 AM - Edit history (1)
There's a bit from Lois McMaster Bujold's novel Memory.
"I had a professor at the Imperial Service Academy once," Miles went on ... "who taught the introduction to tactical engineering course. He said he never bothered changing his tests from term to term to prevent cheating, because while the questions were always the same, the answers changed. I'd thought he was joking."
One major problem with the Vatican's
Weltanschauung is that they believe they have all the answers, and that the answers never change. Both of these beliefs are false. The Vatican is often mind-blowingly wrong in what it says. For example, it was not until Vatican II that religious liberty was acceptable in mainstream Catholic thought. Pope Pius IX, in his
Syllabus of Errors, condemned the idea "Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true." The Vatican II document of religious freedom,
Dignitatis Humanae, said, "the human person has a right to religious freedom," which is described as "immunity from coercion in civil society." Yes, there are worshipers of the papacy who insist that the two statements are compatible, but that is only because such persons want, oh, so desperately, to believe that the Pope cannot be wrong.
Here is an example where the Pope clearly got it wrong, the Second Vatican Council got it right; and, above all,
the answer given by the Church changed. There are many other examples -- In 1441, Pope Eugene IV wrote a bull,
Cantate Domino that says in part
The Holy Roman Church ... firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the Church before the end of their lives; that the unity of this ecclesiastical body is of such importance that only for those who abide in it do the Church’s sacraments contribute to salvation and do fasts, almsgiving and other works of piety and practices of the Christian militia produce eternal rewards; and that nobody can be saved, no matter how much he has given away in alms and even if he has shed blood in the name of Christ, unless he has persevered in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.
That's it. Unless you are a Catholic with an official membership card and know the secret handshake, it's off to hell with you, and don't bring a fan. This is NOT the current teaching -- well, it is and it isn't. Vatican II's
Lumen Gentium maintained
extra ecclesia nulla salus -- "outside the Church there is no salvation" -- but expanded the definition of who is in the Church so far as to include essentially everyone. This allows them to pretend that the answer has not changed, when
in fact it has.
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