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Could the Heresy of
Various Popes regarding Salvation Help Exonerate the Jansenists? Modern Traditionalists generally
admit the last five popes to have been heretics. Many of them - including
Father Feeney, Saint Benedict Center, Most Holy Family Monastery and RJMI -
consider popes from before Vatican II to have issued heretical statements.
Could, then those popes who condemned Jansenism have been heretical? We shall consider this
a step at a time. Heresy of the Vatican II popes The heresy of the popes
during and after the Second Vatican Council needs little proof, as it is so
well known to all Traditionalists bar some of the indult crowd. It is
conceded by both sedevacantists and non-sedevacantists alike. Their heresy concerns,
in particular, matters related to the possibility of salvation for
non-Catholics. We shall mention briefly the well-known papal errors
concerning; The Old Covenant still
being operative for Jews, The salvific role
claimed for the various religions, The Church being spread
through the various sects and religions, The practice of dialogue
and co-operation with other religions that is not aimed at conversion, &c. In particular we refer
the reader to ample
documentation exhibiting the heresy of the Vatican II establishment and
John Paul II in particular, that all people shall finally be saved (apokatastasis). Thus
we can with confidence list the five most recent popes as heretical; John
XXIII, Paul
VI, John
Paul I, John
Paul II and Benedict
XVI. It
should be noted that we are not concerned here with explanations, that is,
whether the popes were contumacious, stubborn in their heresy or misinformed.
We are concerned only with the fact of papal heresy. A few examples We
shall give just a few examples of the heresy of these popes to make the
point, before we proceed. Pope John Paul II habitually taught heresy on the
matter of salvation outside the Church; here is an example. “Normally
it will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions
and by following the dictates of their own conscience that the members of
other religions respond positively to God’s invitation and receive salvation
in Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize or acknowledge him as their
Saviour.” (General Audience of 9, 9, 1998) Even
the brothers at Saint Benedict Center in New Hampshire have denounced this
statement as heretical, writing “This is sheer, undeniable heresy”
(Loyal Catholic Resistance, FTHT 58). Pope
Benedict XVI is also well known to be a heretic on this score. While still a
cardinal, Ratzinger wrote as follows: “Q. But could we not also accept that someone
can be saved through a faith other than the Catholic? A.
That’s a different question altogether. It is definitely possible for someone to receive from his
religion directives that help him become a pure person, which also, if we
want to use the word, help him please God and reach salvation. This is not at all excluded by what I
said; on the contrary, this undoubtedly happens on a large scale.” (Salt of
the Earth, 1996, p. 24) Pope
Paul VI encouraged the heresy that the invincibly ignorant can be saved
without receiving the Catholic religion in his post-Vatican II creed. “We
believe that the Church is necessary for salvation, because Christ, who is
the sole mediator and way of salvation, renders Himself present for us in His
body which is the Church. But the divine design of salvation embraces all
men, and those who without fault on their part do not know the Gospel of
Christ and His Church, but seek God sincerely, and under the influence of
grace endeavor to do His will as recognized through the promptings of their
conscience, they, in a number known only to God, can obtain salvation.”
(Credo of the People of God) Papal heresy in principle and precedent The
case of the last five popes should alert Traditional Catholics in common that
there may have been heretical popes before them. If these several popes can
be heretical, then it is evident that it is in principle possible for a pope
to be heretical. Not
only that, but several precedents have been established all in a row. We
should be less surprised to find heresy before Vatican II than if there had
been but one case of papal heresy since. We should not be too surprised
either to see the present series of heretical popes extend before the Council
to include the popes immediately preceding them or to see cases of papal
heresy some centuries before. It
makes no difference in this regard whether the Vatican II popes are termed
true popes or not. If there have been heretical anti-popes since the council
then there could have been before; if there have been heretical true popes
since the council then there could have been before. Either way the
possibility has been established that popes were heretical before Vatican II. Nor
would it matter if it could be established that the popes before Vatican II
were universally acclaimed by Catholics as true popes – which is by no means
established – for sedevacantists are wont to argue that a heretical pope
would not be a true pope even if he were so acclaimed. As proof they are wont
to cite the bull Cum Ex Apostolatus. Papal heresy before Vatican II We
shall argue in common with various Traditionalists that, in fact, the present
spate of heretical popes does extend further back, with several popes before
Vatican II enunciating, or otherwise encouraging, heresy regarding the
possibility of the salvation of non-Catholics. The
popes contradicted the defined doctrine that “no one at all” is saved outside
of the Catholic Church. Pope Innocent III defined it as follows at the IV
Lateran Council, which was an ecumenical council held in 1215 that all
Catholic theologians recognize to be infallible: “One
indeed is the Church of the Faithful, outside of which no one at all is
saved.” The
list of heretical popes who contradicted this dogma includes; Pius
IX, Pius
X and Pius
XII. Pius
XI may have been heretical too but the evidence against him is only anecdotal
and therefore not weighty. We
shall provide some documentation to substantiate these claims. The heresy of Pius IX It
is well known that Pius IX contradicted the defined dogma that no one can be
saved who dies outside of the Catholic Church. Liberal apologists have cited
him in their favor since the nineteenth century. There are several passages
that people cite from him but for the sake of brevity, we shall cite but one. “The
Catholic Church is the temple of God, outside of which, except with the
excuse of invincible ignorance, there is no hope of life or salvation.”
(Singulari Quidem) Some
Feeneyites are wont to pretend that Pius IX was orthodox and was
misrepresented on this point because they imagine that it would harm their
cause to admit that such an earlier pope contradicted them. But most are more
candid and concede the obvious. Indeed, it is better to be honest if one is
to accurately appraise the situation. The heresy of Pius X Evidence
against Pius X is found in the 1905 Catechism that bears his name, which he
had compiled for the use of the laity of the whole Church and the use of
which he imposed on the diocese of Rome; he wrote most of it. The old
Catholic Encyclopedia says the following. “The
present pontiff, Pius X, has prescribed a catechism for use in the Diocese of
Rome and in its ecclesiastical province, and has expressed a desire that it
should be adopted throughout Italy. It has been translated into English,
French, Spanish, and German, and a movement has begun with a view to
extending its use to other countries besides Italy, especially to Spain,
where the conditions are similar.” (T.B. Scannell, Christian Doctrine) It
is incredible that some Feeneyites should claim that Pius was neither
responsible for nor even conscious of the Catechism’s contents. Indeed it is
particularly laughable that the Brothers Dimond have written that “it is just
a fallible Catechism that went out during his reign and was given his
name”, as if Pius had nothing to do with it and it had a life all of its own,
especially as they are so ready to accuse others of “dishonesty” and “human
respect”. The
following passage is particularly incriminating. “29.
Q. But if a man through no fault of his own is outside the Church, can he be
saved? A. If he is outside the Church through no fault of his, that is, if he
is in good faith, and if he has received Baptism, or at least has the
implicit desire of Baptism; and if, moreover, he sincerely seeks the truth
and does God’s will as best he can, such a man is indeed separated from the
body of the Church, but is united to the soul of the Church and consequently
is on the way of salvation.” The
brothers at Most Holy Family Monastery have denounced this Catechism as
heretical. “Here
we see this fallible Catechism word for word denying the dogma Outside the
Church There is No Salvation! It teaches that there can be salvation
“outside” the Church. This statement is so heretical, in fact, that it would
be repudiated even by most of the crafty heretics of our day, who know that
they cannot say that people are saved “outside,” so they argue that
non-Catholics are not “outside” but are “inside” somehow. So even those
crafty heretics who reject the true meaning of Outside the Church There is No
Salvation would have to admit that the above statement is heretical!”
(Outside the Catholic Church There is Absolutely No Salvation, Br. Peter
Dimond) This
just goes to emphasize that canonizations are not infallible, nor are they
proof of sound teaching. It is as well to remember that canonizations by Rome
are admitted by all to have been a medieval innovation and not of apostolic
origin. Earlier, they were by popular acclaim, which none think to have been
infallible. The
Catholic faith comes to us from the apostles, through the orthodox Fathers
and in particular St. Augustine, and has sometimes been defined by the popes
when there was a need. It is not based on canonizations, approved devotions,
popular drawings or anything else. Any deviation from that rule is just an
excuse for heresy. The heresy of Pius XI The
evidence against Pius XI is only anecdotal. He
is said to have said the following to Cardinal Facchinetti, whom he had just
appointed to be the apostolic delegate to Libya. “Do
you think that you are going among infidels? Muslims attain to salvation. The
ways of Providence are infinite.” (Martin Lings, A Sufi Saint of the
Twentieth Century (University of California Press, 1973); L’Ultima, Anno
VIII, 75-76, p. 261 (Florence, 1954)) Of
course, this cannot be taken as weighty proof and we have included the matter
only for the sake of completeness, though it is quite believable in the midst
of so much papal heresy. The heresy of Pius XII Evidence
against the orthodoxy of Pius XII is found in the 1949 Letter
of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston. As the Letter says, Pius
“deigned to give his approval, that the … explanations pertinent to the
doctrine” of no salvation outside the Church, contained in the Letter, be
given. And as the introduction to the published Letter, written by
Archbishop, says, “Pope Pius XII, has given full approval to [the] decision”
of the Holy Office to order the Archbishop to make the Letter public. The
Letter gives support to heresy by claiming that an implicit desire suffices
for salvation in circumstances of invincible ignorance, because he did not
specify that an explicit faith is essential in central mysteries such as the
Trinity and the Incarnation. Indeed, he knowingly left everyone to interpret
him as saying that non-Catholics can thus be saved. “That
one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that he be
incorporated into the Church actually as a member, but it is necessary that
at least he be united to her by desire and longing. However, this desire need
not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens; but when a person is
involved in invincible ignorance God accepts also an implicit desire, so
called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a
person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God.” Pius
XII also allowed the Letter to quote him as supporting this position in his
encyclical Mystici Corporis and to imply that he was teaching that
people can be saved in other religions, just not “equally well”. “Toward the end of this same encyclical letter, when most affectionately inviting to unity those who do not belong to the body of the Catholic Church, he mentions those who ‘are related to the Mystical Body of the Redeemer by a certain unconscious yearning and desire,’ and these he by no means excludes from eternal salvation, but on the other hand states that they are in a condition “in which they cannot be sure of their salvation” since ‘they still remain deprived of those many heavenly gifts and helps which can only be enjoyed in the Catholic Church’. With these wise words he reproves both those who exclude from eternal salvation all united to the Church only by implicit desire, and those who falsely assert that men can be saved equally well in every religion.” It
is untenable that some Feeneyites should claim that the Letter misrepresents
Pius’ encyclical when he gave his approval to the interpretation and to the
order that it be made public. Father
Feeney and the original Saint Benedict Center denounced the Letter as
heretical. “On
September 24, 1952, three weeks after its publication in full, the Center
addressed a letter to Pope Pius XII in which it protested: ‘This Protocol is
substantially defective in that it contains heresy insofar as it states that
one can be saved under certain conditions outside the Roman Catholic Church
and without personal submission to the Roman Pontiff.’” (Father Feeney and
the Truth About Salvation, SBC NH) Richard
Ibranyi (RJMI) has incredibly gone so far as to question whether Pius XII
even knew about this Letter of the Holy Office, though he claims that he was
a heretic on another matter: “This heretical letter against Fr. Feeney…
Whether Pius XII knew of this letter or not is of no consequence [because] he
was not pope at the time because he lost his office in 1951 for teaching the
heresy of Natural Family Planning” (Why we lost the Pope, not the Papacy, and
the Mass). The Dimond Brothers too dont seem to grasp that Pius gave his
approval to the doctrine of the letter and that it be made public, quoting as
it does his encyclical in support. “If Pope Pius XII had come out in favor of
the Protocol and against Fr. Feeney then he would have been a heretic. This
is just a fact.” (Outside the Catholic Church There is Absolutely No
Salvation, Br. Peter Dimond) Again, it is clear that many Traditionalists are
not being frank about the heresy of pre-Vatican II popes regarding salvation
because they fear that it would harm their cause. Pius X never read his own
Catechism and Pius XII didn’t know of the 1949 Letter? The heresy of the anti-Jansenist popes It
will be less surprising to find that there were heretical popes in the
centuries leading up to Vatican II, given that we have cited eight instances
of heretical popes already. Indeed,
the heresy of the later popes can be understood as a continuation of the
heretical course pursued by the anti-Jansenist popes. They have likewise
endorsed the ways of the world (cupiditas) and falsified the doctrine
of salvation to include in beatitude not the orthodox Catholic elect but all
the posterity of Adam. The heretical course has culminated in the open
profession by popes of the heresy of universal salvation, which maintains
that all men will finally be saved. In
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the papal heretics were led to
condemn the infallibly defined Augustinian teaching that has come to us from
the patristic Church. The Catholic doctrine of grace and predestination has
now almost completely vanished from sight behind the smoke and mirrors of the
non-infallible condemnations issued by the anti-Jansenist popes and now a
heretical “pastoral” ecumenical council. It is apparently granted to very few
these days to recognize the true doctrine of the faith on this matter. As
the early teaching is less well known, we shall compare the statements of the
later Augustinian writers that were condemned by the heretical anti-Jansenist
popes side by side with early definitions and the similarity will be obvious.
We shall quote canons taught by early popes as the rule of the faith, that
are sentences extracted from the writings of Augustine and that express his
doctrine and accordingly must be understood in their original, Augustinian
sense, which is the “sense once defined” as Vatican I (a proper, infallible
doctrinal council) said they must. Indeed, the early popes were wont to
profess that they were teaching the doctrine of Augustine as their own: Pope
St. Hormisdas: “What the Roman, that is the Catholic, Church follows and
preserves concerning free will and the grace of God can be abundantly
recognised in the various books of the blessed Augustine, and especially in
those to Hilary and Prosper [his last two books, called the Predestination of
the Saints and the Gift of Perseverance].” (Sicut Rationi) Again,
it is not our intention to show every papal error here, so we shall make just
one or two comparisons for each anti-Jansenist pope. These popes condemned
dozens of orthodox sentences and often each of these sentences demonstrably
accorded perfectly with various early canons but we shall be brief. The heresy of Pius V Pius
V condemned in Ex Omnibus Afflictionibus (1567) various Augustinian propositions
advanced by Michael Bajus that had been infallibly approved by popes of the
patristic Church. Pope
Boniface II approved the Second Council of Orange (529) as a rule of faith
for the Church and its canons are grudgingly admitted by Catholic theologians
to be infallible definitions of the doctrine of the faith, though few would
honestly own its teaching. Pope
Pius XI: “It is a further tribute to the glory of the Bishop of Hippo
[Augustine], that more than once the Fathers in lawful Councils assembled,
made use of his very words in defining Catholic truth. In illustration it is
enough to cite the Second Council of Orange”. (Ad Salutem)
The heresy of Innocent X Innocent
condemned in Cum Occasione (1653) defined Augustinian doctrine,
supposedly in sentences taken from the writings of Cornelius Jansen.
Some theological explanation of the contradiction is
called for here. The canon quoted from the Indiculus defines
Augustine’s doctrine of efficacious grace, using his terminology of the “adjutorium
quo” (the help by which), which is the help by which the good act is
effected in man, as distinguished from the purely “adjutorium sine
quo non” (the help without which it cannot be), the help had by Adam
which did not itself effect the good act but only made it possible.
Efficacious grace is both adjutorium “quo” and “sine quo non”
as we cannot now do anything good without it. The phrase in the Indiculus
“received through the daily help of God” is the “adjutorium quo”
concept translated into English. The canon teaches that man can persevere in
good acts only through this efficacious help. Accordingly, the justified
cannot keep the commandments if this grace is wanting and that is the only
meaning which can be given to the canon supposedly condemning Jansen. The Indiculus seu præteritorum Sedis Apostolicæ
episcoporum auctoritates (Indiculus de gratia Dei), from which we
have just quoted, was compiled by St. Prosper of Aquitaine for Pope St.
Sixtus III and contains a series of quotes on the Catholic doctrine of grace
from popes St. Innocent I and St. Zosimus and from the Carthaginian Council
approved by Rome. Catholic theologians consider it to be infallible and to
have certainly always been recognized as such. The Catholic Encyclopedia
says, “The Augustinian standpoint of the compiler is as unmistakable as the
anti-Semipelagian tendency of the whole work… It is certain that about A. D.
500 this work was recognized as the official expression of the views of the
Apostolic See.” (Pohle, Semi-Pelagianism) The 1957 edition of Denzinger’s Sources
of Catholic Dogma says that the Indiculus was “recognized
universally as the genuine doctrine of the Apostolic See”. The heresy of Clement XI We
should be here all day if we were to compare every error of Clement with the
early teaching. He condemned in Unigenitus (1713) defined Augustinian
teaching in the writings of Pasquier Quesnel.
Again,
the canons from Orange and the Indiculus express Augustine's doctrine
that we cannot do good without efficacious grace, the “adjutorium quo” that
is the grace of (given by) Christ in distinction from the grace of (had by)
Adam. The heresy of Pius VI Pius
VI attempted to rehabilitate in Auctorem Fidei (1794) the heretical
Pelagian fable of Limbo, ignoring the definition of Carthage XVI that is
contrary to him. Carthage taught that unbaptised infants have the punishment
of fire in hell with the devil and that there is no place of rest and
happiness for them anywhere (limbo). The
canons of Council of Carthage XVI (418) were composed by Augustine and were
infallibly approved as a rule of faith by Popes Innocent I and Zosimus I.
Again, they are recognized as infallible by all Catholic theologians, though
few would honestly own their teaching.
The
canon of Carthage taught that infants have the pain of fire, for they “run
into the left” and are, in their fate a “partner of the devil”. This refers
to the last judgement scene narrated in the twenty-fifth chapter of the
Gospel of St. Matthew. “Then
he shall say to them also that shall be on his left: Depart from me, you
cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.
... And these shall go away into everlasting punishment.” (St. Matthew 25:41,
46) Thus
it is defined by Carthage that unbaptised infants receive their everlasting
punishment with the devil in the fires of hell. St. Augustine often taught
this in his writings and it was characteristic of him to do so with reference
to Bible passages. It is also condemned that there is “some place anywhere
where happy infants live who departed from this life without baptism”. Conclusion – twelve heretical popes exposed We
have exposed twelve popes as heretical. Traditionalists
generally admit the five most recent popes to have been heretics, whether
they are sedevacantists or not. Many
Feeneyites admit a further three popes to have been heretical. Jansenists,
with just as much reason as the Traditionalists and the Feeneyites, admit a
further four popes to have been heretical. It
is not our intention to imply that these are the only twelve popes who have
been heretics or that no other popes fell into heresy over the issue of
“Jansenism” (which is simply the doctrine and discipline of the patristic
Church as historians are wont to admit). Catholic
theologians generally admit several other popes to have been heretical,
including, most famously Liberius and Honorious. It
is not particularly controversial amongst Catholic theologians to say that
popes have been heretical. Indeed, Pope Adrian VI stated as follows. “If
by the Roman Church you mean its head or pontiff, it is beyond question that
he can err even in matters touching the faith. He does this when he teaches
heresy by his own judgement or decretal. In truth, many Roman pontiffs were
heretics. The last of them was Pope John XXII.” (Quaest. in IV Sent.) For
further commentary on papal heresy, see the essay, The Right and Duty to
Resist a Pope, which was republished by Saint Benedict Center. |
St. Augustine, Doctor of Grace |
