“How many examples are there in theology of problems that seem unsolvable, simply because they start from badly-posed questions.” Dom Paul Nau OSB[1] This essay continues my response to Professor Roberto de Mattei’s call for Catholics to rally around the Church’s tradition and to form a “new more compact front for orthodoxy.”[2] To this end, …
Continue reading Pope Honorius and Roberto de Mattei IIIa: Magisterial Heresy? The Rule of Faith
Chapter III of Vacant's work is long, and so the WM Review is publishing it in two parts. This first part addresses the express teaching of the ordinary magisterium, and the second will consider its implicit and tacit teaching acts. This part also describes the ways in which the Church makes use of natural sciences …
The WM Review continues our translation and publication of this nineteenth work on the ordinary magisterium. As we already noted, the author J.M.A. Vacant was the initial director of the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique and was a seminary professor. This short work was awarded the prize for the theological competition in La Controverese, judged by …
We are pleased to present another section from this study by J.M.A. Vacant, in which he addresses the concept and the authority of the ordinary and universal magisterium. We previously published Chapter VI of this work, on the Pope's personal exercise of this magisterium. Fr Vacant was a professor of the Major Seminary of Nancy, …
In this part we will examine the second condition of membership, that of public profession of the true faith. In the part one of this series, we saw that the Catholic Church could be defined as: “The society of men who, by their profession of the same faith, and by their partaking of the same sacraments, make …
Continue reading Membership of the Church: Part III – public profession of the true faith
One of the great delusions of the modern age is the presumption that human beings today are in some way “better”, more “enlightened”, more “moral” than people in the past, who were were cruel, or ignorant, or incapable of seeing things which are obvious to “modern man”. This attitude reveals itself in the frequent use …
Continue reading Suffering under persecution – the example of Robert Southwell, priest and martyr
We shall resume our study of Professor Roberto de Mattei’s treatment of Honorius, the so-called “heretic pope” Honorius. I have previously discussed how interpretations of history shape theological principles regarding the crisis in the Church. I hope that this study will, in de Mattei's own words, overcome “the many misunderstandings that often divide the forces …
Continue reading Pope Honorius and Roberto de Mattei – Part II: “Undoubtedly Magisterial Acts”?