re: Pope Francis removes Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, head of the Doctrine of the Faith

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I'm not really sure that I agree with everything this pope is doing/saying, but I think any Catholic will agree that if we had kept doing what we were doing in 80 years the Catholic church would have been pretty slim.

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This pope is good for the Catholic Church. He is moving it in the right direction. Those "Catholics" who wring their hands and gnash their teeth about how "liberal" he is need to revisit the teachings of Christ and listen with an open heart.

If they do not feel comfortable with the direction of the Catholic Church, perhaps they should stop calling themselves Catholic.

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Let me clarify....when I'm talking children/young people I'm talking in the late junior high to high school age....sure parents could force their children to go to church. Then you have a bunch of people there that would rather be anywhere else than where they are....that isn't what I consider "expanding the faith" because they will be gone in a few years anyway.

Part of the church/priest's job is to "bring" people into the church right?

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I agree with your final statement. But if the children are living under their parents' roof, then they should be abiding by the parents' rules, including attending Mass. Parents allowing their children to skip Mass because they don't want to go or because the priest is "boring" is inexcusable (and absolutely disrespectful). I can't remember one single time I felt like I wanted to be in Sunday 8:00 a.m. Mass in high school. But I went.

It lays the foundation for later life.

"Cool" priests may appeal to some, and probably certainly help with bringing and keeping Catholics in the Church, but they shouldn't be the foundation of a child's faith. That starts at home.

Excuse my mash-up of quotations...

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I always thought trump would be the one to fire Müller.

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That was the first thing that popped in my head too.

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the Pope is infallible.

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No. Never the pope himself.

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we believe the pope is infallible when speaking on matters of the faith and interpretation of the word of God.

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Even that is far too broad.

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The Pope is only infallible when speaking/teaching from the chair of Peter. Ex-cathedra I believe is the technical term. He hasn't done so, in fact it has only been done a small handful of times in our churches history.

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But that's too narrow (typically citing 1854 & 1950, and not much else), and I'm saying that as a sort of minimalist on papal infallibility. There are things that a pope can put into the liturgy or the Catechism, for example, that would be infallible (even though not everything in the liturgy or the Catechism is infallible).

The core of papal infallibility lies in the power to approve the statements of church councils. Almost all Christians recognize the importance of the first few ecumenical councils, which solemnly declared things such as the Trinity and the nature of Christ as de fide articles of truth, putting them into the Church's creed.

What separates Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy is that the Eastern Orthodox have no coherent understanding of what counts as a binding ecumenical council, and what doesn't. This is important, because votes can always be rigged. People in one part of the world can invite only a fraction of the world's bishops, and then claim universality. Or even worse, they can have their bishop accept an ecumenical council, and then get overthrown by a populist mob so that the next bishop installed by the emperor rejects it. That's madness.

One person must hold the authority to put the official stamp on what constitutes an ecumenical council, and what does not; and that person must be absolutely free of loyalties to any worldly ruler in doing so. That person is the successor to Peter.

Without that, you get nationalistic or imperialistic churches, such as what the Eastern Orthodox have. That's repugnant to God, and it's caused the economic and political stagnation of their cultures.

Many compare the Anglicans to the Eastern Orthodox, and indeed, many of the best Eastern Orthodox scholars study at Oxford or Cambridge, because they do have certain a lot of similar doctrines about national self-determination for a church. However, the intent behind the Church of England has always been much different than the intent behind the Imperialist Church of Eastern Orthodoxy in Constantinople (almost immediately from its establishment by Constantine in 330) or Moscow (after the fall of Constantinople in 1453). Whereas the purpose of Eastern Orthodoxy was to give power to the state over the church, the purpose of Anglicanism was a 17th century compromise of (relative) tolerance among competing Royalist and Parliamentarian factions. The Puritans accepted the continuation of the Anglican monarchy, and the High Church catholics accepted low church evangelical freedoms and the supremacy of Parliament. In other words, the state was to be given less power to regulate the nation's religious affairs, not more. It was a Providentially blessed arrangement, even if also a theologically erroneous one.

The Catholic Church of course, has historically gotten itself into the most trouble whenever it bent too far in accommodating CINO (Catholic In Name Only) monarchies--the worst examples probably being France and Spain. Properly understood, Catholicism stands for church over state, but only in essential matters for individuals who confess to being members of the Catholic Church. Church leaders are also supposed to renounce seeking control over secular matters for which they have no expertise. Hence the unique separation of church and state that occurred in Latin Christendom--"you have sovereign power as a secular ruler, but if you choose to be an individual member of the Church, and moreover, want to use the Church's name to solidify your authority over the people, then you will be bound by articles of the faith as pronounced in Rome, and risk losing your sovereign legitimacy publicly, and on an international stage, if you do not adhere."

There were many great English Catholics (Newman & Tolkien) and crypto-Catholics (Shakespeare & Burke), and many Anglicans very close to Catholicism (C.S. Lewis, who made great arguments for Protestant belief in purgatory).

But the desire to "have your cake and eat it too" by being both traditionally Catholic and independent of Rome, is what precipitated the crisis of the 19th and late 18th centuries. It got started with Febronianism in Germany in 1763. Then you had Josephinism in Austria, Gallicanism in France, Cisalpinism in England, and finally a Swiss attempt to organize something called the "Old Catholic Church" that did not accept papal authority. (I suppose this is something similar to the Lutheran argument I've read before asserting that the medieval Church was great, but had never really accepted the Renaissance innovation of papal authority.)

Anyway, it was the formation of the Old Catholic Church in the 1850s that forced the real Catholic Church to formally declare papal authority in 1870. And if the Church itself can proclaim articles of faith infallibly, and the pope has authority to ratify such articles, then that implies that certain papal actions must also have the protection of papal infallibility.


Finally, for those worrying about Pope Francis (and there is good reason to be worried), there was a pretty good 9-minute homily this weekend from Sensus Fidelium that was uploaded to YouTube: " The Papacy Cannot Be Destroyed."

It discussed the striking parallels between the imprisonment of Jesus and the imprisonment of Peter found in Acts 12.

"The worldly governments are not above the pope, but under his jurisdiction. The pope must never be subject to an earthly ruler." (6:20 - 6:29)

"No matter what happens then, we know, the papacy will somehow pass through every trial, even if that trial is brought on by the pope himself, which seems to be happening. He cannot--even the pope himself--cannot destroy the papacy." (7:31 - 7:56)

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Yet somehow I assume you continued to go when it was your decision to do so

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Yes-intermittently in college and grad school. Then I realized that something was missing in my life and have gone regularly since.

You're correct that good priests make things easier. But what also helps with that is good youth programs with good youth leaders. I grew up in a rural area and we did not have that. We had parents teaching classes on Wednesday nights. That was not outreach.

And from a pragmatic standpoint, you are correct. But charismatic priests (even just new priests) are hard to come by, and without any other real youth outreach, a young person's Catholic faith may wither on the vine. That's why the home is so important.

I'm watching the Catholic Church in my home town slowly die because of what you are saying-but I can't help but notice that the parents don't have their children in Mass. That is shocking to me, and the root of the problem.

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our place as Catholics to question it. I mean, if you claim to be a true Catholic, you have to accept Catholic dogma that the Pope is infallible.

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This is why I'm not catholic. I cannot accept that any man alive is infallible

Brilliant way for the church to maintain power. Must be nice to know that all its followers must blindly accept whatever the person in charge does.

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Are these children in Catholic school? That was what was so weird to me a few years back....was that we had so many parents sending their children to Catholic school but those same children didn't attend Sunday mass for the most part. The only time we saw children there is when the confirmation class had to get their cards signed for going to mass

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The Catholic school only goes through 7th grade, and that's about the top end of children you see at Mass.

And there were a couple of kids in my confirmation class many moons ago that I didn't even know were Catholic-and my hometown wasn't that big. They just appeared for the class, and disappeared again after.

Odd that parents would make them do that but not stick their butts in pews on Sunday.

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Not our place as Catholics to question it. I mean, if you claim to be a true Catholic, you have to accept Catholic dogma that the Pope is infallible

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Does the Bible say the Pope is infallible? If not, then you don't have to accept that.

Bible > any religious dogma

Bible > Catechism

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Does the Bible say the Pope is infallible? If not, then you don't have to accept that. Bible > any religious dogma Bible > Catechism

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Shiny hook you left there. Care to inform everyone about the actual roots of the binding of the Bible? I think if you look into it you may have a little bit of tradition and magisterium at work, after all, the Bible contains no table of contents and didn't exist until hundreds of years after Christ.

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His Holiness

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Lost me here.

This pope is a cuck

Elect a pope that won't bend over for the terrorists