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| One of these is Bishop Doug, the Catholic Bishop of Hamilton |
In a Diocese with one of the most beautiful cathedrals in Canada outside of Quebec built in the 1930 and named after Christ the King, which commemorated the then recent institution of the Social Kingship of Christ the King by Pius XI on the protestant "Reformation Sunday,"
Bishop Douglas Crosby, OMI of Hamilton joins in celebration with Lutherans, the heretical poisonous action of that lecherous malefactor.
Clearly following the lead of Bergoglio of Rome, the one thing Crosby didn't do is erect a chocolate statue of the heretical Augustinian.
Celebrating and commemorating the loss of nation and peoples from the Church, the destruction of monasteries, the murder of hundreds of thousands of faithful Catholics, the spread of heresy, the creation of an environment of philosophical and theological error that persists to this day and which lead to the French Revolution, Freemasonry, Communism and Illuminism and the complete loss of faith of Germany and the rest of Europe. Yes, let us commemorate and celebrate that.
The article states, "the Spirit of God is calling us in our time to a renewed
sense of common mission, prayer and service." What blasphemy. The Holy Spirit would only call protestants back to the unity of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Fifty years of this wretched false ecumenism and all it has done is make Catholics, protestant.
How many more stories such as this will we be subjected to this weekend?
Perhaps Bishop Doug should read this!
LUTHER? NOT A REFORM BUT A REVOLUTION
by Gerhard L. Cardinal Müller
There is great confusion today when we talk about Luther,
and it needs to be said clearly that from the point of view of dogmatic
theology, from the point of view of the doctrine of the Church, it wasn’t a
reform at all but rather a revolution, that is, a total change of the
foundations of the Catholic Faith.
It is not realistic to argue that [Luther’s] intention was
only to fight against abuses of indulgences or the sins of the Renaissance
Church. Abuses and evil actions have always existed in the Church, not only
during the Renaissance, and they still exist today. We are the holy Church
because of the God’s grace and the Sacraments, but all the men of the Church
are sinners, they all need forgiveness, contrition, and repentance.
This distinction is very important. And in the book written
by Luther in 1520, “De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae,” it is absolutely
clear that Luther has left behind all of the principles of the Catholic Faith,
Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition, the magisterium of the Pope and the
Councils, and of the episcopate. In this sense, he upended the concept of the
homogeneous development of Christian doctrine as explained in the Middle Ages,
even denying that a sacrament is an efficacious sign of the grace contained
therein. He replaced this objective efficacy of the sacraments with a
subjective faith. Here, Luther abolished five sacraments, and he also denied
the Eucharist: the sacrificial character of the sacrament of the Eucharist, and
the real conversion of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of
the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, he called the sacrament of
episcopal ordination, the sacrament of Orders, an invention of the Pope — whom
he called the Antichrist — and not part of the Church of Jesus Christ. Instead,
we say that the sacramental hierarchy, in communion with the successor of
Peter, is an essential element of the Catholic Church, and not only a principle
of a human organization.
That is why we cannot accept Luther’s reform being called a
reform of the Church in a Catholic sense. Catholic reform is a renewal of faith
lived in grace, in the renewal of customs, of ethics, a spiritual and moral
renewal of Christians; not a new foundation, not a new Church.
It is therefore unacceptable to assert that Luther’s reform
“was an event of the Holy Spirit.” On the contrary, it was against the Holy
Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit helps the Church to maintain her continuity
through the Church’s magisterium, above all in the service of the Petrine
ministry: on Peter has Jesus founded His Church (Mt 16:18), which is “the
Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15).
The Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself.
We hear so many voices speaking too enthusiastically about
Luther, not knowing exactly his theology, his polemics and the disastrous
effect of this movement which destroyed the unity of millions of Christians
with the Catholic Church. We cannot evaluate positively his good will, the lucid
explanation of the shared mysteries of faith but not his statements against the
Catholic Faith, especially with regard to the sacraments and
hierarchical-apostolic structure of the Church.
Nor is it correct to assert that Luther initially had good
intentions, meaning by this that it was the rigid attitude of the Church that
pushed him down the wrong road. This is not true: Luther was intent on fighting
against the selling of indulgences, but the goal was not indulgences as such,
but as an element of the Sacrament of Penance.
Nor is it true that the Church refused to dialogue: Luther
first had a dispute with John Eck; then the Pope sent Cardinal Gaetano as a
liaison to talk to him. We can discuss the methods, but when it comes to the
substance of the doctrine, it must be stated that the authority of the Church
did not make mistakes. Otherwise, one must argue that, for a thousand years,
the Church has taught errors regarding the faith, when we know — and this is an
essential element of doctrine — that the Church can not err in the transmission
of salvation in the sacraments.
One should not confuse personal mistakes and the sins of
people in the Church with errors in doctrine and the sacraments. Those who do
this believe that the Church is only an organization comprised of men and deny
the principle that Jesus himself founded His Church and protects her in the
transmission of the faith and grace in the sacraments through the Holy Spirit.
His Church is not a merely human organization: it is the body of Christ, where
the infallibility of the Council and the Pope exists in precisely described
ways. All of the councils speak of the infallibility of the Magisterium, in
setting forth the Catholic faith. Amid today’s confusion, in many people this
reality has been overturned: they believe the Pope is infallible when he speaks
privately, but then when the Popes throughout history have set forth the
Catholic faith, they say it is fallible.
Of course, 500 years have passed. It’s no longer the time
for polemics but for seeking reconciliation: but not at the expense of truth.
One should not create confusion. While on the one hand, we must be able to
grasp the effectiveness of the Holy Spirit in these other non-Catholic
Christians who have good will, and who have not personally committed this sin
of separation from the Church, on the other we cannot change history, and what
happened 500 years ago. It’s one thing to want to have good relations with
non-Catholic Christians today, in order to bring us closer to a full communion
with the Catholic hierarchy and with the acceptance of the Apostolic Tradition
according to Catholic doctrine. It’s quite another thing to misunderstand or
falsify what happened 500 years ago and the disastrous effect it had. An effect
contrary to the will of God: “… that they may all be one; even as thou, Father,
art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may
believe that thou has sent me” (Jn 17:21).
