Is Pope Francis A Liberal Protestant? by Gerald McDermott 11 . 15 . 17 Is the pope Catholic?” For at least a century, this was the way we Anglicans joked about anything that seemed too obvious to state. Now we must ask in seriousness whether the pope is a liberal Protestant. Early this month, an American theologian resigned under pressure from his post as theological advisor to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. What had Fr. Thomas Weinandy done to deserve this public rebuke? He had made public a July letter to the pope, in which he charged that the Holy Father was causing “chronic confusion.” The pope’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia is “intentionally ambiguous” on grave moral and doctrinal matters. It “risks sinning against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth,” and “demean the importance of Christian doctrine” by inviting changes to traditional Catholic teaching on marriage and divorce. The pope “resents” criticism and “mock” those who have challenged Amoris Laetitia “as Pharisaic stone-throwers.” As an outsider, I can’t help but wonder whether the pope and the USCCB were particularly provoked by Weinandy’s suggestion that Jesus had allowed this controversy in order “to manifest just how weak is the faith of many within the Church, even among too many of her bishops.” Catholics will have to make up their own minds—but I’ll admit I have questions about the faith of Pope Francis, which seems, if not weak, at least different from that of the Catholic tradition. Even before the release of Amoris Laetitia in March 2016, Francis had caused many to question his fidelity to that tradition. In 2014, the midterm report of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family recommended that pastors emphasize the “positive aspects” of cohabitation and civil remarriage after divorce. He said that Jesus’s multiplication of bread and fish was really a miracle of sharing, not of multiplying (2013); told a woman in an invalid marriage that she could take Holy Communion (2014); claimed that lost souls do not go to hell (2015); and said that Jesus had begged his parents for forgiveness (2015). In 2016, he said that God had been “unjust with his son,” announced his prayer intention to build a society “that places the human person at the center,” and declared that inequality is “the greatest evil that exists.” In 2017, he joked that “inside the Holy Trinity they’re all arguing behind closed doors, but on the outside they give the picture of unity.” Jesus Christ, he said, “made himself the devil.” “No war is just,” he pronounced. At the end of history, “everything will be saved. Everything.” Weinandy and other Catholic critics have pointed to alarming statements and suggestions in Amoris Laetitia itself. The exhortation declares, “No one can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!” In December 2016, the Catholic philosophers John Finnis and Germain Grisez argued in their “Misuse of Amoris Laetitia” that though this statement reflects a trend among Catholic thinkers stemming from Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, it contradicts the gospels’ clear statements and the Catholic tradition’s teaching that there is “unending punishment” in hell. Finnis and Grisez charge that, according to the logic of Amoris Laetitia, some of the faithful are too weak to keep God’s commandments, and can live in grace while committing ongoing and habitual sins “in grave matter.” Like (Episcopalian) Joseph Fletcher, who taught Situation Ethics in the 1960s, the exhortation suggests that there are exceptions to every moral rule and that there is no such thing as an intrinsically evil act. I take no pleasure in Rome’s travails. For decades, orthodox Anglicans and other Protestants seeking to resist the apostasies of liberal Christianity have looked to Rome for moral and theological support. Most of us recognized that we were really fighting the sexual revolution, which had coopted and corrupted the Episcopal Church and its parent across the pond. First it was the sanctity of life and euthanasia. Then it was homosexual practice. Now it is gay marriage and transgender ideology. During the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, we non-Catholics arguing moral theology could point to learned and compelling arguments coming out of Rome and say, in effect, “The oldest and largest part of the Body of Christ agrees with us, and it does so with remarkable sophistication.” Those of us who continue to fight for orthodoxy, in dogmatic as well as moral theology, miss those days when there was a clear beacon shining from across the Tiber. For now, it seems, Rome itself has been infiltrated by the sexual revolution. The center is not holding. Though we are dismayed, we must not despair. For the brave and principled stand made by Tom Weinandy reminds us that God raises up prophetic lights when dark days come to his Church. Gerald McDermott holds the Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School. Click here for the rest of the article: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/11/is-pope-francis-a-liberal-protestant
Many consider traditional Roman Catholics as having been radical and intransigent. Now people are beginning to see why we believe and worship and live in the way that we have chosen. His grace Abp LeFebvre rather than being retrospective in outlook has been shown to have been forward thinking by his advocacy of what is necessary for the survival of the Church
If Archbishop Lefebvre was right, then Roman infallibility was wrong, and the entire edifice of Roman Catholicism, all the centuries of claims, seem to me to dissolve If Archbishop Lefebvre was right, by that logic Martin Luther may have been right as well... After all Cardinal Cajetan rejected the apocryphal books of the Bible, and no one thought that was strange, because the apocryphal books weren't in the Catholic canon until Trent... therefore Luther may have been just a dissenter from the Roman Catholic errors of the time, just as Lefebvre (Of course we as Anglicans believe exactly that)
My friend above, there is no such thing as Roman infallibility but rather papal infallibility, and Marcel Lefebvre never contested that. An infallible statement had to be made ex cathedra, and there's only been few of them made. This doesn't apply to everything the Pope says, just as we don't take everything that the Archbishop of Canterbury says as fact. It has to be prayed upon.
Luther attacked the Papacy, Archbishop LeFebvre was intent on protecting the Papacy and the priesthood and that's why the Pope, bishops and priests are prayed for at every Mass offered by a priest of SSPX
Lefebvre and his group have made it their decision to ignore everything the Popes do and say. I would say the Papacy is the last thing they are interested in... For this reason they have been called in schism by mainstream Roman authorities There is surely a Roman infallibility as well, the claim of the infallibility of the Roman church as a whole Roman teaching on infallibility says there is a Papal Magisterium, which they say is infallible, and the Ordinary Universal Magisterium, which they also say is infallible Just to be clear, we don't need to take anything the Archbishop of Canterbury says as fact, for he has no jurisdiction in North America at all... he is the honorary head The Roman Pope on the other hand has absolute ordinary jurisdiction over every Catholic in the world, and the bishops' jurisdiction is merely derived from his, and thus he is the only "true" bishop in the world; the Papal Magisterium must be obeyed, even the non-ex-cathedra statements: the Roman Catholic Councils have decreed this
This is fair enough. However the Magisterium of the church does say that Catholics are not bound per se to believe that which is declared when not ex cathedra. In that, the person isn't separated or penalised for any reason.