Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Msgr.Joseph Clifford Fenton had only to say that the baptism of desire, invincible ignorance, necessity of precept and means are hypothetical and so irrelevant to Fr.Feeney's interpretation of the dogma

The Letter of the Holy Office 1949 made an objective mistake and Msgr.Fenton could not say it in public.
JCFenton
Msgr.Joseph Clifford Fenton had only to say that we do not know any one on earth saved with the baptism of desire or in invincible ignorance or according to the necessity of precept and means, since these are hypothetical cases.So they are not objective exceptions to extra ecclesiam nulla salus as it was interpreted over the centuries.
 
He never criticised the Letter of the Holy Office 1949 on this point.
 
Tantumblogo on A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics has a post A doubting voice from Vatican Council II from a priest who was there.
Many of Msgr. Fenton's writings are hard to find, but there are some here on the vital and greatly misunderstood Dogma of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus (I do not recommend wandering around this site, generally)  http://veneremurcernui.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/a-doubting-voice-from-vatican-ii-from-a-priest-who-was-there/
 
Tantumblogo also interprets extra ecclesiam nulla salus assuming that those saved with the baptism of desire etc are visible to us in real life.Hypothetical cases for him are defacto exceptions to the dogmatic teaching.
 
Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton on Vatican Council II

  • “The statement of the Council is not a theological text book. At the same time, however, a declaration by a council can cause confusion or finally can actually be harmful when even though there is no error about faith or morals in it, the statement passes over Truths which are, and which have long been generally been recognized as, assertions of Catholic doctrine.” (May 11, 1963)

  • Lionel:
    He still has not commented on the irrational inference used in the Letter of the Holy Office 1949 and which was now being used in Vatican Council II.

    • “There is nothing erroneous in the material [in the schema for Dei Verbum, the dogmatic constitution on divine revelation] we have passed. But there is a great deal that is incomplete and misleading.” (June 4, 1964)
    • “M [Fr. John Courtney Murray] has just come in to see the triumph of his false doctrine [of religious liberty].” (Sept. 21, 1964)
    • “The part on ecumenism [in the text of the commission] is a joke. It reads like a 19th century text, or a second-rate article in a leftist magazine.” (Oct. 28, 1965)
    Lionel:
    Mosgr Fenton does not say that 'those saved in imperfect communion with the Church'(Unitatis Redintigration 3, The Decree on Ecumenism) are not known and visible to us, they are not objective. So they could not be relevant to the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
    There is nothing in Vatican Council II to contradict the traditional teachings on ecumenism and other religions unless one assumes that UR 3 etc refer to known and visible to cases.
    The same with NA 2, LG 8, LG 16 etc.
    For the theologians of that time these hypothetical cases were objectively visible and so so were relevant to the dogma. They were exceptions! This was the error that Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton did not notice or noticed, but did not speak it out in public for whatever reason.
    -Lionel Andrades

    The Theological Proof For The Necessity Of The Catholic Church (American Ecclesiastical Review, March 1948)
    http://www.romancatholicism.org/fenton/proof1.html
    http://www.romancatholicism.org/fenton/

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