Tuesday, February 10, 2015

For Francisco Romero Carrasquillo too deceased are living exceptions to the traditional interpretation of Fr.Leonard Feeney

 
The Holy Office 1949 made an objective mistake in the Fr.Leonard Feeney case.
 
 
Francisco Romero Carrasquillo on the blog Ite Ad Thomam rejects the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus, as interpreted over the centuries,  since he infers ( knowingly or unknowingly ) that there is known salvation outside the Church in the present times. This was the same error of Cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani.   For Carrasquillo the baptism of desire and being saved in invincible ignorance refer to explicit cases, personally known in 2015, to be exceptions to the dogma according to Fr.Leonard Feeney.
 
He holds the contradictory position of CCC 1257 which says all need the baptism of water for salvation but some do not.
 
Francisco Romero Carrasquillo cannot conceive of the magisterium making an objective mistake. So like Mons. Joseph Clifford Fenton,  he assumes that the traditional interpretation of Fr.Leonard Feeney was wrong. Since for Carrasquillo the deceased who are now in Heaven, saved with the baptism of desire etc, are visible on earth, to become  living exceptions, to all needing the baptism of water for salvation. Based on this irrationality, he has created a theology.
 
To accomodate this visible dead theory, the Marchetti inference, he rejects Feeneyism as a theology, which says there are no exceptions to the dogma.-L.A

Quaeritur: 'Invisible' Membership in the Church?

 
Quaeritur: Reading more of Fenton's writings, I am becoming slightly confused... In several places he emphatically shows that the Church is a visible society, and that there is not an invisible Church, and thus that membership in the Church means something visible, and not invisible.

And yet, he also states that the Catholic dogma is not that one must be a member in order to be saved, only that one must be in some way within the Church; and that it is possible to be within the Church without actually being a member, if one has an implicit desire (hence baptism by desire or by blood).

My question is this: how can we say that even implicit desire makes one within the Church if the Church is a visible society? If you can be in the Church by some way other than visible membership, doesn't it follow that one can be in the Church invisibly?

I'm having a hard time seeing how Fenton doesn't contradict himself.(Lionel: He contradicts himself since he is trying to adapt to the irrationality of the Letter of the Holy Office 1949. How can the baptism of desire be an exception to extra ecclesiam nulla salus? What has the baptism of desire to do with the dogma when we do not know of any such case in real life? How can it be a defacto, explicit exception? Catholics are confused since no one wants to say that the magisterium of the Church has accepted an objective error.)

For example, these two articles: here and here.


Respondeo: The Church, in addition to being the Mystical Body of Christ, which is primarily a supernatural, invisible reality, is also and secondarily a visible society, with a visible structure and hierarchy, visible worship, etc. And hence those of us who participate fully in this visible society are said to be its visible members.(Lionel: Agreed!)


Now someone who is in the state of grace and through no fault of his own is outside of its visible structure can be said to 'belong' to the Church invisibly, without being a visible member through its worship, government, etc.(Lionel: We do not know and cannot know this person. So how can he be a visible member of the Catholic Church ? How can we say that this invisible for us case, is saved without the baptism of water and Catholic Faith?)  Being a member is much more than belonging. The latter implies somehow mystically participating in the Mystical Body of Christ (being branches of the vine), (Lionel: This is something we can accept in faith but it will be a hypothtical case. So we must not consider it an exception to the dogma. This was the objective mistake made by Cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani in 1959 in the Letter of the Holy Office to the Archbishop of Boston) whereas the former implies also participating in the visible structure of the Church.



For example, a child who is baptized in a Protestant church is invisibly in the state of sanctifying grace and hence belongs to the Mystical Body, but does not visibly profess the Catholic faith, does not visibly attend Catholic worship, and is not part of the hierarchical and legal structure of the Church (e.g., is not bound by canon law).
(Lionel: This is a hypothtical case and so it is not an exception to the dogma which tells us that all Protestants need to convert into the Catholic Church for salvation.)

I remember the pictures in the Baltimore Catechism (St. Joseph's edition): a boat with people in it (visible members) and some people out in the water hanging on to ropes attached to the boat, who are surviving thanks to the fact that they are still hanging on to the boat. Analogously you could say that some are members of the Mystical Body, whereas others merely 'belong' to the Mystical Body (participate in its saving nature) without being members. A picture that is really worth a thousand words.
(Lionel: The picture has its limitations. Those who are saved or going to be saved with the baptism of desire or blood could also receive the baptism of water. Secondly those who are saved as such are invisible for us and so are not exceptions to the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus. The Holy Office 1949 made an objective mistake in the Fr.Leonard Feeney case. There are no known exceptions to the traditional interpretation of extra ecclesiam nulla salus)

For more on this, I recommend Fr. Romanus' three-part article on Church membership, which goes more technically into the relevant distinctions as presented by the majority of the Church's classical theologians. -  Francisco Romero Carrasquillo
(Lionel: In the Notes it mentions Fr.Francois Laisney's, IS Feeneyism Catholic?  published by the SSPX ,USA's Angelus Press. Fr.Laisney does not notice the factual error in the Letter of the Holy Office  1949 1)

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