Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Lutheran Satire of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeJZAb-kS-c&list=UU2-3Cf7Hw10b3NW05p2Z7IA&index=4&feature=plcp

This is good except for the cheap shot at the end about the sale of indulgences.

An Inspiring Figure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gilmour_%28missionary%29

Quote that Rad-Trads hate/love?

"In reading the Schema on the Liturgy, and in listening to the debate on it, I could not help thinking that, if the Church of Rome went on improving the Missal and Breviary long enough, they would one day invent the Book of Common Prayer."- Anglican Bishop of Ripon, John Moorman, an observer of the Second Vatican Council (1962-5)

Thursday, January 5, 2012

That Old Liturgical Latitudinarian, Pope St. Gregory the Great

"You know, my brother, the custom of the Roman church in which you remember you were trained. But if you have found anything in either the Roman or the Gallican or any other church which may be more acceptable to Almighty God, I am willing that you carefully make choice of the same and diligently teach the English church, which is as yet new in the faith, whatever you can gather from the several churches. For things are not to be loved for the sake of places but places for the sake of good things. Select, therefore, from every church the things that are devout religious and upright, and when you have, as it were, combined them into one body, let the minds of the English be trained therein." (to St. Augustine of Canterbury) in the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the British Isles

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Great Passage From Ruth

Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger? And Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore. The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust. Then she said, Let me find favour in thy sight, my lord; for that thou hast comforted me, and for that thou hast spoken friendly unto thine handmaid, though I be not like unto one of thine handmaidens. -Ruth 2:10-13

Friday, December 30, 2011

Augustine Quotation Stolen from Pr. Weedon's Blog

"But as I do not wish my reader to be bound down to me, so I do not wish my critic to be bound to himself. Let not the pious reader love me more than the catholic faith. Let not the critic love himself more than the catholic truth. I say to the pious reader, do not be willing to accept my writings as canonical Scriptures. But when you have discovered in the Scriptures what you did not previously believe, believe it unhesitatingly. While in my writings, unless you have understood certainly what you did not before hold as certain, be unwilling to hold it fast. I say to the critic, do not be wiling to amen my writings by your own opinion or argument, but [amend them] from the divine text or by unanswerable reason. If you apprehend anything of truth in them, its being there does not make it mine, but by understanding and loving it, let it be both yours and mine. But if you detect any falsehood, though it had once been mine in that I was guilty of error, now by avoiding it let it be neither yours nor mine." -St. Augustine "De Trinitate" 3.1

Read it for yourself, here

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Early Gallicanism - Arnulf of Reims

"a very monster of iniquity, reeking with the blood of his predecessor, mounts the throne of Peter. True, he [Pope Boniface VII] is expelled and condemned; but only to return again... What would you say of such a one, when you behold him sitting upon the throne glittering in purple and gold? Must he not be the 'Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself as God'? Verily such a one lacketh both wisdom and charity; he standeth in the temple as an image, as an idol, from which as from dead marble you would seek counsel.

But the Church of God is not subject to a wicked pope; nor even absolutely, and on all occasions, to a good one. Let us rather in our difficulties resort to our brethren of Belgium and Germany than to that city, where all things are venal, where judgment and justice are bartered for gold. Let us imitate the great church of Africa, which, in reply to the pretensions of the Roman pontiff, deemed it inconceivable that the Lord should have invested any one person with his own plenary prerogative and judicature, and yet have denied it to the great congregations of his priests assembled in council in different parts of the world... Why should he not be subject in judgment to those who, though lowest in place, are his superiors in virtue and in wisdom? Yea, not even he, the prince of the apostles, declined the rebuke of Paul, though his inferior in place, and, saith the great pope Gregory, 'if a bishop be in fault, I know not any one such who is not subject to the holy see; but if faultless, let every one understand that he is the equal of the Roman pontiff himself, and as well qualified as he to give judgment in any matter.'" - Abp. Arnulf of Reims A.D. 991

This speech was given in a Council which Pope John XV naturally declared null and void. Far be it from me to say this was an eschatological interpretation or that this and not Papal Supremacy was the majority opinion. However, it does seem to show how traditional and early Gallicanism had developed against Papal Supremacy.