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| Just a few of the items found in the home of a traditional Catholic... |
In fact, let's burn those Catechisms with all its references to ancient beliefs and texts. They will serve as excellent and ecologically sound paper and wood burning stoves in honour of Mother Earth...Laudato Si! What wood is there around? Oh, let's burn our Crucifixes. After all, we've always put them up in veneration of Our Lord's saving Passion and to ward off the Evil one. Does not the very fact we have always done it serve to tell us we should abandon such a practice when but a word from our beloved Supreme Pontiff or his Successors would assure us of the great wisdom in doing so, despite what every one of his venerable and illustrious predecessors have said and done. Just wondering, does the god of surprises stop threatening a surprise should the next Pope be Cardinal Raymond Burke? Now that would be a turn up...
IdolatryPoint of Commentary 1. Just to be clear on this. It is perfectly possible for the flock of Jesus Christ to pay so much reverence to the Pope that, in theory, should a bad Pope lead them astray, they could follow a Pope into error and suffer the loss of their immortal souls, should he teach heresy or error, something which a Pope is perfectly capable of doing. This is an unfortunate fact of which the current Pope seldom reminds the Faithful. For example, a Pope could suggest that God may or will, within his own pontificate or in the future, reveal something new which He had not revealed which could contradict that which has been revealed already according to His good pleasure.
2112 The first commandment condemns polytheism. It requires man neither to believe in, nor to venerate, other divinities than the one true God. Scripture constantly recalls this rejection of "idols, [of] silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see." These empty idols make their worshippers empty: "Those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them."42 God, however, is the "living God"43 who gives life and intervenes in history.
2113 Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, "You cannot serve God and mammon."44 Many martyrs died for not adoring "the Beast"45 refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.46
2114 Human life finds its unity in the adoration of the one God. The commandment to worship the Lord alone integrates man and saves him from an endless disintegration. Idolatry is a perversion of man's innate religious sense. An idolater is someone who "transfers his indestructible notion of God to anything other than God."47
It so happens that the sin of idolatry could lead a Catholic into Hell, should he obstinately follow a Pope's teaching, should, for example, a Pope ever teach the doctrine that reception of Holy Communion while remaining unrepentant in mortal sin is just dandy with the Lord God of Hosts.
Divination and magic
2115 God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. Improvidence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility.
2116 All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to "unveil" the future.48 Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.
2117 All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one's service and have a supernatural power over others - even if this were for the sake of restoring their health - are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another's credulity.
Point of Commentary 2. Just to be clear on this. It is perfectly possible for the flock of Jesus Christ to pay so much reverence to the Pope that, in theory, should a bad Pope lead them astray, they could follow a Pope into error and suffer the loss of their immortal souls, should he teach heresy or error, something which a Pope is perfectly capable of doing. This is an unfortunate fact of which the current Pope seldom reminds the Faithful. For example, a Pope could suggest that God may or will, within his own pontificate or in the future, reveal something new which He had not revealed which could contradict that which has been revealed already according to His good pleasure.
It so happens that the sin of divination (claiming some kind of power to know the future) could lead a Pope and his unfortunate followers into Hell, should a Pope ever obstinately believe and follow his own error - while claiming no source but his own esoteric "insight" - that God will reveal something new that contradicts what God has hitherto revealed, thus communicating to the entire flock that God is not God and that ultimately, God is not, but rather that he is, in consequence, God. That might sound overly dramatic and simplistic, but hey, that's essentially what you're saying, if your telling the People of God to 'forget' what Christ and His Church has taught and believed, always and everywhere and believe something else instead. Don't blame me, or any other Catholic commentator, for drawing the only conclusion there is to draw when simple logic is applied in the process of examining the words of His Holiness Pope Francis.
To conclude, again I must ask why, if traditional customs in the Church are such an encumbrance to 'newness' of life in Christ, then why must Catholics maintain the very traditional custom of venerating, in any way, what a Pope says or giving it even a second's thought? Could we not just instead believe an individual Pope is mad, should we so choose, or an apostate or an infidel, according to what he says? His Holiness can only conduct such sifting and picking of those traditions that can stay (because they please him personally) and those that can go (because they displease him personally) by appealing to an Authority over the Church given by the Son of God to him, his predecessors and his successors, which is going on 2,000 years old, but I very much doubt His Holiness, even in his admirable humility, will ever tell us not to listen to him because listening to the Pope is what we did 'before the Second Vatican Council or before March 2013'.
With all that said, for 60 years, a multitude of Priests, Bishops and even Popes have been refusing to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass. For these men, how can they refuse when people ask for it. After all, "We can't embrace change because it's different to what we have always done!" simply won't wash now...
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