A Vindication of the Bull 'Apostolicae Curae'

A Vindication of the Bull 'Apostolicae Curae' Jan 10, 2020 12:21:35 GMT

Post by Admin on Jan 10, 2020 12:21:35 GMT

A short excerpt from the Vindication:

Cranmer’s doctrine on the Real Presence

When once it is realised that the true key to the meaning of the omissions and dubious phraseology of the Praver Book and Ordinal is to be sought in the views and aims of Cranmer and his party, it becomes indisputable what the key is. The difficulty is indeed not to find but to select testimonies for citation,and it may even seem superfluous to cite testimonies at all in proof of so patent a fact. Still, we have promised some specimens, and will proceed now to give them. That you may understand better, however,the significance we attach to them, may we remind you again of what has been said above concerning the intimate connection between the doctrines of the Real Objective Presence, the Sacrifice, and the Priesthood? Without the Real Objective Presence there can be no true Sacrifice, and without a true Sacrifice no true Priesthood.

Cranmer wrote a long treatise entitled A Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine concerning the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ,and in the Preface he tells us very distinctly what were the principal ’corruptions’ he desired to see abolished :

What availeth it to take away beads, pardons, pilgrimages, and such other like Popery, so long as two chief roots remain unpulled up ? Whereof so long as they remain will spring again all former impediments of the Lord’s harvest and corruption of His flock. The rest is bu tbranches and leaves... but the very body of the tree, or rather the roots of the weeds, is the Popish doctrine of transubstantiation, of the Real Presence of Christ’s Flesh and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar (as they call it), and of the Sacrifice and Oblation of Christ made by the priest for the salvation of the quick and the dead. Which roots, if they be suffered in the Lord’s vineyard, they will overspread all the ground again with the old errors and superstitions.

Here we find the two doctrines which underlie and condition the doctrine of a true Priesthood formally declared to be the roots of evil which most of all needed destroying. This passage is really decisive as to Cranmer’s rejection of the Catholic doctrine, but it will be satisfactory to know more precisely what he himself held; and, faithful to the engagement we have made, we will pass over what he says of transubstantiation.We have to do only with his opinions on the Real Presence. He tells us that Christ is present in the bread and wine only figuratively :

He is not in the bread spiritually (as He is in the man), nor in the bread corporally (as He is in heaven), but sacramentally only (as a thing is said to be in the figure by which it is signified).

Hence it is true to say that He is not in the bread and wine at all, but only in the heart of the receiver :

They teach that Christ is in the bread and wine; we (as the truth itself requires) teach that Christ is in those who worthily partake of the bread and wine... They teach that Christ remains in the sacramental bread, even if it be kept a whole year; but that after the Sacrament has been received, when the bread is ground in the mouth and changed in the stomach, He departs to heaven; but we teach that Christ remains in the man who receives the bread worthily as long as the man remains a member of Christ.

And this, he says in another place, is what is meant by a phrase in the First Prayer Book, afterwards removed as susceptible of a ’Popish’ meaning:

Therefore in the Book of the Holy Communion we do not pray absolutely that the bread and wine may be made the Body and Blood of Christ, but that unto us in that holy mystery they may be so ; that is to say, that we may so worthily receive the same that we may be partakers of Christ’s Body and Blood, and that therewith in spirit and in truth we may be spiritually nourished.

It should be noticed, too, that it is only the worthy receiver of the Sacrament in whom Christ, according to Cranmer, is present.

* * *

The above is only a small excerpt but it may very well be significant when considering the following errors found in Vatican II:

The first is the "dogmatic omission" found in the Vatican II documents - and certainly the reforms that issued from it:

The lack of mention of the dogmas of Transubstantiation and of the propitiatory character of the Holy Sacrifice [In those paragraphs of Sacrosanctum Concilium specifically expounding on the Holy Mass (§§30, 47, 106), there is a repeated failure to reinforce these dogmas.-Ed. SiSiNoNo].

The Second Vatican Council repeatedly refers to the priest as the "president of the assembly," as if such a definition were essential to the priest's "function" in the Holy Mass. Sacrosanctum Concilium (§33) and Lumen Gentium (§26) refer to the "holy presidence of the Bishop."

For it is by the apostolic herald of the Gospel that the People of God is called together and gathered so that all who belong to this people, sanctified as they are by the Holy Spirit, may offer themselves a "living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God" (Rom. 12:1). [Presbyterorum Ordinis (§2)]

Therefore the Eucharistic celebration is the center of the assembly of the faithful over which the priest presides. Hence priests teach the faithful to offer the divine victim to God the Father in the sacrifice of the Mass and with the victim to make an offering of their whole life...(PO §5).

Vatican II officially adopted the obscurantist idea of the "Paschal mystery," the battering ram of the "New Theology." Redemption is realized principally "in the paschal mystery of the passion, resurrection and ascension" of Christ (Sacrosanctum Concilium [hereafter SC] §5). Therefore, redemption is no longer principally the result from the Crucifixion's value as an expiatory sacrifice by which divine justice was satisfied. Moreover, the Holy Mass is identified with the "Paschal Mystery." The Council declared that the Church, from its beginning, was always brought together in an assembly "to celebrate the Paschal mystery" (SC §6) and that she "celebrates the Paschal mystery every seventh day"(SC §106)

Next, Baptism is treated. By baptism, "men are grafted onto the Paschal mystery of Christ" (SC§6), and not that it causes them to enter into the Holy Church, as if the "Paschal mystery" were the same thing as the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. It is a vague, indeterminate, irrational definition that (precisely because of these characteristics) permits altering the meaning of the Redemption and the Mass, thereby hiding the sacrificial and expiatory nature of the latter behind emphasis on the Resurrection and the Ascension-on the Glorious Christ instead of the Suffering Christ-contrary to what was affirmed at Trent.

The Second Vatican Council is guilty of error in its unclear and incomplete definition of the Holy Mass as "a memorial of [our Lord's] death and resurrection..." with death and resurrection placed on the same level and without the least mention of the dogma of transubstantiation or of the character of the Mass itself as a propitiatory sacrifice (SC§§47).

Because of this silence, this definition falls again into the category solemnly condemned by Pope Pius VI as being "pernicious, unfaithful to the explanation of Catholic truth on the dogma of the transubstantiation, favorable to heretics" (Auctorem Fidei). It also introduces a false concept of the Holy Mass, a concept which served as the basis for the new liturgy desired by the Council, thanks to which the errors of the "New Theology" were delivered to the faithful.

The Protestant taint of this definition devolves even more clearly in Article 106 of SC:
....the Church celebrates the Paschal mystery every seventh day, which day is appropriately called the Lord's day or Sunday. For on this day Christ's faithful are bound to come together into one place. They should listen to the word of God and take part in the Eucharist, thus calling to mind the passion, resurrection, and glory of the Lord Jesus, and giving thanks to God who "has begotten them again, through the resurrection of Christ from the dead, unto a living hope" (I Pet. 1:3).

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the original Latin text shows more clearly than the English that, according to SC, the Holy Mass's end is memorial and praise. For more proof of this prevailing mentality, see also Ad Gentes Divinitus (§14): catechumens participate in the Holy Mass, meaning that they "celebrate with all the people of God the memorial of the death of the Lord" in which the Holy Mass is simply the memorial of the death and resurrection of Christ celebrated by all Christian people. There is not the least mention of the renewed Sacrifice of the Cross offered in an unbloody way for the expiation and pardon of our sins.

It should be noted here that already in these Articles there is the definition of the Mass that will be again vigorously stated in the deadly Article 7 of the 1969 Institutio Generalis of the new Roman Missal. This was a definition which, at the time, elicited protests from many of the faithful and priests, including the famous positions taken by Cardinals Bacci and Ottaviani because of these demonstrably Protestant words of heretical character:
"The Lord's Supper is the assembly or meeting of the People of God, met together with a priest presiding, to celebrate the Memorial of the Lord."

Compare this definition with the orthodox one contained in the Catechism of Saint Pius X:
No. 159. What is the Holy Mass? The Holy Mass is the Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ which, under the species of bread and wine, are offered by the priest to God on the altar in memory and renewal of the Sacrifice of the Cross.

The Catacombs

A Vindication of the Bull 'Apostolicae Curae'

Post by Admin on Apr 24, 2019 18:16:26 GMT

Post by Admin on Jan 10, 2020 12:21:35 GMT