Mark Martinson is a Lutheran (WELS). He showed up on my Facebook page under my link of a talk I gave on the radio (11-9-18) on sola Scriptura, or the Protestant rule of faith. Sola Scriptura entails the denial of papal and Church infallibility. Presumably, that’s why he challenged those doctrines in this particular thread. At first I thought he was a Catholic (perhaps a reactionary one: because they think so much like Protestants). I have edited a bit (the whole thing can be read on Facebook), because Mark wanted to talk about three things at once and I thought two complex topics were quite enough. His words will be in blue.
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The church’s change on the death penalty pretty much torpedoed the claim of Church infallibility for me.
No need to. Nothing dogmatic or fundamental has changed. [+ second link with Dr. Robert Fastiggi explaining the issue of the death penalty and Catholics]
It looks like the article came out in 2017 before the change in which the ccc said the dp was “contrary to the gospel” certainly that can’t be reconciled with the council of Trent the Roman catechism and Pius 12.
I find it very unpersuasive in arguing that the church has never defined definitively on the DP. No reasonable person would read the previous statements that way. Does Fastiggi think the ccc version number three is not a definitive statement binding on Catholics?
To the extent that the change is based on changed circumstances then I would have to ask what expertise the Catholic Church has on crime (other than covering it up)?
It’s not “circumstance”: it’s a fuller understanding of the gospel, and the “gospel of life” (Evangelium Vitae). If you are talking about infallibility, something has to be declared infallible in the first place, for it to have supposedly departed from such infallibility. CP wasn’t; therefore, it is no reason for you to reject the infallibility of the Church. I highly suspect that it’s not the only factor in play if your faith in ecclesiastical infallibility is this weak.
Dr. Fastiggi, as the current editor and translator of Denzinger: the premier Catholic source on dogma, and also of the revision of Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma would be in a position to know (far more than you or I) about the status of various dogmas, doctrines and widely-held Catholic beliefs. I can’t argue the case better than Dr. Fastiggi, so I defer to his two articles above.
Are you a Catholic in good standing now?
According to Fastiggi Pius 12 was wrong about the reasons that the dp May be used. Is Francis less infallible then Pius?
I asked you if you are a Catholic. What is your affiliation?
That’s also irrelevant if Pius XII in that instance wasn’t speaking infallibly. He may have simply been wrong on non-infallible points. You don’t seem to even understand the nature of papal and Church infallibility.
Maybe Fastiggi is in a better position to know than you are I but what is a Catholic to do when confronted with contrary church teaching? When Abp Barron says that Hans it’s von Balthasar’s teachiing in hell are the official teaching of the church what is a Catholic to do? Call up Fastiggi? Call up Francis?
Is Fastiggi more infallible than Pius 12?
Answered already.
Either tell me what your affiliation is, or I will block you as a troll.
I’m a Lutheran.
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Yes, if someone was asking about fine points of Catholic dogma, I’d refer them to Dr. Fastiggi or someone similar. I try to get them to the expert who knows the most about it.
I’m against capital punishment primarily because the last three popes have expressed this as their position, based on the Gospel of Life. That’s Catholic authority and hierarchy and the expression of the Mind of the Church. It’s not arbitrary reliance on authority.
Why should the most recent three pope be given priority over all the popes before them? How is it not a contradiction for Pius 12 to say that the DP is good because it demonstrates the value of human life when Francis said it is “contrary to the gospel’?
So your thing is to try to find internal inconsistencies in Catholic doctrines, so you can deny infallibility, like a good Lutheran, and as Luther did in the 16th century? Is that it? Then you can cling to the massively self-refuting sola Scriptura as your rule of faith? That was actually my own biggest objection to Catholicism, before I converted, as I have written about:
Please answer my question about your goals in having this discussion.
According to you the Catholic Church has been around for 2000 years and still it can’t make up its mind about hell. What else hasn’t it made up its mind about?
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