Who Is a Catholic?
Fr. Campbell
The
closing words of today’s Gospel: “And he was teaching daily in the
temple” (Lk.19:47). Jesus taught with authority, as we hear from St.
Mark: “And they were astonished at his teaching; for he was teaching
them as one having authority, and not as the Scribes” (Mk.1:22). As the
Son of God He had absolute authority, the authority of God.
We
believe whatever God has revealed, because God is absolute truth. God
can neither deceive nor be deceived, as we say in the Act of Faith. We
believe unconditionally. This is the definition of what it means to be
Catholic. When the Son of God teaches we listen. Those truths which have
been divinely revealed by Our Lord have been preserved by the Church
since apostolic times, so that all generations may know the truth that
sets us free. For instance, to those who would be saved He taught the
necessity of Baptism: “Unless a man be born again of water and the
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (Jn.3:5).
The
Church teaches with the authority given to it by Jesus Christ. It alone
has authority to teach what Christ taught. But it does not have the
authority to change it, dilute it, or pollute it with innovative or
man-made doctrines. Quite the opposite! The Church must jealously guard
and preserve what has been handed down, under the watchful eye of the
successor of St. Peter. As it says in the Papal Oath (no longer taken by
the later conciliar popes): “I vow to change nothing of the received
Tradition, and nothing thereof I have found before me guarded by my
God-pleasing predecessors, to encroach upon, to alter, or to permit any
innovation therein…”
We
must believe as Peter did. But scarcely a doctrine that the Church
received from Christ through the Apostles has remained untouched by the
Novus Ordo false church with its “new theology,” beginning with the
question of the necessity of Baptism. The Church has always taken Our
Lord’s words about Baptism quite literally, considering the Sacrament of
Baptism an absolute must, as appears from this definition from the
Council of Trent:
“If
anyone denies that infants newly born from their mothers' wombs, are to
be baptized, even though they be born of baptized parents, or says that
they are baptized indeed for the remission of sins, but that they
derive nothing of original sin from Adam, which must be expiated by the
laver of regeneration for the attainment of life everlasting, whence it
follows, that in them the form of baptism for the remission of sins is
understood to be not true, but false: let him be anathema. For what the
Apostle has said: ‘By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin
death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned’
[Romans 5:12], is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic
Church spread everywhere has always understood it” (Denzinger 791).
This
strongly worded anathema from the Council of Trent did not deter the
false pope, John Paul II, from asking the theologians to examine the
question of the fate of unbaptized infants, as in the case of abortion,
recommending that they come up with a “more pastoral” approach than the
traditional teaching on limbo, where the souls of unbaptized
infants were said to spend eternity in a state of natural happiness, but
without the Beatific Vision, which is the true essence of Heaven. The
expected result, of course, was that Baptism in their case would be
judged unnecessary.
The
new teaching is exemplified by Benedict XVI, while still a Cardinal, in
one of his theological works, in which he denies the necessity of the
Sacrament of Baptism:
“The
question of what it means to say that baptism is necessary for
salvation has become ever more hotly debated in modern times. The Second
Vatican Council said on this point that men who are seeking for God and
who are inwardly striving toward that which constitutes baptism will
also receive salvation. That is to say that a seeking after God already
represents an inward participation in baptism, in the Church, in Christ.
To that extent, the question concerning the necessity of baptism for
salvation seems to have been answered, but the question about children
who could not be baptized because they were aborted then presses upon us
that much more urgently.”
After an explanation of the traditional teaching on limbo, the Benedict continues:
“In the course of our century, that (teaching on limbo)
has gradually come to seem problematic to us. This was one way in which
people sought to justify the necessity of baptizing infants as early as
possible, but the solution is itself questionable. Finally, the Pope
[John Paul II] made a decisive turn in the [1995] encyclical Evangelium Vitae, a change already anticipated by the [1992] Catechism of the Catholic Church,
when he expressed the simple hope that God is powerful enough to draw
to himself all those who were unable to receive the sacrament” (God and the World, Ignatius Press, 2002, pp.401-402, as quoted in novusordowatch.org).
How
a “simple hope” can result in a “decisive turn” for the whole Church on
as important a doctrinal issue as the necessity of Baptism remains a
mystery. As for us, may we make a decisive turn to God in hope of final
perseverance in the grace granted us through the mercy of God and our
holy Baptism.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent offers us a traditional definition of Baptism based on the words of Holy Scripture: