Latin Catholicism

OrthodoxyOrDeath · Tue 23 September 2003 9:19 pm

Anybody else, email me at webmaster@ecclesiagoc.org

Justin Kissel · Post by **Justin Kissel** » Fri 26 September 2003 7:31 pm

OOD,

I must admit, it wasn't one of my favorite reads I didn't think it was bad, it just seemed sort of weighed down and plodding to me. Maybe it's just me, though!

I'd still be interested in discussing humanism and the west if anyone else is. $/\$

Daniel · Post by **Daniel** » Fri 26 September 2003 7:43 pm

Paradosis wrote:
OOD,

I must admit, it wasn't one of my favorite reads I didn't think it was bad, it just seemed sort of weighed down and plodding to me. Maybe it's just me, though!

I'd still be interested in discussing humanism and the west if anyone else is. $/\$

I'm game. I would like to get a better understanding of humanism, or at least hear others thoughts on it.

Justin Kissel · Post by **Justin Kissel** » Mon 29 September 2003 12:46 pm

In a way, I think that humanism (like modernism) is something that has always been around. I mean, what is humanism but the replacing of God with man (to at least some extent)? And what is modernism, but the replacing of older, time-tested (and sometimes divinely given) traditional concepts and practices with unnecessary innovations? But this describes (in a certain way) Adam and Eve. Whatever other sins were involved on that day (lying, greed, envy, pride, etc.), there was perhaps a bit of what became humanism and modernism as well.

In that way, I don't say that Catholicism was doing something new by falling into humanism. The difference in the case of Catholicism is that we had a significant part of the body of Christ become infected with the humanistic disease, and it eventually fell off. (I apologize to any Catholics reading this, this is the analogy that best seems to fit Scriptural/Patristic ecclesiology). Another difference is that the humanism was of a precise and elaborate theological nature this time. In the past, certainly some religions had been humanistic, but nothing had happened on this scale before (taking into account not just a head count, but the importance of the Church of Rome and the west generally)

"Distancing itself from the God-man, every humanism by degrees becomes nihilism." - Saint Justin Popovich

Justin Kissel · Post by **Justin Kissel** » Thu 2 October 2003 1:52 pm

In the European West, Christianity has gradually transformed into humanism. For a long time and arduously, the God-Man diminished, and has been changed, narrowed, and finally reduced to a man: to the infallible man in Rome and the equally "infallible" man in London and Berlin. Thus did papism come into being, taking everything from Christ, along with Protestantism, which asks the least from Christ, and often nothing. Both in papism and in Protestantism, man has been put in the place of the God-Man, both as the highest value and as the highest criterion. A painful and sad correction of the God-Man's work and teaching has been accomplished. Steadily and stubbornly papism has tried to substitute the God-Man with man, until in the dogma about the infallibility of the pope—a man, the God-Man was once and for all replaced with ephemeral, "infallible" man; because with this dogma, the pope was decisively and clearly declared as something higher than not only man, but the holy Apostles, the holy Fathers, and the holy Ecumenical councils. With this kind of a departure from the God-Man, from the ecumenical Church as the God-Man organism, papism surpassed Luther, the founder of Protestantism. Thus, the first radical protest in the name of humanism against the God-Man Christ, and his God-Man organism—the Church—should be looked for in papism, not in Lutheranism. Papism is actually the first and the oldest Protestantism. - Saint Justin Popovich

More of this essay can be found here.

尼古拉前执事 · Thu 2 October 2003 8:29 pm

Thanks. $/\$ Heck, the Pope even talks constantly about the "Theology of man" and how work was made for man, etc. Everything is about man these days from the Vatican it seems. I good book on this from the Traditionalist Roman Catholic POV is Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth Century. The books shows, using only official documents of the Vatican, how the Latin church's teachings have been completely turned around because of humanism and other evilisms. Oddly enough it is recommended by Dr. Warren Carrol and other conservative "neo-Catholics".