About that Syllabus of Errors? Guess what else Pius IX condemned.

nemies of so-called “innova­tions” in Vat­i­can II like to cite the Syl­labus of Errors in order to claim that the Coun­cil con­tains Mod­ernist here­sies. For exam­ple, they like to cite No. 15, in which Pius IX con­demns the belief that “Every man is free to embrace and pro­fess that reli­gion which, guid­ed by the light of rea­son, he shall con­sid­er true.” This, say dis­ci­ples of Lefeb­vre, con­tra­dicts Dig­ni­tatis Humanae. DH says, “The human per­son has a right to reli­gious free­dom.”

I am going to be exam­in­ing some of these so-called “con­tra­dic­tions” in a series of upcom­ing posts. But in the mean­time, guess what else Pius IX con­demns in that Syl­labus?

The oblig­a­tion by which Catholic teach­ers and authors are strict­ly bound is con­fined to those things only which are pro­posed to uni­ver­sal belief as dog­mas of faith by the infal­li­ble judg­ment of the Church.

None of that, “I only have to mind what’s infal­li­ble. If it’s not a dog­ma, I am not bound to it.” This is a con­demned belief.

Roman pon­tif­fs and ecu­meni­cal coun­cils have wan­dered out­side the lim­its of their pow­ers, have usurped the rights of princes, and have even erred in defin­ing mat­ters of faith and morals.

These pre-Vat­i­can II doc­u­ments are full of all kinds of things that would sur­prise you! Aren’t they? So those who say that Vat­i­can II has erred in con­tra­dict­ing Pius IX are com­mit­ting an error con­demned by … Pius IX! How fas­ci­nat­ing that is!

The next time some­one says to you, “Vat­i­can II con­tains errors”; the next time some­one says to you, “But that’s not dog­mat­ic, I can dis­re­gard that”…tell them that they are a Mod­ernist and are speak­ing here­sies con­demned by Pius IX.