anathema---explanation/

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/are-you-anathema-how-about-your-protestant-friend

also from comment  43      here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/01/holy-church-finding-jesus-as-a-reverted-catholic-a-testimonial-response-to-chris-castaldo/

For example, the “anathemas” pronounced by Catholic general councils do not “damn” anybody to hell. What they do is turn over to Satan for chastisement those among the baptized who, under the authority of the Church and fully understanding her solemnly proclaimed doctrine, nevertheless reject it. But I have found that most Protestants are like you: They don’t fully understand said teaching, and cannot in any case be presumed blameworthy for rejecting it, because they were formed in some established tradition premised on rejecting it, and thus can’t be held fully accountable for rejecting it.

from comment 44

 . The Catholic Church has throughout history formally decreed many things to be heresy: monophysism, Nestorianism, etc.; Lutheran conceptions of justification simply join the list of many other heresies. Those in the Catholic Church who preached such things were formally excommunicated and were no longer in communion with the Church. This is not the same thing as condemning them to hell, nor is it claiming they are in no sense Christian. The Church has no list of “heretics in hell,” because the anathema is a tool of church discipline, a handing over of one to Satan in the hope of their repentence (1 Cor 5:5), not a determination of one’s final spiritual state. You are right to say that the Council of Trent is still considered wholly true doctrine by the Catholic Church. But Trent is just as much a historical document that needs to be understood as speaking to a particular group of people – i.e. those within the Catholic Church who sought to teach doctrines formally deemed by the Church as heresy (e.g. justification by grace through faith alone). A 21st century Protestant cannot be anathematized from what he or she was never part of. Neither are such Protestants, whose understanding or relationship to Catholicism is informed by what their parents, local church, or favorite Protestant literature, held accountable in the same way as someone who, teaching or worshipping within the Church, knows what the Church teaches, and actively seeks to undermine Catholic doctrine by believing or teaching heresy. This is explained briefly in CCC 817-818.

from comment 49

 If you doubt my contention that Trent did not (and does not) condemn today’s non-antinomian Protestants, I urge you (when you have the time, of course, that is– I know that you have many people here to which to reply!) to spend some serious time pondering the information at these two links:http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-clarifies-luther-s-idea-of-justificationhttp://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html

also comment 46 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/07/ecclesial-deism/

 First, the Catholic Church has never taught that all non-Catholic Christians are damned to hell. The Council of Florence, which Trent reaffirmed, taught infallibly that non-Catholics must attain unity with the Catholic Church “before death” in order to be saved. That’s because previous general councils had dogmatized the Cyprianic doctrine extra ecclesiam nulla salus. But the question what is necessary and sufficient for union with the Church was not clearly and irreformably addressed by Florence or any other instrument of the extrarordinary magisterium. Therefore, there was some room for development of doctrine on that question—and Rome used that room in subsequent centuries.

Like most ecclesiastics since Augustine, the Fathers of Florence believed that formal membership in the Catholic Church is generally necessary for salvation. But in addition to the usual means of water baptism and a confession of faith either by the baptisand or their proxies, the tradition accepted baptism by “explicit desire” (Aquinas’ phrase) as sufficient in the case of catechumens who, through no fault of their own, die before baptism. Also accepted as sufficient was baptism by “blood,” which meant martyrdom for adults; but the case of the Holy Innocents indicated that such baptism need not be accompanied by any sort of desire in those who were not guilty of actual sin; and the case of the OT “righteous,” liberated by Christ from the underworld, indicates that the desire itself need not have been explicit in life even among those who had sinned but somehow repented. That permitted the question, broached explicitly by Catholic theologians after the discovery of the “New World,” whether some people who had never heard the Gospel could be “baptized” by “implicit” desire, and thus joined to the Church before death, rather than having to suffer the bad moral luck of going to hell just because they had never heard the Gospel. Note well: that question was broached before, during, and after the Council of Trent.

By the mid-19th century, Rome recognized that “invincible ignorance” of the Gospel was exculpatory, so that the invincibly ignorant who nonetheless sought and loved truth by grace could be saved; by the time of Vatican II, it was recognized that such ignorance could obtain in the case of pagans, Jews and schismatics. To be sure, that is not entirely compatible with the prevailing view of the Fathers of Florence. But since that view had itself had neither been held and taught with diachronic consensus from the Church’s beginning, nor been formally defined, it could not be considered irreformable doctrine and, in fact, has never been presented as such by the Church. Hence, Rome’s development of doctrine on this question, culminating in Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio, does not negate any irreformable doctrine.

from comment 184 here:http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/01/holy-church-finding-jesus-as-a-reverted-catholic-a-testimonial-response-to-chris-castaldo/

Mike Liccione is best equipped to defend his statement in #43, but I would offer that often the rhetoric and emotions that come with these topics can often obfuscate the meaning of terms and their application. The joint statement on justification between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church in 1999 suggests that further discussion and explanation of what theological terms mean and how they operate can often clarify to a degree where agreement is possible. Per my comment in #44, one cannot be “anathema,” from something of which they are not a member. For the Catholic Church to anathematize a born-and-bred Protestant would have as much meaning as the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod excommunicating me from their denomination, of which I have never been a member. Given the context of the Council, the anathema is directed towards those in communion with the Catholic Church who teach a particular understanding of justification, in that they are viewed as not in communion with the Church. It doesn’t speak to their eternal destiny, only where they stand in view of church discipline. Besides, given what a confessional Reformed Protestant believes about the Catholic Church, would he or she really want to be able to receive communion?

547 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/03/jason-stellman-tells-his-conversion-story/

You’re treating the concept of communion with the Catholic Church as if it were binary: one is either all the way “in” or all the way “out.” That’s a common misunderstanding, but that’s not the concept the Church herself employs. If you look carefully at the quotation from Vatican II that I offered you in #541, you’ll readily see that the Church treats communion with herself not as binary, but as a matter of degree. Thus she says that non-Catholic Christians, just by virtue of their baptism, are in “real” but “imperfect” communion with the Church. Thus it’s possible for them to be saved without becoming formally Catholic–so long as they strive to do such truth as they believe, without being culpable for not believing the whole truth.

I think what drives your conceptual error is another conceptual error: one about “anathematization.” When the Church condemns a given view with a dogmatic canon containing an anathema, that should not be understood to mean that everybody who holds that view is going to hell, or even that they are culpable for holding such a view. It means that the Church turns over to Satan for chastisement people who are culpable for holding such a view. Yet nobody but God really knows who is and is not culpable for failing to accept this-or-that aspect of divinely revealed truth. I suggest you read this brief article for further corroboration and clarification.

comment 553

Another example is how you run with a theological ambiguity. You say: “I rest in Christ’s merits alone and believe nothing of my merits contributes (or any such language) to that salvation.” Well, there’s a sense in which I can affirm that as Catholic. Whatever merits I may have derive solely from divine grace, by which the indwelling Spirit transforms my deeds into his own. It is in that “synergistic” way that I become what St. Peter called a “partaker of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). That’s how both Catholicism and Orthodoxy view the relationship between grace and human action. As a certain sort of Protestant, of course, you believe that only by affirming “monergism”–i.e. that divine grace operates to sanctify us instead of and despite any of our deeds–that you can acknowledge the sovereignty of grace and be saved. Now I believe that monergism is another conceptual error: it posits yet another “either-or” that should be a “both-and.” But in my experience, firm adherence to monergism is usually explained by the fact that monergism is a key component of the Protestant traditions in which many people are raised. Perhaps that describes your case; if it does, then I doubt you can be deemed culpable from a Catholic standpoint. And as a non-Catholic, you’re certainly in no position to judge your own moral responsibility for your position in Catholic terms.

I suggest you just relax and not feel yourself condemned by the Catholic Church. You are not.

comment 52 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/10/vandrunen-on-catholic-inclusivity-and-change/

I’m wondering if you can help me out. I’ve been studying the Council of Trent’s famous Decree Concerning Justification, and I ran into a confusing line in Chapter XVI (emphasis mine):

After this Catholic doctrine on justification, which whosoever does not faithfully and firmly accept cannot be justified, it seemed good to the holy council to add to these canons, that all may know not only what they must hold and follow, but also what to avoid and shun.

How do we Catholics reconcile that definitive statement with Lumen Gentium 16, which says:

Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.

I thought the Church taught the possibility, though not necessarily the likelihood, of salvation for even those beyond formal Church membership, especially our Protestant brothers and sisters. Yet how does that, or the above section from Lumen Gentium, fit with the statement from Trent? No Protestant I know would “faithfully and firmly” accept the Catholic doctrine on justification, so how could they possibly be saved under the Trentine rubric?

The statement in Trent is limited to those who know the divine authority of the Church, and know what is her teaching regarding justification, but refuse to believe it or accept it. It is not making a claim about those who are invincibly ignorant either of the Church’s identity and divine authority and/or her teaching concerning justification. This is why the statement is not claiming either that baptized infants believe something about justification or that they are lost until they come to believe Trent’s doctrine of justification. Lumen Gentium, on the other hand, in the quotation you cite, is referring precisely to those persons in a condition of invincible ignorance. So the statement from Trent is referring to persons not in invincible ignorance, while the statement from Lumen Gentium is referring to personsin invincible ignorance. Hence the two statements are not contradictory, because each is referring to what is true of persons in an epistemic condition different from the other.

comment 53

Where in Trent does it state its limited applicability to only those who know the divine authority of the Church and/or her teaching on justification?

This “where in Trent does it state its limited applicability” question is a ‘Protestantish’ kind of question, because it presupposes that all Church documents are intended to be self-interpreting [i.e. give internally the sufficient explanation of their meaning to all persons, regardless of their epistemic/theological formation], much as Protestants treat Scripture as perspicuous (i.e. self-interpreting). But Church documents are written by Catholics for Catholics, and so they do not provide internally all that a person of any background, tradition, formation, etc. needs to know to interpret them rightly. They are written with the understanding that they are to be interpreted according to the Tradition by those formed and trained within the Tradition, just as Scripture is rightly interpreted according to Tradition and within the community preserving that Tradition. (See “The Tradition and the Lexicon.”) This difference (between the way Catholics and Protestants approach both Scripture and the documents of the Church) not only causes Protestants in some cases to draw different interpretive conclusions from Scripture than does the Catholic Church, but it also causes some persons to claim that there are contradictions between Church documents, where in actuality there are no contradictions. This has been an issue, for example, in the question of the destiny of unbaptized infants. I responded to this in comment #69 of the “Signs of Predestination” thread. Notice there the video of then-Archbishop Burke, and his answer to the question regarding how to reconcile the teaching of Pope Eugenius IV on circumcision with the later teaching of Pope Benedict XIV regarding circumcision. It is another example of “implicit qualification” such as that belonging to the statement in Trent cited above. In short, Trent does not have to say “this injunction is restricted to persons not in invincible ignorance” in order for it to mean and be understood by the Church to be referring only to persons not in invincible ignorance.

Would it be correct to say then that the Council of Trent, including its associated canons and anathemas, were written by Catholics for Catholics and are thus not applicable to modern Protestants? That among Protestants, they only applied to the original reformers who, at least at one time, were within the Catholic Church?

Yes, that is correct. Now, of course this is not to be understood as a doctrinal relativism. The *doctrines* condemned in the canons are perpetually condemned. So if a Protestant holds to a doctrine anathemetized by one or more of the canons, he is holding a false doctrine. But that does not entail that *he* is condemned, or that the canon anathemetizes *him.* See Jimmy Akin’s post, and hisolder article on this subject.

from comment 65 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/02/making-my-way-to-the-church-christ-founded-2/#comment-90444  :

Being excommunicated doesn’t cut one off from God, but from the sacraments, Christian fellowship, etc. A just excommunication serves to “wake up” someone who is imperiling their soul and may not know it or may not care. It is a road sign saying “Turn back now!” And while it doesn’t deprive someone of their union with God if they’re in a state of grace, only sin can do that, it does remove from them the spiritual aids, again, with the idea of bringing them back.

Imagine this, Christ is the Father, and the Church is the Mother. And this is because she shares in the father’s role of governing the family. If the father is away for an extended amount of time, the mother does have the authority to make rules and change them, to apply punishments, etc, and these judgments would, hopefully, be supported by the father.

The Church is our mother, and she may make and change rules in order to protect us, her children, from spiritual harm. She has this authority delegated to her. What child would insist that his mother can’t be representing his father because his mother changes the bedtime? Likewise, an excommunication is like being grounded, sent to your room, or kicked out of the house.

Thinking of the Church as a family, the Family of God, rather than a courtroom may help understand Catholicism “from the inside”.

The authority of the Church is at the service of protecting revelation and ensuring that our deepening understanding of it doesn’t go astray. Who still teaches the indivisibility of marriage, and enforces it? Who still teaches the intrinsic immorality of abortion, or even more specifically, of contraception?