Michael Fighting
"Michael…who standeth for…thy people," — Dan. 12:1-12
UNANIMOUS OPINION OF THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH
Profession of Faith of the Council of Trent (DZ 995): I shall never accept or interpret it (Sacred Scripture) otherwise that in accordance with the unanimous consent of the Fathers.
Lateran Council (DZ 270): If anyone in word or mind does not properly and truly confess according to the holy Fathers all even to the last portion that has been handed down and preached in the holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church of God, and likewise by the holy Fathers and the five venerable universal Councils, let him be condemned,
Trent (DZ 786): Furthermore, in order to curb impudent clever persons, the synod decrees that no one who relies on his own judgment in matters of faith and morals, which pertain to the building up of Christian doctrine, and that no one who distorts the Sacred Scripture, according to his own opinions, shall dare to interpret the said Sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which is held by holy mother Church, whose duty it is to judge according to the true sense and interpretation of holy Scriptures, or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers, even though interpretations of this kind were never intended to be brought to light. …
Pascendi, paragraph 42: They (the Modernists) recognize that the three chief difficulties for them are scholastic philosophy, the authority of the fathers and tradition, and the magisterium of the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting war. For scholastic philosophy and theology they have only ridicule and contempt. Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in them, certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is on the way to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for this system. Modernists and their admirers should remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: “The method and principles which have served the doctors of scholasticism when treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies of our time or the progress of science.” (Syllabus proposition 13). They exercise all their ingenuity in diminishing the force and falsifying the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight. But for Catholics the second Council of Nicea will always have the force of law, where it condemns those who dare, “after the impious fashion of heretics, to decide the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind … of endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church;” and Catholic will hold for law, also the profession of the fourth Council of Constantinople: “We therefore profess to conserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by every one of those divine interpreters the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.” Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: “I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.” The Modernists pass the same judgment on the most holy Fathers of the Church as they pass on tradition, decreeing, with amazing effrontery that, while personally most worthy of all veneration, they were entirely ignorant of history and criticism, for which they are only excusable on account of the time in which they lived. …
Rev. J.C. Fenton, a professor of moral theology at the Catholic University in the 1950's, commented: “The Council of Trent (DZ 786) identified the unanimous teaching of the Fathers with the interpretation of the Church itself as the standard for correct interpretation of Holy Scripture,”(Concept of Sacred Theology). Both Fenton and Manning explained that the consent of every Father for such opinions to be unanimous is not necessary. Fenton further stated that such an opinion constitutes “a rule of faith,” and cannot be questioned.
Volume V (v), of the Catholic Encyclopedia, under 'Discipline' states that it is the UNANIMOUS OPINION of the theologians that discipline enjoys a negative, indirect infallibility, i.e., "... the Church can prescribe nothing that would be contrary to the natural or Divine law, nor prohibit anything that the natural or Divine law would exact." Pope Pius IX declared the unanimous opinion of theologians to be infallible, and hence anything determined by them unanimously must be firmly believed. (DZ 1683) Furthermore, we have the words of Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Quartus Supra, where" he teaches: "... discipline is often so closely united to dogma, it has such an influence on its preservation and on its purity, that the sacred Councils have not hesitated in many cases to pronounce anathemas against those guilty of disciplinary violations and separated them from communion with the Church." Leo XIII states in his encyclical Sapientiae Christianas: "In setting how far the limits of obedience extend, let no one imagine that the authority of the sacred pastors, and above all of the Roman Pontiff, need be obeyed only insofar as it is concerned with dogma, the obstinate denial of which entails the guilt of heresy...Christian men must be willing to be ruled and governed by the authority and direction of ... (in the first place) the Apostolic See .. When the Church speaks, even when She does not speak with all the weight of Her infallible utterance, She does so invariably to give us SAFE GUIDANCE... a Catholic is PRACTICALLY secure in listening to the voice of those whom God has set to rule the Church," (see DZ 1673 and 1792).
Pope Pius IX declared the unanimous opinion of theologians to be infallible, and hence anything determined by them unanimously must be firmly believed, (DZ 1683). Furthermore, we have the words of Pope Pius IX, in his Encyclical Quartus Supra, where he teaches: “... discipline is often so closely united to dogma, it has such an influence on its preservation and on its purity, that the sacred Councils have not hesitated in many cases to pronounce anathemas against those guilty of disciplinary violations and separated them from communion with the Church.”
What are the Fathers Unanimous On?
Catechism of the Council of Trent: That this visible head is necessary to establish and preserve unity in the Church is the unanimous accord of the Fathers;…
All the holy Fathers agree that after the death of antichrist the whole world will be converted, and although some of them assert that the world will last but a few days after his death, while others say a few months, some authorities insist that it will continue to exist many years after. St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Francis of Paula, and a number of other saints have predicted this ultimate universal conversion. Saint John Eudes, page 319, The Admirable Heart of Mary. In reference to the assertion of the Fathers, he refers to Dionysius the Carthusian, chapter 3, Epistle 1 on Thessalonians and Cornelius a Lapide, chapter 2 on the Epistle to the Romans, verse 15.
The Holy fathers teach unanimously not only that heretics are outside of the Church, but also that they are ipso facto deprived of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction and dignity. (Saint Robert Bellarmine, de Romano Pontifice, book 2, Chapter 40)
The practice of the Church has always been the same, as it is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside the Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodoret, drew up a long list of heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. “Noone who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic.” (Saint Augustine, De Haeresibus, note 88) Satis Cognitum, paragraph 9, 2.
Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, paragraph 10: The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium
All the Fathers of the Church say clearly that She (Mary) is co-redemptrix with Christ in the work or our salvation., Saint John Eudes, page 135, The Priest, His Dignity and Obligations.
Goffine’s The Church’s Year, instruction for the Immaculate Conception: As we have already seen, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception has been believed since the time of the Apostles, and it is also established in Scriptures. In the older of the sacred Books, in the Book of Genesis (3:15), is one of the most weighty passages on this subject which reads: “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” After the fall of the first man, God spoke to the serpent, Satan, announcing that a woman would come and crush his head, that is, destroy his power; and all Catholic interpreters and holy Fathers agree that this woman is the Blessed Virgin.
The Holy Fathers who have written upon the subject of Antichrist, and of the prophecies of Daniel, without a single exception, as far as I know,—and they are the Fathers both of the East and of the West, the Greek and the Latin Church —all of them unanimously,—say that in the latter end of the world, during the reign of Antichrist, the holy sacrifice of the altar will cease. In the work on the end of the world, ascribed to St. Hippolytus, after a long description of the afflictions of the last days, we read as follows: "The Churches shall lament with a great lamentation, for there shall be offered no more oblation, nor incense, nor worship acceptable to God. The sacred buildings of the churches shall be as hovels; and the precious body and blood of Christ shall not be manifest in those days; the Liturgy shall be extinct; the chanting of psalms shall cease; the reading of Holy Scripture shall be heard no more. But there shall be upon men darkness, and mourning upon mourning, and woe upon woe." Then, the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible, hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking-places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were, from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early centuries.
"It shall be a persecution in which no man shall spare his neighbour, in which the powers of the world shall wreak upon the Church of God such a revenge as the world before has never known. The Word of God tells us that towards the end of time the power of this world will become so irresistible and so triumphant that the Church of God will sink underneath its hand—that the Church of God will receive no more help from Emperors or kings or princes or legislatures or nations or peoples to make resistance against the power and might of its antagonist. It will be deprived of protection. It will be weakened, baffled and prostrate and will lie bleeding at the feet of the powers of this world ..." (Present Crisis of the Holy See, Cardinal Manning, 1861.)
Leo XIII, Encyclical Providentissimus Deus, Nov. 18, 1893: For all the books which in their integrity the Church receives as sacred and canonical, with all their parts, were written by the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the Supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true.
This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican, which made the positive statement that the Books of the Old and the New Testaments have God for their Author. Hence we cannot say that because the Holy Ghost employed men as His instruments, it was these inspired instruments who perchance have fallen into error, and not the primary author. For, by His supernatural power, He so moved and impelled them to write---He was so present to them as they wrote—that all the things which He ordered, and those only, they both rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth. Otherwise it could not be said that God was the Author of the entire Scripture. . . . And so emphatically were all the Fathers and Doctors agreed that the divine writings, as left by the sacred writers, are free from all error, that they labored earnestly, with no less skill than reverence, to reconcile with each other those numerous passages which seem at variance—indeed in great measure those very passages which have been exploited by the `Higher Criticism'; for they were unanimous in laying it down that those writings in their entirety and all their parts were equally from the afflatus of Almighty God, and that God, speaking by the sacred writers, could not set down anything but what was true." (Acta Leonis XIII, xiii, 357-9.)
Lyons II (A.D. 1274), De Processione Spiritus Sancti: "We faithfully and devoutly profess that the Holy Ghost proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles, but from one, not by two breathings (spirations) but from a single breathing (spiration). This has always been the profession of the Holy Roman Church, this she has preached and taught, this she, the mother and teacher of all the faithful, firmly holds, preaches, professes and teaches; this is the unchangeable and true mind of the Fathers and Doctors, Greeks and Latins alike. Since, however, some, through ignorance of the aforesaid irrefragable truth, have fallen into various errors, we, in our desire to put a stop to such errors, do, with the approval of this sacred council, condemn and reprobate those who dare to deny that the Holy Ghost proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son; also those who rashly assert that the Holy Ghost proceeds from Father and Son as from two and not from one principle." (Mansi, Concilia, xxiv, 81.)
Satis Cognitum: Biblical usage and the unanimous teaching of the Fathers clearly show that supreme authority is designated in the passage by the word keys.
