SALVATION AND DESTRUCTION. THE it was God AND THE Shepherd the Lord's flock OF POPE FRANCIS I

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You do not seem incongruous or risky to compare God has pleased at the Feeding of Dominic's Sheep of the Holy Pontiff Pius X. One might observe that they differ profoundly, because the second is severe, while the former is forgiving. but yet, beyond the historical climate changed, between the two documents there is a continuity: Pius X had to face the problem modernistic. The reigning pontiff had to take up the issue, because the modernism of the times of his predecessor Pius X, as Maritain said in 1966, a "modest hayfever than the neo-modernist fever" of our day.

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Authors
Giovanni Cavalcoli, o.p – Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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the Pope Francis I on the episcopal throne of St. John Lateran

The letter God has pleased of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [see text WHO], It is a topic of extreme importance, Whereas, in the past few decades - more precisely since the end of Vatican Council II -, They have come to light new theories, but also many heresies, not yet won, whereby, This intervention of the Church, It is truly providential, illuminating, comforting and consoling for all Catholics eager to see the triumph of sound doctrine, and freed the souls dall'insidia error, which it is an obstacle on the way of salvation.

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This text It should be read in continuity with another important document dating back to eighteen years ago, the declaration Lord Jesus [see text WHO], desired by the Holy Father John Paul II and signed at the time by the then prefect of the Congregation itself, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. We begin then by saying that salvation, in general, is the state of happiness of those who have escaped a danger, especially if a death; and it is the act with which the savior subtracts danger to the person to whom gives salvation. We can save ourselves, if the problem is not excessive; but the greatest difficulties we need someone more capable of us, saved us, doing we eventually, Behind his orders, if we have the forces, what we can and must do to cooperate to the action of savior or rescuer. The dynamics of the salvation that comes from men's figure and image of the one that comes from God.

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In religions the man is conscious of being in a dangerous condition, misery, of slavery, of suffering, of sinfulness, enmity with God, that makes you wish that God, His benevolent Lord, have mercy on him and succor. But it feels indebted to God for sins committed. Thus with God an account opened. He considers the pains of life as a punishment for such sins and offers sacrifices to God in atonement and reparation, hoping to appease, to obtain forgiveness and mercy and to be raised and saved from their misery, Financo from death.

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Religions have awareness that, for the achievement of the highest aspirations - union with God, holiness, freedom from sin and death, life and eternal happiness - but man must obey God, but above all must ask God for this salvation. Everyone, unless they are proud of perfect, They feel in many ways the need for salvation, but not everyone knows what is it and how you get. Many, as this note Letter, for salvation means only salvation from physical illness or poverty material or at least be freed from a tyranny political or social. They do not realize, or do not know that to achieve true happiness, they need, and if they want a chance to be freed by God from sin, from the bondage of the devil and death.

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This text, shorter than Lord Jesus that preceded it, it is striking in the way it alludes to many of today's heresies, or what we might define as the season of the return of the great heresies. No, the names, but anyone who wants to understand, seize in the first lines to those reference is made. We try then, considering the ideas, to understand in which currents, trends, schools or the document authors can refer, especially those authors who have already been censored by the Church or by the best theologians in ancient times or recent.

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THEMES ALREADY PROCESSED FROM POPE FRANCIS I

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The God has pleased it refers, without quoting him at length, to the speech given by the Supreme Pontiff in Florence to the representatives of the V ° National Convention of the Italian Church, the 10 November 2015. A speech that is worth remembering in this context and in which are presented as two tendencies within the Church temptations. A, is the temptation Pelagian, that

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"It leads us to have confidence in the structures, in organizations, in perfect schedules because abstract. Often it takes us well to take a control style, hardness, normativity. The standard gives the Pelagianizing security to feel superior, to have a precise orientation. This finds its strength, not in the lightness of the breath of the Spirit. In front of ills or problems of the Church it is useless to look for solutions in conservatism and fundamentalism, in the restoration of pipelines and even culturally outdated forms that have ability to be significant. The Christian doctrine is not a closed system incapable of generating questions, doubts, questions, but it is alive, sa unrest, to animation. He does not face stiff, It has a body that moves and develops, It has tender meat: Christian doctrine is called Jesus Christ. The reform of the Church then - and the Church is always reform - is alien to Pelagianism. It does not end in yet plan to change structures. It does mean graft and rooted in Christ leaving lead by the Spirit. Then everything will be possible with genius and creativity ".

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Suggested action by the Supreme Pontiff this rigid and closed mentality is the "root in Christ" and let themselves be led by the "lightness of the breath of the Spirit", that Spirit who "renews the face of the earth". This Spirit prevents us from being too certain of our ideas and too conscious of our strength. It makes our creative fidelity and gives us wings that lift us above measures and human calculations, to make us wander and fly in the boundless horizons of holiness. And these steps, anyone who pays attention will take deep breath of some of the fundamental elements of the Encyclical Faith and Reason of the Holy Pontiff John Paul II. Just as it is not difficult to recognize in the words of the Pope on the issue lefebvrismo, with its unilateral call to Sacred Tradition, tied to a mindset undoubtedly and rightly concerned about the immutability of dogma and certainty, but closed to doctrinal progress made since Vatican II and consequently to the Magisterium of the Church following up current, it accuses of heresy modernistic. That the overflow after the Council unfortunately Modernism, it is a fact not easily subject to denial, but this objective problem, come noi of Padri The Island of Patmos we always highlighted, It must not lead to a truly poisonous error, which then is as follows: It asserts that the many heterodox drifts mold mostly modernistic, the postcouncil, It is a consequence of "obvious" and totally "natural" of Vatican II. Indeed, affirm this, as well as false, It is indeed wicked.

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In the minds of Lefebvre the process of dogmatic deduction crashed to the Magisterium of the Venerable Pope Pius XII, for which he ceased to advance in the name of fidelity to Tradition and the preservation of the deposit of faith, of which the first, the eyes of Lefebvre, It would have been upset, while the second would be abandoned. That is to say that in the transition from teaching dogma of Pius XII to that of the Council, this would not be in continuity, but he broke with that, in other words he would have disproved or falsified.

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The lefebvrismo certainly distinguishes nature from grace, but aims on the works too, on the merits and on the strength of reason and will, running the risk of formalism, legalism, of ritualism, of complacency and self-righteous moral rigor, almost wanting to regulate the work itself with an abundance of grace and leaving little space to the initiative of the Spirit. His conservatism preserves what is exceeded and rejects as falsehoods evangelical novelty of the Spirit, exchanging renovation to infidelity; knows that the full grace nature, but he does not know that nature is anticipated from grace. Now an idea of ​​this kind presupposes and admits the possibility that the papal and conciliar magisterium falling into heresy, which it is by that very heretic, because it would deny the promise of Christ made to Peter that the "gates of hell", or the power of darkness can not destroy the Church. But deny the promises of Christ is a heretic. So, the belief that the Council has fallen into heresy is heresy in turn.

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Pelagian and Gnostic

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The God has pleased complaint those who believe they can achieve divine status by their own efforts, as if the man onsite itself innately divine power or because they believe that God's grace is reward for their efforts - the Pelagians - or because they believe they have by itself an absolute knowledge and superhuman, this - the Gnostics -, It gives itself to know the way of a sublime salvation, that enables them to attain divine power and freedom. For them, their body and human nature are capable of being manipulated or malleable to their liking, in a continuous historical development, without having any obligation to undergo an immutable moral law established by a transcendent and personal God, since God, for their, it is only the absolute bottom of their self. What matters, for their, It is their free will; it alone is good and divine; the body and matter are ephemeral appearances; their laws are seen as obstacles to freedom, for which the subject feels free to operate on the body and humans according to the principle of the Epicurean pleasure or what nietzschiano domain.

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The God has pleased notes that this division heretics in the Pelagian and Gnostic, own these ancient heresies, He responds to recurring deviations of Christianity, so even today reflected in a modern heresies, without obviously coincide fully with them. Consider, for example phenomena such as Lutheranism, modernism, rahnerism, lefebvrismo and the Liberation Theology. The first four can be traced back to Gnosticism; the last to Pelagianism. This is clear, if we refer to the words used by the God has pleased to describe Pelagianism and contemporary Gnosticism.

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He says it in fact:

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"On the one hand, individualism centered on the autonomous subject tend to see man as, the realization of which depends on its own strength,. In this vision, the figure of Christ corresponds to a model that inspires generous actions, with his words and his gestures, that not to Him that transforms the human condition, incorporating us into a new existence reconciled with the Father and with one another through the Spirit [cf. 2 Color 5,19; Ef 2,18]. Individualism self-centered person tends to see the man as a being whose realization depends on his own strength ".

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This is the principle of the Cartesian theory of knowledge cogito, that in the following centuries will lead to Kant and German Idealism, from which rises, by reaction, Marxist materialism and that of the nineteenth century evolutionary. Here we recognize the setting of liberation theology, influenced by Marx, or the anthropology materialistic evolutionism of Teilhard de Chardin influenced by Darwin, in which man, collectively or personally, climbs the ladder of evolution to Christ, but it does not appear as Redeemer, but only as a liberator, Sum template personal and social human perfection.

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Continue to God has pleased:

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"On the other hand, It spreads the vision of a purely inner salvation, which arouses even a strong personal conviction, or an intense feeling, to be united to God, but without assuming, heal and renew our relationships with others and with the created world. With this perspective, it becomes difficult to grasp the sense of the Incarnation of the Word, so He became a member of the human family, taking on our flesh and our history, For us men and for our salvation ".

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We observe that the prospect of salvation 'purely internal' is the Lutheran, which, joint with cogito Cartesian, will produce in the nineteenth century, the subjectivist idealism and pantheistic German. Because it is the subject, considering themselves already enlightened by God, It rejects the mediation of the senses - Descartes - and the Church - Luther -. The Letter then comes better understood in the light of what the Pope said in Florence on Gnosticism, namely that it

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'Leads to trust in logical and clear thinking, who, however, lost the tenderness of the meat of his brother. The charm of Gnosticism is "a faith locked into subjectivism, which affects only a particular experience or a series of arguments and knowledge that you think will comfort and enlighten, but where ultimately subject is closed immanence of his own reason and his feelings " [the gospel of joy, 94]. The difference between the Christian transcendence and any form of spiritualism Gnostic is in the mystery. Do not put it into practice, not lead the Word to reality, It means to build on sand, remain in the pure idea and degenerate into intimacies that do not give fruit, that make sterile its dynamism ».

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The God has pleased He explains well the words of the Supreme Pontiff:

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"It thus claims to free the person from the body and the material universe, in which they find more traces of the provident hand of the Creator, but you only see a reality meaningless, alien identity of the last person, and manipulated according to the interests of man ' [n.3].

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I Gnosticism, for Pope Francis I, as affirmed also deep interiority, is a thinking closed in on itself and then sterile. It is the idealist thinking. "He says and does" [Mt 23,3], as Christ warns us of the Pharisees. But the idealist - here the gnostic - does not produce good fruit, not so much because it does not act or does not give to do or you adagi into laziness in a kind of quietism,quite the opposite, they, without embracing the ethical idealism of Fichte, it is very active, but only for his own interests.

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If a Dear John says that everything is thought, does not deny the action, indeed it gives such importance, that the subject puts himself in being [autoctisis]. Rahner comes to say that the subject determines his will his own essence or his own nature. But this act detached from the attention clear and honest to the divine reality, the reality of human nature and the objective moral law, is at the end is a non-action, or a senseless act, and in any case an disobey God's law. So the idealist, in the end, not grasp the reality, the "thing in itself" - as he himself says Kant -; does not grasp, would the Blessed Antonio Rosmini "neither be real, nor the moral being, "and even the true" being perfect ", but only its false ideas and imaginations, ma, known as the Pope, It remains detached from reality, at the risk of falling into nihilism or solipsism.

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The exorbitant claims of the Gnostic, that the real is identified with his unerring idea of ​​reality and that being, even the divine, coincides with his thoughts, It is punished with detachment from reality, a detachment that is sometimes truly tragic [1]. He says the Pope:

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"The idea detached from reality and idealism originates nominalisms ineffective, that at most classify or define, but not involving. What involves is reality illuminated by reasoning " [2].

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Reality, for the idealist - see for example here Husserl -, it makes no sense in itself, by itself and by itself, a precise and intelligible sense, given by the Creator, an independent way from the man and that man must discover, respect and, if it is the moral law, put into practice; but the man claims, with its a priori categories, to be him to give way to a reality meaningless. And here we see the Gnostic contempt for the body and for the real in general. The body, for the gnostic, It is not good in itself, but it's up to him, with its free will, by virtue of his divine interiority, determine at will the good and the bad about the physical and sexual life, replacing God in legislating the conduct to follow and replacing, with its violence and its lust, the wise inclinations and laws laid down by God in human nature.

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A PROVIDENTIAL NEW IN THE HISTORY OF THE PAPAL TEACHINGS

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The remarkable thing in these words, a new fact that we do not hesitate to consider the historical significance in the history of the papal Magisterium, It is that for the first time a Pope condemns in no uncertain terms Gnosticism calling him by his name; by that name that had once been called by scholars, policyholders who had reported the dangerous return, but without meeting compliance in the Papal Magisterium. Categories used by previous popes since the nineteenth century, that more can be approached to Gnosticism, were only those of rationalism, idealism and pantheism. The Popes of the times of the historical Gnosticism certainly became aware of the danger and the first theologians fought him, even without being explicit condemnation documents, limiting itself to qualify it as a whole as a result of intellectual pride, which then constitutes the essence or spirit of Gnosticism, which certainly appears to be yielding to the temptation of evil generative want to "be like God". Like this, the Holy Pontiff Pius X, in its Feeding of Dominic's Sheep It qualifies as an effect of pride Modernism, which can undoubtedly be considered as the reborn Gnosticism of our times, if ever Gnosticism has ceased to act more or less openly in the history of thought and heresies. What is it heresy, if the effect of pride and, in tal senso, of Gnosticism? And who is the heretic, but he that, believed to possess the supreme knowledge, is convinced to know Christ better the Pope or against the Pope? Or learn more about God of Jesus Christ, as Severino and Heidegger? Or as Mohammed?

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There are many forms of Gnosticism, where the gnostic stands to judge the sacred text of their religion. Thus there is a Jewish Gnosticism [3] and Spinoza jew or Kabbalà They demanded to know more about God of the Bible; Averroes claims to know God better the Koran; Nirvana Buddha claims to know the best of the sacred texts of Brahmanism; Giordano Bruno [4] He wanted to go by the Roman Pontiff to convince him that his magic-hermetic doctrine of Christianity was best for man's salvation, ma, as we know, she went wrong; Freemasonry claims to possess the supreme knowledge best of all religions [5], the Theosophical Helena Blavatsky, inspirer of the esoteric doctrines of Nazism [6], He gave to understand a million people to be able to teach her, with theosophy [7], the way of eternal salvation better than Jesus Christ could.

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CHARACTERS of Gnosticism

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I Gnosticism, indeed, He is claiming to know God more and better than man is allowed to know and, in Christian camp, He is claiming to know Christ more and better than what we are taught by the Magisterium of the Church. A This contrasts, almost opposite extremism, agnosticism, who, under the pretext of the weakness of human reason and covering of the robe of a false humility, refuses to accept what reason itself can know about God and what Christ reveals to us about God through the Magisterium of the Church. The gnostic does not need to reach to know that God exists and who God is and how it operates based on the experience of things or why instructed by a human or ecclesiastical magisterium, because he believes they already know without saying anything, a priori, starting from its simple self-consciousness, for he believes that God does not exist independently of this self-consciousness, but it is precisely in place by it-prioricamente. Because of this, I gnostico, considering themselves by themselves and on their own in the possession of the supreme knowledge or absolute science - precisely the Gnosis -, possibly by means of the concept - Hegel - [8], He is considered authorized and capable of judging or censoring any doctrine of God, including that of the Church, and then to reject it as false, if it does not correspond to his idea of ​​God.

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The issue of ancient Gnosticism He has had a strong increase in the last century, when documents were discovered Gnostic. It is then much discussion of what should be understood by "Gnosticism", a term that derives from the greek gnosis= Science or knowledge. They were called - and called themselves - "Gnostic" [gnostikòi] a group of the second or third century theologians, which, imbued with pagan doctrines, especially Platonic and religious mythology, They were particularly interested in the problem of salvation, who played as an inner experience of an ineffable God, while the action and the external material world appeared to them as the principle of evil and therefore extraneous to the saving experience as a mystical experience of God and supreme knowledge - gnosis ―, secret and esoteric, select few, of the truth. According to their ethics and therefore salvation is exhausted into the horizon of this inner subjective experience as a self-gnostic, a foreign and hostile spirit to matter. So for them there was no binding ethic, commanded by God, against body, society and the world, vain appearances left to their free choice, especially since in the end the freedom for them was just that intimate spirit pervaded by God, free from the shackles of the body. Certainly not above the licentiousness of the flesh, convinced that the matter of the body there were divine commands, although happening they passed the contrary excess of rigor, for they saw the body as the beginning of evil. This kind of Gnosticism reappeared in southern France with the heresy of the Cathars in the thirteenth century [9].

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The early Christian theologians they realized the importance of the knowledge of God in the Christian life, something so tied to the value of truth, but they did not exaggerate the power and reach of knowledge, cleverly connected with the duties of the Christian life and framed in the upper area of ​​charity, in communion with the Church. The true gnosis could and should be accepted and respected, but it had to be rejected as false. So it was that while Clement of Alexandria could define a Christian as a "gnostic", St. Irenaeus was devoted to refuting the false gnosis. However, Beyond this historic categorization, calling Gnosticism as a phenomenon limited in time, the Letter also it suggests a broader sense as a constant attitude of mind, which is summed up essentially in intellectual pride, so it can exist as much a gnosticismo spiritualistic since one materialistic, such a dualistic Manichaean, As one monistic pantheism, so much a lax, As one penalty taker.

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Merit of a throw light on the question of Gnosticism in relation to modernity, goes in the last century to the German Hans Jonas [10]. Others, like John Filoramo, highlighted the pantheistic tendency of gnosis [11]. Emanuele Samek Lodovici showed the dissolving action of Gnosticism in contemporary thought. The Proceedings Phenomenology, gnose, metaphysical, held at the Sorbonne in 1997, curated by Natalie Depraz and Jean-François Marquet [12], Gnosticism show of Schelling and Husserl.

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THE CONTEMPORARY GNOSTICISM

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In order to understand the substance of these words of the Pope, It must focus on and join her the following expressions:

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"A certain neo-gnosticism, for its part, It has a purely inner salvation, locked into subjectivism " [n.3] and "a faith locked into subjectivism, ... where ultimately subject is closed immanence of his own reason and his feelings " [The gospel of joy, n. 94].

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who the God has pleased It refers to the return of idealistic-pantheistic modernism originated by Hegel, who finds a remarkable expression in the theology of Karl Rahner, for which being is being thought, so all the real, including God, It is a thought immanent in the self Cartesian origin. Everything is in the ego, everything is ego and nothing outside the self. At the idealistic conception of knowledge and consciousness, which entails the primacy of thought and idea, ie of the subject, being and the real, ie object, the Pope in the gospel of joy It opposes the biblical-Thomist realistic conception of the "primacy of reality on the idea" [n. 231], that involves the the conformity of intellect and thing and then the subjection of human thought to the divine. This ensures a correct anthropology and sound moral, It founded on the universal and immutable law of nature.

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The God has pleased It is then to order the gnoseology historicist of Cardinal Walter Kasper[13], for which the subject, in its historicity, determines the object, that consequently changes with the changing of the subject. In this way, the change touches, as in Hegel, the essence of truth, Dogma, of natural law and the divine nature; and theses, we remember it, They have already been condemned by Feeding of Dominic's Sheep of the Holy Pontiff Pius X. And here also it affects the conception subjectivist and idealistic consciousness of the Father Arturo Sosa, we have already refuted on The Island of Patmos [cf. WHO]. In accordance with this conception of the consciousness, namely the idea, no obligation to adapt to the real, in absolute terms and in any case so; and therefore such a precise moral law, objective, universal, unchangeable, but rule on itself.

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Returning to the text of God has pleased, states that

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"Individualism is the neo-Pelagian that the neo-Gnostic contempt for the body disfigure their confession of faith in Christ, Unique and universal Savior " [n.4] and "also contradicts the sacramental economy through which God wanted to save the human person" [n.13]. "The place where we receive the salvation brought by Jesus is the Church" [n.12]: understand "this salvific mediation of the Church is an essential help to overcome any tendency reductionist". [there]. Salvation "is not obtained with individual strength alone, as stated in the neo-Pelagianism, but through the relationships that arise from the incarnate Son of God and forming the communion of the Church " [there]. Moreover, Contrary to the neo-gnostic vision of "a purely inner salvation", the Church "is a visible community: in it we touch the flesh of Jesus, in a singular way in the most poor and suffering brethren " [there] through "the corporal and spiritual works of mercy ' [n.14].

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THERE IS ALSO AGNOSTICISM

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But there is also a form of Gnosticism agnostic. You do not seem, this, a contradiction, then we explain in this regard that it is the claim to possess an immediate experience of God in a way athematic, preconceptual, autocoscienziale priori and prior to and independent of things from the experience and conceptual knowledge of God, both the philosophical and the dogmatic, transmitted by the Church, which experience does not intellectually expresses the content of the original experience of God, but it is a derivative within the imagination or emotional and creative symbolism. Therefore we do not have here a real conceptual knowledge of God, objective, universal, certain and unchangeable, that produces a fides, one saving truth the same for everyone and forever, but a multiplicity of "rings", ie subjective opinions about God, relative and changing, all too true, although in contradiction between their, because the truth is not what is in itself, independently of me, It is not universal, but it is what appears to me and I decide. Needless to say, this is a heretical nullification of the foundation of faith "one Lord, one faith, one baptism " [cf. Ef 4, 4-6]. And this just before described is Gnosticism rahneriano, Gnostic and at the same time agnostic. Gnosticismo, for the experience claim a priori "transcendental" God, for which God appears even as "ultimate horizon of human self-transcendence". Other than Pelagianism: Here we are right in pantheism!

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Agnostic, because the truth of God is not understood in the concept, although metaphysical, analog or transcendental, and then in the dogma, but only in that experience in itself ineffable and therefore inexpressible. It gave, so, per Rahner, is "absolute mystery", not relative to what for us of God is unknown and transcends the finitude of our understanding, since it is clear that God, as it revealed to us by Christ through the Church, It not is unknown, there is no mystery, but we know him in concepts and dogmatic formulas.

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Per Rahner, instead, we can not distinguish God what we know - to Revelation - from what is unknown to us and transcends us to the Divine Essence infinity. But God is absolutely Unknown to the concept, just like l 'Agnoston the ancient Gnostics; quell’agnosticismo, that the Holy Pontiff Pius X, in Feeding of Dominic's Sheep condemns referring it to "Unknowable".

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The Pelagianism is instead that conception of the relationship between human works and grace, for which the grace is simply the help given by God for the doing of good, and is the final refinement, Certain, supernatural, granted by God, the efforts and works of reason and human wills. In short grace, for Pelagianism, It is the final fulfillment of human transcendence, which which it arrives at the height of its possibilities. This idea is also found in Rahner, who, therefore, in this respect, you can consider Pelagian. In Pelagianism, so, as is known, the initiative and the beginning of salvation is not from God, but by man and for human merit. Grace completes and rewards the work of man. We have the grace resulting, but not the grace prevenient. There is the grace cooperating with the work of man, but not the grace operating, that moves man to salvation and saves.

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The Supreme Pontiff, in the gospel of joy, He describes the neo-Pelagianism, indicated as

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«Self of those who ultimately rely solely on their own strength and feel superior to others, because they observe certain rules or because adamantly faithful Catholic to a certain style typical of the past. And 'an alleged security doctrinal or disciplinary, which gives rise to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, where is that, Instead of evangelizing, They analyze and classify others and instead of facilitating access to grace, They consume energy in controlling. In both cases' - that is neognosticism and neopelagianesimo - "are manifestations of a immanentism anthropocentric" [n.94].

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It is not difficult to trace in this description Lefebvre. However, there is no one pelagianism Lefebvre, but there is also a modernist, as for example that of Rahner. Indeed, as we have seen, general characteristic of Pelagianism is the over-reliance on their own strength, which leads us to understand grace not as a perfective addition to nature and a gratuitous overcoming of nature's limits, But as the deadline, due to the nature, the unstoppable development orientation must, existential and essential to God, right of every man. The Lefebvre stiffens in store; the rahneriano stiffens in changing. The one and the other are some of its more than Christ was certain of his ideas.

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Rahner, in particular, It conceives the relationship nature-grace as a transcendence or necessary historical development of all human action, until you get to the life of grace, seamlessly. As for Rahner human nature is unlimited, The is easy to pass the limit and live in grace. It confuses the availability of nature to grace - power oboedientialis - with the active power of man to realize himself, and with the passivity or malleability of the corporeal nature towards his will [14].

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At the opposite pole of Pelagianism [one nature], It is Gnosticism, in which the nature is absorbed by the grace [Sola gratia]. who the Letter evidently it underlies the heresy opposite to that rationalist Pelagio, namely that fideist Luther, which he admits but prevenient grace and operating, but not that consequent and cooperating. Pelagio exaggerates the merit, Luther nega. Luther, indeed, as is known, excludes rightly that grace can be earned by the son of Adam, but neglect the existence of the supernatural about, that depends on the work done in grace, who will cooperate with the grace and therefore deserve salvation and the heavenly reward, whereby salvation is conditioned by the performance of good works, done the grace. It's here, Pelagius, he's right.

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THE VARIOUS FUNCTIONS OF GRACE

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Excellent idea of ​​the God has pleased, On the subject of grace, to remember the distinction between healing grace and elevating grace - that is, between the grace that forgives sins and saves our humanity, tracing it back to innocence - and that grace even more free, for which man is elevated to a child of God, in the image of the Son, moved by the Holy Spirit. In fact, today the Christian and New Testament idea of ​​sonship is often trivialized and degraded, because of a fraternity Enlightenment of flavor, So, each man for the simple fact of being a man, He appears as "brother" and "son of God". This means confuse what is the evangelical call to universal salvation and to live the life of God's children in the Catholic Church, with false and unfounded supposition - that the anonymous Christianity ie Rahner [15] - that all men, perhaps unconsciously, are de facto children of God, in grace, invariably and irresistibly tending to salvation. The evidently contrasts with the teaching of Christ[16] and with the Catholic dogma that "not everyone is saved" [17], ie with the dogma of hell, which it is not a corrective punishment, but punitive, because the damn thing is forever and irrevocably in a position to have finally chosen to oppose God, which does not allow him - and even he wants - to repent and mend, finality, which are pursued by the corrective penis.

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This property of the infernal punishment is the reason of the conviction in 1998 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the thesis of Professor. Luigi Lombardi Vallauri, professor at the Catholic University of Milan, who maintained that the dogma of hell is an "unconstitutional" belief [in that] no act however serious it may deserve eternal punishment [and why] It is contrary to the most advanced principles of law, and specifically the right influenced by Christianity, a penalty which in no way blind to the re-education and rehabilitation of the offender '. Instead, in the false belief, supported by Rahner and others, that, however things, everyone is saved, It rises unduly, in essence, a simple one faculty belonging to all - to choose either for God or against God – a real choice for God by all. It lowers the incomparable dignity of the free gift of God, supernatural and free, whose contribution is conditioned by the free response of each, the size of the essential and necessary structure of human nature, common to all, saints and criminals. The message of salvation is no longer: "You can save by grace, if you obey the law of God ", but "you're all saved by grace alone and by faith alone, apart from works of faith ". Which then it is nothing but heresy of Luther.

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CRISTO, ONE SAVIOR OF THE WORLD

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The God has pleased proposes the fundamental Christian teaching about the nature, the ways and means of salvation, whereby we get the teaching obedience and salvation by uniting us to Christ, only Savior of the world[18] and then incorporating us into the Church, Body of Christ. The Letter reminds the fact that n ° 2

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"The Christian faith confession, that proclaims Jesus as the only Savior of the whole man and of all humanity [cf. At 4,12; Rom 3,23-24; 1 TM 2,4-5; Tit 2,11-15].

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This text is reunited with the dogma of the Council of Florence the 1442 [19], according to which, to save, It must belong to the Church. The Second Vatican Council, taking up the teaching of Blessed Pope Pius IX, made it clear that this membership is not necessarily that the visible Church, although it is within the ordinary plan of salvation, but that salvation - and then membership in the Church - it is also possible for those without fault and in good faith do not know the Gospel, and even for "those who, no fault of their own have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge (express) of God" [20]. Because of this, these people are saved forever in the Church, but belonging to the invisible Church or belonging to the Church invisibly or unconsciously [21]. Here of course it excludes the interpretation of Rahner, according to which even atheists could be saved, as an implicit knowledge of God, however implicitly, it is still knowledge of God and is not atheism.

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In this sense, the God has pleased can state:

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"The place where we receive the salvation brought by Jesus is the Church, community of those who, We are having been incorporated into the new order of relations inaugurated by Christ, They may receive the fullness of the Spirit of Christ (cf. Rom 8,9). Understanding this salvific mediation of the Church is an essential help to overcome any tendency reductionist. The salvation that God offers us, indeed, You do not get with the only individual forces, as stated in the neo-Pelagianism, but through the relationships that arise from the incarnate Son of God and forming the communion of the Church […] Because the grace that Christ gives us is not, as claimed by the vision of neo-Gnostic, a merely inner salvation, but that introduces us in the concrete relationships that he himself lived, the Church is a visible community: in it we touch the flesh of Jesus, so singular in the poorest suffering brothers and. In short, the salvific mediation of the Church, "Universal sacrament of salvation", It assures us that the salvation does not consist in self-realization of the individual isolated, and even in his inner merger with the divine, but in incorporation in a communion of persons, that participates in the communion of the Trinity " [n. 12].

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The God has pleased implicitly reiterates its condemnation of the syncretistic Christology of Father Jacques Dupuis, pronounced in 2001 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, according to which all religions are ways of salvation, so that everyone can choose the one they prefer [22], and implicitly condemns the idea of ​​Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, according to which to save themselves you do not necessarily need the mediation of the Church, but just follow the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, or thesis Edward Schillebeeckx, for which a complete and perfect religion is the sum and the set of all religions [23].

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SALVATION OF THE SOUL AND BODY

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Very suitable It was also an idea to remember that the eternal salvation of man is concerned and soul and body. In fact Says God has pleased:

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"Salvation announces that faith is not just about our inner self, but our integral being. It is the whole person, indeed, in body and soul, that was created by God in his image and likeness, and it is called to live in communion with him " [n.7].

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It is the salvation of the whole man, in which the interests of the soul - the spiritual life - should prevail, for their decisive importance, of those of the body - physical life -, they also, however, essential for salvation. But if the interests of the body hinder those of the soul, Christian they must have ready to give to the first, knowing that in the future resurrection will be refunded what they love for Christ, that is, to save the soul, He has given up in this life. Invece Rahner, bad interpreting the biblical concept of the unity of the person psychophysics, He rejects the actual distinction between body and soul[24], dogma of the Fourth Lateran Council 1215 [25], charging it to "greek dualism" and intends the human individual as an indivisible whole, therefore rejects the dogma of the soul substantial body shape, defined by the Council of Viennes in 1312 [26], and it affirms that the soul is inseparable from the body, as well as two different ways of being and occurrence of a single subject they are not intended as were two parts of the same subject.

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The reduction Rahner's soul to the body or vice versa the absorption of the soul body produces so obvious and inevitable two opposite ethical, but that refer to each other because they both characterized by the fusion of the two terms: the first, Pelagianism materialistic, secularist and ground; the second, Gnosticism spiritualist, idealista, pantheistic absolute interiority. It happens then that Rahner does not conceive of death as the parting of the soul from the body and the soul survive the death of the body, for the soul, separated from the body, which it is in the grave, He continues to live alone after the death of the body, but for him the moment of death is the supreme moment of freedom, the whole man dies and rises again around the same time immersed in God. This means that Rahner rejects the dogma of the immortality defined by the Fifth Lateran Council in 1513 [27] and therefore does not allow for a time interval between eviterna the particular judgment and the universal, heresy condemned by the "Letter on Certain Questions Concerning eschatology" of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of 1979. At the same time, in this view, the body resting in the tomb is not intended to be resurrected, against the teaching of the Fourth Lateran Council 1215 [28], but it dissolves in the surrounding matter. The consequence is that the Gospel accounts about the empty tomb of the risen Christ cannot be adduced as proof of his resurrection., because the resurrection of Christ, per Rahner, It is not the fact that the body of Jesus had come back to life, but the fact that Christ's death "was greeted by God". Also Rahner, with his theory of immediate resurrection, denies the dogma of purgatory, defined by the Council of Trent [29]. In the end, the instant resurrection theory constitutes an attack on the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven, because by explicit declaration of Rahner, not only the Mater Dei, but every man's death has taken up.

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Very appropriate, therefore, are the concluding words of the Letter:

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"While he devoted himself with all his forces to evangelization, the Church continues to call for the definitive coming of the Savior, since "in hope we were saved" (Rom 8,24). The salvation of man is accomplished only when, after winning the last enemy, the death (cf. 1 Color 15,26), We participate fully in the glory of the risen Jesus, which will lead to the full our relationship with God, with the brothers and with all creation. The integral salvation, soul and body, It is the final destiny to which God calls all men " [n. 15].

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THE INEVITABLE CHOICE: O GOD FOR OR AGAINST GOD. ONE OF THE LACUNA it was God

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And we too, at this point, let's ask, by way of conclusion, granted that there is an observation. The very serious issue and timeless salvation can not be separated from the equally serious and urgent perdition. Well, It seems to see in the God has pleased, a serious gap: that of not treating, except for fleeting allusions and implicit allusions, this equally important and urgent issue, about which the heresies are spread, the reticence and false interpretations. It can not be talk about health without talking about the disease. You can not talk about life without speaking of death. You can not speak of the good without speaking evil. Of course, it is evident that those who accept Pelagianism and Gnosticism can not be saved. However it would not hurt to remember that it is heretical to believe that God does not punish. And this precisely because they do not understand the meaning and the reasons for the salvation, if you refuse that truth. It is thought that those who say that God's punishment does not appreciate his mercy. But the opposite is true. It 'impossible to understand what is salvation, without starting from the consideration of sin's punishment, starting with the original sin, to get to our personal sins and going through the painful expiation of sin, which occurs due to participation in the Cross of Christ.

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With regard to original sin, the God has pleased obviously excludes implicitly the argument that the story of Genesis, as supports for example, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, It would be a mere myth "causative" to explain the existence of evil and sin and. At that point, one can understand that the gift that the Father gave us His Son's work of mercy, Why, as the prophet Isaiah says: "The chastisement of our peace was upon him" [Is 53,5]. Opera divine is the work that God works to transform the punishment for salvation. That's why the hymn of office Lodi Lent is sung: "Wrath of judgment, deliver or good Father ".

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God frees us, by means of the (C)roce reparation of Christ, miseries in which we have fallen and restores us in Baptism the loss of grace. The guilt of original sin, transmitted by generation to each man by the couple of our ancestors [30], It is deleted from Baptism, although it remains the lust, ie the inclination to sin, We must oppose and curb all your life with the ascetic works and practice of the Sacrament of Penance.

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Precise then God has pleased to n. 13:

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"Like this, cleansed from original sin and from every sin, we are called to a new life conformed to Christ [cf. Rom 6,4]».

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With become children of God, There is open the door of eternal salvation and the entrance, as members of the Church, in the kingdom of heaven. Of course, this is not to say that God may be punishing and merciful at the same time with the same person, which would be inconsistent, because severity and mercy are actually two virtues that are mutually exclusive. The severity inflicts a penalty; Mercy takes it. If there's one o'clock, there can be another. However sometimes they refer and mutually: the mercy that God used to Israel crossing the Red Sea, It was made possible by the severity which he used against the Egyptians.

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CONCLUSION

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You do not seem incongruous or risky to compare God has pleased at the Feeding of Dominic's Sheep of the Holy Pontiff Pius X. One might observe that they differ profoundly, because the second one is severe, while the former is forgiving. but yet, Beyond the changed historical climate, between the two documents there is a continuity: Pius X had to face the problem modernistic. The reigning pontiff had to take up the issue, because the modernism of the times of his predecessor Pius X, as Maritain said in 1966 [31], a "modest hayfever than the neo-modernist fever" of our day. From the time of Maritain fever shows no signs of decreasing, rather, is reached at temperatures which are likely to exceed the 40 degrees of heat. And then we remember that the Holy Pontiff Pius X called modernism of his time as the "sum of all heresies". From here we can get an idea of ​​modernism today. But the Pope Francis I unfortunately do not seem disturbed that much. It's not that you make account of what is going on, maybe, maybe he wants to avoid panic?

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We were in the middle of the Second Vatican Council who welcomed what was valid in the modernist instances, but it avoided the modernist errors, But then came the Church, in overbearing and decisively, during the post-conciliar season. The Second Vatican Council, upholding instances, he added what was missing in Feeding of Dominic's Sheep. But he never forgot the warnings, even more valid today than ever; but obviously the modernism of today is different from that of the time. At reigning Pope loom thus the following tasks:

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1. Maintain the achievements of the Council, carry them out and defend them; and correct some too optimistic trend or feel-good, as for example as reported to the n. 40 from the The joy and hope, which it indicates that the Church has only to communicate with the world, in a reciprocal relationship to equal the world-Church. And this trend, it is urgent to correct them all the false interpretations of the post-conciliar.

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2. Purify the modernists from Gnosticism, welcome their dynamic and progressive reformer, forbid them to exploit the Council.

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3. Purify Lefebvre from Pelagianism, approve and support their fidelity to tradition, persuade them to accept the Council.

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4. Making mediation between Lefebvre and modernists in order to mutual reconciliation, joining tradition and preservation with progress and renewal.

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It is a huge task, wanting abnormal. Ma, of altronde, inside the Sistine Chapel was the man Jorge Mario Bergoglio to answer the call to the sacred throne saying the election "I accept"And shortly after becoming Francis I. And for that affirmative "I accept», He must assume all responsibility before God and before men. E, certain heavy responsibilities, we do not assume or avoiding of providing clear and reliable answers, or saying it could be yes, but also wanting no, or you know ... I do not know, you do!

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We are before God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing [The Cor 2,15]

knowledge puffs, but love builds up [The Cor 8,1]

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From the island of Patmos, 13 March 2018

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NOTE

[1] See the case Nietzsche.

[2] the gospel of joy, n.222. Cf. my study The dependence of the idea of ​​the reality in the gospel of joy of Pope Francis, in PATH, Vatican Publishing House, 2014/2, pp.237-316.

[3] CF. Julius Meinville, Influence of the Jewish Gnosticism a Christian environment, by E. Innocent, Editions of the Sacred Fraternitas Aurigarum in Urbe, Rome 1898.

[4] CF. Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Laterza Publishers, Bari 1992.

[5] Leon de Poncins, Freemasonry and the Vatican, Britons Publishing Company, London 1968.

[6] He spoke at length in his book E.Kurlander I mostri in Hitler, Mondadori Editore, Milan 2018.

[7] Introduction to Theosophy, Brothers Publishers Mouth,Torino 1911.

[8] J.Maritain rightly speaks of a "gnosis Hegelian", in Moral philosophy. historical and critical examination of the major systems, Morcelliana, Brescia 1971, c.IX.

[9] Anne Brenon, I Catari. History and destiny of true believers, Convivio-Nardini Publisher, Florence 1990; Free on two principles:, a neo-Manichaean Treaty thirteenth century, edited by A.Dondaine,ON, Historical Institute of the Dominican S.Sabina, Rome 1939.

[10] I Gnosticism, BE, Torino, 2002.

[11] The awakening of gnosis or become God, The third, Bari 1990.

[12] Editions du Cerf, Paris 2000.

[13] Cf my book The mystery of the Redemption, Editions ESD, Bologna 2004, pp. 318-329.

[14] Karl Rahner. The Second betrayed, Editions Faith&Culture, Verona 2009, c.V - Grace.

[15] Cf .my essay The root of the theoretical dottrna Rahner's anonymous Christianity, in Karl Rahner. A critical analysis, edited by S.Lanzetta, The Proceedings of 23-to give Florence 23 November 2007, organized by the Franciscans, Published By Cantagalli, Florence 2009, pp.51-71.

[16] The Letter He cites c.25, 31-46 Matteo's.

[17] Council of Quierzy 853 (Denz.623). CF. my book Hell esiste. The truth denied, Editions Faith&Culture, Verona 2010.

[18] CF. the declaration Christ the Lord of the CDF of 6 August 2000.

[19] Denz.1351

[20] The light, 16.

[21] CF. The explanation for this given by Maritain The Church of Christ. The person of the Church and its staff, Descleée Brewer, Used 1870, c.X, III.

[22] Notification "Later" of The 24 January 2001. CF. his Introduction to cristolgia, PIEMME 1993.

[23] Humanity. History of God, Queriniana, Brescia 1992, pp.219-220.

[24] On Rahner doctrine of the soul-body relationship, see my book quoted Karl Rahner, the Council betrayed, c. III.

[25] Denz.800.

[26] Denz.902.

[27] Denz.1440-1441.

[28] Denz.801.

[29] Denz.1820.

[30] Council of Trent, Denz.1512-1513.

[31] The peasant of the Garonne, Desclee de Brouwer, Used 1966, p.16.

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