John Lamont on Infallibility, Again

the original article, linked at this blog here

Rorate Caeli: Follow-up Article - Paul VI: The Infallibility of Canonizations and the Morals of the Faithful

The question of what role in which the bishop of Rome acts when he solemnly canonizes someone is not addressed. I don't think it was addressed in the previous installment either. He rather presumes the "traditional" Latin opinion in his article, when he speaks of the Church Universal (in relation to the bishop of Rome), rather than the patriarchate of Rome.

Canonisation, as they addressed it, took two forms; equipollent canonisation, and formal canonisation. Equipollent canonisation happens when a Pope decrees the universal veneration of a person to whom devotion has existed since time immemorial, and whose holiness and miracles are recorded by historians who are worthy of belief. Formal canonisation happens when a Pope decrees the universal veneration of a person whose heroic virtue and miracles have been established by a juridical process undertaken by the Holy See.

And so does he presume a Vatican I definition of papal infallibility? It would seem so:

This argument fails to grasp the nature of an infallible definition. In order for a papal teaching to be infallible, it is not enough for it to say that it is infallible; it has to actually satisfy the conditions for an infallible statement. Such statements must be exercises of the teaching authority of the Apostolic See, and they must definitively and finally bind all the faithful to assent to the assertions that they are making. In the case of an infallible truth that is divinely revealed, the faithful are required to believe (credere) the truth that is being taught. In the case of an infallible truth that belongs to the secondary object of the infallible magisterium, the faithful are required to hold (tenere) the truth that is being taught. The term ‘belief’ is used for divinely revealed truths, not because truths belonging to the secondary object of the magisterium do not also need to be believed to be true, but to underline that divinely revealed truths must be believed with an act of the theological virtue of faith.

What sort of reform?

CNA: The Siena Option: What one saint did in the face of a troubled Church

If there was already a problem with how Latins understood the authority of the bishop of Rome at the time of St. Catherine, it would seem that this fundamental problem was not addressed.

An aside: The clergy as other "Christs" -- can this be developed in a way that would find grounding in the Byzantine tradition?

God Is with Us (Greek)

The "Maranatha Mantra"

promoted by Fr. John Main, OSB (!)

Maybe its defenders can argue that this is just another form of centering prayer, a higher form of Christian prayer but if it is, how can it be employed by beginners? It is certainly different from the Jesus Prayer, in which one does not empty one's mind of all content... Eastern monastics must have a field day with Westerns promoting centering prayer.