Some People Would Love to Save Me From Catholicism

No, I Do Not Believe in Sola Scriptura, and Sola Scriptura is Not the Foundation of Protestantism · Some People Would Love to Save Me From Catholicism · A Catholic Lay Apologist Does Not Need to Have the Church as an Employer

They go so far as to infer from Vehementer Nos and from Epistula Tua (St. Pius X and Leo XIII), that a layman cannot come to the conclusion an otherwise apparent Pope is a heretic, and therefore not a Pope.

Now, Vehementer Nos and Epistula Tua are about people who:

• recognised Pope Leo XIII or Pope St. Pius X
• nevertheless resisted them, especially in politics.

They are also monitions, not definitions. They remind of what it means to be Catholic, they are not the definition of it.

But, most especially, they are not about people who concluded that Leo XIII or St. Pius X were not Popes.

Perhaps the point made by such people is also against me being in a certain sense a lay theologian (though my writings are not exclusively theological). Here are a few Catholic lay theologians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Sch%C3%BCssler_Fiorenza
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sheed
which directs to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Evidence_Guild
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Colaianni
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Sch%C3%BCssler_Fiorenza
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Magliola
possibly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_Pabst

I'll have to verify his confession ... yes, his friend was a Roman Catholic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_G%C3%BCnther

Günther was condemned, actually, for participating in the 1848 Revolution, but it seems J. H. Pabst wasn't.

Every statement in an encyclical does not fall under Papal infallibility.

Leo XIII and St. Pius X may have forgotten about J. H. Pabst and Catholic lay theologians being rare in their time, forgotten about their existence.

Pius XI recalled St. Justin. And Chesterton could be a Catholic and a Lay Theologian. Indeed, the Catholic Evidence Guild (to which I am obviously indebted) had been formed in 1918 ... under Benedict XV.

Perhaps the founders of Catholic Evidence Guild also recalled St. Thomas More, the man for all seasons.

So, if anyone were to pretend that a Catholic needed to avoid being a lay theologian in obedience to Leo XIII's Epistola Tua, he would be appealing to a past pontiff against more recent ones - on a disciplinary matter. One where the position of the "present pontiff" cannot be a heresy, whether he is one or not, as long as it is not unheard of in Catholicism.

That "Pope Francis" is indirectly, via bishops, endorsing lay theologians like Jimmy Akin and (very indirectly) Robert Sungenis, is not a thing which can be held against his Catholicism. What can be held against it is not condemning certain positions of Jimmy Akin (lay theologian) or "Assumptionist Father" Sébastien Antoni (not a lay theologian).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sexagesima
12.II.2023