(January 25, 2016 at 11:54 am)athrock Wrote: No, the Catholic Church has not changed its position. The key is in understanding the definition what it means to be a member of the Church. I'm afraid your "historical fact" is simply an example of ignorance of the full details.
Despite all the efforts made by Protestants over the past 500 years to prove the Catholic Church has changed a doctrine in such a manner as to repudiate a past teaching, nothing has been found.
Doesn't stop folks from trying, though.
These statements are just "ignorance on parade". It ignores the Catholic Church's own theologians who state, explicitly, that the Catholic Church has changed its teachings on EENS ("Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus," or, "Outside the Church there is no salvation") Consider Cardinal Walter Kasper, who is referred to as "the Pope's theologian":
Quote:“Church doctrine is not a closed system: the Second Vatican Council teaches us that there is a development, meaning that it is possible to look into this further. I wonder if a deeper understanding similar to what we saw in ecclesiology, is possible in this case (i.e. that of divorced Catholics who have remarried civilly). Although the Catholic Church is Christ’s true Church, there are elements of ecclesiality beyond the institutional boundaries of the Church too. Couldn’t some elements of sacramental marriage also be recognized in civil marriages in certain cases? For example, the lifelong commitment, mutual love and care, Christian life and a public declaration of commitment that does not exist in common-law marriages.”
We're atheists; you can't "pull wool over our eyes," and we read for ourselves. The Council of Florence taught "that nobody can be saved, no matter how much he has given away in alms and even if he has shed his blood in the name of Christ, unless he has persevered in the bosom and the unity of the catholic church."
You can play "word games" all that you want; it's just a bunch of bullshit.
