{"id":1730,"date":"2014-05-01T14:45:23","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T20:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"\/?page_id=1730"},"modified":"2022-07-06T16:19:09","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T22:19:09","slug":"e-the-reason-for-this-site-revision-divine-and-catholic-truth-alone-will-set-us-free","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.betrayedcatholics.com\/free-content\/4-a-catholic-course-of-study-new\/e-the-reason-for-this-site-revision-divine-and-catholic-truth-alone-will-set-us-free\/","title":{"rendered":"E. The Reason for This Site Revision: Divine and Catholic Truth Alone Will Set Us Free"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\t\t[et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]The Reason for This Site Revision:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Divine and Catholic truth alone will set us free<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Copyright 2013, T. Stanfill Benns (This text may be<\/em>\u00a0downloaded or printed out for private reading, but it may not be uploaded to another Internet site or published,<\/em>\u00a0electronically or otherwise, without express written permission from the author.\u00a0<\/em>All emphasis within quotes is the author\u2019s unless indicated otherwise.)<\/em><\/p>\n

No one starts a journey without having in mind a destination. No one investigates an organization to discover its history and purpose without expecting at some point to find what they were looking for. Many of the dissident Catholic groups which have originated since the close of the false Vatican 2 council in the 1960s, however, don\u2019t seem to know where they are going, or what they are hoping to find. They are not even sure, it often appears, that they are required to have a destination, although they fully expect to reach heaven one day. As one friend commented recently, Traditional chapel groups seem to exist in order to provide a much welcome pacifier or placebo for dissident Catholics, desperate to relieve themselves of the pain and confusion of the times rather than to provide any productive way to address the real problems facing the Church today.<\/p>\n

But in beginning this website it has always been my intent to move readers ever forward in an understanding of their faith and to actually get to the root of the problems that plague us by providing some insight. I have listened to many readers for years who complain that it is just too complicated to try and figure out what has happened to the Church and continues to happen to us today and to make sense of it all, and I sympathize with them. This is why I have struggled for decades to successfully wrap my arms around what precipitated the current situation so I could better explain to others what I have learned from the Church\u2019s own perspective.<\/p>\n

I think the value of this site is that it does not simply present previous Catholic documents as something to guide readers through this dark night that now has lasted 55 years. Instead it attempts to explain the relation to what went before and what is today, with an emphasis on Canon Law and papal teaching as our guide in these times. Hopefully what has been written will help Catholics see why the current circumstances demand that we behave in a certain way, in order to follow the laws and teachings of the Church.<\/p>\n

Like all of you, I have taken many wrong turns, been forced to detour countless times and have run into several dead-ends. The journey to here has cost me dearly in many ways and has been an arduous one. But I am no different than others; we all have our own compelling stories to tell.<\/p>\n

One thing, however, has never changed for me. Since the election of John 23, I was never certain that the popes following Pope Pius XII were Catholic. After formally acknowledging the\u00a0sede vacante<\/em>\u00a0in 1982, I have always firmly believed that the answer to our problems is the papacy. For many years I was stuck in the unfortunate mindset that the laity could and actually had elected a true pope. I believed with all my heart and mind at that time that this is what God wanted, but I was misinformed and misled, not to mention sadly deluded. Once I realized that what I had done was not only contrary to God\u2019s will but opposed to Catholic belief, I began re-evaluating my thinking and renewed my study of the faith. I started with the appointment of St. Peter by Christ to head the Church \u2014 the Vatican Council definitions. I never tire of this subject and until we once again are blessed with a true pope, should that be in my lifetime, papal documents will continue to constitute a large part of my studies.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that the emphasis on Divine faith and the papacy has not always been apparent in what I write \u2014 it has. It is that these references have been scattered throughout different articles on this site when they should be in the forefront. The primary focus of betrayedcatholics should be to promote an understanding of the Church from a truly Christological and papal perspective, because unless that can be done then it will not be possible to explain what really happened to the Church and how it came to pass. In order to understand the importance of Divine faith, which must be first and foremost in our minds even before we begin an examination of the papacy, please see the site article on this subject at\u00a0\/articles<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This is a must read.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once divine faith\u2019s pre-eminence concerning belief is fully understood, we must then focus on the necessity of relying entirely on the decrees of the Roman Pontiffs that officially explain and define Christ\u2019s teachings, also those papal teachings which bind us in disciplinary and moral matters. Nearly 150 years ago, Henry Cardinal Manning, in his \u201cThe Vatican Decrees and Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance\u201d described in detail the method I intend to use here. He wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cTo Peter alone first was given the plenitude of jurisdiction and infallible authority. Afterwards the gift of the Holy Ghost was shared with him by all the Apostles. From him and through him, therefore, all began.\u00a0For which cause a clear and precise conception of His Primacy and privilege is necessary to a clear and precise conception of the Church<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0Unless it be first distinctly apprehended, the doctrine of the Church will always be proportionately obscure. The doctrine of the Church does not determine the doctrine of the Primacy, but<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0the doctrine of the primacy does precisely determine the doctrine of the Church<\/em><\/strong>. In beginning, therefore, with the Head, the Council has followed our Lord\u2019s example, both in teaching and in fact; and in this will be found one of the causes of the singular and luminous precision with which the Council of the Vatican has, in one brief Constitution, excluded the well-known errors on the Primacy and Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff.\u201d Notice that it is Christ who gave Peter his infallibility and supreme jurisdiction, as recorded in the Gospels and defined by the Church.<\/p>\n

If the infallible teaching of the Vatican Council is rightly studied and understood, many Traditionalist errors will be exposed. For these errors deny the truth of Holy Scripture as defined by the Church. They are:<\/p>\n