Pope Francis waves as he arrives in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican for his weekly general audience on Sept. 20, 2017.
A total of 62 clergy, theologians and other academics, though no cardinals and only one bishop from a break-away traditionalist society, have signed a letter accusing Pope Francis of heresy for his document 'Amoris Laetitia' and its cautious opening to Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, with organizers saying the last time such a "correction" happened was in 1333 under Pope John XXII.
VATICAN CITY Several dozen tradition-minded Roman Catholic theologians, priests and academics have formally accused Pope Francis of spreading heresy with his 2016 opening to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics.
In a 25-page letter delivered to Francis last month and provided Saturday to The Associated Press, the 62 signatories issued a filial correction to the pope a measure they said hadnt been employed since the 14th century.
The letter accused Francis of propagating seven heretical positions concerning marriage, moral life and the sacraments with his 2016 document The Joy of Love and subsequent acts, words and omissions.
The initiative follows another formal act by four tradition-minded cardinals who wrote Francis last year asking him to clarify a series of questions, or dubbia, they had about his 2016 text.
Francis hasnt responded to either initiative. The Vatican spokesman didnt immediately respond to an email seeking comment late Saturday.
None of the signatories of the new letter is a cardinal, and the highest-ranking churchman listed is actually someone whose organization has no legal standing in the Catholic Church: Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior of the breakaway Society of St. Pius X. Several other signatories are well-known admirers of the old Latin Mass which Fellays followers celebrate.
Also among the signatories are a handful of well-known Catholic figures from around the world, including Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, a former president of the Institute for the Works of Religion, the so-called Vatican bank, and Italian Monsignor Antonio Livi, former dean of the philosophy faculty at Romes Pontifical Lateran University.
Organizers said the initiative was nevertheless significant and a sign of the concern among a certain contingent of academics and pastors over Franciss positions, which they said posed a danger to the faithful.
There is a role for theologians and philosophers to explain to people the churchs teaching, to correct misunderstandings, said Joseph Shaw, a spokesman for the initiative, signatory of the correction and senior research fellow in moral philosophy at Oxford University.
When it was released in April 2016, The Joy of Love immediately sparked controversy because it opened the door to letting civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion. Church teaching holds that unless these Catholics obtain an annulment a church decree that their first marriage was invalid they cannot receive the sacraments, since they are seen as committing adultery.
Francis didnt create a church-wide pass for these Catholics, but suggested in vague terms and strategically placed footnotes that bishops and priests could do so on a case-by-case basis after accompanying them on a spiritual journey of discernment. Subsequent comments and writings have made clear he intended such wiggle room, part of his belief that Gods mercy extends in particular to sinners and that the Eucharist isnt a prize for the perfect but nourishment for the weak.
Shaw said none of the four cardinals involved in the initial dubbia letter, nor any other cardinal, was involved in the filial correction.
Organizers said the last time such a correction was issued was to Pope John XXII in 1333 for errors which he later recanted. The letter and accompanying materials may be found here.
Crux Staff also contributed to this report.

Pope Francis talks to an infant during his visit to the Santa Lucia Foundation in Rome, Friday, Sept. 22, 2017. (Credit: L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP.)
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Looks like someone at the Vatican doesn't like heretics, and gave Francis a black eye. Maybe Benny 16, the shadow Pope?
#1: A K A Stone To: hondo68 (#0)
Here are a few of many many.
Bible verses about worshipping Mary
Bowing down and praying is a form of worship. Catholics bow down and pray to statues and images of Mary which Scripture clearly forbids. They worship Mary more than they do Jesus Christ. Nowhere in Scripture does it say Mary will be a mediator.
15 Important Bible Verses About Worshipping Mary
Nowhere in Scripture does it say to pray and give thanks and honor to a man- made carving or a man-made painting. Nowhere in Scripture does it tell you to ask Mary to pray for you.
If I drew a woman on a piece of paper and called it Mary would you go in front of that paper, bow down, and start praying to it? You cant worship God through created things. Jesus Christ is eternal and Mary is not the mother of God because God has no mother.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Mary was not in the beginning, but Catholicism turns her into a goddess. Mary was a sinner just like I am a sinner, just like you are a sinner, just like Paul was a sinner, just like Joseph was a sinner, etc.
Jesus Christ came to die for the sins of the world including Mary and everyone including Mary has to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior to get into Heaven.
All the worship, all the praise, all the honor belongs to God and He will not let anyone take away from the glory that is rightfully His. God will not be mocked. The Catholic Church is sending many people to hell. There will be no justifying sin and clear in your face biblical teachings when in front of God.
Pope John Paul II clearly prays to Mary
Together we lift our confident and sorrowful petition to you.
Hear the cry of the pain of victims of war and so many forms of violence that bloody the earth.
Clear away the darkness of sorrow and worry, of hate and vengeance.
Open up our minds and hearts to faith and forgiveness!
Catholics clearly worship statues and images of Mary.
1. Exodus 20:4-5 You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.
2. Isaiah 42:8 I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.
One mediator and that is Christ.
3. 1 Timothy 2:5 For, There is one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanitythe man Christ Jesus.
4. Hebrews 7:25 Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.
5. John 14:13 And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
The angels remind us to worship God and no one else.
6. Revelation 19:10 Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
Mary was a sinner.
7. Ecclesiastes 7:20 Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
The last days: Many will do all they can to justify rebellion and clear biblical teachings.
8. 2 Timothy 4:3-4 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
9. 1 Timothy 4:1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.
Idolatry
10. Psalm 115:1-8 Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! Why should the nations say, Where is their God? Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.
11. Jeremiah 7:18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
12. 1 John 5:21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
Reminders
13. Romans 1:25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
14. 1 John 4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
15. Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.
biblereasons.com/worshipping-mary/
A K A Stone posted on 2017-09-24 20:59:41 Reply Private Reply
#2: Stoner To: hondo68 (#0)
Wonder what that is about, and what the story is ?
Stoner posted on 2017-09-24 21:01:39 Reply Private Reply
#3: Tooconservative To: hondo68 (#0)
I think we all know that LifeSite will take a very strong pro-life view and it is very traditionally Catholic. Perhaps more Catholic than the pope, or at least more Catholic than Pope Frank is. And that is the gist of this controversy, it seems.
LifeSiteNews: 62 scholars correct Pope Francis for propagating heresies
Tooconservative posted on 2017-09-24 21:29:40 Reply Private Reply
#4: Hondo68 To: A K A Stone (#1)
Hondo68 posted on 2017-09-24 21:52:29 Reply Private Reply
#5: Hondo68 To: Tooconservative (#3)
Ah, they capitalized Pope in their headline! It seemed odd to me that the Knights of Columbus article I posted didn't when referring to Francis. I don't think they like him.
Hondo68 posted on 2017-09-24 22:12:12 Reply Private Reply
#6: A K A Stone To: hondo68 (#4)
A K A Stone posted on 2017-09-24 22:20:15 Reply Private Reply
#7: Tooconservative To: hondo68 (#5)
"Sure the pope is infallible but he's just wrong about ________."
"Sure the pope is infallible but he's pandering to the media and entirely misrepresenting the church that he is the head of and whose power he embodies personally."
Et cetera.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-09-24 22:45:16 Reply Private Reply
#8: Hondo68 To: A K A Stone (#6)
Can you explain why you frequently vote for the homo Republicans like Mitt and Donny Trumpkin?
Make America Great for Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgenders
Hondo68 posted on 2017-09-24 22:46:21 Reply Private Reply
#9: A K A Stone To: hondo68 (#8)
A K A Stone posted on 2017-09-24 22:52:04 Reply Private Reply
#10: paraclete To: hondo68 (#8)
why, it is already a poofters paradise
paraclete posted on 2017-09-24 22:54:33 Reply Private Reply
#11: rlk To: hondo68 (#0)
rlk posted on 2017-09-24 23:14:58 Reply Private Reply
#12: redleghunter To: Tooconservative (#3)
What Protestants!
redleghunter posted on 2017-09-25 00:14:03 Reply Private Reply
#13: Tooconservative To: redleghunter (#12)
You have to earn that title, starting with nailing your theses to the door of his palace(s).
Tooconservative posted on 2017-09-25 00:48:29 Reply Private Reply
#14: paraclete To: redleghunter (#12)
paraclete posted on 2017-09-25 04:20:59 Reply Private Reply
#15: sneakypete To: redleghunter (#12)
LOL!
sneakypete posted on 2017-09-25 07:30:47 Reply Private Reply
#16: IbJensen To: hondo68 (#0)
'Nothing is a sin as long as it makes us feel good about ourselves!'
IbJensen posted on 2017-09-25 07:49:26 Reply Private Reply
#17: redleghunter To: IbJensen (#16)
Must have missed this warning in Paul's pastoral epistles.
"Timothy and Titus flee Novus Ordo altars!....they are an abomination!"
Yes still can't find that.
redleghunter posted on 2017-09-25 11:27:37 Reply Private Reply
#18: IbJensen To: redleghunter (#17)
In his most terrible nightmares Paul could never foresee what's happened to Christ's Church on earth.
IbJensen posted on 2017-09-25 19:21:24 Reply Private Reply
#19: Hondo68 To: paraclete, evangelical prot muhammad (#14)
The first and still the most popular Evangelical Protestant was Muhammad.
Virtually every time President Trump tweets or appears on Fox News, thousands convert to the protestant denomination of Islam. Evangelical Wahhabi Don is winnnnning!
Hondo68 posted on 2017-09-27 13:30:38 Reply Private Reply
#20: redleghunter To: Tooconservative (#7)
Life Site updated their page and states since the letter went public the number of signers doubled.
Signatories Double
Looks like they may have some more before Reformation Day. :-)
redleghunter posted on 2017-09-27 21:16:40 Reply Private Reply
#21: Tooconservative To: redleghunter (#20)
I'm sure they all swore their devotion to the pope despite profoundly disagreeing with what he's doing. They really dig all that groveling. It's a good reminder of what life would have been like living under a monarch.
They did submit the letter in August and kept quiet. He had every chance to respond to them and make some change and they would have desisted most likely. Instead, he ignored them entirely and kept on flaunting his loopy ideas and pandering to libmedia at the expense of highly established Catholic dogma. No one can say he wasn't warned and given a chance to alter his conduct to reflect the actual teachings of Rome. It's not as though a pope can claim ignorance of what Rome has adhered to for over 1500 years on some of these issues. No Catholic can possibly be that ignorant.
I have an idea. Maybe they could send Pope Frank to catechism class since he's struggling with the elementary concepts of Catholic beliefs.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-09-27 23:35:17 Reply Private Reply
#22: redleghunter To: Tooconservative (#21)
Perhaps he forgot his infallibility is conditional. :-)
redleghunter posted on 2017-09-28 00:31:03 Reply Private Reply
#23: redleghunter To: IbJensen (#18)
This is what I meant. In three very detailed pastoral epistles, Paul never addressed to Timothy nor Titus the dimensions and rules for altars. Such things were absent from the New Testament church and faith. Why Christians today get wrapped up in controversy about such things is mind numbing.
redleghunter posted on 2017-09-28 17:30:08 Reply Private Reply
#24: redleghunter To: hondo68 (#19)
Wow how can you defend such a position. You can't and I don't expect you to.
redleghunter posted on 2017-09-28 17:31:11 Reply Private Reply
#25: Hondo68 To: redleghunter, turned from Jerusalem, protestant (#24)
This was the defining moment when Muhammad became an evangelical protestant .
Hondo68 posted on 2017-09-28 18:07:58 Reply Private Reply
#26: redleghunter To: hondo68 (#25)
Muhammad was a pagan before his satanic visions.
How you get "evangelical" from that is quite puzzling.
redleghunter posted on 2017-09-28 23:00:15 Reply Private Reply
#27: Hondo68 To: redleghunter, reformation (#26)
You don't get the large number of converts that Mo made during his lifetime, by sitting on the Catholic couch with Newt and Nancy. Muhammad was very active in evangelical preaching up of his new protestant cult.
The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed
Mohammedanism was a heresy: that is the essential point to grasp before going any further. It began as a heresy, not as a new religion. It was not a pagan contrast with the Church; it was not an alien enemy. It was a perversion of Christian doctrine. It vitality and endurance soon gave it the appearance of a new religion, but those who were contemporary with its rise saw it for what it was_not a denial, but an adaptation and a misuse, of the Christian thing. It differed from most (not from all) heresies in this, that it did not arise within the bounds of the Christian Church. The chief heresiarch, Mohammed himself, was not, like most heresiarchs, a man of Catholic birth and doctrine to begin with. He sprang from pagans. But that which he taught was in the main Catholic doctrine, oversimplified. It was the great Catholic world_on the frontiers of which he lived, whose influence was all around him and whose territories he had known by travel_which inspired his convictions. He came of, and mixed with, the degraded idolaters of the Arabian wilderness, the conquest of which had never seemed worth the Romans' while.
He took over very few of those old pagan ideas which might have been native to him from his descent. On the contrary, he preached and insisted upon a whole group of ideas which were peculiar to the Catholic Church and distinguished it from the paganism which it had conquered in the Greek and Roman civilization. Thus the very foundation of his teaching was that prime Catholic doctrine, the unity and omnipotence of God. The attributes of God he also took over in the main from Catholic doctrine: the personal nature, the all-goodness, the timelessness, the providence of God, His creative power as the origin of all things, and His sustenance of all things by His power alone. The world of good spirits and angels and of evil spirits in rebellion against God was a part of the teaching, with a chief evil spirit, such as Christendom had recognized. Mohammed preached with insistence that prime Catholic doctrine, on the human side_the immortality of the soul and its responsibility for actions in this life, coupled with the consequent doctrine of punishment and reward after death.
If anyone sets down those points that orthodox Catholicism has in common with Mohammedanism, and those points only, one might imagine if one went no further that there should have been no cause of quarrel. Mohammed would almost seem in this aspect to be a sort of missionary, preaching and spreading by the energy of his character the chief and fundamental doctrines of the Catholic Church among those who had hitherto been degraded pagans of the Desert. He gave to Our Lord the highest reverence, and to Our Lady also, for that matter. On the day of judgment (another Catholic idea which he taught) it was Our Lord, according to Mohammed, who would be the judge of mankind, not he, Mohammed. The Mother of Christ, Our Lady, "the Lady Miriam" was ever for him the first of womankind. His followers even got from the early fathers some vague hint of her Immaculate Conception.[1]
But the central point where this new heresy struck home with a mortal blow against Catholic tradition was a full denial of the Incarnation.
Mohammed did not merely take the first steps toward that denial, as the Arians and their followers had done; he advanced a clear affirmation, full and complete, against the whole doctrine of an incarnate God. He taught that Our Lord was the greatest of all the prophets, but still only a prophet: a man like other men. He eliminated the Trinity altogether.
With that denial of the Incarnation went the whole sacramental structure. He refused to know anything of the Eucharist, with its Real Presence; he stopped the sacrifice of the Mass, and therefore the institution of a special priesthood. In other words, he, like so many other lesser heresiarchs, founded his heresy on simplification.
Catholic doctrine was true (he seemed to say), but it had become encumbered with false accretions; it had become complicated by needless man-made additions, including the idea that its founder was Divine, and the growth of a parasitical caste of priests who battened on a late, imagined, system of Sacraments which they alone could administer. All those corrupt accretions must be swept away.
There is thus a very great deal in common between the enthusiasm with which Mohammed's teaching attacked the priesthood, the Mass and the sacraments, and the enthusiasm with which Calvinism, the central motive force of the Reformation, did the same. As we all know, the new teaching relaxed the marriage laws_but in practice this did not affect the mass of his followers who still remained monogamous. It made divorce as easy as possible, for the sacramental idea of marriage disappeared. It insisted upon the equality of men, and it necessarily had that further factor in which it resembled Calvinism_the sense of predestination, the sense of fate; of what the followers of John Knox were always calling "the immutable decrees of God."
Mohammed's teaching never developed among the mass of his followers, or in his own mind, a detailed theology. He was content to accept all that appealed to him in the Catholic scheme and to reject all that seemed to him, and to so many others of his time, too complicated or mysterious to be true. Simplicity was the note of the whole affair; and since all heresies draw their strength from some true doctrine, Mohammedanism drew its strength from the true Catholic doctrines which it retained: the equality of all men before God_"All true believers are brothers." It zealously preached and throve on the paramount claims of justice, social and economic.
Now, why did this new, simple, energetic heresy have its sudden overwhelming success?
One answer is that it won battles. It won them at once, as we shall see when we come to the history of the thing. But winning battles could not have made Islam permanent or even strong had there not been a state of affairs awaiting some such message and ready to accept it.
Both in the world of Hither Asia and in the Graeco-Roman world of the Mediterranean, but especially in the latter, society had fallen, much as our society has today, into a tangle wherein the bulk of men were disappointed and angry and seeking for a solution to the whole group of social strains. There was indebtedness everywhere; the power of money and consequent usury. There was slavery everywhere. Society reposed upon it, as ours reposes upon wage slavery today. There was weariness and discontent with theological debate, which, for all its intensity, had grown out of touch with the masses. There lay upon the freemen, already tortured with debt, a heavy burden of imperial taxation; and there was the irritant of existing central government interfering with men's lives; there was the tyranny of the lawyers and their charges.
To all this Islam came as a vast relief and a solution of strain. The slave who admitted that Mohammed was the prophet of God and that the new teaching had, therefore, divine authority, ceased to be a slave. The slave who adopted Islam was henceforward free. The debtor who "accepted" was rid of his debts. Usury was forbidden. The small farmer was relieved not only of his debts but of his crushing taxation. Above all, justice could be had without buying it from lawyers. . . . All this in theory. The practice was not nearly so complete. Many a convert remained a debtor, many were still slaves. But wherever Islam conquered there was a new spirit of freedom and relaxation.
It was the combination of all these things, the attractive simplicity of the doctrine, the sweeping away of clerical and imperial discipline, the huge immediate practical advantage of freedom for the slave and riddance of anxiety for the debtor, the crowning advantage of free justice under few and simple new laws easily understood_that formed the driving force behind the astonishing Mohammedan social victory. The courts were everywhere accessible to all without payment and giving verdicts which all could understand. The Mohammedan movement was essentially a "Reformation," and we can discover numerous affinities between Islam and the Protestant Reformers_on Images, on the Mass, on Celibacy, etc.
Hondo68 posted on 2017-09-29 00:48:17 Reply Private Reply
#28: sneakypete To: hondo68 (#19)
You are genuinely insane. There is no way people that know you well haven't been telling you your head is a couple of quarts low.
Listen to them.
sneakypete posted on 2017-09-29 01:08:00 Reply Private Reply
#29: redleghunter To: hondo68 (#27)
However, now that I know what you were beating around the bush about...you don't condemn modern day Evangelicals but the 1st Century Evangelicals. The NT church did not sit around waiting for people to darken a church door. They went out and preached the Gospel and some lost their lives doing so.
redleghunter posted on 2017-09-29 15:55:52 Reply Private Reply
#30: redleghunter To: sneakypete (#28)
Pete, when you are right, you are so right. :)
redleghunter posted on 2017-09-29 15:57:25 Reply Private Reply
#31: A K A Stone To: redleghunter (#29)
A K A Stone posted on 2017-09-29 16:33:40 Reply Private Reply
#32: Hondo68 To: redleghunter, 5th century infamous evangelical protestant (#29)
Muhammad was 5th century, and the first protestant denomination that has withstood the test of time. No doubt there were other heritics that are virtually unknown.
If Mo were operating today, he'd probably have a mega church in Houston like Joel Osteen. ;)
Hondo68 posted on 2017-09-29 16:46:19 Reply Private Reply
#33: redleghunter To: A K A Stone, Bushbot666 (#31)
http://revelation12.ca/?p=1992
Then again the source just may be as reliable as Handos claims. So take it for what it is.
redleghunter posted on 2017-09-29 21:26:25 Reply Private Reply
#34: paraclete To: hondo68 (#19)
I suppose the Muslims have to counter the loss to Jesus somehow, but please understand Islam is not a christian heresy, it is a diabolical lie a deneil of Christ
paraclete posted on 2017-09-30 08:08:12 Reply Private Reply