POPE-AUDIENCE Feb-9-2011 (460 words) With photos. xxxi
Defend doctrine, but don't attack others, pope says at audience
 Pope Benedict XVI acknowledges pilgrims during his general audience in Paul VI hall at the Vatican Feb. 9. (CNS/Paul Haring) |
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Even in the midst of the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, St. Peter Canisius knew how to defend Catholic doctrine without launching personal attacks on those who disagreed, Pope Benedict XVI said.
St. Peter, a 15th-century Jesuit sent on mission to Germany, knew how to "harmoniously combine fidelity to dogmatic principles with the respect due to each person," the pope said Feb. 9 at his weekly general audience.
The pope was beginning a series of audience talks about "doctors of the church," who are theologians and saints who made important contributions to Catholic understanding of theology.
In St. Peter Canisius' own time, more than 200 editions of his catechisms were published, the pope said, and they were so popular in Germany for so long that up until "my father's generation people called a catechism simply a 'Canisius.'"
More from the Antichrist at this link.
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GJ - Catechisms matter. I use plain old Luther's Small Catechism. The old WELS Gausewitz catechism did NOT have UOJ in it, but taught justification by faith. The Kuske Catechism and the Conference of Pussycats This We Believe made UOJ canonical.
The old German LCMS catechism did NOT have UOJ in it. Knapp's double justification scheme was taught by Walther, but it did not find official documentation until the Brief Statement of 1932 (F. Pieper, Walther's chosen disciple).
The Muhlenberg tradition (ULCA, LCA, roughly half of ELCA) taught justification by faith and the efficacy of the Word in the Means of Grace, until the unionistic modernists took control of the seminaries.
