The Catholic Church claims, and has pronounced on many occasions, the infallible truth that Christ both willed and established a hierarchical Church. Father Kenneth Baker, S.J., in his book entitled Fundamentals of Catholicism, Volume 3, notes how, "In the course of her long history, there have been many heretics and dissenters who have denied, in one way or another, the hierarchical constitution of the Church. Some have said that Jesus had no intention of establishing a visible Church with bishops, priests and sacred authority; for them, the Church is an internal, invisible reality of the heart that arises from the preaching of the Gospel and faith in Jesus. Others rejected the special priesthood and the hierarchy, and acknowledged only the general priesthood of all the faithful. Against them the Council of Trent solemnly declared: 'If anyone says that in the Catholic Church there is no divinely instituted hierarchy consisting of bishops, priests, and ministers: let him be anathema.'" (Fundamentals of Catholicism, Vol. III, p. 102, citing Canon 6 of the Council of Trent's Canons on the Sacrament of Order).
The word anathema comes from the Greek meaning hated or accursed. An anathema is an excommunication. Saint Paul employs this term to describe those who have separated themselves from the Christian community by sins such as teaching a false gospel [See for example Galatians 1].
Those who produce The "Catholic" Free Press [Diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts] have now separated themselves from the Church's communion by embracing the very notion that the Council of Trent anathematized: that the hierarchical constitution of the Church is not divinely instituted.
In an editorial entitled, "Winning friends and souls" [January 10, 2014 edition], the newspaper makes the claim that: "Over the centuries the Catholic Church has acquired a vertical and pyramidal power structure, with graduated layers of hierarchical status from top to bottom. Pope Francis' example makes it possible to say that that might not be right: that far from being the Church's defining characteristic, the very idea of a hierarchy of power is alien to the Gospel*, just as is the idea that all that power should be exclusively in the hands of elderly male clerics.."
The Catechism of the Catholic Church [which the "Catholic" Free Press apparently has little or no use for] refutes such nonsense: "The one mediator, Christ, established and ever sustains here on earth his holy Church...a society structured with hierarchical organs" (CCC, 771). And again: "Christ is himself the source of ministry in the Church. He instituted the Church. He gave her authority and mission, orientation and goal." (CCC, 874). And again: "When Christ instituted the Twelve, 'he constituted them in the form of a college or permanent assembly, at the head of which he placed Peter, chosen from among them.' Just as 'by the Lord's institution, St. Peter and the rest of the apostles constitute a single apostolic college, so in like fashion the Roman Pontiff, Peter's successor, and the bishops, the successors of the apostles, are related with and united to one another." (CCC, 880).
For the modernist, dogmas are merely tentative, provisional formulas which are the fruit of on-going religious experience and are as changeable as that experience itself. For such deluded souls, future followers of the Antichrist, authority in the Church does not originate from Christ Jesus but from the Collective Conscience. For such sons of Hell, the Church is not hierarchical but democratic.
The Man of Sin draws ever closer.
* Alien to the Gospel? The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15: 1-29) bears witness to a definite hierarchical, episcopal structure of government in the early Church. It was Saint Peter who presided over and issued the authoritative pronouncement (Acts 15: 7-11) and Saint James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, who issued a concurring concluding statement (Acts 15: 13-29).
Those who produce the "Catholic" Free Press should spend more time with Scripture.
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