Promoting heretics and their books - Siscoe and Salza

[Nazianzen]

This example has pure shock value, beyond nearly every other crime I have so far noticed in True or False Pope?

Siscoe and Salza, incredibly, write the following:

"According to Church historian and theologian Dollinger (writing under the pen name "Janus"), this comment was made while Pope Adrian was a Professor of Theology in Louvain prior to his election to the pontificate. Dollinger notes that the statement was well-known at the time since it was included in his principal work (see "The Pope and the Council," by "Janus," i.e., Johannes Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger), second edition (Rivingtons; London; Oxford; and Bambridge, 1869), p. 376. We should note that Dollinger denied the dogma of papal infallibility before and after it was defined. So while his historical research and facts may be of use, one should remain cautious with respect to the soundness of his judgement."

It is difficult to decide which aspect of this is to be condemned most emphatically – the description of a famous heretic as a "Church historian and theologian" (and he was a lousy historian even in academic terms), the positive reference to his book, which everybody (except them) knows is on the Index of Forbidden Books (How often do they read it?  How many excommunications have they incurred? Oh, none, of course, they are invincibly ignorant), or the open declaration that his "historical research and facts may be of use."  Perhaps somebody could advise them that recommending a book on the Index is also forbidden by Holy Mother Church?

I guess we should be grateful for small mercies, for at least they here admit what they implicitly deny in their text immediately prior to it when they quote "Adrian VI" yet again – which is that that quote was not by a pope at all, it was by a man who later became pope.

Of course, their open admission that they regard Dollinger as a reliable source of historical facts would explain their abuse of so many popes in history.  Here's a sample of Janus, Dollinger, which I found using Google:

"Those who wish to get a bird's-eye view of the extent to which the genuine tradition of Church authority was still overlaid and obliterated by the rubbish of later inventions and forgeries about 1563, when the Loci of Canus [Melchor Cano] appeared, must read the fifth book of his work. It is indeed still worse fifty years later in this part of Bellarmine's work. The difference is that Canus was honest in his belief, which cannot be said of Bellarmine." (The Pope and the Council, p. 288).

Nice fellow!  And does not the style remind one of another, more recent book?

Another book that is brought to mind by True or False Pope? is described by The Catholic Encyclopedia as follows:

"Through the ages no crime is too monstrous, no story too incredible, provided it furnish a means of blackening the memory of the occupants of Peter's Chair. It was the work, stigmatized by Canisius as opus pestilentissimum, that led Caesar Baronius to write his 'Annales Ecclessiastici', in twelve folio volumes (Rome, 1588-1607), covering the period from the birth of Christ to the year 1198. Such was its success that it completely superseded the work of the Centuriators, the principal value of which now is its use as a key to the historical arguments of Protestant controversial writers in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth century."  (And, of course, furnishing ideas and historical errors which defenders of current heretics can use against pre-V2 popes.)

We might come back to the Centuriators at a later date, for it just happens that those Protestant liars share a lot of ideas, and historical errors, with our friends Siscoe and Salza. 

[YeOldeFustilarians]

Related, I find it shocking how S&S and TOFP apologists seem to throw away all common sense when it comes to arguments from authority.  For a moment, let's just look at it from a perfectly natural and social point of view. 

Salza's a lawyer, and Siscoe is a businessman.  If Salza ran into some difficulty in a particular case, is he going to rush off to legalzoom.com and lurk the blogs there, or head over to r/legaladvice?  Or even worse, is he going to consult articles written by those who've been disbarred?  And then present himself in front of a judge, jury, or panel and make his argument, proudly citing the unprofessional sources from which it derives?

Is Siscoe, when planning some new capital venture, going to head over to about.com and type in "business?"  If he's considering some international partnership, is he just going to google "business laws in India?" 

Of course, both men will rely on the best authorities available.  Salza probably has a subscription to Lexis Nexis and a shelves filled with full volumes of The [insert region here] Law Review [Insert Date Range Here].  Siscoe probably subscribes to HBR and Gartner, or whatever professional trade journals that are peer-reviewed and keep up to date on the different theories of strategic advantage and regulations governing business practices.

Or any of the other posters around here, in whatever profession, if you learn your trade the same way you learn your faith, I'm a consultant for hire! 

But they don't do that, do they?  If I walked into Salza or Siscoe's office and passed myself off as an authority for law or business (which I'm neither, but I know enough to fake it for maybe thirty minutes, believe me) and made some type of pitch, they wouldn't suffer me for long.  They'd vet me, and they'd make sure that I was actually an authority on what I claimed to be.  They'd make sure that my interests and their interests TRULY aligned before going into business with me.

The last thing they'd do is just sit there, waiting for me to say exactly what they wanted to hear, and then hire me as soon as they heard it.  The last thing they'd do is focus on seven seconds of my pitch in a vacuum and make their decision based on that seven seconds, disregarding the other twenty nine minutes.  But that's what they do with their sources!

Why can't people apply the same diligence to learning and practicing the faith that they do to learning and practicing their trade?

[Nazianzen]

An idea of just how "Catholic" the "Church historian and theologian Dollinger" was in his thinking and writing, even before 1870, after which he came openly to admit that he had no respect for the magisterium.  This is an excerpt from his book, manifestly heretical, and even blasphemous.  Dollinger is writing about Our Lord in the Garden:

A passing wish came over Him that, if it were possible, this chalice of agony might pass from Him ; this greatest of all crimes be spared His people, and a pain be removed in which none could even distantly resemble Him. But the next instant, the clear returning consciousness of the irrevocable counsel of God triumphed in Him.   (Dollinger, The First Age of Christianity and the Church, first English Ed. 1866.)

I don't suggest that Dollinger realized that this was heretical at the time, but I do say that he was not a competent theologian.  He was undoubtedly many times more competent than Siscoe and Salza, and somewhat less competent than a well-trained high school catechist. 

[Nazianzen]

This quote from the Jesuit Bottalla is priceless, in our context:

Mr. Renouf, who is so full of admiration of the German Positive School represented by Dr. Dollinger, in which the Gallican principles which have been exiled from France find refuge, thinks himself in perfect security by the side of such a champion. He seems also to believe that, supported by the authority of so great a name, he can speak very dogmatically, and set at defiance all the theologians and historians in the world who have ever attempted to clear Pope Honorius and his letters from the charge of heresy. He treats them all in the most contemptuous manner, saying that they betray an utter ignorance of the real nature of the controversy.  (Paul Bottalla S.J. Pope Honorius Before the Tribunal of Reason and History, Burns and Oates, 1868.