Did the Council of Trent Contradict the Second Council of Orange?

Editor's note:
Here is an excellent article comparing the Council Trent with the Second Council of Orange. Trent was an ecumenical council calling all the bishops of the Church to attend or with representatives and held as binding on all Catholics. The Second Council of Orange was a local council, but received papal approval by Pope Felix IV, making them binding on the Faithful.

Many Calvinists think the Second Council of Orange approved of their theology. This article explains how this is incorrect.

Just as a helpful note on "actual grace" or "helping grace" and "sanctifying grace":

In Christian theology, "actual grace" or "helping grace" and "sanctifying grace" are distinct concepts.

"Actual grace" or "helping grace" refers to the temporary assistance given by God to help a person to perform a specific good action or avoid a specific evil action. This type of grace is said to be "actual" because it refers to God's grace accepted by a person to help him to act according to His will, man is always free to reject such graces.

On the other hand, "sanctifying grace" refers to the state of grace in which a person is placed when they receive God's forgiveness for all their sins and are reconciled into Him in Baptism. This type of grace is said to be "sanctifying" because it transforms a person to be holy, remitting all sin, and transforming them from a state of sinfulness to a state of righteousness and making him or her an adopted child of God and incorporates one into the Mystical Body of Christ-- the Church.

While actual grace is temporary and specific to a particular situation or action; it is available before and after justification. Sanctifying grace (justification) is transformative, changing the very nature of the person into a child of God. Sanctifying grace can be lost by mortal sin (and regained through the sacrament of confession) but being a child of God can never be lost the soul is marked or sealed and this is permanent:
Ephesians 1:13
"having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of the promise"

In short, actual grace is a temporary assistance to help a person act in accordance with God's will, while sanctifying grace is a transformation that makes a person holy and righteous.
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From:
calledtocommunion.com

by Bryan Cross

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John Hendryx is a PCA member who studied at Reformed Theological Seminary and owns and edits Monergism.com, a well known Reformed website and online Reformed library and bookstore. He has posted an article claiming that the sixth session of the Council of Trent (AD 1547) is at odds with the Second Council of Orange (AD 529). Because the acts of the Second Council of Orange were approved by Pope Boniface II on January 25, in AD 531, if Hendryx’s claims were true, this would imply that at the Council of Trent the Magisterium of the Church rejected soteriological doctrines it had previously affirmed over a thousand years earlier, and would thereby strengthen the Reformed claim to have preserved the authentic soteriology of the early Church. Here I show two things: first, that the Tridentine canons Hendryx thinks are contrary to the doctrine promulgated by the Second Council of Orange are not only entirely compatible with the teaching of Orange but in full continuity with it, and second, that in multiple ways Reformed theology deviates from the soteriological doctrines taught at the Second Council of Orange.

Interior of the Cathedral at Orange, France

Hendryx quotes the following three canons from the Second Council of Orange.

CANON 5. If anyone says that not only the increase of faith but also its beginning and the very desire for faith, by which we believe in Him who justifies the ungodly and comes to the regeneration of holy baptism — if anyone says that this belongs to us by nature and not by a gift of grace, that is, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit amending our will and turning it from unbelief to faith and from godlessness to godliness, it is proof that he is opposed to the teaching of the Apostles, for blessed Paul says, “And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). And again, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). For those who state that the faith by which we believe in God is natural make all who are separated from the Church of Christ by definition in some measure believers.

Deposit of the Faith: "Catechism in a Year" by Fr. Mike Schmitz

We live in troubled times. We don't have a good pope.

Pope Francis frankly is doing a very bad job as pope. He has entertained pro-abortion politicians, like Nancy Pelosi, with no correction...etc... the list is long. He has recently changed the teaching on the death penalty in the Catechism. But a catechism is not an official use of Papal Infallibility. Catechisms are summaries of the Faith that also contain theological opinions of their times, and can be inaccurate.

As pointed out in the introduction of the classic catechism of the council of Trent:

Catechism of the Council of Trent- Fifteenth printing, TAN Books, Introduction XXXVI:
“Official documents have occasionally been issued by Popes to explain certain points of Catholic teaching to individuals, or to local Christian communities; whereas the Roman Catechism comprises practically the whole body of Christian doctrine, and is addressed to the whole Church. Its teaching is not infallible; but it holds a place between approved catechisms and what is de fide.”

Catechism can be corrected.

Sometimes the corrections are to clarify in support Sacred Tradition, but in the case of Pope Francis, he is seems to obfuscate the issues.  In any case, he has changed the new Catechism to make the death penalty "inadmissible" . This has opened a can of worms.

Is he saying that the Old Testament's use of the death penalty was immoral? I don't think so. But we have yet to have a full clarification of what he exactly means, and its connotations to the history of the issue.

The Catechism is not some kind of Super Dogma. It is to be taken as a whole, as a sure norm, but there may be  some room for improvement.

In his book Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Cardinal Ratzinger ( later Pope Benedict XVI) wrote on the authority of the Catechism :

"This brings us to the question already mentioned before, regarding the authority of the Catechism. In order to find the answer, let us first consider a bit more closely its juridical character. We could express it in this way: analogously to the new Code of Canon Law, the Catechism is de facto a collegial work; canonically, it falls under the special jurisdiction of the Pope, inasmuch as it was authorized for the whole Christian world by the Holy Father in virtue of the supreme teaching authority invested in him. . . .

This does not mean that the catechism is a sort of super-dogma, as its opponents would like to insinuate in order to cast suspicion on its as a danger to the liberty of theology. What significance the Catechism really holds for the common exercise of teaching in the Church may be learned by reading the Apostolic Constitution Fidei depositum, with which the Pope promulgated it on October 11, 1992--exactly thirty years after the opening of the Second Vatican Council: "I acknowledge it [the Catechism] as a valid and legitimate tool in the service of ecclesiastical communion, as a sure norm for instruction in the faith."

The individual doctrine which the Catechism presents receive no other weight than that which they already possess. The weight of the Catechism itself lies in the whole. Since it transmits what the Church teaches, whoever rejects it as a whole separates himself beyond question from the faith and teaching of the Church" [pp. 25-27].

So, the Catechism  contains teachings of the Church without elevating them to a doctrinal status nor above what they already have. So, other authoritative sources are needed to establish the doctrinal weight of any particular teaching in the Catechism.

This brings us to Fr. Schmitz' new project. I think this podcast can do a lot of good. I don't mean to denigrate in my above comments the new  Catechism, but we must put it in its truthful place. While important and extremely useful, it is not infallible nor Holy Scripture.

Fr. Mike Schmitz is famous for his "Bible in a Year" podcast. It was number one podcast in the world last year.

I'm looking forward to is a new podcast called "Catechism in a Year." It will start in January 2023.

Deposit of the Faith: Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant

 

Deposit of the Faith: How to Read the Psalms

 

Deposit of the Faith: Introduction to Patristic Exegesis

Deposit of the Faith: History of English Bible Translations

 

Deposit of the Faith: The Unity of the Church

 

Deposit of the Faith: The "Brothers" of Jesus?

In my series on the "Founding of Christendom," I have had to address those called "the brothers of the Lord." They are never referred to as children of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but brothers of Jesus. This has been a confusion for many of our Protestant separated brethren

It wasn't the place to go into the details in the history series. But I would like to address it here. 

from: catholic productions
Did Jesus Have Brothers? A Fresh Look at the Evidence

By Dr. Brant Pitre March 01, 2016

Here is Transcript of the video above

Deposit of the Faith: Why Do We Have to Go to Mass Every Sunday?

 

Deposit of the Faith,: Supernatural Life and Death

 

Deposit of the Faith: Spirtual but not Religious ?

 

Deposit of the Faith: The Tranfiguration of Our Lord

 

This is a great feast day in the Catholic and  Orthodox Church. 

Icon of the Feast

In the icon of the Feast of the Transfiguration, Christ is the central figure (1.), appearing in a dominant position within a circular mandorla. He is clearly at the visual and theological center of the icon. His right hand is raised in blessing, and his left hand contains a scroll. The mandorla with its brilliant colors of white, gold, and blue represent the divine glory and light. The halo around the head of Christ is inscribed with the Greek words O on, meaning "The One Who is".

Deposit of the Faith: Did Jesus Allow Divorce?

The Pharisees questioned Jesus when he taught on the permanence of marriage:

Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?” He said to them, “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” (Matt. 19:3–8; cf. Mark 10:2–9; Luke 16:18)

Thus, Jesus re-established the permanence of marriage among his followers. He raised Christian marriage to the level of a sacrament and taught that sacramental marriages cannot be dissolved through divorce. This was part of Jesus’ fulfillment (or perfection) of the Old Law of which he said, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them”(Matt. 5:17).

An Exception to the Rule?

Some Christians hold that Jesus made an exception to the rule of permanence of marriage when he said that “whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery” (Matt. 19:9; cf. Matt. 5:31–32.) The word translated as “unchastity” here is the Greek word porneia (from which the word pornography is derived) and its literal meaning is debated among Scripture scholars. Full treatment of this topic is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say here the Catholic translation of the so-called "exceptive clauses" of Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 as "unless the marriage is unlawful" (i.e., invalid) is a good translation, although it is not a faithful word-for-word translation.

The word used in Greek is πορνεία (porneia), which means anything related to prostitutes and sexual immorality (wantonness, uncleanliness, impure thoughts, immodesty, bestiality, incest, etc.)  However, in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9, πορνεία takes on a restricted meaning of incest or anything else that impedes the validity of any marriage (so-called diriment impediments).

Jesus’ and Paul’s constant and forceful teaching about the permanence of sacramental marriage as recorded elsewhere in Scripture makes it clear that Jesus was not making an exception in the case of valid, sacramental marriages. The constant teaching of the Catholic Church attests to this as well.

Deposit of the Faith: The Ancient Jewish Roots of the Catholic Church - John Bergsma

 Here is an excellent interview about the continuity of the Faith from ancient Judaism to the Catholic Church. It is choppy at parts because of  a bad connection, be patient; it worth listening to.

Taken from the you tube channel:

Intellectual Conservatism