John Zmirak Exults in Rejecting the Roman Catechism!

A few months ago, Mr Zmirak published an essay on The Stream entitled I’ve Been Exposed as a ‘Satanic Liberal.’ Whoopsies! The header to the article reads, 'Catholic Sharia Integralists say the quiet part out loud about America, Protestants, and freedom'.

Since The Stream does not accept comments this is what I would have commented if it did.

Leaving aside the gratuitous slur that those of us who actually adhere to the Social Doctrine of the Church are 'Catholic Sharia Integralists', I want to concentrate on the opening of the essay in which he writes,

I’d like to thank the key organ of Catholic Integralism, The Josias, for doing exactly what I’d hoped to provoke such Integralists to do. That is to finally man up regarding their ideology and say the quiet part out loud.

In a recent post, Alan Fimister blurted out what authors Scott Hahn and Brandon McGinley would only whisper in their recent book, Right and Just. Integralists claim that Catholic bishops have absolute jurisdiction over every baptized human being in their dioceses. They have the right to imprison them for heresy, close down Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches, censor “heretical” books, and ensure that every baptized child is educated as a Catholic. Now it might not be “prudent” to insist on that power at any given moment.

He says that he wanted to 'provoke' integralists to 'claim that Catholic bishops have absolute jurisdiction over every baptized human being in their dioceses'.

I am not sure why he should be eager to provoke integralists into proclaiming the Catholic Faith as defined in the Roman Catechism, otherwise known as the Catechism of the Council of Trent, promulgated in 1566 by Pope St Pius V.

To explain, here is what the Roman Catechism says about this horrible statement made by Dr Fimister in his Josias essay (my emphasis):

Those Who Are Not Members Of The Church

Hence there are but three classes of persons excluded from the Church's pale: infidels, heretics and schismatics, and excommunicated persons. Infidels are outside the Church because they never belonged to, and never knew the Church, and were never made partakers of any of her Sacraments. Heretics and schismatics are excluded from the Church, because they have separated from her and belong to her only as deserters belong to the army from which they have deserted. It is not, however, to be denied that they are still subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, inasmuch as they may be called before her tribunals, punished and anathematised. Finally, excommunicated persons are not members of the Church, because they have been cut off by her sentence from the number of her children and belong not to her communion until they repent.

But with regard to the rest, however wicked and evil they may be, it is certain that they still belong to the Church: Of this the faithful are frequently to be reminded, in order to be convinced that, were even the lives of her ministers debased by crime, they are still within the Church, and therefore lose nothing of their power.

In other words, the Roman Catechism makes the exact claim that Mr Zmirak attacks integralists for making. 

He then twists himself into a pretzel trying to 'prove' that the Catechism is wrong. He says,  'Most chillingly for Catholics, Fimister asserts that the text of Vatican II’s much-celebrated text affirming religious liberty, Dignitatis Humanae, was in fact willfully dishonest propaganda'. He then goes on to quote Dignitatis Humanae,

2. This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.

The council further declares that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself.(2) This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become a civil right.

In quoting DH he conveniently omits this previous statement,

Therefore it (the Council) leaves  untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ. [i.e. the very integralist doctrine he is attacking]

 So, John, which is it to be? The Catholicism of the Roman Catechism, left 'untouched' by Vatican II, or your own religion that is comfortable with the American Republic?