Benedict XVI states that false religions should be valued; that Church teachings evolve; that things adopted by the authorities of the Catholic Church have been shown by history to be false

By Bro. Michael Dimond, O.S.B.
Read more of Benedict XVI’s Recent Heresies

Benedict XVI, Address to La Sapienza University in Rome, January 17, 2008: “... humanity’s wisdom – the wisdom of the great religious traditions – should be valued as a heritage that cannot be cast with impunity into the dust-bin of the history of ideas. Let us go back to our initial question. The Pope speaks as the representative of a community of believers in which a particular wisdom about life has evolved in the course of the centuries of its existence... Various things said by theologians in the course of history, or even adopted in practice by ecclesiastical authorities, have been shown by history to be false, and today make us feel ashamed.” (L’Osservatore Romano, January 23, 2008, pages 3-4.)

First, Benedict XVI states that different false religions’ religious traditions should be valued and “cannot be cast with impunity into the dust-bin of the history of ideas.” The Catholic Church teaches the opposite of Benedict XVI. It teaches that false religious traditions should not be valued and should be cast with impunity into the dust-bin of the history of ideas.

Second, he defines the Church as “a community of believers in which a particular wisdom about life evolved in the course of the centuries of its existence.” The teachings of the Church did not evolve over the centuries, but were delivered by Jesus Christ to St. Peter and the apostles. The body of Catholic teachings – the essential teachings that must be believed – are the same now as they were at the very beginning of the Church. Therefore, what Benedict XVI is teaching is simply the modernist heresy of the evolution of doctrine.

Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi Dominic Gregis (# 26), Sept. 8, 1907, On the doctrine of the Modernists:
"To the laws of evolution everything is subject - dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself, and the penalty of disobedience is death. The enunciation of this principle will not astonish anybody who bears in mind what the Modernists have had to say about each of these subjects."

Third, he says that things which were “adopted in practice by ecclesiastical authorities [by popes, etc.] have been shown by history to be false, and today make us feel ashamed.” Benedict XVI doesn’t go on to explain what specific teachings he says “have been shown in history to be false, and today make us feel ashamed.” Benedict XVI could be talking about any number of defined dogmas of the Church. Dogmas such as infant baptism being necessary for salvation, which he recently attempted to change, might be included in his statement. Nevertheless, this speech of Benedict XVI shows us once again that he is a heretic.

Benedict XVI’s Recent Heresies

The Heresies of Benedict XVI file