Council of Florence on Circumcision; and Man becoming God?

Paul, the statement from the Council of Florence (Denz. 712) condemns all who “observe circumcision,” whether or not they place hope in it for salvation.  Those who get the foreskin of their children cut solely for health reasons are not “observing circumcision” (the ritual of the Old Law), but are simply having a medical procedure performed for health reasons.  Therefore, the phrase “observe circumcision” presupposes that one is doing it to fulfill the Old Law.  If one is not doing it to fulfill the Old Law then he is not actually “observing circumcision.”

Regarding your second question, I’m familiar with the quotes that people bring forward.  In fact, I recently read a large book (over 300 pages) by a man who purports to be a “traditional Catholic” and the whole point of the book was to prove that all the baptized are Jesus.  But it is heresy to say that any man becomes God.  Otherwise there would be more than one God.  Some of the fathers of the Church said this about baptized Catholics when speaking in exaggerated and wrong terms about the truth that a justified man partakes of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4); but they never should have said that man becomes God.  They simply should have repeated what 2 Peter 1:4 says: that a justified man partakes of the divine nature.

Pope John XXII condemned the following proposition, among similar other ones: “A good man is the only begotten Son of God.” - Condemned (Denz. 520).

Pope Pius XII condemned the same thing.

Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi (# 78), June 29, 1943: "But let this be a general and unshaken truth, if they do not wish to wander from sound doctrine and the correct teaching of the Church: namely, every kind of mystic union, by which the faithful in Christ in any way pass beyond the order of created things and wrongly enter among the divine, so that even a single attribute of the eternal Godhead can be predicated of these as their own, is to be entirely rejected."

Writers, such as Solange Hertz, do Catholics a disservice by repeating such exaggerated and non-literal statements from the fathers, who didn’t really believe that baptized Catholics become God, but spoke in exaggerated and spiritual terms about 2 Peter 1:4.  If they really believed that a justified Catholic becomes God they would have believed that there is more than one God (and couldn’t have said the Nicene Creed honestly).  Further, it must be remembered that the fathers of the Church didn’t write in English.  I know that at least some of the quotations that are given from the fathers allegedly asserting that “God became man so that man might become God” actually say in the original “God became man so that man might receive the divinity” (i.e., so that he might partake in the divine nature).

It should also be noted that Antipope John Paul II says that every man is Jesus Christ, not just the baptized; the fathers who spoke in exaggerated and wrong terms about justified persons were only talking about the baptized Catholics.  The fact is that Antipope John Paul II’s words prove that he truly and without a doubt preaches that every man is Jesus Christ; the fathers of the Church didn’t hold this, otherwise they would have been apostates, and if they ever said that a justified Catholic man becomes God they were simply dead wrong in speaking in such a way.