They are still the clear and unaltered teaching of the church on justification

Absolutely.

anyone who understands the teaching of the church against justification by faith alone and knowledgeably rejects it is anathema

Not quite. Anathema was a particularly “intense” form of excommunication. As is obvious, the Catholic Church cannot excommunicate those who are already outside her communion. Which is to say, insofar as the Council of Trent represents the truth about justification, those who dismiss it obviously do so at their peril. However, the canonical penalties (i.e., anathema) attached to the various truth claims were aimed at Catholics, to whom the Church is Mother. And the Reformers were Catholics.

To incur the canonical penalty of anathema required that one be brought before a court in Rome. Rarely has anyone actually been brought before this court for this purpose. So few, in fact, that the penalty of anathema was taken off the books when the new code of canon law came out in 1983. Anathema is, however, still considered by many theologians to be a signal that an infallible truth has been proclaimed in council. So though the canonical penalty no longer exists (and has historically rarely been incurred), those anathemas are still useful as delineations of Catholic truth.

this does not simply refer to the Reformers, but to any Christian who knowledgeably rejects Catholic teaching and teaches that justification is primarily a legal declaration by God

It would apply to Catholics (as the Reformers were), not as an anathema, but to truth claims that must not be denied by Catholics. Denial of such truths would constitute heresy, which does carry an excommunication with it, according to canon law, but again, you can’t kick out of communion those who aren’t in communion. It would be about as meaningful as your local church excommunicating Paris Hilton. Presuming she’s not a member

If this was the first episode of White Horse Inn I ever heard, I would have never listened to it again. This episode seemed to be a platform for the other side to espouse their views without any resistance.

- The Pilgrim

http://cadl.blogspot.com/2007/12/infamous-video.html

http://sungenisandthejews.blogspot.com/2007/06/cai-kind-of-apologizes-for-robin.html

http://sungenisandthejews.blogspot.com/2007/03/sixteen-proofs-of-sungeniss-anti.html

This man does not speak for the Catholic Church. He even changed the name of his organization to take the name “Catholic” out of it.

Here is Bob Sungenis’ response to your points in regards to his teachings on Soteriology:

http://www.catholicintl.com/articles/Reply%20to%20Douglass%2012%204%2007.pdf

God Bless,
Laurence

Bob is already aware of Chris’ site. I challenged him on it a few weeks ago, and his response was an extended, nasty invective.

The statement I quote is from Ed Suter’s question on the Bellarmine forum “Pedagogy of deceit denying Mary Virgin.”

JMJ,
Ben

I will contact Bob about this. I had no knowledge of Chris’ site. I have not evn, as yet, have had contact with him.

Can you also tell me which document has the quote you presented? ““It is astonishing to me how people who call themselves ‘Christian’ can ignore so much of Jesus’ teachings only to fall for the self-exalting megalomania…”

Thanks.

~Laurence

(1) He has made use of forged quotations of Roy Schoeman (Jewish convert to Catholicism) and Albert Einstein, and stuck behind them obstinately even after they were exposed as forgeries. The forged Schoeman quote was sent to him by a young man with whom he had only recently struck up correspondence. It was promptly exposed as a doctored version of an article available on the internet, yet Sungenis left it online and defended it for quite some time. For that whole sordid story, including the part where Sungenis claimed (falsely) to have traced the young man’s e-mail address to Mark Shea and Jacob Michael (the fearsome two-headed judaizing monster, I suppose), see: http://www.pugiofidei.com/fraud.htm.

With respect to the forged Einstein quote, Sungenis obviously copy pasted it from one of the myriad White Supremacist websites which carry it. It consists of two sentences, which are eight paragraphs apart in Einstein’s original article, which the forger connected without ellipses; after this there is an ellipsis and a third sentence which is fabricated out of whole cloth. This has been pointed out to Sungenis many times, yet he has never retracted the quote.

(2) Sungenis has himself forged two quotes of Roy Schoeman. He states in his letter to the editor of The Latin Mass (Winter 2006, p. 5) that, according to Schoeman, “anyone who tries to stop [the return of the Jerusalem Temple] is ‘of the Antichrist’”, and “God will then proceed to make ‘the Old Covenant fulfill the New’”. Neither the phrase “of the Antichrist” nor “the Old Covenant fulfill the New” appear anywhere in Schoeman’s book. Furthermore, so far from believing that those who oppose the restoration of the Jerusalem Temple are of the Antichrist, Schoeman himself opposes it.

(3) Sungenis has stated that there is nothing good in the Talmud. How does he know? Prejudice. I doubt he’s read 20 folios beginning to end; every critique he has put on his website besides mine has consisted in him copy-pasting or paraphrasing secondary sources like Jack Mohr, Ted Pike, or Michael Hoffman II. Sungenis has never demonstrated the slightest personal familiarity with the Talmud or published any original research. Yet, he feels qualified to say that there is nothing good in those thousands of pages! Well, allow me to say this as one who has spent a number of hours studying the Talmud, and on the whole am no fan of it at all: every once in a while the rabbis manage a witty aphorism, or a salutary precept, or a probable interpretation of Scripture, or some such.

This leads into point (4), that Sungenis has habitually and uncritically gobbled up and regurgitated material from the Jack Chicks and Dave Hunts of anti-Judaism: Mohr, Dilling, Pike, Hoffman, National Vanguard (the now defunct racist organization whose leader was arrested for child pornography), Dr. Robert Ley (propaganda minister for the third Reich), etc. In some cases, to be fair, Sungenis did not know who was the author of the text he was copy-pasting onto his website, at the time he copy pasted it (this was the case with the Nazi propaganda tract). But does it reflect any better on Sungenis to note that he copy-pastes anti-Jewish texts onto his website without even knowing who wrote them? And in some cases, without even reading them? What rational consideration convinces him that a text of unknown origin, if it disparages Jews, is therefore ipso facto truthful and worth repeating? Prejudice.

(5) After I left CAI, Sungenis asked me if I were Jewish, and when I responded no, publicly suggested that I was lying. He has also asked Michael Forrest, Jacob Michael, and David Palm whether they were Jewish. When they did not dignify his question with a response, he suggested they too were hiding their Jewishness.

(6) Recently, Sungenis ran an article about Robin Williams mocking the Catholic priesthood. In his headline, he referred to Robin Williams as a “Jewish comedian.” Robin Williams is not Jewish; Sungenis simply assumed he was. Robin Williams did something evil, therefore he must be Jewish, so says the logic of prejudice. Similarly, Sungenis recently ran an article in which various scholars derided the Talpiot tomb theory. The article contained no quotations of Jewish scholars claiming they found Christ’s bones. Sungenis headlined the article: “Jewish scholars claim they found Christ’s bones.”

(7) Even now that he’s justly been punished by his bishop, several of his Jewish articles are still online at another site run by his promotions director, Chris Campbell: http://sungenisandhiscritics.blogspot.com/ Also, he still publishes statements on his website such as the following: “It is astonishing to me how people who call themselves ‘Christian’ can ignore so much of Jesus’ teachings only to fall for the self-exalting megalomania, paranoia, venomous hatred of Jesus, and pedagogy of deceit of the rabbis.” He is also currently running a news article in order to imply that Israel is about to start an apocalyptic world war. Another news article is about Dear Abby promoting abortion and homosexuality. The reason this is relevant is because Sungenis has highlighted her Jewish ancestry in the past. Finally, Sungenis gave his personal imprimatur to an article by Tom Herron in the magazine Culture Wars, which was very disrespectful to Sungenis’ bishop.