Matthaeus ✝️ 🇳🇿 🇻🇦

The Bible is a Catholic book, codified in 382ad at the council of Rome under Pope Damasus. The Bible says the Church is built on Saint Peter and the gates of hell will not overcome it... Jesus told Saint Peter to feed His flock and tend His sheep after His resurrection. Both Saint Peter and Saint Paul died in Rome... The Bible says the Church is the Pillar and bulwark of truth and to go to the Church in a dispute... **Saint Irenaeus of Lyons** (c. 130–202) was a bishop and Church Father, one of the most important theologians of the second century. Born in Asia Minor (likely Smyrna), he was a disciple of St. Polycarp, who himself had known St. John the Apostle. He later became Bishop of Lyons in Gaul (modern France) after the martyrdom of Bishop Pothinus during the persecution of 177. He is best known for his major work *Against Heresies* (*Adversus Haereses*), which systematically refuted Gnostic heresies and defended the public, apostolic faith handed down in the Church. ### On the Bishop of Rome In *Against Heresies* Book III, Chapter 3, Irenaeus singles out the Church of Rome (founded by the apostles Peter and Paul) as the surest and most practical reference for authentic apostolic tradition. He notes that it would be tedious to list the succession of bishops in every apostolic church, so he points instead to Rome: > “the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul... For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority [*propter potentiorem principalitatem*], that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolic tradition has been preserved continuously by those who exist everywhere.” He then gives the list of Roman bishops from Linus (the first after the apostles) through to Eleutherius (the bishop of his own day), showing an unbroken succession that preserves the same faith. This passage is one of the earliest and clearest patristic witnesses to the special authority and role of the Roman See as a criterion of orthodoxy for the whole Church.

I'm well aware of what the catechism states, but you are making a claim about the interior knowledge and disposition of 500k+ people, which you blatantly do not have. I don't even need to get into an SSPX defense here as you're just wrong on your own premises. CCC 846 is contingent on two things: knowing the Church is necessary, and refusing her anyway. The knowledge is definitionally an interior act, which, as you surely know, while we can judge that an act is gravely wrong, we must entrust judgment of specific persons to God (per CCC 1861). Even when the matter is grave, a sin is only mortal with full knowledge and deliberate consent, which are both also interior dispositions... Ignorance, habituation, coercion and the pressure of circumstances can reduce an individuals culpability (according to CCC 1735). You have literally no access to what any of those people know or their interior dispositions or intentions, and neither does literally anyone else. Therefore; your claim "we can be sure they're in hell" is not a remotely Orthodox application of CCC 846. It is fundamentally a claim to know hearts, which the Church says we cannot do. I'd also highly recommend since you love pulling out quotes from the catechism, to look up catechism 2477 :). Might be instructive! Go ahead and reblock me now thanks bye!