The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, every man to his home, and will leave me alone; yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.
If this chaos is to ever end then whoever is elected Pope must forget about ‘openness to modernity’ and ‘engagement’ and ‘dialogue’ and the rest of it. Jesus Christ has established the means to preserve the flock from destruction and they must be used. The successor of Peter must solemnly define all the teachings which the Liberals and the World are forever hoping the ‘next pope’ will abandon and condemn all the false doctrines that are endlessly attributed to the last Council. It would be better if this could be done by a council. It would be better if this had been done by the last council. It is impossible to hold an ecumenical council now it would be a bloodbath ending in multiple schisms. Schism is unavoidable because it already exists “they went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out, that it might be plain that they all are not of us.” Let it be one schism and let it be worth it. The reason for this chaos is the woeful failure over the last six decades to use the keys. At this point it amounts to gross irresponsibility. It must be shown that the teaching of the Church does not, will not and cannot ever change. “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.”
March 4, 2013 at 3:44 pm
aye right enough…what is killing the church just now is the inability of the clergy to live within the proscribed doctrines propounded by hardliners such as the author of this post….only Jesus was free from sin and infallible so how can you propound a doctrine that is so clearly not capable of being adhered to….doctrines that insist upon celibacy and against homosexuality….yet the scandals have shown and continue to expose a great many of the clergy who are closet homosexuals or have abused fellow seminarians or congergation members …this has helped the secular agenda by planting the idea that the clergy are at best hypocrites and at worst abusers protected by a closed and secretive heirarchy
Your solution to this dilemma is to give the dying patient an even heavier dose of the same failed dogma…..simply saying homosexuality is forbidden even louder and more stridently or returning the church to a position pre- Vatican 2 is a delusion…it never prevented homosexuality before nor did it prevent the abuses of power that have had such a corrosive effect on the whole church
The other thing about your position is the lack of forgiveness and compassion, I may not always have agreed with my Cardinal nor have I shared his sexual proclivities BUT I am profoundly sad that he has become embroiled in a scandal because his church has not allowed him to be openly homosexual…did God not make the Cardinal in his own image too…and every other homosexual too for that matter
I have always had profound respect for my Cardinal as a human being and I would prefer the church that could openly celebrate his ability to love another human
You use the term Liberal as a perjorative, in that case I thank God he made me in his image….that he made me a LIBERAL….as for you Scribes and Pharisees, the most dammning passages in the bible involved you lot….
The Holy Father was at pains to rail against in-fighting and divisions within the church yet you seem to have ignored that particular edict…you seem to want it both ways…to have us ‘liberals’ bound by Vatican edict and pronouncement whilst you conservatives consider yourselves free of the same stricture…
March 4, 2013 at 5:38 pm
No liberal is a Catholic although he may frequent Catholic churches. The teachings of Christ are certainly extremely difficult to follow and impossible to follow without supernatural assistance and that supernatural assistance is obtainable only through faith. As liberals do not have faith they cannot follow them. A Catholic can follow the Church’s teaching with the supernatural helps given to him but the struggle will transform him completely and arouse the violent enmity of the world. The belief that the Church’s teaching does, will or can change is incompatible with faith and so the confusion in this matter has injured the capacity of those visibly associated with the Church to live her teaching by weakening or destroying their faith. The Church’s teaching on liberalism is very clear.
“If when men discuss the question of liberty they were careful to grasp its true and legitimate meaning, such as reason and reasoning have just explained, they would never venture to affix such a calumny on the Church as to assert that she is the foe of individual and public liberty. But many there are who follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, and adopt as their own his rebellious cry, ‘I will not serve’; and consequently substitute for true liberty what is sheer and most foolish license. Such, for instance, are the men belonging to that widely spread and powerful organization, who, usurping the name of liberty, style themselves liberals.” Leo XIII, Libertas
March 5, 2013 at 2:33 am
no libral is a catholic….dont remember seeing that in the bible….i agree supernatural assistance is required if we are to follow…but no human can ever attain infallibility therefore all will sin and by extension homosexuality will still be a problem for the clergy and abuse will continue…no amount of dogma will change either of these facts…..
The churchs teachings have changed and will continue to change…or perhaps you had forgotten that we no longer have the inquisition….its not yesterday that the church stopped issuing edicts banning scientists from publishng theories on astronomy and evolution and archaeology that challenged the biblical notion …your assertion is nonsense…as is your premise that a liberal has no faith and can have no faith
Jesus did not congratulate the Scribes and Pharisees for their slavish devotion to the letter of Canon law, he called them hypocrites and accused them of judging other people who were unable to follow their example…when Jesus included sinners into his kingdom you lot would accuse him of weakening or destroying he faith
Leo X11 wrote his tract to deal with an issue which was of his time and as such the response was naturally biased in gfavour of the circumstances and culture prevelant at that time…were this not so we would still have popes with mistresses, empires and dominions acting as de facto rulers ofentire regions….Jesus on the other hand welcomed everyone saint and sinner…even Liberals….his supernatural help is open to all, and givenin a spirit of love and compassion for human failings….no proscription, threats of ex-communication or harsh dogma…..I know you think I serve Lucifer but before I remove the splinter that blinds me to Gods truth, perhaps you conservatives could make a start on the huge plank obscuring your vision
March 5, 2013 at 9:11 am
You do seem very confused about the difference between discipline and teaching. Infallibility relates to teaching not to moral capacity. The charism of infallibility does not make it’s recipient impeccable. The inquisition is simply a department of the curia charged with maintaining vigilance over the doctrine of the faith. That task (but not that institution) is part of the divine constitution of the Church. The task remains always the administrative apparatus may vary. As it happens the Inquisition does still exist but Pius X and Paul VI changed its name. It is now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. A liberal cannot have the faith because faith is belief on account of the authority of God Who can neither deceive nor be deceived. To suppose that the content of the faith could change or that we could not be certain concerning its content is ipso facto to suppose that it is not God Who is revealing that content. The Lord criticised the Pharisees principally for their failure to live up to their teaching rather than the teaching itself “All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not.” It is precisely because the faith is liveable with divine assistance that tax collectors and prostitutes who receive that assistance can be saved and those who trust in their own justice cannot. Jesus did rebuke the Pharisees for inventing traditions of their own to make the living of God’s law more palatable and then then allowing those traditions to frustrate the law of God. The liberal imitates the Pharisee in a more extreme way by subjecting Divine Revelation to the fashionable ideas of the present age with which he identifies himself. He also trusts in his own justice because he denies the possibility of faith (by saying that the teaching of the Church can change) but imagining he may still be saved without faith. In this way (as Leo XIII points out) the liberal imitates Lucifer who thought by his own power to make himself like the Most High “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning? how art thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations? And thou saidst in thy heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the most High. But yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, into the depth of the pit.”
March 5, 2013 at 11:30 pm
not confused at all, just not into semantics….nor am i into navel-gazing or ….only jesus was free from sin…this is impossible for all men…with supernatural help some may be almost free from sin, others less so…not through their will at all…even an entire life of slavish devotion andnear constant prayer makes any difference to the faith or the moral capacity..only God has that gift…my faith might be impure or absent by your standards…franly I couldnt care less how you judge me…but you have no right to say I have no faith…nor did i say faith could change…but the world outside the church has always changed and her officials have always had to contend with the ever changing demographic….hence why one no longer hears the Inquisitors being spoken of…changing the name is good PR…
I refute your charge that I subject my faith to my interpretation…my concern for justice comes from the example Jesus gave us of justice, peace and compassion for sinners..Archbishop Romero and Helder Camara put this point forcefully…” when I feed the poor, they call me a saint, when I ask why the poor have need, they call me a Communist…I know Jesus would rather I was manning the soup kitchen or performing other good works than perfecting my semantics .and Jehovas wintness or mormon stylee copy/pasting chunks of scripture….
You can bang on all day about your chunks of scripture and how you are following the Law contained but Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and Scribes for that same devotion to the letter of the law…not sitting with sinners holocausts etc etc….he called them hypocrites …he asked them to become servants and not lord it over the people, to identify with their lot, not to judge them but to help them …in other words to live according to the Spirit of the Law, not the letter of the law….
A Prayer For the Future
We cannot merely pray to you, O God, to end war;
For we know that you have made the world in a way
That man must find his own path to peace;
Within himself and his neighbour.
We cannot merely pray to you, O God, to end starvation;
For you have already given us the resources,
With which to feed the entire world,
If only we could use them wisely.
We cannot merely pray to you, O God, to root our prejudice;
For you have already given us eyes,
With which to see the good in all men,
If we would only use them rightly.
We cannot merely pray to you, O God, to end despair;
For you have already given us the power,
To clear away slums and to give hope,
If we could only use our power justly.
We cannot merely pray to you, O God, to end disease;
For you have already given us great minds,
With which to search out cures and healing,
If we would only use them constructively.
Therefore we pray to you instead, O God;
For strength, determination and willpower,
To do instead of just pray,
To become instead of merely to wish.
Amen.
I couldnt give a rats for any of your chunks of dogma…as for me like you I will never achieve anything on my own so I pray instead for the conscience and desire to live by the Spirit……
The Prayer of Oscar Romero
“It helps now and then to step back and take the long view” – wise words from Archbishop Oscar Romero. The Archbishop served the people of El Salvador and was assassinated in 1980 while he was saying mass in San Salvador.
It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well. It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen.
pray for me as I shall pray for you
March 6, 2013 at 12:27 am
Dear Whwalker,
It really seems to me that you are messing up two things:
a) what is a sin?, and
b) how do we, and how does God, deal with sinners?
Now, Our Lord, when He forgave the adulterous woman, did not say that adultery was not a sin (the Gospels are rather clear on that). While affirming that it was a sin, He was there to forgive the repentant sinner. He is still doing that, and by His grace and love also helping us to overcome sin and grow in holiness. What Aelianus, I think, is driving at, is the tendency of the world in denying the sinfulness of many acts (including usury, as a reference to poverty and Romero), and the question of how much the Church has been tempted to be silent on these topics so as not to offend the world.
Yes, we are all sinners, and God offers forgiveness to us when we repent. However, if through disinformation we do not even realize that we sin, we are just so much further from repentance and forgiveness. Saying that sins are not sins is not merciful, but just the reverse.
As has been mentioned by commentators in the post below, the fact that person X believes and defends what virtue and Christian living mean does not mean that they are always able to practice it. I myself often find myself defective in practicing things I do believe. Does this mean I am never allowed to give witness to what God means our lives to be in public? And would it be better to just deny the sinfulness of those things where I – or others – find it hard to follow the teaching of Christ? Would not the truly Christian response be to acknowledge that Y is a sin, and yet be merciful to those who have committed Y, praying to God in all humility for them as we do for ourselves in our failures?
March 6, 2013 at 7:57 pm
The problem with the modernist heresy – the idea that dogmas evolve – is that, unlike say the Calvinists, it has no motivation to leave the Church. If you do not think that you alone have the truth – because there is no absolute truth, or none that is knowable – then why go to the trouble of setting up new structures to protect and promote it? So its tendency is rather to remain in the Church and confuse Catholics. Probably St Pius X followed the only possibly course by administering an oath and relying on the natural reluctance to commit perjury to prevent it from being taken dishonestly. An expanded anti-modernist oath would be desirable.
March 6, 2013 at 9:16 pm
It is a mystery to me why Benedict did not use the keys when he had them. For example, he steadfastly opposed the ordination of woman but failed to put the matter beyond all doubt once and for all by proclaiming that position as an infallible dogma of the church.