Posted on 08/17/2013 2:06:44 AM PDT by NYer
The Church's most prominent outreach today, the New Evangelization, aims at reviving the spiritual lives of those who have drifted from Christ. While these people may have been baptized and perhaps catechized, while they may attend Church semi-regularly, they have never been truly evangelized. They have never experienced a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ or real transformation through his Church.
A couple weeks ago, Pope Francis delivered a powerful message to the Brazilian bishops in the midst of his World Youth Day celebrations. Unfortunately, it didn't get nearly the attention it deserved.
Speaking on the New Evangelization, and using the Emmaus Journey as a framework, the Pope encouraged his listeners to reflect on why people reject the Church today—why, like the Emmaus disciples, they decide to walk the other way. To bring people back to Christ and his Church, we must understand why they leave in the first place.
To that end, Pope Francis offered ten specific reasons:
1. The Church no longer offers anything meaningful or important.
2. The Church appears too weak.
3. The Church appears too distant from their needs.
4. The Church appears too poor to respond to their concerns.
5. The Church appears too cold.
6. The Church appears too caught up with itself.
7. The Church appears to be a prisoner of its own rigid formulas.
8. The world seems to have made the Church a relic of the past.
9. The Church appears unfit to answer the world's new questions.
10. The Church speaks to people in their infancy but not when they come of age.
Read the excerpt below for more context:
"The two disciples have left Jerusalem. They are leaving behind the 'nakedness' of God. They are scandalized by the failure of the Messiah in whom they had hoped and who now appeared utterly vanquished, humiliated, even after the third day.
Here we have to face the difficult mystery of those people who leave the Church, who, under the illusion of alternative ideas, now think that the Church—their Jerusalem—can no longer offer them anything meaningful and important. So they set off on the road alone, with their disappointment. Perhaps the Church appeared too weak, perhaps too distant from their needs, perhaps too poor to respond to their concerns, perhaps too cold, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas, perhaps the world seems to have made the Church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions; perhaps the Church could speak to people in their infancy but not to those come of age.
It is a fact that nowadays there are many people like the two disciples of Emmaus; not only those looking for answers in the new religious groups that are sprouting up, but also those who already seem godless, both in theory and in practice.
Faced with this situation, what are we to do?
We need a Church unafraid of going forth into their night. We need a Church capable of meeting them on their way. We need a Church capable of entering into their conversation. We need a Church able to dialogue with those disciples who, having left Jerusalem behind, are wandering aimlessly, alone, with their own disappointment, disillusioned by a Christianity now considered barren, fruitless soil, incapable of generating meaning.”
(HT: Thomas Doran at Catholic World Report)
“Matthew is correct. You are wrong.”
Matthew states that the Church was founded on St. Peter.
“Blessed are you Simon bar Jonah, for it was revealed to you not by me, but by the Father in heaven.”
“The Protestant earthly segment of the church did not form out of thin air. It formed out of the witness of the early church”
1500 years after the apostles? Luther was a Catholic priest.
You offer an article by Thomas Madden? hahahahahahahaha. Try that with someone who doesn’t know he’s a professor from a Jesuit university.
I have put together a nice collection of historic texts dealing with the atrocities of Rome and I’m hunting for more, so I don’t want or need any Jesuit truth. Rome can try to rewrite history, but she spilled too much blood of too many martyrs over too many centuries for her sins to be erased. But it doesn’t really matter what I know because its The Lord Jesus Christ with whom Rome must contend when He returns in judgment.
It has to be one on one for a personal relationship...As Christians, the Holy Spirit indwells individual bodies...
It is odd that non Catholics care about the Catholic church.
I care nothing for the Catholic Church...It is individuals who I care about...Those individuals who don't have a one on one personal relationship with the Savior; those individuals who are told not to worry about a personal relationship...
It is impossible to be a Christian by association...
Rom 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Rom 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
Rom 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
Rom 8:11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
It is very personal...This indwelling of the Holy Spirit is an individual thing...There's no 'group' to it...That person in line in front of you who just ate the Eucharist may not have the Holy Spirit dwelling within him/them...It's very personal and you'd better be sure...
Luther was one, indeed. Luther also picked up the bible, that witness. To the Lord to whom a thousand years is as a day, it’s like day before yesterday. Anyhow the point is we don’t trust in Luther. We trust in what Luther, and Calvin, and Zwingli, and millions? if not billions, of others did, that witness. Brought to us courtesy of the bible.
Let me straddle the fence very firmly. It is individual AND community. Individual puts you in the church. Community of believers helps you keep going forward “towards the goal to win the prize in Christ Jesus.” But the power all comes from Christ.
“Brought to us courtesy of the bible.”
What if I told you that the bible was in existence a thousand years prior to Luther?
I’d respond hallelujah.
“Rome can try to rewrite history, but she spilled too much blood of too many martyrs over too many centuries for her sins to be erased.”
What are your thoughts on the 40 martyrs?
“I care nothing for the Catholic Church”
Then why do you stand outside with the nose pressed up against the glass?
Colt, stop shooting at JCBreckenridge please!
I find it amusing how often I need to chide Protestants to actually BE Protestant. The idea of the sins hanging over you is more Catholic than it is Protestant!
You’re right, that’s wrong to ignore, and the Lord Himself is the one who tells Protestants that they should care about their Roman Catholic brethren. And vice versa! Arrogance, thy name is human.
I don’t know what you’ve seen - but have a look at the Vulgate. The bible didn’t originate with the protestants. The Vulgate is much older and we have other manuscripts that are even older still.
If someone took a book they didn’t make, a book that had been around for a long long time, changed it and took stuff out, and claimed that it was theirs, what would you think of it?
“Matthew states that the Church was founded on St. Peter.
“Blessed are you Simon bar Jonah, for it was revealed to you not by me, but by the Father in heaven.”
.................................
And yet the brief quote you provided does not say the Church was founded on Peter. It says his understanding that Christ is Messiah, Son of the Living God, was revealed to Peter by God the Father.
What else do you have?
We Christians at FR show the flaws in your 'faith' on a daily basis...
I don’t know about the “changed it and took stuff out.” We make sincere effort to capture the witness as it had been penned. And we’ve managed to frame that in pretty tight. The witness just WORKS, no matter what you guys complain. Can’t put the Holy Spirit in your earthly box. We’re brothers and sisters whether or not you like it :-)
Like I said, take a look at the Vulgate and compare it with what you have in front of you. Unfortunately the lists aren’t the same.
“We’re brothers and sisters whether or not you like it”
If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t be so concerned about your welfare before God. :)
I think we have the same sort of problem here that leads some “very well intentioned” Protestants to insanely defend the King James bible. This problem is the idea that we have to have some artifact on earth that is perfect in order to get tuned in to a perfect God who offers a perfect faith but which we execute imperfectly on earth. It takes firm, strong spiritual trust in Jesus Christ to get past this kind of apparent impasse.
Remove the idea that we have an earthly institution that has a perfect representation of the faith... and accept that it’s taught on the fly by the Lord using the resources He provides as they are needed... and that completion of salvation which will yield a perfect execution of the faith is not finished until “the day of Christ Jesus” and voila. He’s the author... He’s the perfecter. The “church” is not the perfecter. To say it is, detracts from His glory... it does not add to His glory....
You’re going down the same road that some Protestants do with the King James, and the answer is the same... see my previous post
“If someone took a book they didn’t make, a book that had been around for a long long time, changed it and took stuff out, and claimed that it was theirs, what would you think of it?”
Are you claiming that the translator of the Vulgate, Jerome, who declared the apocrypha out of the canon, actually wrote the Old and New Testament scriptures?
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