Posted on 07/17/2013 8:05:06 AM PDT by Gamecock
If you're Christian, you might believe the keys to salvation are faith and good works. But a little Twitter might help get you to the Pearly Gates too.
You can now reduce the time your everlasting soul has to spend in purgatory by following tweets from Pope Francis and Catholic World Youth Day, an event held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that the pontiff will attend later this month.
The policy is a form of indulgence, a centuries-old tradition in the Catholic Church in which the temporal punishment for absolved sins is relieved. Since it's a plenary indulgence, a believer gets total remission of sins and relief from penitence.
But that doesn't mean you just click on "follow" and sin at will, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
"Get it out of your heads straight away that this is in any way mechanical, that you just need to click on the Internet in a few days' time to get a plenary indulgence," the daily quoted Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, as saying.
"What really matters is that the pope's tweets from Brazil, or the photos of World Youth Day that will be posted on Pinterest, should bear authentic spiritual fruit in the hearts of each one of us."
"Then even a youngster who is a very long way from Brazil and feels involved by a video, a simple text message, or an e-mail will be truly taking part in the World Youth Day and will receive the gift of the indulgence."
The report quotes a Catholic decree concerning World Youth Day that says the faithful "can obtain the plenary indulgence...by the new means of social communication."
It went on to quote Paolo Padrini, a Catholic scholar known as the "iPriest" for always being online.
"Imagine your computer is a well-laden table where you can find tweets from Pope Francis, videos on YouTube, clips on Corriere.it, and Facebook postings from your friend in Brazil. That is the dinner that will nourish your spirit.
"Sharing, acting in unison, despite the obstacle of distance. But it will still be real participation and that is why you will obtain the indulgence. Above all because your click will have come from the heart."
“Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come."
Walk through this logically with me.
So a believer dies with his "filthy rags clothed in the righteousness of Christ", right?
Now does the believer keep those filthy rags for all eternity, or does he lose them at some point? Does the believer not just become *justified*, but *sanctified*?
Well shucks, I guess then we should totally ignore what they have to say, right!
And of course the passage is talking about works.
But look carefully at the original Greek:
The WORK will be consumed (katakaesetai), and HE will suffer loss (zemiothesetai). It's not that the work is just burned off no problem. He will feel the loss of it. And he will be saved....as through fire (dia pyros). The fire is not just a blind destructive force....it is actually part of the saving. That Greek preposition dia means "through, by means of, because"--as in the beginning of Matthew's Gospel where God spoke through (dia) the Prophet.
This is not an easy passage. But there is definitely a sense here that God is using fire as a cleansing agent to save us, which is precisely why Origen and Augustine said what they did.
And for the millionth time, there are NO sins not satisfied by Christ's sacrifice. That is rank heresy.
Here's a Bible quote for ya (Matthew 10:13-14):
13 If the household is worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 14 And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet.
AND THAT'S PRECISELY why, Lera, that among the requirements to gain an indulgence are 1) to confess your sins, and 2) to NOT have any attachment to sin.
You cannot just pay for an indulgence like it's a candy machine. You have to repent, stop sinning, and THEN do the pious act prescribed in the indulgence. And the pious act is very seldomly giving alms/money. Mostly it is for prayers or some other spiritual deed. There is an indulgence listed in my Bible for....guess what....reading the Bible.
Too few of you are bothering to understand or learn the doctrine--even for the purpose of criticizing it correctly. You are knee-jerk reacting based on some foggy history you learned in school based on an asinine criticism by Luther who--truth be told--didn't seem like he understood it much either.
Forget about what you think indulgences are all about. Study up on what they actually are, and then criticize them if you must.
Here's a Bible quote for ya (Matthew 10:13-14):Yes! Thank you! :)13 If the household is worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 14 And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet.
You’re welcome. I’m sure I’ll still enter the fray at times, but it doesn’t take long for me to figure out that I need to shake off the dust from my feet.
Not the point. The article began with the statement...
If you're Christian, you might believe the keys to salvation are faith and good works.
Our works are not a key that unlock salvation. Salvation is not based on our merit. Of course faith without works is dead, but our works do not earn us salvation.
So too with the fire hence he uses the adverb ‘hos’ before ‘dia’ to say “as” or “like” through fire. It's a comparison and has naught to with any need of cleansing but with building upon the foundation of the Christ instead of various men. It is the quality of the work that is tested.
Paul says in 1 Cor. 3:13 that “the fire will test what sort of work each has done”. and he adds in vs 14, 15 that the builder receives a reward based upon whether his work survives this figurative testing by fire. There is no hint of cleansing of sin by fire, no purging.
“And for the millionth time, there are NO sins not satisfied by Christ's sacrifice. That is rank heresy.”
As Paul said in Hebrews 10:12, “Christ offered a single sacrifice for sins”, hence there is nothing, no sins to be cleansed away with fire in a purgatory.
And Paul's words about building on a foundation must be understood in that sense.
“Well shucks, I guess then we should totally ignore what they (Origen and Augustine) have to say, right!”
Not ignore but their views are just that, while the Scriptures are the word of God.
So how long will each of you personally be in Purgatory?
And how is that relevant to the discussion and the verses posted to which you replied.
That would mean that even purgatory couldn’t pay for those sins, the person is going right to hell.
So my point still stands.
Not logical. You're beginning with a wrong premise.
OUR righteousness and OUR good works are as filthy rags in God's sight. That's why they can NEVER be good enough. They must be exchanged for the righteousness of Christ.
Salvation is a gift, freely offered and given. No strings attached.
God does not impute, or credit to our account, the debt of sin we owe.
Colossians 2:13-14 13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
When we throw ourselves on the mercy of the court (think the publican and Pharisee in Luke 18) the tax collector was the one who went away justified.
It's a done deal in heaven. Sure we still sin while here on the earth and often there are consequences here on earth to our sin, but spiritually, we are new creatures in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).
We are crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20) and for those who are in Christ, clothed with His righteousness, there is no more condemnation. (Romans 8:1).
Now does the believer keep those filthy rags for all eternity, or does he lose them at some point? Does the believer not just become *justified*, but *sanctified*?
The believer doesn't keep those filthy rags at all. They are gone at the moment of salvation, the moment one puts their faith, or trust if you will, in Christ to save him and he is born again.
Positionally, that puts the person *in Christ* and he becomes clothed in Christ's righteousness. That is justification.
The sanctification is still being worked out in our day to day lives.
No, because nothing can save us but shed blood.
Hebrews 9:22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
Works can't do it.
Penance can't do it.
Suffering can't do it.
Baptism can't do it.
The only way to be cleansed from sin is to be forgiven and where there is forgiveness, there is no longer any need for a sacrifice.
Hebrews 10:14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
There is NOTHING anyone in the world can do to deal with our sin problem.
Hebrews 10:18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
No offering. Not suffering, not works, not money, not penance, not anything we want to offer God to pay for our sin which makes us feel better. And that's all it does. It doesn't change the facts of the matter in God's eyes one bit. Those things are just a salve to our conscience.
:July 17th, 2013
By the Rev. James Martin, SJ, special to CNN
(CNN) –Here were the tantalizingly weird headlines: “Follow pope online, get to heaven sooner - Facebook likes don't count.” “Cut your time in purgatory by following pope on Twitter.” And, worst of all, from Slate: “Pope now offering indulgences in exchange for Twitter followers.”
Similar headlines popped up on more than 190 news sources on Wednesday.
Ha ha. Is the Catholic Church offering time off in hell– or purgatory, depending on the website - just for checking your Twitter feed every few hours? Is the church really that dumb? And here I thought Pope Francis was cool, or as Esquire recently termed him, “awesome.”
This is (another) case of how the media misunderstands and misreports a story from “The Vatican.”
Here’s how it seemed to have happened.
On June 24, the Apostolic Penitentiary (the Vatican office that deals with matters concerning sin,) issued a document that said the faithful who attend the upcoming World Youth Day in Brazil would receive a “plenary indulgence” for their efforts during pilgrimage.
That’s a traditional Catholic term for the full remission of the “temporal punishment” in the afterlife due to sin. The theological idea is that by doing good works on earth, or by engaging in pious practices like a pilgrimage, you can help “work off” some of the temporal punishments that may await you after death.
But just from checking Twitter every few hours? Let’s leave aside the very complicated theology of the plenary indulgence for a moment, and see how this story got out of hand.
The Vatican’s original document offered an indulgence for those who complete a pilgrimage. That’s fairly common. A few years ago, when I made a pilgrimage to the French shrine of Lourdes, one could work towards an indulgence by visiting certain holy sites and praying there.
Once again, the idea is making reparation in penance for your sins. To take a homey example, if you’re a student who talks too much in class, your teacher might ask you to clean the blackboards instead of failing you. To avoid a big punishment you make amends for your mistakes.
But there’s more: the Vatican document noted that the faithful at World Youth Day must be “truly repentant and contrite.” In other words, they must undertake the pilgrimage in a true spirit of repentance. Be sorry for their sins. That’s common, too.
At the end of the document, the Vatican noted that it was not just pilgrims to whom this applied, but another, newer, group: those who might participate “with due devotion, via the new means of social communication.”
Why did the Vatican include that category? As I see it, to be inclusive, something people often accuse the church of not being.
For those who cannot travel to Brazil, because of financial limitations or health restrictions, it's a way of welcoming them.
To my mind, it’s a generous way of inviting people into the Masses, prayers and liturgies during the World Youth Day. Why wouldn’t you want to include the sick, the poor and the elderly in the community of pilgrims? And why wouldn’t you want to help them participate via the web?
So how did this get so focused on Twitter?
Well, it would seem that The Guardian got hold of “a source” in the Vatican who said, “That includes following Twitter.”
Now, who was the source? We are not told. But that was enough for the headline writers at the Guardian to write: “Vatican offers `time off purgatory' to followers of Pope Francis tweets.”
That’s already doubly inaccurate. Because, first of all, even the “source” said it’s not enough to just follow the pope on Twitter (as the headline misleadingly stated).
"But you must be following the events live,” he told the Guardian, “It is not as if you can get an indulgence by chatting on the Internet.”
Second, in that same article Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communication, was quoted as telling the Italian daily Corriere della Sera: "You can't obtain indulgences like getting a coffee from a vending machine."
In other words: the original document, the “source” and Archbishop Celli all said the opposite of what the headlines said.
That is, it’s not enough simply to follow the pope on Twitter. It’s not even enough to check his Twitter feed frequently. You need to be (a) contrite, (b) trying to follow the events at World Youth Day live and (c) performing these acts with “due devotion.”
In other words, the Vatican is clearly referring to prayerful participation in these events by men and women who could not otherwise go, through the various “new means of social communication.”
An example: A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with a serious form of cancer. After I told her that I would pray for her, I mentioned that the shrine of Lourdes had a 24-hour webcam in the famous Grotto, where Catholics believe the Virgin Mary appeared in 1858.
She e-mailed me a few days later to say that “visiting” the Grotto, via the web, had helped her to pray. It brought her a great sense of peace. This is the kind of “due devotion” that the Vatican has in mind, despite what the headlines might say.
The worst headline came from the normally careful Slate: Pope Francis is not offering indulgences “in exchange for Twitter followers.” He has plenty of Twitter followers. But he’d probably exchange a few hundred of them for headline writers who actually read the story.
I just post what I find on the Internet. I am not a Catholic so how am I to know what is accurate. That's what I have you for.
BTW, I'm pretty sure accusing someone of being dishonest borders on a personal attack.
Why'd you bring hell into it?
Nobody on FR said anything about this tweeting stuff getting someone out of hell.
Believe it or not, we DO understand the distinction you all make between purgatory and hell.
So nobody has been punked, because nobody has been doing what you are claiming.
Keep telling yourself that. I’m sure you at least believe it.
But....But both Jesus and Paul said the cleansing came before death not after: In 1 Cor. 6:10 Paul reminded the Corinthians they had been murders, etc. In vs 11 he says they were “washed clean, sanctified, declared righteous” in the name of Christ and with the spirit of God.
Jesus prayed that his followers would be “sanctified by means of the truth” (John 17:17).
Clearly it is not some purging in an after life with fire or good deeds of the living that cleanses but the application of the truth of God's word.
The notion of a purgatory state or place denies this as well as Jesus’ promise to resurrect those in the “memorial tombs”. (John 5:28,29)
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