Posted on 06/27/2014 3:58:36 PM PDT by NYer
Two prominent Fort Worth-based Christian ministers led a delegation of Evangelical Christian leaders to Rome to meet privately with Pope Francis.
James and Betty Robison, co-hosts of the Life Today television program, and Kenneth Copeland, co-host of Believer’s Voice of Victory, met the Roman Pontiff at the Vatican on Tuesday. The meeting lasted almost three hours and included a private luncheon with Pope Francis.
Mr. Robison told the Fort Worth Star Telegram, “This meeting was a miracle…. This is something God has done. God wants his arms around the world. And he wants Christians to put his arms around the world by working together.”
Mr. Robison said he was impressed by Pope Francis’ humility and courtesy to the visiting delegation of Evangelical Protestant Christian leaders.
In a written statement, Mr. Robison said he believes “the prayers of earnest Christians helped lead to the choice of Pope Francis.” He described Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Argentine Archbishop chosen as Pope, as “a humble man…filled with such love for the poor, downtrodden…”
In addition to Mrs. Betty Robison, the high-profile Protestant delegation included Kenneth Copeland, co-founder of Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Newark, TX; Reverend Geoff Tunnicliff, CEO of the World Evangelical Alliance; Rev. Brian Stiller and Rev. Thomas Schirrmacher, also from the World Evangelical Alliance; and Rev. John Arnott and his wife, Carol, co-founders of Partners for Harvest ministries in Toronto, Canada. Gloria Copeland did not travel to Rome because of a previously scheduled commitment.
The ecumenical meeting in Rome was organized by Episcopal Bishop Tony Palmer. Rev. Palmer is an ordained bishop in the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, a break-away alliance of charismatic Anglican-Episcopal churches. Bishop Palmer is also the Director of The Ark Community, an international interdenominational Convergent Church online community, and is a member of the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Delegation for Christian Unity and Reconciliation.
Bishop Palmer developed a friendship with Pope Francis when the future Roman Pontiff was a Catholic official in Argentina. Prior to becoming a CEEC bishop, Rev. Palmer was the director of the Kenneth Copeland Ministries’ office in South Africa. He is married to an Italian Roman Catholic woman. He later moved to Italy and began working to reconcile Roman Catholics and Protestants. Kenneth Copeland Ministries was one of Mr. Palmer’s first financial contributors over 10 years ago in support of his ecumenical work in Italy.
Earlier this year, Pope Francis called Bishop Palmer to invite him to his residence in Vatican City. During the meeting, Bishop Palmer suggested that the Pope record a personal greeting on Mr. Palmer’s iPhone to be delivered to Kenneth Copeland. Mr. Copeland showed the Papal video greeting to a conference of Protestant ministers who were meeting at Mr. Copeland’s Eagle Mountain International Church near Fort Worth, TX. In the video, Pope Francis expressed his desire for Christian unity with Protestants.
Later, James Robison telecasted the video on his daily TV program, Life Today. “The pope, in the video, expressed a desire for Protestants and Catholics to become what Jesus prayed for — that Christians would become family and not be divided,” Mr. Robison said the response to the video was very positive, and that Pope Francis asked Bishop Palmer whether a meeting could be arranged with Evangelical Protestants seeking Christian unity in the world.
In his written statement released after the Papal meeting, Mr. Robison said he was “blessed to be part of perhaps an unprecedented moment between evangelicals and the Catholic Pope.” He described the Protestant delegation’s private meeting with the leader of the Roman Catholic Church as “an intimate circle of prayerful discussion and lunch to discuss not only seeing Jesus’ prayer answered, but that every believer would become a bold, joy-filled witnesses for Christ.
In describing the ecumenical gathering as a miracle, Mr. Robison said, “This is something God has done. God wants his arms around the world. And he wants Christians to put his arms around the world by working together.”
During the luncheon on Tuesday, Mr. Robison got a high-five from Pope Francis after the Pope and Protestant guests talked about the need for all people to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. According to the Life Today host, the Roman Pontiff did not know what a high-five was until Bishop Palmer explained it to him in Italian. Mr. Robison said, “The Pope made it very clear that he wanted every believer to become Spirit-filled, joy-filled witnesses.”
Mr. Robison said Pope Francis had written recently, “Too many Catholics look like they’ve been to Lent with no Easter. It’s a mistake for them to look like they’ve been to a funeral” as he challenged Catholics to witness and never try to control the Holy Spirit, but yield to Him.
Mr. Robison said he received a divine call from God to seek Christian unity while he was hospitalized several years ago with a serious staph infection following hip surgery. Robison recalled, “[I] was so weak I could not lift a cup of water to my lips…God got my full attention…He spoke to me through Isaiah 58:6-12 and I saw the importance of living in freedom, touching the suffering, the hungry, poor, and downtrodden. I recognized the promise that our prayers would be answered quickly and we would become a free-flowing stream and a well-watered garden, restoring the foundations upon which we must build. During that time God instructed me to focus my attention on Jesus’ prayer and encouraging others to begin fulfilling it through us in our day.”
During that time, he said, he was impressed by a prayer of Jesus in John 17:21, pleading that all Christian believers be one. “We’ve tried to focus on being an answer to Jesus’ prayer,” Robison said. “We want to see Jesus’ prayer for unity answered in our day.”
Aware that the meeting with the Pope will be troublesome among staunch Protestants, Mr. Robison said he and the other visiting Evangelical Christian leaders talked about diversity and their belief that Roman Catholics and Protestants could work together without compromising their beliefs.
“The world is suffering,” said Robison. “We as Christians have too much love to share without fighting one another.”
Mr. Robison said he and other “respected Evangelical leaders and Spirit-filled Catholics began meeting together to pray for God’s will to be done and to bring true believers together in supernatural unity….We have been commanded to love God with all of our heart and our neighbors as ourselves. The enemy has kept many Christians from loving one another as Christ loves us and have failed to recognize the importance of supernatural unity even with all of the unique diversity.”
Mr. Robison, whose ministry digs water wells and supplies food for impoverished people in third-world nations, recounted that he was christened as a fatherless boy in an Episcopal Church. As an adult, he joined the Southern Baptist Church. In the 1980s, he became one of the first prominent Southern Baptist ministers to openly proclaim he had received the baptism o
Mat 23:9 Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven.
ebb tide:
I am well aware of what the Orthodox Church requires with respect who is eligible to receive Holy Communion in their Church and what their directives are for Orthodox Christians and partaking Eucharist in a Catholic Church. That was not the topic of my post, the issue at hand was what the Catholic Church allows with respect to partaking Holy Communion in the Catholic Church. With respect to the Eastern Orthodox their partaking of Holy Communion in a Catholic parish, I was 100% accurate. Thus the dichotomy in theory can arise, and in all likelihood, has happened whereby an Orthodox Christian married earlier in life, divorced and remarried, has taken Communion in a Catholic parish.
Oh?
In what way?
No; I'm not.
I'm pointing out the FACT that the high leaders of CatholicISM do NOT know what they so PROUDLY talk about!
So do you find that to be an excuse for the Roman Catholic Church to now allow Holy Communion to non-repentant adulterers just because the Orthodox Church does?
The Pope and Kasper never singled out the Orthodox to be the sole beneficiaries of this new form of “pastoral care”. Did you you hear about the Pope’s recent recommendation to the adulteress in South America? He advised her to find a Catholic Church, where here sinful life was unknown, in order to receive Holy Communion.
P.S. Rome has acknowledged the phone call was made; and Rome has not denied (nor confirmed) the published details of that phone call.
The old call no man Father [Mt 23:9]. In what sense is this true? Your 1 line scripture site is typical of fundamentalist American Protestantism.
In the OT, God said Honor your Father and Mother. Do you really think Christ meant “oh, btw, honor them, but don’t call them Father and Mother”. In Mt. 15 Christ tells scribes and Pharisees that God Commanded you to “Honor your Father and Mother” and he who speaks evil of father and mother, let him die [Mt 15:4-5]. The Gospels of Mark and Luke both cite Christ stating that a Christian should honor his Father and Mother [Mk. 10:19; Luke 18:20] and Matthew cites Christ again stating honor your Father and Mother [Mt 19:19]. Saint Paul tells the Christian Community at Ephesus to “Honor your Father and Mother” [Eph 6:2]. Did Saint Paul miss the memo, is he a heretic according to your fundamentalist theology.
In another Gospel passage, when Christ enters Jerusalem Saint Mark calls David “Father” [c.f. Mk 11:10]. In Luke 16:24, the parable of bosom of Abraham, we read “and he called out Father Abraham”.
The passages above are enough to show your views are nonsense. But lets go even further for here is the Kicker. Saint Paul, writing to the Thessalonian Church states “for you know, like a {father} with his children, we exhorted each one of you...” [1 Thess 2:11]. In 1 Timothy 5:1, Saint Paul states regard an older man exhort him as you would a {father}. Perhaps the greatest kicker is this one “I do not write this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel. I urge you then be imitators of me. [1 Cor 4:14-16]
In numerous other passages, Saint Paul called Timothy his Child [obviously not his biological child, so in this sense, Paul was like a spiritual or theological father in the same sense Catholics call their priests Father]. For example, “Therefore I sent to you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ” (1 Cor. 4:17); “To Timothy, my true child in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord” (1 Tim. 1:2); “To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord” (2 Tim. 1:2).
In other passages, he refers to Timothy as his son. “This charge I commit to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophetic utterances which pointed to you, that inspired by them you may wage the good warfare” (1 Tim 1:18); “You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 2:1); “But Timothy’s worth you know, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel” (Phil. 2:22). Titus was also called by Saint Paul his child: “To Titus, my true child in a common faith: grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior” (Titus 1:4); “I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment” (Philem. 10).
In summary, if your view is correct [and it is NOT], then all the Gospel writers and Saint Paul are heretics. But your fundamentalist theology [your theology, not you personally] is 100% wrong. Catholics call priests Father in the sense of a spiritual Father just as many of the Apostles referred to Abraham [as cited earlier] and Isaac [Romans 10:9] as spiritual fathers and Saint Paul referred to himself as a spiritual father.
ebb tide:
What about a situation where a Man abandons a young wife with 2 kids, this hypothetical woman is say 22 years old. She raises those kids the best she can and lets say 10 to 12 years later, she is remarried. So she is now 32 to 34 years old. Lets assume 30 years after the she remarried, she is still faithfully married to the 2nd man and recall that the 1st husband just abandoned her. Is it not possible for a woman in that situation, even though lets say her first marriage was in a Catholic parish, that she could be allowed to take communion. Is that woman really an adulterer? Now, the husband who abandoned the young wife and if he remarried, then No, he is not allowed. Now that is my view, but I am not a priest, theologian, Bishop or Pope. I will abide by whatever discipline regarding Holy Communion Rome provides to best of my ability and with God’s Grace.
As for the South American woman you refer to, I heard press accounts of what happened. And I am aware the Papal Media Priest spokesman confirmed there was a conversation. How accurate the press accounts are, I am not sure. I have never heard the entire story from Pope Francis or the woman and I don’t really know her situation. All we know was their was a call. Maybe he told her to regularize what is in irregular marriage, i.e she had been married and divorced civilly several times, which is catamount to living in sin, but she has in essence never entered into a Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. So maybe the Pope told her to go to Confession, get her marriage regularized with the Church and be a good role model for her children by going to Holy Mass again every Sunday, etc.
Blue Dragon:
Fair enough Post. That the Pope is willing to meet people is in and of itself not a bad thing. This Pope tends to do that a lot. That is his right. Again, meeting with folks, even if you disagree with them or you do not share 100% of their theology is better than what Catholics and Protestants did in the 16th century. We can agree to disagree and do it charitably, although some FR Prots here do test my patience and ability to be charitable. Pope Francis is better at it than I am.
So the other day, the Pope met with a group of American prosperity gospel evangelicals, which the OP in this thread shows.
On June 16th, the Pope met with the Head of the Anglican Communion in Rome. Here is Justin Welby’s, the Leader of the Anglican Communion’s address to the Pope.
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5345/archbishop-justins-address-to-pope-francis
According to the BBC, one of the topics was for the Catholic and Anglicans to work together to stop human trafficking. Not necessarily a bad thing. On that I think we all can agree. Of course this does not mean the Catholic Church agrees with everything the Anglicans are doing and the Anglicans don’t agree with us. But again, talking is not a bad thing in this case.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-27861907
Finally, the Pope today met with the Delegation from the Greek Orthodox Church representing the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinopile. Now, my guess is the discussions with the Orthodox will be much more about serious theological issues than the Pope’s discussions with the American prosperity evangelicals and the Anglican Primate Justin Welby. I think the Link below will clearly demonstrate that.
So in my view, talking with the Orthodox Church is of utmost importance for we and they are in agreement on 99% of things. Talking with the Anglicans 50 years ago would have also been of importance, 2nd behind the Orthodox, since they are structured as an Anglican Communion and there is a dialogue partner. However, the issues of women’s ordination, women Bishops, etc, have moved us further away so any hopes for full communion between Rome and Anglicanism I think are gone. Still, talking to them to work on ministries that can solve things like human slavery is a good thing to do.
Finally, as for the American prosperity gospel evangelicals/Pentecostals. I don’t really know what can come out of that. Maybe better relations can arise and Catholics can work with this branch of Protestantism on some things like aiding the poor,providing medical care and education, etc in South America, where this type of Protestantism seems to be popular.
Let's stop right there with your example of extreme circumstances. In today's Church, this young woman could take her case to a marriage tribunal board and plead her case. With that and fifty dollars, there's a good a chance she would be granted an annulment based on "someone wasn't mature enough to understand the full extent of what they were doing."
What Cardinal Kasper is proposing is far more encompassing as is the Orthodox Church's practice.
ebb tide:
Ok, so maybe the annulment process needs to be streamlined in these cases. Apparently, the annulment process in areas outside US is not applied the same way as some statistics show that a majority of the annulments in the Catholic world occur here in the United States. So what comes out of this Synod is a standardization of the annulment process.
Look, I don’t know what is going to happen and yes I know Cardinal Kasper proposed the Orthodox practice as an alternative. I would rather see what actually happens with the Synod than let theologians write the Catholic press and/or the secular press try to shape and project what is going to happen.
Great Points. Amen.
Hence, while Roman Catholicism may extend Eucharistic hospitality to Orthodox Christians, it does not mean that Orthodox Christians are permitted to accept such hospitality.
Some history on RCC position on those outside it.
Pius 9, Quanto Conficiamur Moerore: “Also well known is the Catholic teaching that no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church. Eternal salvation cannot be obtained by those who oppose the authority and statements of the same Church and are stubbornly separated from the unity of the Church and also from the successor of Peter, the Roman Pontiff..”
-http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9quanto.htm
Pope Pius IX, Amantissimus: “There are other, almost countless, proofs drawn from the most trustworthy witnesses which clearly and openly testify with great faith, exactitude, respect and obedience that all who want to belong to the true and only Church of Christ must honor and obey this Apostolic See and Roman Pontiff." Pope Pius IX, Amantissimus (On The Care Of The Churches), Encyclical promulgated on April 8, 1862, # 3.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P9AMANT2.HTM
Pope Pius IX (1846–1878), Encyclical Singulari Quidem March 17, 1856): “There is only one true, holy, Catholic Church, which is the Apostolic Roman Church. There is only one See founded on Peter by the word of the Lord, outside of which we cannot find either true faith or eternal salvation. He who does not have the Church for a mother cannot have God for a father, and whoever abandons the See of Peter on which the Church is established trusts falsely that he is in the Church. (On the Unity of the Catholic Church)
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9singul.htm
Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos: Furthermore, in this one Church of Christ no man can be or remain who does not accept, recognize and obey the authority and supremacy of Peter and his legitimate successors. Did not the ancestors of those who are now entangled in the errors of Photius [the eastern “Orthodox” schismatics] and the reformers, obey the Bishop of Rome, the chief shepherd of souls?...Let none delude himself with obstinate wrangling. For life and salvation are here concerned...” Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, PTC:873) The Promotion of True Religious Unity), 11, Encyclical promulgated on January 6, 1928, #11;
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19280106_mortalium-animos_en.html
Pius XII, Humani Generis (27,28): "Some say they are not bound by the doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on the Sources of Revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing.[6] Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation...These and like errors, it is clear, have crept in among certain of Our sons."
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html
Fourth Lateran Council (1215): "There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved."
Fifth Lateran Council: Moreover, since subjection to the Roman pontiff is necessary for salvation for all Christ's faithful, as we are taught by the testimony of both sacred scripture and the holy fathers, and as is declared by the constitution of pope Boniface VIII of happy memory, also our predecessor, which begins Unam sanctam, we therefore...renew and give our approval to that constitution... Fifth Lateran CouncilSession 11, 19 December 1516,
http://www.piar.hu/councils/ecum18.htm
Pope Innocent III and Lateran Council IV: "One indeed is the universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved, in which the priest himself is the sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine; the bread (changed) into His body by the divine power of transubstantiation, and the wine into the blood, so that to accomplish the mystery of unity we ourselves receive from His (nature) what He Himself received from ours."
Pope Innocent III and Lateran Council IV (A.D. 1215) [considered infallible by some]
Therefore, if anyone says that it is not by the institution of Christ the lord himself (that is to say, by divine law) that blessed Peter should have perpetual successors in the primacy over the whole Church; or that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in this primacy: let him be anathema. — Vatican 1, Ses. 4, Cp. 1
The COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE under Pope John XXIII condemned the proposition of Wycliff that “It is not necessary for salvation to believe that the Roman church is supreme among the other churches.” [inasmuch as it would deny the primacy of the supreme pontiff over the other individual churches.] — Session 8—4 May 1415;
http://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/CONSTANC.HTM
St. Thomas Aquinas: It is also shown that to be subject to the Roman Pontiff is necessary for salvation. For Cyril says in his Thesaurus: “Therefore, brethren, if we imitate Christ so as to hear his voice remaining in the Church of Peter and so as not be puffed up by the wind of pride, lest perhaps because of our quarrelling the wily serpent drive us from paradise as once he did Eve.” And Maximus in the letter addressed to the Orientals [Greeks] says: “The Church united and established upon the rock of Peter’s confession we call according to the decree of the Savior the universal Church, wherein we must remain for the salvation of our souls and wherein loyal to his faith and confession we must obey him.” — St. Thomas Aquinas, Against the Errors of the Greeks, Pt. 2, ch. 36
http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraErrGraecorum.htm#b38
St. Ambrose, "Expl. of Luke: "The Lord severed the Jewish people from His kingdom, and heretics and schismatics are also severed from the kingdom of God and from the Church. Our Lord makes it perfectly clear that every assembly of heretics and schismatics belongs not to God, but to the unclean spirit." — St. Ambrose, "Expl. of Luke", ch.7, 91-95; PL 15; SS, vol. II, p. 85, (quoted in The Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 4: "The Book of Christians", Chapter 2: "Those Who Reject Christ's Church are Anti-Christian").http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/6480/catholics/apostolic4chp2.html
Pope Boniface VIII, Bull Unam sanctam (1302): "We are compelled in virtue of our faith to believe and maintain that there is only one holy Catholic Church, and that one is apostolic. This we firmly believe and profess without qualification. Outside this Church there is no salvation and no remission of sins, the Spouse in the Canticle proclaiming: 'One is my dove, my perfect one. One is she of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her' (Canticle of Canticles 6:8); which represents the one mystical body whose head is Christ, of Christ indeed, as God. And in this, 'one Lord, one faith, one baptism' (Ephesians 4:5). Certainly Noah had one ark at the time of the flood, prefiguring one Church which perfect to one cubit having one ruler and guide, namely Noah, outside of which we read all living things were destroyed… We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff."
Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam (Promulgated November 18, 1302) "If, therefore, the Greeks or others say that they are not committed to Peter and to his successors, they necessarily say that they are not of the sheep of Christ, since the Lord says that there is only one fold and one shepherd (Jn.10:16). Whoever, therefore, resists this authority, resists the command of God Himself. " http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/b8-unam.html
Pope Eugene IV, Cantate Domino (1441): "The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the "eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41), unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church."
Pope Eugene IV and the Council of Florence: "The sacrosanct Roman Church...firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that..not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life but will depart `into everlasting fire...unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that..no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.”— Pope Eugene IV and the Council of Florence (Seventeenth Ecumenical Council), Cantate Domino, Bull promulgated on February 4, 1441 (Florentine style), [considered infallible by some]
But "the one step further" is the rub! This is not what Pius XI is suggesting at all. Pius XI just wrote a whole encyclical explaining what does not equate to religious unity. It spends the whole time explaining that it is only found in the Catholic Church. Nowhere does he suggest that Catholics should pray with non-Catholics in order to help this recognition along. That's because that would have gone against Catholic teaching. He knew that.
Francis has gone one step further: he promotes prayer with non-Catholics which goes against Traditional Church teaching. In doing so, he encourages a false unity which also goes against Traditional Church teaching.
With all the bad popes in pre-VII history of the Catholic Church, you never saw anything like this. And there was good reason for that: it wasn't the teaching of the Catholic Church.
The reason why you and others think this is just fine and dandy is because this has become the norm in the Church these days.
metmom:
Yep, all true.
Yes. Great anointed song. And as an Anglican priest he was called “ Father.” Good point.
Outside the Church there is no salvation. It is discussed in CCC [846-848] and is re-formulated positively vs. negatively but the teaching is still the same. The teaching of “outside the Church there is no salvation” is found in numerous Church Fathers, one of which you put in your post [Saint Ambrose of Milan
http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p123a9p3.htm
As far back as Saint Ignatius of Antioch, we see a clear teaching of outside the Church there is no salvation. All of the Fathers cited in the links below or orthodox theologians and saints and express a teaching but individually they are not a Church Council or Pope.
http://www.churchfathers.org/category/salvation/salvation-outside-the-church/
However, the basic teaching is there and how that Doctrine gets defined and expressed is up to the Magisterium of the Church. In summary, all Salvation is from Christ thru his Church [His Body and Bride] since Christ is one, his Church is one, thus all Grace comes from Christ thru his Church. Thus since the Catholic Church has the fullness of the 7 Sacraments, the fullness of means of salvation are fully present in her. Those who are not in full communion with her are related to her via baptism and God, in ways known to him, may and has saved them as well. Nevertheless, there are not 10 Churches, 1,000 or 15,000 or whatever, there is but One Church and I hold to that sole Church being the Catholic Church.
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2010/11/is-amazing-grace-anti-catholic-hymn.html
Michael Vorris point of view
piusv:
Your not 100% accurate. At the Council of Basel-Florence [1431-1445], which all the Orthodox were present for most of it, the opening address states the entire “Universal Church is gathered” so while the Orthodox were in schism from Rome, the term heretic was not applied. Clearly the Catholics and Orthodox gathered together and prayed at that Council. This is well before Vatican 2 obviously.
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum17.htm
In addition to the meetings I noted above, here also recently met with the leader of the Armenian Orthodox Church which is one of those groups that did not accept the Council of Ephesus in 431. If memory serves me correctly, Pope John Paul II found terminology and agreement so that these Churches are no longer Nestorian. The next step would be to get them to find a theological term to solve the Council of Chalcedon, which will probably not be much of problem given the Nestorian issue is resolved.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-lauds-armenian-church-leaders-commitment-to-unity/
http://www.armenianorthodoxchurch.org/en/archives/7896
So again, this Pope seems to be willing to meet and talk with lots of Christians from non Catholic Traditions. We see 4 in the last month 1)Armenian orthodox Church, 2) Anglican church, 3) American prosperity evangelical/Pentecostals, and 4) Greek Eastern Orthodox Church delegates from the Patriarch of Constantinopile.
Despite all these meetings, the Pope has not rejected the Nicene or Apostles Creed, nor changed 7 sacraments to 6 or added an 8th, he has not rejected the Primacy of the Pope, nor any other Catholic Doctrine. He has just met with people. Are some of those meetings a waste of time. Maybe? For example, I doubt the meeting in the “Vatican Garden” with the Jewish leader and Palestinian-muslim will amount to anything. I also doubt the meeting with the American prosperity evangelical-Pentecostals will amount to anything. I also doubt the meeting the Primate Welby of the Anglican communion will amount to anything approaching full communion, although working together to stop human trafficking and slavery is a good ecumenical project to work together on.
The meeting with the Armenian orthodox Leader, however, I think might lead to a restoration of full-communion with Rome, which would be a good thing. And of course, the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church needs to keep working for re-union as a fully united Rome and Orthodox would make for a great Christian witness of Christ’s love for the Church and humanity.
That is my take on it, and that is all it is, my take. Nothing more nothing less. You are free to have your take
I have no idea what precipitated this post to me. I never said that the Orthodox were heretics. They are schismatics.
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