Posted on 10/31/2014 4:56:55 PM PDT by Gamecock
Full Title: Pope Francis 'called us his brother bishops,' says Protestant pastor from Mobile, who lunched, swapped caps with the pontiff
MOBILE, Alabama - First, the pope does not want his ring kissed. And he prefers to be called Father Francis rather than Your Holiness.
Those were some of the marching orders given to Rev. Henry W. Roberts II of Mobile and other bishops with the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, who met with Pope Francis at the Vatican Oct. 10. The CEEC is an international ecumenical network that strives for unity among all Christians.
"He looks like one of the fellas. He's so down to earth," said Roberts, describing a photo he took with the pope during the visit. Roberts is founding pastor of Word of Life Community Church, an interdenominational congregation of 1,500 with locations in Chickasaw and Whistler. A graduate of McGill-Toolen Catholic School, he has been a bishop with the CEEC network since 2007.
Roberts said one of the bishops asked the pontiff if he would bless them to go and proclaim the miracle of unity. "He said, 'I can't really bless you, because we're brother bishops.' He actually called us his brother bishops," he said.
Roberts said the group met with Pope Francis for more than an hour and shared lunch in his private dining room at Casa Santa Marta, his Vatican residence. The main topics at the meeting, which occurred during the recent Synod, were family and Christian unity.
"He said, No. 1, that we as believers, as Christians, have to stop talking bad about each other and being condescending," Roberts recalled. "No. 2, we need to find a good Catholic that we can just fellowship with and develop a relationship with."
Roberts also exchanged a skull cap called a zucchetto with the pontiff. He had purchased the white hat made especially for Francis in Rome to make the swap. "I loved his personality, and I could feel his heart and compassion for people and his love for people," he said. "I know he's sincere about seeing people come together."
The meeting with the CEEC bishops, which was videoed and is on YouTube, shows the pope speaking through an interpreter about the need for unity. "We're always concentrating on the differences," the pope told the group. "We all have the same baptism, and the same baptism is more important than our differences. We all believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."
The CEEC, considered part of the "convergence movement," drew media attention this year because of a longtime friendship between the pope and CEEC Bishop Tony Palmer of South Africa. Palmer, a Protestant who considered Francis his spiritual father, organized the October meeting before he was killed in a motorcycle accident in August.
The pope famously recorded a seven-minute video on Palmer's iPhone for the bishop to present to a conference by U.S. evangelist Rev. Kenneth Copeland. In the video, which went viral on YouTube, the Pope Francis urges "the miracle of unity" between Protestants and Catholics.
How about this :
It would not make them Protestant. It would make the Pope Protestant.
In such a case, the bishops would be adhering to the teaching of the Catholic Church, and the Pope would be departing from it.
I can't help but think this is a type of "cop-out" to try to explain how someone who is proclaimed to be the successor to St. Peter - and boasted that such a "line" of popes can be traced all the way back to Peter (though we know that is a well-fudged claim) - can, in turn, end up being a PR nightmare for Roman Catholicism.
No confidence in the Cardinals but they can forgive sins and dispense the body of Christ. It if it wasn't so serious it would be funny.
You can call them bishops, or cowboys or plumbers; I don’t care what you call them.
It’s the “no true Scotsman” fallacy on steroids. It’s a last ditch effort to hang on to an unsustainable assertion, in this case that the only reliable source of theological truth is Rome, by pruning off of Rome whatever seems to conflict with the assertion.
So when we see them giving tolerance to unrepentant baby killers, we are supposed to understand those folks are “automatically excommunicated,” even if in reality they suffer none of the real world consequences of excommunication.
And when we see the supposedly unifying leadership of the supreme pontiff, well advertised here as allegedly a superior value in the Roman model, fracturing the church instead, we are to understand him to really be a Protestant and not just a liberal Roman schismatic who will in fact suffer no consequences for the crime of rending the Roman church asunder.
It’s really all too convenient. The poor Scotsman after whom the fallacy is named would blush for how his Roman counterparts have outdone him.
Peace,
SR
Except that they might not. Is the Pope Catholic? Critics Rally Around Benedict As Talk of Schism Looms
I didn't suggest that he was picked because the college of cardinals thought he was the best man for the job, but if they didn't think so, then why did they pick him?
The point was that the college of cardinals picks the pope just how then?
By the leading of the Holy Spirit or majority vote?
In other words, the Pope’s authority has NOTHING to do with confidence in the integrity or the intelligence of the Cardinals.
Or his either apparently.
It has everything to do with the fact that he is Bishop of Rome. I.e., he is a successor of Peter as Bishop of Rome.
Then Catholics are obligated to obey him as such.
O....M.....G!
Thanks for the clarification.
What was the conclusion on the cause of death for pope John Paul I?
Quite a conclaved conundrum.
Actually, i have seen RC accuse another RC of being a Prot because they were SSPX or similar.
Well said. See here also. And do not forget the special pleading to justify giving Kennedy-Chavex-Menino and such RCs ecclesiastical funerals - "they could have repented, and we have to give them the benefit of the doubt."
Wow. The first ever Papal high five. How do they know? Maybe the pope high fived Constantine after Nicea.
If a Pope attempted to teach heresy, and explicitly claimed to be doing so infallibly, then he would be revealing himself not to be Pope.
Pro-abortion politicians are not “automatically excommunicated.” Only those directly involved in an abortion incur an automatic excommunication.
Pro-abortion politicians ARE notorious grave sinners. It is a mortal sin for a bishop and/or priest to give them Communion. Most of the bishops in the U.S. are chronically in the state of mortal sin because of their insistence that pro-abortion politicians be given Communion.
The rationalization for allowing them Catholic funerals is that they had a priest around as death approached. In my opinion, any pro-abortion politician should be presumed NOT to have repented unless he made a PUBLIC declaration of repentance. And a big, public funeral is scandalous.
Cardinal O’Malley, by his fawning over Obama and the Kennedys, signaled very clearly that he is unoffended by abortion.
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