Posted on 04/26/2015 10:04:43 AM PDT by ebb tide
There is an amusing investing term called a ‘dead cat bounce.’ It follows from the idea that "even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height." A dead cat bounce refers to a temporary recovery from a prolonged decline followed by a continuation of the downtrend. The dead cat bounce is a sucker’s bet. Suckers, thinking that the worst is over and that things have reached bottom, start buying up stock. In reality, the temporary rally is caused by investors shorting the stock purchasing the worthless stock to cover long-term bets against the company creating short-term buying pressure.
In short, the suckers buy up worthless stock thinking the worst is over and the stock is on the uptrend despite the fact that all the fundamental measures should tell them otherwise.
I am a sucker who got fooled by the dead cat bounce.
In 2005 the Catholic Church elected Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI and created a short term rally. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued motu proprio Summorum Pontificum freeing up the Old Mass. As a beleaguered Catholic heavily invested in the Church, I allowed myself to believe that perhaps the worst was over. Even though none of the fundamentals had changed, I bought into the foolish notion that we had hit bottom and that it was all uphill from there. It might be slow, it might be painful at times, but the progressives who had systematically sought to destroy the Church for forty years were getting old and would soon die off. Young people seemed to increasingly embrace tradition. Time was now on the side of tradition.
Boy was I ever wrong. I bought into the Catholic version of the dead cat bounce.
In reality, the Church was thoroughly infiltrated and infested with progressives from top to bottom. Their quiescence during the early years of the Benedictine pontificate did not signify that they knew they were defeated, quite the opposite in fact. It was merely a tactic of the moment by a nefarious group of modernists that had been playing the long game since some fifty years before Joseph Ratzinger was even born.
Within a few short years, they had effectively ground Pope Benedict’s papacy into nothingness and ultimately Pope Benedict just gave up. The dead cat bounced. The decline continues unabated and in many ways has picked up speed, progressive gravity working its freefall magic.
The Church is experiencing a great crisis, what Bishop Athanasius Schneider calls the fourth great crisis of the Church. Many well-meaning Catholics want to exclusively focus their attention on the culture at large ignoring what is happening in the Church. But this is first and foremost a crisis of faith, a crisis of the Church. I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible for the Church as a whole to effectively engage the culture with the purpose of saving souls when the Church, in large part, ignores the need for souls to be saved. Moreover, Catholics themselves are lost to sin because the Church has given up on them. Many Catholics who have only attended the Novus Ordo simply have no idea of what has been lost and what is necessary to truly engage the culture as the Church did successfully for two millennia.
The Catholics who generally sense that things are headed in the wrong direction in the Church but that have yet to fully understand or acknowledge the depth of the crisis are not the enemy. In many ways they are the future. They are the folks that cannot imagine that the October Synod will undermine marriage. Focusing on the internal crisis of the Church makes many Catholics uncomfortable, some angrily rejecting the truth or its messengers. They don’t want to believe it is true. I understand. I was like you.
For me, the turning point was the closing years of Pope Benedict’s papacy when I realized that in many dioceses the Pope’s signature achievement, Summorum Pontificum, was simply a dead letter, like it never even happened. That modernist progressivism was much more entrenched in the Church than I had assumed. My opening eyes moved to Japanese Manga cartoon size during the first two years of Pope Francis’s pontificate. Modernists, sensing their moment, have come out of the woodwork. Even some prelates I thought mostly reliable have firmly established their modernist bona fides. We now have Cardinals openly opposing Cardinals, Bishops openly opposing Bishops. We have the top hierarchy of the Church, with a few notable exceptions, openly and publicly debating how to get around the very words of Jesus Christ so that they can institutionalize the sexual revolution in the Church that has only tacitly accepted it the past fifty years.
The depth of the crisis makes itself more manifest every day and I don’t think it will get better any time soon. I don’t know how far our heavenly Father will allow His Church to go down this road, but I suspect it is a ways more. But as Catholics, our supreme focus should be on saving souls by preaching the Gospel. But we must face the fact that much of the new navel–gazing anthropocentric Church is no longer interested in doing that. To change that, it is necessary to support all those Catholics in the middle as they grow in their unease and understanding of the nature of this crisis and that its only solution lies in tradition and the restoration of all things in Christ.
Strictly speaking, the only "statue" required in a Catholic church is a crucifix on or near the altar. The others are optional, and are no more idols than pictures people keep of their relatives who have passed on.
I don’t agree with that either. Does that mean that the church “has no problem” with Protestants?
Some Catholics on FR certainly seem to have problems with Protestants. What do you think?
“Is that why you fashion statues and images of dead “saints,” kneel before them and light candles and incense in offerings to them?”
Let me correct your errors which are so common among anti-Catholics:
1) The saints are not dead - but alive in Christ.
2) I’ve never lit a candle or offered incense to any saint, or any image of a saint. If I light a candle it is as a reminder that Christ is the light of the world. As a layperson I have never used incense for anything. If you want to know how incense is commonly used, please see this: http://www.adoremus.org/0212Herrera.html
“Follow up question - How can what I described be anything except worship?”
1) I think you first have to deal with the fact that you presented a false premise. In other words, to “describe” what you falsely ascribe to us as “worship” would be a logical error on your part to begin with since you were wrong to begin with.
2) Since we don’t worship saints, it behooves you to not make the error of saying we do. When you say, “How can what I described be anything except worship?” I can’t help but wonder how you can make the mistakes you do when we’re in the information age. It’s not hard to learn the truth.
“No, apparently the last conclave forgot about the Holy Ghost and now we’re stuck with Francis.”
No, thankfully the Holy Spirit doesn’t take direction from you.
“Did you not hear about “Team Bergoglio”?”
How does it matter if I did or didn’t?
“And most of the Independent Fundamental churches do not follow Scofield.”
Doesn’t matter. He espoused sola scriptura and millions of sola scripturists use his Bible.
“As for Ruckman, the Bible says a person can be divorced for adultery, that is the only reason, but that a divorced person cannot be a pastor (2 Timothy).”
Well, he’s a pastor. And there are thousands of pastors like him who are divorced and yet still espouse sola scriptura. So, if claim that sola scripturists (especially pastors) don’t believe in divorce or divorce and remarriage, you’re clearly wrong. Many do. It happens all the time.
“Needless to say, there are many divorced pastors serving in churches today — in evangelical, Bible believing churches.”
https://bible.org/question/can-or-should-pastor-who-has-been-divorced-his-wife-continue-his-role-pastor-even-if-divorc
Nor does the Holy Spirit impose Himself where He's not wanted. We have a pope who has publicly praised the Kasper heresy, labeling Kasper's evil drivel "serene" theology.
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". . . Benedict XVI, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was asked on Bavarian television in 1997 if the Holy Spirit is responsible for who gets elected. This was his response: "I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope. ... I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit's role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined."
Then the clincher: "There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!"
http://www.thesacredpage.com/2013/02/no-holy-spirit-doesnt-choose-pope.html
Yes, you can make those points and they are correct. But in each case they have added something to Sola Scriptura to justify what they are doing.
Denominations are formed because people could not handle exactly what the Bible teaches, so tried to find a way to get around what it plainly says.
So you can claim they are Sola Scriptura and they will call themselves the same, but their books and writings always add to the scripture.
And that fate is plainly spelled out, Revelation 22:18-19.
Which doesn’t contradict anything I said. Thanks for playing.
“But in each case they have added something to Sola Scriptura to justify what they are doing.”
So sola scriptura is essentially useless since it is all subjective to the individual.
The term ‘Sola Scriptura’ commits the fallacy of the undistributed middle ... which is perhaps why Catholics are fond of it since it then allows them to insewrt the authority of the priests and the councils and the Pope and Mary, and ... well, you get the gist. The term wouldn’t apply to the era of Paul when he was evangelizing and writing letters, but that doesn’t stop some from using the fallacy to their agenda aims.
“The decree in question didn’t change anything that wasn’t believed before.”
Why was it made in 1854?
Why not 1754 or 1054 or 554 etc...?
“The term ‘Sola Scriptura’ commits the fallacy of the undistributed middle ... “
No. Sola scriptura is a fallacy.
Whatever ...
Just trying to gauge how ill-informed you are. More than I thought.
See what I mean by insolent?
Back to the question.... What does it look like when a catholic worships God if not as the photos reflect then what?
Someone who claims to be Catholic and constantly slanders all Catholics who don’t agree with them is a far better example of the word “insolant” than someone who may well be running down a rabblit hole but who is at least seeking logical connections.
Oh yes, I know ...it's venerating or some such thing.
They would do well putting aside the Mass entirely and let the people Worship God in and by His Spirit... not through a line of old men masquerading as something they are not.
"Hindu priest holds a human skull as worshippers offer prayers to the Hindu god Shiva"
"Catholic Priest holds out a human skull as worshippers offers prayer to the Catholic god"
I think you meant “all ‘catholics’ who don’t agree with Catholicism”.
I explained dogma in Posts 23, 29 and 32. Three strikes and you’re out.
I did not know ifinnegan was a Catholic, nor did I slander him. Are you even a Catholic, yourself?
How about the dogma of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus? Are you ‘catholic’ enough to state your belief in that dogma on this forum?
“Just trying to gauge how ill-informed you are. More than I thought.”
ebb tide, as you have shown in the past, I am vastly better informed than you appear to be.
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