Posted on 09/17/2015 12:42:53 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
“Not the same” can be a good thing. :)
Could you expound? What do you mean it's not the same?
The article fails to mention that the Catholic Church on marriage and divorce, homosexuality, and faith in general follow Christ teachings 100% and do not waiver from the truth and proclaiming the Gospel. People will always fall short, but Christ told Peter that upon you I build my Church and it will prevail against the gates of hell. People and even Popes need salvation and all sin and require the sacraments and precious blood of Christ for redemption and there are no exceptions. The author of the article appears to be proud that people fall from their faith and adopt sinful choices for their lives. I would expect such as this based upon the source and would expect others to revel in attacking Christ's Church and make other statements that their church is superior to the Catholic faith. Those same other denominations that allow divorce and homosexuality in some cases in direct opposition to the Gospel.
I am proud to defend the faith and thank God for the graces given to me and pray for those that fall from grace and to the worldly views that temp many into a life destructive to families and children and harmful to their souls.
Uh-oh! Here come the charges of "bigotry" and calls for banning from The Usual Suspects!
The churches in places where Christianity was born, which can actually trace their history back to "the beginning," look nothing like evangelicalism.
An Associate Nun is a Lesbian who wants to go bowling but doesn’t drink....
Hmmmm.... what do Christian churches in Jerusalem look like?
No, it really wasn’t.
Perhaps the result of the Synod (divorced and remarried receive communion, inclusiveness for homosexuals, etc) will bring them back!
What is it then? Evangelicals existed from the beginning but left nothing behind? Clung to Bible alone, before the Bible existed?
Please, educate me.
How does all of this affect the problem we are examining? It means that the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is all empty chatter. We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death. The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by the psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist, who does not stand on the sidelines, watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal men, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future.
Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so will she lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, she will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, she will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly she will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Alongside this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize her true center and experience the sacraments again as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.
The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystalization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism of the eveof the French Revolution—when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain9—to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.
And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already with Gobel, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.
From Ratzinger, Faith and the Future, 1970
It seems like we are right on schedule...
The Church must be purified.
As the then Cardinal Ratzinger predicted in his book "Faith and the Future"........
"From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so will she lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, she will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision."
Beat me by 2 minutes. Great minds.....
Ah, thus snarkily (and predictably) dies your feeble defense of a historically absurd and indefensible position.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.