Posted on 06/16/2016 9:22:17 PM PDT by ebb tide
Pope Francis, spiritual leader of a billion people, has just informed them that ‘the great majority’ of sacramental marriages are invalid because couples don’t go into them with the right intentions. He was speaking at a press conference in Rome. Here’s the context, from the Catholic News Agency (my emphases):
‘I heard a bishop say some months ago that he met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said “I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years”. It’s the culture of the provisional. And this happens everywhere, also in priestly life, in religious life,’ he said.
‘It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null. Because they say “yes, for the rest of my life!” but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.’
Uh? You can read the full report here but you won’t be much the wiser. The Pope, thinking aloud in the manner of some maverick parish priest after a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, has just told millions of his flock that they are not really married.
Did he mean to say that? What does he really think? What authority do his words carry?
And why should Catholics even have to ask these questions? Francis’s off-the-cuff ramblings on matters of extreme pastoral sensitivity are wreaking havoc in the Catholic Church, as I’ve written here.
Ross Douthat of the New York Times has just tweeted this response:
Screen Shot 2016-06-16 at 23.54.41
I suspect that even the Pope’s most liberal admirers will have difficulty extricating him from this mess.
Well SOMEONE had to pick up verga's mantle when he; uh; ascended...
I try my best in laying out the words of 'the fathers' before the eyes of our FR Catholics; holding onto the promise that THE WORD is sharper than...
With zero evidence to the FACTs involved.
Trying SO hard to make 'Mary' into what is NEVER claimed for her in the Bible.
I'll betcha that them Seven Asian Churches wish they'd paid more attention when 'the Untier of Knots' was being discussed
Deal...
Luke 10:37 b
1 Kings 1:1-4 English Standard Version (ESV)
1 Now King David was old and advanced in years. And although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm. 2 Therefore his servants said to him, “Let a young woman be sought for my lord the king, and let her wait on the king and be in his service. Let her lie in your arms, that my lord the king may be warm.” 3 So they sought for a beautiful young woman throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. 4 The young woman was very beautiful, and she was of service to the king and attended to him, but the king knew her not.
How DARE you point out the Queen has no clothes!!??!!
Will I have to explain THIS one; too?
Some people like to eat pears.
I am not one of them.
Some ‘fruits’ are wasted on me.
When I get to be old...
1Sa 8:5 and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.”
1Sa 8:6 But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the LORD.
1Sa 8:7 And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.
1Sa 8:8 According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you.
1Sa 8:9 Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
1Sa 8:10 So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking for a king from him.
1Sa 8:11 He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots.
1Sa 8:12 And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.
1Sa 8:13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.
1Sa 8:14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants.
1Sa 8:15 He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants.
1Sa 8:16 He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work.
1Sa 8:17 He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.
1Sa 8:18 And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”
1Sa 8:19 But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, “No! But there shall be a king over us,
1Sa 8:20 that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
1Sa 8:21 And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the LORD.
1Sa 8:22 And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey their voice and make them a king.” Samuel then said to the men of Israel, “Go every man to his city.”
...
1Sa 12:19 And all the people said to Samuel, “Pray for your servants to the LORD your God, that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for ourselves a king.”
1Sa 12:20 And Samuel said to the people, “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the LORD, but serve the LORD with all your heart.
BTW-When men do what is right in their own eyes they will do evil just as they did in appointing themselves a king. When we make Jesus our King, we want to follow what He has commanded of us. We only have one ruler over us.
:o)
Peace b with you.
But we do not share that view. I think you're a Sola Scriptura person --- amirite? ---while I am quite definitely not.
As a consequence, the stunning discovery that "Our Lady, Untier of Knots" does not appear in the Bible, does not disconcert me in the least.
Our discussions often go off at cross-purposes, because you evidently think I should consider a Catholic doctrine "disproved" if it is not commanded or dispositively proven from the Bible. This is applying a too-narrow criterion. We Catholics believe in Sacred Tradition and in the authority of the Church --- both on Biblical grounds, as the Bible itself teaches both the authority of Sacred Tradition (oral teachings) plus the authority of the Church as such.
So it occurs to me, that when I am not cast down by Sola Scriptural arguments, some may think this is obstinacy on my part. It's not obstinacy. It's that I am not making a Sola Scriptura argument.
Unless you think Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are "Rome." And of course, I will concede that they are Catholic.
So the question morphs into, "So could you possibly tell us just WHY the Apostles and Evangelists failed to include so many NECESSARY things in the BIBLE when they wrote it?"
And my answer would be: Because they didn't transcribe into text everything they were teaching by word and example. Nor did they even write down everything Our Lord taught by word and example. St. John answers the question nicely:
John 21:25
"And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen."
No. Did I claim to do that? No.
If you will look at the context at #282, here's what I told metmom that I think is impossible: that God would have begotten His Son on Mary by:
I will add here that I believe it impossible that God would have begotten His Son on Mary by
That is because "God is Love," and Love does not get its way by violating women sexually. Comment?
Comment?
GOD DID ***NOT*** HAVE SEX WITH MARY!!!!!!!!!
He DID NOT violate her sexually!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He did it WITHOUT sex, so there is no sexual sin.
So all the considerations of sexual sin by God are wild speculation. They are flat out ridiculous and if that’s the best argument against Mary having sex with Joseph that Catholics can come up with, then their position is pretty weak.
Mary was already legally married to Joseph when the angel came with the message about her being chosen to be mother of the messiah.
There is NOTHING wrong with her having a normal marriage with Joseph after the birth of Jesus and having other children, some of who are listed BY NAME in Scripture.
So Mary wasn’t always virgin.
BIG DEAL. She’s not a better person for not having sex and not a worse person for having it. Her perpetual virginity is totally irrelevant to the virgin birth and the Incarnation.
I fail to see why the thought of Mary and Joseph doing the deed throws Catholics into such a tailspin.
I never said He had physical "intercourse" with her. He is not a biological male!!
(Yow! The things you object to --- that I didn't say ---are really mounting up here.)
I am saying God impregnated her.
Being impregnated is a "conjugal" thing --- related to the marriage covenant --- whether or not it involves intercourse.
Let me give you an example. Say Ted and Ann are newlyweds. They are both virgins. Say before Ted and Ann can consummate their union, they are tragically separated for some reason (he's hit by a train, critically injured, or something) and when he recovers many months later and returns safe and sound, he find she has had a baby.
She says this is no violation of the marriage, because she conceived the baby by getting 5 cc's of gametes from a guy on CraigsList, who delivered them in a specimen bag.
Is Ann's intentional procreation outside of marriage a violation of Ted and Ann's marital relation? Or is it not?
One problem of our sexually corrupted modern world is that we have so effectively split apart intercourse and procreation. We don't see that they are part of the same thing. They are both aspects of conjugal union. It's only recently (comparatively, 15 minutes ago) that they got split apart into garbled fragments via contraception and artificial reproductive technologies.
You keep insisting that GOD had to use a gamete (sex cell) for making the body of Jesus. Clearly, something in the catholic Maridolatry requires Mary’s chromosomes to be used in making the body for Jesus. I don’t agree, but setting that strangeness aside, where did the other sex cell/gamete come from?
Meant to ping you so that IF there is ‘an explanation’ you won’t miss it.
I did not say He had physical "intercourse" with her. I, nor engaged in any human activity, which is one reason why the adultery change is bogus. A supernatural spiritual act of God is not that an insemination by man, as being impregnated by God is a creative act, not a physically "conjugal" thing and as the author of life God can both give such as well as remove it.
In seeking to defend a Catholic belief that is nowhere in Scripture (and would require the approval of her head), you are equating physical actions by humans and laws that that deal with them with a supernatural spiritual act by God who is not bound by them. And in the supernatural realm God can both be a creator/father and spiritual one and a husband at the same time, while to be consistent with your reasoning, then one could say that God engaged in incest since as a creator/father he engaged in a conjugal act with his daughter!
Let me give you an example.
It is simply a spurious analogy, since aside from the fact that there is more to two persons becoming one than simply receiving seed, what man physically does is not the same thing as if God does so, who could both supernaturally impregnate a women as well as take it away without being either an adulterer or murderer.
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