Posted on 11/17/2017 3:03:09 PM PST by ebb tide
As an outsider, I can’t help but wonder whether the pope and the USCCB were particularly provoked by Weinandy’s suggestion that Jesus had allowed this controversy in order “to manifest just how weak is the faith of many within the Church, even among too many of her bishops.” Catholics will have to make up their own minds—but I’ll admit I have questions about the faith of Pope Francis, which seems, if not weak, at least different from that of the Catholic tradition.
Even before the release of Amoris Laetitia in March 2016, Francis had caused many to question his fidelity to that tradition. In 2014, the midterm report of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family recommended that pastors emphasize the “positive aspects” of cohabitation and civil remarriage after divorce. He said that Jesus’s multiplication of bread and fish was really a miracle of sharing, not of multiplying (2013); told a woman in an invalid marriage that she could take Holy Communion (2014); claimed that lost souls do not go to hell (2015); and said that Jesus had begged his parents for forgiveness (2015). In 2016, he said that God had been “unjust with his son,” announced his prayer intention to build a society “that places the human person at the center,” and declared that inequality is “the greatest evil that exists.” In 2017, he joked that “inside the Holy Trinity they’re all arguing behind closed doors, but on the outside they give the picture of unity.” Jesus Christ, he said, “made himself the devil.” “No war is just,” he pronounced. At the end of history, “everything will be saved. Everything.”
Weinandy and other Catholic critics have pointed to alarming statements and suggestions in Amoris Laetitia itself. The exhortation declares, “No one can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!” In December 2016, the Catholic philosophers John Finnis and Germain Grisez argued in their “Misuse of Amoris Laetitia” that though this statement reflects a trend among Catholic thinkers stemming from Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, it contradicts the gospels’ clear statements and the Catholic tradition’s teaching that there is “unending punishment” in hell. Finnis and Grisez charge that, according to the logic of Amoris Laetitia, some of the faithful are too weak to keep God’s commandments, and can live in grace while committing ongoing and habitual sins “in grave matter.” Like (Episcopalian) Joseph Fletcher, who taught Situation Ethics in the 1960s, the exhortation suggests that there are exceptions to every moral rule and that there is no such thing as an intrinsically evil act.
I take no pleasure in Rome’s travails. For decades, orthodox Anglicans and other Protestants seeking to resist the apostasies of liberal Christianity have looked to Rome for moral and theological support. Most of us recognized that we were really fighting the sexual revolution, which had coopted and corrupted the Episcopal Church and its parent across the pond. First it was the sanctity of life and euthanasia. Then it was homosexual practice. Now it is gay marriage and transgender ideology. During the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, we non-Catholics arguing moral theology could point to learned and compelling arguments coming out of Rome and say, in effect, “The oldest and largest part of the Body of Christ agrees with us, and it does so with remarkable sophistication.”
Those of us who continue to fight for orthodoxy, in dogmatic as well as moral theology, miss those days when there was a clear beacon shining from across the Tiber. For now, it seems, Rome itself has been infiltrated by the sexual revolution. The center is not holding.
Though we are dismayed, we must not despair. For the brave and principled stand made by Tom Weinandy reminds us that God raises up prophetic lights when dark days come to his Church.
Gerald McDermott holds the Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School.
Yes, it's a terrible lie. Luther was never present at Christ's Crucifixion. The Blessed Mother and St John were there, however, and Bergolio choose the protestant lie for his stamp.
He's one of yours.
Not necessarily.
Genius does not equate with spiritual wisdom or moral integrity, or fidelity to Christ.
He could very well be brilliant. But that is not the issue that the Catholic church, or at least FRoman Catholic, have with him.
My sister, who lives in highly Catholic Buffalo, NY says that all the Catholics there just love him to pieces.
I am in communion with all the Catholic popes.
Then Luther is exonerated because he was challenging much the same thing you guys are with Francis, although the immorality and corruption in his day was seemingly far worse than it is today.
That used to be the case and I agree with you on that but it sure does seem they are circling the same bowl.
You were a Catholic and now claim to be a protestant.
Why can’t Jorge Bergoglio be one also?
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."
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
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
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 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
This isn't a Catholic thread. It's a Prot hit piece, non-Catholic bashing thread.
So the Holy Spirit does not guide the church in the selection of the pope.
How do you know if He guides it in anything then?
And why follow a church that is the creation of men or is led by men who are NOT guided by the Holy Spirit?
Was Jesus lying when He told the apostles that the Holy Spirit would guide them into all truth?
You tell us.
You’re the one who seems to think you have him all figured out.
Has the Roman Catholic church officially ex-communicated him?
And they are whom?
On what basis do you decide whether a pope is a Catholic pope or not?
And by what authority to you have permission to make that decision?
I never claimed to be a Protestant.
That’s the label Catholics give to people who disagree with them, using it as a pejorative.
You do not understand art, symbolism, or Luther, based on your post.
Why don’t you turn to Christ while you have time ebb?
I’d love to see you in heaven.
Because the Pope has to be Catholic, you said so yourself.
Define ‘Protestant.’ Define ‘Catholic.’
Because it really sounds like ‘everything I don’t like is Protestant.’
So, the question remains, does the Holy Spirit guide the college of cardinals in the selection and election of the new pope? Simple question that just needs a simply *Yes* or *No* answer.
***
To be fair here, I believe that ebb answered that question with a ‘no, the Holy Spirit does not guide in the selection of a Pope’ on the last thread where we discussed this.
I can probably dig up some links if need be.
“So, the question remains, does the Holy Spirit guide the college of cardinals in the selection and election of the new pope? Simple question that just needs a simply *Yes* or *No* answer.”
I don’t think we can know whether or not the Holy Spirit guided the college of cardinals on selecting Pope Francis without asking them if they truly sought God’s and the Holy Spirit’s guidance or if they followed their own thoughts. And possibly a dislike for where John-Paul 2 and Benedict XVI were leading the Catholic Church away for communist, socialist, and secular influence.
You don’t have to dig up anything.
I said, “No”.
The Church has had other bad popes.
Bergoglio is nothing new.
You don’t have to dig up anything.
I said, “No”.
The Church has had other bad popes.
***
Well tell that to metmom then and answer the follow-up questions.
Pope Francis is extremely popular among American Catholics.
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