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Is Pope Francis a Liberal Protestant?
First Things ^ | November 15, 2017 | Gerald McDermott

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.


TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; Mainline Protestant; Moral Issues
KEYWORDS: francischurch; heresy; kgb; liberationtheology; marxist; popefrancis; religiousleft
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To: aMorePerfectUnion

You do not understand art, symbolism, or Luther, based on your post.

***

...

wooowww...

Based on his response this guy HAS to be either a troll, looking for every excuse to hate Francis and all non-Catholics, or the meme of ‘autistic screeching’ is VERY literal on this thread!


121 posted on 11/17/2017 5:55:34 PM PST by Luircin
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To: ebb tide

Francis has failed to comprehend the failures of the liberal churches, whose congregations are shrinking. The Anglicans and other “mainline” churches once had a good thing going, but they had a flirtation with fads, and now we know it is impossible to be temporal and universal at the same time. Either you deny contemporary social fads and persuasions, no matter how popular, or you stick to your guns. Francis wants to b cool. Not good. Either you stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.


122 posted on 11/17/2017 6:02:08 PM PST by Doche2X2
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To: Luircin

I recall that now.

I had forgotten.

Had a trip to FL in between this thread and that one and am somewhat out of the loop.


123 posted on 11/17/2017 6:03:43 PM PST by metmom ( ...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith..)
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To: metmom
This isn't a Catholic thread. It's a Prot hit piece, non-Catholic bashing thread.

Aren't most of them? Thank God for Luther, even though I don't know much about him. I believe he had assurance of salvation. So do I.

124 posted on 11/17/2017 6:08:29 PM PST by Mark17 (Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. In the beginning GOD....And the rest, as they say, is HIS-story)
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To: ebb tide
Do you even know how to start a thread? Or do you just snipe Catholic threads?

Yes I know how to start threads. I think you post these open threads to have someone to talk to. You receive few if any hits on your Caucus threads.

125 posted on 11/17/2017 6:24:29 PM PST by ealgeone
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To: ebb tide; metmom; Salvation; aMorePerfectUnion; Mark17; GreyFriar; jobim; RegulatorCountry; ...
No. And He never has.

To be clear....you're saying the Holy Spirit has never guided the selection of a pope?

126 posted on 11/17/2017 6:27:07 PM PST by ealgeone
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To: aMorePerfectUnion

Yes He has!


127 posted on 11/17/2017 6:27:59 PM PST by ealgeone
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To: ebb tide
Is Pope Francis a Liberal Protestant?

No, Mr. Mc Dermott, he's a liberal Roman Catholic.

128 posted on 11/17/2017 7:02:12 PM PST by boatbums (The Law is a storm which wrecks your hopes of self-salvation, but washes you upon the Rock of Ages.)
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To: ealgeone
I think you post these open threads to have someone to talk to.

The only open threads I post are ones that mention other "faiths"; forum rules.

Everything else, I caucus in order to keep heretics off of them.

129 posted on 11/17/2017 7:05:52 PM PST by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: RegulatorCountry

God chose Bergoglio? Why would you say that?


130 posted on 11/17/2017 7:06:46 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o (plain human)
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To: boatbums
No, Mr. Mc Dermott, he's a liberal Roman Catholic.

Dream on. He's a protestant, just like Luther.


131 posted on 11/17/2017 7:09:48 PM PST by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: ebb tide; Religion Moderator

Everything else, I caucus in order to keep heretics off of them.

***

You know, isn’t name-calling against the rules? I mean, you were SO upset when you thought that people were calling YOU names, and now you’re throwing that around... AGAIN?


132 posted on 11/17/2017 7:10:28 PM PST by Luircin
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To: ebb tide

How about you define ‘Protestant,’ hmm?

Because from you, the term is as meaningless as ‘racist’ from Francis.


133 posted on 11/17/2017 7:11:16 PM PST by Luircin
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Comment #134 Removed by Moderator

To: Mrs. Don-o; RegulatorCountry
God chose Bergoglio? Why would you say that?

So you also believe that the Holy Spirit does not guide the college of cardinals in selecting the new pope?

Or to make it easier to answer, Does the Holy Spirit guide the college of cardinals in selecting the new pope? Yes or no?

135 posted on 11/17/2017 7:16:19 PM PST by metmom ( ...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith..)
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To: ebb tide; RegulatorCountry
You said yourself upthread that he can’t be Pope if he’s not Catholic. So, he’s Pope.

And so says the non-Catholic.

So, why can you, a non-Protestant, say Pope Francis is a Protestant? Is the Protestant label nothing but a miscellaneous bucket you can toss all your flotsam into?

136 posted on 11/17/2017 7:22:02 PM PST by boatbums (The Law is a storm which wrecks your hopes of self-salvation, but washes you upon the Rock of Ages.)
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To: ebb tide; Religion Moderator

How about you define ‘Protestant,’ hmm?

“heretic”.

***

Once again, I THINK that is against the rules of the forum to refer to an entire denomination as heretics.

Not to mention extremely childish.


137 posted on 11/17/2017 7:23:14 PM PST by Luircin
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To: boatbums

Of course it is; check out how he reacted when I asked him to define ‘Protestant.’

Considering all the rules that he’s breaking, one wonders why he hasn’t been thrown out by now.


138 posted on 11/17/2017 7:31:46 PM PST by Luircin
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To: ebb tide
Everything else, I caucus in order to keep heretics off of them.

Yet amongst Roman Catholics you would not doubt be considered a heretic.

Oh, don't forget Unam Sanctam....you have to be subject to the pope....regardless.

139 posted on 11/17/2017 7:39:06 PM PST by ealgeone
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To: ebb tide
Dream on. He's a protestant, just like Luther.

Yet you post incessantly about your Roman Catholic pope just like a modern day Luther.

The only difference is he used a pen...you're using a keyboard.

140 posted on 11/17/2017 7:41:26 PM PST by ealgeone
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