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Vatican sponsors youth guide promoting ‘values’ of ‘heretical’ interfaith Abu Dhabi documentA group of students will share the ideas of a document that Bishop Athanasius Schneider warned would 'suffocate (the Church's) burning zeal to evangelize all men.'The Vatican is sponsoring the creation of a “guide” to promote the “values” of the Abu Dhabi document on human fraternity — which has been described by a faithful prelate as “a betrayal of the Gospel” — to youth across the world.The Vatican recently announced that 11 university students of various religions selected for the “Human Fraternity Fellows program for the promotion of intercultural...

SÃO PAULO – During a funeral Mass of a major figure in the Brazilian Church on August 28, a Muslim sheikh ended up receiving communion, sparking controversy among part of the local community and traditionalist Catholics all over Brazil, who called what happened a “sacrilege.” Cardinal Geraldo Majella Agnelo, who played a central role in the Brazilian Church for several decades, died on August 26. He was the archbishop of Londrina, Paraná state, for many years, until he took over the Archdiocese of Salvador, becoming the primate of Brazil. Agnelo, one of the founders of the Child Pastoral Ministry in...

Prelate Defends Giving Communion to Muslim SheikhBrazilian archbishop quotes Pope Francis and Vatican II's 'Nostra Aetate'A pro-LGBT Brazilian archbishop is invoking Pope Francis' apostolic letter on liturgical formation and the documents of Vatican II to justify his choice to administer Holy Communion to a Muslim sheikh at a funeral service. "Every reception of Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ was already desired by Him in the Last Supper," argues the archbishop of Londrina, Geremias Steinmetz, quoting Pope Francis in a clarification issued on the diocesan website on Aug. 30.Viral VideoA video of Abp. Steinmetz giving the Sacred Host...

A pastor and podcaster recently provided valuable advice to Christians searching for a new church, cautioning them about specific warning signs that indicate a church might be embracing "woke" ideology.Pastor Lucas Miles is the author of the book Woke Jesus: The False Messiah Destroying Christianity, which is scheduled for release next month. In a May 4 episode of the "Politely Rude With Abby Johnson" podcast, Miles shared tips for Christians on how to discern the red flags when church hunting. It's crucial for believers to be aware of these red flags and exercise discernment when evaluating potential churches, he said.Miles...

Many Christians in the United States are “practical universalists” who believe that many if not all religions will lead a person to Heaven, according to the son of famed evangelist Luis Palau.Kevin Palau, president and CEO of the Luis Palau Association, was interviewed on a recent episode of the Dallas Theological Seminary podcast “The Table” about a Barna Group report indicating that half of Millennial-aged Christians think it is wrong to evangelize.Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at DTS and host of the podcast, commented that he felt that such a conclusion was peculiar given the respondents’ self-identification.“If you...

Christian Universalism, which positions that all people, not some, are saved through Jesus Christ, is "alive and well" as a belief system in America, a modern Christianity professor has said, calling for it to be opposed. Michael McClymond, Professor of Modern Christianity at Saint Louis University, told desiringGod.org in an interview posted on Monday that there is a difference between irreligious universalism and the Christian kind. As he explains in his new book, The Devil's Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism, released in June, "full-bore" universalism means that all human beings will be saved at the end,...

GENEVA/VATICAN CITY, 11 January 2016 - The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) have invited Lutheran churches and Catholic bishops’ conferences across the world to make use of a jointly-developed Common Prayer to prepare commemorations for the 500 years of the Reformation in 2017. In a joint letter today to the Catholic Bishops’ Conferences and to LWF member church bishops, presidents and other leaders, LWF General Secretary Rev. Dr Martin Junge and PCPCU President Kurt Cardinal Koch introduce the Common Prayer for Lutheran-Catholic common commemoration of the Reformation in 2017. The document is...

For those who want the traditional Catholic take on the evils of ecumenism, read the latest essay by Don Pietro Leone (here). Regarding ecumania: Francis, Bishop of Rome, "seeking or meeting God in many ways".

Preface for the English Edition The Arab Spring has shaken a whole series of autocratic regimes. With the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the election of Pope Francis, might something like this be possible in the Catholic Church as well – a ‘Vatican Spring’? Of course, the system of the Roman Catholic Church is quite different from those prevailing in Tunisia and Egypt, to say nothing of the absolute monarchies like Saudi Arabia. In all these countries, the reforms that have taken place until now are often no more than minor concessions, and even these are often threatened by...

Pope Francis' visit with a group of refugees at the Sacred Heart parish can best be described as simple, warm, and relaxed. POPE FRANCIS "Thank you. Because by welcoming everyone as family, you make anyone that comes in feel like family. Today I am here and I feel at home, like family. Thank you very much. But I am missing one thing: Mariana hasn't offered me any mate.” To get to Italy, many of the refugees had to endure many hardships, even the loss of friends and family. Pope Francis said that to lighten the weight of their suffering, they...

Former megachurch pastor Rob Bell, founder of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Mich., recently shared how his 2011 book, Love Wins, led to a fallout with the congregation and forced him on a "search for a more forgiving faith." Bell details this search in a recent interview with The New Yorker, and discusses his invitation to Christians interested in a different kind of church, "one that can keep pace with the rising 'waterline of culture.'" "Bell is now loosely aligned with a cohort of pastors worldwide who are searching for ways to move beyond old-fashioned worship," Kelefa Sanneh of...

Mars Hill Bible Church, the congregation founded by author Rob Bell, lost about 1,000 people over their former pastor's controversial 2011 book, Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, according to the Grandville, Mich., megachurch's new pastor Kent Dobson. Dobson was chosen by Mars Hill Bible Church in 2012 to replace Bell, who founded the congregation in 1999. "There was a lot of drama with (Bell's book) Love Wins and that season feels like it's over. This year has been one of sort of settling down a bit and re-identifying our...

America is exceptional, despite what our current president may think. Asked whether America was an exceptional country, Mr. Obama famously replied that every country is exceptional. North Korea is exceptional? Castro's Cuba is fine? Zimbabwe is great? Really? Obama's response accords with the left's theory of universalism, whereby one's general allegiance to mankind outweighs that to any particular nation, including one's own....... .......From a practical perspective, universalism is a dead end -- quite literally -- because there are always powerful adversaries who do not share one's soft-hearted faith in universal brotherhood. The left's goals of unilateral disarmament and global equality...

Do I agree with Obama's interpretation of Luke 12:48? No. Do I agree with Obama in his 2004 interview "I have a deep faith" in which he said that there many paths to heaven/the Father and his words which were contrary to Jesus saying He is the "Way, Truth, Life...no man comes unto the Father but by me." Absolutely not. Do I agree with Mormon teaching that Jesus and Satan are brothers? Again, absolutely not. (link below in comments section.) The point of the this thread is to point out that Orrin Hatch was wrong. In fact, I believe that...

On Vancouver Island, pagans are lighting cauldron fires and dancing through giant evergreen hoops to symbolize being reborn In Vancouver, pagans are bowing to stag antlers, revering pentangles and burning cinnamon incense to mark Yule, which celebrates the "rebirth of the sun" at winter solstice...There are roughly 400,000 pagans in the U.S. and Canada, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. Their numbers have more than doubled in the past decade. ..Despite many pagans' inclination to privacy, one spiritual organization in B.C. that won't be carrying out its Yule ceremonies in secrecy is the Vancouver Unitarian Church. The large congregation...

AMSTERDAM, December 1, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Dutch euthanasia advocacy group, “The Right To Die” (NVVE), is proposing a plan where “mobile teams of doctors and nurses … can help people to die in their own homes,” according to DutchNews.nl. On November 30 health minister Edith Schippers told MPs that the proposal earlier this month by NVVE spokeswoman Walburg de Jong to create the mobile units “for patients who meet the criteria for euthanasia but whose doctors are unwilling to carry it out,” is worthy of consideration. “If the patients thinks it desirable, the doctor can refer him or her...

William Cwirla (LCMS): When people say things like that, I always like to ask, “On what basis do you think that? What evidence can you put forward that this statement is true?” It is true that all religious paths, save one, lead to the same place, but that place isn’t God. All religions, save one, hold that you must work your way to God, whether by your creeds, your conduct, or your worship. This is essentially the religion of the Law, something that all religions, save one, have in common. The statement presupposes that we are on a search for...

One in four born-again Christians hold universalist thoughts when it comes to salvation, according to a new Barna analysis of trend data. Twenty-five percent of born-again Christians said all people are eventually saved or accepted by God. A similar proportion, 26 percent, said a person’s religion does not matter because all faiths teach the same lessons. And an even higher proportion, 40 percent, of born-again Christians said they believe Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Barna defined universalism as the belief that all human beings will eventually be saved after death. The California-based research and polling firm defines born-again...

Respected theologian Don Carson hadn't planned on discussing hell and universalism at this year's Gospel Coalition conference. But the subject became inevitable when Rob Bell's new book burst onto the scene, debuting at No. 2 on the New York Times' bestseller list. The research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill., is not happy that universalists are diminishing God's holiness, cheapening the cross, and distorting biblical truths. Though he didn't accuse Bell directly, Carson said the handling of the atonement of Christ by universalists is blasphemous. "I say it with respect, I say it with...

This is the time of year for phase two of the Christian mythology. Phase one was Advent ending with Christmas. Now it’s Lent which ends with Easter. At least phase one is a happier time, even if the gift wasn’t quite what was expected. But then, neither was the “Messiah.” That disappointment needed a lot of explanation by the Doctor of Law, Saul, who changed his name to Paul, probably due to his notorious reputation among earlier followers of Jesus. He supposedly had a reawakening that had something to do with forgiveness and mercy without punishment for his past inhumane...