Domestic Church: Sharing in Christ’s Threefold Office of Priest, Prophet and King

The topic I have chosen for my talk is the Catholic Family as the domestic church. Since the Second Vatican Council, this understanding of the family as a miniature embodiment of the Church has taken on more significance, and rightly so. I also want to conjoin to the family as the domestic church Jesus’ threefold office of priest, prophet and king. As priest, Jesus sanctifies his Church, the body of Christ. As prophet, he is the supreme teacher. As king, Jesus rules, governs and shepherds his Church. Married couples and parents by their baptism and confirmation and, in a particular manner, within their marriage covenant are privileged to share in Jesus’ threefold office. Only as they exercise this threefold office within their families will they be able to make their home a living domestic church. I hope or my goal is that my talk will help you look upon your marriages and families in a different light – in a manner in which you may have never considered before.

First, then, I want to examine the Church’s magisterial teaching on what it means for the Catholic Family to be a domestic church.

To understand the family as a domestic church, we must be clear as to what marriage is, for marriage itself gives birth to the family as the domestic church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines marriage, quoting Canon Law, this way.

“The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament" (1601).

Marriage is a covenant, a bond or union, between one man and one woman. They pledge themselves to an exclusive relationship for the whole of their lives. By its very nature, the marriage covenant is for the wellbeing of the spouses and for the procreation and education of their children. This is the natural meaning of marriage. Jesus, moreover, has raised this marriage covenant between two baptized persons to the status of a sacrament. As a sacrament, marriage signifies, according to St. Paul (Eph. 5:21-33), Jesus’ unbreakable, everlasting, life-giving and loving communion between himself and his Church.

Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) speaks of the sacrament of marriage in this fashion.

Authentic married love is caught up into divine love and is governed and enriched by Christ's redeeming power and the saving activity of the Church, so that this love may lead the spouses to God with powerful effect and may aid and strengthen them in the sublime office of being a father or a mother. For this reason Christian spouses have a special sacrament by which they are fortified and receive a kind of consecration in the duties and dignity of their state. By virtue of this sacrament, as spouses they fulfil their conjugal and family obligation, they are penetrated with the Spirit of Christ, which suffuses their whole lives with faith, hope and charity. Thus they increasingly advance the perfection of their own personalities, as well as their mutual sanctification, and hence contribute jointly to the glory of God (48).

This understanding of the sacrament of marriage implies that marriage and family life, as a domestic church, must reflect Jesus’ relationship to his Church. What Jesus does in relationship to his Church, married couples are called to do in relationship to one another and to their children.

While Vatican II first speaks of the family as a domestic church in Lumen Gentium (The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 11), St. John Paul II, in his later apostolic exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, accentuates that marriage and family life are an expression of the Church’s communion with Jesus. “The Christian family constitutes a specific revelation and realization of ecclesial communion, and for this reason too it can and should be called ‘the domestic Church’” (21). Marriage and family life not only reflect but also actually make present the communion between Christ and his Church. John Paul II states that “the family is a living image and historical representation of the mystery of the Church” (49). As Christ gives life to his universal church so he gives life to the domestic church that is the family. Marriage and family life bring into realization, and so live and expresse, the presence of Jesus’ life-giving bond with his Church in the Holy Spirit.

Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, stresses that the family is a domestic church (11 times). He states:

The Second Vatican Council, in its Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, was concerned “to promote the dignity of marriage and the family”…The conciliar document also emphasizes “the grounding of the spouses in Christ. Christ the Lord ‘makes himself present to the Christian spouses in the sacrament of marriage’ (48) and remains with them…In this way, the spouses are consecrated and by means of a special grace build up the Body of Christ and form a domestic church (cf. Lumen Gentium, 11), so that the Church, in order fully to understand her mystery, looks to the Christian family, which manifests her in a real way (AL 67, see also 292).

The family as a domestic church is a living expression, image and icon, of Christ’s relationship to his Church for it reflects and embodies, in miniature, all of the aspects that pertain to the Church at large, and in so doing builds up and fosters the life of the universal Church. The holiness of the Church is dependent upon the holiness of Christian families.

The question now arises: How do married couples enact and make real the domestic church within their families? This realization is founded upon their sharing in the threefold ministry of Jesus – that of being priest, prophet, and king. To that we now turn.

Vatican II in Lumen Gentium and later John Paul II in his Christifideles Laici (On the Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and the World) highlight the laity’s participation in Jesus’s threefold office. John Paul holds that, because all Christians are baptized and confirmed in the Holy Spirit, they are “Christs” after the person of Christ himself, and so share in his anointed threefold office. Thus, “the lay faithful are sharers in the priestly mission, for which Jesus offered himself on the cross and continues to be offered in the celebration of the Eucharist for the glory of God and the salvation of humanity.” Moreover, the laity share in Jesus’ prophetic mission when, through word and deed, they bear witness to the Gospel. Likewise, “because the lay faithful belong to Christ, Lord and King of the universe, they share in his kingly mission and are called by him to spread the Kingdom in history” (CL 14, also see LG 33-36).

Before proceeding I want to underline the honor and the dignity to which Jesus, through his indwelling Spirit, has elevated Catholic lay men and women. By sharing in Christ’s threefold office of priest, prophet and king, no lay person should ever consider himself or herself as a mere passive member of the Church. Jesus himself, as priest, prophet, and king, has anointed the laity with his threefold ministry, and his Spirit now compels the laity to take up the tasks that Jesus has given to them. I believe this threefold commission is essential for the life of the Church today. The voice of the faithful must be heard at this critical time within the Church, for I am convinced that only the faithful’s courageous voice will stem the tide of evil in the world and restore the Church’s faith to full vigor. Not to bear witness to the Church’s authentic faith is to frustrate the work of Christ in the world and to thwart the evangelical mission of his body, the Church.

I want to note at the beginning of our examination that this threefold office which the laity share with Christ has both outward and inward aspects, that is, the lay faithful are priests, prophets and kings in relationship to the world and society at large and in relationship to the more inner sphere of their own families. Because of space and time, I will exclusively treat this threefold office in relationship to the family.

The lay faithful, through baptism, are regenerated by the anointing of the Holy Spirit. While the priesthood of the sacramentally ordained differs in kind from that of the priesthood of the laity, yet the laity, through the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, are “consecrated as a spiritual house and a holy priesthood” (LG, 10), for they share in the one priesthood of Christ himself. This holy priesthood, which forms a spiritual house, is literally brought to life and exercised within the domestic church that is the family. John Paul II states that this “priestly role which the Christian can and ought to exercise in intimate communion with the whole Church, [is practiced] through the daily realities of married and family life. In this way the Christian family is called to be sanctified and to sanctify the ecclesial community and the world” (FC, 55). Married couples, as spouses and parents, employ their domestic priesthood in a number of ways.

In his Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, John Paul highlights that family prayer is a life-giving priestly element within the family. “It is prayer offered in common, husband and wife together, parents and children together” (FC 59). Only if husbands and wives pray together will they together sanctify one another in their conjoined priestly ministry to one another. Together in prayer they grow in love for Jesus through the Holy Spirit and so give glory to God the Father. Together in prayer they grow in love for one another and become more willing to make the priestly sacrifices necessary to lay down their lives for one another and for their children. Moreover, only in praying together can parents together care for their children in a priestly manner, that is, in a manner that would sanctify and make holy their children. While spouses may pray together in private, yet their prayer should be known to their children – “mom and dad pray together.” Such knowledge not only provides children good example, but assures them of their parents love for one another and their love for them. Such an assurance enhances their trust that they live in an environment of love and safety, and so deepens their own sense of wellbeing. This is especially important for children when, in today’s world, they see marriages and families split and divided, and their peers suffering in insecurity and depression because their families no longer live together. Lastly, this spousal prayer together then becomes the basis for communal prayer with their children.

John Paul again states: “Family prayer has for its very object family life itself” (FC, 59). Family prayer has as its primary purpose the up-building, the making holy of the entire family – parents and children together. John Paul beautifully declares: “Only by praying together with their children can a father and mother – exercising their royal priesthood – penetrate the innermost depths of the children’s hearts and leave an impression that the future events in their lives will not be able to efface” (FC 61). Moreover, not only do the spouses exercise their priestly ministry within family prayer, but also the children as well – the whole family exercises their conjoined priestly ministry with Jesus, the great high priest. John Paul notes that this family prayer should include the family’s joys and sorrows, hopes and disappointments, birthdays, weddings, deaths, etc. – the entire life of the family. This spousal and family priestly prayer makes real the domestic church for it becomes a living icon of what the Church herself is – a priestly people being made holy in Christ through the Spirit to the glory of God the Father (see FC, 59).

Here I want to make one further point. The Gospels inform us that Jesus, in his public ministry, performed many acts of healing and he did so through his priestly ministry. Christian parents, in the exercise of their priestly ministry within their families, have the privilege and right, and I might add, obligation, to pray over their own children not only in giving their parental blessing, but also in praying, in the name of Jesus, that all sickness and evil be cast far from them. These prayers for healing, whether they are for the healing of sickness, fear, sadness, etc., can be accompanied with the sprinkling of holy water or signing of the child’s forehead with blessed oil. Parents are called to own the Spirit’s power they possess as the principle spiritual caregivers of their children, and so to act boldly in the name of Jesus whose priesthood they share.

In the light of the above, parents are to teach their children to pray from the earliest age. (This also involves the prophetic role of parents, which I will examine shortly.) Parents are to teach their children to pray to Jesus as their Lord and Savior – that he is a living person with whom they can have a personal relationship for he loves them and cares for them. Children should learn to pray knowing that they do so by the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells within them and makes them holy. They should learn to pray knowing that they are children of God the Father, a Father who desires their wellbeing and eternal life. John Paul enumerates some examples of Christian prayer that are essential for the children to know – the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, the Act of Contrition, the Rosary, prayers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and prayers to Mary and all of the Saints. All of these can be done within the context of morning and night prayer (see FC, 60-61). Pope Francis is of the same mind.

A few minutes can be found each day to come together before the living God, to tell him our worries, to ask for the needs of our family, to pray for someone experiencing difficulty, to ask for help in showing love, to give thanks for life and for its blessings, and to ask Our Lady to protect us beneath her maternal mantle. With a few simple words, this moment of prayer can do immense good for our families. The various expressions of popular piety are a treasure of spirituality for many families (AL 328).

The culmination of the practice and education of family priestly prayer is found in the Eucharist. Again, Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia states: “The family’s communal journey of prayer culminates by sharing together in the Eucharist, especially in the context of the Sunday rest… For the food of the Eucharist offers the spouses the strength and incentive needed to live the marriage covenant each day as a ‘domestic church’” (318). Within the communal celebration of Mass, especially on Sundays and Solemnities, the laity exercises its priestly office to the fullest by offering, in union with the priest, the one saving sacrifice of Christ and receives his resurrected body and blood in Holy Communion. While it is not always possible for families to attend the same Mass on Sunday, it is an ideal for in so doing not only do they together join themselves to the whole Church, the body of Christ, but they also join themselves together in union with Jesus. In the Eucharist, Christ most fully makes the married couple and the family one in him. In the Eucharist, the family most fully becomes and so expresses itself as the domestic church within the universal Church. As John Paul states: “In the Eucharistic gift of charity the Christian family finds the foundation and soul of its ‘communion’ and its ‘mission’: by partaking in the Eucharistic bread, the different members of the Christian family become one body, which reveals and shares in the wider unity of the Church” (FC, 57; see also FC 55-56, LG 10-11, GS 48 and CL 14).

Having underlined some of the ways married couples and families exercise their priestly office, we can now turn to the second office they share with Christ – that of being prophets.

The fathers at Vatican II also declared that the laity shares in Christ’s prophetic office (see LG 12 and 35). They are to fulfill this ministry in proclaiming, by word and deed, the Gospel. This is especially true for parents. Vatican II also states: “The state of life that is sanctified by a special sacrament, namely, married and family life, has a special importance in this (Christ’s) prophetic office” (LG, 35). It has, therefore, been a constant magisterial teaching of the Church that parents are the first and foremost teachers of their children (see for example, Catechesi Tradendi (Catechesis Today), 68; Gravissimum Educationis (Declaration on Christian Education), 3; Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), 52; Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), 11 and 35; General Directory for Catechesis, 179, 226-227, 255; Familaris Consortio (The Christian Family in the Modern World), 36, 38-39, 53, 60; Evangelii Nuntiandi (On the Evangelization of the World), 71; and Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1653, 1656, 2221, 2223). While parents are responsible for the overall education of their children, this is particularly the case when it comes to teaching them the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the authentic teachings of the Church. Vatican II is very clear on this point. “The family is, so to speak, the domestic church. In it parents should, by their word and example, be the first preachers of the faith to their children” (LG 11). This responsibility demands that parents evangelize their children and this is primarily achieved, beginning when they are toddlers and progressing as they become older, by teaching them about the Trinity – yes, about the Trinity! Such teaching does not entail theological sophistication, but that the one God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Beginning with the Trinity, parents can speak of God the Father sending his Son into the world; that Jesus is the Son of God made man; that Jesus saved us from sin and death; that Jesus pours out his Holy Spirit upon all who believe in him and are baptized and so become children of the Father; that it is within the Church that the fullness of the Spirit resides, the Spirit of truth and love; and that it is by living holy lives in union with Jesus, as our Savior and Lord, which guarantees that we will reside with God the Father in communion with the Holy Spirit forever in heaven with all of the Saints and angels. All of the above entails a singular Christian personalism – we, as human persons, have a personal relationship, founded upon the truth of the Gospel and nurtured on love, with each of the persons of the Trinity and so together with all of the persons of the Trinity. Of course, this parental entrusted prophetic ministry is exercised in union with their priestly ministry – the ministry of family prayer and the celebration of the sacraments.

Of the utmost importance is the realization that parents, by sharing in Jesus’ prophetic office, participate in the teaching ministry of the Church. This is especially crucial, as noted above, in our world today where many advocate a “gospel” that is often contrary and so opposed to the Gospel of Jesus. As faithful Catholics, parents partake of the sensus fidelium, the sense of the faith that empowers them to teach their children what is true and faithful to the Gospel. “The whole body of the faithful who have an anointing that comes from the holy one cannot err in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation of the faith (sensus fidei) of the whole people, when ‘from the bishops to the last of the faithful’ they manifest a universal consent on matters of faith and morals” (LG 12). This parental confidence in knowing and teaching the faith to their children is especially important within the Church today when we find some within the Church who endeavor to change the Church’s authentic teaching or make it ambiguous. Parents, then, are obliged to know what the Church has historically taught authentically throughout the ages. This teaching is not hard to find for it is contained within the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Once parents know what the faith of the Church is, they need not fear proclaiming and teaching it to their children. To teach the faith to their children is the greatest gift parents can give to their children – there is no greater gift than to give the gift of knowing Jesus Christ and his Gospel.

Lastly, parents, in teaching their children the truths of the life-giving faith, are to encourage and enable their children to exercise their own prophetic ministry as members of the body of Christ. Children, among their peers and in their own social settings, through the grace of baptism and confirmation, are to bear witness to the Gospel by their words and deeds. They are to do so in charity and without fear.

Having examined the priestly and prophetic offices of Catholic parents, we can proceed now to the final ministry – the kingly office.

Integral to being a domestic church is Jesus’ office of king. Married couples and parents share in Jesus kingly ministry. At first sight this may appear to be rather authoritarian and regal role, but since it is Jesus’ kingship that parents share, their ministry is primarily one of loving governorship. Parents are kings after the manner of Christ in so far as they are shepherds or shepherdesses. Thus, this kingly office intertwines with that of being priests and prophets for they often shepherd their children through their priestly and prophetic ministries. Parents are to govern their families so as to ensure that the gospel is lived out among all of its members.

This right ordering of family life, by its very nature, involves the living out of Christian principles, primarily that of love, and the making of rules that exemplify these principles, primarily those that embody the Ten Commandments. This is not an easy task, for Christian parental authority implies the reciprocal obedience on the part of children, and here is the rub. Shepherding one’s family in a Christian manner will involve, especially in the non-Christian environment of our day, a great deal of wisdom, patience, courage and fortitude. It short, it involves a great deal of hassle, to say the least. However, parents must always call to mind that, from the grace that resides within their very sacrament of marriage, they share in Jesus’ own office of shepherding and, therefore they can act with confidence. Here too we see the need for parents to pray for guidance and wisdom for only in the Spirit can they be true shepherds. At this point, I would add that it is very helpful for likeminded Catholic families to relate and interact with one another. This establishes Christian friendships among married couples and similarly friendships among children of other Christian families. All of this interaction strengthens the life of the domestic church within each family as well as the communal Christian life of their families together.

In all of the above I have spoken in terms of “married couples” and “parents,” but now I want to speak specifically of “fathers” and “mothers.” Parents are male and female, they are “moms” and “dads” and this sexual difference is of vital importance not only in their relation to one another but also in relationship with their children, who are also male and female. I cannot go into great detail here on how this differentiation plays out in its entirety, but I do want to offer some comments that I think are of the utmost importance for the family to be the domestic church, and for fathers and mothers exercising their roles as priests, prophets and kings. I want, particularly, to accentuate the role of fatherhood. I think I am better equipped to do this since I am myself a man, and, by ordination, a spiritual father.

I am convinced that the primary reason that families in general as well as Christian families in particular are fragile is that men have not properly owned and exercised their fatherhood. Today many fathers have abdicated or abandoned their rightful and necessary role as priests, prophets and kings within their families, and have handed over these responsibilities, often not explicitly, to their wives. Fathers may consider that religion is best left to the mother. This neglect may be out of fear or a feeling of inadequacy. It may be a case of refusing to take up the challenge of being a father out of simple laziness. Mothers must also exercise the ministry of priest, prophet, and king within their families, and Christian mothers are more apt to do so than the fathers, but without their collaborative counterpart, the father, the family is missing an essential and necessary component for making strong Christian families that are truly domestic churches. Let me attempt to explain.

If a father is weak in faith or lethargic in practicing his faith – if he does not pray, if he rarely attends Sunday Mass, if he does not know the Catholic faith, as least its basic teachings – he will not only not be an example to his children, but he will also be incapable of performing his ministry of priest, prophet and king with regards to his children. He will not pray with his children. He will not teach his children the faith. He will not guide and instruct his children in the ways of virtue. Being Christian appears to his children then to be something that primarily pertains to women. Real men do not pray or go to Mass or to Confession. Religion is of little interest to men and so is not something that defines who they are as men. If such is the case in various degrees, having a religiously apathetic father is very detrimental to both boys and girls alike. Teenage boys see the Christian faith and its practice as an emasculating of their authentic manhood for it is perceived as a feminization of their manhood. Praying and going to church is something for little children and not something that fashions men of fortitude, courage, and virility. Without the truly masculine example of their fathers, boys turn to its juvenile expression found in arrogant machismo and haughty bravado, expressing itself in vulgar language, drunkenness, drug experimentation, and sexual exploitation of women. Teenage girls, while they may follow the example of their “more” Catholic mothers and so practice their faith, yet they do so without the security of knowing that their fathers, to whom they look to for protection and guidance, are men of faith and, therefore, lack the wisdom and support they so much desire. Men may think that religion, the Christian faith, undermines their integrity as men, but women know that it is precisely the husband’s and father’s lack of faith that destabilizes their true manhood for they cannot be counted on for providing manly support and protection. Lacking the needed fatherly care and affection, teenage girls seek flirtatious attention from boys in the hope of finding their security and worth, but such a search often leads to further insecurity and so to further undermining their self-worth. Thus, weak Christian fathers fail to teach their sons and daughters personal integrity with regards to sexuality and so a Christian understanding of respecting and esteeming others. Only genuine Christian husbands and fathers, only real men, make good priestly prophets and shepherds.

In the above I do not want to lay a guilt trip on Christian fathers nor do I want to imply that all Christian mothers are perfect. Rather, I am attempting to articulate what I see as a major weakness within families today and to accentuate that Jesus has provided a solution by allowing fathers and mothers to share in his office of priest, prophet and king. Moreover, I am emphasizing that Christian marriage itself demands that each partner, the father and mother, fulfills his or her respective role if the Christian family is truly to be a domestic church. A bird needs two wings to fly, and a Christian family needs a Christian father and a Christian mother if it is to be a vibrant and holy Christian family – a domestic church. Mothers and fathers both love their children, but both love their children in somewhat different ways. Mothers tend to enact a more nurturing, affectionate, and devoted love, while fathers tend to enact a more protective, supportive, and encouraging love. The point is that, while not wanting to stereotype mothers and fathers, women and men, this intermingling of motherly and fatherly love, in all of its various combined expressions, makes for one conjoined parental love. This very interplay of motherly and fatherly love makes for a family of love. Yes, there will be mistakes, sin and human weakness will always be present, but Jesus in his love for families has lifted them up to be a living example, a living reality of his Church – a Church that he is constantly purifying of sin and continuously fostering its growth through the Holy Spirit. To share Jesus’ grand adventure of begetting and nurturing a Christian family, a domestic church, is a great honor that brings with it great dignity – an honor and dignity that must not go unrecognized by Christian husbands and wives, fathers and mothers.

By way of conclusion, I hope that I have articulated a vision of Christian marriage and family life that are true to Scripture and the Church’s teaching, and in so doing have engendered within you an image that is enriching and inspiring. I hope that I have provided a fresh way of perceiving your marriage and your family – an image that engenders hope and nurtures vitality. I realize that in many ways I have only offered the theological principles that lay within the Church’s understanding of the family as the domestic church. I am also aware that I have often spoken of married couples and parents as sharers in Christ’s office of priest, prophet and king in a general fashion. Such principles and overviews cannot be avoided for you who are married couples and fathers and mothers have the responsibility, the calling, and the grace to make real what I have presented here – each family in its own particular manner. I hope and pray, nonetheless, that you will take up the challenge and the task that the Lord Jesus has given you when he poured out his Spirit upon you on the day of your marriage. In fulfilling that task you will give glory to God the Father and reap the reward of eternal life both for yourselves and for your children. With all of the Saints you, who were members of a domestic church here on earth, will then be risen members of the heavenly church sharing fully in Jesus’ ministry of priest, prophet and king.

In the end, the most important thing, for you as individuals and as married couples, is to love Jesus and to give him your lives. As your love for Jesus grows, so will your love for one another grow; and as your love for one another grows, so will your love for your children grow. Jesus is the beginning and the end of marriage and family life for in him is the fullness of love, the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and in him is the fullness of life, the abundant life of God his Father.

Thank you. May Mary wrap her mantle of protection around you and your families, and may Joseph guide you.

Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap. Capuchin College, Washington DC tgweinandy@gmail.com

"BTW, I don't know who that figure is that's labeled "F.F." --- do you?"

Not sure of the answer for that myself, but could it be referring to the order that Father Weinandy belongs to, which I believe is one of the "Franciscan Friars" orders (see his name, and the numerous references to various Franciscan Friars orders on this web page), and perhaps others in his order are witnessing all this, but are not speaking up publicly in defense of the Father?

(Just a guess.)

I dunno. Fr. Tom is O.F.M. Cap (Order of Friars Minor, Capuchin) and the Remnant wouldn't be likely to dumb that down to "Franciscan Friars" , especially since there are other flavors of Franciscans out there that they would be confused with. Besides, the guy in the cartoon doesn't look like a Franciscan at all.

I am not very good at Catholic Inside Baseball. I only know a couple of names and faces.

The Capuchins are Franciscans, so, Capuchin Friars are (by definition) Franciscan Friars. (There are many orders that actually use the title "Franciscan Friars", such as the late Fr. Groeschel's "Franciscan Friars of the Renewal", which is also a Capuchin Franciscan order, while other Franciscan Friars orders do not use that official appellation in their organization name.)

But I agree that the FF guy in the cartoon does not resemble any of those Franciscan Orders that I could find pictures for. The FF guy's puffy clothes look more like something the Swiss Guard might wear, but the hat doesn't match. (Of course, to be grudgingly honest, the USCCB guy doesn't resemble any of the USCCB bishops either, though they may be figuratively acting like that.) :-)

But I have to admit that my guess is pretty far-fetched, so I'm sure you're likely right about that. I'm still stumped about it -- maybe someone else who knows will post the answer to that here.

Your thoughts? Thank you. May Mary wrap her mantle of protection around you and your families, and may Joseph guide you.

I really even wonder sometimes do Roman Catholics really understand what they're saying.

Now compare the false statement above with what the New Testament says. The astute ready will notice the complete lack of absence of any appeal to any created being.

My prayer is that Roman Catholics will turn to a faith in Christ and only Christ.

*******************

31What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

33Who will bring a charge against God’s elect?

God is the one who justifies; 34who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

35Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

36Just as it is written, “FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED.”

37But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,

39nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:31-39 NASB

You don’t seem to be on friendly terms with any of Jesus’ nearest and dearest. It’s sad in a way.

You don't seem to be on terms with Him...and Him alone.

The message Paul wrote in Romans is crystal clear.

Christ is at the right hand of the Father interceding for us along with the Holy Spirit.

There is ZERO mention of Mary by Paul. ZERO. That should be a wake up call to the Roman Catholic.

As He told Thomas:” 6Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. John 14:6 NASB

The Greek behind this statement is very emphatic....there is only one way to Heaven and that is through Christ....no one else.

I follow Christ and trust in Him and Him alone for my salvation.

Do you??

"Oh! I didn’t mean the headsman, I meant the guy in Cardinal’s garb. DiNardo with a hemorrhoidal look."

I know. In my post 8, I said the FF guy doesn't resemble any of the Franciscan pictures I could find, and that "the USCCB guy doesn't resemble any of the USCCB bishops either" (meaning the guy marked with the USCCB sign, cartoonishly symbolizing -- in my mind -- the entire set of USCCB bishops). I wasn't referring to the lone bishop in the middle, but the chopping guy marked "USCCB".

I absolutely trust Christ for my salvation.

“Alone”? Inconceivable. One cannot force Him into solitude or reduce Him to an off loner, an isolate.

He is the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trunity, co-eternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit; dwelling co-divine in the everlasting Three of the Godhead. Head of His Mystical Body, of which we and all the glorious Saints are His living Members; the Bridegroom, rejoicing in His Bride.

‘

I absolutely trust Christ for my salvation. “Alone”? Inconceivable. One cannot force Him into solitude or reduce Him to an off loner, an isolate.

The verse I posted from John 14:6 is clear.

I don't think you are understanding that.

Only Christ can save you....no one else. Only He died for our sins. No one else. Not Mary. Not Joseph. Not Peter. Not your mom.

We do not come to Christ through Mary as some in Roman Catholicism claim. Mary plays no part in our salvation as she did not die for us. We do not trust in her or pray to her.

The NT is clear on this.

If you are not trusting in Christ alone for your salvation, then you are following what Paul calls a different Gospel.

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