Posted on 07/18/2013 5:57:50 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
The Vatican is taking a modern approach to one of its oldest traditions, by offering indulgences to Twitter followers of the Pontifex's social media account.
Aware that some Catholics may not be able afford to travel to Brazil, where World Youth Day is being held from July 23-28, and perhaps also in an effort to modernize himself, Pope Francis is making this first-time offer to the faithful who follow the events in Rio de Janeiro online.
Under Catholic belief, after confessing and being absolved of sin, the indulgences granted reduce the amount of time one spends in purgatory....
(Excerpt) Read more at m.cbsnews.com ...
If you really want time off from Purgatory I'd suggest becoming a Presbyterian.
Seriously?
I know a multitude of catholics and people who just say theyre catholic but have done no study of the faith since their tenth year in school - high school
The latter just come up with ideas and rules and stories about how someone told them something
The level of discourse on FR invariably drops to imbecilic when the Church is cited in some anticatholic msm outlet. And the outlet is suddenly treated with honor and respect when it treports on the Church
The catholic church is over two thousand years old. It does not survive and thrive by throwing its dogma around like some stupid country who disregards its founding principles at the whim of a bunch of adolescent thinking men wanting the right to have inconsequential relations with women and pushes an allowance for them to kill the resultant babies
The Church simply does not act like that
Further it does not make up things like purgatory and tell its members what the new thinking on it is. Purgatory is either there pr it is not
Great theologians through the two thousand year history have determined that God has purgatory which purges souls of impurity before inevitably goes to heaven
This stupid CBS report is not intended to inform young people to prayerfully attend. World youth day via the internet
It is meant to get people to make fun of purgatory and the church and to remind people that there was a time of corruption when gullible uninformed lazy wealthy people gave evil men acting like clergy money to get them into heaven
http://www.catholic.net/index.php?option=dedestaca&id=5691
“An indulgence is simply a favor granted by the Church – to which, remember, Christ gave the “keys of the Kingdom” and the “power to bind and loose on earth and in heaven” (see Matthew 16).
By means of this favor, the Church applies the merits won by Christ and the saints to repair the damage that sins cause to our soul. We don’t obtain God’s forgiveness through an indulgence, rather we obtain the remission of what is traditionally called “temporal punishment” for sin. This is an important concept to consider. It connects both to the doctrine of indulgences, and also to that of purgatory.”
http://www.catholic-pages.com/penance/indulgences.asp
Whether or not you agree with the teaching...my point was with WHY CBS is highlighting this. They would be very happy to further divide Christians.
Yes, the Catholic Church is being SERIOUS about getting time off for following twitter. Oh, and Pinterest site
You can expect Catholics on this site to try to spin this.
THIS is not a joke or a prank:
“”These are only tools that are available to believers. What really matters is that the Pope’s tweets from Brazil, or the photos of World Youth Day that will be posted on Pinterest, should bear authentic spiritual fruit in the hearts of each one of us.
“Then even a youngster who is a very long way from Brazil and feels involved by a video, a simple text message or an email will be truly taking part in the World Youth Day and will receive the gift of the indulgence.”
You are taking a report from CBS seriously?
?
right on stanne
Again, you really aren’t telling me what is incorrect in their story.
So, then the actual content is correct.
You can get time off from purgatory by going online and going to the Pinterest site (not sure CBS brought that up but the Vatican did)
In the old days you could get out of purgatory by buying off a Priest (probably still can) but these days it’s free.
Just go visit Pinterest and/or twitter
Huff!
And that goes triple for rummy chick
SO EXACTLY WHAT IS INCORRECT ABOUT THEIR STORY.
I POSTED LINKS TO INFO FROM THE VATICAN ON THIS
TELL THE TRUTH.
:July 17th, 2013
By the Rev. James Martin, SJ, special to CNN
(CNN) –Here were the tantalizingly weird headlines: “Follow pope online, get to heaven sooner - Facebook likes don't count.” “Cut your time in purgatory by following pope on Twitter.” And, worst of all, from Slate: “Pope now offering indulgences in exchange for Twitter followers.”
Similar headlines popped up on more than 190 news sources on Wednesday.
Ha ha. Is the Catholic Church offering time off in hell– or purgatory, depending on the website - just for checking your Twitter feed every few hours? Is the church really that dumb? And here I thought Pope Francis was cool, or as Esquire recently termed him, “awesome.”
This is (another) case of how the media misunderstands and misreports a story from “The Vatican.”
Here’s how it seemed to have happened.
On June 24, the Apostolic Penitentiary (the Vatican office that deals with matters concerning sin,) issued a document that said the faithful who attend the upcoming World Youth Day in Brazil would receive a “plenary indulgence” for their efforts during pilgrimage.
That’s a traditional Catholic term for the full remission of the “temporal punishment” in the afterlife due to sin. The theological idea is that by doing good works on earth, or by engaging in pious practices like a pilgrimage, you can help “work off” some of the temporal punishments that may await you after death.
But just from checking Twitter every few hours? Let’s leave aside the very complicated theology of the plenary indulgence for a moment, and see how this story got out of hand.
The Vatican’s original document offered an indulgence for those who complete a pilgrimage. That’s fairly common. A few years ago, when I made a pilgrimage to the French shrine of Lourdes, one could work towards an indulgence by visiting certain holy sites and praying there.
Once again, the idea is making reparation in penance for your sins. To take a homey example, if you’re a student who talks too much in class, your teacher might ask you to clean the blackboards instead of failing you. To avoid a big punishment you make amends for your mistakes.
But there’s more: the Vatican document noted that the faithful at World Youth Day must be “truly repentant and contrite.” In other words, they must undertake the pilgrimage in a true spirit of repentance. Be sorry for their sins. That’s common, too.
At the end of the document, the Vatican noted that it was not just pilgrims to whom this applied, but another, newer, group: those who might participate “with due devotion, via the new means of social communication.”
Why did the Vatican include that category? As I see it, to be inclusive, something people often accuse the church of not being.
For those who cannot travel to Brazil, because of financial limitations or health restrictions, it's a way of welcoming them.
To my mind, it’s a generous way of inviting people into the Masses, prayers and liturgies during the World Youth Day. Why wouldn’t you want to include the sick, the poor and the elderly in the community of pilgrims? And why wouldn’t you want to help them participate via the web?
So how did this get so focused on Twitter?
Well, it would seem that The Guardian got hold of “a source” in the Vatican who said, “That includes following Twitter.”
Now, who was the source? We are not told. But that was enough for the headline writers at the Guardian to write: “Vatican offers `time off purgatory' to followers of Pope Francis tweets.”
That’s already doubly inaccurate. Because, first of all, even the “source” said it’s not enough to just follow the pope on Twitter (as the headline misleadingly stated).
"But you must be following the events live,” he told the Guardian, “It is not as if you can get an indulgence by chatting on the Internet.”
Second, in that same article Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communication, was quoted as telling the Italian daily Corriere della Sera: "You can't obtain indulgences like getting a coffee from a vending machine."
In other words: the original document, the “source” and Archbishop Celli all said the opposite of what the headlines said.
That is, it’s not enough simply to follow the pope on Twitter. It’s not even enough to check his Twitter feed frequently. You need to be (a) contrite, (b) trying to follow the events at World Youth Day live and (c) performing these acts with “due devotion.”
In other words, the Vatican is clearly referring to prayerful participation in these events by men and women who could not otherwise go, through the various “new means of social communication.”
An example: A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with a serious form of cancer. After I told her that I would pray for her, I mentioned that the shrine of Lourdes had a 24-hour webcam in the famous Grotto, where Catholics believe the Virgin Mary appeared in 1858.
She e-mailed me a few days later to say that “visiting” the Grotto, via the web, had helped her to pray. It brought her a great sense of peace. This is the kind of “due devotion” that the Vatican has in mind, despite what the headlines might say.
The worst headline came from the normally careful Slate: Pope Francis is not offering indulgences “in exchange for Twitter followers.” He has plenty of Twitter followers. But he’d probably exchange a few hundred of them for headline writers who actually read the story.
So the VATICAN is lying????
Growing up a fairly traditional Catholic I never bought the indulgence thing. I can see the Purgatory thing—insofar as all of us sin and never get to do some kind of penance to atone for those sins. God being God cannot stand to have sin in His sight—so there must be some purgation period. Now my evangelical buddies will want to tear their hair out over this one....but Jesus died on the cross for your sins. Yes, Jesus died on the cross for our sins, but that does not mean just because JC died on the cross and the Resurrection happened and I was baptized doesn’t mean I will live a saintly or angelic life. Christ’s death and resurrection made salvation available to me. Not just a given. Even though baptized, I still have to partake in the offer. As I said, even though all of us sin, the vast majority of folks are not absolutely evil. Isn’t that what hell is—the home of absolute evil? As I said before, God by His nature cannot allow sin (no matter how great or small) in His presence, so thus the idea of Purgatory. Now, if it is a place like heaven or hell—that’s up for grabs-—or it could be a process. No one has come back and written a book—sure, it would be a best seller.
Rummy Chick, whether or not you understand/agree with the teaching, you cannot fail to see that the goal of highlighting this is to divide Christians at a time in history when we MUST be working together to fight the greatest attack against Christianity that this nation has ever experienced.
Or real battle is not against flesh (nor against one another)...but against principalities and powers of darkness.
The FACT is that you CAN receive time off from Purgatory if you go to the Pinterest site. Of course, it’s not enough to just look at the picture.
But Twitter and Pinterest are the gateway to receive time off from Purgatory.
Good post. Thanks.
;-)
See post #32.
I am looking at ACTUAL CONTENT and if the CONTENT is factual.
It is disgusting to me that Priest child molesters could follow the Pope on Twitter and lessen their time in purgatory that surely will come from the result of their despicable actions
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