Posted on 07/14/2015 5:15:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Last week the Marxist quasi-dictator of Bolivia, Evo Morales, presented Pope Francis with a gift — a carved wooden hammer-and-sickle cross on which the figure of Christ is crucified.
The Vatican announced that the pope had not been informed in advance about the gift. And some commentators said that photos of the pope and Morales show that the pope was actually offended. That was a false — probably wishful — interpretation. The pope himself later announced that he was keeping the hammer-and-sickle crucifix and taking it home, saying, “I understand this work. For me it wasn’t an offense.”
And “Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi . . . said he personally wasn’t offended by Morales’ gift” (the Guardian).
The pope’s acceptance of Morales’s gift — along with his attacks on capitalism during his Latin American tour — further confirms one of the most troubling moral developments of our time: The Roman Catholic Church is currently led by a man whose social, political, and economic views have been shaped by leftism more than by any other religious or moral system.
It also reconfirms what is probably the single most important development one needs to understand in order to make sense of the contemporary world: The most dynamic religion of the past hundred years has been leftism, not Christianity, not Islam, not any other traditional religion. Indeed, regarding traditional religions, leftism has influenced them — particularly Christianity and Judaism — far more than they have influenced the Left. Mainstream Protestant Christianity, much of Catholicism (especially in Latin America, where Pope Francis lived his whole life before becoming pope), and most of non-Orthodox Judaism have become essentially liberal/Left movements with religious (and in the case of Judaism, ethnic) identity.
In terms of evil committed, what is the difference between the hammer and sickle and the swastika? Would the pope receive, let alone keep, a Fascist, racist, or Nazi sculpture with a crucified Christ on it? Of course not. Yet the hammer and sickle represents more human suffering than all of them combined. The number of people enslaved and murdered under the hammer and sickle dwarfs the number of people enslaved and murdered by any other doctrine in history.
To make things worse, Pope Francis received this gift from a man (Morales) wearing a picture of Che Guevara on his jacket. Is that, too, not worthy of condemnation by the Vatican? Che Guevara devoted his life to undermining human liberty, and to killing innocents in the name of Communism.
The only institutions that can resist the left-wing takeover of contemporary life are religious ones. When they fail, upon which institutions can we depend? What if, in a visit to an American museum, American artist Andres Serrano had presented Pope Francis with a gift — his work of art, Piss Christ — that features a crucifix in a jar of Serrano’s urine?
Would the pope have accepted it? Would he have brought it home?
There could not have been a gift that more accurately represents this pope’s value system than Christ crucified on a hammer and sickle. First, in a literal sense, that is exactly what Communists have done wherever they have assumed power — crucified Christ by working to violently destroy Christianity and murder Christians. Second, in a figurative sense, the gift represents the mélange of Christianity and Marxism, precisely what much of the Church — again, especially in Latin America, and especially in the person of this pope — stands for.
My heart breaks for the millions of Catholics who feel that their beloved Church is being led over a moral and religious cliff by a leftist pope and innumerable other leftists among cardinals, bishops, and parish priests.
Though I am not a Catholic, my heart breaks too. The only institutions that can resist the left-wing takeover of contemporary life are religious ones. When they fail, upon which institutions can we depend?
Tragically, we cannot turn to the contemporary Catholic Church. When the pope keeps a hammer-and-sickle crucifix; when the pope declares free-market capitalism, the one economic system that has lifted masses of people out of poverty, to be largely evil (“the dung of the devil”); when Cuba’s Cardinal Jaime Ortega declares that there are no political prisoners in Cuba; and when the pope issues an encyclical on global warming while the oldest Christian communities in the world are exterminated, it is clear that while one can still turn to individual Catholic priests and lay leaders for moral guidance, one cannot turn to the Church and its pope for moral guidance. On the contrary. One must fight back.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His book, The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code, was published by Regnery. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
Excuse us for borrowing the same standard of discrediting the institution that Protestants so joyfully proclaim.
Look to your own ministers’ sins. Look at your choir masters - mostly gay guys hanging around boy choirs. How many gay Protestant clergy are there? How many gay marriages being performed by gay and women clergy? Just because there are hundreds of splits and schisms and denominations does not mean that as a whole there are many predators within the ranks of the Protestant church. In other words, people in glass houses...
St. Augustine: “It is not the merits of the consecrator that the sacrament is wrought, but by the Creator’s word and power of the Holy Spirit.” I would judge that the most important thing in Catholicism is the receiving of the Communion - while in a state of grace, of course.
My Liberal Catholic mother was very bothered by my conservative bent. So was my liberal/socialist Father!
Verga take note!
LOL
Right.
Maybe for you. Maybe not for others, hopefully.
"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it." (Isaiah 55:10,11)
Actually, some of them use the spam to purposely irritate another freeper. I have complained to admins on occasion because it is hard to maneuver through these quotes to respond or read the gist of the thread properly. In other words, it’s often an hostile act here.
Then spammers need to spam people who appreciate spam. But they don’t do that, do they?
I'd be interested in learning how your interpretations of these verses leads you to the conclusion that the verses are "tangentially related."
The subject is about qualifications of church leaders and what should be done when Catholics priests are "bad men."
Catholics are brought up to understand that even priests can be bad men.
I'm listening. Go ahead.
Not in any church I’ve ever belonged to.
Would you tell us if you did go to a church with a bad minister, lol?
I'm sure YOU understand the question and it's implications.
First, you're calling God's Word "spam."
Second, you're saying that people who proclaim the true Word of God, people who handle it correctly, people who use it to guide their lives and lead others to the truth - because they know its power... these you call "spammers."
Third, God's Word will not return void. It WILL accomplish it's purpose. You don't seem to be sympathetic to that purpose since you complain about seeing God's Word on a website.
Fourth, maybe you SHOULD read those posts. Maybe you'll be changed. That's a GOOD thing.
About 30 years ago, a young, married assistant pastor was having an “inappropriate relationship” with a woman in the church office.
Matthew 18 was followed. He refused to hear and the matter was brought before the church. He was thrown out.
The hope is always for restoration. Eventually, that was realized and the man returned to serve the church (a different church, btw- but that does not matter.)
The effect on the congregation was significant and positive. Sin in the body of Christ must not be tolerated. Accountability to leaders and accountability OF leaders is absolutely needed in the church.
What was the nature of the “inappropriate relationship?” - It was not sexual. It was intimacy- but not physical intimacy. The man was sharing with the woman what he should have been sharing with his own wife. He was violating her trust. He was violating the principle of “oneness” that should exist exclusively between a husband and a wife.
Today, the man and his wife have an excellent relationship. God and God’s people forgive. Everyone has been restored.
My 93 year old Catholic MIL firmly believes that if a Pope is about to make an error on Church dogma he will be struck dead by God. No wonder she believes it. I wonder with today’s science that it would be possible to kill a Pope and get away with it. I doubt it.
Inappropriate relationship not sexual....my friend calls it an emotional affair. Makes sense.
This is getting interesting!
>>But I also think there will be a lot of people called out of “organized churches” - that doesn’t mean they’ll be lone wolves necessarily.
Not all will be lone wolves, but most will be. Every person I know who has “given up organized religion” and still claims to be a Christian quickly becomes a moral therapeutic deist. The ones who are drawn by the Holy Spirit usually start searching again after a period in the wilderness of MTD and find a church that has standards and strongly-held beliefs that are bible-based. The rest are content to be what they are.
If the minister was bad and the church board didn’t do anything about him, I’d leave the church and find another one that follows Scripture.
The personal state of the priest in question is irrelevant.
That is a very shaky statement...in order for the Eucharist to be valid, there must be:
proper form
proper matter
and a proper intention of the confecting priest
Of course, we can’t know the intention of any priest, including renegades, but there it is...
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