Posted on 10/16/2016 7:23:30 AM PDT by Kaslin
Since Jesus famously took out a coin and said "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's" the Church and State have been separated. As St. Augustine famously put it, there is a city of God and a city of Man. The Middle Ages illustrated that division more than most eras; with the relative weakness of political rulers the Catholic Church exercised considerable authority on a temporal level. That authority proved too great for the invading Islamic armies, who never were able to gain a foothold in Western Europe, while in the East, where the successor to the Roman Empire held the Church in a vassal state, Islam flourished and eventually drove the Orthodox Churches out. The bifurcation of power in the West made them strong, able to resist the invasion of the resurrected Arian and Manichean heresy that was Islam. And when the Catholic Church grew too chummy with the political powers there was a rebellion (the Protestant Reformation) which fractured the ability of the ruling class to use religion as a tool of societal domination.
But the rise of modern statism and the subsequent retreat of Christianity made it easy to secularize and conquer. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, the old saying goes, and the Progressive/Leftist movement has spent decades subverting Christianity. How?
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The Kings and royalty ruled over the populace and lands based on the simple concept known as the Divine Right of Kings, and those Kings always had a religious minion in their court. The Catholic Church in Spain, or France and eventually England prove there was no separation of Church and State, until the American experiment where the Constitution declared that there would be no State Church, thus no one religion would be backed by a state, that all religious activity was based on Freedom of Religion... Today American’s are taught Freedom From Religion, by the Godless cadre of Lennon and Marx.
We don’t live in a country ruled by kings. Our republic is unique and God given. There is and ought to be a separation between church and state. The countries you cite had state religions which are miserable things
He who marries the spirit of the age will be a widower in the next.
But the Roman Catholic church promotes souls becoming more and more dependent upon a authoritarian political authority for its needs - a deleterious and dangerous condition.
To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority,...
Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to...ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties,... http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html
The Pope is believed by Catholics to be infallible under certain unique circumstances (ex cathedra) and he and the Church hierarchy are to be listened to although not necessarily followed blindly.
Catholicism cannot in any way "come out of the Middle Ages" and still have any purpose in this world
Actually, assent of faith is required for "infallible" teachings, and assent of mind and will for the second magisterial level, and which forbids public dissent, for "It follows that the Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of per sons, the Pastors and the flock...the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors." - VEHEMENTER NOS, an Encyclical of Pope Pius X promulgated on February 11, 1906. Epistola Tua: To the shepherds alone was given all power to teach, to judge, to direct; on the faithful was imposed the duty of following their teaching, of submitting with docility to their judgment, and of allowing themselves to be governed, corrected, and guided by them in the way of salvation. Thus, it is an absolute necessity for the simple faithful to submit in mind and heart to their own pastors, and for the latter to submit with them to the Head and Supreme Pastor.... Similarly, it is to give proof of a submission which is far from sincere to set up some kind of opposition between one Pontiff and another. Those who, faced with two differing directives, reject the present one to hold to the past, are not giving proof of obedience to the authority which has the right and duty to guide them; and in some ways they resemble those who, on receiving a condemnation, would wish to appeal to a future council, or to a Pope who is better informed. On this point what must be remembered is that in the government of the Church, except for the essential duties imposed on all Pontiffs by their apostolic office, each of them can adopt the attitude which he judges best according to times and circumstances. Of this he alone is the judge. It is true that for this he has not only special lights, but still more the knowledge of the needs and conditions of the whole of Christendom, for which, it is fitting, his apostolic care must provide. - Epistola Tua (1885), Apostolic Letter of Pope Leo XIII; http://www.ewtn.com/vexperts/showmessage_print.asp?number=403215&language=en
to scrutinize the actions of a bishop, to criticize them, does not belong to individual Catholics, but concerns only those who, in the sacred hierarchy, have a superior power; above all, it concerns the Supreme Pontiff, for it is to him that Christ confided the care of feeding not only all the lambs, but even the sheep [cf. John 21:17]. - Est Sane Molestum (1888) Apostolic Letter of Pope Leo XIII; http://www.novusordowatch.org/est-sane-molestum-leo-xiii.htm
...when we love the Pope, there are no discussions regarding what he orders or demands, or up to what point obedience must go, and in what things he is to be obeyed ; when we love the Pope, we do not say that he has not spoken clearly enough, almost as if he were forced to repeat to the ear of each one the will clearly expressed so many times not only in person, but with letters and other public documents ; we do not place his orders in doubt, adding the facile pretext of those unwilling to obey – that it is not the Pope who commands, but those who surround him; we do not limit the field in which he might and must exercise his authority ; we do not set above the authority of the Pope that of other persons, however learned, who dissent from the Pope, who, even though learned, are not holy, because whoever is holy cannot dissent from the Pope.
The Bishops form the most sacred part of the Church, that which instructs and governs men by divine right; and so he who resists them and stubbornly refuses to obey their word places himself outside the Church [cf. Matt. 18:18]. But obedience must not limit itself to matters which touch the faith: its sphere is much more vast: it extends to all matters which the episcopal power embraces. - (Pope Saint Pius X, Allocution Vi ringrazio to priests on the 50th anniversary of the Apostolic Union, November 18, 1912, as found at http://www.christorchaos.com/?q=content/choosing-ignore-pope-leo-xiii-and-pope-saint-pius-x
20. Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent... if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians. - PIUS XII, HUMANI GENERI, August 1950; http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html
The authority (of papal encyclicals) is undoubtedly great". It is, in a sense, sovereign. It is the teaching of the supreme pastor and teacher of the Church. Hence the faithful have a strict obligation to receive this teaching with an infinite respect. A man must not be content simply not to contradict it openly and in a more or less scandalous fashion. An internal mental assent is demanded. It should be received as the teaching sovereignly authorized within the Church." - Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, esteemed Catholic theologian and professor of fundamental dogmatic theology at the Catholic University of America, who served as a peritus for Cardinal Ottaviani at the Second Vatican Council. Extract from the American Ecclesiastical Review, Vol. CXXI, August, 1949; http://www.catholicapologetics.info/thechurch/encyclicals/docauthority.htm
In Matthew 15:10 Jesus tells Peter, the first Pope: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” In other words, the Pope is the boss (at least as Catholics see it) and matters of faith and morals are not open to a vote.
In other words, the Peter was the first of a line of infallible Roman popes is a presumption that is not seen in the life of the NT church in Scripture. I challenge anyone to show Peter being revealed as that therein. The spiritual power to bind and loose was not new, nor restricted to Peter or to the apostles, (Mt. 18:18-20; Ja. 5:16-20) though the governmental judicial power belongs to the magisterial office, flowing from the OT. (Dt. 17:8-13)
Catholicism has been suffering attacks from the inside -- his "Catholic Spring" -- for quite some time. Liberation Theology, a creation of the Soviet Union, is one such example. Pope Francis had ties to Liberation Theology, which promotes a Marxist model for Christian works i.e. it's a revolutionary movement designed to co-opt Christian elements. (Pope John Paul II formally banned it, but Francis is allowing it to come back.)
Thus the problem is with the Roman model for authority and basis for its veracity, with the alternative being that no office possess ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility as per Rome which is unseen and unnecessary in Scripture, and the that basis for the veracity of teaching rests upon the weight of Scriptural substantiation in word and in power. As in Scripture.
Meanwhile, you have the subversion of funds from things like the Archdiocesan Development Appeal to fund radical leftists like ACORN.
Among many other liberal causes, but to dissent from following the RC pastors based upon the premise that your judgment as to what constitutes sound teaching is superior to theirs is the type of means RCs censor evangelicals for, in promoting submission to Rome.
FTA: One of the ways the Left has sought to destroy the Church is by promoting and embracing the corporal works over the spiritual. It is not because they want to help people but rather they want to destroy Christianity, and to do so they must wage war with Christian’s own tools. The Social Gospel is a bludgeon to beat the Gospel of Salvation. Most liberals do not believe in the Christian concept of Salvation, thinking that they are just fine as they are and that there likely is no afterlife anyway. Corporal works are elevated, and this numbs the average Christian who want to obey the teachings of Christ to feed the hungry and cloth the naked. So, numerous Catholics supported Barack Obama, despite his positions being antithetical to most Catholic teachings, simply because he has usurped the corporal works of mercy. Many of these same Catholics will vote for Hillary for the same reason; they think she is in tune with Catholic beliefs because she wants to steal money from some to give to others and call it charity. Real charity is a voluntary act done on an individual level. Forced charity is nothing but theft, and it steals the opportunity of the giver to practice virtue. Oh... and it doesn’t work; few beneficiaries of the welfare state will have anything but a subsistence level of existence. It is a tool for enslaving swaths of the population.
(Skip)
Christianity is ultimately about eternal things. Therein lies the problem with so much of modern Christianity; it disdains the spiritual, ultimate purpose in favor of a social gospel. Jesus commanded that we do good works, the “corporal mercies” but only as part of the bigger picture, which is to save souls from eternal damnation. Feeding a poor person whom you then bless on their road to hell is of absolutely no value. Jesus said “if your eye offends thee, pluck it out; it is better to enter the Kingdom of Heaven with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into Hell.”
Or as Paul put it, “what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”
In times past perhaps, but these days it's looking more like it will be a murder-suicide.
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