but that all Salvation comes through the Church.
Posted on 11/19/2014 5:02:53 AM PST by Gamecock
VATICAN CITY — We’ve all received gifts we can’t use or frankly just don’t like. They get stuffed away in a back closet or sold. Some are eventually re-gifted to unsuspecting relatives or friends. But if you are the pope, getting rid of unwanted gifts is not as easy as that, what with the Spartan living conditions and protocol and all. So Pope Francis has found a way to turn the generosity of others into good luck for a few.
Starting this week, the Vatican is raffling off tickets for a chance to win unwanted papal gifts that Francis doesn’t need. Raffle tickets cost €10 and can be purchased at a select few spots including the Vatican post office and at the Vatican’s tourist and pilgrimage bureau in St. Peter’s Square. The winners will be drawn on January 8, which makes the raffle tickets the perfect Christmas gift.
The prizes are impressive and give a window into just what sort of presents people give the pope. The grand prize is a pristine white Fiat Panda 4X4 – with full options. The second, third, and four prizes are bicycles—baby blue, orange and gray respectively; and the fifth prize is a tandem bicycle built for two – which begs the question of just who the giver of that gift thought the pontiff might be cycling around St. Peter’s Square with.
According to Rome’s Messaggero newspaper, which broke the story on Tuesday, the potential pontifical consolation prizes include an Illy brand capsule coffee maker, a HD digital camera, a silver picture frame, a Homero Ortega Panama hat, and a vast array of belts and comfortable shoes in the style the pope likes to wear. There are wallets, briefcases, and document holders, too. A Vatican spokesperson told The Daily Beast that the monogrammed items would not be included in the raffle at this time, though he didn’t rule out that further raffles would be held if this one proves financially lucrative. There are even electronics like iPhone and iPod docking stations and an assortment of pricey pens intended for the pontiff.
The money raised in the holy raffle will go to the Pope’s main charity for the poor. The project is being overseen by Father Corrado Krajewski, a Polish priest who has been Francis’s papal almoner since his election. Don Corrado, as he is known on the streets of Rome where he frequently distributes gifts of money, food, and clothing to the poor for Francis. Last week, Krajewski initaited a project to install showers for the homeless in the restrooms in St. Peter’s Square after meeting a man in Rome he had hoped to buy dinner for, who said he really wanted a hot shower instead. Rome charities estimate that there are around 8,000 homeless people in Rome.
Father Corrado also travels to poor areas around Rome to visit people in need to distribute money to pay utility bills, and past-due rents along with distributing rosaries and sacred pictures of saints, according to Messaggero, which says when Francis assigned him he told Krajewski.
“You will not be a desk bishop desk. You'll have to be an extension of my me to bring a caress to the dispossessed and the last of the city,” Francis reportedly told his good will angel. “I can not get out of the Vatican but you will.”
The papal raffle is expected to raise hundreds of thousands of euro and should easily clean the papal closets of hundreds of unneeded and unwanted gifts.
It’s not every man his own pope if I don’t disagree with him on faith and morals but occasionally disagree with him on a disciplinary move or something he said at a press conference.
“My objection is with ANY denomination who says that you have to be them to be saved. THAT is divisive.”
The Catholic Church doesn’t teach that one has to be Catholic to be saved, but that all Salvation comes through the Church.
“if by ‘manipulated’ you mean not to accept the RCC slant on every news item regarding this particular church leader”
No, I mean the “slant” which ignores the conservative things this pope says and does because it doesn’t fit a caricature of him. An example of this is the ignoring of his condemnations of gay marriage which have been every bit as forceful as Benedict’s. The majority of this pope’s statements are very conservative but they are swept under the rug by many here because they destroy the slanted caricature of him.
No, I’m not speaking “doublespeak”. It is my interpretation of metmom’s post that she thinks the Catholic Church teaches that one has to formally be a member of the Catholic Church to be saved. The Church doesn’t teach this. She does teach that She is the One True Church. By teaching that all Salvation comes through the Church means that the Church teaches that the Grace necessary for Salvation comes through the Church but this DOES NOT mean that those who aren’t formal members of the Church can’t be saved.
I must say that this particular post of yours is confusing to me. Are you saying that the positive posts about the pope are slanted and untruthful but the negative ones are neutral and truthful? Also, I didn’t say he was your pope. All I’m discussing are cherry picked statements of his which are erroneously interpreted while any statement or action of his which does damage to the caricature of him is ignored, lest those being manipulated start to figure that out.
Can you respond to my post 148 then? It should not be as confusing to you.
For those who want a fuller treatment of No Salvation Outside the Church, I would recommend the Wikipedia page “Extra Ecclesiam nulls salus” as a good starting place. Here is a bit from that:
“In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Church states that the phrase, ‘Outside the Church there is no salvation’, means, if put in positive terms, that ‘all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body’ ... The Church has also declared that ‘she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but do not profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter’ ...
(A) ... 2000 declaration of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith states that ‘it must be firmly believed that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation; the One Christ is the Mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church.’ ...
Martin Luther ... spoke of the necessity of belonging to the church (in the sense of the true church) in order to be saved:
‘Therefore he who would find Christ must find the Church. How should we know where Christ and his faith were, if we did not know where his believers are? And he who would know anything of Christ must not trust himself nor build a bridge to Heaven by his own reason; but he must go to the Church, attend and ask her. ... outside of the Christian church there is no truth, no Christ, no salvation.”
I can’t agree with Martin Luther that there is “no truth” outside the Church. People of other faiths and of no faith can know of elements of Truth, though I’m not saying the truths they know are sufficient for Salvation.
I truly regret you went to such trouble to cut, paste, and post this gobbledegook.
By your non-responsive reply, and your blaming your “confusion” on my posts, you have refused to show an honest effort to respond to post 148 and have convinced me that you are not willing to make any sincere attempts to divest yourself of RCC hyperbole and to speak in plain, everyday English.
Either that or you are not capable of such speech.
Then the question becomes:
Which of you is led by the Holy Spirit?
Thus; the FORMAL church is unnecessary.
FOTFLOL!!!
Well, there are Catholics who say that all baptized people become Catholic by virtue of being baptized, and that there will only be Catholics in heaven because in heaven everyone is Catholic.
Besides, many and various popes of the RCC have stated otherwise and I have plenty of quotes on hand to demonstrate that. Some of them spoken ex cathedra.
It’s baloney to say I didn’t respond to your post as anyone can see. It more looks like you don’t want to respond to what I posted. Some things like No Salvation Outside The Church are complicated and I can’t make the English any more “plain”. Just because you may not be able to understand it doesn’t make it gobbledegook.
“my church” - Matthew 16:18
Jesus seems to disagree with you.
Where do you get the idea that everything a person says or does is led by the Holy Spirit? The Church teaches that the Holy Spirit protects the Pope from formally teaching an error on faith or morals, it doesn’t teach that everything a pope or a person says or does is guided by the Holy Spirit. There’s the Voice of God, the voice of the flesh and the voice of the devil sometimes disguised as an angel of light. There are our own sins which we can mistake as the Voice of God.
What papal infallibility entails and doesn’t entail tends to often be poorly understood here.
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