Posted on 06/16/2016 9:22:17 PM PDT by ebb tide
Pope Francis, spiritual leader of a billion people, has just informed them that ‘the great majority’ of sacramental marriages are invalid because couples don’t go into them with the right intentions. He was speaking at a press conference in Rome. Here’s the context, from the Catholic News Agency (my emphases):
‘I heard a bishop say some months ago that he met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said “I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years”. It’s the culture of the provisional. And this happens everywhere, also in priestly life, in religious life,’ he said.
‘It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null. Because they say “yes, for the rest of my life!” but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.’
Uh? You can read the full report here but you won’t be much the wiser. The Pope, thinking aloud in the manner of some maverick parish priest after a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, has just told millions of his flock that they are not really married.
Did he mean to say that? What does he really think? What authority do his words carry?
And why should Catholics even have to ask these questions? Francis’s off-the-cuff ramblings on matters of extreme pastoral sensitivity are wreaking havoc in the Catholic Church, as I’ve written here.
Ross Douthat of the New York Times has just tweeted this response:
Screen Shot 2016-06-16 at 23.54.41
I suspect that even the Pope’s most liberal admirers will have difficulty extricating him from this mess.
In what way?
There are lurkers here that do NOT 'know' it.
Betcha that USING GOD's name in vain is a wee bit more problematic than PRONOUNCING it wrongly.
Now then; defend against THIS charge, while I put on some popcorn.
Oh?
I've not seen this; but I HAVE seen a bunch of wannabe micro-popes that are REALLY upset at his apparent politics!
oh...
There are so-called clinics ---I knew of one years ago in Oakland, and there are many more today --- whose major "health service" consists of impregnating women who have never had sex with a man. Lesbian motherhood centers. And who knows how many are not lesbians, but married women, simply being impregnated outside of their marriages? it's certainly a reality today. How does this escape your moral evaluation?
Because as explained, it is spurious analogy, for what man physically does is not the same thing as God supernaturally doing so, which is why He could use man to provide the material for a women's body, and could be both a creator-father to Mary as we her husband as Cath theology makes Him. To charge God with adultery under the premise that He was engaging in a form of a physical conjugal act is close to Mormonic theology.
But rejected apocryphal books,as did Mary others until Trent provided the first indisputable canon for RCs - after the death of Luther.
Because they didn't transcribe into text everything they were teaching by word and example. Nor did they even write down everything Our Lord taught by word and example. St. John answers the question nicely: John 21:25 "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written [not form] every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen."
Which simply does not mean that there is another body of wholly inspired Truth to be proclaimed by Rome under her the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility as per Rome (for which she invokes Tradition). And which is contrary to premise that writing was God means of continued preservation, and which contains, in its formal and material sense combined, what is needed.
St. John speaks to this issue nicely
And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. (John 20:30-31)
That simply will not do, for sanctioning doctrine merely if it is not disproven in the Bible opens up the door for all sorts of cultic teaching or such as the Talmud can provide. Instead the premise is that unless the veracity of something rests upon Scriptural substantiation then it is not to be made binding belief. Which the truths we both affirm do.
We Catholics believe in Sacred Tradition and in the authority of the Church --- both on Biblical grounds, as the Bible itself teaches both the authority of Sacred Tradition (oral teachings) plus the authority of the Church as such.
A SS preacher can enjoin obedience to oral teaching of Scriptural Truths, and can also hold to some traditions that are not in Scripture, if consistent with it, but not as binding, but cannot presume to be speaking as wholly inspired of God, nor to be provided new revelation as apostles and NT writers could. And neither does Rome claim to be speaking thusly. Even if she spoke infallibly, that would not make it fully equal with the wholly inspired word of God, which has God as its author, unlike merely "infallible" teaching. But Catholic traditions at issue both lack Scriptural warrant and are contrary to it.
And why it took her over 1700 years to make belief in an event an article of faith. If such was so important then it seems she was negligent in proclaiming it thusly, but in reality it was/is so lacking in early historical testimony that her own scholars opposed it being made an article of faith. But Rome can claim to "remember" what history "forgot."
There is more than one, due to the Mary of Catholicism.
1 Kings 1:1-4 English Standard Version (ESV) 1 Now King David was old and advanced in years. And although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm. 2 Therefore his servants said to him, “Let a young woman be sought for my lord the king, and let her wait on the king and be in his service. Let her lie in your arms, that my lord the king may be warm.” 3 So they sought for a beautiful young woman throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king. 4 The young woman was very beautiful, and she was of service to the king and attended to him, but the king knew her not.
Which leads to the question as to whether she was a wife, versus a nurse. If we think that being very beautiful means that the manner of service included some sort of intimate contact (in lieu of an electric blanket) then marriage would negate any change of impropriety, and thus provide the an example of an unconsummated marriage. But i think the the manner of service of was that of truly intimate contact.
If you’re gonna shave close, you need a lot of lather . . .
I don't know if you're just being dull, or you really don't get it. The baby Jesus gets no genetic material from Mary. That zygote of the "last Adam," Jesus, and invested with His Spirit of life, and implanted by the Holy Spirit, is supplied out of the same configured DNA as that which was created for the "first Adam," by the same God Who created Adam's body DNA from the dust of the ground.
Thus, the 'quickening Spirit" of Jesus the Beloved Son was begotten in the flesh by entering that zygote, occupied the exact same type of sinless body material, be born, and grew into an adult human male.
What Jesus was going to show was that God in the flesh could come down from on high, occupy a human body not tainted by original sin, and completely satisfy the will of The Father, thus being the only human to fulfill the Law on behalf of all humanity.
It specifically did not mention anyone else. Mary could not help, She could only submit. Nowhere does the Bible say that any part of Jesus' flesh came from Mary. /the passage does not say "Thou and Mary prepared a body for me." God sure didn't need a woman's help to create Adam out of the elements present on the earth. Your answers are becoming irritating in their obfuscation, so pretty soon, I'm just going to ignore them and go take a nap. I do have several people whom I can teach that use their own noodle to think things through satisfactorily without oppositional motives..
Thanks for the details!
If you do a little digging into the reasons this dogma was "infallibly" declared by Rome and why it took so long, you will find out that it was because of the petitions of many RCs who placed their faith in apparitions and testimonies of some "Saints" who claimed that Mary told them it was so (i.e.; "I am the Immaculate Conception" of Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette). Nothing from God's word nor from the ancient witness of the Christian church ever mentioned it or thought it such a critical component to the Incarnation doctrine.
It gets pretty monotonous having these same arguments over and over again. I sincerely believe the main, maybe the ONLY, reason FRoman Catholics continue to defend it is because their church declares it is something that must be believed. To acknowledge that others have valid reasons to reject it is a tacit admission that they cannot make.
Satan doesn’t like it when we pay attention tot he details obfuscated by Rome.
I don’t think he does. Though, I believe he rather enjoys the dissension such arguments foment and which sidetrack us from the MOST critical articles of faith such as the gospel of the grace of God who saves all those who trust in Jesus Christ rather than their religion.
Another pithy, informative note. Thanks, BB!
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