Posted on 11/28/2016 8:33:34 PM PST by ebb tide
"Proselytism among Christians, therefore, in itself, is a grave sin,” said Pope Francis.
The journalist then asked, “Why?”
“Because it contradicts the very dynamic of how to become and to remain Christian,” he said. “The Church is not a soccer team that goes around seeking fans.”
It would be hard to conceive of a more superficial, more puerile, remark on relations with other Christian denominations. How much lower can the papacy sink - in terms of both cheap jibes that demean and dishonor the supreme office of Christ's Vicar on earth (lambasting an opposing position with a crude straw-man caricature that would discredit a junior high schooler) and outright heterodoxy?
The American left is currently urging the Electoral College to hand the White House to Hillary on the grounds that Trump is "manifestly unfit to be President". Dare we hope that the scarlet-clad Eminences of the Church's own Electoral College will soon declare Francis "manifestly unfit to be Pope"?
I mean . . . Trying to help non-Catholic Christians, by reasoned argument and apologetics, to recognize and embrace the fullness of revealed truth - and for Francis, that certainly qualifies as "proselytism" - is now to be condemned as sin? And indeed, grave sin? Even though Vatican Council II (to which the Holy Father professes his full adherence) clearly restates that all have a moral duty to seek, embrace and hold fast to this truth of the Catholic Church (cf. Dignitatis Humanae, #1)? Even though the Council (Lumen Gentium, #14) and the Catechism (#846) reaffirm the dogma "Outside the Church there is no salvation", explaining it to mean that those who recognize the Catholic Church as embodying the true religion, yet refuse to enter or remain in her, cannot be saved?
I myself am a convert from Presbyterianism. Prompted by the aforesaid conciliar teaching, I became a Catholic in order to save my soul. The Catholic faith I have professed now for 42 years is the most precious gift I have received. And now the head of Christ's Catholic Church on earth, no less, is telling me that those Catholics who by personal conversation and written argument helped persuade me to abandon my Protestant heresies and embrace the fullness of revealed truth were thereby committing grave sin? And he's justifying this excoriation of convert-seeking with a vapid "explanation" that explains nothing ("Because it contradicts the very dynamic of how to become and to remain Christian”)?
How many previous Successors of Peter must be rolling in their graves at such comments! This, coming from a pope, is . . . outrageous. Mind-boggling. Unspeakable. Incredible. The stuff of nightmare. It is calling good evil, and by implication, evil good. Sorry, I can't find adequate words here, so will simply give up seeking them and sign off.
No. But I do thank God that I’m not like you.
You can’t be like me, like the young ruler you have kept the commandments from birth. You are certainly nothing like the publican.
The purple mafia could not stand Benedict and feared him. So they arranged the vote for Francis.
You’ve been saying that for two years, but you keep extending your deadline.
>>Look for Pope Francis to step down by the end of next year.<<
What leads you to believe this? Just curious.
What commandments did Pope Pius X give to not obey succeeding pontiffs? Using your Moses example, that would put your Catholic offshoot in the sandals of the Samaritans who only recognized the Torah.
What commandments did Pope Pius X give to not obey succeeding pontiffs? Using your Moses example, that would put your Catholic offshoot in the sandals of the Samaritans who only recognized the Torah.
Deo gratias!
What Commandment is the current pope disobeying?
I’ll give you a hint. It comes after the Fifth but before the Seventh.
Pope Saint Pius X issued no new commandments. He obeyed the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses.
Bergoglio does not.
Next question?
A clue, told those who attended WYD in Poland at the end of the closing mass when Panama was the next nation to host in 2019 that he will not be there. That is enough to back what I predict will happen.
Sure, lets hear some. Including why we need to submit to popes, while your interpretation of Catholic teaching such as generally affirms baptized Prots as members of the body of Christ is correct over that of V2 and popes since.
Of course, neither V2 Rome or its past can be the NT church. Which church manifestly did not teach perpetual ensured magisterial infallibility, this being unseen and unnecessary in the life of the church, nor did it have a separate class of believers distinctively called "saints" or distinctively titled "priests," offering up "real" flesh and blood as a sacrifice for sin, which is to be literally consumed in order to obtain spiritual life.
Nor is it otherwise Scripturally manifest in the life of the church as being the sacrament around which all else revolves, and the "source and summit of the Christian faith," "in which our redemption is accomplished."
Nor is the NT church manifest as looking to Peter as the first of a line of exalted infallible popes reigning over the church from Rome (which even Catholic scholarship provides testimony against), and praying to created beings in Heaven, and being formally justified by ones own sanctification/holiness, and thus enduring postmortem purifying torments in order to become good enough to enter Heaven, and saying rote prayers to obtain early release from it, and requiring clerical celibacy as the norm, among other things.
No wonder Catholics rely on amorphous "oral tradition," for under the premise of magisterial infallibility all sorts of fables can be chanelled into binding doctrine, even claiming to "remember" an extraScriptural event which lacks even early historical testimony. , and was opposed by RC scholars themselves the world over as being apostolic tradition.
Who knows what real heresies he rejected, but we know he accepted multitude novelties and heresies.
Entertainment placemarker
The few here who assert they believe it is ONLY through the Catholic church that one can be saved HAVE TO ignore the truth of the gospel - that it is through faith in Jesus Christ, not in a church, that we are redeemed. Knowing Christ and being partakers of His grace and mercy is what's important, NOT what denomination I happen to identify with. Those who continue to insist "their" church is the only true church and we MUST BE members to be saved are not only full of pride they reject the true gospel of Jesus Christ who gives us eternal life through faith in Him and NO ONE can pluck us from His hands.
Baloney. The Bible does not say anywhere that one has to belong to a certain church to go to heaven. Read John 3:16, for example. I know of one other denomination which believes that and they are just as wrong. I do not understand where they get that wrong info.
Are the people who were led to Christ by Paul Christians or not?
What about the rest of the OT Law? You keeping all of those also??
I bet there are more than a few who believe the first part.
Thankfully, Christians believe the second part that it is through faith in Jesus Christ that we are redeemed!!!!
Do you keep them?
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