Posted on 07/17/2014 7:39:22 AM PDT by cleghornboy
Pope Francis has thanked those who seek to,"..recover man[kind], restoring him to the centre of reflection and the centre of life. 'He is the king of the universe'! he exclaimed. 'And this is not theology, it is philosophy and human reality.'" (See here).
Does Pope Francis really mean to convey that theology has nothing to do with "human reality." As I have said so many times before, the retreat from truth is necessary before the reign of Antichrist. See here for example. There is a preparation. Many are "intellectualizing" themselves into dissent and apostasy from the true Faith. The battlefield is in the mind. The attack is intellectual and psychological. Sin must be justified so that a new religion can turn vices into gods.
What is this but a form of insanity? In the words of the late (great) F.J. Sheed: "..if we see anything - ourself or some other man, or the Universe as a whole or any part of it - without at the same time seeing God holding it there, then we are seeing it all wrong. If we saw a coat hanging on a wall and did not realize that it was held there by a hook, we should not be living in the real world at all, but in some fantastic world of our own in which coats defied the law of gravity and hung on walls by their own power. Similarly if we see things in existence and do not in the same act see that they are held in existence by God, then equally we are living in a fantastic world, not the real world. Seeing God everywhere and all things upheld by Him is not a matter of sanctity; but of plain sanity, because God is everywhere and all things are upheld..
He seems to misspeak a lot.
You’re not a blockhead so much as many of us traditional Catholics are cynics. I go to the Novus Ordo Mass five or six days a week. I usually attend a diocesan Extraordinary Form Mass on Sundays. That doesn’t make me a “rad trad.” But even run of the mill trad Catholics faithful to Rome and the Magisterium find this Pope to be at best puzzling and imprudent. Many find him to be exasperating and some think he is a heretic.
Meanwhile the mainstream Catholic apologetics are doing mental and verbal gymnastics trying to explain away what is terribly clear: we’ve got a Pope who doesn’t care to speak or defend orthodoxy and ortho praxis. That is troubling and most don’t know how to deal with it.
The easiest thing to do is ignore him and hope for an orthodox replacement in God’s good time.
I am 4 1/2 hours from the nearest Extraordinary Mass and have never been privileged to even see one in my 13 years, since my late conversion.
I tried the mental and verbal gymnastics you mentioned for awhile out of duty, hope and charity, otherwise known as flying on “a wing and a prayer”, but I have been given nothing that I recognise to work with.
“In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped: I shall not be confounded forever.”
So, I here I sit, baffled. I too am a traditional Catholic
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