Posted on 04/02/2023 4:37:46 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The assault on traditional Christians by the pope, of all leaders, and lately by the FBI, of all agencies, calls for an honest explanation.
Why is the pope turning his back on his own Church? Why is the FBI violating the guaranteed right of Americans to religious freedom?
Since I witnessed Catholic worship long before the church was changed in the 1960s, I can offer some insight into the what and the why of this issue, from eye-witness information recorded in my autobiography. (This is from the perspective of a resident of New York City.)
Before proceeding, I need to remind that the church I speak of is the Church founded by Jesus Christ [ref. Matthew 16:18].
I begin with a view through the eyes of a child. Entering the Church, it was understood that you entered as a child of God, regardless of age.
SNIP
As organist in a Protestant church, I witnessed changes to Christian doctrine that were clearly at variance with the Gospel and with my earlier experiences with Protestant worship. (I will keep a long story short.)
It began with guest speakers coming to announce that changes were coming to the church and it was necessary for the congregation to be prepared for it. Soon hymnals were purged of pronouns referring to God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. Talk on “social justice” sounded more like it came from Marxist “liberation theology” than from the Gospel. Masculinity was smeared with toxicity in church literature. Feminist and Marxist principles had obviously found their way into the service.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The marxists are almost all atheists. Their god is government.
I don’t know, are their attackers Satanically inspired?
“Why is the pope turning his back on his own Church? ”
Because this anti-pope is not the Pope.
Because one of the messages of Christianity is God says,no.
And nature..including men.. is God’s creation.
It is going to make people angry, but that needs to be asked. If we the people are not living correctly, HOW can we expect our government to be any different? The answer to all of these problems is for people to run back to God asap. However, on a Sunday morning, there is almost no traffic on the roads. People do NOT go to worship services and have no intention of doing so. Do NOT complain about what happens to you. People get the kind of government they deserve.
Sure seems like the spirit of the anti-Christ is running rampant these days.
The Christian has been a bulwark against communism. Christianity has been associated with MAGA. Christian teachings say that the homosexuality is a sin, marriage is a sacrament binding a man and a woman and offers eternal life to believers. Pagan forces hate all these beliefs.
It is notable that the cult of transhumanism is offering eternal virtual life. They finally recognized that they have to beat the promise of heaven.
It will get worse. 😝
In my opinion, 2000 years of church leadership, both Catholic & Protestant have, for the most part been in their leadership roles for fun & profit. In many ways, the same as most politicians.
To me that is why Christianity seems to be so fluid.
They answer to God not government.
It’s called the apostate church, or the great apostasy, and it’s predicted by end times prophecy. This apostasy also is not limited to the Catholic Church, but is running rampant through Protestant denominations these days as well, especially the non-denominational, trendy, “seeker sensitive”, churches that are on every corner now. They’re the ones with ultra relaxed environments, skinny jeans-wearing tattooed “pastors”, and an overall allergic reaction to any mention of sound doctrine or discernment. These “churches” are perfectly designed to demand nothing of their congregants, while scratching their “itching ears” and avoiding anything that might “offend” them. I’ve run away from several of these trying to find ANY church that will simply teach straight-forward, unapologetic Biblical truth, and nothing less. It’s getting extraordinarily difficult to find that.
Because Christians stand in the way of leftists, whose numbers include most Democrats.
Because Christians stand in the way of leftists, whose numbers include most Democrats.
We have been attacked since approximately 33 anno Domini.
Well said.
He answered his own question here. Communists have long sought to destroy Christianity as part of the long term goal of making the world Communist. What the Gay Mafia does not realize is that after the Communists win they get sent to the camps first.
It is simple AND predictable. They hate Christians because they hate Jesus.
John 15:18: “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.”
The invisible church, for the simply truth is that distinctive Catholic teachings (mainly about 20 listed here) are not manifest in the only wholly God-inspired, substantive, authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels)
Klaus Schatz [Jesuit Father theologian, professor of church history at the St. George’s Philosophical and Theological School in Frankfurt] in his work, “Papal Primacy ,” pp. 1-4, finds:
if we ask whether the historical Jesus, in commissioning Peter, expected him to have successors, or whether the authority of the Gospel of Matthew, writing after Peter’s death, was aware that Peter and his commission survived in the leaders of the Roman community who succeeded him, the answer in both cases is probably 'no...
If we ask in addition whether the primitive church was aware, after Peter’s death, that his authority had passed to the next bishop of Rome, or in other words that the head of the community at Rome was now the successor of Peter, the Church’s rock and hence the subject of the promise in Matthew 16:18-19, the question, put in those terms, must certainly be given a negative answer.”
If one had asked a Christian in the year 100, 200, or even 300 whether the bishop of Rome was the head of all Christians, or whether there was a supreme bishop over all the other bishops and having the last word in questions affecting the whole Church, he or she would certainly have said no."
It is likely that the Roman church was governed by a group of presbyters from whom there very quickly emerged a presider or ‘first among equals’ whose name was remembered and who was subsequently described as ‘bishop’ after the mid-second century.” — Papal Primacy [Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996]
American Roman Catholic priest and Biblical scholar Raymond Brown (twice appointed to Pontifical Biblical Commission), finds,
“The claims of various sees to descend from particular members of the Twelve are highly dubious. It is interesting that the most serious of these is the claim of the bishops of Rome to descend from Peter, the one member of the Twelve who was almost a missionary apostle in the Pauline sense – a confirmation of our contention that whatever succession there was from apostleship to episcopate, it was primarily in reference to the Puauline type of apostleship, not that of the Twelve.” (“Priest and Bishop, Biblical Reflections,” Nihil Obstat, Imprimatur, 1970, pg 72.)
Avery Dulles considers the development of the Papacy to be an historical accident:
“The strong centralization in modern Catholicism is due to historical accident. It has been shaped in part by the homogeneous culture of medieval Europe and by the dominance of Rome, with its rich heritage of classical culture and legal organization” (Models of the Church by Avery Dulles, p. 200)
While Apostles were on earth, there was the display neither of Bishop nor Pope;.... When the Church, then, was thrown upon her own resources, first local disturbances gave exercise to Bishops, and next ecumenical disturbances gave exercise to Popes; (John Henry Newman, Essay on the Development of Doctrine, Notre Dame edition, pp. 165-67).
Each church at first had at its head not a single chief pastor, but a plurality of elders (=bishops) acting as a college. In course of time there emerged from this presbyterial body...a permanent leader, to whom henceforth the term "bishop" tended to be restricted. This is the "monarchical episcopate" which first meets us in the letters of Ignatius, early in the second century...
....the bishops in the first instance of provincial capitals, gradually acquired control over their episcopal brethren in lesser cities, analogous to that of the civil governor over other provincial cities. Indeed, the development of the whole hierarchy above the congregational bishop was largely influenced by the imperial system, especially after church and state came into alliance under Constantine. (Hugh Chrisholm, The Encyclopaedia Britannica, University Press, 1911, p. 929) English medievalist and critical Catholic researcher Roger J. H. Collins, writing of the Symmachan forgeries” describes these “pro-Roman” “enhancements” to history:
So too would the spurious historical texts written anonymously or ascribed to earlier authors that are known collectively as the Symmachan forgeries. This was the first occasion on which the Roman church had revisited its own history, in particular the third and fourth centuries, in search of precedents That these were largely invented does not negate the significance of the process...
Some of the periods in question, such as the pontificates of Sylvester (314–355) and Liberius (352–366), were already being seen more through the prism of legend than that of history, and in the Middle Ages texts were often forged because their authors were convinced of the truth of what they contained. Their faked documents provided tangible evidence of what was already believed true...
The Symmachan forgeries reinterpreted some of the more embarrassing episodes in papal history, both real and imaginary. … How convincing these forged texts seemed in the early sixth century is unknown, but when rediscovered in later centuries, they were regarded as authentic records with unequivocal legal authority...
It is no coincidence that the first systematic works of papal history appear at the very time the Roman church’s past was being reinvented for polemical purposes. (Collins, “Keepers of the Keys of Heaven, A History of the Papacy” pp 80-82). Orthodoxy was not established [In Egypt] until the time of Bishop Demetrius, 189-231, who set up a number of other sees and manufactured a genealogical tree for his own bishopric of Alexandria, which traces the foundation through ten mythical predecessors back to Mark, and so to Peter and Jesus...
Even in Antioch, where both Peter and Paul had been active, there seems to have been confusion until the end of the second century. Antioch completely lost their list...When Eusebius’s chief source for his Episcopal lists, Julius Africanus, tried to compile one for Antioch, he found only six names to cover the same period of time as twelve in Rome and ten in Alexandria. (Johnson, “A History of Christianity,” pgs 53ff; http://reformation500.com/2014/01/17/historical-literature-on-the-earliest-papacy)
More, by the grace of God.
a Second Vatican Council (1962-65) had turned the church on its head and driven many away. The priest now stood at a table, facing the people, where before, and for centuries, he faced God at the altar. The sanctity that once prevailed in church was gone.
Oh yes, it must be that Jesus and the apostles turned their back to the people, with their primary active function being that of offering a christ as a sacrifice for sin and spiritual food under the appearance of bread and wine which has ceased to actually exist, with a christ whose appearance did not correspond to what he materially was. Until that is, the non-existent bread and or wine begins to manifest decay. Not.
I don’t remember where I read it.
I think it maybe came from some 1950s/60s pastor who once said:
“When God judges a nation, He does so by allowing terrible leadership.”
That “leadership” portends to both political and spiritual positions.
The Lord deals corporately with nations and individually with persons.
The personal walk creates the corporate walk.
With all that in mind, when one looks at our nation today, we’re more backslid than OT ancient Israel ever was, and He’ll deal with us in the same manner....It’s already happening.
He never changes. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever.
It’s way past time to come back to Him.
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