Celebrate Lent? Is it all a party with you guys? Everything's a "celebration" in New Church. Trads "observe" Lent and mortify themselves, prepare themselves to be united to Christ on the Cross. Stations of the Cross, Fast and abstinence etc.
No mention of the growth in the Catholic Church, especially in 3rd world countries.
Growth of what? The same errors that plague the Church in the post conciliar period?
He's pope in a world awash with with the philosophies of self-affirmation, self-assertion and independence.
As the Catholic Church goes: So goes the world.
It's a world whose leaders balk at allowing themselves to be photographed in physically compromised situations, looking weak, vulnerable and dependent on others.
He is heroic as he combats his pains. That can be worked towards his redemption. I firmly believe that God removed his prodigious vitality and physical powers that he had early in his papacy in order to teach him that the "showbiz" won't work. I also firmly believe that God in his truest mercy is keeping the man alive until he actually does what God wants him to. I'm sure JPII has wished to be taken at any number of times. I think God is saying, "Not yet. Do what you know deep down to be right, renounce the stubborness of your errors. Use the power I've given you and then you'll be ready to come home to me."
Despite the secularism that has gripped the Western world, we are under his watch, as pontiff.
Yep. And the traditionalists are encouraging him to stand up against it. Instead of praising the "inculturation" of a pagan world. We want him to clearly articulate that the Catholic Church is the ONLY thing that beats back the darkness.
He signed the Catechism that has given our faith such clarity
The CCC is a scam. It has destroyed the clarity of the faith as expressed in the Catechism of Trent.
His teachings have stood as signs of contradiction in the world.
His teachings are actually his "reflections" as he calls them. They are not signs of contradiction, they are contradictory.
He has himself been the central attraction at events like the World Youth Day, and the Jubilee festivals that sparked so man initiatives throughout the Church.
All trash. Experiments and disrespect for sacred things. Our Lord's body strewn across the ground, burned in heaps, distributed in cardboard boxes etc.
We learned how to be Catholics from this master and his words.
As a non-traditionalist friend told me: "For a man who can speak so many languages, I'm amazed that he can't really say anything." This is idolatry. How ever did the Church teach anybody before 1978? C'mon, this Church is in a state of desolation. And this Pope has sewn confusion with his "Hell is a state and not a "place" comments. They are tailor made to confuse and shake people's faith as public statements.
Last week, from his hospital bed, the Holy Father said: "One must have confidence in life!"
Just what does that mean? How about confidence in Christ? But maybe the name that no one can go to Heaven without, the name that every knee in Heaven, Hell and Earth shall bend to is too "divisive" for his humanist message.
Granted there are aspects of the Church with which you may disagree.
Not just us. The great Popes of this century and prior.
You are not the pope, nor do you shoulder the burden that he has assumed, until death.
This is another form of poisoning the well. I suppose I can't speak out against Abortion because I'm not a woman? I can't engage in politics because I'm not the President? Sorry, it doesn't fly.
By doing what Popes are supposed to do, his yoke will be easy and his burden light.
Maybe if he had the perspective of St. Pius X he would know this; "My hope is in Christ, who strengthens the weakest by His Divine help. I CAN DO ALL IN HIM WHO STRENGTHENS ME. HIS POWER IS INFINITE, AND IF I LEAN ON HIM, IT WILL BE MINE. His Wisdom is infinite, and if I look to Him for counsel, I shall not be deceived. His Goodness is infinite, AND IF MY TRUST IS STAYED IN HIM, I SHALL NOT BE ABANDONED.
Sorry, but when I've got that to comfort me and you show us, "One must have confidence in life!" Forgive me, if I fail to be impressed or moved but rather saddened at the state of degradation in papal teaching.
Please take your misplaced screed somewhere else. It doesn't belong on a thread where the pontiff has upheld Church teaching with regard to Homosexual Marriage.
It belongs right here. A bunch of Rah Rahs! on an absolute "no-brainer" is astonishing. Neos have been so mongrelized that the slightest scrap of right thinking from this Pope is treated like manna from Heaven. It's appreciated by trads but we DEMAND more! We DEMAND he speak JESUS CHRIST and the Roman Catholic Church as the ONLY way to salvation. Nothing else! No compromises! No half-truths about false religions! No more Apologies that are always misunderstood and condemn the dead who have no defense against his attacks.
I didn't scroll down far enough. You beat me to it. lol!
Just as with the Church,so it is with the Pope. One has to read with the knowledge of what has been said before,many of you do not wish to see anything but trouble,when it come to Pope John Paul II. So when he says something that is totally in line with Catholic teaching you leap frog to another subject and hold the Pope,speaking on the other subject up for ridicule.
You only diminish yourself and your compadres and I speak as one who has had much empathy and respect for your position in the past but observing the action on Free Republic lately,I am fast losing it.