Posted on 10/16/2011 4:48:31 AM PDT by JimWayne
It is difficult to believe for an average of 6000 times a year hospital workers were able to get around hospital bureaucracy and administration and were able to transfer babies and parenthood.I agree, the VERACITY of the story is certainly in question. The reporter has a clear, documented bias. That bias may well have allowed her to take a few isolated allegations and spin them into this screed.
When I spoke of the “shepherd sheep relationship”, there is more I could have gone into to explain what I meant. The American Episcopalians for example in their high councils have set the church in a direction that denies the deity of Christ and questions his resurrection as well as allows practising homosexuals to be priests and Bishops.
The churches on the local level and their individual laity are told to accept these evil changes or lump them and 1000 congregations have gone aheaad and lumped them, seeking affiliations with more biblically conservative Anglican associations such as one in Africa I’ve read about. Some of the reprisals have been very vicious with one Lady Bishop Kennedy saying on record that she would rather sell the buildings of dissenting Episcopalians to “Baptists or saloons”. One such dissenting church offered to buy the building in Binghamton, NY but their offer was refused in favor of a low ball offer to a group which then turned the church into a Mosque!
What would local Catholics do in this day and age should the upper command structure of the Catholic church become so corrupted that some liberal Pope and groups of Cardinals want to take the whole of the church completely away from sound Christian values with little or no options in opposing such moves (with complete censure and legally inforced lock down of those churches that would openly resist such corruption)? Would another Martin Luther arise?
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What would local Catholics do in this day and age should the upper command structure of the Catholic church become so corrupted that some liberal Pope and groups of Cardinals want to take the whole of the church completely away from sound Christian values with little or no options in opposing such moves (with complete censure and legally inforced lock down of those churches that would openly resist such corruption)? Would another Martin Luther arise?
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It would mean that Jesus was wrong and that the gates of hell have in fact prevailed.
Well if your definition of the true church of Jesus Christ is the current command structure of the Catholic Church, then the “faith” has indeed “failed”(as you define it). Yet if the church is defined by the invisible but present unity of all Spirit filled believers(Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical or otherwise) undergirded by the gospel of Peace as set forth by the prophets and apostles, and sealed by the shed blood and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then all hell shall indeed not prevail against it!
Remember that Obamba is technically a non-Catholic, Carter was a Baptist as was Slick Willie. And FDR, etc.
I agree! I don’t buy the Christian act from Obama either. Despite being called a nut for thinking this, I hedge towards him being a Muslim.
Not by me.
I am a member of the Church of Richmond. My bishop is in communion with the Holy See. Therefore it is right, but imprecise, to call me a member of the Church of Rome.
You can get an idea of how things really work if you imagine being the head of an empire, membership in which is voluntary, of several hundred million. You can't run stuff. You have to delegate.
Even with modern comm. technology there is just too much information, too much going on. And there is such a variety of structures, “ancient privileges”, and so on.
And in principle there is a commitment to”subsidiarity”, the idea that responsibility devolves to the closest and lowest possible level. The bishop intervenes NOT when the parish priest goofs, but when he HEARS that the parish priest has goofed. The Pope intervenes, reluctantly, when he hears the bishop has a problem.
And add to that the orders! A local Dominican superior has a lot of freedom until somebody brings a problem to the attention of the prior provincial and persuades him that something needs to be done.
(This principle of subsidiarity is a main part of why the Catholic Church won't get behind civil socialism. It has too great a tendency to higher and remoter control and responsibility.)
So, if there's a pinko and heretical local director of religious ed (DRE), it's the pastor's “fault” and problem. IF he doesn't fix it, somebody (several letters from layfolk) has to tell the bishop ... and so on up the line. It's not a matter of a general and inferiors, where the general issues orders and plans operations.
So the scenario you propose is difficult to imagine. And when you suggest that the command structure has failed, the halfway knowledgeable Catholic would say, “WHAT command structure?”
And even in the Episcopal Church — and I was there, it was the diocesan councils (every parish sends elected delegates and every priest has a vote by virtue of his order — but a majority of the lay delegates have the power to veto any measure) that proposed that there was no law against homosexual clergy or that longer life expectancy made the lifelong voes of marriage obsolete. The absence of howls of derision and scorn at that level led the way to the wider church's acceptance of a homosexual bishop. The decline was almost (but not quite) ground-up, not top-down. The laity at almost any point up to the election of the bishop of New Hampshire could have put a stop to this depredation. They could have vetoed resolutions and canons at the diocesan level and at the national level. The lay delegates to the council of new Hampshire could have vetoed the election.
Heck when I was a priest (as I thought) I encouraged lay folk to know their religion and the various canons and to use their power. But they all wanted to get divorced and to remarry (okay, not all, but too many), they all believed the crypto-Freudianism of chastity as a disease and intercourse (with whatever sort of partner) as a cure. They all ate up the sugar-coated poison of tolerance.
They WERE sheep, but they were not made so by the "command structure". They preferred sloth in their religion and fearful "going along" to industrious study, careful thought, and planned action.
I was there. I saw it. I was rebuked by the laity for trying to enhance their power and authority and by calling them to the religion of their fathers. I was mocked by my 'brothers' in orders for trying to keep within the bounds of our polity and our heritage.
A Catholic bishop has more authority than an Episcopalian bishop. But even here, when the laity stand up for orthodoxy, a wayward bishop cannot do much, though he can make things unpleasant for their pastor. And enough letters were sent to the Vatican that a former bishop of Richmond was summoned and had the riot act read to him and a suffragan bishop appointed to keep him in line. As in an older civil polity, the lay people, if they use their wits, can play bishop against pope as they once played baron against king. But "pray, pay, and obey" was ever more theory than practice, and constructive resistance by the laity still counts for much in the Church.
Yet in the end, the laity still rely on the system, letter writing and political games not withstanding. The hope is that the higher authorities will take notice and “change” things”
An old saying goes...”A fish first rots from the head”. If the shepherds have been struck, the sheep scatter. The people perish for lack of vision and if the vision of Christ crucified and risen again has been lost in the upper
councils of these various aforementioned churches, then there is nothing to stop the laity from straying. If the councils of these aforementioned churches are like the “eyes” of the laity and the “eye be darkened”, then is not the body “filled with darkness”?
... if the vision of Christ crucified and risen again has been lost in the upper councils of these various aforementioned churches, then there is nothing to stop the laity from straying.
Sed Contra: Catherine of Siena -- among whose services was to stop the clergy -- even the Pope -- from straying..
Standing far enough off to be not entirely clear what I'm looking at, I would venture that you SEEM to be having (or perhaps reflecting) an unrealistic (that is, not historical and not reasonable) notion of the role and capabilities of leadership and a lack of trust in God's care of and pledge to the Church.
What ex opere operato comes down to in real life is that Fr. Seamus Valdez Mozetta may be a complete bozo, but I don't come to him for HIM, so it doesn't matter. It would be nice if the sermons at Mass weren't a bunch of heretical yawners and the counsel at confession wasn't a bunch of semi-pathological bromides, but I don't go to Mass for the sermon or to confession for advice, and in both cases I get what I come for (at least, so I believe.)
And even the most pious and wise priest cannot do for others what they will not do for themselves. Take catechesis, for example. In our church of 3k plus families PLUS around 1k university students, there's no way the 3 - 4 friars who serve us can do all the teaching. They can't even review the teaching of others.
But the parents and other adults CAN not only help with catechesis of the young'uns, but also OUGHT to take the responsibility to audit the classes now and again to make sure it's good teaching and not the crypto-Humanistic Pelagian BS I got when I was in Sunday School mumble-mumble years ago.
A fish may rot from the head, but the rest of the body ought to provide the oxygen-laden and nutrient rich blood to the head. So the body can often be implicated in the pathology or (purported) morbidity of the head. To the extent such things happen or are approximated, at least SOME of the cause is the members expecting the head to do things they themselves should do, while resisting the head's doing what is proper to it.
[Note: I am being imprecise. The head of the Body is Christ, and in that case, the Head does give life to the body. But at another level of metaphor, the body gives life to the head. Again, see Catherine of Siena, also Francis, Dominic, and all the saints whom God raises up when the 'head' grows weak and dizzy and the whole body staggers.]
In I Cor 12, in Ephesians 4, Paul does in no way speak of a homogenized body where each member does or ought to do the function of others. Ephesians, which is making more and more of an impression on me, begins with a grand presentation of our election to participation in a cosmic restoration of unity which is exemplified by the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile but proceeds then to the means through which this reconciliation and union is effected -- meekness, long-suffering, forbearance, and the articulated and organic structure IN which it is effected, where different members have different functions.
He goes from there to civil and domestic relationships and finally to the individual equipping himself for his role as a member of the body.
If my take on Ephesians is correct (Yeah, it's a big if) then it's a non-starter to blame the Church's problems on its organic structure. From the distinction of the 12 and the 70 onwards there have been leadership (and therefore "followership") roles, and the risen Lord appearing in the upper room commissions not the whole multitude but only the eleven.
A fish may rot from the head, but that is said of dead fish not of the body of Jesus Christ, of God the Son, Savior -- ΙΧΘΥΣ. The problems of a living fish are not remedied by decapitation.
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