Posted on 09/23/2001 3:34:26 PM PDT by Iowegian
Pope John Paul has issued a dramatic appeal that the world not be allowed to slide into war following attacks on the United States and urged against a deepening of religious divisions.
"With all my heart I beg God to keep the world in peace," the Pope said on Sunday at the end of a mass for some 50,000 people on the first full day of his visit to Kazakhstan, a Central Asian republic which may be caught up in an eventual regional crisis.
"We must not let what happened lead to a deepening of divisions. Religion must never be used as a reason for conflict," he said, referring to tensions with some parts of the Islamic world following the attacks in New York and Washington.(snip)
NEGOTIATIONS, NOT WAR
On arrival in Kazakhstan on Saturday, Pope John Paul said all controversies between nations must be resolved by negotiations and dialogue, not force of arms.
The Pope, who aides say is losing sleep over the possibility of war, celebrated a mass that began with a stiff wind blowing in from Siberia over the flat steppes and ended in sunshine.
I don't know, but that is the only thing I could think he might be thinking on the issue!
"Although we fervently pray for peace, we understand the position of a leader [i.e. President Bush] who has to respond to such issues. If someone has done great harm to society and there is a danger that if he remains free he may be able to do it again, the leader has the right to apply self-defense for the society which he leads, even though the means he chooses may be aggressive."
That's an eminently reasonable statement. The Pope is saying that while the best solution for all conflicts is peace, the US has the right to find and destroy those responsible for the mass murder on September 11th - no matter how militarily aggressive those means are.
This is in perfect keeping with Catholic just war theory. The media is out to make the Pope look like an airheaded peacenik when he is anything but. He is trying to appeal to the best in human nature while at the same time he acknowledges the rightful remedies available to the offended parties.
I do not specialize in Rome-bashing on this forum, but I do have to point out that the Pope is a spiritual idiot.
His remark misses the whole point of a just war. When others have religion as the reason for attacking us, our nation ought to respond with deadly force. If we don't do this, the religious extremists in Islam will destroy our nation.
"Turning the other cheek" has no application in this situation. The United States is not an individual, much less a Christian individual, suffering persecution for righteousness' sake. Furthermore, secular governments are ordained by God to restrain wickedness.
Read Romans 13:1-4 to see this.
According to any sensible reading of Romans 13:1-4, the United States must protect its citizens. The mindlessly unqualified, unscriptural pacifism advocated by the anti-American peacniks in Berkeley and Seattle reveals that these folks, in their abject ignorance, are the enemies of the United States. While they claim to be interested in our nation's overall health, they are actually a kind of fifth column of the forces of darkness.
In the same way, I am forced to conclude that Rome's unqualified, unscriptural pacifism makes Rome the enemy of the United States in an odd way. The Pope should not be broadcasting his asinine messages. (His recent remarks remind me of his knee-jerk stupidity concerning capital punishment, only worse!)
(I don't regard America's Roman Catholics as fifth columnists at this time, since they will largely ignore the Pope's stupid appeals. But I say that they need to quit ignoring his appeals. I say that they ought to denounce the Pope and leave Romanism.)
Lurkers are invited to visit www.bereanbeacon.org. It is the website of an ex-Catholic priest who now regards the Papacy as the enemy of America and enemy of God. (Of course, he never realized this in the 30 years he spent in the Dominican Order. He had always been taught that Protestants were the enemy of God!)
No, he doesn't. You don't get it, friend. See my post to Matchett-PI above. And you really ought to read the testimony of Richard Bennett, the ex-Catholic priest at www.bereanbeacon.org.
You ought to quit defending the Pope. Do you also defend his idiotic stance on capital punishment? My goodness, he does not understand justice and he does not understand the right of society to defend itself. He makes up his own rules and ignores the Bible's position on capital punishment.
Your beloved Pople understands almost nothing of importance in the faith of Jesus Christ. Your Pope doesn't understand the gospel in the context of this fallen world of ours. As my friend Richard Bennett would say, the Pope has gotten almost everything wrong.
Surprise, surprise. The Reformers were right. See Revelation 17:1-6.
If I were you, I would be ashamed of Rome and Romanism. As Bennett would point out to you, that shame concerning your very religiosity in contempt of God's Word is an integral part of repentance unto life. IMO, you are completely missing that.
Repentance is not a matter of being sorry for what you have done. It is a matter of being sorry for what you are.
This was also in the statement made by the Pope, which was conveniently left out of most news stories.
Your beloved Pople understands almost nothing of importance in the faith of Jesus Christ. Your Pope doesn't understand the gospel in the context of this fallen world of ours. As my friend Richard Bennett would say, the Pope has gotten almost everything wrong.
Then follow Richard Bennett. If his admonitions are like the link you provided, they won't work.
Some people have more reason for being sorry for what they are than others.
Thus the attractiveness of Calvinism to you.
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.--James 1:27
Why doesn't your preaching agree with the Bible?
Jesus, come into my life, I realise that I have sinned and now repent to follow You . Wash me as pure as the driven snow so that I may be reborn into a life with You and be accepted by the Father . Father God, I thank you for your Son, that you sent Him to die for me, so that I may come to You and that I may recieve Your Holy Spirit . Amen .
Where is this prayer in the Bible?
I don't need a pope to tell me what I do or don't believe .
Obey your leaders and submit to them; for they are keeping watch over your souls, as men who will have to give an an account. Let them do this joyfully, and not sadly, for that would be of no advantage to you.--Hebrews 13:17
Who are your divinely appointed leaders to whom you submit? Where did their authority come from? How do you know?
Why doesn't your preaching agree with the Bible?
ZC is a vociferously anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, ex-fundamentalist, ex-Catholic. Now he's a Jew, or would be if he had the guts to have the required operation done. Instead of getting himself ... cut ... he spends his time writing bizarre screeds on FR intended to convince anyone who listens that:
If I were you, I would be ashamed of my ugly, un-Christian, vile bigotry.
And tell your heretic ex-priest to take a hike. I'll read his stupid site the day you sit down to read David Currie's Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic
By the way, my challenge to you, and to BibChr, and to every other anti-Catholic so-called "Christian" on this site remains unanswered:
Explain how you obey Hebrews 13:17. In particular, explain how you know you are submitting yourself to the leaders God has placed over you, and not just to leaders you, yourself, have picked. And, while you're at it, explain why Luther, Calvin, and the other "Reformers" were exempt from obeying Hebrews 13:17. Include Biblical references.
2) Romans 13:1-4 appears to me to be a mandate for citizens to obey their government, and if the citizens do not, the citizens are the ones who will punished by the government. Thus, I don't think this passage is applicable.
Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves. For rules are not a cause of fear to good conduct, but to evil. Do you wish to have no fear of authority? Then do what is good and you will receive approval from it, for it is a servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer.
3) Since he is the leader of over 1 billion Catholics, it would be more conspicuous if he did not say something.
4) Using phrases such as "stupid", "asinine", "unqualified, unscriptural pacifism", and "knee-jerk stupidity" to describe the Holy Father greatly undermines your argument. This man has been able to live through both the Nazis and the Communists, seeing many friends die. I hardly believe that any of us are as qualified to speak of these things as he is, even if we don't agree with what he says (although I think you are quibbling more with the manner of what he is saying rather than the substance).
5) Any time you attempt to rip the Catholic Church over its interpretation of scripture, keep in mind that the Church was the one who put it together in the first place, and has 2000 years of study put into it.
6) Regarding www.bereanbeacon.org, I would suggest you read up on Scott Hahn or Gerry Matatics, two very prominent Protestants who converted to Catholicism the more they studied scripture.
Allow me to quote Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter: "I'm not your brother!" I am not a chr*stian and do not ever intend to be one again. I want nothing whatsoever to do with your "messiah" of Edom. And why any self-respecting Bible-thumping redneck continues to scream his name, stick his name on their car bumpers, and stick up signs on the side of the road with his name on it is beyond me. Your friend's frankness merely reveals what all liturgical chr*stians think about their "useful idiots" in the Bible Belt. What fools we are. I doubt we will ever wise up. If we were going to we would have done so a long time before now.
Your J*sus isn't worth the devotion of a single "Cletus." And he never will be.
Now--I disagree with something you said in your post. "Conservative"'s remarks and mine were not quite the same. Mine were solely in reaction to his ugly, hateful, and mean-spirited attack on the rural American heartland. As I said, I would never have said any of those things if he hadn't asked for it. And he asked for it! (And I didn't even remember to point out that his bigoted co-religionist Pat Buchanan doesn't criticize "Ay-rabs" but rather courts them. He hates Mexicans, but anyone who kills Jews is an "honorary aryan" in his book. He courts the anti-Jewish Arab vote every time he runs for office.) At any rate, "Conservative" is the first FReeper I have ever asked JR to ban, and that's saying something. I've never even asked for subhuman Jew-hating swine to be banned before. But anyone with such a hatred of rural America belongs in a big city Democratic club, not a conservative forum!
In fairness to Catholicism, let me provide a few URL's that represent the best of contemporary Catholicism. Any one of these guys could skin "Conservative," "Prout2bRC," "Sinkspur," and Fred alive in any debate. (Catholic FReepers tend to be smart@$$ "theistic evolutionists." They aren't all like that.)
Gerry Matatics' home page. Here's one Protestant convert to Catholicism who doesn't try to appear more liberal or sophisticated than he used to be. In fact, quite the opposite.
Robert Sungenis' homepage. Mr. Sungenis is a strong advocate of total Biblical inerrency (even though he has screwy ideas about the generations mentioned in Genesis 5 being more widely separated than father-and-son).
Living Tradition. This site/publication actually represents mainstream Catholics who reject not only Darwinism, but "old earth creationism," the documentary hypothesis, "historical criticism," and a non-literal interpretation of Genesis. See especially this article, which advocates about as literal interpretation of the Creation narrative as one can get (and from a Pope, too!).
This is a British Catholic website that is not only solidly fighting for Creationism, but (unlike our Catholic friends here on FR) actually compliments Fundamentalist Protestants for remaining faithful while everyone else wavered. They even suggest that the Catholic acceptance of evolution and "historical critical" theory is rooted in the Church's reaction to the Protestant reformation. Protestantism's constantly invoking the Bible planted a seed of anti-Biblicism in the Church, they say. But make no mistake: this is a Catholic website.
Here is a traditional Catholic Biblical chronology. It is of course not accurate, but their heart is in the right place.
The Catholic Apostolate for Creation. Unfortunately, this site is about to be restricted by its host. Too bad, as it is geocentric as well as creationist.
Catholicism and the Old South. Though the Old South was nothing like the Bible Belt South of "Cletus" (the latter is in fact far superior), I'm providing a link to this article to show that not all Catholics are South-haters. Or perhaps that the Catholic Church should make up its mind as to whether it loves the South or hates it.
This is a page from which a number of articles on Catholicism and the South can be accessed. Once again, the ante-bellum South was not Fundamentalist, so this does not make Catholicism an appropriate fulfillment of the Bible Belt's search for identity. But this is a part of history most Northern, urban American Catholics know nothing about.
There are other sites out there promoting creationism, geocentrism, and Biblical inerrency, but I cannot recommend them or even link to them because of their anti-semitism and tendency to blasphemy. But I hope the above list will at least silence the mouths of the overly-"sophisticated" Catholics represented on this forum. Also note that the "sophisticates" control almost all Catholic publications, including the mainline "conservative" and "apologetics" publications. Our Sunday Visitor, Liguorian, Catholic Digest, and the galaxy of publications around Karl Keating and Peter Stravinskas (who doesn't believe in Biblical inerrency) are quite anti-Fundamentalist, non-literalist, and are representative of mainline Catholicism's idea of what constitutes "conservatism."
The authors/maintainers of the above-linked sites could sweep the floor with any "sophisticated" Catholic 24/7. They are, however, engaged in a losing battle, as the liberal, Fundamentalist-bashing "sophisticates" run the Church today and probably will from now on.
I nevertheless hope these links are useful.
His screed was SO long, I only read the first several lines. I assumed (never assume) he was a fundy anti-Catholic. Wrong assumption. I realized after my post I was in error but didn't bother to correct it. If he is a faithful Jew (BIG if) then for him too his enemy is Satan, not Christians or arabs, so I thought Peter Kreeft's words still applied.
Now, my words to Zionista, I guess, would be more appropriately applied to the_doc, given the_doc's anti-Catholic words on this thread. I hope the_doc goes back to that link and realizes they are fighting the wrong folks.
By the way, I minored in evolutionary theory in premed, and materialistic atheistic evolutionary theory was the root of my brief stint in atheism then. I no longer accept evolution, but neither do I accept your view of literal creationism.
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