Posted on 10/11/2006 9:29:49 AM PDT by Antioch
Before criticizing Pentecostal churches that draw Catholics as members, Catholic leaders should ask why their own parishes aren't meeting the needs of those who leave, the Vatican's top ecumenical representative said yesterday at Duquesne University. "Our response cannot be in the form of a polemical approach, leaving ourselves to condemn the activities of other groups," said Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Such an approach "is not constructive and could even be counter-productive," he said. While Cardinal Kasper is known for outreach to traditional Protestant and Orthodox churches, he said it is crucial to be engaged with a diverse global Pentecostal movement that now claims 600 million adherents. He spoke to an audience of about 225, including Bishop Paul Bradley, administrator of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, Metropolitan Basil Schott of the Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh, Episcopal Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh and Metropolitan Nicholas of the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church of Johnstown.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Perhaps it is, but a good number of the early Franciscans who hewed to the Franciscan ideal of "naked following the naked Christ" - i.e. of taking up their cross, denying themselves and following Him - eschewed intellectualism and scholarship for scholarship's sake as enervating luxuries that distract from the Christian path.
Sadly, sloppy thinking and sloppy theology abound in all organizational groups.
I think there are mysteries aplenty in Scripture. But it's the plain things that give most folks the most trouble.
I personally think it's to be taken rather literally across the board, too.
Though I don't think that the world is 6,000 years old only. I still believe in ID.
And the foolish of the world will confound the WISE. God will use them in a mighty way.
Ba'Hai's sp. are amongst the most difficult to reach of any group I've known.
The enemy has wrapped them in layers of dead-end logic stuff.
Prayer is certainly a huge key. Some have had to pray . . . WHATEVER IT TAKES, LORD . . . as awesomely hazardous in the natural a prayer that that is.
LUB,
Prayers,
LOL.
Sounds a bit like the naked religious men's group/movement in India . . . though I realize it probably wasn't.
I still think we must think we are more holy by depicting Christ as He wasn't on the cross. But I may just be being silly.
It was an effective literary device for the point being made - although in debate, IMHO, usually the shorter the clearer the better.
INDEED! God makes that very plain in Scripture. And, I think that tongues is one such 'foolishness of God.' But folks affirm Scripture in the abstract and then squirm away from it like the dickens when it comes to practical application.
Agreed.
And certainly an area of hopefully continuing growth, for me.
LOL.
Thanks tons for your edifying exhortations and encouragements.
The Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, Ch.12
38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, "Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you." 39 But he answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40* For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41* The men of Nineveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. 42* The queen of the South will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.
For us Catholics, at least, we have Our Lord Jesus Christ physically present in our Tabernacles, on our Altars, and acting through the Sacraments. What need have we of signs and portents? Do not the miracles recorded in the Bible (all 72 Books of it) suffice?
You WILL find phoniness in some of these churches, for sure. You find it in EVERY church, however, because they are populated with HUMAN BEINGS who are imperfect and sometimes hypocritical. They often don't know what God's word even says, but that's not indicative of most spirit-filled churches I've attended. I've not seen writhing on the floor. Maybe they fall to the floor but they're quiet. I've done that myself. Don't paint us all with such a big brush, my FRiend.
You have no grounds other than sheer hypocrisy or theological anti-Semitism to insist
That accusation, in addition to being false, is beyond the pale of polite discourse.
Now you've overplayed your hand. You're having a meltdown because I pointed out that there is no logical reason for a chr*stian (who supposedly subscribes to the inspiration and inerrancy of "both testaments") to accept the literal truth of the "new" while dismissing the "old" as "myth" is either hypocrisy or theological anti-Semitism? That is self-evident!
Why are you so threatened by the literal truth of Genesis? Does it undermine your chr*stian beliefs? If you say so . . . !
I believe there are two types of tongues: one is private, between you and God, and one is to be used in church with interpretation, usually by another in the congregation. I often sing in the Spirit in church and often with a word to the congregation. I did that more when I was on the worship team but once in a great while it comes out while I'm in the congregation, at the suitable time. It's not all wild and woolly in our church. Everything is done in order. Our pastors would never allow confusion.
I probably should have.
What need have we of signs and portents? Do not the miracles recorded in the Bible (all 72 Books of it) suffice?
= = = =
Evidently God disagrees.
Certainly human nature has not changed.
God has not changed.
He delights to show HIS majesty in dramatic ways in times, places and situations of His choosing. He has always been so and always done so.
The perspective cited assumes that folks after say 70-100 AD were somehow inherently more righteous or somehow had a more righteous substrate such that they
did NOT NEED miraculous affirmations and confirmations of Scripture while those of the dusty pathed days of Jesus and His disciples were not so grandly constructed and did need such kindergarten level proofs.
I find that an unjustifiably haughty, self-righteous perspective.
While I find absolutely no evidence that the generations post 70 AD were in any respect any more righteous or in any respect less needing of reasons for faith than the earlier folks were.
Human nature is human nature. Until He writes His law in our hearts . . . we share flaws identical to the flaws of all mankind through the ages.
But I think the most important aspect of all this is--God delights to show Himself mighty in behalf of HIS KIDS. It is HIS GLORY to do so. We just get the bennies accordingly when we walk as He prescribes for such.
imho, of course.
INDEED.
imho and experience . . .
many times when some demonic influence--whether oppression or worse--is involved . . . physical contortions may be displayed.
That Holy Spirit is exacting business person to person directly without other's being involved is quite dramatic enough, to me. I certainly have no need to throw rocks. Especially when in the vast majority of such cases, folks get up from their 'writing' thoroughly change invididuals as their friends and relatives and themselves will attest for months afterwards.
Certainly some 'floor stuff' may be acts of the flesh. Some may even be counterfeit to distract. But not all of it is.
Amen. Heartily agree.
Thanks for your wonderful attitude.
I don't know. Just my prefrence.
Did you become a Jew?
Heading off to pottery at the college shortly. Not sure how much I'll get back to this on breaks. Thanks for your great discerning posts hereon. LUB
I always ask them when the last time they went to Mass of their own volition - not a wedding or a baptism or a funeral or obligatory Easter or Christmas with their parents. If they really rile me I ask them about their moral opinions.
They inevitably admit that they have never in their lives been to a Mass that was not socially compulsory.
I would guess that there are 70 baptized Catholics in my office and I would guess that four or five of them attend Mass regularly and I would guess that of that five, three attend regularly purely because their spouse demands it.
One other person in the office agrees with me on these issues and I would guess she is the one other Catholic who, like myself, would regularly attend Mass whether anyone else wanted her to or not.
Every serious Catholic knows, whether they admit it to themselves or not, that the distinctive giants of Catholicism: St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Therese of Lisieux, etc. never themselves doubted for a second that the creation account of Genesis 1-2 was historical reality and that it is a single unitary account.
My argument, as always, is that the deeper one becomes in authentic Catholic theology like St. Thomas, the further one retreats from modernist fancies like Darwin.
All of this is good to hear, but unfortunately your argument falls apart when applied to the clergy--the people who actually perform the masses all those devout Catholics go to. And Biblical literalism among the Catholic clergy (and probably the Orthodox as well) is all but non-existent.
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