Posted on 05/13/2008 9:46:56 AM PDT by Pyro7480
At Fatima, Our Lady gave a basic message: conversion or chastisement. Conversion is not happening, and we are living in a moral crisis that is a real chastisement.
But we are also experiencing a chastisement in the form of natural disasters. The disasters are also invitations to conversions.
St. Alphonsus Liguori, tells us how God uses natural calamities such as floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes, to warn people to change their ways, rather than as punishments. He show proves that God uses these disasters to warn us to change our ways.
Here are the facts:
-- Mother's Day brought a devastating storm system that hit the Midwest and South, causing 22 deaths....
-- China was shaken by an earthquake of 7.8 magnitude.... Fatalities could pass 10,000.
-- Cyclone in Burma-Myanmar: Officials the death toll could reach more than 100,000, with disease killing even more.
-- Chiaten Volcano in Chile: a 9,000 year dormant volcano is spewing ash for weeks, and is forecast to continue blowing for weeks, months and even years. The volcano started erupting shortly after a man in black burnt the statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Chile, the Patroness of the country.
He [St. Alphonsus] discusses how God threatens to chastise us in order to save us from chastisement; how sinners often refuse to believe in God's Divine Threats until the chastisements come upon them; how God is merciful for a season and then chastises; how external devotions are useless if we do not cleanse our souls from sin; how God chastises us in this life for our good, not for our destruction; and the four principal gates of Hell, which are hatred, blasphemy, theft and impurity....
(Excerpt) Read more at americaneedsfatima.blogspot.com ...
Catholic ping!
Clearly you bitter people hang on to your God! I say it is the true religion that is causing these events. Global Warming! “Repent and give me your money and your freedom.” Gore Gospel Chapter 5 verse 7.
It is just weathers natural occurance. I believe in God and all that, but one thing worse then atheists are religious nutjobs spouting this stuff. The other spectrum of nuttyness from the anti-religious zeolot nutjobs.
Nature > humans
I can’t say I an in line with this one. God’s creation is a wonderment, and stuff happens as part of a huge complex and dynamic system that is beyond our control and influence.
I suspect that God warns us in smaller ways in our individual lives. At least, that is the way that it feels for me personally.
I’m not Catholic but I do believe you’re right. God is telling us that he gave us a dynamic planet to live on.
The presupposition is that God is trying to tell us something. Anything. It’s a dubious assumption. It’s entirely possible that He isn’t trying to tell us anything.
That it is Spring, thank God.
I believe in God and all that, but one thing worse then atheists are religious nutjobs spouting this stuff.
One needs to be careful here. If you doubt God doesn't interact in this way, it could lead to one thinking that God doesn't interact at all, which is the underpinning of Deism.
More earthquakes and volcanoes occur in the spring?
As I said in post #10, "one needs to be careful here. If you doubt God doesn't interact in this way, it could lead to one thinking that God doesn't interact at all, which is the underpinning of Deism."
I find it interesting (and please don’t take this as a criticism of you specifically) that no one has answered my question yet: “Have we as Catholics ‘moved beyond’ the ‘St. Alphonsus Liguori’ way of thinking concerning natural disasters?”
Buy good insurance.
Faith doesn’t promise us that. Think back to the psalm: ‘When you travel through the valley of the shadow of death I’ll be with you’. Not ‘if’, ‘when’ is what the scripture says.
The Christian gospel never says that there will not be suffering or evil. And it does not promise us that we will not go through it. And those of you being confirmed today, this isn’t some sort of talisman which will stop you ever experiencing evil. You and I will experience the same suffering that is the common lot of humanity.
The above by the Anglican Bishop of Litchfield
see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2014787/posts
The first sermon that Jesus preached was a message of repentance (cf. Mt 4:17). As He through whom all things were made, I have no problem with the idea of his continuing to call us to repentance through the world he created.
Don’t worry, FRiend, I have never known you to be critical of me or of anyone else. I guess I can’t answer the question you posited because I don’t see my take as “moving beyond” because that phrase implies that my thinking is somehow superior. I just see my position as on a different pathway, one that is neither greater nor lesser than the good saint’s.
I need a bigger sign. Like California breaking off into the sea for starters.
Deuteronomy VI,5
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