Pope Francis greets the faithful at the May 8 General Audience (Credit: CNA / Stephen Driscoll)
Posted on 09/07/2013 3:49:35 PM PDT by NYer
.- In his daily homily on Saturday, Pope Francis reflected on the question of authentic Christianity and rejected the practice of focusing more on devotions than on Christ himself.
Jesus is “the center” of faith, said the Pope. “A commandment is valid if it comes from Jesus: I do this because the Lord wants me to do this. But if I am a Christian without Christ, I do this and I don’t know why I have to do it,” he said to the congregation at the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta on September 7.
Like the Pharisees, he said, there are some people who “make so many commandments the center of their religiosity.”
Others who have a false sense of religiosity “only seek devotions” or “things that are a little uncommon, a little special, that go back to private revelations,” noted Pope Francis.
“If your devotions bring you to Christ, that works. But if you remain there, something’s wrong,” he explained.
“If Jesus is not at the center, there will be many other things,” so that people become “Christians without Christ.”
Remembering that Jesus is the center of faith “regenerates us, grounds us.”
Pope Francis further explained the mark of a true “Christian with Christ.”
“The rule is simple: only that which brings you to Jesus is valid, and only that is valid that comes from Jesus. Jesus is the center, the Lord, as He Himself says.”
Christians can avoid false religiosity by adoring Jesus as “the Lord, the only Lord.”
“If you aren’t able to adore Jesus, you’re missing something,” warned Pope Francis.
The sign of a true “Christian with Christ” is one who does “that which comes from Jesus” and that which leads to Jesus.
Such adoration bears true fruit in the life of a Christian, encouraged the Pope.
He said that Jesus also gives “the grace of loving Him so much, of following Him, of going along the path that He has shown us.”
A “Christian with Christ” has the courage to proclaim Jesus as Lord.
Pope Francis exhorted Catholics not to focus on false piety, but rather evangelize and “take the Gospel!”
???
I find myself taking bets on which of the four standard posts is going to show up when I see I have a ping from certain posters.
Are you incapable of posting a mocking cartoon?
It's kinda humorous that we are seeing the changes Francis is trying to enact WRT the pomp and regalia of the office of the Papacy. I recall a specific discussion with a certain rabid RC over whether or not the new Pope, whoever he might be, would try to resolve some of the excesses of the Vatican and try a more humble approach where the poor really WERE being thought of more than the continuation of the royal regalia surrounding the office. This person got quite incensed that anything about the wealth and trappings of wealth around the Papal office was even questioned much less diminished in any way. Well, I guess the joke's on him since Pope Francis seems to have taken the idea to heart. No doubt he has MANY enemies already and he's been at the job less than a year!
What's dumb, too, is when people pretend that Scripture always needs some kind of decryption device as if plain words in context don't or can't mean exactly what they say! It's usually those who want to twist and pervert Scripture for their own nefarious purposes that do so and like Peter warned:
Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen (II Peter 3:15-18)
Simple yes or no question. A real Christian would have no trouble answering.
I don't have that particular one in my store. Still waiting on that simple yes or no. I am truly amazed at the mental gymnastics that the "christians" on this thread have demonstrated.
“Christ made it clear Faith comes by hearing the word of God...... “
And no one in a sect will hear it as Christ gave it.
While one may impugn evangelical faith and support the need for an assuredly infallible interpreter by invoking so-called "gay evangelicals," these are contrary to the evangelical Scriptural "tradition" of exegesis, regardless of their use of the term.
Perhaps we should invoke "gay Catholic" orgs (like http://www.dignityusa.org/) as examples of how Catholic teaching can be interpreted based on the understanding the Holy Spirit has given them. And what Rome does by treating such as members speaks louder than her words.
While an authority claiming assured veracity is efficient for maintaining doctrinal fidelity, which cults do better than Rome, this is not how faith was preserved in Scripture and truth claims established (upon Scriptural substantiation in word and in power), and such a magisterium can the more easily lead multitudes astray, as Rome and sola ecclesia cults have.
If you known the history, modern "evangelicalism" was a Scriptural reaction against liberal, revisionist Christianity, and a basically non-literal approach to Scripture, and which much of Roman Catholic scholarship exhibits.
Revisionist "Christianity" engages in such things as denying that such OT miraculous stories as the tower of Babel, Noah's flood, Balaam and the donkey, Joshua's long day, Jonah and the fish, etc, were not literal, and which spin is seen right in the sanctioned notes in your own official Bible .
Rome either allows this or is not diligent to monitor Biblical interpretation due to the distant second-class status she treats Scripture as.
And while she officially is opposed to homosexuality, she much tolerates it*, and the church you would have conservative evangelicals to join treats prohomosexual RCs as members in life and in death. And the faith she effectually sanctions is one that sees RCs overall testifying to being liberal, in contrast to evangelicals , and as soft on homosexual rights as the public is, or more. Search "homo" on the above link.
Thus while you point to liberal evangelicals as testifying to the need for an assuredly infallible magisterium, the fact is that without even one centralized magisterium (which i do affirm is the ideal, if as in Scripture), yet evangelicals overall testify to greater unity in many basic moral (and strongly opposed to homosexuality) and doctrinal issues. And as a the movement it overall has historically exhibited a common assent to basic core truths and a front against cults and traditions of Catholicism and moral decay, and thus is treated as a great threat by Rome and liberals alike.
Moreover, Rome can only govern herself, and her unity is not necessarily superior to that of any other single denomination with its magisterium.
As for the so-called "gay evangelicals," in contrast to the basic hermeneutics evangelicalism has historically exhibited, and in which the righteousness of the law was upheld, versus antinomianism, the end result of homosexual hermeneutics, one of which relegates the holiness code of Lv. 18 to only applying to the context of pagan idolatry (but which context is what the 10 commandments and even moral exhortations in the NT are in), allows for the negation of most any moral code, or the Bible as having a coherent sexual ethic.
See here for an extensive examination of such prohomosexual polemics which i was able to provide by the grace of God.
And similar to RCs in trying to support such things as PTDS from Scripture, being unable to find actual support for their practice, they engage in arguments from silence ("God never forbade loving, monogamous homosexual relationships") and wresting of texts in order to do it.
The result of such is such a view that affirms such things (from your link) as,
As far as the belief that no sex outside of marriage means no lesbian or gay intimate partnerships, I believe that view comes from an inadequate understanding of what constitutes a marriage in the Bible....The spiritual principle is that being in committed faithful relationship with an orientation compatible partner is God's answer to the question, How can I avoid fornication?
Yet the Lord Himself detailed what constitutes a marriage in the Bible, specifying that what God joined together was male and female, invoking Gn. 2:24. And Scripture uniquely affirms this, and only condemns homosexual unions wherever they are dealt with. Neither is motive a determinative factor in laws defining illicit sexual partners.
And this:
Leviticus is not addressed to Christians 3500 years later, when we are not Jewish, are not living in the land of Israel and are not under the law of Moses. On this side of the Cross, we are under grace, not law, Romans 6:14.
But this antinominiam spin is what Paul condemned, "turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness," (Jude 1:4) as grace is so purposed "That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. " (Romans 8:4) And Reformers clearly affirmed that the kind of faith that justifies is one that will effect obedience.
And more here on Lev. 18.
Then there is this spin and blindness:
God does include the love story of Jonathan and David, giving more detail and more verses describing this romantically involved couple than He devotes to any story of heterosexual love.
Frustrated because God knows how to describe sexual relations, and refuses to do so here, sodomites must insist that the sacrificial brotherly love of Jonathan, described as of a higher l higher quality of love than that of women (romantic), was romantic and erotic! If Bathsheba only knew.
In addition, the sodomite seems to be blind to the story of Song of Solomon, in which God glorifies heterosexual love! (And sexually even apart from procreation.)
It is such wresting of Scripture, whether by sodomites or Catholics, that is opposed to conservative evangelicalism (which originally was basically synonymous with fundamentalism) reflecting its basic historical.
Simple yes or no question. A real Christian would have no trouble answering.
No, not a simple question. An obviously, set up, front loaded question followed by another front loaded question with presuppositions built in that put the person answering in a lose/lose situation.
If I and I daresay, any of us, detected that the question was asked in honesty and integrity, actually wanting to know the truth, then I would hazard a guess that it would have been answered with a simple *yes* or *no*.
However, this question falls into the *Have you stopped beating your wife?* category.
And the implication that one is not a *Christian* if one doesn't answer, is disingenuous.
One's Christian character is not dependent on whether one answered a baited question or not, nor does what anyone else thinks I should.
I've had too many people, Catholics almost without exception, use that tactic to try to coerce out of me the behavior they want, as if they think that I will melt down if someone doesn't think I'm behaving in a *Christian* fashion. When I see manipulation tactics, at work, I am not playing.
For that reason, since I perceive that your question was not asked in good faith, it will remain unanswered.
Elsie, where is your RCOPI?
Sure they will. All they have to do is crack open a BIble and not listen to man or any man’s interpretation and they can read just what Christ said.
SURE they will!
And then it will be EXPLAINED to them what it REALLY means.
Uh...
...it appears that you failed to put CATHOLIC inside the quotes as well...
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