Posted on 09/19/2013 1:04:30 PM PDT by NYer
“False teacher” as applied to Francis is to me a way-out-there polemic without grounding in the real world.
To me, the issue is simply manner of communication and its consequences.
Take the argument up with Pascal who did have “a station in life”.
I see nothing in your quote about repentance.
“In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.”
No, God does not accompany everyone. We are called children of wrath before we repent.
Eph 2:3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Eph 5:8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light
2Pe 2:14 They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children!
1Jo 3:10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
The Gospel is not hard to proclaim:
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
Any honest response to a homosexual would be along the lines of ‘God loves you, but you are living al ife of enimity with God. Repent, and trust God to forgive you your sins.”
Or as Peter put it:
“Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”
And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”
I ask you - does Pope Francis sound like someone who follows Peter, or who rejects Peter?
I’ve been carefully reading the translated interview and copied a few statements that address the issues we’re discussing. Maybe could be used as flamethrowers? One thing, imho, is that avowed deathists or any other glory-in-their-shame-ists will criticized or falsely ump on the bandwagon, one or the other. If he spoke more “harshly” against certain sins, they’d they’d be damning him as a “Hater” and “bigot”. Those who want to be justified in doing evil can never see simple truth, nor be reasoned with.
But God can even touch their hearts, if there’s a little chink some where. Such a person is writing this comment....
Oops, here are some of the statements I referred to, of course read completely in context is best. I think his meaning is clear, and if deathists etc want to imagine that he is saying “Stay as you are, keep on sinning”, they are fooling themselves!
The church’s ministers must be merciful, take responsibility for the people and accompany them like the good Samaritan, who washes, cleans and raises up his neighbor. This is pure Gospel. God is greater than sin.
In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.
But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.
The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.
But the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives.
The message of the Gospel, therefore, is not to be reduced to some aspects that, although relevant, on their own do not show the heart of the message of Jesus Christ.”
God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else—God is in this person’s life. You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.”
Those are good comments, Steve. My real computer is in the shop, and I’m trying to type on a touchscreen, which I don’t like. I haven’t posted much in the past week ... and the world didn’t miss me!
Bless you! Bless you, and all the down-home, stone-ground, dyed-in-the-wool, God-pleasing, Old Southern Baptists!
In the first sentence you quoted. The militant Gay Pride guy would say "Hmpf. Healed of what?" And the penitent homosexual would say, "Healing? Thank you."
The penitent *anybody* would say, “Healing ... thank you!” With loud cries and tears, prostrations and wailing. We should all be penitents: that’s his point in saying, in effect, “Your sins are deadly, too, not just other people’s.”
You ask:
“If you see where he is saying homosexuality is sin that needs repentance, I’d like to know what phrase it is.”
Here is part of it:
“During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge.”
From a Catholic perspective, no one who is of good will and is in search of God will not find Him, and it is God who will bring that person to repentance and conversion. It’s a little too subtle for my own taste. It presupposes that one takes as prologue the entirety of Catholic teaching, and I doubt many listeners are doing that, even many Catholic ones (yes, I’m talking to all you “social justice Catholics” and “seamless garment Catholics,” as well as most of you Jesuits).
But the pope can, I guess, impose on the listener the assumption of that presupposition. After all, he is the pope, and it is unrealistic to presuppose differently.
Yet, many of his listeners will presuppose differently.
And the pope should know this.
sitetest
1.Get deep into your "Hermeneutic of Suspicion" mode.
2. Immediately, if not sooner, put a big ol' set of parentheses, followed by a question mark, around these elements:
3. Remember that even the best journos are rushing to make a deadline and often get stuff wrong through sheer haste and inadvertence.
4. "Stuff" includes botched translation from the Italian original, omitted key portions of the quote, ignored context, and hashed theology.
5. I actually once read in a newspaper account that the book being read from the church lectern was the "Axe of the Apostles."
6. The deeply-missed Chuck Colson once stressed that we need to be "Salt and Light" (a well-known Jesusy phrase) and was misquoted as saying we need to "assault the light" (!)
7. When nearing total panic or bafflement, get the straight scoop from the wonderful GET RELIGION blog, which specializes in analyzing the MSM spin, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/getreligion/
Now go forth and untangle that spaghetti!
“From a Catholic perspective, no one who is of good will and is in search of God will not find Him...”
14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. - Romans 10
How are they to find God if those who call themselves Christians refuse to show them? And that means showing them the True God, the one the Bible describes, who hates sin and requires us to acknowledge we are sinful men who deserve destruction.
It may not require preaching of hellfire, but it requires at least some knowledge of sin. You cannot reject and repent of what you think is good and acceptable.
At some point, it requires this:
Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. 2 We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. 3 Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? 4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? 5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
6 He will render to each one according to his works: 7 to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; 8 but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. 9 There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, 10 but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. 11 For God shows no partiality.
Modern man’s greatest obstacle to the Gospel is that he believes he doesn’t need it. Modern man wants to know if God deserves us instead of falling down and admitting we don’t deserve anything from God. There is no need to be saved if you are not first in trouble.
Jesus did not emphasize that because his message was to the Jews first, and the Jews understood that God hated sin and that they deserved wrath. But modern man is like the Pharisees:
“25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, 30 saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31 Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. 33 You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? 34 Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, 35 so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. 36 Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.”
We don’t even bother to whitewash the outside! We claim that filth IS cleanliness, and that evil IS good. Yet your new Pope rejects judgment, and skips to the part people want to hear: God loves you. And yes, God loves us while we are still rebels, but God will not ACCEPT us while we are still rebels. God loves us WHERE we are, but God does not love us AS we are - he requires us to accept His judgment and repent.
Repent is what the modern world hates to hear. They reject the preaching of Peter:
And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”
The Pope is either an idiot, or he knows how people are interpreting his comments and wants it. Has he come out and rejected the reaction of the secular world? Has he issued a statement saying his interview does NOT mean homosexuality and abortion are OK, and that those who practice such evil need to beg God for forgiveness - and that THEN and only THEN will God forgive them and start healing them?
There is absolutely no doubt about how this interview is being received by the lost world. If the Pope doesn’t immediately take steps to correct it, then we can only assume he is endorsing their interpretation.
I’m a Baptist, but I’ve welcomed the Catholic Church’s rejection of modern morality. But the new Pope says matters of morality are minor things, not worthy of serious attention. Instead, ‘Love, Love, God loves everyone’ - a half-truth with which the blind lead the blind to destruction.
Take a look at how the masses of modern men view the Pope’s remarks, and ask yourself, “Does this make God happy, or Satan?” Maybe then you will understand why I’m afraid of your new Pope. He’s working for the wrong side.
” “Stuff” includes botched translation from the Italian original”
Then we can expect the Vatican to correct the translation by today?
And, of course, the MSM are greatly aided when a pope speaks in a way that requires referencing the Catechism, or Church teaching in general, to put what he says in the proper context.
One can say all day long that folks should know better than to presume non-Catholic premises for what a pope says, but the pope is trying to speak to someone OTHER THAN THE CHOIR; he is trying to speak to the world, and BY DEFINITION, they are not presuming Catholic premises.
sitetest
I can't answer that because I don't know whether the problem *today* is bad translations, cropped pictures, or phrases yanked out of context.
A couple days ago it was the word "gossip," which in English usually means light, newsy gab with perhaps a tad too much interest in other people's "bidnis", but which from the context sounded like Pope Francis was referring to "deadly calumny" (he compared it to "homicide".) That made me wonder whether the word in Italian was closer to "slander" than "gossip".
Catholic means universal...
When Pope Francis said "everybody knows what the Catholic Church teaches on contraception, abortion, and homosexuality," my immediate thought was, "OOOOooo no they don't, Holy Father. Many people know 'what' the Church teaches in a slapdash, bumper-sticker sort of way, but not one in 50 knows 'why' the Church teaches that."
The majority of justices in the USSC even stated in a ruling that there existed NO ARGUMENT against gay marriage except animus, i.e. bad intent and malice against homosexuals. Jaw-dropping. Maddening. But that's where the culture is in this Year of Our Lord 2013.
If Pope Francis assumes a abroad or deep understanding of fundamental moral principles, he should be taken aside and informed that that train left the station a long time ago.
Beautiful pictures, I just saved it.
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