We have enough problems battling secularism, narcissism, relativism and all the other "isms". The Catholic Church is under attack from every direction. The Holy Father has addressed a Letter to Families, asking for their prayers. Here is an opportunity to devote the next 39 days, as a family, to pray for Pope Francis. It is also a good time to examine and resolve the motives that drive your distrust for him. I wish you all a Blessed Lent.
Every year at lent and advent the secular media tries to find ways to stir the pot and get Catholics and other Christians all jacked up over nothing.
In the spirit of Lent, I will forgive you for this very ignorant and malicious statement.
Don't forget Modernism....in the Church.
Did Christ promise there could never be a bad pope? I missed that. In fact, he couldn't have said it as it was falsified long ago.
The Bad Popes is a 1969 book by E. R. Chamberlin documenting the lives of eight of the most controversial popes (papal years in parentheses):Pope Stephen VI (896–897), who had his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, tried, de-fingered, briefly reburied, and thrown in the Tiber.[1]
Pope John XII (955–964), who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people, and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife.
Pope Benedict IX (1032–1044, 1045, 1047–1048), who "sold" the Papacy
Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), who is lampooned in Dante's Divine Comedy
Pope Urban VI (1378–1389), who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured.[2]
Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503), a Borgia, who was guilty of nepotism and whose unattended corpse swelled until it could barely fit in a coffin.[3]
Pope Leo X (1513–1521), a spendthrift member of the Medici family who once spent 1/7 of his predecessors' reserves on a single ceremony[4]
Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), also a Medici, whose power-politicking with France, Spain, and Germany got Rome sacked.
And (we hope) Pope Francis is not on a par with any of these precedents, but he does have a way of letting the devil run wild with his verbal ambiguities and soft-on-sinfulness manner.
" We have enough problems battling secularism, narcissism, relativism and all the other "isms". The Catholic Church is under attack from every direction. The Holy Father has addressed a Letter to Families, asking for their prayers. Here is an opportunity to devote the next 39 days, as a family, to pray for Pope Francis. It is also a good time to examine and resolve the motives that drive your distrust for him. I wish you all a Blessed Lent."
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Hey, my friend, since your post #6 here was directed to a very small subset of your Catholic "Ping" list, and I happen to be on this small subset for this post #6 for some reason, I'm wondering if this post #6 you made here was directed at me because of some specific post I had made somewhere earlier with which you disagreed for some reason. Is it (and, if so, could you please direct me to the post I made which triggered this directed response)? Thanks.
2) In distrusting the pope, you demonstrate a distrust for Christ's promise.
On 1) we are in full agreement. On 2) we'll just have to agree to disagree. As such, I won't judge you if you don't judge me, OK?
Because, "Who are [we] to judge?"
Lent is for Catholics. Nobody else is bound by your traditions.
Additionally, real Christians don't need a special *season* for repentance and prayer. It should be part of the normal everyday experience of a follower of Christ.
In distrusting the pope, you demonstrate a distrust for Christ's promise.
Distrusting a pope who has proven himself untrustworthy by being a grave robber? Can you imagine? The gall of them.
Or a recognition that the church and the Pope are two different things.