Posted on 07/03/2014 4:10:21 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "We are not isolated and we are not Christians individually, each on his or her own". Instead, we are all part of the Church, "a large family, where one is welcomed," where "one learns to live as believers and disciples of the Lord Jesus," Pope Francis said.
Speaking in the last general audience before the July break, the Holy Father devoted his catechesis to the Church before a crowd of 35,000 in St Peter's Square. Despite a few drops of rain, he walked extensively among the assembled faithful.
In his address, he warned against those who "think they can have a personal, direct, immediate relationship with Jesus Christ outside of the communion and the mediation of the Church."
In the Church, he noted, there is no "do it yourself", no "free agents." For him, "Our Christian identity is belonging! We are Christians because we belong to the Church. It is like a surname. If the name is 'I am a Christian', the surname is 'I belong to the Church'." Such sense of belonging was born from the alliance between God and Abraham, to whom he donated a great people for his loyalty.
"God's relationship to his people comes before all of us, it comes from that time," and thus, "in this sense, our thoughts go first, with gratitude, to those who have gone before us and who welcomed us into the Church. No one becomes a Christian by himself! Is this clear? Nobody becomes a Christian by himself. Christians are not made in a lab.
(Excerpt) Read more at asianews.it ...
How sad. Why are Catholics so loath to give credit to God? God gave us the scripture and preserved it as He promised. Might I remind you that He also used Balaam’s donkey, Judas, Herod and many who would not be considered true believers?
You have been corrected on that many times. You don't listen to the truth and you still try to spread falsehoods. Why is that?
You may be brain dead by the looks of it. I don’t really mean that, I mean spiritually dead.
With all due respect, the pope is wrong....the only thing that matters is how on an individual basis we answer the question "And what did you do with Jesus Christ?" Nothing else matters as far as one's salvation. The church is just the body of believers.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 18 And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;
You realize that Augustine was in Alexandria when he said this, right? And that Constantinople was essentially the center of the Christian world at the time, with Alexandria not far behind? Meanwhile Rome was on it’s last leg and fading fast.
So you realize that he is NOT talking about Rome, right?
You wrote, “Easter (a pagan fertility holiday) was propagated by the Catholics instead of Passover.”
Jesus gave us a New Covenant, so Easter is the celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord, the triumph of Jesus over the grave. Surely you, as a Christian, know that. It is true that Easter practices with dyed egg, bunnies, etc. are borrowed from earlier spring festivals dating back to pagan times. But with the resurrection, we are called to a new ‘spring’ so to speak, and should not deny the significance of the day due to some pagan myths mixing into the day’s celebration.
Secondly, you admit that the Catholic church was the entity that began celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord - which takes us back to the time of the Apostles. Of course the first Christians celebrated Jesus’s Resurrection. We are into the New Covenant of God with His people. Jesus’s Last Supper, and His Crucifixion are not the end to his story, for His triumphal emergence from death to life on that Holy morning is celebrated now as a Christian holiday which Europeans called Easter (Ostertag in German) because it indicates the dawn of a new day when the sun rises in the east.
You realize that Lactantius was also a native of North Africa and taught throughout eastern Roman empire the Christian part of his life? You also realize he was an advisor to Constantine?
Do you think he was speaking of Rome here?
Matthew 18:20:
“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
I don’t believe 2 or 3 people is a Church.
“The church is just the body of believers”
Christ started one church, the Catholic Church. A very visible church of believers. Nothing at all invisible about it. It was that way for 1,500 years until the heretic Martin Luther thought he knew more than God himself and he and his followers broke away from the Catholic Church. Protestantism is a false religion. Eternal salvation is through the Catholic Church they broke away from. I would suggest that if you care anything for your eternal salvation you return to the faith of your ancestors.
“God says don’t incorporate pagan practices in worship of Him.”
We don’t. Candles were universal - not just pagan. Jews use them all the time: http://judaism.about.com/od/jewishculture/a/What-Do-Candles-Represent-In-Judaism.htm
I guess you better tell all the Jews of the world that they’re violating Deuteronomy 12 in your opinion. Maybe they’ll care (actually I doubt it).
Since your comment is so blatantly ridiculous I can’t take anything else you say in your post seriously.
Eternal salvation is through the Catholic Church...
wow ...
can you please share that passage of scripture with a little one who is on the outside looking in?
I would certainly hate to mislead anyone in my travels.
wow is right
Truth hurts on indulgences doesn’t it?
Don’t confuse a catholic with the Word. They’ve got tradition and Mary and indulgences and relics.
Christians have the Word. Catechism not needed.
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