Posted on 08/08/2014 6:24:07 PM PDT by marshmallow
The English surgeons who fought to save the life of a badly mangled motorcyclist on the morning of July 20 might have guessed he was someone unusual, since the hospital was receiving calls from Rome, from the pope himself, asking for updates.
The silver Audi that slammed into a Protestant cleric named Bishop Tony Palmer in a quiet country lane that morning, however, left little chance of his surviving, and he died after a 10-hour emergency surgery. The news stunned not just his grieving wife and young adult children, but many across the Christian world who were aware that, behind the scenes, the unlikely friendship of Palmer and Pope Francis was the catalyst of an extraordinary historic breakthrough in relations between the Catholic Church and the evangelical world.
An articulate, laid-back, jovial South African in his early fifties, with a penchant for quirky clerical clothes, Palmer didn’t look or sound much like a conventional Anglican bishop. When I first met him in May, at a coffee shop in Bath, close to where he lived with his family, he explained that he had been ordained by the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, or CEEC, whose presiding bishop is in Florida.
The CEEC, which was formed in the 1990s, is Anglican. Yet unlike the Episcopal Church in the United States, it’s not part of the Anglican Communion loyal to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Its leaders see themselves as part of a “convergence” movement, seeking to combine evangelical Christianity with the liturgy and sacraments typical of Catholicism.
That convergence, Palmer told me, “is a precursor to full unity between the Protestant and Catholic Churches.”
Born in Britain, Palmer grew up in South Africa where he worked as a medical underwriter and met and married Emiliana, a non-practising Italian Catholic. After a sudden conversion........
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonglobe.com ...
Dissuading potential converts is not something one expects to find on the CV of a future Pope, no matter how exalted the goal.
The Pope really doesn’t believe there’s anything special about this. I’ve become increasingly disturbed by his behavior.
Dissuading converts was all the rage among lefty clergy in the 1970s and 80s, and Pope Francis’ mind is still stuck in that time and that viewpoint.
“...Palmer didn’t look or sound much like a conventional Anglican bishop.”
Cause he wasn’t one.
Those who know they must be Catholic have a grave duty to do so. Those who dissuade them commit the sin of scandal.
Wow that’s kinda big news. Are the Catholics going to start meeting Protestants somewhere in the middle and form a Christianity that all can live with? Or does this merging thing mean if protestants ate welcome if they obey the Pope and accept the Catholic theology
By the way, you know I’m just having a little fun with ya,,,,
Francis has made it abundantly clear (yes, CLEAR) that he doesn’t believe that one needs to be Catholic to be saved.
Nice to know Pope Francis agrees with the Holy Bible scripture...
Yes, he makes a great Protestant.
Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 14: “They could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it, or to remain in it.”
Last Wednesday, in Bath, Palmer’s funeral was a Catholic Requiem Mass at which most of the congregation were evangelicals. He was buried in a Catholic cemetery, united at last with the Church he felt at home in.
WTF?
In as much as Christ built His Church on Peter, and that Church is the Catholic Church, Francis doesn’t agree with scripture at all.
It's a little too late at this point, thanks to Francis discouraging Palmer, while he was alive, from converting to Catholicism.
How the hell did an Evangelical have a Catholic Requiem Mass in the first place?
——Francis doesn’t agree with scripture at all.——
Interesting, so a sitting Pope doesn’t agree with the Word of God....
How can that be?
What does he believe? His reflection in the mirror?
Who knows what he believes. How can it be? The same as it is with any fallible human being not agreeing with the Word of God.
True, except he's the Pope...Christ vicar on earth..and he doesn't believe in what the Bible says...
Much of it being Jesus own words...
Peter didn't believe he would deny Christ; but he did. What's your point?
Correct, he wasn't an Anglican bishop; he was a fellow Catholic bishop according to Pope Francis.
No, he wasn’t a Catholic Bishop - and the pope did not say he was a Catholic Bishop either. He simply called him a fellow bishop since he apparently had valid orders through an Old Catholic line.
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