Posted on 06/22/2015 6:31:38 PM PDT by ebb tide
Since my buddy Chris Ferrara has, perhaps before anyone else in the English speaking world, done a thorough examination of the pope’s environment encyclical, “Laudato Si,” I will confine myself here to some observations of a different sort and to proposing a few questions for consideration – to talking around it, so to speak.
A great many people, long before the document was issued yesterday, have been asking whether it should have been written at all. Is this appropriate for a pope? Why was it necessary? Why, of all the possible topics, did Pope Francis choose this one? Has he stepped outside the proper bounds of papal authority? Aren’t there more pressing matters for the head of the Catholic Church to think about? (Does anyone know how many Chaldean Catholics are still alive in Mosul, Iraq, for instance?)
Let me just start by claiming credit for being an environmentalist, in that the mass degradation of the natural world by industrial agriculture, manufacturing and yes, fossil fuels – by human short sightedness and obsession with material consumption – is of grave concern to me. I am, in short, a not-very closeted, Left-Coast hippie tree-hugger, and always have been, and so as a Catholic, I am looking actively for guidance in framing these topics. I have felt for a long time that the Church’s competent (that is, believing) theologians should address them.
The other day our friend Jimmy Akin offered his list of “12 things to know and share” about the leaking of the encyclical. I thought this was a useful format, so now that we can all read the thing for ourselves, I’m offering a different kind of list: larger issues to think about to give the document some context.
1 – Does the encyclical, in its topic or its handling, undercut papal authority? – How much authority does the papal office give Francis to make definitive statements about climate change, or about science in general? None. Nada. Not a lick. On the subject of global warming, climate change and the environment Pope Francis is as authoritative as the guy sitting next to you on the bus. He’s as authoritative as I am.
Papal infallibility does not extend either to scientific, economic or political matters. Nor does the ordinary authority of the papal office – aside from formal infallibility – bestow any particular insight into these matters. This is why, of course, popes have advisors and even ghost writers for non-infallible documents. But having made some very disputable statements as though they are indisputable facts, Pope Francis has with this document perhaps created bigger problems for himself, his successors and for the Church by undercutting the genuine authority that actually is proper to the office.
It is normal for popes to write encyclicals on topics for which they have personally little or no background. This is why they have advisors and drafting committees whose job it is (or perhaps was) to frame the papal responses with infinite care to ensure that he remains within strictly defined boundaries. But for all the papal documents on topics that are not specifically theological, has there ever been a time in modern Catholic history when a pope has made definitive claims on highly disputed scientific topics without the least nod to the legitimacy, or even existence of a debate?
What can we say about a pope who would declare, on a massively un-settled, vexed and hugely controversial scientific and political subject, “Global warming is real and humans caused it, and we know this because the mainstream science says so.” (With the implied coda, “So shut up, everybody who disagrees.”)
“Scientific consensus exists indicating firmly that we are in the presence of a worrisome warming of the climate system.”
“In recent decades… the heating was accompanied by the constant rise in the sea level…”
“…And [it] is also hard not to relate it to the increase in extreme weather events, regardless of the fact that we cannot attribute a cause scientifically determined to each particular phenomenon.”
“[N]umerous scientific studies indicate that most of the global warming of recent decades is due to the large concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other) issued mainly because of human activity.”
All of these claims, presented by the pope under his authority as absolutely indisputable fact, have been disputed and sometimes even outright debunked, all by people well within the realm of perfectly reputable science.
In fact, so problematic has the claim become that “warmist” activists have had to change their scare-term to the more neutral “climate change” to avoid having people point and laugh at them at scientist parties. Someone might have informed the pope of this change before allowing him to embarrass himself.
But more pertinently, how can anyone ever trust Pope Francis’ pronouncements on any other topic again? How can such declarations be anything other than catastrophic for his personal credibility? Because the unwritten implication behind these extraordinary assertions is that he himself thinks he does have some kind of special insight.
So outrageous is the presumption that a pope could make definitive statements in highly politically charged scientific disputes, that some bolder among our Catholic writer colleagues were openly mocking it within hours of the encyclical’s release. Matt Archbold, brother of Remnant columnist Pat, posted the headline yesterday, “Good News. Pope Now Respected as Science Expert.”
Protestants have always accused Catholics of believing everything the pope says on every subject whatever. They have accused us, in fact if not word, of “papal positivism,” the very theological vice that has suddenly become fashionable within the Church. And with this foray into areas where he has no more competence than anyone else, Pope Francis himself appears to be first among this trend.
And this is not the first time. When he was asked why he thought there had been mutterings against his lack of clarity and sound leadership, Francis told Antonio Spadaro, “Look, I wrote an encyclical – true enough, it was by four hands – and an apostolic exhortation. I’m constantly making statements, giving homilies. That’s magisterium. That’s what I think, not what the media say that I think.”
The Catholic neo-conservative world tied itself into knots trying to demonstrate that the pope’s many interviews, homilies and off-the-cuff ramblings, and the frequently incomprehensible statements in them, meant nothing. That he wasn’t interested in changing Church doctrine or doing anything really crazy, because as everyone knows, interviews and off-the-cuff comments can’t be taken as part of the formal papal magisterium. Shortly after this, they fell silent as the Vatican issued a book compiling all the papal interviews, primarily those most controversial ones with the Marxist atheist Eugenio Scalfari, and calling it formally part of the Francis magisterium.
The conclusion seems inescapable that this is a pope who does not know the meaning of the term “papal magisterium,” or the purpose of his own office. Or perhaps who simply doesn’t care. Remember, this is also the pope who has repeatedly railed against “doctors of the law” and the Church’s previous interest in “small-minded rules.”
2 – Who were these advisors? – Many of the people who have criticised Pope Francis for coming down on this side of the “global warming” debate have pointed out that he is now keeping some very unpleasant company indeed. And appears to be doing so without the least embarrassment.
Who are these people? Well, one of the people at the press conference launching the encyclical officially – who was presumably also advising the pope – was Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. This is a highly respected member of the warmist community and is perhaps the best possible representative of their entire programme for humanity. And his influence is enormous. He advises the Chancellor of Germany, Europe’s lead economic nation and serves as chairman of the German Advisory Council on Global Change. At the transnational level, he is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of the United Nations.
Professor Schellnhuber is a major voice calling for massive reduction in… wait for it… human population. In 2009, he articulated the commonly held opinion of the scientific left that the only solution for planet earth will be the elimination of all but one billion of the human population. The New York Times reported on his speech at an international climate meeting in Copenhagen, where he said it is a “triumph for science” that they have “stabilized” the estimate: “namely the estimates for the carrying capacity of the planet, namely below 1 billion people.” At that time, Herr Schellnhuber declined to specify a methodology for achieving this.
At the Vatican’s press conference, though, he focused on other priorities, protesting only that “the science of Laudato Si is watertight.” He added a warning that if “humanity” didn’t reduce carbon emissions, “we, our neighbors, and children will be exposed to intolerable risks.”
Pretty softy-toffee stuff for a guy who openly proposes eliminating over 5 billion people. Perhaps with a mind to where he was sitting, he added that he wanted to expel the “myth” that climate change has to be fought by reducing the number of poor.
“Contrary to what some have claimed, it is not the mass of poor people that destroys the planet, but the consumption of the rich,” he said. Which I’m sure represents a massive conversion in this, one of the world’s leading advocates of population control. Must’ve been the New Evangelization. (Rorate Caeli has more from the press conference here.)
3 – Who is this document really meant for? – Is this encyclical really meant for Catholics at all? A colleague of mine wrote, “LS is a meandering mishmash of muddled thought…” Is this surprising? Was anyone expecting anything else from the meanderingest, mish-mashiest leader of the Church we’ve ever had? I know that there is an ongoing contest at Vatican Radio to “translate” the pope’s homilies and Angelus addresses into language – complete sentences – that can actually be understood. There is a reason that VR usually only publishes summaries and not complete transcripts.
Certainly the atheist, anti-human, Marxist ideologues who are being recruited to promote and advise on it have no interest in informing or advising believers on the specific will of God about the proper stewardship and management of the earth’s resources. From their point of view, it could have said anything at all, as long as it was vague, disorganized, ambiguous and mish-mashy. Pope Francis personal writing, speaking (and presumably thinking) style is ideal for those who want to use the papal office to further their own causes. Only this time, of course, the pope himself has invited them to collaborate personally.
It certainly seems that the encyclical was intended by its real authors, the warmists and population-controllers, leftists and Marxists in and out of the Church, as little more than a prop to hold up in front of cameras during interviews and say, “See? The pope agrees with us. And the Catholic Church has to obey because it’s the pope and as everyone knows, all Catholics have to believe unquestioningly everything the pope says, right?”
Which is already happening. In his commentary, Chris Ferrara predicted that “the world will ignore the good elements in LS and proclaim a great victory for climate change fanatics—a victory Francis will undoubtedly have given them…” And indeed, with the ink barely dry, that machinery is already well in motion.
Crux, the Catholic magazine of the bitterly anti-Catholic leftist paper the Boston Globe, quoted Argentinean Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, who, they said, “shrugged off the criticism the document is receiving from some sectors of society.”
Crux continues: “Though Catholic skeptics on climate change are within their rights not to believe in it, that doesn’t mean [they] can ignore the fact that Laudato Si’ is now part of the Church’s official teaching.”
“One can’t choose to only accept the documents we like,” they quoted the archbishop saying.
From the redoubtable Fr. Thomas Rosica, the English language spokesman for the Holy See press office and vigorous defender of all Canadian things Catholic and lefty, we have, “No Catholic is free to dissent from the teaching of Laudato Si.” Well, we’ve been told, eh?
The irony of watching the Catholic extreme left demanding that conservatives obey the pope and accusing them of being “cafeteria Catholics” has been one of the more entertaining aspects of the entire Francis parade for the last two years. All we needed, really, was an encyclical, and now we get to watch them insisting that this type of papal document “IS SO magisterial and infallible, dammit! And is to be obeyed WITHOUT QUESTION!”
4– Has the pope undercut the Church’s work for the poor in the developing world? – But much less entertainingly, there are concerns that Pope Francis in this document has clearly and repeatedly taken the position of some of the Church’s most bitter and venomous enemies, and, moreover, the enemies of the very poor he claims to want to defend. This is, after all, the camp at the UN and elsewhere of those who would resolve the problem of poverty, particularly developing world poverty, by simply eliminating the poor.
In other words, it could easily be argued that Pope Francis has undercut decades of work defending the poor and helpless of his own delegation at the UN. This is the group of people who have sometimes been the sole voice opposing the population control agenda that has been forcing abortion, sterilization and enforced contraception on the developing world.
And before anyone starts howling, let me say that a single, rather ambiguous, token four-line paragraph – in a nearly 200 page document – stating that “concern for the protection of nature” is “incompatible with the justification of abortion,” reads like the barest possible token nod. And it is not going to have the protective power of an umbrella in a hurricane. Particularly since it is immediately followed with the notion that some people’s existence really can be “troublesome or inconvenient,” and whose existence “is uncomfortable and creates difficulties.”
“If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away.” … Right. That’ll show em!
5 – Let’s talk about the White Coat fallacy – We keep hearing, from the encyclical itself and from its defenders on the left that “global warming” and climate change catastrophizing is “mainstream science”. Let’s examine what that means, if anything.
How does real science actually work? We all learned it in high school: a scientist observes natural phenomena, then comes up with experiments to test his observations and writes down the results. He develops a hypothesis to explain the observed phenomena and then tests it some more. As the results of his tests bring him more information, he may or may not adjust his hypothesis. Then he publishes the results of his investigation, and other scientists reproduce the tests to see if they get the same result. This process continues more or less indefinitely and information on the observed phenomena is added a piece at a time in an infuriatingly slow process that is of no interest to journalists and politicians whatsoever.
Sometimes the scientific world succumbs to the temptation to say, “This thing we’ve observed, we’ve got it licked. We know all about it. The science is settled.” Sometimes this is a pretty safe bet. The planet, for example, does seem to be going around the sun, and not the other way round. But in general, with questions that anyone is still paying the slightest attention to, the notion of “settled science” is an oxymoron. The only way one could have “mainstream” science is if science itself had become heavily politicized. Which it has.
Let’s examine a completely different topic. When does pregnancy occur? From the 1880s, medical science knew that a unique human being comes into existence from the moment the gametes are fused. Later they found out more about genes and this idea was confirmed again. And again. Every textbook ever published on the subject of human embryology confirms the same findings: a unique, genetically distinct member of a given species comes into existence at fertilization.
How is pregnancy now defined by governments around the world, informed by their scientific advisors? It is usually defined as beginning when the zygote implants in the endometrium. This is the “mainstream” scientific opinion among doctors and bioethics committees the world over. It is the “settled science” on human reproduction. Only, of course, it came about because the medical world wanted to get wedded to chemical contraception, and in 1965, had to get it past the Catholic doctors in all the professional medical bodies.
Later, in the early 2000s when governments around the world again wanted to pass legislation having to do with human reproduction, this time created artificially in petri dishes, they asked the same group of people if it was OK. In every case, the science advisors shouted in chorus, “Sure!” No parliamentary or congressional committee in any jurisdiction anywhere ever invited anyone who specialized in embryology to give evidence at the public hearing stage. They didn’t need to. Everyone knows, the “science is settled.”
An entire science-writer career could be made out of the incredible political shenanigans being perpetrated to bolster materialist Darwinism. Heaven help any scientist who dares to breathe the slightest doubt about the orthodoxy of random mutation and selection.
Briefly, what we’ve got here is a papal example of the old White Coat fallacy: a simplistic appeal to “science” or “scientists say” that would receive a failing grade from any reputable journalism school.
6 – A brief note about the footnotes – Every encyclical ever written relies heavily on lots of different sources, and these are normally listed at the bottom as footnotes, and this one is no different. There is only one problem, however. Nowhere in the midst of all these rather extraordinary scientific claims is there a single footnote saying where, exactly, the pope got his “solid” and “settled” “mainstream science”.
We have the usual roster of encyclicals, statements from bishops’ conferences, Vatican II documents, apostolic exhortations, even one or two saints. But where are the scientific references? Where are the citations to articles in peer review journals? To papers from scientific conferences? Where, in other words, did the pope’s scientific assertions come from?
In fact, out of a final total of 172 footnotes, the only “scientist” quoted is the discredited heretic, eugenicist, Nazi-supporter and archaeological hoaxer Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
~
How is this document going to be received by the world? We are seeing that already, and Catholics concerned about the unspoken messages being sent by this encyclical are being told quite firmly by Francis’ main supporters to “Shut up and obey.”
How should believing Catholics deal with it? I would recommend the advice given by St. Paul. If you feel inclined, read it, figure out as best you can which parts are good and theologically sound, give them your assent, and then stop worrying about it.
And pray for the pope and the Church, and pray that saner heads will soon prevail. The Synod is coming; let us not be distracted.
If you had any knowledge whatsoever of that which you profane you would know the answer to this ridiculous and childish retort.
Neither. I simply answered your comment. Your current comment is nothing more than baiting. Good bye.
So you're saying that the Calvinists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Anabaptists, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Charismatics, Quakers, Millerites and 20,000+ others have a common understanding of Scripture? Really? Some common voice...
Do they all interpret it the same way?
“...You are attributing the type/shadow of Eliakim to Peter instead of Christ”?
I am not attributing this - this is the correct meaning and self evident by the plain meaning of the scripture passage.
Apocalypse 3:7; Jesus is clearly the holder of the key of David (”he that hath the key of David ...”)
Luke 1:32-33 Jesus IS the heir to the throne, thus He is the king.
In Isaiah 22, Eliakim holds the key FOR his master, the King.
In biblical tradition, the servant of the household who holds the keys carries DYNASTIC authority with the power of succession.
Peter identifies Christ as the King (messiah).
Christ as King uses His authority to NOW give the keys to Peter as steward symbolizing authority to bind and loose.
Rabbinical tradition contains the authority of determining who has the power of binding and loosing. (what is permitted and what is forbidden) so this concept was very familiar to Peter and the apostles who witnessed this and they knew exactly that the Lord had given special authority to Peter.
The 1906 Jewish encyclopedia notes that the expression “to bind the key upon his shoulder denotes POSSESSION of office. (Isaiah 22:22) Offices have successors. The key as a symbol of authority is also met with in the Talmud.
“There is no special sense in which binding and loosing is ascribed uniquely to Peter”.
Incorrect:
The binding and loosing IS TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY unique to Peter because THE POWER WAS GIVEN TO HIM BY JESUS THE KING, HIMSELF. That is why it is unique.
This is not due to RC’s reading into the text - it is due to a logical reading of the text.
The early Church recognized the primacy of the Office of Peter. The letter (extant) of Pope Clement the 1st, writing an Epistle to the Corinthians, he as Bishop of Rome with particular authority gives them clear doctrinal instructions. This was done in the 1st century, showing the succession of this thought from the beginning. He also references the Alexandrian canon of the OT, books that Luther threw out.
On Topic:
This Pope shold have stuck to doctrine. He has jumped the shark by believing in fake climate change; but the encyclical is NOT an ex Cathedra pronouncement on faith and morals that is required belief.
He upholds that abortion is wrong, and Genesis does tell us to be steward’s of God’s creation.
I wish he had stuck to Faith and morals, but it doesn’t prove that the Chair of Peter had no succession.
He wrote iin
Making something up contrary to what scripture teaches doesn't make it true.
I don't know about all of them as I'm not one of any of those. From what I understand each one of those is told to check what they hear with scripture unlike Catholics.
>>Trying to seem like an authority on Catholicism, your every sentence displays your ignorance.<<
Even when I quote the CCC or it's apologists?
>>Clearly no one was every bodily assumed into Heaven... unless you count Enoch and Elijah. Besides them, it just didn't ever happen in the Bible.<<
That's right. We are clearly told about Elijah and Enoch. But Catholics put more importance on the assumption of Mary don't they. Yet not one word of her after the day of Pentecost was ever written by either the apostles or any other writer. The Holy Spirit inspired the apostles what to write and didn't see fit to even mention Mary. Take a hint Catholics.
>>Do you give your personal testimony in your church?<<
No, nor would I ever. So the rest of your post is built on conjecture and assumptions and is irrelevant to our conversation. Now I understand how Catholics rely on assumptions, conjecture, and could have beens but trying to put me in some box you have constructed won't work.
I think it is also note worthy that Jesus gave John the responsibility to take care of Mary and it was John who was the last writer of Scripture and the last Apostle to die. If anyone would have known of any note worthy events surrounding Mary it would have been this Apostle.
The views on Mary by RC's are just one example of what happens in a centralized authority structure when leadership is corrupted. We see it today as the current pope is steering his church to the radical left. Ultimately, RC's will fall in line with whatever they are told because they are indoctrinated from early on that their salvation is dependent on their loyalty to their church. As these events unfold it's a great reminder why the Apostolic Era churches were decentralized.
It is sad you try to put God in a box. He is all powerful, He can do what He wants and He can send who he wants to warn us. If you choose to ignore the warnings, that is your choice. The Blessed Mother was the most spotless human ever created on earth, (I am not speaking of divine nature like Jesus here just for the record) if God was to send someone why would it not be her? The bible might not say “I will send the Blessed Mother to warn you when the time is close”, but He does preform God only miracles to prove which messages are truly from Him. It is because of His love of us that He sends His mother. I am sorry you don’t believe these things, but they are true. We warn our own children everyday of the dangers of the world, why would He not warn His children of the dangers to our souls and tell us what to do about those said dangers.
Frankly the above is not a good example of how Holy Scriptures divide, but how traditions of men divide. Like Rome all of the above have some man-made traditions. How the Millerites got tucked in to your sample group is unknown as Miller clearly disobeyed Christ's words in Acts 1.
However, Paul made the core truth of Christianity quite simple in 1 Corinthians 15:
Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. 6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.
9 For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. 11 Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
So actually, the burden of proof is on those who decry the Holy Scriptures are insufficient to determine truth claims. One only needs to examine them.
We have a very good example of how man-made traditions, error and sin enters into churches. Such is evidenced in Revelation 2-3 when Christ directly rebukes 5 of the 7 churches addressed. Only the persecuted church of Smyrna and the church at Philadelphia are given kind words from Christ. The rest are corrupt, luke warm, dead, loveless, and compromising.
Take your pick of the lot above. We have evidence from God's Written Word of what He expects of His sheep in Revelation chapters 2-3. And I will point out that all of those standards are thoroughly recorded for all to see from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. Anyone or any organization who adds to or subtracts from brings on error and condemnation.
Take in Revelation chapters 1-3 when you have a moment. Then see how your church measures up to the test of Christ. I do it often not only for the church I attend but for my walk with Christ.
You really believe this.
Too bad.
GOD can do anything HE wants.
Therefore; when the Church says HE did something; HE did!
--Catholic_Wannabe_Dude(Hail Mary!)
Can you prove it is not from God? I don’t need to prove anything to you, He can prove His miracles Himself. It is a good thing you weren’t an early Christian, how would you have known Jesus was the messiah if you wouldn’t have believe His miracles. He never said He would quit performing miracles. Why is it so hard to believe?
I'm a pretty cautious person. I try to understand the implications of what I think and believe. If Bergoglio is a formal heretic, then the chair is empty. Is that a possibility? Sadly, yes, it is. But it's an extraordinary thing to think. So, I think about the topic in the way that leads to the most conservative judgment. Your theologian notwithstanding, no one can be guilty of formal heresy who is incapable of understanding their fault. Think of someone who is mentally disables, with an IQ of, say, 65. If this person has an inaccurate understanding of the Real Presence. are we to say that he is a formal heretic and excluded from the Church?
You say that clerics cannot be invincibly ignorant. Rather, you should say, clerics SHOULD not be invincibly ignorant. There is a reason why we used to have tighter intellectual standards for ordination. Unfortunately, it seems those standards have fallen.
I have heard Bergoglio give speeches, talks, that were very good. And I wondered, how can he be so on the mark today and so off the mark the next? Then I found out, many of his speeches are prepared by his theologians without much input from him. He reads them, he agrees with them, he vaguely seems to be aware of Catholic doctrine. But when he ventures out on his own, depending on his own intellectual resources, it appears that he's lost at sea. So, he comes up with nonsense. Not because he's a formal heretic, but because he's not too bright. This is why he always denounces “the doctors of the law,” because down deep, he realizes his intellectual inadequacy, and he resents it. And so in himself, he says something like, “They're not as smart as they think they are! THEY may have the LAW, but I have the SPIRIT!”
And he goes with the side whomever flatters him most.
If you wish to say that he is vain, egotistical, and pompous, I won't argue with you for a moment. But to that, I think one needs to add “not the greatest theological mind of the 21st century.”
sitetest
Yeah. Right.
Who needs the Holy Spirit with Mary around to do the job?
I’ll betcha she didn’t know the half of what she was signing up for when she said *Yes* did she?
BTW, you do know that Satan himself can appear as an angel of light, don’t you?
I wouldn’t trust any apparition which claimed it was Mary, or any other person who has passed on, for that matter.
That is why any true apparition is followed by a God only miracle(s).
9. Are there any miracles that devils cannot perform?
Only God can create matter out of nothing, such as the changing of water into wine at the marriage feast of Cana, or the multiplication of the bread and fishes. This would also hold for cures that require instantaneous growth of destroyed tissue such as cancer, or the quick closing of a wound such as a stigmata.
By the same criteria as above, only God can multiply matter, since it requires creation. Any instantaneous and permanent cure, scientifically tested, objectively diagnosed and measured, showing the condition of the body both before and after the cure, can only be from God.
The best of these are organic lesions [hernia, cancer, toxication, parasites, and the like], or the organ shows a congenital malformation, or again it is in a state of degeneration or gradual disintegration. Some processes of tissue degeneration are irreversible and therefore incurable. The cure of a blind child, who was born with no pupils in her eyes, is beyond the power of Satan since it is beyond the power of nature. Done by the prayers of Padre Pio. She is still living and she still has no pupils.
A supernatural light given to a soul to understand mysteries of God from imaginary images, as happened with Joseph (Gen. 40:41) and with Daniel (Dan. 1:24), is the highest form of miracle. Neither the demons nor the angels can infuse this supernatural light into the understanding, since they can only cause images and fantasies in the imagination. See Chapters XIV, XV in CITY OF GOD, Book 1.
Satan can fake bilocation by carrying his seer someplace quickly, but only God can allow someone to be in two places at the same time, as in the case of Padre Pio and Mary Agreda.
Taken from unitypublishing.com/answers.html#9
Not one word about Mary from John or any other writer. She was obviously insignificant to them. Yet the Catholic Church has built much of it's belief structure and practices around her. It's actually pagan in origin probably begun around the goddess Diana to attract the pagans into the Catholic belief system. Paul already was having an issue with the economics built around the worship of Diana and the trinkets being made and sold.
It's actually sad that the Catholic Church has built a pagan system and called it Christianity. God has told us who He is and what He stipulates as far as worshipping Him and how He communicates with us. Jesus said the Holy Spirit would be sent NOT Mary. Scripture teaches that contact with those who have left this life is prohibited and nowhere are we told that those who have left this life would contact us.
Since Satan can counterfeit miracles, it's up to those claiming that the miracle is from God to prove that it is.
This nonsense of *You have to believe what we tell you unless you can prove us wrong* is garbage.
Anyone could claim absolutely anything they want and to expect everyone else to take it on say so unless it can be proved false lacks integrity and is the lazy way out for those making the claim.
And yes, we would have known Jesus was the Messiah based on His fulfillment of Scripture prophesy.
Miracles are not the only verification of who He was, nor was it the primary one.
2 Corinthians 11:13-15 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.
If you believe everything that comes down the pike without checking it out first, you are leaving yourself wide open for deception.
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