Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

‘Comfortable’ Catholics are ‘unwilling’ to see dangers facing Church: Scholar
LifeSite News ^ | May 24, 2017 | LifeSite News staff

Posted on 05/26/2017 9:18:05 AM PDT by ebb tide

Too many Catholics are caught up in a “comfortable” Catholicism that makes them unwilling, and even unable, to see the “grave problems” currently besetting the Church, said a renowned theologian and one of the world’s top Catholic experts on the Church Fathers.

“Most Catholics seem to live their life on a sort of comfortable zone, just the way that a lot of bishops live in a sort of safety-first sort of zone,” Australian patristics and classics scholar Anna Silvas said. “It is too disturbing” for those living in such a zone to “pry any more deeply,” because what they might find will challenge them too much, she added.

Silvas was specifically referring to problems arising from Pope Francis’ controversial Amoris Laetitia. The Apostolic Exhortation’s novel concept of “mercy” has been used by some Cardinals and bishops to justify giving Holy Communion to civilly-divorced-and-remarried Catholics living in adultery and even to people living in a homosexual relationship. Catholic critics say that such a move amounts to giving tacit approval to adultery and homosexuality, actions that have always been condemned by the Church as gravely immoral sexual sins.

Silvas, a senior research fellow at Australia's University of New England, said that too many in the Church are governed by what she called an “affective papalism,” in which everything a pope says is “an oracle from heaven.”

People are too scared to ask what happens when a pope is “disobedient” to the teachings of a previous pope, she said. That kind of question “doesn’t compute” for most people, she added.

Silvas said that faithful Catholics who notice discrepancies between what a pope says the Church teaches and what the Church actually teaches are called “unfaithful,” when nothing could be further from the truth.

She said that the laity, priest, bishops, cardinals, and the pope are all “obliged” to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to the teachings of the Catholic Church which he founded.

“The Church is a covenant of common obedience...and all are obliged to that obedience to Jesus Christ, right up to the top. The pope needs to be obedient, indeed, preeminently so,” she said.

Silvas said that Pope Benedict was likely right when he spoke of a faithful Church, one that is obedient to Christ, being a smaller Church.

A faithful Church will shrink in numbers, she said, but it will acquire a different character than what is currently in vogue.

“[Only] a really intense commitment to Christ will jolt us out of [the current crisis],” she said. “There are no easy answers except for a very serious interior turning to Our Lord who is the one true Lord, Master, and Bridegroom of his Church, yesterday, today, and forever,” she added.

Professor Silvas joins the ranks of Princeton Professor Robert P. George and Catholic writer Msgr. Charles Pope in calling Catholics to rise from a “comfortable Catholicism” and live the truth of the Gospel without compromise.

“The days of socially acceptable Christianity are over, the days of comfortable Catholicism are past,” said Prof. George in a 2014 speech. “It is no longer easy to be a faithful Christian, a good Catholic, an authentic witness to the truths of the Gospel. A price is demanded and must be paid,” he said.

Msgr. Charles Pope wrote in a 2016 article that Catholics must put away “comfort” and live their faith as if they were at war.

“It seems there is no awareness that we are at war and that Catholics need to be summoned to sobriety, increasing separation from the wider culture, courageous witness and increasing martyrdom,” he said.


TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; Moral Issues
KEYWORDS: adultery; catholic; francischurch; heresy

1 posted on 05/26/2017 9:18:05 AM PDT by ebb tide
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: ebb tide

The biggest threat facing the church is the current fake-assed Red Pope.

I will also accept “Pope Che” as the correct answer.


2 posted on 05/26/2017 9:36:35 AM PDT by T-Bone Texan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dp0622

“Comfortable Catholic” Ping


3 posted on 05/26/2017 9:56:14 AM PDT by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ebb tide

Genesis 6:6&7 reads as follows: “It repented Him (God) that He
had made man on the Earth. And being touched inwardly with sorrow of heart, He said: I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the Earth, from man even to beasts, from the creeping things even to the fowls of the air, for it repents Me that I have made them.” Under God’s direction and supervision Noe spent the next 100 years building his family and the ark and then waiting for any of his neighbors who would come. No one showed up, and God therefore instructed him to pull out all the little rooms that He told him in verse 14 to build into the ark and was directed by God to bring 2 of every animal male and female to replace those humans that never showed. How ironic. The Bible tells us that humans were created to take the place of the fallen angels in Heaven and now are replaced by the animals on the ark!
Other noteworthy 100 year time periods: The French Kings were given 100 years by Jesus to consecrate their country to His Sacred Heart. Upon their failure to do so, 100 years later the French Revolution replaced the monarchy with a Republic and among those who were beheaded was the king himself. (Certainly we have to understand that the royalty that was beheaded represented the Catholic Church royalty.); Satan, over heard by Pope St. Leo XIII was given 100 years to take over the Catholic Church in 1884. For the outcome, all we need do is look at the condition of the Church in it’s different divisions as it stands today and whose running it. A true Alphonse and Gaston routine with two popes at once and all the ruckus that that continues to cause; Our Lady appeared at Fatima in 1917 to almost beg mankind to straighten up their act in light of all the devastation that Satan caused during his 100 years and since. Our Lord intervened in 1936 and connected the fate of the popes to that of the French Kings since they too failed in consecrating Russia to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart. It is now the year 2017, 100 years later. It seems rather apparent to this writer that the phenomenon of the recent blood moon tetrad was one of the Biblically prophesied events in the sun and the moon and the stars when the sun was turned to darkness and the moon to blood, “before the great and manifest day of the Lord come” found in Acts 2:20.
The Protestants went crazy with their guesses and predictions especially those concerning Isreal when Our Lady’s warnings at Fatima were for the entire world and in fact thanks to World’s News Networks, the blood moons and the solar eclipse were seen not just by Isreal but by the entire world. When are the Catholics and then the world going to wake up to the absolute implications of Our Lady’s Warnings at Fatima and straighten up before the destruction comes of the great and manifest day of the Lord. For more detail on what has happened and what needs to happen, go to “The Witnesses Are Here!”
https://sites.google.com/view/thewitnessesarehere
for five Treatises on this topic, and follow the links to the other websites.


4 posted on 05/26/2017 11:49:05 AM PDT by Little Blue Nun
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Comment #5 Removed by Moderator

Comment #6 Removed by Moderator

To: metmom
My sister, who lives in highly Catholic Buffalo NY, says every Catholic she knows (and in Buffalo, that’s MANY of them) *LOVES* Pope Francis.

Every heretic has his fool followers. Look at Luther; and he's been dead for over 500 years.

7 posted on 05/26/2017 7:25:35 PM PDT by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: metmom

It’s not a denomination, and the pope is not its head.


8 posted on 05/26/2017 7:33:27 PM PDT by Marchmain
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: metmom
Thank you metmom for your questions. They brought back memories of several years ago when​ my pastor was teaching a study on the book of Genesis and yours were questions that I and others asked during that study. Since the answers were anecdotal rather than doctrinal I went back to my pastor after your questions for a refresher course. Your question regarding men being created to replace the fallen angels, go to Replacing Fallen Angels: Overturning the Evil Powers @ www.patheos.com for a dissertation from St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Anselm of Canterbury, as there are no direct Bible quotes. See also 1Peter 2:9~12 for an idea of how St. Augustine and St. Anselm through the Holy Spirit were able to as we have intuit using the Bible as our source. Additionally for a clearer understanding, you should read St. Matthew 24, paying special attention to what it says regarding as in the days of Noe. (See also our website So as in the Days of Noah! https://sites.google.com/site/view/soasinthedaysofnoah ) For you to be able to understand any of this read all of St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews 11, and recognize what part faith plays in understanding anything that is not spelled out specifically in the Scriptures. Genesis 6:10 tells us of Noe's three sons. Chapter 6:18 tells us that Noe and his sons each had a wife. 2Peter 2:4&5 tells us "...(God) spared not the original world but preserved Noe, the eighth person, the preacher of justice, bringing​ in the flood upon the world of the ungodly." We can understand from this that no one else showed up! We can also intuit from chapter 6:14 that the little rooms were meant for humans. There was no mention of accommodations for animals. If you will read all of Job 38&39 you will get an idea of the daunting task that Noe had in providing accommodations for all the various types and sizes of animals that God commanded him to put on the Ark, and pay special attention to Behemoth and Leviathan in Job 40 and you can easily tell that all the little rooms were for people as opposed to animals.Chapter 5 of Genesis verse 31 tells that Noe was 500 years old when he found Grace before the Lord (Genesis 6:8) and began his family and the building of the Ark, and chapter 7:6,11 tells us that "he was 600 years old when the waters of the flood overflowed the Earth." Keep in mind that Genesis 2:5&6 tell us that it had never rained upon the Earth so you can imagine the fear and despair that took hold on every human and animal aside from those in the Ark when the water came up to their ankles then to their knees and to their waists and to their necks, then was above their heads and they could no longer breathe. The Bible does not give us this specific detail. Genesis 7:18,19,20,21,22,23 tells us of the flood's devastation. Again. Our own intuition can easily fill in the blanks. If after you read all this and you have new questions from this material feel free to ask. Before you send those questions, follow the Blood Moons trail starting with "The Witnesses are Here!" and the 5 Blood Moons Over Fatima Treatises as they may answer many of those questions or bring up more. May God reward you for your earnest search for Him in the Scriptures as He did Daniel through the Archangel Gabriel in his Scriptural searches.
9 posted on 05/27/2017 8:34:39 AM PDT by Little Blue Nun
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Little Blue Nun
We can also intuit from chapter 6:14 that the little rooms were meant for humans. There was no mention of accommodations for animals.

Well, people can *intuit* all they want but there's nothing in the passage to suggest that. There's no reason to think that the rooms weren't for animals and there's nothing that indicates Noah ripped out rooms and remodeled the ark to accommodate animals.

That's taking a lot of liberty with the passage.

Paragraphs are your friends.

I would suggest you check out this link for formatting HTML.

HTML Sandbox 2015

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3242857/posts

10 posted on 05/27/2017 4:45:32 PM PDT by metmom ( ...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Little Blue Nun

That’s way too difficult to read.Proper formatting would help.

.


11 posted on 05/27/2017 4:50:18 PM PDT by Mears ("It takes a lot of clout to be a victim."---Joe Sobran)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: ebb tide

The Catholic Caucus addendum has been removed so Lutherans and other non Catholics can give answers to your comment #7

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3555516/posts?page=7#7

If you are going to post a thread with a caucus designation, please study the caucus guidelines by clicking on my name at the bottom of this post.


12 posted on 05/27/2017 10:04:11 PM PDT by Religion Moderator
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: metmom
"Now faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not. By faith Noe, having received an answer concerning those things which as yet were not seen, moved with fear, framed the Ark for the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world; and was instituted heir of the justice which is by faith."
Hebrews 11:1&7
13 posted on 05/28/2017 11:18:57 AM PDT by Little Blue Nun
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson