Posted on 05/20/2018 12:47:05 PM PDT by NRx
In her Nobel Prize-winning book Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, Svetlana Alexievich interviews scores of Russians who lament the loss of the Soviet Empire, even as they recount its horrors in excruciating detail. The Soviet Empire may have been barbaric, but at least they were great! The world feared them! They had defeated Hitler! (No thanks to the British and Americans.)
Several unapologetic Soviets complain they lost their beloved empire without a shot. Why didn’t blood flow in the streets in her defense? They blame Mikhail Gorbachev. As one Soviet observes, the Communist system could withstand any challenge from below. It could suppress any revolution. Except one. What if the party’s leader was no longer a true believer? What if Gorbachev betrayed the cause from within the Kremlin, from the very top, where no one could stop him?
Ross Douthat ponders an analogous takeover within the Vatican in his new book, To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism. What if Pope Francis isn’t Catholic? What if he aims to overturn centuries of dogma? What if he plans to stack the College of Cardinals with liberal allies who will ensure his revolution can’t soon be reversed? What if he banishes his conservative critics to the church’s periphery? Who, then, will enforce the teaching on sexuality and marriage preserved against Western cultural trends by the late Pope John Paul II and self-titled Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI? Indeed, how can the vicar of Christ so confidently dismiss the words of Christ on marriage and adultery from the Gospels?
(Excerpt) Read more at thegospelcoalition.org ...
Pointing out what your own religion says is not *heretics* telling you what you are bound by.
Your own religion tells you that.
You are shooting the messenger.
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Bon08/B8unam.htm
Unam Sanctam
One God, One Faith, One Spiritual Authority
Pope Boniface VIII - 1302
Bull of Pope Boniface VIII promulgated November 18, 1302
Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins, as the Spouse in the Canticles [Sgs 6:8] proclaims: ‘One is my dove, my perfect one. She is the only one, the chosen of her who bore her,‘ and she represents one sole mystical body whose Head is Christ and the head of Christ is God [1 Cor 11:3]. In her then is one Lord, one faith, one baptism [Eph 4:5]. There had been at the time of the deluge only one ark of Noah, prefiguring the one Church, which ark, having been finished to a single cubit, had only one pilot and guide, i.e., Noah, and we read that, outside of this ark, all that subsisted on the earth was destroyed.
We venerate this Church as one, the Lord having said by the mouth of the prophet: ‘Deliver, O God, my soul from the sword and my only one from the hand of the dog.’ [Ps 21:20] He has prayed for his soul, that is for himself, heart and body; and this body, that is to say, the Church, He has called one because of the unity of the Spouse, of the faith, of the sacraments, and of the charity of the Church. This is the tunic of the Lord, the seamless tunic, which was not rent but which was cast by lot [Jn 19:23- 24]. Therefore, of the one and only Church there is one body and one head, not two heads like a monster; that is, Christ and the Vicar of Christ, Peter and the successor of Peter, since the Lord speaking to Peter Himself said: ‘Feed my sheep‘ [Jn 21:17], meaning, my sheep in general, not these, nor those in particular, whence we understand that He entrusted all to him [Peter]. Therefore, if the Greeks or others should say that they are not confided to Peter and to his successors, they must confess not being the sheep of Christ, since Our Lord says in John ‘there is one sheepfold and one shepherd.’ We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: ‘Behold, here are two swords‘ [Lk 22:38] that is to say, in the Church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: ‘Put up thy sword into thy scabbard‘ [Mt 26:52]. Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered for the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest.
However, one sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal authority, subjected to spiritual power. For since the Apostle said: ‘There is no power except from God and the things that are, are ordained of God‘ [Rom 13:1-2], but they would not be ordained if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were, were not led upwards by the other.
For, according to the Blessed Dionysius, it is a law of the divinity that the lowest things reach the highest place by intermediaries. Then, according to the order of the universe, all things are not led back to order equally and immediately, but the lowest by the intermediary, and the inferior by the superior. Hence we must recognize the more clearly that spiritual power surpasses in dignity and in nobility any temporal power whatever, as spiritual things surpass the temporal. This we see very clearly also by the payment, benediction, and consecration of the tithes, but the acceptance of power itself and by the government even of things. For with truth as our witness, it belongs to spiritual power to establish the terrestrial power and to pass judgement if it has not been good. Thus is accomplished the prophecy of Jeremias concerning the Church and the ecclesiastical power: ‘Behold to-day I have placed you over nations, and over kingdoms‘ and the rest. Therefore, if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power err, it will be judged by a superior spiritual power; but if the highest power of all err, it can be judged only by God, and not by man, according to the testimony of the Apostle: ‘The spiritual man judgeth of all things and he himself is judged by no man‘ [1 Cor 2:15]. This authority, however, (though it has been given to man and is exercised by man), is not human but rather divine, granted to Peter by a divine word and reaffirmed to him (Peter) and his successors by the One Whom Peter confessed, the Lord saying to Peter himself, ‘Whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in Heaven‘ etc., [Mt 16:19]. Therefore whoever resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God [Rom 13:2], unless he invent like Manicheus two beginnings, which is false and judged by us heretical, since according to the testimony of Moses, it is not in the beginnings but in the beginning that God created heaven and earth [Gen 1:1]. Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.
You. Don't. Have. A. Choice.
And I suppose that the cardinal rule of Catholics is to call non-Catholics *heretics*.
But that’s not Protestant bashing, is it?
Yeah, right.......
“In her Nobel Prize-winning book “
I stopped reading right there as I realized a Nobel award means the article is about an extreme left-wing person.
So reminding Catholics of their own papal encyclicals is now *Catholic bashing*?
Heretics need not tell Catholics what they are “bound” by.
***
Let the record show that it is once again the Romanist that resorts to personal attacks first.
Pope Francis is Protestant but — as a matter of accuracy and fairness — he’s a post-Christian Protestant, not a Christian Protestant.
Here’s a thought. Maybe we can appoint a former head of the Swiss Guard as a Special Prosecutor to investigate charges of Russian meddling in his election.
The most recent properly-elected head of the Roman church is named Benedict.
Not this again! Do Cardinal Burke and Archbishop Schneider not understand Unam Sanctam correctly, in your view? What are your credentials for claiming to interpret a Catholic magisterial document more correctly than a Cardinal and an Archbishop? You don't have any credentials like that, am I right?
Yes....unam sanctam again. Has it been negated?
Do Cardinal Burke and Archbishop Schneider not understand Unam Sanctam correctly, in your view?
I have no idea how they see it.
But I do see Roman Catholics change things or disregard things they don't like.....like Unam Sanctam.
What are your credentials for claiming to interpret a Catholic magisterial document more correctly than a Cardinal and an Archbishop? You don't have any credentials like that, am I right?
Only the ability to read.
Now, I can turn the question around to you and some of your fellow anti-pope friends.....who gives you the authority to question YOUR pope?
You a Cardinal?
Really. So the college of cardinals and the white smoke and the whole show never happened? Can you get a pope anulled just like a marriage? You Romans never cease to amaze me. Your doctrines and magisterium reign supreme unless it’s inconvenient then it doesn’t count. Now I know how pelosi and the other abortion loving democrats and the pedophile priests remain in good standing in your sect.
They interpret church encyclicals like they interpret the Bible.
It means whatever we want it to mean and it doesn’t matter if it’s the opposite of the plain text and what I said yesterday. You’re just a Catholic basher reeeeeeeeee.
Roman Catholicism is guilty of eisegesis....reading something into the text that isn't there to support a doctrine. TV evangelists do it a lot.
Rome has practically built their worship of Mary on about three verses taken completely out of context.
Eisegesis is a horrible way to understand the Bible as it leads to a lot of false teachings as we've witnessed.
If these Caths are so willing to revolt against their Pope if they believe him wrong, they still have yet to answer what Luther did that was so bad.
I tried to ask once and all I got was a foaming at the mouth rant about how I was going to Hell.
So what’s so hard about....
” Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”
....to understand?
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
It says what is says.
If it doesn’t mean what it says, then what does it mean?
And if it doesn’t mean what is says, then why didn’t someone make it say what they meant?
Because that is precisely what Roman Catholicism does with words. The normal meaning of words has to be twisted or redefined to justify their false doctrines.
Kneeling before an idol is not worship in Roman Catholicism.
Kneeling before an idol is worship in Buddhism.
There is absolutely no difference between the two.
The Roman Catholics who are posting article after article after article about how bad the current pope is are doing the very same thing Luther was doing. They refuse to see it though.
The only difference being A: Luther was a doctor of theology, and B: Luther risked his life for it!
Bergolio is not the Pope. Benedict XVI is still the Pope. He was forced out by the imposter. So, not the same as Luther.
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