Posted on 02/10/2021 11:35:07 AM PST by ebb tide
The senior religious director of the archdiocese announces the pope will deliver a video message Feb. 18 at this year's Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, or LA REC.
The event is known for providing platform to heterodox speakers, like pro-gay Jesuit James Martin, who spoke in 2020.
But despite such scandal, the upcoming, formal papal address will validate LA REC.
This year's speakers will include a host of dissident Catholics, like Sr. Carol Zinn — involved with the notorious Association of U.S. Catholic Priests, which rejects Church teaching on doctrine such as female ordination and the evil of homosexual acts — and another subversive Jesuit, Fr. Gregory Boyle.
San Diego bishop Robert McElroy, a climate change enthusiast who once said abortion is not a preeminent issue, will also speak at this year's conference.
Requesting anonymity, one priest who has ministered extensively in California remarked LA REC is a sham.
"From Pope Francis to Bp. Robert Barron, we have men devoid of Christ and thus left pushing drivel that suffices for religious sentiment — this notion that religious people are just nice guys, who never judge and are open to all belief systems. Of course, it's damning nonsense. And tragically, none of this religious sentiment will save a single soul!"
For years, many Catholics have been calling for an end to the conference.
Playing with the acronym LA REC, the priest said he calls the conference, "The LA Train Wreck."
Ping
LA WRECK....................
So not looking to start a fight, but asking two honest questions.
1) How far can the pope move away from traditional Catholic teachings and still be considered “not a heretic”?
2) If a pope does go rouge, what controls does the Church have to bring him back in line with traditional teachings?
Full disclosure - I am a Baptist by upbringing and consider myself a conservative Protestant (non-denominational) now.
Welll,if your job as pope is to try and destroy the church from within.....Giving anti Catholics like James martin a strong voice certainly helps you with your agenda,,,,
I remember when the phrase “Is the Pope Catholic” was a dad joke instead of a legitimate concern
It’s a difficult, and to some extent unprecedented, situation. There have been bad popes before: adulterers, scoundrels, near-heretics. But there were counter-weights that limited the scope of papal power and prevented the Church from completely going off the rails. Specifically, the Christian monarchs of Europe limited the damage of bad popes, as they were involved with and/or controlled the selection of bishops in their own countries or principalities. Also, at one time, the King of France, the King of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor all claimed “jus exclusivae” (”the right to exclude”), i.e., the right to veto selection of unacceptably bad man as pope.
The French Revolution (1789) kicked off a 130-year process (culminating with the end of World War I) that terminated, for practical purposes, the temporal power of European monarchs. The Church was a bystander and an opponent of the forces that destroyed monarchy in Europe, i.e. the Pope himself lost temporal power over the areas around Rome with the unification of Italy in 1870, but oddly enough the papacy was a beneficiary of the political transformation. With all the European monarchs deposed or defanged, a vacuum was created and all power over the Catholic Church was gradually consolidated in the papacy ~1870-1919. Around the time of the First Vatican Council (1868-1870) at which the concept of “papal infallibility” was articulated, some Catholics warned of the danger of giving the pope too much power over the Church (e.g., Lord Acton’s famous ‘power corrupts & absolute power corrupts absolutely’ was in reference to the changes happening to the papacy).
So the papacy became more powerful in the 19th century, but for whatever reasons, for approximately a century and a half, divine providence appeared to save the Church from the catastrophe of a bad pope using the office to destroy the Church. And then Bergoglio happened in 2013, and all bets are off.
My dad once told me that the wisest man is often the saddest as he can see a crisis before it happen, knows how to avoid it, but is often unable to prevent the it.
I fear that this pope will be the demise of the Catholic Church. I don’t believe all of the tenants of the Church but I do recognize that there are some very good Christians in the church and the church has done much good in this world.
“Through some crack or fissure the smoke of satan has entered the Church.”
He has told us that we have a duty to follow the mandates of the United Nations - the godless United Nations.
I look at him and just shake my head.
“I fear that this pope will be the demise of the Catholic Church.”
Not according to our Lord.
It may be the demise of the Church’s temporal riches, its pomp and circumstance, the universities, the hospitals, the orphanages...
But the Church that our Lord established will still exist, even in the absence of visible manifestation. There are, I think, enough Catholics right here on FR to ensure that.
we have a duty to follow Christ, and that is all...................
Yes, we are only called to be faithful.
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.