Posted on 07/10/2023 12:38:23 PM PDT by ebb tide
"Go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Known as "the Great Commission," spreading the Gospel and making converts is a basic duty of all Christians, as set forth by Our Lord in sacred scripture. At the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis reiterated this call in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.
But the results of the Church's evangelization efforts during Francis's pontificate have been disappointing, to say the least. In Francis's native South America, Catholicism has been losing members in large numbers to Pentecostalism. Francis's home country of Argentina has seen the biggest decline, with the Catholic share has plummeting from 76% to 49% in the last decade. Germany, which has fulsomely embraced Francis's "synodality" and repudiated core Catholic teachings, has seen a record 500,000 leave the Church just in the last year. And due to the Vatican's financial difficulties and incompetent administration, it can no longer fund missionary activities.
It does not help that Pope Francis's teachings increasingly emphasize religious indifferentism. Yesterday, Francis announced that he was appointing 49-year old Lisbon Auxiliary Bishop Americo Aguiar as a Cardinal, despite the fact that he is still only an auxiliary bishop and the appointment means that Lisbon now has two cardinals at the same time. Bishop Aguiar, who was a Socialist city council member in Portugal in the 1990s, recently set forth a worldview that denies the need for evangelization. Speaking of World Youth Day, which he is helping to organize, Bishop Aguiar denied that the purpose of the event was to convert souls to the Church: "We don't want to convert young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that." Instead, he said that the "main message" of the event was, "I think differently, I feel differently, I organize my life differently, but we are brothers and we are going to build the future together." He drove home the point that atheism was part of cultural "richness" that the event promotes. He connected his message to that of Pope Francis and his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, "which the Pope has made a megalomanic effort to make echo in the hearts of all." And indeed, this message strongly echoes Pope Francis's recent "Declaration on Human Fraternity," which exalt 'fraternity' and vague social goals, but contain no mention of Christ or the Gospel-- and give hearty, unqualified praise to religious pluralism. Whatever one might make of this message, it is one that seems to prioritize social harmony over evangelization and conversion-- and thus is not the message of Christ.
Similar theological threads can be found in the writings of Fr. James Martin, whom Francis recently named to the Synod on Synodality. Fr. Martin has said that Christ may even command people to apostatize in the name of serving "the greater good." Fr. Martin again connects these views to Francis, who (Fr. Martin states) "emphasizes discernment for people facing complicated situations, where a black-and-white approach seems inadequate" and the "normal rules seem inadequate to the situation." These heterodox views also find favor with others close to Francis, such as Cardinal Hollerich (relator general of the Synod on Synodality) and soon-to-be-Cardinal Tucho Fernandez (the new head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith).
Thus, a pontificate that began by proclaiming the need for evangelization ends by embracing something that seems disturbingly close to the "dictatorship of relativism" denounced by Cardinal Ratzinger: "Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be 'tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine,' seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires. We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism." It remains to be seen whether Francis's approach will "bear fruit that will endure."
Ping
“God’s Church?”
NOT!
He drove home the point that atheism was part of cultural “richness” that the event promotes.
What???????
Hey catholics, if you want a chance to go to heaven then get as far away from the catholic religion as possible. Find the real Jesus, repent and ask for salvation.
Salvation has nothing at all to do with the catholic religion.
And a bang up job of not converting anybody he’s doing, too. No young person on earth would want to be part of PachamamaChurch.
Is it saving souls the priority for every Christian?
Dear Catholics,
Your religion has cancer.
Signed,
A not particularly religious guy looking on from outside.
I think this development was inevitible and many denominations will die in the onlsaught from Christ’s followers who will see the apostasy for what it is - denying Christ. It is their own members awakened to Christ in the end days who will set fire to many denominations - they represent the spiritual fire that will be unleashed on them.
That’s OK, the LCMS wants to bring young people to Christ; if the Catholic Church doesn’t want ‘em, we do, and so does our Lord who died for them.
were watching the catholic church devour itself like most empires it will be destroyed from within
Lotta haters here.
Our religion will NEVER be defeated .....but this Pope is trying very hard.
The CATHOLIC Church is PERFECTION , except for some of the people in it!
It certainly has precious little to do with the college of Cardinals, especially at this point in history.
But, thanks to grace and providence, we will still be here 500 years from now. Don’t ask me how—God will figure it out.
BTW—I just saw the real Jesus. He was in our Church, hanging out under the appearance of Bread waiting for people to drop in.
If you go into most non-Catholic Churches, occasionally you can see bread. And most of them are right that what they have is really bread. Cool.
Not some, most.
The left wants to convert our children into something they are not. Meanwhile, the organized church is scared of trying to convert children to Christianity.
We have failed.
No. BIGOT.
In Jesus’ time he had the Pharisees who conspired and ultimately put the Son of Man to death. Today, we have Francis and his house of Pharisees. The Catholic church has become the Whore of Babylon.
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