Posted on 05/07/2019 3:43:32 PM PDT by Ennis85
This is not a clerical bureaucracy. It is no mere human organization. It is the Great Mystery (Eph. 5:32) --- we should speak this on our knees --- with reference to Christ and the Church.
We don’t want gay people top go away. We want them to behave themselves.
You don't leave the Bride-- you abase yourself to Heaven and implore God to rescue Her.
It’s a literary reference. Look it up.
L
Christ ≠ church. Any church.
This is not a clerical bureaucracy. It is no mere human organization. It is the Great Mystery (Eph. 5:32) --- we should speak this on our knees --- with reference to Christ and the Church.
No one should bow down to a church. The church bows down to Christ.
The body of Christ is something a person is, not something a person joins and can leave.
And Roman Catholicism is no bride of Christ.
To equate the corruption and immorality that infests Catholicism with the purity and sinlessness of Christ is reprehensible.
If Catholicism wishes to take on itself the name of the Bride of Christ, it needs to start acting like it and at this point, as has been the case for well over 1,000 years based on evidence from within Catholicism itself, it doesn't and it hasn't.
Get back to me when the Catholic hierarchy cleans house and lives in humble, repentant obedience to the Scripture it claims to have written.
They can start here......
1 Corinthians 5:1-13 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
This business of asking God to*rescue* Catholicism is meaningless. They need to take action. They know what to do. God has already revealed it to them. They are now responsible to act on it instead of begging God to do for them what they won't do in simple obedience.If they are not going to obey, then why should God be expected to deliver them?
They do not need to go away. They need to repent.
This is here you go astray from the words of Our Lord. He warns repeatedly that our Faith --- which is to say, our Life within the Body --- may fail.
Any of us may fail. He knows that Judas will fail; He prays that Peter will NOT fail, but that when he repents of his dereliction and recovers, he may then confirm his brethren.. If His multiple, urgent warnings and prayers do not speak to that reality --- the reality that we may depart from our life of faith and love within Him --- then they mean nothing at all.
Christ says explicitly that a branch can be CUT OFF from the True Vine,and that the cut-off branch will die and then be thrown into the fire to be burned. He is speaking of His own Body: He is the vine, we are the branches.
Again, He warns that while many patches of soil receive seed (the Word of God) from the Sower, may even receive it gladly, and yet the seed may die out and not bear fruit. In some cases, the seed is eaten up by bird and never even sprouts. In other cases the living plant springs up, but dies out, either because the soil is too shallow, or because its growth is stunted by being planted among rocks, or because rampant weeds spring up along with it and choke it out.
Once again, the life and fruitfulness of the seed means His Word within us, that which makes us alive. This is a different analogy with the same object: a warning that even though our Faith was once planted, one sprouted, was once alive, it may yet die out.
Christ has told you that the fact that you believe in Him and you love Him now, does not guarantee that you always will, since as long as you live and breathe on this earth, you have that dread power to say "Non serviam." That's why there are imperative verbs in the New Testament: that's the meaning of Christ telling us what WE must do. Because God created us "without us" ---that is, created us without our having anything to say about it --- but He does not save us "without us."
He knows that your faith may fail.
"Because of the multiplication of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold. But the one who perseveres to the end will be saved." (Matthew 24:12-13) Noting can cut us off from the Love of Christ: nothing material or spiritual can do that, nothing visible or indivisible. Except that we can refuse that love. We can refuse to persevere. This is why He says we must persevere; only the one who perseveres to the end will be saved.
You wrote, "This business of asking God to*rescue* Catholicism is meaningless. They need to take action."
Quite right. Asking for "rescue" without our corresponding action, is meaningless. My point exactly.
In terms of his own particular organization, he may be right.
you are, of course correct....have there been evil persons in the Church throughout history....of course there have been.....Sinners are the reason that we need a church in the first place aand you don't exclude them from your midst......you, however, don't appoint them to positions of power in the church. While Catholicism has probably had homosexual persons in it for thousands of years, only recently did she succumb to the "Politically correct" notion that it was wrong to keep them out of high positions.......members of the church....of course, we are all sinners....leaders of the Church.....nope, keep them as behaviorally correct as is humanly possible.
as a side note, the incidents of sexual misbehavior is FAR greater in Protestant denominations than in the Catholic Church.....the difference, of course, if a Catholic priest is involved, the victim can sue the archdiocese of New York rather than Fred's church of what's happening now....
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.