Posted on 01/18/2012 3:19:15 PM PST by NYer
.- Pope Benedict XVI said today that achieving Christian unity requires more than “cordiality and cooperation” and that it must be accompanied by interior conversion.
“Faith in Christ and interior conversion, both individual and communal, must constantly accompany our prayer for Christian unity,” said the Pope to over 8,000 pilgrims gathered in the Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall on Jan. 18.
The Pope’s comments mark the start of the 2012 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity that runs until Jan. 25. It will be observed by over 300 Christian churches and ecclesial communities around the globe.
The Pope asked for “the Lord in a particular way to strengthen the faith of all Christians, to change our hearts and to enable us to bear united witness to the Gospel.”
In this way, he said, they “will contribute to the new evangelization and respond ever more fully to the spiritual hunger of the men and women of our time.”
The Pope explained that the concept of a week of prayer for Christian unity was initiated in 1908 by Paul Wattson, an Episcopalian minister from Maryland. One year later, he became a Catholic and was subsequently ordained to the priesthood.
Pope Benedict recalled how the initiative was supported by his predecessors Pope St. Pius X and Pope Benedict XV. It was then “developed and perfected” in the 1930s by the Frenchman Abbé Paul Couturier, who promoted prayer “for the unity of the Church as Christ wishes and according to the means he wills.”
The mandate for the week of prayer, the Pope underscored, comes from the wish of Christ himself at the Last Supper “that they may all be one.” He observed that this mission was given a particular impetus by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) but added that “the unity we strive for cannot result merely from our own efforts.” Rather, “it is a gift we receive and must constantly invoke from on high.”
The theme for 2012 Week of Prayer – “All shall be changed by the victory of Jesus Christ our Lord” – was crafted by the Polish Ecumenical Council. Pope Benedict said it reflects “their own experience as a nation,” which stayed faithful to Christ “in the midst of trials and upheavals,” including years of occupation by the Nazis and later the Communists.
The Pope tied the victory the Polish people experienced over their oppressors to overcoming the disunity that marks Christians.
He said that the “unity for which we pray requires inner conversion, both shared and individual,” and it cannot be “limited to cordiality and cooperation.” Instead, Christians must accept “all the elements of unity which God has conserved for us.”
Ecumenism, the Pope stated, is not an optional extra for Catholics but is “the responsibility of the entire Church and of all the baptized.” Christians, he said, must make praying for unity an “integral part” of their prayer life, “especially when people from different traditions come together to work for victory in Christ over sin, evil, injustice and the violation of human dignity.”
Pope Benedict then touched on the lack of unity in the Christian community, which he said “hinders the effective announcement of the Gospel and endangers our credibility.” Evangelizing formerly Christian countries and spreading the Gospel to new places will be “more fruitful if all Christians together announce the truth of the Gospel and Jesus Christ, and give a joint response to the spiritual thirst of our times,” he explained.
The Pope concluded his comments with the hope that this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity will lead to “increased shared witness, solidarity and collaboration among Christians, in expectation of that glorious day when together we will all be able to celebrate the Sacraments and profess the faith transmitted by the Apostles.”
The general audience finished with Pope Benedict addressing pilgrims in various languages, including greeting a group of men and women from the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, before leading the crowd in the Our Father and imparting his apostolic blessing.
Still can’t prove your accusations ey?
Do you still think dodges work with me?
Deal or no?
How could the early Christian community honor the Gospels as authoritative unless they knew who had written them? Even granting such a late date as some critics surmise, it is doubtful that the Gospels could have gotten anywhere unless they were certainly attributable to someone who was recognized as knowing what they were writing about. On the other hand, I must say that some critics assume a high degree of gullibility in the first-century church.
To this end, Hengel [CarMoo.Int, 66] has argued that the Gospels must have received their titles immediately - not in the second century. For an anonymous author to have penned a Gospel, and have it accepted as from the hand of one of the Quartet or any authoritative person, would have required them to first produce the Gospel, then present it as the work of another; they would have to concoct some story as to how it came peculiarly to be in their possession; get around the problem of why a work by such a person disappeared or was previously unknown; then get the church at large, first in his area and then throughout the Roman Empire (and would not the claimed discovery of such a document cause a sensation, and controversy?), to accept this work as genuine.
Can any critic explain how these logistic difficulties were overcome? I have noted that they do well in offering generalities, but never get down to the specifics of how Joe Gentile could have managed to pull off such a hoax on the church as a whole. Is there any parallel to this in secular history, where an enormous group at large was bamboozled by (and continued to be bamboozled by) not just one forgery, but four, attributed in a couple of cases to members of an inner circle, in widely separated places and times?
I'll add that under the "Q/Marcan priority" hypothesis, how is it they suppose that "Matthew" and "Luke" would choose to use an anonymous document as a source? Mark could not be recognized as authoritative until it was known what source it came from; yet if the critics are right, "Mark" was considered authoritative enough to use not by just one, but by two others working independently of one another. (One way around this scenario is to hypothesize Christian "prophets" through whom these works might have been received and recognized; for a response to this, see below.)
At the beginning of the second century, there would have been first-generation Christians alive who recalled the apostles and their teaching, and many more second-generation Christians who would have had information passed directly to them.
We have early witnesses to the authorship of some of the Gospels. Papias wrote around 110-130, and he surely did not design the authorship of Matthew and Mark on the spur of the moment. That being so, how could anyone have dared to attribute the Gospels to anyone other than the genuine authors with these first- and second-generation witnesses still alive? Believers in the 70s-90s, when critics suppose that the Gospels were authored anonymously, would have known of no works of Matthew and the others; believers after the 90s who descended from this generation and lived into the lifetime of Papias would have had no tradition of such documents.
I Peter 2:4-5
To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
No where does Scripture say those who came from their graves and walked about Jerusalem ever returned to their graves. So there goes the bogus, “I do so hope ...” hokum.
Luke 9:26 "If anyone is ashamed of Me and MY WORDS, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in His glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels."
This is not for my salvation, I'm good to go at any time with no trepidation, no mystery, no fear! Praise God! Thank You, Jesus, for delivering from the cult of catholicism. And I'm never ashamed of YOUR WORD - I embrace YOUR WORD ALONE!
I'm blessed!
That was very nicely presented - you have a real talent at dealing with the ridiculously unreasonable
Interesting perspective. The all pervasive attempts by the RCC to keep the doubt out there in order to retain the control is insidious. The RCC needs to take credit away from the Holy Spirit to retain it’s earthly kingdom.
Claiming something was said twice is not *refreshing* anyone’s memory.
Without evidence to back it up, nobody is obligated to believe you.
So we won’t until you provide them.
Of course he's sure. And so am I. Nobody ever made that claim. If you think they did, it's up to you to provide the evidence for it.
Until then, without evidence to the contrary, the accusation or assertion is conceded and CB is exonerated.
And everyone knows that those were the Old Testament saints who were released at Christ’s death and later taken to heaven. To try to associate them with New Testament Saints is ludicrous.
Yes, I do know that Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter both died later, although Scripture doesn’t actually say so.
The message of these miracles is that Jesus is God and can raise the dead.
Remember that when He raised Lazarus, He specifically speaks of the resurrection, He says “I am the resurrection and the life, He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”
Again, it is not contradictory to Scripture to believe that Mary is with her Son at His will.
Pity the words of Jesus are lost on you.
I will prayer for you.
Believe in those myths as you want.
LOL, nearly unable to stop, actually.
So, we have here a protestant arguing the case that those who were closer to the life of Jesus would know better than those separated by many years.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
You have just made the case for the Church regarding the writings of the early fathers. The case for the fact that those fathers knew an Apostle and studied and because Christian with an Apostle.
And you have just made the case for Apostolic succession and why it is important to trace the lineage back through the generations.
You have also made my case that protestants do not read or consider what is written to them, it is all knew jerk reaction of readied pat responses.
Why do I say this?
I Never said anything about discounting the reliability and authority of the Bible. I said the Bible does not say within itself who those authors are and that by accepting who the early church claims they are, one is relying on Tradition.
That God exists and the Bible is His word, is a matter of faith and without that faith, one reading the Bible is lost.
So, my statement is true.
We accept the Bible on faith and tradition.
As Paul said, we are many members of the one Body of Christ because we share in the One Bread.
1 Corinthians
Paul believed in the Eucharist and Christ present in it.
So, there are untold people who have been bodily resurrected into heaven?
Further proof that the Assumption of Mary DOES NOT contradict Scripture.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places IN CHRIST." Eph. 2:6.
"...which is CHRIST IN YOU the hope of glory." Co. 1:27.
We, as believers are ALREADY IN CHRIST. He is ALREADY IN US. Why would Paul believe that we would need to continue to put Christ into us?
A good thinking cap would do wonders.
Pity those who embracing Catholicism which means void of the power of Holy Spirit where prayers are useless, vain and produce nothing - like Jesus spoke about 'the babbling pagans'. The jealous have no way to react to Spirit-filled children of God but 'act holy' since they live in bondage being controlled by man which is the result of not hearing and obeying God's Word ALONE!
God's Holy Spirit inspired Word alone is The Final Authority for His children who are His church. God's children never listen to the voice of another and no one can snatch them out of God's Hand. They are secured in their eternal life for It Is Written.
Not of New Testaments saints which Mary would have been one. It would be a lie to include those Old Testament saints with the New Testament saints which we are concerned with in this case.
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