Posted on 11/19/2014 12:20:09 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
The high five, which left some Catholics I know muttering, he explained in the Huffington Post a few days afterward. At a three-hour meeting at the Vatican, Francis listened to several Evangelical leaders talk about their faith and their passion for evangelism. He then responded with “a dynamic evangelical message.” He “wanted everyone to have a personal life-changing encounter with Christ and enter into a personal relationship with Jesus and become bold witnesses for the Gospel. Religion is not the way; Jesus is.”
Robison, sitting next to the pope, was pleased. “So fervent was his message that as he concluded I said, ‘As an evangelist, I want you to know what you just said deserves a high five!’” The translator apparently had to explain this idiom to the pope and when he understood what his Evangelical friend wanted, Francis raised his hand. In the picture, both men are smiling, though one of them looks as if he hadn’t done this before.
As I say, some Catholic friends muttered and grumbled at what they apparently thought was an unpapal act. It was, I think obviously, an act of kindness and friendship, with Francis adapting himself to someone else’s way of doing things. If Jesus could eat with prostitutes and tax collectors, popes can exchange high fives with American Evangelicals.
James Robison comes from a world very different from mine, and even more different from Francis’. Part of the difference is cultural, but the more important difference is religious. The Catholic and the Southern Baptist understand the Church differently, the Bible differently, the way God forms and transforms us differently. Our churches have a crucifix and a Tabernacle, theirs may have a cross (but probably don’t) and definitely don’t have a Tabernacle. It would be wrong to understate the differences in the spirit of Christian friendship. The Catholic forced to worship in a Baptist church would feel the room empty, the Baptist forced to worship in a Catholic church would feel it filled with idols. Each might, out of charity, treat the other’s church as if it were a version of his own, but that would be only a polite fiction.
And yet. Eating together in Rome, the Catholic pope and the Evangelical pastors listening to each other listened to men who spoke of souls and of Jesus Christ in the same way, who talked in similar ways about someone they knew and served, who shared the desire that others come to know and serve him too.
Sitting round a table with Robison and his peers and two other Catholics, I felt the same thing. They speak a different language than I do as a Catholic. Our Lady and the saints were not presences they felt and friends they would claim. They do not enjoy the sacraments. They do not look to the Magisterium for help in knowing what Christians believe and how they ought to live. They do not, the Catholic would say, have all the gifts of God that bring us happiness.
And yet. Here are men who love Jesus. If Jesus walked into the room, they’d hit their knees as fast, if not faster, than the Catholics with them. If he told them, “You go join their Church,” they’d do it. Perhaps not right away, and not without grumbling, and only after double- and triple-checking, but they would do it.
“The enemy has kept many Christians from loving one another as Christ loves us and have failed to recognize the importance of supernatural unity even with all of the unique diversity,” Robison wrote in the Huffington Post article. “We know it is God's will for those who have been born from above to become bold witnesses for His glory and Kingdom purpose and to go into all the world and make disciples of Christ. We have been commanded to love God with all of our heart and our neighbors as ourselves.”
We can explain the growing friendship of Evangelicals and Catholics as the result of culture: two once-dominant and now increasingly marginalized groups find each other to be allies in their marginalization, while sharing a belief in the moral law much of their society rejects. They find themselves friends, like the lonely kids on the playground who won’t have any friends if they don’t band together or the nerds in the computer club everyone else teases.
That’s certainly a reason. But what Robison calls supernatural unity seems to be a reason as well. In this meeting and others I’ve attended, people sharply divided by the Reformation felt themselves brothers not only because they found themselves huddled together in the cultural doghouse, but because they shared a friendship with the Lord. I suspect Francis saw this in his meeting, that he knew that he and the Evangelicals met, as Robison writes, “in the presence of the Lord.”
Meeting in the presence of the Lord does not erase the real differences. Whether those hosts in the Tabernacle are really Jesus or only pieces of bread remains a serious and divisive question, and a difference that epitomizes all the others. That two men share a close friendship with Jesus does not mean they will agree. One friend may be quite wrong about what Jesus wants. He may not be listening very well.
But Evangelicals and Cathoilcs see more and more that they are friends, not just allies but friends, and that counts for a lot in this world. I would never in a million years high five the pope. But I’m pleased that James Robison felt he could, and in fact that he felt he must.
David Mills, former executive editor of First Things, is a writer and author of Discovering Mary. His webblog can be found at www.patheos.com/blogs/davidmills.
So? Blathernaut still didn’t make that judgment solely because of that one statement by Francis. That was my point.
No argument from me, re the Catholic understanding of what a saint is. If you don't mind, I'm going to expand on those steps you posted to put some order to them:
If entire process successfully repeats:
“Religion is not the way; Jesus is.”--- "The Pope said this? If so, he ought to resign."
------------------
aphorism: a terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation
“Religion is not the way; Jesus is.”
This statement embodies a general falsehood, not a general truth.
The Catholic Religion was given to us by Christ himself as the means of our salvation. Christ can not be divorced from the Holy Religion He founded.
One Lord, one faith, one baptism.
2000 year old tradition based on Petrine authority. Without authority all else is in essence whimsical. Just look around.
I also like it! ;-)
I see it as the genuine work of the Holy Spirit.
The Pope is a Jesuit. That should explain things a bit.
__________________________
Fr. James Schall is also a Jesuit. What does “being a Jesuit” explain to you?
I suppose that you meant that he consecrated the HOST.
The fact that he did not genuflect does not automatically mean that he is showing disrespect. Our very good Bishop cannot genuflect due to the awful condition of his knees.
My own husband cannot genuflect because of a hip problem. We should not be quick to judge the motives of others from appearances only.
I can think of a number of non-Catholics who would also disagree. So what?
Pope of Your Own Church - Five Signs
If there is anything I have noticed since I returned to the Church it is that people who find themselves on the extreme opposite ends of the spectrum of opinions in the Church are actually, despite their different points of view, often quite similar in attitude.
When I first returned to the Church I began attending a parish where some rather unorthodox things would take place. The first time I saw a woman get up to deliver the homily, I thought to myself, “Well hmm, I don’t think that is permitted. I am going to have to think about this.”
I very quickly came to the conclusion that as I had recently exited from a life of rebellion, I did not plan to continue it within the Church. Since then I have developed, over time, a love for the Church’s teachings and a deep trust that the Holy Spirit guides the Church, despite human failings, politics, and sin.
As I have made this journey I have noticed that on the opposite ends of the spectrum of opinions, there are groups of people who continue to make their own rules.
Here are some of the warning signs I have noticed:
1. Stuck in the Past or the Future: Either nothing the Church has taught post-Vatican II is trustworthy or everything post-Vatican II is the bees knees and nothing else matters. In order to support their opinions, these people either refer to quotes from Saints and popes from fifty years ago or more that seem to contradict current Church teaching or dismiss Church teaching with a wave of the hand and the mantra, “Some day the Church will catch up with my ideas.”
2. Voracious Support for Certain Church Teachings, Disregard for Others: Catholics who are intensely dedicated to some of the Church’s teachings but easily dismiss and disregard others while vilifying those who believe in them as either “leftist,” if the teachings are social, or “ultra-conservative,” if the teachings are moral.
3. Opinions About Liturgy Are the Standard: These people either turn their nose up at liturgies in Latin or liturgies with guitars and drum sets. Some believe liturgical rules are made to be broken and the Mass needs “creative interpretation” and others think liturgy should, in every parish around the world, resemble the parish they attend (or their dreams for the parish they attend). Either way, they are sure their way is the right way.
4. Bodyguard or Prophet: People in both of these camps see the Church’s enemies as primarily inside the Church. They are either intensely focused on defending the Church against infiltrators and attack anyone they think is bringing the ship down or they think the Church needs prophetic people who don’t think like the rest of the sheep, so they break the rules in advance of the Church catching up to their “visionary” ideas.
5. People First or Rules First: When approaching Church teaching some do not to adhere to anything that might hurt other peoples’ feelings or be seen as telling other people what to do. And others defend Church teaching by attacking people who do not follow it, believing the biggest enemy in the Church is people who don’t follow the rules, rather than prideful people who see following the rules and extending mercy to the wounded as mutually exclusive.
If you find yourself in any of these characterizations, I hope you do not feel that I am making fun of you or attacking you. I find myself, at times, on both sides of the spectrum. Instead, this is an invitation to step back on the narrow road with Jesus and the Church. It is an invitation to everyone, including myself, to live intimately united with the Church.
* * *
There is something attractive and mysterious about rebellion. But beneath our tendency to rebel can be found a deeper desire to live the most profound rebellion, the revolution against sin and the world’s false values.
Rather than being rebels inside and against the Church to serve our own ideas of what is right, let us instead be rebels who dedicate ourselves to profoundly living the counter-cultural Gospel values that Jesus has given us in Scripture, Tradition, and the living witness of the Church.
The Church will be re-established properly some distant day. However, during this time when Satan is permitted to rule to earth and the Church along with general society is subject to chastisements and human folly run wild, the Holy Spirit is withholding His guidance, quite obviously. "It will become clearer in 1960".
The Church has already been *properly* established by Christ. There is nothing in Scripture nor in the Magisterium about any “re-establishment.”
“When I first returned to the Church I began attending a parish where some rather unorthodox things would take place. The first time I saw a woman get up to deliver the homily, I thought to myself, “Well hmm, I don’t think that is permitted. I am going to have to think about this.”
Women can not be priests or deacons, who are the only clergy that can deliver the Homily. If you saw a woman do the Homily it was a gross violation of Catholic doctrine and should have been brought up to the parish priest first, then the bishop.
You are absolutely correct about such things. However, I think we have to remember that satan will often tempt us according to extremes. These days...those extremes can be found between the liberalized, cafeteria-type mentality on one hand...and the utterly (what I call) uber-traditional on the other hand. Both extremes place trust in SELF rather than God. The liberal knows better than the Church teaching on contraception, marriage, women priests, etc....and the uber-traditionalist knows how to lead the Church better than the Pope. There is horrendous danger in both extremes. Both lead away from the protection (placed by God) in His Church. Satan is evil and he is not stupid. He wishes us all to leave the Church....or, at the least, to weaken her.
Means he’s cool.
Define “cool.”
The writer is falsely equating opposition to corruption with "rebellion".
Purely silly. Obviously, you did not read the entire article.
What is "purely silly" is that anyone would find profundity in assertions that rely on a series of ridiculous caricatures for support.
There is GREAT danger in a prideful attitude.
That is true.
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