Posted on 12/18/2014 8:27:09 PM PST by ebb tide
I kinda wasn't too surprised to hear the pope say he prays that people fall to temptation.
It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out the kind of Catholics he curses.
You know the irony of his ruthless perversion of prayer and role of a Pope?
Catholics who want their religion taught to them are the very Catholics who humbly acknowledge their temptation and sin. That is why we constantly beg for pastoral perspectives on ways to recognize the devil long before he has us duped, ways to circumvent temptation and sin and remain in a state of Sanctifying Grace.
We are, in fact, the very people who are examining our conscience, going to confession to have our sins absolved, filling our soul with the Body and Blood of Christ so we have the strength to not act on our temptations.
When we go to the Pope to ask him to preserve the institution to cure sinners with Sanctifying Grace, he utters a curse that we fall into sin.
This is nothing new. We have been dealing with priests and bishops like him for as long as we can remember.
They stop giving us the tools we need to stay in a state of Grace. Then they say things that make listeners think sins aren't sins anymore. Then when those of us who know they are sins ask for the Church that absolves sins, they get pissy and start insulting us, calling us names. They publicly tell the congregation that folks like us who don't want to sell our soul for a hug and kiss from them, are antiquated people who don't know what love is.
They send hostility and venom our direction, throw the word "Pharisee" around and misrepresent Christ and the Gospel.
This one curses us.
I wish he would simply have the decency to face the reasons he doesn't want us around. Our presence and witness reminds people what they are doing - or teaching others to do - is sinful. What we have to do to ask for the Church that absolves sins and gives out Sanctifying Grace, makes what they teach and do, a lie. They can't feel good about what they are saying and doing so they concoct a tall story that we are viscous people who deserve their slander, insults and exiles.
The pope has seriously damaged Church teaching. It has robbed people I love and care about of right judgement they need for their salvation. It would be sinful to express how I feel about his antics. But in my worst hour I have never wished he fall into temptation and sin to fix his perversion of humility.
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
I wonder if the Pope has ever read the Bible. I know lots of Catholics who haven’t. I haven’t read it enough but I’ve said that prayer thousands of times.
Get over yourself. You were never on any ping list of mine.
But I will respond to you when you claim you “knew” what the author meant.
Looks like a ping list to me , terycarl; Larry Lucido; fatima; Jeff Chandler; Ken H,yup.It is.Somebody is fibbing.
Somebody appears to be drunk.
Ebb tide, I'm not sure, but I think Fatima is asking you not to ping him or her anymore. I just want to make that clear, incase it wasn't already, that no pinging should happen from henceforth, absolutely no pinging, not even an emergency ping. "Never Ping [Fatima]." That means NO. Definitely do not ping him TWICE to the same thread, as that would be redundant in the first place, but even the first one is NOT ALLOWED.
That was a reply ping. He was just pinging the people in the thread. You weren’t on the ping list. If he can’t ping you even when he replies to you, basically that’s just silly and I don’t want to explain how silly that very silly request is.
This statement is inconsistent with everything I know or have been taught about the Catholic Church.
I have said in the past that this Pope's novel philosophic approach is either very right or very wrong.
At the time I was kind of sitting on the fence as to which was which.
Now, not so much
Given the Pope's comments, if correctly reported, words would fail me too.
Given the Pope's comments, if correctly reported, words would fail me too.
Blog about nothing!
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2014/12/15/pope_francis_rigidity_is_a_sign_of_a_weak_heart/1114830
I didn’t see the actual homily linked in the blog, so I searched for it.
This is actually one of the most disturbing and irrational things I’ve seen the Pope say so far. He’s very fond of railing against “legalists” and “Pharisees” and people who are not as humble and merciful as he is, although I’m not sure exactly who these people are. It’s true that there were once Catholics who were perhaps a little obsessed with the possibility of sinning, but that related to themselves - this was called “scrupulosity,” and actually was itself something that could be matter for confession. That is, fixating on one’s sins or the fear or possibility that one may have sinned was wrong in itself.
But these supposed Pharisees that the Pope keeps attacking now are straw men, in my opinion; legalistic, ritualistic Christians really aren’t the problem in the Church, and if anything, it’s Christians who don’t know or care about any of the laws of the Church (including basic moral law) who are the problem. But his attacks on these non-existent people look like and are interpreted by most of us as attacks on people who adhere to traditional Catholic practice and morality, and many such people, who really do their best to be good Christians, feel unfairly targeted by the Pope, of all people.
This was a particularly cruel attack, in which he accused them of having “stiff skins” (I assume that he meant prim and rigid faces) but “rotten hearts” and then he went on to say that he hoped they would slip on a banana peel and be angered with God and thereby sin themselves. So while his words were incoherent to begin with, no matter how you look at them or interpret them, they are certainly spiteful and cruel. He doesn’t seem to think much about what he says before saying it, so he probably didn’t mean it to come out like that, but it’s very hard to take it any other way.
John Baptist Vianney (Curé d’Ars), Priest (RM) - BEWARE IF YOU HAVE NO TEMPTATIONS
So, you will ask me, who then are the people most tempted? They are these, my friends; note them carefully. The people most tempted are those who are ready, with the grace of God, to sacrifice everything for the salvation of their poor souls, who renounce all those things which most people eagerly seek. It is not one devil only who tempts them, but millions seek to entrap them. We arc told that St. Francis of Assisi and all his religious were gathered on an open plain, where they had built little huts of rushes. Seeing the extraordinary penances which were being practiced, St. Francis ordered that all instruments of penance should be brought out, whereupon his religious produced them in bundles. At this moment there was one young man to whom God gave the grace to see his Guardian Angel. On the one side he saw all of these good religious, who could not satisfy their hunger for penance, and, on the other, his Guardian Angel allowed him to see a gathering of eighteen thousand devils, who were holding counsel to see in what way they could subvert these religious by temptation. One of the devils said: “You do not understand this at all. These religious are so humble; ah, what wonderful virtue, so detached from themselves, so attached to God! They have a superior who leads them so well that it is impossible to succeed in winning them over. Let us wait until their superior is dead, and then we shall try to introduce among them young people without vocations who will bring about a certain slackening of spirit, and in this way we shall gain them.”
http://www.cfpeople.org/apologetics/page51a015.html
http://www.philomena.org/vianney.asp
Tempted much, Ebb Tide?
How in the hell does one translate that into the Pope wanting people to be tempted? Hi wants them to be aware of their sinful natures and to feel shame instead of being so damn self-righteous and believing they actually have the power to live sanctified lives without God's AMAZING Grace.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Those who realize that they follow in the footsteps of the apostle who lamented that he did that which he would not do, and did not that which he would do, and they anguish over their sinful natures. Far too many think they actually lead just lives and are shining examples of their own goodness.
[In fact, there's something very Flannery O'Connor in his imagery. Read her short story "Greenleaf" published just after her death from lupus.]
I've known people, including family, who profess to never sin or have no need for a Savior. How to get through to such people? [May Jesus "stab them in the heart!" See: O'Connor above.] It's frustrating. I believe the pope is expressing a similar frustration.
That said, I think the pope should be more careful in his public utterances. He's not an assistant pastor in an obscure parish back of beyond.
He not only wants them to be tempted, he wants them to "fall" aka SIN. A demonic wish to say the least.
I give him enough credit to take him at his word. If he had wanted to express "frustration" regarding the supposed blindness of those he judges as particularly spiritually lacking (the "pelagians", "restorationists", "ideological Christians", "museum mummies", "slaves of superficiality" to name a few of the choice insults he has flung at practicing Catholics) he is obviously quite capable of making his point. So when he says he prays for such people to "fall", I believe him. Rather than recommending prayer and fasting for the advancement in the spiritual life of the souls under his care, he tells us that he prays for them to sin. He himself has stated that his homilies are part of his "magisterium", but his banana peel prayer has no foundation whatsoever in Catholic theology. And in making sweeping judgments regarding the spiritual condition of others based on externals, he is selectively applying his own "Who am I to judge" philosophy.
All the time, Jack; but never by God. Do you believe in Satan?
Modernists tend to use the word “rigid” when describing true Catholics.
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