Posted on 09/21/2015 2:41:13 AM PDT by markomalley
There is a lot of energy swirling around and about the Holy Father’s visit to Cuba and, soon, to these United States. I’ve already heard MSM hype about how Francis is the pretty much the first Pope who has ever smiled or kiss a baby. As a matter of fact, he is the first Pope who has ever thought about poor or who has been nice. He is the most wonderfulest fluffiest Pope ehvur. He’s not like mean old Benedict! He was harsh and Francis is humble!
This is going to get really tiresome.
Meanwhile, not everything is “Rah! Rah! Francis!”, even in the MSM. It is good to know what they are saying as well.
First, check out George Will at WaPo. All I can say is brutal. His piece seems to be a preemptive strike not just against Francis and what he might say to Congress and to the UN about environmentalism and capitalism, but against the lib dems who will try to coopt Francis for cynical political reasons. The libs will accuse Will of shilling for the GOP, but I don’t think that that is what he is doing.
Pope Francis’ fact-free flamboyance
Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony. With a convert’s indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false and deeply reactionary. They would devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak — if his policy prescriptions were not as implausible as his social diagnoses are shrill.
[…]
Pretty rough stuff.
We don’t, by the way, have to accept Will’s simplification of the science and Gallileo issue or about medieval economies.
Next comes something from the Weekly Standard by Jonathan V. Last.
Pope Francis: Menace or Farce?
Back in 1999, The Weekly Standard ran one of my favorite cover lines ever: The New Europe: Menace or Farce? I often think of that question when I watch Pope Francis.
It’s only been two and a half years since Francis assumed the chair of St. Peter, yet he’s already compiled an entire dossier’s worth of . . . interesting . . . incidents.
For instance, the Holy Father seems to have a habit of appearing to endorse all sorts of left-wing political causes. There was the time he posed with environmental activists holding an anti-fracking T-shirt. And the time he posed for pictures holding a crucifix made from a hammer and a sickle. And the time he held up a poster calling for the British to hand the Falkland Islands back to Argentina. In each instance, the official Vatican response has been to suggest that Francis didn’t mean to endorse anything because he’ll pretty much smile and pick up anything you hand him, like some sort of consecrated Ron Burgundy.
[…]
While this piece also indicts the Pope’s handlers, the bucks land on the Pontiff’s desk.
Anyway… it is good to know what else is going on, apart from the cloying sweet stuff.
Father Z is a delight and so are the comments at the link.
God bless him and you too, dear markomalley.
For ALL have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God.
Put YOUR faith where you will. In Roman doctrine, or The Word! It can't be both.
I think it’s too bad the R.C. denomination doesn’t believe in the Bible, or they’d have read Matthew 23:9 - “And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.”
Gonna burn...
:: the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak ::
So, where does that leave the Faithful; who now speaks for them?
So you don’t call your father “father”?
The last comment is priceless. (Pope Francis should) Walk into the White House wearing his purple stole and saying “I will be hearing Confessions for the next three hours.”
That should clear the room! I laughed when I read the comment and apologize for repeating it.
Is this in your Bible? I bet it is.
Matthew 16: 17-19
Peter’s Confession of Christ
…17And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. 18”I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. 19”I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”…
“So you don’t call your father “father”?”
No; I call my dad “Reverend”.
Evidently Paul didn't believe in the Bible, either. /s /s
Yet doesn’t Paul call himself of some other people as their father in Christ?
Yet Paul didn't run around instructing people to call himself "father" either, which is far different than how things are presented to be from within Roman Catholicism regarding the present day, so-called priesthood.
They are not following Paul in this. Citing Paul in this context is almost like Solo Scriptura, taking that saying of his (and then through later doctrinal development also) turning it into what is else-wise spoken against quite clearly.
That is, unless Jesus Himself either didn't know what He was talking about, or was telling lies.
It wasn't until centuries later that those who had risen to positions of authority within the Christian Church demanded that they be addressed as "father".
In fact, doesn't the Roman Catholic Church rather DEMAND that people assume that posture, and use those precise words towards priests and prelates?
It is an old practice, but it does not go back all the way to Paul.
Citing him now, dragging out that one verse is typical of how within the Church the meanings of the NT Scriptures became distorted by those whom would seek to rule over others, using the Scriptures as a tool, not entirely dissimilar to how Satan (didn't God say?) would seek to distort the meaning of the Word by way of misapplication of the same.
To what did Christ turn to when He was tempted by Satan in that way? He did not declare His own authority, instead relying upon "it is written, thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God."
What did Jesus have to say about calling earthly religious teachers & leader -- father?
8 But you, do not be called ‘Rabbi’; for One is your Teacher, the Christ,[b] and you are all brethren. 9 Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. 10 And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ. 11 But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
That can be understood to not preclude ourselves referring to our actual earthly fathers as 'father', but from the context in which the above is found, does preclude ourselves from calling those who would sit in Moses' seat (now translated by way of the Latin Church religious precepts into becoming 'chair of Peter', within that church) referring to teachers and administrators within the church as "father".
As for turning towards Paul for justification of papal system, much as there is only one who can be 'first' (and that was Peter, not some other, correct?) later occupants of office are not able to be again 'first'.
No one automatically inherits being "becoming as a father", when the truth of the matter is they are themselves more as one of the ten thousand child-conductors (as Young translated that passage), yet themselves also needing to follow meekly after Paul, not themselves then being entirely as Paul is to all of us (who are Christians) today, merely for sake of themselves presently or at any other time since the first Apostles, being in offices within the church.
Paul ministering to us the Gospel, through his writings, remains much more of a father to us through the gospel than is anyone who comes along later.
Again, although he used the symbolism of becoming their father, being in a sense father to those Corinthians to whom he wrote, his use of that does not nullify & overthrow the plainer teachings of Christ in Matthew 23, and in Matthew 20:20-28, for that matter.
25 But Jesus called them to Himself and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. 26 Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant.
Notice for
Notice also that the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA), (which is an updated Challoner version), does not put it as Paul writing quote un-quote "I became your father", and not as a "I AM your father" either, but was obviously speaking figuratively for his (Paul's own) particularly special role in the formation of the first, and earliest Christian church, to have in a limited sense, begotten yet more members of the Church, by Paul's being as a father to them, Paul viewing them with the heart of a father towards his own children. Still, again, he did not write "call me father...".
Where is Paul's successor? If we could find who that would be, we still shouldn't refer to that man as "Our Father", nor tack the capitalized "H" Holy in front of capital "F" Father. No one did for Paul, or Peter either, not for long centuries after those two had passed on from the realm of the living, upon earth.
Having a Latin Church Pope, centuries later, declare Paul to being subservient to Peter, and of lower rank than Peter, doesn't quite cut it either, for reason of running afoul of the passages I have cited, if those passages could but be understood in the larger context of the written Word.
I guess that pope (and many others too?) didn't believe in the Bible, and still don't.
RC apologetic in this area is weak...
Just ask the Orthodox.
They don't buy into the concept that there was a singular papacy (one prelate to be called "father" over the entire Church) established within the primitive church, and never did --- and can prove it!
That's a BIG problem for the Latin Church, which holds itself as preaching only what bears unanimous consent of the fathers as prepared by order of Pope Pius IV., in 1564, by a college of Cardinals (see Schaff's notes 184, 185, 186, 187 by clicking on the numbers to open the footnote).
I don't know if the two who you directed that inquiry towards have read it, since I cannot speak for them.
But I have read those passage, and so have many others.
Read on;
The Church Fathers' Interpretation of the Rock of Matthew 16:18
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