Posted on 11/17/2017 3:03:09 PM PST by ebb tide
As an outsider, I can’t help but wonder whether the pope and the USCCB were particularly provoked by Weinandy’s suggestion that Jesus had allowed this controversy in order “to manifest just how weak is the faith of many within the Church, even among too many of her bishops.” Catholics will have to make up their own minds—but I’ll admit I have questions about the faith of Pope Francis, which seems, if not weak, at least different from that of the Catholic tradition.
Even before the release of Amoris Laetitia in March 2016, Francis had caused many to question his fidelity to that tradition. In 2014, the midterm report of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family recommended that pastors emphasize the “positive aspects” of cohabitation and civil remarriage after divorce. He said that Jesus’s multiplication of bread and fish was really a miracle of sharing, not of multiplying (2013); told a woman in an invalid marriage that she could take Holy Communion (2014); claimed that lost souls do not go to hell (2015); and said that Jesus had begged his parents for forgiveness (2015). In 2016, he said that God had been “unjust with his son,” announced his prayer intention to build a society “that places the human person at the center,” and declared that inequality is “the greatest evil that exists.” In 2017, he joked that “inside the Holy Trinity they’re all arguing behind closed doors, but on the outside they give the picture of unity.” Jesus Christ, he said, “made himself the devil.” “No war is just,” he pronounced. At the end of history, “everything will be saved. Everything.”
Weinandy and other Catholic critics have pointed to alarming statements and suggestions in Amoris Laetitia itself. The exhortation declares, “No one can be condemned for ever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!” In December 2016, the Catholic philosophers John Finnis and Germain Grisez argued in their “Misuse of Amoris Laetitia” that though this statement reflects a trend among Catholic thinkers stemming from Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, it contradicts the gospels’ clear statements and the Catholic tradition’s teaching that there is “unending punishment” in hell. Finnis and Grisez charge that, according to the logic of Amoris Laetitia, some of the faithful are too weak to keep God’s commandments, and can live in grace while committing ongoing and habitual sins “in grave matter.” Like (Episcopalian) Joseph Fletcher, who taught Situation Ethics in the 1960s, the exhortation suggests that there are exceptions to every moral rule and that there is no such thing as an intrinsically evil act.
I take no pleasure in Rome’s travails. For decades, orthodox Anglicans and other Protestants seeking to resist the apostasies of liberal Christianity have looked to Rome for moral and theological support. Most of us recognized that we were really fighting the sexual revolution, which had coopted and corrupted the Episcopal Church and its parent across the pond. First it was the sanctity of life and euthanasia. Then it was homosexual practice. Now it is gay marriage and transgender ideology. During the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, we non-Catholics arguing moral theology could point to learned and compelling arguments coming out of Rome and say, in effect, “The oldest and largest part of the Body of Christ agrees with us, and it does so with remarkable sophistication.”
Those of us who continue to fight for orthodoxy, in dogmatic as well as moral theology, miss those days when there was a clear beacon shining from across the Tiber. For now, it seems, Rome itself has been infiltrated by the sexual revolution. The center is not holding.
Though we are dismayed, we must not despair. For the brave and principled stand made by Tom Weinandy reminds us that God raises up prophetic lights when dark days come to his Church.
Gerald McDermott holds the Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School.
That and Luther did his research and knew what he was talking about.
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It's ebb's way of leaving the debate when he's losing...which is quite often.
And really, that’s not even Biblically accurate, because shaking dust from their feet is something that JWs do, because Jesus only told that to the ones he first sent out during his earthly ministry.
Ebb should be saying something like casting pearls before swine instead, but I wonder if he’s even ever read that part of the Bible.
Awesome! So, you are either admitting Protestantism has defeated the Roman Catholic church and seated one of their own as the leader of all Christendom - and the "gates of hell" HAVE overcome it - or you ashcan the "we have an unbroken line of succession going back to the Apostle Peter" meme. Which is it to be?
Ebb's a pre Vatican 2 Roman Catholic. Per the website, catholic-resources maintained by Felix, Just, S. J. (http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Statistics.htm) we have this:
NT Summary: Pre-Vatican II Missal Sundays and Major Feasts
% of NT verses used: 16.5%
For the OT the results are 1.0% (not including Psalms).
This helps us understand why so many of Roman Catholics are illiterate in the very book they claim to have given everyone.
Felix Just notes on his webpage:Although I am a Roman Catholic priest and have taught mostly in Catholic institutions, I hope that these materials are academically reliable and pastorally adaptable enough to be useful for many other Christians and non-Christians as well.Felix Just, S.J., Ph.D.
So shaking the feet of one’s sandal is not applicable anymore; but casting pearls before swine still is.
Perfect example of cherry-picking.
Thank-you.
Wow, you don’t even know the answer to that question?
Some defender of the faith YOU are. No wonder ya have to post anonymously to FR; that kind of statement would get laughed out of even a Unitarian debate.
Perfect example of cherry-picking.
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I know the difference because I read the Bible.
You don’t.
Nope. I’m saying Jorge Bergoglio is not a Catholic and the Catholic Church will always prevail against the gates of Hell, despite the likes of him.
"Unitarians"; are they are a different denominaton than "protestants"?
You keep saying it doesn't make it true. The dude's a Roman Catholic whether you like it or not.
“Unitarians”; are they are a different denominaton than “protestants”?
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You know, I’ve never seen someone so proud to be so ignorant before.
Then again, YOUR church is the one that burns books, so I suppose that prideful ignorance is a cardinal virtue in Catholicism.
You don’t.
Are you pretending to read minds?
That's against forum rules, but I don't go running to the moderator.
Completely false.
HA.
So Ebby admits that he DOESN’T read the Bible.
If he did, he could prove me wrong; instead he changes the subject.
What a stalwart defender of the faith he is.
When I asked you to do Biblical research, you told me you had better things to do.
How is that anything but an admission that you don’t read Scripture?
Yet in your post #137, you complain about demeaning other "denominations" as a whole.
Look up hypocrite.
He shakes his sandals so much...
There’s no dust left!
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