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.
Yes.
It’s called “interregnum”.
By the way, have you heard of Pope Benedict XVI?
So you readily make false accusations against me without backing it up?
Typical.
***
Hey, you want me to; after all, I just quoted you with that statement.
Remember, Golden Rule. You’re obviously a supremely holy Catholic, so you always treat others the way you want to be treated.
Why blame me for doing to you what you do to me? It’s obviously the way you want to be treated, right?
You really must be insecure in your faith to keep posting all these anti Protestant threads.
What is your motivation and goal in doing this?
Maybe it's the alcohol - but I'm feeling pretty confident. Your call...
What is a heretic’s definition of a “valid pope”?
I thought y’all considered all of them not valid, and not even “christian” for that matter.
Don’t you reject the the title and the office and the Church it represents?
See my post 147.
Don’t worry about my Faith.
Worry about yours.
What is a heretic’s definition of a “valid pope”?
I thought y’all considered all of them not valid, and not even “christian” for that matter.
Don’t you reject the the title and the office and the Church it represents?
***
Don’t try to change the subject, Schimatic Ebb. (Again, you called metmom a heretic, so I’m returning the favor like you obviously want. Golden Rule!)
But really, answer the question.
And...FYI, Benedict XVI is no longer the Pope of Rome. He resigned four years ago. But don't Sedevacanists dispute every Pope AFTER Pope Pius XII who died in 1958? According to them (you?) the See of Peter has been vacant for going on 60 years. Quite a long time for an interregnum, wouldn't you say?
I don't give 2 sh*ts about some website. I want you to go *line-by-line* (Priest and the Faithful's response(s)) and prove that the Catholic Mass is non-Biblical.
Spoiler Alert -- You won't do it. Simply because you can't...
The papacy is not found in the New Testament or the very early church...as is the case with so much of Roman Catholicism.
For your edification, an interregnum occurs every time a pope dies.
Why shouldn’t we be concerned about your faith?
I mean, if it can’t stand up to simple logic and Scripture without you trying to change the subject and call everyone else a heretic before posting that silly sandal picture, that has to be a pretty weak faith.
And despite how fun it is to keyboard joust against you, I actually do care about your status in eternal life, and I’d rather you be with Jesus.
Well, I see you've had a couple of glasses of false courage.
As is often the case when the argument is against them the Roman Catholic is often the first to resort to profanity or the personal attack.
BTW...that website you don't care about is one run by a Roman Catholic priest.
But to your request to show the Catholic Mass is non-Biblical I will post from another Roman Catholic priest.
| John O' Brien, Roman Catholic Priest in the Faith of Millions. | Hebrews 9:24-28 | Hebrews 10:11-13 |
| When the priest pronounces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our altar to be offered up again as the Victim for the sins of man. It is a power greater than that of monarchs and emperors: it is greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of Seraphim and Cherubim. Indeed it is greater even than the power of the Virgin Mary. While the Blessed Virgin was the human agency by which Christ became incarnate a single time, the priest brings Christ down from heaven, and renders Him present on our altar as the eternal Victim for the sins of man—not once but a thousand times! The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows His head in humble obedience to the priest’s command. | 24For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; 25nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own. 26Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. 27And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, 28so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him. |
Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; 12but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD, 13waiting from that time onward UNTIL HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET. 14For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. |
You sound like a muslim now.
http://www.catholic.org/pope/new_pope.php
So there's been no unbroken line or not??
It's part of that Great Commission we read about in the New Testament.
I'm sorry -- exactly what in the hell are you talking about? Men's follies? The Consecration of the Pope has not been broken -- regardless of the actions-of-man. Can God ***N-O-T*** institute Holy Orders upon His Throne?
Just asking - Please, continue on with your account of the evils-of-man...
You really hate being treated like you treat others, don’t you?
Then why do you do it?
I mean, that’s a pretty deliberate sin to keep on treating others in ways that you don’t want to be treated back. You can’t even claim ignorance because of how angry you got when I directly quoted stuff you said right back at you.
Remember when I said that I care about your status in eternal life and I want you to be with Jesus?
I have to wonder about that when you keep up this kind of sinful behavior. And yes, it is sinful because you just showed how much you hate it when you get treated like you treat others.
That kind of behavior is NOT a very good reflection either on your church or upon the God you worship.
So I’m going to drop the name calling and the condescending behavior now that the point has been made and just ask you to think about it.
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