I think this beautiful video of Pope Francis speaking to a gathering of Pentecostal Christians has not been widely publicised but should be seen by all Christians: There is a news item associated with this video at: http://cnsblog.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/a-pentecostal-a-pope-and-an-iphone-for-christian-unity/
This could leave some Christians to believe that they dont have to renounce their false religion and join the Church of Rome. In fact I Know some Catholics who think the same thing.
Sorry Mac. I find your post to be uncharitable in its tone towards other Christians who are children of God through baptism. The Church refers to them as separated brethern. It is through a dialogue of the heart and mind that we reach out to others bringing them to the fullness of truth, not by sniping criticism of their beliefs.
Garabandal said...Sorry Mac. I find your post to be uncharitable in its tone towards other Christians who are children of God through baptism. It may sound uncharitable in tone . Fortunately TONE is not up there with TRUTH. Only the truth will set them free. Dont judge me on my tone Garabandal, this is a Catholic forum and while non catholics should visit and learn at least something here, shouldnt we hope it is the truth?
So you are hoping to win converts by telling them that they follow a false religion. Good luck to you.
Raising seven children is my duty, I will get to Heaven if I fulfill my duty well.If I raise my children well ,armed with the Catholic Faith, rather than embracing the' world' [ as I see most Catholics doing ,] I will be happy. Most Catholics I know cant hold there own marriages together and keep their children in the Faith which is in fact their DUTY. Forget evangelising , We cant even hold ground!
Thank God we have a saint as Pope. What a blessing. Someone who speaks the language of love. It reminds me of something I have heard over and over again in prayer, this phrase keeps coming and I never quite grasp it's meaning, 'Like speaks to like in the meeting of waters'. Well you know I believe I have just witnessed it happening, praise God. My father as we grew up was a very good and devout Catholic Catholic but a very severe man. He always spoke of Protestants as heretics and we were taught all their faults and failings. As a result I always thought the Unity that would come would be a result of them repenting of all their wrongs and coming back to us who were all sweetness and light. Time has taught me different, time and prayer and the Holy Spirit has shown me how very,very greatly we were wrong to, how sinful. More than this it has taught be how very wrong and sinful and proud I myself was and am. Unity, true Unity begins in our own hearts and in healing ourselves ,each and everyone one of our own sinful brokenness and from this Unity of Heart to move to heal the brokeness of others. Pope Francis, bless him sees this so well, for his own heart has been broken and remade. How he must have suffered. I don't know if the Holy Father understood this as he said it, but in talking of Joseph's brothers being in hunger and starving he spoke of the Eucharist. Our Brothers come to us for the Eucharist. The Eucharist will heal us all. ..and make us one.
I loved the bronze statue of Mary and the child Jesus he had on his desk. I am heading off to Rome tomorrow to steal it on him!
Amen and Amen. I have said this before, but I'm increasingly convinced that there is a massive re-alignment coming and already in progress within the universal Body of Christ which is going to render our traditional concept of denominational divides irrelevant. That's not at all to say that questions of doctrine are redundant or to downplay the fullness of truth in the Roman Catholic Church, but everything indicates to me that the coming divisions are NOT going to be about replaying old Protestant-Catholic hostility. What they will be about, however, is the issue of fidelity to Biblical Christianity (in the face of 'modernism' and compromise with secular humanism) and the reality of the supernatural in today's world, including such things as the angelic/demonic, prophecy, healings, apparitions, encounters in near-death experiences and other supernatural manifestations. This is where Catholics and Pentecostals should be natural allies - something you can for example sense if you follow the links on Spirit Daily carefully -, but there is clearly great opposition a) from the modernizers in ALL constituencies who regard all this as superstition and b) the new Pharisees who attack all contemporary manifestations of the supernatural as 'extra-Biblical' (the 'sola scriptura' crowd). A prime example of this was the recent 'Strange Fire' conference last October at which a highly influential American Evangelical pastor launched a full-frontal assault on charismatics of all types (both nominally Protestant and Catholic), basically accusing 500 million Christians of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, i.e. condemning them to Hell. Interestingly, the civil war that this seems to have set off was predicted in detail by a number of prophetic Pentecostal ministers months earlier, including Neville Johnson (to whom I referred yesterday on account of the similarity of his visions to those of Fr Adam Skwarczynski on the 'I saw a New World' thread). His prediction was that this war would be brutal, though short, as Heaven would not put up with it for long... What my gut tells me is that this re-alignment is going to proceed in two directions simultaneously. - On one hand, we will see Spirit-filled Catholics reach out to partner with others (this already started with John Paul II - as I mentioned a while ago, it was his support for a music group of charismatic American Methodists which sparked renewal in the Polish Church back in the 1970s, a fact recently revealed on a broadcast by Rick Joyner and the leader of the music group, evangelist Terry Law, over at www.morningstartv.com). Cardinal Schönborn's keynote appearance at the Holy Trinity Brompton (initiators of the Alpha Course) leadership conference in London's Royal Albert Hall last May is another good example of this. An examination of some of the phenomena accompanying Pentecostalism at its best reveals a striking similarity to phenomena seen in Catholic/Orthodox circles (healings, exsudation of oil, appearance of 'escarchas' or gold glitter), so surely people on both sides are going to recognize a kinship here. - On the other hand, charismatics/Pentecostals are going to receive direct revelation from the Lord with doctrinal implications which will create a rapprochement with Catholics. A recent example I noticed was that of a woman named Barbie Breathitt (who has a ministry in healing and dream interpretation with a particular outreach to New Agers) who was on TV telling viewers about her encounter with the (arch)angel Raphael who Jesus revealed to her as being the angel of healing who stirred up the water of the pool of Siloam in the Gospels. No suprises for Catholics here, of course, but think about this for a moment - this is a woman whose background in the Presbyterian Church could not have told her this, as Raphael only appears in a book omitted from the Protestant Bible! For me that's a strong indication that such angelic encounters are authentic and not just imagined. One of Ms Breathitt's ministry partners, Patricia King, recently related a prophetic statement about renewal in the Catholic Church which is absolutely congruent with Pope Francis's video and which you can read here: http://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word.html?ID=12625 . Other prophetic ministers such as Paul Keith Davis have made similar pronouncements (all the more surprising given that PKD's own theological background is heavily, even stereotypically anti-Catholic!). Naturally both these developments are guaranteed to create furious opposition from those who want to stay in their denominational gun emplacements rather than listening to what the Spirit says to the churches. And in saying all of this, a word of warning needs to be sounded - the 'prophetic pulse' is the positive developments will be paralleled by the rise of a global false Church which will be hugely seductive and create an alliance of Liberal Protestantism with a modernized, de-mythologized Catholicism ... The wheat and the tares mature together. Watch and pray!!!
Insightful. Basically God is going to melt us down and remould us in the furnace of His love. What a wonderful roller coaster. But first we have to let Him. He can't force it. You can't force love or it isn't love.
Sounds like Anne was right... Anna-Katarina Emmerick(19th century): The Church is in great danger…The Protestant doctrine and that of the schismatic Greeks are to spread everywhere. I now see that in this place (Rome) the (Catholic) Church is being so cleverly undermined, that there hardly remain a hundred or so priests who have not been deceived. They all work for the destruction, even the clergy. A great destruction is now at hand…I saw that many pastors allowed themselves to be taken up with ideas that were dangerous to the Church. They were building a great, strange, and extravagant Church. Everyone was admitted in it in order to be united and to have equal rights: Evangelicals, Catholics, sects of every description. Such was to be the new Church…I saw again a new and odd-looking Church which they were trying to build. There was nothing holy about it… (Dupont Y. Catholic Prophecy: The Coming Chastisement. TAN Books, Rockford (IL), 1973, pp. 66, 71, 116) Yves Dupont {writer interpreting A. Emmerick}: They wanted to make a new Church, a Church of human manufacture, but God had other design.
A large proportion of our 'natural allies' the Pentecostals reject belief in the Trinity! There are 30,000 Protestant denominations and there are more splits among them every day. The major Protestant denominations don't agree on some very basic matters such as the necessity of baptism, the efficacy of infant baptism (for those who believe that it is necessary at all), the need for works as well as faith, the fact of Hell and on and on and on. There is only one truth and if we pretend that there can be many, we will end up like Anglicans. How many warnings have we had from the prophets of the Church about the abominable body that will be set up to encompass any and all beliefs? The Pope talks of Joseph's brothers who were starving. Our brothers are starving not for fraternal love as he says but for Blessed Sacrament, they starve for their failure to accept the plain words of Jesus in John 6:48. 'I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you will not have life in you'. I knew a group of Catholic charismatics who linked up with Pentecostals and then decided that they didn't need the Sacraments because they had the Holy Spirit and left the Church. Does anyone here believe that this was a calling of the Holy Spirit? I note that the Pope refers to Tony Palmer as 'my brother bishop'. Now, this is a very nice compliment to Tony Palmer but according to the definitive ruling on this matter in by Pope Leo XIII in 1896, Apostolicae Curae, Anglican orders are 'absolutely null and utterly void'. I have made no secret that the Pope has said some things that are deeply troubling to me (as well as many others in the Church) but this appears to me to be 'absolutely and utterly' (to quote Pope Leo) insupportable.
True unity will be the work of God. It is the fervent desire of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and his prayer 'Father, that they might be one' will be accomplished since He is the Word and His word is truth. It will take a miracle but it will be the work of God. May not happen in my lifetime but I hope it does. I think the mass conversion of enture Anglican parishes in recent years is a sign of things to come, and a work of the Holy Spirit. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/b...vi_apc_20091104_anglicanorum-coetibus_en.html This unity can only come about under the Petrine ministry as the Pope is the visible head of unity.
I think Pope Francis is a sign of the times himself. Pray for him and ask God to guide him. Difficult days lie ahead.
I agree that he is a sign of the times and I do pray for him every day as I have never prayed for any other Pope and he is the seventh in my lifetime.
