Amen!!! Reading your replies fortify me! We have been baptized into the one true Church, our Sacrament of Reconciliation restores our relationship with God, and the Precious Body and Blood of Jesus gives us eternal life!
For me too--"God is permitting this. It is for the purification of the Church and much prayer is needed. But we do have a right to be angry at what is being done to the one true Holy Catholic Church. We should be angry.. But we must pray." (Fr John--a very holy elderly Franciscan priest and my confessor when I can get to him)
My anger knew no bounds until I went to an elderly, very holy priest for confession. He said he got angry too sometimes, and that was ok. But, he said, never ever let the sun go down on that anger........because if you hold onto it, eventually it won't let you go...
Jesus said to His Disciples before He ascended into heaven: John 14:18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. This is quite a promise. How has He fulfilled this promise? By sending the Holy Spirit and so Christ sits in our hearts as in a little Tabernacle. Jesus will show us the right path to take no matter what. But in order for us to hear Him we must listen to His voice. And in order to listen to Him we must build up a deep personal relationship through prayer. But there is one piece in the Book of the Apocalypse which gives pause because I believe it refers directly to our times we are living through. Basically it talks about God intervening directly in the affairs of men : 'Lest even the good be lost' So we see things will eventually become so bad that even very good and Holy people will be so confused they risk getting lost. We must be very,very close to that at the moment.
If people are genuinely confused about what the Pope is doing and saying , how will they work things out if they stay silent? How will they arrive at the Truth unless they critique? If Father Blount said something like that to me I would ask his to show what Scriptural and Church sources he is using to justify such an opinion. I know of none. It sounds nice and holy, but a lot of things that sound nice and holy are incorrect. How can we expect as a Church to overcome a very, very Great Evil indeed that has come upon us by staying silent about it? This is illogical.
I would say Padraig that we are there - the confusion is palpable - The German (& Belgioum) situation is revealing that the church is fast becoming like the Church of England. Whole swaths rejecting the dogmas of the faith.
It is not just that, but that as Our Lady of Good Success told us in Prophesy, 'At the Hour of Greatest need, the one who should most speak out will stay silent'.
Speaking out is necessary. But with charity, and in truth. Prolonged anger and outrage just turns into "the clanging gong" that no one hears anyway....and the enemy capitalizes on that by by using terms like "disrespectful, unruly, etc". It's a difficult balance to maintain, imho. Meekness is difficult in the best of circumstances, let alone the times we find ourselves in now ~ ***a clarification: by enemy I mean The Enemy, not a specific individual. St. Francis of Assisi called satan & his minions God's police force. They can't do anything on their own that God does not allow.....
I always find it useful to pray for those who annoy me or whom I fail to understand. So I pray for Pope Francis, as like an elderly father needing support in the twilight of life. Charity in all things pray, pray and pray.
Like Jacob and Esau looking away while they covered the nakedness of their father, Isaac, while he slept. For me the thing that goes to the very heart of the program of Pope Francis, and which causes me to stop and question my own view, is this: I have heard Pope Francis say that all of us on planet earth either have a shared future or we have no future at all. So this is really the question that must be answered at least by me. Is he right? This is the question I put to everyone. Is he right? If he is right, then it leads to compromise and the one world religion. And there is no final trial of the Church as it says in the Catechism. If he is wrong, then I'm afraid our Pope (bless him and correct him, dear God) must be resisted. God forgive me for being so audacious. If resistance is successful, then the current trajectory of the Church can be altered and the Faith of our fathers can be restored. Our Holy Father would call this the 'backwardwist program'. It would result in a restoration of the full eschatological as well as incarnational and spiritual dimension of the Church, traditionally held by the historical Church. It would lead at least sooner to the final trial of the Church along with martyrdom. I am writing this just off the cuff and without any editing and as you can see I am way out of my depth. Do we (or our children, grandchildren) have a shared future or no future at all? If we have no future at all, is this the way it should be - as all things are passing and our obedience to the Faith is the only thing that matters? I may not be able to reply to this - but just putting it out there.
is there any info on popes who led personally evil lives (like leo X) damaging the theology and administration of the Church? for example i know leo X, a bad catholic, praised the rosary in an encyclical
My thoughts on the above article. To correct error from say a Priest, Bishop, Cardinal or Pope, is not sinful criticism, but an act of love, nor is it a form of schism. When somebody undermines true teaching regardless of who they are, they need to be corrected for the good of souls. Error has no rights. This reminds me, when Cardinal Burke defended the Churches ban on unrepentant adulters receiving Holy Communion some people accused him of schism, he responded, you can't go into schism for defending the perennial teachings of the church.
