I agree, prayerful silence should be encouraged. If you are a faithful, practicing Catholic who understands the Catechism of the Catholic Church you know what is right and wrong, it is written on your heart. You don't need a professional blogger/ YouTuber to tell you what you should believe. People usually subscribe because these bloggers tell them what they want to hear, and validate their personal opinions of the Church, and Pope Francis. Others subscribe just to argue, so someone like Taylor Marshall should fully expect a fair amount of criticism. I think it's important to remember that some of these big blogs and You Tube videos may be monetized. If 'prayerful silence ' was encouraged there wouldn't be much to talk about. There is nothing wrong with the give and take of opinions and healthy discussion, but it crosses a line when the faithful are influenced to be critical rather than prayerful. As Garabandal said in his above post we are going through a spiritual chastisement, nothing will be accomplished through anger, only through prayer.
Yes Brian…we are not being fed and the faith is not being taught. I have personally benefited so much by these good holy men who are not afraid to teach truth…truth that would never roll off of the tongue of the priest in this woke church today. Just two weeks ago, one such woke priest was asked why we never hear about hell anymore…his answer, “ well, we all just creat our own hell by living with ourselves “….. really? That’s the church’s definition of hell? Honestly, you could write forever about these things and we wonder why the faith is lost on the young? Seriously? No, I personally thank God for the men of God who actually teach the truths of the faith to all of us. I’m not sure I’d still be in the church if I though the “ truths” of my faith were the absolute nonsense that we are getting from those of this woke segment of society in today’s Catholic Church. Their abuses are so dangerous to ones faith. If we didn’t get the actual truth from others,…including some very good priest, I’d hate to think of how bad things would be. Having said this, we absolutely need to pray for them all…that’s just a given .
I know and feel your same concerns about Pope Francis. I have family members for whom I have been praying for conversion come to me asking why Pope Francis said this, or that, and I have to explain to them the Truth. It is more difficult to explain why our pope would say something that doesn't seem to line up with our Faith. It's actually quite painful and I've been in tears over it on multiple occasions. But it's so important to speak of our pope with respect, because it further damages the Catholic Church in the eyes of non-Catholics or those weak in faith to hear faithful Catholics disparage Christ's representative and head of our Church. It has majorly eroded the concept of God-given authority and holy obedience. No, it's not directly our fault that we've been put in this position, but that's part of our cross, I think... that we must walk the very fine line of speaking Truth without disrespecting our prelates, setting our feelings aside and remembering that each and every priest, bishop, cardinal, and pope represents Christ and bears an indelible mark that is worth treating with the utmost respect---no matter how flawed or fallen the man has become. In this way, we can teach even more Truth to our non-Catholics and poorly catechised Catholics. We can gently correct what they've heard that is wrong while still affirming that the Catholic Church was instituted by Christ and is holy. We won't cause any further damage to the respect due to our prelates than they themselves have caused. This is a very weighty task and one I believe we'll be questioned about by Christ when we die.
Yes, it's part of our mission. St. Faustina saw that we are judged on a strict scale. I know Our Lady said our job was to fulfill our daily duties, pray the rosary daily, and make the First Saturdays. That's quite a bit. I do agree with Beth that hell is not what happens on earth, which the priest said. But I am not sure the answer lies in needing to read blogs, and blogs about the latest blog, and then blog your own opinions to other bloggers. LOL I realize I am in the minority here. But I don't think I'm alone.
Actually, I think that while these lay Catholic apologists and commentators have done much good work, the reason they go astray is that the work they’re trying to fulfill is not theirs to do in the first place. That role is proper to our bishops and priests, NOT lay apologists and commentators. Think of Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Fr. Benedict Groeschel and all the great priests through the years who have appeared on EWTN. When laity are forced to fill this role by the dereliction of our bishops and priests, of course we’re going to see problems exactly like what we’re bemoaning in this thread. It’s not the job of lay people to fill the shoes of the shepherds. When the Church is restored and our shepherds once again teach and preach the Truth, lay apologists will no longer be necessary.
I agree. The whole blog concept has gone OTT, but there has been good coming out of it. It just isn’t one of my priorities each day.
This is all very well, but where is Our Holy Father the Pope in all this? Why the silence? The Devil will try to persecute the ministers of the Lord in every possible way; he will labor with cruel and subtle astuteness to deviate them from the spirit of their vocation and will corrupt many of them. These depraved priests, who will scandalize the Christian people, will make the hatred of bad Catholics and the enemies of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church fall upon all priests. This apparent triumph of Satan will bring enormous suffering to the good Pastors of the Church, IN THIS SUPREME MOMENT OF NEED OF THE CHURCH, THE ONE WHO SHOULD SPEAK WILL FALL SILENT! Our Lady of Good Success
