In a video address to the John 17 movement the Pope said something that should be highly controversial, but really isn’t because of the way that he said it.
Go here to read the rest. If Satan does not recognize the Church as the one true faith, and confuses Catholics and other Christians, that is only two of many things the Father of Lies gets wrong.
Are we now to understand that heresy is the mortar that hold God’s Churches together?
I’ve heard it said that; “The greatest sin is to believe sin doesn’t exist.”
Could this be the second greatest?
To proclaim that Satan doesn’t know where the Body Blood Soul and Divinity of God resides? Really Pope Francis?
Sometimes it better to be silent and this is definitely one of those times dear Francisco.
In Marks passage it feels as though this “night” is happening agian. Mark 14:27 ;
“And Jesus saith to them: You will all be scandalized in my regard this night: for it is written; I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep shall be dispersed.”
Once in awhile a Catholic doctrine would sound sweet coming from his holiness. It happens…just not as often as one hopes.
The devil is not an atheist.
Perhaps, a starting point would be the fact that heretical baptism is indisputably valid.
Pope Stephen taught it and, in doing so, differed from all the world besides. The Apostolic Canons, the Synods of Iconium and Synnada had denied heretical baptism was valid. So, also, did Clement of Alexandria, Firmilian and Tertullian; St Basil, too, and St Cyprian, St Athanasius and St Ambrose and St Cyril. All taught that “We have not the same baptism with heretics,” “”Then may there be one baptism, when there is one faith. We and heretics cannot have a common baptism,” and “he that is sprinkled by them is rather polluted than redeemed.”
They were all wrong, all these holy Fathers and Catholic doctors. Rome had spoken through Stephen, although for a century and a half, his judgment was all but unknown, until it was embraced and defended by St Augustine.
By virtue of the Sacrament of Matrimony, husband and wife are therefore one flesh and what God has joined together, let no man put asunder. By virtue of the Sacrament of Baptism, One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all. The husband and wife, while one, often disagree, and sometimes separate but are still one flesh. Christians have their falling out, and sometimes separate but they are still one. In both cases, the separated ones may deny their oneness but cannot escape it. Now this is off the top of my head and I won’t have to be beaten up much to recant but it seems to make sense.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen said; “Before the hand of God comes down upon the world it comes down upon the Church.”
Is our pontiff saying we are one because we are Christs even though we all don’t eat of the same flesh or drink of the same blood? Who has life? The partakers of the one Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or is it all baptized regardless of refusal to acknowledge Catholic sacraments?
I know God has perfect vision. He sees what men can not see, the heart.
If Pope Francis is striving to unite our differences with other communities there might be a clearer way.
This brings my mind to consider what is “permissive” ( as in Jesus description of Moses’s allowing divorce) and what is BEST for us from our loving Father. What the devil does know is that God loves and redeems those who love him.. And His DESIRE is that all should be united. We are all “called out” ekklesia– we all respond according to our own reception of the gifts He has for us. We who have been given much, have much required of us.
We and those outside the Catholic Church are not one. All Protestant denominations were born out of the denial of one or more of the truths that Christ taught and was passed on through the Apostles and their successor’s in the only Christian Church Christ instituted. That is where all Truth resides. What profit is there for one to believe error or exist outside of all Truth?
This is a tragic heresy (one of many) promulgated in the Second Vatican Council.
The only way to be one, to be truly unified, is for those outside of the Church to come into Her.
Lanie wrote, “We and those outside the Catholic Church are not one.”
As Bl John Henry Newman points out, in discussing the controversy in the early Church over heretical baptism: “in the preceding century. Baptism was held to be the entrance to Christianity and its other sacraments, and once a Christian, ever a Christian. It marked and discriminated the soul receiving it from all other souls by a supernatural character, as the owner’s name is imprinted on a flock of sheep. Thus heretics far and wide, if baptized, were children of the Church, and they answered to that title so far as they were in fact preachers of the truth of Christ to the heathen… To cut off such cautious baptism from the Church was to circumscribe her range of subjects, and to impair her catholicity.”
The “character” imprinted by baptism derives from a Greek word, χαρακτήρ, often applied to the stamp or effigy on a coin; all baptized souls are indelibly stamped with the image of their divine King.
Michael Patterson-Seymour.
Thank you kindly.
You helped me see the picture in clearer light. It takes any sting out of the remarks, since we are one, united in the one Christ whom Satan hates.
Blessings.
Michael Paterson…one “t”.
Pardon me.
more indication that Jesuits are not Catholic.
Philip wrote, “It takes any sting out of the remarks, since we are one, united in the one Christ whom Satan hates.”
Lumen Gentium (para 15) puts it succinctly, when it says, “The Church recognizes that in many ways she is linked with those who, being baptized, are honored with the name of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter…. Likewise we can say that in some real way they are joined with us in the Holy Spirit, for to them too He gives His gifts and graces whereby He is operative among them with His sanctifying power. Some indeed He has strengthened to the extent of the shedding of their blood.”
As one baptized, then taught well the precepts of Christianity in the Lutheran Church, and yearning for the mysticism, depth and richness which only Catholicism protected from the time of the Apostles of Jesus; I was eventually confirmed. My Baptism certificate was thankfully accepted as once for all time. From the words spoken to John 17 by Peter’s successor, I, once again apprehend a lack of encouragement or invitation or elevation of Catholicism or teaching of God’s Love or leadership – Christians being ‘whatever’ as opposed to using the opportunity to elevate, strengthen souls in this onslaught. (The ‘glass of water is half full or empty’ question).