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PopeWatch: True Faith

 

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Sandro Magister at his blog Chiesa speculates on how great a disaster Assisi II will be:

 

 

ROME, September 18, 2016 – The memorable encounter in Assisi, thirty years ago, between John Paul II and men of all religions (see photo) was perhaps the only moment of disagreement between the holy Polish pope and his absolutely trusted chief of doctrine at the time, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who didn’t even go.

Ratzinger himself recalls this in his book-length interview published in recent days: “He knew,” he says, “that I was following a different approach.”

But now that Pope Francis, the successor to both, is preparing to replicate that event in Assisi on September 20, the contrast is reemerging even stronger than before.

A dialogue among the religions on an equal footing – Ratzinger has in fact warned even after his resignation of the papacy – would be “lethal for the Christian faith.” Because every religion “would be reduced to an interchangeable symbol” of a God assumed to be equal for all:

> “Renunciation of the truth is lethal for the faith”

Naturally Jorge Mario Bergoglio does not identify with this kind of egalitarian dialogue, nor has he ever thought that the Catholic Church should give up preaching the Gospel to every creature.

But some of his actions and words have effectively bolstered such tendencies, starting with his definition of proselytism as “solemn foolishness,” without ever saying how this is to be distinguished from genuine mission. There are no few missionaries on the frontiers, having spent a lifetime preaching and baptizing, who now feel betrayed in the name of a dialogue that makes almost any conversion useless.

Also with other Christians, Protestant and Orthodox, Francis moves at a different pace compared to his predecessors.

While for example Benedict XVI encouraged and facilitated the return to the Catholic Church of Anglicans in disagreement with the “liberal” pivot of their Church, Francis does not, he prefers that they keep to their own home, as revealed by two Anglican bishops who are his friends, Gregory Venables and Tony Palmer, whom he discouraged from becoming Catholic:

> Ecumenism Behind Closed Doors

But it has been above all a brief video from January of this year, released on a large scale in ten languages, that has most given the idea of a surrender to syncretism, to the equating of all the religions:

> “We are all children of God”

 

 
In it, Francis urges prayer together with men of every faith, for the love of peace. And along with him, in fact, appear a Buddhist, a Jew, a Muslim, with their respective symbols, all on equal terms. The pope says: “Many seek God and find God in different ways. In this broad spectrum of religions there is only one certainty for us: we are all children of God.”

Nice words, but in effect not in keeping with those of the New Testament and in particular of the Gospel of John, according to which all men are creatures of God, but the only ones who become his “children” are those who believe in Jesus Christ.

In Assisi, on September 20, Francis will again find himself beside Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, and still others. And it is likely that his speech will be more circumspect than in the video.

But there is an impact of the images that will be difficult to contain and rationalize. It is that which has been extolled by many since 1986 as the “spirit of Assisi,” a formula that Ratzinger always sought in vain to defuse, as cardinal and pope, so that it would be taken in a manner opposite to how so many understand it, meaning not in the “syncretistic” and “relativistic” sense:

 

 

Go here to read the rest.  The Catholic Church is either, as she has always taught, the True Faith, or she is not.  Popes engaging in this type of vapid ecumenism undermine this central teaching.

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bill bannon
bill bannon
Tuesday, September 20, AD 2016 4:35am

I sent out thirty envelopes yesterday to Muslims and Brahmin named Hindus at my own expense….a weekly thing.
In each envelope are Augustine explanations of veiled prophecies of Christ….e.g. the ark has the PROPORTIONS of a man’s body and a hole in its side and therefore the ark is really about the future Christ as was the account of Eve coming out of Adam’s side as the Church came out of the spear hole in Christ’s side later in the form of water and blood. Hence Christ told the Jewish leaders….” if you believed Moses, you would believe in Me for he wrote of Me”….” you search the scriptures for eternal life and it is they which bear witness to me”. David cuts off Goliath’s head with the huge sword of Goliath. Christ similarly says as He nears the passion…” the prince of this world is coming and in me he has nothing”. What does a cross look like in silhouette against a darkening sky? It looks like a huge sword and where is it being stuck into the earth….at the place of the skull…Golgatha. The sword of satan is cutting off the head of satan in the crucifixion in the far long term….as David used Goliath’s sword to cut off the head of Goliath. Augustine saw the veiled prophecies as the best because of their ingenious nature. My envelopes help erroneous believing people to reconsider the Bible. Pope Francis? If a Pope is photo oping…he ain’t working. He should be working the phones daily to shut down lavender graduations (8) in the US Catholic colleges. Papacy as work or papacy as constant socializing. Take your pick.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, September 20, AD 2016 5:45am

I could be wrong. I often am wrong. It appears that, “Is the Pope Catholic?” is no longer a rhetorical question.
.
A lawyer friend once told me the first thing he learned in law school was the answer to all questions is, “It depends.” Here it depends on how you define “Catholic.”

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Tuesday, September 20, AD 2016 5:57am

“not in keeping with those of the New Testament and in particular of the Gospel of John, according to which all men are creatures of God, but the only ones who become his “children” are those who believe in Jesus Christ.”
But, in his Sermon on the Hill of Mars, St Paul says,
“…though, indeed, He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we live, and move, and are; as also certain of your poets have said: “For of Him also we are offspring.” [Τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμέν] Being, therefore, offspring of God [γένος οὖν ὑπάρχοντες τοῦ Θεοῦ], we ought not to think the Godhead to be like to gold, or silver, or stone, graving of art and device of man;” (Acts 17: 27-29) – The quotation is from Aratus, Phaenom 5. The Apostle may also be thinking of Cleanthes, Hymn. In Jov. 5 ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ γένος ἐσμέν.
What stress, if any, we should place on the difference between St John’s τέκνα Θεοῦ and St Paul’s γένος… τοῦ Θεοῦ is a large question. However, St Paul obviously though we could speak in some sense of the universal Fatherhood of God, a commonplace of the Stoic philosophers; both Aratus and Cleanthes were Stoics and his Athenian audience would naturally have understood him in that sense.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Tuesday, September 20, AD 2016 11:51am

T Shaw wrote, ” Here it depends on how you define “Catholic.””

Yes, indeed. If one holds to the traditional definition (One who holds communion with the see or church of Rome), then asking if the Pope is a Catholic is like asking whether Le Grand K weighs a kg. The question is meaningless, because “to weigh a kilo” means “to have a mass equal to Le Grand K” and to make the question meaningful, one would need some other definition of 1 kg.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Tuesday, September 20, AD 2016 12:11pm

Fatuous nonsense, of course. Bottom line: if this is religion who needs it. All this lovin’ buries the truth. Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Obedience to God leads to the Love of God.

Sydney O Fernandes
Sydney O Fernandes
Wednesday, September 21, AD 2016 10:01am

Guess we have been nuked and levelled by love.

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