...I just read an article on SpiritDaily about Sr Lucia, where it claims she said nuclear war was avoid in the 80's. But specifically, a quote attributed to her says this; "Up to this point, I see in the Message as it were a preparation to release the people of God, in the words of Pius XII, from the greatest heresy to appear at any time in the world, and carrying its errors to the ends of the earth. And also from the danger of a nuclear war which would destroy a great part of his creative and redemptive work: the People of God chosen for eternal life.[xi]" ...I address a probably age old question; I wonder, did God already choose certain people for eternal life? Or should I read this as....people who choose God are the ones who will receive eternal life. And I also wonder, does anyone really know, for certain.
Predestination is not Catholic teaching, but protestant. In today's Mass reading we here how God spoke in parables, because they did not understand. They had dulled their minds to his truth and so he made parables to help them. God desires all to attain salvation, but few choose to take the narrow way.
I keep thinking that the Warning will occur to prevent a huge portion of the population from dying in war without having a chance for salvation. This is how I read this quote, if there was a nuclear war which was to kill billions of people many of those people may not have had a sufficient chance to achieve salvation. In addition, the true church itself needs to be preserved in some form for the People of God to achieve salvation. The Warning will achieve this also, preserve the true church however small it may become in the future until Our Lord returns.
If the Garabandal messages are true, which I believe they are, "communism will return" and "things will be at there worst" before the Warning comes.
God didn't create anyone just to send them to Hell. He gives us free will and enough grace for everyone to be saved. He doesn't interfere with our free will. Jesus died for everyone, not just some predestined for Heaven. If faith and how we live our lives make no difference to where we end up, why would Jesus have bothered telling us what to do to get to Heaven? Because He is omnipotent and outside time God has foreknowledge of who will avail of His grace and who won't. Remember the parable of the talents. The one who buried what was given him was condemned. Those who used and increased the talents given them were rewarded. So it is with grace.
I personally am sceptical of the Garabandal messages, but it is certainly true that modern-day 'cultural marxism', with its totalitarian political correctness and antinomian shibboleths, represents what Our Lady at Fatima warned us of as the spread of Russia's errors, but in an even more egregious form. To be pernickity, one could say that rather than returning communism has been with us all the time, since the appearance of 'welfare states', slowly and insidiously infiltrating Western societies. Now that the cancer has almost completely replaced the normal tissue, it is becoming more blatant and defiant.
For the sake of my loved ones (not to mention myself!) I try to console myself that Our Lord is pulling out all the stops to get us into Heaven, not keep us out. Is this not why He humiliated Himself by taking upon Himself the form of one of His creatures and willingly submitted to a horrific and undignified death? Modern man, mostly unawares of its true significance, is being subjected to a brain-washing, ubiquitous and universal wave of satanic propaganda by means of the international mass-media the likes of which Our Lord's sheep have never had to endure in human history. It doesn't seem unlikely that He will counter this unprecedented psychological warfare with something even more extraordinary.
http://catholicexchange.com/church-say-predestination What Does the Church Say About Predestination? In the history of Christianity, few terms have stirred as much controversy and confusion as this one. Predestination is a bit of a thorny thicket for theologians, perhaps territory some think best avoided for greener pastures. But it is nonetheless worth venturing into that thicket for the beautiful gem of truth to be found within it. At the outset a clarification is necessary: Predestination, as used here and unless otherwise noted, refers to the God’s plan of salvation for individuals. Double predestination, on the other hand, is the erroneous belief that God also actively chooses people for damnation. Predestination is a doctrine that can be found in the Bible and is an official Church teaching. Double predestination is a condemned heresy. That’s a fine line between orthodoxy and heresy, but so it goes for many dogmas. Predestination today doesn’t get talked about much by Catholics. This is probably because it is so closely identified with Calvinism, confused with double predestination, and appears to be at odds with the Church’s heavy emphasis on the freedom of the will. The truth, of course, is something quite different: predestination was not invented by Calvinism, is not the same thing as double predestination, and does not undermine the freedom of the will. In fact, in order to better appreciate how we are called to exercise our free will, it’s worth understanding what the Church really teaches about predestination. The Church teaches predestination ■ Scripture: First, there is ample biblical support for predestination. The classic verse is Ephesians 1:4-5, As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in his sight in charity. Who hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto himself: according to the purpose of his will (all citations Douay-Rheims unless otherwise noted). Notably, such language is repeated later in the same chapter. Romans 8:29-30 is equally clear: For whom he foreknew, he also predestinated… And whom he predestinated, them he also called. And whom he called, them he also justified. Beyond these, there are numerous other verses that refer to God choosing us for salvation—the very definition of predestination (double predestination would be choosing some for hell). There are too many to list all here. Some notable ones include: John 6:44, John 13:18, Acts 13:48, 1 Thessalonians 1:4, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, and Colossians 3:12. The language of Revelation 13:8 is particularly striking for our purposes here. In reference to the worship of the end-times beast this verse states: And all that dwell upon the earth adored him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb, which was slain from the beginning of the world. It’s harder to think of a better image of predestination than a book with the names of the elect entered into it—even before they are born. But note there is just one book here. There is a book of life, but not a book of death—there is no complementary book in which the names of those who are damned are written (as would be the case in double predestination). This is what Scripture has said. How has the Church authoritatively understood and interpreted it? ■ Early Councils: Double predestination, also traditionally called predestinarianism, has been condemned at a number of councils, which, though not full ecumenical councils, still have authority. They are the Council of Arles in 473 and the councils of Quierzy, Valence, Langres, Toul, and Thuzey in the 900s. The Council of Orange in 529 is sometimes also included in this list, though its focus was more on grace and the free will, rather than predestination as such. ■ Council of Trent: Several hundred years later, the ecumenical Council of Trent once again tackled these issues in responding to the Protestant Reformation. When it comes to this issue, Trent said two things. First, we cannot be assured in this life that we are among those who have been predestined, apart from some special revelation from God. This kind of language presumes predestination—that there exist some who are predestined. Here all that is condemned is the notion that we can know we are among the ones chosen, or predestined. The council also condemned the false teaching that some are predestined to evil. Significantly, however, in this condemnation it also implicitly upheld single (or, what I call positive) predestination, the idea that we are chosen for life. Here’s the full text of this important canon: If any one saith, that the grace of Justification is only attained to by those who are predestined unto life; but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being, by the divine power, predestined unto evil; let him be anathema (CANON XVII). (Click here to read the full context of the canon.) ■ Fathers and Doctors: It’s almost impossible to have an in-depth discussion of the Church’s teaching without mentioning the ecclesiastical elephant in the room—St. Augustine, whose emphasis on divine sovereignty was distorted by the Protestant Reformers into the false doctrine of double predestination. To be sure, there are some difficult passages in some of Augustine’s writings. The consensus among honest scholars is that Augustine’s views, even thought they could be misconstrued as supporting double predestination, are reconcilable with the tradition and teaching of the Church. (For further reading see the Catholic Encyclopedia articleon predestinarianism, Fr. William Most’s analysis, and the summary of theologian Karl Barth, himself a Protestant.) With that said, it’s equally clear that there are passages—indeed at least one entire text—in which Augustine is completely and unequivocally in line with the Church’s historic position on this question. One such text is On Rebuke and Grace, which really reads like an elaboration of the above canon from Trent. Although the text has its own interpretive difficulties, it is adamant that the divine will by which men are saved—the process of predestination—is not to be equated with the process by which the damned end up in hell. Special mention must be made of St. Thomas Aquinas. With Aquinas we do not face the nagging difficulties that we do with St. Augustine, but he is nonetheless clear in his support for the doctrine of single predestination. The word predestination itself (or variants of it) appears hundreds of times in the Summa Theologica—approximately 430 including the table of contents—and the topic is addressed in discussions of the doctrine of God, the Incarnation, and the doctrines of grace and free will. ■ The Church today: Predestination remains a part and parcel of Church teaching today. The current catechism of the Church, promulgated in the 1990s under Pope John Paul II, gives clear expression to this teaching: To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of ‘predestination,’ he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace: “In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” [Acts 4:27-28]. For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness. In affirming predestination, the catechism does two other things at the same time: it also affirms the freedom of the will and clarifies that sin is permitted, not predestined, by God. continued...
How can predestination be reconciled with freedom? The above makes it clear that predestination is a Church teaching. Next comes the obvious question: How is free will possible if God has chosen some people for salvation? Divine knowledge seems to foreclose the possibility of human freedom: How do I really have a choice if that choice was known before the foundation of the world? Since divine knowledge is infallible, it seems to follow that my apparent choice is inevitable. It seems that I must act in a certain way—and have little actual choice in the matter. Ultimately, of course, this must be accepted as one of the great mysteries of faith. But we can attain to some limited understanding first by remembering that knowledge of the future before it has happened is incredible to us only because we are time-bound creatures who live in a world where cause chronologically precedes effect. God, of course, stands not only outside of the limitations of space but also those of time. Past, present, and future are present to Him all at once in their immediacy, as the catechism teaches. But the question still stands: How can God’s plan for us include our free response (as the catechism explicitly affirms)? If we truly have free will, is there not the possibility that that plan might be rejected? In what sense, then, can there really be a plan? The answer, I believe, rests in God’s infinity. Only infinite being itself—which is God—can not only foresee the future and plan for the many billions or more who are saved, but also can have a kind of plan that includes the genuinely free response of His creatures. Before this mystery we can only humble ourselves in pious reflection. Another question that haunts many of us: If God chooses to save some doesn’t that de facto mean that He is effectively condemning others? The answer here rests in the distinction between God’s ordaining or active will and hispermissive will. (For more on this distinction, read here.) It is within his permissive will that those who are damned are allowed to sin, what is called reprobation. Predestination belongs to his active will; reprobation to His permissive will. As Aquinas wrote, “Therefore, as predestination includes the will to confer grace and glory; so also reprobation includes the will to permit a person to fall into sin, and to impose the punishment of damnation on account of that sin.” For some, perhaps many or most of us, this sometimes may seem too neat and tidy an explanation, one that glosses over what remains a paradox. But this is a much better paradox than the alternative: the hardline Calvinist belief that an all-good God actively chooses some for damnation. I’ll take the first paradox over the second any day. There are other probably many other questions that follow too. But, rather than exhausting ourselves in trying to wrap our minds around this great mystery in all its cosmic dimensions, a better response is to understand its implications for us. The beauty of this teaching To restate predestination in more personal terms: this doctrine means that God has a plan for each one of us who is open to such a possibility and willing to accept it. This means that each of us who intends on following the will of God has a destiny laid out before us. This divine plan was not something God made up as he went along. It isn’t something he drafted and amended as we grew into adulthood. Rather, as Ephesians tells us, this destiny was set before the foundations of the world. Wow. Here’s where predestination and free will meet: God has a plan for us, but we must cooperate in that plan. We must choose to accept a destiny that God has set out for us. The fact that we retain freedom in the face of such destiny is one marked difference between the Christian worldview and that of the ancient Romans and Greeks, who grimly resigned themselves to what they saw as the crushing inevitability of an impersonal fate. In Christianity, destiny is not something that weighs upon us because we retain free will. With free will, then, destiny instead becomes something that lifts us up. Destiny gives us something to choose. It points the way forward to what we are called to do in our freedom. In this aspect, Christianity is also at odds with the modern view of freedom as an end in itself. Our culture tends to idolize freedom. What matters is not so much what one chooses as the fact that one is allowed to choose. Our society celebrates the right to choose without offering any moral framework in which to guide those choices. (Think I’m exaggerating or over-generalizing? This recent op-ed shows just how far we’ve gone.) With little outside guidance and no absolute standards of behavior, freedom falls back on itself. Perhaps this is what Soren Kirkegaard meant when he spoke of the ‘dizziness’ of freedom. Christianity, then, avoids the defeatism of destiny without freedom and the dizziness of freedom without destiny. The thrill of the Christian is that he is called, in his freedom, to discover his destiny. This is the beauty of the doctrine of predestination.
Modern Catholic Dictionary by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. PREDESTINATION. In the widest sense it is every eternal decision of God; in a narrower sense it is the supernatural final destination of rational creatures; and in the strictest sense it is God's eternal decision to assume certain rational creatures into heavenly glory. Predestination implies an act of the divine intellect and of the divine will. The first is foreknowledge, the second is predestination. According to its efficacy in time, predestination is distinguished as incomplete or complete depending on whether it is to grace only or also to glory. Complete predestination is the divine preparation of grace in the present life and of glory in the life to come. This doctrine is proposed by the ordinary and universal teaching of the Church as a truth of revelation. The reality of predestination is clearly attested by St. Paul: "They are the ones he chose especially long ago and intended to become true images of the Son, so that his Son, might be the eldest of many brothers. He called those he intended for this; those he called he justified and with those he justified he shared his glory." (Romans 8:29-30). All elements of complete predestination are given: the activity of God's mind and will, and the principal stages of its realization in time. The main difficulty in the doctrine of predestination is whether God's eternal decision has been taken with or without consideration of human freedom. Catholic teaching holds that predestination by God does not deny the human free will. Numerous theories have been offered on how to reconcile the two, but all admit with St. Paul (Romans 11:33) that predestination is an unfathomable mystery. (Etym. Latin praedestinatio, a determining beforehand.)
Great summary from Fr. Hardon, especially the last paragraph. I was curious as to why Pope Francis would have chosen a Presbyterian Minister and Theologian to be his spokesman in his native country of Argentina. I couldn't understand why he couldn't or wouldn't find a qualified Catholic in a country where Catholicism has been the religion of the majority for so long. Also, the man he chose to ghost write Amoris Laetitia penned something on predestination that didn't quite fit with Church teaching. He later retracted or perhaps gave some kind of explanation of what he had written. I can't remember whether his explanation was of the type offered by the Superior General of the Jesuits' explanation of his extraordinary statement about the Apostles' lack of a tape recorder. That explanation was simply a statement that he believes in Church teaching and contained no attempt to reconcile what he had said with Church teaching. From what I read, the Argentinian hierarchy weren't fully convinced of the orthodoxy of the Pope's ghost writer but Pope Francis as Bishop of Buenos Aires installed him as head of the Catholic University there and has since made him a Bishop. That prompted me to do a little reading about Predestination and Presbyterianism in the hope that it would allay some of my doubts about Pope Francis. I'm sorry to say that it didn't allay my fears but does leave me with a conundrum as to why a Pope so focused on works of mercy would be so partial to people with Calvinist leanings. I find it peculiar that some of Pope Francis' most ardent admirers tend towards the Reformist "Once saved, always saved" belief when it comes to sidelining Church teaching on sins of the flesh while the Pope doubles down and perhaps exceeds Catholic teaching on works of mercy almost to the extent that any belief in God or any erroneous belief about God is irrelevant. The New Advent Catholic Encyclopaedia is a wonderful online resource. It gives some background on a subject that has been something of a puzzle for Christians over the centuries. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12378a.htm The Reformers and, to a greater or lesser extent, today's Protestants are all over the place on the question of predestination. Here's what it says about Presbyterianism http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12392b.htm Reading their page on Calvin, I was surprised to learn that he wasn't a contemporary of Luther but was of the next generation of Reformers: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03195b.htm I sincerely hope that predestination isn't another Church teaching in the crosshairs of the current regime in the Vatican. For me, St. Ambrose summed it up best in this sentence: "He did not predestine before He foreknew, but for those whose merits He foresaw, He predestined the reward".
It is more than atheism, of our souls and economy. It is militant as Loli, a Garabandal seer, explains. All this precedes the Warning. Loli interview October 19, 1982 Q) Remember what Our Lady told you about the communistic tribulation that must proceed the warning? A) It will appear that the communists have taken over the world and will be very difficult to practice religion, the priests to say Mass and the people to open the doors of the Churches. Q) Is that what you meant when you said that the church seems the have disapeared ? A) Yes, those who practice will have to do it secretly. Q) Did the Blessed Virgin say that the Holy Father would have be forced to leaven Rome when the Warning comes? A) No, but it seemed to me, maybe at the time confused, in my mind what I saw and what the Holy Mother said, because so many years have passed - was that the pope might not be in Rome openly, do you understand? He would also be perused and should hide like everyone else".
...Only now am I seeing there were more replies to my post. For whatever reason, no email notifications came to me, like they usually do. So, thanks for all the replies. I've read them over.
just saw the whole predestination thing, the essential difference is that both Luther and Calvin believed our very natures were completely corrupted, Luther said grace is like snow over a dung hill, us being the dung hill, and Calvin said we are "totally depraved". You will not really find protestants saying that today but you will hear it in how they say we have a "sinful nature". Well that is what we don't believe as Catholics. If something is in our nature, God put it there, and in Genesis God saw what he made and saw it was good. Calvin's idea is actually called double predestination--that is what Catholics do not believe. Double predestination is the idea God created some for heaven and created others for hell, by design. That's not the Catholic view of predestination. We have a different definition of it, and yes, as others have posted above, we have for centuries. St. Augustine in the 4rth century is the most famous writer on it, especially his writings on the Palagian heresy. But he also wrote against Manichaenism, which is extremely close to Calvinism, which we don't believe.
Remember Conchita was very young at the time of these messages. It is possible she may have mixed up a spiritual meaning versus a worldly meaning. The Middle East today especially the birth of where Christianity began, Syria, is experiencing exactly what Conchita said would happen. And I believe Pope Benedict was forced to go into "hiding." It was not clear to either Conchita or Mari Loli if the entire Church would have to practice secretly worldwide. Although it felt like it was to both of them.
Would it be the Catholic thing to say that our natures, created by God, are not sinful but that, because of Original Sin, we rejected that nature which Our Lord died on the Cross to restore?
From the Baltimore Catechism: 6. Q. What other effects followed from the sin of our first parents? A. Our nature was corrupted by the sin of our first parents, which darkened our understanding, weakened our will, and left in us a strong inclination to evil. 47. Q. What is the sin called which we inherit from our first parents? A. The sin which we inherit from our first parents is called original sin. 48. Q. Why is this sin called original? A. This sin is called original because it comes down to us from our first parents, and we are brought into the world with its guilt on our soul. 49. Q. Does this corruption of our nature remain in us after original sin is forgiven? A. This corruption of our nature and other punishments remain in us after original sin is forgiven.
Therefore, our final return to our original, pre-Adamic state of nature can only be achieved through Death and Judgement, which in most cases of those passing that Judgement will need to be completed by a certain stay in Purgatory? We must die in order to enter life. Our Lord had to die for our sins just as all must die in order to be restored to their purified nature. It makes so much more sense than the Protestant view that God created us with imperfect natures. Why would God do that? Indeed, wouldn't it be impossible for a perfect God to create something originally imperfect? Therefore, Free Will is the key. God created us perfect, but left us with the option of choosing not to be. This great Mystery is what represents the difference between being human and being mere obedient robots. Perhaps it represents a goodly part of being created in God's likeness. I speculate that God possesses complete Free Will, but because of His perfect Divine Nature, eternally chooses to do what is right and good. Anyone got any thoughts on this? In this Eternal Choice for the Good, the Christian God is completely different from what seems to be the Muslim theological idea of Allah, whom they apparently believe to be primarily motivated by his will (the Christian God is thought to be firstly dominated by Love, initially that between the three Persons of the Trinity and secondarily for His Creation) and can change his mind and decide that evil can be good and vice versa. It seems they have no notion that Allah is Truth. His will can be entirely arbitrary. In contrast is it notthat our God is considered in Himself to be Truth, which is just as immutable as the rest of His Nature? This turbulent priest Father Spadaro asserts that with God 2+2 can equal 5. Perhaps Father Spadaro should consider converting to the Allah side. Finally, would the Calvinist notion of Predestination not contradict the whole concept of Free Will? Wouldn't it mean simply God creating automatons for Heaven? What would be the point of the whole shooting match? Wouldn't it have been simpler and more just to create these automatons and put them in Heaven immediately? Additionally, God takes nobody for granted-He will leave everyone with the option of not entering Heaven. Calvin's idea denies this option and makes God a tyrant. God is not a tyrant, He is a Father who invites us.
