I described Jesus as a conservative as a response to your own use of the word in your post to which I responded. Having unjustly accused me of politicising Christ (conservative is a word with much broader application than vulgar politics), you then invoke democracy as a justification for change in Church teaching. Well, every single Catholic in the world can vote, contrary to Christ's explicit and unambiguous words, that adulterers can remain in their sin and still be worthy of receiving the Eucharist, but it will change nothing. 'What God has joined together, let no man put asunder' applies as assuredly to His words as to the subject of marriage. My comments about the Holy Spirit refer to certain individuals asserting that many things this pope says are utterances of the Holy Spirit. I suspect such statements are quite heretical. Additionally, there has been a trend for a long time to appeal, without any justification, to the authority of the Holy Spirit for many radical changes in doctrine and liturgy. Cardinal Burke is interpreting the relevant passages in the Gospels in the same manner as the Apostles, the Fathers and every pope I am aware of before Francis. It is Pope Francis who has decided to change things after two thousand years and he won't even clarify or explain it. It seems to me the reluctance to clarify is because this means crystallising ambiguity into direct heresy. If not, why not just come out and say it?
Listen to what I have written, Padraig: I'm sure [Padraig] has done this in good conscience... In the midst of the clamoring and back-and-forth, I am not certain as you. Therefore, it is imperative that I not judge my Pope. We two have discussed this before. Have you put on the mantle of John the Baptist? Both Athanasius and Luther went against the tide. Do what you must, but listen to the Holy Spirit and his beloved Spouse.. But there are some who have taken up a banner of contention simply because they like a good fight. It is to those that I say, "Woe!" Safe in the Barque of Peter!
..I know it from prayer and if you are looking for a precise time and date you do not know the nature of prophesy though I speak prophetically: Your thinking in this is merely human: 2 Peter 3:8–9 : ‘But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.’
If in fact he is your Pope. My prayerful contention is that he is not. Jeremiah 23:1 1“Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of My pasture!” declares the LORD. 2Therefore thus says the LORD God of Israel concerning the shepherds who are tending My people: “You have scattered My flock and driven them away, and have not attended to them; behold, I am about to attend to you for the evil of your deeds,” declares the LORD. 3“Then I Myself will gather the remnant of My flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and bring them back to their pasture, and they will be fruitful and multiply. 4“I will also raise up shepherds over them and they will tend them; and they will not be afraid any longer, nor be terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the LORD. 5“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD, “When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; And He will reign as king and act wisely And do justice and righteousness in the land. 6“In His days Judah will be saved, And Israel will dwell securely; And this is His name by which He will be called, ‘The LORD our righteousness.’ 7“Therefore behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when they will no longer say, ‘As the LORD lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ 8but, ‘As the LORD lives, who brought up and led back the descendants of the household of Israel from the north land and from all the countries where I had driven them.’ Then they will live on their own soil.”
As for the Father of lies: Ps 68:1 Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered, And let those who hate Him flee before Him.
Padraig I could be completely wrong here. If so I apologize up front. Didn't you claim earlier this year when something else was going on, that our Blessed Mother said to you that the Pope was indeed our valid Pope? Again I apologize if I got this confused with something else, but I seem to recall that
I have mentioned exercising the gift of prophecy years past in the Charismatic Renewal and, at times, spoke words of rebuke. I am still willing, if God so leads! But only if He does. Until then I'll speak honestly! Safe in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary!
I don;t know if you have been following Mark Mallet Dean, but if you have you will l have seen you will have witinessed that I siad something along the same lines. That he had been to God in prayer, confused and he decided to follow Bergogilio no matte what. He and I were both wrong. By the way I don't know if you have been following EWTN but it looks like Raymond Arruyo the eldest spiritual son of Mother Angelica is taking the same line as me on this. But I respect your concerns on this.
I don't have cable so no ewtn. I used to read MM often but have not much in the last few months. I find it interesting that he and Arroyo would think that and will examine more closely. I am concerned you are going down the wrong path. But I am also concerned I will someday too
This from DeGaulle just about sums it up. For Padraig: While I understand your frustration, I don't think it wise to make such bald statements about the Pope. As explained in Brian's posts, he remains Pope unless and until the Church (in the form of a Council) declares him unfit. We pew-sitters have no authority to make such a declaration no matter what we think of him, even if he is actually a heretic. It can't be helpful to Cardinal Burke or the hierarchy who agree with him to see such statements on the internet because it gives more ammunition for the modernists who would have the good Cardinal hounded out of the Church.
Oh boy, I have been on the fence, but with his latest statements, lastest appointments of progressive bishops and cardinals, the whole climate change encyclical, and the decision of the local ordinary to admit divorced Catholics to communion.. I kinda knew...just didn't want to admit it. But if Padraig is now saying this... A man who has always been an ardent defender of the faith and the Pope. It must be worse than I thought. May the Heart of Jesus, in the Most Blessed Sacrament, be praised, adored, and loved with grateful affection, at every moment, in all the tabernacles of the world, even to the end of time. Amen. Most Sacred Heart of Jesus please be merciful to me a sinner.
It doesn't get any more clear than this. Spoken with truth, conviction, courage and it is surely done within the spirit of the spiritual works of mercy to 'instruct the ignorant'.
This is what our pope has done. Made it possible for divorced and remarried Germans to receive the Holy Eucharist, thus stemming the tide of those refusing to pay the German church tax, preserving the lucrative income that props up much of the European church. Thirty pieces of silver in exchange for sacrilegious Communions - opening the doors to active homosexual couples also being admitted to the Eucharist. http://www.churchmilitant.com/news/...-receive-holy-communion#.WGBaGPhxQjU.facebook German Bishops: Divorced & Civilly Remarried May Receive Holy Communion by Bradley Eli, M.Div., Ma.Th. • ChurchMilitant.com • December 22, 2016 56 Comments SPEYER, Germany (ChurchMilitant.com) - German bishops will soon publish guidelines allowing the divorced and civilly remarried to sacrilegiously receive Holy Communion while continuing to live in sin. Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann of Speyer, Germany announced on December 17 his intention to publish guidelines instructing priests how to give the sacraments to civilly remarried Catholics. The bishop professed that Pope Francis in his apostolic exhortation "Amoris Laetitia" (AL) has made this possible on a case-by=case basis. [T]he pope says that, without changing Church doctrine, we must distinguish between the different circumstances people live in. We priests are not here to replace a person's conscience. Francis wants us to be spiritual companions and not lords over people's faith. We should accompany people and help them to find the right way based on their faith. Bishop Wiedemann is the second German bishop to implement AL following Abp. Stephan Burger of Freiburg, who did so in November. According to Abp. Burger, a central message of AL was admitting remarried Catholics to the sacraments. Speaking to the archdiocesan paper Konradsblatt, the archbishop remarked, "It is not possible to find a clear and unambiguous solution for everyone and everything at hand, as life is too complicated." Bishop Burger expressed his belief along with Bp. Wiedemann that Pope Francis now allows various remarried Catholics to receive the Eucharist after first discussing their particular case with apriest and having decided to do so in their conscience. In the same December 17 interview, Bp. Wiedemann was asked about the widely reported dubia by four cardinals — one of whom was the former archbishop of Cologne, Cdl. Joachim Meisner — asking Pope Francis if AL does in fact allow the sacraments to be given to unrepentant adulterers who are committed to living in sin. The bishop responded: The pope has replied and pointed out that there are not only black-and-white answers. Francis is not invalidating Church teaching but ... has opened up a way of reaching a decision in individual cases that will enable the divorced and remarried to receive the Eucharist after appropriate accompaniment by a priest. In an interview December 21, the president of the German conference of bishops, Cdl. Reinhard Marx, also spoke negatively of those seeking to clarify AL. The archbishop of Munich and Freising commented, "The text is not as misleading, as some claim. It is not a new doctrine." Asked about AL's practical implications, he replied that accompaniment of a person means not only forming the individual's conscience but also respecting it. "This also includes the possibility of returning to Communion and confession," he claimed. "To this end, we must now encourage the priests," he noted. "Many are already acting this way." These prelates all highlighted the need to respect the conscience of each individual, but none of them broached the subject of "culpable moral blindness," which Cdl. George Pell, former archbishop of Sydney, related in November has been "discussed as infrequently as the pains of Hell." Terms like affected ignorance or vincible ignorance, whereby a person is morally responsible for his willful ignorance, are seldom spoken of by prelates or pastors. Many clerics today tell Catholics to follow one's conscience, but seldom is a person told he is responsible for first informing his conscience according to Catholic teaching and culpable for deforming his conscience by sinning repeatedly. Giving the sacraments in Germany to the civilly remarried who remain sexually active predated AL and even the synods on the family of 2014 and 2015. Back in 2013, the former archbishop of Freiburg, Robert Zollitsch, circulated a 14-page handout to priests outlining how priests could allow such people to receive the sacraments without the Church's requirement of chastity. The problem of false mercy — providing sacraments to an unrepentant adulterer, now called the Kasper proposal — goes back even further. As early as 1993, Cdl. Walter Kasper and two other cardinals petitioned the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) for permission to grant the sacraments to civilly remarried Catholics without the the requisite chastity. The CDF in 1994, with Cdl. Jospeh Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) as prefect, issued the following authoritative response: Members of the faithful who live together as husband and wife with persons other than their legitimate spouses may not receive Holy Communion. Should they judge it possible to do so, pastors and confessors, given the gravity of the matter and the spiritual good of these persons as well as the common good of the Church, have the serious duty to admonish them that such a judgment of conscience openly contradicts the Church's teaching. The current prefect of the CDF, Cdl. Gerhard Müller, when asked this month about the correct interpretation of AL, upheld this 1994 directive while emphasizing that AL "should not be interpreted as if the teachings of earlier Popes and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the subject were no longer binding."
http://m.ncregister.com/daily-news/for-german-bishops-sacramental-mercy-has-a-price#.WGBfqoE8LYU For German Bishops, Sacramental Mercy Has a Price Posted by CNA/EWTN NEWS on Thursday Nov 6th, 2014 at 11:11 AM Since 2012, critics note, the German bishops have denied the sacraments to those who opt out of paying Germany’s ‘church tax.’ BERLIN — As Cardinal Walter Kasper prepares to receive an award and give a speech at The Catholic University of America later today, some are accusing him and his episcopal colleagues of Germany of hypocrisy. The critics point out that while Cardinal Kasper and most of his fellow German bishops have been leading the charge to allow those in “irregular” marital situations — those who are divorced and remarried — to receive Communion, they have simultaneously denied the sacraments, including confession, to those who opt out of paying Germany’s “church tax.” In both cases, the German position is at odds with Church teaching: admitting to Communion those formally not allowed and forbidding those whom the Vatican says can validly receive the sacraments. The German definition of mercy, critics say, is a “pay-to-pray system” that has its “financial” limits. The bishops in Germany “are notoriously the most merciful in wishing to grant Communion to the divorced and remarried, but at the same time are the most ruthless in de facto excommunicating those who refuse to pay the church tax, which in their country is obligatory by law,” Vatican analyst Sandro Magister wrote Oct. 29 in his Settimo Cielo blog for Italy’s L’Espresso newspaper. The church tax earned the Church in Germany an income of more than $7 billion in both 2012 and 2013. The critics charged that the German bishops are on one hand saying that mercy demands Communion be given to those living in what Christ called adultery, while simultaneously banning those who may be living according to Church teaching but for whatever reason choose not to pay their church tax from all the sacraments. “In Germany, the church tax (kirchensteuer) is obligatory, such that to be able to not pay it one must declare his departure from the church to which he belongs, whether Catholic or Protestant, by a public act made before a competent civil authority,” Magister explained. When Germans register as Catholic, Protestant or Jewish on their tax forms, the government automatically collects an income tax that amounts to 8% or 9% of their total income tax or 3% to 4% of their salary. The church tax is given to the religious communities, rather than those communities collecting a tithe. The Church uses its funds to help run its parishes, schools, hospitals and welfare projects. Many Germans have de-registered in recent years, so as to avoid paying the additional tax. Magister noted that the number of persons declaring their departure from the Church has been substantial — in 2010, the figure was more than 180,000. The number of de-registrations has been heightened this year, as the church tax is now being withheld from capital gains as well as from salary. Many of those who have de-registered from the Church on the German government’s forms continue to practice the faith and have de-registered to avoid the tax altogether or to support the Church with private tithes. In response to the de-registering, the German bishops issued a decree in September 2012 calling such departures “a serious lapse” and listing a number of ways such individuals are barred from participating in the life of the Church. The decree specified that those who do not pay the church tax cannot receive the sacraments of confession, Communion, confirmation or anointing of the sick, except when in danger of death; cannot hold ecclesial office or perform functions within the Church; cannot be a godparent or sponsor; cannot be a member of diocesan or parish councils; and cannot be members of public associations of the Church. If those who de-registered show no sign of repentance before their death, they can even be refused a religious burial. While these penalties have been described as “de facto excommunication,” the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts wrote in a March 13, 2006, document that opting out of taxes in a civil situation was not the same as renouncing the faith, and thus excommunication did not apply to such persons. The German group Union of Associations Loyal to the Pope has said it is ironic that one could reject Church teaching on any number of issues, including the indissolubility of marriage, and still be considered Catholic — as long as one paid the church tax. The group charged that the “selling of sacraments” through the tax system is even worse than the abuses protested by Martin Luther at the start of the Protestant Reformation.
This also was mentioned by Our Lady of good success...'Losing the divine compass, they will stray from the way of priestly ministry mapped out for them by God and will become devoted to money, seeking it too earnestly.'
Something that niggles at me is whether the Pope is being honest about this question of Communion for people in adulterous relationships. He knew that this was a controversial issue. He knew that he had no authority to change Doctrine or to invent new Doctrine. He made it possible for pastoral practice to contradict Doctrine. Clearly, he knew what he was doing because rather than spelling it out in the main body of the Exhortation, he buried it in a footnote which, to me, is rather devious and less than honest. Then, when asked about the infamous footnote, he said that he didn't even remember it. I'm very reluctant to accuse the Holy Father of lying but I can't be the only person who finds it hard to believe that he didn't remember the footnote. Yet, he accuses people seeking clarification of being guided by evil spirits??????? I thank God for the Cardinals who have submitted the Dubia, and pray that they will remain steadfast in their duty to Christ and His Church. It's ridiculous to suggest that they are motivated by resentment or ambition. The only promotion for them would be the Papacy. Three are too old to be considered and Cardinal Burke is too smart not to have been aware that going against the tide would scupper his chances. He could have kept his mouth shut and held on to his position, leaving him with a fair chance of succeeding Pope Francis. Instead, he has exposed himself to ridicule, calumny, detraction and possible demotion to curate, all for the sake of the Truth - for our sake and for the sake of future generations of Catholics. May God bless and strengthen the four Cardinals, and may the voice of the Holy Spirit drown out any other voices whispering in the Pope's ear.
I'm sure that He will. On The Nativity of Our Lord you do this. Choose wisely my brothers and sisters. As my dear departed father ingrained in me, eternity is a long time . . .
