When is God going to raise up leaders in the Church with backbone? http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ca...iticians-wont-be-excommunicated-politician-cl
Maybe some are starting to gain their fortitude. But what disturbs me in this story about Cardinal George is the woman going back to Communion and receiving the Host again and she distributes to the man denied Communion. Where does this take us?
Sorry, here is link to the story. http://cal-catholic.com/wordpress/2...rge-refuses-communion-to-rainbow-sash-leader/
The Church is already split - the schism exists only waiting to break out into the open. Compromise with secular atheism is not possible indeed we are at war but there are many asleep!
We are. I think Pope Benedict said not long before he stepped down that the Church would be smaller but compromised of those who would adhere to the true tenants of the faith. I wonder if Benedict's role was to teach us and prepare us for this and now Pope Francis is here as the man of action to walk with us and show us how this "new" and smaller Church must act?
Here is the quote you are referring to, and written long before he was pope! Pope Benedict: Faith and the Future February 16, 2012 By Elizabeth Scalia In 2009 Ignatius press released this prophetic little volume, written by our pope over 1969-1970 — while the world was in the first throes of the social revolution. I thought I’d share a few of Joseph Ratzinger’s prescient thoughts. They seem timely: “The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges. . . As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members.”He goes on, saying: [the church] “It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek . . . The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution – when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain . . . But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret. And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already with Gobel, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.”
Now that is truly prophetic! We are much further downhill since he penned this. Only the Holy Spirit could have inspired him with such clear vision! Safe in the Barque of Peter!
I don't think you are uncharitable and I think when I read the words of Archbishop Chaput, he is telling us as the lay people we will need to lead. http://www.ncregister.com/daily-new...s-liberty-depends-on-lay-faithful-not-bishops
I agree and as I think the words of Archbishop Chaput( full link below) are spot on: "The secular world is the place where laypeople exercise their leadership most naturally. It’s the environment of their everyday lives and their primary mission field. Bishops can counsel and teach, but their role in practical political affairs like the fight for religious liberty can only be indirect and secondary. If laypeople don’t love their Catholic faith enough to struggle for it in the public square, nothing the bishops do will finally matter."
Yes, Bishops can counsel and teach; indeed they must. Anyone, layperson or clergy, who won't defend innocent human life has no business claiming to be a Christian. However, I'd take the word of a professed Catholic politician who publicly supports abortion with a grain of salt. (Never mind the hand-wringing about suicide threats and risks to the mother's life. Those are convenient excuses to compromise with the world.) Our own Nancy Pelosi (who infamously proclaimed on national T.V. that the abortion issue hasn't been settled yet in the Church) had a closed door meeting with Pope Benedict, and came out claiming they had a lovely chat. I doubt it.
At the start of the Protestant Reformation under Henry 8th only one Catholic Bishop out of the whole lot stayed loyal to the Faith and that was St John Fisher. I think it will be the same in our own times. Why do people like Bishops leave when the going gets tough? I think partly it is because they think of it as a human institution ,rather like a buisness or a University rather than a mystical reality. Or to put it another way they have too much to loose. People who have too much to loose won't risk loosing it. Also because they were so busy being Bishops they were too busy to pray. They were so busy organising their fellow Catholics they became no longer Catholic. I think its pretty well the same this time round. If they start putting their hands up before a single shot is fired in anger what will they not do when the bullets start flying..and they will? The clever person will always come up with a clever answer and the clever money is on compromise and on trying to weasel their way out of things. But that won't work. They'll end up weaselling their way to hell. Matthew 10:33 But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.
A great movie Padraig, I own it and soon my older daughters will appreciate it.They always groan when I show them my 'old stuff' but they will watch.We watched Ben Hur at Easter ,they groaned, they enjoyed it.
When Pope John Paul declared Thomas More as the patron of statesmen and people in public life, he wrote: “The defense of the Church’s freedom from unwarranted interference by the State is at the same time a defense, in the name of the primacy of conscience, of the individual’s freedom vis-à-vis political power. Here we find the basic principle of every civil order consonant with human nature.” These words of Blessed JP II, the Great, ring so profoundly and true today. May St. Thomas More intercede for us all as we stand for and defend our religios freedoms and the Gid given right to express our consciences.
I read a lovely story about Pope John Paul from the guy who used to be is driver when he was Cardinal of Kracow. The Communist Government used to subject him to all kinds of petty humiliations and insults. One time he was called to see a Government Minister and the guy kept him waiting outside for three hours. The man said Pope John Paul just sat there the whole time calm as a cucumber ,saying the rosary. What an example.
