This item has a wider relevance to this thread and others: From the Desire to Be Re-Tweeted, Deliver Us, O Lord The blogosphere can be a hateful place, and we Catholics are in no small part responsible Collette Power June 6, 2016 Jason Howie CC Pope Benedict XVI will be remembered for many contributions to the Church, but one of his most characteristic gifts is his ability to observe and analyze culture and current events, get to the roots of the mayhem, uncover the signs of hope, and look to the future with prophetic insight. It was with this acumen that he encouraged my generation to set out as missionaries to a New World, the “digital continent.” And I responded. I first got involved in new media back in 2011. I learned how to blog for World Youth Day Madrid, and a year later, bounced onto Twitter. Then a blog I co-founded on the Pope Emeritus went viral and I’ve dabbled in everything since: Instagram, Periscope, YouTube, etc. With that viral blog, I learned the immense power and beauty of communicating the Gospel to thousands from the comfort of your home. With just a few clicks, one can connect, dialogue, evangelize, communicate, share good practice and so much more. I wonder what the likes of St Paul or St Therese would have done with social media. Oh the holy possibilities! But oh too, the holy responsibility that comes with everything we post, tweet or comment! Over recent years, I have grown more and more discontented with the way the Catholic social media scene has developed in the UK, and I wonder just how detrimental this development is to unity within the Church and to our engagement with society. My discontent echoes something Fr. Thomas Rosica of Canada’s Salt + Light TV said in a recent address: “We Catholics have turned the internet into a cesspool of hatred, venom and vitriol, all in the name of defending the faith.” A senior Church official spoke to me last year about the nature of the blogosphere, commenting on the spirit driving various media platforms. He made this point: If something divides the Church, tearing people down in the process, then how can you claim it is from the Holy Spirit? It is not. I struggle to grapple with this culture that has somehow seeped into Catholic communications. After a particularly nasty incident involving a young priest who took an internet beating last year, two young bloggers contacted me independently, asking what we can do to end this divisiveness in our Church, for relentless negativity is counterproductive to our mission in an already hostile environment, and it doesn’t exactly model community or communion. Is social media the best place to thrash out our issues and concerns? The recent March for Life in Birmingham, UK underlined the power and strength of people united in joyful witness. This unity and joy are vital if our work on the digital continent is to bear good fruit. Around the time of the March, two different stories were unfolding on social media about abortion and the Catholic Church in the UK. One involved the scandalous pro-choice positions of some key figures of influence in the Church in England and Wales. This is shocking and divisive in itself. However, by way of response, how much did the angry tweeting, face-booking and blogging actually achieve? Why not change our tactics in the public arena and focus on the good? Let us praise God for the many religious who marched, for the bishops who were bold enough to turn up or send their support, for the priests who preach on the Gospel of Life, for the many young people, and people of all ages, who were involved in this event. Let’s showcase all that is good, focusing very much on the good, so that it can flourish and grow. My own personal resolution as a missionary of the digital continent is to flood social media with all that is good, beautiful and true, and to encourage others to follow me. We need the humility to trust that all that is of darkness and error will run its course without our (cyber) smackdowns*. As we know and believe, His Truth is eternal and unchanging, and has more power than anything we can tweet. Let us flood the internet with His Light and His Love. From the desire to be re-tweeted, deliver us, O Lord! “He who continues in anger, strife and a bitter spirit has a taste of the air of hell.” — St. Philip Neri - See more at: http://aleteia.org/2016/06/06/from-...eeted-deliver-us-o-lord/#sthash.mAfnNNf9.dpuf
It is absolutely true, but what does it have to do with Amoris Laetitia watering down Church teaching on marriage and sex outside of a valid marriage?
Thank you malachi for Fr Regis critique. Who can argue with this: "Some will undoubtedly respond: “But what about God’s Mercy?” The answer is this: true Mercy and true Justice are never in conflict, which means that all authentic happy relationships are based on the Truth. It is deceptive and dishonest to try to lead people to believe that they can begin or continue the intimacies of marriage, when they are divorced and not validly remarried. The preparers of Amoris Laetitia seem to have forgotten a fundamental teaching of Christianity found in St. Paul’s Gal. 6: 14: “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” We must never forget that without the cross, you do not have true Christianity. The “Joy of Love” is not the “joy of the flesh” but rather “the joy of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” What is so very troubling is that a document, professed to be a help for suffering, invalidly married couples, does just the opposite. Instead of helping them to find their way back to living according to the sixth commandment in a second union, Amoris Laetitia leads them not to a recovery of their chastity, but to a reaffirmation of their adultery. This is done stealthily, concealed in a footnote. I do not believe that Pope Francis would write such a deceptive and immoral footnote. Pope Francis himself seemed to indicate, in paragraph 3 of Amoris Laetitia, that he did not intend to exercise his magisterial authority over any new faith and moral opinions that he expressed in Amoris Laetitia. It is beginning to look more and more like Amoris Laetitia is the work of persons with a politically inspired agenda. The hope and prayer of so many faithful Catholics around the world is that Pope Francis will take another look at this deceptive document. Please, Holy Father, pull it back, and have it rewritten, but this time put it in the hands of persons who will prepare it with honesty and accuracy."
Your last paragraph strikes me as grasping at straws. People who have problems with the document yet don't want to be seen questioning the Pope take the default position that somebody else is responsible - that somebody inserted it without the Pope's knowledge or consent. They say this despite evidence to the contrary, for example, the Pope's journalist friend reporting His Holiness as saying that Communion would be open to all the divorced and remarried who asked for it; out of the thousands of letters the Pope must receive every day, the one he choose to respond to by phone was from the remarried Argentinian woman who had been refused Communion by her priest and his advice to her was that she should find another priest; the Pope pronouncing Cardinal Schonborn to be the official interpreter of the document when he cannot have been unaware that Cardinal Schonborn had already sanctioned Communion for the divorced and remarried in Austria; the reported comment by the Pope suggesting that to state clearly what was hidden in the footnote would cause too much trouble and that they should leave it to him; and, of course, the "Prize for the Perfect" comment.
What I quoted was Fr Regis Scanlan's beliefs about the pope's document. It needs to be re-written according to one of Charlie Johnston's favorite priests!
Yes, Picadillo, it was a quote. My apologies for assuming you were re-stating it as your own opinion. I hate always being the one to point out that the Holy Father didn't have a fast one pulled on him with the footnote. My speculation as to what really happened is that the Pope wanted to find a way of giving Communion to people in irregular situations (and by this I'm also speculating that the long term aim is to include not just the divorced and remarried but also people living together in long term unmarried relationships including homosexual relationships). Having decided that it was going to happen, he then enlisted the help of like-minded Cardinals, Bishops and theologians and charged them with finding some loophole in the writings of previous Popes and one of the "experts" came up with the piece about it being a strain on marriage fidelity where the couple must refrain from conjugal relations. I get the impression that Pope Francis likes to quote his two immediate predecessors as some kind of verification when making what he knows will be controversial statements. It's a sad situation where we know that the Pope has the power to bind and loose yet even members of the hierarchy are not in agreement on whether he has loosed or even what he is loosing. If he wants to follow the Orthodox practice of allowing up to one sacramental plus two or three non-sacramental marriages, I wish he would come out straight and say so rather than letting all this confusion drag on. Jesus didn't blame Moses for allowing divorce. He placed the blame on those who pressed for it through the hardness of their hearts. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has family or friends living in "irregular" unions that we would love to be able to encourage to come on back to Mass and Communion and never mind about their situation, but deep down we know we would be misrepresenting what the Church has taught since Jesus defined marriage. Maybe that's hard-hearted and the Church has got it wrong up to now. I don't know but I find it very unsettling.
While I agree with your post 100%, I would like to publicly thank Fr Regis Scanlan for pointing out the "rupture" this encyclical has had with St. John Paul and tradition. We have been accused of many things for complaining about this pope but Fr Scanlan has put some "meat on those bones." I agree, the pope should just come out and be honest instead of bullying, hiding behind others, and his seeming habit of being vague. Like it or not, this seems to be his style.
Davidtlg, if the quoted post is yours; it is nice to see committed pro life people here in the UK. Is there a way you could post venues for pro life marches here in the Forum. We read about how USA combats the death culture; but it is so rare to hear of such, especially marches so I for one could try and attend. The thing is knowing when and where to be able to try and attend. I am too old and worn out to take the initiative on organising; but could support by attending if I knew in time. God bless your efforts. Maybe there is a UK thread some where on the forum, I have not found it.
AL seems to encourage adulterous sex for the sake of...eh...adultery. This is not taking up one's cross but breaking it over one's knee.
It has to do with how we treat each other, regardless of how dark things become in the Church and the world. And we have it on good authority that it will get very dark indeed.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinio...tion-will-lead-to-practice-that-trivializes-a Bishop Schneider: Pope’s exhortation will lead to practice that ‘trivializes and profanes … three sacraments’ Voice of the Family June 7, 2016 (Voice of the Family) -- Bishop Athanasius Schneider has made his strongest comments yet on the “real spiritual danger” posed by the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. The bishop said that the document contains expressions that are “objectively erroneous” and which “one can hardly interpret… according to the holy immutable Tradition of the Church.” Bishop Schneider’s remarks were made in a letter to the Catholic newspaper The Remnant in response to an open letter by contributor Chris Ferrara, which asked the bishop “to do everything in his power to persuade his brethren in the episcopacy… to mount concerted and decisive public opposition to the destructive novelties of Amoris Laetitia.” Among the many important points made by Bishop Schneider in his reply, we wish to draw attention to the following: (i) that the “the natural and logical consequences” of Amoris Laetitia will include “doctrinal confusion, a fast and easy spreading of heterodox doctrines” and “the adoption and consolidation of the praxis of admitting divorced and remarried to Holy Communion, a praxis which will trivialize and profane, as to say, at one blow three sacraments: the sacrament of Marriage, of Penance, and of the Most Holy Eucharist” (ii) that all Catholics “who still take seriously their baptismal vows, should with one voice make a profession of fidelity, enunciating concretely and clearly all those Catholic truths, which are in some expressions in AL undermined or ambiguously disfigured” (iii) that exaggerated views of papal infallibility are “contrary to the teaching of Jesus and of the whole Tradition of the Church. Such a totalitarian understanding and application of Papal infallibility is not Catholic, is ultimately worldly, like in a dictatorship; it is against the spirit of the Gospel and of the Fathers of the Church.” (iv) that future popes “will be grateful to those bishops, theologians and lay people” who raised their voices in this time of “great confusion.” The full letter can be read at The Remnant. Further analysis of Amoris Laetitia Key Doctrinal Errors and Ambiguities of Amoris Laetitia, Matthew McCusker, Building a Catholic Resistance Movement, John Smeaton The Current Crisis in the Context of Church History, Professor Roberto de Mattei
.and can Bishops lead , 'oppostion', to a Pontiff? What does , 'Opposition' entail? Where is obedience in all this? Troubling.
Doctrinal confusion has been embedded in Church practise well before AL. Bishop vs Bishop Cardinal vs Cardinal It is difficult days to be a Catholic. Lets just get on with saying our prayers and let God deal with the confusion.
Obey God , not man. Obedience lies there. We have had bad Popes before . One would hope with all the genuine prophecy we have looked at , most would accept we will face a bad Pope again. If you accept that one day a bad Pope will surface, ....What should one do?
Obedience is not a human concept for us as Cahtolics but a Spiritual Reality, Mac. The reason why you are not understanding the conecpt is that you are looking on this and these vents in a human, or Prtoestant way , rather than in a supernatural one. Obeidence in this matter to Our Holy Father the Pope is supernatural rather than natural.
This is in my mind, one of the most profound comments I have read on MOG. I am not driven by any personal agenda in this opinion. This must have cost. Thank you Padraig
All I meant was , Bishops have stood up to Popes before. Look to St Athanasius. He did not follow like everyone else. He was in fact obedient. And consequently his false Excommunication was lifted and he was made a saint[obviously] Did he not understand the concept? and look on these vents in a protestant way?
