Now if the Pope and Mr. Scorsese could put their little brains together and come to the real conclusion that it's been their "types" who have promoted the immoral erasing of the lines between good and evil and encouraged all kinds of perverted behavior!! WATCH: Martin Scorsese Tells Pope: ‘The World Is Marked by Evil’ ROME — Hollywood director Martin Scorsese told Pope Francis Tuesday that the world of today is “marked by evil” and asked him how elderly people can “strengthen and guide the young.” Mr. Scorsese, whose 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ provoked protests from Christian groups for its alleged blasphemy, was invited to address Pope Francis at a book presentation of Sharing the Wisdom of Time on the occasion of the Synod of Bishops on Young People. “Holy Father, I’ve been making movies for a long time now, but I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in downtown New York,” said the director, who was raised Catholic. “There’s a church there, Saint Patrick’s old cathedral and it’s still there. It’s the first Catholic cathedral in New York and I spent a lot of time in that church, but outside the church, things were very different. There was poverty and violence.” “I experienced that there was a truth in the street and that there was a truth presented to us in the Church and that they weren’t or didn’t seem to be the same and it was very, very, very difficult to put the two of them together, to reconcile the two worlds,” he said. “Jesus’s love seemed something that was completely apart, or like foreign, alien often to what I was seeing on the street. True, I was fortunate to have good, loving parents and an extraordinary young priest who became kind of a mentor for myself and others during those formative years.” “However, even today, when we look around at newspapers and television, it seems that the world is marked by evil. We also see the painful human failings of the institution of the Church itself,” he said. “How can we elderly people strengthen and guide the young in what they have to go through yet in life,” he said. “How, Holy Father, can the faith of a young woman or man survive in this maelstrom? How can we help the Church in this endeavor?” In his reply to Mr. Scorsese, Pope Francis said that the key is to teach young people that cruelty is the “wrong path,” helping them to have the “wisdom and gift to cry in the face of so much violence, cruelty, [and] destruction of human life. To cry is human and Christian.” The pontiff suggested that the path is marked by “empathy, closeness, non-violence, tenderness, all human virtues that seem small but are capable of putting an end to the most violent of events.” This was the second time the pope has granted an audience to Scorsese. In 2016, the pope met with the director in preparation for the Rome premiere of his film Silence, about a conflicted Jesuit missionary in 17th-century Japan during violent persecutions of Christianity. https://www.breitbart.com/entertain...rsese-tells-pope-the-world-is-marked-by-evil/
So to sum it all up the walls and foundation of the Church must be razed for the New Church to be built under the auspices of the abuses of hedonism, clericalism, and chauvinism. After all we can't have old wine skins for this outpouring of the new wine. Many signs and wonders will take place under this "new wine". We were warned. I suspect that God has other plans and I trust Him. One thing is pretty clear, for all this to take place societies like the SSPX and FSSP will be mercilessly attacked. It will come soon IMO because they are growing at rates the new church can not come even close to. Another thing about this sexual abuse "crisis" that is being used as a scapegoat to mobilize the wrecking ball of new church; it seems very convenient that it has blemished the priesthood in such a way does it not? Almost IMO as if it was painstakingly constructed to lead to the present time.
etoa, Thank you for posting this. I read that Martin Scorsese's question was the final question of the Youth Synod. My first thought was how does Martin Scorsese qualify as a youth (or a yute as Joe Pesci would say ) and Raymond Arroyo had a similar thought, https://twitter.com/raymondarroyo My first impression of Pope Francis' answer to the final question of the Youth Synod is that it lacks any sign of the supernatural. There is no suggestion to turn to God, Jesus Christ on the cross or to Our Lady and no suggestion to pray or to repent and do penance for our own offenses to God. From what I have read so far about the Youth Synod there is very little mention of repentance and penance at all. Maybe I'll be corrected about this. Blizzard, Wow again! Thank you for posting this also. I still have to go through this BBC article, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/China_hidden_camps , more thoroughly but at a first glance it appears extremely ominous and I am again reminded of Conchita's words, “When communism comes again everything will happen.” I think we can't pray enough right now.
Don, interesting point about the priesthood. Where I come from, there are three or four really holy and orthodox priests who refer to “their Priesthood, or his Priesthood” As in “he defiled his Priesthood”
It seems like the lack of the supernatural is the common denominator of sorts eh? I am surprised it was not this character again...
Indeed. And for some it is the only Sacrament. Some seem to believe that the Catholic Church was ignorant of the plight of the poor, oppressed and marginalised until the advent of Pope Francis. They seem to believe that Pope Francis is some kind of innovator of Catholic charity, changing a mean, selfish, doctrine ridden church into one which had suddenly discovered the Christian belief in helping the less fortunate. The truth is that without the Doctrine, there would be no Catholic charities such as those referred to by US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, in her speech at the NY Archdiocese's Al Smith Dinner: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...miracles-of-church-despite-abuse-crisis-41693 In the course of her time as ambassador, Haley said that she had been to some “truly dark places” where the suffering endured by many people would be “hard for most Americans to imagine.” “I’ve been to the border between Colombia and Venezuela, where people walk 3 hours each way in the blazing sun to get the only meal that they will have that day. Who’s giving that meal? The Catholic Church,” she said. “I’ve been to refugee camps in Central Africa where young boys are kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers and young girls are raped as a matter of routine. Who was in the forefront of changing this culture of corruption and violence? The Catholic Church.” Catholics have been helping the poor, sick and downtrodden since long before the arrival of Pope Francis, and they didn't need to badmouth or compromise Church Doctrine or Tradition to carry out that mission.
The Pope Doesn’t Understand China Oct. 24, 2018 By Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun Cardinal Zen is a retired bishop of Hong Kong. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/opinion/pope-china-vatican-church-catholics-bishops.html Mass ahead of Easter celebrations at the government-sanctioned South Cathedral in Beijing, in March.Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images HONG KONG — Last month the Vatican announced that it had come to a provisional agreement with the government of China over the appointment of Catholic bishops. Supporters of the deal say that it finally brings unity after longstanding division — between an underground Church loyal to the pope and an official church approved by the Chinese authorities — and that with it, the Chinese government has for the first time recognized the authority of the pope. In fact, the deal is a major step toward the annihilation of the real Church in China. I know the Church in China, I know the Communists and I know the Holy See. I’m a Chinese from Shanghai. I lived many years in the mainland and many years in Hong Kong. I taught in seminaries throughout China — in Shanghai, Xian, Beijing, Wuhan, Shenyang — between 1989 and 1996. Pope Francis, an Argentine, doesn’t seem to understand the Communists. He is very pastoral, and he comes from South America, where historically military governments and the rich got together to oppress poor people. And who there would come out to defend the poor? The Communists. Maybe even some Jesuits, and the government would call those Jesuits Communists. Francis may have natural sympathy for Communists because for him, they are the persecuted. He doesn’t know them as the persecutors they become once in power, like the Communists in China. The Holy See and Beijing cut off relations in the 1950s. Catholics and other believers were arrested and sent to labor camps. I went back to China in 1974 during the Cultural Revolution; the situation was terrible beyond imagination. A whole nation under slavery. We forget these things too easily. We also forget that you can never have a truly good agreement with a totalitarian regime. China has opened up, yes, since the 1980s, but even today everything is still under the Chinese Communist Party’s control. The official church in China is controlled by the so-called patriotic association and the bishops’ conference, both under the thumb of the party. From 1985 to 2002, Cardinal Jozef Tomko was the prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which oversees the Church’s missionary work. He was a Slovak, who understood communism, and he was wise. Cardinal Tomko’s position was that the underground Church was the only lawful Church in China, and that the official church was unlawful. But he also understood that there were many good people in the official church. Like the bishop of Xian, who for a time was a vice chairman of the bishops’ conference. Or the bishop of Shanghai, Jin Luxian, a Jesuit and a brilliant linguist, who had been interned in the 1950s. Back then, the Holy See had a cautious policy that it implemented generously. It was amenable to reasonable compromise but had a bottom line. Things changed in 2002, when Cardinal Tomko reached the age of retirement. A young Italian with no foreign experience replaced him and began legitimizing official Chinese bishops too quickly, too easily, creating the impression that now the Vatican would automatically second Beijing’s selection. Hope returned when Joseph Ratzinger, a German who had lived through both Nazism and communism, became Pope Benedict XVI. He brought on Cardinal Ivan Dias, an Indian who had spent time in West Africa and South Korea, to head the congregation of evangelization, and that internationalized the Vatican. A special commission for the Church in China also was set up. I was appointed to it. Unfortunately, Cardinal Dias believed in Ostpolitik and in the teachings of a state secretary in the 1980s who had been a proponent of détente with Soviet-controlled governments. And he applied the policy to China. When Benedict issued his famous letter to the Church of China in 2007, calling for reconciliation among all Catholics there, something incredible happened. The Chinese translation was released with errors, including one too important not to have been deliberate. In a delicate passage about how priests in the underground might accept recognition by the Chinese authorities without necessarily betraying the faith, a critical caveat was left out about how “almost always,” however, the Chinese authorities imposed requirements “contrary to the dictates” of Catholics’ conscience. Some of us raised the issue and the text was eventually corrected on the Vatican’s website. But by then, the mistaken original had widely circulated in China, and some bishops there had understood Benedict’s historic letter as encouragement to join the state-sanctioned church. Today, we have Pope Francis. Naturally optimistic about communism, he is being encouraged to be optimistic about the Communists in China by cynics around him who know better. The commission for the Church in China no longer convenes, even though it has not been dissolved. Those of us who come from the periphery, the front lines, are being marginalized. I was among those who applauded Francis’s decision to appoint Pietro Parolin as secretary of state in 2013. But I now think that Cardinal Parolin cares less about the Church than about diplomatic success. His ultimate goal is the restoration of formal relations between the Vatican and Beijing. Francis wants to go to China — all popes have wanted to go to China, starting with John Paul II. But what did Francis’s visit to Cuba in 2015 bring the Church? The Cuban people? Almost nothing. And did he convert the Castro brothers? The faithful in China are suffering and are now coming under increasing pressure. Early this year, the government tightened regulations on the practice of religion. Priests in the underground on the mainland tell me that they are discouraging parishioners from coming to Mass to avoid arrest. Francis himself has said that although the recent agreement — whose terms haven’t been disclosed — provides for “a dialogue about eventual candidates,” it is the pope who “appoints” bishops. But what good is having the last word when China will have all the words before it? In theory the pope could veto the nomination of any bishop who seems unworthy. But how many times can he do that, really? Soon after the deal was announced, two Chinese bishops from the official church were sent to Vatican City for the synod, a regular meeting of bishops from around the world. Who selected them? Both men are known to be close to the Chinese government. As I have said, their presence at the gathering was an insult to the good bishops of China. Their presence also raises the painful question of whether the Vatican will now legitimize the seven official bishops who remain illegitimate. The pope has already lifted their excommunication, paving the way for them to be formally granted dioceses. The official church has about 70 bishops; the underground Church has only about 30. The Chinese authorities say: You recognize our seven and we’ll recognize your 30. That sounds like a good trade-off. But will the 30 then be allowed to still function as underground bishops? Surely not. They will be forced to join the so-called bishops’ conference. They will be forced to join the others in that bird cage, and will become a minority among them. The Vatican’s deal, struck in the name of unifying the Church in China, means the annihilation of the real Church in China. If I were a cartoonist I would draw the Holy Father on his knees offering the keys of the kingdom of heaven to President Xi Jinping and saying, “Please recognize me as the pope.” And yet, to the underground bishops and priests of China, I can only say this: Please don’t start a revolution. They take away your churches? You can no longer officiate? Go home, and pray with your family. Till the soil. Wait for better times. Go back to the catacombs. Communism isn’t eternal.
Hospitals, schools, universities, the concept of social welfare; all primarily invented by the Catholic Church many centuries ago. Pope Francis hasn't been the one to invent Charity, but he is the one to introduce the concept of virtue-signalling it.
If anyone wants a good laugh, you'd do worse than looking at Eccles' latest skit on the 'Yoof Synod'. His description of the 'impudent hussy's encounter with Uncle Ted is a classic.
So what's really going on. The world is turning darker and darker. And yes, just like God has saints...the "created one" has his anti-saints. When I read that the Church needs women priests...I cringe. Its not that they can't be or they wouldn't make great priests. Its that in God providence, God created women, for a different role. We in the West... have been spoiled with relative peace. Our priests and/or our church... has not suffered. But when evil becomes strong... the priest are the ones that must make the ultimate sacrifice. I don't think God created woman to suffer...He created them to teach the children, lead the family and lead the community by example. Modern society might say that is wrong. But Our Spirituality is based on humility...he or she needs to have great humility to become a great saint. In the 60's, Our Catholic nuns thought teaching at schools was beneath them. There was a gradual exodus of nuns from our schools. Many left to be social justice warriors...pride took over. Our children were left without guidance and/or examples. Look where this has lead us. All those nuns that took off the habits and tried to conform to the world. Have gradually disappeared and their orders have died with them. But the damage done to our children...has lead us to the situation we are in now. They left Gods children because they thought they had greater things to do. Their pride has lead them to believe they should be priests. But God chose mostly fisherman for priest. Not for their intelligence... but because in those days, fisherman were strong and disciplined. He needed those type of apostles... because He understood the ultimate sacrifice, they would have to make. But also he understood... they were disciplined enough to follow a schedule and orders. But even then... WHO was the greatest saint. Who was with Jesus from day one, up until His Death. Who saw and heard everything? From His first miracle to His death on the cross. Who was with the apostles, when Jesus was gone and they were being persecuted? When Jesus died...I believe the apostles had great esteem for the Mother of God and most likely used her for advice on all spiritual matters. But in the end...it was humility that made Our Mother, Queen of Heaven and Earth. In the big picture, the greatest saint is a humble woman. A woman that was always in the background... but never wanted to be in the spotlight. In the big picture, its not about who is the priest. Its about knowing our roles. Would I want my mother, sister or daughter hanging backwards on a cross? I wouldn't... and not sure God would want that either. Have there been some great female martyrs...of course. But we must remember humility is not lack of greatness. Humility is the path that leads to sainthood.
A person (for confidential reasons called "X") was recently asked to send a message to Vassula Reyden on behalf of a priest who was negative about Pope Francis. Person X replied to the priest with a strong defence of Pope Francis, but told the priest to forward his reply (about the Pope) to Vassula in case she didn't agree. This is what Vassula wrote in reply to "X": "Good answer. Pope Francis has approached Unity with the Orthodox Church like no other Pope and this is the reason the devil has turned wild on him and has created all this chaos and persecution against him vomiting on him by the so called stiff necked Catholics who still call the Orthodox schismatic and would never want to BEND to be able to unite. The Catholics who are persecuting him should wake up !" A little later Vassula sent a second message to person "X". Here it is : "Dear X, I did not have enough time to write a longer explanation to Father..... (as this is a public forum, I do not reveal his name) as I was on my way to Egypt. So please forward this email. Jesus had been saying it all these years, that a great tribulation will enter the Church and that we should be praying for priests as there will be confusions between them. Obedience to the leaders of the Church has always been a flag in the Catholic Church. That lay people, Priests etc, should be obeying their superiors, no matter what and we know from the great Saints how sometimes they were mistreated by their superiors, yet they obeyed them anyhow. Today, many Catholics are tempted to disregard this rule that was like a number one in the Catholic church more than all the other Churches, and even go as far as to disobey the Pope (leader of them all) and even ask the Pope Francis to step down. This is called mutiny. When Jesus showed me the 3 stiff iron bars, He had said that all three have to bend. He has not spared the Catholic church. The catholic Church has also to see what is not right, otherwise Jesus would not have shown me 3 bars, but two. When I talk about stiff necked Christians, it’s those who do not see what Christ see, that the Catholic church has also to bend, but what I hear to this day, (even very recently from the CDF) is “why has Vassula not converted to our Catholic church and she still preaches Unity?” – so is this the mind they have? When a letter from Cardinal....... (as this is a public forum, I do not reveal his name) (who was at one time working in the Pontifical office of Unity) came into my hands which he was writing: “if we approach and have discussions and dialogues with the Orthodox it is so that one day we will be able to convert them into our church…” Unfortunately many say that we have somehow understood the Will of Christ, but our mind is far still from understanding Him. Like why does He appear to Moslems and converts them into Christians but never tells them which Church to follow, why doesn’t He tell them to go and join the Catholic or Orthodox church? Most of them become evangelical. Jesus gives them a path to become Christians and does not impose on them which Church to join. Do we know why? No, and to me, this is a mystery! When I see the humility and the simplicity of Pope Francis that irritated all the Curia, because it exposed the difference, and from the beginning he created enemies because of that, and when he broke protocols of how the Popes should dress and behave, because he wanted to reach out to the people and defend the simple and not to the Curia, detaching himself from all the frills and prestige that the Curia have, and went to live in a simple monastery with simple furniture, this again exposed those who live in the luxurious areas of the Vatican. But this is not the main thing, the main thing is that he tries to bring up Unity with the churches especially with the Orthodox church and make one Easter. Then, wouldn’t the devil try harder? He would try so hard as to have a mutiny formed against him so that they throw him out! Time would tell says Father......., yes, but in the meantime, one should not ignore their rule of Obedience. And many are in disobedience to the Pope, and his ministry, and they should know better that disobedience comes from the devil. In the meantime, if Father....... took such an offence from my previous email, to decide step down, this reminds me of a passage in Scriptures that when Jesus said something stronger to his accumulated followers, many of his followers just turned their back and left him. People will never change, and the words of St. Paul go into void: …"love is never boastful or conceited, it is never rude or selfish, it does not take offence, and is not resentful".… I too forgive Father ......., as he forgave me. TLIG comes from above, and is not from below, therefore, priest or without priest, the messages of God will be taken care by Him and will keep growing. I thank him anyway for having accompanied our prayer groups and support on TLIG. In Christ, Vassula" TLIG= True Life In God = title of the books that contain the messages from Heaven given to Vassula. Shortly after, the priest and Vassula met and have reconciled, as real Christians ought to do. I know it because I was present. The priest in question will not step down from TLIG because he believes in the messages of TLIG. I would like to emphasis that Vassula feels and sees things that only a mystic is able to do. She is gifted from Above. If ever Pope Francis would not be ok, then she already would have felt it and have been warned by the Holy Spirit and she would never have shown such a positif attitude towards the actual Pope. You should read her book "Heaven exists, but also Hell" in which you discover that Vassula already in her childhood experienced supernatural events and saw souls who passed away and was warned about an upcoming danger in advance, also regarding persons. This should make us understand that she knows more than we do... A short video from Vassula: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkjh9Lw9_ps&feature=youtu.be . In particular the message regarding Our Father is touching: we already knew Him before were born. In our present life, we forget about Him, but we know Him ! I read this also in other mystical readings and moreover it was told that before we came to earth, we asked our Father to bear a particular cross on earth as a sacrifice. So we should not complain about our sufferings on earth, because we have chosen for it before we were born ! Wauw ! By the way: all the books from Vassula were distributed freely at the prayer event and this will continue as from that day. This decision was made by Vassula. View attachment 8789
Isnt vassula comdemned by vatican since 1995. I have read her stuff and now i know why she is condemned. PF is a heretical Pope and im sorry it wouldnt be mutiny it would be trying to save our Church. No disrespect to you.
Nice one -- what about the so called 'superiors' who beat the crap out of school children, sexually abused children and seminarians like Cardinal McCarrick? Now that's what I call a tribulation - the abuse of minors by superiors! They need to be kicked out of the priesthood full stop, period! Really - are we to tolerate such pharisees! No! And should we tolerate those who tolerate the abusers! No! Purification begins in the house of God. No toleration of abuse! It's time for the laity to demand proper governance of the Church. And if they don't listen -- let in the civil authorities to put the abusers into prison cells where they belong!
Never heard of this Vassula, before, but why should we listen to this person ahead of the advice of St. Paul?
How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the Priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him! How much pride, how much self-complacency!" "Lord, your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side. In your field we see more weeds than wheat. The soiled garments and face of your Church throw us into confusion. Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again, after all our lofty words and grand gestures. Have mercy on your Church...You stood up, you arose and you can also raise us up. Save and sanctify your Church. Save and sanctify us all." Pope Benedict with an honest assessment of where we are with the state of the church.
Hi Elisa! I have Vassula’s book and loved it. At first I believed Pope Francis was bringing chaos in order to unveil the evil, so there would be a concerted outrage within the laity against those hurting the Church. Maybe he infiltrated their Masonic circles as a white hat. I’m still hoping this may be true, but becoming less hopeful by the day.
