I'm saddened and grieved at a number of things Pope Francis has said and done. Sometimes, however, I'm bothered by his critics who themselves lean toward subtle distortion to drive home their angst. Take the above which references to the following quote of Pope Francis: Accepting that Christ is dead and that He died crucified is not an act of faith. It is a historical fact. Believing he is Risen, on the other hand, is. It is quite plausible that the Pope was referring to quotes from 1st century personages like Josephus and Pliny, who definitively stated that Jesus died, but did not believe in the Resurrection. However, in a different section of the audience, the Pope states: This is the fact: He died, He was buried, He rose and He appeared. That is, Jesus is alive! This is the heart of the Christian message. The Resurrection sounds factual in that line! So why does a critic have to be so selective in his quotes as to stretch the truth in order to garner more ammunition? This can be tiresome at times. Safe in the Barque of Peter!
This is just an opinion from a scholar, Anna Silvas, and not a church authority. Please discern that she is not judging the Pope but rather criticizing his teachings on marriage in contrast with the Church Fathers. I find it quite bold and refreshing, because in her criticism there is a tremendous trust in God and his power to bring Peter around. A good reason to pray for the Pope even with more zeal rather than to think badly about him, which does not help. Pope Francis’ teaching on marriage is not ‘in the Spirit of Christ’: scholar LifeSiteNews: Anna Silvas, your talk gave the impression that you think that everything that is happening is intentional. How can we as Catholics live with a Pope who is doing intentionally bad things? I did try to not disguise the stark conundrum we find ourselves in, and I don't quite know what the solutions are. The Lord is obviously allowing this to happen for some very good purpose. I think it's the culmination of decades of malaise in the Church. How on earth is the Lord going to purify the Church of this crisis, I don't know. But the fact is that the current Pope of Rome is a serious paradox. I don't think, for example, “synodality” or “conciliarism” is any sort of solution to balance the papacy. I do think the papacy itself probably needs to be looked at, but how on earth the Lord will allow this to happen… There have been other times in the Church when the vast majority of bishops went the way of heresy, or soft-pedaling heresy as in the Arian crisis. The Lord has handled that. Pope Francis is moving, bit by bit with his choices of cardinals, to get his sort there in the Vatican so that he can retire. He thinks this is the way he can achieve his agenda. of that actually makes me glad in a way, because it's obvious that it’s so very much not of the Spirit of God. It's so very much not of the Spirit of Christ. It's paradoxical, but I think it's clear that the Lord Himself is going to bring about something different. LifeSiteNews: That was the gist of your talk: Christ will not abandon His Church. He will not. And we have to center on Him absolutely. Popes come and go, but Jesus Christ is the real Lord and Master, and the Bridegroom of the Church, absolutely. The same yesterday, today and forever. Getting a good, strict purchase on that will be the one remedy, at least in our own pained situations, individually, that we can look for. I'm not one of the minimizers of the deep distress of the Church, but it is so varied, in so many different ways. This moral, sacramental crisis is just like a widespread corruption – the cult of modernity. You can think of your own descriptions. We're all thinking and have been thinking for years to try and understand what has brought society, in general, and our Church, in particular, to this point. But how we'll get out of this hole, I don't know, except by definitely cleaving to Our Lord Jesus Christ, with faith. LifeSiteNews: In the Oriental orthodox Churches, there is the “oikonomia,” as you remarked, of remarriage and communion. Has their theology evolved because of this or at the same time as this? Has it moved away from the true faith? Definitely! They've abandoned the Greek Fathers! They have abandoned the original tradition of the Fathers of the Church – I refer to their breech with Holy Tradition. In the 3rd century, there were people like Athanagoras of Athens. The early tradition of the Church was you did not marry a second time after the death of your first spouse. They've traveled a fair distance since the time of Justinian. It took about 500 years, I'd say, when Rome and civil law began to infiltrate into the practice of the Church and a bad example began to be set for “dynastic reasons,” of course, by the emperors and empresses. And then it filters down … It takes some centuries. You get some saints, like saint Theodore the Studite, who fought a rearguard action against this devolution in the Church of Constantinople, but they very definitely abandoned the Greek Fathers. You can still find some very powerful statements from Saint John Chrysostom or Gregory the Theologian, but it’s a fair-seeming theology, beguiling language that actually cloaks a serious abandonment of the Tradition. People like Kasper and Häring are listening to all this, and they haven't actually done the work on the early Fathers. They're listening to their line, and thinking of course the Russian Orthodox Church must know about the Fathers of the Church. Actually, this is one of the most significant areas where the Catholic Church maintained the Tradition and the Eastern Orthodox didn't. Interview continues here: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/f...nt-breathe-the-spirit-of-christ-patristics-sc
http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?ID=1220 Is the Vatican’s top canonical official undermining canon law? By Phil Lawler (bio - articles - email) | May 11, 2017 My favorite canon lawyer, Ed Peters, has some “Questions in the wake of Cdl. Coccopalmerio’s comments on Anglican orders.” I recommend his analysis highly, for anyone who wants an expert perspective; I happily defer to Peters on the legal issues. Let me add a few comments, however, on the pastoral implications of the cardinal’s statements. In case you missed it, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio—who must be taken seriously, since he heads the Pontifical Council responsible for the interpretation of canon law— made headlines by saying that we should not assume that the ordination of an Anglican priest is invalid. This appears to be a clear contradiction of the pronouncement by Pope Leo XIII that Anglican orders are “absolutely null and utterly void.” Cardinal Coccopalmerio remarked that the Catholic Church has held a “very rigid understanding of validity and invalidity.” According the London Tablet, which broke this story, Cardinal Coccopalmerio suggested that it’s possible to say: “this is valid in a certain context, and that is valid in another context.” Peters repeatedly, and charitably, observed that the cardinal might have been misquoted—a point that should be kept in mind. But if the Tablet story represents his views accurately, Peters adds, this “is huge.” In the Tablet account, Cardinal Coccopalmerio comes very close to saying that the validity of an ordination depends on the attitudes and/or merits of the individual. (“This is about the life of a person and what he has given…”) That attitude, however understandable, is contrary to the very purpose of law. The law is the same for every man: regardless of his status, regardless of his virtue. You either are, or are not, an ordained priest. Your attitudes, your behavior, your feelings—and how other people feel about you—do not determine the question. Canon law does. Although Peters does not explicitly say why it is “huge” [his emphasis] that Cardinal Coccopalmerio places so much emphasis on the “context” of the Anglican ordination, I think it is because the Vatican’s top canonical official seems to be slipping into an increasingly common error: confusing the purpose of making the law, or preaching the law, with the pastoral application of the law. The results of this error reach far beyond the question of Anglican orders. Every intelligent Christian knows that the morality of a given action is affected by the circumstances. There is an enormous difference between the act of a starving man who steals a crust of bread and that of a hoodlum who steals a car for a joyride. Any good confessor recognizes that difference. But the men who write laws—even canon laws—are not acting as confessors. They must fashion legislation that applies to everyone. The law is a teacher; it sets norms of behavior. Might there be exceptions to those norms? Of course! But if you begin with the exceptions—if you cannot state the law clearly without mentioning the exceptions—the law loses its force. A good priest, when he preaches against a particular serious sin, leaves his congregation with no doubt that the action is gravely wrong. When a parishioner confesses that same sin, the same good priest might recognize that, in this individual case, the penitent bears little guilt for his act. But even if the sinner’s guilt is clear, and the matter is grave, the good confessor is quick to offer absolution, reminding the penitent that God’s abundant mercy can expunge all sins. But imagine the confusion that would arise if the same priest, in his homily, had said that the same gravely sinful action could be excused in some circumstances. (And isn’t this the message that many pastors have drawn from Amoris Laetitia?) As a confessor, a priest might tell a repentant sinner: “You were wrong to rob the bank, and you must make restitution, but God forgives you.” But he should not, as a preacher, tell his congregation: “God will forgive you if you rob a bank.” That is a very different, and potentially deadly, message. Or look at the question for a slightly different perspective. We are all tempted toward sins, and those temptations very often lead us to think that the moral law does not apply to our particular cases. The Tempter tells us: “This is an exception; the rule doesn’t apply to you here.” Then, if we do fall into sin, the Tempter changes his message radically, trying to convince us that we should not confess, because God can never forgive us for what we have done. The good priest counters temptation on both scores: as a preacher, by upholding the standards of moral law; as a confessor, by dispensing God’s mercy. But when the preacher feels compelled to downplay the importance of law, isn’t he making the Tempter’s task easier? And when the president of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts suggests that the answer to an important canonical question depends entirely on the context, he too downplays the importance of the objective law. That indeed in huge.
This from Fr. Z's blog: "The Bitter Pill (aka The Tablet, the UK’s … not best Catholic weekly) has Coccopalmerio opining that perhaps Anglican orders are not invalid after all. You will recall that Pope Leo XIII determined that they are and that that is the position of the Church. Peters looks at quite a few angles of the story. However toward the end he put his finger directly on the most serious problem: That said, and as important as the above questions might be, the cardinal’s further statement, one directly attributed to him, also deserves a closer look: namely, that the Church has “a very rigid understanding of validity and invalidity: this is valid, and that is not valid. One should be able to say: ‘this is valid in a certain context, and that is valid another context.’” That, folks, is huge. Huge is right. Once we go down that path, we don’t know anything any more and we are pretty much Brother Billy Bob’s Faith Community in the old gas station down by the park." Pope Leo XIII appointed a commission to consider this at the request of 'Anglo-Catholic' Anglican 'bishops' and said that they were 'absolutely null and utterly void'. They asked his to reconsider and he agreed to do so and gave the same reply. That, of course, was in the days when all Anglican clergy were male, now they are not which should, I suppose, provide confirmation if it were needed of Pope Leo's decision. It is known that Pope Francis does recognise orders other than Catholic, Orthodox and Coptic, he allowed 'Bishop' Tony Palmer (who wasn't even an official Anglican) to be buried in a Catholic Church with the honours of a Catholic Bishop against Canon Law. It could get worse but I can't imagine how (until the commission for the ordaining of women deacons is appointed, perhaps).
This is paving the way for the recognition of all Protestant ministers in the name of a universal ecumenical "church" that believes absolutely nothing - except the ascendancy of man.
Here's the original article referred to above: ANGLICAN ORDERS NOT 'INVALID' SAYS CARDINAL, OPENING WAY FOR REVISION OF CURRENT CATHOLIC POSITION 09 May 2017 | by Christopher Lamb Leo XIII’s remarks that Anglican orders are “absolutely null and utterly void” have been a major stumbling block to Catholic-Anglican unity One of the Vatican’s top legal minds has opened the way for a revision of the Catholic position on Anglican orders by stressing they should not be written off as “invalid.” In a recently published book, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, calls into question Pope Leo XIII’s 1896 papal bull that Anglican orders are “absolutely null and utterly void.” “When someone is ordained in the Anglican Church and becomes a parish priest in a community, we cannot say that nothing has happened, that everything is ‘invalid’,” the cardinal says in volume of papers and discussions that took place in Rome as part of the “Malines Conversations,” an ecumenical forum. “This about the life of a person and what he has given …these things are so very relevant!” For decades Leo XIII’s remarks have proved to be one of the major stumbling blocks in Catholic-Anglican unity efforts, as it seemed to offer very little room for interpretation or revision. But the cardinal, whose department is charged with interpreting and revising Church laws, argued the Church today has a “a very rigid understanding of validity and invalidity” which could be revised on the Anglican ordination question. “The question of validity [regarding the non-recognition of Anglican orders, while the Pope would give pectoral crosses, rings or chalices to Anglican clergy], however, is not a matter of law but of doctrine,” he explains in a question and answer format. “We have had, and we still have a very rigid understanding of validity and invalidity: this is valid, and that is not valid. One should be able to say: ‘this is valid in a certain context, and that is valid another context’.” Cardinal Coccopalmerio also recalled Pope Paul VI’s meeting with then Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, in 1966. It was a famous meeting as the Pope gave the archbishop his episcopal ring and also, according to the cardinal, a chalice. “What does it mean when Pope Paul VI gave a chalice to the Archbishop of Canterbury? If it was to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, it was meant to be done validly, no?” he explains. “This is stronger than the pectoral cross, because a chalice is used not just for drinking but for celebrating the Eucharist. With these gestures the Catholic Church already intuits, recognises a reality.” Pope Francis has also pushed ahead with a number of symbolically important ecumenical initiatives such as travelling to Sweden to mark the 500th anniversary of the reformation. The Pope has also called for Christian denominations to act as if they are already united and leave the theological disagreements to be resolved later. Yet the major difficulty for the Catholic Church in recognising Anglican clergy would be the perception of validating women priests, something that was strongly ruled against by John Paul II. The new collection of papers also includes the records of two discussions that took place between Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI - when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - and the former Anglican Bishop of the Diocese in Europe, Geoffrey Rowell. On Anglican orders, Bishop Rowell quotes Cardinal Ratzinger as saying: “we cannot do anything about Leo XIII’s words but there are, however, other ways of looking at things.” While the Pope Emeritus does not follow up with any suggestions, he does accept that Anglican eucharist services have value. “When an ecclesial community, with its ordained ministry, in obedience to the Lord’s command, celebrates the eucharist, the faithful are caught into the heavenly places, and there feed on Christ,” he says. Elsewhere in his contribution, Cardinal Coccopalmerio distinguishes between the “differences” and “divisions” between Christians: the latter, he stresses, should only be over fundamental things such as the divinity of Christ. “Today, Churches are divided, or, rather, they say that they are divided because they lack common elements which, however, are not fundamental because they are not a matter of faith,” he explains. “We say: ‘you don’t have this reality, which is a matter of faith, and therefore you are divided from me. But in fact it isn’t a matter of faith, you only pretend it to be.” While a revision of Leo XIII’s position on Anglican orders would be a milestone, the cardinal also stresses the situation is currently somewhat “unclear.” http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/706...ay-for-revision-of-current-catholic-position-
Sounds a lot like the liberals in the US changing the US constitution. "argued the Church today has a “a very rigid understanding of validity and invalidity” which could be revised on the Anglican ordination question." Sounds a lot like the pope. Blah, blah, blah. What church do I belong to anyway? This is not the one I grew up in.
Hogwash. Utter and complete nonsense, idiocy, heresy. To have a valid holy orders one must have valid bishops to confer the sacrament. I don't think the lady bishops and openly marrying homosexual bishops and openly abortion embracing bishops qualify. If YOU agree with this demonic position David you too are a heretic, to be shunned.
Of course David believes it. He follows Vassula....''Orthodox! Catholics! Protestants! You all belong to Me! You are all One in My Eyes! I do not make any distinction My Vassula draw three iron bars with a head on the top these represent the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox and the Protestants, I want them to bend and unite but these iron bars are still very stiff and cannot bend on their own, so I shall have to come to them with My Fire and with the power of My Flame upon them they shall turn soft to bend and mould into one solid iron bar, and My Glory will fill the whole earth Message of October
I think there was a real chance of bringing the Anglicans home to the Catholic Church about 20 years ago. Until that time they had maintained some semblance of tradition much different from many of the other protestant denominations. Sadly I think that time has passed. The Anglican Communion is fracturing over - surprise, surprise! Homosexuality. Now various factions have openly homosexual Bishops, "blessings" for same-sex "unions". The LGBT agenda is being welcomed in many portions of their church. In addition they are now ordaining women "priests". They are now far too incompatible with Catholicism to be brought back into the Church as a whole unless they have a major reversion of their thinking. If there is any hope of unity it is with the east, not the west. I have no idea why there is this push to unify with the protestants and the same effort is not being placed into the churches in the east. The eastern churches have maintained their traditions and unity of belief. We are much closer to them in belief than any of the protestant denominations. The more the Catholic Church waters down its beliefs to accommodate protestants the farther unity with the east becomes. Protestant need to be brought back to the One True Catholic Church just as they operate. One by one, not in groups. Their thinking is not group based, but individual based. Christian unity is not a bad thing. I am sure God wants all of His children in His Church. The Catholic Church. What can be bad is the way we go about it. Whatever may happen, a potential unity with any of these individuals or groups must have one baseline principle. We cannot "meet them in the middle". The Catholic Church cannot change what it believes. Truth is Truth. This is not a corporate merger, it has to be a coming home of wayward prodigal children to Christ's Catholic Church. I think the major problem here is that men think they can unify the churches through accommodation. Watering down your beliefs until they are gone achieves nothing but destroying your own beliefs. I think only God can unify all Christians in His Catholic Church at this point. To unify would take a miracle and lots of prayer. Do we still believe in those anymore?
"I have spoken from above not to impose My rules on you, but propose to you an alliance of peace and love to lead you all under My Wings and unite you... Have you really understood what the Spouse had offered you? Explain to Me then why every time I speak of reconciliation you turn your eyes away from Me...Explain then to Me, if you claim you are in the Truth, your division... open your eyes My friend! Open your ear not your mind! Unity will be in your heart, reconciliation will be in the heart and not by a signed treaty! How can any man claim he is just when your countries are at war and aflame! Learn that My Sacred Heart seeks from you, charity, generosity, prayer and a spirit of reconciliation and to love one another as I love you. Will I hear from you your cry of surrender and of repentance?" (True Life in God, Sep 14, 1992) http://www.tlig.org/en/messages/748/
I think we can all agree that our Church is suffering from leadership that confuses rather than clarifies. This is just a small sampling of news that proves this. https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/news-05-08-2017
Too late David, too late. Unity will come after the Warning. But I do give Vassula credit, at least she tried.
Byron, After the Warning? or after both the Warning and the Miracle? I think the Miracle is necessary also per a locution which Conchita had with Jesus.
