Heck with Herod, what about King Solomon? No one praised Herod but Abraham and his concubine. So many revered biblical characters that were flawed beyond belief. And yet God gave us these humans, huge warts and all.
I get your point all right. Now, to get my point, maybe for a minute you might put yourself in the place of pro-life Catholics who stand up against the multi-million Euro, all powerful, anti-Catholic abortion and euthanasia industry; people who face the wrath, ridicule and vilification of the glitterati and illuminat, all for the sake of the most vulnerable of all God's creation - innocent, voiceless, defenceless babies. They are sustained by their belief in God and Church teaching that all human life is sacred. Now, put yourself in their shoes when they open the newspaper and read that Christ's Vicar on earth has visited and praised to the world via that newspaper one of their most ardent opponents. How would you feel? Don't you have any sympathy for them at all? Would you feel even a tiny bit disheartened, or maybe even betrayed by none other than your own bishop - the leader of the Church? I'll give this a rest now because, like I said, I feel uncomfortable criticising the Pope. I will continue to pray for him. If you can't find it in your heart to spare some sympathy for Catholic pro-life activists, maybe you will offer a prayer that they will have the courage to keep on keeping on. I'm confident that God won't abandon them or stab them in the back.
My last word on this: Nowhere is it recorded that Jesus made a public announcement that an unrepentant atheist killer of innocent human life was a "forgotten great" portraying such a person as some kind of role model. Jesus didn't and neither should his representative on earth.
I totally understand, Dolours. At times I also cringe knowing what the aftermath of these remarks bring upon us Catholics. I also am a pro-life activist with absolutely no stomach for this new age cafeteria Catholicism. I have been married for 38 years to the same man, daily Mass, rosary, 5 year discipleship formation and as torn as anyone who loves their faith--such trying times! But I vowed and pledged my allegiance to Our Holy Father. Until God tells us otherwise, I stand with him. Now go take a break, this is hard work. You obviously care greatly about your Church.
So you must know the great pain he endures when he demonstrates for others what their attitudes should be. More recently though....in last year esp. he has been falling and tripping. Didn't search for any of those pictures for display?? Like all those with chronic pain they may be able to get to a position with help but it's difficult to get back up or to maintain one position very long without great pain. Probably why he keeps moving when possible. So I wouldn't be so cold as to state bluntly that he "can kneel just fine". Ever notice his rapid breathing as well while enduring long ceremonies? He doesn't have full lung capacity since a portion was removed when he was young. Have some compassion. The man's life's history is to walk the walk....not comfortably talk the talk....with the poor (of all manners).
FatimaPilgrim, I apologize for my rude reply to your thought-provoking piece. I was looking for an alternate way of looking at this situation and you provided it. I will have to re-read your piece. Thanks for providing it no matter what I may think. Once again, mea culpa.
"Merely" Christ's appointee for Himself via the Holy Spirit....His Vicar. and of course we have the counseling from THE Jesus Himself that we would be taught a lot more after He left us via that same Spirit. That referenced example of the ongoing comparison between the two is priceless and so well done for a real pride of thought prodding. Nothing really that new under the Sun/Son.....human nature merely repeating itself.
Ratzinger on Conclaves Here I point the reader to a pieceCatholic journalist John Allen recently published in which he cites Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on the topic: . . . Benedict XVI, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was asked on Bavarian television in 1997 if the Holy Spirit is responsible for who gets elected. This was his response: "I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope. ... I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit's role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined." Then the clincher: "There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!"
Do you think Pope Emeritus Ratzinger would appreciate his words being used, with such innuendo, about our current Pope? Would you please pull up some photos showing the lack of collegiality and respect between the two?
No problem at all but thank you for the charitable response, picadillo. This is how we have to treat one another Charity first I'm as argumentative and questioning as anyone. And as conservative as they come. I am over the top conservative, completely pro life, stand outside the clinics, daily rosary, have railed for years about cafeteria "catholics" etc. When Pope Francis started his papacy I had all kinds of "what the hecks!" from all kinds of things he did. But in prayer I was led to Trust . . . not to Trust Pope Francis per se, but to Trust God that He had a plan and know that mabye it wasn't me Pope Francis was trying to attract (as God already had me won over) but to win over the lost sheep, the sinners. And that mabye it wasn't my job to rail against cafeteria catholics as mabye that pushes them farther away instead of bringing them into Truth. So I chose to be still and watch and I began to notice the good things Pope Francis did, and that started to soften my heart to him. So now when he does the inevitable "what the heck!" moment on the way back from these trips and other missteps that he makes, I don't immediately jump to judgement on him but instead ponder what he meant and also understand that he's human and makes mistakes, like we all do. But his good outweighs his mistakes and he has NOT changed any doctrine. When he speaks sometimes and I go "what the heck!" I slow down and think I probably would have had the same reactions if I was there 2000 years ago and heard some of what Jesus said in real time. We have the benefit of time passed and the fruits that followed and teachings of the doctors of the Church to show us the context of what Jesus meant. But even today I still need help understanding much of the Word. I really truly believe that this is all part of the storm. You know who seeks to divide us into camps and pit us against one another, but his ultimate goal is to get us to get us out of God's church and part of that is probably to get us to question His vicar on earth. It's good to question and it's not wrong to think Pope Francis makes mistakes, but please try to keep an open mind. God thinks and plans multiple steps ahead of what our feeble minds can see. Let's not fall into the traps of letting old skinny legs pit us against one another, against Pope Francis, which only helps him to achieve his ultimate goal of getting us out of the Church. Charity first, so thank you very much, brother
Pope Francis rehabilitated Cardinal Kasper, a personal nemesis of Pope BXVI, and permitted Kasper to spread his error about Sacraments for the divorced and remarried, an error for which he was silenced by Cardinal Ratzinger as head of CDF under St. Pope JPII. Pope Francis openly dissented from Humanae Vitae, a Magisterial teaching document Pope BXVI went to great lengths to defend and protect from dissenters. Pope BXVI published Summorum Pontificum to free up the Traditional Latin Mass from those who would prevent its use. Pope Francis has denigrated and insulted those who prefer it and persecuted a great and holy religious order committed to its use. I suspect Pope BXVI is involved in actively encouraging those opposed to this new agenda to keep on fighting it. I have good reason to "suspect" this. So I have no reason to think he would be offended at quoting him in this regard. That would prove nothing.
Although I know Brian Cardinal Kasper was silenced, was it not Pope Saint John Paul released him from this? I can't remember.
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/walter-kasper-the-same-yesterday-today-and-forever When Ratzinger Said No: A History of the Kasper Proposal Like the good German that he is, Cardinal Walter Kasper has a wonderful capacity of persistence. Like a dog with a bone, he is able to keep fighting against incredible odds long after a lesser man would have packed up his things and gone home. The case in point is, of course, the question of Holy Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried. Though the topic has come to a head in the two-part Synod on Marriage and the Family, it is no recent development in the mind of Kasper and his cohort, but has been brewing literally for decades. In a recent interview with the French daily, Le Figaro, Cardinal George Pell said that the present synod on the family was witnessing the most recent stage of a running “theological battle” between Walter Kasper and Joseph Ratzinger, a statement that seems self-evidently true. Back in 1993, three German bishops—Walter Kasper, Karl Lehmann, and Oskar Saier—issued a pastoral letter in which they stated that a dialogue was needed to determine whether the general rule prohibiting the remarried from receiving the Eucharist “applies also in a given situation,” arguing that there ought to be “room for pastoral flexibility in complex, individual cases.” The bishops had the letter read aloud in all the churches of the three dioceses of the Upper Rhine that September. In the text, the bishops propose that the ultimate decision to receive Communion devolve upon the individuals in question, who are to discuss their personal situation with a Catholic priest. “The priest will respect the judgment of the individual’s conscience, which that person has reached after examining his own conscience and becoming convinced his approaching the Holy Eucharist can be justified before God.” The bishops’ letter drew an immediate response from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under the guidance of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The Cardinal called the three German bishops to the Vatican for a series of meetings, and on October 14, 1994, the CDF sent its own letter to all the bishops of the Catholic Church titled “Concerning the Reception of Holy Communion by Divorced-and-Remarried Members of the Faithful.” The letter reaffirmed the traditional ban on reception of the Eucharist by those living in irregular unions. “In fidelity to the words of Jesus Christ, the Church affirms that a new union cannot be recognized as valid if the preceding marriage was valid,” it read. “If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive Holy Communion as long as this situation persists,” the text concludes. Despite the clarity and seeming definitiveness of this response, Cardinal Kasper remained undaunted in his quest. Seven years later, in 2001, Cardinals Joseph Ratzinger and Walter Kasper again faced off, this time on the pages of the Jesuit magazine America. Though the topic of their debate was whether local churches or the universal Church should take precedence, at the core was again the question of local pastoral practice versus the universal discipline of the Church. In his essay, “On the Church,” Cardinal Kasper argued for the precedence of the local Church, highlighting diversity over unity and pastoral flexibility over doctrinal universality. “As the bishop of a large diocese,” Kasper wrote, “I had observed how a gap was emerging and steadily increasing between norms promulgated in Rome for the universal church and the needs and practices of our local church.” Kasper made no effort to conceal his animus toward Ratzinger, or his disdain for what he considered the heavy-handedness of the doctrinal Congregation. For a bishop to “enforce the general norms ruthlessly as his Roman superiors sometimes expect, his effort is likely to be useless, even counterproductive,” Kasper contended. As examples of areas where enforced unity could be counterproductive, Kasper included “ethical issues, sacramental discipline and ecumenical practice.” Later that year, Cardinal Ratzinger responded in the same journal with his own essay titled “The Local Church and the Universal Church.” In his piece, Ratzinger reasserted the principle “that the universal church (ecclesia universalis) is in its essential mystery a reality that takes precedence, ontologically and temporally, over the individual local churches,” a principle sharply criticized by Kasper. Ratzinger asserted that the central thread of sacred history is that of “gathering together, of uniting human beings in the one body of Christ, the union of human beings and through human beings of all creation with God.” “There is,” he wrote, “only one bride, only one body of Christ, not many brides, not many bodies.” Therefore, he asserted, pastorally speaking the people of God throughout the world must experience the unity of the Church in her discipline as well as her doctrine. “Anyone baptized in the church in Berlin is always at home in the church in Rome or in New York or in Kinshasa or in Bangalore or wherever, as if he or she had been baptized there. He or she does not need to file a change-of-address form; it is one and the same church,” he argued. Once the College of Cardinals elected Joseph Ratzinger to the chair of Peter, Kasper realized that further open debate was futile, and he produced little on the subject from 2005 to 2013. When, however, Pope Benedict resigned in February of that year and the Jesuit Jorge Bergoglio was elected pope, Kasper once again reactivated his campaign for Communion for the divorced and remarried. With his nemesis safely out of the way and a potentially more progressive pontiff in his place, Kasper deemed that the time was right for his crusade to finally succeed. In an interview with Commonweal in May 2014, Kasper took up the topic again, his basic thesis from 1993 still intact and unmodified. Moreover, he added a doctrinal argument to back up his pastoral proposal: namely, that the divorced and remarried may not, in fact, be living an adulterous relationship. In reference to those who are divorced and civilly remarried, Kasper stated: “I can’t say whether it’s ongoing adultery. Therefore I would say, yes, absolution is possible.” This would seem to square with another interview the cardinal gave recently to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, in which he compared Jesus’ words on marriage to the Genesis account of the creation of the world, accusing those who take Jesus’ words on marriage and adultery at face value of “fundamentalism,” like those who still believe the world was created in six days. Asked whether there can be a fundamentalistic reading of the New Testament, Kasper responded in the affirmative. God created the world in six days, but no one takes that literally today. Of course the teaching that marriage cannot be dissolved is clear, but already in the New Testament Jesus’ commandment is adapted to certain situations. Interestingly, in the CDF document from 1994 cited earlier, which said that a new union cannot be recognized as valid if the preceding marriage was valid in “fidelity to the words of Jesus Christ,” the footnote to “the words of Jesus Christ” referenced Mk 10:11-12: “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” This is the sentence that Kasper insists must not be understood literally, unless one wishes to fall into “fundamentalism.” Returning to the question of reception of Holy Communion, Kasper emphasized the fact that the Eucharist isn’t for the perfect. “Every time we celebrate Mass we say: for the remission of sins,” he said. “The Eucharist is for sinners, which we all are.” He chose, however, not to recall the consistent teaching of the Church regarding the essential distinction between mortal and venial sins, especially as regards the reception of Communion. Catholics believe that not all sins carry the same weight or have the same effect on our souls, and traditionally make a clear distinction between “mortal sins,” which separate a Christian from the life of grace, and “venial sins,” which do not. The way that this is expressed in the Catholic Catechism is that anyone “who is aware of having committed a mortal sin must not receive Holy Communion … without having first received sacramental absolution” (No. 1457). This is obviously not the case for those who are conscious only of venial sins. Whether Cardinal Kasper will eventually triumph in his lifelong quest to open the door to sacramental Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried is still a matter of debate. What cannot be debated is the persistence of a man who has not allowed himself to be dissuaded from an opinion that he once adopted, and has never since questioned. (Photo credit: Reuters)
permitted Kasper to spread his error about Sacraments for the divorced and remarried It looked to me more like this Pope allowed for a transparent offering from each and every man rather than the hidden church factions previously existing rather surreptitiously. To "out" themselves or perhaps even hang themselves was more likely the motivation. This Pope hates gossip and the divisions that fester with the devil's assistance which was very evident in the situation that Benedict found himself in....one where he felt incapable of answering such forces so embedded. He honestly then handed over the office to hopefully one who could take such forces on honestly and attempt to clear the air, begin to right some of the wrongs, rather than allow more stories of great detriment and danger to the Church. The institution was becoming unraveled during Benedict's humble reign while he was being taken advantage of. Re: any remarks or opinions by Benedict about the Holy Spirit's influence at the time of the choice for Pope that remark could also be directed towards himself since he never believed he should or could be Pope and thought about the resignation long before he surprised the world with its actuality. And yet every man voting for him or for Francis had the understanding that their prayers to that Spirit would not go unanswered in some mysterious way....in the long way, protecting the Church in its foundation. Benedict seemed more to be a bridge between two great Popes with two very dangerous times to confront without committing their own personal "wreckovation" of the Church....and that certainly can come through such human material only by the Holy Spirit.
This is from a message to Verne Dagenais in GSWYL on the Pope, worth consideration 07/25/07 My son, ponder these words. Ask my Holy Spirit to interpret the meaning for you. Isaias 55:8,9,11. For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts. So shall my word be, which shall go forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me void, but it shall do whatsoever I please and shall prosper in the things for which I sent it. Matthew 16:19. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven. My people, who were these words addressed to? Peter, my apostle and to his successors. These words were not addressed to lay people, religious, or even individual priests. Today in my church, many factions are questioning the authority of the Holy Father. I ask you: do you have the power to loose and bind? These words do not apply to you. If you are in rebellion, calumniating, or causing others to question the authority of my vicar, you are in rebellion against me. You will be held responsible for those you lead astray, if you do not repent. By your words and actions, you are persecuting me. You are led by your own pride, not by my Holy Spirit. For I am meek and humble of heart. Are your actions, thoughts, and words leading my people to me or away from me? Beware,the serpent is sly and can lead you astray. If my pope was truly teaching false doctrine,my spirit would lead and purify my church. This schism over the validity of the mass must stop. It is a stumbling block and a serious offense to my sacred heart, my Mother’s Immaculate heart, and to the Holy Trinity. For it is only my sacrifice which appeases my Father’s justice. My sacrifice of the mass is a renewal daily of my atonement on Calvary.Who are you to stifle my spirit? If a validly ordained priest, speaks the words of consecration established by my church, I AM PRESENT. It is a valid consecration. If you question the validity of my masses, after the Holy Father has explicitly guided you, are you any different than Martin Luther or any of the protestant reformers? Remember,Satan wants to destroy belief in my mass. He does not care which method he uses. By questioning the validity of the Novo Ordo Mass, you are causing people to leave my church and deny my presence in the Eucharist. You will be held responsible for all the souls, which you have caused to be led astray. I am a God of humility. It is my humility which has brought about your salvation. My desire is for all to be saved. I will go to whatever lengths, to save a soul. The loss of one soul to hell, causes much sorrow and grief in my sacred heart. For I told you, there is much joy over one sinner who repents.Who are you to judge the workings of my spirit? My people, the Tridentine Mass brings great honor and glory to my Father, myself, and the Holy Spirit.Please Ponder on this: There is much evil in your world. How do you know the Novo Order Mass, was not inspired by my spirit? I knew there would be sacrilegious communions, lack of reverence in my churches, and lack of belief in my presence in the Eucharist. But I will do anything for the salvation of souls. I will humiliate myself to great extremes to save my people. I will sacrifice my honor and glory to save my people and bring my presence to my people. What will you do for the salvation of souls? Since the introduction of the Novo Ordo Mass, many protestants and others have entered my church, who otherwise would not have. Many conversions and Eucharistic miracles have occurred with both rites of my mass. For the most important thing to me, is to share my presence and to save the souls of my people. With the mass said in the vernacular languages, many souls have learned to love me and have come back to the shepherd of their souls. If you continue to fight over the validity of the mass, do you even care about souls? For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord. I receive honor and glory, not from the praise of men, but through the salvation of souls. For truly I say to you, my divine purpose, is to deliver my people from sin and death and bring them to my Father in heaven. What is your purpose, you who call on my name? Follow the visible head of my church, your Holy Father and you follow me. Follow not your Holy Father and you do not follow me, but you persecute me. These are the words of the Lord.
