Anguish and misery for the state of the Church

[DustinsDad]

I’ve got to chuckle here because it was not long ago that someone on this forum was going on and on how the Catholic Church was the Christian Faith and that protestants weren’t. So, which is it?

The Pope’s comments sure seemed obvious to those who heard it. They were none too happy!

Chuckle all you want if that makes you feel better - you and I both know this is a serious question and a serious matter. The question again was, did Pope John Paul II - the Vicar of Christ and the visible head of the One True Catholic Church outside of which no one can be saved - ever offer specific invitations to non-Catholics to convert to the Catholic faith for the salvation of their souls?

Are you trying to suggest that a non-Catholic Christian who heard this message - “*There can be no true evangelization without the explicit proclamation of Jesus as Lord” - * would take it to mean he has to convert to the Catholic faith in order to be saved? Are you kidding me???

If you can’t find Pope John Paul II offering such an invitation just say so for crying out loud. Why dance around the question?!?

DustinsDad

 

[bear06]

Chuckle all you want if that makes you feel better - you and I both know this is a serious question and a serious matter. The question again was, did Pope John Paul II - the Vicar of Christ and the visible head of the One True Catholic Church outside of which no one can be saved - ever offer specific invitations to non-Catholics to convert to the Catholic faith for the salvation of their souls?

Are you trying to suggest that a non-Catholic Christian who heard this message - “*There can be no true evangelization without the explicit proclamation of Jesus as Lord” - * would take it to mean he has to convert to the Catholic faith in order to be saved? Are you kidding me???

If you can’t find Pope John Paul II offering such an invitation just say so for crying out loud. Why dance around the question?!?

DustinsDad

How about you show me the exact invite you’re looking for from, let’s say, St. Pius X?

 

[thecoach]

Chuckle all you want if that makes you feel better - you and I both know this is a serious question and a serious matter. The question again was, did Pope John Paul II - the Vicar of Christ and the visible head of the One True Catholic Church outside of which no one can be saved - ever offer specific invitations to non-Catholics to convert to the Catholic faith for the salvation of their souls?

Are you trying to suggest that a non-Catholic Christian who heard this message - “*There can be no true evangelization without the explicit proclamation of Jesus as Lord” - * would take it to mean he has to convert to the Catholic faith in order to be saved? Are you kidding me???

If you can’t find Pope John Paul II offering such an invitation just say so for crying out loud. Why dance around the question?!?

DustinsDad

It seems many threas in which I read your posts you are accusing people of averting questions. Maybe its you and you just cant keep up. Instead of defending doctrine, try taking it to heart.

 

[chrisb]

Grace and Peace,

It is my belief that our beloved Pope John Paul II was probably a “Universalist” in the Classic Christian sense (i.e. St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Maximos the Confessor). Although I don’t claim Universalist beliefs myself I can’t argue that several of our very early Saints were in fact “Universalists”.

That being said I don’t have a problem admitting that our beloved Pope John Paul II was perhaps one as well which goes a long way in explaining why he acted the way he did in many of the situations which draws ire with Arch-Conservative Catholics.

Unfortunately, anyone who reads the Early Church Fathers simply cannot hold such narrow views of our faith. We would have to black-list too many of our greatest Early Church Minds.

Peace and God Bless.

 

[DustinsDad]

How about you show me the exact invite you’re looking for from, let’s say, St. Pius X?

Sure. Here’s the sort of things I had in mind…
But, Venerable Brethren, we shall never, however much we exert ourselves, succeed in calling men back to the majesty and empire of God, except by means of Jesus Christ…Now the way to reach Christ is not hard to find: it is the Church. Rightly does Chrysostom inculcate: “The Church is thy hope, the Church is thy salvation, the Church is thy refuge.” (Hom. de capto Euthropio, n. 6.) It was for this that Christ founded it, gaining it at the price of His blood, and made it the depositary of His doctrine and His laws, bestowing upon it at the same time an inexhaustible treasury of graces for the sanctification and salvation of men. You see, then, Venerable Brethren, the duty that has been imposed alike upon Us and upon you of bringing back to the discipline of the Church human society, now estranged from the wisdom of Christ; the Church will then subject it to Christ, and Christ to God.
(E SUPREMI, cf 8-9, 1903, Pope St. Pius X)

… Yet at the same time We cannot but remind all, great and small, as Pope St. Gregory did, of the absolute necessity of having recourse to this Church in order to have eternal salvation, to follow the right road of reason, to feed on the truth, to obtain peace and even happiness in this life.
(IUCUNDA SANE, 9, 1904, Pope St Pius X)

This triumph of God on earth, both in individuals and in society, is but the return of the erring to God through Christ, and to Christ through the Church…To this return We look with confidence, and plans and hopes are all designed to lead to it as to a port in which the storms even of the present life are at rest. And this is why We are grateful for the homage paid to the Church in Our humble person, as being, with God’s help, a sign of the return of the Nations to Christ and a closer union with Peter and the Church.
(COMMUNIUM RERUM, 4, 1909, Pope St. Pius X)

Hence We beg your fraternity to implore God assiduously to relieve the Church and Us who govern it, albeit unworthily, from the pressing assaults of the heretics, and lead these from their errors to the way of truth" (In lib. ii. Epist. S. Anselmi, ep. 31).
(COMMUNIUM RERUM, cf57, 1909, Pope St. Pius X

True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. **But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors.
**(Notre Charge Apostolique, 1910, Pope St Pius X)
Peace in Christ,
DustinsDad

 

[crenfro]

I’ll be frank. I am angry and frustrated at the state of the Church today. My tolerance level is near the breaking point.

I understand your frustration. But are you going to be part of the problem or part of the solution? What can be done now, on the part of each of us, today, no matter how small, to make our church a better place and for each of us to be more loving towards each other?

God doesn’t take orders according to how I want things. I need to ask His will for me and trust His plan.

Perhaps channeling your anger into energy to pray for peace and unity in the Catholic Church might be more constructive?

Just my two cents.

 

[bear06]

Sure. Here’s the sort of things I had in mind…

OK, this is what you originally asked for:

Pope John Paul II ever…and I mean ever…specifically invite non-Catholics to convert to the Catholic faith?

Again, no salvation outside the Church. JPII agreed with that and yet there’s no invitation and, of course, it’s not Pius X.

This triumph of God on earth, both in individuals and in society, is but the return of the erring to God through Christ, and to Christ through the Church…To this return We look with confidence, and plans and hopes are all designed to lead to it as to a port in which the storms even of the present life are at rest. And this is why We are grateful for the homage paid to the Church in Our humble person, as being, with God’s help, a sign of the return of the Nations to Christ and a closer union with Peter and the Church.

Again, talks about hope that the Nations will return to christ and a closer union with Peter and the Church. Still no specific invitation to non-Catholics to return to the Catholic Church.

Hence We beg your fraternity to implore God assiduously to relieve the Church and Us who govern it, albeit unworthily, from the pressing assaults of the heretics, and lead these from their errors to the way of truth" (In lib. ii. Epist. S. Anselmi, ep. 31).

Ok, this isn’t an invitation either. It’s a request to pray for the Church and them against the assaults of the heretics.

True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors.

Yet another statement without a specific invitation to non-Catholics to convert.

I’m actually quite sure there are some popes and saints out there that have probably given a specific invitation but you haven’t produced the one you wanted from John Paul from anyone else. All of those you quoted said the same thing that is found Redemptoris missio.

The fact that the followers of other religions can receive God’s grace and be saved by Christ *apart from the ordinary means *

which he has established does not thereby cancel the call to faith and baptism which God wills for all people." (100) Indeed Christ himself “while expressly insisting on the need for faith and baptism, at the same time confirmed the need for the Church, into which people enter through Baptism as through a door.” (101) Dialogue should be conducted and implemented *with the conviction that the Church is the ordinary means of salvation and that she alone possesses the fullness of the means of salvation.(*102)

The Catholic Church is the Church and we’d better get along with bringing people to it.

 

[DustinsDad]

OK, this is what you originally asked for: Pope John Paul II ever…and I mean ever…specifically invite non-Catholics to convert to the Catholic faith?

Agreed. I don’t have any quotes from public speeches or audiences so you won’t read an “I invite you…” or “We invite you…”, but I think these quotes from his writings speak for themselves. They are uneqivocal statements of the necessity of all people to convert to and enter into the One True Church for the salvation of their souls, and of his own specific responsibility - and the other bishops’ specific responsibilty - of bringing souls outside the Church into the One True Church. This, he is clear, is absolutely necessary and is their mandate from none other than Christ Our Lord. If you have something similar from JP2, please share it with me. I really need to see it.

Now let’s examine the quotes…

But, Venerable Brethren, we shall never, however much we exert ourselves, succeed in calling men back to the majesty and empire of God, except by means of Jesus Christ…Now the way to reach Christ is not hard to find: it is the Church. Rightly does Chrysostom inculcate: “The Church is thy hope, the Church is thy salvation, the Church is thy refuge.” (Hom. de capto Euthropio, n. 6.) It was for this that Christ founded it, gaining it at the price of His blood, and made it the depositary of His doctrine and His laws, bestowing upon it at the same time an inexhaustible treasury of graces for the sanctification and salvation of men. You see, then, Venerable Brethren, the duty that has been imposed alike upon Us and upon you of bringing back to the discipline of the Church human society, now estranged from the wisdom of Christ; the Church will then subject it to Christ, and Christ to God.
(E SUPREMI, cf 8-9, 1903, Pope St. Pius X)

Here we see the call from Pius X to bring back souls who have strayed from the Church. And what is this Church? What is it “for”? For the sanctification and salvation of men - and bought at the price of the precous blood of Our Lord Himself. This is a powerful statement - and if not an invitation directly to those outside the Church, it’s a forceful, powerful statement to the hierarchy of the Church to do just that.

(continued…)

 

[DustinsDad]

(Continued from above…)
Next quote…

… Yet at the same time We cannot but remind all, great and small, as Pope St. Gregory did, of the absolute necessity of having recourse to this Church in order to have eternal salvation, to follow the right road of reason, to feed on the truth, to obtain peace and even happiness in this life.
(IUCUNDA SANE, 9, 1904, Pope St Pius X)

Towhich you replied:

Again, no salvation outside the Church. JPII agreed with that .

EENS is closely related to calling others to conversion of course. And I’m not saying JP2 didn’t agree with it - I hope and pray he did - but did his words and practice express this belief? Did anything he said or wrote ever indicate that he did? I hate to have to ask this, but was he afraid to speak of this infallible teaching explicitly for fear of the dangers it would present to the “new” ecumenism?

and yet there’s no invitation

I’d respond to this the same as the first one.

and, of course, it’s not Pius X.

No it’s Pope St. Pius X quoting a previous pope. And yes, it was practice in years-gone-by for popes to quote more than just the preceding two or three popes. How often did Pope JP2 quote any popes other than Pius VI and John XXIII?

Next quote…

This triumph of God on earth, both in individuals and in society, is but the return of the erring to God through Christ, and to Christ through the Church…To this return We look with confidence, and plans and hopes are all designed to lead to it as to a port in which the storms even of the present life are at rest. And this is why We are grateful for the homage paid to the Church in Our humble person, as being, with God’s help, a sign of the return of the Nations to Christ and a closer union with Peter and the Church.
(COMMUNIUM RERUM, 4, 1909, Pope St. Pius X)

Here the pope expresses his heartfelt desire that ALL return to the One Holy Catholic Church - it’s not only his personal opinion, but it’s indeed the central part in the very triumph of God on earth! Wow. Now that’s powerful. Pretty darn hard to dismiss or ignore the clarity and power in this saint’s writings. Nothing ambiguous there.

(continued…)

 

[DustinsDad]

(continued from above…)

Next quote…

Hence We beg your fraternity to implore God assiduously to relieve the Church and Us who govern it, albeit unworthily, from the pressing assaults of the heretics, and lead these from their errors to the way of truth" (In lib. ii. Epist. S. Anselmi, ep. 31).
(COMMUNIUM RERUM, cf57, 1909, Pope St. Pius X

Towhich you repolied…

Ok, this isn’t an invitation either. It’s a request to pray for the Church and them against the assaults of the heretics.

Got me there - no invitation. But it’s a rather different approach to ask folks to pray for the Church against the assaults of the heretics, as opposed to complementing said heretics for those elements of truth they have not yet completely rejected - and never commenting on the heresies themselves within their belief systems (which themselves are often based on a rejection of the One True Church in their very foundation).

Next quote…

But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors.
(Notre Charge Apostolique, 1910, Pope St Pius X)

Here again we have Pope Saint Pius X declaring the absolute necessity (by Christ laying it down with His supreme authority) that all men must belong to His Church, accept His doctrine, practice virtue, and accept the teaching and guiance of Peter and his successors. That’s an invitation if I ever heard one.

Now let’s take a look at the quote you provided…

The fact that the followers of other religions can receive God’s grace and be saved by Christ apart from the ordinary means which he has established does not thereby cancel the call to faith and baptism which God wills for all people." (100) Indeed Christ himself “while expressly insisting on the need for faith and baptism, at the same time confirmed the need for the Church, into which people enter through Baptism as through a door.” (101) Dialogue should be conducted and implemented with the conviction that the Church is the ordinary means of salvation and that she alone possesses the fullness of the means of salvation.(102)

No “formal error” in there…but it’s the fuzzy ambiguous language that all-to-often leads to religious indifferentism. It can easily mean the Catholic Church is just the “best” path of a wide variety of “pretty good” paths that all lead - more or less - to salvation. Or it could easily mean that the Church is merely the oridnary means among many other extraordinary means of salvation.

And if the Church alone possesses the “fullness” of the means of salvation, then other groups and religions must obviously have “partial” means of salvation. Sort of a non-sensical thing in the practical order - since one is either saved or not saved in the end - there is no partial salvation. It sort of turns EENS on it’s head to unless you really do some mental gymnastics. In any case, there is no warning to those outside the Church, no call to convert.or even the eternal consequences and peril of not converting, no mention of Christ’s *mandate *that all belong to His Church.

And finally, the last sentence sort of nullifies any call to conversion - it’s a call to “dialogue”. And as any number of folks here can testify who have actually read official documents on the subject, the new ecumenical dialogue does NOT have conversion listed as one of it’s goals. Such attempts to influence conversion are to be avoided (like the plague apparently).

All that being said, do you have anything else that might come a little closer to what I’m looking for?

Thanks, and Peace in Christ - (I mean that!),

DustinsDad

 

[bear06]

EENS is closely related to calling others to conversion of course. And I’m not saying JP2 didn’t agree with it - I hope and pray he did - but did his words and practice express this belief? Did anything he said or wrote ever indicate that he did? I

Uh, I think I provided one quote already found in a whole document on calling people to converison:

The fact that the followers of other religions can receive God’s grace and be saved by Christ apart from the ordinary means which he has established does not thereby cancel the call to faith and baptism which God wills for all people." (100) Indeed Christ himself "while expressly insisting on the need for faith and baptism, at the same time confirmed the need for the Church, into which people enter through Baptism as through a door." (101) Dialogue should be conducted and implemented with the conviction that the Church is the ordinary means of salvation and that she alone possesses the fullness of the means of salvation.(102)

I’d respond to this the same as the first one.

No it’s Pope St. Pius X quoting a previous pope. And yes, it was practice in years-gone-by for popes to quote more than just the preceding two or three popes. How often did Pope JP2 quote any popes other than Pius VI and John XXIII?

Boy howdy, there’s a lot of footnotes in his encyclicals and writings. In fact, as you all like to point out, he wrote a lot and I’d bet he probably quoted more previous popes (and yes more than the 2 you gave) than anyone. Off the top of my head I can think of plenty of documents that quoted previous Magisteriums.

No “formal error” in there…but it’s the fuzzy ambiguous language that all-to-often leads to religious indifferentism. It can easily mean the Catholic Church is just the “best” path of a wide variety of “pretty good” paths that all lead - more or less - to salvation. Or it could easily mean that the Church is merely the oridnary means among many other extraordinary means of salvation.

Not fuzzy. Very precise. You, however, are adding things to it that aren’t there. Never did JPII say many other extraordinary means. Why do you feel the need to reach beyond what it says. Do you do the same thing when you see Lefebvre’s quote stating that people of other faiths can achieve salvation?

 

[Joab_Anias]

I’ll be frank. I am angry and frustrated at the state of the Church today. My tolerance level is near the breaking point.

I read things about the Dutch Dominicans who created their own Mass and declare the priesthood unecessary; or their superiors who either support them or refuse to take action against them; or the Archbishop of San Francisco who gave Holy Communion to a group of anti-Catholic transvestite sodomite men who dress as sisters of the Church and mock the faith, in a parish that actively supports homosexuality. I hear countless stories of liturgical abuse, dissident educators, priests preaching heresy, teachers openly defying doctrine. I have seen, in my former diocese, Catholic priests “concelebrating” a “Mass” with protestants during a gay pride festival. No small number of bishops can either be categorized as part of the problem or too incompetant to do anything about it. And there are not isolated incidents, or rare occurences.

And where is Rome? Well, it seems that while the faithful are poisioned with erroneous teaching, orthodoxy is stamped out by heterodox dissidents who thrust Vatican II before them like a banner, and dioceses are embroiled in a sea of scandal and corruption, the Pope and the Roman curia are off in their own little world tackling far more important issues like enviromentalism, ecumenism, and reminding people that the Holy See does not in fact own a popular Italian soccer team (no joke, that was the big news out of Vatican City a couple days ago…). Does Rome care? Have they even noticed?

In the last month not a day has gone by where I do not stop for a moment and consider that maybe, just maybe, the SSPX has a point.

Where the **focus is on Christ alone **is the storm calmed and one able to walk on water.

Hope that makes sense.

 

[DustinsDad]

Uh, I think I provided one quote already found in a whole document on calling people to converison

Very good. You are referring to Redemptoris missio, I’d have to disagree with you that the document can be described as an explicit and urgent call to conversion to the Catholic Church for the salvation of souls. Like much of Vatican II and JP2’s writings, you find contradictory if not confusing notions presented within the very document. A sentence here may be fully orthodox and sound, a paragraph later you find one that is bizzare and looks like it was written by a universalist and only with “extreme nuance” can it be reconciled with the Catholic faith. And as I stated before, the nuanced exception seems to be presented as “the norm”.

I am troubled by this approach. I could go thrugh the list of troubling statements, but you would just reply with the laundry list of nuances that can make them reconcile with traditional Catholic teaching. I fully understand and am thankful that it can be reconciled - I just think it is rather difficult (to say the least) and that the new approach is problematic in how it works in the real world. In addition to the confusion caused among the average lay-folk reading such - the ambiguities are also EASILY hijacked and twisted by enemies of the Church who wish to promote the unorthodox interpretation.

I would say the call to conversion is there in Redemptoris missio, but it is hidden in an “ecumenical approach” that is designed not to offend. It’s implicit rather than explicit. It’s an implicit call to conversion to the Church because the Church has the "fullness of the means of salvation"while - never explicitly saying that outside the “fullness of the means of salvation” there is no salvation.

In fact, the prospect of the loss of salvation - eternal damnation - is never really addressed. The fact is, that though it is possible for a person to be saved without formal membership in Christ’s church - such is the exception and not the rule. Just as it is possible to point a loaded gun to your head and pull the trigger and have the bullet inside be a dud. And despite the “good intentions” and infinitely optimistic attitude contained therein, approaching evangilization and implicitly inviting conversion without the warning of the eternal dangers of failure to convert is - well - neglectful in my humble layman’s opinion. And with that, I’ll sign off with a biblical quote that I think is relevant to the situation".
Ezekiel 2:17-21
“Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, `You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you will have saved your life. Again, if a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die; because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand. Nevertheless if you warn the righteous man not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning; and you will have saved your life.”
In a sense, the document is kind of sad, in that the Holy Father is lamenting the religious indifferentism that arises from the very language he is using. It seems he kind of recognizes this reality but keeps plugging away with the “new language” anyway. Tough to change course mid-stream I suppose…with so much wrapped up in it (the new “approach” that is).

Peace in Christ,

DustinsDad

 

[otjm]

He said the church in India denounces “forced conversions” and that the pope in no way intimated the “Christianizing of India.”
[/INDENT]Members of the hierarchy - like this Archbishop - were never corrected by the pope.

You simply do not know that. Correction is not generally a public matter when it occurs between a pope and a bishop.

 

[SemperFidelis]

You simply do not know that. Correction is not generally a public matter when it occurs between a pope and a bishop.

Well he probably should have. Many faithful lose hope when such a heretical comment is said, and they see the Pope do nothing. In the past, corrections have been very public matters, and they should have been. Their purpose: to make sure the faithful hear the correct, orthodox teaching from the Pope himself and know to stay away from teachings like that.

 

[edwest2]

I recently read an article in the Michigan Catholic about how people think the Church is not responding to certain matters fast enough. As the Bible teaches, we need to really know the details about what we are talking about in order to regard a problem, any problem, correctly.

Unfortunately, in the google present when we can get hundreds of pages of links in under .05 seconds, I think patience is difficult. One of my favorite quotes from Pope John Paul II is: “Don’t lose heart.” I sincerely believe he meant that for yourself, for those around you and for the Church itself.

Also, the so-called popular media feeds on scandal. Don’t get caught up in the world but pray to God. Put your concerns on Him. Jesus promised the gates of hell would not prevail. Some Catholics have forgotten about spiritual warfare against powers and principalities and evil in high places. And if you can do or say something, do it, but in the meantime, prayer is our best defense.

God bless you and all who love God,
Ed

 

[Avorio]

I’ll be frank. I am angry and frustrated at the state of the Church today. My tolerance level is near the breaking point.

And where is Rome?

Does Rome care? Have they even noticed?

In the last month not a day has gone by where I do not stop for a moment and consider that maybe, just maybe, the SSPX has a point.

Hi Ceasar, I wonder these same things and I get frustrated too. I have attended SSPX chapels and sedevacantist chapels. When I get frustrated and think of going back I remind myself why I left them. They offered the beautiful Tridentine Mass but they had their own problems, scandals, cliques, backstabbing, you name it, plus they are not in union with Rome. Maybe the problems with these chapels seemed magnified since they were all relatively small and everyone knew each other. I stay with the Church for God, to receive Jesus, no matter how angry I get, and I do get angry sometimes. I know it’s the true Church no matter how infuriating the people may be. I believe the Rosary, Communion and the Adoration Chapel are keeping me going. No warm fuzzies, just faith.

 

[Like]

I recently read an article in the Michigan Catholic about how people think the Church is not responding to certain matters fast enough. As the Bible teaches, we need to really know the details about what we are talking about in order to regard a problem, any problem, correctly.

Unfortunately, in the google present when we can get hundreds of pages of links in under .05 seconds, I think patience is difficult. One of my favorite quotes from Pope John Paul II is: “Don’t lose heart.” I sincerely believe he meant that for yourself, for those around you and for the Church itself.

Also, the so-called popular media feeds on scandal. Don’t get caught up in the world but pray to God. Put your concerns on Him. Jesus promised the gates of hell would not prevail. Some Catholics have forgotten about spiritual warfare against powers and principalities and evil in high places. And if you can do or say something, do it, but in the meantime, prayer is our best defense.

God bless you and all who love God,
Ed

RIGHT ON, Ed