Michael Voris & 'Church Militant' on Purgatory

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Crusader13 said:
For every Cardinal Sarah and Cardinal Burke there is a Fr. Martin or a Fr. Boyle.
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Michael Voris has publicly expressed his desire for Cardinal Raymond Burke to be elected pope.

BTW, check this out.
 
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Crusader13 said:
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AlNg:
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Crusader13:
As for Authority, you summed up what I assumed some people were talking about. If Voris is to be considered wrong on his views about the Church’s teachings because he doesn’t have Apostolic Authority, then that same standard would apply to nearly every apologist here at Catholic Answers. Most of the well known catholic apologists, Karl Keating, Tim Staples, Jimmy Akin, Patrick Madrid, Scott Hahn, Trent Horn and many others, don’t have “authority”, in the sense you described it, to speak authoritatively on church teachings.
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What does it mean to speak authoritatively? In the past wasn’t there a lot of authoritative teaching on Limbo ?
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Well that was part of my question and how the criticism against Voris for not having said “authority” somehow negated the legitimacy of his arguments.

The teachings on Limbo weren’t doctrinally defined, from my understanding. It was a long held belief that was shared, probably by the majority of the Church during those times, as to what happened to unbaptized babies who died. However, I don’t believe it satisfactorily answered those questions and therefore it was never formally defined.

Others may have greater insight into the history of Limbo though.
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Limbo was and still is a THEORY. At one time, it was a very popular theory, but it was only a theory, never Dogma, Doctrine or Discipline.

Today, the official response is “we don’t know what happens to them, but we entrust them to God.” No matter what anyone says, the Church does NOT teach that they go to Heaven… the Church teaches that we don’t know but trust in a merciful God
 
Maxirad said:
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Crusader13:
For every Cardinal Sarah and Cardinal Burke there is a Fr. Martin or a Fr. Boyle.
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Michael Voris has publicly expressed his desire for Cardinal Raymond Burke to be elected pope.

BTW, check this out.
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Well… that’s one way to ensure Cardinal Burke is never elected 😉
 
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Maxirad said:
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phil19034:
Well… that’s one way to ensure Cardinal Burke is never elected
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What do you think would happen if Cardinal Burke were to be elected pope, phil19034? Be charitable.
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If Cardinal Burke was elected Pope, I would jump for joy! I would love that.

But I just don’t see it happening
 
phil19034 said:
If Cardinal Burke was elected Pope, I would jump for joy! I would love that.

But I just don’t see it happening
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Heck, I’d settle for Archbishop Chaput being raised to the cardinalate, but I’m not sure I’ll ever see that happen either. :cry:
 
phil19034 said:
I know. It was a very popular theory that was taught. But it was just a theory.
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No. It was not taught as just a theory. It was taught as official Catholic teaching with the nihil obstat and the imprimatur of the Church officials. Things taught in the Baltimore catechism were not taught as theories. They were taught as official Catholic teaching. The Baltimore catechism was used for many years as official teaching of the Church. I don’t believe that it was supposed to be a compendium of theories. .
Is the teaching against artificial birth control a theory of some sort? Pope Paul said that humanae vitae was not infallible, did he not?
 
Phil - You say that Michael Voris ‘bashes’, well yes, he does bash out at sin and errant teaching and the Devil, but I see no harm or wrong in that. Yes, he can be robust in criticising that which undermines Jesus’ and Traditional Magesterium teaching and practice. It is a fact that there is much going on within the Church that has been wrongly introduced and promoted as being superior or equal to Church tradition. It does appear that ‘feelings’ are becoming the arbiter or truth - that way lies all sorts of problems and dangers of scism. Regarding Purgatory, and time spent there, I won’t attempt to second guess the mercy of God, nor just how much He in his mercy regards sincere intercessors for the Souls in Purgatory, save to say His mercy is more awesome than we here on earth could ever hope to imagine. Michael Voris is a polemicist at a time when Mother Church so much needs polemicists.
 
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Pope Francis has done a lot with regards to raising up cardinals in parts of the globe that had never had a cardinal before. I think that’s an overall good thing. Of course, the side effect is that—if you’re going to keep roughly the same number of cardinals as before—you end up skipping over places that previously always had a cardinal at the helm.

I can’t lie, though. I’d be happy to see Chaput get a red hat. 🙂
 
AlNg said:
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phil19034:
I know. It was a very popular theory that was taught. But it was just a theory.
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No. It was not taught as just a theory. It was taught as official Catholic teaching with the nihil obstat and the imprimatur of the Church officials. Things taught in the Baltimore catechism were not taught as theories. They were taught as official Catholic teaching. The Baltimore catechism was used for many years as official teaching of the Church. I don’t believe that it was supposed to be a compendium of theories. .
Is the teaching against artificial birth control a theory of some sort? Pope Paul said that humanae vitae was not infallible, did he not?
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  1. To be clear, when I say Limbo, I’m referring to Limbus infantium, not Limbus patrum
  2. I never said Infant/Child Limbo isn’t real or wrong. I said it’s a theory. We don’t know 100% if unbaptized babies are in Limbo or in Heaven. As far as we know, limbo might just be filled with good non-Christians. Karl Keating has good article on Limbo here: Out on a Limbo | Catholic Answers
  3. The Catholic Encyclopedia (from 1911 AD) says the following at the very end. It calls it a “Catholic notion… from the standpoint of reason.”
Thus the Council of Florence, however literally interpreted, does not deny the possibility of perfect subjective happiness for those dying in original sin, and this is all that is needed from the dogmatic viewpoint to justify the prevailing Catholic notion of the children’s limbo, while from the standpoint of reason, as St. Gregory of Nazianzus pointed out long ago, no harsher view can be reconciled with a worthy concept of God’s justice and other attributes.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09256a.htm
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  1. I never said Limbo wasn’t taught as tradition (lower case t, not upper case T) or as an official teaching of the Church… esp in the United States. It was in the Baltimore Catachism and it was also in the Roman Catechism after the Council of Trent. But it WAS then and still IS a theological theory. It WAS they preferred theory and the prevailing “notion” for a long time… but it was never doctrine nor dogma.
  2. A nihil obstat and the imprimatur signify that, in the judgment of the bishop who grants the imprimatur, the work contains nothing contrary to faith and morals. However, the nihil obstat and imprimatur are not an endorsement and do not guarantee that the entire contents of a work are true. http://www.cuf.org/2006/03/nihil-obstat-and-imprimatur/
  3. Pope Paul teaching against birth control is doctrine. The Church has always been against birth control. Blessed Paul VI’s teaching extended the Church’s teaching to the pill and other modern methods. Some believe (as do I) that Pope Paul’s teaching actually elevated the doctrine to dogma. So this is not the same thing.
God Bless
 
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You say that Michael Voris ‘bashes’, well yes, he does bash out at sin and errant teaching and the Devil…
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I have decided to retract any negative opinions about Michael Voris and such a voice is indeed needed at this time.

May there be peace in the Body of Christ.
May God destroy futile bickering and increase His love in the Church.
Amen.
 
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Bookworm77 said:
Hello all from New Zealand:)

I am a recent convert from Protestantism (Presbyterian & Baptist/Evangelical) and now fully embrace the Catholic Faith after a deep and difficult journey and will be confirmed in the near future.

While I accept all the Church’s teaching (otherwise I would not be Catholic) including purgatory - just happened to be up to 2 Maccabees 12 this morning in my daily reading of the seven wrongly removed books from the Canon - I watched this video last night:


Although Mr Voris seems to defend Orthodoxy, he and his ‘crew’ are pretty harsh, the woman on this episode and the rest commented that only those who are completely perfect go straight to heaven, and that most of us may have to spend millions of years in Purgatory - this extreme view seems to nullify the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. On the other hand EWTN and Catholic Answers have been both enlightening concerning the Truth but also full of the love of God.

Any comments are welcome.

Peace and God bless.
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Welcome home, and prayers ascending for your continued journey.

Remember, Peter said, to God 1000 years is like a day and a day is like 1000 years.
[ 2 Peter 3:8 ]

That time analogy could easily be changed to a trillion years instead of 1000 years.

IOW there is no clock outside of time. No seconds, minutes, hours, days, months years etc. No yesterday, today and tomorrow. A million years from now in eternity, is still now.

Outside of time is where Heaven, purgatory and hell is.

Padre Pio is a great saint. In his last years on earth, Fr Alessio took care of Pio. I met with Fr Alessio 3 months before Alessio died. Fr Alessio had great stories to tell about Pio’s life. Pio told Alessio that while he was saying mass one day, a sacristan who died 70 years prior to this, visited with Pio in a vision. He asked Pio to offer his mass that moment for the sacristan who had been in purgatory all this time for not taking proper care of the altar properly on this side of eternity. If Pio offerd mass for the sacristan, the sacristan would be able to go to heaven. Pio offered the mass for the sacristan and he went to heaven after the mass.

The CCC (Catechism of the Catholic Church) has this on purgatory.
http://ccc.scborromeo.org.master.com/texis/master/search/?sufs=0&q=purgatory&xsubmit=Search&s=SS
 
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Yeah, I did a little reading on the Church Militant and Mr. Voris. They’re walking a fine line where they’re so aching for a fight I think they’re gonna go rogue. Something about it…maybe because they seem like the Catholic version of InfoWars doesn’t sit well with me. 🤔
 
That’s one of the incidents that comes to mind when I think of why I don’t like Church Militant. To me, it illustrates why I don’t care for their style or trust them to be balanced and fair.

Cardinal Dolan was trying to build bridges rather than burn them. Now, if some Catholics disagree with how he handled the St. Patrick’s Day parade, I think there are ways they could do that respectfully (and I could even articulate a few arguments for them). But Voris took the opportunity to characterize Dolan as somehow surrendering the Culture War or knuckling under to the gay lobby. I don’t think that’s a fair characterization, and I know it’s not a charitable one.

You can disagree with the Cardinal’s prudential decision without characterizing him as an enemy. Rather than issuing knee-jerk diatribes against a bishop, I think our first thoughts should be to assume that the bishop is actually seeking to be a good pastor of souls in line with Catholic teaching and ask why he’s taking whatever approach he is taking (with an eye to actually learn something). My experience with Church Militant and Voris is that they don’t tend to be able to do that.

Again, not every bishop makes the best decision in every circumstance. And there are times when we might even voice our disagreement. But it’s an extremely tough job and they are balancing a lot of variables. We should give them the benefit of the doubt and seek to understand where they are coming from before going off half-cocked based on limited information. I don’t see Church Militant extending a lot of benefit of the doubt.
 
Let me add then, that I did not give your effort its proper due. Yes, we all knew who you were referring to, but you did show reasonable restraint and you have my apology.
 
I completely understand why a good Catholic would feel that way. And I think that question is a very good one that deserves many good conversations. I have no problem with people feeling that way or asking that question. The main problem I have with Church Militant’s approach is the lack of respect. There are respectful ways to present one’s thoughts and feelings, and there are disrespectful ways. You have articulated your thoughts much more respectfully than Church Militant did.
 
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