Pope Bluntly Faults Church's Focus on Gays and Abortion

  • Thread starter Thread starter AdvanceAlways
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Now the question is how do we explain it to the nay sayers? Truth may be the answer to that. “Truth” is the forge of fortitude.
 
This is what the Pope said, and it was nothing like the thread title :o

In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.

“This is also the great benefit of confession as a sacrament: evaluating case by case and discerning what is the best thing to do for a person who seeks God and grace…I also consider the situation of a woman with a failed marriage in her past and who also had an abortion. Then this woman remarries, and she is now happy and has five children. That abortion in her past weighs heavily on her conscience and she sincerely regrets it. She would like to move forward in her Christian life. What is the confessor to do?

*“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context.

The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.*

Far from me to do anything beyond listening to the bishop’s teachings and trying to act on them, and since I am not a priest, far from me to wonder at whether I would be committing a grave sacrilege by speaking the words: “I absolve you from your sins” to someone who, conveniently, has only repented of those sins that make him sad. None of that is of my concern. And I wonder why so many insist in drawing commands, instructions, and interpretations, from words that are meant to be a mere testimony of someone’s mindset.

It is at this point that I start hoping to get a post of Br. J to cast some light in my brain…:o
 
The Holy Father is 110% correct. Look. It’s fine to think of abortion as an evil or gay marriage as something that only exists in scare quotes. However, it should not be the focus for all of ours or the clergy’s time and money. The poor? Schools? Putting children with wonderful couples and hospitals? What about that?
 
The_Bucket said:
They don’t love him. They love a caricature of him that they have created for themselves. Just as they did with JP2.
Click to expand...
It makes no difference if they just love the “caricature” of our dear Holy Father, because, if he is making a difference in how humans treat each other and even view the Church (which has, in recent years, been viewed by non-Catholics and even some Cradle Catholics as an institution that is comprised of “haters”), then AMEN! He is leading by deed and example and quite obviously following his loving and well formed conscience.🙂
 
VanSensei said:
The Holy Father is 110% correct. Look. It’s fine to think of abortion as an evil or gay marriage as something that only exists in scare quotes. However, it should not be the focus for all of ours or the clergy’s time and money. The poor? Schools? Putting children with wonderful couples and hospitals? What about that?
Click to expand...
Our clergy and Church have been doing that.
 
kozlosap said:
It makes no difference if they just love the “caricature” of our dear Holy Father, because, if he is making a difference in how humans treat each other and even view the Church (which has, in recent years, been viewed by non-Catholics and even some Cradle Catholics as an institution that is comprised of “haters”), then AMEN! He is leading by deed and example and quite obviously following his loving and well formed conscience.🙂
Click to expand...
Is leading people to believe that abortion, same sex “marriage,” and contraception, are obsessions of the Chuch, and things which shouldn’t be talked about, leading by example?
 
The_Bucket said:
They don’t love him. They love a caricature of him that they have created for themselves. Just as they did with JP2.
Click to expand...
I could not disagree more. JP2 got slammed constantly in the media.

Can you imagine what it would be like if you devoted your life’s cause to the pro-life movement and to get NO support from the person who should be your biggest champion?

Speaking of JP2, I can’t imagine he will get a eulogy from PJB like this:
Even the secular world against which he stood so defiantly recognized his greatness. But what was it that was so special about John Paul II, the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church? What set him apart and above all the secular leaders of his time?

At 84, he was old, stooped, suffered from Parkinson’s and slurred his speech. He was decried by our media and cultural elites as a moral reactionary who had failed to bring his church into the 21st century.

Yet, even as the editorial writers fulminated and the dissident clergy fumed, the Holy Father drew the young in the tens of millions. The great politicians of his time came and went, most of them long forgotten, save Ronald Reagan, who was very much like this pope in his humor, serenity and core convictions. And yet, this pope endured into his ninth decade as the most revered and beloved figure on earth. The world’s reaction to his death testifies to it.

But wherein did his greatness lie?

What set John Paul II apart from the other leaders of his time was his goodness, his holiness, his sanctity, his moral courage in defending the truths of the church and his uncompromising refusal to alter moral truth to accommodate the spirit of an immoral age. His charisma, like that of Mother Teresa, came of the fact that he was a Man of God, not a man of this world. He became popular by testifying to the unpopular truths of Jesus Christ.

What those most disappointed with John Paul’s failure to conform church teaching to trendy views on contraception, abortion, stem-cell research and homosexuality fail to understand is that it was because the pope defied the spirit of the age that he was great. He believed in moral absolutes in a world of moral relativism. He was a beacon of light in a darkening age, a beacon of truth in a moral wilderness.

He died in the 40th year following the close of Vatican II, the church council called by a predecessor, John XXIII. And by the time John Paul II died, all the fashionable and trendy clerics of that time, from Hans Kung to the “Are-You-Running-With-Me-Jesus?” clergy were gone and forgotten.

“How many divisions does the pope have?” Stalin cynically asked. But it was this Polish pope with no army who would inspire Solidarity to stand up to Stalin’s empire and help bring it down peacefully in 1989.

“We’re more popular than Jesus now!” John Lennon exclaimed back then. Where are the Beatles now? “Is God Dead?” Time famously asked in the 1960s. Now people ask, “Is AOLTimeWarner dead?”

But if John Paul II achieved greatness as a man, a leader, a pope, the same cannot be said of the church he led.

Here in America, there has been a dramatic contraction in the numbers of nuns, priests, churches and parish schools since Vatican II. The church in America has been horribly scarred by the ugliest scandal in its history, the abuse of thousands of altar boys and Catholic children by pedophile and homosexual priests, who crept into the seminaries and were not purged when their predations were discovered.

Moreover, there has been a widespread loss of faith and belief in traditional teachings. On birth control, divorce, sexual morality, abortion, assisted suicide and euthanasia, millions of Catholics now embrace Hollywood values and the culture of death. Indeed, it was because John Paul II would not yield on any issue that the “Cafeteria Catholics” still cannot concede his greatness.

Today, we are told a new pope must reconcile Catholic teaching to the views of American Catholics. But the proposition is demonstrably absurd.

All the churches that have drunk the Kool-Aid of modernity are dying. Beginning with the Lambeth Conference in 1931, which approved of artificial contraception, the Episcopal Church acceded to the spirit of the age. Today, that church has women priests and homosexual bishops living with male lovers. Meanwhile, many of its most devout priests are defecting to the Rome of John Paul II, while its devoted faithful are splitting away.
While the mainstream Protestant churches shrink, the more orthodox and militant churches that make demands upon their flocks to live by Christian truths are attracting converts.

It was the philosophy of John Paul II that he would do all he could to defend and advance the truths Christ came to earth and died to teach the world. After that, it was up to the Holy Ghost. Now that God has called his good and faithful servant home after a long lifetime of labor, it is up to the Holy Ghost.
 
NEWS ALERT! POPE FRANCIS FOLLOWS JESUS ON ABORTION
BY TOM HOOPES
Click to expand...
If people’s minds were blown when they found out that the Pope actually believes the Catechism, imagine how blown their minds are when they figure out that the Pope actually imitates Jesus Christ.
Click to expand...
Minds are being blown even as we speak. A great new media fervor is starting about how Pope Francis is saying to back off from abortion and homosexual marriage and just talk about Jesus.
Click to expand...
It’s important to read his actual words and try to understand where the Spirit is leading us in the Church of Pope Francis. His new interview with America magazine is available here: “A Big Heart Open to God.”
Click to expand...
When Pope Francis said “who am I to judge?” with respect to homosexuals in his interview on the plane back from Brazil, headlines cried out that he was changing everything. “By saying this, I said what the catechism says,” he explains in his new interview. Indeed he did.
Click to expand...
In his new interview, he suggests that we love people with same-sex attraction and not define them merely by that one characteristic. And he suggests we find an effective way to address abortion in context, which he points out is a cause of suffering for the women involved.
Click to expand...
Here is how he put it:
Click to expand...
“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”
Click to expand...
To read that and say that the Pope wants to be accepting of abortion and contraception and gay marriage is like reading the story of Jesus and the Woman at the Well and say it shows how accepting Jesus is of adultery.
Click to expand...
A key to his approach comes later in the interview:
Click to expand...
“Because God is first; God is always first and makes the first move,” he said. “I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else — God is in this person’s life. You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.”
Click to expand...
Compare Francis’ approach with Christ’s meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well.
Click to expand...
First, Christ respects the woman’s freedom. When we say we want to “evangelize” someone, we often mean we want someone to stop being who they are and be who we want them to be. Christ doesn’t treat the woman at the well that way. He recognizes the woman for who she is, but offers her a positive way to become more.
Click to expand...
Second, Christ speaks in the woman’s language about a real need the woman feels, in this case for water. Too often, our efforts to tell other people about Christ fail to recognize their interests, while making our interests (their joining our Church) very clear. Pope Francis wants us to put this in a
Click to expand...
Third, Christ doesn’t condemn the woman — rather, he leads her to a place where she can see the error of her own ways. This is crucial. Not only do we frighten people away from us by being judgmental, we deny them the opportunity to truly repent.
Click to expand...
The harder way, the respectful way, is the only way that works.
Click to expand...
Describes Francis:
Click to expand...
“I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess. The church’s ministers must be merciful, take responsibility for the people and accompany them like the good Samaritan, who washes, cleans and raises up his neighbor. This is pure Gospel. God is greater than sin. The structural and organizational reforms are secondary—that is, they come afterward. The first reform must be the attitude. The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to descend themselves into their people’s night, into the darkness, but without getting lost.”
Click to expand...
Jesus did things the hard way. It is the hard way that Francis chooses. We should do the same.
Click to expand...
 
AdvanceAlways said:
Is leading people to believe that abortion, same sex “marriage,” and contraception, are obsessions of the Chuch, and things which shouldn’t be talked about, leading by example?
Click to expand...
He’s not the one leading people to believe that.
 
AdvanceAlways said:
Our clergy and Church have been doing that.
Click to expand...
Very true. Our Church has been doing that and that is important to remember.

The Pope message helps us spiritually with a different mindset and a kind of ordering of our faith.
 
AdvanceAlways said:
Is leading people to believe that abortion, same sex “marriage,” and contraception, are obsessions of the Chuch, and things which shouldn’t be talked about, leading by example?
Click to expand...
anything, no matter how noble, when obsessed over, will lead to a disservice of even the initial noble ambitions
 
Baloo said:
While I’m in no way a supporter of Gay Marriage or Abortion, I do believe Pope Francis has a point. We are the Catholic church, here for the salvation of all mankind. We can’t ostracize people, they are human beings as well. Preaching against gay marriage and abortion until we’re blue in the face won’t lead others to the Catholic church, living a Catholic lifestyle and being an example for others however will, and with that brings an end to things like abortion and gay marriage.
Click to expand...
👍
 
agnes_therese said:
He’s not the one leading people to believe that.
Click to expand...
I don’t think I can agree, effectively the pope has told the bishops to be quiet about homosexuality and abortion, no priest or bishop, will now say that these things are sins.
if he wanted a true reflection of his words he would use twitter.
the pope must want his words twisted. so he can say shut up to his bishops and priests who have held true. but he can still claim to be authentic to church teaching.
 
Baloo said:
While I’m in no way a supporter of Gay Marriage or Abortion, I do believe Pope Francis has a point. We are the Catholic church, here for the salvation of all mankind. We can’t ostracize people, they are human beings as well. Preaching against gay marriage and abortion until we’re blue in the face won’t lead others to the Catholic church, living a Catholic lifestyle and being an example for others however will, and with that brings an end to things like abortion and gay marriage.
Click to expand...
And it seems the closer and closer one gets to the simplicity of the Catholic faith the more one notices his or her own personal sins and wishes to eradicate them… I’m with the Holy Father!
 
The Holy Spirit is blowing through our Church, my friends. I have never been more proud to be a Catholic. Pope Francis is wonderful, wonderful. St. Francis is smiling. So am I. 😃
 
saveusfromhell said:
I don’t think I can agree, effectively the pope has told the bishops to be quiet about homosexuality and abortion, no priest or bishop, will now say that these things are sins.
Click to expand...
You must not have read the part of the interview where he spoke of confessors, and how a confessor being too lenient is just as bad as one being too strict.

And he also said, quite specifically, “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods.”
That in no way says “be quiet.” It says don’t talk about these to the exclusion of everything else.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top