Hawkiz #62
Abu…from a Catholic to a Catholic, I would urge you to prayerfully consider your approach. I am not disagreeing with your points, which are valid, but I am concerned about your tactics…
Thank you so much for the kind remarks and concern for others.
For anyone who feels that they know better than Christ and His Church on faith or morals, and that loving one another precludes offering His Church’s loving, healing truths, including sorrow for sin and forgiveness on repentance (to the woman found in adultery to “go and sin no more”), the Christ commanded us to: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them” (Mt 7:15, 16).
St Paul (Acts 20:17-36), admonishes the elders of the Church at Ephesus: “So I solemnly declare to you this very day: if any of you should be lost, I am not responsible. For I have not held back from announcing to you the whole purpose of God. Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock which the Holy Spirit has placed in your care. Be shepherds of the Church of God, which He made His own through the death of His own Son. I know that after I leave, fierce wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock. The time will come when some men from your own group will tell lies to lead the believers away after them. Watch, then, and remember that with many tears, day and night, I taught every one of you for three years.”
That outstanding apologist Frank Sheed from Australia has taught on soapboxes in Hyde Park, London, and founded the publishing House of Sheed and Ward with his wife, Maisie Ward; has written outstanding books including *Theology and Sanity *and
Society and Sanity, but the one I shall quote from here is
Christ in Eclipse – A Clinical Study of the Good Christian, 1978, for there is a great need to listen to Christ through this great work.
we need to ‘kill them with kindness’
Really? That’s not the example that St Paul gives, who follows Christ who had admonished St John.
That very same loving Christ to His own Apostles, “whom He loved to the end” exclaimed: “Have you no sense, no wits, are your hearts dulled, can’t you see, your ears hear, don’t you remember?” (Mk 8:17-18) (Frank Sheed,
Christ In Eclipse, Sheed & Ward 1978, p 42). "With individuals He was very much the doctor with a duty not only to tell them what was wrong with them, but to make sure they realized it.” (Ibid. p 40-41).
St John is a good example of the ways of Jesus as the Way, apparently unknown, like much else, to many. John “had met the hard firmness three times: when he and his brother asked for high places in Christ’s kingdom, his ambition was tossed back on him so decisively (Mk 10:35-41); when he wanted fire from heaven to consume a Samaritan city which would not receive Christ, he was rebuked, ‘You do not know what manner of spirit you are, for the Son of man came not to destroy men’s lives but to save them’ (Lk 9:56); when he asked how Peter was to die he was told in effect to mind his own business (Jn 21:22).”
The forgotten reality that is Jesus of Nazareth is given by the great Frank Sheed:
“Certainly, some people who knew Christ in His lifetime would have been startled to find so much made of His loving kindness, indeed might have wondered if you were talking of the same person.”
Frank Sheed points out that Jesus was simply not given to sentimental utterances, and we have just seen how he handled John. Jesus shows plenty of the emotions of anger and grief – at those who accused Him of breaking the Sabbath when he healed (Mk 3:5). We never see Him smile, and His settled habit was terseness of speech. He made it His duty to tell people what was wrong with them, and made sure they realised it.
He refers us to the Gentile woman who “must have felt His ‘Do you want Me to take the bread of the children and give it to dogs?’ as an assertion of her inferiority as a Gentile:…did she feel Him loving?” (Mk 7:25)
So much for the false “acceptance” so often attributed to the Christ who told the woman taken in adultery to “sin no more” as she had breached the sixth commandment – which ensured that she paid more attention to the law. (Jn 8:3-11).
On the multitude however “he had compassion, for they were helpless and harassed like sheep without a shepherd.” (Mt 9:36). So, beware of the wolves in sheep’s clothing.
That’s why faithful Catholics don’t disregard faithful bishops; they heed them and follow them, for to follow Christ is to heed and accept His Church – “if you love Me, keep My Commandments”, for He is the Way the Truth and the Life.
[See *Christ In Eclipse, Frank Sheed, Sheed & Ward, 1978, p 40-41].
Until one is able to take off the blinkers and assent to all of Christ’s teaching through His Church that person will remain in a haze over what Christ really teaches. If there is dissent from any of the teaching of Christ’s own Church then those so afflicted are unable in the area of their infidelity to help others to the truth. The information is flawed – the education is flawed. They will be disinformed, malformed, without clear direction – strong and vibrantly wrong.
