How do you mean? I don't see it. Did you watch the clip? He likens religions to different languages, and says that it's wrong to claim that one's own god is "more important" than others. As I quoted in the essay, "Dominus Iesus" plainly states the Catholic position. If Catholicism is no more or no less true than Islam or Hinduism, Orthodoxy or Protestantism, then why be Catholic, except that you like it?
Then he's at least playing with matches. Come on. This cat has a track record. To spite Giorgia Meloni he effectively said not toeing his line on immigration puts one in "grave" sin, as close to what used to be called mortal sin as the Church gets today.
I'd say think of it like a cone. They're all human ideas about the transcendent, so in that sense there's similarity—base of the cone. Some schools of Hinduism are very close to the thought of Plato and Plotinus, who are foundational to a lot of Catholic and Orthodox theology. So more harmony, further up the cone. There's often a lot of common ground to find, if we approach things with a spirit of charity.
The Gospel, though? The Resurrection? That's the apex of the cone, which only Christians can know. There is no common ground with anyone else on that.
One can argue that "universalist" is not the most accurate term, since that generally means the belief that everyone will be saved. And unless I missed something Francis did not literally say that, but rather that all paths to salvation are more or less equal. So, strictly speaking, he apparently didn't say that everyone would in fact get there. He does seem to say that all religions are functionally equal. That's possibly even more wrong, but I don't know what the precise theological word for it is. Most definitely not "in line with historical Catholic teaching" as GoKnights954 says.
In context though--aptly signified by the "coexist" bumper sticker--this seems to be a distinction without a difference.
I think religious indifferentism is the more accurate term. And that too is specifically condemned in the Catechism as a sin against the First Commandment, if I remember correctly.
That is indeed even more wrong; that's more or less apostasy. And universalism proper is an acceptable theological opinion within the Orthodox Church—see St. Isaac of Nineveh.
I don’t believe that’s true, there’s Canons of the pre-schism church that wildly condemn the idea of universalism. My universalism was one of the reasons I ended up leaving Orthodoxy and ending up in the Mainline.
Believe what you want, but what I said is true: it is a minority opinion, but not officially condemned. I didn't say popular, I said acceptable. Dana here can back me up, if she's around.
Ehh, you’re bordering on a technicality with that. Origenism is explicitly condemned at numerous councils, and although it may not explicitly say “Universalism”, the people at the council would’ve probably understood themselves as condemning what we now call Universalism.
There's also (in Catholicism) the sort of universal hope idea, as articulated by von Balthasar in "Dare We Hope"--that it's *possible* that everyone will be saved. Some hardliners want to condemn that as just plain universalism, but I think that's wrong. I don't see why we can't have that hope.
I also don't think people really understand what they mean when they say "eternity". Trials and torments for aeons, sure—but eternity? What could a finite created being ever do to earn an eternity of torture? That doesn't even mathematically make sense; it's more or less a category error.
Ilaria Ramelli, Catholic patristics specialist, "wrote the book" on this one, Sethu: "Terms for Eternity: Aiônios and Aïdios in Classical and Christian Texts". And of course, her 900+ page tome on "The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis". Unfortunately, because they are academic publications, they are outrageously expensive.
Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy the two serial killers that tortured the girl that the FBI uses the recording of to desensitize new recruits, or even the one fellow torturing a cat and the other eating a kitten while it’s alive, that are making the rounds on twitter right now. Yah I hope they endure eternal torment.
He’s speaking heresy. Had he said all religions are “paths toward God,” he would be on defensible ground. But he clearly says all religions are paths “to *arrive* at God.” The heresy is right there in *arrive*. And worse, he strongly implies all religions are equal.
I’ve long considered him a crypto-heretic. These remarks are hardly crypto- anymore. They’re heresy.
I agree with Anne below: “The pope is wrong, confusing, and should be ignored.”
Agreed, and that is a useful distinction. All human longings toward the holy and transcendent lead *toward* God; but as we get farther up that mountain, there is only one way to actually arrive at the summit.
I think “because you like it” is exactly why one should choose one religion over another. Or to put it in more exact terms, because the rituals of that religion help you feel closer to God and willing to do God’s will here on earth.
But closeness to God is the point, not the theology or “story” told by the religion, which is just something made up by humans to try to conceptualize something we can’t understand.
None of us here on earth has the capacity to understand spiritual reality. I believe that we will know those answers someday (after death?), but as earthbound beings, we can’t.
I do adhere more closely to the Christian faith than others, mostly because I was raised culturally Christian and so I love the hymns and rituals. But I don’t necessarily think that Christian theology is more true than any others. I try not to even trouble myself with those questions, because I see my job on earth as doing God’s will to the best of my ability, not thinking I know answers which I probably am not equipped to understand anyway.
If you don't necessarily think Christianity is "more true" than others, you are not a Christian. Have you ever read The New Testament, specifically, the Gospels, especially John?
When Jesus said He was The Way, The Truth, and The Life, and that no one came to The Father but by Him, He told the world for the entirety of its existence who He is and what Christianity is.
You say that we can't understand spiritual reality, and it's certain that we can't understand all of it now, and that possibly we never will, but Jesus came into the world to announce who The Godhead is and that He is the Second Person of it. He IS spiritual reality, staring you in the face, so to speak. To have Him is life everlasting. Not to have Him, which is your condition now, is to be a lost soul, dwelling in utter spiritual darkness, three missed heartbeats away from Hell.
He came primarily to die for you and for all of us. You make reference to the will of God. The Bible tells us what that will is. It is the command of God that all people everywhere believe in the Son. ( This is what the New Testament means in its use of the term, "obey the Gospel." )
Do you really want God? You seem to want to feel good about God rather than actually having God. For God's sake, truly, read John's Gospel.
Did you ever think that maybe John had a personal agenda, and that his writings do not faithfully capture what Jesus said? Because what you quote directly contradicts many of Jesus’s other teachings, as well as common sense. God does not reject humans who seek him because they were born in a non-Christian culture.
Allie, John, chapter one, is something like the foundational statement of what Christianity is. John is the only disciple described as the one whom Jesus “loved,” and though, of course, He loved them all, scholars, believing or not, have always affirmed that John and Jesus seem to have been particularly close. He had an agenda, all right, to make Jesus as the only begotten Son of God known to the world. Try to find me a scholar who thinks that John was working his own agenda.
Actually, apostasy is so far advanced that it probably won't be all that difficult for you to do. The distinction is that such people are not believing Christians. All believing Christians affirm the authority of John, as well as the authority of the writers of the other three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Each account differs to an extent from the others, but in matters of biography, not of doctrine. One is not more accurate than the other three. But each emphasizes different things about Jesus’ life and ministry, in the same way that a multi volume biography of Lincoln would emphasize different aspects about Lincoln's life. As an example, one Lincoln biography would tell the story of Lincoln's rise from obscurity to become one of the most successful lawyers in Illinois. If such a biographer omitted any mention of Lincoln's Presidency, it wouldn't mean that the biographer didn't know that Lincoln had become President. What it would mean is that in that volume, the biographer was focusing on Lincoln's life before he became President.
All biographies of Lincoln have as the overriding theme the contention of the various authors that Lincoln was a great man. Similarly, the other three Gospels present different aspects or perspectives of Jesus' life and ministry, but all agree that He was the Incarnate Son of God, and that salvation comes only through Him.
I'm trying to imagine an agenda which John might have been working. He knew He was going to face persecution and almost certain martyrdom. ( As it happens, he appears to have been the only Apostle who somehow escaped martyrdom. God preserved Him into very old age, when he would write the book of Revelation on the Isle of Patmos, but he couldn't have known in his younger years that he would be spared, and we don't know that ultimately, he was spared martyrdom. )
Again, I try to come up with “an agenda” John or any of the others could have been pursuing. It's no one's agenda to court torture and crucifixion or beheading. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by The Word of God. ( Romans 10:17. ) The New Testament is there. The Gospels are there. Jesus doesn't want to stiffarm you away, He wants you to come to believe in Him, because only in Him is there life everlasting.
All religions and all followers of the religions believe theirs is the best! It’s all mostly culturally and geographically determined. Most will disagree but it’s not what religion you follow that gets you to God or heaven, it’s how well you live God to the best of your ability. Jesus never meant one could only find Him in one religion, in my view.
Agreed. Fighting over who has “the truth” is really far from what we are called by God to do, IMO.
I try to stay away from people, and religious groups, who loudly assert that their way is the only truth, and that you have to believe “xyz” to be a member, be pleasing to God, etc.
A friend of mine proposed the following thought experiment: Centuries ago, Satan decided it would be a really cool game to take three religions who all actually worshipped the same God, but convince them that their primarily goal was to denounce the other religions and proclaim that theirs had the only truth - to the point that they would fight wars, murder, and torture the proponents of those other religions. Satan then would look on with glee as they did all that in God’s name.
The history of Christianity would be even more delightful to Satan, since Christians would torture and murder other Christians who had a somewhat different interpretation of their dogma.
With regard to Francis, if a corporate spokesman said that the competitor’s products are just as good as ours, and that it’s fine if people buy them, they would be fired on the spot.
With regard to Putin and World War Three, I am starting to wonder why there is no peace movement right now. After all, there was a massive peace movement in the 1960s mostly because baby boomers didn’t want to get sent to Vietnam and risk death. We had nuclear protestors all over the place in the 1980s. Why don’t we have this now? I’ve been pondering this one for a while.
Maybe this is all connected to the culture of death. The only qualification Kamala seems to have as president is that she favors abortion, for example. No one presses her on a peace plan in Ukraine. I am not a big Trump fan, but I think he might actually try to broker a peace deal in Ukraine. No ones seems to care or take the idea seriously. Instead, it is all about forcing Putin to the mat, regardless of where it leads. But maybe that reflects where we are as a culture anymore. If we favor murdering babies, then is it a big step to favoring murdering half the planet?
I was thinking the same thing. People should be taking to the streets in protest, just like in the 1960s, not that the elites could care less what us peons think. The one reason I can think of that the Democratic Propaganda Machine, formerly the U.S. media, is not giving this more attention is that it might cause people to think about vote for Trump. Mustn't distract the masses with their short attention spans. After all, Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala!
Who is the media currently? Muscle Boy and Collagen Lips on ABC Tuesday evening is who they are. How can we expect such superficial people to ask questions, let alone, good ones, about things as important as the terrifying risk of a nuclear exchange? America is dying of its banality.
Well we’ll see if that changes once the initiate the draft which I think would have to include trans and women. I don’t know if all the new arrivals would volunteer to fight since they are here for economic gain but one never knows.
I don't see a draft happening any time soon. Moreover the days of mass conscript armies in battle are over. Today's wars are much more digitalized: drones and missiles from afar, and small bands of partisans shooting from the shadows. We will not see another Gettysburg or Borodino any more than we shall armored knights charging on horseback.
If that were true then the Ukraine wouldn’t be having 50 yo soldiers on the battlefield and there wouldn’t be all this talk how Russia can hold for the long haul because they have so many men.
There is no peace movement because this is a Left war, a Left cause. Do you know the history of Soviet foreign policy from the '30s to the '50s? First it was Social Democracy is social fascism (which destroyed the center left for Hitler, thanks very much). Then it was the Popular Front, no enemies to the Left. Then there was the Non-Aggression Pact. Then Hitler invaded and Second Front Now! Then peace peace peace, until the Los Alamos crowd got the Soviet scientists their own bomb. Then Korea. There is zero principle, zero anything like good faith. Iraq was bad because George Bush (with an assist from Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, never forget) did it. Libya was fine because Obama did it. See how it works?
Well, the Rand Paul/Massie wing of the party aside, and they aren't very powerful, the establishment GOP is wired into the military industrial complex. Short form: we're screwed.
I look at Dick Cheney endorsing the Marxist Kamala and I can only think of
two things:
-His hatred for Trump trumps everything else.
-He feels Trump 'knows where the bones are buried' and a second term will see trump reveal items on previous administrations that they have long fought to keep concealed from the public.
He hates Trump with all his being for a lot of reasons not least because his daughter was thrown from office because of him. Plus the plebs were given more platform instead of the routine practice of ignoring them after receiving their votes.
I think there were still some old school leftists opposed to the war against Serbia. Even that's gone.
The Democrats seem to be all in on Russia, which to be fair really is the antithesis of much of their social agenda (despite Russia's pretty significant welfare state) .
The “peace movement” of the sixties to the eighties was mostly orchestrated by the Soviet Communist Party. We don’t have one now because they lack the wherewithal to do it.
More striking to me is the change from twenty years ago, when opposition to the Iraq war was so very loud. To a degree this is of a piece with the shift that happened with Obama, when progressives really became the establishment.
The image which occurs to me is of junkies who are so addicted, they keep a needle permanently in a vein so they will be immediately ready when the desire for the next hit begins.
I think that's where much of America is in terms of morale. A culture of death, indeed. If you read about World War I, you are almost certain to find the assertion that the European nations just sort of sleptwalked into it. If a nation has collapsed, as ours has in every way which counts, it shouldn't be a surprise that there isn't much call that we recognize the danger we're in so we can pull back from it before it's too late.
"Maybe this is all connected to the culture of death. The only qualification Kamala seems to have as president is that she favors abortion, for example. "
I tend to think that. My guess is that Harris has had abortions. A childless woman with unrepented abortions in her past is likely to have an unacknowledged longing for the extinction of all life on earth.
The Pope is wrong, confusing, and should be ignored. I am going to ignore him and stay Catholic, because I believe that is where Jesus Christ wants me and my family. But I go to churches with good priests and am a Third Order Carmelite, so the choice isn't as hard as it is for others. I think at some level the leaders in the West have become crazy and want to start WW3. So I am trying to prepare for some level of disruptions (black outs, terrorists attacks, false flags) because that is what we get served up by the Left. J6 was orchestrated, I witnessed 911 close up, with 2 of my kids down there, lost friends that day (and don't think we got the real story) no one knows who was behind the Las Vegas attack (or will ever be told), the elections are rigged (polite word for stolen), and then Time magazine brags about it afterwords). The real President is a shadow committee, with a fake demented, bribe-taking leader as the frontman, to be followed by a phony airhead (who cannot speak extemporaneously) who is a borderline former adulterous prostitute for Willie Brown by way of political training.
Am I discouraged? Let's say I don't like it. I think God is going to intervene. Life is a test (as I tell my children), so don't flunk the test. It may get very bumpy here so people should prepare reasonably for potential disruptions of supply lines.
I have little trust anymore for our “leaders.” My favorite knee slapper lately was Kamala accidentally admitting that the lab leak theory was true, after the establishment spent years discrediting anyone who floated the idea. Some things, like global warming, can’t be hidden or lied about, so they admit it, but do nothing about it because they worship money and power. Other things, like the economy, they lie to our faces about. Interest payment on the debt is approaching the point where it is going to become a death spiral. This should be a flashing right light and no one does anything about it. These are things which can destroy a nation, and the human race, but God forbid that we put even some restrictions on abortion.
Yes, and the killing (sacrifice) of children is a flash-point for God in the OT, so I expect a Divine Riposte. God has had enough. He's warned and warned and warned. If you kill children, God will act. I attach an article about the killing of newborns that survive late-term abortions. What will God do? I am trembling spiritually inside. It sickens me to death. Once, Nancy Pelosi said "late-term abortion is sacred ground." Sacred ground for whom? Baphomet. I am attaching relevant articles and also a youtube of Nancy Pellosi's "omen" she's going to continue helping tear the nation in two (when she immediately tore up Trump's SOTUS after he gave it).
I found it hard to forget Molech when I saw pictures of how the ancient Carthaginians used to worship him (and read the description).
The Lord singled him out in Scripture, which I'm happy to take as Him (The Lord) cursing the practice of infanticide, including the form practiced in our degenerate times.
Chesterton wrote about the Carthaginians and their Molech-worship:
"There was a tendency in those hungry for practical results, apart from poetical results, to call upon spirits of terror and compulsion; to move Acheron in despair of bending the gods. There is always a sort of dim idea that these darker powers will really do things, with no nonsense about it. In the interior psychology of the Punic peoples this strange sort of pessimistic practicality had grown to great proportions. In the New Town which the Romans called Carthage, as in the parent cities of Phoenicia, the god who got things done bore the name Moloch, who was perhaps identical with the other deity whom we know as Baal, the Lord. The Romans did not at first quite know what to call him or what to make of him; they had to go back to the grossest myth of Greek or Roman Origins and compare him to Saturn devouring his children. But the worshippers of Moloch were not gross or primitive. They were members of a mature and polished civilization abounding in refinements and luxuries; they were probably far more civilized than the Romans. And Moloch was not a myth; or at any rate his meal was not a myth. These highly civilized people really met together to invoke the blessing of heaven on their empire by throwing hundreds of their infants into a large furnace. We can only realize the combination by imagining a number of Manchester merchants with chimneypot hats and mutton-chop whiskers, going to church every Sunday at eleven o'clock to see a baby roasted alive."
I'm glad Chesterton didn't live to see our day. We don't wear chimneypot hats, but people wearing our generation's equivalent are just as devoted to the sacrament of abortion as the Chesterton's hypothetical merchants of Manchester would have been to their baby-killing.
I think it is beautiful that you can't get the demon's names straight. That is SO disrespectful! I hate it when I get people's names wrong; it is so embarrassing. But to be unable to keep the various demons straight? You go, girl, and may your memory continue to fail you in this regard!
This is just ridiculous nonsense. The term “misinformation” is way overused, but it applies here.
No one is killing newborns. This lie (and it is an out and out lie) arose because there were discussions about removing life support from newborns who cannot survive outside the womb. Just like we remove life support from children and adults who cannot, and will never be able to, survive without it. That is not the same as killing people. Good grief.
I have some familiarity with the topic, as I just crafted my own Advanced Directive. It basically asserted that I want to be taken off all forms of life support when I am basically dead but just being kept technically alive by machines or other medical interventions, and have no hope of recovery.
Newborns, unfortunately, don’t have Advanced Directives, so there is no opportunity for them to legally assert their wishes in this regard. This means that parents are legally required to make the decisions for them, in consultation with doctors.
Allie587, as Pelosi said "Late-term abortion is sacred ground." I have not met a Leftist (used to be known as Democrat) who does not say lies like you are saying. Infants ARE bieng left to die or are given comfort care. It just so happened this state reported it. Most states don't. Infanticide is now the line of skrimmage, but it will not end at that. Soon, there will be "mercy killing" of the old and sick (see Canada) (Cuomo got started early, deciding to kill 16,000 Medicaid patients in NY by having them exposed in their nursing homes, accidentally on purpose, to CV, at the start of the plandemic). Have you read of Canada's MAID program (probably stands for Medically Assisted Insured Death, but I'm guessing). If you are depressed, one can now opt for mercy killing. If you are homeless, one can now opt fo rmercy killing. And, as always with the Left, whatever isn't forbidden soon becomes mandatory. Whatever is permissible soon becomes required. Thus, the clot shots, which imposition upon pain of losing one's job (or military appointment) VIOLATED THE NUREMBERG CODES, of which is USA is a signatory. (It was a type of "economic" guillointining, cutting off your economic head--college be damned, you're out in the street, starving, if you don't take the clot shots.) Queen Commiela has already ordained that no one can work in her circle without bieng up-to-date on their clot shots. Well, we will all be working for her soon since the election will be swindled (barring an Act of God) as it was in 2020 and 2023, and assuming Trump is not assasinated by the State first. that is where all the praying comes in. So pray (assuming you're not a Soros troll here).
I am not a leftist, and I am not lying. Comfort care, more properly termed palliative care” is what is given to people who are dying so they can die without suffering. It is not a bad thing, and it is certainly not the same as killing anyone.
But clearly I’m not going to convince you of anything, so I am bowing out of this discussion.
You don't realize the juncture we're at. Actually, I don't think these babies are given any care. They're left to die (or worse--this is a kiling procedure, you know). I am attaching an interview with a mid-to-late-term aborter (who had a profound conversion experience) who said at one point, the infant started to cry. He pulled them apart limb from limb, and SAYS so. Did you listen to former VA Gov Northam (a pediatric neurologist, of all things) when he discussed (regarding the full-term abortion that the VA legislature was considering, and which he supported) what to do with an infant that survives the procedure? Oh, and I read subsequently that when he years later got CV, he lost his sense of smell (and thus taste). Well, sin has a payday, and we as a nationl are about to find out that God doesn't like a nation that kills infants and then denies it is happening. You are the 5th Dem (or denialist) who says "not happening." Yes it is. What do you think all the hang-wringing is about. I attach the interview with the former mid- to late-term abortionist who says he started "spiritually fracturing" when God intervened in his life--he also says he felt deep, deep remorse for what he had done. Going back to former Gov. Northam, he spoke of consulting with the mother as to what to be done in the way of possible "comfort care" for the struggling infant. But in actual practice, I doubt ANYTHING is done for the infant, because killing an infant is the object, so why give comfort to "fetal matter"? Full term abortion is not advertised--it's amazing we even heard about the 8 babies who survived the procedure in the article I attached.
Why am I spending so much time on this Allie587 since I am sure I will not convince you (nor have I been able to convince any of the 5 or 7 women who have told me (invariably Dems) that what I am describing simply does not happen. I am spending this time, because God is almost certainly going to act, and when He does, people will wonder "Why would God let an awful thing befall us?" Because our leaders have become corrupt, murderous, bribe-taking, and now, killers of infants and attempted killers of Presidential candidates. How can they (Biden, Obama, Pelosi, etc.) escape final damnation?
Here's an article about former Gov Northam comments about what to do with a live infant that survived the third-semester abortion and second, the testimony of the former abortionist who God stopped from falling into Hell for what he'd done:
I am constantly stunned and alarmed that no-one is talking about national debt. It astounds me. It's like a car doing 80 toward a cliff and the driver is messing with the radio or something.
Can't be hidden or lied about? The powers scream about it constantly. But problem is, what can't be hidden or lied about, is there is not any real world evidence to support them. Their models fail, doomsday deadline after deadline busted, and water levels that have been tracked for centuries, no appreciative change. And most damning, some of the public figures pressing loudest about it, their behavior does not match their heated rhetoric.
It is as much bullshit as their COVID nonsense was.
Your first sentence here is spot on, Anne. My comment to Rod above:
He’s speaking heresy. Had he said all religions are “paths toward God,” he would be on defensible ground. But he clearly says all religions are paths “to *arrive* at God.” The heresy is right there in *arrive*. And worse, he strongly implies all religions are equal.
I’ve long considered him a crypto-heretic. These remarks are hardly crypto- anymore. They’re heresy.
I agree with Anne below: “The pope is wrong, confusing, and should be ignored.”
I had an allergic spiritual reaction to Pope Francis early on. What set me off? When he said things like "who am I to judge?". We are not to judge (in the sense of assigning people to Heaven, Hell, Purgatory). But we are supposed to evaluate behavior, including our own, and try to avoid sin. I have been trying to pray for the preservation/restoration of the RCC (and conversion of Pope Francis) as well as preservation of our democratic republic by saying extra Te Deum prayers each day. Here's a sample of sung version of Te Deum.
I've been praying daily for the conversion of Pope Francis to the Catholic faith, but I've always felt it a bit presumptuous of me to pray for such a thing for The Pope. This latest heresy from him makes me feel entirely vindicated.
I do not have a stake in the theological impact of Pope Francis' statements, the recent ones or any of the other ones in the past. I have a personal opinion about what Rod calls universalism. I grew up in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, attended their Religious Education classes (RE is a formal curriculum with them, what most kids would call Sunday School), and I've held a Pagan ritual performance for the Winter Solstice at two UUA churches in the recent past.
My opinion is that to assert and insist on the precise phrasing of belief in Jesus Christ, is the epitome of hubris. C.S. Lewis used a metaphorical avatar for Jesus, Aslan the lion. At no point until the very last page of the series does the author reveal that. Certainly, Christians reading his Narnia stories will recognize his intentions. Everyone else, unfamiliar with it all, will not, but they will "get it" in the manor in which they see it from their own religious points of view.
Universalism is the concept that we are on superficially different paths. Metaphor is the key here. The entire reason that evangelism and proselytizing is disdained, or met with outright hostility (and laws against it) in some parts of the world, is the (to outsiders) arbitrary imposition of a single path, a path which rejects metaphor that doesn't eventually explicitly reveal itself as Jesus Christ.
I am a Pagan. I've been met (less so recently, but still happens) with verbally and sometimes physically violent behavior from some Christians. I have also, more than once, been told by a devout Christian that I am more Christian than some Christians of their acquaintance. I'm not patting myself on the back. I accept the compliment with gratitude when it happens, but only rarely do I mention my main thought: if I have not accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, if I am in no way deserving of accepting Communion, if I am not baptized, by what metaphor can I possibly be compared to Christians?
I've known Christians who witness their faith. They live it for all to see, and have come to the conclusion that they have no need to talk about it unless asked. It is their example that I follow, not as a Christian, but as a believer in humanity, and a believer in the immanence of the divine.
I read your comment with genuine interest, though I am not a pagan - at least I don't think I am. But could you edit this sentence?
"The entire reason that evangelism and proselytizing is disdained, or met with outright hostility (and laws against it) in some parts of the world, is the (to outsiders) arbitrary imposition of a single path, a path which rejects metaphor that doesn't eventually explicitly reveal itself as Jesus Christ."
I think this though is critical to making your point, but the syntax makes it a bit ambiguous at least to me and I have reread it several times.
I often stumble over the need to keep my posts from getting longer than they should (something other readers here will appreciate). I'll try to reword it for you, because clarity is precious and your request is perfectly valid.
Evangelism and proselytism are met with outright hostility, and laws against it, in some parts of the world. Most other places disdain it, even mock it, though not so much in majority Christian places. It is, to outsiders, the arbitrary imposition of a single path, a path which rejects metaphor which doesn't eventually, explicitly reveal itself as leading to Jesus Christ.
The problem is, of course, that Jesus commanded his followers to evangelize, just as the Jews in his time, or many of them, were eager to make proselytes.
The slow suicide of the modernist, leftist wing of Catholicism continues as it stumbles its merry way down the road to oblivion. Mr. Bergoglio will be dead shortly but he will be replaced by someone as bad. Could it be Archbishop Gregory? That would be a modernist two-for. Black and q****. Eventually the Catholic Church will lose more and more parishioners, parishes will close, churches will be sold off as mere property, and Bergoglio will be named St. Francis because he successfully helped destroy the church. I expect the modernists will spend the next century electing more popes like Bergoglio. These popes will get television time when they utter something that the modern secular left supports. In reality, these popes will be as relevant as the Dalai Llama is today.
I’ve been waiting for the tipping point in the church for some time now. It’s just a matter of when, not if, that Catholicism is going to lose so much wealth, prestige, and power, that the only people left are the ones who really believe the truth in it. The people who have wrecked it from inside, and lived off of gullible parishioners, will be gone because there will be nothing of interest for those seeking comfort, prestige, and a cushy job with sodomy as a perk. I live in an area that was heavily settled by Catholic immigrants, but parishes are folding or consolidating, because the congregations are dwindling, but there is starting to be an undercurrent of purification. The priests these days actually mention formerly off limits topics like sin and hell, even. It’s been a minute since I’ve heard anyone in the church complaining these days about priests being too judgmental. We’re not there yet, but when you see a parish priest fixing the roof or mowing the grass, you’ll know that time has come.
The Baltimore Diocese is having a large consolidation right now. The Catholics of 1950s Baltimore have long left the slums of Baltimore. And the old Catholics who moved out to the Baltimore suburbs don't go to church any longer.
To be fair, Derek those were not "slums" back in the day-- though some parts of the city (the west side for one) were "the bad part of town" going way back. Canton and Fells Point (especially Upper Fells away from the ruckus of the bars clustered at the foot of Broadway) are still decent neighborhoods.
My Baltimore Orthodox church is in Upper Fells (though the neighborhood has christened itself Butcher's Hill). That area used to be the old Slavic ghetto of the city with lots of Catholic churches for the Poles, Czechs and Hungarians, plus two Orthodox churches (both still there) and Ukrainian Catholic church, also still there. The Catholic churches have been closing one after the other, since the gentrifying yuppies don't much bother with church; the Orthodox are either newcomers (I was) or people with family roots in those churches who drive in from the suburbs.
As it has always done, although sometimes as much with sideward motion, as downward - as befits a religious tradition founded on "the Royal Supremacy" aka Erastianism; cf. the Church of England as "the Established Church" and the Episcopal Church as "the Church of the Establishment." I honor the witness of the bodies that comprise "Continuing Anglicanism," but those like ACNA, which is not part of "the Continuum," seem to be founded on that spirit of compromise otherwise known as "the Via Media" which goes right back to 1559, and which is the prioritizing of expediency over truth.
On Hinduism: It’s not a codified religion. Hence you’ll find an incredibly wide range of beliefs among Hindus. There are schools of thought that range from atheism to clear polytheism. Some Hindus maintain they are monotheist’s. The most famous example of this at present may be Vivek Ramaswamy who on his pod cast with Andrew Sullivan was quite clear on that point.I think when Vedanta first came to the US it was presented as monotheistic and universalist.But this does get more than a bit confusing because in some circles , you hear about underlying essences and you may actually be going into something remarkably similar to deism.
Relating to an earlier comment I made, near-instant communication in the modern age may not be a net positive.
No doubt defenders of the Papacy will point to worse popes in history, and I'll agree, Pope Francis does not hold a collection of pornography or slaves in his court. But before the internet, or really before the printing press, a small village in western France or northern England wouldn't have heard about such awful things.
Now any place with an internet connection can hear about the latest screw-up from the pope, or any leader in charge of a significantly large organization. More than ever before, leaders need to watch what they say, lest it undermine the organization or cause they serve.
On the issue of nuclear escalation, and I admit I am very pessimistic, but I would not be surprised if Putin drops a tactical nuke on Kiev before the end of the year. Would Western leaders actually retaliate? Would this be a red line for China and India (as in, they would cease to do business with Russia)? Are we just sleepwalking into nuclear armageddon? Will cooler heads prevail? Current leadership leaves much to be desired.
As for Putin's frank red line statement and the apparent madness of NATO, I am beside myself. Even without Putin's statement, why does the Biden-Harris Regime and the rest of those Globalist idiots think that Putin would put up with the likely missile permissions and strikes? The U. S. would not put up with it if the shoe were on the other foot.
Trump is not blowing smoke when he says Biden-Harris is leading us towards WW3.
Totally agree - but introspection is not the globalists' strong suit. But it doesn't really matter for them anyway as a cohort. Does anyone think if WWIII actually kicks off that anyone in the west who started it will face any consequences?
None of them would lose their jobs, none of them would be in harm's way...so why not blow up the world?
No, I think this is just straight up heretical. FNG implies a falsehood that is also somehow trivial and somewhat weak. As in, "Why are you even bothering me with this obvious bullsh*t?" It's an expression that has as much to do with your exasperation with the nonsense of the statement or situation as it does with the liar or the ridiculousness of the circumstance.
Due to the nature of the man's position, one has to take the anti- pope's pronouncements seriously and I think he personally believes this heresy. It's a lot of things, but it certainly is not Fake.
I get the sentiment. Who wouldn't want it to be true--that all roads lead to God? But it is a Hallmark Care theology and ironically, is not shared by others on the other roads.
Alas, what a boring Pope. But this will pass. The grave has a way of changing up and purifying the church generation by generation.
I think Rod is too skeptical about the pope. It is true that the Church sees “striving” toward the Truth outside of Catholicism. (Paul’s reference to the “Altar of the Unknown God”, reading Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue as foretelling the Saviour, for example). Other religions feel through the fog toward the Logos, and the Pope, an old sick exhausted man, often speaks spontaneously and without the rigorous consideration of a theologian. He is pastoral, and was visiting an area which (except for East Timor) is mostly not Catholic.
Like I said, through God's mercy, and the saving work of Jesus Christ. I am not going to tell God how to decide who gets into heaven and who doesn't. The one thing we Christians are told by Christ is that no man comes to the Father except through Him. You can interpret that in a strict way, to mean no non-Christians ever get to paradise. But I think you can also interpret it the way I do: as saying if God chooses to allow people who did not believe in Jesus into heaven, it will be through mercy and through what Jesus did on the Cross, somehow.
None of this should dissuade us from taking what we Christians believe is the right path to God, and encouraging others to follow. Hope that we can live however we want to and make it to heaven anyway is not a particularly wise strategy.
Also, one way or the other, if we don't like God in this life, then we're *really* not gonna like what comes next, when we are no longer buffered by this dense clay flesh against spiritual reality.
I mean the actual guy; I don't care whether they recognize Him by name over here, and I don't think He particularly does either (although of course that would be nice).
Not all who say His name will be saved, He said—and I think it works the other way around as well. Who are His people? The ones who do His works and manifest His love. Do you think He'd prefer for a cruel man to ramble on about Him, or for a man to not confess His name but care for others? The best-case scenario would be to also confess with our tongues, but I know He's reading our hearts, and some among us may be very surprised by the judgments He makes in the end.
God in Jesus Christ has told us clearly what each of us has to do personally to attain salvation. The rest, really, isn't our business.
As we travel down the road to the Celestial City we see many fascinating things happening on either side. We just have to remember not to wander off the road - and, if we do, to get right back on it - before we reach our Destination.
And there's this (St. Luke 12: 42-48):
And the Lord said, "Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath. But and if that servant say in his heart, "My lord delayeth his coming;" and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken; The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."
A Christian is a servant of God. The servant's task is, simply, to serve his master - nothing more and nothing less.
Thanks for responding, but c'mon man. You're implying strongly that you don't have to know Jesus in order to get to Heaven. How is that functionally different from what the Pope said? He also implied you don't need Jesus, because Mohammed will do the job just as well. Isn't that exactly why you're frustrated with him in his remarks today?
John 10:1 should give any Christian considering that line of thinking pause:
"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber."
"To know" isn't restricted to just one meaning. In all of us there is a seed of knowing God due to the basic fact that "God is in all place and filleth all things"-- and that includes us. I wouldn't reject the possibility that people who have never heard the Gospel or who have heard false and hateful things said of it, may nonetheless know God at some level of their soul. I am also wary of making salvation nothing more than a work of the mind, as if it depended on taking some sort of multiple choice theology test. The "knowing" in this case is much more likely to be in the sense of Spanish "conocer" (knowing by direct acquaintance) rather than "saber" (a knowledge of facts).
No one here (not Rod, Sethu or myself) is really disputing that "Jesus is the door". What dispute there is, is based on the meaning of "know".
Kierkegaard (a Protestant) famously said, "Truth is subjectivity." He did not mean that all truth is subjective. He meant that there are truths that can only be known in a subjective way -- that is, by passionately appropriating them and living them out. Religious truth is like that, he said. Nobody lives and dies for the Pythagorean theorem, but the truths proclaimed in the Gospels are different. Kierkegaard was a Christian, and believed that Jesus was objectively the Son of God, and all the rest. His point was a psychological one, mostly.
Similarly, Iain McGilchrist's great work has been on the two ways of knowing truth: propositionally and experientially.
Finally, it might help to think of it like this: in French and German, there are different verbs for "to know": there is savoir/wissen (to know something intellectually) and connaître/kennen (to know something personally). E.g., I know (savoir) the recipe given to me by my friend's grandmother, whom I know (connaître) from having visited her once.
Jesus is the Way, that is clear. But we cannot know where and how Jesus is meeting people, either in this life or on the threshold of the next (the latter being closed off to us). If you have read CS Lewis's Narnia series, you can see how he tries to make the point at the end of all things in The Last Battle. In that book, at the final trumpet, Aslan (Christ) has called all to judgement. A follower of Tash (a demon who has tried to usurp Aslan) comes before Aslan and knows and is known. The man is surprised at this, but Aslan tells him that all this man's worship of Tash was ever directed towards the good and true things - helping the poor, feeding the hungry, loving his neighbor - could not be claimed by tash. In short, this man had been serving Aslan, even if he didn't know it due to the lies of Tash.
This way of thinking has always given me hope, especially for those whose knowledge of Christ has been poisoned by the lies of others, or by abuse meted out by Christians. There is a prayer of repentance in the Orthodox prayer books that asks God to please protect others from our own sins, and not let others fall through *our own* sins.
We cannot know for certain. But we can hope, and we can pray.
No, we cannot know for certain - we are finite beings, with finite reasoning skills, and incomplete knowledge. To claim we can know anything so critical as the salvation of another is to make a claim approaching the equality of God.
The way Substack is set out, it isn't always easy for a would be respondent.
You say you have no idea what point I am trying to make. It was this: Ssronica had said that we can know how to be saved, and that God doesn't want something that important to be vague. Ssronica is correct. Ssronica added that we can read the Bible to learn this, and Ssronica is again correct.
You said that until printing became widespread, few could read the Bible. That is also true. You added that because of its rarity before the printing press, we were back to reliance on others.
I had no idea what you meant by that, at all. But I said what I said about God's giving the Church evangelists, pastors, and teachers because this has been true since Pentecost. It was true before the canon of Scripture had been completed, which is why the Apostles were given authenticating sign gifts, and in the canonical era it remains true.
Your earlier point, that we can't know as God knows whether a particular person is saved, is something I agree with to a limited degree. Christians are called to do the work of evangelism. That alone implies that we can't know the spiritual condition of many others. However, because of what the Bible says about apostates, we can know what their spiritual condition is: they're lost souls.
I hope this clarified matters but I still have the feeling that as Mark Twain wrote, we are understanding right past one another.
"Vladimir Putin’s statement this week that if the West grants Ukraine permission to use its Western-donated long range missiles for strikes deep into Russia, that Russia will consider itself in a state of war with NATO."
Good for Putin. As someone said above, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it the situation were reversed the U.S. would not tolerate it for two seconds. Again, it's Monroe Doctrine for me but not for thee.
Even if Putin is bluffing, is it worth the risk? Honesty, these neocon/neolib f--kers are going to get a lot more people killed if they don't quickly gain a little sanity here.
As I have pointed out many times, the US took no serious military actions against Castro's Cuba, an overt Soviet client state a very short voyage from Florida. Our reaction was mainly economic: we refused to trade with Cuba, or allow any save a tiny number of US visitors to travel there. Those were certainly options for Putin with regard to Ukraine. For example Russia could have refused to sell one drop of oil or one whiff of natural gas to the Ukrainians.
If Putin actually did use nukes in Ukraine it could easy be the most colossal act of folly in recorded history. Even setting aside the international consequences, it would bring massive blowback, starting with the fact the prevailing winds at that latitude are from the west so any fallout is going back over Russian territory. I have to wonder that if Putin really were serious and makes that decision if he'd be taken out by his own people to prevent such consequences.
I know I wasn't alive at the time so I may have missed something, but if memory serves the USSR never gave the okay for Cuba to launch a missile, nuclear or otherwise, into the U.S. That's what's being discussed here in case you hadn't noticed.
Let us also recall the precedent the USA established at the time of the Cuban missile crisis: no nuclear armed great power needs to tolerate a mortal threat on its border, the precedent we established when we detached the province of Kosovo from Serbia, and the precedent we established by waging a dishonest, preventive war against Iraq, a country that posed zero threat to the USA. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. You would not be able to slice through the hypocrisy of our Ukrainian policy with a chain saw.
I’ve long since realized the only reason I am still a Catholic is because of my personal circumstances. There is a strong, non-heretical Catholic community where I live, for one thing. And my wife is not interested in switching churches and raising our kids in another church, at least at this point. Maintaining family unity on such matters is essential. But I’ve long been drawn to Orthodoxy, and if it weren’t so culturally unfamiliar to my family, I could well see us going that way. One thing that perturbs me, though, is that when an incident like this occurs, I find myself tempted to seize upon it as an *excuse* to leave the RCC. I don’t believe there is any mortal peril in leaving, but I also don’t want to do something out of fear or disgust. If I ever go East, it must be out of overwhelming love for that tradition and not mainly as a reaction to a moribund Catholicism that is nevertheless still endowed with a profoundly beautiful cultural patrimony and, indeed, the Truth.
I converted (from Anglicanism) over 40 years ago. Orthodoxy hardly exists where I lived at the time. And as my thinking was informed by the the West, I don't recall that it even occurred to me as an option. I've sometimes thought, though, that if Orthodoxy had been on my radar at the time I might have gone that way.
I think that a deeper knowledge of Catholic theology will help ease you. There are things that are taught infallibly, and there are things which are authoritative but not infallible. These latter things can be overturned by a teaching of higher weight - for there are differing degrees of authority in Catholic teaching.
What Pope Francis said here is known as a “papal allocation” and is of low authoritative weight. If some earlier teaching is of higher weight, then that earlier teaching stands, and the Pope is incorrect in his statement.
The Pope did not make this statement in appealing to infallibility, so it could theoretically be overturned.
And the teaching against religious indifferentism is named in many highly authoritative teachings of the past, and is indeed infallible. So, the Pope is incorrect here (unless there is an orthodox interpretation that one could find), and the earlier teaching stands.
What would disprove Catholic teaching is if an error were proclaimed infallibly against another infallible teaching. That has not happened, and never will happen.
The Church has actually dealt with situations like this before. Pope Honorius made problematic statements about who Jesus is in a non-infallible teaching letter. Subsequent Popes through ecumenical councils (for it is the approval of a Pope which makes the statement ecumenical) set the record straight and cleared up confusion.
Thank you this was so informative but please help me a little more. I was under the apparent misunderstanding that strict "papal Infallibility" was an ex-cathedra statement, and so the Church had only had that since Vatican 1. I heard vague references to papal infallibility before that but was not sure who to take them since one pope might contradict another or even himself when tens of thousands of things were said.
Here you mention a 7C pope who made a false statement, but it was in an "a non-infallible teaching letter. I don't really know what "non-infaliable" was before Vatican 1. I thought it church canons and the magisterium - i need to learn more, I see. So then it took an ecumenical council to set things straight? My view on "the magisterium" is too simplistic, it seems.
”Magisterium” is simply the name for the teaching office of the Church. Some of its teachings are infallible and set in stone, and some are not, but are still authoritative; and it would be a sin to reject them. Sometimes non-infallible teachings can be raised to the level of infallible.
Everyone has always agreed that the Church as a whole is infallible - for example, in the definitive teachings of ecumenical councils. The question was whether the Pope on his own could exercise this infallibility.
At Vatican I, the ecumenical council infallibly *recognized* that the Pope can teach infallibly on his own. The teachings are not *new*, only recognized to a greater extent and clarity. A debated question was settled, just like at the Council of Jerusalem in the book of Acts.
That’s why Jesus said to His apostles “the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth.”
So Popes have always had this power, and the Church clarified this with absolute certainty at a later time. So, we can now go back with that certainty and say “Ah, yes, this teaching was infallible.” Theologians debate how many of these past statements were infallible. But all are authoritative for sure.
The Pope doesn’t need to say “this is an ex cathedra statement”. He just has to teach something definitively to all Christians using the teaching authority of his office.
Now, Popes may contradict each other. But there are different levels of authority to Catholic teachings. Some teachings are infallible and set in stone. But something can be authoritative even if not infallible. So if two Popes contradict with non-infallible teachings, the teaching of higher weight wins out.
Thankfully, that’s all above our pay grade. I’m not a theologian who has to hash this out, so I just accept what the Church teaches.
There are three ways that a teaching is infallible:
1. A solemn definition of an ecumenical council. This usually means the canons. The doctrinal canons are infallible if they say “anathema” to an error. Other Council teachings may be of very high authority, but not always infallible.
2. An ex cathedra statement of the Pope which is intended to be definitive and for all time.
3. When all the bishops in union with Rome throughout the world teach the same thing as definitive. That’s the “ordinary and universal magisterium.” Many teachings, especially moral teachings, fall under this infallibility. An example would be the teaching that women cannot receive ordination to the priesthood. The Church explicitly said that this was infallible by this path.
I say it was a non-infallible letter because the Church says so. Theologians debate whether this letter was wrong, or just unclear. They debate whether it was an official teaching, or a private letter to a patriarch. At best, Pope Honorius gave a confusing and unclear teaching that could easily be taken in a heretical way, and didn’t do enough to clearly oppose heretics spreading confusion.
But it wasn’t infallible, so the Catholic faith stands. And the Church later clarified the confusion that this Pope had caused via another Pope in an ecumenical council (which requires the Pope or a representative of him to be ecumenical). See, the Church teaches that no one can judge the Pope except another Pope. Not a Council of bishops without the Pope - that’s the heresy of concilliarism.
Another example would be Pope John XXII. He made a deeply wrong statement in a sermon about Heaven. He says this was not part of his official teaching as Pope, but was him speaking in a private capacity.
Theologians got on his case, and he retracted this false view before he died. After he died, the Church raised the true teaching to the level of an infallible dogma so that there could be no doubt or confusion remaining.
Thank you for takin the time to write this. I meant to respond right away but have not responded until now.
I remain unclear. Former Protestants grow up hearing about "the sale of indulgences". Yes, I know - there are technically some remaining, but the practice was modified, so there must have been errors.
I understand serious rulings of ecumenical councils to be infallible. This is despite the addition of the filioque, which I think was wrong but I am not leaving the Church over it.
I believe I am an orthodox Roman Catholic to say the pope is infallible only when he speaks ex cathedra. Since V1 we know of that happening twice. It could have happened in the past, but we do not know when it was ex cathedra and when it was not.
I do not think of myself as a Cafeteria Catholic. I would have used NFP, for instance (if married and if we had planned.) I do not want the church to ordain women priests but I'm surprised to hear that was a way to close down that possibility forever. I thought, except for ex cathedra statements (two) there was nothing the Church could not change. Meanwhile, I thought it was my job to trust that they heard the Holy Spirit correctly in doctrines, since I can't guess what might be wrong. Further, I doubt any major doctrine impacting me is going to wind up correctly "changed". People sure are upset about blessing gay unions, but I just think that the church can "take that back" since it did not seem to be ex cathedra. - - I was only brought back to the Church after speaking with Rod about the place of "reason/logic". I no longer have to think everything sounds logical, nor do I have to think all human reason can grasp of Catholic teaching makes sense, in order to practice Catholicism.
I get the claim that doctrine does not change it develops. I consider that spin in light of the changes. Examples of changes: moneylending was authoritatively forbidden not now, Original sin doctrine also states there was a definite original pair - monogenesis (Yes, but mitochondrial Adam and mitochondrial Eve lived at different times.) Teaching on the death penalty has changed (yes, I get it, because prisons are now secure and they once were not is the reason the church gives). Whether Latin rite priests can marry or not. Plenty of changes.
I think, if the Ukraine does use western weapons to hit deep inside of Russia the likely outcome would be a gradual ramping up of attacks my Russia on Kiev and other Ukrainian cities as a warning. If that warning is not headed then tactical nukes on the battle field and probably a quick end to the war. There is no way that Putin uses strategic nukes as that would end Russia and much of the world. Deep strikes are not a nation defeating strike on Russia. Could things spiral out of control in this scenario yes but I don't think it is likely.
I think that’s right. There is another factor as well: it’s not clear that Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces even work right now. The weapons themselves and the missiles that launch them require regular and expensive maintenance. Given Russia’s overall lack of competence, it’s not clear they even have the ability to launch nuclear weapons.
Yes there is that also but I would wager a couple hundred are probably in fine working order. It is clear though, to me at least, that the end is coming soon for Ukraine. The Kursk gambit failed and Russia did not panic when it happened but doubled down on taking land in the Donbas.
I wouldn't gamble on the missiles not launching. The Russians can be incompetent, but if you've taken the Moscow Metro you know they can also do a remarkable job at keeping things operating when they want to.
How do you mean? I don't see it. Did you watch the clip? He likens religions to different languages, and says that it's wrong to claim that one's own god is "more important" than others. As I quoted in the essay, "Dominus Iesus" plainly states the Catholic position. If Catholicism is no more or no less true than Islam or Hinduism, Orthodoxy or Protestantism, then why be Catholic, except that you like it?
Except he’s speaking Italian, as I suppose you mean. But it’s very clear, and the tr. is exact.
Then he's at least playing with matches. Come on. This cat has a track record. To spite Giorgia Meloni he effectively said not toeing his line on immigration puts one in "grave" sin, as close to what used to be called mortal sin as the Church gets today.
Bergoglio is just a left-wing politician and not a religious leader.
Here is THE Problem many of us have. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, are Entirely Different views/ideas of God. I Mean ENTIRELY Different.
I'd say think of it like a cone. They're all human ideas about the transcendent, so in that sense there's similarity—base of the cone. Some schools of Hinduism are very close to the thought of Plato and Plotinus, who are foundational to a lot of Catholic and Orthodox theology. So more harmony, further up the cone. There's often a lot of common ground to find, if we approach things with a spirit of charity.
The Gospel, though? The Resurrection? That's the apex of the cone, which only Christians can know. There is no common ground with anyone else on that.
One can argue that "universalist" is not the most accurate term, since that generally means the belief that everyone will be saved. And unless I missed something Francis did not literally say that, but rather that all paths to salvation are more or less equal. So, strictly speaking, he apparently didn't say that everyone would in fact get there. He does seem to say that all religions are functionally equal. That's possibly even more wrong, but I don't know what the precise theological word for it is. Most definitely not "in line with historical Catholic teaching" as GoKnights954 says.
In context though--aptly signified by the "coexist" bumper sticker--this seems to be a distinction without a difference.
I think religious indifferentism is the more accurate term. And that too is specifically condemned in the Catechism as a sin against the First Commandment, if I remember correctly.
That is indeed even more wrong; that's more or less apostasy. And universalism proper is an acceptable theological opinion within the Orthodox Church—see St. Isaac of Nineveh.
I don’t believe that’s true, there’s Canons of the pre-schism church that wildly condemn the idea of universalism. My universalism was one of the reasons I ended up leaving Orthodoxy and ending up in the Mainline.
Believe what you want, but what I said is true: it is a minority opinion, but not officially condemned. I didn't say popular, I said acceptable. Dana here can back me up, if she's around.
Ehh, you’re bordering on a technicality with that. Origenism is explicitly condemned at numerous councils, and although it may not explicitly say “Universalism”, the people at the council would’ve probably understood themselves as condemning what we now call Universalism.
There's also (in Catholicism) the sort of universal hope idea, as articulated by von Balthasar in "Dare We Hope"--that it's *possible* that everyone will be saved. Some hardliners want to condemn that as just plain universalism, but I think that's wrong. I don't see why we can't have that hope.
I also don't think people really understand what they mean when they say "eternity". Trials and torments for aeons, sure—but eternity? What could a finite created being ever do to earn an eternity of torture? That doesn't even mathematically make sense; it's more or less a category error.
Indeed. I think about this often. Whatever "eternity" means, I'm pretty sure it's not "a really really long time."
Ilaria Ramelli, Catholic patristics specialist, "wrote the book" on this one, Sethu: "Terms for Eternity: Aiônios and Aïdios in Classical and Christian Texts". And of course, her 900+ page tome on "The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis". Unfortunately, because they are academic publications, they are outrageously expensive.
Dana
People choose Hell. Just as Satan did.
To a soul which rejects God, God's love is torture, and His light burns.
Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy the two serial killers that tortured the girl that the FBI uses the recording of to desensitize new recruits, or even the one fellow torturing a cat and the other eating a kitten while it’s alive, that are making the rounds on twitter right now. Yah I hope they endure eternal torment.
He’s speaking heresy. Had he said all religions are “paths toward God,” he would be on defensible ground. But he clearly says all religions are paths “to *arrive* at God.” The heresy is right there in *arrive*. And worse, he strongly implies all religions are equal.
I’ve long considered him a crypto-heretic. These remarks are hardly crypto- anymore. They’re heresy.
I agree with Anne below: “The pope is wrong, confusing, and should be ignored.”
Agreed, and that is a useful distinction. All human longings toward the holy and transcendent lead *toward* God; but as we get farther up that mountain, there is only one way to actually arrive at the summit.
On my computer now, so I can actually "like".
Your comment above using a cone as analogy is also sharp.
I think “because you like it” is exactly why one should choose one religion over another. Or to put it in more exact terms, because the rituals of that religion help you feel closer to God and willing to do God’s will here on earth.
But closeness to God is the point, not the theology or “story” told by the religion, which is just something made up by humans to try to conceptualize something we can’t understand.
None of us here on earth has the capacity to understand spiritual reality. I believe that we will know those answers someday (after death?), but as earthbound beings, we can’t.
I do adhere more closely to the Christian faith than others, mostly because I was raised culturally Christian and so I love the hymns and rituals. But I don’t necessarily think that Christian theology is more true than any others. I try not to even trouble myself with those questions, because I see my job on earth as doing God’s will to the best of my ability, not thinking I know answers which I probably am not equipped to understand anyway.
See my comment at about 3:40pm for more detail.
Romans 1:18 - 32.
If you don't necessarily think Christianity is "more true" than others, you are not a Christian. Have you ever read The New Testament, specifically, the Gospels, especially John?
When Jesus said He was The Way, The Truth, and The Life, and that no one came to The Father but by Him, He told the world for the entirety of its existence who He is and what Christianity is.
You say that we can't understand spiritual reality, and it's certain that we can't understand all of it now, and that possibly we never will, but Jesus came into the world to announce who The Godhead is and that He is the Second Person of it. He IS spiritual reality, staring you in the face, so to speak. To have Him is life everlasting. Not to have Him, which is your condition now, is to be a lost soul, dwelling in utter spiritual darkness, three missed heartbeats away from Hell.
He came primarily to die for you and for all of us. You make reference to the will of God. The Bible tells us what that will is. It is the command of God that all people everywhere believe in the Son. ( This is what the New Testament means in its use of the term, "obey the Gospel." )
Do you really want God? You seem to want to feel good about God rather than actually having God. For God's sake, truly, read John's Gospel.
Did you ever think that maybe John had a personal agenda, and that his writings do not faithfully capture what Jesus said? Because what you quote directly contradicts many of Jesus’s other teachings, as well as common sense. God does not reject humans who seek him because they were born in a non-Christian culture.
Allie, John, chapter one, is something like the foundational statement of what Christianity is. John is the only disciple described as the one whom Jesus “loved,” and though, of course, He loved them all, scholars, believing or not, have always affirmed that John and Jesus seem to have been particularly close. He had an agenda, all right, to make Jesus as the only begotten Son of God known to the world. Try to find me a scholar who thinks that John was working his own agenda.
Actually, apostasy is so far advanced that it probably won't be all that difficult for you to do. The distinction is that such people are not believing Christians. All believing Christians affirm the authority of John, as well as the authority of the writers of the other three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Each account differs to an extent from the others, but in matters of biography, not of doctrine. One is not more accurate than the other three. But each emphasizes different things about Jesus’ life and ministry, in the same way that a multi volume biography of Lincoln would emphasize different aspects about Lincoln's life. As an example, one Lincoln biography would tell the story of Lincoln's rise from obscurity to become one of the most successful lawyers in Illinois. If such a biographer omitted any mention of Lincoln's Presidency, it wouldn't mean that the biographer didn't know that Lincoln had become President. What it would mean is that in that volume, the biographer was focusing on Lincoln's life before he became President.
All biographies of Lincoln have as the overriding theme the contention of the various authors that Lincoln was a great man. Similarly, the other three Gospels present different aspects or perspectives of Jesus' life and ministry, but all agree that He was the Incarnate Son of God, and that salvation comes only through Him.
I'm trying to imagine an agenda which John might have been working. He knew He was going to face persecution and almost certain martyrdom. ( As it happens, he appears to have been the only Apostle who somehow escaped martyrdom. God preserved Him into very old age, when he would write the book of Revelation on the Isle of Patmos, but he couldn't have known in his younger years that he would be spared, and we don't know that ultimately, he was spared martyrdom. )
Again, I try to come up with “an agenda” John or any of the others could have been pursuing. It's no one's agenda to court torture and crucifixion or beheading. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by The Word of God. ( Romans 10:17. ) The New Testament is there. The Gospels are there. Jesus doesn't want to stiffarm you away, He wants you to come to believe in Him, because only in Him is there life everlasting.
All religions and all followers of the religions believe theirs is the best! It’s all mostly culturally and geographically determined. Most will disagree but it’s not what religion you follow that gets you to God or heaven, it’s how well you live God to the best of your ability. Jesus never meant one could only find Him in one religion, in my view.
Agreed. Fighting over who has “the truth” is really far from what we are called by God to do, IMO.
I try to stay away from people, and religious groups, who loudly assert that their way is the only truth, and that you have to believe “xyz” to be a member, be pleasing to God, etc.
A friend of mine proposed the following thought experiment: Centuries ago, Satan decided it would be a really cool game to take three religions who all actually worshipped the same God, but convince them that their primarily goal was to denounce the other religions and proclaim that theirs had the only truth - to the point that they would fight wars, murder, and torture the proponents of those other religions. Satan then would look on with glee as they did all that in God’s name.
The history of Christianity would be even more delightful to Satan, since Christians would torture and murder other Christians who had a somewhat different interpretation of their dogma.
With regard to Francis, if a corporate spokesman said that the competitor’s products are just as good as ours, and that it’s fine if people buy them, they would be fired on the spot.
With regard to Putin and World War Three, I am starting to wonder why there is no peace movement right now. After all, there was a massive peace movement in the 1960s mostly because baby boomers didn’t want to get sent to Vietnam and risk death. We had nuclear protestors all over the place in the 1980s. Why don’t we have this now? I’ve been pondering this one for a while.
Maybe this is all connected to the culture of death. The only qualification Kamala seems to have as president is that she favors abortion, for example. No one presses her on a peace plan in Ukraine. I am not a big Trump fan, but I think he might actually try to broker a peace deal in Ukraine. No ones seems to care or take the idea seriously. Instead, it is all about forcing Putin to the mat, regardless of where it leads. But maybe that reflects where we are as a culture anymore. If we favor murdering babies, then is it a big step to favoring murdering half the planet?
I was thinking the same thing. People should be taking to the streets in protest, just like in the 1960s, not that the elites could care less what us peons think. The one reason I can think of that the Democratic Propaganda Machine, formerly the U.S. media, is not giving this more attention is that it might cause people to think about vote for Trump. Mustn't distract the masses with their short attention spans. After all, Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala!
Who is the media currently? Muscle Boy and Collagen Lips on ABC Tuesday evening is who they are. How can we expect such superficial people to ask questions, let alone, good ones, about things as important as the terrifying risk of a nuclear exchange? America is dying of its banality.
Well we’ll see if that changes once the initiate the draft which I think would have to include trans and women. I don’t know if all the new arrivals would volunteer to fight since they are here for economic gain but one never knows.
I don't see a draft happening any time soon. Moreover the days of mass conscript armies in battle are over. Today's wars are much more digitalized: drones and missiles from afar, and small bands of partisans shooting from the shadows. We will not see another Gettysburg or Borodino any more than we shall armored knights charging on horseback.
If that were true then the Ukraine wouldn’t be having 50 yo soldiers on the battlefield and there wouldn’t be all this talk how Russia can hold for the long haul because they have so many men.
You're right, this isn't an either/or. A full scale war against Russia would need conscripts, and in fact in Europe conscripts are still the nom.
A full scale war against Russia would need conscripts domestically to bury all the bodies that weren't incinerated in firestorms.
There is no peace movement because this is a Left war, a Left cause. Do you know the history of Soviet foreign policy from the '30s to the '50s? First it was Social Democracy is social fascism (which destroyed the center left for Hitler, thanks very much). Then it was the Popular Front, no enemies to the Left. Then there was the Non-Aggression Pact. Then Hitler invaded and Second Front Now! Then peace peace peace, until the Los Alamos crowd got the Soviet scientists their own bomb. Then Korea. There is zero principle, zero anything like good faith. Iraq was bad because George Bush (with an assist from Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, never forget) did it. Libya was fine because Obama did it. See how it works?
Zackly
Are the Right incapable of protest? Didn't seem that way on Jan 6. Can't blame all the inaction on the Left.
Well, the Rand Paul/Massie wing of the party aside, and they aren't very powerful, the establishment GOP is wired into the military industrial complex. Short form: we're screwed.
The military-industrial complex made the Cheney family rich.
Really, why not back your luck?
I look at Dick Cheney endorsing the Marxist Kamala and I can only think of
two things:
-His hatred for Trump trumps everything else.
-He feels Trump 'knows where the bones are buried' and a second term will see trump reveal items on previous administrations that they have long fought to keep concealed from the public.
I am sure you are right. But I don't think Trump is competent enough to reveal all the sordid deeds of Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush.
He hates Trump with all his being for a lot of reasons not least because his daughter was thrown from office because of him. Plus the plebs were given more platform instead of the routine practice of ignoring them after receiving their votes.
I think there were still some old school leftists opposed to the war against Serbia. Even that's gone.
The Democrats seem to be all in on Russia, which to be fair really is the antithesis of much of their social agenda (despite Russia's pretty significant welfare state) .
The alleged left peace movement against the 2nd Gulf War was really an anti-Bush movement.
Lots of lefties mumbling nice things about Russia until Putin was mean to Pussy Riot.
Comrades! All Power to the Orgasm!
The Sainted Pete Seeger was all in for the Hitler-Stalin pact.
As a fellow-traveler he'd have to be.
I understand that that the leftist labour unions in the northern states threw a hissy fit when Hitler Stalin pact HIT THE NEWS.
Brilliant.
The “peace movement” of the sixties to the eighties was mostly orchestrated by the Soviet Communist Party. We don’t have one now because they lack the wherewithal to do it.
More striking to me is the change from twenty years ago, when opposition to the Iraq war was so very loud. To a degree this is of a piece with the shift that happened with Obama, when progressives really became the establishment.
There is no peace movement because A) the US is not committing troops to any war and B) there is no draft,
And C) whoever is making money on it is most likely supporting the war uniparty in Congress.
Dana
Probably true.
The image which occurs to me is of junkies who are so addicted, they keep a needle permanently in a vein so they will be immediately ready when the desire for the next hit begins.
I think that's where much of America is in terms of morale. A culture of death, indeed. If you read about World War I, you are almost certain to find the assertion that the European nations just sort of sleptwalked into it. If a nation has collapsed, as ours has in every way which counts, it shouldn't be a surprise that there isn't much call that we recognize the danger we're in so we can pull back from it before it's too late.
The boomers are too old to go now. Maybe that should change...
"Maybe this is all connected to the culture of death. The only qualification Kamala seems to have as president is that she favors abortion, for example. "
I tend to think that. My guess is that Harris has had abortions. A childless woman with unrepented abortions in her past is likely to have an unacknowledged longing for the extinction of all life on earth.
Except for cats.
If I could click "LikeX1000" for this comment I would do so.
The Pope is wrong, confusing, and should be ignored. I am going to ignore him and stay Catholic, because I believe that is where Jesus Christ wants me and my family. But I go to churches with good priests and am a Third Order Carmelite, so the choice isn't as hard as it is for others. I think at some level the leaders in the West have become crazy and want to start WW3. So I am trying to prepare for some level of disruptions (black outs, terrorists attacks, false flags) because that is what we get served up by the Left. J6 was orchestrated, I witnessed 911 close up, with 2 of my kids down there, lost friends that day (and don't think we got the real story) no one knows who was behind the Las Vegas attack (or will ever be told), the elections are rigged (polite word for stolen), and then Time magazine brags about it afterwords). The real President is a shadow committee, with a fake demented, bribe-taking leader as the frontman, to be followed by a phony airhead (who cannot speak extemporaneously) who is a borderline former adulterous prostitute for Willie Brown by way of political training.
Am I discouraged? Let's say I don't like it. I think God is going to intervene. Life is a test (as I tell my children), so don't flunk the test. It may get very bumpy here so people should prepare reasonably for potential disruptions of supply lines.
I have little trust anymore for our “leaders.” My favorite knee slapper lately was Kamala accidentally admitting that the lab leak theory was true, after the establishment spent years discrediting anyone who floated the idea. Some things, like global warming, can’t be hidden or lied about, so they admit it, but do nothing about it because they worship money and power. Other things, like the economy, they lie to our faces about. Interest payment on the debt is approaching the point where it is going to become a death spiral. This should be a flashing right light and no one does anything about it. These are things which can destroy a nation, and the human race, but God forbid that we put even some restrictions on abortion.
Yes, and the killing (sacrifice) of children is a flash-point for God in the OT, so I expect a Divine Riposte. God has had enough. He's warned and warned and warned. If you kill children, God will act. I attach an article about the killing of newborns that survive late-term abortions. What will God do? I am trembling spiritually inside. It sickens me to death. Once, Nancy Pelosi said "late-term abortion is sacred ground." Sacred ground for whom? Baphomet. I am attaching relevant articles and also a youtube of Nancy Pellosi's "omen" she's going to continue helping tear the nation in two (when she immediately tore up Trump's SOTUS after he gave it).
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/abortion/abc-news-debate-moderator-fact-checks-trump-botched-abortions-despite-8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppoElx09wFk
Not Baphomet, Molech. Old demon, same foul stench.
Thank you. I always get the devils confused. I keep listening to Fr. Chad Ripperger on this topic, but they have awful names, hard to retain.
I found it hard to forget Molech when I saw pictures of how the ancient Carthaginians used to worship him (and read the description).
The Lord singled him out in Scripture, which I'm happy to take as Him (The Lord) cursing the practice of infanticide, including the form practiced in our degenerate times.
He also goes on and on and on about protecting widows and orphans—just doesn't stop. It's easy to tell where His heart is at.
Chesterton wrote about the Carthaginians and their Molech-worship:
"There was a tendency in those hungry for practical results, apart from poetical results, to call upon spirits of terror and compulsion; to move Acheron in despair of bending the gods. There is always a sort of dim idea that these darker powers will really do things, with no nonsense about it. In the interior psychology of the Punic peoples this strange sort of pessimistic practicality had grown to great proportions. In the New Town which the Romans called Carthage, as in the parent cities of Phoenicia, the god who got things done bore the name Moloch, who was perhaps identical with the other deity whom we know as Baal, the Lord. The Romans did not at first quite know what to call him or what to make of him; they had to go back to the grossest myth of Greek or Roman Origins and compare him to Saturn devouring his children. But the worshippers of Moloch were not gross or primitive. They were members of a mature and polished civilization abounding in refinements and luxuries; they were probably far more civilized than the Romans. And Moloch was not a myth; or at any rate his meal was not a myth. These highly civilized people really met together to invoke the blessing of heaven on their empire by throwing hundreds of their infants into a large furnace. We can only realize the combination by imagining a number of Manchester merchants with chimneypot hats and mutton-chop whiskers, going to church every Sunday at eleven o'clock to see a baby roasted alive."
I'm glad Chesterton didn't live to see our day. We don't wear chimneypot hats, but people wearing our generation's equivalent are just as devoted to the sacrament of abortion as the Chesterton's hypothetical merchants of Manchester would have been to their baby-killing.
I think maybe we ought to keep "Baphomet" out of these boxes? He's been getting a workout lately, you know?
I think it is beautiful that you can't get the demon's names straight. That is SO disrespectful! I hate it when I get people's names wrong; it is so embarrassing. But to be unable to keep the various demons straight? You go, girl, and may your memory continue to fail you in this regard!
"Sorry, I just don't think about you very much."
Well they all have the same father....
Demons never have had much regard for personal publicity. That's a nice quality, really. I wish my cousin had it.
Marketing, YES!!!!! Otherwise, they do tend to shun the spotlight most of the time.
Its The Same Old Lies, In A Brand New Bottle
The Divine Riposte should be the name of a band.
This is just ridiculous nonsense. The term “misinformation” is way overused, but it applies here.
No one is killing newborns. This lie (and it is an out and out lie) arose because there were discussions about removing life support from newborns who cannot survive outside the womb. Just like we remove life support from children and adults who cannot, and will never be able to, survive without it. That is not the same as killing people. Good grief.
I have some familiarity with the topic, as I just crafted my own Advanced Directive. It basically asserted that I want to be taken off all forms of life support when I am basically dead but just being kept technically alive by machines or other medical interventions, and have no hope of recovery.
Newborns, unfortunately, don’t have Advanced Directives, so there is no opportunity for them to legally assert their wishes in this regard. This means that parents are legally required to make the decisions for them, in consultation with doctors.
Allie587, as Pelosi said "Late-term abortion is sacred ground." I have not met a Leftist (used to be known as Democrat) who does not say lies like you are saying. Infants ARE bieng left to die or are given comfort care. It just so happened this state reported it. Most states don't. Infanticide is now the line of skrimmage, but it will not end at that. Soon, there will be "mercy killing" of the old and sick (see Canada) (Cuomo got started early, deciding to kill 16,000 Medicaid patients in NY by having them exposed in their nursing homes, accidentally on purpose, to CV, at the start of the plandemic). Have you read of Canada's MAID program (probably stands for Medically Assisted Insured Death, but I'm guessing). If you are depressed, one can now opt for mercy killing. If you are homeless, one can now opt fo rmercy killing. And, as always with the Left, whatever isn't forbidden soon becomes mandatory. Whatever is permissible soon becomes required. Thus, the clot shots, which imposition upon pain of losing one's job (or military appointment) VIOLATED THE NUREMBERG CODES, of which is USA is a signatory. (It was a type of "economic" guillointining, cutting off your economic head--college be damned, you're out in the street, starving, if you don't take the clot shots.) Queen Commiela has already ordained that no one can work in her circle without bieng up-to-date on their clot shots. Well, we will all be working for her soon since the election will be swindled (barring an Act of God) as it was in 2020 and 2023, and assuming Trump is not assasinated by the State first. that is where all the praying comes in. So pray (assuming you're not a Soros troll here).
I am not a leftist, and I am not lying. Comfort care, more properly termed palliative care” is what is given to people who are dying so they can die without suffering. It is not a bad thing, and it is certainly not the same as killing anyone.
But clearly I’m not going to convince you of anything, so I am bowing out of this discussion.
You don't realize the juncture we're at. Actually, I don't think these babies are given any care. They're left to die (or worse--this is a kiling procedure, you know). I am attaching an interview with a mid-to-late-term aborter (who had a profound conversion experience) who said at one point, the infant started to cry. He pulled them apart limb from limb, and SAYS so. Did you listen to former VA Gov Northam (a pediatric neurologist, of all things) when he discussed (regarding the full-term abortion that the VA legislature was considering, and which he supported) what to do with an infant that survives the procedure? Oh, and I read subsequently that when he years later got CV, he lost his sense of smell (and thus taste). Well, sin has a payday, and we as a nationl are about to find out that God doesn't like a nation that kills infants and then denies it is happening. You are the 5th Dem (or denialist) who says "not happening." Yes it is. What do you think all the hang-wringing is about. I attach the interview with the former mid- to late-term abortionist who says he started "spiritually fracturing" when God intervened in his life--he also says he felt deep, deep remorse for what he had done. Going back to former Gov. Northam, he spoke of consulting with the mother as to what to be done in the way of possible "comfort care" for the struggling infant. But in actual practice, I doubt ANYTHING is done for the infant, because killing an infant is the object, so why give comfort to "fetal matter"? Full term abortion is not advertised--it's amazing we even heard about the 8 babies who survived the procedure in the article I attached.
Why am I spending so much time on this Allie587 since I am sure I will not convince you (nor have I been able to convince any of the 5 or 7 women who have told me (invariably Dems) that what I am describing simply does not happen. I am spending this time, because God is almost certainly going to act, and when He does, people will wonder "Why would God let an awful thing befall us?" Because our leaders have become corrupt, murderous, bribe-taking, and now, killers of infants and attempted killers of Presidential candidates. How can they (Biden, Obama, Pelosi, etc.) escape final damnation?
Here's an article about former Gov Northam comments about what to do with a live infant that survived the third-semester abortion and second, the testimony of the former abortionist who God stopped from falling into Hell for what he'd done:
Gov Northam:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/31/politics/ralph-northam-third-trimester-abortion/index.html
Former mid- to late-term abortionist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REJilDS1u0o
I am constantly stunned and alarmed that no-one is talking about national debt. It astounds me. It's like a car doing 80 toward a cliff and the driver is messing with the radio or something.
No one will.belief until the consequences arrive.
Totally agree. And both parties are equally guilty on this front.
Can't be hidden or lied about? The powers scream about it constantly. But problem is, what can't be hidden or lied about, is there is not any real world evidence to support them. Their models fail, doomsday deadline after deadline busted, and water levels that have been tracked for centuries, no appreciative change. And most damning, some of the public figures pressing loudest about it, their behavior does not match their heated rhetoric.
It is as much bullshit as their COVID nonsense was.
Every religion needs its apocalypse, after all, and so the wokies found theirs. It isn't as much fun as Ragnarok.
Not sure Ragnarok as described by Snorri S. is fun, but it's visually poetic:
“Men will know misery,
adulteries be multiplied,
an axe-age, a sword-age,
shields will be cloven,
a wind-age, a wolf-age,
before the world's ruin.”
Okay, fine—aesthetically fun.
But even Snorri couldn't imagine the Return of the Tophet.
I may have to just copy this and hand it to people when/if they ask me what I think. Sums it up well.
Your first sentence here is spot on, Anne. My comment to Rod above:
He’s speaking heresy. Had he said all religions are “paths toward God,” he would be on defensible ground. But he clearly says all religions are paths “to *arrive* at God.” The heresy is right there in *arrive*. And worse, he strongly implies all religions are equal.
I’ve long considered him a crypto-heretic. These remarks are hardly crypto- anymore. They’re heresy.
I agree with Anne below: “The pope is wrong, confusing, and should be ignored.”
I had an allergic spiritual reaction to Pope Francis early on. What set me off? When he said things like "who am I to judge?". We are not to judge (in the sense of assigning people to Heaven, Hell, Purgatory). But we are supposed to evaluate behavior, including our own, and try to avoid sin. I have been trying to pray for the preservation/restoration of the RCC (and conversion of Pope Francis) as well as preservation of our democratic republic by saying extra Te Deum prayers each day. Here's a sample of sung version of Te Deum.
https://youtu.be/pk0fVNt1IJs?si=zSfpvLMHdwtR8prl
Also, he has no problem judging Trump.
Come on down!
I've been praying daily for the conversion of Pope Francis to the Catholic faith, but I've always felt it a bit presumptuous of me to pray for such a thing for The Pope. This latest heresy from him makes me feel entirely vindicated.
Hardly "crypto" for some years now, save for those pious (but ignorant) people who imagined that a papal heretic was impossible, or improvidential.
100% agree!
I do not have a stake in the theological impact of Pope Francis' statements, the recent ones or any of the other ones in the past. I have a personal opinion about what Rod calls universalism. I grew up in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, attended their Religious Education classes (RE is a formal curriculum with them, what most kids would call Sunday School), and I've held a Pagan ritual performance for the Winter Solstice at two UUA churches in the recent past.
My opinion is that to assert and insist on the precise phrasing of belief in Jesus Christ, is the epitome of hubris. C.S. Lewis used a metaphorical avatar for Jesus, Aslan the lion. At no point until the very last page of the series does the author reveal that. Certainly, Christians reading his Narnia stories will recognize his intentions. Everyone else, unfamiliar with it all, will not, but they will "get it" in the manor in which they see it from their own religious points of view.
Universalism is the concept that we are on superficially different paths. Metaphor is the key here. The entire reason that evangelism and proselytizing is disdained, or met with outright hostility (and laws against it) in some parts of the world, is the (to outsiders) arbitrary imposition of a single path, a path which rejects metaphor that doesn't eventually explicitly reveal itself as Jesus Christ.
I am a Pagan. I've been met (less so recently, but still happens) with verbally and sometimes physically violent behavior from some Christians. I have also, more than once, been told by a devout Christian that I am more Christian than some Christians of their acquaintance. I'm not patting myself on the back. I accept the compliment with gratitude when it happens, but only rarely do I mention my main thought: if I have not accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, if I am in no way deserving of accepting Communion, if I am not baptized, by what metaphor can I possibly be compared to Christians?
I've known Christians who witness their faith. They live it for all to see, and have come to the conclusion that they have no need to talk about it unless asked. It is their example that I follow, not as a Christian, but as a believer in humanity, and a believer in the immanence of the divine.
I read your comment with genuine interest, though I am not a pagan - at least I don't think I am. But could you edit this sentence?
"The entire reason that evangelism and proselytizing is disdained, or met with outright hostility (and laws against it) in some parts of the world, is the (to outsiders) arbitrary imposition of a single path, a path which rejects metaphor that doesn't eventually explicitly reveal itself as Jesus Christ."
I think this though is critical to making your point, but the syntax makes it a bit ambiguous at least to me and I have reread it several times.
I often stumble over the need to keep my posts from getting longer than they should (something other readers here will appreciate). I'll try to reword it for you, because clarity is precious and your request is perfectly valid.
Evangelism and proselytism are met with outright hostility, and laws against it, in some parts of the world. Most other places disdain it, even mock it, though not so much in majority Christian places. It is, to outsiders, the arbitrary imposition of a single path, a path which rejects metaphor which doesn't eventually, explicitly reveal itself as leading to Jesus Christ.
The problem is, of course, that Jesus commanded his followers to evangelize, just as the Jews in his time, or many of them, were eager to make proselytes.
The slow suicide of the modernist, leftist wing of Catholicism continues as it stumbles its merry way down the road to oblivion. Mr. Bergoglio will be dead shortly but he will be replaced by someone as bad. Could it be Archbishop Gregory? That would be a modernist two-for. Black and q****. Eventually the Catholic Church will lose more and more parishioners, parishes will close, churches will be sold off as mere property, and Bergoglio will be named St. Francis because he successfully helped destroy the church. I expect the modernists will spend the next century electing more popes like Bergoglio. These popes will get television time when they utter something that the modern secular left supports. In reality, these popes will be as relevant as the Dalai Llama is today.
I’ve been waiting for the tipping point in the church for some time now. It’s just a matter of when, not if, that Catholicism is going to lose so much wealth, prestige, and power, that the only people left are the ones who really believe the truth in it. The people who have wrecked it from inside, and lived off of gullible parishioners, will be gone because there will be nothing of interest for those seeking comfort, prestige, and a cushy job with sodomy as a perk. I live in an area that was heavily settled by Catholic immigrants, but parishes are folding or consolidating, because the congregations are dwindling, but there is starting to be an undercurrent of purification. The priests these days actually mention formerly off limits topics like sin and hell, even. It’s been a minute since I’ve heard anyone in the church complaining these days about priests being too judgmental. We’re not there yet, but when you see a parish priest fixing the roof or mowing the grass, you’ll know that time has come.
The Baltimore Diocese is having a large consolidation right now. The Catholics of 1950s Baltimore have long left the slums of Baltimore. And the old Catholics who moved out to the Baltimore suburbs don't go to church any longer.
To be fair, Derek those were not "slums" back in the day-- though some parts of the city (the west side for one) were "the bad part of town" going way back. Canton and Fells Point (especially Upper Fells away from the ruckus of the bars clustered at the foot of Broadway) are still decent neighborhoods.
My Baltimore Orthodox church is in Upper Fells (though the neighborhood has christened itself Butcher's Hill). That area used to be the old Slavic ghetto of the city with lots of Catholic churches for the Poles, Czechs and Hungarians, plus two Orthodox churches (both still there) and Ukrainian Catholic church, also still there. The Catholic churches have been closing one after the other, since the gentrifying yuppies don't much bother with church; the Orthodox are either newcomers (I was) or people with family roots in those churches who drive in from the suburbs.
The Anglican Church leads the way on the downward spiral
As it has always done, although sometimes as much with sideward motion, as downward - as befits a religious tradition founded on "the Royal Supremacy" aka Erastianism; cf. the Church of England as "the Established Church" and the Episcopal Church as "the Church of the Establishment." I honor the witness of the bodies that comprise "Continuing Anglicanism," but those like ACNA, which is not part of "the Continuum," seem to be founded on that spirit of compromise otherwise known as "the Via Media" which goes right back to 1559, and which is the prioritizing of expediency over truth.
On Hinduism: It’s not a codified religion. Hence you’ll find an incredibly wide range of beliefs among Hindus. There are schools of thought that range from atheism to clear polytheism. Some Hindus maintain they are monotheist’s. The most famous example of this at present may be Vivek Ramaswamy who on his pod cast with Andrew Sullivan was quite clear on that point.I think when Vedanta first came to the US it was presented as monotheistic and universalist.But this does get more than a bit confusing because in some circles , you hear about underlying essences and you may actually be going into something remarkably similar to deism.
Relating to an earlier comment I made, near-instant communication in the modern age may not be a net positive.
No doubt defenders of the Papacy will point to worse popes in history, and I'll agree, Pope Francis does not hold a collection of pornography or slaves in his court. But before the internet, or really before the printing press, a small village in western France or northern England wouldn't have heard about such awful things.
Now any place with an internet connection can hear about the latest screw-up from the pope, or any leader in charge of a significantly large organization. More than ever before, leaders need to watch what they say, lest it undermine the organization or cause they serve.
On the issue of nuclear escalation, and I admit I am very pessimistic, but I would not be surprised if Putin drops a tactical nuke on Kiev before the end of the year. Would Western leaders actually retaliate? Would this be a red line for China and India (as in, they would cease to do business with Russia)? Are we just sleepwalking into nuclear armageddon? Will cooler heads prevail? Current leadership leaves much to be desired.
"...Pope Francis does not hold a collection of pornography or slaves in his court.."
You're on safe ground with the second assertion. You can't possibly know for sure about the first.
LOL, point taken. I was thinking of a physical collection, pre-internet stuff; I can't control what he puts on his phone or computer.
My thinking, largely inspired by Rod's excellent post yesterday, about the Hippie Pope's ridiculous statement:
https://markmarshall.substack.com/p/is-every-religion-a-way-to-arrive
As for Putin's frank red line statement and the apparent madness of NATO, I am beside myself. Even without Putin's statement, why does the Biden-Harris Regime and the rest of those Globalist idiots think that Putin would put up with the likely missile permissions and strikes? The U. S. would not put up with it if the shoe were on the other foot.
Trump is not blowing smoke when he says Biden-Harris is leading us towards WW3.
Totally agree - but introspection is not the globalists' strong suit. But it doesn't really matter for them anyway as a cohort. Does anyone think if WWIII actually kicks off that anyone in the west who started it will face any consequences?
None of them would lose their jobs, none of them would be in harm's way...so why not blow up the world?
Victoria Nuland does her happy little dance.
Ew.
The hokey-pokey?
Regarding the Pope, if it looks like the Anti- Christ and explicitly talks like the Anti-Christ, well, you know, the thing...
I think I first heard this phrase from you, but does this latest howler qualify as "fake and gay"? I seem to see a lot of that nowadays.
No, I think this is just straight up heretical. FNG implies a falsehood that is also somehow trivial and somewhat weak. As in, "Why are you even bothering me with this obvious bullsh*t?" It's an expression that has as much to do with your exasperation with the nonsense of the statement or situation as it does with the liar or the ridiculousness of the circumstance.
Due to the nature of the man's position, one has to take the anti- pope's pronouncements seriously and I think he personally believes this heresy. It's a lot of things, but it certainly is not Fake.
But he's not epic enough.
I get the sentiment. Who wouldn't want it to be true--that all roads lead to God? But it is a Hallmark Care theology and ironically, is not shared by others on the other roads.
Alas, what a boring Pope. But this will pass. The grave has a way of changing up and purifying the church generation by generation.
I think Rod is too skeptical about the pope. It is true that the Church sees “striving” toward the Truth outside of Catholicism. (Paul’s reference to the “Altar of the Unknown God”, reading Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue as foretelling the Saviour, for example). Other religions feel through the fog toward the Logos, and the Pope, an old sick exhausted man, often speaks spontaneously and without the rigorous consideration of a theologian. He is pastoral, and was visiting an area which (except for East Timor) is mostly not Catholic.
"I want people to come to Orthodoxy, but not like this"
My thoughts exactly.
"I believe that should I make it to heaven, I will see some non-Christians there"
I'd love to know how that works (I mean that unsarcastically).
Like I said, through God's mercy, and the saving work of Jesus Christ. I am not going to tell God how to decide who gets into heaven and who doesn't. The one thing we Christians are told by Christ is that no man comes to the Father except through Him. You can interpret that in a strict way, to mean no non-Christians ever get to paradise. But I think you can also interpret it the way I do: as saying if God chooses to allow people who did not believe in Jesus into heaven, it will be through mercy and through what Jesus did on the Cross, somehow.
None of this should dissuade us from taking what we Christians believe is the right path to God, and encouraging others to follow. Hope that we can live however we want to and make it to heaven anyway is not a particularly wise strategy.
Also, one way or the other, if we don't like God in this life, then we're *really* not gonna like what comes next, when we are no longer buffered by this dense clay flesh against spiritual reality.
In a good many cases the "God" people don't like in this life is a farrago of lies built up by purveyors of spiritual abuse.
I mean the actual guy; I don't care whether they recognize Him by name over here, and I don't think He particularly does either (although of course that would be nice).
Can you elaborate on that? I'm pretty sure he cares about being recognised by name.
Not all who say His name will be saved, He said—and I think it works the other way around as well. Who are His people? The ones who do His works and manifest His love. Do you think He'd prefer for a cruel man to ramble on about Him, or for a man to not confess His name but care for others? The best-case scenario would be to also confess with our tongues, but I know He's reading our hearts, and some among us may be very surprised by the judgments He makes in the end.
What name? The names of "God" and even "Jesus" differ by language.
God in Jesus Christ has told us clearly what each of us has to do personally to attain salvation. The rest, really, isn't our business.
As we travel down the road to the Celestial City we see many fascinating things happening on either side. We just have to remember not to wander off the road - and, if we do, to get right back on it - before we reach our Destination.
And there's this (St. Luke 12: 42-48):
And the Lord said, "Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath. But and if that servant say in his heart, "My lord delayeth his coming;" and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken; The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."
A Christian is a servant of God. The servant's task is, simply, to serve his master - nothing more and nothing less.
Thanks for responding, but c'mon man. You're implying strongly that you don't have to know Jesus in order to get to Heaven. How is that functionally different from what the Pope said? He also implied you don't need Jesus, because Mohammed will do the job just as well. Isn't that exactly why you're frustrated with him in his remarks today?
John 10:1 should give any Christian considering that line of thinking pause:
"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber."
Jesus is the door, no-one else.
"To know" isn't restricted to just one meaning. In all of us there is a seed of knowing God due to the basic fact that "God is in all place and filleth all things"-- and that includes us. I wouldn't reject the possibility that people who have never heard the Gospel or who have heard false and hateful things said of it, may nonetheless know God at some level of their soul. I am also wary of making salvation nothing more than a work of the mind, as if it depended on taking some sort of multiple choice theology test. The "knowing" in this case is much more likely to be in the sense of Spanish "conocer" (knowing by direct acquaintance) rather than "saber" (a knowledge of facts).
No one here (not Rod, Sethu or myself) is really disputing that "Jesus is the door". What dispute there is, is based on the meaning of "know".
I confess I lack the debate skills to address defining the word "know".
Kierkegaard (a Protestant) famously said, "Truth is subjectivity." He did not mean that all truth is subjective. He meant that there are truths that can only be known in a subjective way -- that is, by passionately appropriating them and living them out. Religious truth is like that, he said. Nobody lives and dies for the Pythagorean theorem, but the truths proclaimed in the Gospels are different. Kierkegaard was a Christian, and believed that Jesus was objectively the Son of God, and all the rest. His point was a psychological one, mostly.
Similarly, Iain McGilchrist's great work has been on the two ways of knowing truth: propositionally and experientially.
Finally, it might help to think of it like this: in French and German, there are different verbs for "to know": there is savoir/wissen (to know something intellectually) and connaître/kennen (to know something personally). E.g., I know (savoir) the recipe given to me by my friend's grandmother, whom I know (connaître) from having visited her once.
Søren is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.
Adding to what Rod said:
Jesus is the Way, that is clear. But we cannot know where and how Jesus is meeting people, either in this life or on the threshold of the next (the latter being closed off to us). If you have read CS Lewis's Narnia series, you can see how he tries to make the point at the end of all things in The Last Battle. In that book, at the final trumpet, Aslan (Christ) has called all to judgement. A follower of Tash (a demon who has tried to usurp Aslan) comes before Aslan and knows and is known. The man is surprised at this, but Aslan tells him that all this man's worship of Tash was ever directed towards the good and true things - helping the poor, feeding the hungry, loving his neighbor - could not be claimed by tash. In short, this man had been serving Aslan, even if he didn't know it due to the lies of Tash.
This way of thinking has always given me hope, especially for those whose knowledge of Christ has been poisoned by the lies of others, or by abuse meted out by Christians. There is a prayer of repentance in the Orthodox prayer books that asks God to please protect others from our own sins, and not let others fall through *our own* sins.
We cannot know for certain. But we can hope, and we can pray.
I am certain that Christ will always recognize His own, on the far side of our distinctions of ideology and language.
He knows his sheep.
We can know for certain. The Bible is *extremely* clear. God doesn't want ambiguity in something as important as the salvation of His children!
No, we cannot know for certain - we are finite beings, with finite reasoning skills, and incomplete knowledge. To claim we can know anything so critical as the salvation of another is to make a claim approaching the equality of God.
I didn't mean the salvation of another.
I meant that we can know *how* to be saved and that God doesn't want something that important to be vague. We can read the Bible.
Until printing became widespread, few could read it, so we're back to reliance on others.
Which is why God gives evangelists, pastors, and teachers to the Church. The Holy Spirit protects The Gospel. The New Testament isn't a shell game.
The way Substack is set out, it isn't always easy for a would be respondent.
You say you have no idea what point I am trying to make. It was this: Ssronica had said that we can know how to be saved, and that God doesn't want something that important to be vague. Ssronica is correct. Ssronica added that we can read the Bible to learn this, and Ssronica is again correct.
You said that until printing became widespread, few could read the Bible. That is also true. You added that because of its rarity before the printing press, we were back to reliance on others.
I had no idea what you meant by that, at all. But I said what I said about God's giving the Church evangelists, pastors, and teachers because this has been true since Pentecost. It was true before the canon of Scripture had been completed, which is why the Apostles were given authenticating sign gifts, and in the canonical era it remains true.
Your earlier point, that we can't know as God knows whether a particular person is saved, is something I agree with to a limited degree. Christians are called to do the work of evangelism. That alone implies that we can't know the spiritual condition of many others. However, because of what the Bible says about apostates, we can know what their spiritual condition is: they're lost souls.
I hope this clarified matters but I still have the feeling that as Mark Twain wrote, we are understanding right past one another.
"Vladimir Putin’s statement this week that if the West grants Ukraine permission to use its Western-donated long range missiles for strikes deep into Russia, that Russia will consider itself in a state of war with NATO."
Good for Putin. As someone said above, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it the situation were reversed the U.S. would not tolerate it for two seconds. Again, it's Monroe Doctrine for me but not for thee.
Even if Putin is bluffing, is it worth the risk? Honesty, these neocon/neolib f--kers are going to get a lot more people killed if they don't quickly gain a little sanity here.
And (re your last sentence) as there is not sign of the latter happening the chances of the former look pretty strong.
“La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu”
As I have pointed out many times, the US took no serious military actions against Castro's Cuba, an overt Soviet client state a very short voyage from Florida. Our reaction was mainly economic: we refused to trade with Cuba, or allow any save a tiny number of US visitors to travel there. Those were certainly options for Putin with regard to Ukraine. For example Russia could have refused to sell one drop of oil or one whiff of natural gas to the Ukrainians.
If Putin actually did use nukes in Ukraine it could easy be the most colossal act of folly in recorded history. Even setting aside the international consequences, it would bring massive blowback, starting with the fact the prevailing winds at that latitude are from the west so any fallout is going back over Russian territory. I have to wonder that if Putin really were serious and makes that decision if he'd be taken out by his own people to prevent such consequences.
I know I wasn't alive at the time so I may have missed something, but if memory serves the USSR never gave the okay for Cuba to launch a missile, nuclear or otherwise, into the U.S. That's what's being discussed here in case you hadn't noticed.
And the US never invaded Cuba so Cuba had no causus belli to do so.
Nations which suffer invasion from foreign aggressors generally may launch attacks on the aggressor nation's own territory.
Oversimpllification, but it's a waste of time trying to explain why.
Castro asked Khrushchev to launch nuclear missiles at America. Read more here: https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/DC-Decoder/2012/1016/Cuban-Missile-Crisis-the-3-most-surprising-things-you-didn-t-know/Fidel-Castro-was-pushing-for-nuclear-annihilation-of-the-US
What do you think would happen if Putin sent a wave of bombers over Vilnius or Warsaw with conventional bombs?
My guess is Putin would use conventional weapons on NATO countries first. How NATO responds is the big question.
Let us also recall the precedent the USA established at the time of the Cuban missile crisis: no nuclear armed great power needs to tolerate a mortal threat on its border, the precedent we established when we detached the province of Kosovo from Serbia, and the precedent we established by waging a dishonest, preventive war against Iraq, a country that posed zero threat to the USA. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. You would not be able to slice through the hypocrisy of our Ukrainian policy with a chain saw.
I’ve long since realized the only reason I am still a Catholic is because of my personal circumstances. There is a strong, non-heretical Catholic community where I live, for one thing. And my wife is not interested in switching churches and raising our kids in another church, at least at this point. Maintaining family unity on such matters is essential. But I’ve long been drawn to Orthodoxy, and if it weren’t so culturally unfamiliar to my family, I could well see us going that way. One thing that perturbs me, though, is that when an incident like this occurs, I find myself tempted to seize upon it as an *excuse* to leave the RCC. I don’t believe there is any mortal peril in leaving, but I also don’t want to do something out of fear or disgust. If I ever go East, it must be out of overwhelming love for that tradition and not mainly as a reaction to a moribund Catholicism that is nevertheless still endowed with a profoundly beautiful cultural patrimony and, indeed, the Truth.
I converted (from Anglicanism) over 40 years ago. Orthodoxy hardly exists where I lived at the time. And as my thinking was informed by the the West, I don't recall that it even occurred to me as an option. I've sometimes thought, though, that if Orthodoxy had been on my radar at the time I might have gone that way.
I think that a deeper knowledge of Catholic theology will help ease you. There are things that are taught infallibly, and there are things which are authoritative but not infallible. These latter things can be overturned by a teaching of higher weight - for there are differing degrees of authority in Catholic teaching.
What Pope Francis said here is known as a “papal allocation” and is of low authoritative weight. If some earlier teaching is of higher weight, then that earlier teaching stands, and the Pope is incorrect in his statement.
The Pope did not make this statement in appealing to infallibility, so it could theoretically be overturned.
And the teaching against religious indifferentism is named in many highly authoritative teachings of the past, and is indeed infallible. So, the Pope is incorrect here (unless there is an orthodox interpretation that one could find), and the earlier teaching stands.
What would disprove Catholic teaching is if an error were proclaimed infallibly against another infallible teaching. That has not happened, and never will happen.
The Church has actually dealt with situations like this before. Pope Honorius made problematic statements about who Jesus is in a non-infallible teaching letter. Subsequent Popes through ecumenical councils (for it is the approval of a Pope which makes the statement ecumenical) set the record straight and cleared up confusion.
Thank you this was so informative but please help me a little more. I was under the apparent misunderstanding that strict "papal Infallibility" was an ex-cathedra statement, and so the Church had only had that since Vatican 1. I heard vague references to papal infallibility before that but was not sure who to take them since one pope might contradict another or even himself when tens of thousands of things were said.
Here you mention a 7C pope who made a false statement, but it was in an "a non-infallible teaching letter. I don't really know what "non-infaliable" was before Vatican 1. I thought it church canons and the magisterium - i need to learn more, I see. So then it took an ecumenical council to set things straight? My view on "the magisterium" is too simplistic, it seems.
Linda,
You might find this helpful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility
especially the subsection entitled "Instances of Infallible Declarations;" we may have discussed this in the past, though.
”Magisterium” is simply the name for the teaching office of the Church. Some of its teachings are infallible and set in stone, and some are not, but are still authoritative; and it would be a sin to reject them. Sometimes non-infallible teachings can be raised to the level of infallible.
Everyone has always agreed that the Church as a whole is infallible - for example, in the definitive teachings of ecumenical councils. The question was whether the Pope on his own could exercise this infallibility.
At Vatican I, the ecumenical council infallibly *recognized* that the Pope can teach infallibly on his own. The teachings are not *new*, only recognized to a greater extent and clarity. A debated question was settled, just like at the Council of Jerusalem in the book of Acts.
That’s why Jesus said to His apostles “the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth.”
So Popes have always had this power, and the Church clarified this with absolute certainty at a later time. So, we can now go back with that certainty and say “Ah, yes, this teaching was infallible.” Theologians debate how many of these past statements were infallible. But all are authoritative for sure.
The Pope doesn’t need to say “this is an ex cathedra statement”. He just has to teach something definitively to all Christians using the teaching authority of his office.
Now, Popes may contradict each other. But there are different levels of authority to Catholic teachings. Some teachings are infallible and set in stone. But something can be authoritative even if not infallible. So if two Popes contradict with non-infallible teachings, the teaching of higher weight wins out.
Thankfully, that’s all above our pay grade. I’m not a theologian who has to hash this out, so I just accept what the Church teaches.
There are three ways that a teaching is infallible:
1. A solemn definition of an ecumenical council. This usually means the canons. The doctrinal canons are infallible if they say “anathema” to an error. Other Council teachings may be of very high authority, but not always infallible.
2. An ex cathedra statement of the Pope which is intended to be definitive and for all time.
3. When all the bishops in union with Rome throughout the world teach the same thing as definitive. That’s the “ordinary and universal magisterium.” Many teachings, especially moral teachings, fall under this infallibility. An example would be the teaching that women cannot receive ordination to the priesthood. The Church explicitly said that this was infallible by this path.
I say it was a non-infallible letter because the Church says so. Theologians debate whether this letter was wrong, or just unclear. They debate whether it was an official teaching, or a private letter to a patriarch. At best, Pope Honorius gave a confusing and unclear teaching that could easily be taken in a heretical way, and didn’t do enough to clearly oppose heretics spreading confusion.
But it wasn’t infallible, so the Catholic faith stands. And the Church later clarified the confusion that this Pope had caused via another Pope in an ecumenical council (which requires the Pope or a representative of him to be ecumenical). See, the Church teaches that no one can judge the Pope except another Pope. Not a Council of bishops without the Pope - that’s the heresy of concilliarism.
Another example would be Pope John XXII. He made a deeply wrong statement in a sermon about Heaven. He says this was not part of his official teaching as Pope, but was him speaking in a private capacity.
Theologians got on his case, and he retracted this false view before he died. After he died, the Church raised the true teaching to the level of an infallible dogma so that there could be no doubt or confusion remaining.
Thank you for takin the time to write this. I meant to respond right away but have not responded until now.
I remain unclear. Former Protestants grow up hearing about "the sale of indulgences". Yes, I know - there are technically some remaining, but the practice was modified, so there must have been errors.
I understand serious rulings of ecumenical councils to be infallible. This is despite the addition of the filioque, which I think was wrong but I am not leaving the Church over it.
I believe I am an orthodox Roman Catholic to say the pope is infallible only when he speaks ex cathedra. Since V1 we know of that happening twice. It could have happened in the past, but we do not know when it was ex cathedra and when it was not.
I do not think of myself as a Cafeteria Catholic. I would have used NFP, for instance (if married and if we had planned.) I do not want the church to ordain women priests but I'm surprised to hear that was a way to close down that possibility forever. I thought, except for ex cathedra statements (two) there was nothing the Church could not change. Meanwhile, I thought it was my job to trust that they heard the Holy Spirit correctly in doctrines, since I can't guess what might be wrong. Further, I doubt any major doctrine impacting me is going to wind up correctly "changed". People sure are upset about blessing gay unions, but I just think that the church can "take that back" since it did not seem to be ex cathedra. - - I was only brought back to the Church after speaking with Rod about the place of "reason/logic". I no longer have to think everything sounds logical, nor do I have to think all human reason can grasp of Catholic teaching makes sense, in order to practice Catholicism.
I get the claim that doctrine does not change it develops. I consider that spin in light of the changes. Examples of changes: moneylending was authoritatively forbidden not now, Original sin doctrine also states there was a definite original pair - monogenesis (Yes, but mitochondrial Adam and mitochondrial Eve lived at different times.) Teaching on the death penalty has changed (yes, I get it, because prisons are now secure and they once were not is the reason the church gives). Whether Latin rite priests can marry or not. Plenty of changes.
I think, if the Ukraine does use western weapons to hit deep inside of Russia the likely outcome would be a gradual ramping up of attacks my Russia on Kiev and other Ukrainian cities as a warning. If that warning is not headed then tactical nukes on the battle field and probably a quick end to the war. There is no way that Putin uses strategic nukes as that would end Russia and much of the world. Deep strikes are not a nation defeating strike on Russia. Could things spiral out of control in this scenario yes but I don't think it is likely.
I think that’s right. There is another factor as well: it’s not clear that Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces even work right now. The weapons themselves and the missiles that launch them require regular and expensive maintenance. Given Russia’s overall lack of competence, it’s not clear they even have the ability to launch nuclear weapons.
Yes there is that also but I would wager a couple hundred are probably in fine working order. It is clear though, to me at least, that the end is coming soon for Ukraine. The Kursk gambit failed and Russia did not panic when it happened but doubled down on taking land in the Donbas.
I wouldn't gamble on the missiles not launching. The Russians can be incompetent, but if you've taken the Moscow Metro you know they can also do a remarkable job at keeping things operating when they want to.