Note to FrancisChurch: Know the Devil You’re Dealing With

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I'm getting ready to say tell you something profound, and most importantly, from the heart

I’m getting ready to tell you something profound, and most importantly, from the heart.

Catholic Culture reports on the Pope’s video message to the John 17 ecumenical movement’s meeting in Phoenix over the weekend.

Pope Francis sent a video message to the Celebration of Christian Unity, an event that took place on May 23 at the Phoenix Convention Center.

The celebration was sponsored by the John 17 Movement, an organization founded by a Protestant pastor and whose leadership team includes a bishop, Catholic laymen, and evangelical Protestants.

“I will be with you spiritually and with all my heart,” the Pope said. “We will search together, we will pray together, for the grace of unity. The unity that is budding among us is that unity which begins under the seal of the one Baptism we have all received. It is the unity we are seeking along a common path. It is the spiritual unity of prayer for one another. It is the unity of our common labor on behalf of our brothers and sisters, and all those who believe in the sovereignty of Christ.”

Unity among Protestants and Catholics is not something worth seeking. It’s a ridiculous idea very common to our time.  What is there to unite?  Of course we can love each other.  Of course we can praise virtue and regret sin, but there is only unity in the Faith.  How will they ever see this if we keep acting like fools, giving false honor to their lies?

The Pope sounds as if unity with heretics is some high holy goal when in truth unity with heresy can only equal sin and death.  I wonder why there’s so much of both today!

Referring to Satan– “the Father of Lies, the Father of Discord,”– the Pontiff added:

feel like saying something that may sound controversial, or even heretical, perhaps. But there is someone who “knows” that, despite our differences, we are one. It is he who is persecuting us. It is he who is persecuting Christians today, he who is anointing us with (the blood of) martyrdom. He knows that Christians are disciples of Christ: that they are one, that they are brothers! He doesn’t care if they are Evangelicals, or Orthodox, Lutherans, Catholics or Apostolic…he doesn’t care! They are Christians. And that blood (of martyrdom) unites.

Today, dear brothers and sisters, we are living an “ecumenism of blood”. This must encourage us to do what we are doing today: to pray, to dialogue together, to shorten the distance between us, to strengthen our bonds of brotherhood.

If I were a sentimental Protestant, of which there are very few among the more faithful Baptists and Evangelicals, I might be swayed by this nonsense; but I don’t imagine I’d be moved enough to renounce my own heresies, give up my sins, and become Catholic.  That would require facing hard realities, not feel-good-ism. But that’s not what’s so striking about the Pope’s statement here.  It’s the fact that he thinks the Devil could care less whether people are Catholic or not.

To call blood shed at the hands of ISIS a sign of Christian unity is to make bloodthirsty Muslims our Christian touchstone is it not?  We all must die and even bleed, some of us at the hands of others. Many, please God, will call upon Christ or stand with Him at that moment; but does that make us united in Faith?  Of course not.

We can’t count on our bishops nor our Pope today to express what matters in terms of Heaven and Hell; but one thing for which we can be certain, the Devil does care about those things!  If it means Hell then he’s for it.  If it means Heaven, he’s against.  The Devil is hateful, angry and proud, but he is not blind to his own cause.

The Pope himself, in his own clumsy and self-revealing way, knows that this sounds like heresy.  He says as much but he doesn’t seem to care.  He is not here to condemn heresies.  He’s here to build and solidify the new FrancisChurch.  He’s on a mission, and he seems just as ready to spread destructive falsehoods about the Devil as he is about God Himself.

 

 

Obama: Don’t Buy That Cynical “The Poor You Will Always Have With You” BS!

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Going for walks, discussing policy, or sometimes just values

Going for walks, discussing policy, or sometimes just values

Obama’s grasp of Biblical quotes is about what you might expect from a man who’s spent most Sundays golfing for twenty years.

Obama scorned Christians at the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Tuesday, twisting the words of Jesus Christ into an insult against the Savior of the believers he was addressing.

“It’s important for us to guard against cynicism and not buy the idea that the poor will always be with us and there’s nothing we can do,” Obama said. Lest leftists and liberal Christians say his comment was “taken out of context,” but here are his full remarks:

“One of the things I’m always concerned about is cynicism,” Obama said. “My chief of staff, Denis McDonough, we take walks around the South Lawn, usually when the weather is good. And a lot of it is policy talk, sometimes it’s just talk about values. And one of our favorite sayings is our job is to guard against cynicism, particularly in this town. And I think it’s important for us to guard against cynicism and not buy the idea that the poor will always be with us and there’s nothing we can do, because there’s a lot we can do. The question is, do we have the political will, the communal will to do something about it.”

Does Obama take walks around the south lawn with his chief of staff when the weather is bad, in order to discuss policy or sometimes just values?  Can’t they even bother to pay an adult writer for these cheesy lies?  Aren’t the American people even worth a half-hearted appearance of sincerity?

Obama’s quotes Matthew 26:11 in a manner that’s utterly contrary to the verse’s meaning.

6 Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper,

7 There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.

8 But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste?

9 For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.

10 When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me.

11 For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.

12 For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial.

13 Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.

Far from heaving a resigned sigh, Jesus is reminding the disciples that poverty, like death or the pain of childbirth, are constants in this fallen world that can be attended to but never wiped out. The Complete Commentaries of minister Matthew Henry affirms this:

“Observe his reason; You have the poor always with you,” Henry writes. “Note, 1. There are some opportunities of doing and getting good which are constant, and which we must give constant attendance to the improvement of. Bibles we have always with us, sabbaths always with us, and so the poor, we have always with us. Note, Those who have a heart to do good, never need complain for want of opportunity. The poor never ceased even out of the land of Israel, Deu. 15:11.” [For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.]

Twisting the words of the Gospel to push unjust, disastrous government programs robbing Peter to pay Paul? For shame.

Well put.  Someone tell Pope Francis and his Yoda.

 

 

 

 

 

Pope Francis: The Answer to Obama’s Prayers

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Pope Francis: The Answer to Obama's Prayers

Superhuman Political Force for the Poverty Panel

NBC News reports:

It’s being dubbed “the Francis effect” and it’s hitting Washington, DC.

From 4500 miles away Pope Francis is exerting his influence on everything from foreign policy to summits on poverty. Pope Francis got a big shout out on Tuesday from the leader of the free world as a great example of someone who understands what’s important.”Nobody has shown that better than Pope Francis, who I think has been transformative just through the sincerity and insistence that he’s had that this is vital to who we are,” President Barack Obama said during a panel discussion at Georgetown University.

“And that emphasis I think is why he’s had such incredible appeal, including to young people, all around the world.”

Why does the Francis adulation from Obama go on and on and on? Is the Pope more sincere?  Is he ‘transformative,’ whatever that liberalspeak means?  What does it say when something is ‘vital to who we are?’  Does Pope Francis really have an ‘incredible appeal’ especially including young people, or is it just non-stop well-funded hype?

I know one thing: it’s not filling up Churches, but we don’t need those any more anyway.  You can ‘kneel before the poor’ anywhere, can’t you?

Well, not in Georgetown.

The three day Catholic-Evangelical leadership summit at Georgetown is a direct response to the pope’s call to help the poor.

It’s been answered by an influential lineup of people on vastly different ends of the political spectrum. Speakers include ideological opposites from progressive Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat and former conservative presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty to members of Opus Dei, a Roman Catholic lay organization, to Nuns On The Bus, a Catholic groups focused on social justice.

Democrats, dissidents, and a Romney Republican.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a pope have this kind of influence in the United States,” said E.J. Dionne, Washington Post columnist who moderated the poverty panel including President Obama.

…and the whole thing run by a left-wing Wapo pundit.  Does anybody ever help the poor by actually doing something for them?  I’ve never met a poor broke person who would be interested in moderators of ‘poverty panels.’

However, it’s too early to say whether Tuesday’s talk will lead to change.

“If they care about these problems, Americans can change the politics that would, over the next five to 10 years, make a huge difference. And I’m not talking about changing Republican-Democrat. I’m talking about making poverty and the opportunity to escape from poverty a higher issue on both parties’ agendas,” said Robert Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard.

I guess if both parties adopted your big government redistribution platforms it wouldn’t matter if they were Republican or Democrat, you’re right.

The report presents some silly charts showing how beloved and respected Pope Francis is.  Then it talks about how important Catholics in Congress supposedly are.  It all boils down to a sort of superhuman papal political force.

The president said he can’t wait to host the pope and if he can spur the least effective congress in history to action, it might just be a certifiable miracle.