Pope Francis Gets Around To The Gist of the Final Judgment

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Salvation at short notice?

Salvation at short notice?

Does Pope Francis believe in Hell, I mean for other than faithful Catholics?  If he does, then why doesn’t he act like it?  He sounds like a Lutheran.

Christians are to comfort each other through good works and kind words and not with useless chatter.

In his first public daily Mass at his residence since his summer break, Francis called on Catholics to realize our God lives and will come to find us, and therefore, to live accordingly, reported Vatican Radio.

In the responsorial psalm, the Pope noted how we repeat the words, ‘I am sure I will see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living,’ and then posed a question to those present.

“Are you certain you will see the Lord?” he asked.

Like Job, Francis said, despite many misadventures, we are to firmly believe we’ll see Christ with our own eyes and let this give us hope.

“It’s true, He will come to judge and when we go to the Sistine (Chapel) we see that beautiful scene of the Last Judgement,” the Pope said. “But we must also believe that He will come to find me because I see Him with my eyes, I embrace Him and am always with Him.  This is the hope that the Apostle Paul tells us to explain to others through our life, to give witness to hope.  This is the true comfort, this is the true certainty: ‘I am sure I will see the Lord’s kindness.'”

Liberals are always embracing, embracing.  It’s wonderful to think of embracing Jesus but isn’t there a bit more to it?  Michelangelo’s Last Judgment is beautiful yes, but also terrifying.  There isn’t any embracing at all.

In today’s letter to the Thessalonians, St. Paul encourages early Christians to let hope grow in their hearts until the final day in which they meet him, the Pope recalled. Francis stressed how the Apostle also warned that this day could arrive without warning, like a “thief in the night.”

Though the thought of lack of notice could be frightening, Francis reminded those gathered that Jesus is coming to bring salvation to those who believe in Him and to have hope, comfort and help each other.

“Lack of notice?”  I feel like I’m being read to by my kindergarten teacher (A cruel woman with little respect for boys.)  Is Francis joining the chorus of ‘minders’ intent on removing every trace of freedom, power, or dignity from the human race?  Can we not get a true image of the final judgment from the Pope so we can know what to do with our lives?

It takes hope to follow the Lord, to be obedient to the laws of God and His Church.  It is not hope in Christ ‘no matter what,’ or in ‘faith alone.’  It’s the hope in His promises.

“Let us ask the Lord for this grace: that seed of hope that he has planted in our hearts so it germinates and grows until our final meeting with Him.”

“‘I am certain that I will see the Lord.’ ‘I am certain that our Lord lives.’ ‘I am certain that our Lord will come to find me’: This should be the horizon of our life.  Let us ask the Lord for this grace and let us comfort each other with good works and kind words, (let’s go) along this road.”

“This is my advice, ‘comfort each other.’ Speak about this: but I’m asking you: do we speak about this, that the Lord will come and will we meet Him? Or do we speak about so many things, including theology, things about the Church, priests, religious sisters, monsignors, all this?  And is this hope our comfort? ‘Comfort each other,’ comfort those in the community. In our community, in our parishes, are we speaking about this that we’re waiting for the Lord who comes?  Or are we instead chattering about this and that to help pass the time and not get too bored?”

The Pope concluded by exhorting the faithful to live lives they would be at peace with the day the Lord gives a surprise visit.

That sounds more like it.

 

 

 

 

 

Pew Survey Reveals Catholic Church Is Practically a Lifeless Husk

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Begetting new life requires a certain virility

Starting new life demands a certain virility.

The Washington Post is reporting a Pew survey which reveals stark information that  will immediately fall into a memory sieve.  The so-called ‘catholic’ population of the United States (and the world for that matter) is comprised almost entirely of apostates and protestants.  That vast majority of these people are both:

  1. Almost completely un-formed
  2. Brilliantly and ruthlessly mal-formed

They most certainly are not Catholic and should not be considered so.

Most Americans who were raised Catholic but have since left the church could not envision themselves returning to it, according to a new Pew Research Center survey examining American Catholics and family life. The survey’s findings were released Wednesday, weeks before Pope Francis makes his first visit to the United States, and as Catholic leadership contends with dramatic demographic shifts.

Seventy-seven percent of those who were raised Catholic but no longer identify with the religion said they could not envision themselves eventually returning to the church, according to the Pew survey. The survey also examined U.S. Catholics’ views on issues such as divorce, same-sex marriage and sinful behavior, finding an openness for non-traditional family structures.

This is unsurprising.  Outside the Faith everybody thinks the same.  On the other side of Heaven is only the reign of Hell.  It also has its ‘doctrines.’ Life has only two rooms really.

Although Catholics have long made up about a quarter of the U.S. population, recent data has shown that percentage dropping. In 2007, 23.9 percent of Americans identified as Catholic. In 2014, 20.8 percent of Americans said the same, according to previous survey results from Pew.

But the new survey illustrates something else about Catholic life in the United States: while the percentage of Americans who may identify their religion as Catholicism is dropping, a much larger group of Americans identify as Catholic in some way.

In all, 45 percent of Americans say they are either Catholic, or are connected to Catholicism. That larger percentage includes “Cultural Catholics” (making up nine percent of those surveyed) who are not practicing Catholics but who identify with the religion in some way; and “ex-Catholics” (also nine percent) who were formerly Catholic but no longer identify with Catholicism at all. And another eight percent said they had some other connection to Catholicism, for instance by having a Catholic partner or spouse. For the purposes of the survey, Pew kept each category mutually exclusive.

According to the survey, about half of those who were raised Catholic end up leaving at some point, while about 11 percent of those who left have since returned.

That means half of them don’t leave.  I wonder how old most of those people are.

The study also sheds some light on how Catholic American attitudes on family, sex, and marriage compare with church teaching. When asked whether they believed the church should change its position on a variety of issues, a very large percentage of religiously identified Catholics — 76 percent — expressed a desire to see the church allow the use of birth control. Sixty-two percent felt that the church should allow priests to marry, and about the same percentage thought that the church should allow divorced and cohabitation couples to receive communion.

These beliefs are easy to instill.  All you have to do is reject the sacraments and turn on the TV.

Fifty-nine percent of Catholics surveyed thought women should be allowed to become priests. Meanwhile, just 46 percent of Catholics believe the church should recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples.

Among those Catholics who attend Mass weekly, support for these changes was lower overall. But Pew notes that even among this particular population, two-thirds of Mass-going Catholics think the church should relax its prohibition on contraceptives.

Heretics.  The vast majority of ‘catholics’ don’t even approach a Church.  The vast majority of those that do, still reject her teachings.  This would be strikingly clear to the world if only the bishops weren’t even worse themselves.

These people don’t need ‘mercy.’  They need the book thrown at them so they know where they stand.  The Pope and hierarchy are unable to do so today, but until clear lines are drawn around the Church militant, she will never be visible, and the world continue to spiral like a fireball.

 

 

 

The Era of the New Hippie Catholic

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Humble FrancisChurch Pilgrims en Route

Humble FrancisChurch Pilgrims en Route

Hippies are so cute, right?  Just don’t look too closely.

Hippies are also perfect for FrancisChurch.  They love nature, have poor humble carbon footprints, and they hate those stuffy rules!  CNN reports:

The freewheeling Volkswagen bus, painted a Caribbean turquoise, rolls down Guatemala’s CA-9 highway. Hot wind blows in and out of every open window, and the noise from the rear engine is loud. But no one seems to mind.

Sandwiched between four kids in the back, I can’t help but think these travelers’ attitude might be mistaken for flower power. But this is no magic bus on a hippie trip. This family is on a mission rooted in their Catholic faith.

Catire Walker, 41, and his wife, Noël Zemborain, 39, packed their children, camping gear and a few belongings in March and left their home in Buenos Aires on a daunting 13,000-mile journey through 13 countries.

Their family and friends called them crazy. Maybe they were. But they figured it was about time that they did something crazy. About time that they devoted more time to what mattered most: family.

There final destination is Philadelphia to see the Pope.

Pope Francis, who has made family one of his hot button issues, is visiting the United States for the first time later this month. The Walkers plan to attend the 2015 World Meeting of Families, a central event of the papal visit. The VW bus is plastered with a sticker emblazoned with the event’s logo. Everywhere the family goes, the curious stop and ask.

These people aren’t crazy.  This is a marketing stunt and Mrs. Hippie is a marketing professional.  That VW is over forty years old.  It only means something to old liberals and collectors.

Faith, for the Walkers, has never been about church and its rituals but about the everyday occurrences of life. In Francis, they finally saw a pope who understood ordinary people like them, a pope who talked about things no pope had discussed openly before.

They may be ordinary people but they’re not Catholics!  They don’t believe in anything.  They like Francis because he doesn’t remind them of the Church.

Besides, they felt immensely proud that Francis was a fellow Argentine. They had followed Jorge Bergoglio closely when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires and had even seen him up close right after he was named Pope.

They were in Rome on a business trip and stood among the crowd at the Vatican. When Francis drove by in the Pope Mobile, Catire screamed “Jorge!” and held up their youngest child, Carmin, then only 10 months old. One of the security guards carried the baby past the barricade and lifted her up so Francis could kiss her.

What kind of poor hippies can afford to take their entire family of six to Rome on business, yet still find it in their hearts to beg their way north for five months?

The Walkers don’t know how far they will get today or where they will sleep tonight. This is how it has been in their months of travel on a tight budget. They raised a few dollars through a crowdsourcing site but mostly, they depend on the kindness of strangers, many of whom open up their homes and become lifelong friends.

The journey has been humbling, Noël tells me.

“We have learned how to ask for help,” she says. “We have learned how to be grateful, how to live with very little. And just to let go and not to try and always control everything.”

They’ve also learned how to be cogs in the left-wing FrancisHype machine, sort of like hippie-capitalists.