Francis: Don’t Be One of Those Medjugorje Catholics

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Insipid ethereal gnostics full of prayers and ideas and only seeking God?

Insipid ethereal gnostics, full of prayers and ideas and only seeking God?

Zenit News Reports:

During his daily Mass at Casa Santa Marta this morning, Pope Francis called on Christians to contemplate what exactly is our Christian identity, and warned against ways it can be weakened, reported Vatican Radio.

It is true that we are sinners, Francis acknowledged. Yet, he added, when we fall down, God’s strength enables us to get up again and continue our journey.

While sin is part of our identity, the Holy Father said, we are sinners with faith in God “who has anointed us, put his seal upon us” and given us the Holy Spirit as a pledge in our hearts.

How many times is Pope Francis going to remind us that we are all sinners?  Some may find that encouraging.  I find it de-motivating.

So I’m a sinner but I’m anointed.  I’m a sinner but the Holy Spirit is a pledge in my heart.  It was just yesterday that the Holy Eucharist was also a pledge!  How can God be a pledge?

Christians, the Pope said, are those who remain faithful to this God-given identity as the anointed ones who let the Spirit into their hearts, rather than those who follow a particular philosophy.

So although I’m a sinner, I’m a Christian so long as I remain faithful to my ‘identity’ and let the Spirit into my heart.  Well that’s easy.  Spirit c’mon in!  I don’t have to follow a particular philosophy.  Well that’s good too.  What about a particular theology?  No mention.

The Argentine Pontiff went on to warn of three ways in which this witness can be weakened.

The first applies to those who move for a concrete faith in Christ to “a kind of insipid religion of just prayers and ideas,”  a type which could be compared to the Gnostics in the ancient world.

A Gnostic was a particularly proud sort of heretic.  “Insipid” is an insulting word for people who pray and think, as if prayers and ideas were dull, dead or boring.  This is the Pope’s continual straw man.

Who are these terrible people that only pray but never love, who only have ideas but never act upon them?  Hint: None of them are liberals and none of them are dissenters.

These “modern Gnostics,” Francis said, are tempted to avoid the scandal of the Cross. Through their “rather ethereal Christian spirituality,” they are content to seek God, Francis said.

Second, there are those who always are searching for some “novelty” in their Christian identity since they have forgotten they have been anointed and given the guarantee of the Spirit. Francis joked that they say: “Where are the visionaries who can tell us exactly what message Our Lady will be sending at 4 o’clock this afternoon?”

Why has Medjugorje been allowed to persist?  It has always been what it is.  There must be a great deal of money involved.

The Pope is right to speak against it, but why now?  Might it perhaps have something to do with the fact that most of its followers are faithful Catholics?  Doesn’t it perhaps put devotional Catholics in a bad light, and make those who are attentive to Marian visions look bad?  It certainly does, as it always has, but is the Pope saying that all visionaries have that sort of ‘ethereal spirituality’ that ‘only seeks God?’  I hope not but it sounds like it.

It’s clear that Pope Francis is willing to use Church scandals against faithful Catholics.  Look at Kansas City Bishop Finn, Bishop Livieres in Paraguay, and now Cardinal Pell.  All three of these situations came from overhyped scandals.  Medjugorje is just another opportunity to exploit weaknesses.

 

 

 

Why Do Banana Republic Bishops Hate Global Warming Critics?

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Praying you'll become happy with less.

Praying you’ll become happy with less.

Pedro Biretto Jimeno, Archbishop of Huancayo, Peru is another Latin American Communist in the FrancisChurch style.  If the global warming agenda isn’t about crushing the free market with  unreasonable and suffocating worldwide taxes and regulations, then why do these faux-Catholic clerical agents keep acting like it’s all about money?

The Archbishop of Huancayo, Peru has said that Pope Francis must prepare himself for criticism following the publication of his encyclical on the environment.

Archbishop Pedro Barreto Jimeno of Huancayo, Peru, told Catholic News Service: “(The encyclical) will have many critics, because they want to continue setting rules of the game in which money takes first place. We have to be prepared for those kinds of attacks.”

That’s what Marxists see as capitalism.  It’s a rigged system in which someone besides themselves is making the rules.  It’s obvious to them that since some are rich and some are poor, that the system is unfair.  Of course, these communists no nothing about serving others since most of them spend their lives shuttling from speaking engagements to catered meetings in hotels.  They are often academics or bureaucrats who’ve spent their lives pleasing superiors rather than customers.  There seem to be quite a few of them in the South American hierarchy.

The archbishop said that there would controversy once people had read the Pope’s new encyclical because resisting the “throwaway culture” by being satisfied with less means “putting money at the service of people, instead of people serving money.”

What is money, Archbishop?  Isn’t just a way for two people to help each other?  Why do you want other people’s money so much that you must condemn it?  There’s nowhere on earth that people are serving money.  It’s a tool.  If you don’t like working at McDonald’s go to school?  Live with your folks, save your money and open your own burger shack.  If you think Bill Gates is using you, don’t buy Windows.

Pope Francis’ upcoming encyclical on ecology and climate is expected to send a strong moral message – one message that could make some readers uncomfortable, some observers say.

“The encyclical will address the issue of inequality in the distribution of resources and topics such as the wasting of food and the irresponsible exploitation of nature and the consequences for people’s life and health,” Archbishop Pedro Barreto Jimeno said.

“Pope Francis has repeatedly stated that the environment is not only an economic or political issue, but is an anthropological and ethical matter,” he said. “How can you have wealth if it comes at the expense of the suffering and death of other people and the deterioration of the environment?”

Lies on top of lies on top of lies.  How is this man an archbishop?

The encyclical is not expected to be a theological treatise or a technical document about environmental issues, but a pastoral call to change the way people use the planet’s resources so they are sufficient not only for current needs, but for future generations, observers said.

It’s not technical and it’s not theological.  That’s a relief.  We don’t have to pay attention to any faux-science or faux-theology we might find in it.  It’s only harmlessly pastoral, just like Vatican II.  So we don’t need to believe anything in it, but we damn sure better follow it like sheep!

The document “will emphasise that the option for stewardship of the environment goes hand in hand with the option for the poor,” said Carmelite Father Eduardo Agosta Scarel, a climate scientist who teaches at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina and the National University of La Plata in Buenos Aires.

If it’s an option, why do I have no choice in the matter?

“What the Pope brings to this debate is the moral dimension,” said Anthony Annett, climate change and sustainable development adviser to the Earth Institute at Columbia University and to the nonprofit Religions for Peace. “His unique way of looking at the problem, which is deeply rooted in Catholic social teaching, resonates with people all across the world.”

Are popes supposed to bring moral dimensions to debates, or are they supposed to defend moral absolutes?  If these things are debatable, then why are they treated as undeniable truths despite the fact they’re based upon one sided well-funded junk science?

“Whether you think climate change is a problem or not, you cannot deny that running out of fish, oil, water and other resources is a really big problem. The solution is a radical change in our concept of what makes a person happy. We need to move away from the idea that the more things we have, the happier we’ll be,” Kane said.

Check your things and redefine your happiness because we’re getting ready to confiscate both in the name of Christ.

 

 

Is Corpus Christi Just Some Poverty Thing?

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Corpus Christi?

Corpus Christi?

La Stampa reports on last week’s Angelus address given by Pope Francis where he continued to incessantly impute some supra-doctrine about the poor.

Pope Francis has poignantly said that Christians have no right to refuse help to those who need it, saying that to partake in the commemoration of Christ’s death is to see him in the poor and suffering and to welcome them and offer them help.

First of all the Pope is not poignant.  Secondly, the Eucharist is not a commemoration of Christ’s death.  It is Christ himself.  At Mass it is being present at His own sacrifice.  Third, and most importantly, the Blessed Sacrament is not about seeing Christ in the poor and suffering, welcoming them, or offering them help.  That is something else entirely.

Speaking during his weekly Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square Sunday, the pope reflected on the meaning of the Catholic feast day celebrated this week, that of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

Known commonly by its Latin name of Corpus Christi, the feast commemorates Christ’s actions at the Last Supper, when he is said to have instituted the Eucharist by first holding a piece of bread and saying: “Take this, this is my body.”

Francis applied wide ranging social consequences to that action on Friday, saying those who participate in the Eucharist enter into a communion that requires them to give care for all.

“When we take and eat this bread, we become associated with the life of Jesus, we enter into communion with Him,” said the pontiff. “We commit ourselves to realize the communion between us, to transform our life into a gift, overall to the most poor.”

“Today’s feast evokes this integral message and pushes us to welcome the intimate invitation to conversion and to service, to love and to forgive,” the pope continued. “It stimulates us to become, with our lives, imitators of that which we celebrate in the liturgy.”

“The Christ who feeds us in the consecrated species of bread and wine is the same that we meet in daily occurrences,” said Francis. “It is the poor person who pulls our hand, it is the suffering person that implores our help, it is the brother that asks our availability and waits for our welcome.”

This kind of 1970’s propaganda is quite the blast from the past.  Why is it that liberals always go back to their tired old playbook?  Who decided that we would now be re-treated to the effeminate, suffocating nightmare that was hippie Catholicism?

When we receive Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament we do not commit ourselves to transform our life into a gift overall to the most poor.  Jesus in the Eucharist is not the people we meet in daily occurrences.  He is not the one who pulls our hand, implores our help or waits for our welcome.  He is Jesus.

Jesus tells us when we help the least of His brothers, we do it for Him, because he loves them so much.  He appreciates our love to them and expects it, but they are not actually Him.  If they are in states of grace Jesus lives within them, but nevertheless Jesus is Jesus and people are people, even in states of grace.

Why must the Pope twist and minimize the Blessed Sacrament, who is God Himself, by turning it all into one big worldly poverty program?  Can’t he just defend the faith and teach it?  Isn’t that worth doing on it’s own?

If you’re like many people you spend most of your time helping others.  But is that our faith?  Isn’t it so much more?