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Tuesday, September 6, 2016

THE BAD OLD TRIUMPHALISTIC AND SELF REFERENTIAL CHURCH AND THE GOOD VERSION SELF-REFERENTIAL, TRIUMPHLAISM

To be honest with you, I like what is in this video and what is proclaimed is why I am and remain Catholic. But as I look at it, it is self-referential. Is this kind of video of the past effective in bringing back fallen away  Catholics?  The nones? I wonder.


This newer version is self-referential in a different way. It is a soundbite compared to the much  longer and more thorough bad old version above. Is this a better self-referential, triumphalist soundbite and its it better to be short given today's short attention span?


I know, I know, tolerance and inclusive have many meanings. But the Church has always included some of the most despicable people. Private excommunications, such as for abortion and profaning the Blessed Sacrament are still in force even if no one publicly knows you've done these things. Excommunications abound even under Pope Francis and he hasn't lifted public excommunications for priests who attend women's "ordination" rites. 

Doesn't this speak to the younger generations of nones better than the first bad old version of the past?

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

First of all the fact that the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church has been brought so low that she is reduced to making commercials to get people in the door like a soda company would do is disgusting. But that is what happens when you have nothing to give. The majority of bishops and this pope refuse to teach the Catholic Faith in all is glory and beauty and instead reduce to social activism is a scandal. This self destructive behavior has caused ruin. Thank god that the people who think like the modernists in the Church do aren't going to Mass. So let the churches and parishes close and who will be left standing? It not going to be the "Catholics" like Pelosi and Kain and Cuomo and the Kennedys. No it will be the faithful remaining few who carry their cross and despite all opposition from Rome and their bishops keep true to the Catholic Faith as it has always been taught.


THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY. And "anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery"
Galatians 1: 6-10

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! 9 As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!
10 Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Romans 1 24-26

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Pope Francis - Amoris Laetitia

#301- 301. Hence it is can no longer simply be said that all those in any “irregular” situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace. More is involved here than mere ignorance of the rule. A subject may know full well the rule, yet have great difficulty in understanding “its inherent values”, or be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin.

I'm following Christ and the teachings of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis can keep his personal opinions to himself. I don't care if he puts on a tiara and a cope and reads his drivel from the balcony of St. Peter's ........ He CAN'T change the truths of the Faith. Period end of story!

Anonymous said...

He HASN'T changed the truths of the Faith. Period. End of story.

Your angry, self-destructive intentional misreading and misrepresentation of Pope Francis is shameful for one who claims to be a faithful Catholic.

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

Yes, the anger/rage is one of the deadly sins and hopefully the person writing or spewing this will seek spiritual or psychological counseling to get to the root of this "depression" which could be clinical. It is also a mortal sin against Faith, Hope and Love, the greatest of these of course love. Mortal sin is when one knows that something is wrong, which I think this contributor certainly does, and then chooses to sin and with full consent of the will, often in a planned and premeditated way. It isn't spontaneous.

rcg said...

Personal tastes change as we grow. All sorts of folks will, hopefully, be in the pews next to me. I have to understand that many of them will not know how to behave in public but I am grateful they are there. I am grateful for the 0730 Low Mass since most people who think that is sleepng late can focus on the Mass. I can then get to the Parish Hall to fire up the eggs, beans, and cornbread and get my banjo and fiddle ready to enjoy the tunes that should not be allowed during Mass.

Jusadbellum said...

Fr. Allan,

I think it's useful to define terms. What is "Anger"? What is "rage"? Generally speaking, "anger" is the natural reaction to the presence of evil or the depravation of goodness. Rage is a species of anger. Another word might be "wrath".

Thus it's not unnatural or sinful to experience anger in the face of evil. Anger CAN be perverted and lead to sin as it generates a great deal of energy for "doing" but in and of itself the reaction is amoral.

Our Lord was angry when driving out the money changers from the Temple. The Lord is called "Wrathful" when purging structural sin ("grapes of wrath"...)

So people who experience horror and egregious sin in unlikely places (fellow believers) are not ipso facto committing a sin....unless they allow such anger to bleed over into indiscriminate judgment and violence. (like general, blanket accusations or nuking a whole time zone).

Now, on to the commercials.... the method is determined by the intended audience. It's not any more complicated than that. There are 6 billion "not yet Catholics" on earth and it's a given that you're not going to reach all of them with the same marketing approach.

Any good marketing expert (otherwise known as "an evangelist" or Missionary, will have a full quiver of different approaches.

Anonymous said...

'He HASN'T changed the truths of the Faith. Period. End of story.

Your angry, self-destructive intentional misreading and misrepresentation of Pope Francis is shameful for one who claims to be a faithful Catholic."

The reasons given by the previous poster seem legitimate to me. Pope Francis did do all those things. I always follow the example of Our Lord. What did He do when those in the Temple went against the will of God. Jesus went and made a whip, kicked over the tables and drove those people from the Temple. Somebody should do something like that to Pope Francis. Remaining quiet in the midst of the scandal he id doing daily doesn't cut it.

Anonymous said...

I must not understand "mortal sin" as well as some, else I'd be able to see how it applies to any of the comments above. Of course, St. Padre Pio was said to have the ability to discern as if by telepathy the presence of mortal sin in a penitent. But someone here, over the internet, yet?

rcg said...

Anger is the emotional response to an offense. Rage is a loss of control of that emotion. Wrath is the workmanlike destruction of the offender with emotionally controlled anger.

glob said...

Padre Allan "Pio" McDonald can spot a mortal sinner at 500 paces....easy....

Anonymous said...

Our "Anonymous" would condemn His Holiness were he to say "The sky is blue." There is no possibility for this Anonymous that Pope Francis can shed new light, offer new insights, or develop new understanding of doctrine.

Why? It has nothing to do with Francis and everything to do with Anonymous' state of permanent dissatisfaction, a choice he/she has made to be unhappy with hi .

George said...



Anonymous @ 8:23 AM

I haven't read anything anywhere in which Pope Francis has said or written anything which supports the behavior described in Romans 1 24-26.

Yes, it would be helpful if a clarification were issued for certain parts of Amoris Laetitia, but it is primarily a pastoral document. Also, this document, as with any other written by the Pope, must be read in the light of Magisterial teaching.




johnnyc said...

Lol.....those last two are advertisements for some generic 'church'.

johnnyc said...

Only liberals get to use the spiritual works of mercy lol. When Traditional Catholics employ them they are called 'uncharitable'.

Anonymous said...

These spiritual works of mercy specifically.....

To instruct the ignorant.
To counsel the doubtful.
To admonish sinners.

johnnyc said...

So disagreeing with a Pope is mortal sin? Many in the Church including clergy are of the opinion that footnote 301 is problematic. I also thought his statement at the beginning of his pontificate about how we shouldn't be obsessed with abortion and homosexuality was a mistake. I think it damaged the pro life movement and just at a time when the evil one was specifically attacking the family on those two fronts.

Jusadbellum said...

I think we owe it to ourselves and to others to actually READ what Pope Francis says or writes IN CONTEXT vs. react to the easy spin of the media including the Catholic media.

I've friends whose confirmation bias is constantly fed with lop-sided and unfair hit jobs on Pope Francis, lifting one sentence out of a paragraph and interpreting it in a completely opposite sense as the paragraph and page would naturally read.

Otherwise smart and insightful writers on the right-wing blogosphere are doing this too just as Mark Shea was doing it in the opposite direction over at Patheos.

It's natural and it's hard to shake confirmation bias - we first get a gut feeling about someone being either good or bad, either part of our tribe or among the hated "other" and then all the rest of our input is screened with that pre-judice in mind. We'll discard whole pages of perfectly good evidence to find that needle of heresy and if it's not there, we'll invent it.

I have had an awful feeling for 4 years that the Catholic Church is being played....we're being played or stampeded into a schism by this modernist vs. traditionalist divide and I'm not entirely certain that the main actors are leading or REACTING to outside influences.

Take Amoris Laetitia.... I was pretty much predisposed to regard it as a formal heresy based on ALL the hype from secular and Catholic sources. But once I got my hands on the actual text and read all 320 paragraphs start to finish I realized that in light of the 7 preceding chapters, there's no way an honest theologian could interpret Chapter 8 as allowing for divorce and remarriage with a wink and a nod in the 'internal forum'. No way.

So predictably, BOTH sides in the debate immediately (and still) IGNORE chapters 1-7 and glom onto exclusively and only chapter 8 and then only 4 paragraphs as though they are the whole picture.

I may be a minority (no, I AM a minority in this opinion) but I've yet to find any theologian, bishop, or commentator actually make the case from the whole text to justify either the modernist drive towards permanent sexual revolution....OR the traditionalist freakout that this document is a slam dunk heretical piece of agit-prop.

Now, anyone can use a shovel as a weapon, but it's not a weapon. Anyone can distort the very Gospel of God as the Gnostics did in the 2nd century without this meaning the Gospel is suspect.