Father Gobbi's messages #406, 407, 409 from the Virgin Mary describe the symbolism of the mark of the beast of the book of Revelation and in so many words the mark of the beast is the formation of the false church and the false christ which everyone will be forced to worship. I worry and wonder if there will be a definitive event when we will have to make a choice between the real Church and the false church. I do not think the moment has yet come when we have to make the crucial choice but when it does come, if it does, we will have to choose for the real and true Christ and His Church. Jesus said that His sheep know Him and follow His voice. Does anyone else think that there will be an event to prompt our choosing or do you think it will be the slow slide down the slippery slope and that we will have to choose somewhere along the descent?
Thank you very much DeGaulle, I consider my posts so much dust compared to the many erudite writings of yourself and others. It is very nice to know though that some of what I write is useful. Thank you again.
We have a tight-rope to walk. A single mis-step could be our doom, as there are no safety nets in this situation. You have just given us, so to speak, a map. We must not allow ourselves to be led off the narrow way by distractions, that though excruciatingly painful, are political in nature. If the Vatican sells out the Chinese Catholics to the Communists, it will be disgraceful. However, and it may have been you who pointed it out, I can't remember, we don't know the full truth. The Communists may have threatened to forcibly destroy, by gun and gulag, the underground Church. We know communists are well capable of this. Still, there is another point of view. A recent article in Zerohedge, pointed out that the Chinese are in serious peril. As any Catholic might suspect, the 'one-child policy' is bringing a devastating demographic set of consequences to China, which is going to be economically cataclysmic. The Communists recently relaxed the one-child policy to little avail. So selfish and softened have the only-child snowflakes of China become, that 75% of those of child-bearing age find themselves unable to contemplate more than one child. This corruption means that the child-bearing rate predicted for the future is insufficient to reverse the decline. Could it turn out that the Communists need Christianity more than we realise? What other force is likely to move the suicidal Chinese nation to having more children? Perhaps, God can, yet again, steal good from the maw of the jaws of the devil? Remember, the Communist 'economic miracle' of recent times has left China with many entire cities, devoid of people who haven't managed to get born. If these huge investments aren't to go to waste, maybe the only solution is to let Catholics 'breed like rabbits'!
Yes. The Barque seemingly has no guard rails anymore. One can fall off of either side. Too far to the "left" and one falls off into heresy. Too far to the "right" and one goes into schism. The Devil gets most people today to fall into any one of the many heresies that plague the Church, but for those few who can see through what is going on he has fewer options. The most common attack against these people is to get the person to totally abandon the Pope. We must be on guard as I think this temptation will only get greater. It is in a way a form of papalotry to grant to the Papacy a much greater degree of power and perfection than the position actually holds. It is in effect saying the Pope must be so perfect that if he errs he cannot be Pope. This is almost a deification of the Pope and a flawed premise. Popes can err.
If popes couldn't err, there would be no popes, starting with the first one. By the way, I edited that post, in case there was anything you might wish to question or take issue with.
It is a time where if you don't know your faith teachings (doctrines) you may well loose it. The pope is banking on the ignorance of most Catholics today in order to sell his apostasy.
You know I was thinking that what is happening to the Church in China is very like what happened to the Early Christians. The Early Christians were asked to sacrifice to Pagan Gods. The Romans were not interested so much in the Pagan Gods as such (many of them did not really believe in them anyway). No, the reason why the Romans were so offended was that in refusing to make Sacrifice they were not expressing total loyalty to the State. Now imagine you went back in time and St Peter ordered the Early Christians to make Sacrifice to the Gods. To allow the Roman State to take control of the Church. Well if I were an Early Christian there are one or two questions I would have been asking St Peter. The first would be , why did you allow Christians to be beaten, tortured , killed and imprisoned for not making sacrifice and allow it now? Why did we reject the States Authority over the Church at such a High price but allow it now? That is the same question I would ask Pope Francis now ..were the deaths and sufferings of the Chinese Martyrs all silly? Were we wrong not to simply give in from the beginning and save all the suffering and death?
I have said the same thing in regards to his position on adultery. Poor St. John the Baptist who chose to loose his head rather than allow divorce and remarriage and this was before Christ's reaffirmation of the 6th commandment on adultery. St. Thomas Moore and Bishop John Fischer as well lost their heads in defending God's truth in marriage. Now we have Pope Francis who thinks otherwise on the issue and has no problem with it and even rewards it with communion?????? A lot of Judas' in the Church today deep with the Vatican.
You misunderstood my post, and for that I am truly sorry. But these are NOT legitimate Catholic bishops. They are merely tools of an atheistic Communistic government and are automatically excommunicated men. No one, not even a pope, can place automatically excommunicated agents of an atheistic Communist government that tortures and kills faithful Catholics into a bishopric over Catholic Faithful. It is NOT schismatic to say so, but it IS schismatic for any pope to try to do so!! You lead people astray here in asserting otherwise.
I wouldn't be so sure about that, Brian, because even as far back as Pope Pius X11, the Vatican made a distinction between invalid and illicit. Pope Benedict regularised a lot of them and now it looks like all the Patriotic Church's bishops are accepted as having been validly ordained. Some of their Bishops hadn't even been baptised but we don't know whether there are still unbaptised men acting as Bishops. The trouble with automatic excommuniation is that lay Catholics don't have the authority to declare a person excommunicated. In the case of a Bishop, only a Pope would have that authority. I think that Praetorian's earlier post gave a good synopsis of what we pew sitters can or cannot say or do.
I am not leading anyone astray and you continually stating that I am is slanderous. The SSPX bishops were automatically excommunicated when they were made bishops. Yet they are true and valid bishops. The same is true of the Chinese bishops. You are incorrect. You may be honestly misinformed, but you are incorrect. When someone is excommunicated there is always a way back into the Church. Excommunication is a legal state within the Church that any Pope has the right to impose and lift. It was never meant as a permanent barring from the Church. Just the opposite in fact. Excommunication was always intended to be used as a tool to bring people back into the Church. Dolours' post is correct. I will also repeat once more. I do not like this agreement with China. Not at all. But my opinion cannot change what powers a Pope does and doesn't have.
I admit that due to present personal circumstances my response to this situation is more based on emotion than fact, and I’m unable to do the usual level of research on this subject that I prefer, sitting here in an ICU waiting room on an iPhone. I’ll defer to your opinion and drop out of this particular debate until I’ve heard back from a noted theologian who I trust.
Is schism really the sin it is made out to be? When I think of all the Catholic celebrations for the 500th anniversary of Luther's revolt, it reminds me of that "time is greater than space" statement......or maybe it was "space is greater than time", gobblydegook either way but some people raised it almost to the level of new Divine revelation. (Don't anyone bother protesting that it wasn't really a celebration because it was a disgraceful display by today's hierarchy dancing on the graves of far greater men that they will ever be). Is there a time limit on the sin of schism? Invincible ignorance probably applies to the average Lutheran pew sitter, but I reckon all those Lutheran theologians so loved and admired by our hierarchy would be very offended if anyone said they were ignorant, invincible or not. Then there's the Chinese Communist Catholics. Is their schism not sinful because they have the support of a world power? The Church never caved in to Anglicanism even when the sun didn't set on the British Empire but today's Church is replacing orthodox Bishops with schismatics. Is this another paradigm shift whereby what was sinful in the past is no longer sinful? Or is it like adultery which is sinful in one diocese but not in another? Is schism acceptable in, say, Germany or China but not in other countries? Does it depend on the Pope? For example, Cardinal Kasper has been advocating for his version of Catholic divorce for decades in direct violation of papal teaching? Was he in schism then but not in schism now because Pope Francis is good with the Kasper proposal? Maybe schism isn't a sin at all because according to our current hierarchy the personal conscience is supreme. If the personal conscience can take precedence over the very words of Jesus and 2,000 years of Church teaching, why doesn't it have precedence over the Pope's compliance with an Atheist government's wish to replace faithful Bishops with schismatic men of the government's choosing? In asking these questions, I'm conscious that probably the only tradition of the Church which Pope Francis hasn't cast doubt on is the one about the primacy of the Pope. I reckon that will hold as long as he is Pope because he needs that much time to empty the papacy of any real authority. Nevertheless, we have to bear in mind that someone like Fr. James Martin could some day be elected Pope. Considering the harm he does as a simple priest, imagine what could happen were he to have the power to declare his beliefs ex cathedra.
Modern Catholic Dictionary by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. SCHISM. A willful separation from the unity of the Christian Church. Although St. Paul used the term to condemn the factions at Corinth, these were not properly schismatical, but petty cliques that favored one or another Apostle. A generation later Clement I reprobated the first authentic schism of which there is record. Paul's exhortation to the Corinthians also gives an accurate description of the concept. "Why do we wrench and tear apart the members of Christ," he asks, "and revolt against our own body, and reach such folly as to forget that we are members of one another?" While the early Church was often plagued with heresy and schism, the exact relation between the two divisive elements was not clarified until later in the patristic age. "By false doctrines concerning God," declared St. Augustine, "heretics wound the faith; by sinful dissensions schismatics deviate from fraternal charity, although they believe what we believe." Heresy, therefore, by its nature refers to the mind and is opposed to religious belief, whereas schism is fundamentally volitional and offends against the union of Christian charity. (Etym. Latin schisma; from Greek skhisma, a split, division, from skhizein, to tear, rend.) SCHISMATIC. According to Church law, a schismatic is a person who, after receiving baptism and while keeping the name of Christian, pertinaciously refuses to submit to the Supreme Pontiff or refuses to associate with those who are subject to him. The two factors, submission to the Pope and association with persons subject to him, are to be taken disjunctively. Either resisting papal authority or refusing to participate in Catholic life and worship induces schism, even without further affiliation with another religious body. Like heresy, schism is formal and culpable only when the obligations are fully realized. EXCOMMUNICATION. An ecclesiastical censure by which one is more or less excluded from communion with the faithful. It is also called anathema, especially if it is inflicted with formal solemnities on persons notoriously obstinate to reconciliation. Two basic forms of excommunication are legislated by the Code of Canon Law, namely inflicted penalties (ferendae sententiae) and automatic penalties (latae sententiae). In the first type, a penalty does not bind until after it has been imposed on the guilty party. In the second type, the excommunication is incurred by the very commission of the offense, if the law or precept expressly determines this (Canon 1314). Most excommunications are of the second type. Among others identified by the new Code are the following: "An apostate from the faith, a heretic or a schismatic incurs automatic excommunication" (Canon 1364). "A person who throws away the consecrated species or takes them or retains them for a sacrilegious purpose incurs an automatic excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See" (Canon 1367). "A confessor who directly violates the seal of confession incurs an automatic excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See" (Canon 1388). "A person who procures a successful abortion incurs an automatic excommunication" (Canon 1398). There are three principal effects of this penalty, so that "an excommunicated person is forbidden: to have any ministerial participation in celebrating the Eucharistic Sacrifice or in any other ceremonies whatsoever of public worship to celebrate the sacraments and sacramentals and to receive the sacraments to discharge any ecclesiastical offices, ministries or functions whatsoever, or to place acts of governance" (Canon 1331).
I don't see any time limit there. Also, according to that "Schismatic" definition, every non-Catholic Christian is a schismatic, including ordained Protestant ministers with whom members of our hierarchy have been conducting ecumenical services. So, that brings us back to invincible ignorance and all those Protestant theologians. Invincibly ignorant theologians? It's beginning to look like this all boils down to schism being whatever the current Pope and his inner circle want it to be. Martin Luther said the Pope was the anti-christ. Martin Luther was a theologian. Martin Luther's statue was displayed in the Vatican and a stamp issued in his honour to celebrate the Reformation. So, can the sin of schism be absolved posthumously? No other sin such as murder or rape can be absolved posthumously. Why the exception for schism and why only for some schismatics?
Yes, the definitive time will be after the Warning when all will know truth. Some will accept Christ and most will choose the world and the Antichrist.
If the below is all true? .... it's just another "Sign" that the Vatican is "Out of Touch" at best and at worst ....??! !?? God Bless The Resistance!!! "Disgraced cardinal cancels appearance representing Pope after locals vow to protest" https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/d...earance-representing-pope-after-locals-vow-to GOD SAVE ALL HERE!!
All good points to remember when catechizing our Catholic faith. I am constantly defending the Catholic Church while acknowledging our current mess and it leaves me exhausted. Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth. O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.
Rest up Brian and take care of your mother. These are important topics, but they aren't going to go away so take care of what you need to and keep the forum updated so we can continue to give you emotional and prayer support. You are my brother even though once in a while we club each other over the head I am sorry if this dispute added to your duress.
