“I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

If that's the case then I'm going into the kitchen to see if there's anything in the fridge to drink.

Anybody else want something? Lemonade, iced coffee, maybe a Coke?

 

Muzhik, you crack me up
May our Lord continually Bless you and Family!

 

If things continue as is, gonna need something a wee bit stronger than that!

 

because you like the taste of course!!

 

Well its Saturday morning here in New Zealand. Time for breakfast. What will it be? Two or three valium washed down with a drop of the strong stuff. Nah, life is too good for that much....but it is Friday night in Europe haha!

 

…many forces have tried, and still do, to destroy the Church, from without as well as within, but they themselves are destroyed and the Church remains alive and fruitful… she remains inexplicably solid… kingdoms, peoples, cultures, nations, ideologies, powers have passed, but the Church, founded on Christ, notwithstanding the many storms and our many sins, remains ever faithful to the deposit of faith shown in service; for the Church does not belong to popes, bishops, priests, nor the lay faithful; the Church in every moment belongs solely to Christ.

—POPE FRANCIS, Homily, June 29th, 2015; www.americamagazine.org

 

The gifts were not rejected and the Pope did not express concern over these blasphemous images.

In fact, he accepted them and subsequently presented them as a gift at the feet of a Shrine to Our Lady:

Pope Places Presidential Honors at Feet of Our Lady of Copacabana
Expresses Gratitude to Virgin Mary During Private Mass in Santa Cruz

"..."According to the Holy See Press Office, the Holy Father presented two decorative honors that were conferred onto him by Bolivian president Evo Morales, to a statue of the Our Lady of Copacabana, patroness of Bolivia."​

He received 3 gifts ("decorative honors"): the crucifix, and two medals, one of which was also of the Marxist crucifix. However you do the math, that means he dedicated either one or both of the blasphemous crucifixes to Our Lady.

 

So offering our sins is now Blasphemous.....who can be saved Brian? help us understand.

 

Firstly they are not blasphemous except in the eyes of those who wish to adopt this perspective and secondly Our Lady is the best Person to whom what they truly represent should be dedicated. She has told us She will save us from Communism. "I alone can save you from the calamities ahead". I truly believe that your negativity and hostlility is an example of "honi soit qui mal y pense". In any case if someone presents me with a gift that I don't particularly like I suppress my dislike and accept it as graciously as possible. Having discovered that a Jesuit Priest and Martyr designed the cross I am sure Pope Francis adopted the best attitude. Did you really expect the Pope to humiliate the giver and tell him to keep his gift even if that could have caused greater harm to others. I suppose you did expect this Brian. If the Pope believed for one second that such a reaction was warranted for the greater good then he would have acted accordingly. He did not react. Rather he gave a measured response. I trust his wisdom infinitely more than yours. No more time to waste on you. Not today anyway.

 

I think it is blasphemous. Where do you draw the line Joe?
Would you be happy to have a crucified Christ on a swastika?

 

FP,

Its pretty much how you said...Brian thinks all this was planned and agreed too. The pontif was probably told he was going to get a few necklaces and a cross from a head of state. When he got there he was hustled by the hustler ...to embarrass the pope and the Catholic Church.

And then we have people pushing their agenda against Papa Francis. Its a gotcha moment with no real teeth.

Sad sad sad

I don't think Brian understands he could be helping people turn away from Our Holy Father and the Catholic Church. Maybe Brian is not a saint and if he is not a saint...he may be working for the other guy.

I will pray for all of us.

Brother al

 

papa Francis just said he prayed and consecrated the people of Paraguy to our Lady... Im watching Live TV.
Papa settin the World on fire !!!!!! wooooo weeeee Come Holy Spirit!

 

The World will be set on fire soon indeed.

 

Is Jesus on a cross Blasphemous? a sinners death! the Godman who knew not any sin, but yet we all wear a crucifix.... back down sir, this is a non argument! pray Mac and Company

 

Keep up your war on the Pope and the fire might bite ya....Im NO prophet but im giving you all a dire warning! Get off your high hoarse!!!
you all rap yourself in smells and bells but your HEARTS are far from the Lord. (YOU ALL means the anti Francis posters)
Mac most of your beliefs are based on 'private revelation' that we don't have to believe at all! Are you going to risk your soul over the Fatima message??? what you may think a pope should have said or didn't say?
Mac wake up!!! ,Im not a PC guy. If my post offends anyone., offer it up

 

Again, I don't understand the motivation to continually seek to find fault in the Pope from a few members of this forum. As Cardinal Wotyla, St. John Paul II, had to be quite deft in his dealings with communist leaders first in Poland and then in what was the former USSR. I don't recall anyone condemning JP II for how he had to deal with the realities of politics. Should Francis have rejected and humiliated this public leader and risk alienating an entire nation or accept an improper and perhaps ill intended gift but have access to a nation so they have access to the Light of Jesus Christ? Who knows, maybe the pope humbled himself so much like Christ and accepted this knowing full well it was not fully appropriate. Maybe he knew at that moment like every sin we have, every imperfection we have when taken to The Lord, it can miraculously be made good. Perhaps that's why he offered to Our Lady in his private Mass. It's ironic that the symbol of the cross is at the forefront of this story. The cross that symbolized Rome's power and authority used to torture and kill the Son of God is now the symbol and the power of Life and God's instrument of His power. This so called communist cross is much the same in my opinion. The hammer and sickle meant to represent a government and a way of life that people think means something, but this Holy Father, just like John Paul, knows it means nothing and so he accepted it like Christ accepted his, but by offering it to God, it can be transformed into something more. And as was the case in Poland, eastern EU and finally the USSR itself, this symbol of power collapsed and God remains. I trust this pope is doing what he think is right and I pray for him.

 

Firstly there is a difference between Christian Socialism and Marxist/Leninst Communism. (I am not a left winger - In fact when I was a student I once got every Communist thrown off the Student Representative Body and I was elected to go to Conference where I was physically attacked by Pro Abortionists. I hate to admit it but I was pretty frightened) The priest who designed the cross died defending the rights and dignity of the poor which Atheistic Communism never does. He was tortured and assassinated just before Archbishop Romero was martyred. There is context to be found in this cross not in the politics of Communism but in the person of the priest.
Of course if Christ was ever depicted on a Swastika this would be regarded by the Jews as as a huge insult to the Holocaust victims even if it was intended as a symbol of reconciliation. Of course Christ was a Jew and he was crucified by the Jews - something that we are no longer allowed to say - but in reality it was for our sins that he died. Without our sins being the reason for his death the execution by the Jews would have meant nothing in terms of Salvation. He would have died for nothing and simply have been a victim of the hatred of their leaders. Not all Jews hated Jesus. His Mother was a Jew as were his followers and Jewish women wept for him on the Way of the Cross. Taken outside a context of political correctness and with proper motivation and explanation for such a depiction I would say that Christ on a Swastika is particularly appropriate. The Nazis killed the Jews and Jesus was a Jew. Therefore the Nazis killed Jesus. Hitler hated Catholics and murdered millions of them in the war years. Christ died for the Jews too. Christ took the sins of the world on himself and all sin was crucified to him. Nazi persecution was a terrible sin. So to show Christ taking this sin on himself would indeed be a powerful symbol. To show Christ crucified on the symbol of those who massacred his people, The Jews, could be acceptable if people truly understood what the symbolism meant and took it the right way. Sadly there would be very little chance of that perspective these days and through ignorance and animosity many people would find it abhorrent. Ever since the time of Christ our precious and sacred symbol, the Cross, has been used and abused by many groups and individuals to promote ideas and ideology that have nothing to do with orthodox Christianity. For many people today the Cross has been reduced to an item of fashion often worn in conjunction with immodest attire and pagan symbolism such as tattoos. Thank God most of these fashion items do not carry the Corpus of Christ. How ironic that He is excluded from the very place where He makes most sense and shows the extent of His love for all mankind. Perhaps that is no accident. As for Christ crucified on a Swastika many people would simply use it as yet another excuse to attack the ways of the church. What a waste of time this has been - f0r those who believe and trust in our Pope no reply was really necessary. Why would my opinion make a difference?

 

Joe, I have to take exception to something you just wrote:

I have thought long and hard about this, read much on it and debated the question over the years. I believe the correct answer is that no one was responsible for Jesus' crucifixion.

The greatest error I see today (or one of them, anyway), is diffusion of responsibility. If a company's actions result in someone's death, we can't punish the board that voted on the action, we have to find the person, the ONE individual, who said "yes, let's perform evil." Instead, we have boards who make public votes with plausible deniability that, "We didn't know this would happen." And when people die, or they lose their life savings and are forced from their homes, regulators dither for years and finally give up trying to pin the crimes on one person, or perhaps they'll find one person who had some degree of guilt and use that person as the sacrificial lamb to appease the mobs, quiet down the regulators, and let us get back to making money.

The Sanhedrin voted (in an illegal session using illegal means) to have Jesus killed for making Himself the Son of God. Here is the beginning: no one, not even his own followers, were willing to risk anything by standing up before the crowd and say, "This is wrong! This man is innocent!" Next, the priests went to Pilate and accused him of a different crime, one sure to get him executed: they accused him of making himself a rival to Caesar. Pilate saw through their efforts and wanted to find Jesus innocent, but when the priests threatened to let Caesar know Pilate let this crime go unpunished, he caved. He did not declare Jesus guilty or innocent, he simply and literally washed his hands of Jesus' fate, putting that fate in the hands of His enemies.

So it wasn't the fault of the Jews, it wasn't the fault of the Romans, it was no one's fault -- diffusion of responsibility. And by making it no one's fault, it becomes the fault of ALL of us.

 

What a waste of time this has been - f0r those who believe and trust in our Pope no reply was really necessary. Why would my opinion make a difference?

Please keep posting Joe!!!!
you have a DEEP spiritual insite for sure and I know this is a fact! Post away Joe your in the Lords hands

 

No offence taken at all IJop.
Can you not see that you are judging me? you cant judge a homosexual seeking Christ but you can judge me?
My beliefs are not based on private revelation.
Private revelation on the other hand does tend to back me up.