Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” declares the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: “You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord. Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, declares the Lord. Jeremiah 23:1
I did not post the article to defend Francis as an orthodox pope but to draw attention to a potential schism focus in the Church, which is the synod of the German Church. each one has the right to his own opinion about the role of Francis in this synodal process, but I think that the majority will agree that this synod is the greatest threat to the unity of the Church in centuries.
considering that the visit of a pope to moscow will take place near the Warning, I believe that we can consider Francis' conversion possible because the signs of an imminent war between Russia and NATO make it likely to happen in his pontificate.
I didn't attribute any motive to your reason for posting the article other than sharing information. I'm sorry if my response gave you the wrong impression. As to schism, we already have a schism of faith. There are at least three factions in the Church: one faction believes what the Church has always held to be true; another believes that the Faith is changeable to suit the times; and another (the biggest faction) is waiting to see how the dust settles. Perhaps the third faction fancy themselves as modern day Gamaliels, thinking that if blessing sin is from God, it will prevail. I often wonder whether Gamaliel converted. Probably not or it would have been a big enough event to have been hailed by the Church fathers. If he didn't convert, did his caution benefit him? I doubt there will be any formal schism after the German synodal process. Cardinal Ladaria and the CDF have already covered the Pope's behind. The dubium they answered was most likely submitted for that purpose. The pattern has already been established with Amoris Laetia: Pope Francis will find a way to enable in pastoral practice what the Church condemns and what he claims to condemn. The true shepherds will either be persecuted or replaced. The faithless will forge ahead with a wink and nod from the Pope. The rest will blame the media for "misrepresenting" the Pope, the clergy for "disloyalty" to the Pope and the remnant faithful for their ignorance. Some of the fence sitters will go on and on about the Pope being our father and no matter what a father does, he must always be honoured and obeyed but never challenged or criticised in public. I wonder when I see such comments what would those people do if their father was a drug baron or a Mafia Don. Would they keep quiet, hoping that he would mend his ways while he brought death and destruction to countless families? Isn't that the situation we're in with our Holy Father? We are seeing the prophecy of St. Francis of Assisi playing out in real time. If I'm not mistaken, the Saint said that the destroyer Pope would come shortly before the end times. He's here, and he won't be standing beside us on our personal judgement day. The natural law is written on our hearts, so turning a blind eye to evil because the Pope does it isn't a get out of hell free card. Sorry for the rant. I don't know the solution other than to pray, especially that the Lord will strengthen our faithful clergy.
Yes. Exactly. Happening in "real time"--not a movie!!! God have mercy on us. Our culture and our Church are reaping the whirlwind.
Our Lady has always asked for many prayers for priests. In Luke 22, Jesus tells Simon Peter that satan has demanded permission to sift him like wheat. "I don't know the solution other than to pray, especially that the Lord will strengthen our faithful clergy. "
It sure looks like Satan has done a very thorough job. With all the chaff in the Vatican, it's hardly worth his while to hang around there looking for wheat. Diana Montagna has the agenda for the Vatican's Body, Mind, Soul love-in with the eugenicists. https://twitter.com/dianemontagna/status/1383357276099022853 Edward Pentin quotes a Vatican apparatchik justifying this betrayal of the Church's sacred mission: "Msgr. Tafny of @VaticanCultura says it's "challenging" to have speakers opposed to Church teaching but "important to start talking to these people and not exclude them, to try to understand them and challenge them to understand us and our point of view". Challenging! They've been doing nothing but wining, dining and crawling to "these people" these past eight years, compromising the Faith at every opportunity, all to get high fives for the Pope from Satan's journalist minions and money for fake Catholic charities from billionaire "charitable" foundations using the poor as an excuse to reduce the world's population to whatever level they believe will keep them and their offspring in luxury and power. The only people being excluded from our Church these days are believing Catholics. Anyway, if the need speakers opposed to Church teaching, they need look no further than the Pope's inner circle. Throw a stone at them and you couldn't fail to hit a Cardinal, Bishop, priest or other Vatican luminary with plenty of practice opposing Church teaching. The Pope's own record of defending it is nothing to write home about. Then again, they're trotting him out at the end. No show without Punch. Edward Pentin also has news about the imprisoned Catholic in China, as well as clips of a BBC interview with the Pope's puppet master, the odious Jeffrey Sachs, and a response on the same programme from a Chinese man who actually knows, from bitter experience, something about his own country: https://twitter.com/edwardpentin?lang=en The guy who wrote the DaVinvi code should have waited a few years. If it weren't playing out in full view, we would pass off today's facts as less believable than his fiction. We've gone way past the over-used excuse "Peter denied Jesus three times". Peter feared for his life. Pope Francis is Babylon's hero. No fear of him being fed to the lions - he's far too useful to today's version of Nero. I'd best say no more.
I think the Germans and the one who currently occupies the chair of S. Peter are actually in the same camp. This is more like a soap opera to achieve a preconceived outcome, female "ordination".
I haven't watched this yet, but what happened to the Jesuits? How have they fallen so low from the faithful and zealous order they once were? I wonder if God is going to send a great Jesuit saint to reform the order...
Vatican summit on 'theology of the priesthood' will look at questions raised in recent synods Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops./ Franco Origlio/Getty Images News. By Courtney Mares Vatican City, Apr 12, 2021 / 07:00 am America/Denver (CNA). Cardinal Marc Ouellet announced Monday that the Vatican will host a theological symposium on the priesthood that will touch on questions raised in recent synods, including priestly celibacy, dwindling vocations, and the role of women in the Church. “Insight from Divine Revelation on the priesthood of Christ and the participation of the Church in this priesthood is a crucial question for our time,” Cardinal Ouellet said at a Vatican press conference on April 12. “During the synods on the family, on young people, and on the Church in Amazonia, questions regarding the priesthood and synodality were raised in all their magnitude, with an insistence on the reality of baptism, the basis of all vocations,” the cardinal said. “The time has come to prolong the reflection and to promote a vocational movement facilitating the sharing of the various Church experiences all over the planet.” The international theological symposium organized by the Congregation for Bishops will take place February 17-19, 2022 at the Vatican. Cardinal Ouellet, the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, said that the symposium, entitled “Toward a Fundamental Theology of the Priesthood,” will be open to all, but is especially intended for bishops and those interested in the theology of the priesthood. “Given the scope of this symposium, we hope it will mark a stage in the research of the Church and encourage new initiatives and publications,” Ouellet said. In his presentation of the 2022 theological summit on the priesthood, the cardinal said that the symposium will serve to clarify “a fundamental relationship between the priesthood of the baptized, which the Second Vatican Council has enhanced, and the priesthood of ministers, bishops and priests, which the Catholic Church has always affirmed and specified.” “This rapport is not to be taken for granted in our time, because it entails pastoral readjustments, and it involves ecumenical questions not to be ignored, as well as the cultural movements that question the place of women in the Church,” he added. When asked at the Vatican press conference whether the symposium will return to the debates from the 2019 Synod of Bishops on the Pan-Amazon Region on the ordination of mature, married men, sometimes called “viri probati,” Ouellet responded that priestly celibacy will not be the main focus of the summit, but said that the topic will be addressed. “We are very aware that the celibacy issue is important and it will be dealt with, but it will not be the central issue of the symposium,” Ouellet said. “It is not a symposium on priestly celibacy, as if this question had to be fundamentally taken up again, it is a broader perspective, starting with baptism.” Ouellet published a book on the uninterrupted tradition of priestly celibacy in the Latin rite in 2019: Friends of the Bridegroom: For a Renewed Vision of Priestly Celibacy. "We are all aware of the scarcity of vocations in many regions, as well as tensions on the ground due to divergent pastoral visions, challenges posed by multiculturalism and migrations, not to mention the ideologies that condition the witness of the baptized and the exercise of the priestly ministry in secularized societies," Ouellet said at the press conference. "In this context, how can we live a missionary conversion of all the baptized without a new awareness of the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church and to the world through the Risen Christ?" The cardinal said that the Second Vatican Council put the “priesthood of the baptized back in the foreground,” but that the “synthesis made by the Council has not entered the life of the Church.” “The symposium will serve to deepen this question. It is not just a question of the way of organization and division of functions, but of the mystery of the Church,” he said. https://catholicherald.co.uk/vatica...ll-look-at-questions-raised-in-recent-synods/
I posted this news here because it reminds me of a possible revival of the Amazon Synod that sparked so many divisions in the Church
Could you imagine if all the time and energy that goes into organizing these synods and Vatican meetings with frauds like Fauci and Co., instead went into honoring and organizing Our Lady of America's simple, decades-old request to have her statue solemnly processed into the National Shrine Basillica by the Bishops of America for the promised purpose of bringing about spiritual miracles greater than the physical miracles at Lourdes?
German priests defy Pope with public blessings of gay couples Since his election in 2013, Francis has contended with deepening divisions in the global church between conservatives and progressives. Picture: AFP By FRANCIS X. ROCCA THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 6:30PM MAY 7, 2021 Catholic clergy are preparing to bless gay couples across Germany in defiance of a recent Vatican ban on the practice, in the latest sign of how far liberal German Catholics are pushing the boundaries of the Vatican’s authority and teachings to forge a more progressive version of their church. Priests and some lay ministers are planning co-ordinated ceremonies blessing gay relationships in about 100 Catholic churches and other venues in Germany, including Essen Cathedral, over the next few days, most of them on Monday. Almost 20 events will be live-streamed. Such blessings have become common over the past decade in Germany and some other parts of northern Europe, but they have usually taken place quietly, in places other than churches. Monday’s highly visible ceremonies will mark a protest against a Vatican declaration in March, approved by Pope Francis, prohibiting the blessing of same-sex relationships on the grounds that God “cannot bless sin”. “It always has been a little bit kind of a secret,” said Christian Olding, a priest in the northwestern town of Geldern, who says he has blessed about 10 same-sex couples in the past eight years. “This is the first time that we are going this way in society, to do it visibly for everyone.” Since his election in 2013, Francis has contended with deepening divisions in the global church between conservatives, including in the US and Africa — who are uncomfortable with his more liberal approach to matters including divorce and homosexuality — and progressives, with Germany in the vanguard, who are impatient with what they see as a reluctance to back substantive change. The prohibition of gay blessings by the Vatican’s doctrinal office was seen in Germany as an example of that resistance to change. Vatican officials are anxious about a national synod of German Catholics, under way since last year, that is debating a number of overhauls, including the ordination of women, greater roles for laypeople in church governance, and the revision of church teaching on homosexuality. Conservative bishops in Germany, the US and elsewhere have warned that such changes could lead to a schism in the universal church. Francis and Vatican officials have more than once admonished German church leaders not to go their own way. The German synod “is an instrument to adapt the teaching of the Catholic Church to the demands of the Western world that has largely fallen away from God. It neither respects the apostolic tradition nor seems to care about the majority of faithful believers in the universal church,” said Gabriele Kuby, a German writer and sociologist. Matthias Kopp, spokesman for the German Bishops Conference, said such criticism reflected a lack of understanding of the synod’s aims and procedures. “Our bond with Rome and the Holy Father is very close,” Mr Kopp said. “The church in Germany is an integral part of the universal church.” The Vatican document on gay blessings, meant to bring the Germans into line, has brought the conflict further out into the open. Several German bishops, including the president of the national bishops’ conference, Georg Batzing of Limburg, criticised the document, as did a group of more than 200 prominent theologians. Catholic churches hung rainbow pride flags from their facades or bell towers, until then a rare practice. More than 700 priests and deacons signed a petition, along with thousands of lay church officials, insisting that they wouldn’t refuse a blessing if requested by gay couples. Some progressive Catholics say the Vatican document has changed their image of Francis, who until recently was known for his conciliatory words and gestures toward gay people, most famously his comment about gay priests: “Who am I to judge?” “Maybe the pope doesn’t have the strength to go further,” said Volker Nagel, a bank employee who lives in the southern German town of Worndorf. “Everybody hoped that something in the church would change with Pope Francis, but nothing has happened so far.” Mr Nagel’s 2018 marriage to Andreas Pfau will be blessed for the second time on Monday, by Mr Nagel’s brother, Father Armin Nagel. Conservatives see the May 10 event as a dangerous show of disobedience to church authority. “It is an enormous scandal, a terrifying sign of heresy, schism and the collapse of the church,” said German Cardinal Walter Brandmuller, who is retired and lives in the Vatican. “Priests, during their ordination to the priesthood, promise the bishop to teach truly the Catholic faith and now they are acting against that promise,” said Helmut Hoping, a professor of theology at the University of Freiburg. “Going back is not a possibility anymore … this will be a normal practice in the parishes to offer blessing services for homosexual couples.” Leading German bishops haven’t endorsed Monday’s planned protest. Bishop Batzing said that blessings “are not suitable as an instrument of church-political manifestations or protest actions.” But they haven’t threatened to discipline clergy who take part. Father Olding’s superior, Bishop Felix Genn of Münster, has said he won’t punish priests who bless same-sex couples. The Vatican didn’t respond to requests for comment. Klaus Nelissen, one of the organisers of the Germany-wide blessings, said Monday was chosen because that is traditionally a priest’s day off. “No bishop can tell them not to do it, since they are doing it on their own time,” Mr. Nelissen said. The German synod, which meets again this fall and is expected to conclude in October of 2022, is likely to vote for blessings for same-sex couples, said Joachim Frank, a journalist who holds a leadership position on the Central Committee of German Catholics, the lay body that is running the synod along with the German bishops’ conference. Frank says it is less clear whether same-sex blessings can garner support from two-thirds of the bishops, needed to approve final resolutions. But he believes that priests will continue to perform such blessings regardless and that German Catholics will continue to press for other progressive changes, such as women clergy. “The current discussion might lead to a historic development: the truly positive recognition of responsible sexuality in Germany’s Catholic Church,” said Birgit Mock, vice-president of the Catholic German Women’s Federation, who is co-directing the section of the synod on sexuality, during a panel discussion last week. Francis has created a new atmosphere of openness to discussing change, despite his caution reflected in the Vatican document on gay blessings, Mr Frank said. “This is the crucial point about the historical change under Pope Francis,” Mr Frank said: “These discussions are unsuppressable.” The Wall Street Journal https://www.theaustralian.com.au/wo...s/news-story/014da35e6473ae68d7f284398055cd35
In the latest clip from Edward at the link above, Chelsea Clinton offers her "personal opinion" that the thought police need to clamp down on naysayers! At least she requested this action with a smile on her face. How reasonable! Lord have Mercy!
