Here is something I just don't understand. We freely criticize the president, but no one is claiming anyone here is anti-American, or unpatriotic.
In some areas, it seems, open discussion is not acceptable.
Why can't a discussion of the Vatican or any officials appointed there, be held as completely separate from the private choices of individual Catholics?
This current pope has one of the best books on Christ I have ever read. I have read now many of the desert fathers, patristic fathers, the saints and other Christian theology but his fellow was quite good at going beyond just mere Christianity. I loved him for his intelligence and depth of understanding the word of God. I was a protestant for a good 50 years and became a recent convert to Catholicism because of the eucharist and the connections to the true body and blood. I do not want to give the impression that I am a cheerleader for the Catholic way, but give the fellow a break by not casting a stone unless you know the fellow a little.
If we substutute the word "Catholic" for the word "Samaritan" in the Gospels, perhaps we will see that the Lord wishes to address and correct our condescending religious prejudices.
For instance, in the parable of the Good Catholic, we may see the first person who walks by and leaves the man to die as a "born again Christian."
You say, that's not what the parable teaches, but indeed it is. Those first century Levites were the Evangelical, Bible-believers of their day. Jesus would've perhaps sided with their theology, but He did not side with their unkind judgmental attitude toward the Samaritans, a group they viewed as inferior.
Who was the neighbor to the man?
Come on, force yourself to say it..."the Catholic."
Before the law, abstain from blood. Under the law, abstain from blood. In Acts, abstain from blood.
Now the Eucharist has a priest take fermented wine and a cookie, say hocus pocus, and shazam, he calls Christ from heaven, crucifies him again, and magically transforms the cookie into Christ's flesh and the wine into his blood, which we were commanded to abstain from.
So, once again, what happens to Christ after his blood and flesh go through the human digestive process?
You got it. Holy crap.
It is figurative, not literal. We are not cannibals, and we receive Christ by faith, not a cookie from a priest who is likely a sodomite. Moreover, the priesthood ended when when the veil was torn from top to bottom after Jesus died on the cross, showing that we could boldly approach the throne of grace, without the need of a priest.
Jesus Christ was a prophet here. He is now our Great High Priest, and he will return as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
The Eucharist is simply an Egyptian/Babylonian carryover that blended the pagan religions of sun worship into Christianity, and the outcome was the RCC.
There was a thread here somewhere that I can not find talking about the reconstruction of the EU and the old Roman Empire. The next Pope is to be Petrus Romanus.
just saying