Pope says Catholic Church is Only True Church ?????
Pope says: Other Christian Denominations Not True Churches. There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, says Pope.
(It is one of the severe persecutions towards Jesus Christ and His people who cleansed by His precious blood)
Tuesday, July 10, 2007.
persecution4christ
LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy — For the second time in a week, Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church and saying other Christian communities were either defective or not true churches. (Translation: if you’re not a Roman Catholic, then you’re not a Christian).
Benedict approved a document released Tuesday from his old office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which repeated church teaching on Catholic relations with other Christians.
While there was nothing doctrinally new in the document (that other born again Christian have been ignoring for years), it nevertheless prompted swift criticism from Protestants, Lutherans and other Christian denominations spawned by the 16th century reformation.
"It makes us question the seriousness with which the Roman Catholic Church takes its dialogues with the Reformed family and other families of the church," said the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which groups 75 million Reformed Christians in 214 churches in 107 countries. (Well, that’s the problem; these non-Catholic Christian Churches have been trying to become one with the false Church of Rome for too many years. Instead of continuing to denounce the false teaching of the Catholic Church they have been trying to become one brotherhood with the religion of Idols, the Catholic Church.)
"It makes us question whether we are indeed praying together for Christian unity," the alliance said in a letter to the Vatican's key ecumenical official, Cardinal Walter Kasper, charging that the document took ecumenical dialogue back to the pre-Vatican II era. (There it is clear as a bell, trying to unify with the Church of Rome; a church full of false doctrines like Purgatory- not found in the Bible.)
Another key change was the development of the New Mass in the vernacular, which essentially replaced the old Latin Mass. On Saturday, Benedict revived the old Latin Mass, saying it was wrong for bishops to deny it to the faithful because it had never been abolished. Traditional Catholics cheered the move, but more liberal ones called it a step back from Vatican II.
Benedict, who attended Vatican II as a young theologian, has long complained about what he considers the erroneous interpretation of the council by liberals, saying it was not a break from the past but rather a renewal of church tradition.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said it was issuing the new document on ecumenism because some contemporary theological interpretations of Vatican II's ecumenical intent had been "erroneous or ambiguous" and had prompted confusion and doubt.
The new document -- formulated as five questions and answers -- restates key sections of a 2000 text the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, "Dominus Iesus," which riled Protestant, Lutheran and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation." (There you have it folks: The Catholic Church has been very clear on this matter for centuries. They claim that salvation is only through the Catholic Church – basically not through only Jesus Christ.)
"Christ 'established here on earth' only one Church," said the document released as the pope vacations at a villa in Lorenzago di Cadore, in Italy's Dolomite mountains. (That means, to them, the Catholic Church is the only true church.)
The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession -- the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles (Funny; neither can the Catholic Church)-- and therefore their priestly ordinations are not valid, it said. (The Bible says that all Christians are kings and priests in Christ Jesus.)
The document said some Orthodox churches (Russian Orthodox, Greek Ortholox) were indeed "churches" because they have apostolic succession and that they enjoyed "many elements of sanctification and of truth." But it said they lack something because they do not recognize the primacy of the pope -- a defect, or a "wound" that harmed them, it said.
"This is obviously not compatible with the doctrine of Primacy which, according to the Catholic faith, is an 'internal constitutive principle' of the very existence of a particular Church," said a commentary from the congregation which accompanied the text.
Despite the harsh tone of the documents, they stressed that Benedict remains committed to ecumenical dialogue.
"However, if such dialogue is to be truly constructive it must involve not just the mutual openness of the participants but also fidelity to the identity of the Catholic faith," the commentary said.
The top Protestant cleric in Benedict's homeland, Germany, complained that the Vatican apparently did not consider that "mutual respect for the church status" was required for any ecumenical progress. ECUMENISM (according to the Pope): Trying to get all churches together as one, under the Catholic Church.
In a statement headlined "Lost Chance," Lutheran Bishop Wolfgang Huber argued that "it would also be completely sufficient if it were to be said that the reforming churches are 'not churches in the sense required here' or that they are 'churches of another type' -- but none of these bridges is used in the 'answers."
The document, signed by the congregation prefect, American Cardinal William Levada, was approved by Benedict on June 29, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul -- a major ecumenical feast day.
There was no indication why the pope felt it necessary to release the document, particularly since his 2000 document summed up the same principles. Some analysts suggested it could be a question of internal church politics, or that the Congregation was sending a message to certain theologians it did not want to single out. Or, it could be an indication of Benedict using his office as pope to again stress key doctrinal issues from his time at the Congregation.
In fact, the only theologian cited by name in the document for having spawned erroneous interpretations of ecumenism was Leonardo Boff, the Brazilian who was a target of the former Cardinal Ratzinger's crackdown on liberation theology in the 1980s.
LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy — For the second time in a week, Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church and saying other Christian communities were either defective or not true churches. (Translation: if you’re not a Roman Catholic, then you’re not a Christian).
Benedict approved a document released Tuesday from his old office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which repeated church teaching on Catholic relations with other Christians.
While there was nothing doctrinally new in the document (that other born again Christian have been ignoring for years), it nevertheless prompted swift criticism from Protestants, Lutherans and other Christian denominations spawned by the 16th century reformation.
"It makes us question the seriousness with which the Roman Catholic Church takes its dialogues with the Reformed family and other families of the church," said the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which groups 75 million Reformed Christians in 214 churches in 107 countries. (Well, that’s the problem; these non-Catholic Christian Churches have been trying to become one with the false Church of Rome for too many years. Instead of continuing to denounce the false teaching of the Catholic Church they have been trying to become one brotherhood with the religion of Idols, the Catholic Church.)
"It makes us question whether we are indeed praying together for Christian unity," the alliance said in a letter to the Vatican's key ecumenical official, Cardinal Walter Kasper, charging that the document took ecumenical dialogue back to the pre-Vatican II era. (There it is clear as a bell, trying to unify with the Church of Rome; a church full of false doctrines like Purgatory- not found in the Bible.)
Another key change was the development of the New Mass in the vernacular, which essentially replaced the old Latin Mass. On Saturday, Benedict revived the old Latin Mass, saying it was wrong for bishops to deny it to the faithful because it had never been abolished. Traditional Catholics cheered the move, but more liberal ones called it a step back from Vatican II.
Benedict, who attended Vatican II as a young theologian, has long complained about what he considers the erroneous interpretation of the council by liberals, saying it was not a break from the past but rather a renewal of church tradition.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said it was issuing the new document on ecumenism because some contemporary theological interpretations of Vatican II's ecumenical intent had been "erroneous or ambiguous" and had prompted confusion and doubt.
The new document -- formulated as five questions and answers -- restates key sections of a 2000 text the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, "Dominus Iesus," which riled Protestant, Lutheran and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation." (There you have it folks: The Catholic Church has been very clear on this matter for centuries. They claim that salvation is only through the Catholic Church – basically not through only Jesus Christ.)
"Christ 'established here on earth' only one Church," said the document released as the pope vacations at a villa in Lorenzago di Cadore, in Italy's Dolomite mountains. (That means, to them, the Catholic Church is the only true church.)
The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession -- the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles (Funny; neither can the Catholic Church)-- and therefore their priestly ordinations are not valid, it said. (The Bible says that all Christians are kings and priests in Christ Jesus.)
The document said some Orthodox churches (Russian Orthodox, Greek Ortholox) were indeed "churches" because they have apostolic succession and that they enjoyed "many elements of sanctification and of truth." But it said they lack something because they do not recognize the primacy of the pope -- a defect, or a "wound" that harmed them, it said.
"This is obviously not compatible with the doctrine of Primacy which, according to the Catholic faith, is an 'internal constitutive principle' of the very existence of a particular Church," said a commentary from the congregation which accompanied the text.
Despite the harsh tone of the documents, they stressed that Benedict remains committed to ecumenical dialogue.
"However, if such dialogue is to be truly constructive it must involve not just the mutual openness of the participants but also fidelity to the identity of the Catholic faith," the commentary said.
The top Protestant cleric in Benedict's homeland, Germany, complained that the Vatican apparently did not consider that "mutual respect for the church status" was required for any ecumenical progress. ECUMENISM (according to the Pope): Trying to get all churches together as one, under the Catholic Church.
In a statement headlined "Lost Chance," Lutheran Bishop Wolfgang Huber argued that "it would also be completely sufficient if it were to be said that the reforming churches are 'not churches in the sense required here' or that they are 'churches of another type' -- but none of these bridges is used in the 'answers."
The document, signed by the congregation prefect, American Cardinal William Levada, was approved by Benedict on June 29, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul -- a major ecumenical feast day.
There was no indication why the pope felt it necessary to release the document, particularly since his 2000 document summed up the same principles. Some analysts suggested it could be a question of internal church politics, or that the Congregation was sending a message to certain theologians it did not want to single out. Or, it could be an indication of Benedict using his office as pope to again stress key doctrinal issues from his time at the Congregation.
In fact, the only theologian cited by name in the document for having spawned erroneous interpretations of ecumenism was Leonardo Boff, the Brazilian who was a target of the former Cardinal Ratzinger's crackdown on liberation theology in the 1980s.
No comments:
Post a Comment