Interview With Pope Francis In America Magazine

[Apotheoun]

One doesn't have to sugar coat anything, but you can choose to not start out with fire and brimstone. Words can be chosen carefully without compromising the truth.

Interestingly, in our discussion so far the only person who has mentioned hell and fire and brimstone is you.  :dance:

[Fidei Defensor]

Too simple a message becomes a mere slogan. The Church has always resisted that course, as its creeds - lengthy as they are - reveal.

Mark 10:21
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

 

Seems simple to me.

[Apotheoun]

Yes, that was the great sin of Christ. If only he had written more creeds, maybe he wouldn't have been killed.

All the creeds were written by Christ, because they were composed by the God-inspired Fathers - as we say in the East.

[Fidei Defensor]

Interestingly, in our discussion so far the only person who has mentioned hell and fire and brimstone is you.  :dance:

Point to you.

[Apotheoun]

 

Mark 10:21
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

 

Seems simple to me.

 

And is that all that Christ had to say? Aren't there four Gospels and 23 additional books in the New Testament?

[4588686]

Some people see somebody with their hand mashed down on the 'self-destruct' button and think that something deeper is going on.  That the compulsion towards self-immolation is a signal for depth or profundity.  

 

Some men just want to watch the world burn, as Alfred taught us.  And others just want to feel persecuted.  They're masochists.  And not the healthy masochists who can confine that yearning for a beating to the bedroom.  They're social or public masochists.  And, in the Roman Catholic Church, those people reside overwhelmingly in the Reactionary faction of the Church.  They like feeling stigmatized and estranged.  Because it makes them feel special.  despite their pious airs, it's all about them.  

 

So this frightens them.  They see a Pope getting praise in the presses.  They feel like their relationship with the Church hierarchy is getting stale.  They want to spice things up and bring back those old thrills.  But being masochists, they can't get a shiver in their spine if they're getting praised and validated.  They need a beating.  And in order to get the rough treatment they need they'll engage in self-destructive behavior.  Because it's not really about piety for them.  

 

Back away from those people, quickly.  

Edited September 20, 2013 by Hasan

[Seven77]

The most that any human being can do is lay the seeds for future growth. God alone can bring about conversion. My point is simply that the Church needs to preach the whole Christ and not a sugar-coated version found only in certain mainline Protestant sects. Should the preaching be joyful? Yes. Should it refrain from speaking the truth about man as revealed in Christ? No. Truth and love are inseparably bound together, and one without the other - as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross once said - is a lie.

 

Yes of course the Church needs to preach the whole truth… but sometimes in the manner of her Divine Bridegroom when he asked for a drink of water and went from there...

[Fidei Defensor]

And is that all that Christ had to say? Aren't there four Gospels and 23 additional books in the New Testament?

Jesus said surprisingly few things. Most everything else is his followers.

[Apotheoun]

Point to you.

I know you have experience reading my posts over the years, and I think you would admit that they would not be described as a "fire and brimstone" sermon. 

 

I do know that I have mentioned "fire" and "brimstone" before, because I wrote a post some years ago that basically said that God is "brimstone," because the Greek word translated as "brimstone" has as its root the word for "divinity." And as far as "fire" is concerned, I hold that the "fire" mentioned in scripture is God's love itself, which is the burning joy of the saints and the pain of those who have cut themselves off from Him through their own choices.

[Apotheoun]

Jesus said surprisingly few things. Most everything else is his followers.

Have you never owned a "red letter" Bible? Jesus said quite a lot.

Edited September 20, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Apotheoun]

Yes of course the Church needs to preach the whole truth… but sometimes in the manner of her Divine Bridegroom when he asked for a drink of water and went from there...

Jesus also had a tendency to turn over tables and call people "whited sepulchres." Let's not turn Him into the effeminate Christ of the mainline Churches.

[Fidei Defensor]

Have you never owned a "red letter" Bible? Jesus said quite a lot.

But not as much as one is lead to believe.  

 

Regardless, that's not the important part. The important part is that what he did say was simple enough that his followers could understand and chose to leave their lives behind to follow him.

[4588686]

Have you never owned a "red letter" Bible? Jesus said quite a lot.

 

 

Yeah.  And he railed against the powerful.  The modern church schmoozes with the powerful all the time and then says something homophobic to feel edgy.  

 

Pope Benedict is a great example of this.  He was supposedly morally courageous because he announced that he thought sodomy was gross.  He lashed out against a still largely stigmatized and persecuted segment of society and that was supposedly 'courageous.'  But when he met with Bush he didn't offer any public 'fraternal correction.'  He didn't call him out for instituting a system of international torture networks, for rushing into a war that killed tens of thousands of civilians and displaced and immiserated millions, for enacting economic policies that helped the rich soak up the wealth of a society.  No.  He let that little gnome hug him and use him as a prop to signify his role as a culture warrior for the religious right.  

 

That's why people find the Church repulsive.  

[Apotheoun]

But not as much as one is lead to believe.  

 

Regardless, that's not the important part. The important part is that what he did say was simple enough that his followers could understand and chose to leave their lives behind to follow him.

He also spoke in parables so that people could not easily grasp His meaning. He would then reveal the meaning to His apostles so that they could pass it on.

[Fidei Defensor]

He also spoke in parables so that people could not easily grasp His meaning. He would then reveal the meaning to His apostles so that they could pass it on.

What a jerk.