Could God Still Use Prophets Today?

[HS_Dad]

[quote name='JeffCR07' post='1147373' date='Dec 22 2006, 11:00 AM']
All of this having been said, it is possible for us to understand the term "prophet" in a different (and more historically accurate) way. Originally, the word "prophet" simply meant someone who speaks for someone else. Thus, God tells Moses that he will become His prophet, and that [i]Aaron[/i] would be [i]Moses'[/i] prophet to the people. This is because Moses would speak (be prophet for) God and Aaron would speak (be prophet for) Moses.

Now, in this more traditional sense, then of course there are still prophets. Anyone who speaks the Word of God truly and gives testimony to Christ and the Church is a prophet.

[/quote]

The Catholic Church teaches that there is a "hierarchy of truths"... At times, the hierarchy can get out of whack
in a time or a place as focus or culture changes. A "prophet" could be one who speaks unpopular truths that are needs to help bring things back into focus. In this sense some of the founders of religious orders were prophets or theologians whose teachers are first treated poorly but then eventually received fully into the church, etc.

For example, perhaps John Paul II was a prophet for saying so strongly that communism was an inhumane system when many (in and out of the church) wanted to just get along with communism.

Eventually, walls fell down (Berlin) as a result of proclamation.

[Resurrexi]

Public Revelation was consummated at the death of John the Apostle, so there are going to be no more prophets.

[quote name='Introduction to L. Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma']With Christ and the Apostles General Revelation concluded. (sent. certa.)

Pope Pius X rejected the liberal Protestant and Modernistic doctrine of the evolution of religion through "New Revelations." Thus he condemned the proposition that: "The Revelation, which is the object of Catholic Faith, was not terminated with the Apostles." D 2021.

The clear teaching of Holy Writ and Tradition is that after Christ, and the Apostles who proclaimed the message of Christ, no further Revelation will be made. Christ was the fulfilment of the Law of the Old Testament (Mt. 5, 17 ; 5, 21 et seq), and the absolute teacher of humanity (Mt. 23, 10: "One is your master, Christ" ; cf. Mt. 28, 20). The Apostles saw in Christ: "the coming of the fullness of time" (Gal. 4, 4) and regarded as their task the preservation, integral and unfalsified, of the heritage of Faith entrusted to them by Christ (1 Tim. 6, 14; 6,20; 2 Tim.1, 14; 2,2; 3,14). The Fathers indignantly repudiated the claim of the heretics to possess secret doctrines or new Revelation of the Holy Ghost. St. Irenaeus (Adv. haer III 1 ; IV 35, 8), and Tertullian (De praesc. 21) stress, against the Gnostics, that the full truth of Revelation is contained in the doctrine of the Apostles which is preserved unfalsified through the uninterrupted succession of the bishops.

b) As to the Formal side of dogma, that is, in the knowledge and in the ecclesiastical proposal of Revealed Truth, and consequently also in the public faith of the Church, there is a progress (accidental development of dogmas) which occurs in the following fashion:

1) Truths which formerly were only implicitly believed are expressly proposed for belief. (Cf. S. th. I; II, 1, 7 : quantum ad explicationem crevt numerus articulorum (fidei), quia quaedam explicite cognita sunt a posterioribus, quae a prioribus non cognoscebantur explicite. There was an increase in the number of articles believed explicitly since to those who lived in later times some were known explicitly, which were not known explicitly by those who lived before them.)

2) Material Dogmas are raised to the status of Formal Dogmas.

3) To facilitate general understanding, and to avoid misunderstandings and distortions, the ancient truths which were always believed, e.g., the Hypostatic Union (unio hypostatica), Transubstantiation, etc., are formulated in new, sharply defined concepts.

4) Questions formerly disputed are explained and decided, and heretical propositions are condemned. Cf. St. Augustine, De civ. Dei 2, 1 ; ab adversario mota quaestio discendi existit occasio (a question moved by an adversary gives an occasion for learning). [/quote]