St Paul's Epistle to the Romans 12:2 - And be not conformed to this world; ...
From Catholic World Report
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“The crisis in the Church is man-made and has arisen because we have
cozily adapted ourselves to the spirit of a life without God,” the
cardinal told thousands of Catholics gathered in Phoenix for the 2020 Student Leadership Summit.
Phoenix, Ariz., Jan 1, 2020 / 09:27 am (CNA).- The crisis facing the Catholic Church today has arisen from an attempt – even by some within the Church – to align with the culture and abandon the teachings of the faith, said Cardinal Gerhard Müller Jan. 1.
“The crisis in the Church is man-made and has arisen because we have cozily adapted ourselves to the spirit of a life without God,” the cardinal told thousands of Catholics gathered in Phoenix for the 2020 Student Leadership Summit hosted by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS).
“The poison paralyzing the Church is the opinion that we should adapt to the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, and not the spirit of God, that we should relativize God’s commandments and reinterpret the doctrine of the revealed faith,” he said.
He cautioned that even a number of people in the Church are “longing” for a kind of Catholicism without dogmas, without sacraments, and without an infallible magisterium.
Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, celebrated Mass Jan. 1 for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. In his homily, he reflected on the human desire to embrace substitute gratifications when God is set aside.
“But the one who believes needs no ideology,” he said. The one who hopes will not reach for drugs. The one who loves is not after the lust of this world, which passes along with the world. The one who loves God and his neighbor, finds happiness in the sacrifice of self-giving.”
“We will be happy and free when in the spirit of love we embrace the form of life to which God has called each one of us personally: in the sacrament of marriage, in celibate priesthood, or in religious life according to the three evangelical counsels of poverty, obedience and chastity for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,” he continued.
Müller stressed that thanksgiving is a key part of the Christian life. At the start of the new year, he encouraged Catholics to voice gratitude for all of creation, for sending Christ into the world as our savior, for the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Catholic Church, the gift of family, and all the other blessings that can be easily taken for granted.
“As Christians, we have a musical awareness of life: In our hearts resounds the song of thanksgiving of being redeemed. Its melody is love, and its harmony is joy in God,” he said.
Rather than placing hope in fate, he said, the Christian recognizes that suffering is inevitable, but can still find joy in Christ, who also suffered and opened for us the door to eternal life.
In these challenging times, however, scandals in the Church and a crisis among traditionally Christian societies in the West have led many to anxiously wonder whether the rock on which Christ built his Church is crumbling, the cardinal said.
“For some, the Catholic Church is lagging behind by 200 years compared to where the world is today. Is there any truth to this accusation?”
Calls for modernization demand that the Church reject what it holds to be true, for the sake of building a “new religion of world unity,” Müller warned.
“In order to be admitted to this meta-religion, the only price the Church would have to pay is giving up her truth claim. No big deal, it seems, as the relativism dominant in our world anyway rejects the idea that we could actually know the truth, and presents itself as guarantor of peace between all world views and world religions.”
The post-Christian society welcomes these efforts to reconstruct the Church “as a convenient civil religion,” the cardinal said.
The antidote to secularization within the Church is a life of faith, lived in the enduring truth of Christ, Müller told those present.
God, who is eternal, cannot be changed by the whims of society, he stressed.
“In the concrete human being Jesus of Nazareth, God’s universal truth is concretely present here and now – in historical time and space,” Müller said. “Jesus Christ is not the representation of some supratemporal truth: He is ‘the way, the truth and the life’ in person.”
01 January 2020
2 comments:
Comments are subject to deletion if they are not germane. I have no problem with a bit of colourful language, but blasphemy or depraved profanity will not be allowed. Attacks on the Catholic Faith will not be tolerated. Comments will be deleted that are republican (Yanks! Note the lower case 'r'!), attacks on the legitimacy of Pope Francis as the Vicar of Christ (I know he's a material heretic and a Protector of Perverts, and I definitely want him gone yesterday! However, he is Pope, and I pray for him every day.), the legitimacy of the House of Windsor or of the claims of the Elder Line of the House of France, or attacks on the legitimacy of any of the currently ruling Houses of Europe.
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I've been quoting Romans 12:2 for years. Just imagine the letters to the Romans Paul would be writing today.
ReplyDeleteThe crisis in the OHC&A Church stems from VII (a bad council - Our Lady) & the false ecumenism it was founded on & vehemently implemented by consecutive popes & hierarchies to this day. We now know of the huge amount of Masonic/Marxist/Sodomites that were planted in the seminaries during the '30s & '40s by Bella Dodd who were allowed to fester & grow at an enormous rate due to church leaders wanting to suppress, for their own advantage, the gross indecencies being perpetrated by these perverse men. We are now devoid of our Old Rite Mass & most of the sacraments, bad catechesis, scant belief in the Real Presence, the Ten Commandments scoffed at, SSM & Abortion being condoned, married clergy & women priests being discussed, ecological sins replacing mortal sins which are now regarded as peccadillos. PF's profanities, material heresy, scandal, idolatry, abandonment of 7M Chinese Catholics to a Communist regime, signing of Abu Dhabi statement proclaiming that the diversity of religions is willed by God, yet our prelates continue to hesitate to denounce PF & all his appointees for what they are - Marxist/Masonic/Modernists. We are looking directly at the Gates of Hell & the only way of preventing the greatest of all schisms is to stand by Christ, which means bringing back PBXVI (a prisoner in the Vatican - Our Lady of Quito) to his rightful position as successor of St. Peter. I'm sure he & half the cardinals know that his resignation was not valid but yet they are still not prepared to take the necessary action their red hats permit. Their behaviour is truly scandalous!
ReplyDeleteIt would be much preferable for Cardinal Mueller to start issuing the formal correction with a