Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed by thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but give us advice.
What happens if God’s advice, like heresy, goes in one ear and out the other?
Old Life 
Darryl,
Thank you for this. Looks like Rome is as perspicuous as ever.
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Some people like talking (blogging) because they love hearing the sound of their own voice.
Yep, thanks Darryl.
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PS
Even our Lord seems to have had an opinion re: brevity..
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Darryl,
Man I love Rod Dreher sometimes. He pointed me to this article. You’ve got to blog about it:
http://theweek.com/article/index/261033/catholics-must-learn-to-resist-their-popes–even-pope-francis
Some money quotes:
Unlike a party, the church already knows the outcome of its election; the blessed reign, the accursed don’t. The church already has victory. And so the church and its believers do not depend on the righteousness of the pope; the papacy and the church depend on the righteousness of Christ. The Catholic faith teaches that the pope has the same duty to remain constant in the faith as we do, the Holy Spirit doesn’t turn him into an automaton upon his election. If he lies, we must rebuke him in charity. If he fails at something, we should help him. He ain’t just the Catholic heavy, he’s our brother.
Church members have assurance that comes from God not Rome, the type that if it ever sunk in would prepare them for martyrdom.
In truth, the most salient fact of contemporary Catholic life in the West is the way it is pervaded by the pattern of saying things and then acting as if something else were true.
The audacity of pope indeed.
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Apparently Cross doesn’t understand what prayer is. Nor does he understand the difference between union and communion (as in we don’t lose our union with God but occasionally and temporarily losing communion with God).
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I wanna see Muller reign in the U.S. nuns. I double dog dare him. That’ll be one neutered German. Don’t mess with the sweat, mothballs and butch cut crowd.
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Sean,
The whole LCWR thing is quite fascinating. James White has said that JPII when he was in office tended to say something one year that the conservatives would like and one thing the next that the liberals would like; essentially, that he threw a bone to each in order to keep the whole thing together. (He referred to the whole thing as a flotilla—a brilliant metaphor, I think). What do you think of that? I get the sense that is what Rome is trying to do sometimes, but then I read your comments and look at what the church is actually like in practice, and it seems that the radical traditionalists and conservatives are mostly irrelevant. But its hard for me as someone who has never been RC to tell.
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Robert, before 1992, I can’t say I ever encountered a trad. If the internet is a guide, then they exist. But, they exist as little more than a bump in the road. After Vat II, Francis is the type of RC we were ALL ‘catechized’ to be. Ratzinger may have been upset after the student revolts, but he and pope Paul were about it. And even Ratzinger drank deeply of the higher critics, so, we need to use ‘trad-conservative’ narrowly-contra Kung. If you want to know where the RCC lives, follow the money and vocations. The RCC wheel doesn’t turn without both. If the trads are moneyed and consecrating their children in droves to the religious orders like entire countries used to do; Ireland, Poland, Spain, Mexico, etc., then they will have their day. If not then they will die along with Ratzinger, with a whimper.
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Robert, for example, Conrad Hilton is backing LCWR. Who does Muller have as his benefactor?
“National Catholic Sisters Week is part of the Catholic Sisters Initiative, which is an effort being funded by a generous grant from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. See the National Catholic Sisters Week website for more information.”
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There is a difference between a federal relation of Christ and elect, so that Christ bore ALL their sins and also obtains for them all blessings (impetration) and yet this remission of sins and these blessings are not yet given to all the justified elect (some of those blessings have not been given to any of the elect yet).. There is a difference between the just payment/purchase and the legal application by imputation. But the application is first legal. The Spirit is not the one who gives Christ. Christ is the one who gives the Spirit. The Father is the one who gives the Son.
For Byron Cross this is dangerous doctrine, because what’s important to him is what good people we ‘really actually” become. Since I don’t have that hope going for me, I am putting all my trust in Christ’s law work, His death as satisfaction for my sins, past and future….I do not confess my sins in order to allow God to not impute those sins to me. I do not make the work of Christ of none effect. If Christ died only to make the forgiveness of my sins possible if I permit God to do so, then Christ died for nothing. The Roman Catholics teach a counterfeit Christ who is an idol on which they build for themselves a righteousness of their own construction. And then thank “god’s grace” for….
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What Mark M said: Awesome
As AB would say: “Boom”
And while they’re working themselves up to be good enough via the never-ending, sacramentalism that never saves, they still have Purgatory to attain the good enough-ness that Christ couldn’t accomplish for them. Yippee.
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Not only puritan experimentalists (Paul Washer) but also Reformed nomists (Peter Leithart) move the “purgatory” into this life. Max Weber called it a work-ethic to confirm to ourselves that we are elect, but the “federal vision” sect rejects the idea of “evidence” and puts the onus on us to not break our union with Christ and lose our election.
The good book The Persistence of Purgatory (Richard K Fenn) traces Western attitudes toward time back to the myth of Purgatory. As popular understandings of Purgatory became increasingly secularized, the lifespan of the individual in this age became correspondingly purgatorial. No time could be wasted on golf or watching the Spurs.
Fenn demonstrates the impact of Purgatory on the preaching of Richard Baxter and William Channing. “Covenantal nomists” will always talk about a “difference” between a paradigm with strict quid pro quo conditions and the “in the covenant now” situation with more relaxed rules..(Condign merit vs congruent merit)
There is a difference between the gospel that teaches that Christians are imparted with the divine nature and thus graciously enabled to meet “conditions in the covenant” (Augustine, command what you will and give what you command) and those who refuse any notion of “conditionality” except that which depends on Christ’s finished work of penal satisfaction distributed by God’s imputation, resulting in present justification of elect sinners before God.
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