This passage is unironically giving me a mega-blackpill crisis of faith given what's going on in the church:
On one hand, in an intellectual way, I get it.The church militant is a hospital of sinners, not a temple of saints. There will be sinners. There will be sin. We were only promised that the church wouldn't fall, not that it wouldn't be under attack from both within and without. It has weathered arguably worse popes.
On the other hand, where's the break point? Part of me is worried that there is going to be either a formal or an informal schism if/when Francis or his immediate successor finally becomes guilty of manifest, formal heresy either accidentally or on purpose after being a bit too progressive, and it's not going to end well because where there was one church, there will now be two since there's no protocol nor historic precedent for what to do with a heretic in the seat of Peter. Both claiming to be the proper one, both necessarily filled with sinners, both hopelessly degraded beyond what we had even a few short decades ago.
And so I ask - how do you avoid writing off the RCC entirely? Their fruits seem increasingly rotten.
It's not only a Catholic problem. If you're gonna apply good fruit-bad fruit based on molestation cases, no Christian organization bears good fruit. In my mind, these degenerate priests and how they act have no influence on the truth of the deposit of faith the Church holds.
Mason Thomas
That seems more an argument in favor of writing them off then one against. Shouldn't the church.. be better somehow? Set itself apart?
Jaxon Thomas
The Church of the East recognized the Pope as a heretic in the 5th century, over the Council of Ephesus. The Oriental Orthodox Church recognized the Pope as a heretic in the 5th century, over the Council of Chalcedon. The Eastern Orthodox Church recognized the Pope as a heretic in the 15th century, over the Council of Florence. More recently, the Old Catholics recognized the Pope as a heretic over Vatican I, and the sedememers recognized the Pope as a heretic over Vatican II.
There have been plenty of instances where a group within the Catholic Church recognized the Pope as a heretic and cut him off from communion, believing themselves to be the legitimate continuation of the Church. Up to you to figure out who is the most consistent though.
Christian Butler
Christ promised that the gates of Hell would never prevail against the Church, and God will not allow His son to become a liar. God will intervene before we reach the breaking point. Unfortunately, we probably won't like the intervention. In the 70s a series of Marian apparitions in Akita, Japan, which the Church holds as valid, revealed to us that God is angry with an apostate Church, and that if the Church doesn't repent then He's going to bathe the Earth in fire, sparing neither the righteous nor the guilty, and that in the aftermath of this the living will envy the dead. Because if it's a choice between the death of the Church, and massive society-resetting destruction, the destruction is far preferable. The best thing we can do to make this destruction less likely is to pray the Rosary every day. So pray like the world depends on it, because it literally does.
Ayden Rogers
Except those affirmatives are true. Greentexting and muhposting are not arguments.
Caleb Walker
(checked) Absolutely 100000000% this
Please pray the rosary if you truly fear God and maybe our ever merciful Lord will have mercy on us and give us time to make things right.
The only consistent things in your timeline are the Pope and the existence of people who will lose faith in him.
Hudson Bennett
That is precisely why the sex abuse question is irrelevant when you discuss whether Catholicism is true or not. Most of the times people mention it in forms of whataboutism, anecdotes or victim narratives.
