Gosh. This is pure gold! Were my own parish priest to give such a homily, the whole nature of the spirituality within our local Church parish would change. People would weep in the very pews for their sins and negligences!!
Perfect!!! And what a tragedy that our own Holy Father has let us down time and time again with poor example, poor communication, poorly worded Church teachings and slow response times to criticise those who mock Christ and His Sacraments.
The reason the Reformers didn’t acknowledge the apocryphal books as Inspired is because they weren’t included in the Hebrew Tanakh. The books are excellent Jewish history but not on par with the Law, Prophets and Writings.
It's important to take the books for what they are. The book of Judith, for instance, is essentially a work of fantasy and while it's a fun read, I wouldn't put it in there as part of the Word of God. The books of the Maccabees, however, are an extremely valuable history outlining yet another fight for Jewish independence, and I might venture to say we have them to thank for the circumstances that enabled Jesus to have the ministry that he had.
But let's ignore the pope endorsed mass slaughter that was all of the crusades the Catholic church is about love people, more people have been murdered in the name of God than anything else, but love they neighbor
That's exactly how I feel about God's mercy. We need to be gentle on ourself after a fall and not beat ourself up. Then confess when we get the chance and trust implicitly in God's most profound and healing mercy. Which is more sublime than we will or can ever imagine.
Great explanation. One can also refer to the Scripture passage where Jesus states quite clearly that one doesn't get into the reception hall without a wedding garment. Meaning ... no Baptism = no salvation. Pretty clear!
Protestant sects of Christianity exist because people disagreed with how the Catholic Church was running things. Similar to how Christianity exists because the main character, Jesus, didn't agree with how people were behaving within his faith. Indulgences (paying money to essentially buy favor with God), holding Mass in a language only the clergy understood, and not having the Bible unavailable though most people attending church were not allowed to read. Add to this the fact that the church owned land and had tenant farmers who they took huge percentages of their money, livestock, supplies, and inventory while the farmers themselves were malnourished and barely scraping by with their families. The Bible was compiled from SELECTED writings by a council - the books within are not the only ones and in being hand picked it can be argued that they were selected to push a narrative in contrast to what the collected works as a whole would have shown. If you are interested in Theology, there are many great resources out there to learn more. The more you learn about Theology, the more you understand context, history, and the broader landscape in which your chosen path of religion resides. We are all more connected than we think.
Born and raised Catholic. I still shake my head when so called Christians tell me that I need to be saved. I tell them yup. I need to be saved from people like you.
