Pope Leo X on Luther and Lutherans

"Moreover, because the preceding errors and many others are contained in the books or writings of Martin Luther, we likewise condemn, reprobate, and reject completely the books and all the writings and sermons of the said Martin, whether in Latin or any other language, containing the said errors or any one of them; and we wish them to be regarded as utterly condemned, reprobated, and rejected. We forbid each and every one of the faithful of either sex, in virtue of holy obedience and under the above penalties to be incurred automatically, to read, assert, preach, praise, print, publish, or defend them. They will incur these penalties if they presume to uphold them in any way, personally or through another or others, directly or indirectly, tacitly or explicitly, publicly or occultly, either in their own homes or in other public or private places..."

--Pope Leo X, Exsurge Domine

Read More at St. Louis Catholic

Link:

• The Pope on Luther and Lutherans
• CONDEMNING THE ERRORS OF MARTIN LUTHER

German Protestants apologise for Reformation iconoclasm

By Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

(The Tablet) The German Protestant Church (EKD) has apologised for the widespread destruction of religious images during the Reformation.

“The Protestant Church rejects the destruction of images. Images have long since become an expression of Protestant piety,” Protestant Bishop Petra Bosse-Huber underlined at a meeting of delegations from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the EKD. The clerics met in Hamburg to discuss the word “image” from the Orthodox and Protestant points of view. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and EKD chairman Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm sent greetings and blessings to the Hamburg meeting.

Destroying image was most common in the immediate aftermath of the Reformation. In the first half of the sixteenth century, statues of the Virgin and the saints, stained-glass windows, organs and any objects associated with miracles and the supernatural were removed from Catholic churches and wayside chapels and in many cases destroyed. Switzerland, the Netherlands, England and southern Germany suffered particularly... (continued)

Read More Here

Link:

• German Protestants apologise for Reformation iconoclasm

Presbyterian Pastor: “I Love Planned Parenthood.” Calls Abortion Business a “Ministry”

By Carole Novielli

(LifeNews.com) The president of the largest chain of abortion clinics in the United States is thanking “Faith Leaders” for standing with them.

In a tweet by Planned Parenthood president, Cecile Richards, recently released she states, “So grateful to the many faith leaders who stand with Planned Parenthood and our patients. http://ppact.io/1IIU4QF Thank you, @awkukla!”



@awkukla is Andrew Kukla, who describes himself as a , “Presby minister, love philosophy and Kierkegaard in particular, dad of four young kids, and I live in Boise, ID,” on his twitter page. The link takes you to a post written by the Presbyterian pastor which calls what Planned Parenthood does “a ministry“.

He titled the blog post, “I (heart) Planned Parenthood.” Hard to believe? Read for yourself:

“I heart Planned Parenthood. I love these people who do not care what others will label them or say about them or even say to them. They care too much about people and too much about life to let hate and ignorance hold them back. As a Christian I am called to grace, forgiveness, mercy… and building up of those who life has torn down. And from all I learned today, some of the greatest practitioners of that are the people working at Planned Parenthood. So I say it proudly: I love Planned Parenthood. I love the people that are Planned Parenthood. I love their ministry”.

Planned Parenthood has proudly posted about this this Pastor on a blog they entitled, “Pastor loves Planned Parenthood.”

The blog makes it clear that the Rev. Andrew Kukla loves the killer of unborn children and some women like 24 year-old Tonya Reaves who was left to bleed for 5 hours after her abortion.
And, why does the delusional Rev. Kukla “love” Planned Parenthood? For “fighting for life.”

REALLY?

“What I love is the dedicated staff of people who are doing the ministry of caring for people. Fighting for people. Fighting for life,” he writes.

He then calls Planned Parenthood “resurrection workers.”

“I walked out of a meeting this morning at a Planned Parenthood office/clinic and saw a lone protestor holding a sign that said, “They kill babies here.” I have a lot of thoughts about that sign but I will restrain myself. Here is what I thought that is most relevant: This is resurrection work. No, not the sign carrier. The people I love at Planned Parenthood. They are resurrection workers.”

Rev. Andrew Kukla is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church Boise, Idaho.



Despite that the Word of God is full of scriptures against the killing of the innocent, this Pastor supports Planned Parenthood. Even more ironic, is that one of his recent blog posts was entitled, ““Cherry Picking” Scripture.” This man will have to answer to God for what he is doing.

In the words of our Lord Jesus Christ from Matthew 18, “If anyone causes one of these little ones–those who believe in me–to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Unfortunately, this heretic pastor and church is not alone.

I recently blogged about a Presbyterian Church in Louisiana which opened their doors to Planned Parenthood for support- read that post here. In addition, I also exposed the Planned Parenthood clergy letters encouraging abortion – shameful. Read that here.

LifeNews Note: Carole Novielli is the author of the blog Saynsumthn, where this article originally appeared.

Link:

• Presbyterian Pastor: “I Love Planned Parenthood.” Calls Abortion Business a “Ministry”

Pope Francis Becomes First Pope To Visit A Pentecostal Church In Outreach To Evangelicals

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Francis has become the first pope to visit a Pentecostal church, pressing his outreach to evangelicals who represent Catholicism's greatest competition for Christian souls around the globe.

Francis flew by helicopter Monday to visit the under-construction Pentecostal Church of Reconciliation in the southern city of Caserta. He met privately with a Pentecostal preacher who is an old friend, Giovanni Traettino.

Speaking to some 350 Pentecostal faithful in the church, Francis apologized for Catholic persecution of Pentecostals during Italy's fascist regime and stressed that there was unity in diversity within Christianity.

He acknowledged the remarkable nature of his visit, saying: "Someone will be surprised: 'The pope went to visit the evangelicals?' But he went to see his brothers."

Francis has met unofficially with several Pentecostal and evangelical preachers recently.

Link:

• Pope Francis Becomes First Pope To Visit A Pentecostal Church In Outreach To Evangelicals

Christ's Meaningless Words

By Michael Voris

Hello everyone and welcome to The Vortex where lies and falsehoods are trapped and exposed. I’m Michael Voris.

Picking up with yesterday’s theme .. the heresy of Protestantism has spawned the destruction of a nation.

The calculus is really very simple .. because Protestantism distorts the truth of Christ .. it will result in the perversion of morality .. which when played out over sufficient time ..will bring about the ruin of a nation.

Now .. case in point .. just one central point. A protestant pastor and I had a brief passing encounter at a radio station a couple of years ago. During our short encounter .. he made reference to my Catholicism and then said .. well what matters is that we all agree on the essentials.

Not having really heard that before .. I asked what he meant. His answer was revelatory indeed because it revealed a mindset of the very snake lying all coiled up under the Protestant table.

Listen to his answer. He said .. well , we shouldn’t waste time fussing over the nonessentials.

“What non-essentials?”, I asked, having never even thought that some points of Catholic doctrine were non-essential .. or even Protestant doctrine for that point. I think Martin Luther and John Calvin would take exception to this descendant of theirs would be referring to parts or some of their teachings as “non-essential”.

His response was nothing less than flat out stupid. He proposed that what Jesus said about divorce and remarriage was a “non-essential”. Imagine this for a moment.

Stop what you’re doing for five seconds and consider the full import here .. five seconds ..

[ five second countdown ]

Did your consideration carry you to the logical conclusions which must follow from his beliefs?

First .. God said a non-essential thing. Second, if he says ONE non-essential thing, how many more did He say? And if He did say more than one, how many MORE? And if he does utter non-essentials, how can we know which ones? Who determines which ones are non-essential? What’s the criteria for determining.

And on a philosophical note – why would the all perfect knowing Being blabber out nonessential things? What would be the point?

This whole stupid line of discussion is the direct result of the Protestant heresy .. and it has VERY REAL effects. It misleads souls in their ability to make moral choices .. moral choices that will determine their eternal destinies.

This farcical notion that some teachings of Almighty God’s are non-essential is the final destination of Protestantism .. because having declared that the Church He personally established is non-essential .. then how could they NOT arrive at the place they have come to now .. that other things He declared are non-essential.

I was in a 3 hour discussion this weekend with a young man who attends a Baptist congregation. When I asked him why he goes there, he said, he likes the way the preacher preaches.

A while later, he willingly offered up something that was decidedly non-Baptist and when I noted that his Baptist preacher wouldn’t agree with that, he said he doesn’t REALLY consider himself a Baptist.

When I asked him what he thought of Calvinism .. he scoffed and said he had bigger problems with Calvinism than he did with Catholicism. So when we got into a deeper discussion .. on a more philosophical level than theological .. but surely with theological consequences .. it became clear he was just making up his own religion.

Now to be fair .. he wasn’t saying that others had to believe his line of reasoning .. but he was giving his line of reasoning equal footing with any other religion .. especially Catholicism since that was the focus of our talk .. some Catholic doctrines.

At the end of the day .. for him .. it boiled down to the simple point that HE has the final say so in interpreting Scripture, teachings, and so forth. Interpretation of the word of God belongs to him and him alone FOR HIM - in short .. theological relativism.

And in the Protestant world .. of course it does. What Protestant can tell another Protestant that his opinion is wrong – based on what? In the Protestant heresy, there is no final arbiter of the truth, no final interpreter and for wimpy Catholics to refuse to talk about this or refuse to accept this horror and even more to challenge it is disgraceful.

It’s beyond disgraceful – it will be a point of shame for them when they stand before the judgment seat of God. God is truth and He desires and commands that truth be preached.

Protestantism is a heresy because .. like all heresies .. it distorts truth ever so subtly and prevents those who fall in its pit from reaching the fullness of the truth.

And that there Catholics who are not only aware of this perversion but attempt to silence by intimidation and insult and invective other Catholics who speak from GENUINE charity for the souls of those infected with heresy is perhaps one of the greatest failings of the past fifty years.

This false ecumenism .. the promotion or tolerance of religious parity has reigned down moral terror on this nation and many other nations.

Since so many of these religions offer competing and contradicting views of God .. truth .. morality .. how can they all be worthy of consideration? How can they all be viewed as equal or equally worthy?

They can’t. You cannot have one religion saying the words of Our Lord on the question of divorce and remarriage are non-essential and another saying they must be understood literally and lived by.

You can’t have one religion saying murdering children in the womb is a viable alternative .. however perhaps regrettable, while another says it is an unspeakable crime.

Likewise with so-called same-sex marriage .. In Vitro Fertilization .. contraception.

Yet we have Catholics .. CATHOLICS howling whenever these discrepancies and contradictions are pointed out.

They have drunk the koolaid of the religious relativism because they have a misplaced sense of compassion .. they are driven by their feelings and have switched off their intellects.

They have as horrible a sense and understanding of GOD Himself as the Protestant heresy that they have no problems with.

While this is understandable .. owing to the fact that the catechesis huge numbers of Catholics have received and still get pumped into them from clergy and religious has been essentially Protestant at its core .. that alone is not enough to let lukewarm Catholics off the hook.

They have eyes. They have ears. They can see parishes being closed down by the thousands .. vocations at a point of crisis .. family members leaving the faith in hordes.

And these objective realities demand an honest .. an intellectually honest evaluation.

Any Catholic who steps back and takes a level-headed honest look at where the Church is right now .. must conclude that the Protestant heresy has infected the Church to a tremendous degree .. much like Arianism did in the fourth century .. and a massive falling away from the faith has resulted.

This heresy must be fought against and the wimpy response of “don’t hurt people’s feelings” has to be taken on defeated as well. The Church on earth isn’t called the Church Militant for nothing.

GOD Love you,

I’m Michael Voris

Link:

• ChurchMilitant.TV

Holy Shoot

Churches offering gun training to attract members

By Justin Rocket Silverman

A neighbor’s sign “has been an attendance driver,” preacher Jeff Copley says of a critic of his church’s gun classes.

(The Daily) MARENGO, Ohio — Salvation isn’t automatic — but it might be semiautomatic.

In an effort to increase membership, a number of U.S. churches — including the Church of Christ congregation in this rural village 30 miles north of Columbus — are offering an unconventional public service: Concealed weapons training.

“Church has done a good job with coffee klatsches or whatever, but we haven’t really reached out to guys,” said Jeff Copley, a preacher at the church. “And guys in Morrow Country, they shoot and they hunt.”

Hundreds of students have enrolled in the 10-hour course, which meets the state requirements for earning a concealed weapons permit. The training includes two hours on a church member’s private shooting range.
“I grew up going to church, but hadn’t attended in a number of years,” said David Freeman, 52, a local engineering manager who attended a firearm safety class at the church. “Always considered myself a Christian. I came for the gun classes and have been coming back for two years.”

The Marengo church launched its program several years ago and was likely among the first in the country to offer concealed weapons training. But from Texas to North Carolina, a smattering of congregations have recently followed suit, as ministers seek to capitalize on local enthusiasm for gun culture and demand for carry permit classes to expand their flocks.

Central Baptist Church in Lexington, N.C., held its first concealed weapons classes in March, in what the Rev. Ryan Bennett described as just “another avenue to reach people.”

“We want to draw people in to our campus,” Bennett told a local newspaper at the time. “And we’re going to try anything that we can to do that.”

While conceding that he carries a 9mm pistol with him at all times, he said he doesn’t want his congregation to be labeled “gun-toting.”

“We promote responsibility. We don’t endorse violence,” he said. “It’s just another way to draw people in.”
In Texas, where it’s legal to carry guns into any church without a specific no-firearms policy, Heights Baptist in remote San Angelo began offering concealed carry classes in June. The class was a response to security concerns among congregants.

“We’re about 150 miles from the border with Mexico and we’re very unsure about our insecure borders — about what’s coming into our cities,” Pastor James Miller told NRA News. “Personally, I feel more secure that should our worship time be interrupted by a life-threatening intrusion, that we would at least stand some kind of a chance in stopping either a mass killing or terrorizing experience.”

Preacher Jeff, as Marengo Christian’s Copley is called by his flock, likewise emphasizes the spiritual importance of being able to defend oneself.

“Jesus advises his disciples to sell their cloak and buy a sword,” he told The Daily. “He instructed his people to be prepared to defend themselves. It’s really hard to find someone in our congregation that doesn’t shoot somehow.”

In part, the new offerings represent a response to broadly declining religious enthusiasm. Across the country, about 20 percent of Americans identify themselves as unaffiliated with any church, up from 15 percent five years ago, according to a study released this month by the Pew Research Center.

Against that backdrop, the classes “may reflect the desperation of some churches to attract members in a time of decline,” said Bill Leonard, a professor of church history at Wake Forest University.

But gun training remains out of step with mainstream doctrine. For example, the National Council of Churches of Christ, which represents about 100,000 Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox and Evangelical churches comprising 45 million members nationwide, endorsed strict gun control in a 2010 position paper.

Conceding the need for an armed police force, the council wrote that “to allow assault weapons in the hands of the general public can scarcely be justified on Christian grounds. The stark reality is that such weapons end up taking more lives than they defend, and the reckless sale or use of these weapons refutes the gospel’s prohibition against violence.”

But advocates of gun ownership rights cast the new classes as a reflection of widespread public support for gun rights.

“The Ohio church’s classes are an example of the general cultural shift in the United States over the last two decades, in which people who support responsible gun ownership have become less timid about speaking up in public,” said David Kopel, a policy analyst at the conservative Cato Institute.

Concealed carry licenses have seen a boom in demand in recent years. In Ohio, for example, county sheriffs issued 49,828 new licenses last year, compared to 22,103 in 2007.

But judging from a sign posted in the yard next door to the Church of Christ property, not everyone in Marengo agrees that houses of worship should be offering gun training.

“Some think the Bible is a hunter’s guide,” the sign says. “They are lost.”

For his part, Copley was unfazed by the criticism.

“Frankly the sign has been an attendance driver,” he said. “We’ve had two families come and place memberships because they said this is the kind of thing we’d like to support.”

Link:

• Holy Shoot 

Related:

• Rabbi Rambo

Trick or Treat! The Heresy of Protestantism

"What do Protestant and Halloween have in common? Much more than you think."

Do Aborted Babies Go To Heaven?

By Ann Barnhardt at Barnhardt.biz

It is getting progressively harder and harder for me to leave the house. Not because I'm threatened or under surveillance or anything like that. It's because every situation or conversation I enter, or even just OVERHEAR or OBSERVE, is potential fodder for this bizarre website. It's as if I am eavesdropping on and then plagiarizing the world or something.

(Pause for moment of scruple-driven angst.)

Aaaaannnnddd......I'm over it.

So, I found myself in a discussion, the base of which was the question of what happens to babies who are killed in abortion. Do they go to heaven?

The answer is NO, they do not.

If you are recoiling in disgust and red-faced rage at this point, I would urge you to humble yourself and receive instruction, as this is a nuanced yet incredibly important bit of theology - and a lesson in logic. When you're done reading it, I guarantee you will have learned something. If you are Catholic, you will see how shallow and inadequate your catechisis has been, and if you are Protestant you will see how much you are missing.

1. The Church teaches and has taught from day one that baptism is essential for salvation. This comes straight from Our Lord Himself:

He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.
Mark 16:16

This is repeated throughout the four Gospels and in the epistles. Baptism, baptism, baptism. Go forth and BAPTIZE. Don't just talk. BAPTIZE everyone you possibly can. With water. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. In fact, baptism is so non-negotiably essential that ANYONE can baptize - even a non-Christian. As long as the baptism is with water, and the form is correct, meaning in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit), then an atheist could baptize. A musloid could baptize. A Jew could baptize. A Hindu could baptize.

(*The notable and particularly relevant caveat to this is if the baptizer says the right words, but consciously means something completely different by the words "Father", "Son" and "Holy Ghost". I'm talking about the cult of Mormonism here. Did you know that Mormons teach and believe that God the Father is one of many "gods" who came from another planet and just happens to be the "god" of this particular planet, and that "God the Son" was once a non-divine mortal man, and that satan was his brother, and that the man they call "Jesus" at some point achieved divinity and was made the god of this world? Further, Mormons teach that when they die that they will also become gods and be given their own "celestial kingdoms" to rule? Mormons also teach that the Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost are two completely separate and distinct beings. 

Bottom line: Mormons are NOT, NOT, NOT Christians and Mitt Romney is NOT, NOT, NOT a Christian. Does that piss you off? Wow. I SO don't care. It is the truth. Deal with it. 

Oh, and for the record, Obama is not baptized either. One of the huge selling points of Jeremiah Wright's Trinity "church" is the fact that he DOES NOT baptize muslims. Thus, muslims who are engaging in the war tactic of KITHMAN, that is pretending to be non-muslim while infiltrating a culture for stealth jihad, flock to Wright's "church" because they can pose as Christians while avoiding the sacrament of Baptism. If you don't believe me, just call Trinity and ask them yourself. Their number is (773) 962-5650. Be polite. 

Not that this election is real, and not that the First American Republic still exists, but I do think that it is VERY interesting and telling that NEITHER candidate is Christian, which would be a first, and is certainly apropos.)
 
2. What is heaven? Heaven is nothing less than indwelling INSIDE the Trinity, contemplating the Trinity for all eternity. This is hard to understand from the "outside", but we know that this is the case from the words of Our Lord Himself:

That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.
John 17:21

This is called "the Beatific Vision", which could perhaps be simplistically stated as "seeing and contemplating God from the inside."

3. Who DESERVES the Beatific Vision as a mere corollary to their existence? Nobody. Not even the Angels. The Angels had to choose to serve God even before the creation of the world. They were created by God, and then shown the plan of Salvation History before the Big Bang (Let There Be Light). Those who chose to serve God were granted the Beatific Vision. Those who chose not to serve God, specifically the Second Person, the Divine Man, Whom they resented as being "beneath them", were cast out of heaven, never having seen the Beatific Vision, and never to see it. Satan and demons are real.

Even the Blessed Virgin Mary doesn't DESERVE the Beatific Vision merely as a corollary to her existence. She says so in her Magnificat:

And Mary said: My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. Because He hath regarded the humility of his handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. Because He that is mighty, hath done great things to me; and holy is His name. And His mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear Him.  

Luke 1:46-50

Given these realities, does an unborn baby DESERVE the Beatific Vision? The answer is obviously "no".
4. But an unborn baby (Or even a born and yet unbaptized baby) has committed no sin. Their fate can't be hell. So where do they go? The answer is, they go to a "place" (for lack of a better word) called Limbo, specifically The Limbo of the Innocents. There is another Limbo called the Limbo of the Fathers which was filled with the righteous people who died on earth before Christ opened the gates of heaven on Calvary. The Limbo of the Fathers no longer exists - Christ emptied it while He was in the tomb.

At this point many are screaming, "BUT THAT ISN'T IN THE BIBLE!"

Oh, yes it is. If you bother to READ IT. And again, from the lips of Our Lord, no less:

And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell.
Luke 16:22

Abraham's Bosom is NOT the Beatific Vision. When Our Lord spoke these words, the Gates of Heaven were yet closed because He had not yet opened them. Abraham's Bosom was the Limbo of the Fathers.
The proof for the Limbo of the Innocents actually comes from the very first scripture I quoted above:

He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.
Mark 16:16

Read that VERY carefully. Note that the second phrase does NOT tie non-baptism to condemnation. Condemnation (hell) is for those who reject Christ, but the baptismal state is left open. Note that in the first phrase that baptism is only tied to the Beatific Vision. What does this tell us? It tells us first that a person MUST be baptized in order to reach the Beatific Vision. It also tells us that those who die unbaptized and yet without any sin (which can only mean babies, both pre-born and born, and children who have not reached the age of reason, and therefore cannot be guilty of sin) DO NOT GO TO THE HELL OF THE DAMNED.

Makes sense, huh? And remember, NOBODY deserves the Beatific Vision.

So, the "place" these innocent yet unbaptized babies and children go is the Limbo of the Innocents. The Limbo of the Innocents is a "place" wherein these souls experience MAXIMUM NATURAL HAPPINESS, but do not experience the SUPERNATURAL happiness of the Beatific Vision.

Let's think about this. Maximum natural happiness. Guys, you have never, ever experienced anything even close to maximum natural happiness. In fact, if you were given the gift of five seconds of maximum natural happiness, I'll bet that you would swear up and down that you had just seen heaven and that there is no way that there could be anything better. You would be wrong. Heaven, the Beatific Vision, is so far above Limbo that Limbo is considered to be at the edge of hell by comparison, simply because it is outside the Beatific Vision. But it is still better than anything you have ever experienced.

5. Now, we have to answer the question, "Why can't unbaptized babies go straight to heaven?"
It is a great question, with a great answer. On the surface it sounds "unfair" that a baby, especially a baby that was murdered in cold blood by its own mother, couldn't go straight to heaven, especially when we consider the fact that the mother could sacramentally confess her sin and die in a state of grace and achieve the Beatific Vision herself.

Boo! Not fair, the critics say.

Again, let's think this through. WHAT IF all aborted babies went straight to heaven? How would the logical truth table from that false premise play out?

Well, if all aborted babies are GUARANTEED heaven, but a born person who lives to the age of reason runs the risk of living a life wherein they reject Christ and end up in hell, wouldn't it be an act of charity and mercy for every mother everywhere to abort every child they conceive so that the child will absolutely, positively spend all of eternity enjoying the Beatific Vision?

Let's put a context to it. Let's say a poor woman who lives in an urban slum gets pregnant. She looks around and sees a terrible environment. She knows that her child will be raised fatherless. She knows that the odds of her child escaping the grasp of the gangs and the Marxist overlords are very slim. What should she do? If all aborted babies go to heaven, then the young mother should kill the child in utero, thus guaranteeing her child heaven and sparing it the risk of life in this world and thus the high risk of being lost to hell. In fact, it would be selfish and uncharitable for her NOT to abort the child....

Do you see what happens when we try to form a logical truth table off of a false premise? We end up with abortion as a charitable act of mercy. And satan SQUEALS with delight.

6. Now the question must be answered, "Why SHOULD the young mother allow her child to be born even with the high risk of the child eventually being lost to hell?"

The answer comes from Lesson Number One in the Catechism:

Q: Why did God make you? 

A: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.
 
Every person is made by God with the desired end of the Beatific Vision. If the mother aborts the baby, the baby can never see the Beatific Vision, which is what God created the child for, and nothing less. In order to achieve the Beatific Vision, a person must be born and baptized, and die in a state of grace. Because remember, NOBODY deserves the Beatific Vision. Nobody.

No matter how long the odds seem, that baby is born with the Beatific Vision within grasp. Human beings CAN NEVER deprive a child of that chance.

And Jesus beholding, said to them: With men this is impossible: but with God all things are possible.  

Matthew 19:26

7. What about miscarriages?

True miscarriages and stillbirths are God's will, and remember, those babies, like the aborted babies, are granted maximum natural happiness in the Limbo of the Innocents. We must trust God in these matters. It is possible that God in His omniscience and Divine Providence allows miscarriages and stillbirths in order to bring about the best possible outcome for the child. This is a very difficult idea to face, but again, it comes straight from Our Lord Himself:

The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of Him: but woe to that man by whom the Son of man shall be betrayed: it were better for him, if that man had not been born.
Matthew 26:24

It would have been better for Judas Iscariot to have been miscarried because then he would have the maximum natural happiness of the Limbo of the Innocents. Instead, Judas betrayed Our Lord, doubted His mercy and never sought forgiveness and instead committed suicide, thus choosing the hell of the damned for all eternity.

But remember, ONLY GOD can make that call. No man can ever, ever play God and induce miscarriage, which is to say MURDER a pre-born child.

8. Why have I never heard anything about any of this up until now?

First, if you are Catholic and under the age of 60 or so, it is because the Church has been infiltrated by Marxist-homosexualists tasked with destroying the Church from the inside. Their father, satan, wants to convince as many people as possible that abortion is "morally neutral" or "contingent on the circumstances".

Beyond that, satan actually does want people to believe that aborted babies go to heaven so that eventually he can convince people that abortion can be a MORAL GOOD. Satan gets two things out of this. He maximizes the number of people who murder their own children and then DO NOT REPENT, thus dying in mortal sin and going to hell. The second thing satan achieves is keeping as many human beings from achieving that which he himself rejected and RAGES against: The Beatific Vision. Satan is willing to compromise and cut his losses. He'll take the baby going to the Limbo of the Innocents, never seeing the Beatific Vision PLUS the damnation of the unrepentant mother AND the damnation of the apostate priests, nuns and clergy who told the woman that her abortion wasn't a sin because "the baby is in heaven."

If you are Protestant, it is because Protestantism is intrinsically stupid and insipid. That's it. Superfun Rockband church. Jimmy Swaggart. Brain dead Methodist "we're just here to keep up appearances". Don't believe me? Okay. Ask your pastor on Sunday if aborted babies go to heaven, and after reading this, stand back and bask in the bumbling ignorance of his (or her, shudder) answer. Yep. You can almost visualize it right now, can't you?

UPDATE:  Limbo Citations

By Ann Barnhardt

This is just excellent. I'll pick out just a few of the 24 reasons. Do read the whole thing.

Source Link HERE.

24 Reasons Why Not To Reject Limbo 

John Vennari

Limbo is in the news. A new document from Rome's International Theological Commission [ITC], released on April 20, states that Catholics may virtually ignore the teaching on limbo and may have "many reasons for hope" for the salvation of unbaptized infants.

Practically every major newspaper carried the story. Headlines such as "Vatican Abolishes Limbo;" "Vatican Report Rejects Limbo;" and "Concept of Limbo Now Assigned to Oblivion" appeared throughout the world.

Yet despite this latest study, many intend to hold to the conventional teaching that the souls of infants who die before Baptism do not attain Heaven, because they have not obtained the remission of Original Sin that only Baptism provides. They go to Limbo, a place of natural happiness wherein they suffer no pain of punishment since they are guilty of no personal sin.
Listed below are 24 of the chief reasons why I, and thousands of Catholics the world over, will not reject the Catholic doctrine of Limbo:

1. Because Pope Pius VI, in a formal magisterial decree, denounced the rejection of Limbo as "false, rash, slanderous to Catholic schools";

2. Because the ITC's study on Limbo is neither a papal document, nor a magisterial document, but a modern theological exercise that does not bind the conscience of Catholics in any way;

4. Because it is an unchangeable article of Faith, taught infallibly by the Second Council of Lyons and the Council of Florence that the souls of those who depart this life in the state of original sin are excluded from the Beatific Vision;

5. Because Pope Sixtus V taught in a 1588 Constitution that victims of abortion, being deprived of Baptism, are "excluded from Beatific Vision," which is one of the reasons Sixtus V denounced abortion as a heinous crime;

7. Because to reject Limbo strengthens the implicit denial of Original Sin, a chief error of our age;

http://www.catholicessentials.net/limbo.htm 

I. The Limbo of the Fathers - A place and state of rest wherein the souls of the just who died before Christ's ascension were detained until he opened Heaven to them; referred to as "Abraham's Bosom" (Luke xvi,22) and "Paradise" (Luke xxiii, 43) and notably in Eph. IV, 9 and I Peter iii, 18-20.

II. The Limbo of Children - It is of faith that all, children and adults, who leave this world without the Baptism of water, blood or desire and therefore in original sin are excluded from the Vision of God in Heaven. The great majority of theologians teach that such children and unbaptized adults free from grievous actual sin, enjoy eternally a state of perfect natural happiness, knowing and loving God by use of their natural powers. This place and state is commonly called Limbo. (Definition from A Catholic Dictionary, 1951)
References in Scripture:

"And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell" Luke 16:22
"Now that He ascended, what is it, but because He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth" Ephesians 4:9

"Because Christ also died once for our sins, the just for the unjust: that He might offer us to God, being put to death indeed in the flesh, but enlivened in the spirit, In which also coming he preached to those spirits that were in prison: Which had been some time incredulous, when they waited for the patience of God in the days of Noe, when the ark was a building: wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water." 1 Peter 3:18-20

"And he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with Me in paradise" Luke 23:42-43

Church Teaching:

"Moreover as Christ was true and perfect man, He of course was capable of dying. Now man dies when the soul is separated from the body. When, therefore, we say that Jesus died, we mean that His soul was disunited from His body. We do not admit, however, that the Divinity was separated from His body. On the contrary, we firmly believe and profess that when His soul was dissociated from His body, His Divinity continued always united both to His body in the sepulchre and to His soul in limbo. It became the Son of God to die, that, through death, He might destroy him who had the empire of death that is the devil, and might deliver them, who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to servitude." Catechism of Council of Trent, The Creed, Article IV

"Q: What are we taught in the Fifth Article: He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead? A: The Fifth Article of the Creed teaches us that the Soul of Jesus Christ, on being separated from His Body, descended to the Limbo of the holy Fathers, and that on the third day it became united once more to His Body, never to be parted from it again". Catechism of St. Pope Pius X, The Fifth Article of the Creed

"The fourth and final reason is that Christ might free the just who were in hell [or Limbo]. For as Christ wished to suffer death to deliver the living from death, so also He would descend into hell to deliver those who were there". Also, "The reason they were there in hell [i.e., Limbo] is original sin which they had contracted from Adam, and from which as members of the human race they could not be delivered except by Christ. Catechism of St. Thomas Aquinas, The Creed, The Fifth Article, Reasons for Christ's Descent

"The limbo of the Fathers and the limbo of children, without any doubt, differ as to the quality of punishment or reward. For children have no hope of the blessed life, as the Fathers in limbo had, in whom, moreover, shone forth the light of faith and grace. But as regards their situation, there is reason to believe that the place of both is the same; except that the limbo of the Fathers is placed higher than the limbo of children, just as we have stated in reference to limbo and hell." Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas, Whether the limbo of children is the same as the limbo of the Fathers?

"Suarez, for example, ignoring Bellarmine's protest, continued to teach what Catharinus had taught -- that unbaptized children will not only enjoy perfect natural happiness, but that they will rise with immortal bodies at the last day and have the renovated earth for their happy abode (De vit. et penat., ix, sect. vi, n. 4); and, without insisting on such details, the great majority of Catholic theologians have continued to maintain the general doctrine that the children's limbo is a state of perfect natural happiness, just the same as it would have been if God had not established the present supernatural order" 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia, Limbo Summary
Contrary to what some Catholics have come to believe today, the doctrine of Limbo is mentioned in Scripture (albeit by a different name) and as we can see above, has been taught century to century by the Catholic Church. To deny its existence is not Catholic.

Link:

• Do Aborted Babies Go To Heaven? 

Related:

• 24 Reasons Why Not To Reject Limbo
• Limbo
• CDF - Request for Canonization for Abortion Victims is “Doctrinally Problematic.” 
• Could Limbo Be 'Abolished'?
• On Benedict’s silence about limbo and on his theological method
• The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized
• Limbo of the Children - New expiration date: 2008

Playing Church

By Father Erik Richtsteig

OK, here is the deal. About one mile south of my church of St. James the Just, there is a little white church. I am told that it was a Southern Baptist church at one time. When I came to Ogden nine years ago, it was Glory to God Community Church. I found out later that it was a Metropolitan Community Church. Yup, the gay denomination. Not just gay friendly, but of, by, and for gays. Even the World Council of Churches won’t let them in as even that liberal organization doesn’t think that sexual orientation should be the foundation of a denomination. Later I heard that the pastor was an ex-Catholic and failed Franciscan seminarian. Well, I had heard more than I wish I had about that happening. All of a sudden a few years ago, the sign was changed and it had morphed into Glory to God American Catholic Church. That denomination evidently went under and now they have joined a North American Old Catholic Church out of the North East (headed by an ‘archbishop’ who received his formation via mail) and the pastor has been consecrated a bishop.

All along, they have received glowing coverage in the local media. They are open. They are inclusive. They don’t turn people away like the ‘other’ Catholic church. Their clergy has ‘life experience’. Etc, etc, ad nauseum. They are insistent that they are Catholic, just not papal Catholic. Last Christmas, they even had a sign out front, “Not your mamma’s Catholic church.” (Unintentionally true--the Blessed Mother has nothing to do with it.)

No doubt you can tell that it bothers me. I don’t like heresy and schism. Not by a long-shot. And when that heresy and schism masquerades as Catholicism, my blood pressure redlines. It is false advertising. It is like Mormonism claiming to be theologically Christian. Or Scientology claiming to be a religion. Or Wicca claiming to be the survival of pre-Christian paganism. It just isn’t true... (continued)

Read More at Orthometer

Superfun Rockband Church

h/t to Barnhardt.biz

Pope Benedict XVI Thumps Protestants

"Growing religious pluralism is a factor that calls for serious consideration. The ever more active presence of Pentecostal and Evangelical communities, not only in Colombia, but also in many regions of Latin America, cannot be ignored or underestimated." - Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Gives Advice to Keep Catholics From Falling Away

Be Better Believers, More Pious, Welcoming in Our Parishes

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 22, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI met today with a group of bishops from Colombia in Rome for their ad limina visits, offering them some concrete advice on growing religious pluralism and the increasing presence of evangelical communities in the country.
 
The Pope cited the concluding document from the fifth general conference of the Latin American and Caribbean bishops, which observed that people often leave the Church not because of what non-Catholic groups believe, but because of what they live.

Hence, the Holy Father said, facing this challenge is "about being better believers, more pious, affable and welcoming in our parishes and communities, so that no one will feel distant or excluded."

"Catechesis must be promoted, giving special attention to young people and adults; homilies must be carefully prepared, as well as promoting the teaching of Catholic doctrine in schools and universities," he added.

All of this, the Bishop of Rome affirmed, will help to recover in the baptized "a sense of belonging to the Church and to awaken in them the aspiration to share with others the joy of following Christ and of being members of his Mystical Body."

Benedict XVI added that it is important to emphasize the Church's tradition, Marian spirituality and the rich diversity of devotion.

"To facilitate a serene and open exchange with other Christians, without losing one’s own identity, can also help to improve relations with them," he said, "and to overcome mistrust and unnecessary confrontations."

Link:

• Pope Gives Advice to Keep Catholics From Falling Away

Make Sure You Bleed Out Real Good Part 1

By Ann Barnhardt @ Barnhardt.biz

So I got an email from someone last evening stating that I should totally monetize this website and make all kinds of money off of it because even if doing so is indeed sinful, I will never be punished for that or any other sin if I’m “saved”, because once a person is “saved” sin doesn’t matter anymore.

I hear variants on this all the time from neo-pagans who fancy themselves "Bible Christians." It’s the old “once saved, always saved” heresy, and man is this heresy bad, bad, bad. All heresies are bad, but this one is truly from the pit of hell.

As with all heresies, satan begins with a statement that is true, and then twists and perverts it into a hellish nightmare. The true statement that gets perverted in this case is: no person can ever merit salvation. No person can ever, through their own efforts “earn heaven.”

That is true. Christ’s Passion and Sacrifice is infinite. No person can ever come even remotely close to earning, deserving or meriting the Cross, which is nothing less than the total self-immolation of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.

Where satan now leads people – and let me tell you, it is a massive number of people – is to the conclusion that because the Sacrifice of Calvary is infinite in the amount of grace that it makes available, and because no one can ever fully merit the total self-immolation of God Himself, that people need not even bother to try, and as corollary beyond that, that sin has become irrelevant to a person who declares themselves “saved.”
In short, do what you want, Jesus has it covered.

You people have got to snap out of this, because to embrace this mindset is to completely and totally reject Christ. Let me say that again: to embrace the “once saved, always saved” mindset is to completely and totally reject Christ. How can that be? Isn’t the “once saved, always saved” mindset simply an expression of faith in Jesus? No, it is not. It is an expression of faith in a legalistic abstraction. Jesus is not a legal contract, a juridical philosophical abstraction. Jesus Christ is a Person – a Divine Person. Saying, “If I do x, then Jesus is obligated to do y . . . If I accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, then Jesus HAS to forgive my sins, so if I get “saved” I can do or not do whatever I want without any further worry . . . .” is not Christianity. It is a perverse, evil form of heartless litigation, and that lawyering bullshit is not going to fly at your Particular Judgment.

For the last 2000 years, there have been many people, later declared saints, who have been given private revelations from Our Lord. There is a remarkably consistent thread that runs through these revelations, and that is the command, and dare I say even the pleading by Our Lord to pray and contemplate on His Passion and Death. It is constant. The Stations of the Cross. The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. Spontaneous prayer focused on His Passion and Death. And obviously, the Mass itself, which is Calvary Itself re-presented by the manipulation of time. Why? Because keeping focused on His Suffering forces us to acknowledge His Humanity and His Personhood. If a person stops regarding Jesus as a Person, or never regarded Him as a Person at all, but rather as an abstract philosophical or legal construct, that person is no longer Christian. They are no longer worshiping God. They are worshiping something inside their minds that does not exist. Non-existent abstractions did not die for you. Non-existent abstractions do not and cannot forgive your sins and reconcile you to the Father. Non-existent abstractions DO NOT EXIST. By staying focused and ever-mindful of the Passion, we are kept engaged and close to Christ’s Humanity and Personhood and from slipping into this apostasy of worshiping a system of contract law that we name “jesus.”

Oh, but it gets so much worse. If you are a person who believes that sin no longer matters, and that no matter what you do or don’t do, it’s cool because “Jesus has me covered – I’m free to live my life and no longer worry about whether my actions are sinful or not,” you will be one of the people who very well may be utterly rejected and turned away by Christ at the Judgment. Remember this verse?

Not every one that saith to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of My Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to Me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in Thy name, and cast out devils in Thy name, and done many miracles in Thy name? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, you that work iniquity.
--Matthew 7:21-23

Make Sure You Bleed Out Real Good Part 2

By Ann Barnhardt

Let’s think this through, and I warn you, this is going to get brutal, because you people clearly are not thinking about this or comprehending this.

Jesus Christ is a Person, who is also God, who loves you infinitely. He has freely chosen to suffer infinitely for you – and not just physically, but spiritually. He has volunteered to allow you to kill Him and break His Heart unto complete burning immolation. You do this to Him with every sin you commit. Since He is infinitely good, infinitely innocent, and loves you infinitely, every sin you commit against Him is an infinite offense. And because His Blood is infinitely precious, it has the capacity to cover any sin, and can never be earned or merited by any person. Got it? Every sin causes Him infinite pain.

If you tell yourself that because of this dynamic of infinities canceling each other out that you can therefore mathematically sin without compunction and still be “legally covered”, and that since you can never mathematically merit salvation, you shouldn’t even bother worrying about or trying to avoid sin, you have declared that you by definition DO NOT LOVE JESUS. How? Because you are declaring that you are indifferent to His suffering. You are declaring that you do not care and are unmoved by the fact that you are causing Jesus Christ infinite pain. Not only that, but you are using His infinite capacity for pain as a satanic counterfeit currency with which you happily convince yourself you have an infinite supply of to purchase the legal right to sin and still retain your salvation. And this is what gives satan tremendous satisfaction. THIS is what he is seeking to accomplish. Satan luxuriates in a masturbatory frenzy at the agony of Christ, the God-Man.

Do you know what the opposite of love is? It isn’t hate. The opposite of love is indifference. If you are indifferent to the suffering you inflict on Christ with your sins, you do not love Him in any way shape or form. Your indifference is worse than hating Him. Satan hates Him, but satan fully acknowledges both His Divine Personhood and His Suffering on the Cross. The indifferent man denies Christ’s very personhood and thus is totally indifferent and apathetic towards His very real Suffering.

If some soulless gang-banger walked up to me on the street and started beating the crap out of me, I wouldn't take it personally. It would be a physical crime, but it wouldn't break my heart. You know what would break my heart? If I was walking along with my best friend, a soulless gang-banger started beating the crap out of me, I cried out for help, and when I turned to my best friend, instead of helping me he turned and walked in the opposite direction. THAT would break my heart. THAT would damn-near kill me, not Pookie the gang-banger. Bruises and broken bones heal. Broken hearts? The total indifference of a FRIEND? That would leave scars that would never, ever would go away. That's why Jesus still has His Wounds after the Resurrection, and always will. Look at the holes in His hands, feet and side, and see your own indifference to Him.

If your parent, spouse, best friend, or even a total stranger was hooked up to a torture device and tortured to death every time you sinned in exchange for your life . . . wouldn’t you be horrified and try to do everything you could to not sin, and thus spare them as much agony as possible? And when you did sin, wouldn’t you be wracked with sorrow and tell that person that you were sorry? Wouldn’t you want to get them removed from the torture device, or at least hook yourself up to it too so that you could bear a share of the agony – agony that you fully deserve, but they do not?

Oh, but not you “once saved, always saved” people. No. You would look at your beloved family member or friend hooked up to the torture device, feel absolutely nothing, and then with aloof indifference say, “You got me covered then? Cool. I’m out. I’ve got a life to lead, and since you’ve got me covered, I’m gonna live it up, Baby! Yeah!”

What the hell is wrong with you people? Seriously. This is all the domain of the psychopath. You have the unmitigated gall to call yourselves “true, Bible-believing Christians” and yet, from what I can tell, a terrifying number of you are totally indifferent to what you are doing to Christ by your sins, and even promote that indifference to His Passion as virtuous, and proof of your “faith.”

Well, I guess that’s what happens when you are the member of a schismatic sect and not of the Church. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t go to Mass, but instead go to a pagan rock concert and worship yourself. I guess that’s what happens when there isn’t even a Crucifix, or for that matter even a Cross in your pagan meeting hall, so you don’t have even the slightest reminder of Christ’s Humanity, much less His Suffering. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t think or use your brain. I guess that’s what happens when churchin’ is merely a self-serving social and entertainment experience.

You got me covered then? Alright, I’m out. Catch You on the flip. Dude, make sure You bleed out real good ‘cause I’m planning on living it up, Baby! No worries, just doing what feels good and doin’ what a man’s gotta do to make it in the world, cause I know You got me covered, right? I’m prolly gonna need, like, a swimming pool of Blood to cover me, so just plan on that! But seriously, you can't expect me to hang around and deal with this, right? See Ya. I'll call You later.

“And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, you that work iniquity.”

Link:

• Make Sure You Bleed Out Real Good Part 1 & 2

Serpent-handling pastor dies from rattlesnake bite

By Julia Duin

Mack Wolford, a flamboyant Pentecostal pastor from West Virginia whose serpent-handling talents were profiled last November in The Washington Post Magazine , hoped the outdoor service he had planned for Sunday at an isolated state park would be a “homecoming like the old days,” full of folks speaking in tongues, handling snakes and having a “great time.” But it was not the sort of homecoming he foresaw. 

Instead, Wolford, who turned 44 the previous day, was bitten by a rattlesnake he owned for years. He died late Sunday.

Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford was known all over Appalachia as a daring man of conviction. He believed that the Bible mandates that Christians handle serpents to test their faith in God — and that, if they are bitten, they trust in God alone to heal them.

He and other adherents cited Mark 16:17-18 as the reason for their practice: “And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

The son of a serpent handler who himself died in 1983 after being bitten, Wolford was trying to keep the practice alive, both in West Virginia, where it is legal, and in neighboring states where it is not. He was the kind of man reporters love: articulate, friendly and appreciative of media attention. Many serpent-handling Pentecostals retreat from journalists, but Wolford didn’t. He’d take them on snake-hunting expeditions.
Last Sunday started as a festive outdoor service on a sunny afternoon at Panther Wildlife Management Area, a state park roughly 80 miles west of Bluefield, W.Va. In the preceding days, Wolford had posted several teasers on his Facebook page asking people to attend.

“I am looking for a great time this Sunday,” he wrote May 22. “It is going to be a homecoming like the old days. Good ’ole raised in the holler or mountain ridge running, Holy Ghost-filled speaking-in-tongues sign believers.”

“Praise the Lord and pass the rattlesnakes, brother” he wrote on May 23...

Read More Here

Michael Voris in Edmonton, Canada: Spiritual Warfare Part One

Michael Voris presents a talk on spiritual warfare from Edmonton, Canada. This talk is the first of a four-part series - the other parts are available online on our premium service at http://www.realcatholictv.com or you can purchase them on DVD here http://www.realcatholictv.com/store/?product=227&tag=38

Where Does it Say That in the Bible?

Apocalypse now - maybe - I'll get back to you

Harold Camping reckons the world will end today. Or whenever's good for you. Picture: AP

(news.com.au) Or maybe not. It could "probably" be the end of the world. And even then, it'll happen "very, very quietly".

Er, sort of.

Remember when Camping - a US radio evangelist - told us the world would end on May 21? And then nothing happened?

Well, his revised date is October 21 - which is today. Or tomorrow in the US.

And with judgment day bearing down on us, Camping revised his prediction in a very non-committal portrayal of how things will go down.

"The end is going to come very, very quietly probably within the next month, by October 21st," he said earlier this month.

"Probably there will be no pain suffered by anyone because of their rebellion against God. We can become more and more sure that they'll quietly die and that will be the end of their story."

Taiwan's Next Media Animation team has given us a look at what to expect - in their own unique way.

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Catholic War

h/t to The Tenth Crusade

Protestant Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world

By Robert Pigott

(BBC) The Rev Klaas Hendrikse can offer his congregation little hope of life after death, and he's not the sort of man to sugar the pill.

 

An imposing figure in black robes and white clerical collar, Mr Hendrikse presides over the Sunday service at the Exodus Church in Gorinchem, central Holland.

It is part of the mainstream Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN), and the service is conventional enough, with hymns, readings from the Bible, and the Lord's Prayer. But the message from Mr Hendrikse's sermon seems bleak - "Make the most of life on earth, because it will probably be the only one you get".

"Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death," Mr Hendrikse says. "No, for me our life, our task, is before death."

Nor does Klaas Hendrikse believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing.

"When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, that's where it can happen. God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience." 

Mr Hendrikse describes the Bible's account of Jesus's life as a mythological story about a man who may never have existed, even if it is a valuable source of wisdom about how to lead a good life.

His book Believing in a Non-Existent God led to calls from more traditionalist Christians for him to be removed. However, a special church meeting decided his views were too widely shared among church thinkers for him to be singled out...

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A Vatican II Moment: Lord's Supper to be Celebrated by Protestant, Priests to Concelebrate

From New Catholic at RORATE CÆLI:

Father Marcel Gravet will celebrate his 85th birthday and the 60th anniversary of his priestly ordination tomorrow at Rochefort (Namur, Wallonia, Belgium) with a very touching ceremony, which will take place in his own Parish church of Buissonville (Saint-Laurent/Diocese of Namur); in his own words:

"Out of concern for the unity of Christians, the Lord's Supper will be celebrated by Annette Ruby, who is a Protestant pastor in Alsace [France]. The priests who so desire will be able to concelebrate. It is an event which will not fail to provoke reactions which I expect to be numerous. I hope to obtain, afterwards, numerous responses to questions such as: what did you feel about the celebration of the Supper by a married woman, and mother of several children? What do you expect from a priest or a pastor? What questions do you wish to pose to the highest authorities of the Church? By gathering all these testimonies, we expect to establish a deep reflection on these matters and to assemble a document to be made public somewhere in the next year or two in the most appropriate way."

[Source: L'avenir; tip: Le Salon Beige. That's Father in a restaurant - that is not Madame Annette's supper. Yes, Father really is a priest in the Namur diocese; yes, Mme. Staub-Ruby really is a minister of the Union of Protestant 'Churches' of Alsace and Lorraine.]

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