Apotheoun Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 I don't think Pope Francis is afraid to tell people about his faith in Christ either... in fact, he does it on a regular basis. Except he isn't into converting people. He wants to be friends, and that should be sufficient. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aloysius Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 he is definitely into evangelizing and converting people, he is not into what he calls proselytizing and I have explained to you what he means by that. he calls on people to emulate the Apostle Paul in evangelizing people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apotheoun Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 he is definitely into evangelizing and converting people, he is not into what he calls proselytizing and I have explained to you what he means by that. he calls on people to emulate the Apostle Paul in evangelizing people. I hope so, but in his most public of activities, i.e., these inane interviews, he has presented the Catholic Church as basically uninterested in converting people to faith in Christ. After all, it was not his intention to bring his interview to faith; instead, he just wants to be friends. Such a poor friend to withhold knowledge of eternal life in Christ from him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nihil Obstat Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 No, but if you want I will. I am not afraid to tell people about faith in Christ, and how that faith has helped me through some really terrible things, e.g., my bout with viral encephalitis that nearly killed me and left me with nerve damage on the left side of my body. I have spoken at Churches and schools about faith before, after all I have been a religion teacher, so I am pretty good and giving talks in front of crowds, but I am also good in one on one discussions. I am willing to go pretty much anywhere to talk about Christ. I used to have conversations with Jews and Muslims at SF State, it is not like I am a man in my early twenties who has barely lived life. I am 50 years old. Ask any of my friends from Franciscan University who have actually met me. You can get in touch with them through Facebook. Hm. Ok. I am just wondering if you consider it a moral obligation to try to convert literally every single person you interact with, no matter how briefly. Obviously you and I and Al all agree that evangelization is our grave duty. Manufactured doubts from this interview notwithstanding. The part not specified is what exact methods we should use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apotheoun Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 I have been praying that the pope would stop these terrible interviews, but this is probably one time when my prayers will not be answered. It was hard to take in the last interview when Pope Francis spoke about his own humility. I think he may be believing the media hype about himself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apotheoun Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 (edited) Hm. Ok. I am just wondering if you consider it a moral obligation to try to convert literally every single person you interact with, no matter how briefly. Obviously you and I and Al all agree that evangelization is our grave duty. Manufactured doubts from this interview notwithstanding. The part not specified is what exact methods we should use. :smile3: It is a given that I cannot convert 4 billion people to faith in Christ. It would be physically impossible for me to contact every single living human being, but I do pray daily for the conversion of all men to Christianity, and I have done so for more than 20 years. Edited October 2, 2013 by Apotheoun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apotheoun Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 (edited) Hm. Ok. I am just wondering if you consider it a moral obligation to try to convert literally every single person you interact with, no matter how briefly. Yes. Every single person you come in contact with, who does not already have faith in Christ. You have a moral responsibility to convert non-Christians. I was at the bank yesterday and the teller brought up Christmas and how she loves the holiday, and as we talked it became clear that she celebrates only the secular part of the holiday, and so I talked briefly about the incarnation and the importance of Christ and the salvation He brought us through His passion, death, and resurrection. It wasn't hard at all. Edited October 2, 2013 by Apotheoun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apotheoun Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 (edited) By the way, I also told the young lady about the once a month Melkite divine liturgy in downtown Walnut Creek. She was quite receptive. Who knows maybe she will remember and come. Regardless it caused no harm to invite her. Edited October 2, 2013 by Apotheoun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aloysius Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 reading through the whole interview on la republica, not just the controversial parts listed in the OP, the Pope certainly did try to share knowledge of Jesus and of eternal life with him... he started from a place of telling him to follow his conscience, he told him that he had a soul, he told him to love God and neighbor as Jesus commanded, he tried to suggest that the definition of Existence is God Himself (but the interviewer defined it in terms of physics and energy or some such materialistic nonsense)... oops, but then he said he "had no intention" of trying to convert him but just have a respectful dialogue, so I guess he was withholding knowledge of salvation through Christ from him! better be careful and let everyone know at every Thanksgiving meal that you're trying to convert them, or else that means you're withholding knowledge of salvation from them! the Church grows by attraction to real authentic faith being shared, and there is plenty of room for dialogues and discussions in which one is not 'trying' to convert the other, merely trying to share faith and love, friendship and understanding. not explicitly trying to convert someone is not the same as refusing to share your faith with them, it's not even the same as not hoping that they will convert, those are the unfounded equivocations you are making. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apotheoun Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 (edited) Al, perhaps the translation is poor, or perhaps Pope Francis is just not good at expressing the faith to others, but even those parts, and yes they are there, that talk about Christ sound like the version of Christ I heard about when I would go into Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. I was always disappointed with the Christ that was preached there, because He had little or no connection to sacred scripture or Church tradition. That is the sense I get in reading what Pope Francis said in the interview, and that worries me greatly, because I left the Episcopal Church for a reason, and sought out the whole truth about Christ in the writings of the Fathers and found it in the Catholic Church. If that truth is going to be presented in a vague or incomplete fashion by the most important figure in the Catholic Church, then something is terribly wrong. Al, honestly, I do not want to see 25 years of my life crumble into ash, but that is what I am experiencing when I read what Pope Francis says. If things continue to go in the present direction I will have to completely re-evaluate my life. That is hard to do, especially when my education, my job, my whole life and existence has been focused upon Christ and His holy Church. Edited October 2, 2013 by Apotheoun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aloysius Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 it is strange to me how much your faith rises and falls based upon the personal ability of the pope to express himself adequately in interviews. I doubt it would've survived the Borgias or the Medicis, if it can't even survive a little vagueness in a couple interviews... are you such an ultramontanist, in the end? anyway forgive me if that sounded harsh, I don't mean it that way, we all can struggle with doubts sometimes... I think blaming the Pope for any doubts you may be experiencing now is a bit of a scapegoat though. I hope you can find peace and your faith remains strong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apotheoun Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 (edited) it is strange to me how much your faith rises and falls based upon the personal ability of the pope to express himself adequately in interviews. I doubt it would've survived the Borgias or the Medicis, if it can't even survive a little vagueness in a couple interviews... Honestly, if Pope Francis were an immoral man that would be easier to take, because we are all sinners, we all fall in different ways, but doctrinal ambiguity is another matter. I became Catholic because the Catholic Church is a dogmatic Church, as an author I read years ago put it, "Dogma is the drama." Francis appears weak on dogma. One of the things that has helped to keep me Catholic, instead of Eastern Orthodox, has been the Catholic Church's unwavering devotion to teaching - even though many people fail to live it - the moral norm. Pope Francis is weak on that, at least compared to previous popes. He seems more like Cardinal Mahony, Cardinal Bernardin, or Bishop Cummins, than Pope Benedict or Pope John Paul II. Edited October 2, 2013 by Apotheoun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apotheoun Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 anyway forgive me if that sounded harsh, I don't mean it that way, we all can struggle with doubts sometimes... I think blaming the Pope for any doubts you may be experiencing now is a bit of a scapegoat though. I hope you can find peace and your faith remains strong. Al, I have no doubts about Christ, or Catholic moral teaching, but if the head of the Church is less than Catholic on certain issues, or if he is going to compromise Catholic moral teaching in order to be politically correct, then for me that is a crisis. It's not like I am going to become an atheist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apotheoun Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 Al, do you believe that Pope Francis presented the Catholic teaching on conscience accurately in the interview? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aloysius Posted October 2, 2013 Share Posted October 2, 2013 I don't like the way it was presented... however I do not yet see any indication that he disagrees with Ratzinger's Conscience and Truth. he seemed to be clearly using that as a starting point in the interview in a way that led to discussions about God and the soul, etc, ie, at the outset, at the beginning, we need to come together on trying to follow what is good, people need to believe in their consciences and follow them... of course in addition to that their consciences should be correctly informed, and he never quite got around to saying that and I think he should have done so, but he didn't say "and that's it!", he said "that would make the world a better place"... it was clearly a starting point, and it's a very important starting point--to get people to recognize and conceive of good and evil and try to follow their consciences... I believe the Holy Angels in particular and of course the Holy Spirit are constantly trying to speak to people's consciences, but people don't even conceive of a conscience in the first place, and that's the first place they block themselves from grace. maybe I saw it differently than you did, but it clearly seemed to me a starting point, not an ending point--he said start out with listening to your conscience. try to conceive of and follow good and avoid evil. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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