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The End of the World

Click on the following link and go to the Vortex, the message on December 28 "The Pope's Warning."

This program is from RealCatholicTV.com


Here is the transcript of the Pope's Message to which Michael is referring:

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
ON THE OCCASION OF CHRISTMAS GREETINGS
TO THE ROMAN CURIA

Sala Regia
Monday, 20 December 2010

 Dear Cardinals,
Brother Bishops and Priests,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,

It gives me great pleasure to be here with you, dear Members of the College of Cardinals and Representatives of the Roman Curia and the Governatorato, for this traditional gathering. I extend a cordial greeting to each one of you, beginning with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, whom I thank for his sentiments of devotion and communion and for the warm good wishes that he expressed to me on behalf of all of you. Prope est jam Dominus, venite, adoremus! As one family let us contemplate the mystery of Emmanuel, God-with-us, as the Cardinal Dean has said. I gladly reciprocate his good wishes and I would like to thank all of you most sincerely, including the Papal Representatives all over the world, for the able and generous contribution that each of you makes to the Vicar of Christ and to the Church.

Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni. Repeatedly during the season of Advent the Church’s liturgy prays in these or similar words. They are invocations that were probably formulated as the Roman Empire was in decline. The disintegration of the key principles of law and of the fundamental moral attitudes underpinning them burst open the dams which until that time had protected peaceful coexistence among peoples. The sun was setting over an entire world. Frequent natural disasters further increased this sense of insecurity. There was no power in sight that could put a stop to this decline. All the more insistent, then, was the invocation of the power of God: the plea that he might come and protect his people from all these threats.

Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni. Today too, we have many reasons to associate ourselves with this Advent prayer of the Church. For all its new hopes and possibilities, our world is at the same time troubled by the sense that moral consensus is collapsing, consensus without which juridical and political structures cannot function. Consequently the forces mobilized for the defence of such structures seem doomed to failure.

Excita – the prayer recalls the cry addressed to the Lord who was sleeping in the disciples’ storm-tossed boat as it was close to sinking. When his powerful word had calmed the storm, he rebuked the disciples for their little faith (cf. Mt 8:26 et par.). He wanted to say: it was your faith that was sleeping. He will say the same thing to us. Our faith too is often asleep. Let us ask him, then, to wake us from the sleep of a faith grown tired, and to restore to that faith the power to move mountains – that is, to order justly the affairs of the world.

Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni: amid the great tribulations to which we have been exposed during the past year, this Advent prayer has frequently been in my mind and on my lips. We had begun the Year for Priests with great joy and, thank God, we were also able to conclude it with great gratitude, despite the fact that it unfolded so differently from the way we had expected. Among us priests and among the lay faithful, especially the young, there was a renewed awareness of what a great gift the Lord has entrusted to us in the priesthood of the Catholic Church. We realized afresh how beautiful it is that human beings are fully authorized to pronounce in God’s name the word of forgiveness, and are thus able to change the world, to change life; we realized how beautiful it is that human beings may utter the words of consecration, through which the Lord draws a part of the world into himself, and so transforms it at one point in its very substance; we realized how beautiful it is to be able, with the Lord’s strength, to be close to people in their joys and sufferings, in the important moments of their lives and in their dark times; how beautiful it is to have as one’s life task not this or that, but simply human life itself – helping people to open themselves to God and to live from God. We were all the more dismayed, then, when in this year of all years and to a degree we could not have imagined, we came to know of abuse of minors committed by priests who twist the sacrament into its antithesis, and under the mantle of the sacred profoundly wound human persons in their childhood, damaging them for a whole lifetime.

In this context, a vision of Saint Hildegard of Bingen came to my mind, a vision which describes in a shocking way what we have lived through this past year. “In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 1170, I had been lying on my sick-bed for a long time when, fully conscious in body and in mind, I had a vision of a woman of such beauty that the human mind is unable to comprehend. She stretched in height from earth to heaven. Her face shone with exceeding brightness and her gaze was fixed on heaven. She was dressed in a dazzling robe of white silk and draped in a cloak, adorned with stones of great price. On her feet she wore shoes of onyx. But her face was stained with dust, her robe was ripped down the right side, her cloak had lost its sheen of beauty and her shoes had been blackened. And she herself, in a voice loud with sorrow, was calling to the heights of heaven, saying, ‘Hear, heaven, how my face is sullied; mourn, earth, that my robe is torn; tremble, abyss, because my shoes are blackened!’

And she continued: ‘I lay hidden in the heart of the Father until the Son of Man, who was conceived and born in virginity, poured out his blood. With that same blood as his dowry, he made me his betrothed.

For my Bridegroom’s wounds remain fresh and open as long as the wounds of men’s sins continue to gape. And Christ’s wounds remain open because of the sins of priests. They tear my robe, since they are violators of the Law, the Gospel and their own priesthood; they darken my cloak by neglecting, in every way, the precepts which they are meant to uphold; my shoes too are blackened, since priests do not keep to the straight paths of justice, which are hard and rugged, or set good examples to those beneath them. Nevertheless, in some of them I find the splendour of truth.’

And I heard a voice from heaven which said: ‘This image represents the Church. For this reason, O you who see all this and who listen to the word of lament, proclaim it to the priests who are destined to offer guidance and instruction to God’s people and to whom, as to the apostles, it was said: go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation’ (Mk16:15)” (Letter to Werner von Kirchheim and his Priestly Community: PL 197, 269ff.).

In the vision of Saint Hildegard, the face of the Church is stained with dust, and this is how we have seen it. Her garment is torn – by the sins of priests. The way she saw and expressed it is the way we have experienced it this year. We must accept this humiliation as an exhortation to truth and a call to renewal. Only the truth saves. We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred. We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen. We must discover a new resoluteness in faith and in doing good. We must be capable of doing penance. We must be determined to make every possible effort in priestly formation to prevent anything of the kind from happening again. This is also the moment to offer heartfelt thanks to all those who work to help victims and to restore their trust in the Church, their capacity to believe her message. In my meetings with victims of this sin, I have also always found people who, with great dedication, stand alongside those who suffer and have been damaged. This is also the occasion to thank the many good priests who act as channels of the Lord’s goodness in humility and fidelity and, amid the devastations, bear witness to the unforfeited beauty of the priesthood.

We are well aware of the particular gravity of this sin committed by priests and of our corresponding responsibility. But neither can we remain silent regarding the context of these times in which these events have come to light. There is a market in child pornography that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society. The psychological destruction of children, in which human persons are reduced to articles of merchandise, is a terrifying sign of the times. From Bishops of developing countries I hear again and again how sexual tourism threatens an entire generation and damages its freedom and its human dignity. The Book of Revelation includes among the great sins of Babylon – the symbol of the world’s great irreligious cities – the fact that it trades with bodies and souls and treats them as commodities (cf. Rev 18:13). In this context, the problem of drugs also rears its head, and with increasing force extends its octopus tentacles around the entire world – an eloquent expression of the tyranny of mammon which perverts mankind. No pleasure is ever enough, and the excess of deceiving intoxication becomes a violence that tears whole regions apart – and all this in the name of a fatal misunderstanding of freedom which actually undermines man’s freedom and ultimately destroys it.

In order to resist these forces, we must turn our attention to their ideological foundations. In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children. This, however, was part of a fundamental perversion of the concept of ethos. It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a “better than” and a “worse than”. Nothing is good or bad in itself. Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end in view. Anything can be good or also bad, depending upon purposes and circumstances. Morality is replaced by a calculus of consequences, and in the process it ceases to exist. The effects of such theories are evident today. Against them, Pope John Paul II, in his 1993 Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, indicated with prophetic force in the great rational tradition of Christian ethos the essential and permanent foundations of moral action. Today, attention must be focussed anew on this text as a path in the formation of conscience. It is our responsibility to make these criteria audible and intelligible once more for people today as paths of true humanity, in the context of our paramount concern for mankind.

As my second point, I should like to say a word about the Synod of the Churches of the Middle East. This began with my journey to Cyprus, where I was able to consign theInstrumentum Laboris of the Synod to the Bishops of those countries who were assembled there. The hospitality of the Orthodox Church was unforgettable, and we experienced it with great gratitude. Even if full communion is not yet granted to us, we have nevertheless established with joy that the basic form of the ancient Church unites us profoundly with one another: the sacramental office of Bishops as the bearer of apostolic tradition, the reading of Scripture according to the hermeneutic of the Regula fidei, the understanding of Scripture in its manifold unity centred on Christ, developed under divine inspiration, and finally, our faith in the central place of the Eucharist in the Church’s life. Thus we experienced a living encounter with the riches of the rites of the ancient Church that are also found within the Catholic Church. We celebrated the liturgy with Maronites and with Melchites, we celebrated in the Latin rite, we experienced moments of ecumenical prayer with the Orthodox, and we witnessed impressive manifestations of the rich Christian culture of the Christian East. But we also saw the problem of the divided country. The wrongs and the deep wounds of the past were all too evident, but so too was the desire for the peace and communion that had existed before. Everyone knows that violence does not bring progress – indeed, it gave rise to the present situation. Only in a spirit of compromise and mutual understanding can unity be re-established. To prepare the people for this attitude of peace is an essential task of pastoral ministry.

During the Synod itself, our gaze was extended over the whole of the Middle East, where the followers of different religions – as well as a variety of traditions and distinct rites – live together. As far as Christians are concerned, there are Pre-Chalcedonian as well as Chalcedonian churches; there are churches in communion with Rome and others that are outside that communion; in both cases, multiple rites exist alongside one another. In the turmoil of recent years, the tradition of peaceful coexistence has been shattered and tensions and divisions have grown, with the result that we witness with increasing alarm acts of violence in which there is no longer any respect for what the other holds sacred, in which on the contrary the most elementary rules of humanity collapse. In the present situation, Christians are the most oppressed and tormented minority. For centuries they lived peacefully together with their Jewish and Muslim neighbours. During the Synod we listened to wise words from the Counsellor of the Mufti of the Republic of Lebanon against acts of violence targeting Christians. He said: when Christians are wounded, we ourselves are wounded. Unfortunately, though, this and similar voices of reason, for which we are profoundly grateful, are too weak. Here too we come up against an unholy alliance between greed for profit and ideological blindness. On the basis of the spirit of faith and its rationality, the Synod developed a grand concept of dialogue, forgiveness and mutual acceptance, a concept that we now want to proclaim to the world. The human being is one, and humanity is one. Whatever damage is done to another in any one place, ends up by damaging everyone. Thus the words and ideas of the Synod must be a clarion call, addressed to all people with political or religious responsibility, to put a stop to Christianophobia; to rise up in defence of refugees and all who are suffering, and to revitalize the spirit of reconciliation. In the final analysis, healing can only come from deep faith in God’s reconciling love. Strengthening this faith, nourishing it and causing it to shine forth is the Church’s principal task at this hour.

I would willingly speak in some detail of my unforgettable journey to the United Kingdom, but I will limit myself to two points that are connected with the theme of the responsibility of Christians at this time and with the Church’s task to proclaim the Gospel. My thoughts go first of all to the encounter with the world of culture in Westminster Hall, an encounter in which awareness of shared responsibility at this moment in history created great attention which, in the final analysis, was directed to the question of truth and faith itself. It was evident to all that the Church has to make her own contribution to this debate. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his day, observed that democracy in America had become possible and had worked because there existed a fundamental moral consensus which, transcending individual denominations, united everyone. Only if there is such a consensus on the essentials can constitutions and law function. This fundamental consensus derived from the Christian heritage is at risk wherever its place, the place of moral reasoning, is taken by the purely instrumental rationality of which I spoke earlier. In reality, this makes reason blind to what is essential. To resist this eclipse of reason and to preserve its capacity for seeing the essential, for seeing God and man, for seeing what is good and what is true, is the common interest that must unite all people of good will. The very future of the world is at stake.

Finally I should like to recall once more the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman. Why was he beatified? What does he have to say to us? Many responses could be given to these questions, which were explored in the context of the beatification. I would like to highlight just two aspects which belong together and which, in the final analysis, express the same thing. The first is that we must learn from Newman’s three conversions, because they were steps along a spiritual path that concerns us all. Here I would like to emphasize just the first conversion: to faith in the living God. Until that moment, Newman thought like the average men of his time and indeed like the average men of today, who do not simply exclude the existence of God, but consider it as something uncertain, something with no essential role to play in their lives. What appeared genuinely real to him, as to the men of his and our day, is the empirical, matter that can be grasped. This is the “reality” according to which one finds one’s bearings. The “real” is what can be grasped, it is the things that can be calculated and taken in one’s hand. In his conversion, Newman recognized that it is exactly the other way round: that God and the soul, man’s spiritual identity, constitute what is genuinely real, what counts. These are much more real than objects that can be grasped. This conversion was a Copernican revolution. What had previously seemed unreal and secondary was now revealed to be the genuinely decisive element. Where such a conversion takes place, it is not just a person’s theory that changes: the fundamental shape of life changes. We are all in constant need of such conversion: then we are on the right path.

The driving force that impelled Newman along the path of conversion was conscience. But what does this mean? In modern thinking, the word “conscience” signifies that for moral and religious questions, it is the subjective dimension, the individual, that constitutes the final authority for decision. The world is divided into the realms of the objective and the subjective. To the objective realm belong things that can be calculated and verified by experiment. Religion and morals fall outside the scope of these methods and are therefore considered to lie within the subjective realm. Here, it is said, there are in the final analysis no objective criteria. The ultimate instance that can decide here is therefore the subject alone, and precisely this is what the word “conscience” expresses: in this realm only the individual, with his intuitions and experiences, can decide. Newman’s understanding of conscience is diametrically opposed to this. For him, “conscience” means man’s capacity for truth: the capacity to recognize precisely in the decision-making areas of his life – religion and morals – a truth, the truth. At the same time, conscience – man’s capacity to recognize truth – thereby imposes on him the obligation to set out along the path towards truth, to seek it and to submit to it wherever he finds it. Conscience is both capacity for truth and obedience to the truth which manifests itself to anyone who seeks it with an open heart. The path of Newman’s conversions is a path of conscience – not a path of self-asserting subjectivity but, on the contrary, a path of obedience to the truth that was gradually opening up to him. His third conversion, to Catholicism, required him to give up almost everything that was dear and precious to him: possessions, profession, academic rank, family ties and many friends. The sacrifice demanded of him by obedience to the truth, by his conscience, went further still. Newman had always been aware of having a mission for England. But in the Catholic theology of his time, his voice could hardly make itself heard. It was too foreign in the context of the prevailing form of theological thought and devotion. In January 1863 he wrote in his diary these distressing words: “As a Protestant, I felt my religion dreary, but not my life - but, as a Catholic, my life dreary, not my religion”. He had not yet arrived at the hour when he would be an influential figure. In the humility and darkness of obedience, he had to wait until his message was taken up and understood. In support of the claim that Newman’s concept of conscience matched the modern subjective understanding, people often quote a letter in which he said – should he have to propose a toast – that he would drink first to conscience and then to the Pope. But in this statement, “conscience” does not signify the ultimately binding quality of subjective intuition. It is an expression of the accessibility and the binding force of truth: on this its primacy is based. The second toast can be dedicated to the Pope because it is his task to demand obedience to the truth.

I must refrain from speaking of my remarkable journeys to Malta, Portugal and Spain. In these it once again became evident that the faith is not a thing of the past, but an encounter with the God who lives and acts now. He challenges us and he opposes our indolence, but precisely in this way he opens the path towards true joy.

Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni. We set out from this plea for the presence of God’s power in our time and from the experience of his apparent absence. If we keep our eyes open as we look back over the year that is coming to an end, we can see clearly that God’s power and goodness are also present today in many different ways. So we all have reason to thank him. Along with thanks to the Lord I renew my thanks to all my co-workers. May God grant to all of us a holy Christmas and may he accompany us with his blessings in the coming year.

I entrust these prayerful sentiments to the intercession of the Holy Virgin, Mother of the Redeemer, and I impart to all of you and to the great family of the Roman Curia a heartfelt Apostolic Blessing. Happy Christmas!

Questions For Catholics

I am confused about something.

Coming from several years in mainstream Protestantism, most  ''saved" fundamentalist talk with casualness about their relationship with Christ. Their love and joy of being born-again is all over them with enthusiasm--which by the way, I believe is the number one reason Catholics are running into Protestantism.

My husband's godfather (sponsor) told us that he grew up when Catholics bowed their head at the holy name of Jesus and felt it was disrespectful to take the Lord's name on your lips unless it was said in complete sacredness. That was why I assumed that Catholics didn't constantly share all the things that Jesus did for them--like, "He sent me an apron that I wanted in the shop the other day!" and "He got me the best parking lot space at Wal-Mart." I actually am using examples I have heard.

So, I totally understand if we Catholics don't go around shouting "Jeeeezzuzzz SAVED me! Hallelujah!" like the televangelists with big gold cufflinks.  Ah! That always makes me cringe. Sorry Lord.

But then, since becoming Catholic, I have heard more Catholics remark with a cynical roll of the eyes, "Oh my God" over just about anything. Even a priest I know says it.  I asked a nun in that church why everyone took the Lord's name in vain, she told me that the priest said it was okay and that they don't teach (whoever she meant by "they") that saying "God" flippantly is a sin anymore.

So, what's the deal all you cradle Catholics? Did you just go from NEVER saying the name of Jesus lest He be offended and confusing all the Protestants about your lack of religious verve, to bursting through with saying it in anything BUT a religious, sacred context and CONTINUING to confuse your Protestant brothers with your lack of verbal respect?

It sounds like I am angry and complaining but I am not. This is a real, sincere question. Await your answers.

God bless.

Catholics and the Written Word

My grandfather, James J. Ling was the founder of Ling-Tempco-Vought (LTV) which was a pretty big deal in Dallas as I grew up. My uncle Rob, as a collegiate getting his CPA, took a business class about my grandfather’s rise to multi-millionaire as a titan conglomerate genius. The professor was unaware that Rob was Ling’s son, so when the final grades were passed out and he received a “C” it ruffled my uncle’s feathers. As he exited the classroom for the final time, he let the professor in on the secret and indignantly insisted that he’d know more about his own father than the professor would ever know--no matter how many books he’d studied.

 **************** 

Since a little girl, dutifully enjoying my daily worship, I have worn out several bibles with notes and highlights. In college, I thought, “the lips that ‘boy, that Teresa knows her Bible’ rolled off of just didn’t realize they were making the understatement of their lives.” 

Through the years I have felt incredibly grateful that the Lord placed a passion in my heart for His written Word. Because knowing it better than anyone else around me, placed me in a position where I could clearly see that the church I grew up in, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, taught heretical doctrines. I knew my Bible and later, when I began looking into Catholicism I made sure the priests felt intimidated by my knowledge. They couldn’t trip me up, those wily papists.

Once I really began studying Catholicism intensely.... the phrase “rude awakening” comes to mind. As God opened up for me just how He had infused the Catholic church with two thousand years of spiritual giants, of men and women who, well, made my knowledge of scriptures look like Crayola-scribbled refrigerator art next to The Louvre-- or my adding and subtracting next to their quantum-mechanics-theoretical-astro-physicism. I now think the lips that say, “boy, that Teresa was humbled” don’t realize they are making the understatement of their lives. Eventually I was grateful that the Lord placed such a passion in my heart for His written Word, that I could clearly see that the church I was studying was teaching me orthodox doctrines.

It’s hard... hard... for us Bible-believing Protestants to humble ourselves and realize that all our study, all our scholarship melts in light of Catholicism. It confusing when most of them get a “C” when we test them on our Bible knowledge. 

What I have learned is that Catholics have a different understanding of the Word of God. They have more of a perspective of my uncle in a classroom situation with that professor. The Catholic worldview is from inside. They do not completely understand Protestants placing a book as the final authority, when they believe knowing God is about being in a covenant relationship with God--your Father. To Catholics, studying a written word is a good thing and nothing written in scripture is false. But there is also what He has said to the church that was not written down--family traditions. These hold just as much weight because they came straight from the mouth of God--their family heard Him say it. To a Catholic, Christ’s body is still on earth with His church and that is where we go to get the fullness of understanding of our Father.

Michel Voris and Real Catholic Television

If I could talk  to Michael Voris this is what I would say:

First off, I wish to thank you for your programing. It has expanded my love for my faith and Jesus Christ whom I have come to worship in such a deeper way  in the Catholic Church. For my husband and myself, we couldn't be more thankful because our RCIA classes just couldn't do what your premium channel has done with the "One True Faith" series as well as the other instructive programs.

Please don't take this as criticism in any way, for it is certainly not. (I usually brace myself for some "constructive criticism" when those words are written to me... but do not fear... I am not going to criticize.)

It is more than apparent that God has chosen you for the position of a modern-day Erasmus. (I would say Martin Luther for many of those reading, but I doubt Michael would take that as it was meant. Maybe he’d prefer a comparison to the prophet Jeremiah!) You have been called to a very, very difficult task--to rebuke the leaders of your church. 

Whew. What a position. You get the Devil trying to snuggle up to you on one side, because he will heartily use your words in fomenting hatred for the the Catholic faith. So you hear warnings from inside the church to shut up and sit down because you are hurting Catholicism and creating disunity. And there is some truth to that position. And you know it. And it can be REALLY confusing.

Then on the other side you have people who desperately need to hear your message because the CHURCH leaders are hurting the church and someone has to stand up and say what everyone is thinking or should be thinking. So you plead with the Lord  to show you if you are doing the right thing. Is my criticism hurting the faith more or will my criticism in the end hurt the faith less than the bishops and priests? (I am assuming I understand you and I may not...) 

However, usually those who benefit from your rebukes aren’t going to pat you on the back and thank you. They most likely resent your pointing to their faults. 

People in your position, Michael, often have great and agonizing debates within their spirits as to the validity of their calling. I would think, with the perspective of Catholicism where criticism of bishops and priests is taboo, it would be even more difficult to be confident of one’s vocation to be a voice crying in the wilderness. (not comparing you with John the Baptist--just using Biblical phraseology.)

It is heart rendering to stand and admonish those whom you love the most. Each word of criticism is arduous and you suffer as much to say it as those who hear it. (I am assuming you feel that way.)

Michael and Simon and those working at St. Michaels Media--you get bombarded on all sides from within and from without. Nobody can handle being in your position and being labelled the “bad guy” for long. 

So,

To Everyone else: 

I encourage everyone: Catholic liberals, Catholic conservatives, Protestants and anyone else who prays-- to pray for Michael and those working at their ministry. 

If he is from the Lord, then we need to hear his message whether we want to our not. We need to pray for him to continue his mission without bitterness, without despair and without loneliness. We need to pray that our hearts are open to hear his reprimands and change. If his message is not from the Lord, then of course he also needs our prayers just as much. 

http://www.realcatholictv.com

Did Jesus set His Kingdom Up for a Fall?

Take a look at the early church:

ACTS 2: 41-47

So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Luke reports in the book of Acts that in the early church, the Apostles accept gifts to the church, that all their property was held in common and distributed to those in need. A. Someone had to accept, house and protect the donations. B. Someone had to decide to whom it was distributed based upon their assessment of the community's needs. Therefore:

If the church accepted donations, then the church HAD to be a visible organization. It could not be a community of autonomous believers. 

ACTS 5: 1-14 excerpts

But a man named Ananias ...kept back some of the proceeds, and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles' feet. "Ananias," Peter asked, "why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God!" ... the people held them in high esteem. Yet more than ever believers were added to the Lord, great numbers of both men and women...

The church was organized to receive and distribute contributions. Those who accepted the donations were the apostles and they chose an administration to assist them (I Cor. 12:28). Those who speak against an institutionalized church need only look at Acts to see that the early church, by necessity, had to be an organization and could not be simply a spiritually amorphous group of independent believers. 

Point #1: The church was by necessity a visible, identifiable organization.

*************

The early church had a head, a recognizable leader that was obeyed.

The scripture doesn’t record that the early church was a democracy where everyone voted on what to do with the gifts. No, the Apostles called the shots. Notice that Ananias in the above story laid his gift down at the Apostle’s feet. That is a sign of subservience. He didn’t just drop the land title into a basket passed around during the offering at Sunday services. Also take note that when he fell down dead that Peter, as the head of the Apostles did not say that he personally had been lied to, but said that when you lie to him or the church authority, it is the same as lying to God himself. There was a direct fusing of God and His organized church as to make one indistinguishable from the other. It is also recorded that the miracles and wonders were at this time done, not the general church membership, but specifically by the Apostles.

Point #1: The church was by necessity a visible, identifiable organization.

Point #2: The early church had a head, a recognizable leader who was obeyed. 

************

Point #3 The Apostles were not perfect in their administration of the church.

For those who instruct the Protestants that Christ abandon his corrupted church because the leaders were unfaithfully mismanaging the funds, the scriptures remind us that Judas was among the chosen by Christ himself as one of the twelve. Judas, who was in charge of Jesus’ finances (John 13:29), was found to be a thief.

John 12:4-6 

But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages. " He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. 

Notice that Jesus did not dismantle the twelve disciples because one was a thief, nor for that matter because they all scattered when he was arrested and his head apostle betrayed him. Jesus simply replaced Judas. The position was still viable and was filled by the next generation of believers (Acts 1: 20-26) by the current leaders. This would be later called apostolic succession.

Scripture records members of the church criticizing how the Apostles distributed the possessions and deacons were appointed as administrators.  (Acts 6:1)

As we read, we must ask ourselves does the book of Acts record the derailing of God’s plan for His church? Should Peter have refused to baptize members until they were fully vetted at Pentecost and afterwards? Should the early church have steered clear of accepting donations, avoiding any misuse of funds by fallible leaders?

Point #1: The church HAD to be a visible organization.

Point #2: The early church had a head, a recognizable leader who was obeyed. 

Point #3 The Apostles were not perfect in their administration of the church.

Was this to be a temporary measure and did this practice later become wrong? Would later Christian leaders become so faithless themselves as to be unfit to handle the finances? Did the Bridegroom entrap His Bride by allowing financial practices in the beginning that would, when followed four centuries later, cause her own fall? 

Let’s take a trip into history, the fourth and fifth centuries:

AD 380. From Constantinople soon-to-be-ruler of the entire Roman Empire, Emperor Theodosius, made Christianity the official religion. 

Having recently been decriminalized, over the next century many people (converted and non-converted) flooded the Christian church which was sorely lacking in priests to properly disciple those being baptized. For various altruistic and spurious motivations, the church received huge monetary and property contributions--starting with Emperor Constantine who bequeathed the Lateran Palace to the popes when he picked up his capital and moved it to Constantinople. Burgeoning membership put stress upon the leadership in not only ministering to the spiritual needs of their parishioners but also the administration of these immense contributions.

Large churches were being built and filled with lavish and beautiful gifts. There was, of yet, no official seminaries where priests could be taught. Bishop became bishop, priest became priest by the anointing and consecration of their own cities’ bishops. Heresies have come and gone. The one still menacing the church, due to waves of Gothic invasions, was Arianism.

By the fifth century, the cities all over Italy had fallen into decline and often the Germanic tribes who came to conquer simply walked in and took over the smaller cities without lifting a sword. That facilitated the sack of Rome in 410 by the Visigoth King Alaric. After 423, western emperor after emperor is murdered, executed or appointed to the position by the dominating Germanic tribes. The western empire is virtually abandon by Constantinople and the popes became de facto civic authorities in charge of city water, food supplies, roads, and wall fortifications.

In 452 Pope Leo, as the only spokesman for Rome since the murder of the western emperor, met Atila the Hun on the Micino River and convinced him to leave the city untouched.  The official “fall” of Rome is twenty-five years away, but it felt to the city as if it had already happened. 

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Fast forward a millennium plus a couple hundred years and Enlightenment scholars are bombastically excoriating fifth century Christianity for allowing in the wave of converts, many who were not carefully taught the doctrines and accepting huge monetary donations. 

Many suggest that at the close of persecution, this sudden surge in political influence marked the beginning of the corruption of the church. The influx of money changed what they had assumed were tiny, autonomous, pure and penniless Christian communities into one monolithic organized, imperialistic Catholic Church. Against the history of the primitive disciples and the very will of God Himself, the church prostituted herself with paganism thus acquiring  world dominion. Satan’s conquering temptation for these Christians? The power of new members and new money.

Yet, did the church actually behave pre-Constantine much differently than it did post-Constantine? Scripture records the Apostles doing exactly what was condemned later. Was God no longer in charge in later centuries? Had He changed His mind about the church growing from a seed to a huge tree? Were church leaders so corrupted that they were allowing people into the church God would have kept out? Was is now that an organized church became wrong? Perhaps now was the time God required infallible leaders and perfect members. Perhaps it was now that the Apostolic succession carried on from the beginning should be abandon and anyone claiming a revelation and authorization from God allowed to be leader of the church?

Had not Christ anticipated such a time from the beginning and warned against the flood of people coming in and the church becoming large and organized? Or did He set His beloved Bride up for a fall when she was no longer a persecuted church?

You see, either God laid down a foundation of a real, organized church of fallible administrators or He didn’t. According to the passages in Acts, that is exactly what He did. He set up a visible, organized church whose fallible leaders accepted contributions and they made the assessment--right or wrong--what was to be done with these donations.

And yet, when the church was filling the earth three and four centuries later, all of a sudden, we think the rules should change and all those things set up as foundations for the Kingdom were now used to trip it up and cause God to abandon His Church. As the church grew some Protestants scholars claim, it was not supposed to be organized and the administrators were to be totally incorruptible. 

Did Jesus abandon His disciples because there was a Judas?  

Remember it was Judas who objected to the leaders use of gifts. When Mary poured the expensive perfume upon the feet of Jesus, Judas stood up and protested, "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?” (Context: John 12: 1-9) These words echo today against the Catholic church....

Michael Voris in the new CIA Episode.

Anyone have any comments? As a newbie, I am just watching and wondering.....

http://www.realcatholictv.com/cia/

or try

http://www.realcatholictv.com/cia/05rebellion/