Showing posts with label Catholic News Service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholic News Service. Show all posts

Monday, February 11, 2013

Popes and Diatribes

"a theology which out of love, wants to know the beloved better." --God Is Love by Pope Benedict XVI

As many, such as the writer quoted below, would like to distort the state of the world's largest Christian denomination with splenetic diatribes-- in other words, puking guts and not much else, T. Sanderson of the National Secular Society writes today:
"Under Ratzinger [Pope Benedict XVI] the Vatican has become despised and resented throughout the world. He has played a major role in reducing the Catholic Church's popularity and its authority.
Catholics have deserted the Church at an increasing rate, repelled by the inhumanity of Ratzinger's  unbending adherence to what are perceived as cruel doctrines ..."


It is a display of regrettable ignorance that one would attempt to characterize 1.3 billion persons of the earth's population as such. Are these world-wide Catholics fools? Why do they keep coming? Why does the Church increase world-wide in numbers?
Think carefully, seek creditable news sources such as Catholic News Service, before you form an opinion about another faith based on something different from your own.

It is in practice the truth that while the Catholic Church is regulated from the top down, from the Vatican to the world; equally true is that the Church is local. She, the Church, is regulated by the average person in the pews and by the local Bishops every bit as much. And in the working of the Holy Spirit, it is so that faith based on what one can know but may not see is true, like the truth of the wind blowing upon one's face. And that while some members may be in commission of grievous faults, the Church, the body of Christ is composed of those same persons in the pews who live the greatest call to "love one another."

That leaves little room for scathing diatribes against humanity. The Church is present upon all continents and under all governments from the most liberal to the most repressive dictatorships, offering care and comfort to the human family. May those same blessings of the Spirit be yours and mine.