Writing about a new post by D. G. Hart, a Calvinist who, he says, "continues to needle Catholics," he writes:
DG Hart continues to needle Catholics. He also continues to sound more sane and more Catholic than most Catholic commentators posting these days. At least in my book. The Gospel is NOT proclamation of a done deed, but the propostion of an offer to accept. Hence the momentousness of evangelization. Versus the commonly perceived triviality of the New Evangelization. I guess the new voices would have us believe Francis Xavier died on an island off of China telling people there they were already "mercy'd" and could chill. Somehow I doubt he would be down with that. But then he was blessed with not just holiness but also with basic common sense. Just saying... More pastoral pearls from the New Media false messiah that is John Allen's CRUX...Here's Hart:
Don’t listen to the polls but only to Jesus except when he teaches about what will become of Jerusalem:Q. Recent polls indicate that some 70 percent of Catholics in the United States (and 66 percent in Ireland) do not believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but rather a symbolic presence.I happen to be one of them. I am Jesuit-educated, and I have written to my pastor with my question but have been greeted with stone silence. If these polls are even halfway true, why is this elephant in the room never addressed or even mentioned in church? Are we all condemned to hell for this belief? (Duxbury, Massachusetts)A. The beliefs of the Catholic Church are not determined by plebiscite. That is to say, what is fundamental in determining the core content of the Catholic faith is not how people feel, but what Jesus said. And for that, we go to the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel.Jesus has just multiplied the loaves and the fish to feed 5,000 people, and the crowds are in awe. The very next day, Jesus says something that turns out to be very controversial (Jn 6:35, 51): “I am the bread of life … the living bread that came down from heaven … and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” People are shocked and ask: “How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?” (Jn 6:52).Even his followers are horrified. Christ has every opportunity to pull back and explain. “Wait,” he might have said, “I was only speaking figuratively.”Instead, he presses the point, watching as people start to drift away: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him” (Jn 6:54-56).Later, at the Last Supper, Jesus reaffirms this teaching in language that is virtually identical.Polling data varies widely regarding this teaching. The National Catholic Reporter, for example, found in a 2011 survey that 63 percent of adult Catholics believe that “at the consecration during a Catholic Mass, the bread and wine really become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”But as I said at the start, polling data is largely irrelevant, except to this extent (as your question suggests): If a fair number of Catholics do not subscribe to a long-held and central article of faith, the Church should doubtless do more to proclaim and explain that teaching.As to your last line, about the consequences of not believing, one thing is certain: No one is going to hell who sincerely follows the dictates of his own properly formed conscience [Huh?! This is as obscure as the annulment doctrine . Just what constitutes salvation anyway, 'good' intent? Most apparently so.] So why worry about that? Why not focus instead on determining what Jesus taught?So bishops should teach what the Bible teaches or [should] church members [...] follow their [own properly formed] consciences? No wonder the polls’ results and authority.
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Acknowledging the obvious problem of dismissing what it is men have always believed about real events - Paul Revere warning of the British invading; Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor - modern eisegesis has been constrained to swallow the Blue Whale of Tradition while straining out the nits they have linguistically picked in the Gospels.
Thus, we are now told that it was an error for the Evangelists to write that the Jews crucified Jesus for not every Jew did such a thing.
Really?
O, you mean that there were Jews like, say, the Apostles and disciples ,who were not culpable for the Holocaust of Jesus on Calvary?
OK, then let's go and rewrite secular history also and belabor the painfully obvious point that not every Brit then alive was invading the Colonies and that not every single Jap then alive participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Jerusalem was destroyed for the crime of Deicide and which crime was not only the worst crime in the entire history of man but a crime than which no greater crime can even be conceived.
Imagine an inter-stellar Martha Raye manning a Martian Death Ray and killing every single living person on Earth.
That act compared to the Holocaust of Christ on Calvary?
It would not even be morally visible by comparison but as we go deeper and deeper into Lent and as we draw closer and closer to the Passion of Christ it is right to wonder why our Pope and Prelates do not plead with the Messias-Deniers to repent and do penance and convert to the Ark of Salvation,The Catholic Church, outside of which they will perish.
John the Baptist, Jesus, and Peter all began their ministries preaching repentance and conversion but one has a better chance of hearing Narvel Felts live on NPR singing," Reconsider me" than one has of hearing any Prelate preaching the Gospel to the Jews even though there have more documents issued about the new evangelization than there are the number of notes played in the guitar solo of "Green Grass and High Tide."
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