I can't wait to read it! Since we are suffering through perhaps the greatest crisis the Church has ever seen, surely this encyclical will address all of the root causes of this crisis including a false hope in the novel ideology of error having public rights and its disastrous consequences, how the novel idea of collegieality has made the pope nothing more than a figure head who can be ignored, and the false perception propogated by many in the Church that salvation has no real connection to formal membership in the Church of Christ. I can't wait to see how the Pope once and for all attacks and explains these errors that have wracked the Church for the last 50 years and clearly renounce and turn away from them. I also can't wait to see a catalogue of the bad fruits of the New Mass since 1969, desacralizing the Holy Sacrifice, a denunication of the sad state of the Mass, and an elimination of the Novus Ordo. Also I can't wait to see Pope Francis condemn in the strongest terms and excommunicate those bishops and priests within the Church who support abortion, ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ "marriage", women's ordination, and contraception. I also am excited to see his explicit condemnation of national governments who support these practices and set out to destroy the family and demand that they recognize the Social Kingship of Christ or perish.

Certainly the pope will address all of the pressing and urgent concerns to turn things around as the Church is on fire and falling apart and the world is descending into Hell.

SURELY he won't just write another long encyclical like his predecessors on some generic spiritual topic as if everything were normal. As if the state of the Church were basically good and the faithful just need a little pep talk about Faith (in the generic sense) to pray a little more and feel better about themselves. Ha! That would be absurd!!

Ok, let me start reading. So excited!!

 

What is NOT said is more telling than what is said...

Man, I need a drink.

I skipped ahead to the last section (oops), where I'm sure it's Francis writing about faith in our fallen society. In God Prepares a City for Them, he's already gone over the faith in the family part, and then he puts these faithful families in "society":

54. Absorbed and deepened in the family, faith becomes a light capable of illumining all our relationships in society. As an experience of the mercy of God the Father, it sets us on the path of brotherhood.

Welp, seems like "Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword" is out the window.

I need to learn to embed a video here, but here are some peaceful [probably Prot] Christians at a gαy pride parade in Seattle a few days ago. You'll note their offense is wearing a shirt that says "Jesus" and not calling anyone out of their sin, just trying to turn "their brothers" (and some ..."women") to God:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/embed/utyiN7g0TkE[/youtube]



With that show of human brotherhood in mind, continuing in the same paragraph:

Modernity sought to build a universal brotherhood based on equality, yet we gradually came to realize that this brotherhood, lacking a reference to a common Father as its ultimate foundation, cannot endure. We need to return to the true basis of brotherhood. The history of faith has been from the beginning a history of brotherhood, albeit not without conflict. God calls Abraham to go forth from his land and promises to make of him a great nation, a great people on whom the divine blessing rests (cf. Gen 12:1-3). As salvation history progresses, it becomes evident that God wants to make everyone share as brothers and sisters in that one blessing, which attains its fullness in Jesus, so that all may be one.

First, why not call it "the Heresy of Modernism", not "modernity" — I've never heard the word modernity. Maybe I missed that class.

I'd like to suggest humbly that this great brotherhood at the start of history was Cain slaying Abel. You'd think that if God had called all humanity to brotherhood, He wouldn't have called Cain's offering dog meat; He would have instead handled Cain with kid gloves and said, "Abel gets the Faithful prize, but Cain you get the Most Improved! Everybody wins!"

Yes, Abram was called out to bring A blessing (SALVATION) to the FEW who'd seek after God, but not to evolve the whole world into brothers. Yes, Abram might have thought God was super-merciful and wouldn't blow Sodom, heh, but when God said He was going to nuke Sodom and Gomorrah, Abram learned about God's Mercy (allowing the Angel of the LORD and another angel to go try to rescue Lot), but he also learned about God's Justice: God blew Sodom sky high, and Lot's wife who yearned for Sodom got turned into a symbolic "your heart is where your treasure is" pillar even though she left, because she loved Sodom! (Not to mention, Lot merely exposing his family to depravity ruined his daughters. That's VERY worrisome to me living in our present-day Sodom.)

Abram (Abraham, whatever) was holy to ask God to look for a few decent sorts and not blow the sodomite cities, but then Abram had to suck it up when God's Judgement came down. —I wonder if Abram ever learned that the Sodomites he tried to defend ATTEMPTED RAPE on the ANGEL OF THE LORD?  

So the only "all" outside the Church is ALL getting blown up if they stay in a heathen paradise. When Lot wanted a blessing, he had to leave "his brethren" behind in Sodom and never look back. (And I still can't figure his fate; he got raped like Noah did.)

I have so many problems with just this little section, but overall, if God had "called all humanity to brotherhood" first and foremost (versus calling all men to HOLINESS), why didn't God just take Cain's unfaithful gift so Cain wouldn't get jealous of Abel? Hello! Cain screwed up; God didn't mince words on that, and it made Cain jealous enough to be the first murderer. THAT'S the fallen world's history of brotherhood.

And then, I'm not real comfortable with "universal brotherhood", maybe because it sounds like the "Muslim Brotherhood". This part is in the SOCIETY section, as if the whole world is magically in the Church, and that's what God intended? But that's sorta NOT what God intended: separation of wheat and chaff... someone's got to be the chaff.

Yes, I see "the fullness in Jesus so that all may be one", but God doesn't say anywhere that EVERYONE is going to share in the blessing of Abraham unless they're IN the Church AND repent, give up their perverse natures and become one with +Jesus through the Holy Eucharist. THAT'S "the Faith."

And on this Abraham stuff... I'd point out that not everyone before Christ went to Hell (though it was still "through Christ"), nor did Jesus descend to Hell to get only Jews (much less "everyone"). The early guys like Enoch (who we know NOTHING about) and Elijah (who found most of Israel completely EVIL and was done with them) were "translated," for one; and then some of God's "friends" who were definitely scooped up from Hell when Christ descended into Hell weren't ALL Jews, or maybe not even "Abrahamic". Um, Ruth, Rahab, JOB, and ..well, I'm sure there are plenty of others floating around that had remembered God. Job surely wasn't a Jew stuck down in Egypt being a slave when he was called "the most holy person on earth" (which, btw, doesn't say much for Jacob's offspring in that 400 yr period). Yeah, it's a mystery I don't get, but the pre-Christ faithful weren't all of Abraham's seed. What about those Persians who came to see the Advent of Christ?

(Yeah, it's possible they got it from some of Abraham's myriad offspring; I just don't know, except that they weren't all ONLY Jacob's offspring who God loved and considered faithful.)

If anything stands out in the OT, it's how ungodly the blessed Jews who brought the scriptures were when a prophet like Moses wasn't in their faces 24x7. I get it; that's why my priest is on speed dial. But Abraham brought forth a people (not ALL the people) who would eventually bring forth the holy scriptures and the Holy Mother and Jesus, and that's IT. After that, your nationality isn't going to matter much: you're a Catholic holding to the tradition of the Apostles, or you're not. All this "Abraham" talk bothers me for some reason. I don't think being a Jew, Christian, or Muslim gives you the "faith of Abraham". Obviously not. We need to stop lifting up Abraham and start lifting up +JESUS, the point where Jews and Muslims fall away quickly.

Yes, all that from ONE paragraph of the encyclical. I'mma need a drink to continue, which means after getting my housework done tonight.

Very depressing.

Has the novus ordo echo chamber declared this encyclical a masterpiece yet?

I am not going to read it. It would just make me upset. :really-mad2:

Has the novus ordo echo chamber declared this encyclical a masterpiece yet?

Capt. You can bet they will be praising it ad nauseam. The pope could publish a recipe for beef stroganoff and they would hail it as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The word "soul" never appears in this encyclical.

But the word "supernatural" does, surprisingly, considering it never did in Vatican II docuмents.