Proof that a person knows Christ as his Savior is not found in sinless perfection. The Bible does, however demand a changed life as evidence that a person has received new spiritual life from God.
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17).
There is the constant tension between the lust of the flesh and the desire to be under the control of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:16-17). From the moment we are saved by grace through faith we are made a new creation in Christ and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The old nature is not eradicated when we believe on Christ, but we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to overcome sin and grow in Christ-likeness (3:26-29; 4:6; 5:22-26; 6:14).
Original post by mattpruett@faith-net.net (Faith Community Church of Canton NC) and software by Elliott Back
Sat Jun 30, 2007 7:12 pm (GMT -5)
Pope urges Chinese Catholics to unite
By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI made his most significant attempt to unite China’s 12 million Catholics Saturday, urging the underground faithful and followers of the state-run church to overcome decades of animosity and distrust.
Benedict lamented the lack of religious freedoms in China and called the government-sanctioned church “incompatible” with Catholic doctrine for appointing bishops without Vatican approval. But he also said he hoped the Vatican could reach an agreement with Beijing authorities on nominations.
In an unprecedented gesture, Benedict revoked 1988 Vatican regulations that had called for limiting contact with China’s official clergy and excommunicating bishops consecrated without the pope’s consent.
The pope’s comments came in a letter translated into five languages - including Mandarin in both traditional and simplified characters - a sign the Vatican wanted it widely read. It issued two accompanying documents highlighting key points and posted the letter on the Vatican’s Web site.
However, Liu Bainian, the vice chairman of the state-run China Patriotic Catholic Association, said Saturday he had not seen the letter and that the church had no immediate plans to read it out to the faithful or distribute it.
Qin Gang, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said China would “continue to have a frank, constructive dialogue with the Vatican in order to resolve differences between the two sides.”
China forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, shortly after the officially atheist Communist Party took power. Worship is allowed only in government-controlled churches, which recognize the pope as a spiritual leader but appoint their own priests and bishops.
Millions of Chinese, however, belong to unofficial congregations that are not registered with the authorities and have remained loyal to Rome.
Several times in the letter, Benedict praised the Catholics who had resisted pressure to join the official church. But he also urged them to forgive and reconcile with followers of the state-run church for the sake of unity.
“Indeed, the purification of memory, the pardoning of wrongdoers, the forgetting of injustices suffered and the loving restoration to serenity of troubled hearts … can require moving beyond personal positions or viewpoints, born of painful or difficult experiences,” he wrote.
Benedict referred repeatedly to the “Catholic Church in China” without distinguishing between the divisions.
“He underlines the unity of the church, which is fundamental because with this affirmation reconciliation becomes possible,” said the Rev. Bernardo Cervellera, director of AsiaNews, a missionary news agency close to the Vatican.
China’s Foreign Ministry called on the Vatican not to interfere in Beijing’s internal affairs in the name of religion. It also urged the Vatican to sever ties with rival Taiwan.
The Vatican said it was prepared “at any time” to move its diplomatic representation from Taiwan - which split from China in 1949 - to Beijing when an agreement with the government is reached.
The Cardinal Kung Foundation, a U.S.-based foundation that supports the underground church, said the clandestine priests “will follow the pope’s guidelines and instructions.” In an e-mail to The Associated Press, the foundation relayed what it said was the initial opinion of some underground clergy in China.
“He truly respects and hopes for total, genuine religious freedom in China and views it as essential for the normalization of relations,” the clergy said. “We hope and pray that the Chinese government will understand these very important points.”
Benedict cited the church law that calls for automatic excommunication of any bishop ordained by the official church without the consent of the pope.
But he highlighted mitigating circumstances, saying clergy were often pressured to join the official church or face persecution, and he left it up to individual bishops to decide how to proceed.
In another measure to eliminate divisions, Benedict also revoked special Vatican allowances for underground bishops trying to ordain new priests and perform other duties. The allowances had been granted because publicly celebrating the rites in traditional ways could have attracted attention and resulted in retaliation.
Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said the revocation was significant because it meant that the church in China did not have separate rules for each division.
Benedict called the Patriotic Association “incompatible with Catholic doctrine” because it named its own bishops and sought to guide the life of the church.
But he welcomed the fact that most bishops of the official church had reconciled with the Vatican and urged them to make that public.
Benedict stressed that he alone must appoint bishops but said he trusted that an agreement on nominations could be reached.
The Vatican would like to have a formula similar to the one it has with Vietnam, another communist country, where the Vatican proposes a few names and the government selects one.
Vatican analysts say an indication of China’s reaction to the letter will be how the next bishop of Beijing is selected to replace Bishop Fu Tieshan, the hard-line chairman of the Patriotic Association who died in April.
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Associated Press reporter Alexa Olesen in Beijing contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
Letter is at http://www.vatican.va
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Original post by mattpruett@faith-net.net (Faith Community Church of Canton NC) and software by Elliott Back
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Sat Jun 30, 2007 4:51 pm (GMT -5)
DON BABWIN; The Associated Press
Published: June 30th, 2007 01:00 AM
Link to original
CHICAGO For more than a century, Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary has prepared teenage boys for the priesthood, largely unchanged as the city transformed around it from gritty industrial center to modern metropolis.
But another kind of change finally caught up with Quigley.
The 102-year-old seminary, a Gothic-style building in a tony Chicago shopping district, closed this month because of a shrinking student body that has seen just one graduate ordained in the past 17 years.
Its the latest reminder that Roman Catholic preparatory seminaries have all but vanished in the United States, and it highlights the churchs struggle to find men willing to dedicate themselves to the priesthood.
This is more or less the final nail in the coffin of the preparatory seminary, said R. Scott Appleby, a historian at the University of Notre Dame who has written extensively about the church. Historians of the Catholic Church will point to the closing of Quigley
as a final landmark in a trend that has been building now for almost 50 years, he said.
As recently as the late 1960s, there were 122 high school seminaries in the U.S., with a combined student body of nearly 16,000, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
Quigley, which counts New York Cardinal Edward Egan and Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory among its alumni, was bursting with about 1,300 students in the 1950s; it had only 183 at the beginning of this school year.
When Archdiocese of Chicago officials announced in September that the school would close, they said it would be $1 million in debt by June.
Its closure leaves just seven preparatory seminaries, with a combined enrollment of about 500 students in the United States. This, at a time when the number of priests in the United States has dropped from nearly 59,000 in 1975 to about 42,000 last year.
The decline of high school seminaries illustrates a dramatic shift in the way the church finds priests, and how its had to scramble to do so.
Parishes more commonly are being served by priests from foreign countries, in large part because fewer American men are becoming priests. At the same time, the average age of new priests is older, with many men waiting until their 30s, 40s and beyond.
When 13 priests were ordained last month in Chicago, all but one were born and raised in another country, with most attending college before they came to the United States. Nine of them were in their 30s. The lone American-born priest was a 42-year-old former advertising executive.
The reasons for the shift begin with how dramatically things have changed since Quigley opened in 1905.
Like other seminaries, Quigley, which moved to its present home in 1918, thrived because large Catholic families, many Irish or Polish, often sent at least one of their sons there.
In the old days, you had an Irish family with three kids. One was going to be a priest, one was going to be a cop and one was going to be a fireman, and the mother was going to be the one who decided which was which, said Peter Makrinski, a longtime teacher and coach at Quigley.
That began to change in the 1960s and 70s. Archdiocese spokesman James Accurso said seminaries fell out of favor among young people for the same reason marrying right out of high school did.
A lot of things in life are delayed, young people get married later and I think they join the priesthood later, he said.
Morgan Mellske, an 18-year-old Quigley senior, said that, while some students are considering becoming priests, most are not.
I dont even know what I want to do with the rest of my life, Mellske said. People become priests in the middle of their life.
Appleby, the historian, said theres more to it.
Its a culture that raises a collective eyebrow at the notion of a young man or a young woman (who) would renounce sexuality or sexual self-expression, he said. Theres a general skepticism about the emotional health of people who would do that voluntarily, particularly, he said, at such a young age.
Within the church itself, more people began questioning the wisdom of training teenagers to become priests and forgo sex.
Our understanding (of sexuality) is more developed today, said the Rev. Donald Cozzens, a professor at John Carroll University in Cleveland and a former seminary rector who criticized mandatory celibacy in a book, Freeing Celibacy.
Further, as families shrank, so did the pool of prospective seminarians.
When they dont have more than one boy, parents are very reluctant to let that child go into the priesthood, said Sister Katarina Schuth, a teacher at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, who has studied seminaries for more than two decades.
Even families that continued to send their sons to Quigley made it clear they were doing so for a Catholic education and not to start them on a path to the priesthood.
The parents, they want their sons to make money, they want their sons to get married, Makrinski said. Theyd say, Id much rather see them get a job.
In fact, while more than 3,000 young men have graduated from Quigley in the past 17 years, just one has been ordained. That was in 1999.
Original post by mattpruett@faith-net.net (Faith Community Church of Canton NC) and software by Elliott Back
