Will Catholics Excommunicate the Pope?

 When the Pope expressed the opinion that homosexual civil unions are o.k. he did not avoid giving the appearance of acquiescence in support of sin. Homosexuality is plainly condemned in the Bible in quite strong language so the statement seems an expression of apostasy.  As a member of the Jesuit order he may have been using a little duplicity to accomplish some organizational goal of increasing membership in the secular world. The E.U. and the United States each have homosexual marriage or civil union already so he may have been trying to follow what he believes is the leading political line.

 The Catholic Church has something of an imperial history, or quasi-imperial in association with actual political royals, and a swinish society where people rely on imperial authority instead of civil law isn’t uncommon. That may be the developing trend around the world today actually. A fellow that had returned from Australia felt a certain pride in that Australians tended to just fight among themselves and didn’t use lawyers too much, unaware that Australia has a magisterial rather than an adversarial legal system. In societies with a royal, imperial history magisterial legal systems tend to exist still, and the Judge has a role closer to that of a rep of royalty listening to pleas of the commoners rather than as an impartial judge of the commoners. The Pope said he was not one to Judge on the issue of homo marriage in the year before the Obama administration made a full court press to get homo marriage the law of the land; he was just swinging along with the times and will of Wall Street.

 The Catholic Church for the first thousand years more or less was o.k. and brought a unity to savage pagan lands. Europe in Christendom was able to survive pagan and Muslim attacks from the east and south. Some people were actually saved for Christ yet as apostasy shows many professing to be Christian may actually be rather duplicitous about that. Papal infallibility was a reasonable claim when a standard doctrine was required amidst a wealth of heresy and schismatic hermeneutics. Keeping a standard doctrine amid mostly illiterate savages of Europe and the rest of the world wasn’t so easy; the pope was a kind of Supreme Court of Himself back in the day getting the last word on doctrinal disputes. Of course sometimes schisms did arise by powerful groups that could afford to split off and hence the Orthodox Church arose as later did the Church of England. A former Pope relinquished a Papal claim to infallability maybe a half century ago –sometime after they ended The Index (the last bit of the Inquisition) about 1960 something.

 There are numerous apostate Christian sects these days. Darwinism weakened the Church a lot; scientists and bad theologians advocating pre-tribulationism have taken theological thought away from the truth and moved it toward either atheist science or secularism entirely or end times apocalyptic movies and books. The Bible seems to indicate for many though that the apocalypse was in the first century from the crucifixion of the Lord for the next 40 years culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem with a million dead. Jesus Christ said all of the things he said concerning end times would occur before the end of that living generation and they did. Those were the most accurate prophecies by one individual in the Bible and most Christians throw out that idea altogether. What was to follow those end times was the establishment of the kingdom of God on Earth in the hearts and minds of believers for an unspecified period of time that continues to the present day even though some seem to be falling away or supporting false doctrine to a certain extent.

 The Protestant reformation of the 15^th century showed that the Church structure needed a lot of change and reform to return to the gospel expressed in the Bible. It was not right for an amalgam of syncretistic or unbiblical correct practices to be associated with or to become Church doctrine. Independent, non-papal Church leadership developed. Salvation was thought to be between and individual soul and Jesus Christ directly without mediators in the clergy. The Pope’s recent apparent expression of support for homosexual relationships formalized in law could be regarded as a reason why direct relationships between believers and God through the Lord is a good idea; relying upon sinful, fallen mankind for salvation or official help with that or making doctrine from the Bible as if with divine authority just won’t work very well.

 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pope-francis-faces-divided-reactions-after-backing-same-sex-civil-n1244243

Of course the Pope may have just been somewhat clumsy with his words and meant something instead like ‘civil law concerns civil authorities, I am just concerned with Godly and Biblical things myself’. If that were the case he might have simply commented on what the Bible says about homosexuality (homosexuals and drunkards won’t be going to heaven although they could change) and noted that civil laws are for civil authorities. That is he should have disambiguated his viewpoint as leader of the Catholic Church from sin and secular practices regarded as permissible in civil law. I believe he might have done so if he actually belied what the Apostle Paul wrote in the book of Romans and if he had no interest in trying to make his imperial, modestly in decline, religious imperial empire mirror the evolution of civil law in the west.

 People today have so many wrong ideas concerning philosophy and religion as well as inferences to be made from evolution concerning spiritual matters (as well as in interpreting the Bible) that Erasmus’ book title ‘In Praise of Folly’ seems appropriate for the era. It really is remarkable and the present Pope just seems to go along with that trend. Christians should probably move toward a priesthood of believers’ church structure as Luther seemed to wish. The trouble with that is the clergy want job security and don’t really want to step aside. In an era of near universal illiteracy t more rigid clergy was requisite for keeping the gospel message intact and universal. In an era of universal literacy that church structure is anachronistic and fails to make the faithful direct ministers participating in church themselves. There are numerous ways Christian worship services perhaps in smaller groups could be made more spiritual, egalitarian and yet remain with standard Biblically correct doctrine.

 Why so many people of so many religions and scientists to have wrong ideas concerning the Church of Jesus Christ is a little difficult to understand-just a little though. Most misunderstand why the economic structure of the Earth is causing mass species extinctions too. At least I understand why there are so many traffic accidents in crowded urban areas. One there is a lot of traffic and two- everyone is looking for an advantage to help themselves a little where they can to get ahead.

 Christianity need only be consistent with the Bible and the Lord to be Christianity. It shouldn’t at all be concerned with trying to get the approval of the worldly.