“If you believe what you like in the Gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.”
For many people today, practical atheism is the normal rule of life...If this attitude becomes a general existential position, then freedom no longer has any standards, then everyting is possible and permissible.
Assuredly, the word of truth can be painful and uncomfortable. But it is the way to holiness, to peace, and to inner freedom. A pastoral approach which truly wants to help the people concerned must always be grounded in the truth. In the end, only the truth can be pastoral.
That Christianity gives joy and breadth is also a thread that runs through my whole life. Ultimately someone who is always only in opposition could not endure life at all.
In the name of tolerance, tolerance is being abolished; this is a real threat we face.
There are many problems with sedevacantism, but the major one is assuming that a Pope has to be faultless. The Pope is a sinner, just like the rest of us, and part of the problem with sedevacantism is that it rests on the assumption that a Pope who has faults cannot be a legitimate Pope, which is of course, non-sense and goes against much of what the Church teaches with regards to sin and concupiscence.
A very interesting and worthy-of-your-time article by Michael Brendan Dougherty entitled " Catholics must learn to resist their popes — even Pope Francis - Too many are becoming party apparatchiks ". My only beef with it is taht it should have replaced the texts "even Pope Francis" with "especally Pope Francis".
Distinctions Matter
Distinctions Matter Forward
Missale Romanum
Pre-1951 Calendar