Showing posts with label Idolatry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Idolatry. Show all posts

11/28/2011

Mike Gendron's lies and he wanted to see Pope Benedict XVI

Divine Appointments in Europe

Our ministry in Europe was a huge success with many divine appointments and open doors of opportunity to share the glorious Gospel of grace. On our first day at the Vatican, I approached the Pope's residence to see if we could meet with him to talk about the Gospel and his strategy for ecumenical unity. The Swiss guard told me I could see him at noon (along with the other 500,000 people waiting to see him in St. Peter's square). It occurred to me that I have immediate access to God through one mediator but had no access to the pope because of one obstruction. Later, when the pope appeared at his window to "bless" the crowd, we were astonished to witness the misplaced and excessive exaltation of this man. Our hearts were filled with compassion for the many nuns whose eyes were transfixed on him as if he were a god.

As usual Gendron proceeds to lie and deceive his readers. Notice that like some politicians have done he declares victory without having actually achieved it. He can't tell us that he didn't know that personal meetings with His Holiness are scheduled far in advance. This is just another of his outright lies that he propagates as an attack on the Catholic faith. Is this the kind of Christian integrity that he should display? I think not.

During our tour of St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museum, we were taken back by the immense idolatry and paganism that is thinly veiled by a counterfeit form of Christianity.

Notice that he doesn't bother to detail this, probably because he knows full well that any Catholic whose remotely knowledgeable about our most holy faith would make him look like even more of a liar than he already does. For those of you who might not have seen it, I answer this sort of specious propaganda in an article on my blog called. Iconoclasm: Or: Catholics Worship Graven Images NOT

 Clearly Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers from the light of the Gospel and the glory of Christ.

Any of you feel blinded? Any of you unbelievers? Odd...all the faithful Catholics I know are not only very strong believers and followers of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but can explain and defend what we believe and why.


We left with a greater sense of thanksgiving to God for delivering us from this kingdom of darkness into the glorious light of the Savior.

Hmmm, I seem to express that same feeling about coming home to the Catholic faith in My Testimony.

Many of the Catholics we witnessed to showed no interest in the Word of God because of their fierce and unbending loyalty to their religion. We were, however, encouraged by some who had a teachable spirit and expressed an interest in the truth we shared from Scripture.

Sure Mike, and just how much Italian do you even speak? More likely, he couldn't make himself understood and they were bored with this rude American anti-Catholic. Truth from scripture? Really? If it's so true then how come I've been able to refute so many of your newsletter articles with abundant scriptures and well documented Catholic teaching?
Response to Hard Questions to Ask Good Catholics (By Mike Gendron)
Refuting anti-Catholic tract: "Rome vs The Bible" by Mike Gendron
Refuting: "Is a Catholic Christian an Oxymoron?"
Refuting Mike Gendron's attacks on Eucharistic Adoration


We continued to sow the imperishable seed of God's Word in Naples. It was somewhat of a homecoming for me since I lived there 52 years ago while in middle school. At that time, as a devout Catholic and altar boy, I had what I thought, was a great privilege to meet Padre Pio. He was the stigmatist who bore the 5 wounds of a crucifixion and was recently named a saint. In his autobiography he said souls from purgatory would stop by his window on the way to heaven to thank him for suffering on their behalf.

Irrelevant...

As our merciful God set us free from this religious deception, we now pray that the truth of His Word will do the same for all the divine appointments He set for us.

And I will pray a Rosary and a Divine Mercy Chaplet (Please join me in this my Catholic brothers and sisters.) in thanksgiving that I am not deceived by lying men like you Mike Gendron and my intention will be the collapse of your anti-Catholic "ministry" and your final reversion by the mercy of God.

7/28/2007

Iconoclasm: Or: Catholics Worship Graven Images NOT

View Poll Results: Allegation of Catholic Idolatry
I agree: Catholics worship Mary, the saints and statues 6 3.85%
That is completely wrong and here's why. 150 96.15%
Voters: 156.


Okay let's try this again...

Welcome!
A graven image according to the context of the 1st commandment is anything that a person would construct in order to give it the worship that is due only to God. Now, that said, it could also include anything that we choose to make more important than God in our lives, such as money, career, or power. The Catechism of the Catholic Church gets into it more here: http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/comm1.html#GRAVEN so you can peruse that at your convenience.

Islam forbids the display of ANY images (It's called Iconoclasm, this forbidding) and the iconoclastic heresies that have arisen in Christianity were the result of Islamic influence in about the 800's. you can find that history here at New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07620a.htm

Read the graven image part of the first commandment here:
Exodus 20:1-5

"1 And the Lord spoke all these words: 2 I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 Thou shalt not have strange gods before me. 4 Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. 5 Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them: I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me:"

It is clear that the prohibition is not iconoclastic as you preach, but based upon the intent of the one making and using the image. Since NO CATHOLIC EVER kneels down before any image to worship it we are not idolators at all. We are not stupid enough to confuse a mass of rock, plaster, metal, or any other created thing with the almighty and ever living God of the Universe

New Advent entry on Iconoclasm.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07620a.htm


From the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

IV. "YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FOR YOURSELF A GRAVEN IMAGE . . ."



2129 The divine injunction included the prohibition of every representation of God by the hand of man. Deuteronomy explains: "Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a graven image for yourselves, in the form of any figure...."[66] It is the absolutely transcendent God who revealed himself to Israel. "He is the all," but at the same time "he is greater than all his works."[67] He is "the author of beauty."[68]

2130 Nevertheless, already in the Old Testament, God ordained or permitted the making of images that pointed symbolically toward salvation by the incarnate Word: so it was with the bronze serpent, the ark of the covenant, and the cherubim.[69]

2131 Basing itself on the mystery of the incarnate Word, the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea (787) justified against the iconoclasts the veneration of icons - of Christ, but also of the Mother of God, the angels, and all the saints. By becoming incarnate, the Son of God introduced a new "economy" of images. 2132 The Christian veneration of images is not contrary to the first commandment which proscribes idols. Indeed, "the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype," and "whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it."[70] The honor paid to sacred images is a "respectful veneration," not the adoration due to God alone:
Religious worship is not directed to images in themselves, considered as mere things, but under their distinctive aspect as images leading us on to God incarnate. The movement toward the image does not terminate in it as image, but tends toward that whose image it is.[71]

If the making of images is wrong as the Moslems and these misgiuded iconoclasts say then how do they account for God COMMANDING the making of images to adorn the top of the Ark of the Covenant and the brass serpent that Moses lifted up to save the Israelites that had sinned and which in fact is mentioned in the NT as a type of the lifting up of Christ for our sins? The temple of Solomon is described as having been adorned with all manner of images yet God was pleased to be present there and did not condemn them for it.