Tradicat

 + JMJ A Church without a Hell isn't Worth  Damn!  or If the Catholic Church isn't the Church of Christ - why did the martyrs and missionaries sacrifice their lives to convert people to the Catholic Church???   From my perspective, the concept that the Church of Christ subsists within the Catholic Church and therefore exists outside the Catholic Church is responsible for the death of the missionary spirit. Why give people the narrow path when the wide path of their respective religions is equally valid?  The word for this is, I think, syncretism. So once the 'subsistit' part gets cleared up, the Church will be in need of a great many Catholics like St. Francis Xavier to go and work Our Lords vineyard! This doesn't mean that you can't start with your own family, in all the virtues, to help them grow in the Faith!!! P^3    

+ JMJ As hinted at in the earlier post, a cynicism accompanied the modernism that permeated the Catholic Church from the seminaries upward. Words such as legends, myths came to be used in describing the miracles worked by saints and eventually even Our Lord Jesus Christ. One reference that I came across was an article titled GROWTHS OF LEGENDS OF HEALING THE LIFE OF XAVIER AS A TYPICAL EXAMPLE written by Andrew Dickson White in 1896.  In it the author claims that: The letters given in it [Collection of Letters by Emanuel Acosta - published ~20y after Francis' death.] Fr. were written by Xavier and his associates not only from Goa, which was the focus of all missionary effort and the centre of all knowledge regarding their work in the East, but from all other important points in the great field. The first of them were written during the saint's lifetime, but, though filled with every sort of detail regarding missionary life and work, they say nothing regarding any miracles by ...

 + JMJ     Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has been in the icy grips of self-skepticism ( doubt ) and self-cynicism ( disbelief ).  This extends to the claims of the supernatural, I suppose, because this runs counter to the modernist belief that religion emanates from within humans and therefore miracles didn't really happen.  It is truly a matter of wonder that one man in the short space of ten years (6 May, 1542 - 2 December, 1552) could have visited so many countries, traversed so many seas, preached the Gospel to so many nations, and converted so many infidels. The incomparable apostolic zeal which animated him, and the stupendous miracles which God wrought through him, explain this marvel, which has no equal elsewhere. The list of the principal miracles may be found in the Bull of canonization. St. Francis Xavier is considered the greatest missionary since the time of the Apostles, and the zeal he displayed, the wonderful miracles he p...