Great Catholics of history - adds an American Catholic

[BobRyan]

While it is true that the Catholic church is often identified with the atrocities of the dark ages - let us not forget that some of the great Christians of history - were indeed Catholic. Martin Luther comes to mind. Wycliff, Huss, Jerome.

Perhaps we have an American Catholic to add to that prestigious list.

Quote:

Dr. George is the Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). He is also a McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University. One of America’s foremost scholars in the fields of constitutional law, ethics, and political philosophy, he has won numerous awards for his academic and civic work, including the Presidential Citizens Medal. He has served on the President’s Council on Bioethics and as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

He is a former Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. He is the author or editor of many books, including Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality and The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Morality, and Religion in Crisis, and co-author of Embryo: A Defense of Human Life.

Not a man out to start "the Protestant Reformation" for sure but perhaps a man at a nexus point in Christian history none-the-less.

See his talk entitled "Ashamed of the Gospel?"

http://www.catholicprayerbreakfast.com/robert_george_remarks_2014.pdf

It starts out like this --

Quote:

Ashamed of the Gospel?

Remarks of Robert P. George

National Catholic Prayer Breakfast

May 13, 2014

The days of socially acceptable Christianity are over.

The days of comfortable Catholicism are past. It is no longer easyto be a faithful Christian, a good Catholic, an authentic witness to the truths of the Gospel. A price is demanded and must be paid. There are costs of discipleship — heavy costs, costs that are burdensome and painful to bear.

Of course, one can still safely identify oneself as a “Catholic” and even be seen going to mass. That is because the guardians of those norms of cultural orthodoxy that we have come to call “political correctness” do not assume that identifying as “Catholic” or going to mass necessarily means that one actually believes what the Church teaches on issues such as marriage and sexual morality and the sanctity of human life.

And if one in fact does not believe what the Church teaches ,or, for now at least, even if one does believe those teachings but is prepared to be completely silent about them, one is safe—one can still be a comfortable Catholic. In other words, a tame Catholic, a Catholic who is ashamed of the Gospel—or who is willing to act publicly as if he or she were ashamed—is still socially acceptable .But a Catholic who makes it clear that he or she is not ashamed is in for a rough go—he or she must be prepared to take risks and make sacrifices. “If,” Jesus said, “anyone wants to be my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow me.” We American Catholics, having become comfortable, had forgotten, or ignored, that timeless Gospel truth. There will be no ignoring it now.

The question each of us today must face is this: Am I ashamed of the Gospel? And that question opens others: Am I prepared to pay the price that will be demanded if I refuse to be ashamed, if, in other words, I am prepared to give public witness to the massivelypolitically3incorrect truths of the Gospel, truths that the mandarins of an elite culture shaped by the dogmas of expressive individualism and me-generation liberalism do not wish to hear spoken? Or ,put more simply, am I willing, or am I, in the end, unwilling, to take up my cross and follow Christ?

Powerful forces and currents in our society press us to be ashamed of the Gospel—ashamed of the good, ashamed of our faith’s teachings on the sanctity of human life in all stages and conditions, ashamed of our faith’s teachings on marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife. These forces insist that the Church’s teachings are out of date, retrograde, insensitive, uncompassionate, illiberal, bigoted—even hateful. These currents bring pressure on all of us—and on young Catholics in particular—to yield to this insistence. They threaten us with consequences if we refuse tocall what is good evil, and what is evil good. They command us to conform our thinking to their orthodoxy, or else say nothing at all.

Do you believe, as I believe ,that every member of the human family, irrespective of age or size or stage of development or condition of dependency, is the bearer of inherent dignity and an equal right to life? Do you hold that the precious child in the womb, as a creature made in the very image and likeness of God, deserves respect and protection? Then, powerful people and institutions say, you are a misogynist—a hater of women, someone who poses a threat to people’s privacy, an enemy of women’s “reproductive freedom.”You ought to be ashamed!

Do you believe, as I believe, that the core social function of marriage is to unite a man and woman as husband and wife to be mother and father to children born of their union? Do you hold, as I hold, that the norms that shape marriage as a truly conjugal partnership are grounded in its procreative nature—its singular aptness for the project of child-rearing? Do you understand marriage as the uniquely comprehensive type of bond—comprehensive in that it unites spouses5in a bodily way and not merely at the level of hearts and minds—that is oriented to and would naturally be fulfilled by their conceiving and rearing children together? Then these same forces say you are a homophobe, a bigot, someone who doesn’t believe in equality.

You even represent a threat to people’s safety. You ought to be ashamed! But, of course, what you believe, if you believe these things, is a crucial part of the Gospel. You believe the truth—in its fullness—about the dignity of the human person and the nature of marriage and sexual morality as proclaimed by the Church—our only secure source of understanding the Gospel message. So when you are invited to distance yourself from these teachings or go silent about them, when you are threatened with opprobrium or the loss of professional opportunities or social standing if you do not, you are being pressured to be ashamed of the Gospel—which means to give up faith in the Lordship of Christ and hope in the triumph of goodness, righteousness, and love in and through Him.

[BobRyan]

Indeed - SDAs face many of the same issues and will face them even more so in the future. It is interesting that these insights come from one who is Catholic and yet aware of the signs of the times for Christians and what it will cost.

[Stewart (SDA)]

Interesting!

 

Over the years I have taken an interest in John Huss, and yes, in many ways he did die a devout Catholic.

 

One of the better [in my view] old-school Protestant historians writing about Huss says :

 

"...So perished John Huss as an obstinate incorrigible heretic [the writer is using here the words of Huss's enemies during his trial], but his heresy has never been clearly defined. It was not a denial of any of the great doctrinal truths of universal [i.e. Catholic] Christianity, nor any of those tenets of belief rejected afterwards by the German and English Reformers."

 

"On Transubstantiation... the Communion in one kind, worship of the Saints and of the Virgin Mary, Huss was scrupulously, unimpeachably orthodox."

 

(Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Bk xiii, chp ix, p.499)