Voice of the Faithful held its Palm Sunday Vigil for Accountability today, says Kelly Clark, but she notes that in the process VOTF completely muddles Catholic teaching on the nature of Jesus Christ.
We start, of course, by denying the Divinity of Christ. And put a woman in charge.
“Through dialogue, a foreign woman, moves Christ to change his mind. Her faith opens his heart and mind. Because of her, Christ sees his mission in entirely new terms.”
Not content with Sunday’s readings, the group takes a truly wonderful piece of the Gospel of Matthew (15:27)...and totally misconstrues it.
Distorting the message further with a bit of character analysis, we proceed.
The Canaanite Women…faithful, persistent, not one of the chosen.
Jesus…open to change
Disciples…protective of Jesus, why?
They interpret this Gospel episode as showing that Jesus changed his mind about His mission. The claim that Jesus had originally intended to come only to save the Jews, but that the Canaanite woman “changed his mind.” Of course, the lesson here is supposed to be that if Jesus can change a matter of “doctrine,” then why can’t the Church?
They seem to miss the fact that Jesus is Divine and that His mission was always universal in nature. By the way, read all of Kelly’s post.
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Well the Old Testament sometimes looks like Moses is getting God to change from His wrath, change His mind.
But we know that God is immutable, cannot change.
But the quote about Jesus and the syrio-phoenecian woman was one that VotF used on the front page of their handout back at their flagship Boston meeting at the Hynes. It’s part of their philosophy, their agenda, if you will.
I know I’m mostly preaching to the choir on this blog, but their mindset and direction was cemented from the get-go, from their roots in Future Church / We Are The Church movements. Anyone w/ eyes to see (like Kelly) can spot it.
Wanna hear something really out to lunch? Some of them are preparing to send a letter to Rome calling for the resignation of Bishop Bruskewitz, the one guy with probably the lowest incidence of clerical sexual abuse in the country, but who won’t play ball with a board of lay consultants with an attitude problem. Developing…