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October 31, 2010 What Part of 'Everlasting Possession' Does This Man Not Understand?In October Pope Benedict XVI met with leaders of other churches in communion with the Roman Catholic Church to discuss the increasing persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The closing statement on Oct. 23, however, as issued by Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, landed far afield from that synod's declared intent. "For Christians, one can no longer talk of the land promised to the Jewish people," the archbishop said, because the "promise" was "abolished by the presence of Christ." Oh? Because I'm not a member of his church, perhaps I shouldn't let it bother me that the archbishop has taken it upon himself to proclaim that the Bible is wrong and the Jewish people are no longer chosen by God, especially since my Bible doesn't say anything of the kind. But it does bother me. It bothers me because it is a blatant contradiction of at least a dozen perfectly clear verses in the Holy Scripture, which the Catholic Church - both Greek and Roman - claims to uphold as the Word of God. It bothers me because it's impossible to tell if the pope, the head of the entire Catholic Church, backs the archbishop's statement or not. And it bothers me, well, because it seems to bother so few other people. One of the other people it does bother, however, is Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch and co-author with Atlas Shrugs publisher Pamela Geller of the book The Post-American Presidency. Spencer is also a member of Bustros's church. "If this is accurate," Spencer writes, "then it must be said that in his haste to parrot the jihadist political agenda, Archbishop Cyril contradicts the Catholic Church's teaching that the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures ... It is shameful, and indeed, makes me ashamed today to be a Melkite Greek Catholic." The most obvious place one would look to find the latest on what the Catholic Church has to say about anything should be its official Web page for breaking news, http://www.vatican.va/latest/latest_en.htm. Could anything be more current than that? But at least as of this writing, the latest/latest page contains no reference at all to the synod or Bustros's allegation. Does that mean that the pope doesn't necessarily agree with the archbishop's statement, that he does agree but doesn't want to address the inevitable flak at this time, or that he simply wants to dispense with the issue altogether? Nobody seems to know for sure. "We are especially appalled at the language used by Archbishop Bustros during his press conference," Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said. "We call on the Vatican to distance themselves from Archbishop Bustros's comments." So do the prophets, Archbishop Bustros. In fact, in the cursory search I just ran using an electronic search engine, I counted 12 clear passages which include eight "forevers," two "everlasting possessions," and two "forever and evers." That makes for a pretty compelling case, don't you think?
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Marylou writes a series of children's books available through Amazon. You can read them all online at HouseWithTheLightBooks.com. |
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