How Can Your Kill Your Church?

I am not a Roman Catholic nor do I agree with the theology of the Roman Church or the new Pope. However, I know what builds congregations and denominations and religious movements, and Pope Benedict has the right stuff. He is firmly convinced that the traditional theology of the Roman Catholic Church is correct and that is what builds adherents. Wishy, washy theology kills churches and the Pope is not wishy washy so the leftists cannot stand it.

The following remarks are taken from Phillip Lawler, the editor of the Catholic World Report and of the Web site Catholic World News (www.cwnews.com).

Is the Pope Catholic?

Yes, of course. And critics are disappointed and annoyed that he is.
BY PHILIP F. LAWLER

Ordinarily that question is a rhetorical device, intended to suggest that someone has said something foolish, ignoring the patently obvious. But as cardinals of the Catholic Church gathered in Rome this week, many commentators seemed to wonder whether the next pope would hold firmly to the age-old doctrines of the Catholic faith: Would the new leader of the world's one billion Roman Catholics be ready to compromise on matters such as abortion, homosexuality and the ordination of women?

The public speculation before the papal election suggested that anything was possible--that the church might strike out in a radically new direction. But the 115 cardinals who entered the conclave thought differently. They elected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in a remarkably quick conclave, because he was the obvious choice to inherit the legacy not only of John Paul II but also of 264 other Roman pontiffs in a line stretching back to St. Peter. There would be no break in that continuity, no shifts in fundamental dogma.

Yes, the pope is a Catholic. Yet that unsurprising result has clearly shaken many secular liberals--and more than a few liberal Catholics--who feel that they have been somehow cheated of an opportunity. Their vindictive snarls have been prominently featured in the coverage of the new pope's election. Benedict XVI has been characterized not merely as a "conservative" but as an "ultraconservative." Words such as "rigid" and "stern" are ubiquitous. Profiles of the new pontiff rarely fail to mention that as a teenager he was briefly a member of a Hitler Youth group (in which he was enrolled against his will) and the German army (which he deserted). When a London tabloid identified the new pope in a banner headline as "God's Rottweiler," dozens of more respectable journalists gleefully seized on the nickname.

Pope Benedict will be a convenient target for critics whose hostility is really directed against the Catholic Church and its moral teachings.

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If I were a loyal Roman Catholic I would be very happy that the secularists and media mavens do not like Pope Benedict. Nothing causes a church to grow like being hated by people who despise Christians.

If you want to grow in numbers, influence and moral persuasion look and see what the mainline church denominations have done over the past 50 years and do the opposite. They have pandered to almost every vice and moral impurity prmoted by the secularists and leftists and attacked the Bible. They have stopped planting churches, stopped evangelizing, stopped overseas missions and enocuraged free sex.

As a result they are dead or dying with few exceptional congregations where traditional Bible based preaching and teaching has triumphed.

Gary Sweeten