straightouttascripture

How do you answer this as a Christian: If God's grace is enough for our sins, both past, present and future, then why are we required to live a righteous life?

I think people are unaware of how mutable the Church's grant of jurisdiction for valid confessions has been in the history of the Church. Before Trent, it was required that one have permission to be validly absolved from one who wasn't their own priest: "If anyone from a just cause shall wish to confess his sins to another priest, let him first ask and obtain permission from his own priest, since otherwise that one cannot absolve or bind him." (Lateran IV) This is why the mendicant orders were so important due to the special permissions from the Pope to be the 'proper priest' to absolve wherever. St. Thomas (and other authors on IV Sent) make this quite clear: "it is essential to this sacrament not only for the minister to be in orders, as in the case of the other sacraments, but also for him to have jurisdiction: wherefore he that has no jurisdiction cannot administer this sacrament any more than one who is not a priest. Therefore, confession should be made not only to a priest, but to one’s own priest..." (ST.IIISup.Q8.A4) The Church didn't always give supplied jurisdiction to heretical or schismatic priests (outside of danger of death, ST.IIISup.Q8.A6): "the power of jurisdiction is that which is conferred by a mere human appointment. Such a power as this does not adhere to the recipient immovably: so that it does not remain in heretics and schismatics; and consequently they neither absolve nor excommunicate, nor grant indulgence, nor do anything of the kind, and if they do, it is invalid." (ST.II-II.Q39.A3)

Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. (Matthew 10:16)

Jesus obeyed Mary on Earth. Now He yields to her in Heaven. When Mary asks, she receives.

As an expert on Islam, I state: The U.S. is finished. It has no idea at all that this is coming for it, and it has zero tools to defend itself. On the contrary, the tools it does have will be turned against it to destroy it. Islam will wipe it out. It will be brutal, and far worse than anything happening in Western Europe. The haters of Israel and the Jews in America will pay a heavy price for the elections and the side they chose. So will their children and grandchildren, with compound interest collected by members of the Islamic Ummah. They will tear down the democratic system and the Constitution by using the tools of democracy and the Constitution itself, while shaking the foundations of American existence in ways that have not happened since independence. It will be devastating. The U.S. will slide into a civil war that will make the wars in Syria and Iraq look like child's play. This is not a maybe. It will happen for sure.