Posted on 09/03/2014 6:36:07 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
Do you REALLY want to go here?
Then the Catholic church needs to ditch its add-on to Scripture traditions.
They all amassed massive amounts of wealth to live comfortably for themselves and their family. No Mother Theresa lifestyle for any of these except television celebrity.
Just like the Catholic church whose leaders live in opulence.
Any complaint you have against Protestants can easily be turned around and shown to be easily and equally applicable to the Catholic church.
How ironic that a Catholic should be criticizing non-Catholics for amassing wealth at the expense of the people.
No. It's not ironic. It's downright hypocritical.
The pope is the Antichrist and The Vatican bank financed Hitler.
There I fixed your post.
What - you've never read my theories regarding the Jesuits' control of the bottled water industry?
Related thread:
Religious opposition to bottled water growing
The Roman Catholic church hasn't consistently taught "one single uniform teaching" Jesus commanded His disciples to teach for a very long time - if ever. We have ample proof that many of the dogmas and doctrines the modern RCC follows were never heard of either in Scripture or by the early Christian church. You expect everyone to just take it on faith - like the Roman Catholic "faithful" are expected to - that whatever the magesterium in power at any particular time decides is "de fide" must be what all Christians have to believe? Prove the Apostles ever taught "purgatory", or "indulgences" to get people out of it. Show where any Apostle ever taught Mary was born without a sin nature or never had other children with her husband, Joseph. Demonstrate from Scripture where ANY Apostle taught there was to be ONE, singular Pope of the universal church and that ALL had to be in subjection to him. Know what? You can't. I think you know that and we certainly do.
Your reasoning makes no sense because again you fall into the error of saying that many Catholic beliefs like dogmas etc., aren’t recorded in Scripture You take as your single source Scripture (even though Scripture itself informs that there were many things Christ said and did that were not recorded, and yet the books in Scripture did not fall from the skies but its selection was based on the received oral tradition, which helped the early Church Fathers decide which books should be in the Bible and which were not, such as where the so-called Gnostic gospels that were excluded. These were decisions of the profoundest authority. i.e. what constitutes the sacred written text.
Then you purport to dispute this very authority of the Catholic Church to insure that there be one single teaching because by “your” reading of Scripture you may offer “your” own “authoritative” version.
This is precisely what leads to multifarious interpretations often at diametrical odds to one another. Think Jim Jones, David Koresh, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Rev. Moon, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Joe Osteens etc.
Now, strange, isn’t it that leading Protestant and Episcopalian theologians and scholars who have written several books and taught theology and history of Scripture in major Protestant-oriented colleges and university, have upon their further ongoing study and research now ditched their former writings, analyses, and beliefs, including quite recently, the pastor of Sweden’s preeminent Protestant congregation and converted to Catholicism. These theologians, quite apart from having the courage of their convictions, did not have to use religion to gain personal profits and amass fortunes like the “pastors” named above.
We need to get back to where this discussion started. There is one Church, with one single authority given by Christ to Peter and his successors, to teach one truth to be the mustard seed that becomes the one universal Church in all corners of the Globe. This Church is sustained by the litany of its saints and the blood of martyrs. It’s theological foundations have been tested through two millennia confronting the early heresies. Therefore it is tragic that the evil of Protestantism has, in the words of the great English essayist Hillaire Belloc, spawned a “cluster of heresies” that we now have every Tom, Dick, and Harry right down to Rev. Jeremiah Wright or Rev. Billy Graham or Rev. David Koresh spouting “their” own interpretation of Scripture to say nothing of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons. These birds of a feather that stick together have one thing in common, they all deny the reality of the Eucharist and the most elevated form of worship, the Mass.
Amen. Well said!
Does anyone else see the irony in a Roman Catholic asking where Scripture “says” anything? Since when did that stop their magesterium from deciding what is the “truth” and everyone has to believe what they say???
It isn’t Scripture, but it is still true.
I believe that that is the reason that God would NEVER put a single man in the kind of position of authority that the popes, not to mention cardinals and bishops in Catholicism, are in.
Man simply cannot be trusted with that kind of unbridled power and Elise’s lists of bad popes verify that.
100% correct. That is why I keep posting that there is ONLY ONE HEAD of the Body of Christ. It will never be a fallible man no matter how smart he dresses, or what degrees he has. And there is only one source of Truth - God's Word.
My thoughts exactly! ;o)
It reminds me of a time I was having breakfast with family and a local Catholic priest. We got on the subject of favorite Bible verses and I said mine was Ephesians 2:8,9 - For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast." The priest then said, "That sounds Protestant to me." He knew that what Scripture said didn't fit with what he was supposed to teach and believe as a Catholic priest so his only response was that there had to be some mistake.
Your tattered and shoddy opinion of how we even got the sacred Scriptures only further proves you place your church OVER the very words of God - the EXACT thing Jesus condemned the Jewish religious leaders for doing! We have the Scriptures because God chose to give them to us. It wasn't up to the Jewish "fathers" to tell God which of His divinely inspired texts they would accept and which ones they would reject nor was it of Christian leaders to do so either. What a bizarre view you seem to have about Scripture. We have the SAME sacred writings preserved for us today that the early believers had and they contain our rule of faith. NOTHING was omitted that pertained to Godliness, our salvation, our walk with Christ or what we should know about our faith. Paul told the churches that he did not fail to teach them the "whole counsel of God" and GOD ensured that it was written for our edification. Suggesting Jesus taught other things that were left out of Scripture is nothing but a smokescreen to allow your religion a backdoor to insert whatever they could come up with to make mandatory to be believed - even things that CONTRADICT the written word of God.
You might as well stop with your foolish contentions that "all the smart people go Catholic" since nobody here has fallen for it yet. I DO hope you aren't implying that there aren't any brilliant theologians that left Catholicism for, or that continued to remain with, the "Protestant" Christian view. You would be seriously wrong if you did.
Finally, as you continue to play your straw man card of "multifarious interpretations", let me remind you that having one teaching "authority" in charge of deciding truth has NEVER ensured unity in the Catholic faith much less for all Christians. There IS one faith, one Lord and one baptism and having a shingle hanging from a church door with a name on it doesn't guarantee the truth is taught inside. Our rule of faith is the Scriptures and genuine Christians believe the central tenets of Christianity - always have, always will. Even your religion at one time believed that. How we know truth from heresy is by God's word. It was used by the ECFs and is just as much relevant today as it was back then.
You must sure LIKE these folks; since you refer to them a LOT!
Oh, Honey!!!
It was the SINS of your chosen religion that 'created' PROTESTants!!!
Can't you even get THIS right?
... they all deny the Catholic teaching about the reality of Eucharist...
OOOooohhh!
We've give you guys the prize for this all right!
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:
to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
You keep having identical thoughts as I, and you’ll be labeled HUMORLESS; too!
There goes a LOT of Catholic postings!
Peter – rock
Matthew 16:18 - http://bible.cc/matthew/16-18.htm
Jesus said that Peter was *petros*(masculine) and that on this *petra*(feminine) He would build His church.
Greek: 4074 Pétros (a masculine noun) – properly, a stone (pebble), such as a small rock found along a pathway. 4074 /Pétros (”small stone”) then stands in contrast to 4073 /pétra (”cliff, boulder,” Abbott-Smith).
“4074 (Pétros) is an isolated rock and 4073 (pétra) is a cliff” (TDNT, 3, 100). “4074 (Pétros) always means a stone . . . such as a man may throw, . . . versus 4073 (pétra), a projecting rock, cliff” (S. Zodhiates, Dict).
4073 pétra (a feminine noun) – “a mass of connected rock,” which is distinct from 4074 (Pétros) which is “a detached stone or boulder” (A-S). 4073 (pétra) is a “solid or native rock, rising up through the earth” (Souter) – a huge mass of rock (a boulder), such as a projecting cliff.
4073 (petra) is “a projecting rock, cliff (feminine noun) . . . 4074 (petros, the masculine form) however is a stone . . . such as a man might throw” (S. Zodhiates, Dict).
It’s also a strange way to word the sentence that He would call Peter a rock and say that on this I will build my church instead of *on you* as would be grammatically correct in talking to a person.
There is no support from the original Greek that Peter was to be the rock on which Jesus said he would build His church. The nouns are not the same, one being masculine and the other being feminine. They denote different objects.
Also, here, Paul identifies who petra is, and that is Christ. This link takes you to the Greek.
http://biblehub.com/text/1_corinthians/10-4.htm
1 Corinthians 10:1-4 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.
http://biblehub.com/text/romans/9-33.htm
Romans 9:30-33 What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock (petra) of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
http://biblehub.com/text/1_peter/2-8.htm
1 Peter 2:1-8 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,”
and
“A stone of stumbling, and a rock (petra) of offense.”
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
All occurrences of *petra* in the Greek.
Thank you for admitting you do not have a valid argument - again.
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