let's see now, the Catholic church was founded by Christ approx. 2,014 years ago....learned peopple have studied the scriptures, for than legth of time and until a few hundred years ago, all agreed that what was in the bible was the absulute truth.
along came protesters and decided that they were better prepared, somehow, to interpret what the Catholic bible said.
now you come along, probably born in the 50's 60's or 70's and after weeks or months of diligent study of the bible, has come up with your own interpretation and determined that the Catholic church has been in error for 2 centuries.......O.K. I guess
A mere rote assertion, while ignoring that the presuppositions behind it effectively nuke the church.
.learned peopple have studied the scriptures, for than legth of time and until a few hundred years ago, all agreed that what was in the bible was the absulute truth.
And thus the modern evangelical movement arose to counter liberal revisionism, which much of Roman scholarship subscribes to, while there never was comprehensive doctrinal unity in Catholicism, less alone all correct.
along came protesters and decided that they were better prepared, somehow, to interpret what the Catholic bible said.
Actually, contrary to your bare assertion of fantasy, before the Reformation,
"For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective form--the true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought outside the institution. It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation. ( Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for the Church of Rome, Principles of Catholic Theology, trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) p.196). http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/13/whos-in-charge-here-the-illusions-of-church-infallibility/)
Cardinal Bellarmine:
Jaroslav Pelikan (Lutheran, later Eastern Orhodox), The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1959), also found:
"Recent research on the Reformation entitles us to sharpen it and say that the Reformation began because the reformers were too catholic in the midst of a church that had forgotten its catholicity..."
...To prepare books like the Magdeburg Centuries they combed the libraries and came up with a remarkable catalogue of protesting catholics and evangelical catholics, all to lend support to the insistence that the Protestant position was, in the best sense, a catholic position.
Additional support for this insistence comes from the attitude of the reformers toward the creeds and dogmas of the ancient catholic church. The reformers retained and cherished the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the two natures in Christ which had developed in the first five centuries of the church
.
If we keep in mind how variegated medieval catholicism was, the legitimacy of the reformers' claim to catholicity becomes clear. (Pelikan, pp. 46-47).
"Substantiation for this understanding of the gospel came principally from the Scriptures, but whenever they could, the reformers also quoted the fathers of the catholic church. There was more to quote than their Roman opponents found comfortable." (Pelikan 48-49).
However, Scripture, tradition and history can only assuredly consist of and mean what Rome may say they do, and which is the real basis for the veracity of Rome for a RC. Thus no less than Cardinal Manning stated,
"It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine....The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour." Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, pp. 227,28
Thus we come back to the same terminal circularity behind the veracity of Rome, with its presuppositions which invalidate the NT church, as it began contrary to the Roman premise of assured veracity with its presuppositions.
now you come along, probably born in the 50's 60's or 70's and after weeks or months of diligent study of the bible, has come up with your own interpretation and determined that the Catholic church has been in error for 2 centuries.......O.K. I guess
While my position is historical one, and requirtesd the church to continually validate that it is the church of the living God thru Scriptural substantiation, which the NT church began under, your response actually further indicts you as one that invalidates the NT church, as your premise here is that historicity equates to a level of veracity that excludes being wrong. And which would invalidate "prophets, and wise men, and scribes" (Matthew 23:34) whom God raised up but the historical magisterium rejected, and disallows following itinerant preachers - including their Lord - by which the NT church began.
And indeed, your position places you in the company of those who heeded the men who demanded,
Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him? But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed. (John 7:48-49) ,
Which is only part of the testimony from scholars, even Catholic ones.
However, Scripture, tradition and history only assuredly mean what she says they do, which is the real basis for the veracity of Rome for a RC. Thus no less than Manning stated,
"It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine....The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour." Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, pp. 227,28