Posted on 05/18/2015 6:05:47 PM PDT by Old Yeller
For years, growing up as a Roman Catholic, we were taught that we were members of the one true church. It was impressed upon us regularly by the parish priest during Mass while giving his homily; by the nuns all throughout my Catholic parochial school years of second through seventh grade.
It was impressed upon us during our preparation to receive for the first time the sacraments of Penance, Communion and Confirmation. And while attending CCD classes all the way through high school. (CCD is the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, an association established at Rome in 1562 for the purpose of giving religious education, normally designed for children.)
It was an established fact that we understood and we never questioned the validity of it. And to be honest, it was a matter of pride, that we were privileged enough to be members of the correct church, while all others had belonged to something else that didnt quite measure up to the status of the Roman Catholic Church.
After all, how could it be possible that Roman Catholicism is not the one true church?
Look at what Rome has to offer: It has the priests, the nuns; the bishops; the cardinals; and of course, the Pope. They have the Sacraments; the statues; the holy water; the incense; the Stations of the Cross; the Eucharist - in which Chris supposedly physically manifests Himself into the wafer after the consecration by the priest during the Mass; the Marian apparitionswhich appear mainly to Roman Catholics.
And they have the Vatican, where the Vicar of Christ (who they believe is Christs representative on earth), governs the faithful and makes infallible proclamations and doctrine. How can this not be the one true church? No other organization on the face of the earth comes close to offering to its flock what Rome provides for its faithful.
But, of course, to be true, one must adhere to what has been established as truth and not teach or practice what is contrary to the truth. We read in Scripture a few passages that declare what is truth and what is not. Jesus proclaimed in John 14:6:
I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by me.
Very creative and well thought out.
Is that yours, BipolarBob?
yeah
Cool...
[applause]
Ah...
There are HUNDREDS of my posts on FR that I wish I could have worded better; too.
Things average out over time...
Cleanup on aisle three.
Another head has exploded.
Thanks a lot!
NOW what will we lame limerick writers do?
Well done!
Eyes have they, but they see not what refute their object of devotion.
Great creative expression BB!
We are the writers of limericks
We play with words as our gimericks.
Our methods are crude
And our lines sometimes rude,
But we stop not our output of wordtricks.
There once were religions works based
Whose "prophets" were very well placed
More commonly called tares
They were made to be snares
Cuz Jesus saves only those graced.
Yeah!
OK, that was FANTASTIC! You guys are great with this!
Doggonit, Steelfish went and ran away again. And this time he took ex-snook with him.
Maybe we should put their photos on milk cartons...
Maybe after reading this you may like to take cover under a roc.
The contradictions in these responses are apparent on their face.
First we are told that there is no such thing as a Protestant belief. Although each one of the contrarian posts in essence gives his/her variant of scripture. kayaker is kind. He calls Catholics cultist. I wonder what term hed use to describe the vapid rot spewed by the likes of David Koresh, Joel Osteen, Billy Graham and the rest of the crowd?
Compared to this mudslide of Protestant beliefs the term cultist would be embraced by the early Church fathers, the saints, and martyrs who followed Petrine authority for eleven centuries before the heresy unleashed by the Reformation of 1517 that, like a cancel cell, has self divided itself into some 30,000 sects and is still keeps subdividing itself.
We have seen so-called mainline Protestant and Evangelical denominations ordaining married gay and lesbian pastors as apart of their interpretation of scriptural warrant, and sections of their congregations heading for the hills.
Renowned essayist Hillaire Belloc explained this well in his book, The Great Heresies when he wrote that unlike other heresies, Protestantism spawned a cluster of heresies. Iscool, elsie, metmom do their usual things. The let loose a selective cascade of scriptural interpretations.
Apparently they believe these quotes undermine Petrine authority and the ONE Credo and teachings of the Catholic Church. Lets take an example offered by Iscool. It is too simplistic to merit a response. He quotes: Mat_15:9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Christ was referring here to the Pharisees.
But never mind. Maybe iscool wants us to believe that Christ spoke not to men but to aliens when Matthew records in 28:19 the Great Commission given by Christ Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
This authority is to men but not to any and all men who think they can crack open the pages of the Bible and each offer their own and contradictory interpretations of the word of God. Types like Billy Graham, Joel Osteen, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, David Koresh and the local Foursquare Church pastors (First AME; First Baptist: First Methodist: First etc.) all need to stay at home and not become false preachers.
The Great Commission is confined to Peter and his successors. Not to every Bible Christian from Joel Osteen to Jim Jones. Take another piece of shallow rot from metmom who plucked this out from an unknown blog to undermine Petrine authority: Jesus said that Peter was *petros*(masculine) and that on this *petra*(feminine) He would build His church.
And, aMorePerfectUnion chastises me for calling Bible Christians shallow? Quite apart from the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and Benedict, it appears somehow that the early Church fathers missed this.
Maybe the blogger knows something more that St. Irenaeus and St. Ignatius. It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).
In the year 110 A.D., not even fifteen years after the book of Revelation was written, while on his way to execution St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote: Where the bishop is present, there let the congregation gather, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic church. The Church believes that when the bishops speak as teachers, Christ speaks; for he said to them: He who hears you, hears me; and he who rejects you, rejects me (Lk 10, 16).
smvoice naively inquires from me: “I find this post of your interesting. Could you tell me the ONE TRUTH that Christ taught?” A good place to start is to go check the Catholic Catechism and the Credo.
Much of this sophomoric confusion comes form a failure to understand the Churchs doctrine based on scriptural text, sacred tradition, and ritual. Is the Bible the sole teaching from God? No.
The Bible itself states that there are oral teachings and traditions that are to be carried on to the present-day (2 Thessalonians 2:15; 1 Corinthians 11:2; 2 Timothy 2:2; Romans 10:17; 1 Peter 1:24-25).
These teachings are what the Catholic Church considers Sacred Apostolic Tradition. This type of Tradition never changes because it was passed down by the Apostles themselves.
It is not the same as the man-made traditions condemned in Scripture. The man-made traditions condemned in Scripture were those of the Jewish Pharisees what Iscool quotes in Matthew 15:9 In fact, as Christians, we are supposed to disassociate ourselves from persons who do not follow Apostolic Tradition (2 Thessalonians 3:6).
If oral tradition is not to be followed, why did St. Paul state that Christ said something that is not recorded in the Gospels (Acts 20:35)? St. Paul must have heard this saying, not read it from any Gospel or Scripture, thereby, proving that there were many things Christ said that were not recorded in the Gospels (John 21:25) and were passed on orally among His disciples instead, but were just as valid as anything written since St. Paul himself used one of these oral passages in one of his own epistles.
Besides it is the word of God that must be preserved as part of the Great Commission to “Go forth and teach..”
Did the early Christians have the Bible as we know it? No. The Bible as a whole was not compiled until the late 4th century and then it was compiled by a Catholic saint (St. Jerome) at the request of a Catholic pope (St. Damasus I).
So how were the early Christians saved if they did not possess the entire written “Word of God” to follow His teachings?
Well, naturally, they were the Body of Christ and were taught through oral teachings by the Church, not by writings.
Heres what Martin Luther, the primary progenitor of Protestant heresies was forced to admit. In his Commentary On St. John, he stated the following: We are compelled to concede to the Catholic Church that they have the Word of God, that we have received It from them, and that without them we should have no knowledge of It at all.
This Petrine did not dissipated eleven centuries later with the advent of the heresy of the Reformation. Fortunately, a number of Lutheran and Evangelical theologians who have converted to Catholicism have discovered what the shallow Bible Christians on this thread are yet to grasp and indeed keep sadly embarrassing themselves.
How do we know the Catholic Church is the ONE true Church? Hear it from a convert who was raised as a fundamentalist in Bob Jones University.
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/how-do-we-know-its-the-true-church
Well, my dear friend, you inquired where the Catholic doctrine can be found. If you are unwilling to read the Catechism or the Credo, there’s not much I can do. Christ told Peter and the rest of the apostles to “Go forth and teach..”
Maybe you don’t want to be taught by those instructed by Christ to teach His ONE truth. Maybe DeprogrammerLiberalism might be able to point to that ONE truth?
No, dear friend, I inquired what the “one truth” was. Like, SPECIFICALLY. I KNOW where Catholic doctrine can be found...
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