What’s So Great About Catholicism

Catholic Educators ^ | H.W. CROCKER III

[Barnacle]

It illustrates that there is a time and place to cleanse the temple, so to speak. (Now if you could guarantee that everything catholics ever did was totally in line with the will of God then you might be able to argue that your temple was never in need of cleansing.)

This is the same type of argument Leftists use against America.

Now if you could guarantee that everything Americans ever did was totally in line with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, blah, blah, blah...

[annalex]

Non sequitur was to attach to the Church the defects of the ancient Greeks' worldview wholesale. One can appreciate beauty with the Greeks without sharing in their paganism.

This is the exact curse referring to the earth (Gen 3):

17 And to Adam he said: Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. 18 Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth. 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.

There is no curse on the earth, only on man's labor on earth.

The Greeks missed God in his entire majesty, but they found him revealed in the Creation, and they celebrated him.

[Barnacle]

My basic contention is that real beauty is spiritual truth and not outward form or pomp.

Spiritual and physical beauty are not mutual exclusive. In fact, they can correctly have a lot in common.

[PetroniusMaximus]

"This is the same type of argument Leftists use against America."

That is FR's unkindest cut!!!


I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Communist Party.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Communist sympathizer.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a defender of or apologist for the Soviet Union.

[PetroniusMaximus]

"Spiritual and physical beauty are not mutual exclusive."

They are in Hollywood.

[Kolokotronis]

God willing it will be in our lifetimes! But as we say, these things are up to God.

[Salvation]

Wonderful post to ponder and expand on!

[Kolokotronis]

"What I am saying is that if we become too focused on what is "nice and good" outwardly then we run the risk of becoming blind to what God thinks is beautiful.

We are, by nature, idolatrous."

Very, very good, PM!

[Salvation]

You don't think the example of Christ's life is an example of beauty?

[PetroniusMaximus]

"You don't think the example of Christ's life is an example of beauty?"

It is the standard by which all beauty is judged.

[AlbionGirl]

I agree with you in some measure about attachment to extravagance. It can be unseemly. Also, your point about Christ being born in a Manger is well taken. Simplicity was never so elegant and never so beautiful.

But, I want to ask you a question about Jesus' body.

When Jesus appeared in the Upper Room, he was Resurrected. He asked not to be touched because he had not yet ascended to the Father, but he ate with the Apostles. His Resurrected body ate, the way his body before he was Resurrected ate. Isn't it possible that this Resurrected body joined all of that that was made Incarnate, and all that the Resurrection was returning to Divine?

[PetroniusMaximus]

"Isn't it possible that this Resurrected body joined all of that that was made Incarnate, and all that the Resurrection was returning to Divine?"

Well, quite honestly I don't know. Is there a Scriptural basis for that belief? As to the fact that the Incarnate and post resurrection forms of the body are different, of course there can be no doubt.

Jesus, as God, is able to be present in all places at all times spiritually. But don't you see the problem with omnipresence and real physical corporeality?

An omnipresent physical being would literally fill the whole universe.

[Barnacle]

That is FR's unkindest cut!!!

I don't mean to be unkind, or suggest that you were a Leftist. My point is if you were to diagram that argument in a logic syllogism, it reminds me too much of the type used by our adversaries.

[Barnacle]

"Spiritual and physical beauty are not mutual exclusive."

They are in Hollywood.

Indeed. But, the topic here is church.

[AlbionGirl]

There's no Scriptural passage, it was a way to try to understand the fact that the Resurrected Body of Christ and the Body of Christ before he was crucified and buried, both ate. They both ate cooked fish. That to me is not insignificant. That isn't to say I fully understand it, but it's more than just a detail.

But don't you see the problem with omnipresence and real physical corporeality?

Not really. I don't understand the Trinity, and yet I believe. Is God incapable of both omnipresence and physical corporeality? Is that Scriptural? That isn't a tit-for-tat question, I'm asking you to show me where Scripture holds to this impossibility. That Christ retained his body as it appeared before he was crucified, ascended to the Father with His Body means to me that it went where he went. Maybe I don't fully understand corporeality as you do, so you'll have to excuse me, if that's the case.

[ArrogantBustard]

You're better than that.

[BlackElk]

It IS part of our Book. Luther did not pull the remains that he personally was willing to accept out of thin air nearly fifteen hundred years after Christ's crucifixion and rsurrection. More likely than not, Luither had access to the relatively scarce (in the very early days of rare printing presses) and incredibly valuable Bibles (the full version whether hand-copied or printed on Mr. Gutenberg's invention) by virtue of having access to Augustinian Catholic institutions that were in possession of copies.

Get over myself????? Why would I have to? I am merely posting history in this instance. I do thank God that those who are not of the Catholic Faith (often, sadly, but understandably refugees) have found many other denominational and non-denominational venues wherein they may study a substantial portion of God's written Word and wherein their witness (often shored up only by the sanctifying grace that they receive through their respective baptisms and such sanctifying grace as God may choose to grant them because of their prayer life but bereft of the sanctifying graces that flow from those sacraments rejected by the "reformed" such as the receipt of the Holy Eucharist and the sacramental confession of one's sins and the performance of the requisite penances imposed as atonement for sins sacramentally forgiven.

One is inclined to ponder the life and witness of a saintly Lutheran pastor Richard Wurmbrand who suffered for Christ under Nazis and Communists in his native Romania and made an heroic witness of his passionate love for Jesus Christ or the Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred at the hands of the Nazis in World War II, or I think of my mother's best friend, an old school Methodist, who was the best Christian I ever hope to know, who spent her last twenty years without a Methodist Church within her area in Connecticut where she could hear the Scriptures faithfully preached so she spent her time with Scripture itself.

[PetroniusMaximus]

"Very, very good, PM!"

K, I am intrigued by your approving comment...

[ArrogantBustard]

"Over me". Pilate had no power over Jesus because Jesus was not subject to the spiritual effect of the fall.

Not so. Pilate's authority was simply that of his office as Procurator of Judea. Normal, earthly authority given to him from above, which Jesus had already recognised as legitimate (Render unto Caesar ...) and which St. Paul would later recognise as legitimate when he notes, among other things, that Kings "do not wield the sword in vain".

[ArrogantBustard]

Pray without ceasing.

Knock, and the door will be answered. Ask, and it will be given.