Posted on 05/17/2006 9:08:53 PM PDT by Full Court
font face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4" color="#990000">From Operation Rescue to Operation Convert
May 21-27, 2006 |
| by TIM DRAKE |
Also in the Register: Randal Terry, CatholicRandall Terry has become Catholic. Tell me about your family. How did you come to know Christ? How did you first get started in pro-life work? What led to the founding of Operation Rescue? How many times were you arrested? When did you first take an interest in the Catholic Church? Which theological hurdles were the most difficult for you to jump? I understand that you are awaiting word on the annulment of your first marriage. Can you tell me why you chose to be received into the Church (without being able to receive the Eucharist), before the resolution of your annulment? Tell me how your reception into the Church came about. What was your greatest fear? How do you expect your evangelical colleagues will react to news of your conversion? Do you anticipate that your conversion could hurt you in your Senate race in a predominantly Protestant state?
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Not to worry! I found the OBEX meter at a tag sale and for a small sum I will let anyone use it to see if they pass or fail the baptism test. It has a special connection that will tell if the baptizer is doing it right at the same time it measures the purity of the intent of the baptizee. It might look old but it was recently updated with all of the latest Council pronouncements. 
You: It seems you've left a church that assured you of God's absolute redemption of His sheep for a church that tells you it's still up in the air and anyone's game.
Read the Scriptures and recognize our salvation through Christ's finished work on the cross, and not through our own efforts which are as "filthy rags" in the pursuit of salvation.
Swing and a miss. If Diva was eternally saved while a baptist, she's still saved now, silly. She cannot be "un-Saved" according to the logic of Predestination, unless she was never intended to be saved to begin with, in which case she never was and never will be.
Now as I wrote to you in a previous post, which you conveniently ignored, Predestination is meaningless unless God is confined to a linear temporal frame of reference. Which He cannot be if He is both Eternal AND Unchanging. The Bible won't help you here because it was written by men subject to this changing linear existence trying to describe a reality which is both Eternal and Unchanging. As Paul would tell you, for now we see through a glass, darkly. Predestination is a logical conclusion if God created the End and the Beginning, but it's a self-defeating paradoxical doctrine if God Himself has no beginning and no end.
- Diva's son.
These statements are not anathemas for the members of the Catholic church, ... they strictly target the Pope, ... and there were some evil popes.
So we are not Anathema, even though we are a Church run by the Anti-Christ? Boy you Protestants are pretty loose when it comes to damnation and salvation.
As I said originally, no Protestant Church declared any anthemas upon the rank-and-file Catholic membership.
But the catholic church does not believe that. So who are you going to go with on this one?
Greetings Warthog.
You said: "Think about it. You Protestants believe that the teachings of the Apostles written down in the books of the Bible are infallible, but you believe that those Apostolic teachings that DIDN'T get written down are not??? The Bible itself tells you directly that both are valid, and in fact the Bible is the "lesser" source compared to Tradition. (can't recall specific chapter and verse at this point, and I'm away from my references, but one source is St. Paul)."
Question: What items, necessary for salvation, that the Apostles have said verbally and have been passed down in Tradition am I missing from reading Holy Scripture? Please let me know. Thank you.
Respectfully, a serious question one I've been wanting to understand for a while now...
A man can get married, cheat on his wife and then ask for an annulment on the basis that he never really was intending to be faithful and then get the anullment and all moves on like nothing ever happened because he entered the marriage with the wrong intentions?
And and I emphasize AND he can get married with no punishment or denial of the Lord's Supper despite the true fact that he used the cheating as a way to get out of the marriage by denying it ever existed in the first place...please tell me that's not done...please.
We don't damn or save. That is done by our Savior and Lord.
Think of it this way. Ken Lay is responsible for Enron. He commits crimes and is found guilty. How could anyone then say that anyone who works for Enron is also guilty? No one could be justified in saying such a thing.
We don't presume to judge the individuals inside the RCC, it is not our place. However, the declarations of the Pope show the teachings of the office/position and those specific declarations can be examined and commented upon.
Hope that helps and makes sense.
It's not that Catholics don't believe God knows everything and therefor knows who will be saved and who will not. That's true, insofar as it goes. But it's essentially meaningless to us, since we are part of the created world and are subject to a sequential understanding of that world and ourselves. We can't apply sequentiality to God because that would negate His Unchanging nature. Thus, as I said, God doesn't "Pre- anything." To say that He does one thing, (predestines us), and after that does something else, (creates us), makes God mutable and subject to linear reality.
Ask yourself what did God do before he Created Time, and you will see why the whole notion of Predestination is pointless. Predestination is only to the point if God is subject to linear time. Thus our salvation is only predetermined outside the the context of the created world with reference to it; but to the created world itself, by its very nature, that predetermination becomes irrelevant, because outside the context of Creation it's meaningless without a temporal frame of reference, which you don't have outside the context of Creation. Predestination is a paradox because it requires God to be both outside time, and subject to time at the same... time. See, we can't even talk about it we are so biased for our own frame of reference.
With God (and the Catholic Church) all things are possible...for the right price. ;O)
And neither does the Pope or the Bishops of the Catholic Church. Anathema means a person is seperated from the Church, not necessarily damned, that's up to God but, certainly seperated from the Sacraments. The Church does not teach that my mother, a cradle Baptist until the day she died is damned. The Church encourages me to pray for her soul which I do. I pray for all of my family within and without the Catholic Church living and dead because as a Catholic I am called to this task.
With God (and the Catholic Church) all things are possible...for the right price. ;O)
annulment means that, on account of some impediment, there never was a marriage. Marriage itself is indissoluble assuming it takes place. That's Catholic doctrine. The man in question would have to prove that he never married because of his state of mind, which might be true in certain circumstances (though probably not in this case), but even if so, he doesn't just go on "like nothing ever happened." Such a man would have committed a grave sacrilege against the sacrament of marriage. To put it another way, marriage, though sacramental to the Christian Church, is still a contract. The nature of the contract is voluntary, if a man gives his consent to marry even though he in his heart does not acknowledge his consent he still never the less gives it by his actions.
Read "Catholicism vs. Fundamentalism" by Karl Keating.
The articles on Newadvent are mostly from the Catholic Encyclopedia usually the 1907-1911 editions, and as such are written in a rather precise language. Not something most modern readers are comfortable with unless they do a lot of scholarly or legal research in their day to day lives. But if you think that's hard try plowing through Gratian's "Decretum."
I don't think we can subject God to anything except what he says in His word.
Ephesians 1:5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
Ephesians 1:11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:
BTW, I am not a Calvinist.
That was funny
Dear phatus maximus,
"A man can get married, cheat on his wife and then ask for an annulment on the basis that he never really was intending to be faithful and then get the anullment and all moves on like nothing ever happened because he entered the marriage with the wrong intentions?"
It depends.
If the Church decides that the grounds for a declaration of nullity are valid, a declaration of nullity will be granted.
The man you describe, however, may wind up not being free to marry in the Church. The tribunal can determine that the man cannot or will not contract a valid sacramental marriage, and thus, although his first marriage is declared sacramentally null, he may be, at least temporarily, forbidden from attempting marriage again in the Church. On the other hand, if his spouse is innocent and otherwise free of impediments, she may marry again.
A man who is unrepentant for his sins, shows no proof that he has grown spiritually, and possibly psychologically and emotionally, or otherwise overcoming the impediments that made a sacramental nullity of his marriage, may very well be forbidden from attempting marriage within the Church.
However, if the man is repentant, shows evidence that the impediments to the first marriage have been cured, then he will likely be permitted to marry within the Church.
As to costs, most dioceses charge a few hundred dollars to cover the administrative costs of the marriage tribunal, and to provide some minimal compensation for the professionals employed in the process. The costs usually amount to less than, say, six or seven months cable TV bill. For individuals who truly can't afford the costs (as opposed to those who do not wish to afford the costs so that they don't have to cut back on eating out or get rid of the premium package for their cable TV), dioceses often reduce or waive the charges.
sitetest
I'm sure that has happened, after all, the people who run tribunals are humans and make mistakes, and some priests and Bishops don't like to tell folks no, whether or not they are offering 'the right price'.
However, most tribunals are serious about their work, and that work will be getting more difficult with Pope Benedict XVI. Things have already started to change, and couples getting married from now on, will have to face the fact that there likely won't be any more easy annulments in the future, so they'd better be DANG serious about their decision and the promise made to each other before God, the priest, and their families and friends because they are going to be together a LONG time, if they're serious about their faith.
The Church does not deny that a MARRIAGE existed. That is a LEGAL contract, and the couple has to deal with that in a court of law if they choose to dissolve it. What the Church deals with is the SACRAMENT. There are specific requirements for the Sacrament to be valid. One of those is that BOTH parties go into it with every intention of being faithful to their spouse, welcoming children and raising them in the faith. If either party never had any intention of doing any of this, then the Sacrament was never valid. Unfortunately one party may be so in love, that they just don't see what the other might be up to. Even if family members or friends try to tell them, they are blind to it, or don't want to believe it. They are disappointed later, but by then the mistake was made.
As for someone who had no intentions of living up to their marriage vows; if their marriage is annuled, the Church has every right to not allow that person to enter into the Sacrament again, if the priest perceives that the person has not changed his or her attitude about marriage. Yes, there are some priests who will still marry someone like that in the Church because they don't like having to tell folks no. It is not right, but again, they are human. Their failings notwithstanding, the Church is serious about marriage and the rearing of children in the faith, and is trying to make sure that folks getting married in the future will be fully aware of what the Sacrament truly MEANS.
With all due respect, most priests will never forbid communion or annulments with the Ted Kennedy's of the world. I'm not impressed with the Church who states they have set beliefs yet fails to implement them.
Pinging you to the above.
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