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Will the Pope's Pronouncement Set Ecumenism Back a Hundred Years? (Challenge to Apostolicity)
Progressive Theology ^ | July 07

Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins

Will the Pope's Pronouncement Set Ecumenism Back a Hundred Years?

Wednesday, 11 July 2007

Yesterday's Reuters headline: "The Vatican on Tuesday said Christian denominations outside the Roman Catholic Church were not full churches of Jesus Christ." The actual proclamation, posted on the official Vatican Web site, says that Protestant Churches are really "ecclesial communities" rather than Churches, because they lack apostolic succession, and therefore they "have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery." Furthermore, not even the Eastern Orthodox Churches are real Churches, even though they were explicitly referred to as such in the Vatican document Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism). The new document explains that they were only called Churches because "the Council wanted to adopt the traditional use of the term." This new clarification, issued officially by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but in fact strongly supported by Pope Benedict XVI, manages to insult both Protestants and the Orthodox, and it may set ecumenism back a hundred years.

The new document, officially entitled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church," claims that the positions it takes do not reverse the intent of various Vatican II documents, especially Unitatis Redintegratio, but merely clarify them. In support of this contention, it cites other documents, all issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973), Communionis notio (1992), and Dominus Iesus (2000). The last two of these documents were issued while the current pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was prefect of the Congregation. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was born in 1542 with the name Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, and for centuries it has operated as an extremely conservative force with the Roman Catholic Church, opposing innovation and modernizing tendencies, suppressing dissent, and sometimes, in its first few centuries, persecuting those who believed differently. More recently, the congregation has engaged in the suppression of some of Catholicism's most innovative and committed thinkers, such as Yves Congar, Hans Küng, Charles Curran, Matthew Fox, and Jon Sobrino and other liberation theologians. In light of the history of the Congregation of the Faith, such conservative statements as those released this week are hardly surprising, though they are quite unwelcome.

It is natural for members of various Christian Churches to believe that the institutions to which they belong are the best representatives of Christ's body on earth--otherwise, why wouldn't they join a different Church? It is disingenuous, however, for the leader of a Church that has committed itself "irrevocably" (to use Pope John Paul II's word in Ut Unum Sint [That They May Be One] 3, emphasis original) to ecumenism to claim to be interested in unity while at the same time declaring that all other Christians belong to Churches that are in some way deficient. How different was the attitude of Benedict's predecessors, who wrote, "In subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the [Roman] Catholic Church--for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame" (Unitatis Redintegratio 3). In Benedict's view, at various times in history groups of Christians wandered from the original, pure Roman Catholic Church, and any notion of Christian unity today is predicated on the idea of those groups abandoning their errors and returning to the Roman Catholic fold. The pope's problem seems to be that he is a theologian rather than a historian. Otherwise he could not possibly make such outrageous statements and think that they were compatible with the spirit of ecumenism that his immediate predecessors promoted.

One of the pope's most strident arguments against the validity of other Churches is that they can't trace their bishops' lineages back to the original apostles, as the bishops in the Roman Catholic Church can. There are three problems with this idea.

First, many Protestants deny the importance of apostolic succession as a guarantor of legitimacy. They would argue that faithfulness to the Bible and/or the teachings of Christ is a better measure of authentic Christian faith than the ability to trace one's spiritual ancestry through an ecclesiastical bureaucracy. A peripheral knowledge of the lives of some of the medieval and early modern popes (e.g., Stephen VI, Sergius III, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI) is enough to call the insistence on apostolic succession into serious question. Moreover, the Avignon Papacy and the divided lines of papal claimants in subsequent decades calls into serious question the legitimacy of the whole approach. Perhaps the strongest argument against the necessity of apostolic succession comes from the Apostle Paul, who was an acknowledged apostle despite not having been ordained by one of Jesus' original twelve disciples. In fact, Paul makes much of the fact that his authority came directly from Jesus Christ rather than from one of the apostles (Gal 1:11-12). Apostolic succession was a useful tool for combating incipient heresy and establishing the antiquity of the churches in particular locales, but merely stating that apostolic succession is a necessary prerequisite for being a true church does not make it so.

The second problem with the new document's insistence upon apostolic succession is the fact that at least three other Christian communions have apostolic succession claims that are as valid as that of the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Churches, which split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054, can trace their lineages back to the same apostles that the Roman Catholic Church can, a fact acknowledged by Unitatis Redintegratio 14. The Oriental Orthodox Churches, such as the Coptic and Ethiopic Orthodox Churches, split from the Roman Catholic Church several centuries earlier, but they too can trace their episcopal lineages back to the same apostles claimed by the Roman Catholic Church as its founders. Finally, the Anglican Church, which broke away from the Roman Catholic Church during the reign of King Henry VIII, can likewise trace the lineage of every bishop back through the first archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine. In addition to these three collections of Christian Churches, the Old Catholics and some Methodists also see value in the idea of apostolic succession, and they can trace their episcopal lineages just as far back as Catholic bishops can.

The third problem with the idea of apostolic succession is that the earliest bishops in certain places are simply unknown, and the lists produced in the third and fourth centuries that purported to identify every bishop back to the founding of the church in a particular area were often historically unreliable. Who was the founding bishop of Byzantium? Who brought the gospel to Alexandria? To Edessa? To Antioch? There are lists that give names (e.g., http://www.friesian.com/popes.htm), such as the Apostles Mark (Alexandria), Andrew (Byzantium), and Thaddeus (Armenia), but the association of the apostles with the founding of these churches is legendary, not historical. The most obvious breakdown of historicity in the realm of apostolic succession involves none other than the see occupied by the pope, the bishop of Rome. It is certain that Peter did make his way to Rome before the time of Nero, where he perished, apparently in the Neronian persecution following the Great Fire of Rome, but it is equally certain that the church in Rome predates Peter, as it also predates Paul's arrival there (Paul also apparently died during the Neronian persecution). The Roman Catholic Church may legitimately claim a close association with both Peter and Paul, but it may not legitimately claim that either was the founder of the church there. The fact of the matter is that the gospel reached Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, and other early centers of Christianity in the hands of unknown, faithful Christians, not apostles, and the legitimacy of the churches established there did not suffer in the least because of it.

All the talk in the new document about apostolic succession is merely a smokescreen, however, for the main point that the Congregation of the Faith and the pope wanted to drive home: recognition of the absolute primacy of the pope. After playing with the words "subsists in" (Lumen Gentium [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church] 8) and "church" (Unitatis Redintegratio 14) in an effort to make them mean something other than what they originally meant, the document gets down to the nitty-gritty. "Since communion with the Catholic Church, the visible head of which is the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Peter, is not some external complement to a particular Church but rather one of its internal constitutive principles, these venerable Christian communities lack something in their condition as particular churches." From an ecumenical standpoint, this position is a non-starter. Communion with Rome and acknowledging the authority of the pope as bishop of Rome is a far different matter from recognizing the pope as the "visible head" of the entire church, without peer. The pope is an intelligent man, and he knows that discussions with other Churches will make no progress on the basis of this prerequisite, so the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the pope, despite his protestations, has no interest in pursuing ecumenism. Trying to persuade other Christians to become Roman Catholics, which is evidently the pope's approach to other Churches, is not ecumenism, it's proselytism.

Fortunately, this document does not represent the viewpoint of all Catholics, either laypeople or scholars. Many ordinary Catholics would scoff at the idea that other denominations were not legitimate Churches, which just happen to have different ideas about certain topics and different ways of expressing a common Christianity. Similarly, many Catholic scholars are doing impressive work in areas such as theology, history, biblical study, and ethics, work that interacts with ideas produced by non-Catholic scholars. In the classroom and in publications, Catholics and non-Catholics learn from each other, challenge one another, and, perhaps most importantly, respect one another.

How does one define the Church? Christians have many different understandings of the term, and Catholics are divided among themselves, as are non-Catholics. The ecumenical movement is engaged in addressing this issue in thoughtful, meaningful, and respectful ways. Will the narrow-minded view expressed in "Responses" be the death-knell of the ecumenical movement? Hardly. Unity among Christians is too important an idea to be set aside. Will the document set back ecumenical efforts? Perhaps, but Christians committed to Christian unity--Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike--will get beyond it. The ecumenical movement is alive and well, and no intemperate pronouncement from the Congregation of the Faith, or the current pope, can restrain it for long. Even if ecumenism, at least as it involves the Roman Catholic Church's connection with other Churches, is temporarily set back a hundred years, that distance can be closed either by changes of heart or changes of leadership.


TOPICS: General Discusssion
KEYWORDS: apostolic; catholic; fascinatedwcatholics; givemerome; obsessionwithrome; papistsrule; pope; protestant; solascriptura
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To: stfassisi
You have been shown the typology of scripture along with the writings of the early church fathers that view Mary as the New Eve, The Immaculate ark of the New Covenant, etc..

I have been shown no convincing material. You believe because you want to. Fine with me, but you have nothing but speculation.

The belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is founded on the apocryphal treatise De Obitu S. Dominae, bearing the name of St. John which belongs however to the fourth or fifth century. It is also found in the book De Transitu Virginis, falsely ascribed to St. Melito of Sardis , and in a spurious letter attributed to St. Denis the Areopagite . If we consult genuine writings in the East it is mentioned in the sermons of St. Andrew of Crete , St. John Damascene , St. Modestus of Jerusalem and others. In the West , St. Gregory of Tours (De gloria mart., I, iv) mentions it first. The sermons of St. Jerome and St. Augustine for this feast , however, are spurious. St. John of Damascus (P. G., I, 96) thus formulates the tradition of the Church of Jerusalem :

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA - THE FACT OF THE ASSUMPTION

Since History is not on your side ,it is up to you to provide proof that Mary’s body was NOT assumed into heaven.You can’t!

You have a problem with simple logic my friend.

11,281 posted on 11/21/2007 11:48:53 AM PST by OLD REGGIE (I am most likely a Biblical Unitarian? Let me be perfectly clear. I know nothing.)
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To: OLD REGGIE
You have a problem with simple logic my friend.

You don't have any physical evidence of Mary's body still being on earth.

Simple logic!

11,282 posted on 11/21/2007 12:05:19 PM PST by stfassisi ("Above all gifts that Christ gives his beloved is that of overcoming self"St Francis Assisi)
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To: stfassisi
You don't have any physical evidence of Mary's body still being on earth.

Simple logic!

You don't have any physical evidence of Mary's Jimmy Hoffa's body still being on earth.

His body must have been ported to heaven.

Simple logic!

11,283 posted on 11/21/2007 1:44:05 PM PST by OLD REGGIE (I am most likely a Biblical Unitarian? Let me be perfectly clear. I know nothing.)
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To: OLD REGGIE
“”You don’t have any physical evidence of Mary’s Jimmy Hoffa’s body still being on earth.””

I knew you were going to write that before you even posted it. No lie.

Do you really want to make comparisons of Jimmy Hoffa to the Blessed Mother?

Do you think our Blessed Lord would approve?

11,284 posted on 11/21/2007 2:17:19 PM PST by stfassisi ("Above all gifts that Christ gives his beloved is that of overcoming self"St Francis Assisi)
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To: stfassisi
You don't have any physical evidence of Mary's body still being on earth.

Simple logic!


Your error is a classical logic fallacy "An Appeal To Ignorance".

Appeal to Ignorance (argumentum ad ignoratiam)

An appeal to ignorance proposes that we accept the truth of a proposition unless an opponent can prove otherwise. Thus, for example:

No one has conclusively proven that there is no intelligent life on the moons of Jupiter.

Therefore, there is intelligent life on the moons of Jupiter.



Your argument (Appeal To Ignorance):

1. Nobody has found Mary's body.
2. Therefore her body must be in heaven.

Is logically identical to:

1. Nobody has found Jimmy Hoffa's body.
2. Therefore his body must be in heaven.

I repeat, your argument demonstrates a complete lack of the knowledge of logic. Her body could be in heaven but it is not proven by your argument.


11,285 posted on 11/21/2007 2:22:36 PM PST by OLD REGGIE (I am most likely a Biblical Unitarian? Let me be perfectly clear. I know nothing.)
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To: stfassisi
Do you really want to make comparisons of Jimmy Hoffa to the Blessed Mother?

No comparison meant at all and you know that. You also know that argument is rediculous yet you make exactly the same one.

Do you think our Blessed Lord would approve?

Of my attempt to assist you in framing your argument? Sure!

11,286 posted on 11/21/2007 2:30:07 PM PST by OLD REGGIE (I am most likely a Biblical Unitarian? Let me be perfectly clear. I know nothing.)
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To: OLD REGGIE
My original discussion with you was to show you through typology and the Early Church Fathers that The Blessed Mother is both Scripturally and historically the New Eve, Ark of the new Covenant that easily leads to the understanding that Mary was assumed into heaven.

Your love or your own intellect ignores all of it as appeal to ignorance. so you can please your own prideful mind

Now you bring the discussion to the gutter with the Hoffa Jupiter nonsense so you can please your own prideful mind.

Do you believe that Jesus physically multiplied the loaves and the fish to feed the thousands? Or do you think that is ignorant to believe as well?

11,287 posted on 11/21/2007 2:38:10 PM PST by stfassisi ("Above all gifts that Christ gives his beloved is that of overcoming self"St Francis Assisi)
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To: stfassisi
Do you believe that Jesus physically multiplied the loaves and the fish to feed the thousands? Or do you think that is ignorant to believe as well?

I believe you have lost it.

Have a good Thanksgiving.

11,288 posted on 11/21/2007 2:56:15 PM PST by OLD REGGIE (I am most likely a Biblical Unitarian? Let me be perfectly clear. I know nothing.)
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To: OLD REGGIE
I believe you have lost it.

Is that how you avoid answering a question,by insult?

Perhaps you can explain how the Holy Spirit would move you to write such hate?

11,289 posted on 11/21/2007 3:05:14 PM PST by stfassisi ("Above all gifts that Christ gives his beloved is that of overcoming self"St Francis Assisi)
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To: OLD REGGIE
Do you believe the miracle that Jesus really multiplied the loaves and the fish to feed the thousands?.Yes or NO?
11,290 posted on 11/21/2007 3:35:40 PM PST by stfassisi ("Above all gifts that Christ gives his beloved is that of overcoming self"St Francis Assisi)
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To: Forest Keeper; MarkBsnr; D-fendr; wmfights; annalex
The "leap of faith" philosophers were specifically UNSUCCESSFUL because they were forced to give up all hope of a meaningful reconciliation between man and God

Unsuccessful? Europe is for all practical purposes secular (church attendance in German is 6% of Catholics and 5% for Protestants). Even in America, atheism is on the rise and, even though church attendance is vastly exaggerated, the American society in general (despite religious lip service) is profoundly secular, violent and materialistic.

Enter the Reformers, particularly John Calvin. Once you have reduced God to naked legalism, it was only a (predictable) step to naked rationalism.

But, they insisted that man was autonomous, and THAT is what destroyed their ambitions

To the contrary, FK. Man believes to this day that we can solve all our problems and unlock of the mysteries through reason, that there is a logical explanation to everything. Just because we don't have eough data doesn't mean the premise is false. In fact, most people would say that, given sufficient information, we can unlock any mystery of the world.

It is the believers who lost the motivation when they relied that diseases are not demonic possessions as the Bible teaches, when thunder turned out to be electrical energy, even something we can harness. The old adage "if God wanted man to fly He would have given him wings" went out the window when men began to fly,

Reason uncovered many a mystery that was attributed to God or to the devil, and discovered that being in the dark we see things differently. Once science shone its light on things we realized the monsters were only in our head.

Man is autonomous to a certain point, but the Church teaches (and this predates the Reformers FK) that man is dependent on God and can exist fully only in full communion with God, never as a creature separated from God; in other words, it was the Church that taught that man is not autonomous. The Reformers did not discover that.

11,291 posted on 11/21/2007 4:55:39 PM PST by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: Forest Keeper; MarkBsnr; D-fendr; wmfights; annalex
Kosta: The core "truth" is the initial assumption, which is accepted on a leap of faith, as absolute truth.

FK: IOW, Christianity is a baseless faith

It's not baseless. It's just that our basis for our faith is no more verifiable than any other. It's a matter of personal choice. How do you "prove" that Moses encountered God on Mt. Sinai? Or that God dictated scripture to Moses and Koran to Mohammad? How do you "prove" Incarnation?

There is a basic leap of faith and from there on it all becomes very "real." If you and are convinced that there are unicorns on Jupiter and someone comes up with a "revelation" about their size and color and the shape of the horn, we could be having real discussions about them the way medieval theologicand discussed how many angels fit on a head of a pin.

Look, the city of Troy existed and its ruins have been found. Does that make Homer's Iliad a true story? Historical finds in biblical lands prove nothing either. There is simply no other way to believe the Bibe but by a leap of (blind) faith. And that is true of every other religion in the world. Muslims call it, correctly, surrender, which is what Islam means.

At one point we admit that our reason fails, that there is something much, much bigger and smarter than we are. We approach God in silence and in complete acceptance. The ineffable becomes real but not understood.

We are like dogs who have no clue why the master leaves home every day (to go to work), or why he does things. We simply trust him even if for some reason we don't understand he gets angry with us and even punishes us. We stick around, nonetheless, because we know he cares and loves us. But we understand nothing...we have no clue that our home is in a place with a name, or in a large replace called a state, or that the state is in some other place called USA, and USA is aprt of some toher place called North America, which is aprt of a big round ball called the earth, floating around in space around the sin that makes us squint, a furnace 8 light minutes away (one light second = 160,000 miles; the distance from here to the Moon! So, 8 light minutes = 160,000x60x8=76.8 million miles from us) so powerful that it burns us raw in the summer, and that this is only one of billions of stars in another place called the Milky Way Galaxy whose core can be discerned in the southern skies, and that this galaxy make sup a local group separated by millions of light years from ours (you dot he math), and is part of the visible universe which comprises 23 hexatrillion stars (more stars than all the grains of sand on all the beaches and in all the deserts on earth!), packed into more than trillions of galaxies...and we still don't know everything about it...nor have we seen all of it...

That's where the age of reason brought us, FK. To realize that we know nothing and that God's revelation to us was all we really needed to know, because all the knowledge of the world a nd beyond does not bring us closer to the ultimate answer. The west deconstructed the Mystery of God and ended up with a mystery too big for us to handle.

11,292 posted on 11/21/2007 4:58:22 PM PST by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: Forest Keeper; MarkBsnr; D-fendr; wmfights; annalex
I was talking about the things that really matter, such as the proverbial questions: Who am I?, Why am I here?, Where am I going? "Leap of faith" philosophy has no hope of truly answering any of those questions

Different religions offer different answers, proving that religion doesn't have one answer either.

Biblically, "inspired" means "God-breathed". The words from God's breath either contain error or they do not

The words are human, not divine. If the Bible were perfect then the Bible would be God. Some people take it that way.

He doesn't lead us fallibly, He leads us according to His plan. That plan includes growth. Some will achieve higher levels of truth than others, all under the direction of the Holy Spirit. My understanding of Christianity right now is exactly what the Holy Spirit wants it to be for right now. It was a little different a year ago and it will be different next year. That doesn't mean He is leading me fallibly, it means He didn't give me all the answers at once. The plan is for me to spend the rest of my life growing in Him.

Then why not believe that God leads His Apostolic Church accoridng to His plan? And why not believe that He would make sure the Church is infallible, since it teaches the word of God? And since He specifically made it for that purpose?

We believe that God gave us the whole revealed truth through the pophest and patriarch and crowned it with His Son's ministry. God's revealed truth to man is complete and finished (should have been finished with Christ dying, as He is quoted as saying, but then someone decided to write Revelation!). And the completeness of that revealed truth is in His Apostolic Church, given that no other Church was made by Christ personally.

If one thinks the originals were infallible, like I do, then it is no leap to also think that if God went to all that trouble, that He would also protect later versions that were accepted by God's Church

He did. He created His Church, gave the keys to His Apostles and told them to carry on His work and safeguard the truth revealed in an unchanging and eternal Church that nothing will bring down. The Apostolic Church taught what it teaches to this day. And thats same Church put together the NT.

11,293 posted on 11/21/2007 4:59:19 PM PST by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: stfassisi

***Did man crucify Christ by free will?***

God is sitting up in heaven, enjoying himself, just hanging around. Then, suddenly, his Son appears.

God says, “Hey, I thought I sent you down there?”

Jesus replied, “Well, I guess they didn’t want me, they crucified me and tossed me in a tomb.”

God: “Great, now what are we going to do. If I left it up to them, no one would come. Boy, you plan and you plan, but hey, you can’t plan human nature.”


11,294 posted on 11/21/2007 6:46:04 PM PST by irishtenor (History was written before God said "Let there be light.")
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To: MarkBsnr; Gamecock; Forest Keeper; HarleyD

***Thinking and rationalizing led us to the heresy of the Reformation and all the denominations that it has spawned. ***

So, what you are saying is that your religion is irrational and stupid? Finally, something we can agree on :>)


11,295 posted on 11/21/2007 6:48:48 PM PST by irishtenor (History was written before God said "Let there be light.")
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To: MarkBsnr

Heresy: a religious opinion that is contrary to the orthodox doctrine OR ACCEPTED BELIEFS OF A SPECIFIC RELIGION.

Heretic: a person who holds a heresy or is guilty of heresy.

The above brought to you by the Oxford American Dictionary.

Therefore, the Pope is a heretic in my book.


11,296 posted on 11/21/2007 6:53:29 PM PST by irishtenor (History was written before God said "Let there be light.")
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To: stfassisi

***Does scripture say otherwise,or say Salvation without Mary’s fiat? NO!***

Mary had a sports car? Italian job, eh?

A fiat is an order or decree. Mary did neither. Mary did what the Lord told her to do. She had no will to do otherwise.


11,297 posted on 11/21/2007 6:57:12 PM PST by irishtenor (History was written before God said "Let there be light.")
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To: MarkBsnr

***Mary is the exceptional human, Noah was not.***

The whole world died except for him and his family and you say he wasn’t exceptional?


11,298 posted on 11/21/2007 7:41:43 PM PST by irishtenor (History was written before God said "Let there be light.")
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To: Forest Keeper

***We are just plain lucky that Mary said “yes”,***

Since it was foretold that a virgin would bear a child, maybe God had a few other virgins waiting, just in case Mary said “No.”


11,299 posted on 11/21/2007 7:45:46 PM PST by irishtenor (History was written before God said "Let there be light.")
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To: OLD REGGIE

There’s intelligent life of Jupiter? When are they going to find some on Earth?


11,300 posted on 11/21/2007 7:48:14 PM PST by irishtenor (History was written before God said "Let there be light.")
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