Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
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.
Forest Keeper, I love that, I believe that, I live that. Thank you for stating it so beautifully.
No, but I have made sure that they are aware of how many millions of children their age actually live in this world. In addition, when I discipline they are trained to know that if I get any lip that I will double it or worse. That is partly intended to show them to be grateful that they are only losing some, not all. I am a huge believer in the correct perspective on approaching life.
Your children are blessed because of your perspective on life. If they don't know that now....they will.
.....Ping
Happy to help.
I’m pleased that we’re finding more common ground as we go on.
So, how can you reject that which you know nothing about? Do you even know whence came the Bible you so fervently believe in? It didn't come down, like manna, from the sky. Where do you get the authority to interpret what God says? The Bible? From a book that the Church (which you deny) put together for you?
But the spirit of the law is in the interpretation and this is where the trillion dollar question comes is: whose interpretation? Clearly speeding over the speed limit is against the law, even if it is one mile per hour if it is "just because." Clearly speeding in order to get a pregnant woman about to have a baby to the hospital on time is not condemnable because of "mitigating circumstances."
Christ's correction of the Pharisaical view was that the law is applied against the intent of an offence, and not against the act itself.
Throwing myself on a grenade to save my buddies is suicide by the letter of the law, but it is obviously not sinful by what Jesus said
People who throw themselves on the grenade don't do it with the intent to commit suicide, but to save others. Their resulting death is not the intended target of the act. I hope they do that hoping (even if the chance is remote) that somehow they will survive and save their buddies' lives. Those who commit suicide do so with the intent of killing themselves.
Is this another "lawyer question"? The synonym of to rest is stop, halt, standstill. Certainly it does not mean woodworking! Pleasure doesn't even come into the sabbath equation. That is an entirely personal innovation to treat the Lord's Day as one's personal day, a time we devote to us and not to God.
Think about it: if we say we love God with all our heart, mind and soul, and we pursue personal pleasure activities on His day, what message does that send? Out of, say 16 hours of waking time, we devote 1 hour to God in church and 15 hours on us, we can safely say that a Sunday is 93.75% our day and 6.25% the Lord's Day in our book. Pretty telling, isn't it?
In the Law, Israel was to do two things on sabbath; stay in their tents and feast. The priests were to offer the sacrifices. I could not find in the Law where Israel was to come to the tabernacle or the temple for bible study or worship. Perhaps you have a reference.
That is a very illustrative point.
I do know however, several Bears fans here that are religious in their observance of Sunday football.
From the Greek Archdiocese of America (emphasis added):
[T]he Holy Spirit inspires, and the sacred author follows the Holy Spirit's injunctions, utilizing his own human and imperfect ways to express the perfect message and doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
In this sense, we can understand possible imperfections in the books of the Bible, since they are the result of the cooperation between the all-perfect and perfecting Divine Author, the Spirit, and the imperfect human author. Biblical textual criticism is completely normal and acceptable by the Orthodox, since they see the Bible in this light. Nothing human is perfect, including the Bible, which is the end product of human cooperation with the divine Spirit
If you mix clean clothes with soiled linen, you don't end up with clean linen, but with soiled clothes. That which is pristine, when mixed with the corrupt, itself becomes corrupt.
The Gospels represent direct quotes (although in ancient times even the practice of "quoting" did not follow modern rules; instead, writers would paraphrase what they heard or read as best as they could recollect or as they believed the person they "quote" would have said it!). So, while the Gospels are as close to direct quotes of God, their synergism (discarding plagiarism, which we do on an assumption more than fact) shows that they are the words spoken by Christ.
Our only corroborative authority is the written history of the Church practices and beliefs from as far back as posisble (Apostolic Fathers, +Ignatius, +Polycarp, etc.), and the earliest liturgical traditions (Didache, St. Justin Martyr, Liturgy of St. james [the Just]), etc. They are circumstantial evidence that what the Church believed and taught and practiced then si what it teaches, belies and practices today, which corroborate the Bible, collectivel called the Holy Tradition. Even that evidence is not always genuine as some writings of +Ingantius are known forgeries.
This places everything before and after the Gospels' time frame (Christ's minister on earth) on a different plane, because prophesies and visions cannot be distinguished from fantasy and hallucinations, FK.
You say that Mary was without sin. Wouldn't that make her God under this view?
This is the heart of Orthodox disagreement with Catholics regarding BEV Mary. She remained pure by following God, and not of her own. Is she was created unlike any one of us (Immaculate Conception) then her ability to resist sin was in her nature and not because she syngercistically cooperated with God's will in perfect obedience.
That doesn't follow. The Bible is FROM God THEREFORE it has no errors
Now, we know that not everyone who got hold of the Bible and made little changes was inspired. Like I said, the very fact that we add commas is corrupting, since different locations of commas affect the meaning of the verses, we cannot claim inerrency. Additions of vowels have a potentially even greater effect. Thus, it is naïve to treat the existing copies of the Bible as some pristine work of God.
We really don't know what is genuine and what was added in time through written or even verbal corruption. For instance, we know that Comma Johanneum and Pericope Adulterae were added to the NT. We also know that the Gospel of Mark has an addition of some 10 verses at the very end. Clearly, people were fashioning the Bible according to their own taste and agenda. We also know that various authors change style, language, vocabulary and even the nature of their writings. This is true of OT and NT authors. We also know that most of the books in the Bible are anonymous, yet they are ascribed with "certainty" to specific authors. We also know that some events in the Bible do not match the geography and history, etc. etc, etc.
But, there is always the option of sticking one's head into the sand and pretending the sun doesn't shine.
Taken from Ps. 40:7 and taught in Heb.10:7: Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy will, O God."
This is where we find Him Kosta, as He told us, In The Book. (It is written - Have you read - I have foretold you)
So, when you say that He said, "teach all nations..." do you believe by that that we should not read His Word too? His Word is the foundation of His teaching.
In fact, the Church did exactly that, for 30-60 years after Christ, without the New Testament, by word of mouth, and ever since then, and always in the true tradition of the Gospels
"without the New Testament" - Yes, but they had the Old Testament, that was the Book He referred to when He said, "I come in the volume of the Book".
We can be taught by our teachers, churches, etc. and if we can't read or study on our own that would have to be enough. But....We can read, we can study, we can compare what we are taught with what He said. It is written for us to do that.
I've pointed out a few places on this thread where some things are written but not taught. These aren't minor teachings, little inconsequential matters, to be ignored. If I am wrong in what I believe they clearly tell us, the 3 ages of earth, what really happened in the garden, etc., then why are they written? What can they mean if not what I believe they teach us?
That's right, because the Jews expected Messiah to be a mortal man.
That isn't why He said to "follow no man".
We know where the authority of our bishops comes from. It's in the Bible. But where does the authority of self-styles Protestant pastors and individuals come from? I don't see it in the Bible.
Kosta, this is becoming a battle on different religions and I don't want to go there. As I told MarkBsnr, I don't know enough about religion to enter a conversation about them, nor do I want to. My points are not based on who teaches, or doesn't teach but rather on what is written.
........Ping
Agreed, the Western church has been guilty of a non-Trinitarian approach to things at times and in places. Each of our churches has been imperfect in some regard or another, and even when we honour the Trinity with our mouths, we sometimes do not honour Him fully with our hearts. The work of the Holy Spirit in particular come to mind.
The triple baptism though, as your texts clearly show, are a human tradition. Scripturally, we are not told that Christ/God/Spirit requires it.
“You were conducted to a bath just as Christ was carried to the grave and were thrice immersed to signify the three days of His burial.” (Clement of Alexandria)
Note the word ‘signify’. We should be careful to separate those things which are tradition (even beneficial tradition), and those things which are for salvation.
The tradition is a lovely one, and many ‘Western’ churches use it as well... it is not however a requirement for salvation.
Christ's own revelation witnessed in the Gospels shows us that God does not order slaughters, that the Hebrew prophets did not receive full revelation, and that God's Justice is not human justice.
and given the greatest likelihood that all of those OT children would have grown up to oppose the one true God, then God DID actually show them mercy by killing them
If this is what Protestants believe, then we do not believe in the same God, FK. God, revealed fully in Christ, does not order or perform mercy killings of children.
There are plenty of examples. Here are some showing legal personhood in God's eyes, thus making it wrong to kill the unborn
There are many more examples of permissive cruelty ascribed to God in the OT than examples that would teach against aboriton, FK. Abortion was unknown. Obviously, killing memebrs of non-Hebrew tribes, whether they were born or unborn, was not considered murder but "righteous."
I think all of these go to show how God views an unborn baby. He or she exists as a person at conception, at which time all the OT rules against the murder of innocent life would apply
Except when God orders genocide against Canaanites and others in the OT, even smashing their babies against rocks, all of which—according to your earlier statements—are acts of "mercy" to "save" their souls. I mean, this is about as weird as I have seen some posters propose that Cain was conceived by Eve having sex with the serpent. It's dark, FK, it's really dark.
I'm not trying to reject it or deny it. I'm trying my best to not discuss it. The "church" may have put it together but they didn't write it. The Catholics didn't write it - the Protestants didn't write it. God did.
I am trying to discuss what is contained in that Book, not who did or did not teach it.
Where do you get the authority to interpret what God says?
What you call authority I call my understanding of what I read. If you disagree with it please let me know what you, or your church, believe those scriptues could possibly mean.
Kosta, I'm trying my best to steer completly clear of any type of discussion on churches. One, as I have said, I don't know enough about the different doctrines but I do have my opinions on some of them. That is all it would be, my opinion and those opinions could possible offend some. The scriptures I have quoted are not my opinion. They are written and therefore need to be discussed.
So, when you form your religious opinions based on English translation you are reading "I baptize you..." which doesn't even describe what that means, let alone the manner of such act.
And Greek reads the same passage and sees "I immerse you repeatedly ... " and the two of you do not read one and the same thing. And that carries a completely different meaning. This is also an excellent example of how one's theology cannot be formed properly by simply reading any version of the Bible because all translations are corrupt. Thus, to a Protestant who makes up his or her own rules based on reading some Bible, there is nothing wrong with just immersing once. In fact, more than once becomes a 'tradition of men' quite erroneously based on erroneous reading. Once the error is set, errors proliferate.
Now, I will agree that thrice is probably a tradition that the Church adopted as the meaning of baptiso based on the trinitarian concepts, God's three days of burial before resurrection, etc. quite in line with Gospels' witness and not as something arbitrary or, worse, as a result of misunderstanding.
Kosta,
There is a part your missing. There is no prohibition against killing *anywhere* in the bible but there is one against murder. God being holy and man being by nature sinful from conception means God has the absolute right to kill us, even here as I sit. Man does not...
First, He provided the inspiration and they wrote it in their own words. That's different from God "wrote" it. Second, the Bible, as it was written had no punctuation marks. the fact that we have commas and semicolons inserted at various places (by uninspired editors) corrupts the original (which we don't have) and puts in question the veracity of their choices.
The addition of vowels in the Hebrew text represents human corruption as different 'words" without vowels can be turned into a variety of unrelated words, the choice of vowels then becomes a human choice and none of the rabbis as far as I know were inspired.
Take for instance the vowel less 'word" shp. Add some vowels and see what happens: ship, shap, shop, etc...Hebrew is especially subject to many more word choices because it is a vowelless written language.
Other evidence of corruption is abundant. research Comma Johanneum for example (in 1 John), and Periciope Adulterae in the Gospel of John, or the addition of the last 10-plus verses at the end of the Gospel of Mark and you get the picture...
There is nothing pristine about the Bible.
God is Life. He gives life. Those who parish do so not because God kills them but because they do what God is not. God came on earth to save us, not to destroy us. But that becomes obvious in the Gospels, not in the OT.
It's the same reference that says it's okay to do woodworking because it's fun.
I didn't know feasts were part of the sabbath observance. And if they were, they were devoted to God, not hobbies.
The entire Bible was written by men. There were a great number of books, but the 72 books chosen to make up the entire Bible were chosen by the Church.
The writings were judged to be inspired by the Church; the Church was inspired by the Holy Spirit. But just as individuals nowadays invariably wander into error, so did many of the Church Fathers. And the Church as an institution made the correct judgements.
That is why the Bible tells us not to privately interpret it. Because, being human, we will inevitably err.
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