Posted on 07/23/2007 3:36:15 PM PDT by annalex
Sunday, July 22, 2007
As a young Catholic I was unaware of the amount of irrational hatred that was directed toward the Catholic Church and Catholics themselves. Growing up in Los Angeles I was not subject to the Fundamentalist “tracts” being placed on my family car while we were at Mass as I would have been had I lived in the “Bible Belt”. My exposure to people of other faiths was frequent and always positive. The majority of my friends growing were Jewish as were the girls whom I had the honor of dating. My babysitter growing up was Mormon, as was my Paternal Grandfather. My Paternal Grandmother is a Methodist and my Father was an atheist for most of his life. My Maternal Grandfather was a Presbyterian from a family that produced many deacons. However, my Maternal Grandmother was an Irish Catholic and thus my Mother was a Catholic and therefore we were raised Catholic. None of this was seen as a conflict. None of the above people in my family ever acted as though anything was “wrong” with my siblings and I being raised Catholic.
In my college years I essentially fell away from the faith. I still called myself a “Catholic” but had no particular belief in any of the dogmas that makes one a Catholic. I just knew that I was of Irish ancestry and thus was “Catholic”. My beliefs were for the most part agnostic. I thought that true believers were absurd (I included both theist and atheist true believers as absurd).
While in college I heard all about how the Catholic Church was responsible for the Dark Ages, the destruction of the Native Peoples of the Americas, the Holocaust, the Inquisition, pimples on teenagers, Milli-Vanilli and just about everything else that negatively effected anyone anywhere at anytime everywhere. I learned how peaceful and wonderful Muslim societies were and how Christians lived very well under Islamic rule. And how the Crusades were an evil move by a corrupt Pope to throw off that wonderful balance and have a huge land grab for greedy Churchman and Nobles. I heard how nothing good happened in the Christian world and no good men were produced in the Christian world until Marin Luther and later "the Enlightenment". I look back now and marvel at how I remained a Catholic even if it was in name only. All my history professors with their fancy PhDs thought Catholicism was a force for evil in the Western World who was I to disagree? Of course I just went along and got good grades and degrees not really challenging the idiocy that I was being taught.
There I was just a young guy going through life not contemplating the great issues of life and certainly not contemplating being a Catholic when I had the misfortune to meet a Rabbi that was a friend of my wife’s family. During our discussion, the rabbi told me about things that Christians “buy into” like the Trinity and the fact that Jesus was God. I was told that I could never understand Jews and their suffering at the hands of Catholics. I was told that I “would never know what it is to be a Jew or how it feels to have your children forced to sing Christmas carols (oh the horror! the horror!)”. I would never know what it is like to look at someone like me and see the Inquisition and the Crusades. Now, anyone who is not a self absorbed bigot would know that talking to a person who is half Irish and Catholic knows a little something of prejudice and persecution. My ancestors could not own land in their own country. They had to pay taxes to a foreign English master and support his foreign Church that was a parasite on their own land. They had real persecution. If they could have gotten off with simply singing Church of Ireland songs rather than pay taxes to and be persecuted by the British, I'm sure they would have gladly accepted. But why look past ones on victim-hood in order to see truth, when victim-hood is so much more of a commodity in our modern society.
At that point I made a commitment to understand my faith. I would never let someone attack the beliefs of my ancestors as this rabbi did without making a strong defense. My ancestors were willing to be persecuted (the real kind of persecution not the Christmas Carol kind) rather than abandon their faith. The least I could do is understand what they found so important as to endure what they did. Thus starting my journey toward becoming a passionate believer. The irony of a anti-Catholic bigoted rabbi bringing me closer to the truth of Christ is absolutely wonderful.
I started reading books by the usual authors that are sold at Borders and Barnes & Noble like George Weigel. While informative they were, upon reflection, very superficial. However, I happened upon a book called “Catholicism verses Fundamentalism” by Karl Keating. I thought it was simply going to be an analysis of Catholic beliefs versus Fundamentalist beliefs. What I had purchased was a wonderful combination of satire and apologetics. It has become the definitive apologetics book produced in the last 30 years. The title of the book itself mocks Jimmy Swaggarts silly book “Catholicism and Christianity”. Throughout the book I was baptized by fire into the world of anti-Catholicism. I learned about such Fundamentalist writers and “thinkers” as Lorraine Boettner, Alexander Hislop, Jimmy Swaggart, Jack Chick and others. Keating dismantled their arguments so thoroughly that one wonders how these people are not all routinely dismissed even by honest Fundamentalists. Sadly, low rent bigots like Hislop, Boettner and Dave Hunt are still widely read in Fundamentalist circles. Swaggart has fallen out of favor as we all know. Keating opened up a new door to me. I now was ready for the next step and started buying every book by Chesterton and Belloc I could find as they are the greatest apologists for the Catholic faith in the last 100 years.
The Holy Spirit has a funny way of working. I became friends with a wonderful guy who happens to be a Fundamentalist Christian. As we would talk he would mention some of the things that Keating talked about in his book. I was informed that Peter never went to Rome and that the Church was founded by Constantine the Great, and that Easter is really “Ishtar” and other scholarly insights that occupy the minds of Fundamentalist writers. I was told all about Catholicism and how it is really just paganism re-written. To his and most Fundamentalists credit, they literally do not know they are repeating lies. These books are sold at Protestant Book Stores and Churches. Also, he informed me of these things out of love as he believed my soul was in peril. So he could not process the refutations that I would make to him and just go on to the next attack. Most Catholics know about this tactic that Fundamentalists use. They will tell us what we believe and how stupid we are for believing it. 99% of the time they are wrong. The problem is that they have been told by Dave Hunt (his bio is from "rapture ready") or James White that the Calumnies that they are stating are Gospel truth.
After a while I began to pick up more and more apologetics material to refute my friends claims. I also decided that I would no longer play defense with him. I would attack his belief in sola scriptura (scripture alone) and sola fide (faith alone). When I would press him and ask about where those teachings are found in the Bible he would have no answer. This lead to his anger that I was asking too much to show me where the Bible taught either one of those Protestant Traditions (Traditions of men, not of God I might add). I would also repeat what he would say to me but re-phrase it to see if he really was willing to stand by it. For instance, he once told me that he was passionately anti-Catholic. I responded “Really? So if I were Jewish would it be okay for you to tell me that you are passionately anti-Jew?” He was taken aback and responded “Of course not!” I then responded “I guess some hatred is acceptable while others is not”. His response….silence. And then move on to the next attack. That is generally the tactic of the anti-Catholic. Never acknowledge that they are wrong, just move on to the next attack until they find something that the Catholic cannot answer. Usually it ends with some obscure Pope from the 7th century that no one knows about.
Anti-Catholicism rots the mind. It blinds people and they become obsessed with the destruction of something that they cannot destroy. People have been trying for 2000 years. Churchmen like Roger Mahoney have done their best. But the Gates of Hell will not prevail against it. So this leads to desperation. Which then leads to all kinds of ridiculous theories and outright lies about what Catholics believe and do. It does not stop with Fundamentalist Christians though. Before we think “well that’s just those weird bible-thumpers” let’s examine some things that people just “know”.
People "just know" that the Catholic Church did nothing in the Americas but persecute the indigenous people and massacre them. We "just know" that Priests never stood up to the Spaniards. Of course this is untrue. It is true that there were Catholic Priests who conducted themselves terribly during colonial times. However, it was Catholic Priests who sought to make life better for the indigenous people. Jesuits armed Indians against the Spanish in Paraguay, Francisco de Vittoria pleaded with the Spanish King in defense of the Indians. Most people in the Americas have never heard of Bartoleme de las Casas. Las Casas, a Spanish Dominican Priest has been called the Father of anti-imperialism and anti-racism. There is also Antonio Montesino who was the first person, in 1511, to denounce publicly in America the enslavement and oppression of the Indians as sinful and disgraceful to the Spanish nation. There of course were villains in the Spanish system but so were there in the American and English systems that were dominated by Protestants. We don’t hear about the brutality of Protestant lands in the US. We hear about those backward Spanish Catholics (who built the first Universities in the Americas) but not about the theocratic police state established in Geneva by John Calvin or the massacres carried out by Anabaptists in Munster.
In some cases anti-Catholicism is not only profitable it can allow for common bullies to slander and desecrate the memory of men finer than themselves without repercussions. Take the case of Daniel Goldhagen. He has made a career out of slandering the Catholic Church. Commenting on Mr. Goldhagens slanderous book A Moral Reckoning, Rabbi David Dalin, described Goldhagens work as "failing to meet even the minimum standards of scholarship.” He went on to say “That the book has found its readership out in the fever swamps of anti-Catholicism isn't surprising. But that a mainstream publisher like Knopf would print the thing is an intellectual and publishing scandal." This statement is absolutely correct. Let us be honest though, Goldhagen simply represents the double-standard that exists in our society. He is a left wing Jew who attacks the only group that it is acceptable to attack in modern American society, the evil Catholics. If a right wing Catholic were to make his living by attacking Judaism and slandering a prominent rabbi while blaming Judaism for the Marxist massacres under the NKVD he would be an out of work “conspiracy kook” and a anti-Semite. He would certainly not be published in the New Republic. Goldhagen has made the absurd statement that Christianity is anti-Semitic at its core. Imagine if one were to say that Judaism is anti-Gentile to its core. They would be isolated as an anti-Semite. The message is clear. A Jewish bigot like Goldhagen gets published by Knopf and the New Republic while his mirror image would be isolated and vilified.
I would like to wrap up with some other observations. All Catholics are told endless stories about Catholics persecuting people. Generally it starts with a Catholic King who orders the persecution of a group and despite the Bishops or Pope condemning it, "the Catholics" are to blame. An example of his would be during the Crusades when Crusaders massacred Jews along the Rhine. That was “the Catholics” despite the local Bishops hiding and protecting Jews. When a Protestant barbarian like Oliver Cromwell slaughters Catholics at Drogheda and sells the women and children into sex slavery or sacks Wexford that’s not “the Protestants”. That’s just Cromwell.
Much is made about Hitler being a baptized Catholic by ignoramuses like Dave Hunt. Other bigots like Goldhagen argue that Nazism was an extension of Catholic bigotry through the ages. Yet these people do not mention that Karl Marx was a Jew and that the ranks of the NKVD, some of the greatest murderers of all time, were filled with Jews. By using Goldhagens logic should we not attack Judaism and Jews? If we Catholics are and our faith are responsible for a former Catholic who later went so far as to persecute the Church, should not Jews be held responsible for Karl Marx and Genrikh Yagoda and the fact that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish. The answer is of course not. Your Jewish neighbor has likely not heard of the NKVD, Yagoda let alone support what he and they did.
As I wrap up my thoughts on this I should say thank you to all of the people that I mention above. Especially the Rabbi who started my journey. Had he not been a self absorbed bigot, he would not have angered me and I would not have explored my own faith. I would have continued in my ignorance and would not have understood the faith that built Western Civilization and sustained my ancestors. I would not have understood the faith that Christ taught to the Apostles, that was passed on to their successors, our Bishops. I would not truly know the joy of being a Catholic. His ignorant statements brought about my reversion back to the true faith and my wife’s conversion to it. For that, I will literally be eternally indebted to him.
You just described orientation and preconditioning.
From what I've seen Catholics most enthusiastically choose to worship Mary.
“If you were to join some Protestant church, you simply. . .go to church...”
Some do. Some attend mass and other devotions for decades before they finally enter into full communion.
It has nothing to do with brainwashing. That’s a bit much.
It has everything to do with God calling you to enter into eternity.
That’s what the Eucharist is.
I’m sorry my poor words can’t make it any plainer.
I am Catholic, not because I have been born into, brainwashed, or coerced or any other nonsensical thing one can mention.
I am Catholic because it is simply the faith.
Not the Jebbie BORG!
PLEASE! NO!
A A A A A A H!
As for dyslexia: It's interesting, isn't it? My fingers have it worse than my eyes. Yes, it's also a nuisance.
This weeks insight: (known to everyone but myself) If I am given the grace offer my suffering to be joined to that of our Lord, then it becomes a privilege. (And when I forget to ask for that grace, most times, too many times, it becomes an occasion of very interesting language.)
I'm just thrilled more and more to be in the company of the brainwashed fools who recovered Euclid and the rest from the Moors and worked on Aristotle and Plato and all those guys, who developed for the western world the concept of the hospital and then made it happen, who produced Dante and Giotto, who laboriously and painstakingly copied the scriptures and the fathers and who preserved literacy as Europe sank into chaos, and who did all this before the printing press.
I'm delighted to read John Damascene, Dominic and Catherine of Sienna and Eckhart (I said "read" him, not "spell" him) and Augustine and Ambrose and Anselm and so on. I look at Kolbe or the Martyrs of Uganda or Kateri Teckakwitha or Fr. Jogues .... Wow!
If that's brainwashing, not only my brains, but my feet and my head and hands also!
Take a look (emphasis and parenthetical comments mine):
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0512fea3.asp
Extra ecclesiam, nulla salus does not mean that only faithful Roman Catholics can be saved. The Church has never taught that. So where does that leave non-Catholics and non-Christians?
Jesus told his followers, "I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd" (John 10:16). After his Resurrection, Jesus gave the threefold command to Peter: "Feed my lambs. . . . Tend my sheep. . . . Feed my sheep" (John 21:15–17). The word translated as "tend" (poimaine) means "to direct" or "to superintend"—in other words, "to govern." So although there are sheep that are not of Christ’s fold, it is through the Church that they are able to receive his salvation.
People who have never had an opportunity to hear of Christ and his Church—and those Christians whose minds have been closed to the truth of the Church by their conditioning (me: interesting choice of words, eh? ;-)) —are not necessarily cut off from God’s mercy. Vatican II phrases the doctrine in these terms:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their consciences—those too may achieve eternal salvation (LG 16).
Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery (Gaudium et Spes 22).
I'm pinging a few Catholics to correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe that the misunderstanding may arise from the Catholic belief that those who are saved without being members of the Catholic Church are still "imperfectly joined" to the Church by the grace of God. I think non-Catholics often tend to focus on the phrase "Extra ecclesiam, nulla salus" without fully understanding the theology behind it.
Hopefully this helps a bit in clearing up the confusion regarding "no salvation outside the church". Catholics, if I've botched this explanation, please let me know! I'm trying to clear up misunderstandings, not add to them :)
I read that you have written:
“Yeah, when I make an act of contrition, I guess I’m thinking that Hell is dreadful and if I keep this stuff up and don’t have frequent and purposeful (and pious and the rest) recourse to the assured means of Grace, I could end up there. “
I had written asking if Hell would be separation from God, which I am thinking is occurring here and now as well as in the past and in the future. I am thinking that the “ending up” is the end of a path.
“when I momentarily turn away. But I don’t WORRY about it. Does that make sense? “
You are a very blessed person. Momentarily !! There is no fear that the fallen state might someday have interference perhaps unsuspectingly if not guarded against? Especially this would be when God is ignoring you?
But on the other side of the analogy, it’s hard for me to believe that God would remove all the graces that keep me choosing and yearning to see HIm more clearly, love Him more dearly, follow HIm more nearly day by day.
Is not the God of Christianity always loving His people? I am wondering how it is that the thought of God “removing graces” is a side of an analogy, if the sin is always coming from Satan, and the removal of graces is an impossibility. Have not these graces always been coming from God from all time? And yet, in my thinking, in the presence of graces people are turning away?
I try to hang around Him as much as He lets me.
I am not understanding this. God is limiting your access to Him? He is saying to you “not now” ? Or He is not saying to yo anything at all? In my thinking this would be God abandoning the person to Satan. I am thinking that would be putting a person into temptation, much harder for the person to remain loyal, very lonely for the person. Would that not be leading the person into temptation? A person might always wonder is God with me? The devotion of the person to God would never be completely because the devotion of God to the person would never be completely?
But I’m also suggesting that the Love of God to someone who hates Him, who has locked himself into perpetual hate of the good and of the Good, that might be Hell.
I do not understand. This is meaning that Hell is only when there is a permanent or perpetual separation ? Transient separations are not Hell?
I am not understanding the “might be” of this sentence. I am thinking that is Hell.
This is very different from how I am thinking about God.
May the Sabbath be Holy!
Thanking you,
Excellent point! I believe this may clarify your point.
“From what I’ve seen Catholics most enthusiastically choose to worship Mary.”
But W.T., Catholics aren’t aware of their Mary worship due to conditioning, right? Do you mean that at some time all Catholics enthusiasticlly choose to be conditioned to both worship Mary and also to be ignorant of this goddess worship themselves? And as far as enthusiasm fer Mary worship(or any sorta worship) goes, I’d think part of being enthusiastic would be to at least admit, if only to yourself, that something is being worshipped.
Freegards
No, we think we are ALL part of that same Church Jesus formed. All who believe and follow after Him.
Christ had more than one mother?
Some of us believe the woman in Revelation is Israel.
You write
Especially this would be when God is ignoring you?
I don't think God ever ignores - is unknowing about - any of His creation. All the time, "His eye is on the sparrow," and rumor has it that you are of more worth than many sparrows. So I'll need help with what you might mean by God ignoring me.
So far as I now the only time anyone in the Bible seriously talks about God not knowing (ignoring) something, it's when we ask Him to "forget" our sins. But I think it's ridiculous to ask God to forget the way I forget what I went upstairs to get or the way I forget who was Jefferson's vice-president. The ideas of remembering and forgetting are very rich in the Bible, I think.
I think there are two kinds of "fear". I have introduced people to shooting with small arms. I encourage them to treat them with the utmost respect. No playing around. But I don't want anyone to be so afraid of a pistol that he can't shoot straight. Or with Rappelling: I don't ever want to get casual and relaxed about hanging on a rope off a cliff. But I don't want anyone to be so afraid they can't move either. IS that distinction apposite? useful?
I rely on God to keep me straight. I rely on Him to teach me more and more how much I depend on Him. As I do so, I pray and do other things related to growing closer to Him and in hopes that somehow I will be able more and more -- and more and more continually and consistently -- to hand my will over to Him. He has never tricked me. He has always been patient with me. He has shown me blessings beyond my expectation and so far beyond anything good I ever did that it would be flat silly to talk about my deserving the least particle of them. So I trust Him. I rely on Him.
All I meant by "the other side of the analogy" was that I was abandoning the comparison to Physical Therapy and talking about the subject without the "figure".
I would not say the removal of graces is an impossibility. God can do as He will. But I don't see Him removing graces. St. Paul says he is faithful for he cannot deny Himself. (But I think we must say that it is His Choice to be who He is.
I do think, that somehow it is possible for people to refuse to turn to God, or to turn away from Him forever. I do not understand why or how this should be so. I know I find I forget God. not that He ignores me, but that I can't find my car keys and I ignore Him and act like it's the end of the world.
What I SAY is that God "let's that happen" because He is slowly teaching me to choose Him every minute - using both positive and negative reinforcement.
Our praying "Lead us not into temptation," is a request, not a command. It seems, though that off and on since 1971, which is when I started trying to step into what God was drawing me into, I have found times when it SEEMED that I was abandoned. What I tell myself there is "God is teaching me to stick with Him when it doesn't SEEM easy. He's training my will."
And that's kind of where the physical Therapy image comes back in. You know those therapists HURT you! They cause you PAIN! But it's easy to believe that they are doing it to help heal the wounded part of you. I tink GO is doing something like improving my strength and range of motion. And sometimes it hurts.
Again it's a matter of trust. It also seems to be something like training butterflies. The wind that would blow them wherever you want them to go would damage them. God wants me to flutter to Him, but still to be, well, human -- whatever that is. That's when the erotic images, the wooing and courtship language comes into play.
A long time ago I ministered to a retarded child who had gone temporarily psychotic because of nightmarish emergency procedures she had to endure after a patch sewn into her heart blew loose. Her way of relating to grown ups was to try to claw them with her fingers and to reach into her diapers and to smear them with feces.
Slowly I was able, by the grace of God, to teach her it was better for all of us if she allowed herself just to be cuddled and held and loved. But it was pretty ferocious there for a while.
God taught the children of Israel to trust Him, I think. and they learned no better than I. They DID step between the walls of water, but before and after passing through the Red Sea, though they had seen signs and wonders, they easily fell into mistrust. "Were there no graves in Egypt that you brought us here to die?"
So in my life and in the Scriptures I find God slowly, slowly, patiently teaching us how to turn more and more to Him, not just for good feelings or pleasant experiences, but for Him as He is in himself.
Strictly speaking, transient separations cannot be Hell because Hell is the place where there is no hope. IF Hell is a separation, as it well may be ( my comments were only speculative) it is, as it were, the final state, the end of the game. There are no do-overs. If this is right, then the separations I feel because I am as ashamed to look God in the face as I am to see a person I have wronged, are not Hell because I have hope that my sin is forgiven and that the full enjoyment of a relationship is a possibility. "I have sinned, I have sinned, and I know my wickedness only to well!" Sometimes that's the best thing to say to God. But we also ask for forgiveness because, as Psalm 51 says, we can being others to God. That is our falling and God's reaching out to us becomes the basis for our reaching out to others.
I'm not sure that's relevant.
we're probably going to have to settle on one topic and work through it slowly together.
Thank you for your questions. I hope some of what I said was helpful and even maybe by the grace of God, true!
The Sabbath! The Day of Rest and of Freedom! The day, we say, when our Lord rested in Death while He turned the Universe upside down - or maybe right side up!
I always give my dog and the cats who are moving in on me a little extra treat on The Lord's Day. There should be rejoicing. Why should they go hungry?
well done - God bless you
This is secondary meaning at best: whshe is described as physiologically giving birth, to a male son named the Christ and the Lamb. By the same logic you can think that the Mary of Luke 1-2 is “Israel”.
It is, indeed, true that Mary is the high point of the Old Testament Covenant with Israel.
There are four “understandings”—or meanings—of Scripture; literal, moral, allegorical and anagogical.
The Woman of Revelation can have more than one of those understandings—i.e., the Woman can be described as symbolizing Israel(which means “people of God”—in other words, the Church) and also it can have the meaning of the woman who bore the Son. The one level of understanding may be allegorical, the other anagogical (having to do with the end times).
It isn’t easy to present an exegesis of Revelation, especially when there are such differences of interpretation among Christians. I admit to that problem.
You also keep repeating the claim that the Church has deified Mary, with no substantiation. What’s common here? Your perceptions, perhaps?
“Therefore, they must be unaware of the behavior. But someone not inducted into the belief system looks at the overt action and thinks “idol worship”. There are any number of those observers who have posted that opinion on these threads for years.
I severely doubt that they all met and decided in concert to level this accusation, which means each came to the same conclusion independently. “(WT)
There is a very much more plausible explanation. Perhaps it has something to do with protestants spreading the same lies from their pulpits, week after week, for 400 years. Could that have something to do with similar accusations? Of course you, WT, claim that you figure all your faith out from the bible, by your own guidance from the Holy Spirit? Are you telling us you never went to a preacher to hear what they had to say about the Word of God? You haven’t been preconditioned, have you?
Your obvious hate for the Catholic Church is quite clear, since you claim to be given the chore (by God, I suppose) to correct all the errors of the Church. Now, WT, you seem to be an expert on understanding scripture. Since you never were indoctrinated or conditioned, as those dumb Catholics are, please tell me, how did you find the scriptures? Were you walking past a used book store, and stumble on a bible, buy it, decide to read it and therefrom base your faith? I’m sorry, but I doubt your veracity.
Since you are convinced of the sinfulness of the Catholic Church, and the “man made organization,” (your words, not mine) I assume you will agree to avoid Catholic documents, or at least claim they are suspect?
Hate to break this to you, but the Bible is a Catholic Church document. The canon of the Bible was decided by all the Catholic bishops in the year 399, and approved by the reigning pope. Had that not been done, there would be no Bible today. As has been mentioned several times in this thread, over the centuries, the Bible was preserved by the Catholic Church, by having monks make copies. Without the positive efforts of the Catholic Church to save scripture, you would have no way to make your statements about your misinterpretations. Don’t believe me, look up history.
You will also notice, until the year 399 there was no bible to base your faith upon. I guess that’s why there were no protestants then. Come to think of it, all the centuries when producing a Bible was monumental task, there were no protestants to take up the task, and only when the printing press was invented, did some folks think about making “different versions” of the Bible. Your for-bearers in the 16th century decided that several books of the Old Testament and several books of the New Testament didn’t agree with their idea of what faith in God should be and deleted those books. They also changed many phrases to agree with their new religion. I like to call it, “The Word of God, According To The Way We would Have Written It.” Your scripture study is all for naught, if you do not have a Catholic Bible.
From your post 706: “I’ve opined this before and I’ll do so again. The Catholic interpretation of passages like these are clearly of a process: make the policy to be disseminated to the flock first, then find some Biblical passage that can possibly be spun to support it.”
Seems to me, if the Church is the originator of the canon of the Bible (which She is), the bishops who studied the “books” would have realized that when they decided what writings were actually inspired, and which were not, and therefor would have little need to spin passages to suit some idolatrous idea. The realization that there was no Bible for 400 years also points to the fact that Christ said “listen to the Church,” and NOT “Read my book.”
“Nobody reads these passages and comes away with the meaning the church places on them without prior conditioning.”(WT) One can play that game both ways. Nobody reads these passages and comes away with the meaning the protestant places on them, without prior conditioning. Since your preconditioning is based upon being opposed to Catholicism (a negative feature), and my Catholic conditioning is based upon bringing me closer to God (a positive feature), who’s conditioning is better or worse?
Your religion is based upon opposition to Catholicism, as all protestantism is. If there was no Catholic Church, there could be no protestantism, because there would be nothing to oppose. The very name of the system of “protestant” points to the protest. You are true to that tradition. From your post 725”
” I don’t hate Catholics, but I’m deeply contemptuous of the policy declaring men in the Catholic church and regard them as running a con job on innocent folks.”
The Church was founded by Jesus Christ, as He said he would, and did, and His instructions were and are, “listen to the Church.” Christ is the Head of the Church He founded. When the Church speaks, it is Christ Who speaks. If you are contemptuous of the Church, you are contemptuous of Christ. There are bad men in the Church, some in positions of power, and it has always been thus, and presumably always will be so. The Church was made for sinners, that we may be guided to all truth. To reject the Church is to reject Christ, and you do so at you own risk. There is no salvation outside the Church. As several have already mentioned, you are the perfect proof of the article which started this thread. Your hate of Catholicism has blinded you to the truth, and your whole religion is based upon opposing Christ and the Church He founded. It's a shame you can't drop the blinders of hate and see the beauty of the Truth and thereby save your soul by true worship as God revealed to and demands of us. -Glenn
Attributing motives - and otherwise reading another poster's mind is "making it personal."
I’d love to. Please tell me where you think it is. (Or is this just another protestant lie?)
“The scriptures, in Jesus’ words, said that He is the truth and the life, and no one goes to the Father except by Him. Where is Mary shoehorned into to that? Show me. Point it out.”(WT)
How about: His mother saith to the waiters: Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye. John 2-5
“Why would the church do that? I have one theory.”(WT)
I love this form of “argument.” Don’t prove something, but assume it’s wrong and explain why your opponent made such a severe psychological error. You have repeated a lie that you have been corrected on several times, and though you can’t substantiate what you’ve said, you need to explain why somebody else might be lying.You need to read something posted in FR a while back
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