Posted on 09/16/2007 7:11:48 AM PDT by Ottofire
While you undoubtedly felt social pressure, I seriously doubt that you were pestered theologically and had people at your door with fistfulls of tracts and loaded questions on their breath.
I am sorry you had such difficulties as a religious minority among Catholics. Still, there is a qualitative difference between the way Catholics treat protestants and how protestants treat catholics. Protestantism needs to keep the 16th century alive in order to justify its existence. It’s very purpose and identity is anti-Catholic.
If a Catholic never knew of the Reformation, it would make no difference to us. The Reformation has nothing to do with who we are or what we do or teach—that comes from Christ and the apostles.
Well, if it is in a blog then it must be true for most. ;)
Can it really be so hard to imagine
I can imagine a lot of things. What I said was that I had not seen it occur.
Protestant schools will fire Catholic Converts from their faculties without discussion?
Can the Catholic convert teach what he/she no longer believes in, or will that convert be duty-bound to teach Catholic doctrine? If the latter, then ethically speaking, he/she should have left the school on their own.
I know of no Catholic college or university which has the same narrow and bigoted policy.
So a Catholic college would have no problem with a convert to Protestantism teaching their own beliefs? Or would that college require that the convert teach something they no longer believe?
Can you say with a straight face that Catholic and Protestant converts are treated the same by the churches the leave?
Yes, from what I have observed. To say otherwise, you should be prepared to present documentation of church policy. Do all people behave the same? No. That doesn't mean an individual's behavior is church policy.
Reformation theology sees justification as an instant act of God, rather than a long term process. Furthermore, Arminian theology, which emphasizes free will, believes that Christians must persuade people, sometimes with emotional appeals, to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior. Like Catholicism, Arminian theology believes that while original sin corrupted mankind, it did not do so to the extent that people cannot be moved by the Gospel.
In the South and the Border states, three of the four major Protestant strains, Methodist/Holiness, Campbellite, and Pentecostal/charismatic, are Arminian, as are a majority of Baptists, the largest single group in the South. Lutherans are few in number, as are Episcopalians except in a few coastal areas. Presbyterians are quite often liberal and thus not into evangelism. As a result, aggressive evangelization is the result, irrespective of the sensibilities of Jews, Catholics, liberal Protestants, and nonbelievers.
Here at Notre Dame, we have all kinds of Protestants teaching in theology. It is not a problem. They teach church history, systematics and liturgy. As a Catholic I could teach buddhism if I knew it well enough. It is far more dangerous to have a bad Catholic misrepresent Catholic theology than to have a Protestant teach Catholic theology respectfully and responsibly.
Apparently, Protestants dont get this important distinction. Or they use their feigned ignorance of this distinction to justify persecution of Catholic converts. It is a hateful thing.
I see. So you have no problem teaching something that you don't believe in? I take it you would teach it as 'this is what they believe, but not what is true', right? Would Catholics have a problem with Protestants doing the same at a Catholic college?
Apparently, Protestants dont get this important distinction.
One can teach anything, but the context in which it is taught is important. Could a Catholic teach the Protestant belief that Mary was a great servant of God, but not eternally a virgin without stating the caveat "that's what they believe, but it isn't true"?
Most Catholic Universities are no longer even Christian Universities. Witness secular Georgetown. An occassional Jesuit professor pops up, usually he appears more interested in Democratic politics than the church, and that’s it. By not keeping the faith and not requiring that the professors keep the faith, the Catholic schools have lost their bearings and their focus on Christ.
Nothing reactionary in the Council of Trent! It's a farce to pretend that the Catholic church did not react politically and theologically against Protestant.
Certainly the Council of Trent put limits on what is acceptable theologically in the Church, but no, it did not change substantively Catholic theology. Protestants need Trent to be the boogey man so that have a justification of their existence. This explains why Protestants are so stuck in the 16th Century.
As a Catholic I could teach buddhism if I knew it well enough.
I see. So you have no problem teaching something that you don’t believe in? I take it you would teach it as ‘this is what they believe, but not what is true’, right? Would Catholics have a problem with Protestants doing the same at a Catholic college?
Apparently, Protestants dont get this important distinction.
One can teach anything, but the context in which it is taught is important. Could a Catholic teach the Protestant belief that Mary was a great servant of God, but not eternally a virgin without stating the caveat “that’s what they believe, but it isn’t true”?
What a completely ridiculous objection. The professor’s opinion is irrelevant. One simple says this is what Calvin taught, this is what the Catholic Church teaches, this is how the Church’s teachings developed in this period.
How a professor personally feels is irrelevant.
What a self serving joke.
ah, but I was a Catholic at an Episcopal Church of the evangelical variety, and yes, they fawned all over me and loved to joke and chide about my being a new recovering Catholic. It wasn’t “hey, how are you?” It was “hey, how is your recovery going.” They relished in having snagged a Catholic. It was a nice little trophy to add to their mantle.
But, it wasnt helpful to me in the long run. I was spiritually dealing with authority and disobedience issues. I wanted my life free from the moral claims of the Church. My real conversion spiritually came when I went to confession and reconciled to the Catholic Church. My years as a Protestant were shallow and spiritually empty while I kept up the appearances of a good Christian life.
Maybe there but that hardly allows you to speak for all of us.
But, it wasnt helpful to me in the long run. I was spiritually dealing with authority and disobedience issues. I wanted my life free from the moral claims of the Church. My real conversion spiritually came when I went to confession and reconciled to the Catholic Church. My years as a Protestant were shallow and spiritually empty while I kept up the appearances of a good Christian life.
If you went to an Episcopal church, then yes I can believe that you were spiritually empty.
If the Council of Trent didn’t “substantively change” theology or practice then they wouldn’t have made decrees. They could have just skipped the council altogether and announced solemnly “carry on!”
In my experience, Protestants rarely discuss Catholic practices, any more than Catholics discuss Protestants and Protestant practices. By necessity it comes up, but it’s hardly a focus in either church. Protestants worship Christ — that is the “justification of their existence” as you so crudely and evocatively put it, where you view the Protestant as justified by attacking your church. Protestants use the term “justification” in a different sense.
What worries me in the Catholic church is a reactionary stance to Protestant Christianity and the drift to stranger and stranger assertions in the face of it. It’s a sort of grand mistake, where the Catholic church has painted itself into a corner. Suddenly, after 1800 years the world was assured that there is a Christian leader, the Pope, who is infallible. If mankind had known that in the 1800 years before, so many heresies and misunderstandings could have been avoided, and so many changes avoided. My ancestors would have really trembled when they took a Pope hostage. What if he solemnly declared them goats or marmots? And oh, when the same family had a Pope from itself, when they won their power struggle, after alliances, kidnappings, wars, bribes, and the like, wouldn’t they have wondered at their own magnificent, sudden, and assured infallibility?
Lord Acton, a Catholic, responded to this assertion of Papal infallibility by saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely. He was right. Your denomination is wrong. The Pope is a man. He is only infallible insofar as God makes him so, and even Christ himself refused to demand action on the part of the Father, saying that you do not put the Lord your God to the test. To me it seems that the Catholic church chose to step off the cliff instead of heeding the example of Christ; I hope it was an arrogant and trusting act and not a cynical or calculating one.
On a personal level, I am a Protestant. I believe it is a man’s relationship with Christ that saves him not what church or demonination he is a part of.
There are entire orders focusing on evangelism. I think you know less about your own church than you think you do.
That is the kind of silly oversimplification that is born of ignorance. You must think I know nothing of Trent. Well, you are wrong. As I said, Trent put limits on what a Catholic can hold. So while transubstantiation was the dominant theology of the Church before Luther, it became the only acceptible formulation of Real Presence at Trent. Before Trent there were some 30 forms of the Mass. Trent confined the use to just one rite with some minor variations. There were no standards for ordination before Trent, afterward there were seminaries with universal standards. And on and on. And, yes, Trent condemned Protestant innovations such as sola scriptura and sola fide, both of which has never existed before 1519. So yes, it is necessary for the church to condemn heresies from time to time and that was what was new in Trent.
It still stands that the Catholic faith was not substantively changed at Trent or by Protestantism.
There’s being in a Christian area and being Christian. You can find someone to evangelize in your cafeteria there at Notre Dame.
the Catholic faith was not substantively changed at Trent or by Protestantism.
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According to your post ordination, seminaries, transubstantiation, the mass, sola scriptura and sola fide were effected by Trent! I know what you are saying but it’s not sensible for you to claim no change when the very mass was selected from 30 alternates. It’s a pretense on your part that tradition exists as a basis for decision in the church, so that nothing ever truly changes, when they chose 1 from 30 existing traditions in the mass alone.
No doubt some things changed. But that is different from a substantive theological change. Catholicism's claim is not that nothing has changed. Nor that nothing has developed. Catholicism's claim is not that no pope has sinned or that no mistakes have been made. It's claim is not that the pope can change anything he wants on a whim.
Catholicism's claim is that the faith of the early church has never undergone "substantive change." No protestant has ever demonstrated a moment of such substantive change.
Now I am off to mass to pray for all of our sorry souls.
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