Posted on 09/28/2007 6:20:54 AM PDT by Ottofire
It is better than taking 2 or 3 verses from the Bible to make your whole theology.
I think the author (and any biblical Christians) would agree, but the quote is taken from RCC sources from the footnotes...
Nope, I already knew the answer.
Yep, by my reckoning, although I hear tell I may still be on the books in my old parish. How does one ever get removed from an RC register?
Don't forget the pitiful catechesis that practically all of them received in the immediate post VC2 era.
Karl Keating himself admits that the figure approaches hundreds of thousands who have left Rome for evangelical or fundamental Protestantism
Yep, that certainly is a "broad road," isn't it.
I take it that was an attempt at humor. Don’t quite your day job. You’re no Jackie Mason. :-)
One reason why attendance figures are much more reliable than membership numbers. :>)
How do you get out of it?
Any possibility of becoming a guitarist in Sinnead O’Connor’s band?
No chance. I like my women with a full head of hair and knowing when to shut up.
How 'bout with a full head of steam, and knowing when to let down their hair!?
:>)
XS>Why not skip to the last paragraph, its all in the past, there is no future. <;-)
I take it that was an attempt at humor. Don’t quite your day job. You’re no Jackie Mason.
:-)
26 posted on 09/28/2007 9:14:05 AM MDT by topcat54
But if I were you I would not quit my day job quite yet Yes; it was an attempt at humor.
EXCELLENT! EXCELLENT! EXCELLENT!
imho terrible paragraphing but excellent content.
Hope to finish and comment later. Lots to do today.
I did not. I actually identified with the holy catholic church after leaving Romanism since I now truly understood the words of that ancient creed.
= = =
Oh, dear! Here I am cheering the wisdom of something written by TC54??!!!
Jesus is clearly coming soon.
Excellent article...The truth will set you free...
Uh, that's the Roman version of bible history...
tsk, tsk....
Well, once again, someone writes about his past in the Catholic Church as if to validate that he truly knows Catholicism, yet he acknowledges he left the Church in the state of woeful disobedience. Contrast that to the converts to Catholicism, who study history and the bible so thoroughly and zestfully that they can no longer remain Protestant.
The article seems fairly devoid of the usual slander… No mention of “worshipping saints.” But it’s main failing is that it tries to rifle through too many issues at once, and thereby addresses none of them uniquely well.
For instance, let’s look at the discussion of sola scriptura. The article compares its presence in the bible to that of ‘trinity.’ The absence of ‘trinity’ in the bible isn’t problematic because the definition of ‘trinity’ doesn’t demand that ‘trinity’ be explicitly stated in the bible.
Webster asserts, “The clearest token of the prestige enjoyed by [Scripture] is the fact that almost the entire theological effort of the Fathers, whether their aims were polemical or constructive, was expended upon what amounted to the exposition of the Bible.” Has Webster not read the Catholic Catechism? Every assertion is footnoted, if not to the bible, than to one of these Fathers, who in turn did, as Webster acknowledges, base his arguments on the bible. To assert that the Fathers based all their arguments on the scripture, is to assert that the Catholic Church does likewise.
The first thing many Protestants do is complain that Catholics misunderstand the meaning of ‘sola scriptura,’ defining it much more harshly than Protestants maintain. But Webster blows this assertion when he insists that Cyril of Jerusalem is arguing for Sola Scriptura, when, in fact, the Catholic Church whole-hearted affirms what Cyril teaches; If Sola Scriptura, indeed, merely meant that doctrine had to be based on scripture, then the Catholic Church would have readily affirmed it. The problem was that Luther was insisting that such doctrines as “purgatory,” and “propitiation” and the order of the mass were inherently untrue because the bible didn’t annunciate them; At the same time, the bible’s annunciation of purgatory and propitiation were so clearly spelled to Luther at the Council of Worms, that Luther had to justify excluding Revelations, Hebrews, 1-2-3 Peter, 2 Maccabees, the portion of Daniel concerning the Canticle in the Furnace, and Wisdom in order to maintain his assertions.
On the subject of the deuterocanonicals, Webster continues canards which were excusable on the grounds of ignorance at the time of Luther, but simply falsehoods today. Webster states, for instance, asserting that the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel were unknown to the Hebrews. Yet not only were these portions part of the GREEK canon at the time of Christ, they were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Indeed, the reason they weren’t known to Hebrews at the time of Luther was because they had been removed at the POST-CHRISTIAN council of Jamnia specifically because the Jews believed they helped lead to the sort of ideas that led to Christianity!
The misuse of Jerome’s writings are, sadly, quite typical of Webster’s arguments. One has to conclude that his “research” into the Fathers was either simply reading someone else’s proof-texting, or that, before embarking on his studies, he was so convinced by such proof-texting, he did not even truly consider what the Fathers actually wrote. How can one have independently studied Jerome, and not have read of how he calls those who say he denigrates the scriptural status of the deuterocanonicals, “fools and slanderers”?
And the wildly unfounded suppositions he makes would be breathtaking! Many presume falsely that ecumenical councils indicate when doctrines were first settled, whereas the opposite is frequently true: that the doctrines existed but were never challenged until the events which the councils were called to address. But Webster actually deliberately leads people to this conclusion: “The first general council of the Western church to dogmatically decree the Apocrypha to be part of the canon and therefore to be accorded the status of Scripture was the Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century. This was done contrary to the universal practice of the Jews and the church up to that time.” To misinterpret comments of certain Fathers to say that they held the deuterocanonicals to be non-scriptural is perhaps reasonable in the light of so much existing misinformation; to assert that holding them to be scriptural was contrary to the universal practice of the Church is preposterous.
In all frankness you are not a reliable source for Catholic teaching as your anti-Catholic bias is apparent in almost every sentence.
The truth is that most Catholics dont study doctrine in depth, particularly doctrine on justification. Justification is a Protestant issue. It is protestants who are stuck in the 16th Century and have to be in order to justify their existence.
It is ridiculous to believe that Christ intends the Church to be a jumble of constantly dividing and contradicting bodies of individuals each recreating Christianity by their independent interpretation of scripture. Protestantism is a play to the ego. I, I, I, get to decide which scripture means. I had a job as a painter during the summers in college. One ofthe other painters was a pastor of a small storefront church. He taught for years that divorce was wrong——until he had marital problems. Then, poof, he was spending lunch hours trying to convince his co-workers that divorce was permitted by scripture. He changed his teaching one day in a sermon and his little storefront church divided into two even smaller churches.
If this crap is the Church, then Christ is not God. If Protestantism is the true Church, then there is no God at all.
This is like saying, "If he eats oranges, how can he know about apples?" How does disobedience to something preclude you from knowing that something inside and out?
I think you have to really credit any RC moved to leave. They are indoctrinated from very early on that if they leave the RCC they will be lost.
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