Posted on 10/08/2007 9:49:35 AM PDT by NYer
I have no problem agreeing to disagree. However, when someone is going to talk about “corruption” within the Church, they need to be prepared to differentiate between whether it was the Church that was corrupt or individuals.
I will NEVER deny that there were a lot of corrupt practices that individuals carried in the name of the Church in Luther’s day (and other times), I will even acknowledge that high-ranking Church officials probably turned a blind eye to them. But this is still distinct from Church teachings.
From my POV, incorrect teaching fostered much of the corruption. Absolute power always leads to tyranny. A direct connection between ecclesiastic & temporal power was as absolute as one could get. Connection of that absolute power is Church dogma.
Mind you, when Luther got into bed with the Princes he mirrored the error instead of correcting it, but by taking absolute power away from men, the result was a correction. That correction eventually followed back to the Catholic Church & strengthened Her, but the error is still officially on the books.
“In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship. Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship”
The CONDEMNATION of the above statement was once official Church teaching.
The Catholic Church, though a divine institution, is still a human organization, and though the teaching of the magisterium is worthy of respect and serious consideration it can still sometimes be wrong.
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