You: I do not engage in discussions of genealogies or other such issues and thus will not be answering your questions:
But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. – Titus 3:9
Now you're just being silly, wedging a Scripture passage into an area that it doesn't fit. I'm not asking for "genealogies"; I'm asking you to connect your denominational teachings that are at variance with Catholicism to the Apostolic Era. It's a fair question, because, if you can't do it, it shows fairly convincingly that your doctrinal novelties do not have the warrant of Christ or the Apostolic Church.
As for hiding behind the word "genealogies" found in Titus 3:9, I can only say that your concern for the purity of your adherence to Scriptural mandates is not only somewhat out of context, but highly selective, too. Just by being here on FR's religion forum, you are willing enough to engage in "contentions," are you not? Whenever one person disagrees with another, and goes around and around with that person to try to make his or her point, that is engaging in "contention." We all do that here! So, a willingness to engage in contentions while scrupulously avoiding genealogies is a rather haphazard application of the passage, it seems to me. I would say that asking for an answer to an honest, fair question is not contentiousness, but I agree that things often quickly escalate here into just the sort of contentiousness that St. Paul is clearly condemning.
Indeed, as some of my other posts on recent threads will indicate, I have some uncomfortable feelings about my participation in this vein as well. But not so much because of Titus 3:9, rather, I find verses 10 and 11 to be more problematic: "As for a man who is factious, after admonishing him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is perverted and sinful; he is self-condemned."
The ill-will that pervades these threads in the form of hijacking, name-calling and general ugliness, and the responses to such that can also get out of hand, certainly are an indictment to just about everyone here at some point or another, based on Titus 3:10-11. We should all take pause, and consider whether honest presentations and honest, respectful questions about those questions can be better realized, in consideration of this very passage.
Having said all of that, I do not feel that it is a matter of contentiousness to ask for evidence that ties the author's Gospel stance, or that of his theological allies, to a continuum of belief back to the Apostolic Era. Especially when this thread implies that the Catholic Church, though clearly and demonstrably older, is guilty of preaching a "different Gospel." If you cannot demonstrate that your own take on the Gospel can, despite a 1500 year gap from Christ to its inception, be clearly shown to be what He had in mind, then the entire premise of this thread is destroyed. The reference atandard of the author is his own Gospel. If it is disconnected from the continuous teaching of the Christian Church for 3/4 of the Era up to now, then it is arrogant to claim that the Catholic Church's teaching, which can credibly claim continuity, is not the reference standard. It would be nice if you or Manfred (he was the originator of the thread, after all) could just answer my question or repudiate the strongly implied premise of the thread. Don't worry, I shall not ask you again, Titus 3 and all that!
I'm sure you will find others here willing to engage your question, but I am not one of them.
But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all [men], apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And [that] they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will. – 2 Timothy 2:23-26
This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. – I John 1:5-7