Could you explain who is being worshiped here?baruch HaShem
Posted on 05/03/2008 4:38:34 PM PDT by NYer
Scripture, our Evangelical friends tell us, is the inerrant Word of God. Quite right, the Catholic replies; but how do you know this to be true?
It's not an easy question for Protestants, because, having jettisoned Tradition and the Church, they have no objective authority for the claims they make for Scripture. There is no list of canonical books anywhere in the Bible, nor does any book (with the exception of St. John's Apocalypse) claim to be inspired. So, how does a "Bible Christian" know the Bible is the Word of God?
If he wants to avoid a train of thought that will lead him into the Catholic Church, he has just one way of responding: With circular arguments pointing to himself (or Luther or the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries or some other party not mentioned in the Bible) as an infallible authority telling him that it is so. Such arguments would have perplexed a first or second century Christian, most of whom never saw a Bible.
Christ founded a teaching Church. So far as we know, he himself never wrote a word (except on sand). Nor did he commission the Apostles to write anything. In due course, some Apostles (and non-Apostles) composed the twenty-seven books which comprise the New Testament. Most of these documents are ad hoc; they are addressed to specific problems that arose in the early Church, and none claim to present the whole of Christian revelation. It's doubtful that St. Paul even suspected that his short letter to Philemon begging pardon for a renegade slave would some day be read as Holy Scripture.
Who, then, decided that it was Scripture? The Catholic Church. And it took several centuries to do so. It was not until the Council of Carthage (397) and a subsequent decree by Pope Innocent I that Christendom had a fixed New Testament canon. Prior to that date, scores of spurious gospels and "apostolic" writings were floating around the Mediterranean basin: the Gospel of Thomas, the "Shepherd" of Hermas, St. Paul's Letter to the Laodiceans, and so forth. Moreover, some texts later judged to be inspired, such as the Letter to the Hebrews, were controverted. It was the Magisterium, guided by the Holy Spirit, which separated the wheat from the chaff.
But, according to Protestants, the Catholic Church was corrupt and idolatrous by the fourth century and so had lost whatever authority it originally had. On what basis, then, do they accept the canon of the New Testament? Luther and Calvin were both fuzzy on the subject. Luther dropped seven books from the Old Testament, the so-called Apocrypha in the Protestant Bible; his pretext for doing so was that orthodox Jews had done it at the synod of Jamnia around 100 A. D.; but that synod was explicitly anti-Christian, and so its decisions about Scripture make an odd benchmark for Christians.
Luther's real motive was to get rid of Second Maccabees, which teaches the doctrine of Purgatory. He also wanted to drop the Letter of James, which he called "an epistle of straw," because it flatly contradicts the idea of salvation by "faith alone" apart from good works. He was restrained by more cautious Reformers. Instead, he mistranslated numerous New Testament passages, most notoriously Romans 3:28, to buttress his polemical position.
The Protestant teaching that the Bible is the sole spiritual authority--sola scriptura --is nowhere to be found in the Bible. St. Paul wrote to Timothy that Scripture is "useful" (which is an understatemtn), but neither he nor anyone else in the early Church taught sola scriptura. And, in fact, nobody believed it until the Reformation. Newman called the idea that God would let fifteen hundred years pass before revealing that the bible was the sole teaching authority for Christians an "intolerable paradox."
Newman also wrote: "It is antecedently unreasonable to Bsuppose that a book so complex, so unsystematic, in parts so obscure, the outcome of so many minds, times, and places, should be given us from above without the safeguard of some authority; as if it could possibly, from the nature of the case, interpret itself...." And, indeed, once they had set aside the teaching authority of the Church, the Reformers began to argue about key Scriptural passages. Luther and Zwingli, for example, disagreed vehemently about what Christ meant by the words, "This is my Body."
St. Augustine, usually Luther's guide and mentor, ought to have the last word about sola scriptura: "But for the authority of the Church, I would not believe the Gospel."
Ah, the wonders of YOPIOS. A word can mean ANYTHING you want it to mean, in fact the SAME WORD can even change meanings within a single phrase if you need it to.
Nor do Catholics.
Okay, fair enough. Then why have them? Also, why do I see people doing that if its prohibited???
You responded:
Statuary everywhere. Flowers laid before statuary. Statues, statues, statues........
You STILL have not answered the question.
How did I NOT answer it? Are not Roman Catholic churches filled with statues?
Neither do Catholics.
Could you explain who is being worshiped here?baruch HaShem
That image in the back there, the one to whom the priest turns his back for most of the Mass, THAT is who is being worshiped.
We Catholics always show our idolatrous worship by turning our backs on things. Stop with the spin stuff, okay?
Christ, in the Real Presence of the Eucharist and in the Liturgy of the Word.
Are you God? Has he given you the ability to read the hearts of all people?
Regarding Luke 22:19 - we DO celebrate the Lord’s Supper. We do NOT however have the Doctrine of transubstantiation where the bread and the wine LITERALLY become the body and blood of Christ. That is more blasphemy.
Titanites, it is quite obvious that you HAVE NOT read the last several hundred posts, otherwise you would understand that Catholics DO NOT understand what the Church is actually teaching.
For instance, it is entirely possible that the phrase "not allowed" REALLY means "go ahead and do it anyway."
Nobody. It is a photograph.
Okay idiot here....what exactly does ‘baruch HaShem’ mean?
Thank God.
Yes, I understand that you have a problem with the Catholic Church, statues and flowers. What I do not understand is how this relates to the church pictured in 1380.
So we can assume you are one of those who don't believe what Jesus said.
“Blessed be the (holy) Name.”
Okay, my first effort to translate that failed.
Then I found this:
Baruch Hashem Adonai / Blessed be the name of the Lord
“You really feel that being emotional is the best way to relate to the divine?”
No, but it is an appropriate way to react to the grand gift that is given you that is salvation.
All those wild 1st catholic guys at pentecost...sheesh. Heretics!
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