Posted on 01/03/2010 10:30:30 PM PST by Gamecock
It seems peculiar (maybe not) that you're encouraging Protestants (even in jest) to call Roman Catholics a pejorative like "filthy" which is clearly against the rules of the FR religion forum.
As Jesus asked, "Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?" (Matthew 22:18)
"Papist" suffices.
ABSOLUTELY.
And it's more than a LITTLE mystifying that so few of them seem to have any insight into that fact. And, perhaps worse, that they seem indignant that we don't enjoy their bullying and aren't kowtowing in abject submission to THEIR heretical labels etc. The whole edifice seems to be rife with a god-complex. No wonder the multiply so plentifully within the edifice.
I think your? below is quite apt, as well:
Dogma, in any tradition, is just institutional opinion that demands adherence. All creeds, traditions, pronouncements of Councils, church fathers, or dogma are man's interpretation and understanding of the truths of scripture. None of them save or have the authority of the inspired scriptures and ultimately, it will only be whether the individual has trusted Christ alone for salvation that has eternal significance.
I don't know that none of them have the authority of Scripture. I don't know what percentage give proper weight to Scripture. Some do. However, you could be right about the finger frother's cliques hereon.
Ah, yes. Like in the case of, say, Roman Catholic Adolph Hitler.
Oh, wait. My bad. He wasn't excommunicated. Apparently the RCC didn't consider his "behaviour in question" to be "a grave wrong."
In that case "the church" didn't need "protecting." Only the Jews.
False. He was excommunicated many times over latae sententiae.
And he was not a practicing Catholic anyway after his late teens. "Excommunicating" a non-communicant accomplishes nothing.
Nothing Gnostic about the doctrine of the Assumption. In fact, quite the contrary. Gnostics taught, basically, that spirit is good and matter is evil. So why on earth would a doctrine of the Assumption be pushed by Gnostics?
Gnostics tended also to dismiss the idea of the humanity of Jesus, and stumbled over the idea of transubstantiation in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. They also resisted the idea of a bodily resurrection at the Last Judgment, as promised by Jesus.
The Assumption was not declared a dogma until very late, but its history goes back a long way.
In the eighth century, the Life of one of the Anglo-Saxon missionaries to Germany (in a book of that name published by Sheed & Ward) describes making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, where among other things the saint in question not only visited the places of Jesus’ Birth, Last Supper, Crucifixion, burial, and Resurrection, but also the cave where Mary was said to have been laid before she was assumed into Heaven. Mary’s Assumption was evidently already an old tradition in the Holy Land during that period, one of many oral traditions.
The Assumption was NEVER condemned officially. That simply is not true. It may be true that a condemned heretic mentioned it, but that proves nothing. And clearly no Protestant can say that bodily assumption is impossible to God, since several of the ancient Hebrew prophets were taken up and assumed into Heaven, according to the Bible.
The assumption was an early oral tradition. If heretics picked up the idea and mentioned it, that would hardly indicate that it was untrue. Heretics played with other Christian ideas all the time, and not all that they said was necessarily false—although they were not to be trusted because of their errors and distortions, and so were best avoided. But a man could be a heretic in one thing, or many, yet not necessarily in all.
Amen. "A lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path."
"Filthy" seems like small potatoes next to painting us as Nazi sympathizers, lunatics, or child molesters, all of which seem to be in vogue here, and completely permissable under "the rules of the FR religion forum".
As far as I've been able to determine, you can call groups of people anything you want as long, as you don't specify individual FReepers.
So I'm going to contrinue to live with the thinly-veiled insults, attacks and implausibly denied hatred of people who do that kind of thing, and continue to pray for them.
God bless you.
I haven't seen anyone here called a "lunatic" nor a "child molester." Please provide some substantiation for that outlandish claim.
And it was Pius XII who was a "Nazi-sympathizer" and he's long dead. As for your current bishop of Rome, Ratzinger was a Hitler Youth. The jury's still out.
Your complaint seems like more defensive, Roman Catholic hyperbole.
Okay, serious question: What if someone does not believe the statement above?
Note, the question is NOT about the person's trust in Christ alone, but about his thinking about his relationship with Christ, salvation,etc.
Irrational defensiveness is an unbecoming trait, whether by an individual or an ecclesiocracy, which may be overcome, God willing, with a little introspection and searching of the Scriptures.
Most likely God wants you to be happy. And so do I.
” but about his thinking about his relationship with Christ, salvation,etc.”
If he is trusting Christ alone for salvation, that is what eternally matters. In a poor paraphrase of rabbi Hillel, “all else is commentary”. Right now I am wrestling with N.T. Wright’s “new perspective” on justification but it does not affect my standing in Christ.
I did a double take with your “Okay, serious question”. I had to make sure it was really you. How have you been and are you surviving the cold?
I appreciate your concern for my eyes. I have found that the thickness of my glass lenses is directly related to my age; but then, when I have trouble reading Kay is gracious enough to read to me.
Tra la.
My question is one that interests me. The grace of faith seems to, what, infect us slowly. I mean we have moments of complete trust, and then moments of doubt and worry and all the rest. And our thinking so easily goes off the rails.
So I guess it's good to pray for more or deeper or somehow mo' better faith. That itself is an act of faith.
I assume that your GED quote is meant as a joke. Maybe you should come up with other picture to show lack of intelligence, since I know quite a few entrepreneurs that only had a GED or not even that, and they are now worth millions. I personally knew one, that had a ton of PHd’s working for him.
First, thank you for making an honest attempt at trying to make linguistic distinctions and be non-offensive about it. Discussion is not possible without it.
I would like to comment on your terms, with the hope that we can begin to come to some sort of consensus on what to use.
"Catholic" refers to the Church Universal -- i.e., all those who place their faith in Christ whom the Lord has saved.
Catholics (i.e. "Roman Catholics" - I'll get to that term in a moment) would agree that speaking of the Catholic Church refers to the Church Universal, but there is a disagreement as to what that "Church Universal" is.
To summarize the matter (though we could continue to discuss it in depth if it seems useful) the Catholics would consider members of the Orthodox, Coptic, Protestant and other separated churches to be part of the "catholic church" - that is, they are baptized believers (most of whom even hold to the theological judgments of at least the first several Ecumenical Councils), but not part of the Catholic Church, because they do not hold to the fullness of the Catholic Faith.
To refer to the Catholic Church as the "Roman Catholic Church" is usually understood in context, but is not always an accurate description for the Catholic Church, which contains numerous Eastern Rites as well as the Latin (Roman) Rite. And the term "Roman Catholic" itself was a term of derision used in post-reformation England (so that Anglicans, considering themselves "English Catholics" could distinguish themselves from the "Roman" or "Romish" Catholics) - obviously the term no longer has that stigma in most cases.
To speak of the Roman Pontiff is accurate, because he is the Bishop of Rome, even though he is the head of the entire Catholic Church, not only the Latin Rite.
I would propose that the most accurate differentiations would be to use "catholic" and "Catholic" as opposed to "Catholic" and "Roman Catholic" as you described.
Hitler was NEVER excommunicated.
You are repeating filthy KGB lies.
As for your current bishop of Rome, [His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI] was a Hitler Youth.
It was compulsory.
You say that like he was a practicing Catholic.
Seem like more RC usurpation of the language.
How about "christian" for Roman Catholics" and "Christian" for Protestants?
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