Posted on 12/21/2012 11:51:50 AM PST by marshmallow
VATICAN, December 20, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - Fr. Federico Lombardi, Director of the Vatican Press Office published an editorial Saturday responding to mainstream media denunciations of Pope Benedict’s message for World Day of Peace.
In the message, released December 14, the pope noted that “serious harm to justice and peace” comes from denying the true principles of respect for life and promotion of the “natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman.”
Lombardi noted that the media storm resulted specifically from the pope’s comments on traditional marriage. “This has happened,” he said, “because the pope, in a short passage, returns to the vision of marriage between a man and a woman as profoundly different from radically other forms of union, and states that this difference is recognizable by human reason.”
The Vatican Press Office Director said that the “the Church never tires of stressing” its pro-life and pro-family views, even “at a time when this point is being challenged and even attacked from several quarters in many different countries.”
(Excerpt) Read more at lifesitenews.com ...
You wrote:
“So I guess I’m kinda missing your point.”
That’s not surprising. It was obvious after all.
“I hope you are not blaspheming by claiming that RCC is the ground and pillar of the truth with supremacy over the Word.”
The Catholic Church is the Church of the New Testament. No one claims the Church has “supremacy over the Word” - except anti-Catholic bigots of course.
“Ground and pillar of the truth is not the same as the truth.”
It’s inseparable from it.
“It is a subtle idolatry that worships the church and not the Lord over the church.”
It’s an unsubtle idolatry when anti-Catholic bigots worship the Bible (or their own interpretation of it) and not the Lord.
Indeed. So does this PCA(Presbyterian Church in America)-er on this issue.
You are completely missing the argument.
There are propositions which can only be known by revelation, that is, only proven from Scripture.
There are also propositions which can be proven from Scripture, but can also be proven from right reason without recourse to Scripture. That's not setting reason over Scripture, it's only asserting that some truths can be known even without the light of revelation, and were known before it. And because of that, they impose an obligation of belief and obedience even on people who don't accept, or don't have the opportunity to hear, Christian revelation. The proposition that two men can't marry each other is a fine example of what I'm talking about.
And how do I know this? I know it because the Bible teaches it, in Romans 1:18-21 and 2:13.
I do not believe I am "missing" the argument, but disagreeing. I disagree that natural law and human reason are better suited where the scripture is already clear. To appeal to reason where the scripture is clear and explicit serves to make reason man's ultimate appeal and standard displacing God and His word. The problem is not that homosexuals cannot understand God's word, but that the do not fear Him and are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. Their deeds are evil, not just bad logic. It is the explicit law of God not the subjective law of nature that they have violated and for which they stand condemned. Christ came not because men were fallacious in their thinking, that their syllogisms had improper form and conditions, but because they transgressed His law. Because they were sinners their thinking became corrupt and creation was likewise corrupted such that the grass withers and flowers fall, but the word of the LORD stands forever.
I am not even disagreeing that natural law used correctly is adequate to condemn homosexuality. I do not want to win the battle and set-back the war. Humanism advances as the soldiers of natural-law and human reason find the Word of God no longer the standard issue sword.
Uh, how many tank divisions does the Pope have? Seriously, the Catholic Church has been on the losing end of every conflict in the western world for the past 300 years. An impotent paper tiger in robes.
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