Posted on 09/30/2013 11:30:08 AM PDT by NYer
How do you read the Bible? Today is the feast day of Saint Jerome, who once quipped, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”
It’s a running joke that if you want to find a Bible verse, you ought to ask a Protestant and not a Catholic. Protestants read the Bible. Catholics not so much.
This raises the question:
I think the answer lies in the fact that we Catholics go to Mass. The Holy Mass has at least two Bible readings every time. If you pray the Breviary or Liturgy of Hours, multiply that several times.
Joe Catholic says to himself, “Why should I study the Bible? I go to Mass. I hear it there. Check and check.”
There is something beautiful in this. For Catholics, Bible reading is liturgical. Hence, Bible reading remains chiefly a community experience.
It’s good to listen to the readings from the Bible at Holy Mass. However, we also need a personal (even private) encounter with God in the pages of Sacred Scripture. All of the saints breathed Sacred Scripture. Scripture served as the grammar for their souls. They couldn’t communicate without it.
Here are some basic spiritual needs that you have every single day of your life:
So when you wake up tomorrow, do the following:
What? You’re too busy. Sorry, you just got served a yellow card:
Doing these three readings will take you only 3-5 minutes. That’s the time of a commercial break. It will change your life for good. I promise. It takes 21 days to make a habit, so give it 21 days and see if you aren’t hooked. Put the Bible on your night stand and read it in the mornings. Start fresh.
“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” – Saint Jerome, Doctor of the Church
...and I'm not asking you to prove a POSITIVE, I'm asking you to prove a point declared to be a dogma of the church; using ANY DATA you have access to, from ANY source!
WHIM alert!!!
How about catholicWANNBE lore???
So a person is left to wonder...
HMMMmmm...
Just who/what is this new BABYLON mentioned here:
Rev 18
1 And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
2 And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
3 For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
5 For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
Hush!
How DARE you question CATHOLIC on something that he’s uttered!
Maybe next time...
NEVER choose 1-2-3-4-5-6, for the odds of THAT being chosen are, are... the EXACT same as 6-13-21-32-37-42!!!
Dontcha know? Facts they don't like ARE diatribes.
They use the same word in regard to the posting of Scripture, and you can't get any more fact than that.
And in the meantime, you still have the money that you DIDN'T waste on lottery tickets.
Considering the odds of winning, maybe, might, someday, if I'm lucky, a person will come out further ahead by banking that money instead of pouring it down a black hole.
I have it on good authority that the best odds are with my birthdate, and the last two numbers of Obama's driver's license...
And if I can get those numbers, I'm a shoe-in...
Well when you try to change the Bible to fit what you want it to say, it’s time to be EX-COMMUNICATED.
Notice a change he admitted to regarding Romans 3:28:
“You tell me what a great fuss the Papists are making because the word alone in not in the text of Paul say right out to him: Dr. Martin Luther will have it so, I will have it so, and I order it to be so, and my will is reason enough. I know very well that the word alone is not in the Latin or the Greek text” (Stoddard J. Rebuilding a Lost Faith. 1922, pp. 101-102; see also Luther M. Amic. Discussion, 1, 127).
Genesis 3:15. Do a comparison study on that verse, between various translations, then get back to us on who should be "ex-communicated".
Luther was excommunicated for several reasons but mostly for refusing to adhere to his vows of fidelity and obedience.
His rejection of the misuse of indulgences was forthright and reading his theses one can see that in the beginning he tried to call attention to those misuses and yet remained faithful to much of Catholic doctrine and theology.
Using indulgences to raise funds for a lavish lifestyle for the clergy was wrong. Using indulgences as an excuse to sin with impunity was wrong.
Luther had the chance to remain in the Church and work within her to return the faithful to right practices but he did not do that.
Finally, he denied and scorned the authority of the pope and the Church councils but then assumed that authority for himself as he established his own idea of church with creeds and a catechism and a clergy.
He was a tortured soul who never found peace even in his own religion.
The Church was right to formally excommunicate Luther.
I base what I believe about Luther on what I have read, what he wrote and what has been written about him.
He was not all wrong when he began his protestation of the pope’s misuse of indulgences, but he went too far and lost the chance he had for reform within and broke away completely when he refused to submit to the authority of the Church and work within her to build her up.
He became an authority unto himself and that was his greatest error and what has caused the most harm to Christian unity.
What “authority” does the Bible give to physical church institutions?
definition of church is “2 or more people who come together to exalt HIM”
It always amused me to see some welfare mom spending her last twenty bucks on lottery tickets thinking she had twenty times more chances to win had she only spent $1. Little did she realize, or understand apparently, that her statistical chances for winning with twenty tickets versus one was so infinitesimally minimal and that with 25 MILLION to 1 odds, even a THOUSAND tickets wouldn’t help much. I think the lottery is little more than an extra tax on poor people.
There won't be a "next time". You couldn't have stopped at just Luther, there were thousands of men and women before AND after him that carried the Reformation. You would have had to kill them ALL and you still couldn't have stopped it. It was a work of GOD and you cannot fight against HIM! Thanks for showing that the murderous Inquisitional spirit is alive and well within the elitists of the Roman Catholic Church!
You have a master's degree in theology, right? It's surprising then how easy it seems to dispute your partial, out of context and inaccurate posts and it appears you do very little research before you post. For a better, more accurate understanding of that point, see http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2006/02/luther-added-word-alone-to-romans-328.html. In it we learn:
This is the sad part about those who use Luther's Open Letter On Translating against him. He actually goes on to give a detailed explanation of why he uses the word "alone" in Romans 3:28. In the same document, in a calmer tone, Luther gives his reasoning for those with ears to hear:
I know very well that in Romans 3 the word solum is not in the Greek or Latin text the papists did not have to teach me that. It is fact that the letters s-o-l-a are not there. And these blockheads stare at them like cows at a new gate, while at the same time they do not recognize that it conveys the sense of the text -- if the translation is to be clear and vigorous [klar und gewaltiglich], it belongs there. I wanted to speak German, not Latin or Greek, since it was German I had set about to speak in the translation.
Luther continues to give multiple examples of the implied sense of meaning in translating words into German. He then offers an interpretive context of Romans:
So much for translating and the nature of language. However, I was not depending upon or following the nature of the languages alone when I inserted the word solum in Romans 3. The text itself, and Saint Paul's meaning, urgently require and demand it. For in that passage he is dealing with the main point of Christian doctrine, namely, that we are justified by faith in Christ without any works of the Law. Paul excludes all works so completely as to say that the works of the Law, though it is God's law and word, do not aid us in justification. Using Abraham as an example, he argues that Abraham was so justified without works that even the highest work, which had been commanded by God, over and above all others, namely circumcision, did not aid him in justification. Rather, Abraham was justified without circumcision and without any works, but by faith, as he says in Chapter 4: "If Abraham were justified by works, he may boast, but not before God." So, when all works are so completely rejected which must mean faith alone justifies whoever would speak plainly and clearly about this rejection of works will have to say "Faith alone justifies and not works." The matter itself and the nature of language requires it.
Previous translations of the word alone in Romans 3:28 Luther offers another line of reasoning in his Open Letter on Translating that many of the current Cyber-Catholics ignore, and most Protestants are not aware of:
Furthermore, I am not the only one, nor the first, to say that faith alone makes one righteous. There was Ambrose, Augustine and many others who said it before me.
Now here comes the fun part in this discussion.
The Roman Catholic writer Joseph A. Fitzmyer points out that Luther was not the only one to translate Romans 3:28 with the word alone.
At 3:28 Luther introduced the adv. only into his translation of Romans (1522), alleyn durch den Glauben (WAusg 7.38); cf. Aus der Bibel 1546, alleine durch den Glauben (WAusg, DB 7.39); also 7.3-27 (Pref. to the Epistle). See further his Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen, of 8 Sept. 1530 (WAusg 30.2 [1909], 627-49; On Translating: An Open Letter [LuthW 35.175-202]). Although alleyn/alleine finds no corresponding adverb in the Greek text, two of the points that Luther made in his defense of the added adverb were that it was demanded by the context and that sola was used in the theological tradition before him.
Robert Bellarmine listed eight earlier authors who used sola (Disputatio de controversiis: De justificatione 1.25 [Naples: G. Giuliano, 1856], 4.501-3):
Origen, Commentarius in Ep. ad Romanos, cap. 3 (PG 14.952).
Hilary, Commentarius in Matthaeum 8:6 (PL 9.961).
Basil, Hom. de humilitate 20.3 (PG 31.529C).
Ambrosiaster, In Ep. ad Romanos 3.24 (CSEL 81.1.119): sola fide justificati sunt dono Dei, through faith alone they have been justified by a gift of God; 4.5 (CSEL 81.1.130).
John Chrysostom, Hom. in Ep. ad Titum 3.3 (PG 62.679 [not in Greek text]).
Cyril of Alexandria, In Joannis Evangelium 10.15.7 (PG 74.368 [but alludes to Jas 2:19]).
Bernard, In Canticum serm. 22.8 (PL 183.881): solam justificatur per fidem, is justified by faith alone.
Theophylact, Expositio in ep. ad Galatas 3.12-13 (PG 124.988).
To these eight Lyonnet added two others (Quaestiones, 114-18):
Theodoret, Affectionum curatio 7 (PG 93.100; ed. J. Raeder [Teubner], 189.20-24).
Thomas Aquinas, Expositio in Ep. I ad Timotheum cap. 1, lect. 3 (Parma ed., 13.588): Non est ergo in eis [moralibus et caeremonialibus legis] spes iustificationis, sed in sola fide, Rom. 3:28: Arbitramur justificari hominem per fidem, sine operibus legis (Therefore the hope of justification is not found in them [the moral and ceremonial requirements of the law], but in faith alone, Rom 3:28: We consider a human being to be justified by faith, without the works of the law). Cf. In ep. ad Romanos 4.1 (Parma ed., 13.42a): reputabitur fides eius, scilicet sola sine operibus exterioribus, ad iustitiam; In ep. ad Galatas 2.4 (Parma ed., 13.397b): solum ex fide Christi [Opera 20.437, b41]).
See further:
Theodore of Mopsuestia, In ep. ad Galatas (ed. H. B. Swete), 1.31.15.
Marius Victorinus (ep. Pauli ad Galatas (ed. A. Locher), ad 2.15-16: Ipsa enim fides sola iustificationem dat-et sanctificationem (For faith itself alone gives justification and sanctification); In ep. Pauli Ephesios (ed. A. Locher), ad 2.15: Sed sola fides in Christum nobis salus est (But only faith in Christ is salvation for us).
Augustine, De fide et operibus, 22.40 (CSEL 41.84-85): licet recte dici possit ad solam fidem pertinere dei mandata, si non mortua, sed viva illa intellegatur fides, quae per dilectionem operatur (Although it can be said that Gods commandments pertain to faith alone, if it is not dead [faith], but rather understood as that live faith, which works through love). Migne Latin Text: Venire quippe debet etiam illud in mentem, quod scriptum est, In hoc cognoscimus eum, si mandata ejus servemus. Qui dicit, Quia cognovi eum, et mandata ejus non servat, mendax est, et in hoc veritas non est (I Joan. II, 3, 4). Et ne quisquam existimet mandata ejus ad solam fidem pertinere: quanquam dicere hoc nullus est ausus, praesertim quia mandata dixit, quae ne multitudine cogitationem spargerent [Note: [Col. 0223] Sic Mss. Editi vero, cogitationes parerent.], In illis duobus tota Lex pendet et Prophetae (Matth. XXII, 40): licet recte dici possit ad solam fidem pertinere Dei mandata, si non mortua, sed viva illa intelligatur fides, quae per dilectionem operatur; tamen postea Joannes ipse aperuit quid diceret, cum ait: Hoc est mandatum ejus, ut credamus nomini Filii ejus Jesu Christi, et diligamns invicem (I Joan. III, 23) See De fide et operibus, Cap. XXII, §40, PL 40:223.
Source: Joseph A. Fitzmyer Romans, A New Translation with introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible Series (New York: Doubleday, 1993) 360-361.
Even some Catholic versions of the New Testament also translated Romans 3:28 as did Luther. The Nuremberg Bible (1483), allein durch den glauben and the Italian Bibles of Geneva (1476) and of Venice (1538) say per sola fede.
Hopefully, the next time you play your "Luther card", you will remember that whatever you claim CAN be checked for accuracy and WILL BE corrected, if needed.
“Catholics believe the same as the Church Fathers that lived 2,000 years. The REAL PRESENCE! Amen.”
Great. Please post some evidence from 2000 years ago from a Church Father. That would be 3 AD.
Show what you have.
“when Christ appointed Peter to head His church....why not accept my guess as accurate as any other ??? “
Obviously, because we don’t accept the premise of your point.
“we keep our own house clean”
It’s true. I notice how when there is a pedaphile disguised as a priest, the next guy up shuffles them right out of the parish! Unfortunately, he shuffles them to a new parish...
I suggest a Swifter!
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