[daniel1212]

I wish the author defined what a Catholic University is. Does the author mean Notre Dame, Georgetown, etc. If so, then the results are not suprising.

While TRCs (tradtional RCs) respond to the abundance of stats showing evangelicals as far more conservative and unified than their Catholic counterparts by relegating them to being CINOs, the problem with that is that Rome treats them as members in life and on death.

What can be argued is that modern evangelicalism was a reactionary movement against liberalism (and before that against institutionalization) - including the manner of liberal scholarship seen in the NB commentary on the Vatican's own site.

Thus evangelicalism could be considered the equivalent to TRCs, insofar as being a morally conservative movement.

The problem for the TRC then is that they promote a particular church, but which effectually fosters liberalism where it predominates, as what we believe is shown by what we do, and the latter defines our words. And by her treatment of even long term leftists such as Teddy K, she is teaching what she really means as required fidelity to be counted as a Catholic. And thus what a "rue Scotsman" can be.

In addition, TRCs characterize those who hold Scripture as the supreme authority to be helplessly in disarray, and in need of the supreme magisterium of Rome. Yet without even one centralized magisterium evangelicals overall testify to greater unity in conservative moral views and on core doctrinal issues than Catholics, and the latter testifies that Rome herself is subject to interpretation.

And unlike evangelicals, TRCs cannot formally separate from liberal Rcs (the majority) without themselves being schismatic.

Of course, the real issue is what is the supreme basis for truth claims, Scriptural substantiation or the assured veracity of the magisterium. And the answer to that is seen in how the church began.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness

[21] ...For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succsession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start out of the ruins of that heathen power.

[22] The language also which they use (both in the churches and in theirpublic acts) being Latin, which is not commonly used by any nationnow in the world, what is it but the ghost of the old Roman language?

[23] The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope.

Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.
Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.

[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.

[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.

Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness

Besides these sovereign powers, divine and human, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another power, namely, that of "the rulers of the darkness of this world," [Ephesians, 6. 12] "the kingdom of Satan," [Matthew, 12. 26] and "the principality of Beelzebub over demons," [Ibid., 9. 34] that is to say, over phantasms that appear in the air: for which cause Satan is also called "the prince of the power of the air";[Ephesians, 2. 2] and, because he ruleth in the darkness of this world, "the prince of this world":[John, 16. 11] and in consequence hereunto, they who are under his dominion, in opposition to the faithful, who are the "children of the light," are called the "children of darkness."

For seeing Beelzebub is prince of phantasms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness, and these demons, phantasms, or spirits of illusion, signify allegorically the same thing. This considered, the kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.