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To: unlearner
We can go on endlessly debating the meaning of these passages and will get nowhere primarily because you apparently regard the entity that identifies itself as the Catholic church, or more particularly the clergy of this entity, as a higher authority than the Bible.

Rather it is you who regard Protestant ideology as a higher authority than the Bible. The passages I have given show, without any appeal to Catholic authority, a clear Catholic understanding of the sacraments. By their plain meaning the biblical teaching given in these passages is Catholic.

30 posted on 12/16/2013 1:10:16 PM PST by Petrosius
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To: Petrosius

Answering every heretical teaching and practice of the Catholic religion would take the hours of several full time jobs. That is just based on what I am currently aware of, not even attempting to explore any in depth. The scriptures you listed have nothing to do with the so-called sacraments (as practiced in the Catholic religion) you correlate with them.

EUCHARIST
The Lord’s supper is a time for believers to remember Christ’s death, renew their commitment to the New Covenant, and to discern the body of Christ. See 1 Corinthians 10-11. Christ had a natural, but incorruptible, human body which experienced death on the cross. He also has transformed His true Church into His spiritual body by means of the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit in all who believe the gospel. Because you incorrectly attribute to the “Catholic church” the essence of this spiritual body, you do not correctly discern it nor truly ever practice the biblical command of partaking of the Lord’s supper. To do so would require you to first believe the true gospel and receive the Spirit of God in order to become a member of Christ’s spiritual body. The bread and cup do not become Christ’s natural body but His spiritual body.

John 6:63 [from the passage you cited about eating and drinking Christ’s flesh and blood]
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.

CONFIRMATION
The Holy Spirit fell in Acts to several distinct groups of people confirming that the gospel of the apostles was the true message of God. It is the Holy Spirit who confirms the believers, not the church nor even the apostles themselves. Yet the Apostles did have power to bestow the Holy Spirit which is something wicked Simon the sorcerer coveted and the Catholic religion falsely holds to possess. You ignored my question about apostolic succession. Was Pope Paul III a legitimate example of this doctrine? Do you expect me to accept that he represented Christ on earth and not William Tyndale who is primarily responsible for me being able to read scripture for myself?

CONFESSION
When people confessed their sins to the apostles and others who preached the gospel and were baptized; they did so publicly, they did not elaborate and describe their sins, they named them using the names that the Bible ascribes to those sins, and believers were encouraged to make confessions to “one another” and pray “one another” rather than to a clergyman in private. Again, was Pope Paul III, an unrepentant adulterer and murderer, heir to this apostolic authority?

ANOINTING OF THE SICK
Representatives of the church, typically elders (or bishops as some call them), were instructed to anoint the sick with oil. This is still practiced today.

HOLY ORDERS
There are leaders in the church appointed by God. Whether these are accountable to Rome is the subject of debate. Whether the leaders in Rome qualify to represent Christ is also subject to debate. Again, do you think William Tyndale should have recanted his pursuit of translating scripture into the common language against the wishes of Rome? Should he have submitted to Pope Paul III and avoided his deserved punishments of imprisonment and execution? Is that what you want me to believe?


33 posted on 12/16/2013 2:07:30 PM PST by unlearner (You will never come to know that which you do not know until you first know that you do not know it.)
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