Posted on 05/15/2014 8:58:50 PM PDT by Salvation
Sacraments are instituted by Christ to give grace.
Baptism — Christ’s Baptism sets the scene
Eucharist — at the Last Supper
Confirmation — Pentacost
Reconciliation, Penance — Christ forgave sins and gave the apostles that power too.
Anointing of the Sick — How many people did Christ heal?
Marriage — Wedding at Cana where Christ worked his first miracle
Holy Orders — Sending out the apostles, then the 72, breathing and laying hands on them.
Actually it's the Catholics who "can believe anything they feel like believing, with everyone right about scripture. Just ask them. No authority to turn to, no nothing." Take a look at Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, the Kennedy clan, etc. These people are pro-murder (abortion), pro divorce, pro fornication sans marriage, all very in view of the public eye and yet the Catholic church does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to discipline them.
If public people did that in my church they'd be asked to change their ways or leave.
“I think the timing is a little off but not sure where I would put it instead of its current place.”
How about outside the church after Mass?
LOL, I know lots of people that would go along with that!
I see what you did there:) Good call.
Sure. And all those priest diddling little boys are just paragons of virtue.
Those priests. They’re all the same. Perverts all.
Oh, Salvation, I know the standard Catholic line.
But of course, Christ never said anything at all about sacraments giving grace. Nor is that teaching in the inspired Scriptures. Nor is it found during the first 100 years of the church.
I’ve been in Protestant churches where members have been *disfellowshipped* (so to speak) IOW, removed from the membership roles for tame things like garden variety adultery or dishonest business practices.
They were approached by the leadership and would not change, so they were gone.
They were not given a church sanctioned funeral, being told they were right with God now.
I think I see the problem though. The Catholic church can’t ex-communicate the laity who live sinful, hedonistic lives because that would mean they’d have to apply the same standard to the clergy and it would more than decimate their ranks, which are in a world of hurt already.
John 15:4-6
New Living Translation (NLT)
4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.
5 “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned.
******So the Catholic church tells people they’re going to hell if they don’t get right with Catholicism.*****
Another erroneous understanding of Catholicism.
Why is it that protestants, supposedly so well versed in Scripture, manage to miss the many dos and don’ts given in its pages?
A rhetorical question, since with protestants, one who does not remain in Christ was probably not with him in the first place. Yet, Jesus made this exhortation to His followers.
From your own CCC
"Outside the Church there is no salvation"
846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?335 Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.336
And a papal bull, spoken ex cathedra...
Pope Boniface VIII, Bull Unam sanctam (1302): "We are compelled in virtue of our faith to believe and maintain that there is only one holy Catholic Church, and that one is apostolic. This we firmly believe and profess without qualification. Outside this Church there is no salvation and no remission of sins, the Spouse in the Canticle proclaiming: 'One is my dove, my perfect one. One is she of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her' (Canticle of Canticles 6:8); which represents the one mystical body whose head is Christ, of Christ indeed, as God. And in this, 'one Lord, one faith, one baptism' (Ephesians 4:5). Certainly Noah had one ark at the time of the flood, prefiguring one Church which perfect to one cubit having one ruler and guide, namely Noah, outside of which we read all living things were destroyed… We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff."
— Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam (Promulgated November 18, 1302) "If, therefore, the Greeks or others say that they are not committed to Peter and to his successors, they necessarily say that they are not of the sheep of Christ, since the Lord says that there is only one fold and one shepherd (Jn.10:16). Whoever, therefore, resists this authority, resists the command of God Himself. " http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/b8-unam.html
Why is it that protestants, supposedly so well versed in Scripture, manage to miss the many dos and don’ts given in its pages?
We don't miss all the do's and don'ts in the Bible. Not by any means.
We just recognize that they do not save us. Salvation is by faith, as it always has been.
A rhetorical question, since with protestants, one who does not remain in Christ was probably not with him in the first place. Yet, Jesus made this exhortation to His followers.
It's not up to us to remain in Christ. God places us in Christ and has sealed our salvation with the promised Holy Spirit. We remain in Christ because of HIS faithfulness, not ours.
Security of the believer
John 5:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
John 10:25-30 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.”
Ephesians 1:13-14 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
Ephesians 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Colossians 1:13-14 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Colossians 3:3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
2 Corinthians 1:21-22 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
2 Corinthians 5:4-8 For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
No, it is your assertion, which was corrected before , that is unlearned. Dictionaries trace priests as coming from presbyteros, because that is where it is etymologically derived from, "Middle English preist, from Old English prēost, ultimately from Late Latin presbyter" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/priest).
And Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and evolving changes in form and meaning. over time . Etymologies are not definitions.
The etymological fallacy is a linguistic misconception, genetic fallacy, that holds, erroneously, that the present-day meaning of a word or phrase should necessarily be similar to its historical meaning. This the basis of your fallacious argument. You might as well argue that "apologia" in Scripture (1Pt. 3:15) must mean "to express regret for doing or saying something wrong" since that is a dictionary definition.
The fact is that the idea that presbuteros actually properly means priests is what is absurd, as it simply does not, but means elder, or senior. Any Greek lexicon will tell you that. Meanwhile the NT word for "priest" is a specific one, "hiereus" and out of 150 times in the NT it is NEVER used for NT pastors. A priest can be an elder, but elders preceded the Jewish priesthood, and is not the word for priest.
How then did presbuteros come to be rendered priest? Because of imposed functional equivalence, not because that is what the word meant in the NT, and was used by the Holy spirit to describe pastors. And He knows better than Rome.
"Priesthood as we know it in the Catholic church was unheard of during the first generation of Christianity, because at that time priesthood was still associated with animal sacrifices in both the Jewish and pagan religions." — Catholic Greg Dues in “Catholic Customs & Traditions
As R. J. Grigaitis (O.F.S.) states while also trying to justify the use of priest:
"The Greek word for this office is ‘ιερευς (hiereus), which can be literally translated into Latin as sacerdos. First century Christians [such as the inspired writers] felt that their special type of hiereus (sacerdos) was so removed from the original that they gave it a new name, presbuteros (presbyter). Unfortunately, sacerdos didn't evolve into an English word, but the word priest took on its definition." http://grigaitis.net/weekly/2007/2007-04-27.html
"So far as i know, it was only ca. 200 that the term “priest” started to be applied to the bishop and only still later was it applied to the presbyter... When the eucharist began to be thought of as a sacrifice, the person assigned to preside at the eucharist (bishop and later presbyter) would soon be called a priest, since priests were involved with sacrifice." — Raymond Brown (Sulpician Father and a prominent Biblical scholar), Q 95 Questions and Answers on the Bible, p. 125, with Imprimatur.
Some other Catholics also confess that “the Latin word presbyter has no lingual or morphological relationship with the Latin word sacerdos, but only an inherited semantical relationship.” - http://catholicforum.fisheaters.com/index.php?topic=744379.0;wap2z
As a result of this change, the CE states,
“presbyter soon lost its primitive meaning of "ancient" and was applied only to the minister of worship and of the sacrifice.“ - http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12406a.htm)
Yet as Vines correctly states, "The NT knows nothing of a sacerdotal class in contrast to the laity; all believers are commanded to offer the sacrifices mentioned in Rom. 12:1; Phil. 2:17; 4:18; Heb. 13:15, 16; 1 Pet. 2:5; (d) of Christ, Heb. 5:6; 7:11, 15, 17, 21; 8:4 (negatively); (e) of Melchizedek, as the forshadower of Christ, Heb. 7:1, 3." -Vine's NT Dictionary.
The only sense in which pastors are priests is by being part of the general priesthood of all believers, as all are called to sacrifice. (1Pt. 2:5,9; Rm. 12:1; 15:16; Phil. 2:17; 4:18; Heb. 13:15,16; cf. 9:9)
Nowhere are NT pastors even shown distributing common bread as part of their pastoral functions, let alone turning it into human flesh and distributing it to be eaten to give spiritual and eternal life. What Rome considers paramount and central and common, the Holy Spirit fails to mention describe NT church pastors doing.
Unlike hiereus, presbuteros or episkopeō can be used interchangeably without distinction, as one denotes the position (senior) and the other the function (overseer). Titus was to “set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders [presbuteros] in every city, as I had appointed thee: If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop [episkopos] must be blameless...” (Titus 1:5-7) Paul also "sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church," (Acts 20:17) who are said to be episkopos in v. 28. Elders are also who were ordained in Acts 14:23, and bishops along with deacons are the only two classes of clergy whom Paul addresses in writing to the church in Phil. 1:1.
Yeah, God wasted his time on the last night of his earthly life, instituting it in front of his closest friends, because it really wasn't all that important.
That is another logical fallacy, a false dilemma, supposing that the institution of the Lord Supper must mean that it either was the source and summit of the church life, or that the Lord wasted His time in instituting it.
However, going with the evidence, in which the Lord's supper is only manifestly described once in the life of the church and all the epistles to them, and which instance in 1Cor./ 11:13-34 has to do with the church as the body of Christ shows, declares, His death by how they partake of the communal meal, while the preaching and hearing of the word is what is said to "build" them up, (Acts 20:32) and "nourish" the believer, (1Tim. 4:6) then we see that the Lord's supper was important, and how, but that it was not the source and summit of the Christian life, thru which the work of our redemption is carried out.
Instead, the Lord "manifested his word through preaching," (Titus 1:3) with spiritual being gained by believing the gospel a faith which is counted for righteousness, and thus follows Christ.
A picture is worth a thousand deceptions.
If Christ did not bestow grace on the apostles when he breathed on them, then how did Peter and other Apostles work miracles?
Obvious answer — through the grace given by Jesus Christ.
It’s amazing that in Protestant/Non-Denominational churches we banish/jail those who betray trust or commit crimes - not just shuffle them off to another parish!
“If Christ did not bestow grace on the apostles when he breathed on them, then how did Peter and other Apostles work miracles?”
You claim grace is was imparted by Christ breathing, which is not true, but let’s go with your logic!
If being breathed on imparts grace, why aren’t you breathed on during the “sacraments” you described earlier?
Why isn’t breathing itself a sacrament?
And to finish, prove that Christ breathing imparted “grace”. So far, you simply assumed, which is an opinion. Can you demonstrate and support your opinion with any facts?
“And what if the Priest tells you to hold hands while saying The Lord’s Prayer? Is it wrong then?”
Yes.
“I was at Mass last Sunday and that is exactly what happened.”
See Pascendi Dominici Gregis, On The Doctrine of the Modernists, Encyclical of Pope Pius X, September 8, 1907.
“Honestly, I find the hostility to “touching” one another’s hands that has been demonstrated on this thread”
You misunderstand. There are sound theological grounds for rejecting the practice of hand-holding, which is why the Vatican has spoken out against it.
“What would you do if Jesus commanded you to wash anothers’ feet as an act of submission? Would you refuse?”
Of course not. Frankly, the fact that you would ask that question must be taken as an indication that you are assuming the worst of those who disagree.
Well, considering those that lie to others while at Mass so that they don't have to shake hands, etc. are hypocrites of the worst order to me. Lying by "fake sneezing into a handkerchief" as some have said, lying by saying they have a cold as others have said.....all while supposedly being "reverent" at Mass is a sin!!! Absolute dishonor to God. Despicable.
That Sacrament is the Sacrament of Holy Orders. LOL! I can’t address it at all.
It’s in Scripture. Why isn’t that enough for you?
“If public people did that in my church they’d be asked to change their ways or leave.”
You’re right, that should happen.
John Paul II didn’t do much if anything, which is one reason I am skeptical of his “greatness,” Benedict XVI did some, enough to get our hopes up, but now we have Francis...
It is a symptom of Satan’s attacks on the Church that so many enemies of the Church have so much power.
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