I am a born-bred Catholic, BUT I take my wisdom from the Bible and I believe in God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit...anything else, not so much...The Catholic Church is run by humans, so therefore humans make mistakes, God doesn’t....
Thankfully, these lies about the Catholic church continue to be easily countered. “Mary worship,” along with so many other non-Scriptural things Catholics do, are perversions the Bible does not support.
Have a good day.
Recall that Paul had to correct Peter. Not a good claim to Peter being the rock.
Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick— no food, no sack, no money in their belts. They were, however, to wear sandals but not a second tunic. He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave. Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them.” So they went off and preached repentance. The Twelve drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.
Jesus plainly told Peter that he was giving him the keys to the kingdom.
Peter made use of the keys on the day of Pentecost, one of the greatest events in history.
However any one who works in the real world will soon learn that if some one has to argue about if they are in charge or not IS NOT IN CHARGE
There is no scripture that says that...
No church was given authority to teach without error...The only place we can find teaching without error is the scriptures...
Mat_22:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.
The scriptures are the authority, not any church...
The truth of God and the truth of the essentials of salvation do not come from any church but again from the scriptures...
Joh_20:31 But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
1Jn_5:13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
1Co_4:6 And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another.
A number of 'Churches' make false claims about God...The truth can only be found in the preserved scriptures of God...
The Bible, of course!
.....And Jesus of course!
Thank-you and God Bless.
This is a key passage for understanding the Catholic doctrine of Church authority: Christ’s deliberate intent to establish a new Church (“I will build My Church”) His choice of Peter as the foundation, or head, of this Church Christ confers on Peter his own divine authority (“the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven”) for ruling the Church (“bind” and “loose”). This power to “bind and loose”, repeated also in Mt 18:18 to the Apostles as a whole, is understood as applying first to Peter and his successors (the Pope), and then to the rest of the Apostles and their successors (the other Bishops) in union with Peter.
This assessment overlooks Paul being selected by Christ also. No authority was "passed down" to him from Peter. His authority came straight from Christ.
Paul was equal among James,Peter, and the rest of the brethren.
We will recall that Paul also had to correct Peter over Peter withdrawing from fellowship with the Gentiles and being influenced by the Judaizers.
The Greek doesn't support what the rcc claims regarding binding and loosing.
An appeal to the ECF's regarding Peter being the rock reveals a myriad of opinions that is oft ignored by catholics when this is noted.
Christ is the ultimate authority from which any believer derives any authority.
If Christ has called you to preach, you're authority is just as good as Paul's, James, Peter's, Barnabas, Timothy, etc.
He has given the Holy Spirit to all of us to guide us in our relationship with Christ and our understanding of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The “Church” is the body of all Born Again Christians and has nothing to do with any denomination. Those entering the body of Christ do so only when called by The Father and given the gift of faith. The Father doesn’t ask anyone for permission to add people to His Church.
There is a large amount of evidence in Scripture to support the Catholic Church’s claim to authority,
ironic
They only have the authority that Christians give to them. I don’t give the Catholic church authority over me as a Christian.
In light of the recent posts stressing unity over divisiveness, I have to ask, what about this thread? It is all about the Catholic claim that only its church is a legitimate one and is alone “Christ’s church.” And it has given rise to comments such as one by the article’s poster:
To: DungeonMaster
“The “Church” is the body of all Born Again Christians and has nothing to do with any denomination”.
The Church is the Catholic Church. The Orthodox can also call themselves members of the Church of Christ because of apostolic succession and sharing the same sacraments as Catholics. Not so for protestant sects. That ended with the heretics breaking away 500 years ago. They are members of faith communities. I’m right, you’re wrong, end of discussion.
50 posted on 7/27/2015, 3:45:10 PM by NKP_Vet
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Yeshua’s Assembly has no authority.
It has a responsibility to spread the gospel, and that is it.
The apostles had some organizing authority, but they, and their power have been gone for 1,900 years.
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There are several bodies that claim to be “The Church” but they are merely human corporations with no relevance in the realm of God.
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You must know that the supplied answers are elitist, and provocative. Since this is allowed, it infers responses also are that challenge it, all of it, and which is a purose pof a forum, and which type of exchange forum rules provide for and regulate.
The source & nature of Church authority is one of the major issues that beginning Catholics have to examine and come to terms with.
One her autocratically defined terms.
It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine.... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness...The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour. — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation”
The Catholic Church makes an amazing claim: it teaches, governs, and sanctifies with the authority of Christ himself.
There is a large amount of evidence in Scripture to support the Catholic Church’s claim to authority, as well as from early Church history. Rather, there is a large amount of lack of evidence, and contrary in Scripture to support the Catholic Church’s claim to authority , as well as from early Church history.
Christ himself is the source of the Church’s authority.
So say the Mormons who likewise operate under sola ecclesia and hold to additional books of fantasy, and autocratically defines what is truth.
Rejection of this claim is usually based on the common misconception of “misplaced worship” — the accusation that Catholics worship the something else (the Church, the Pope, Mary, the Saints, etc.) instead of God.
The New Testament shows that Christ deliberately created his Church to be the vehicle of his continuing mission in the world. He promised to remain present in his Church for all time, and he lovingly guides it through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Indeed. Despite the attempts and corruptions of men, and of Rome in particular , the body of Christ has endured, and it is Scripture, not the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility, that the Spirit abundantly manifests is the transcendent supreme standard for Truth and obedience.
To ensure the success of this mission, Christ gave his Church the ability to teach, govern and sanctify with Christ’s own authority. The Apostles appointed successors to ensure that the Gospel would continue to be handed on faithfully as “the lasting source of all life for the Church” (Vatican II, “Lumen Gentium” 20; also Catechism #860).
In reality, there were no apostolic successors after Judas, which was (in order to maintain foundational number of apostles (cf. Rv. 21:14) and which was by the non-political Scriptural means of casting lots. (cf. Prov. 16:33) The only continuously perpetuated pastoral office (unless deacons are included) by way of formal ordination was that of presbuteros (senior/elder) or episkopos (superintendent/overseer), both of which refer to those in the same office. (Titus 1:5-7)
The purpose of this authority is to give the Church the ability to teach without error about the essentials of salvation: “On this rock, I will build My Church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18). The scope of this authority concerns the official teachings of the Church on matters of faith, morals, and worship (liturgy & sacraments). We believe that, because of Christ’s continued presence and guarantee, his Church cannot lead people astray with its official teachings (which are distinct from the individual failings and opinions of its members, priests, bishops, and Popes).
More erroneous extrapolation. God's promises of His presence and preservation, as well as providing teaching authority, NEVER required or inferred ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility as per Rome, leaving it unseen and unnecessary in Scripture. The NT magisterium flows from the OT magisterium, to which general obedience was enjoined, and disobedience to which could mean death. (Dt. 17:8-13; cf. Mt. 23:2) But which did not require or promise ensured formulaic infallibility as per Rome,
(Remember that Catholics view the Bible as one of two definitive witnesses to divine Revelation. Christ taught many other things to the Apostles that are not recorded in Scripture; we call this Catholic Tradition,
Likewise the Mormons, for whom history etc. is also what they say it is. And in reality, this effectively makes the magisterium the supreme authority, under which fables can be deemed binding doctrine, even an extraScriptural event which is lacking even in early evidence , and was opposed by the Rome's own scholars, but decreed as fact under the premise that Rome cannot err on such and can remember what no one else seems to have for centuries.
Before Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was defined, all theological faculties in the world were consulted for their opinion. Our teachers' answer was emphatically negative . What here became evident was the one-sidedness, not only of the historical, but of the historicist method in theology. “Tradition” was identified with what could be proved on the basis of texts. Altaner, the patrologist from Wurzburg…had proven in a scientifically persuasive manner that the doctrine of Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven was unknown before the 5C; this doctrine, therefore, he argued, could not belong to the “apostolic tradition. And this was his conclusion, which my teachers at Munich shared .
>But,
subsequent “remembering” (cf. Jn 16:4, for instance) can come to recognize what it has not caught sight of previously [because the needed evidence was absent] and was already handed down in the original Word” [via invisible, amorphous oral tradition] - J. Ratzinger, Milestones (Ignatius, n.d.), 58-59 .
“the mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as definitely true is a guarantee that it is true.” — Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), p. 275.
The famous Protestant historian Philip Schaff also writes,
"It [the Assumption of Mary] rests, however, on a purely apocryphal foundation. The entire silence of the apostles and the primitive church teachers respecting the departure of Mary stirred idle curiosity to all sorts of inventions, until a translation like Enoch's and Elijah's was attributed to her. In the time of Origen some were inferring from Luke ii. 35, that she had suffered martyrdom. Epiphanius will not decide whether she died and was buried, or not. Two apocryphal Greek writings de transitu Mariae, of the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century, and afterward pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory of Tours († 595), for the first time contain the legend that the soul of the mother of God was transported to the heavenly paradise by Christ and His angels in presence of all the apostles, and on the following morning her body also was translated thither on a cloud and there united with the soul. Subsequently the legend was still further embellished, and, besides the apostles, the angels and patriarchs also, even Adam and Eve, were made witnesses of the wonderful spectacle" (section 83).
Here are some of the more important Scriptural references that address Church authority... (Mt 28:18-20)..(Jn 20:21)
Which commission does not require what Rome uniquely presumes of herself. Evangelicals have been preaching the gospel Peter preached, (Acts 10:36-43,47) and teaching the only comprehensive wholly inspired body of Truth that the Lord provided.
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build My Church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.” (Mt 16:18-19)
If Peter was called the Rock upon whom the church was continually built and was thus looked as that, rather than “this rock” in Mt. 16:18 referring to the truth of Peters confession and by extension Christ, then we most certainly would see this affirmed in the rest of the NT. However, in contrast to Peter, that the LORD Jesus is the Rock (“petra”) or "stone" (“lithos,” and which denotes a large rock in Mk. 16:4) upon which the church is built is one of the most abundantly confirmed doctrines in the Bible (petra: Rm. 9:33; 1Cor. 10:4; 1Pet. 2:8; cf. Lk. 6:48; 1Cor. 3:11; lithos: Mat. 21:42; Mk.12:10-11; Lk. 20:17-18; Act. 4:11; Rm. 9:33; Eph. 2:20; cf. Dt. 32:4, Is. 28:16) including by Peter himself. (1Pt. 2:4-8) Rome's current catechism attempts to have Peter himself as the rock as well, but also affirms: “On the rock of this faith confessed by St Peter, Christ build his Church,” (pt. 1, sec. 2, cp. 2, para. 424) which understanding some of the ancients concur with.
This power to “bind and loose”, repeated also in Mt 18:18 to the Apostles as a whole, is understood as applying first to Peter and his successors (the Pope), and then to the rest of the Apostles and their successors (the other Bishops) in union with Peter. The Acts of the Apostles (a New Testament book) provides abundant evidence of how Church authority was practiced during the Apostolic age (during the lives of the Apostles themselves, after the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ). Indeed the latter does ) provides abundant evidence of how Church authority was practiced during the Apostolic age, and which never examples or teaches that souls were to come to the apostles or leadership to obtain forgiveness, which is the primary use Rome claims for its presumed binding and loosing power.
Nor is coming regularly to clergy to obtain forgiveness seen or taught in the rest of the NT, while the only application of that aspect is in Ja. 5, in which, while teaching that God has regard to the intercession of others, primarily elders (not Cath "priests ") confession is only exhorted to each other in general, and for which spiritual binding and loosing is provided, as in Mt. 18:19-20. Only judicial binding/loosing requires the magisterium, yet that is to be in union with the church in general. (Mt. 18:15-18; 1Cor. 5)
Moreover, rather than as in Ja. 5, the Cath sacrament of anointing of the sick is usually a precursor of death.
In Acts, we see repeated examples of the Apostles teaching, governing, and sanctifying (baptizing and confirming, as well as “breaking the bread”).
Never is NT church leadership shown officiating over giving bread to be eaten as one of their unique ordained duties, let alone in order that souls may obtain a sacrifice for sins and obtain spiritual life, nor is the NT ever shown doing so in the entire recorded life of the church, nor that the Lord's Supper is "the source and summit of the Christian life," around which all revolves. The only epistle to a church that even describes the Lord's Supper, 1Cor. 10+11 does not teach that, nor does Scripture in its totality .
One of the most striking passages in Acts tells how the Apostles describe their decision about whether pagan converts should submit to the Jewish laws of circumcision. They say, “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” that those laws of the Old Covenant should not apply (Acts 15:28).
And in which James provided the Scripturally substantiated judgment on what should be done, confirmatory of the exhortation and testimony of Peter, and that of Paul and Barnabas. But the validity of the magisterial office (which Westminster affirms) is not the issue, but the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility, and the specious claim of Rome to validity of unique magisterial Roman claims. are.
Finally, the various Epistles in the New Testament (the letters of Paul, Peter, etc.) likewise give many examples of the Apostles exercising their teaching and governing offices. I
Which makes Paul more of a pope than Peter , and refute Cath. distinctives.
. In fact, those letters only exist because the Apostles knew that it was their role to teach and lead the various local churches!
And which, among multiple other things , never show or teach any churches to submit to Peter as their supreme head, or to pastors distinctively titled "priests," or pray to anyone else in Heaven but the Lord.
Catholics see the Church as continuing in Christ’s role of teaching the truth: “He who hears you hears me.”) Why do Protestants reject this claim?
Because that is mere presumption, which Mormons and other elitist cults likewise engage in, who also misappropriate the words of Christ. The fact is that while RCs deny that those without her can preach in the name of the Lord, it is Catholicism which takes His name in vain as it invoked Him to sanction false teachings not seen in in the NT church, while the Lord affirm ministry done in His name even though the apostles censured him as not being part of their company. (Mk. 9:38-41)
Non-Catholics usually base their rejection of Church authority on the common misconception of “misplaced worship”: it is claimed that Catholics worship the Church instead of God.
Since that is what so many RCs mainly preach and manifest cultic devotion to, with Christ being a means to the end of glorifying Rome, the conclusion is warranted.
Opponents of this authority sometimes also accuse the Catholic Church of claiming power that is only proper to God.
From what manner of men would they get that idea from?
With regard to the mystic body of Christ, that is, all the faithful, the priest has the power of the keys, or the power of delivering sinners from hell, of making them worthy of paradise, and of changing them from the slaves of Satan into the children of God. And God himself is obliged to abide by the judgment of his priests, and either not to pardon or to pardon..The sentence of the priest precedes, and God subscribes to it. .” – Dignity and Duties of the Priest, St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Vol. 12, p. 2 (whose writings were declared free from anything meriting censure by Pope Gregory XVL (1839) in the bull of his canonization). http://www.archive.org/stream/alphonsusworks12liguuoft/alphonsusworks12liguuoft_djvu.txt
“The supreme power of the priestly office is the power of consecrating...Indeed, it is equal to that of Jesus Christ...When the priest pronounces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our altar to be offered up again as the Victim for the sins of man...Indeed it is greater even than the power of the Virgin Mary [who is said to be all but almighty herself]...The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest's command.” - (John A. O'Brien, Ph.D., LL.D., The Faith of Millions, 255-256 , O'Brien. Nihtt obstat: Rev. Lawrence Gollner, Censor Librorum Imprimatur: Leo A. Pursley, Bishop of Fort Wayne,-South Bend, March 16, 1974
The best argument for the Catholic doctrine of Church authority comes from the New Testament itself:
Wrong, as shown and can be shown further, the best argument against the Catholic doctrine of Church authority comes from the New Testament itself:
Additionally, this same Church authority is the only thing that guarantees the accuracy and inerrancy of the Bible itself. It was the Church that selected the books of New Testament and defined the canon of the Bible.
It took over 1400 years after the last book was penned for Rome to provide what she calls an infallible (indisputable) canon. Meanwhile, the Bible was not a project of the magisterium,, nor did the church of Rome write it, nor does being a discerner and preserver of Divine revelation require of mean that such is the infallible authority on what it is and means. If it does then it invalidates the NT church. For in reality, the church actually began in dissent from those who sat in the seat of Moses over Israel, (Mt. 23:2) who were the historical instruments and stewards of Scripture, "because that unto them were committed the oracles of God," (Rm. 3:2) to whom pertaineth" the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises" (Rm. 9:4) of Divine guidance, presence and perpetuation as they believed, (Gn. 12:2,3; 17:4,7,8; Ex. 19:5; Lv. 10:11; Dt. 4:31; 17:8-13; Ps, 11:4,9; Is. 41:10, Ps. 89:33,34; Jer. 7:23)
And instead they followed an itinerant Preacher whom the magisterium rejected, and whom the Messiah reproved them Scripture as being supreme, (Mk. 7:2-16) and established His Truth claims upon scriptural substantiation in word and in power, as did the early church as it began upon this basis. (Mt. 22:23-45; Lk. 24:27,44; Jn. 5:36,39; Acts 2:14-35; 4:33; 5:12; 15:6-21;17:2,11; 18:28; 28:23; Rm. 15:19; 2Cor. 12:12, etc.)
The End.
Is this a Caucus?
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:13)
But to be REALLY sure; pray to His mom.