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To: Elsie

My brother, Elsie, here's some friendly advice.   I've seen you do this many, many times, posting these big, long, boring, time-consuming, tedious lists, of what are ostensibly "quotes", from various long-dead figures, which in your mind "prove" that those figures disagree with some teaching or other of the Church.   First of all, do you really believe everything you read in books, or online?   If so, I have a great chicken farm to sell you in the middle of the ocean, and you'll really love it!   (Just send all your money to me, a true Nigerian prince, and it is all yours!)

You probably believe this pious religious book, too, don't you?


       


Over the centuries, there have been lots of books and other writings of questionable veracity, filled with bias on both sides (Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Protestant), and, in that light, it is best to take any books filled with quotes and accounts from long-dead figures with a grain of salt.   Many of the writers of books and online materials probably have even less credibility than today's mainstream media, and their fictitious published accounts of Trump and of Trump supporters.

But, for arguments sake, let's pretend for a moment that all of your quotes from these long-dead figures are genuine and accurate.

So what?

Right from the beginning, the Bible records that some prominent Church leaders have expressed or promoted erroneous ideas, but those teachings were never officially (magisterially) accepted or implemented by any form of the Church Magisterium, as guided by the Holy Spirit.   (Read, for example, Galatians 2, where St. Paul says he had to straighten out St. Peter himself, right to his face, regarding the issue of forcing new converts to live like Jews, so the Holy Spirit can and does at times even cause popes to be overridden, before they are able to implement something magisterially in the Church.)   St. Peter's views were expanded and "refined" over time, as the Church's teachings developed more fully over time, and were settled by the Church Magisterium under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that refining of individual views can probably be said to be true about all Church leaders (and Church members) over the centuries.

Does that mean you throw out the whole Church, just because some number of its early Church leaders did not have a full and complete or correct understanding yet of some particular issue, and which the Holy Spirit caused to be overridden and rectified in the Church's actual official magisterial teachings, which came out of the Church leaders' prayerful discussions?   Of course not!   Or, do you throw out the Bible, just because some of the early Church teachings mentioned in it, later turned out to need to be further developed, or refined, or corrected, or because some Epistles in the Bible are attributed to St. Peter, who was at some point corrected by St. Paul (who was also in very deep error for a while, and was strongly corrected himself - see Acts 9 - regarding his own strikingly erroneous views before that)?   Of course not!

The Church leaders of the time, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, magisterially hammered out a new formal Church doctrine (concerning an issue Jesus had never instructed them on), which declared the new official Church teaching that new converts did not have to become like Jews, and get circumcised, and so forth.   They nipped that right in the bud.   (This official doctrinal decision was all done magisterially by the Church leaders, based on prayer-guided tradition, without any consultation or interpretation of the New Testament writings, as most (if not all) of the New Testament "books" weren't even written yet.)

This is another great illustration of the fallacy of following your own personal interpretation of the Scriptures.   Both the Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul knew the Jewish Scriptures well, and both men also knew a great deal about the teachings of Jesus, and they both came to opposite personal conclusions about the "Judaizer" issue.   But, they didn't just rely on their own personal interpretations of those things, and they didn't split up into two churches, or just agree to disagree about it.   Instead, those Apostles and the Church leaders sought and received the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and were directed on which way to go, which was to establish a brand new doctrine for the One Church, which did not require gentiles to adopt Jewish practices, and that became the official Church doctrine from that time forward.

Other humans in various Church leadership roles over the centuries have also said or done things that are later determined by the Magisterium to be inadequate, just like those early Judaizers (like Peter and James), but that is why the Holy Spirit is necessary, to guide the Church and her magisterial doctrinal decisions, and keep her on course, as Jesus promised.   Those "erroneous teachings" of various individual Church leaders do not end up becoming official, magisterial teaching of the Church over time, thanks to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

What you always have to look at is not the expressed opinions of various individuals within the Church, but the actual teachings of the Church, as hammered out over the centuries by the Magisterium, directly guided by the Holy Spirit (as Jesus promised), which are conveniently available these days in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.   You may still want to attack those Church teachings, but you won't have to force yourself to continue to post so many long, rambling lists of questionable quotes, attributed somewhere, to some long dead individuals, who can no longer be questioned about those "quotes", or about their true beliefs.

There have been prominent Church leaders right from the very beginning (and recorded in the Bible), who have made misstatements concerning Church doctrines, or non-magisterially proposed some erroneous teachings, as mentioned in Galatians 2.   The opinions of those individual Church leaders in biblical times (like the Judaizers) were listened to, and considered, then officially abandoned by the Magisterium leaders of the Church, under the guidance of God, and the same kind of assessments and decisions have continued to be resolved in that same way ever since those early biblical examples.   So, you can save yourself a lot of time (and save your misemployed fingers) from a lot of useless and senseless typing of all those protracted, wearisome, and thoroughly irrelevant lists!         :-)

(You're welcome, brother!)

220 posted on 01/02/2019 5:33:42 PM PST by Songcraft
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To: Songcraft
Thanks for wasting all of your time trying to convince others of the rightness of your logic.

Perhaps you could put them in a BOOK so folks can REALLY ignore them.


What part of the FACTS of the matter presented to you do you not approve of?

It's clear you're all atwitter over the messenger who has tossed the albatross onto your doorstep.

230 posted on 01/03/2019 12:18:17 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Songcraft

Excellent example of ‘muddying the water’ BTW.


231 posted on 01/03/2019 12:18:42 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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