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Childishness |
Posted on 03/06/2022 11:16:06 AM PST by CharlesOConnell
A man commits a serious crime, then he gets released. He has "paid his debt to society". But wait a minute, he's only ready for the half-way house. He's unlikely to get a prestigious job in his new prison suit coat, or any job at all; he has civil impediments, he can't vote or hold certain offices. His crime was serious enough that he won't be presumed to have been completely rehabilitated until he performs a notable service to society, or at least spends many years on the straight and narrow, so that his crime can be truly overlooked or forgotten.
In Catholic faith, your "debt to society" is paid by Jesus Christ on Calvary. It's called "eternal punishment", without Christ it keeps you from going to heaven. Supposing that you do take advantage of His sacrifice, you're truly sorry, have a firm purpose of amendment, if you relapse, you go again for forgiveness (to the Sacrament of Confession).
But your sin leaves a strong trace at another layer of impurity called "temporal punishment due to sin", like the civil impediments facing the half-way house prisoner. Because "nothing impure can enter heaven", there is a place or a state, a condition of purification to render you fit for heaven after Christ has finally saved you from hell. The Catholic Church calls it purgatory.
(Where is it in the bible? Where is the word Trinity in the bible? Where does it say that you only need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Many valid principles aren't stated explicitly in the bible, but it does say to "hold fast to the traditions you have learned, whether by word or by letter", because much of the Gospel wasn't written down, as Jesus only wrote in the sand, the majority of the Gospel was taught from word to ear to people who couldn't afford expensive books, the exceptions were what tended to get written down. But the implication that there is a purgatory, is contained in the bible--see the comments.)
The ex-con can receive a pardon or commutation of his probation from a Governor, if he performs some heroic deed, saving numerous lives, or, like Chuck Colson, performs a long-lasting, valuable community service helping numerous people who can't help themselves.
In the Catholic Church there are 2 ways for the residual, temporal effects due to sin to be expiated: suffering in this life, or after life, undergoing purifying suffering along with other people who will finally be saved, but have to suffer for long without the vision of God--that is what causes them their pain.
Their suffering isn't meritorious enough to grant their release, the saints in heaven and those on earth suffering and practicing virtue can pray for the suffering souls in purgatory. In no way is their release by slow transfer of suffering or practice of virtue, "buying heaven". It's a long, excruciating process.
How the misunderstanding arose that Catholics think they can buy their way into heaven, is involved with history more than 500 years old. For a millennium of Christendom between roughly 410 and 1410, there was a Medieval civilization with harmony between faith and government.
Many small farmers would cluster around the manor house of a military lord who would protect them, in exchange for a certain fixed obligation of labor and agricultural produce. In most cases, those "serfs" had much more leisure than factory workers of the industrial revolution; there were a large number of holy days without work, and except for planting and harvesting, there were long stretches of idle time.
Another large sector of the economy surrounded monasteries, where the monks developed most of the farming practices that stabilized the serfs and their manorial lords. The monks who worked those monastic lands were sworn to poverty, so that monasteries built up large accumulations of economic value over decades and centuries of labor.
At the beginning, when lands were being cleared and put into production there weren't prominent town fairs ruled by merchants and bankers. Money wasn't used for sustenance, not even much barter occurred, life was mostly agrarian.
Charity was woven into the economy of monasteries. It was estimated that you only need travel 12 miles in medieval England between monasteries, where you could get a meal and minimal lodging for free, based on need. And the charity was also spiritual, including the ancient Catholic principle of prayer for the dead, which is biblical. (See "prayer for the dead" in the original King James Bible in the comment.)
There were foundations and benefices for praying for the dead, that allowed a person of means to support monasteries' charitable works, and in proportional response the monks would pray for the souls of the donors.
It happened at the close of the middle ages, that militarily strong nobles cast their eyes on the labor value accumulated by the poverty-sworn monks of the monasteries, which those nobles perceived as monetary wealth, especially where gold and jewels had been donated by the devout to adorn churches.
(Protestant writer William Cobbett wrote in his 1824 "A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland", an anecdote, that an incredibly valuable, hand illustrated bible was stripped of it's bejeweled, gold cover, the much more valuable hand-illumined manuscript, thrown in the mud and trampled by horses hooves by raiders suppressing the monasteries in Henry VIII's England.)
A new religion growing up around this seizure of monastic lands and valuables, that sought to discredit the Catholic Church, spread the black legend that the "sale of indulgences" was abusive. But this was very exceptional. Today the stipend of a Mass said for the dead is $10.
With promises like this; if I were Catholic; I'd wear TWO!
—> those who wear the scapular from the fires of hell; She will also shorten their stay in purgatory
—-> With promises like this; if I were Catholic; I’d wear TWO!
The Brown Scapular can’t even save itself from fire 🔥! Throw it in and watch it burn and melt… like anyone who puts their hope in it.
You are correct sir. I was poorly catechised, but that was by choice. I didn’t like catechism class. I just wanted to flirt with the girls and when I got out, I just wanted to go play hockey. 😆😆😀
Evidently, I wasn’t alone. It seemed the girls were doing as much flirting as we guys were. We sure were a bunch of lousy Catholics. 😀
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But the Bible can, and is entirely consistent. Take note of the following:
Forty days before Jesus' peripatectic ministry began, He was baptized by his cousin John at Bethabara (Mt. 1:13, Jn. 1:28). That happened in mid-to-late 29 A.D., not long before John was jailed for his accusations of Herod. It was at that time that the sobriquet "Kayfahs" (in Aramaic language)was given to Simon Bar Jonah by Jesus when they first met. That is described in the volume "The Gospels: A Precise Translation"; the author Fred Wittman:
"40Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard from John and followed Him. 41This one finds his own brother Simon. And he says to him,This shows that (1) Simon was already informed by his brother Andrew that he should consider Jesus to be the Messiah (Anointed One) prophesied in the Holy Scriptures (example: the Hebrew of Psalm 2:2, the last word ־משׁיחו pronounced "Messiach" translated as "anointed" in English); and (2) this is the time that Jesus gave him the title, or nickname "Kayfahs" in Aramaic, which was translated to the Greek "Petros" by John when he wrote this Gospel account (not "petra" the feminine inflection, having a different meaning, which is "a vast geological escarpment of rock extending perhaps for miles").We have found The Messiah (which being translated, The Christ).42And he led him to Jesus. Now when Jesus earnestly looked upon him. He said.You yourself are Simon. the son of Jonah. You yourself shall be titled Kayfahs* (which is being interpreted, A piece of a rock).----------
*Note: In Beloved John's Koine Greek manuscript, this is πετρος pronounced "peh-tross" which in the masculine is the definition of a stone or piece of rock perhaps up to the size of a human, but not much bigger. The definition given in the translation of this inflection of the base is very precise as to size.
Most people haven't learned this detail, for different causes; one is that it is a minor detail to the greater story inscripturated here, but a second is that its significance greatly detracts from the preferred (mis)interpretation by one deviate "Christic" cult of the passage that covers Jesus' declaration of the formal gathering of people called out to deliberate under leadership, the assembly (Anglicized as 'church') to worship and to be taught Bible truths.
That later occasion is described in Levi's Gospel (Matthew 16:15-19 and context, precisely translated in the volume cited above):
"15He says to them,In this second passage, the overall import is that it took place in the month Sivan (our June) of 32 A.D. two and a half YEARS later than when Simon first received his sobriquet "Kayfahs" = a piece of rock, precisely defined in plain-literal language, from Jesus, a precisely speaking kind of guy. That nickname was used by then all from their first meet, for the years of discipleship afterward. It was not a new thing at Caesarea Philippi where Jesus announced the building of His clutch of professing earthly believers, a village situated on just such a cliff of rock, upon which they were (standing or sitting?) at the time He was imparting this novel concept that embraces the New Covenant, another announcement to de given later once they got used to this one.But yourselves, Whom are you saying that Iam?16Then Simon Peter answered and said,You are continuously The Christ, The Son of The Absolutely Living God.17And Jesus answered and said to him,You are continually a blessed one, Simon Bar Jonah; because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father, namely The One in The Heavens. 18Now I Myself also say to you, "You yourself are Peter πετρος, and upon this rock ledgeτη πετρα I will build My Church. And Hell's gates shall not prevail upon it. 18And I will give to you the keys to the Kingdom of the Heavens. And what thing ever you bind upon the Earth shall be a bound thing in The Heavens. And what thing ever you loose upon the Earth shall be a loosed thing in The Heavens."---------
Note: In verses 17 to 19, Jesus is addressing Simon singularly, not here including the others at the moment.
Even many years later, Paul in his epistles calls Simon "Kayfahs" (the KJV gives it in English letters as "Cephas," which most readers (mis)pronounce it as "Seefuss" in their ignorance; the translators wanted the letter "C" to have the "K" sound, not the "S" sound).
The second thing deserving a remark is that the "Rock" being in the feminine gender, has a precise and very different meaning, and that is a NEW use of the sense, in comparison to the OLD use of reference to stone-like material (Simon's intellectual dullness? inflexiblity of opinion? unteachability?). What Jesus meant was the physical plain-literal term that suggested the figurative-literal totsl strength, solidity, and unchangeable concept that measured how His faithfulness and reliability in all things would size up as compared to any other touchstone (so to speak). Like Peter, who was wholly unreliable in his fidelity or reasoning aptitude, didn't even seem to be shaken by this comparison (?!).
Thirdly, one needs to come to realization that Simon DID execute the first application of use of "the Keys to the Kingdom of The Heavens," which would be a figurative-literal application of that phrase of the Keys to his first sermon on the day of Pentecost, in which over three thousand souls were admitted by immersion subsequent to their profession of faith in Jesus as one's Savior and Lord. But note: the sermon was addressed to humans tracing their heritage of Jewishness only, not Gentiles. Peter had not yet a concept of the churches' breadth, even from Jesus delegation of the Great Commission. Peter was not yet willing to admit Gentile into his concept of what Jesus' Church was all about.
There is more to discuss about this, but the concept of Jesus' Church being founded on Peter's person or example is totally false, when even lazily investigating the facts residing in the writings about him show the supposition's absolute incredible weakness, just a con trick.
The last and most important point we ought to take away from this is that the foundational concept did NOT come from Simon Bar Jonah's mentality or body of knowledge. It came from The Mighty God and Father of Jesus God's Anointed King of All, put on the lips of the unlearned fisherman much as a warning came from the mouth of Balaam's ass. The foundational Rock of Belief and its Originator in not just a concept to marvel at; it is a fearsome warning of what might happen to the human or fallen angel that might trifle with the Father's Only Begotten-in-the-flesh Son, and go away into eternity unforgiven. Remember, Judas Iscariot was right there and heard it all; only a hair's breadth difference between the standing of Judas and that of Simon. The difference is that of even a miniscule degree of unobliterated, perseverant, ineradicable preference of a human in commitment to The Christ above self or other, as fixed in Simon Bar Jonah, for whom Jesus effectively prayed for his faith not to fail, and informed Peter of it (Luke 22:32). Peter was not yet "saved," was he? Not "converted" from Judaism to complete trust in Jesus, though he professed otherwise. A very ticklish thing if you are of a miscatechized Christic cult, if you can "lose your salvation", eh?
What is the reader's position on the subject of this post? Eh?
First passage was John 1:40-42 APT
thats the poopy part of the Ark... always needing to be cleaned up...
That’s the Roman organization, from the Vatican down.
It is known, allowed, covered up.
It’s liberal, Marxist, full of child molesters, and gay.
This has been true under the past 4 popes at a minimum.
Nothing in Scripture anyone could construe to identify that as Christ’schurch.
You misspelled “typical”.
Could you please show us where in Scripture the terms * Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus * and * Invincible Ignorance * are found?
Which is only a rabbit trail.
I did not ask those questions nor does it address the point of my post, that Catholicism can take no credit whatsoever for giving is God’s word.
The homosexual priests issue has been a problem for over 1,000 years in Catholicism.
All one has to do is check out Father Peter Damian and The Book of Gomorrah.
Dp you really imagine I would endorse a false assertion by you? You miss characterize what I wrote as ‘sounding more like Calvinism’ to you, then expect me to endorse that erroneous thought by using it to reason an issue you promote? I washed my hands of you once. Silly of me to entertain your twisted reasoning once again.
I had completely forgotten about that brown scapular. Me, and all the other people I went to Catholic school with, needed to wear 10 scapulars. Most of the people I went to Catholic school with, were grotesque sinners, and they enjoyed sinning. We were typical, lousy Catholics. All of us. 🤗😀
Could you please show us where in Scripture the term “sola scriptura” is found?
Why wasn’t I told this, when I was a Catholic? 😀😆🙃
The principal of our school, was a priest, and he had two assistant priests. Most our teachers were nuns. We always wondered if he was boinking the nuns. No one ever knew for sure. I did know one of those assistant priests, married the school secretary. She had to divorce her husband first. Her kids were my classmates.
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