Posted on 05/15/2003 2:02:36 PM PDT by Polycarp
For your reference:
The Three Crosses: The Bad Thief, or the Cross Rejected
The Three Crosses: The Good Thief, or the Cross Accepted
Accepted or rejected? Which is your Cross?
It is your decision to make, and we always invite you to view the flip side of the coin. (Or Cross in this example.)
Just what I thought.
This is not an entirely bad thing, as at least "those people," will know what's on our minds. The downside is that they will tend to use the info to distort what we think, or worse, pretend to agree to get short-term support, e.g. in an election.
All of the catholic churches have, over the long centuries of their existence, stated their rules and then simply more or less trusted their clergy to lead chaste, Christian lives, whether living in celibacy or marriage. The ideal, as in most human arenas, was not always reached. What's remarkable to a fair-minded person is, how close the overwhelming majority of clergy actually come to achieving the goal.
The present infestation of the perverse in the Roman Church could well be the organized clerical queers(what a thought!) taking advantage of the trust. It's happened before and been dealt with (or ignored until the bastards died). But in earlier days, the perverted lacked the base of support of "scholars," and the media.
By and large, Catholics leave it to the Assembly of God (for example) to deal with its ministers such as Jimmy Swaggert and James Bakker as the Assembly of God sees fit. That is as it should be in a nation with our First Amendment among men and women of good will.
As it happens, any actual Catholic will agree that these homosexuals have no business in our priesthood or in any position of authority in our Church. We will agree among our Catholic selves that they should be defrocked and excommunicated and we will applaud their prosecution and incarceration which is society's only constitutional means of helping us take out the trash.
Your ignorance of matters Catholic is obvious from your posts. Do NOT confuse the Church in the United States (AmChurch) with the actual Roman Catholic Church as governed in Rome. Here the leftist termites are in control of many dioceses, universities and institutions. In Rome as in most of the world, the homeowners are in control. Long after whatever church you may worship in is long-forgotten, there will be a Roman Catholic Church, as guaranteed by your Savior and mine.
If you are going to fall back on the silly notion that you have read a bible and therefore know better than the pope and that you reject the "traditions of men", please translate the following in Aramaic, ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek:
"The quick brown dog jumped over the lazy fox."
If you cannot do this, I assume that you depend upon the translations of other men whose persons, characters and capabilities are not within your personal knowledge--- i.e. you rely upon the traditions of other men who are not Catholics.
I am going to go out on a limb here and suspect that 2,000 years of Roman Catholic scholarship, learning, wisdom and faith (the Teaching Magisterium) will trump the Martin-come-latelies and YOPIOS in terms of authentic Christian doctrine and teaching. I would not mention this but for the fact that you saw fit to stick your nose in where it most certainly did not belong.
All that having been said, I have yet to see anyone accuse you of being a persecutor of gays, whatever it may please you to claim. From your posts it is rather evident that you are their apologist. That is quite real.
Mind your own business. Good fences make good neighbors.
You flatter yourself that you will be the object of any Catholic attempting to have you banned for your rather standard issue deformationist heresies. We understand that you are depending upon your own personal interpretation of Scripture (YOPIOS) which is evidently insufficient.
Your Bible, whether the magnificent King James (as commissioned by King James) or the new, new, new, good news up-to-date scriptures easy enough for even today's public school kids to read and become confused by together with explanatory anti-Catholic notes (which are NOT, ahem, traditions of men whatever those durn Catholics might say), does not tell you the lie that Catholics worship Mary. You needed your pastor or your neighbor to provide the old calumny. Just what you folks have against God's mom is a mystery to rational men and women. Just what you have against Jesus Christ who told His own disciples that if they did not eat His Flesh and drink His Blood they would not see heaven (See John 6) is a mystery as well. As John wrote: Many of the disciples found this a hard saying and walked away. Many (and I presume you) still do.
Let me state that I have never sought to have anyone banned or admonished. I think that we have better things to do than squabble over doctrines on a site devoted to conservatism, but that would be an unwinnable fight since people are just addicted to these squabbles. So I must play my role as a Catholic in response.
Far better than having you banned is for your beliefs and ideas to be posted so that all may see them and judge for themselves. Don't you agree? No Catholic who knows anything about this Church founded your Savior and mine (see Matthew) need fear being affected in the slightest degree of doctrine by those who would so worship their own preferences as to ignore the Teaching Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church and choose their own heresies among the thousands available.
Jesus Christ, God's only begotten Son, was made flesh and dwelt amongst us, lived thirty-three years or so and had a three year public ministry. He founded His Church upon Simon bar Jonah whom He renamed Peter and was the first of many Peters culminating up to now in Pope John Paul II and guaranteed that He would be with THAT Church all days until the end of the world. He was betrayed, suffered, died on the Cross, resurrected and ascended into heaven, promising to send the Paraclete who would also protect THAT Church.
Now it is the pretense of the deformed churches that Jesus Christ did all this so that a renegade Augustinian monk would come along nearly fifteen centuries later, massacre his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and drive a wedge into the Church created by Jesus Christ Himself so that all men and women could become their own individual arbiters of Scripture, taking a little from here and a little from there and ignoring many other passages to create their own churches intheir own images and likenesses.
Seek to have you banned? Whyever would we want to do that? Christ's own Church or YOPIOS? Sounds like a no-brainer to me and one that calls upon Catholics to pray for you, now and at the hour of your death and thereafter since your evident sincerity may well result in your victory in achieving purgatory on your way to heaven which the Church militant on earth may speed through prayer.
Trying to have another banned or admonished over disagreements is the act of a coward. We are conservatives. We are big boys and girls. If we cannot disagree among ourselves with valor, how WILL we fight the liberals, who are our real and mutual enemies and Christ's, as well?
God bless you and yours.
For all that we disagree on (and that is just about everything RCC) I wholeheartedly concur with this:
"Trying to have another banned or admonished over disagreements is the act of a coward."
PING to Polycarp --- he requested that I not post to him anymore :)
This is your answer?.. to the fact that numerous homosexual Catholic priests molested young boys in the Church for years..and the Church not only DID NOT remove these priests but moved them around and protected them?
The idea that you would respond to this by claiming "How the Roman Catholic Church governs itself is the business of Catholics and no one else's business" is not only disgraceful, it's wrong.
Catholic priests are not above the law when it comes to molesting children. It IS our business.
Ignorance? You're joking right?
It just so happens these "matters Catholic" (specifically homosexual Catholic priests molesting boys with impunity for years) were splashed all over the news and were the subject of a very public discussion for several months. How could anybody be ignorant of these things?
And your attempt to distinguish the Catholic Church in Rome from that in the United States means what? That the US Church isn't the *REAL CATHOLIC CHURCH*? Therefore their homosexual pedophile priest scandal leaves the real Catholic Church untainted?
Give me a break.
The Church in Rome and indeed the Pope came under a lot of criticism for not doing anything about the situation, even when they were made aware of it.
If you cannot do this, I assume that you depend upon the translations of other men whose persons, characters and capabilities are not within your personal knowledge---
#1 Anybody can by a Greek or Aramaic lexicon and easily look up the original language of any passage of scripture.
#2 The idea that we cannot trust the Bibles we have today because of faulty translators is exactly the sort of argument we hear from the likes of "gay Christians" who want to discredit the Bible and it's prohibitions against homosexuality.
You imply that somehow we need the "pope" to tell us what the scriptures REALLY say because God gave us a bunch of faulty translators to confuse us is laughable.
#3 FINALLY!!~
Exactly what "translation" of scripture have I posted that you are challenging?
I said was that I believe the Bible when it defines homosexuality as a sin in God's eyes, and that those involved in immoral sexual conduct do not belong in positions of authority in the Church. ESPECIALLY those who molest children.
What part of that do you disagree with?
And if you don't disagree with this then what is the point of the incoherant argument you attempt to make above?
You're an evil, evil man, FRiend GWB.
I really hate it when someone knows exactly how to push my buttons. Here I stay up a little too late on a Friday night, and the next thing I know GWB has me writing "Short Takes" for The Wanderer and The New Oxford Review.
I'll have you know that, if this keeps up and my Teaching Presbyter ever hears of it, I'm gonna hafta write....
....FIFTY times on the Church Blackboard as penance, just to re-establish my "Protestant Credentials".
Don't you even feel the least bit ashamed, provoking my alleged (and much over-estimated) "Debate Skills" into action for your own personal amusement?? Eee-gads. The messes you get me into, GWB....
I hope you don't mind, but I just emailed your superb analysis all over the conservative Catholic world! ~~ Polycarp
Well, shucks... I don't mind a bit.
If my "superb analysis" (which was really nothing more than GWB goading me into a response, bomb-thrower that he is) should help provide encouragement, and perhaps a bit of fraternal levity, for the Religious Conservatives within the Bishopric of Rome (whom I regard as one of the Five Christian Patriarchs, though I do not regard him as any more than that)... then I can only say "Amen".
If you have really seen fit to Email my "superb analysis" to those Roman Catholics who are still fighting for Traditional Christianity within the Bishopric of Rome, then I hope my little off-the-cuff critique of the sheep-skinned Wolves within your Communion is of benefit, Polycarp.
I should very much like to see the Roman Catholic Church return to the Discipline of believing in Absolute Truth. For that matter, I should very much like to see the Protestant Church adopt the same Discipline -- believing in Absolute Truth. We Modern Protestants seem very far from it...
best, OP
It’s NOT my so-called definition it’s the APA’s, go to their web site and look it up.
The APA's????
You've got to be kidding. The APA, who removed homosexuality from their list of disorders under pressure from the gay activists?...
This is YOUR authority on the the definition of "homophobe".
Too funny.
The only contortions are your tap dancing around the truth of you parroting homosexual propaganda.
ROFL! You come up with some obscure weirdo definition of homophobe backed up by the pro-homosexual APA...and accuse me "contortions" for using the term "homophobe" in it's generally understood context...which is a person who suffers from an inordinate fear and dread of homosexuals.
You know I'm right...admit it already.
You might as well call us “breeders” while you’re at it.
Haven't heard that term for a while....
But it seems you are really keeping up on your gay lingo....almost as if it is your native language.....hmmmmm.
I'm still waiting for you to find ANY "homosexual propaganda" I've posted and paste it here....much less inform me of the so-called "consequences".
Where is it?
Your so used to throwing accusations you cannot support at all those who disagree with you..that when anybody challenges you to prove what you say....you come up with NOTHING.
Pathetic.
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