Posted on 09/30/2003 9:32:47 AM PDT by Fifthmark
Protestantism is founded on many lies: (1) That Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did not create a visible, hierarchical Church. (2) That there is no authority given by Our Lord to the Pope and his bishops and priests to govern and to sanctify the faithful. (3) That each believer has an immediate and personal relationship with the Savior as soon as he makes a profession of faith on his lips and in his heart, therefore being perpetually justified before God. (4) Having been justified by faith alone, a believer has no need of an intermediary from a non-existent hierarchical priesthood to forgive him his sins. He is forgiven by God immediately when he asks forgiveness. (5) This state of justification is not earned by good works. While good works are laudable, especially to help unbelievers convert, they do not impute unto salvation. Salvation is the result of the profession of faith that justifies the sinner. (6) That grace is merely, in the words of Martin Luther, the snowflakes that cover up the "dungheap" that is man. (7) That there is only one source of Divine Revelation, Sacred Scripture. (8) That each individual is his own interpreter of Sacred Scripture. (9) That there is a strict separation of Church and State. Princes, to draw from Luther himself, may be Christians but it is not as a Christian that they ought to rule. These lies have permutated in thousands of different directions. However, they have sewn the fabric of the modern state and popular culture for nearly 500 years (I shudder to think how the Vatican is going to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Luther's posting his 95 theses on the church doors in Wittenberg fourteen years from now).
Here below are explanations of these lies and their multifaceted implications for the world in which we live:
(1-2) The contention that Our Lord did not create a visible, hierarchical church vitiates the need for a hierarchical, sacerdotal priesthood for the administration of the sacraments. It is a rejection of the entirety of the history of Christianity prior to the Sixteenth Century. It is a denial of the lesson taught us by Our Lord by means of His submission to His own creatures, Saint Joseph and the Blessed Mother, in the Holy Family of Nazareth that each of us is to live our entire lives under authority, starting with the authority of the Vicar of Christ and those bishops who are in full communion with him. The rejection of the visible, hierarchical church is founded on the prideful belief that we are able to govern ourselves without being directed by anyone else on earth. This contention would lead in due course to the rejection of any and all religious belief as necessary for individuals and for societies. Luther and Calvin paved the way for Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Revolution that followed so closely the latter's deification of man.
(3-6) Baptism is merely symbolic of the Christian's desire to be associated with the Savior in the amorphous body known as the Church. What is determinative of the believer's relationship with Christ is his profession of faith. As the believer remains a reprobate sinner, all he can do is to seek forgiveness by confessing his sins privately to God. This gives the Protestant of the Lutheran strain the presumptuous sense that there is almost nothing he can do to lose his salvation once he has made his profession of faith in the Lord Jesus. There is thus no belief that a person can scale the heights of personal sanctity by means of sanctifying grace. It is impossible, as Luther projected from his own unwillingness to cooperate with sanctifying grace to overcome his battles with lust, for the believer to be anything other than a dungheap. Thus a Protestant can sin freely without for once considering that he has killed the life of sanctifying grace in his soul, thereby darkening his intellect and weakening the will and inclining himself all the more to sin-and all the more a vessel of disorder and injustice in the larger life of society.
(7-8) The rejection of a visible, hierarchical Church and the rejection of Apostolic Tradition as a source of Divine Revelation protected by that Church leads in both instances to theological relativism. Without an authoritative guide to interpret Divine Revelation, including Sacred Scripture, individual believers can come to mutually contradictory conclusions about the meaning of passages, the precise thing that has given rise to literally thousands of Protestant sects. And if a believer can reduce the Bible, which he believes is the sole source of Divine Revelation, to the level of individual interpretation, then there is nothing to prevent anyone from doing the same with all written documents, including the documents of a nation's founding. If the plain words of Scripture can be deconstructed of their meaning, it is easy to do so, say, with the words of a governmental constitution. Theological relativism paved the way for moral relativism. Moral relativism paved the way for the triumph of positivism and deconstructionism as normative in the realm of theology and that of law and popular culture.
(9) The overthrow of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ as it was exercised by His true Church in the Middle Ages by the Protestant concept of the separation of Church and State is what gave rise to royal absolutism in Europe in the immediate aftermath of Luther's handiwork. Indeed, as I have noted any number of times before, it is arguably the case that the conditions that bred resentment on the part of colonists in English America prior to 1776 might never have developed if England had remained a Catholic nation. The monarchy would have been subject in the Eighteenth Century to same constraints as it had in the Tenth or Eleventh Centuries, namely, that kings and queens would have continued to understand that the Church reserved unto herself the right to interpose herself in the event that rulers had done things-or proposed to do things-that were contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law and/or were injurious of the cause of the sanctification and salvation of the souls of their subjects. The overthrow of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ deposited power first of all in the hands of monarchs eager to be rid of the "interference" of the Church and ultimately in the hands of whoever happened to hold the reins of governmental power in the modern "democratic" state. Despotism has been the result in both cases
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlecatholic.com ...
"Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ and the dispensers of the sacraments (Greek - musterion) of God." (1 Corinthians 4.1)
"For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother: and shall cleave to his wife. And they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrament (Greek - musterion): but I speak in Christ and in the church." (Ephesians 5.30-31)
Ohh no LOL
We Think? We Think ? WE THINK?
Hasn't the pope told you what to think on this yet?
This sounds easy enough to prove: just what chapter and verse are you talking about?
Isaiah 22.20 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant Eliacim the son of Helcias,
21 And I will clothe him with thy robe, and will strengthen him with thy girdle, and will give thy power into his hand: and he shall be as a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Juda.
22 And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder: and he shall open, and none shall shut: and he shall shut, and none shall open.
23 And I will fasten him as a peg in a sure place, and he shall be for a throne of glory to the house of his father.
24 And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, divers kinds of vessels, every little vessel, from the vessels of cups even to every instrument of music.
25 In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, shall the peg be removed, that was fastened in the sure place: and it shall be broken and shall fall: and that which hung thereon, shall perish, because the Lord hath spoken it.
St. Matthew 16.16 Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.
17 And Jesus answering said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven.
18 And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
19 And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.
St. Luke 12.35 Let your loins be girt and lamps burning in your hands.
36 And you yourselves like to men who wait for their lord, when he shall return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open to him immediately.
37 Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching. Amen I say to you that he will gird himself and make them sit down to meat and passing will minister unto them.
38 And if he shall come in the second watch or come in the third watch and find them so, blessed are those servants.
39 But this know ye, that if the householder did know at what hour the thief would come, he would surely watch and would not suffer his house to be broken open.
40 Be you then also ready: for at what hour you think not the Son of man will come.
41 And Peter said to him: Lord, dost thou speak this parable to us, or likewise to all?
42 And the Lord said: Who thinkest thou is the faithful and wise steward, whom his lord setteth over his family, to give them their measure of wheat in due season?
43 Blessed is that servant whom, when his lord shall come, he shall find so doing.
44 Verily I say to you, he will set him over all that he possesseth.
Doesn't God use people to get his teachings through? I know he does sometimes. The Eunuch didn't know what the scripture meant until Phillip was sent to him.
I'm kind of torn between the devil (evil protestants /sarcasm) and the deep blue sea (you-know-who).
You did make some good points in some of your posts, I thought, but the other side scores a few, too. Getting late.
14 I give God thanks, that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Caius:
15 Lest any should say that you were baptized in my name. (or any of my DEACONS names, either!!)
16 And I baptized also the household of Stephanus. Besides, I know not whether I baptized any other.
17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not in wisdom of speech, lest the cross of Christ should be made void.
See, St. Paul did not always busy himself with "other stuff".
That is what his helpers who were Deacons were there for.
It's amazing that the very One who was called "The Lamb of God*" should take the very MEAL the Moses had started (to make them remember what had saved them from the DEATH ANGEL*) to point the fact the HE was, indeed, that 'lamb'.
*John 1: 29. The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
*Exodus 12:26-27
26. And when your children ask you, `What does this ceremony mean to you?'
27. then tell them, `It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.'"
The 'blood of the lamb' on the doorposts was a precursor of "The Blood of The LAMB" that is our Savior.
NIV Romans 5:9
9. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!
NIV Acts 20:28
28. Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.
NIV Romans 3:25-26
25. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished--
26. he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
NIV Romans 5:9
9. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!
NIV 1 Corinthians 11:29
29. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.
Just what IS - "the body of the Lord"?
To be perfectly accurate, then, I am an apostate, not a heretic.
Canon 751 Heresy is the obstinate denial or doubt, after baptism, of a truth which must be believed by divine and catholic faith. Apostasy is the total repudiation of the christian faith. Schism is the withdrawal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or from communion with the members of the Church subject to him.
As such, I am excommunicated latae sententiae.
Canon 1364 §1 An apostate from the faith, a heretic or a schismatic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication, without prejudice to the provision of Can. 194 §1, n. 2; a cleric, moreover, may be punished with the penalties mentioned in Can. 1336 §1, nn. 1, 2 and 3.
whereas you have nothing but caustic sarcasm to hurl at those you don't wish to hear.
The irony is that you are oblivious to the truth underlying my sarcasm. You sow disrespect, and then act surprised when you reap discord.
I agree wholeheartedly.... at 12:52AM, it's blurring vision here in Indiana, but just when I think I'm caught up in this thread, there is just ONE more that I just HAVE to respond to!
Gee, I guess we forgot the slaughter of the innocents by Herod, the flight into Egypt, etc.
Consider that the woman in Revelation 12 is in pain so she can't be the original sinless Mary. The reason for pain during childbirth is because of Eve's eating from the forbidden tree:
Actually, the Immaculate Conception did not exempt Mary from the punishments of Eve - it allowed her to be born full of grace. She was still subject to death and disease since she is human. We do believe that she gave birth virginally, without Christ physically imparing the intactness of the birth canal, since Isaiah says: "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son", but it does not follow from that that she had no pain. St. John Damascene notes "the birth was through the usual channel by which children come ... Certainly it was not impossible for Him to come by this gate without injuring its seal in any way." (The Source of Knowledge, 3.4.14, AD 743). Scripture certainly says she put forth the normal effort: "... her days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her first born son ..." (St. Luke 2.6-7)
He could hardly sanctify childbearing for women ("Yet she shall be saved through child bearing" [1 Timothy 2.14]) if he was not born in the ordinary manner. St. Ambrose says: "Therefore He accepted from us what it were proper for Him to offer us in order to redeem us by means of what is ours ... you will find many things in Him both in accord with nature and beyond nature. According to the condition of the body He was in the womb, He nursed at His mother's breast, He lay in the manger; but superior to that condition, the Virgin conceived and the Virgin bore, so that you might believe that He was God who restored nature, though He was man, who, in accord with nature, was born of a human being." (The Mystery of the Incarnation, 6.54, AD 382)
Can you produce these texts? What councils were these? How would you know that they are Church councils? Are you sure these weren't councils held by heretics and opposed by the Catholic Church?
You wouldn't know what the Bible said if someone hit in the head with it. You've quite copiously proven that tonight.
LOL!!!!!
That's why there are so many devout Protestants in Germany, England, Scandanavia, and Holland today, eh? All, what, 5% of the population?
Y'all let us know when you've agreed on what Protestantism is, other than fear and loathing of the Catholic Church.
Sorry, the atonement was God dying on the Cross in the flesh. A finite creature could not offer infinite atonement, nor could the sacrifice of a finite creature unite us to God. You are truly Nestorians and Protestants, and truly NOT Christians.
You have a very limited and juridical view of the atonement that leaves out the crucial point of it all - God became Man so that man might become god.
Btw your comment about aborted babies being sinless is against your churches of original ..do you want me to explain it to you?
Yes please do. You've proven how little you know tonight. Why not dig yourself in a little deeper?
I'll give you a big hint. We do NOT believe original sin is analogically an actual sin. We believe babies are born sinless and graceless.
You mean, even if I live a stellar life and am revered as a saint, after I die I won't be able to pray for those who revere me?
God is all powerful. He could do whatever He needed to merely by an operation of His will.
Really? So you and the LDS agree?
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