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 ...
Actually it is called bending scripture to fit your Mary theology. She has been shoved into every nook and cranny of scripture and been given titles that belong to Christ.
Its hard not to slow down and look at a car wreck. :)
Hi. How have you been?
Every day is a holliday and every meal is a feast! How are you doing these days?
Just think of it this way. These people are out in the open. They are not playing any of the "ecumenical" games. I would much rather deal with them than with those who pretend to be your friends.
I'll go along with that, the stab marks in my back are healing. :)
BigMack
As another freeper noted
" Some may say, "well, this list only shows what churches these men were members of, it doesn't show what they believed." Which is a veiled way of suggesting that these men were liars when they swore to God to adopt the confessions of their churches when they became members of these churches (most churches back then required an "examination" of members when they were received into full membership)"
Moses did not start a "meal" but a system of bloody sacrifices of lambs which were then consummed at a ritualistic supper. You seem to be confusing modern Seder services with the ancient Passover when there was still a Temple.
The 'blood of the lamb' on the doorposts was a precursor of "The Blood of The LAMB" that is our Savior.
Are you really so naive as to think we Catholics do not know this?
The Lamb given by God to Abraham and Isaac is also a precursor of Christ, as was the sacrifice of Abel.
However Christ did not sacrifice lambs for our salvation, but rather He gave Himself, under species of bread and wine, just as did the Lord God's High Priest Melchisedech.
Genesis 14.18 But Melchisedech, the king of Salem, bringing forth bread and wine, for he was the priest of the most high God
St. Luke 22.19 And taking bread, he gave thanks and brake and gave to them, saying: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me.
20 In like manner, the chalice also, after he had supped, saying: This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which is being shed for you.
Hebrews 5.6 As he saith also in another place: Thou art a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchisedech.
Hebrews 12.24 And to Jesus the mediator of the new testament, and to the sprinkling of blood which speaketh better than that of Abel.
Do you see it yet? Or are you still not looking?
Christ is taking bread and wine like Melchisedech, consecrating them saying "This is my body which is given up for you" and "This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which is being shed for you." Then he is effecting a New Testment in His Precious Blood in the Eucharist and sprinkling His Precious Blood upon His people by having them consume the contents of the chalice. And notice this sacrifice, where he is giving His body and shedding His Precous Blood is taking place in a clean and unbloody manner.
Malachi 1.11 For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts.
When you see it, reread the book of Hebrews Chapter 5 through Chapter 12.
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"?
The Body of the Lord is the bread of the Eucharist consecrated into the Body of Christ.
St. Matthew 26.26 Take this all of you and eat it, this is my body.
Our common communion of the Body of Lord in the Eucharist causes our mystical communion in the Church as the Body of Christ which was effected by our Baptism.
1 Corinthians 10.16 The chalice of benediction which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord?
17 For we, being many, are one bread, one body: all that partake of one bread.
1 Corinthians 12.13 For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free: and in one Spirit we have all been made to drink.
We are not one because we all share one Bible, or we all believe in Christ (that is not enough!), or we all love each other. We are one body in Christ because of the Sacraments. We were "all baptized into one body" and "being many, are one bread, one body: all that partake of one bread".
Mat 22:14 For many are called, but few [are] chosen.
It is not a issue of numbers it is a matter of truth. Truth is not decided by popular vote.
Zec 4:6 Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This [is] the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.
Numbers mean nothing to God..
Deu 7:6 For thou [art] an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that [are] upon the face of the earth.
Deu 7:7 The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye [were] the fewest of all people:
Deu7;8
Deu 7:8 But because the LORD loved you, ..."
See Hermann if it were about numbers it would be the Buddhists that would hold the keys :>)
(Fifthmark) "This is a riot. You predict the downfall of the Catholic Church and its denigration to "cult" status, and yet it has survived every conceivable onslaught of the last 2,000 years to be the faith of more than 1 billion people worldwide..."
When you drop the "Catholics" who don't believe in the Real Presence, in the Immaculate Conception, in the Bodily Assumption of Mary, the Infallibility of the Pope, who never go to confession, and in various and sundry ways deny the teachings of the Catholic Church, what happens to the "more than 1 billion" number?
Deo gratias! Another example of Our Blessed Mother answering prayers.
'I came not to put away the law but to fulfill it.'
Ie what was defined before as sin is still sin. Strike one. Christ's death and resurection did not change this.
OT worship of the dead was done *knowing* it was explicitly to ask of someone other than God something which was not God's will.
Couple of things here, 1) we weren't talking about worshipping the dead, we were talking about communicating with the dead. 2) No they didn't know it explicitly and that in part is the error of it. Saul thought he was talking to the prophet though he spoke with a demon. God put him to death for trying to commune with the prophet.
Christian prayers with the dead help to conform your prayers to someone whose faith in Christ has been perfected, explicitly because it helps conform our wills to Christ's, and perfect our faith.
Who cares. This is like saying that a gun is a beautiful thing and attempts to be as accurate, etc.. it doesn't make murder any less a sin. You can talk about conforming wills to Christ, but praying to a dead person who cannot hear you or respond to you and is in itself a sin doesn't conform your will to Christ, it rather repels one from Christ. Or did you not know that is the nature of sin. Sin is rebellion against Christ. A rebellious act is not one of conformity. You are trying to define black as white and white as black.
Communicating with the dead is impossible and the attempt, as it happens, is a sin. Pure and simple. If you'd done it as pre-christ Jews, you'd have been stoned to death for it. Now the proper thing to do is warn you because the penalty is reserved by God now and is owned by Christ. Sin didn't stop being sin when Christ came, it merely stopped being appropriate for men to take the right of punishment into their hands. Thus the difference between doing away with the law and fulfilling it. Men act unevenly in the application of the law - God doesn't. Thus is fulfilled with evenhanded Justice and tempered mercy that which once was merchandised upon by the priesthood... much like modern fraudulent sects who make merchandise of salvation..
Jesus gave Simon the name "Peter" the first time He met him.
John 1:
[40] One of the two who heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.
[41] He first found his brother Simon, and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which means Christ).
[42] He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him, and said, "So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas" (which means Peter).
It might also be noted the Last time Jesus spoke to Peter He called him "Simon". Wonder why?
John 21:
John.21 [15] When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs."
[16] A second time he said to him, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep."
[17] He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.
If we counted only those who walk the path in perfection, the number would be One.
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