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 ...
Revealed mysteries are no longer mystery and there is nothing 'simplistic' about it. As soon as they are revealed, they are known. That you must puzzle over the known. That they are deep or have meaning that is astounding is one thing. To say it's unknowable or hidden is quite another.. a fraud as it were.
Actually the Protestants and one Jew have kicked your butt all over the place.
The Catholic church believes that every child is born in original sin and can not enter heaven without being baptized
It seems that the Council of Trent has something to say to you too
4. If anyone denies that infants, newly born from their mothers' wombs, are to be baptized, even though they be born of baptized parents, or says that they are indeed baptized for the remission of sins, but that they derive nothing of original sin from Adam which must be expiated by the laver of regeneration for the attainment of eternal life, whence it follows that in them the form of baptism for the remission of sins is to be understood not as true but as false, let him be anathema, for what the Apostle has said, by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned, is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church has everywhere and always understood it. For in virtue of this rule of faith handed down from the apostles, even infants who could not as yet commit any sin of themselves, are for this reason truly baptized for the remission of sins, in order that in them what they contracted by generation may be washed away by regeneration. For, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.
This IS a corruption of the term. This is in no way even similar to the definition in scripture. IE, this is a perversion of what is in scripture. Try again.
yea ..Catholics are forbidden to have a spiritual thought of their own
So where do you suppose that this was learned?
This line is from St. Athanasius, "On the Incarnation", by the way.
Really? So you and the LDS agree?
I have no idea, nor do I care, what the LSD cult teaches. I do know the Bible, and I do know Church history.
1 St. John 4.15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him, and he in God.
16 And we have known and have believed the charity which God hath to us. God is charity: and he that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him.
2 St. Peter 1.2 Grace to you and peace be accomplished in the knowledge of God and of Christ Jesus our Lord.
3 As all things of his divine power which appertain to life and godliness are given us through the knowledge of him who hath called us by his own proper glory and virtue.
4 By whom he hath given us most great and precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature: flying the corruption of that concupiscence which is in the world.
St. John 1.12 But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in his name.
St. John 10.33 The Jews answered him: For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy: and because that thou. being a, man, makest thyself God.
34 Jesus answered them: Is it not written in your law: I said, you are gods?
35 If he called them gods to whom the word of God was spoken; and the scripture cannot be broken:
36 Do you say of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world: Thou blasphemest; because I said: I am the Son of God?
37 If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.
38 But if I do, though you will not believe me, believe the works: that you may know and believe that the Father is in me and I in the Father.
Psalm 81.1 A psalm for Asaph. God hath stood in the congregation of gods: and being in the midst of them he judgeth gods.
2 How long will you judge unjustly: and accept the persons of the wicked?
3 Judge for the needy and fatherless: do justice to the humble and the poor.
4 Rescue the poor; and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner.
5 They have not known nor understood: they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth shall be moved.
6 I have said: You are gods and all of you the sons of the most High.
7 But you like men shall die: and shall fall like one of the princes.
8 Arise, O God, judge thou the earth: for thou shalt inherit among all the nations.
Psalm 94.1 Come let us praise the Lord with joy: let us joyfully sing to God our saviour.
2 Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and make a joyful noise to him with psalms.
3 For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
Palsm 135.1 Alleluia. Praise the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.
2 Praise ye the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever.
Psalm 137.1 For David himself. I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart: for thou hast heard the words of my mouth. I will sing praise to thee in the sight of the gods:
2 I will worship towards thy holy temple, and I will give glory to thy name. For thy mercy, and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy holy name above all.
Don't worry, though, if you still don't won't to become gods by grace and sons of the Most High, our sweet and gentle Lord Jesus isn't going to force you. He has prepared an alternative in a place where it is always nice and toasty, and many of your friends will be there to greet you if you so choose.
On the other hand, perhaps you migth try reading this:BECOMING LIKE GOD: AN EVANGELICAL DOCTRINE OF THEOSIS
I take issue mostly with one gratutious assertion in this article, and that is that the Catholic West does not know of Theosis. That is false. It is actually directly at the heart of Catholic Theology. St. Thomas Aquinas writes:
But when any created intellect sees the essence of God, the essence of God itself becomes the intelligible form of the intellect. Hence it is necessary that some supernatural disposition should be added to the intellect in order that it may be raised up to such a great and sublime height. Now since the natural power of the created intellect does not avail to enable it to see the essence of God, as was shown in the preceding article, it is necessary that the power of understanding should be added by divine grace. Now this increase of the intellectual powers is called the illumination of the intellect, as we also call the intelligible object itself by the name of light of illumination. And this is the light spoken of in the Apocalypse (Apoc. 21:23): "The glory of God hath enlightened it"--viz. the society of the blessed who see God. By this light the blessed are made "deiform"--i.e. like to God, according to the saying: "When He shall appear we shall be like to Him, because we shall see Him as He is" (1 Jn. 2:2). (Summa Theologica, Pt. I, Q. 12, Art. 5)Man is perfected by virtue, for those actions whereby he is directed to happiness, as was explained above. Now man's happiness is twofold, as was also stated above. One is proportionate to human nature, a happiness, to wit, which man can obtain by means of his natural principles. The other is a happiness surpassing man's nature, and which man can obtain by the power of God alone, by a kind of participation of the Godhead, about which it is written (2 Pt. 1:4) that by Christ we are made "partakers of the Divine nature." And because such happiness surpasses the capacity of human nature, man's natural principles which enable him to act well according to his capacity, do not suffice to direct man to this same happiness. (Summa Theologica, Pt. I-II, Q. 62, Art. 1)
Charity signifies not only the love of God, but also a certain friendship with Him; which implies, besides love, a certain mutual return of love, together with mutual communion, as stated in Ethic. viii, 2. That this belongs to charity is evident from 1 Jn. 4:16: "He that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him," and from 1 Cor. 1:9, where it is written: "God is faithful, by Whom you are called unto the fellowship of His Son." Now this fellowship of man with God, which consists in a certain familiar colloquy with Him, is begun here, in this life, by grace, but will be perfected in the future life, by glory; each of which things we hold by faith and hope. Wherefore just as friendship with a person would be impossible, if one disbelieved in, or despaired of, the possibility of their fellowship or familiar colloquy; so too, friendship with God, which is charity, is impossible without faith, so as to believe in this fellowship and colloquy with God, and to hope to attain to this fellowship. Therefore charity is quite impossible without faith and hope. (Summa Theologica, Pt. I-II, Q. 65, Art. 5)
Nothing can act beyond its species, since the cause must always be more powerful than its effect. Now the gift of grace surpasses every capability of created nature, since it is nothing short of a partaking of the Divine Nature, which exceeds every other nature. And thus it is impossible that any creature should cause grace. For it is as necessary that God alone should deify, bestowing a partaking of the Divine Nature by a participated likeness, as it is impossible that anything save fire should enkindle. (Summa Theologica, Pt. I-II, Q. 112, Art. 1)
For since in every knowledge some form is required whereby the object is known or seen, this form by which the intellect is perfected so as to see separate substances is neither a quiddity abstracted by the intellect from composite things, as the first opinion maintained, nor an impression left on our intellect by the separate substance, as the second opinion affirmed; but the separate substance itself united to our intellect as its form, so as to be both that which is understood, and that whereby it is understood. And whatever may be the case with other separate substances, we must nevertheless allow this to be our way of seeing God in His essence, because by whatever other form our intellect were informed, it could not be led thereby to the Divine essence. This, however, must not be understood as though the Divine essence were in reality the form of our intellect, or as though from its conjunction with our intellect there resulted one being simply, as in natural things from the natural form and matter: but the meaning is that the proportion of the Divine essence to our intellect is as the proportion of form to matter. For whenever two things, one of which is the perfection of the other, are received into the same recipient, the proportion of one to the other, namely of the more perfect to the less perfect, is as the proportion of form to matter: thus light and color are received into a transparent object, light being to color as form to matter. When therefore intellectual light is received into the soul, together with the indwelling Divine essence, though they are not received in the same way, the Divine essence will be to the intellect as form to matter: and ... this suffices for the intellect to be able to see the Divine essence by the Divine essence itself ... (Summa Theologica, Supplement, Q. 92, Art. 1)
1 Corinthians 4.1 Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ and the dispensers of the mysteries (Greek - musterion) of God.
Apparently your "Christianity" excises large chunks fo the Bible. Try doing a search of "musterion" in a Greek New Testament.
I'll go an earn some for you. How much are you willing to pay per day off in Purgatory? You can send payment via credit card to my paypal account.
If the Pope did not accept them, they were not authoritative, no matter how many other Bishops subscribed to them, and no matter how many Emperor's tried to promulgate them as law. Can you point to where the Pope sent his legates to them and signed off on their works? Otherwise, they are just another conventicle of heretics as was the infamous Robber Synod (Latrocinium) of Ephesus.
I'm afraid you will find that they were authoritative for nobody of any import in the Catholic Church. Maybe in the Arian Church or among the Arian Emperor's of Rome they were authoritative, but we are Catholics, not Arians.
You are SOOOOO far from the truth here. But that is okay. Go on enjoying your myths.
Uh, no it wasn't. It was called by Constantine.
We are not "consulting the dead" but asking their intercession before God. Apparently, the difference is lost upon you.
Anyway, we certainly wouldn't pray to dead Protestants, but we will continue to pray to live Catholics in heaven and purgatory for their prayers.
This doesn't comport with what you said earlier. This I would agree on. The rest is claptrap.
No, it doesn't, but the nature of the act is completely changed.
Double talk. Sin is still sin. If it was sin to commune with the dead then, it is now. The law was not done away with, it was fulfilled. That means it's definitions of sin still hold, only the judge has changed - to be as concise as possible.
Jesus spoke with Moses and Elijah in the transfiguration.
Do you not know scripture?! Jesus had a Vision. Go read it again. Scripture does not say that they were present. It says he saw them in a vision. Christ even Corrected Peter for saying that they were present. Do we need to call him down to correct you to? Astonishing.
Who says they cannot hear you? The souls in Heaven watch the events below. "And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God:" (Rev 19.1). These are they who Rev 14 calls the Saints, the firstfruits.
Well, where to begin on this one. Ecclesiastes says they can have nothing more to do ever with anything that happens under the sun. Speach happens under the sun (ie here on earth). That would fall into that Anything - ever exclusion. Next, you reference what John saw in heaven going on, that would be John seeing events in heaven, not vice versa. But, then you neglect to note it is a vision, not an actual happenstance. John wasn't in heaven, nor was the remnant in heaven on earth making a display for John's benefit. In short, you've offered nothing but empty excuses and sweet sounding hollow rhetoric. Biblically, you should be rebuked at this point.
How has a baby sinned? Can a baby make conscious acts?
...he should not have been QUOTING that David fellow!
Psalm 50.7 For behold I was conceived in iniquities; and in sins did my mother conceive me.
St. King David doesn't say babies have sinned or that he sinned as a baby, but rather that he was born into sin, namely, the sin of Adam, which causes men to be born without grace.
Anyway, St. King David says:
2 Kings 12.23 But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Shall I be able to bring him back any more? I shall go to him rather: but he shall not return to me.
How could David go to him if the child was in sins?
The Pope wasn't "the Pope" then. He was just the bishop of Rome. Frankly, the bishop of Alexandria was much more involved in the Arian controversy.
Your version of history hinges on faith, not on what really happened.
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