How Your Priest Shuts Out the Pope and Catechism

Traditional Catholic Reflections & Reports ^ | 01/03/02 | Stephen Hand, editor TCRNews.com

[Antoninus]

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image ...

I've heard other Protestants mention this as precluding any religious statues. Just curious, though- how do you reconcile a strict, literalist interpretation of this with the fact that the Ark of the Covenant had statues of cherubim on top of it?

[cathway]

Yes. Dave's is excellent. Also, John Loughnan's page (I forget the URL)

[topcat54]

I've heard other Protestants mention this as precluding any religious statues. Just curious, though- how do you reconcile a strict, literalist interpretation of this with the fact that the Ark of the Covenant had statues of cherubim on top of it?

I think I already answered that in another message. It has to do with temporary, localized commands versus timeless, universal commands. The command to fashion the ark fits into the fomer. The graven image coammnd, as with all Ten Commandments, fit into the latter.

[topcat54]

The simple fact is; bishops, priests and deacons as well as others who work in the catechetical ministries are NOT free to ignore church teaching. They can be and are reprimanded (to the point of losing their faculties) when their teachings fall outside the Church norms! Some have been declared heretical.

Very few and not very often. If I were an errant priest or bishop under current conditions of RC discipline I wouldn't loose any sleep over it.

[topcat54]

"Perfect love casts out fear." "How do you know that?"

If you read the bible you would know that. St. John wrote that thousands of years ago. It's in the bible.

You mean I can read and discern it for myself without the aid of the magisterium? How refreshingly protestant!

[topcat54]

The fruit of private interpretation of scripture and sola scriptura, which has come to fruition this past century, is march darker, friend.

How would one under the thumb of popery know that?

[topcat54]

David Armstrong's Biblical Evidence for Catholicism

Why does Roman Catholic need biblical evidence for anything? In the final analysis it's only what the magisterium says that matters.

[topcat54]

Liberal Catholic layman Garry Wills has written another book on the Catholic Church, a kind of follow-up to his Bare Ruined Choirs (1972), which I reviewed a long time ago in The Wall Street Journal. In that book, he reminisced about the parish of his youth, one that sounded a lot like the parish in Going My Way. It was gone forever, he said, and good riddance. A newer, more liberal Catholicism had replaced the Catholicism of his youth. Wills had been radicalized in the 1960’s, and he argued that the American Catholic Church had, too.

His new book is called Papal Sins. I prefer to let Catholics respond to Mr. Wills’s historical critique of conservative popes and liberal ones Who Did Not Go Far Enough. Here, I want to discuss some implications of statistical trends that he brings up.

From Going Their Way by Gary North

[cebadams]

Here's a better quote:

Every Protestant denomination that has adopted liberalism has suffered a significant decline in its membership. The onset of this decline can be dated: 1926, the year following the Scopes trial/media circus. Also beginning in 1926, independent fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches started growing.

Catholic liberals, such as Garry Wills, have told the Catholic hierarchy ever since 1950: "Liberalize or die!" By 1960, the Catholic church had entered the race to match the mainline Protestants. Despite its late start, it seems to have won.

Sums up the current situation pretty well.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Read the Fruits link, friend.

Thank you for sharing your own personal opinion.

May God Bless you abundantly, illuminate your darkened intellect, and have mercy on your soul.

[Theresa]

Don't waste your time. I guess they just WANT to believe we worship statues. For some reason they NEED to believe it. It just seems to me that a reasonable approach would be, "Okay I understand that you really don't worship statues but out of an abundance of caution we Protestants do not want to have statues." Now that is sensible. And the Catholics could say, "Fine there is no command from God that one must have statues." Debate over, understanding and tolerance all around.

[Theresa]

This is a great summation of what makes liberals tick!

"Bored with the spiritual life, and chafing under the apparent burdens of the moral law, the neo-modernist attempts to translate his ennui into a "spirituality" of "outrage" and "change". He cannot admit to being wrong, so the Church must be wrong. He does not change, so he is determined to reinvent the Church, conform it to his image. This is what he calls being "prophetic". It is tragic"

Now that just nails it!