Attorney: Kentucky clerk Kim Davis met with pope

CBS News ^ | 9-29-2015

[Repent and Believe]

“You and I are not the ones to judge whether the conclaves of 1958 and thereafter,, and the Popes they elected, were invalid.”

Who were the passengers of flight 93 to judge that the new pilot from the middle east was not valid? He was sitting in the pilot’s seat was he not?

Or if you were on the flight where the validly installed co-pilot crashed the plane into the French Alps would you have just yawned and said “Who am I to judge that that co-pilot is not to be followed supported and obeyed”?

Likewise the faithful must judge the validity of their leaders when evidence to their validity is present, and do everything to alert others and stop the wolf from devouring the flock in the case where evidence indicates.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I can see how that would be confusing to many. However, one can be "all upset about Frank" inasmuch as he neglects or speaks ambiguously about Catholic doctrine, while at the same time recognizing his Petrine ministry of "confirming the brethren" when he upholds those same doctrines.

It's not the personality of the Pope that's authoritative. It's fidelity to the Truth.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Thanks, tanknetter. “Free exercise of religion” is certainly a priority which goes way beyond denominational or national boundaries. We need to pre4sent a united front on that.

[tanknetter]

Absolutely correct!

Infringement upon one’s rights are an infringement upon everyone’s rights. The issue here isn’t really same-sex marriage, thats just the catalyst. The real issue is the meaning of “free exercise” and the extent to which the government is allowed to restrict it. For anyone.

[daniel1212]

He has defenders here, while other imagine they do not have to give assent to all encyclicals, and pick and choose which Cath. teaching is valid based upon their judgment of past non-inspired teaching of Rome, while censuring evangelicals who do so from wholly inspired Scripture.

Those FReepers are defending Catholicism hoping for silver linings notwithstanding your antagonistic BS.

That all you have Gene? A mere spitwad of bare denial.

[daniel1212]

Kim Davis accepted that rosary like the gracious Christian lady she is. She's one of my heroes. I am glad she has a Catholic mother.

And JP2 graciously accepted a Qur'an to kiss, and to this day RCs criticize him for so doing.

"The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful. " James 5:16. Even if that person is in heaven.

Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. (James 5:17)

Go find even one prayer in Scripture by anyone but pagans that was addressed to anyone in Heaven but the Lord. Or even where they can hear all such (elders and angels offering up incense in memorial at the end is not it). Its right after the verse that says Ishmael was the child of promise, as Islam teaches . The difference in both heresies is in the matter of degrees.

[daniel1212]

What I continue to find fascinating is how FRoman Catholics continue to beat the straw horse that each Protestant is his/her own Pope, but then they all are upset about Frank. Tgey seem to think they are better Catholics than he is. Who are they to judge?

Indeed. We are told that we need to submit to submit to all Rome teaches, which includes following the pope in all public teaching, rather than ascertaining the veracity of Truth claims by Scripture, but then they disagree with the popes manifest interpretation of church teaching.

[Mrs. Don-o]

1. I am not one of those who so criticized JPII. Please read this (from Free Republic 2006!) and you will see what I mean:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1607763/posts?page=12#12

2. I don't understand your comment about Elias, as referenced in the Epistle of James. It seems unrelated to the discussion, as I don't think it has to do with the intercession of members of the Body of Christ, but perhaps you will explain.

3. The entire NT doctrine about the Body of Christ emphasizes that we are continually sharing spiritual goods with each other, continually praying for each other, continually bearing each others' burdens --- and that we all need each other. Jesus Christ clearly also teaches that the faithful who have gone on before us are not dead, because certainly they are all alive unto God. Therefore they are a part of this continual intercession.

It is this awareness that the Body of Christ really IS alive in the sense of His Church's continual giving and receiving of love in Him, which has inspired His Church from the beginning to pray for each other.

It appears to me that many don't quite see the church as the pillar and foundation of the truth, though the church is His Body and His Bride.

[daniel1212]

I am not one of those who so criticized JPII.

Regardless, a Christian should no more kiss a Qur'an or show such affection to that idolatrous book than he should do so to a figure of Dagon.

And JP2 certainly has been criticized by conservative RCs.

I don't understand your comment about Elias, as referenced in the Epistle of James.

It was the next verse after the one you quoted, and the point was that Elijah did not pray to anyone else but the Lord, nor did any other believer. The Lord Himself instructed, Our Father," not "Our mother." And the Spirit cries "Abba, Father," (Gal. 4:6) not "Mamma, Mother." Only pagans made supplications to other beings. To address anyone else in Heaven infer deity, thus Christ is prated to as the only Heavenly intercessor btwn man and God, and only God is shown having the power to hear the multitudinous prayers to Heaven.

The entire NT doctrine about the Body of Christ emphasizes that we are continually sharing spiritual goods with each other, continually praying for each other, continually bearing each others' burdens --- and that we all need each other. Jesus Christ clearly also teaches that the faithful who have gone on before us are not dead, because certainly they are all alive unto God

Therefore they are a part of this continual intercession.

Typical vain egregious extrapolation, as your premise utterly fails to warrant your conclusion. Outside being examples, the interdependence of the Body of Christ shown to be practiced on earth. Being alive in glory as part of the body of Christ simply does not translate into hearing prayers addressed to them and and making intercession in response! You have to know better than that.

The Bible nowhere teaches that the departed are dependent on us, nor that they are receiving prayer addressed to them, or still sharing things with us, nor even that any created being of Heaven could communicate with those in this realm unless both parties were somehow in the same realm in a personal encounter.

Only God is shown able to hear all the prayers of earth, whom believers can commune with without a earthly visitation of sorts

Yet despite the absence of even one single prayer to created beings in all the Bible, Caths presume to add as a doctrine what the Holy Spirit left out, despite prayer being a most basic practice, with about 200 prayers being recorded! So then they attempt to argue for it based upon the false premise of correspondence to earthly relations, as if complete, but which Scripture also fails to support.

It appears to me that many don't quite see the church as the pillar and foundation of the truth, though the church is His Body and His Bride.

What? You want to extrapolate the novel (in Scripture) practice of praying to created beings in Heaven out of 1Tim. 3:15?! That is specious desperation, and which incredibly presumes the Scriptures do not say enough on prayer so that you must cook it up out of false premises.

Give it up. You would be better off just admitting it is not of Scripture, but of tradition.

As French historian Jacques Le Goff states,

“It then becomes clear that at the time of Judas Maccabeus - around 170 B.C., a surprisingly innovative period - prayer for the dead was not practiced, but that a century later it was practiced by certain Jews.” — Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, p. 45, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I can't reply at length right now (I'm involved in another project) but I wanted to thank you for clarifying two things for me that I hadn't quite seen before:

First, you evidently thought I was trying to use Scriptures to show that people in the NT Church asked for the prayerful intercession of the saints in heaven. I did not try to do that, nor could I have done so: there's no example to be had in the text.

What the sacred text does provide, is the underlying theology: the Church as the whole Body of Christ praying together with our Head, a Body which includes those here on earth as well as those who have gone on before us. It is this solidarity of all for one and one for all -- in one Spirit, one Lord, one Baptism, one Body --- in Christ our Lord, which make it possible to pray with and be prayed for by the saints, whether on earth or in heaven.

Truly no intercessory prayer could possibly have meaning, or be efficacious, or "work" if we were not all praying in Christ. And His Body is not hampered by "dead clumps." All of us, on earth or in heaven, are members; nor, as St. Paul said, can we dare say we don't need each other.

So what I was doing was not providing examples, but explicating the underlying theology.

I liked your observation that the actual examples of such intercessory prayer are from Sacred Tradition and not from the text of the NT. This Sacred Tradition shows how the Church from the very beginning understood and acted on these truths.

Second, you provided me with an early example about which I would like to know more:

"It then becomes clear that at the time of Judas Maccabeus - around 170 B.C., a surprisingly innovative period - prayer for the dead was not practiced, but that a century later it was practiced by certain Jews." --French historian Jacques Le Goff.

I had been thinking that the earliest examples we have of praying for the dead, and of being prayed for by those in heaven, were the following:

• 2 Macc 12:35-49 (where the Jews pray and offer sacrifices for the souls of the fallen soldiers) and

• 2 Macc. 15:11-16 (where both the martyred priest Onias, and the great prophet Jeremiah, are seen in heaven "in a vision worthy of belief," paying and interceding for the Jews in their battle against the pagan idolators.)

What Jacques Le Goff makes of this I do not know, but you quote him saying that by a century after Judas Maccabeus (about 70 BC), you find Jews praying for the dead.

You seem to be familiar with this De Goff's writings. What evidence does he proffer that there were Jews circa 70 B.C. were praying for the dead?

The earliest examples I can find, aside from that, are from the inscriptions on the Catacombs, 2nd-rd century A.D. That's not to say there isn't textual evidence, too, from Ante-Nicene writings, but not that I have seen.

[daniel1212]

wanted to thank you for clarifying two things for me that I hadn't quite seen before: First, you evidently thought I was trying to use Scriptures to show that people in the NT Church asked for the prayerful intercession of the saints in heaven. I did not try to do that, nor could I have done so: there's no example to be had in the text.

I was not simply referring to the conspicuous absence of even one prayer among the approx. 200 the Holy Spirit recorded in Scripture, which incongruous absence itself for such a basic common spiritual exercise is so profound as to exclude praying to anyone else but the Lord as being sanctioned, but i was also referring to attempts to such it based upon principle.

What the sacred text does provide, is the underlying theology: the Church as the whole Body of Christ praying together with our Head, a Body which includes those here on earth as well as those who have gone on before us. It is this solidarity of all for one and one for all -- in one Spirit, one Lord, one Baptism, one Body --- in Christ our Lord, which make it possible to pray with and be prayed for by the saints, whether on earth or in heaven.

Which is simply more of the same elastic extrapolation of Scripture ("wrest" 2Pt. 3:18), as the unity of the body of Christ, even if it allows for believers in glory interceding for those on earth, does not translate into or support praying to them.

Only God is prayed to in Scripture, and abundantly so, and we are only instructed to address Him in prayer, and only He is shown able to hear and personally respond to the multitudinous prayers addressed to Him.

In addition, among spiritual beings, outside of false gods, only He is shown receiving such adulation, homage and entreaty that is given to Mary.

As said before, one would have a hard time in Bible times explaining kneeling before a statue and praising the entity it represented in the unseen world, beseeching such for Heavenly help, and making offerings to them, and giving glory and titles and ascribing attributes to such, which are never given in Scripture to created beings (except to false gods), including having the uniquely Divine power glory to hear and respond to virtually infinite numbers of prayers individually addressed to them

Which manner of adulation would constitute worship in Scripture, yet Catholics imagine that by playing word games then they can avoid crossing the invisible line between mere "veneration" and worship.

Moses, put down those rocks! I was only engaging in hyper dulia, not adoring her. Can't you tell the difference?

I liked your observation that the actual examples of such intercessory prayer are from Sacred Tradition and not from the text of the NT. This Sacred Tradition shows how the Church from the very beginning understood and acted on these truths.

What is there to like? This is one example of one of many errors that developed in post OT Judaism with its many fables and superstitions, and which the NT warns of.

You affirm one thing as Sacred Tradition but cannot sanction all that comes in the cart, and which means that the real basis for the veracity of prayer to created being in Heaven such is the infallible magisterium of Rome. RCs invokes Scripture and Tradition to support this, but which operates under the premise that one one cannot be sure what the contents of Divine revelation are apart from faith in her.

For Rome has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares.

I had been thinking that the earliest examples we have of praying for the dead, and of being prayed for by those in heaven, were the following: 2 Macc 12:35-49...2 Macc. 15:11-16

Which comes from books which were disputed as canonical until after the death of Luther, and in the first instance supports offerings and prayers being made for souls who die due to mortal sin, for which Rome holds there is no hope, despite RC special pleading here.Thus if anything this apocryphal book proves too much.

Nor does this teaching praying to the departed or angels, which remains the issue, not whether the departed may pray for those on earth. Why RCs move the goal posts is obvious.

What Jacques Le Goff makes of this I do not know, but you quote him saying that by a century after Judas Maccabeus (about 70 BC), you find Jews praying for the dead. You seem to be familiar with this De Goff's writings. What evidence does he proffer that there were Jews circa 70 B.C. were praying for the dead? The earliest examples I can find, aside from that, are from the inscriptions on the Catacombs, 2nd-rd century A.D. That's not to say there isn't textual evidence, too, from Ante-Nicene writings, but not that I have seen.

2 Macc was penned about 124 B.C. (est.) Le Goff finds:

PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD Christians seem to have acquired the habit of praying for their dead at a very early date. This was an innovation, as Salomon Reinach nicely observes: "Pagans prayed to the dead, Christians prayed for the dead." Now, it is of course true that beliefs and mentalities do not change overnight, so it should come as no surprise that we do find instances, particularly in the domain of popular belief, in which non-Christians prayed for the suffering dead in the other world....

These practices developed around the beginning of the Christian era. They were a phenomenon of the times, particularly noticeable in Egypt, the great meeting ground for peoples and religions. Traveling in Egypt around 50 s.c., Diodorus of Sicily was struck by the funerary customs: "As soon as the casket containing the corpse is placed on the bark, the survivors call upon the infernal gods and beseech them to admit the soul to the place received for pious men. The crowd adds its own cheers, together with pleas that the deceased be allowed to enjoy eternal life in Hades, in the society of the good."

"The passage cited earlier from the Second Book of Maccabees, which was composed by an Alexandrian Jew during the half-century preceding Diodorus's journey, should no doubt be seen against this background." It then becomes clear that at the time of Judas Maccabeus--around 170 s.c., a surprisingly innovative period—prayer for the dead was not practiced, but that a century later it was practiced by certain Jews. No doubt it is in relation to beliefs of this type that we should think of the strange custom described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:29-30: "Else what should they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?" This baptism for the dead was not the Christian baptism but rather the baptism received by Greek proselytes who converted to Judaism.

The abundant epigraphic and liturgical evidence available for the first few centuries of the Christian era has often been used to prove that belief in Purgatory is very ancient indeed." But it seems to me that the interpretation goes beyond the evidence. The favors that God is urged to grant the dead essentially involve the pleasures of Paradise, or at any rate a state defined by pax et lux, peace and light. Not until the end of the fifth century (or the beginning of the sixth) do we find an inscription that speaks of the "redemption of the soul" of one who is deceased.

The soul in question is that of a Gallo-Roman woman from Briord, whose epitaph includes the phrase pro redemptionem animae suae.s. Furthermore, the inscriptions and prayers make no mention of a specific place of redemption or waiting other than the one traditional since the time of the Gospels, the "bosom of Abraham." But in order for the idea of Purgatory to develop, it was essential that the living be concerned about the fate of their dead, that the living maintain contacts with the dead, not in order to call on them for protection, but rather in order to improve their condition through prayer. - The Birth of Purgatory By Jacques Le Goff. pp. 45,46 , transcribed using http://www.onlineocr.net.