Posted on 01/08/2007 5:34:25 PM PST by dcnd9
Deliver Us From Evil Movie Synopsis: AND Movie Trailor: http://mcwindows.arcostream.com/media/arco/lionsgate/streams/windowsmedia/deliver_us_from_evil/dufe_Absolute_V18_Trlr_1B_300.wmv
"Deliver Us From Evil" is the story of Father Oliver O'Grady, the most notorious pedophile in the history of the modern Catholic Church. Completely lacking in moral fiber and devoid of any sense of shame or guilt, O'Grady used his charm and authority to violate dozens of faithful Catholic families across Northern California for more than two decades. His victims ranged from a nine month-old infant to the middle-aged mother of another adolescent victim.
Despite early warning signs and complaints from several parishes, the Church, in an elaborate shell game designed to avoid liability and deflect criticism, lied to parishioners and local law enforcement, while continuing to move O'Grady from parish to parish.
Over the years, O'Grady successfully exploited mothers and fathers in order to get to their children. His penchant for sexual mayhem was as essential to him as breathing, and internal Church documents prove that since 1973, he raped and sodomized with the full knowledge of his Catholic superiors.
Remarkably, "Deliver Us From Evil" filmmaker Amy Berg tracked down Father O'Grady and persuaded him to participate in the making of her film. O'Grady's account of his years in various Northern California parishes is chilling and he tells his story without remorse or self-reflection. Also included in the film is never-before-seen footage of the deposition of Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony and his former second-in-command, Monsignor Cain. She also interviews canon lawyer and medieval historian Fr. Thomas Doyle, former priests, lawyers and the abuse survivors themselves.
Director: Amy Berg Writer(s): Amy Berg Cast: Father Oliver O'Grady Release Date: October 13 2006 Official Site: Not Available Distributor: Lionsgate Genre: Documentary
Well, I certainly agree with that sentence, but I don't think the RCC believes it. No reformer is put forth as "infallible" and no Protestant is required to read or follow any of them.
Unlike your popes whom you believe to be infallible in matters of religion and whose dictates you must follow.
Actually, the RCC makes much more of the fact of the various Protestant demoninations than Protestants do. I rather enjoy the variety.
I also liked how Albion Girl described how she is investigating different faiths to see which fits. ("I'm a pilgrim searching for a good and loving pastor and a pilgrim who seeks to know God through His Son.") That's a very good thing to be.
"And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee." -- Psalm 9:10
LOL.
-A8
Jesus doesn't.
"that they may be one, even as We are" (John 17:11)
"that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee" (John 17:21)
"that they may be one, just as We are one" (John 17:22)
"that they may be perfected in unity" (John 17:23)
You just wrote yesterday that you think all Christians in the world should believe the teachings of the OPC. Now you say you enjoy the variety of having so many denominations. Which is it?
-A8
In American Evangelical culture it is now entirely normal and even expected to engage in what has come to be called church-shopping. One visits various churches and determines which best suits what one is looking for. One might consider the kind of community they offer, the child care, the quality of the preaching and music, the driving distance, the opportunities for one to contribute with one's own talents, whether they have home groups, etc. One weighs all the various factors and tries to decide which church best matches what one (and one's family) are looking for.
There is, however, an unconscious assumption that underlies this practice. That assumption is that none of the churches is the true Church. If one of the churches is the true Church, and the others are mere imitations (to some degree or other), then none of those other features (e.g. quality of preaching, music, child care, etc.) is relevant in determining where to be on Sunday morning. Only if there is no true Church do the other features become criteria. In short, only if there is no true Church does "church-shopping" become an option. Even the quest to find the true Church is entirely distinct from "church-shopping", because the criteria identifying the true Church are not the criteria examined when one engages in "church-shopping". The former are historical, substantial, theological, objective, and ecclesiological; the latter are practical, unsubstantial, experiential, individualistic, and subjective.
So the person engaged in "church-shopping" has adopted the relativistic assumption that there is no true Church, and therefore that one should simply find the church that best fits his or her own personal needs and tastes. In the proper order of inquiry, however, one can engage in church-shopping only after one has *established* that there is no true Church. But the relativism underlying the practice of church-shopping is simply assumed, never established. So the proper response to the church-shopper is to ask him why he believes that there is no true Church, or whether he has shown definitively that there is no true Church.
Church-shoppers treat Catholics as if Catholics are church-shoppers, as if the Catholic is a Catholic only because the Catholic finds the Catholic Church most satisfying to his personal needs and tastes, and not because the Catholic believes the Catholic Church to be the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church founded by Christ. The church-shopper is not trying to be rude or offensive; he simply has no concept of "the true Church", at least as anything other than the invisible Church, i.e. the "set of all believers". When the church-shopper discovers in dialogue that the Catholic is a Catholic, the church-shopper typically responds with sentences filled with the words 'you' and 'I'. "Oh, that's great for you. I'm glad you found a place that you like. I went to a Catholic service once, and it just wasn't my style." At that point in the conversation the Catholic is thinking, "Place that I like? What? That has nothing to do with why I am a Catholic. Wasn't your style? What? That has nothing to do with whether the Catholic Church is the one true Church that Christ founded." The two interlocutors are in entirely different conceptual worlds.
At that point in the conversation, the Catholic can either point out the conceptual chasm between the church-shopper and himself, or he can just nod and go on. The latter option is so much easier, because showing the church-shopper the conceptual chasm usually takes much more than a casual conversation; it requires an entire paradigm shift. And a simple comment like "No, I am a Catholic because I believe the Catholic Church is the one true Church that Christ founded" will come across as arrogant to the church-shopper, as truth claims in general come across to relativists. But we have an obligation for the sake of the Truth to help the relativists out of their error.
The Church is not a commodity, nor a man-made artifact suited to the various tastes of men, nor made to order for us. The Church is a divine institution given to us by Christ; it is the mystical Body of Christ Himself. The Church calls us to conform to it, not the other way around. One comes to the Church just as one comes to the Apostles, and just as one comes to Christ. Not with lists of requirements and demands that must be satisfied before one will enter and submit, like someone shopping for a car or a house. That approach reminds us of some of the 'ghosts' in Lewis's The Great Divorce. Whatever it is that must conform to one's own judgments, opinions and tastes before one will submit to it, is something man-made, something beneath and below us -- definitely not something divine. The true Church is not only made by God, but more importantly, she is joined to God as His mystical body. She is in that respect divine. And for that reason one should expect to have to conform oneself to her, not the other way around. That is why we do not 'shop' for the Church; the Church calls us to herself, to come naked and humble to the baptismal font. She calls us to "believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church teaches, believes and proclaims to be revealed by God", nothing less. If the requirement were anything less, whatever it was that we would be joining would be something other than the mystical body of Christ.
-A8
That was an excellent reply, A8.
I second it.
Not little errors, like singing the Psalms compared to the older hymns or even infant vs. adult baptism. Rome contains real errors, ones that God expressly warns us against.
•We are not to call any man "Father" but God.
•We are not to fall down to the stock of a tree in idol worship.
•We are not to believe anyone is a mediator between man and God but Jesus Christ.
•All men are sinners, including Mary.
•No man can forgive sins; only God.
•Scripture is God's word. Period.
•A celibate clergy is not advocated by Jesus Christ, but instead is indicative of a stunted view of human sexuality and leads to the massive, systemic perversion that began this thread.
•There is no head of the church but Jesus Christ.
•Inanimate objects such as wooden crosses and relics contain no supernatural powers, but instead are further evidence of a belief in the occult.
•There are only two sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ, Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
•Limbo and purgatory are fictions made up to keep men fearful.
But the really big error of Rome is that it tells you to believe the lie that men are justified by something other than the perfect sacrifice of Christ on the cross. This lie says somehow our own obedience saves us when the truth is we are saved by Christ's obedience alone.
When you get justification wrong, you might as well start over from square one because you've missed the heart of the Christian faith.
So again, I'll take just about any mainline Protestant church over any RCC because at least I know these errors are not being preached there.
As the Westminster Confession of Faith explains...
V. The purest Churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error; and some have so degenerated, as to become no Churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan. Nevertheless, there shall be always a Church on earth to worship God according to His will.IV. This catholic Church has been sometimes more, sometimes less visible.[8] And particular Churches, which are members thereof, are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the Gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them.
You say you've left the Protestant faith behind. More's the pity. From light to darkness is no way to live a life in Christ.
But the really big error of Rome is that it tells you to believe the lie that men are justified by something other than the perfect sacrifice of Christ on the cross. This lie says somehow our own obedience saves us when the truth is we are saved by Christ's obedience alone.
AMEN! Fix this huge heresy, and the others will take care of thrmselves.
How about in the late 16-17th century when the Cardinals of Rome kicked the Pope out of the Vatican and installed another Pope. The Church functioned with two Popes, one in France and one in Rome, for a while. If memory serves me correctly there might have even been three but I'd have to check that. Would you say there were divisions in the Catholic Church?
And even now there are divisions within the Church they don't wish to admit. The Vatican has all this fancy smancy doctrinal stuff that isn't worth the paper it's written on because it's not enforced.
What you propose is simply a straw man argument.
I couldn't agree more with this.
I do think Catholics church shop too though. They go from one Catholic church to another because one doesn't suit their taste and the other does: one is too liberal the other too conservative, they don't like one priest they do like another.
That said, I'd like to ask both of you to not include me in your responses to another poster or the to-ing and fro-ing that comes from that.
I know this post had to do with something I said, so the response is understandable, but I perfer to limit the pings in my New Forum Posts To You! to those I'm having a one-on-one conversation with. It makes it much easier to check messages -and then if nothing is there to exit forum- without having to sift through excess pings.
Are you suggesting that Protestants and Catholics are not "one" with Christ? This isn't what Vatican II states.
As Tertullian writes:
"For this reason we [Catholics] should not appeal merely to the Scriptures nor fight our battle [with the heretics] on ground where victory is either impossible or uncertain or improbable. For a resort to the Scriptures would but result in placing both parties on equal footing, whereas the natural order of procedure requires one question to be asked first, which is the only one now that should be discussed. 'Who are the guardians of the real faith? To whom do the Scriptures belong? By whom and through whom and when and to whom was committed the doctrine that makes us Christians?'"
And the answer is that the Scriptures were entrusted by the Apostles to the bishops, not to the heretics. That is why it is the bishops' interpretation that is authoritative, just as the authoritative determination of the canon comes from the bishops.
But you refuse to answer the question: 'Whose interpretation is authoritative?' If you want to review how evasive you are about this question, go back to #109 and read the dialogue. The reason you refuse to answer the question is because the question forces you to admit one of two things: either you think that *your* very own interpretation is authoritative (and you're ashamed to admit that you are that presumptuous, making yourself out to be effectively the pope even over your fellow Protestants who in any way disagree with your interpretations) OR you think that *no* one has the authoritative interpretation ['if I can't have it, then no one can'].
All the heretics of the first five centuries (e.g. Docetists, Ebionites, Gnostics, Marcionites, Cataphrigians, Montanists, Arians, monophysites, Donatists, Sabellians, Apollonarians, Eutychians, Nestorians, Pelagians, etc.) treated the Scripture's relation to the Church just as do you, usurping the interpretive authority of the bishops in order to justify disagreement with and separation from the Church. As Vincent of Lerins (434 AD) writes:
"And if one should ask one of the heretics who gives this advice, How do you prove [your assertion]? What ground have you, for saying, that I ought to cast away the universal and ancient faith of the Catholic Church? he has the answer ready, "For it is written;" and forthwith he produces a thousand testimonies, a thousand examples, a thousand authorities from the Law, from the Psalms, from the apostles, from the Prophets, by means of which, interpreted on a new and wrong principle, the unhappy soul may be precipitated from the height of Catholic truth to the lowest abyss of heresy.... Do heretics also appeal to Scripture? They do indeed, and with a vengeance; for you may see them scamper through every single book of Holy Scripture.... Whether among their own people, or among strangers, in private or in public, in speaking or in writing, at convivial meetings, or in the streets, hardly ever do they bring forward anything of their own which they do not endeavour to shelter under words of Scripture. Read the works of Paul of Samosata, of Priscillian, of Eunomius, of Jovinian, and the rest of those pests, and you will see an infinite heap of instances, hardly a single page, which does not bristle with plausible quotations from the New Testament or the Old."
Do you think they really believed they were heretics? Of course not. They thought their position was correct, and that everyone who disagreed with them was wrong. But what they all have in common is taking to themselves (as it were) the bishop's chair, taking to themselves an authority that did not belong to them, and thus imitating their father who in his pride also sought to usurp the divine throne (Isaiah 14). And your list of Catholic 'errors' is for that reason rather a self-indictment, a list of your own errors. Written behind that list of errors is the foundational error which goes back to the garden: "I am my own interpretive authority".
-A8
That should read: "is more authoritative than that of MY DENOMINATION..."
There. That's better.
Not to the same degree. By their faith in Christ and their proper baptism, Protestants are put in a certain, but imperfect, communion with the Church and with Christ. To be in full communion with Christ, one must be in full communion with His Church.
-A8
Which denomination is the true Church that Christ founded? (Or do you reduce the Church to the mere "set of all believers", or if not, do you teach that the gates of hell prevailed over the Church Christ founded?)
-A8
I think both sides have admitted that both sides were responsible. I hope you are not trying to use the schisms of others to justify your own.
How about in the late 16-17th century when the Cardinals of Rome kicked the Pope out of the Vatican and installed another Pope. The Church functioned with two Popes, one in France and one in Rome, for a while. If memory serves me correctly there might have even been three but I'd have to check that. Would you say there were divisions in the Catholic Church?
Yes. There have been antipopes at different times throughout history, even as early as the third century. But again, two wrongs don't make a right, and a past sin doesn't justify a present sin.
And even now there are divisions within the Church they don't wish to admit.
But they are still "within the Church". We still are one body because we partake of one bread. Those who have separated themselves from the Church, such that we cannot even share the Eucharist with them, are in schism. But those who disagree with each other, while remaining in the Church, are not in schism. Disagreement is not the same as ecclesial division.
What you propose is simply a straw man argument.
How so?
-A8
It will not be any church that claims Mary is the co-redemptrix.
Read the early Fathers. It doesn’t show up anyplace. (It doesn’t really show up until recently)
Therefore, any denomination that comes to that conclusion cannot be His Church.
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