Who are you kidding??? Six months of candor and you are just now catching on. Get real. I've been candorous from day one.
The problem is that you don't know where the RCC really stands on anything because it keeps shifting when the ground beneath its position begins to crumble. But we do know one thing that it stands on --- and that is a pagan boneyard full of soothsayers beneath the Vatican where the bones of Simon Bar Jonah are nowhere to be found.
Speaking of candor, how come your own magisterium has withheld the truth about the discovery of the ossuary of Simon Bar Jonah on the Mount of Olives in the monastery of Dominus Flevit? When do you start requiring candor and truth from your own magisterium? When it's too late to do anything about it? Why is it that others have to provide it for you?
And why do you call facts: arguments? Do you know the difference? Is the ossuary of Simon Bar Jonah kept there at Dominus Flevit an argument or a fact???
***Speaking of candor, how come your own magisterium has withheld the truth about the discovery of the ossuary of Simon Bar Jonah on the Mount of Olives in the monastery of Dominus Flevit?***
Maybe because the monastery of Dominus Flevit doesn't hold the bones of Simon Bar-Jonah? We can question your assertion of his burial on the Mount of Olives just as much as you question his burial at the Vatican. Just because someone says the bones are Peter's doesn't make it so, but there HAS been a tradition for 2,000 years that he was buried in Rome, and there hasn't been a tradition for his burial on the Mount of Olives. Maybe the monastery was trying to drum up some pilgrimage trade and suddenly "discovered" some bones? Maybe the monastery was trying to undermine the authority of the Holy Father with this "discovery." It makes as much sense as your theory of Simon Magus being buried under the Vatican!
Easy there big fella? I know you disagree and now I'm getting a taste of the anger with which you disagree.
In answer to your question, I see an article put up by people who put up a lot of extremely dubious articles and who tried to parlay probabilities into certainties. The article is about an ossuary with "Simon Bar Jona" written on it in Aramaic. I am prepared to say that there is an ossuary with Simon Bar Jona written on it. I am NOT prepared to say it is the ossuary of the one we call Peter. To show that that is a fact would take an argument. I have not seen the argument nor been persuaded by it. I did see one eminent scholar refuse to declare one way or another on it. That may be what leads to you're saying I call facts arguments. From my point of view you appear to call hunches known facts.
As to the "candorous" thing, I do not think you have been very candid. This thread was started with one guy's humorously inept denunciation of the Catholic Church. You contributed some objections about Sabbath worship and then some of the Simon Magus line of thought, things of that kind. What got by me until now was what looks like very great contempt and anger at us. So my not getting that was what lead to my remark.
So as far as I know, I'm not kidding anyone.
While misuse of reason upsets me, and the specious presentation of guesses as certainties makes me angry, I am not upset by the existence of cults or denominations or what have you. A real live Baptist pastor and I met for a while on a regular basis to pray together, despite our profound differences in ecclesiology and other theological matters. Yeah, I think people ought to agree with me. No I don't think I have to conduct campaigns to persuade them to do so. If you want to worship on Saturday and think I'm a magician, have at it! We both think the other is wrong. Tra la!
But that's just not how people think about the Church. One of the things that led to my conversion was the amount of rage there seemed to be against the Church. Communism can kill 100 million people in a century while proclaiming that it has the means of salvation. And that's terrible, and so we all agree, as we pause and tut, and then go onto discuss March Madness
But if you want to see real salivating, wide-eyed, teeth-clenched anger, you have only to look at how people feel about the Catholic Church with, yes, it's massive imperfections, but also its universities and hospitals, schools and colleges. Catholic Countries get excoriated for enslaving indigenous South American peoples, while Protestantism get a pass when Protestant settlers nearly exterminate the north American aborigines. Isn't that interesting?
That seems to me to suggest that even those who hate us acknowledge, despite themselves, that we have a special vocation.
You might rethink this one. What church for over 2000 years now had stood against contraception, for pro-creation, against abortion, for life, against same-sex marriage, for marriage between a man and a woman, for families, against euthanasia, for keeping a person alive and now withdrawing life support systems, against women's ordination, for keeping the priesthood holy as Christ was holy?? Granted on that last one some priests fell into sin and followed their selfish desires -- but the church never changed their stance!
Which church -- the Catholic Church. There has been no shifting, no crumbling.