Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
Wednesday, 11 July 2007
Yesterday's Reuters headline: "The Vatican on Tuesday said Christian denominations outside the Roman Catholic Church were not full churches of Jesus Christ." The actual proclamation, posted on the official Vatican Web site, says that Protestant Churches are really "ecclesial communities" rather than Churches, because they lack apostolic succession, and therefore they "have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery." Furthermore, not even the Eastern Orthodox Churches are real Churches, even though they were explicitly referred to as such in the Vatican document Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism). The new document explains that they were only called Churches because "the Council wanted to adopt the traditional use of the term." This new clarification, issued officially by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but in fact strongly supported by Pope Benedict XVI, manages to insult both Protestants and the Orthodox, and it may set ecumenism back a hundred years.
The new document, officially entitled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church," claims that the positions it takes do not reverse the intent of various Vatican II documents, especially Unitatis Redintegratio, but merely clarify them. In support of this contention, it cites other documents, all issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973), Communionis notio (1992), and Dominus Iesus (2000). The last two of these documents were issued while the current pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was prefect of the Congregation. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was born in 1542 with the name Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, and for centuries it has operated as an extremely conservative force with the Roman Catholic Church, opposing innovation and modernizing tendencies, suppressing dissent, and sometimes, in its first few centuries, persecuting those who believed differently. More recently, the congregation has engaged in the suppression of some of Catholicism's most innovative and committed thinkers, such as Yves Congar, Hans Küng, Charles Curran, Matthew Fox, and Jon Sobrino and other liberation theologians. In light of the history of the Congregation of the Faith, such conservative statements as those released this week are hardly surprising, though they are quite unwelcome.
It is natural for members of various Christian Churches to believe that the institutions to which they belong are the best representatives of Christ's body on earth--otherwise, why wouldn't they join a different Church? It is disingenuous, however, for the leader of a Church that has committed itself "irrevocably" (to use Pope John Paul II's word in Ut Unum Sint [That They May Be One] 3, emphasis original) to ecumenism to claim to be interested in unity while at the same time declaring that all other Christians belong to Churches that are in some way deficient. How different was the attitude of Benedict's predecessors, who wrote, "In subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the [Roman] Catholic Church--for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame" (Unitatis Redintegratio 3). In Benedict's view, at various times in history groups of Christians wandered from the original, pure Roman Catholic Church, and any notion of Christian unity today is predicated on the idea of those groups abandoning their errors and returning to the Roman Catholic fold. The pope's problem seems to be that he is a theologian rather than a historian. Otherwise he could not possibly make such outrageous statements and think that they were compatible with the spirit of ecumenism that his immediate predecessors promoted.
One of the pope's most strident arguments against the validity of other Churches is that they can't trace their bishops' lineages back to the original apostles, as the bishops in the Roman Catholic Church can. There are three problems with this idea.
First, many Protestants deny the importance of apostolic succession as a guarantor of legitimacy. They would argue that faithfulness to the Bible and/or the teachings of Christ is a better measure of authentic Christian faith than the ability to trace one's spiritual ancestry through an ecclesiastical bureaucracy. A peripheral knowledge of the lives of some of the medieval and early modern popes (e.g., Stephen VI, Sergius III, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI) is enough to call the insistence on apostolic succession into serious question. Moreover, the Avignon Papacy and the divided lines of papal claimants in subsequent decades calls into serious question the legitimacy of the whole approach. Perhaps the strongest argument against the necessity of apostolic succession comes from the Apostle Paul, who was an acknowledged apostle despite not having been ordained by one of Jesus' original twelve disciples. In fact, Paul makes much of the fact that his authority came directly from Jesus Christ rather than from one of the apostles (Gal 1:11-12). Apostolic succession was a useful tool for combating incipient heresy and establishing the antiquity of the churches in particular locales, but merely stating that apostolic succession is a necessary prerequisite for being a true church does not make it so.
The second problem with the new document's insistence upon apostolic succession is the fact that at least three other Christian communions have apostolic succession claims that are as valid as that of the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Churches, which split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054, can trace their lineages back to the same apostles that the Roman Catholic Church can, a fact acknowledged by Unitatis Redintegratio 14. The Oriental Orthodox Churches, such as the Coptic and Ethiopic Orthodox Churches, split from the Roman Catholic Church several centuries earlier, but they too can trace their episcopal lineages back to the same apostles claimed by the Roman Catholic Church as its founders. Finally, the Anglican Church, which broke away from the Roman Catholic Church during the reign of King Henry VIII, can likewise trace the lineage of every bishop back through the first archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine. In addition to these three collections of Christian Churches, the Old Catholics and some Methodists also see value in the idea of apostolic succession, and they can trace their episcopal lineages just as far back as Catholic bishops can.
The third problem with the idea of apostolic succession is that the earliest bishops in certain places are simply unknown, and the lists produced in the third and fourth centuries that purported to identify every bishop back to the founding of the church in a particular area were often historically unreliable. Who was the founding bishop of Byzantium? Who brought the gospel to Alexandria? To Edessa? To Antioch? There are lists that give names (e.g., http://www.friesian.com/popes.htm), such as the Apostles Mark (Alexandria), Andrew (Byzantium), and Thaddeus (Armenia), but the association of the apostles with the founding of these churches is legendary, not historical. The most obvious breakdown of historicity in the realm of apostolic succession involves none other than the see occupied by the pope, the bishop of Rome. It is certain that Peter did make his way to Rome before the time of Nero, where he perished, apparently in the Neronian persecution following the Great Fire of Rome, but it is equally certain that the church in Rome predates Peter, as it also predates Paul's arrival there (Paul also apparently died during the Neronian persecution). The Roman Catholic Church may legitimately claim a close association with both Peter and Paul, but it may not legitimately claim that either was the founder of the church there. The fact of the matter is that the gospel reached Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, and other early centers of Christianity in the hands of unknown, faithful Christians, not apostles, and the legitimacy of the churches established there did not suffer in the least because of it.
All the talk in the new document about apostolic succession is merely a smokescreen, however, for the main point that the Congregation of the Faith and the pope wanted to drive home: recognition of the absolute primacy of the pope. After playing with the words "subsists in" (Lumen Gentium [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church] 8) and "church" (Unitatis Redintegratio 14) in an effort to make them mean something other than what they originally meant, the document gets down to the nitty-gritty. "Since communion with the Catholic Church, the visible head of which is the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Peter, is not some external complement to a particular Church but rather one of its internal constitutive principles, these venerable Christian communities lack something in their condition as particular churches." From an ecumenical standpoint, this position is a non-starter. Communion with Rome and acknowledging the authority of the pope as bishop of Rome is a far different matter from recognizing the pope as the "visible head" of the entire church, without peer. The pope is an intelligent man, and he knows that discussions with other Churches will make no progress on the basis of this prerequisite, so the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the pope, despite his protestations, has no interest in pursuing ecumenism. Trying to persuade other Christians to become Roman Catholics, which is evidently the pope's approach to other Churches, is not ecumenism, it's proselytism.
Fortunately, this document does not represent the viewpoint of all Catholics, either laypeople or scholars. Many ordinary Catholics would scoff at the idea that other denominations were not legitimate Churches, which just happen to have different ideas about certain topics and different ways of expressing a common Christianity. Similarly, many Catholic scholars are doing impressive work in areas such as theology, history, biblical study, and ethics, work that interacts with ideas produced by non-Catholic scholars. In the classroom and in publications, Catholics and non-Catholics learn from each other, challenge one another, and, perhaps most importantly, respect one another.
How does one define the Church? Christians have many different understandings of the term, and Catholics are divided among themselves, as are non-Catholics. The ecumenical movement is engaged in addressing this issue in thoughtful, meaningful, and respectful ways. Will the narrow-minded view expressed in "Responses" be the death-knell of the ecumenical movement? Hardly. Unity among Christians is too important an idea to be set aside. Will the document set back ecumenical efforts? Perhaps, but Christians committed to Christian unity--Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike--will get beyond it. The ecumenical movement is alive and well, and no intemperate pronouncement from the Congregation of the Faith, or the current pope, can restrain it for long. Even if ecumenism, at least as it involves the Roman Catholic Church's connection with other Churches, is temporarily set back a hundred years, that distance can be closed either by changes of heart or changes of leadership.
Me too, dear 'pipe! Me, too.... It's an interesting analogy at least.
Try this scheme: (1)The union of soil and God's breath makes man a living soul.
(2)Man rejects the source of the life-giving breath. (3)Consequently the "integrity" of the union is fatally compromised and the body (aka "the flesh") manifests its disintegrative tendency, the tendency to, as we technically say, "croak".
(4)The neshemah, the Divine Flatus (no I'm not kidding, somebody really said that) is yielded back.
(5)In other words, human life as we come upon it empirically tends toward death, or 'title' to 'breath' is illegitimate and we cannot maintain possession. (Am I mixing enough metaphors here?
(6)Jesus also dies, gives up his ghost, and, IN PLACE of that former spirit which we sinners qua sinners never seemed to want anyway, gives us HIS spirit.
(7) Therefore St Paul says, You have died and your life is hid with Christ. Therefore he says, the Spirit prays within us. Therefore we are now a new body, Christ's body vivified with Christ's spirit.
So when St. Paul says nasty things about "the flesh" he is not being all gnostic and dualist and Platonic. Rather he is talking about what the flesh does, where it tends, when it isn't vivified with God's breath. It tends toward death. The "works if the flesh" tend toward death, etc.
In Christ, that tendency is accomplished. It's worked out all the way to its end. He gives up the ghost.
And if we join in a death like His we will join in His life. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. And, Christ being raised from the dead, will never die again, Death no longer has dominion over Him. For in that He died, he died to Sin once for all, but in that He lives, He lives unto God, So also you must consider yourselves dead unto sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ our lord.
And so also, the poor in spirit, those of us who have been given to see that we have zip, and such spirit as we have we already refused "in Adam", are blessed because he gives us His Spirit. And so We say, "I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.
I tend to like Sundays. They get me goin' ....
You can’t hear it, but your post got lots of applause.
Nonsense. You "do science" by the light of that absolute belief.
The greatest truth is not science, which is basically exponential conjecture. The greatest truth is God's will, at least for those given eyes to see and ears to hear.
All others pay cash.
"Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ." -- John Calvin
Amen. Which is just a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 3:15...
"That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been"
You continue to misstate the reformed position, Kosta.
A person's "innocence" has nothing to do with his salvation. All men are fallen and none deserves redemption. We are saved by God's unmerited mercy alone through the innocence, obedience and sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
See post 5,196.
I like Butterflys.. What a metaphor?..
LoL....
Yet many of the evos have stated that everything is consistent and has to be assumed to be for science to be properly done; that if there had been a change in laws, it would make doing science impossible.
Scripture clearly states that that HAS been a change in condition of the world; one time at the Fall when corruption set in, another time after the Flood, when conditions on the Earth changed.
Here we have another situation where scientists propose something that was addressed in Scripture thousands of years ago yet when it's in the Bible, it's scorned, but when they think of it, it's the latest in scientific progress.
Kind of like extra-terrestrials- very likely to exist (to the point of actually spending money on searching for them); angels and demons- mythology.
Alternate dimensions-the latest in cosmology; heaven and hell-propaganda designed for the manipulating of the ignorant unwashed masses but unscrupulous churchmen.
It seems to be a matter of who's proposing these concepts and what they're called as to whether the scientific community gives them any credibility.
That doesn't ring any bells as something I would say. :) And, from my readings of all the other posts, I can't think of anyone who has said that. Is this a paraphrase of something I said?
It departs from the Gospels and from much of the Bible, though, to discard the greatest of His creations - man - to roast in hellfire forever for His pleasure.
The Bible says that those who do not believe go to hell. That is God's justice, and those people get what they want. God's pleasure is to keep His justice pure. The alternative would be for Him to violate His own nature. It will never happen. It is inapplicable for anyone to suggest that anyone around here thinks that God somehow derives "jollies" when people go to hell.
There are other opinions:
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, a humbler heav'n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold!
To be, contents his natural desire;
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire:
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
I think there are many legitimate ways to frame the issue. This is one of them. I disagree with the Apostolic position on free will because it supposes that we are good enough or qualified enough to make the important decisions all on our own, with no more than an arm's length offer from God plus a nudge that is given to everybody. I never would have accepted that offer if that's all it was.
If our intended purpose [is] to freely worship God for ever, then we can’t do it if we are robot slaves.
Robots are not sentient beings, we are, so the analogy does not fit. I think the term "robot" is used by many who are uncomfortable with the idea of God being in control. People like to feel in control. ...... As to being slaves, the Bible says that before we were saved were slaves to sin, but after, we are slaves to righteousness. I think that is a wonderful idea, and want to forever be God's slave.
What? Of course they used the institution of the Church to do their evil. That's how they got the access. Of course they were not representing true Catholicism, however, they WERE using their positions of authority within the institution. Based on your theme (below), when you say that these clergy created their own religion, I surely hope you are not implying that the Reformers are to blame for the recent scandals in your Church. Please tell me that isn't the case.
I am saying that the Reformation made it possible to create religion to do evil and that the Reformers will have to answer to that.
How did the Reformation "make it possible" to create religion to do evil? The Reformation simply identified what the Christian faith was at the beginning verses what it had turned into. We aren't the ones who created any new religion. Plus, there were plenty of abuses and "evil" being done in the Latin Church long before the Reformation ever came along.
Nah, He has the model HG333 ETERNAL flame. Totally waterproof. :)
Thank you for pointing out the most glaring flaw of this man centered theology about who binds and loosens my FRiend.
Amen!
Who other than God creates something from nothing?
D-fendr: IIRC, it's along the lines of: where in the biological material process do we assign the creation non-material soul - in the sperm, DNA, sperm-egg union..?
Who is assigning creation? The soul is already created. It is merely being passed on. It's simple: life begets life. Living things give life to living things. There is no contradiction in the traducianist view.
The "organic process" issue seems, rather, to apply to the creationist belief, as it implies that somehow the body (actually the haploid cells and their DNA information), and not the soul, suffers the consequences of Adam's fall and, in a retrograde fashion, corrupts the pristine soul God gives to each newborn at the moment of conception.
The Church teaches that Adam suffered spiritual death, which in turn caused physical (somatic) death. It is the soul that quickens the body, not the other way around. The body of a spiritually pure human being will be reined in. Only a fallen, defective soul lets the body take over. God intended us to be moral creatures. The body does not move by morality, but by necessity. Obviously, in individuals where the "animal" predominates the soul is deeply wounded, defective.
I spoke unclearly. Not that it was the soul has parts, but that the causation of fallen nature was transmitted through the parent. Inherited in a sense.
It was not the body that fell, but the soul. A fallen soul left the body to follow necessity and not morality. Once a bus driver becomes sick, the bus "takes over" and the consequences are predictable. There is no chance the bus will stay on course or stop for pedestrians. Only a "rejuvenated" (healed) bus driver will prevent a certain tragedy. But at no time can one blame the bus. Our bodies cannot be blamed. They are simply how they were created. It is our soul that is ill and in need of healing. Surely, God wouldn't give us defective souls; our defective soul is that begotten from Adam.
It is not in our body that we differ from animals but in our soul. The body did not fall. How can the body be responsible for our fall? How can the body carry Adam's sin? How can DNA "receive" grace (ability to repent) or fall from it? The parents do not transmit just the body but the life that is in them, the fallen soul, which we all received through Adam.
The issue with the Immaculate Conception is, as you noted, related very much. To the Orthodox, the divine intervention that took away the effect of ancetral sin we all suffer (defective soul) also removed in her any concupiscence and therefore her immaculate obedience was achieved through no effort of her own, but through divine intervention. With her will restored (healed) she could resist temptation and remain ever-obedient.
Her immaculate self, which remains completely transparent,becomes meaningful only if she was born like any one of us, with ancestral sin, and through free choice despite tendencies to the contrary, remained perfectly obedient. This elevates her to her rightful place of being the highest of all saints and closest to God.
Immaculate Conception also implies that she was baptized in Spirit before she accepted Christ.
I forgot about the séances allegation! What a riot! The situation reminds me of the old story, the emperor's new clothes - because it is clearly obvious to most Lurkers that people only throw spit wads when they have no ammunition. LOL!
Your observation (paraphrasing) that biology is playing catch-up with quantum field theory (and geometric physics in general) is spot-on.
Those whose concept of reality is "matter in all its motions" - or that which can be observed from telescope to microscope - have bet their collective farms on something which has not yet either been observed or created, namely the Higgs field/boson which the Standard Model posits to explain ordinary matter (5% of the critical density of the universe.) So far neither Fermilab nor CERN have met with success but perhaps CERN's next test will. We'll see...
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