Posted on 08/02/2007 8:25:20 AM PDT by NYer
FROM GERMANY
FROM SWITZERLAND
during Mass at a Catholic Church in Switzerland.
My eyes aren’t particularly good. Are all of the girls in the chorus line female? The tall one in the middle looks like it might be a male.
The wait is over, Harley, and has been for some time.
Among others, Pope Paul II (1464-71); Pope Julius II (1503-13); Pope Leo X (1513-1521): and Pope Julius III (1550-55) were all homosexual.
Cardinal della Casa's poem, "In Praise of Sodomy," was even dedicated to Pope Julius III.
It looks like those carpets have been mauve for centuries, although that may be due, in part, to all the spilled blood.
Looks like they’re trying to imitate those late Medieval “Feast of Fools” Masses where people banged pots and pans and a donkey was brought to the altar.
To tell you the truth, I’d just walk out of a Mass like this. It would likely be invalid and certainly illicit. I’d walk out and tell my confessor about it at Confession.
And where did that get Luther? Today, there are more than 33,000 Christian denominations, none of which agree with each other ... and more springing up each day.
Protestant blood-letting is minuscule compared to that in the RCC as history confirms.
And while your "double letters" is an interesting observation, the truth is no Protestant believes Bakker, Swaggart, Haggard, nor any man on earth is infallible, or that there is any mediator between man and God but Jesus Christ.
When Catholics begin to understand this, they will, by the grace of God alone, be on the road from darkness to light. The only "chance" a man has of "converting to Protestantism" is if God gives him ears to hear and eyes to see and a new heart with which to believe his salvation is by Jesus Christ alone.
As God wills.
Try this one just yesterday and read some of the RCC posts concerning Baptists and Protestants.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1874746/posts?page=1,50
Oh Lord, not this old wives' tale again. "More springing up each day?" We've been holding steady at 33,000 to 36,000, after dropping from a high of over a million denominations in the first quarter of this year!
Mimes must die.
Correction:
Today, there are more than 33,000 Christian denominations [Catholic Freepers on Free Republic], none of which agree with each other ... and more springing up each day.
Hey, it doesn’t bother me if people (of any faith) have a laugh at the expense of these massclowns. These doofwads have made a mockery of the mass, and they deserve to be mocked in return — and I say that as a faithful Catholic.
“Today, there are more than 33,000 Christian denominations, none of which agree with each other ... and more springing up each day.”
By this definition there are 33,002, counting RCC and Orthodox.
“A religious denomination (also simply denomination) is a subgroup within a religion that operates under a common name, tradition, and identity. The term is frequently used to describe various Christian denominations (for example, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and the many varieties of Protestantism”
1 Cor. 3:3-9, “For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.”
1 Cor. 12: 18-29, “But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body.”
I have no problem with that, believe made. But it’s tragic when people who already have vendettas against the Church use it to smear her (but perhaps to be expected). But I think we have to be careful what we say to and about folks of other religious, so as to be careful not to drive them away. I’ve been guilty of making snarky or angry comments in religious debate that I later felt sorry for because I realized it only damaged my credibility.
They're steamed about the recent Vatican document restating the Catholic Church's belief that it alone is the true Church founded by Jesus.
They'll be high-fiving it around threads like this for a while. Don't sweat it.
That was the OT, Jesus fulfilled the old law PERFECTLY for us. Just because something is old does not mean it is correct,
Gal 3:24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster [to bring us] unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
One of the problems with the Catholic Church is that it is looking for an OT salvation and not the one given by Christ.
I am not talking about the Old Law. I am talking about the posture of obedience to lawful authority in forms of worship, which is always a good virtue to foster and leads, just like it did for 1300 years with the Israelites/Jews, to liturgical and theological stability. God ordered certain things to be done in the Old Testament because He knew that such rituals were a means to the end of fidelity. The strictness and potential punishment, even, were in place because the Israelites were not the beneficiaries of the same graces available to us after the Cross. But, while the strictness of “penalty” in the old rituals is removed in favor of grace, it is still true that ordered worship according to properly established norms achieves the same effect of continuity, unity and fidelity that was the whole *point* to even the Old Testament rituals. THAT is why we do what we do, to transmit faithfully the *same* Faith down through the generations, even aftr two millenia.
We live under grace, not under the Law. But transmitting the Faith through the ages even under the rule of grace requires uniformity of worship, in order to demonstrate unity of belief. Lex orandi, lex credendi. We have it.
You seem rather obsessed with chasing this statistic across the website, and you continually cite as a mere polemical ploy the obvious hyperbole of “over a million denominations,” and combine it with the approximations inherent in ranges like the 33,000 to 36,000 you referto now. Look, I doubt seriously that anyone can come up with an *exact* number of denominations, but the figure usually touted around here of 33,000 is taken from a work written by Protestants, the World Christian Encyclopedia. Here are two sites (there are dozens available in a simple Google search) that cite the same figures and source, the first is Catholic, the second is non-Catholic: http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/a120.htm
http://www.uniquebiblestudy.com/topic41.htm
Whether the criteria for defining a denomination meet your standards or not, some people, at least, can honestly come to the conclusion that the splitting of Christian bodies can tally to these kinds of numbers. I’m not so sure that I myself would agree that the nuances of differences between some bodies constitute actual “speciation” in denominations. But, clearly, there are hundreds and hundreds, at least, of definitively separated groups. That is more to the point, rather than quibbling about whether the tally - only an estimate anyway - goes up or down weekly like the Dow Jones averages
Remind me to make the same statement about Catholics the next time they "obsess" over how veneration is not worship.
Look, I doubt seriously that anyone can come up with an *exact* number of denominations, but the figure usually touted around here of 33,000 is taken from a work written by Protestants, the World Christian Encyclopedia.
According to your first link, if we accept that there are 33,000 denominations, we must also accept that there are "242 total Roman Catholic denominations (year 2000 numbers)", as both claims are found in the same source. Both your Catholic apologist and myself take issue with the fast-and-loose nature of Barrett's statistics, though. Regardless of how many times it's been debunked, however, Catholics here on FR continue to cite Barrett's work blindly (usually not even knowing the source) to dismiss all Protestants.
Although this may fall on deaf ears, you should know that the Barrett work doesn't refer to 33,000 denominations as Catholics claim, but rather it speaks of 33,000 organizations, of which (as mentioned above) there are 242 Catholic ones among them. If you accept the one number, you have to accept the other. That armchair Catholic apologists continue to cherry-pick Barrett's work, gleefully citing the larger number as authoritative about Protestants while dismissing the smaller number because it suits them to, speaks volumes about the credulity of Catholic apologists and their work.
You once savaged an article saying "If it can’t be trusted to speak truthfully of Catholicism even beyond the first line, this article is worthless for whatever “truth” it seeks to impart as a goal. It’s disingenuous tripe, fit for the bird cage floor." I suggest you take your own advice re Barrett, and stop defending the indefensible.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.