Scripture, Tradition, and Rome (Part 1)

http://www.sfpulpit.com/2007/05/14/scripture-tradition-and-the-roman-catholic-church-part-1/ ^ | May 14th, 2007 | John MacArthur

[Mad Dawg]

Tell me which post it is you want me to look through and I'll try to find what you say is there.

(Why are we both up so late?

You stated in your opinion that if Communion is taken outside of the Catholic church it is not the full bore real thing. How is one to take those comments?

As the teaching of the Catholic Church? As a really good reason, if you ever decide we're right, to join up?

More seriously: as a serious, and even sorrowful, difference of opinion about ecclesiology between Catholics and Protestants and one which, if we are to obey our Lord's injunction, we ought to try patiently and long-sufferingly to understand - both our side and the other side or sides?

I KNOW it sounds weird. But then, God chose the Jews. He's weird! All those powerful nations, and learned cultures? And he chooses a bunch of people whose main claim to fame seems to be that they live on a piece of real estate that conquerors like to stomp on on their way to or from Egypt?

From most of the Catholics I know, especially myself, we're the last group I'd choose. But then, it's not about us, it's about Him.

You are trying to imply that if it is not of the sacraments of the Catholic church then they are not valid or as good,

I'm not "Trying to imply". I'm pretty much stating it outright and as frankly and clearly as I can.

do I believe that the bread and the wine are actual body and blood? No. Because it is done in remembrance of the Communion we have with Christ.

Oh Boy. Seriously. As estranged brothers who ought to be working carefully, picking their way gingerly but honestly through their differences in hopes that somehow God will lead them to reconciliation, we ought to be slow and careful and meticulous with this. Few things require more slow and careful deliberation than Eucharistic Theology.

Let me tell you a story (I'm old: I tell a lot of long pointless stories) about memory:

First part: I used to be an Episcopal Priest. I became persuaded that the Episcopal Church was as bogus as Bill Clinton's professions of chastity. I had a lot invested in that and I had to give it up.

Second: my wife and I were, as they say, sub-fertile. After grief and tears we finally had a wonderful little girl, conceived, I hasten to add, the old fashioned way.

Then, just as soon as the warranty ran out on the kid, she contracted what we were told was a fatal disorder which would kill her slowly and horribly. Well, the docs were wrong and after the worst year of my life we found the cure at Johns Hopkins. It was a diet that took all my patience to enforce and all my search and rescue first aid to monitor. As it was the 'orrible brat child had to be hospitalized once, and it was my search and rescue first aid stuff that led even the doc to see what was up.

Anyway, praise God, she got well, though not without some neuro hits, that make her testing charts funny because of the way the professionals wrinkle their brows when they look at them.

And she and I get along really well, even when she was thirteen! We make each other laugh. We say nice things to each other about each other. All that. Caring for her has been the most fun job of my life. Absolutely the best.

So one day, I succeeded, and it was time for her to leave home. And Reagan (kin ah git an AMEN!) National Airport is, like, inches way from my seminary.

So we drove to Alexandria the night before the kid's flight to California. And we kind of checked out my Seminary, which now has a lesbian homiletics prof. And then the next AM the kid leaves the nest. We've succeeded. And the price of success is bereavement.

The boss-lady and I go into the chapel and pray a tearful rosary together and drive home.

On the way home, I was so overcome with grief, having seen the corpse of my seminary and having smiled as the kid stretched her wings and flew, with strength and confidence, away from my care, that I didn't know where I was. I didn't know WHEN I was either.

Fortunately I had done a LOT of work with bereft people, so that while I was undergoing this, I could tell the boss lady what was going on. I'd seen it, I'd read about it. Now I was living it.

I knew what road I was on, but I didn't know what it meant. Was I on it, as I had been at different time, to shear a flock of sheep, to fly to a conference related to ministry (re returning home after the conference), or ... why was I driving on this road now?

Was I thirty years old and newly ordained? Was I in my mid-fifties and my kid is leaving home? was in in my forties and shearing sheep? WHEN was I?

I was cut adrift in time. What I yearned for, my eight year old daughter's arm around my waist and her smart-alecky and witty teasing, my 4 year old daughter's holding my hand as I bought her an ice cream cone, the first time she said, "I love you, papa," the "theme and variations" we played over the years on the family joke that I'd wanted a gold fish and the boss-lady had wanted a baby, and I caved," ... all gone.

Memory anchors us in our context, and lashes us with guilt and loss and pain. You won't catch THIS Catholic dissing the Eucharist as memorial. A true "memorial" is a thing of immense power, and that power is, in our opinion, an important part of the power of the Eucharist.

I wish I could persuade you that I am not comfortable or at ease saying, "Well, please excuse my saying so, but I really think our opinion is correct, and yours is lacking in some important respects. I hope you can pardon that and we can continue to converse, confident as I am that we both will benefit from good conversation."

I am not about "nanny nanny boo-boo," as a rule.

We have a difference of opinion. We both love and hope for the love of the same Lord. I am confident that I can learn from you, and that you can learn from me. There is, as far as I can see, no need for hostility, even if the rules permit it. That I think "my side" is right is no more of a put-down of your side, than your (as I assume) opinion that we are wrong. If we didn't disagree we'd be in bed by now. There's no need to be all "oppositional". People in the past treated religious differences stupidly. We are not obliged to do as they did.

[guitarplayer1953]

Who’s the boss lady?

[Running On Empty]

It’s hard for me to think you have to ask.

[guitarplayer1953]

If that is his wife then it is not a very Godly thing to call her. Any man who thinks His wife is his boss places her above Christ.

[reagandemocrat]

>>>Any man who thinks His wife is his boss places her above Christ.<<<

Did you mean to capitalize “His wife”?-— If the Church is Christ’s bride (ie “His wife”) then how can any man ignore her?

If you meant to say that Mad Dawg places his own wife above Christ, where did you get that idea from? I read virtually all of his posts, and have never gotten that notion.

But I’ve been wrong before—just ask the boss-lady here.

[guitarplayer1953]

From reading his long post and he referred to his boss lady I ask who that was and someone responded did I really have to ask? and I did not know really what they meant so I asked if he called his wife the boss lady in ignorance of who mad dawg was speaking of. Where I grew up in my family my father never called my mom except by her name no cracks about the old lady, the ol ball and chain or any of that he did call her babe and that was about it. So yes I have no idea of who the boss lady is.

[Mad Dawg]

This is what we refer to as a "joke".
  The word "joke" is derived from the same root as the Italian giocare, to play.

The example is similar to my calling my kid "the 'orrible brat child".

In "jokes" we say something different from what we actually mean in order to provoke amusement or even laughter from the person with whom we are speaking.

"Jokes" serve many useful functions, one of which is to help us enjoy humility by making it pleasurable to quit taking ourselves too seriously. Another is to point out the frequent contradiction between our affect and our thought. (For example, we are afraid of dentists, who usually are good for us, and we are not afraid of hot fudge sundaes, which are bad for us. That is silly.)

Finally, one of the surest and most reliable ways to become a "joke" ourselves is to fail to recognize the humor all around us.

My responding in this pedantic way to your question is another example of a "joke".

[Mad Dawg]

If you meant to say that Mad Dawg places his own wife above Christ, where did you get that idea from? I read virtually all of his posts, and have never gotten that notion.

Yeah! I'm too busy trying to get her to place me above dust bunnies.

(Note: This is another attempt at a "joke".)

[guitarplayer1953]

I normally can recognize a joke or a jab but not knowing you from the man in the moon I was at a loss of what the term meant.

I use to tell a joke of before I got married of how my bride to be had only cooked once for me and treated me like a god, the general response was oh she fixed you a fine meal and my response was no she gave me burnt offerings of chicken.

I told this until my wife told me how it made her feel and I've never told the joke again.

Now I simply tell people she loves me to much to cook for me. The inside joke is I was raised in restaurants and can cook better by the seat of my pants than most.

[Mad Dawg]

The burnt offering joke is a good one. But I can see how if you are a hot-shot cook and your wife isn't that the joke might be a tad painful. Anyway good for your wife for saying how she felt when you told the joke! And good for you for listening and accepting her account! (And lucky her to have a husband raised in restaurants!)

I'm going to start sharing my travel plans with you so that I can drop by your place for dinner sometime. Do you cook any particular cuisine or are you eclectic?

For our pre-marital counselling the clergyman who presided just went over the marriage vows and pointed out what we were promising. We lingered over the words "cherish" and "honor" and it has stuck with me for the 33 years since how important those vows are and how often they are overlooked as just some pretty words to say.

The boss-lady and I have also discussed what it means to be king, to wear the crown, and how we think the only crown fit for humans in this world is a crown of thorns, and how the perfection of crowns is to be cast down around the glassy sea.

Have a nice evening. I may get back again before bedtime, or maybe not ...

[guitarplayer1953]

Can cook about anything that moves and doesn't so to say. Prior to being married My pastor at the time who was only two years older than me yet wise beyond his years was like a older brother and we began a study of Eph 5:25

5:25 Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to sanctify her by cleansing her with the washing of the water by the word, so that he may present the church to himself as glorious – not having a stain or wrinkle, or any such blemish, but holy and blameless.

In the same way husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one has ever hated his own body but he feeds it and takes care of it, just as Christ also does the church,

There is a lot of meat in these verses and it took us over a year of study.