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To: Mad Dawg
This is one of those arguments where everybody needs to take notes and agree on vocabulary.

Truer words are rarely spoken. Unfortunately, actually DOING this is hard work!

Catholicism is messy, like most organic things. It's not a crisp, clear, legalistic phenomenon with a lot of bright lines and a handbook which is in every instance applicable.

No disagreement from me here.

Similarly Constantine might even have thought of Himself as THE Big Enchilada, but the real enchiladas were more likely to say to each other "Bide your time," and, to him,"Yessir, that's very thoughtful of you, Sir, uh, Sir, would you mind putting down that legion? Or at least pointing it somewhere else?"

Disagreement here. I've read that at the First Council of Nicea, the delegate bishops who attended the initial audience with the Emperor were greeted with the sight of not just Constantine but more than a few soldiers with drawn swords. I gather he was a REAL and BIG enchilada. Perhaps that's why the "Eastern Orthodox" call him St Constantine.

522 posted on 10/27/2009 9:26:36 PM PDT by Poe White Trash (Wake up!)
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To: Poe White Trash
If I were a fresh Christian, and I'd read some of St. Athansius's polemic, I would martial a guard with submachine guns! And Athanaius was one of the good guys!

But I was trying to say that the holy < koff koff > bishops at Nicea couldn't fail to notice the drawn swords, but that probably (my guess) didn't lead them to think that he was the spiritual head of the Church. That's what I was trying to convey. So Constantine was "REAL" and "BIG" in an earthly sense, but, well, I'm not thinking that the bishops were too interested in his theological opinions, though they might have been ever so polite.

Hey! The D00d made Christianity legal! Let's give him SOME props ...

Mind you, legalization was probably the third great crisis and challenge for the Church, one with which we're still struggling.

536 posted on 10/28/2009 5:08:30 AM PDT by Mad Dawg (Oh Mary, conceived without sin: pray for us who have recourse to thee.)
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