[Mad Dawg]

Here's another way to look at it. The various documents produced by Vatican II have taken 4 decades to be, as it were, digested into the whole body, and some are still causing some indigestion here and there. The SSPX mentioned in this thread, and various groups of sedevacantes (folks who say currently there is no bona fide pope) arose in the wake of Vatican II and tried to resist or ignore the real results of the council, while other groups, in the name of something called "the Spirit of Vatican II" developed a whole range of practices and beliefs that were not intended by the council.

So I'm not surprised or scandalized by the resistance to the decision at Jerusalem, or by Paul's maybe taking the bit in his teeth and running with it.

We cannot bear the burden, encouraged I fear by our own rhetoric sometimes, of a sort of Disney-esque or Ozzy-and-Harriet vision of the Church at any time. Things were wild and woolly in the 1st Century and in most of the intervening centuries. While I admire the heck out of Paul for many reasons, I don't think I would have liked to negotiate with him.

TO me the importance of Acts 15 is that it was a council which not only reached a conclusion but which promulgated that conclusion as seeming good to the Holy Spirit as well as to the council participants.

We are castigated for the authority we think our apostolic leaders have. Our answer is that we see in Acts 15 precedent for that kind of authority. Our leaders are disobeyed now, those leaders were disobeyed then.

As to the letter's being political, my response is similar. It's in the movies or in paintings, but only rarely in real life, that everyone assumes the poses of classical sculpture, with their clothes draped just so, and light shining through a high window or a hole in the clouds on just the right people.

Real life is messy. The Catholic Church is VERY messy. when we say earthen vessels, we ain't kiddin' around.

[blue-duncan]

“Real life is messy. The Catholic Church is VERY messy. when we say earthen vessels, we ain’t kiddin’ around.”

You are beginning to sound like a Baptist. Do you have a favorite covered dish for the next pot-luck?

A while back when I was an Elder in my church we had meeting one night every week and sometimes on Saturday. Most of the elders were research Engineers, used to working collaboratively in teams and just brought that mind set into the church.

By nature I am a loner who likes to work alone and come to meeting having done the homework and expect the meeting to be short.

I fought this for 15 years and then the Lord took pity on me and provided a way out. Someone posted and article here on FR entitled “Meetings Make You Stupid”. I e-mailed it to all the Elders and Pastor and very quickly was asked to resign which I took as sort of my own “Damascus Road experience”.