Who are the Catholics: The Orthodox or The Romanists, or both?

Me

[the_conscience]

I just witnessed a couple of Orthodox posters get kicked off a "Catholic Caucus" thread. I thought, despite their differences, they had a mutual understanding that each sect was considered "Catholic". Are not the Orthodox considered Catholic? Why do the Romanists get to monopolize the term "Catholic"?

I consider myself to be Catholic being a part of the universal church of Christ. Why should one sect be able to use a universal concept to identify themselves in a caucus thread while other Christian denominations need to use specific qualifiers to identify themselves in a caucus thread?

[Petronski]

Romans 3:23 does not contradict any Catholic doctrine.

Don’t you ever get tired of being so haplessly, relentlessly wrong?

[annalex]

Yes, that is usually the one. Read how all are supposed to have “feet quick to shed blood”, and hown “none seeks God”, and find the psalm being quoted. Them find the psalm next to it, that praises the people who are of the opposite makeup. Than tell me how this passage contradicts the righteousness of Noah, St. John the Baptist, Mary, or any biblical saint.

[Cronos]

""Same with God’s elect. Same with the un-elect." So sayeth the Bhagavad Gita.

It is better to do one's own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

31-38
The Kshatriya’s duty to engage himself in battle (to fight).

Then, in chapter 11: verses 33 & 34, Krishna says that he has prearranged the deaths of Arjuna’s irreligious enemies. If deaths can be prearranged, anything can be prearranged, and if that is the case, why Krishna doesn’t prearrange all good in the first place? Doesn’t Krishna – the governing principle of the material manifestation, as he claims himself to be in Chapter 7: verse 30 – do this for his own despicable enjoyment? If he were really good and noble, he would only create numerous pleasant (mental) states of self-realisation – the thing that he hails throughout Gita, including Chapter 3: verse 17 & Chapter 4: verse 35 – and not any of suffering. Isn’t, therefore, Lord Krishna – being responsible for unfathomable violence and suffering – satanic?

[annalex]

Make an investment in wrong, and you’ll wait for your ship to come in quite tirelessly.

[Cronos]

We have the same will God has.. again does God have a free will?

God has "ultimate" will, He IS will. If by free will we mean the choice to choose whatever action we want to do, then God does have that -- and more. By granting us the ability to choose, that does not in any way negate or denigrate God's own will, omnipotence and omniscience.

Why He doesn't keep us as marionettes, I don't know, but God does.

[the_conscience]

I have never seen a passage from the Bible, taken in its close context, that contradicts any Catholic doctrine

You mean like this one:

However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.

Dude, you're scaring me.

[Cronos]

It is simply impossible to worship the God of Abraham while denying Christ.

A flaw in your argument -- Jews DO that and we can't deny that they worship the God of Abraham.

[Petronski]

That does not contradict any Catholic doctrine.

[Cronos]

Did Calvin get his teachings from ISKCON?

In the Bhagavad Gita, Ch.4, Verse 13 The Lord says:

"The fourfold caste has been created by Me according to the differentiation of Guna and Karma;"

In the Bhagavad Gita, Ch.18, verse 40 the Lord says:

"There is no being on earth, or again in heaven among the gods, that is liberated from the three qualities born of Nature."

Gita Ch. 18, V.41: "Of Brahmanas, Kshtriyas and Vaishyas, as also the Sudras, O Arjuna, the duties are distributed according to the qualities born of their own nature."

[Cronos]

God can’t sin because sin is the anti-thesis of God. So what God wills or does is GOOD. God is not a slave to his Divine Nature, not an automaton.

[Iscool]

Well, you just saw the scripture that does not agree with this opinion of yours. Perhaps you should produce your own mistranslation, every one else already has one.

HaHa...That's why you have to compare scripture with scripture..

So when Paul says he is with the Lord when he's absent from the body he was lying, eh??? You just throw that part of the scripture away so you can pick a single verse which, by the way, contradicts the other verse you stuck with it...

You guys are a trip...You can't read the scriptures like you read a dime store novel...

[the_conscience]

According to annalex’s methodology it does.

[Cronos]

A tenet of Hinduism is that God was born of a giant serpent egg, was first out of the nest and ate up the others. Is this the God of the bible?

I dunno, maybe that's calvinGod?

But seriously, NL pointed out the similarities in the concept of an elect to the idea of a fixed caste system of the Gita.

[Petronski]

That's for annalex to say, not you.

[Iscool]

Don’t you ever get tired of being so haplessly, relentlessly wrong?

I am certainly happy counted as being wrong from anyone from your religion...

[annalex]

1 What shall we say then that Abraham hath found, who is our father according to the flesh. 2 For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory, but not before God. 3 For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was reputed to him unto justice. 4 Now to him that worketh, the reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to debt. 5 But to him that worketh not, yet believeth in him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reputed to justice, according to the purpose of the grace of God.

(Rm 4:3-5)

What is my problem, supposedly? If Abraham did his works by his own calculations, that would be his debt to the Providence, but as he did his works by faith with no self-serving calculus, it is his salvific work. You think crossing the desert and sacrificing one's son is no work? What desert have you crossed?

[Petronski]

Then you are thrilled when Christians recognize your ineptitude.

[the_conscience]

He gave his methodology in 2387.

[Cronos]

Actually, Hinduism started out as a purely Aryanic religion (the Gods of the Vedas are similar to the Gods of the Hittites and the Nordic gods and the Irani pre-Avestani gods) with their two families of gods: Ahuras/Asuras/Aesir and Devas/Daevas/Vanir. Then it merged with Dravidian religions and you got Shiva and Vishnu and then it added on various ideas from Greeks and also from local kings and queens who fought against the invasions of the Greeks, Kushans, White Huns, Scyths etc. (the goddess Devi for example)

[Petronski]

Yes he did. And you're still wrong. You're extra wrong.

You're almost Iscool wrong.