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?

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Makes as much sense as anything else. 8~)

[Mr Rogers]

“I believe wmfights narrative is much truer to history.” / “My children (except for the oldest two) belive in Santa Claus.”

Santa Claus has about the same historical validity as Papal Supremacy. Peter and Paul had been dead a LONG time before the Bishop of Rome started calling himself “Vicar of Christ”.

The Apostles may not have prohibited a hierarchy, but neither did they establish one above the congregation, apart from Apostles.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

I just noticed that the photo of the pope bowing to a statue has been removed. I didn't know that website was off-limits. It was just on Google Images (along with a thousand others when I searched "Roman Catholics bowing to a statue.")

The statement was made on the forum that Roman Catholics do not bow to statues. As this photo shows, this Roman Catholic bows to statues...

[Forest Keeper]

Dr. E.: “But we know that if God has numbered someone to be one of the elect, that person will succumb to the persuasion of God at a time of God’s choosing. It could not be otherwise, if God is sovereign.”

Mr. Rogers: Dr E, you are the one denying the sovereignty of God. You presume to tell God what His will is...and that it is to require men to obey.

I don't understand your objection. Dr. E.'s statement amounts to: "If God is sovereign and if God wills that a person is to be one of His elect, then everything that needs to happen WILL happen such that the person will be among the elect." So here, God's will is known. From your post, it looks to me that you are objecting to this by saying that it is God's will that man have the ability to thwart God's will.

Please correct me if that is not what you are saying. But if it IS what you are saying then I can only ask if this really describes a sovereign and loving God to you? The Bible tells us that God's will is "good, pleasing, and perfect" (Rom. 12:2). If that is so, then how can it be argued that God is showing love to us by submitting that good, pleasing and perfect will under the will of man? It would be like loving a two-year-old by submitting to his will to play in traffic. Is that love? :)

[Iscool]

Your posts are not God's words. They are largely or surpassingly in error, as our recent exchanges have shown.

Ha...Because you disagree with me I am in error...And you don't believe the scripture I post is scripture...Guess you can believe what you want to...

Care to talk to about Antioch further?

Antioch??? You still hanging on to that one??? What is interesting tho is you have no problem telling me I'm wrong but you fail to correct me, other than to say Antioch is in Turkey, which didn't exist at the time of the Apostles...

I can only assume that you can't tell my why I'm wrong...

[Dr. Eckleburg]

From your post, it looks to me that you are objecting to this by saying that it is God's will that man have the ability to thwart God's will.

Yep. That's exactly what seems to be asserted. It's nonsensical. If God is sovereign, nothing can thwart His divine, perfect and just will, ordained from before the foundation of the world.

Arminians would have us believe there is a moment in time or outside of time that God was waiting for men to choose Him, and that kind of by-stander Logos is fiction. And scary. Who wants a God who isn't in control of His creation?

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Your post in indecipherable.

[Quix]

Santa Claus has about the same historical validity as Papal Supremacy. Peter and Paul had been dead a LONG time before the Bishop of Rome started calling himself “Vicar of Christ”.

The Apostles may not have prohibited a hierarchy, but neither did they establish one above the congregation, apart from Apostles.

#####

INDEED. WELL PUT.

I think Christ showed HIS attitude toward bureaucratic hierarchical RELIGION when he contended with the RELIGIOUS RULERS 2000 years ago.

[Iscool]

Paul is one of the two greatest Apostles of the Church. He saved the Church when it was headed for oblivion by bringing it to the pagans and Gentiles.

So you're saying that the churches were falling apart under the leadership of Peter...After all, one of your favorite claims is that Peter is the one who brought the Gospel to the Gentiles...

And how could the church have been headed for oblivion??? The gates of hell could not prevail against it, remember???

[Dr. Eckleburg]

But in order to call one's self a Christian, one must believe in Christ.

Yes, and as He tells us -- "only Christ."

Repent of praying to Mary and statues of saints and calling your priests "another Christ."

[Dr. Eckleburg]

that's your hat slipping down

ROTFLOLOLOL!!!

I'm so behind on this thread and I'm missing a lot of Spiritual truth. 8~)

[Mad Dawg]

The problem is one which demands incredible self scrutiny. Sometimes we read the Bible paying attention to Paul's diction and subject matter, and to the forms generally. Other times we get almost like the Jehovah's Witnesses who seem willing to cobble together an argument with a verse from here and a verse from there. But all of it makes this kind of argument difficult.

I do not see any rebuke in Mary's remark to Jesus. I didn't see a rebuke before I was a Catholic, and I don't see one now. So while that text under a certain understanding MIGHT BE construed to contradict the Integrated Circuit, uh, I mean Immaculate Conception, it does not necessarily do so.

And ignorance is not intrinsically sinful. One could be really dumb and sinless. In fact, I think I own a cat like that.

So we have PROBABLE or POSSIBLE readings but they're only dispositive if their interpretation is certain.

Personally, while I think Paul comes as close to real theology in Romans as he does anywhere, I still think it's forcing things to suggest that he meant something like a proposition expressible in Boolean logic. ALL elements of the set MEN where the set excludes MEN who are also GOD, have sinned.

He's quoting Psalms for crying out loud. They are a kind of poetry.

It would seem that Catholicism would be forced to claim there is an override from extra-Biblical Tradition, but not from scripture.

Well I wouldn't say "override" exactly.

This is going to upset folks, especiaally those whose Church history imagines that canon of "the Bible" was very rapidly closed and the scrolls or codices were distributed around and about by the end of the first century, I just don't think it went down like that.

I think from the beginning written tradition has made part of a dynamic system with verbal tradition (which became extra-canonical tradition.) I just don't think the Church ever looked to Scripture alone to determine doctrine.

So, it looks like your default pattern is, FIRST draw the best conclusion we can from Scripture alone. THEN, if other paradosis contradicts what we got first, toss it out.

But I'd say all along the Scripture has been the Queen of Tradition, but it has not been read outside of tradition.

And, as a reminder to the peanut gallery, the Dogma as defined is very clear that Mary needed Jesus as her savior. As we have said in these threads easily a dozen times the person who falls into the bog is saved by being pulled out. But a person can be saved by being caught before she falls in. In both cases there is a Savior.

And, since the Magnificat is part of evening prayers or "vespers" nearly every day of the year, it it a little difficult to imagine that the theologians considering the IC would be ignorant of Mary's reference to "God my savior."

[Iscool]

With all due respect, I read that post but I didn’t see any reference to sexual behavior...

[caww]

Quote..”Who wants a God who isn’t in control of His creation?”

Well, having an issue about the degree of God’s controlling the will of man. I’m convinced I am a free agent...Christ set me free from the law of sin and death, but as to the will???

I can and have resisted God’s will in my life. That’s not to say not without struggle, nor that He sometimes does let us have our own way..even if it’s bad for us because He does allow that. But that God controls the will???? Have a problem with that because He did give me a mind to make choices...otherwise I’d be a puppet on His string. Hummmm

[Iscool]

And we can't forget partaking in the eucharist which the RCC teaches is the exclusive conduit for God's grace, and without that "consecrated" bread there is no salvation.

Isn't that peculiar...The priest (if I understood it correctly) temporarily turns into the High Priest (Jesus/God) and turns the wafer into Jesus (maybe because no mere human could do that)...They then eat Jesus to gain the ultimate grace, but then Mary is the dispenser of all graces they say, so Jesus must have to go thru Mary to get to God to give back to Jesus to hand out the grace for taking a bite out of Him...

I like the bible way better...

Thank you Jesus for giving me the grace, freely, to believe in you...

[Mad Dawg]

Your claims to believe in and trust in Him who said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” would be more credible if you avoided gross falsehoods about what we teach. If somebody SAYS he loves the truth, but repeats things which are not so, he casts all his own sayings in doubt.

[annalex]

Some of you say the full cleansing come at baptism

No. When a child is baptized, he has nothing to be cleansed of, other than original ancestral sin. So maybe in that sense there is a cleansing, but it is not ordinarily thought of that way.

What happens at baptism is that a new creation is made out of the person. His soul is marked as belonging to Christ. Now, when an adult is baptized, it wil be a requirement that he also repents of his past sin, and so that sin will be cleansed. But this is not the central part of baptism.

The cardinal, repetitive, on the as-needed basis cleansing of sin happens at the sacrament of confession, provided the priest absolves rather than retains the confessed sins.

Purgatory is a state of the soul when the soul is prepared to enter heaven. The cleansing there is for sins that the person was not aware of, so he did not confess them, for sins that are minor, or for sins that the person had a desire to confess but he did not have a chance because he died suddenly.

It is not to purify a sin that was confessed and retained, or for a sin that the person committed, is aware of, and chose not to confess. Anyone, -- anyone -- aware of a sin that mortified his soul should NOT assume that it will be cleansed in purgatory. He should seek sacramental confession at his earlier convenience, and if the sin is still retained, he should amend his life so that he can obtain sacramental absolution IN THIS LIFE, and then go and obtain it. This is nothing to toy with.

A non-Catholic who is near death can obtain the last rites and die in a state of grace, provided he is sincere in his deathbed conversion and can get a hold of a priest. It is, of course, matter of prudence to convert to the Catholic Church in an ordinary way and not on an emergency basis.

So, in short, there are many instances in the life of a Christian when purification from sin occurs. One does not exclude the other. This doens't make us "all over the map". That makes us holding the right map.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

FR Calvinist motto: Victory before Truth

To be victorious over Romanist error is truthful. The convoluted, endlessly long posts on this forum from some RC apologists reveal a definite manner of argument -- make everything needlessly confused. Debate motives. Deny the language. Label Scripture as unclear. Say Scripture is too hard to understand. Say it's a puzzle, a mystery, an enigma. Then find a word here and there, string them together and turn the jagged sentence into permission to commit blasphemy by praying to saints, and bowing to statues, and calling a priest "another Christ," and conferring the title of "co-redemptrix" on a fallible young Jewish girl who must certainly have known better than RCs that there is "only one God and one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus."

Christianity is not shrouded in confusion. It is not overly complex. It is not meant to be only deciphered by scribes and old men in robes.

The truth of Christ risen is revealed to plowboys by the Holy Spirit through God's written word which instructs us how to live in peace and how to worship Him in truth.

What more is there?

"Sirs, what must I do to be saved?

And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." -- Acts 16:30-31

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"Be not afraid; only believe." -- Mark 5:36

[Iscool]

Your claims to believe in and trust in Him who said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” would be more credible if you avoided gross falsehoods about what we teach. If somebody SAYS he loves the truth, but repeats things which are not so, he casts all his own sayings in doubt.

Well make it easy on me (us) then...

Does the priest temporarily turn into Christ (as during confession) when the wafer is turned into Jesus???
Is Mary the dispensor of all graces, or some graces???
Is partaking of the Eucharist the ultimate sacrament for receiving grace???

[Iscool]

I of course don’t buy into your purgatory position but I thank you for a better understanding of that position...