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?

[Quix]

. . . .

AND !!!!CONTROL!!!!

INDEED.

I don’t recall anyone mentioning above . . .

The “See” of Rome has had a LOT of centuries to insure

that only “historical”

“documents” supportive of their power-mongering

much survived . . . .

[Quix]

. . . .

uhhhh . . . OK . . .

AS

the most famous, recognized woman in the group.

That’s REALLY a BIG toothpick to build a lot of skyscrapers of dogma on, now isn’t it!

silly rabbit.

[Alamo-Girl]

Please let me know what you discover!

If you're interested, here is a resource to customize a parallel Bible search.

And this link is helpful to get deeper into the manuscripts.

[Judith Anne]

I don’t recall anyone mentioning above . . .

The “See” of Rome has had a LOT of centuries to insure

that only “historical”

“documents” supportive of their power-mongering

much survived . . . .

Got a source for that?

[Mr Rogers]

“Depending on the source and the nature, some very bad, some very good. If I can have that (yes, it’s weak, shaddup) then to speak against some drugs is not to speak against all.”

True. And not all tradition is wrong. However, since it can be good & bad, it isn’t authoritative.

For example, I frequently cite Albert Barnes. He disagrees with me...well, OK, I with him since he died about 50 years before I was born. But I value his comments - just don’t find them authoritative for interpreting scripture.

Same with Calvin, who is one of my favorite commentators. He probably would have drowned me - at a time when others would have burned me, so maybe they could have gotten together and Calvin douse me as I started to burn - but I find his commentaries thought-provoking.

I don’t mind using church fathers to provoke thought and challenge my preconceptions, but sacred tradition has a very different meaning to Catholics.

Sola Scriptura includes the ideas of scripture’s inspiration (we agree), sufficiency (don’t really agree) and perspicuity / understandability (we disagree).

“This feels a little like a stretch, but outside of the Torah, was there a real “canon” in our Lord’s day?”

Yes, according to Josephus and others. Jesus said, “ 44Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” - so He didn’t feel it was a paradosis, if the lexicon explained the word correctly:

“of the body of precepts, esp. ritual, which in the opinion of the later Jews were orally delivered by Moses and orally transmitted in unbroken succession to subsequent generations, which precepts, both illustrating and expanding the written law, as they did were to be obeyed with equal reverence”

Consider: “The Jews are accustomed to call Malachi the “seal of the Prophets.” Jerome says: “Post Haggæum et Zachariam nullos alios Prophetas usque ad Johannem Baptistam videram.” That is, “After Haggai and Zacharias, even to the time of John the Baptist, I have found no other prophets.” In Esaiam xlix. 2.”

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/alexander_a/canon.iii.iii.html

[Hegewisch Dupa]

Who needs sources when one flexes the powerful muscles of cute little quotation marks to make their “points”???

[Judith Anne]

Here is the one I like:

http://www.greeknewtestament.com/B41C007.htm

[Quix]

Ahhhhhh . . .

I guess that would be the

—REVISED,
—VETTED,
—CLEANSED,
—EDITED,
—?COMMISSIONED?
—AUTHORIZED,
—APPROVED,
—PROPERLY RUBBERIZED

“HISTORIES.”

[Cronos]

I have repeatedly said that no man seeks God, and that we can only respond to his offer. HE initiates. HE crosses the divide. HE gave us Himself in sacrifice. WE believe, or not.

I concur

[Quix]

THAT’S

a pretty DANGEROUS place for anyone’s heart to be!

Goodness!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you! I'll save that to my research resources.

[Judith Anne]

Thank you for making that point about Sacred Tradition.

[Quix]

Really??? Who do you resemble in the scriptures that prayed to Mary???

So Jesus told the apostles things like no meat on Fridays, everbody wear a black robe, put your pope in the ‘chief’ seat, and then let people bow to him, etc....

But when the apostles/disciples wrote what Jesus said, they neglected to put any of this teaching into their epistles...

And then the apostle says to hold fast to the traditions, whether they are the traditions found in the scriptures, or, the Roman Catholic’s version which is spread by word of mouth...

Hmmm...I’m thinkin’ it’s pretty evident your crew is NOT the evidence...

####

INDEED.

[Mad Dawg]

AND !!!!CONTROL!!!!

No offense, but you're dreaming. That is just SO MUCH a bogus myth.

Have you SEEN how much control has been exercised in, say, the cases of Stretch Pelousy or Patrick Kennedy?

Even when the Pope had armies, he didn't have much control.

When the Pope gives permission to the Dominicans and Franciscans to do their thing in the 13th century it's precisely because he DOESn't have control. If he did, he would have just written the bishops and told them to clean up their act.

[Quix]

I wasn’t there.

Neither were you.

I’m enormously skeptical of this

OUTRAGEOUSLY ILLOGICAL AND UNHISTORICAL PRETENSE

that a homogeneous, seamless line of authority goes from Jesus to Peter to succeeding Popes.

I think that’s one of the biggest farces and most outrageous deceptions of the last 1600 years or so.

I think it’s also an outrageously unlikely assumption that any of the far flung clusters of tribal and extended family sized groups of Christians would have been regularly in contact with power centers . . . or that they would have submitted wholesale thereto.

I think that is absurd to the max.

[Quix]

And out of kissing & carressing statues and beads instead of God in Worship DIRECTLY TO HIM.

[Mad Dawg]

That’s REALLY a BIG toothpick to build a lot of skyscrapers of dogma on, now isn’t it!

Well, as toothpicks go ....

Seriously, that's asking us to prove it according to YOUR standards of proof, standards we not only repudiate but get stomped on for repudiating. It is , at best, a hint. But COMBINED with tradition it has some moxie. It won't serve to conclusively prove Marian dogma, but we didn't say it could, would, or should.

We are not using the "highly favored" or this text to BUILD a doctrine BECAUSE we have tradition which we trust. It's only if one repudiates tradition and insists on Sola Scriptura that one has to play those games.

[Quix]

GREAT LINKS.

THX.

[Cronos]

1. We are told to “check THE historical documents.” Meaning: Their historical documents are THE historical documents. -- No, I'm telling you to check ANY historical documents. You made the false claim that people in the Caucasus etc. did not know of the Roman Church. That's incorrect. If you can't prove that false claim, then it remains false and unproven.

2. We are told (or it is directly implied) that the only safeguard against error or heresy in the early churches was to come under their bishops --- you're putting words in my mouth. I said that the Bishops helped prevent error or heresy, not that they were the ONLY safeguard -- can you point out any post where I said "ONLY"? And this in the face of the fact that worldwide there are people who are demon-possessed, worshippers of unclean things still standing at the front of altars controlled by the “SEE”, opening their mouths and having something called “His Body” put in their mouths every Sunday morning. They are not guarded from error even within the system, while it is denied that the Holy Ghost of God can keep someone from error outside the system who are these people you talk of who are demon-possessed who open their mouths to receive "His Body"?

3. We are told to believe that no individual believers ever left Syria, Palestine or Asia Minor and carried the Gospel of Jesus Christ to any other regions, and that none of them could have ever witnessed for Christ or formed congregations of believers elsewhere in the first century -- who told you that -- where did you get this false statement from? I don't see it in any earlier post.

4. No Christians in the first century (if one can believe them) ever traveled and opened their mouths for Christ unless it was under the authority of bishops -- where did you get this false statement from? I don't see it in any earlier post.

5. According to them, any true Christianity could only have spread itself along the ROMAN ROADS -- where did you get this false statement from? I don't see it in any earlier post

6. The rural, non-urban regions bordering on the Barbarian regions, or into the Barbarion regions themselves, being Pagan, and worshiping false gods, ate for supper any wandering evangelistic child of God before he could ever utter the name, -- where did you get this false statement from? I don't see it in any earlier post. unless you found that somewhere?

7. All Montanists and Donatists were heretics of course, if you read the “SEE” dominated histories on these people -- do you believe in the prophecies of Montanus then?

8. All bishoprics were tightly held, according to the “SEE”’s official accounting—and of course it is impossible that there were hundreds of bishops that the “SEE”’s bishops knew nothing about, and therefore were never included in their histories. -- where did you get this false statement from? I don't see it in any earlier post. unless you found that somewhere?

No region that didn’t use Koine Greek as the native language could possibly have received the Gospel of Christ from travelers and merchants who had learned the native dialects long before they themselves had become believers -- where did you get this false statement from? I don't see it in any earlier post. unless you found that somewhere? The only reference to Koine Greek is when you post some funny story about a Czech in 45 AD (when they was no Czech republic and the Western Slavs were not even in that neck of the woods and that place was basically, well, woods!). your little fantasy was I mean just think of a traveler having heard the Gospel and having believed on Christ in, say, 45 AD in Antioch. His home is somewhere in th current-day Czech Republic. The new Christian goes home and begins to expound the salvation he has experienced by faith in Christ. Soon, he has won others to Jesus Christ, and they form a congregation of believers. Several years or several decades could have passed before they were aware of a “SEE” in Rome, even if they had traveled to other congregations where they might find copies of the Scriptures in part or in whole. To which you got the reply "Incorrect -- current-day Czech Republic in 45 AD was outside the Roman Empire and populated sparsely, if at all, by Vandals or other barbarian Germanics. They were illiterate and definitely didn't know Koine Greek. If there was this Germanic who came to Antioch, to go back would have been rare, if not impossible in 45 AD. Let's however, for arguments sake, say he DID and he knew Greek. Then, in that case, he would want to ensure that His teachings were true, so HIS teacher would be the priest or Bishop in Antioch. To think that would not have heard of the bishop of Rome, St. Peter, is ludicrous. " --> again, negating the false statement that was made earlier that they may not have heard of the See of Peter.

10. We simply must not allow in history the possibility that their were any soul-winning Christians where the “SEE” could not see—and control. -- do you really believe that? Because I don't see anyone else saying that in any earlier post.

[Alamo-Girl]

I am one of those who repudiates tradition as doctrine when it adds to or diminishes from a commandment of God.

Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching [for] doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, [as] the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. - Mark 7:7-9

It goes to this commandment:

Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish [ought] from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. – Deuteronomy 4:2

God's Name is I AM.