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?

[Cronos]

So, what are your answers to

Did Yah'shua found "Christianity" ?

Did Yah'shua come to end the need for animal sacrifice ?

Thus ending the need for a priestly class ?

Or did Yah'shua send Rabbi Paul to share the "Good News"

Does Yah'shua recognize such a thing as "Christianity" ?

Did Yah'shua permit the grafting into the Olive Tree of selected gentiles ?
Gentiles who would call on YHvH for their salvation ?

[Cronos]

Although, in ths particular case, she was the human vessel to bring Christ into the Earthly realm.

True -- she was The Ark of the New Covenant that is Jesus. And just as the Ark, despite all it's embellishments and being the focus of attention, is JUST the vessel, Mary is JUST the vessel, the one directing to GOD contained, Christ.

[Quix]

I’m reminded of the mathematical proof that 2 + 2 = 5.

I deny the absurdity of Mary the lesser bringing glory to God the greater by her innate wonderfulness or any other quality of her being what she simply was, Jesus’ earthly mother.

I deny the cheeky label of MOTHER OF GOD to a mere mortal.

I realize all manner of mythology has been concocted by the Vatican that turns mortal Mary into far more than a mere mortal in Vatican associates’ eyes. Not in mine. Nor in Mary’s, actually, according to reports of some Heavenly visitors.

All kinds of things can be rationalized. Doesn’t make them fitting nor right.

[Mad Dawg]

The Councils CALLED Mary Theotokos, Mother of God because that glorifies GOD, Jesus Christ

This is critical. Whatever one makes of the later elaborations and unfolding, the core proclamation is Christological, as the Annunciation is a Christological and not in the first instance a Marian Feast.

[Cronos]

I ask you, is calling Mary “Mother of God” incorrect, based on the points I said above. And Mary is not compared to Jesus — she’s just the vessel, but any vessel that contained God is blessed, LOOK AT THE ARK!

[Quix]

NOPE.

It is a brazen play on words based elevation of Mary beyond her station.

The CONOTATIONS are horrendous.

[Quix]

NOPE.

Not by a trillion miles or degrees.

That’s like saying OThuga’s radical advisors are fair-minded protectors of the U.S. Constitution!

LOL to the max.

[NoGrayZone]

"Mary is the Mother of God. Simply proven:"

False. Mary was the mother of Jesus. Jesus is God's Son. Jesus chose to be a servant, instead of equal to God....

Phillipians 2:4-11 - Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:

That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;

11.And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Separate....Jesus is Lord, God is the Father.

However, I do agree with your point that anyone who believes in the trinity CANNOT deny Mary is the mother of God....if Jesus and God the Father are actually one.

[Cronos]

Dan Brown novels

Actually, those novels attack Christianity as a whole, not just The Church.

My problem with those novels is that they SAY they are facts, yet they are fiction (proven ad nauseum, if you can read)

This has been ammunition for Muslims who use it against Christians

The books insinuate that Christ was not divine -- which is an attack on us ALL.

[Cvengr]

So Mary created God’s soul? I think not.

[Quix]

it is
[GROSSLY & ABSURDLY]
misleading
to refer to her
as God’s mother,
which conveys
more
than her being that vessel.

INDEED TO THE MAX!

[Mad Dawg]

3. IF, as Vatican associates et al acknowledge (much of the time--when they aren't ACTING AND WRITING OTHERWISE) that Mary is less than God (though ALMOST equal--according to a vast array of writings) THERE'S ABSOLUTELY NO WAY--in terms of rank and discussions of rank--THAT CALLING THE LESSER MOTHER OF THE GREATER IS A WAY TO BRING GLORY TO THE GREATER.

I would think that one who praised passion and enthusiasm would get this more than others who were colder in their approach.

The great hymn in the 2nd chapter of Philippians is born out in many ways. There was once in a stable, in a manger in a stable, something bigger than the whole world. In the womb of the Panagia was He through whom that womb was made. Once, we may imagine, H was a one-celled creature, no bigger than a speck.

In His condescension, in His kenosis, His self-emptying, He submitted to coming to see the roseate light and to hearing the muffled and indeterminate sounds filtered to Him through the walls of his Sanctuary of Flesh.

The core problem of the Arminian/Calvinist debates is the inability or unwillingness to imagine a sovereignty so great that it rules in weakness, a control so profound that it shows itself in the freedom of the controlled. The power and bliss of God are seen not only in an infant at the breast or restrained in swaddling cloths, but in a man nailed to gibbet like an hide drying on the wall of a barn.

The Divine greatness is not lessened but seen as beyond all understanding when we call a mortal the Mother of God.

[Quix]

The comparison was not about birth.

The comparison was about the incapacity of the lesser to give glory to the greater in such an arrangement.

I think many Roman Catholics et al may well know that somewhere in the recesses of awareness.

[Quix]

I see. Thanks.

[Cronos]

is that Jesus as God actually created Mary, and that she provided the vessel thru which Jesus would come, (a body hast thou prepared me: Hewb. 10:4)

Yes

but it is misleading to refer to her as God’s mother, which conveys more than her being that vessel

But it is not logical -- Mary gave birth to Christ who was God (and her creator), hence Mary was the Mother of God. It's like saying the Ark of the Covenant held the 10 commandments -- the Ark was not God, was not supernatural, NO, what it contained was supernatural.

[Quix]

Misdirection and straw dogs do not advance dialogue.

[Mad Dawg]

Is that what they told you at your baptism???

It is what I was taught in my neo-Orthodox seminary when we studied the decrees of Ephesus and Chalcedon. Mary is Th3otokos because that which was in her womb and which she brought to birth is God.

[Cronos]

Like many other things that Catholicism ascribes to Mary

I'm sorry, but I am a Catholic and I don't consider Mary a demi-goddess in any way. She was a woman, yes, but the vessel through which God came in -- and she ACCEPTED that position (as the angel Gabriel came to ask her)

[Quix]

It is beginning again to appear that we do not share a sufficiently large enough mutual vocabulary to engage in a true dialogue.

[Quix]

The most plausible is

ISRAEL.

Certainly the days involved are during the last half of the 7 YEAR GREAT TRIBULATION OF THE END TIMES.

. . . a time when . . . Mary is helping teach aborted babies in Heaven about God’s goodness—and having essentially nothing to do with the earthly realm . . . according to some reports.