Posted on 01/05/2010 9:46:47 PM PST by 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?
IN other news, I got in the middle of the night the problem with your view of the development of doctrine. I can quite see how people who talk about "changeless" without explanation can encouraged this perception.
The exercise of conciliar and papal authority is better understood as judicial than as legislative or executive (though our polity is not purely Montesquieu-an in structure.) Acts/Jeruslem, Ephesus, Nicea/Constantinople were called to resolve conflict, as of course was Trent. That implies that among fathers before the relevant council there will be disagreement. So the existence of conflicting witnesses is not to us a problem to deal with in talking about the handing down of doctrine.
And I think the thing about the vast numbers of CINOs and whatnot also shows a different attitude. For us it's a lot of tares and a little wheat -- or as a Catholic acquaintance told me before I even thought of converting, "It takes a lot of manure to grow roses."
We were talking about the meaning and uses of the word "Protestant." I adduced Thwackum (Fielding) to (get a laugh and to) support the contention the Protestant for quite a while was held to mean those Christian groups who disputed the authority of the Bishop of Rome.
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
But I feel set free. "Faith does not impose limitations on the mind of man. It removes them."
— Farrell,Walter and Healy, Martin, My Way of Life
How about both?
There is a way, an approach to Scripture in which one seeks not so much a theological understanding but communication with God Himself.
But in the other way one seeks not only to learn how to read, but to learn other languages and to go into the meanings of words and so forth.
These ways are not the same. Some of us need to do them both, and nobody who needs to do the more theological reading can safely neglect the more personal and more spiritual reading.
Snow here is so bad that Adoration was cancelled. My wife and I were in town and paid a brief visit anyway.
I'm glad you liked my post. I think Paul VI is under appreciated. Good and helpful post.
In related news, at the end of the world, the teaching goes, Purgatory also ends. It is a temporary arrangement.
Great piece.
Thx.
I’ll try to oblige. 8~)
Hang in there! ;-)
I don't always have time to read the "books" that get posted because of work, but I do enjoy most of the give and take.
Dr.E. the thing about Baptists that can drive people crazy is we are a very decentralized Christian Church. Our national organizations are associations and do not have the authority to tell us what we must believe. The end result is you will find Reformed Baptists and Arminian Baptists.
I think the constant you will find with any Baptist is when they realize how much RC dogma has "evolved" they will turn their back to those beliefs pretty quickly.
I THINK the problem, the area of disagreement, is related to the matter of freedom. But it's hard for me to get this clear. This'll take days, at least.
Yes, the rebellion within is the "root cause."
Yes to everything down to the Romans 10 quote.
It's important to get clear that Purgatory is not a second chance. Those in Purgatory are saved. Lewis suggests "the outskirts of Heaven" in The Great Divorce.
Yes, qualifiedly, through Ephesians 2 and Hebrews 10.
Purgatory does not justify us or gain us access to God.
We're still kind of skipping off each other as though one was a flat stone and the other smooth water.
Pain we suffer doesn’t remove sin or its penalty. It may teach us and guide us, and God does so to discipline his children, but it is geared toward our future actions and understanding, not our past. Spurs and bits cause pain, but in the hands of a good rider, they communicate the will with no more pain than absolutely required.I'm going to check at penalty - but maybe substitute "consequence."
Let me strike out in a new direction here. We agree that God "nominates" us as righteous or "imputes" righteousness to us. And whenever/however this relates to will, this first blossoms when it hits us that Christ died for our sins and we ourselves personally needed Him to, and He did, and we thank Him and make the first conscious commitment of ourselves to Him.
Still, I don't leave a guy whose been in AA a week alone with a bottle of Scotch. If he's got 10 years of sobriety, that's a different thing.
I mean, just existentially, though we are a new creation, as Paul says the old man, the "flesh" is there tugging at us.
It is that "consequence" of past sins, what we would call the "habitus" of vice is still with us. It is GREATLY weakened by the act of Grace through which we and Christ give ourselves to one another. Penance, reparation, prayer, worship, all those things are, in part, the grace of God operating in us to evict or destroy that habitus and to help us live in virtue>
Heaven has started for those who believe.
Truly. Certainly. And Purgatory, for us, is the outskirts of heaven. In our musing (as distinct from thinking) the faith, hope, and charity, the self-gift of God in the blessed are more apparent in Purgatory, though the pain is said to be more acute. (It's important to de-mythologize when the myths trip us up. Some Catholic thinkers suggest purgation is virtually or almost instantaneous.)
If you applied Purgatory to our current life, ...
And we do. The "outskirts of heaven" are here for those who believe.
So it comes down to the death thing.
I'm thinking that you may place a more concrete (NOT more 'real') meaning to flesh than I do. I think of "flesh," especially as St. Paul uses the word, a referring to a tendency or an aspect of myself -- of mySELF, not of "my body."
I'm going to have to find a way to articulate that.
I think most don't understand it was originally coined as a slur. I find it offensive, but not worth going ballistic about because it is a great reminder of the hegemonic attitude of the RCC.
Are these the sort of quote marks which indicate NOT that the word was used but that the writer disapproves of a word not used.
Our teachings developed, which is another way of saying "unfolded." If you want to say they "evolved" well, "whatever." But, if truth matters, it might be good to note that we have a different take on it.
Worthy points, imho.
Sources? It may well be so but when I used it to describe myself I never thought of it as self-deprecation. As I said, it was part of the official name of the Episcopal Church in the US for a long time. They didn't think of it as deprecatory or derogatory.
Wordsworth. Good stuff.
INDEED:
I think most don’t understand it was originally coined as a slur. I find it offensive, but not worth going ballistic about because it is a great reminder of the hegemonic attitude of the RCC.
AMEN, RnMom!
Without a correct understanding of who God is, man will never understand who he is and why he exists in the first place.
Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God; Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began" -- 2Timothy 1:7-9"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
I agree. Actually I’ve known more anti-papacy Baptists than anti-papacy Presbyterians. So many Presbyterians have fallen for an ecumenicism that very nearly denies the obvious and important differences between Rome and the Protestant faith.
One of my favorite sites is http://www.LazarusUnbound.com
It's a sewer.
Scripture Alone!
I know in my wife's case she was surprised we would bring our Bibles to church. She saw the sense of it though when I explained it's to make sure that nothing is being taught that is not supported by Scripture.
Also, if you study history you will understand why members of independent Christian Churches would not trust a centralized command and control church that has never treated other churches as coequals.
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