Posted on 02/26/2010 1:08:31 AM PST by Gamecock
I personally think that “Roman Catholic” is fine, even though, as many explained, it is not technically correct in a theological discussion. It is sure a fact of life in American usage. Most objections are to various idiomatic usages that avoid saying “Catholic”.
In discussions with the Orthodox “Roman Church” or “Latin Church” are the terms often used to distinguish between the Latin and Eastern liturgical forms, which are different.
Here we go again with an anti-Catholic seeing things that aren’t there. You wrote:
“More to the point, why can’t someone read his own words?”
I can and I did. And I STILL NEVER SAID what you implied I did. This is what you wrote: “I’ve been told here frequently that Vatican 2 recognized someone can be a Christian without being ‘Roman Catholic’.”
Your suggestion is clear. You are saying that I believe someone cannot be a Christian unless he is a Catholic. As supposed proof of this position - which I have never in my life held or believed you posted these words from me:
“There is only one Church, and it is not your sect. You belong to a sect invented sometime after 1500. You, therefore, cannot be Catholic and cannot hold a faith that could possibly be called “catholic” because it belongs to nothing but a particular sect founded in the last few centuries with a new gospel, no history beyond 1500, and no mandate from Christ Himself. Do my words offend you? The truth often does offend people.””
Note: NOTHING, and I mean, NOTHING, in there even remotely suggested that Protestants are not Christians. As I have already stated now more than once: Not being in the Church does not make one not a Christian, but it does make one not a Catholic.
“Now, can someone who is not part of the true church be a Christian?”
Yes. You’re one of them. You’re in a sect. You’re not in the Church.
“If the church is Christ’s body, can someone not a part of the body be in Christ?”
A person who denies the Church cannot be in the Church, but can still have an incomplete faith in Christ and receive benefits from the universal mission of the Church. That’s what Protestants have.
As Dominus Iesus says:
“With the expression subsistit in, the Second Vatican Council sought to harmonize two doctrinal statements: on the one hand, that the Church of Christ, despite the divisions which exist among Christians, continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church, and on the other hand, that “outside of her structure, many elements can be found of sanctification and truth”,55 that is, in those Churches and ecclesial communities which are not yet in full communion with the Catholic Church.56 But with respect to these, it needs to be stated that “they derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church”.57”
And your sect - because it is not a Church, but a sect - is different from the Churches:
“The Churches which, while not existing in perfect communion with the Catholic Church, remain united to her by means of the closest bonds, that is, by apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, are true particular Churches.59 Therefore, the Church of Christ is present and operative also in these Churches, even though they lack full communion with the Catholic Church, since they do not accept the Catholic doctrine of the Primacy, which, according to the will of God, the Bishop of Rome objectively has and exercises over the entire Church.60”
Does that mean that you, in your puny, man made sect of recent years are not in Christ in any way? No. Again, as Dominus Iesus points out:
“On the other hand, the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery,61 are not Churches in the proper sense; however, those who are baptized in these communities are, by Baptism, incorporated in Christ and thus are in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church.62 Baptism in fact tends per se toward the full development of life in Christ, through the integral profession of faith, the Eucharist, and full communion in the Church.63”
Thus you are not in the Church because you reject it. You have only imperfect communion with it. Again, we see you never read the document - even after I mentioned it to you. Typical.
“Can someone who believes “a new gospel”, not the one preached by the Apostles, be saved?”
How knowledgeable is the person in question? Does he knowingly hold to a false gospel? Then he is damned. Does he truly believe in the false gospel and not know it is false? Then I have every reason to believe God will be merciful and be mindful of what the man DOES correctly believe and does out of love for God.
“What did Paul say?”
Nothing in this regard - for he never addressed the issue of “sincere but erroneous”.
When he addressed the Galatians, St. Paul knew EXACTLY what he had taught them. He knew that they knew that as well. If they knowingly rejected the true gospel for a false one they damned themselves. That is not what the vast majority of Protestants have done. The vast majority of Protestants have only known the false gospel of sola fide.
“Can someone accursed be united with Christ?”
Nope. And then again, the case of the Galatians is worlds away from that of most modern day Protestants.
“Really? A church that killed heretics by the thousands recognized them as Christians?”
1) The Church never killed anyone.
2) The Church never killed “heretics by the thousands”.
3) The Church recognized them as heretics which automatically necessitates a Christian baptism and some Christian beliefs. For someone to be a heretic, he must be a baptized person who holds to a condemned belief even after correction. Thus, EVERY heretic by definition was once a Christian according to Church teaching.
You apparently never even thought of that. No surprise there. As the old Catholic Encyclopedia states, by definition, “the heretic always retains faith in Christ.”
“That is a strange sort of brotherly love...”
Executing serious criminals was common in the Middle Ages. The love was for the souls of men - including those who could be preserved from falling into heresy by the execution of other heretics. Christ said: “Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). Medieval Christians took that more literally than we do today.
And as usual, you seem to have no idea of what you’re talking about.
Thank you! Mystery solved. That’s good to know. I really appreciate it.
More recently, I have noticed Roman Catholic on some of the church signs and bulletins.
There is one body - Christ body - and it is the church. Of course, that is per scripture...
If we are not part of the one church, we are not Christians, for we are outside Christ.
It may be that Catholic theology teaches one can believe a false gospel and still be saved. That concept - that what you believe doesn’t need to be the truth - is foreign to Protestant thought. We think the truth is important.
I would also point out that Baptists reject utterly that we “derive [our] efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church”, which makes communication challenging. We may use the same terms at times, but with different meanings.
BTW - I’m not convinced calling people anti-Catholic is within the bounds of an ecumenical thread. I’m also not convinced “Why can’t anti-Catholics READ?” is within the bounds of an ecumenical thread.
“To antagonize is to incur or to provoke hostility in others.
“Unlike the “caucus” threads, the article and reply posts of an “ecumenic” thread can discuss more than one belief, but antagonism is not tolerable.
More leeway is granted to what is acceptable in the text of the article than to the reply posts. For example, the term “gross error” in an article will not prevent an ecumenical discussion, but a poster should not use that term in his reply because it is antagonistic.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/~religionmoderator/
INDEED.
It was pointed out that Luther's disagreements with the Catholic Church were unfounded. I simply provided more background for the discussion to address Luther's credibility and fidelity to Christian values.
As you’ve been told by now, I’m the one who said that. In 1518, Luther asserted that the Muslim conquest of Europe was a punishment from God, agents of the apocalypse who would destroy the anti-Christ, by which he meant the papacy. He welcomed their coming. Bear in mind, at the time, there was no Christian Church in Western Europe but the Christian Church.
But this was no mere theological error. Luther based his assertion that the Christian Church was worthy of destruction on what he claimed he had witnessed in Rome. But since we know he had never been to Rome, we know that this was not the true basis for his assertion. It was simply hatred.
But view this hatred in context: Mohammed had taken dictation from Satan, himself. The armies of his disciples had killed hundreds of millions, from China to Morrocco, many times more than any other movement in human history. And here was Luther, setting forth slander to assert that Mohammed’s work, straight from Satan, was from God.
Due to various miraculous interventions (Read about the 1571 Battle of Lepanto, lest you wonder which side God was on), the Islamic horde’s conquest of Europe failed. A turning point had been the 1529 Siege of Vienna, in Germanic lands.
How deadly was Luther’s alliance with the Turks? The Christian crusades resulted in a total of 1 million deaths. The 30-years’ War, an alliance between Lutherans and Muslims, resulted in 15 million dead. (In comparison, the Spanish Inquisition killed 3,000.)
But then, how many Americans know that the 30-Years’ War was even fought by the Muslims? For instance, the same Wikipedia about the 30-years’ War explicitly mentions the involvement of 400,000 Turks, including 65,000 cavalry in the invasion of Poland, nearly half of the entire Protestant-Muslim-French force... but doesn’t even list Turkey among the beligerents, because tradition doesn’t mention the Turkish alliance.
This move to delete the "Roman" from Roman Catholic seems confined to people under the age of 23 and cat lovers.
Or perhaps it has occurred since a German pope now resides in the Vatican. Hmmm...
German Catholic would be fine by me too. Systematic mind and all that...
LOL.
“Not as sorry as I am that you and yours have such crappy holidays.”
Oh, So it is you who admit to maintaining Druid and pre-Christian European pagan cult practices in association with your Christianity?
And resort to vulgarity, too.
None of that surprises us. In your system, it would appear that hundreds of years of fixing ones eyes, and lips, and so forth, on stone, porcelain, so forth, idols, has weakened any resolve to maintain the Bible’s very strict forbidding of images and idolatry. In this thread some have tried so hard to make pagan idolatry look like such a light thing and acceptable within their church. As in earlier threads there was what appeared to be defense of Voodoo in the Catholic Church.
And, by the way, Christians had joy long before there were any concocted holidays (most which are actually relatively recently established), because Christ is the object of joy—He IS the Joy—of those who have been Born Again by the Spirit of God and have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Those who have served in missionary posts where they cannot travel to see their families, where Christians are few, where the society round about is anti-Christian and anti-Church, so nothing around reflects any Christian holidays, have learned this in a very particular way. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself IS our Joy—personally—we have known Him Personally for 33 years. We realize that your system cringes and twists, and moans at the truth that there are people outside of your system who know Christ better than they know their own spouses and parents—that we walk with the Lord and receive very direct and obvious answers to our prayers—and that without outward religious trappings.
And by God’s grace and the Holy Spirit’s work, we see souls come to believe upon Christ and have that same joy. They have that joy long before they learn that someone created holidays (none of them are mandated in the New Testament), as Jesus Christ the Sinless Son of God and their Sin-Bearer IS HIMSELF their joy.
And don't try to portray yourself as such a martyr. You haven't experienced anything millions of others haven't experienced. Those of us who have spent Christmas in a combat zone and have awakened to firefights instead of presents have learned that sharing the holidays in a festive way in the traditions handed down through the generations with family and loved ones in every meaningful way lives the Beatitudes.
I am not surprised that you think my response vulgar. Those who are so proficient at slinging it seem to take the greatest offense at anyone who mentions it. In the meantime Catholics will continue to have fun and Salvation at the same time.
” . . . Catholics will continue to have fun and Salvation at the same time.”
By the way, you really don’t know whether I have or have not had like combat experience, do you? You speak a lot by presumption.
But it illustrates how you folks often read, or don’t read posts, as the case may be, and make your presumptions and twists on people’s statements, while pretending to be damaged in some way if people don’t agree with you.
Nobody is making themself a martyr. We were talking about how we learn or don’t learn to walk with the Lord without religious trappings—we weren’t talking about martyrdom. Martyrdom is death, and it is death inflicted because one holds views that an opposing system doesn’t like. Matydom is not simply suffering the things that might be common to men in general.
Yawn......Those observations are like someone wetting their pants in a dark suit. I'm sure it gives you a momentary warm feeling, but nobody really notices and you will eventually be uncomfortable and embarrassed by it.
I agree with what you said!
Are you finally acknowledging that the Catholic Church brought in the pagan rituals to the religion??? Seems just like yesterday, y’all were denying it all over the place!! LOL!!
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