On intemperate and indiscreet zeal. (The Primary Fault of many Religion Forum posters)

Various | Various | Various

[Judith Anne]

*

[roamer_1]

He [Newman] was far more candid about the sources of Catholic doctrine and practice then many would like, I gather.

I am quite taken by Newman's bare honesty, and I look kindly upon his work for that reason. What he does after that honest look at the historical aspect of the Roman church is where we, most necessarily, must part ways.

I do not see how one can continue in a faith while admitting syncretism and invention.

[count-your-change]

I cannot either but “the heart is more treacherous than anything else and is desperate, Who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9)

[Mad Dawg]

(To Quix:)Brother in the Lord,

I am sorry you have hit a rough patch.

Quix and caww:

I am also sorry for my, oh, nastiness. My new medical adventure is Norvasc, which evidently keeps me from falling asleep until 2:00 AM. And then I sleep like a baby - I wake up every couple of hours and, um, void the products of micturation (Must remember: religion forum. No potty language!)

So I am rapidly becoming unfit for human consumption.

I think I will take the day off and hope that tomorrow I am a better brother and a less offensive antagonist.

May God shield us all from our own sins.

[count-your-change]

I believe the properly Orwellian term is “DoubleThink”.

[Mad Dawg]

darn. I thought my analogy was good.

Quix adduces a chunk o’ quotes and says they mean such and such and are therefore blasphemous, etc.

I respond by looking at the quotes and how I can say them and how they do not, IMHO, constitute blasphemy.

So my analogy was that I am eating lunch and somebody says I am committing murder. I do not need to go to the legal code to show that I am not committing murder.

(Okay, you clowns from PETA, shaddup!)

I just need to point out how the thing I’m doing does not involve homicide.

If I shoot the raccoon who is eating the cat food I left for the outdoor cat, we don’t need to go to the code to show how it’s not homicide. We just go look at the raccoon and note that it’s not a human being.

Likewise, I don’t think I have to go to Scripture to show that calling Mary the dispenser of all grace is not blasphemy. I just need to explain that she gets that “title” because she, ahem, dispensed Christ, who is the summit and source of all grace. She is no more (but no less) the CAUSE or ORIGIN of Christ than the PEZ candy dispenser is the cause or origin of PEZ candies.

But, in actual fact, I go to the Bible a LOT, and if you were to read some of the encyclicals you would find a lot of references to Scripture. You might disagree with the interpretation, but they would be scripture nonetheless.

[Mad Dawg]

Do you really think that we have not read the Scriptures you adduce?

One aspect of this is that you guys say we have made Mary a goddess in our thought. WE say How YOU show some quotes from Catholic texts We say, THOSE don't say she's a goddess You say, Yes they do, and when pressed to explain the charge you end up saying what amounts to, They do too! Or you say, WEll you pray to her And we say, yes and to other saints in heaven and to angels and to one another. And then we get to wonder about being members of one body means. Sure, it may LOOK like we pay divine honors to Mary. And it may even be that some degenerate Catholics DO think of her as divine. (The last group to insist on that got excommunicated, but is that acknowledge by your side?) But I KNOW what I think about Mary. And I do NOT think she is Divine. But look. Wouldn't God make his will known among us by writing in the sky or by miraculously taking over the internet or something? But what he actually DOES is use humans. Moses, Elijah, Amos, Isaiah, John the Baptist, etc. We honor not only the One who calls the prophet but the prophets he calls. So, only moreso, with Mary. WE don't think honor and love are a zero sum game. We honor the General, and we honor the Lieutenants and the enlisted personnel.

[Mad Dawg]

So paul is wrong to ask us to make prayers and intercessions and to give thanks for all men?

AND

He’s wrong to describe us all as members of one body?

[Elsie]

(Holy Mary, Mother of God, please pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.)

Well, you KNOW the bible says that we are to pray for one another, so what is WRONG with this?

Other than the FACT that to be ABLE to pray for someone else, the prayer must be ALIVE; so it appears that RCC doctrine is that Mary is ALIVE right now; somewhere.

[Mad Dawg]

However, most RC’s are skillful about such dances and hopscotching across criteria, standards, values etc. . . . particularly when contending with Proddys.

Backatcha, doubled!

For one thing, when one wing of "Proddys" attacks us from one side, soon another wing attacks us from another. So they can delegate the Protestant, non-Catholic inconsistency.

For another, I have already adduced how today on this issue, the coming of Christ makes an OT injunction or description of God void, and yesterday on another injunction or description the OT has no bearing. But no account of the distinction is made.

!!!TRADITION!!!

NO question about it, "Fiddler on the Roof" is a great show.

[Mad Dawg]

(Personally, I draw the line at resin.)

[Elsie]

May I recommend that you read post # 1600 and then reconsider your accusation?

I did.

WHAT 'accusation'?

[Elsie]

We are Biblical and do not hold the unBiblical belief that those who have fallen asleep are dead.

HUH???

Just WHO will be the folks comimg out of the GRAVES when the final trumpet sounds?

Some to everlasting glory; others to everlasting... you know.

[Elsie]

 

But at least in principle we agree that the standard of Acts 15 applies:

 

 

Oh??

 

 

Acts 15:10-32
 10.  Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?
 11.  No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are."
 12.  The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them.
 13.  When they finished, James spoke up: "Brothers, listen to me.
 14.  Simon  has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself.
 15.  The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:
 16.  "`After this I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it,
 17.  that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things'
 18.  that have been known for ages.
 19.  "It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.
 20.  Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.
 21.  For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath."
 22.  Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barsabbas) and Silas, two men who were leaders among the brothers.
 23.  With them they sent the following letter:

 

 

 The apostles and elders, your brothers, To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:

 

 Greetings. 

  We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. 
  So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul-- men who have risked their lives

  for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. 
  It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: 

You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.

You will do well to avoid these things.

 

Farewell.

 

 30.  The men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter.
 31.  The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message.

 

 

[Elsie]

We might reasonably have differences of opinion about what the Bible says...

Ok; we Protestants have 'differences of opinion' about what the Bibles say, too; but I guess that OUR differences are UNREASONABLE to Catholism.

[roamer_1]

But we Catholics, or some of us at least, read our Scripture and find that in I Kings 2, Solomon, to whom all bowed, bowed to his mother!

Sorry Dawg - that doesn't wash. A "Queen Mother" is a very precise thing: A dowager queen whose son is on the throne.

A "dowager queen" was queen before the fact of her husband's ("the," or possibly, "a" previous king) death, and her son's ascent to the throne.

Solomon's mother was the wife of David - A dowager queen, and therefore properly entitled "queen mother."

For Mary to be "Queen Mother", she would have had to be married to, and widowed from, her son's father, the previous king. Otherwise, she is just the mother of the king, and not entitled to any royal privilege in the proper sense.

Just sayin'

[Elsie]

She was exactly what God's Word says she was. no more, no less.

Ah... but you leave out our TRADITIONS!

Is it not OBVIOUS, that our early church leaders knew ALL about what happened to Mary?

Do you not think that the Apostle who was told, "Behold your Mother" would NOT have written down her fate?

Is it not RECORDED in our VERY EARLIST church teaching about Mary's role in Christendom?

--Catholic DudeWannabe

[Mad Dawg]

I do not see how one can continue in a faith while admitting syncretism and invention.

For the same reason that a man takes out of his treasure house both that which is old and that which is new. (You'll find it in the Bible. Just sayin'.)

It's not really syncretism, as such. What Greek learning gave to the Church was, you might say, the ability to be coherent, where coherence is possible.

This is no mean thing. If the earliest documents, including the NT (and the OT 'types') give a sense that God is somehow three as well as one, then sooner or later somebody will crop up worshipping three gods -- or charging that we do.

If we insist on one-ness, then somebody will crop up, as they still do, saying Jesus and the Holy Spirit are less than God.

We have the responsibility, all of us who are able, to say, as much as we can, HOW it can be that God is at once three and one. Greek learning gives us the tools.

Nobody says a Christian carpenter is syncretistic for building a house using a hammer made in China. How are we syncretistic for using a philosophical armamentarium built in the Mediterranean littoral?

I say again, and again and again, the councils, the development of doctrine arose because of disputes, as we read in Acts 15. Scripture itself could not resolve the dispute between the Judaizers and the more, ahem, catholic wing. So the Church resolved it. Causa finita.

Similarly, Scripture itself could not resolve whether Jesus was one 'person' with human and divine natures, or two persons, or a kind of tertium quid, a blend.

And even more so with the Trinity. Surely SOMEHOW the Son is less than the Father. He says so Himself. And the Father "sends" the Spirit, which suggests HE gets to tell the Spirit what to do.

Yet, how can God have parts so that the Spirit is not all of Him? And is it the Spirit of Christ, as Paul says, or what?

I don't see how anyone can claim that a conclusive, indisputable resolution can be proved from Scripture. And certainly the Jehovah's Witnesses are evidence that the Arians can find texts to support their stand.

Sure WE can say that they are misreading and misinterpreting. Can we prove it before an objective and disinterested judge?

So the Church, bringing forth from its treasure house what was a couple of centuries old to the Greeks but a new acquisition to the Church, uses the tools of Greek philosophy to build a doctrinal structure about the God of the Bible.

And please don't go after all the Pauline stuff about "philosophy." Already in Paul's time (as in ours) bizarro gnostic cults were abusing Platonic concepts to construct weird cosmologies. THEY were the syncretists, trying to shove the round peg of the Gospel into the square hole of pseudo-Platonism.

The councils, on the other hand, made good use of philosophical concepts to delineate if not explain things which needed to be clarified somehow if the evangelical work was to continue.

Okay, that's it for the day. Discuss amongst yourselves. I'm going to take a real Sabbath.

[Elsie]

Mad Dawg has stated.... I prefer Scripture to the traditions of the non-Catholics.

Whereas ELSIE states:

I prefer Scripture to the traditions of the Catholics.

[roamer_1]

She is no more (but no less) the CAUSE or ORIGIN of Christ than the PEZ candy dispenser is the cause or origin of PEZ candies.

LOL! Sooo... If we would see her as a "pez dispenser" instead of a "vat" we'd have it right, then?