Posted on 07/18/2010 6:04:05 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
False. Negligently false. Culpably false.
Once again, I will not argue to defend what we do not OFFICIALLY teach. What some non-Catholics seem to love doing is to place the worst possible construction on a few statements while they ignore other statements. Then they triumphantly wave their highly edited misunderstanding around as though it were a trophy.
Even Dante quite plainly puts someone who was not Catholic in heaven. But does that ever get any play? Of course not, because it would take ammo away from the barrage of falsehoods. The Catechism quite plainly states the possibility of being saved without Baptism. Is that ever mentioned? Only when our opponents try to use it to say that we teach that one can be saved without Christ (which we do not argue, but when did your side ever allow facts to get in the way of a good assault!) But when they're not trying to make that argument it's back to the first falsehood.
What are we to conclude when our opponents lard their attacks with falsehoods? Does anybody think this will make us want to change sides? On the contrary, it shows that the truth will not serve our opponents so they have to throw phantoms and delusions at us. So we are confirmed in our allegiance to the Body and Bride of Christ.
Just a few questions for you:
And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come. (Matthew 12:32)
Where is the "world to come" where those sins which have not yet been forgiven might still be forgiven? Everyone in Heaven has already been forgiven and nobody in Hell has hope of forgiveness, so what other world is our Lord speaking of?
If any man's work burn, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire. (1 Corinthians 3:15)
Where is man saved "as by fire"? There are no saving fires in Heaven and the fires of Hell are for punishment not salvation, so what is Saint Pau speaking of?
Your point?
Did Jesus drink His own blood?
Why couldn't He?
Just when does the host and cup become the literal body and blood of Christ?
When it is consecrated.
All I ever saw anyone receive was a wafer. Never any raw flesh.
So, if you cannot see something and logically explain it then it isn't real?
Drinking blood has historically been connected with Satan worship. It is expressly forbidden to Jews and Christians throughout Scripture. It is expressly forbidden in the OT and reiterated in the Council of Jerusalem in the book of Acts. They had ample opportunity to elaborate on it then, and didn’t make any exceptions.
Read John chapter 6, our Lord was quite clear as is Paul in First Corinthians chapter 11.
All the verses about the Last Supper can be easily interpreted to mean that communion is a symbolic representation,
Again, how can a person be unworthy of a symbol?
Besides, if God has determined what the bread and cup really are, it doesn’t really matter what someone believes about it.
Is that what you believe about EVERYTHING?
I don’t identify myself as a Baptist, a Methodist, or a Presbyterian because that’s not what saves me and that’s not who I am in Christ. It’s not the church that saves. The church is the body of believes for fellowship, teaching, encouragement, etc., not as the vehicle of salvation.
So, what does the confessional work of the congregation you belong to say about the Real Presence?
Of course the parish also has small study groups, but haven't participated in them in years because of my hearing disability.
I didn't mention that in the years when I was homeschooling my 2 sons, we used a daily study plan which eventually covered all 72 books of the Bible. Our progress on that was ziggy-zaggy because we always went off in different directions with it. History, geography, Scripture-based songs and so forth. And I did mention the peanut-butter. :o)
And the peanut butter LOL!
But what that man says about Church teaching is not the truth let alone the Truth.
Oh and I believe Jesus is the Truth against which all other truths must be measured. Even ones of a non religious nature. So for example if science were to discover a “gay” gene it would still be falsehood that homosexual marriage was right. Because Jesus Himself gave us the Truth about marriage.
Do you not have Matthew 18:20 in your Bible?
It is not superstitious magick....not on a gilded altar in Peoria, brought down to earth by some shaman "alter Christus."
This description of the Holy Mass is utterly diabolical, and you can see EXACTLY where this kind of dissembly of belief leads directly into the secularism that was born in the French Revolution and has been rampaging around the world ever since.
Show me any Catholic who argues Roman Catholic Church alone. The Church teaches and we believe “The Word of God” This word is not restricted to the written word of Scripture but is also in the Oral tradition of the Apostles received by and protected and passed on by the Church. But one is not superior to the other but they consist of a seamless whole.
The Church alone has the authority to interpret both the written and oral Word of God. Most of the time such interpretation is not necessary as the teaching is very clear. You don’t need the Church to tell you what Jesus meant when He said “go and sin no more.” Or what Paul meant when he wrote “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.” Plain meaning if ever I read one.
But what about those verses if taken wrongly can lead to heresy? (and I just don’t mean what a Catholic defines as heresy but what most Protestants and Catholics both believe is heresy) What then?
Do you believe Jesus left everyone to their own devices? Does the Holy Spirit illuminate the meaning of a passage in one way for one person but in another way for somebody else? How can that be possible?
You have found a big truth here. Disappointment comes from unmet expectations. A good solution is not to "have" expectations. We should be in the being mode instead of the having mode. This is true especially between people. The solution is to not have expectations of others and love them for who they are and let them be who they are.
If they are engaging in destructive behavior ask God to use you as a vessel to help, if this is his will. Then wait and let God do the work, not you.
You say that like it's a bad thing. ;-)
There's an unexamined premise that the truths of the faith are less recondite than the truths of, say medicine or electrical engineering. But it is clear from the Religion Forum that, even when what the Catholic Church actually teaches stares people in the face, they do not see it, they don't take the trouble seriously to pursue or to acquire understanding.
But one of the offshoots of the Reformation is the common but barely articulated notion that one just ought somehow to have equality of results when it comes to doctrinal acumen and knowledge. Despite the very clear working out of the body analogy in Paul, everyone thinks he's the cerebral cortex and just naturally, or with a weekly Bible study, knows everything he needs to know to be able to judge this group over against that.
So despite the plausible claim that
Virtually all denominations (Southern and Fundamental Baptists, Assembles of God, Calvary Chapels, etc.) hold to the above
there are still divisions. Within ten miles of me as I write there are easily a couple of dozen, probably more, small chapels of different groups of Christians who claim unanimity on the "distinctives", while they are unable or unwilling to gather together to worship the one Lord. What exactly is that about if not about a visible and even an expensive lack of unanimity on the Nicene pillar of the koinonia of the holy?
We are tasked with worshipping men, but our group is called by the Nicene "marks" of the Church, not after Wesley, Luther, or Calvin. I don't really think that's a big deal -- the names, that is -- but I am struck with the claim of unity in the face of all these denominational names, buildings, structures and so forth.
Against that model I pose the hospital, or even the chain of hospitals, analogy.
One rather hopes that the patients in the hospital are often in disagreement with the physicians about what medical care is or ought to be. But the patients believe that the physicians are probably righter than they are. Even the nurses and therapists are not expected to know as much about medicine as the doctors, though they may have greater expertise in the practical aspects of their small area.
If we were to embrace the madness of hospitals where the care and administration were conducted on a representative basis, where (to dart back to Paul for a minute) the tragus, epiglottis, and phalanges had as much to say about the direction of the whole as the cerebral cortex did it would be ludicrous and ultimately destructive.
Or think of a medical mission such as the ones my Doc goes on, to Haiti or to Honduras (when he ought to be home taking care of MOI, darn it!): Would we think my doctor bad or incompetent because the people who come to him for care don't know much about medicine and are sometimes incoherent even about their symptoms? Would someone suffering with a ruptured appendix be better off going to a local herbal healer who was more attuned to his culture and who spoke his language?
Finally, as I have said, and no doubt will say, often. The rate of patient death is not a good measure of the excellence of a hospital. The very sick want to go to the best hospital, and not all of them recover, while the small, suburban, comfortable, private hospital which does very well with routine stuff generally refers the hard cases to the big medical edifice.
Yes, lots of Catholics are not very good Christians, not interested in learning their faith, not sacrificial givers. And often they are the most obvious and apparent Catholics. A lot of the good ones go unnoticed.
As I’ve noted hereon before . . .
The Vatican Institution . . . INCLUDING all the documents
essentially covers the waterfront.
Like any large system . . . it can be VERY REASONABLY AND JUSTIFIABLY said to teach a lot of things, many contradictory.
So, you are saying the elephant’s tail is not like a tree.
Whooop T do. No one said it was.
It’s the legs that are like a tree.
RC’S ON THIS FORUM year in and year out have PROVEN, DEMONSTRATED, PONTIFICATED, BROADCAST IN QUADRUPLICATE
MANY TIMES OVER
THAT . . . what . . . 99.999% of the stuff the former priest asserted are exceedingly true for major chunks of the Vatican system.
Deal with it.
That’s just a fact.
Add in the many examples from RC’s in Proddy’s personal lives and it’s even MORE EMPHATICALLY true.
Deal with it.
That’s just a fact. THE TRUTH.
“Nonsense.
A person with an authentic experience . . . almost any experience
need never be at the intellectual mercy of folks with merely vain arguments”
I think I have to make it clear on this board, that it was not I who posted that Catholics, ex or otherwise, are always Catholics. My only response was that it was odd to me that many individuals who were born Catholic seem to never get over how much they felt the Roman C. church betrayed them. In evangelical churches, listening to the testimonies of new believers, there are always those who focus on how awful the Catholic church was. I felt sometimes, while listening, that these people carry a big burden and that in and of itself was a problem.
Certainly healing and forgiveness are in order in all such cases.
Lots of truth in your fine post.
Thx.
As in the exegesis of the Bread of Life discourse, the accounts of the Institution of the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, and of this passage, one must remember than a significant tool in the non-Catholic hermeneutical armory is "He didn't really mean that."
I've never quite understood how they can rationalize that in the light of sola scriptura.
“Certainly healing and forgiveness are in order in all such cases”
Without question they are.
Thanks for the statistics.shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiachVery illuminating.
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