This line of reasoning would be more persuasive had these titles et al and practices been part of the Church in Acts. Surely something of this import would not have taken 1800 odd years to promulgate as a doctrine. Also due to the immensity of the honors, one would think there would have been at least a mention of it within the Scriptures.
May I assume you are of Gentile background? If I may, then I have to ask if you think it's okay for Gentile Christians to neglect the dietary restrictions imposed by the Council of Jerusalem?
I am, and there are plenty of NT references to the import of dietary and other such rules. If they aren't stumbling blocks to others, then the neglect or exercise thereof become a matter of Christian liberty. Surely you don't equate the two nor I'm sure that these two subjects are held on anywhere near the same level by you.
Surely no one is upset if I view pornography after my wife has gone to sleep in the privacy of my own home. is THAT a part of Christian liberty? I think it isn't.
Surely something of this import would not have taken 1800 odd years to promulgate as a doctrine.
THis is not so clear to me. I think the Trinity is of some importance and yet it took 3 centuries and change to get settled -- if the following chaos can be called "settled."
I think this is a non-Catholic misconception. WHY, they say, does a canon of Scripture not laid down until Trent have any importance? And the answer is that there was no serious conflict about it until then.
Similarly with the Marian Dogmata. There was no pressure to decide. No harm was seen if some believed Mary to be immaculately conceived, and no harm was seen if some didn't.
But then there were apparitions. People developed theological consequences and "penumbra and emanations," and there was, (so I hear, I don't know) a lot of enthusiasm for the Holy See or a council or SOMEbody to make it official.
The Vatican doesn't go looking for trouble, you know. Arius says this, Athanasius says that, and pretty soon the Emperor's peace is being disturbed. (Not his own personal peace, but the peace of the empire) and so he kicks some reluctant ecclesiastical behinds and they make a decision. That's how I view it.
Paul wasn't WRONG about the Gentiles before Jerusalem, but the issue hadn't come to the point where somebody needed to do something.
But then, when they DID do something, they said,"It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us...."
I'm not asking you to agree. I'm asking if you grant any force to the opinion. I see in the Council of Jerusalem (complete with Peter's waffling) a pattern for the horrible inefficient and frustrating way what we think of as The Catholic Church has done business ever since. They wait until there's a critical Mass and then some of irritated people, and they say, "Okay, okay> You want me/us to decide? Well, you won't like it, but here it is: ..."
ABSOLUTELY TO THE SUPREME DEGREE.
A point some of us have repeatedly made hereon.
However, boring a hole and pouring it in doesn’t seem to work.
Denial is evidently systemic and entrenched to a fossilized degree at the bone marrow, if not organizational DNA levels.
It’s absolutely utter irrational nonsense that a lot of the hogwash the Vatican pretends was homogeneous exclusivist Vatican dogma from Noah onwards when, in fact, great chunks of it didn’t get propagandized by the magicsterical for many hundreds of years after the Vatican’s beginning in 300-400AD.