Posted on 08/27/2010 11:45:13 AM PDT by Hank Kerchief
The ultimate intention of Catholicism is the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire. That has always been the ambition, at least covertly, but now it is being promoted overtly and openly.
The purpose of this article is only to make that intention clear. It is not a criticism of Catholics or Catholicism (unless you happen to think a Catholic dictatorship is not a good thing).
The most important point is to understand that when a Catholic talks about liberty or freedom, it is not individual liberty that is meant, not the freedom to live one's life as a responsible individual with the freedom to believe as one chooses, not the freedom to pursue happiness, not the freedom to produce and keep what one has produced as their property. What Catholicism means by freedom, is freedom to be a Catholic, in obedience to the dictates of Rome.
The Intentions Made Plain
The following is from the book Revolution and Counter-Revolution:
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"B. Catholic Culture and Civilization
"Therefore, the ideal of the Counter-Revolution is to restore and promote Catholic culture and civilization. This theme would not be sufficiently enunciated if it did not contain a definition of what we understand by Catholic culture and Catholic civilization. We realize that the terms civilization and culture are used in many different senses. Obviously, it is not our intention here to take a position on a question of terminology. We limit ourselves to using these words as relatively precise labels to indicate certain realities. We are more concerned with providing a sound idea of these realities than with debating terminology.
"A soul in the state of grace possesses all virtues to a greater or lesser degree. Illuminated by faith, it has the elements to form the only true vision of the universe.
"The fundamental element of Catholic culture is the vision of the universe elaborated according to the doctrine of the Church. This culture includes not only the learning, that is, the possession of the information needed for such an elaboration, but also the analysis and coordination of this information according to Catholic doctrine. This culture is not restricted to the theological, philosophical, or scientific field, but encompasses the breadth of human knowledge; it is reflected in the arts and implies the affirmation of values that permeate all aspects of life.
"Catholic civilization is the structuring of all human relations, of all human institutions, and of the State itself according to the doctrine of the Church.
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Got that? "Catholic civilization is the structuring of all human relations, of all human institutions, and of the State itself according to the doctrine of the Church." The other name for this is called "totalitarianism," the complete rule of every aspect of life.
This book and WEB sites like that where it is found are spreading like wildfire. These people do not believe the hope of America is the restoration of the liberties the founders sought to guarantee, these people believe the only hope for America is Fatima. Really!
In Their Own Words
The following is from the site, "RealCatholicTV." It is a plain call for a "benevolent dictatorship, a Catholic monarch;" their own words. They even suggest that when the "Lord's Payer," is recited, it is just such a Catholic dictatorship that is being prayed for.
[View video in original here or on Youtube. Will not show in FR.]
Two Comments
First, in this country, freedom of speech means that anyone may express any view no matter how much anyone else disagrees with that view, or is offended by it. I totally defend that meaning of freedom of speech.
This is what Catholics believe, and quite frankly, I do not see how any consistent Catholic could disagree with it, though I suspect some may. I have no objection to their promoting those views, because it is what they believe. Quite frankly I am delighted they are expressing them openly. For one thing, it makes it much easier to understand Catholic dialog, and what they mean by the words they use.
Secondly, I think if their views were actually implemented, it would mean the end true freedom, of course, but I do not believe there is any such danger.
SFA, the Calvinists believe in a God who is hijacked by Necessity. Even their God has no choice.
Are you delusional or just terribly misinformed? Where does the EOC teach that there was no original (ancestral) sin?
“The Jewish God never taught such a thing!”
Isaiah 53 is a prophecy of such a thing. John the Baptist in pointing out Jesus called him “The lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world”.
“Seriously, what kind of a father would do that?”
Jesus said it was his Father,
Matt 26:39,“Father, if it’s possible, let this cup {of suffering} be taken away from me. But let your will be done rather than mine.”
42, “Father, if this cup cannot be taken away unless I drink it, let your will be done.”
John 18:11, “Jesus told Peter, “Put your sword away. Shouldn’t I drink the cup {of suffering} that my Father has given me?”
You don't do much reading, do you? I mean, this is basic stuff...and to be so far off on that is rather sad.
They reject the teachings of Augustine on original sin..
They reject Augustine's teaching on the original sin.
they do not believe that man is born with the sin or the guilt of the sin of Adam, only with the effects of the fall
The Catholic Church also believes that man is born with the effects (stain) of the original sin, and not actual committed sin, which is removed at Baptism.
Catholic Catechism #404
This is a rejection of St. Augustine's total depravity which the Protestants scraped off from the bottom of his trash can. The Catholic teaching as stated in the Catechism is fully compatible with the Eastern Orthodox teaching on the subject. You will have to do the other half of the homework, or ask someone who knows what he is talking about.
Ah, so He did. Thanks much for the correction. Any way we look at it, the totality of scripture is clear that the concept of sanctification is used in more than one way, including progressive sanctification.
John the Baptist was a Jewish sectarian, an apocalyptic Jew, very possibly an Essene, and hardly a representative of of mainline Judaism. By the way, the followers of John the Baptist, who still exist, insisted from the beginning that he, not Jesus, was the messiah. Christianity pretty much hijacked him. That's why I love the Christian history not tainted by the Bible.
Jesus said it was his Father
Yeah, I know what the Bible says Jesus said, but in your heart is this the moral guideline we should follow (you know, imitate God!): sacrifice your own son for a good cause? Is this the message we should take home with us after a Sunday homily?
Well, the Jews do not read Isaiah 53 the same way. Why should I believe you? Jewish arguments are just as compelling, if not more so, than Christian. Do you think the LDS know the NT better than the Christians? If not, then why would you think the Christians know Jewish scriptures better than the Jews?
“Is this the message we should take home with us after a Sunday homily?”
Well I suppose if there is a better way to expiate sin it has yet to be discovered. Jesus did say he was the only way and as C.S. Lewis said “ A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.”
“Well, the Jews do not read Isaiah 53 the same way. Why should I believe you?”
You should not believe me. It’s like the old blues standard “Nobody loves me except my mother, and I think she’s jiving me too”. I may be jiving you so come to your own conclusion. I just gave you my take on the Isaiah passage. From my study it seems reasonable.
I pick neither, Kosta. The Fathers are quoted all the time when what they are saying does not reflect the consensus patrum, when they reflect the consensus patrum and when there is no consensus...as has been the case for the past 1600 years on many things written by the Cappadocians. You know that! As for The Church having the "...faith delivered once and believed everywhere and always.", indeed it does, even when individual Fathers, or even groups of them didn't. As you and I have noted many times in past, there are points of theology we believe simply because The Church tells us we should believe them.
"...when we quote early Church Fathers we should be careful to make sure what they say agrees with the consensus patrum, rather than present their individual opinions as authoritative one-man "dogma"."
I can't imagine why any of us couldn't quote an early or a late Father whether the quote agrees or disagrees with the consensus patrum and to the extent that we are not post Vatican I Roman Catholics quoting some ex cathedra declaration of a pope, I can't imagine any of us presenting the individual opinions of a Father as dogmatic under any circumstances.
Yes there is. You'd think a perfect loving God would have created a perfect loving world without sin, since he hates it so much.
All I am saying is that if we do not qualify their writing as either doctrinally orthodox or unorthodox, one can easily get the impression that some things outside of the consensus of the Church are "orthodox" simply because they bear the brand name of one of the Capapdocian Fathers, or any other prominent early Christian apologist.
People like to quote the Church Fathers as evidence that what the early Church believed back then is what the Church believes to this day—that the catholic faith of the Church did not change, or go astray from the beliefs she held originally; a certificate of authenticiy of sorts, if you will.
But the fact is that not everything they wrote is what the Church as a whole believed. Just because +Basil the Great believed God caused evil for a greater good doesn't mean the Church does. Or just because +John Chrysostom said that Christ annihilated death doesn't mean the Church does, or else the Paschal Troparion wouldn't say otherwise.
The point I was making, Kolo mou, is that quoting the Church Fathers, can easily lead outsiders, or the insufficiently catechized, to accept what they wrote as doctrinally authoritative even when it isn't.
Finally, why quote such authorities if not to show what the Church believed? Their unorthodox theologoumenna may be of interest to students of Church history and theology, but not as examples of orthodox faith. And last time I checked, there are almost no Orthodox posters left on the RF; most are either outside the Church or insufficiently catechized in Orthodoxy.
Reasonable that it's about Jesus? Without going into too much depth on this subject, because of its sheer complexity, I am just curious what you have to say about the fact that "Isaiah"—pretending here, for simplicity's sake, that it was only one author, despite evidence to the contrary—identifies God's servant as anything but Jesus, or even resembling Jesus: But you, O Israel, my servant... [Isaiah 41:8]
But now listen, O Jacob, my servant, Israel, whom I have chosen... [Isa. 44:1]
Remember these things, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel. I have made you, you are my servant... [Isa. 44:21]
For the sake of Jacob my servant, of Israel my chosen... [Isa. 45:4]
He said to me, 'You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor'... [Isa. 49:3]
Do you really think that, after identifying the servant as Jacob, Israel all along, all of a sudden "Isaiah" in chapter 53 drops Jacob, that—is Israel, as his servant, and introduces another one? Just curious.
Thanks for the explanation.
Apparently some on here simply do not, cannot or will not attempt to understand.
What he said!
Perhaps the context was to be set apart from the world. Jesus was set apart from the world for His special purpose and so we are also to be.
In the sanctification of the believer our glorification is implied as the last event in the change from glory to glory
Are you saying implied to avoid saying presumed?
The apostle Paul put glorification as the last and final event in the process of salvation (Rom. 8:28-30).
But it doesn't say it has to be a life-long process! Grammatically, Paul is saying God already did that as a matter of fact, a finished, accomplished act (aorist, active, indicative). You of all people are the one who insists on interpreting the scriptures contextually, as a totality and not isolated verses. Well, Paul repeatedly uses the same grammatical form to drive the point that once you accept Chest you are saved, justified and sanctified. Period.
So, where are you getting this "life-long" process from?
The greatest promise in the Scriptures is when Christ appears, “we shall be like Him.”
What does that mean to be like him? In what way will you be like him? Will you be perfect? Immortal? Holy? Glorified?
If the answer is yes to any or all, then you believe that you and all like you will one day be divine because only God is believed to be perfect and immortal, holy and glorified forever. How, then, does your belief differ from the LDS(Mormons)?
Glorification is a perfect, indisputable standing before God in the day of judgment (Rom. 5:6-11). In glorification believers shall be in a state of complete exoneration for any possible change
Nothing in these verses says anything about being "glorified."
I did not realize there was any controversy within Christianity on the concept of entering Heaven with glorified bodies and without the stain of sin. Do Latins or Orthodox dispute this?
They teach that the souls of the departed, who did not repent of all their sins before physical death, undergo "purification," the nature of which is a subject of dispute among them.
In this intermediate state, the souls of the saved are eventually "purified." and united to their new bodies at the Last (Dread) Judgment. I have never heard of them being referred to as "glorified."
It seems proper that the glory belongs only to God, as the appendix to the Lord's Prayer says "and Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever. Amen."
So if the "saved" will be "perfected," and shall "inherit the kingdom," and "glorified" then they will be divine! The whole concept of man being glorified is preposterous, imo. It implies that man, a creature, is elevated to the level of the creator, a pot elevated to the level of the potter, a chair made equal to the carpenter who made it, a thing begotten made equal to its maker. How can God "glorify" man unless man is made equal to God!?!
Where do you see reference to "glorified bodies" of the saved in the Bible? I really don't know where you are getting this from, FK. [...to be continued]
By grace; not by nature. Holy, not divine.
—o0o—
To wit, no one is ever elevated to literal Divine status, and Heaven is not a place conducive to the presence of sin. Therefore, if anyone is to enter into Heaven it must be in some form without sin. This is expressed in terms of glorification and having glorified bodies.
There is an ontological difference, FK. Only God is potentially without sin. When God created Adam, he was without sin, but not without the potential to commit sin. In his sinless state, Adam was neither God, nor was he "glorified." He was only like God in that he did not commit and sins (yet).
Theosis is restoring man to his original intended state, free of committed sin, in the likeness of God. Salvation is not being "rescued" from an angry God, but being restored to his likeness, which was lost in the Fall when our ancestral parents committed the first sin.
—o0o—
I also do not see controversy in the idea of standing before the Father. I suspect the reason the author put it this way is in keeping with the language in Romans 5:6-11. The idea is that we are reconciled TO God BY Christ.
Paul makes it abundantly clear that (in his mind) there is one God, the Father (1 Cor 8:6). Trinitarian Christianity, however, theologically understands God is one ontological entity, one nature (essence), in three separate, unconfused divine realities (hypostases), or "persons" as you call them in the West, in the economy of our salvation.
—o0o—
Economically speaking, that is, how God manages his "plan," it is not the Father who is to judge, but the Son. It is therefore Christ before whom the resurrected souls will "stand" (Matthew 25), and it is Christ who will judge them, not the Father.
So, if there is going to be any reconciliation of the souls before God, it will be by and through Christ, not the father—economically speaking.
—o0o—
As to when the saints will be perfected it appears to be a matter of some eschatological debate. I believe the final perfection is pretty much the last thing to happen before the elect then move into Heaven for eternity.
FK, the "kingdom of God" or the "heavenly kingdom" refers to Israel, God's own kingdom on earth. Apocalyptic Judaism believed in the restored, perfected earth, new earth with the new Jerusalem, not a castle in the sky.
—o0o—
I think many Protestants believe, including Baptists, that at the point of death the saved are in the "presence" of God (2 Cor. 5:8)
What does "in presence of God" mean? besides, 2 Cor 5:8 doesn't say that. He says we prefer to be without the body but "at home with the Lord."
—o0o—
but that final perfection does not take place until after the second coming of Christ
Yeah, that final perfection inlcudes having a new body!
Let's just chuck it as traditions of men. :)
—o0o—
We are positionally sanctified because of what Christ did, and our following faith, NOT because anyone becomes sinless upon belief.
Sorry, FK, it would be very easy to show that Paul and his ideological buddy who wrote 1 John imply that the believers are as good as sinless, because God doesn't see their sins any more. So, whether the elect sin or not, is irrelevant. In the Protestants' God's eyes, Andrea Yates' is as holy and free of sin as Mary.
—o0o—
By their deeds Paul considers everyone to be unfit for the kingdom of Heaven: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God", ... "the wages of sin is death".
But the totality of his theology teaches that God is "blind" to the sin of the "elect" because he has committed their sins to oblivion and "remembers them no more." What is so preposterous about Protestantism is that what the "elect" do on this earth simply does not matter to God. It may matter to Paul, but not to the God he created.
Whether you are Andrea Yates or Adolf Hitler, as long as you believe, you are as holy as it gets in God's eyes. The Big Daddy in the sky simply does not see the terrible things his little monsters are doing. To him, they are his pristine little angels. Is there a religion more narcissitic than Protestantism?
—o0o—
Therefore, he cannot be referring to sinless people here or it would be pointless.
It is pointless, because God has decided from before the foundation of the world that some of his human creatures will be excused no matter what. They are sinless in his eyes.
—o0o—
I'm not sure what Protestant rituals you are referring to, but whatever they are they in no way make us more or less fit for Heaven.
Are they waving to God so he can see them? :)
FK: Perhaps the context was to be set apart from the world. Jesus was set apart from the world for His special purpose and so we are also to be.
Oh boy! Think about it, FK: was there any time when Jesus was not holy (i.e. set apart from the world)?
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