Posted on 08/27/2010 11:45:13 AM PDT by Hank Kerchief
Almost exactly my story as well.
After I found Christ, I went back to the Catholic church as well, having been the church I was raised in.
I could not reconcile the inconsistencies between what was the plain reading of Scripture. I visited an Evangelical church and vacillated between the two for several months.
I wasn’t sure how my family would react but decided that it was a risk I had to take, and finally left the RCC.
Who besides Catholics accuses others of being poorly catechized?
That’s what I was talking about. Why the quote mining?
What are you talking about? I never denied patronage — the question was about Spenser’s sincerity.
I am not quote mining.
The operative words are "I tried".
Maybe I missed something, but the only "'poor' translations" I've seen referenced here are translations from the Latin.
I agree. OTOH would you expect an ackmowledgement that the translation "confusion"/"error" was made in the Latin version?
Both of you made a conscious decision, after thoughtful consideration, to leave the Catholic Church.
I made a conscious decision, after thoughtful consideration, to be baptized into the Catholic Church.
Neither of you has the intention to leave the present course of your Christian life.
Likewise, I have no intention of leaving the Catholic Church.
This is really is the bottom line, as I see it.
My whole life is entrusted to the Lord and I am at peace to let Him sort all this out on the Last Day.
That would be better?
Remember, at least when I have suggested this explanation, it is not because somebody didn't know something, but in response to their claiming to know something false.
I didn't understand my "fire away," to be about anything BUT dialogue.
******I’m not entirely sure I understand. First “transformation” and “sense”. We keep insisting there is not a perceptible change, not “sensible”, that is, not able to be sensed by the senses. The change is apprehended sola fide. It is believed. So yes, if one’s faith was troubled, I suppose one’s focus might shift.****
I believe the Catholic teaching of transubstantion comes from trying to force a literal meaning into a prophetic teaching
The Last Supper was actually the Last “passover “ and the 1st Lords Supper.
Gods intervention to end the slavery of His people by the Egyptians held many types that pointed to Christ’s death .
We see as a prime example the final plague God brought on the Egyptians.
Every 1st born was to die at the hand of Gods avenging angel.
God gave specific orders on how the jews were to be protected from that sword of death.
They were to have a perfect Lamb and to slaughter him. They were to spread the blood of that lamb over the drop posts ( in a shape similar to a cross) When the angel saw that blood he would pass over that home and the people inside were preserved from the plague.
God gave specific instructions on how to eat that Lamb, The passover meal was to be a ritual that would be celebrated in remembrance of the grace and salvation of God for His people. But like the passover itself the passover meal pointed to Christ..it was a prophetic meal celebrated every year by every Jew.. yet they still could not see Him.
That meal prefigured the crucification, the redemption of His people and the resurrection of Christ . So on the night Jesus was betrayed they celebrated the meal that prefigured His coming .
Christ OUR PASSOVER LAMB would be slain, and many would be saved that were under His blood.
There was a piece of matzo broken into 3 parts.
One pieces was broken and the hidden piece it was wrapped in white linen ( as Christ dead body was in the tomb ) it is called the aphikomen
When the meal is finished the host breaks off olive-size pieces of matzoh from the aphikomen and distributes them to all. They each eat it, in a reverent manner. Sometimes there is a blessing, “In memory of the Passover sacrifice, eaten after one is sated.”
It was at THIS point during the Last Supper Jesus broke the bread and passed bits to His disciples; however, Jesus added the significant words given in Luke 22:19),
Luk 22:19 And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake [it], and gave unto them, saying,[b] This is my body which is given for you:[/b] this do in remembrance of me.
The symbolic broken matzo wrapped in white linen was the symbolic body of Christ revealed in the passover meal. Jesus was revealing the prophetic nature of the passover and the passover meal.
Consider that Jews had a probation against the eating of blood, yet not one disciple asked Jesus what He meant. That is because they understood when he took the APHIKOMEN into his hands, this broken Matzo that had been hidden in a linen wrap was symbolic of HIM.
Matzo has no leaven, leaven is a sign of sin. Jesus was sinless.
The Matzo had been broken as His body would be broken .
It was wrapped in linen as He would be and be hidden for a time.
This is the exact spot where Jesus proclaimed “This is my body which is given for you.” as he held that broken Matzo
The next step of the ritual meal is drinking from the wine-goblet called the “Cup of Redemption.” That’s when Jesus said,
“This cup is the New Testament (Covenant ) in my blood, which is shed for you.”
The Passover meal was a REMEMBRANCE of the deliverance of the Jews. Just as the passover was a type of Christ so is the Passover meal.
Jesus was telling them this, and He was telling them NOW instead of the remembrance of the passover, their eyes were opened and the meaning revealed NOW they were to do the mean in remembrance of HIM, of His blood, the blood of the Lamb of God.
As He held that bread He was revealing the mystery that the symbolism held.
Think of the words the apostles used
1Cr 11:24 And when he had given thanks, he brake [it], and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
The broken matzo was a type of Christ, who’s body would be broken for them.
Then in the passover tradition
The host now takes the third cup of wine, “the cup of redemption,” or “the cup of blessing,” and offers the main table grace blessing. (In Jewish tradition, the main blessing comes after the meal.) Then they all drink from the third cup.
Luke 22:20,
“Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you’.”
Here is what the apostles and disciples said at the Lords table
1Cr 10:16 The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?
The were recalling “remembering” the PASSOVER ritual. THEY understood that Jesus was revealing a spiritual truth about the passover being a prophetic meal that prefigured HIM.
The Passover was fulfilled on the day that Christ died, and so from that day forward that meal not longer held a prophetic promise of a future savior, but it was now a remembrance of the completed work of salvation at the cross.
IMHO Catholics forgo actual spiritual growth by studying the word because they believe that a piece of wafer grows them to know Christ more and to be more Christlike...when in fact there is no growth to be seen
INDEED.
EXTREMELY WELL PUT, IMHO.
THX.
HMMMMM.
THX.
Hacksaw:
Who's that clown?
Qx:
Insult a distinguished moderately famous, 100% disabled, 74 year old, 2X Iraq Vet, Army Surgeon, Roman Catholic, handler of Roswell UFO debris at your own risk.
The mods on FR have historically taken a very dim view of folks insulting veterans at all . . . much more so FREEPER VETERANS . . .
Much more so . . . disabled FREEPER VETERANS as JimRob is.
There are plenty of links up thread if truth is your genuine quest.
You can also look up JESSE MARCEL JR on youtube . . . as well as his father--who was responsible for picking up the Roswell UFO debris--JESSE MARCEL SR who also has an interview on youtube.
Or, you can continue to depict yet another of the terminally uninformed.
Absurd hardly describes it.
I find it ludicrous that so many FRoman Catholics posting on FR who have made no claim to any advanced, seminary type training by and in the Catholic church would sit in judgment on their very own Catholic seminary educated priests and accuse THEM of also being *poorly catechized*.
For the record to all the Catholics, that term and accusation has been bandied about so much with so little provocation, that it has lost virtually all it’s effectiveness. It has degenerated into a meaningless, knee jerk, one answer fits all response to anything that doesn’t fit with the FRoman Catholics idea of what the Catholic church SHOULD be like, not even what in the real world, it IS like.
A newsflash for Catholics. What you want the Catholic church to represent and what you want the Catholic church to mean and what you want Catholics to believe is a fantasy fairy land compared to reality.
It is simply not what is occurring in the real world and when we point this out, we’re mocked, ridiculed, derided, told we’re poorly catechized, we’re called *haters*, heretics, and anything else a warm, loving, charitable, Christlike, Catholic response can generate.
Goodness, there are even Catholics on this forum who recognize the problems within the Catholic church and acknowledge that what much of what the non-Catholics are saying and observing is true, and yet they’re accepted and not given a dose of the same kind of Catholic *charity* the rest of us receive.
By the admission of some of the more reasonable Catholics on this forum, the Catholic church is in a world of hurt. It’s priesthood is infiltrated with pedophiles, its leadership isn’t appropriately dealing with it, its membership is voting highly liberal, Catholics can’t even trust their own Catholic schools to give their kids a proper Catholic education, and yet they’ll defend their church to the death. Admirable loyalty and devotion, but sadly misplaced at this point in time.
EXCELLENT TO THE MAX.
The condescension demonstrated by the majority of the FRoman Catholics is palatable.
PALATABLE isn’t the word for it . . .
Try granite foundation material.
No doubt, only the FRoman Catholics, but not even many of them depending on which other of them was grading the paper. I’ve seem plenty of disagreement even amongst them.
ABSOLUTELY INDEED TO THE MAX.
I tried to stay, but the more I read scripture, the less I believed church teaching... finally one day I realized that I could not longer accept the doctrine as any manner of truth ..and so I left.
I had never heard of “sola scriptura” or “sola fide” .. alll I knew is that the bible did not support the doctrine I had grown up with ...I knew to be faithful to God, I had to leave and I did.That decision was not without cost, all of my friends were catholic.. they no longer talked to me. I lost ministries I loved, but as He did with Job, God restored what was lost with a far greater gain...Christ
PRAISE GOD. ABSOLUTELY INDEED.
Sounds like progress.
I’m a bit skeptical on the sufficiency of the progress.
LOL.
INDEED.
EXCELLENT POST.
Ab so LOOT ly!
Further, it is interesting to note which beliefs are verifiable and which not. For example, what we assert about the Eucharist is not directly verifiable. We would say we find corroborating evidence in the difference it makes in our lives, but that's all really 'belief', and will not stand up to analysis -- not before we die and the polls are closed.
But my belief that there's an architecturally interesting church on Lexington and 63rd in Manhattan is verifiable. You can show me wrong.
In the second case we can usually settle things by experiment. In the first, all we can do is look at the proposition and try to understand its relationship to other propositions with the hope that we will find some confirmation or, ahem, 'refudiation' in that process.
When somebody says, "God told me to do X," it's not exactly a conversation stopper, but the basic datum is unverifiable. Maybe God told him, maybe he's nuts, maybe a demon told him.
That calls for a very different sort of inquiry.
The VAST majority of my posts are not about trying to get someone to agree with Catholic teaching, but to clarify what that teaching is. I may also try to offer and advocate depictions of "mind-sets" in which certain propositions or behaviors which differ between Catholics and non-Catholics would be consistent with those things about which we agree. And I will try to analyze arguments.
For example, I am engaged in a slow process (at your invitation, BTW) to lay the groundwork for some basic concepts of scholastic realism. We've done Aquinas's "first way" -- the unmoved mover argument. We've looked at the idea of the reality of universals. Next I will try to address "substance." These posts have tried to sketch not only what the ideas are but how a reasonable person would think them.
Then, as an example of the second class, I try to look at, say, Marian devotion, and present the notion that it is an outgrowth or flowering of devotion to Christ.
Old Reggie was making some point, which I didn't quite get, but it led me to find that JP2 said:
Thanks to [the writings of (I assume)] Saint Louis of Montfort, I came to understand that true devotion to the Mother of God is actually Christocentric, indeed, it is very profoundly rooted in the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity, and the mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption".So I spend some effort arguing not that this MUST be so, but that it COULD be so.
And, as is evident, if somebody argues, for example, that Marian devotion is bad because it is easily abused, then we need to look at the capability of good things to be used badly, and to inquire into whether the abuse of, say, Oxycontin means there is no good use for that medication.
If somebody contests a point I am making, but their argument seems to be be directed to some other point not the one I am making, I will say they don't understand me. Otherwise, we 'take it to the next level' and reason backwards to find where the differing premises are or forwards to look for reductios. As far as I can tell, that's how dialogue (the art which the vulgar call 'talking') works.
Now if somebody says that Transubstantiation cannot be true because the "bread" does not have the appearance of "flesh" and the "wine" does not clot, I have every reason to say that that person does not understand the doctrine.
Nothing in that statement indicates that when they understand it they will then agree. And, in fact there have been a few small signs, in the hailstorm of outraged abuse, that there are a few tentative steps being made in that direction.
Specifically both you and metmom have insisted that I have no alternative to mean a "symbolic" event, rather than a 'real' one.
Of course, the defect in this counter is the air of triumph, the projection of certainty, the barely cloaked, "aHA!" This is remarkable, because when somebody displays, as I say, not just ignorance, but certainty about something which is not true, it would seem prudence and humility would suggest a little reduction in the incidence of premature end-zone dances.
But I am delighted that in the midst of the self-granted triumphal procession, a really good question is raised: in what respect, if any, is it right to say this is "merely symbolic?" Related questions would be 'What is the difference between spiritual and symbolic?', 'What is the locus of symbols?' 'Whether there can be 'true' or 'false' symbols.'
To me, your side has at once a harder goal and too eager a tendency to descend to triumphalism, though some on my side do a pretty good end-zone dance too. I have the easier goal because I am just trying to get a coherent expression of what I scarcely understand myself. It is made harder because of the abundance of abusive terms and phrases, AND the sensitivity of having to say to somebody, "You may think you 'know' that, but you don't, because it's not true."
Mind you, if the effective conveying to one another that (a) you understand what I am saying and (b) you still disagree is REALLY a goal, I think it is far more likely to be achieved if the white hankies and the other terms of abuse were used less. Usually it is clear to me that you disagree, but I end up having no understanding of the reasons (as distinct from the causes) for the disagreement. All I read is outrage and abusive language. I cannot find (not saying it's not there) a coherent reasonable disagreement. Consequently I have no way of knowing whether there is any understanding of the points I am advocating. Rejection is clear, understanding, not so much.
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