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.
I vaguely remember this incident, wasn't there a bruhaha because the pope walked out?
I think there are at least two elements to this current situation.
1) The Catholic Church doesn't hold present day Protestants guilty for what we see as the errors of the reformation so it's kind of difficult to hold muslims guilty for the way islam got started.
2) Prudence. Pakistanis were already burning Christian churches on the threat alone of the koran burning, I think 3 churches were attacked. It's one thing for the pope to willingly choose martyrdom for himself, it's another for him to take as many people as he can with him.
CANON 13. Concerning the restoration of free will. The freedom of will that was destroyed in the first man can be restored only by the grace of baptism, for what is lost can be returned only by the one who was able to give it. Hence the Truth itself declares: "So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:36).
A nicely drawn distinction
Thank you. It's what I do. :-)
The right way is dangerous. Without God's grace travelling it will always fail.
I think the Catholic understanding of the Catholic Council is pretty well available all over the net, but I have to wonder why in the world you chose canon 13... How can free will be restored if it doesn’t exist? Nevermind that it is restored only by the grace of baptism.
TOTAL depravity and DOUBLE predestination isn’t taught by the Council of Orange.
Yes. Amply demonstrated on thread.
Rom 9;10 And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; 11 for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God's purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls, 12 it was said to her, "THE OLDER WILL SERVE THE YOUNGER." 13 Just as it is written, "JACOB I LOVED, BUT ESAU I HATED."
14 What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! 15 For He says to Moses, "I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION."
16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. 17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH."
18So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. 19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?"
where have I heard that before?
20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it?
21 Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?
22 What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
23 And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, 24even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. 25 As He says also in Hosea, "I WILL CALL THOSE WHO WERE NOT MY PEOPLE, 'MY PEOPLE,' AND HER WHO WAS NOT BELOVED, 'BELOVED.'" 26"AND IT SHALL BE THAT IN THE PLACE WHERE IT WAS SAID TO THEM, 'YOU ARE NOT MY PEOPLE,' THERE THEY SHALL BE CALLED SONS OF THE LIVING GOD."
Free will was lost by Adam. See Canon 8.
You do realize this isn’t news don’t you? Double predestination and total depravity are insane and depraved traditions of men and all the wrestling and twisting of Sacred Scripture in the world won’t make them so. They aren’t even worthy of contempt.
I didn’t even believe those theories when I was a Protestant. I know what it’s like to have scorn heaped on a pet theory, but really now, think it through. They don’t support the doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty, they support the doctrine of God’s absolute monstrosity.
Corrupted and weakened do not equal TOTAL depravity.
You will note many of the parchments date well prior to the church council which you say gives them authenticity. In fact, they were being used as scripture almost immediately. No one waited for a church pronouncement to make them scripture - the church waited until there was consensus among the congregations before it ratified what was already being done.
We generally trust the Greek manuscripts...at least, among Protestants. Not translations, but the Greek.
One thing that gets me angry is when Catholics feel a need to denigrate the word of God to build up their tradition. As I understand it, the Catholic teaching is that scripture IS the word of God and reliable, BUT that it needs the ‘lens’ of tradition to ensure it is understood clearly and correctly.
Obviously, I’m a Baptist because I reject the need to read scripture thru tradition - but it is at least a possible position. I reject it because A) scripture is pretty easy to read and understand, and B) the Catholic Church of 1400 hardly showed signs of being more spiritual and Godly than scripture.
But there is no need for a Catholic to pretend that we don’t know what was written, or that we rely on the Catholic Church councils of the late 300s to ‘make’ scripture scripture. It didn’t ‘make’ the Old Testament, nor did it ‘make’ the New. The churches - congregations - decided what they accepted as God’s word, and the council merely ratified current practice.
The Catholic Church did not wake up one day and suddenly find itself astray. It was a gradual process, and I don’t know many evangelicals who believe it was totally bad by 500 AD, or many who believe it was totally bad in 1400...but by 1400, internal reform was a fantasy. The Catholic Church of 2010 is much truer than it was in 1400, but it did so in response to pressure from the Protestant Churches.
Regardless of whether you accept the Baptist interpretation of history or the Catholic one, there is no requirement to pretend scripture isn’t trustworthy. A great deal of work has been done over the last couple hundred years, and yet all that research shows the manuscripts used by the KJV were pretty good - there is no significant doctrine (or any minor ones that I know of) that can’t be supported by both the KJV and the ESV (or NASB, or NAB even).
Both Catholics and Protestants ought to be gladly proclaiming the truth and trustworthiness of God’s Word, rather than attacking it or pretending it took a Church Council to approve of God’s Word. In reading the Church Fathers, I haven’t seen passages attacking scripture, but rather they used scripture to support their ideas. They did so because they understood, as did Jesus, that the word of God is true and comes from God, not man.
He's human and he made a mistake. Thank God the Lord Jesus is more forgiving than ya'll and won't beat him with that stick everytime he turns around.
And after this many years I would have thought that stick was worn to a nub, but using it still seems to give your side immense pleasure. That's pretty sad, really.
It’s the whole Calvinist reluctance to acknowledge chiaroscuro.
BTW, the horses and family are fine.
And yes, the Vatican library has one of the most important texts existing. The other big ones include “the wellknown Codex Sinaiticus, which the British Government purchased from the Soviet Government for £100,000 on Christmas Day, 1933, and which is now the chief treasure of the British Museum...the Codex Alexandrinus, also in the British Museum, written in the fifth century, and the Codex Bezae:, in Cambridge University Library, written in the fifth or sixth century...” Yet I do not say that I trust scripture because I trust the British Museum, or Cambridge University!
Again, as Catholic teaching has been explained to me here, I think Catholics ought to be praising scripture as the reliable word of God. We differ, not in accepting scripture as the word of God, but in whether or not Catholic tradition has a valid input on how one interprets scripture.
For example, I’ve debated transubstantiation with Catholics, with both of us going over John 6 line by line. And we differ, not is WHAT John 6 contains, but what it MEANS - and that is because a Catholic is required to interpret scripture through tradition, while I am not.
It does not mean that everyone is Hitler or Stalin.
Council of Orange;
The sin of the first man has so impaired and weakened free will that NO ONE thereafter can either love God as he ought or believe in God or do good for God's sake, unless the grace of divine mercy has preceded him.
CANON 13. Concerning the restoration of free will. The freedom of will that was DESTROYED in the first man
You do realize this isn’t news don’t you? Double predestination and total depravity are insane and depraved traditions of men and all the wrestling and twisting of Sacred Scripture in the world won’t make them so. They aren’t even worthy of contempt. I didn’t even believe those theories when I was a Protestant. I know what it’s like to have scorn heaped on a pet theory, but really now, think it through. They don’t support the doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty, they support the doctrine of God’s absolute monstrosity.
The Double-Predestination Distortion (R. C. Sproul)
The distortion of double predestination looks like this: There is a symmetry that exists between election and reprobation. God WORKS in the same way and same manner with respect to the elect and to the reprobate. That is to say, from all eternity God decreed some to election and by divine initiative works faith in their hearts and brings them actively to salvation. By the same token, from all eternity God decrees some to sin and damnation (destinare ad peccatum) and actively intervenes to work sin in their lives, bringing them to damnation by divine initiative. In the case of the elect, regeneration is the monergistic work of God. In the case of the reprobate, sin and degeneration are the monergistic work of God. Stated another way, we can establish a parallelism of foreordination and predestination by means of a positive symmetry. We can call this a positive-positive view of predestination. This is, God positively and actively intervenes in the lives of the elect to bring them to salvation. In the same way God positively and actively intervenes in the life of the reprobate to bring him to sin.
This distortion of positive-positive predestination clearly makes God the author of sin who punishes a person for doing what God monergistically and irresistibly coerces man to do. Such a view is indeed a monstrous assault on the integrity of God. This is not the Reformed view of predestination, but a gross and inexcusable caricature of the doctrine. Such a view may be identified with what is often loosely described as hyper-Calvinism and involves a radical form of supralapsarianism. Such a view of predestination has been virtually universally and monolithically rejected by Reformed thinkers.
The Reformed View of Predestination
In sharp contrast to the caricature of double predestination seen in the positive-positive schema is the classic position of Reformed theology on predestination. In this view predestination is double in that it involves both election and reprobation but is not symmetrical with respect to the mode of divine activity. A strict parallelism of operation is denied. Rather we view predestination in terms of a positive-negative relationship.
In the Reformed view God from all eternity decrees some to election and positively intervenes in their lives to work regeneration and faith by a monergistic work of grace. To the non-elect God withholds this monergistic work of grace, passing them by and leaving them to themselves. He does not monergistically work sin or unbelief in their lives. Even in the case of the "hardening" of the sinners' already recalcitrant hearts, God does not, as Luther stated, "work evil in us (for hardening is working evil) by creating fresh evil in us."
When men hear us say that God works both good and evil in us, and that we are subject to God's working by mere passive necessity, they seem to imagine a man who is in himself good, and not evil, having an evil work wrought in him by God; for they do not sufficiently bear in mind how incessantly active God is in all His creatures, allowing none of them to keep holiday. He who would understand these matters, however, should think thus: God works evil in us (that is, by means of us) not through God's own fault, but by reason of our own defect. We being evil by nature, and God being good, when He impels us to act by His own acting upon us according to the nature of His omnipotence, good though He is in Himself, He cannot but do evil by our evil instrumentality; although, according to His wisdom, He makes good use of this evil for His own glory and for our salvation.
Thus, the mode of operation in the lives of the elect is not parallel with that operation in the lives of the reprobate. God works regeneration monergistically but never sin. Sin falls within the category of providential concurrence.
Another significant difference between the activity of God with respect to the elect and the reprobate concerns God's justice. The decree and fulfillment of election provide mercy for the elect while the efficacy of reprobation provides justice for the reprobate. God shows mercy sovereignly and unconditionally to some, and gives justice to those passed over in election. That is to say, God grants the mercy of election to some and justice to others. No one is the victim of injustice. To fail to receive mercy is not to be treated unjustly. God is under no obligation to grant mercy to all — in fact He is under no obligation to grant mercy to any. He says, "I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy" (Rom. 9). The divine prerogative to grant mercy voluntarily cannot be faulted. If God is required by some cosmic law apart from Himself to be merciful to all men, then we would have to conclude that justice demands mercy. If that is so, then mercy is no longer voluntary, but required. If mercy is required, it is no longer mercy, but justice. What God does not do is sin by visiting injustice upon the reprobate. Only by considering election and reprobation as being asymmetrical in terms of a positive-negative schema can God be exonerated from injustice.
http://www.the-highway.com/DoublePredestination_Sproul.html
“I hope that’s not too long, too unclear, or too wrong.”
Outstanding post.
Great point.
...the manuscripts used by the KJV were pretty good - there is no significant doctrine (or any minor ones that I know of) that can’t be supported by both the KJV and the ESV (or NASB, or NAB even).
AMEN! Although I do prefer the King James Bible because I think it is the most faithful translation. Here's a nice recap of some of the more important reasons for this choice...
Even still, we trust God to protect His word, just as He promised. The presupposition we need to believe is not that the word of God is malleable and uncertain, but that God has provided ways and means to ensure His word is consistent and reliable.
The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes." -- Psalm 19:7-8" The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
As you said, the Gospel is not that difficult to understand. In fact, a child can grasp it, if God so wills. And interestingly, to a one, the reason given by ex-Roman Catholics on this forum is that when they finally got around to reading the Bible they left Rome behind for a better testament, the surety of Jesus and the promises of Scripture.
Both Catholics and Protestants ought to be gladly proclaiming the truth and trustworthiness of God’s Word, rather than attacking it or pretending it took a Church Council to approve of God’s Word. In reading the Church Fathers, I haven’t seen passages attacking scripture, but rather they used scripture to support their ideas. They did so because they understood, as did Jesus, that the word of God is true and comes from God, not man.
Amen!
I believe the term is “weasel words” and stupid traditions of stupid men. “positive-positive predestination” is that rebranding? ALL NEW AND IMPROVED! Buy one, get one free! Coming soon “Double-dog-dare-predestination”.
“He cannot but do evil by our evil instrumentality”... that may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever read. To sum up: Double predestination doesn’t mean what everyone thinks it means, weasel words, weasel words, sleight of hand, pay no attention to the man behind the heresy, presto chango, it means exactly what it sounds like.
I wish God would scratch the itch I have under my arm since apparently I don’t actually exist.
NEXT!
I don't think it was quite that smooth a process; but kosta knows far more about the development of the canon than I, so . . .
kosta -- I respectfully request that you come in here!
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