Posted on 01/03/2011 10:40:41 AM PST by RnMomof7
On January 3, 1521, Pope Leo X issues the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, which excommunicates Martin Luther from the Catholic Church.
Martin Luther, the chief catalyst of Protestantism, was a professor of biblical interpretation at the University of Wittenberg in Germany when he drew up his 95 theses condemning the Catholic Church for its corrupt practice of selling indulgences, or the forgiveness of sins. He followed up the revolutionary work with equally controversial and groundbreaking theological works, and his fiery words set off religious reformers all across Europe.
In January 1521, Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther. Three months later, Luther was called to defend his beliefs before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms, where he was famously defiant. For his refusal to recant his writings, the emperor declared him an outlaw and a heretic. Luther was protected by powerful German princes, however, and by his death in 1546, the course of Western civilization had been significantly altered.
There are a number of misconceptions non Catholics, and sadly too many Catholics have about this. I will try to break it down in several points.
First, Catholics do not believe that Scripture represents 100% of the Revealed Word of God. We look to the same Apostolic Traditions that served the Church before and during the process of Canon that established the Bible for guidance. Much of Mariology comes from this Tradition.
The prayers of intercession are simply our request of others to pray to the one mediator, Jesus Christ, for us and our Salvation. This is not unlike asking your friends, family, neighbors and church members to pray for you.
Third, prayers by themselves do not absolve anything. If done right they help to focus the mind and evoke a pure communication with God.
Thank you so much, CTrent, for your obvious dedication to your beliefs.
But, my question was - where do you find that Quix is wrong? He posts Scripture as do you. Why do you find that wrong?
Is it interpretation of the Word?
FYI, I am a sincere Believer in Christ and the written Word. But, some of these threads, (with arguing and spitting at each other), makes me feel so sad.
It is my hope that all Believers will come together and accept other’s tradition, beliefs, knowledge, hope, and inspiration.
IMHO - the entire New Testament could be described in one word - “L O V E”.
??? Mit Brennender Sorge had nothing to do with Italy, wasn't directed to the Italian church, was written in German, not Italian, etc.
You might as well say that it contained a good recipe for fettucini alfredo; that would make as much sense.
Why was Hitler not [formally, by decree, by name, as an individual] excommunicated, while Luther was? Easy: Luther was a theologian, was a churchman, and was a priest.
Hitler was none of those things. He wasn't a practicing Catholic at all after 1918. (Posting a picture of him leaving a Protestant church after giving a campaign speech doesn't prove he's a practicing Catholic, sorry.)
And, as you have been reminded -- is it maybe a hundred times by now? -- Hitler was excommunicated latae sententiae (automatically), many hundreds of times over. Every time one of his minions, on his orders, beat up, tortured, or killed another Catholic priest or religious, that's an excommunicable offense.
Witha few minor qualifications, if you aren’t Catholic or Orthodox, you don’t have a sacramental priesthood. Given that you attacked the sacramental priesthood as imposing itself between God and man in post 123, and refer to God as a “wafer” in post 198, and I hold beliefs contrary, which in at least the second case were already evident, things were already somewhat personalized prior to the post.
I would be quite suprised if you made daily holy hours, were an ardent RC or Orthodox, or were a continuing Anglican. I would also be suprised if you were Jewish or a Mormon.
There is a big line between those who hold for a fuller sacramental system and those who don’t. Either you are right, and in a little more than two hours I will be prostrating myself before a wafer, or I am right, and those holding on to the Bible but rejecting the sacramental system are, to develop the analogy a bit farther, sitting in McDonalds cherishing a Waldorf-Astoria menu while being convinced that the Waldorf-Astoria is evil—they may even order a chickenburger with cheese thinking that it is what the menu means by cordon-bleu.
I will pray for you, and ask you to pray for me. A great deal is made to ride on John 6.
In my experience, you are much more likely to get thrown out of a protestant Church than be threatened with formal excommunication in the Catholic Church—which is to say that I have known protestants that have been tossed from their churchs, while now days Catholics get formally excommunicated at a rate of about one per hundred million per year—mostly for participating in fake ordinations, though occasionally for writing works deemed heretical and refusing to clarify or recant after years of back and forth dialogue.
As to what the apostles left—everything of significant length which survived in writing into the third century was eventually incorporated into the Bible, but their followers did not undergo mind cleansing upon the apostles’ deaths, and surely would continue doing what the apostles had been doing. Some of what the liturgy preserves has roots in the synagogue,and so we may be morally certain came through the apostles adapted in a way appropriate for Christian worship. For example, right before the “Eucharistic Prayer” or “Canon” (prayer of institution might be a more familiar term in your tradition—I’m not sure) every single one of the 17 different liturgical rites—stretching from Spain to Ethiopia to India, sing (or recite) Isaiah 6:3—which just happens to be the verse chanted in the synagogue immediately preceding the removal of the Torah from the ark and the reading of the Torah passage, which is the height of the synagogue service. In the RC latin tradition, the word “Sabaoth” has even survived in the chant, a Hebrew word which may be translated a number of different ways, and so in some ways is best left untranslated when people still have some knowledge of Hebrew. I don’t think a 4th century Pope with no knowledge of Hebrew composed this prayer and forced it on the west and somehow convinced the Christians in India who trace themselves back to St. Thomas, and those in Persia who, politically, were trying to distance themselves from the Roman Empire, to stick the prayer into their services. Rather, those in the apostolic age saw that this portion of the liturgy entered into the true Holy of Holies and took that chant from their heritage that would best bring out this belief. Other than a precursor of the massad systematically infiltrating all of these Christian communities, many of which were only in the loosest of contact with others from the late 1st century on, the apostolic origin of this portion of the liturgy seems to me the only rational explanation. One could try for a systematic misinterpretation of Rev 4:8, but Rev was received late in the East, with suspiscion, and only half-heartedly (at least some of the Orthodox refuse to use this book liturgically) so it is virtually certain that the Rev passage commented on existing worship, rather than was misunderstood at a later point to deform the tradition.
The spirit of the Lord does blow everywhere, but it blows toward one destination, and in a consistent way. I wish you well and will pray for you on your journey. At the same time, the debate over wafer or God is not an insignificant one—and to call my God a wafer is something personal, though I do not take it as a personal attack. My analogies deal with the issue, and while everyone who reads into them will have a personal stake, that is because all are involved with the issues. Maybe the Waldorf-Astoria is only good for its menus.
The Lady who said, "Be it done unto me according to thy word" and "Do whatever He tells you" is not in the habit of keeping any gift -- any honor, any person, anything good at all -- for herself apart from God. Since she's in heaven now, there is no "herself apart from God". That's what heaven is, that's why we go there.
Don't you agree?
Cardhu,
I said that the Vatican never recognized the annexation of 1870 or the law of 1871. Signing a treaty in 1929 which specifically requires Italy to abrogate the odious law of 1871 (did you read article 26—it is right there) and has Italy recognizing, not granting, the sovereignty that the Vatican claims was never relinquished, merely re-enforces my point.
The question is not what is the world coming to when you cannot trust the Vatican, but what is the world coming to when Freepers don’t read their sources closely enough to realize that their evidence supports the other side.
I know it is fashionable among the Euro Trash to pose some pseudo intellectual theories based upon personal research to undermine the Church, its history and its clergy, like some kind of reverse gnosticism. Perhaps that is why Europe is in the deplorable condition it is today, teetering between abject collectivism and Islam. How's that working for ya'll?
OK, that’s all good and well.
But we can still all agree to hate the Christadelphians, can’t we?
Hank
THANKS.
I’ve put a shortcut on my desktop to your link.
Enoch—a half dozen of us have committed to dialoguing about it when I can get finished and start the thread.
To date, my records indicate that:
MHGinTN; Alamo-Girl; Roamer_1; 1000 Silverlings; Son of Dark Skies; Mitch5501;
have shown such interest and commitment.
I thought I was much further into my 2nd version but I’m making slow yet steady progress.
Some of us recognize that ENOCH has a LOT to say about the END TIMES and even about the fallen angels/ET’s that have plagued the world and are increasingly demonstrating that they are connected to the globalist oligarchy toward setting up the Biblically prophesied END TIMES satanic global government.
So, I thought it would be good to get some thoughtful perceptive, Biblically knowledgeable Believers together to sift and sort through it and see what insights we could come up with that might shed more light on the times looming on the near horizon.
I’m not sure what all other folks have as their motivations for reading it.
The higher quality translation I’m reading now is Alamo-Girl’s understandable favorite and is so exhaustive in it’s footnoting etc. that it is somewhat slow going.
PNSS—
I need to get a bit of work done before heading off to pray for a handful of Freepers before the God of the Universe—or a wafer—I’ll remember you. While I would like to respond in-depth, work (actually John in the Greek) calls, Campion’s response is very good for a short answer, so I trust that he can take care of whatever God wills be taken care of.
Our Lady’s lines in the Magnificat (the Catholic term for her prayer beginning at Luke 1:46) would seem outrageously presumptuous did we not believe that they were spoken in His Spirit—she is lowly, she is a handmaid, she proclaims the greatness of the lord, the almighty has done (and continues to do) great things for her—God is her savior in the superlative way. He has saved us all, in some sense, and he has saved Mary supremely. On the other hand, he himself needs no salvation.
But here I go waxing poetically.
Prayers for you both.
THX for your kind pings and faithful questions.
Ping me as a lurker when you get rolling, though my attitude toward it, at least reflexively, would be St. Jerome’s (my screen name is his name in the original Greek) which is to say—why waste time with a book the Church does not recognize.
It is mentionied in Scripture quite a number of times—IIRC, more than any other non Canonic book.
IIRC, Christ may have mentioned it himself.
This saddens me - the admonation and condemnation posted. OMG, that is so sad. The entire New Testament is a document of four letters: “L O V E”.
How can we ever expect to lead others to Him, with words like “Euro Trash”?
It should not be about Churches, internal beliefs, tradition or Doctrine - but about the Word. Period.
Where does hatred or distaste or dissention or name calling come into the Word?
It doesn’t.
SURE.
WILCO.
See 346 before laughing too much at 334.
Enoch as an individual is certainly mentioned a number of times, mostly in Genesis, though Heb 11:5 is certainly inteteresting and Jude 14 contains a prophesy from Enoch, but the individual is not identical with a book attributed to him. He also crops up a few times in Sirach. That said, my gut says the work would likely have gnostic tendancies—but it would still be interesting to see it discussed.
I don’t recall how many mentions are of Enoch the man vs the book.
Thx.
Have you down to ping.
Now, off to bed.
Sleepier by the min.
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