Posted on 02/10/2011 7:57:12 AM PST by Christian Engineer Mass
Jesus said that the truth will set us free. (John 8:32) However, He did not say that the truth would necessarily be easy to accept. It was painful for me to learn the information that I am about to share with you, but it was also liberating and it led to a closer relationship with God.
As a faithful Catholic, and later as a nun, I practiced Mary worship for many years without realizing it. The prayers and practices were so familiar. They were taught to me by good people, sincere people that I trusted. I prayed rosaries and wore a scapular and engaged in other “devotions” which I honestly thought were good and pleasing to God. Because of my lack of knowledge of the Bible and of Church history, I honestly had no idea that I was actually worshipping Mary.
If modern Catholic teachings and doctrines about Mary are true, then they will not be contrary to Scripture, the writings of the Early Fathers, or the decrees of past popes. For a devout Catholic to question these issues and put them to the test can be painful. It certainly was for me. However, it would be far more painful to have God correct us when we face Him on Judgment Day.
LETTING THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SPEAK FOR ITSELF
I believe in letting people speak for themselves. Therefore my primary sources about Catholic doctrines and history come from the Catholic Church.
First and foremost is the official Catechism of the Catholic Church which was written for the purpose of summarizing the essential and basic teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. It was approved by Pope John Paul II in 1992 and the English translation was released in 1994.
(Excerpt) Read more at parkviewgospelhall.com ...
The argument isn’t so much between scripture and tradition, but between tradition and tradition.
That is true - we all have to come to grips with what we think the original texts mean. Everyone, who is not a scholar themselves, must rely on someone else to some extent to form their understandings of a particular passage. Catholics have full confidence in official church positions and feel that the pope can’t be wrong when he makes an “official” statement. Protestants follow the Berean example and don’t necessarily take any fallen man’s opinion about scripture as absolute.
>>On that basis, then, who would know this verse better...people who speak Greek or people who don’t? People like your friend who study NT Greek as an academic subject in the 20th century, or the people who spoke it natively in the 1st and 2nd centuries?<<
Here is the problem. She followed up by reminding me that those people that actually know and understand the original text disagree strongly on some interpretations. IOW, trusting the experts is like believing the “majority of climate scientists” regarding Man Made Global Warming.
See, it’s just not that easy to trust flawed men. We are left with the scripture as interpreted and, more importantly, the Holy Spirit, to guide us. Fortunately, the core of Christianity is very simple indeed: Christ and Him crucified and being raised from the dead 3 days later as the perfect sacrifice for all of our sins.
With all our bickering and honest discussion of the nuances and “meat” of scripture, it really IS about John 3:16 in the end.
>>I submit if we want to understand this verse, we need to go back and find out how the people it was addressed to understood it.<<
My understanding is that a lot of the “church fathers” only knew the Latin version.
Also, if you want to find out how the people it was addressed to understood it, you cannot fully know without crawling under their skin and into their brain. In the meantime we have surprisingly accurate translations in pretty much every language currently being spoken. And for it to be arguably so close to the original after thousands of years is, frankly, miraculous.
So it is your own personal belief that the souls of the departed are dead or in a state of suspended animation?
The link I posted contains all of the Scripture passages, which I am also quite familiar with, in which Melchisedech is mentioned.
Every Protestant is a "fallen man" ... therefore, by your logic, no Protestant takes even his own opinion about Scripture as absolute.
Do you agree?
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
I’d be shocked if I found a practicing protestant who didn’t work with concordances.
What Latin version? You mean the Vulgate?
Only after the 5th century or so.
So you claim. If your wife was a Catholic for 30 years, as you stated she was, then she learned and publicly proclaimed that the Blessed Virgin Mary is a perpetual virgin. If she claims that that is not the case then she is not and never was a Catholic.
You speak for yourself only, not "we".
The difference between being the Mother of God Incarnate and randomly winning a game of chance is lost on the obtuse.
>>So it is your own personal belief that the souls of the departed are dead or in a state of suspended animation?<<
I haven’t a clue. The scripture doesn’t go into a lot of detail about the quality of existence of people between the time they die and the resurrection.
Do you acknowledge that your earlier assertion was incorrect?
Yes. My response was very poorly worded. The purpose of my post was to ask what your thoughts were regarding those comparisons as it relates to needing another intercessor or mediator.
>.So you claim. <<
Well, I have lived with her for going on 13 years and come into contact with her family much more often than you do. I’ve also discussed this at length with her on many occasions.
All you have is a few brief posts. Just sayin’. :)
Then why do you ignore him?
>>If your wife was a Catholic for 30 years, as you stated she was, then she learned and publicly proclaimed that the Blessed Virgin Mary is a perpetual virgin. If she claims that that is not the case then she is not and never was a Catholic.<<
I think she just learned the proclomation as a young person (while not fully understanding the actual context and meaning of what she was reciting) and, by the time she was an adult it just became so many sounds strung together.
I do know that she was very involved. In the youth group, one time she and some friends went to downtown Seattle to hand out leaflets to people going into dirty book stores and x-rated movie theaters. She got into a discussion with a guy where the guy got really heated and one of her friends yanked her out of the way just as the guy took a swing at her. He ended up hitting the wall behind where she had been standing.
What I think happened with her was that she was always a “Christian” but never fully got into the ‘uniquely Catholic” stuff. Also, as I said earlier, she was one of the only members of her family (large Irish-Catholic) that actually read the bible on her own. Again, when she brought questions to the church leadership she was given “pat” answers with sort of a “don’t you worry your pretty little head about that” attitude. I think it is to her credit that she broke the cycle of “that is what I was taught when I was young and I believe it, no matter how much scripture, as an adult, I read that contradicts it.” A lot of us fail at that to one degree or another.
>>Then why do you ignore him?<<
Do I? In what way?
>>The difference between being the Mother of God Incarnate and randomly winning a game of chance is lost on the obtuse.<<
It is lost on the world. That is why I use that example. It is an albeit flawed, but easy to understand analogy. It is the idea that someone is blessed because something wonderful happened to them, as outlined in the english definitions of the Greek word translated “blessed”.
Thanks! I came upon that first in Josephus.
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