Well; I didn't see it back then.
Do you think that MD's 'rebuttal' can be re-posted here?
I, for one (and maybe others that missed it) would like to understand it.
To: RnMomof7
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
The WORD priest evolved from the word presbyter. In the Catholic Church priests are often called presbyters, for example in some canons.
The Old Testament priesthood was fulfilled in Christ. I agree there.
However, you do not understand what we say about the priesthood, and so you speak of it as if it were essentially distinct from the eternal priesthood of Christ.
The false polemicists of your side love few things as much as they enjoy getting the vapors and twisted knicker syndrome over the idea of the Catholic presbyter being “another Christ.”
But their loud and cherished consternation looks as ridiculous and as false as most of their arguments and charges because they do not take the trouble to understand that with which they are disagreeing.
This is not mind-reading. It is a conclusion from the arguments made. As usual they are arguments not against what we hold but against what we do not hold.
You see, at least here on FR, the basic Protestant and anti-Catholic maneuver is to shift attack and shift defense. Argument is not used as a tool to find or uncover the truth. It is used rather as a kind of weapon to discomfit the other side. Since discomfiture rather than truth is the goal, when a refutation is made of some anti-catholic argument, the usual response is to change the subject. Thus, the anti-Catholics make the same arguments over and over again and never learn from them.
So, go ahead and cite Garry Wills. His iffy relationship with the Church makes sense in the context of his superficial understanding of her teaching. And the same for the other guy.
The argument, however, is circular. The assumption implicit in citing them is that the ‘true’ church somehow ceased about a generation after the death of John. And this assumption requires that the promised gift of the spirit was kind of a dud. In the protestant view it took the Holy Spirit about 1500 years to get his act together enough to make a successful stand against those awful, stupid, and superstitious successors of the Apostles. The martyrs of Rome and of the various persecutions might be worthy of a little respect, but they were just SO wrong about what really mattered.
So when Jesus promised the 12 that they would be led into all truth, he left out the part about “in 1450 years give or take.” That's what we are expected to believe. And the people who expect us to believe it repeat the same arguments over and over again like machines, while rarely demonstrating a willingness, to say nothing of ability, to understand what it is they are arguing against.
WHATever.