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One question: How long are you all going to let that poor, beaten, starving, mangy dog hunt? The one named “the catholic church gave us the Bible”. If you gave it to us, why don't you use it? Why gather together and dust off a table of “wise” magistrates to tell you what God meant to say? Don't you think God gave you enough sense to understand what He is saying?

Your argument is attested to by the lack of division amongst Christians who just use their God-given sense to understand the Bible.

smvoice wrote:

One question: How long are you all going to let that poor, beaten, starving, mangy dog hunt?

(*sigh*) I suppose I might ask, in return, how many times you (and those with like sympathies) will use emotionalism, banal rhetoric, and threadbare canards to try to attack the Church...

The one named “the catholic church gave us the Bible”.

All right: you've made the claim that (if I understand you correctly) the Catholic Church did NOT give you (and us) the Bible (since you object so strenuously to the idea that the Church DID just that, and since there are no other possibilities--either She did, or She didn't). Now: would you be so kind as to prove it? The positive proof is already well-established (and recited on this forum, nearly to death); the following Google search terms might be of use:

Council of Carthage
Council of Hippo
Canon of Scripture

If you gave it to us, why don't you use it?

You are, of course, assuming that I do NOT use it... right? Can you please explain how you came to that (wrong) conclusion?

Why gather together and dust off a table of “wise” magistrates to tell you what God meant to say?

I suppose you might just recognize the fact that you're using flamboyantly rhetorical "fluff words" to evoke an emotional effect, rather than using calm reason to make your case? Care to try again, using logic and reason?

Don't you think God gave you enough sense to understand what He is saying?

God gave NO ONE (including you) an infallible ability to know positively what every last word, phrase and section of Scripture says; nor did He give anyone an infallible ability to know positively how any given Greek or Hebrew word/phrase/idiom translates best into any other language (which will always lose something in the translation, anyway). God gave us a limited understanding by which we can know, with reasonable certainty, many of the easier and clearer meanings of various Scripture passages--but to assume more than that would be foolish... and unbiblical:

"So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, beware lest you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability." (2 Peter 3:15-18)

I must ask: do you presume to know more than Holy Scripture, in this matter?

I'm also assuming that you don't quite understand the Catholic teaching on the infallibility of the Church (in the formal teachings/dogmas of the Pope, councils, etc.); it's not a "positive" infallibility which gives knowledge of this-or-that passage of Scripture; rather, it's a "negative" protection which prevents the Pope, Church Councils, etc. (after they've done the normal hard work of academic research, prayer, etc.), from formally teaching any error as truth. That's how Catholics know that they haven't been misled in any fundamental matter of salvation.

Don't you think God gave you enough sense to understand what He is saying?

Well...

NIV Luke 24:44-47
44. He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms."
45. Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
46. He told them, "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day,
47. and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

NIV 2 Corinthians 1:13-14
13. For we do not write you anything you cannot read or understand. And I hope that,
14. as you have understood us in part, you will come to understand fully that you can boast of us just as we will boast of you in the day of the Lord Jesus.