Posted on 08/31/2013 3:38:44 PM PDT by Greetings_Puny_Humans
Full interview (roughly one hour) with former Roman Catholic priests Richard Bennett (website: http://www.BEREANBEACON.ORG) & Bartholomew Brewer, Ph.D, author of "Pilgrimage from Rome - A Testimony" (website: http://www.MTC.COM) and former nun Rocio Zwirner give glory to God for their exodus from the Roman Catholic Church & into the glorious grace of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. (Description from youtube)
“I think you should point to me Catholic doctrine which says this. Do you mean obedience to what?”
Obedience and communion with the Pope in Rome, that is, and submitting to the sacraments which are the “ordinary” means for receiving various types of grace from God.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13295a.htm
All of this, thus, renders grace as the reward of obedience and good works, which is not the Reformed or Augustinian position. Which rather sees salvation as insured by grace, from the very beginning, unlike in Trent:
CANON IV. If any one shall affirm, that man’s freewill, moved and excited by God, does not, by consenting, cooperate with God, the mover and exciter, so as to prepare and dispose itself for the attainment of justification; if moreover, anyone shall say, that the human will cannot refuse complying, if it pleases, but that it is inactive, and merely passive; let such an one be accursed”!
While my other brethren amongst the Protestants differ from the Calvinistic/Augustinian view in some regards, the end result, in either case, is that salvation is by grace alone without the working of the law. Nor is grace or salvation the reward for good works, as your religion teaches.
“The Old Testament already declares the meritoriousness of good works before God. “But the just shall live for evermore: and their reward is with the Lord” (Wisdom 5:16). “Be not afraid to be justified even to death: for the reward of God continueth for ever” (Ecclus., xviii, 22). Christ Himself adds a special reward to each of the Eight Beatitudes... It is worthy of note that, in these and many others good works are not represented as mere adjuncts of justifying faith, but as real fruits of justification and part causes of our eternal happiness. And the greater the merit, the greater will be the reward in heaven.”
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10202b.htm
You say that it is by “cooperating,” in other words, remaining in a state of grace, that one is saved, which our merits and cooperation play a part in our salvation.
Whereas Augustine and all Protestants say, that good works are the result of a living faith, and the results of a renewed and born again soul, who is already saved by that grace which is without works.
Whether Augustine was a Bishop or not is not the point. Notice that you do not actually engage what Augustine actually said, but merely assert it, making the fatal assumption that the Roman Catholic does not change.
Discuss the other issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
Notice that you do not actually engage what Augustine actually said, but merely assert it, making the fatal assumption that the Roman Catholic does not change.And yet again, making it personal.
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
And we all know that for awhile Augustine went off the deep end with the Manichaean heresy. Makes me wonder about Augustine quotes that people put up.
“And we all know that for awhile Augustine went off the deep end with the Manichaean heresy. Makes me wonder about Augustine quotes that people put up.”
Well, it is good that you “wonder” about it, because it basically concedes that they say what they clearly say. (This is always a hard point whenever I quote ECFs at Catholics.) But these were all things he wrote when he was a Bishop, and during that time he also wrote against the Manicheans. Nor are the Manicheans even Protestant Predestinarians, so it has nothing to do with it anyway. The truth is Augustine never fell into Manicheans after having been a Christian. He entered the Manicheans, and then was wonderfully converted to Christianity away from their errors and sins.
Either way, the value in using Augustine against Catholics is purely in that they regard him as authoritative, since he is the “doctor of grace.” So it is strange that they do not actually agree with the doctor’s remedies.
More importantly, though, is the clearness of the passages that refutes the Catholic position, which the good “Doctor” so wonderfully expounds.
It was a heresy.
“It was a heresy.”
What was? Augustine’s doctrine of grace? (Well, the RCC DOES consider it so when Protestants speak them), or the Manicheans? If the latter, what does that have to do with Augustine who did not assert any of their doctrines? If the former, why should we be at all bothered by the assertions of the RCC when we have the scripture that defends our every position? I’ll happily be a heretic with Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Spurgeon, Henry, etc. And you can keep your french-kissing Pope.
That’s not what I said. He was spouting Manicaean heresies before he was baptized by St. Ambrose, not afterwards. Look at the daily thread for St. Augustine to read the details.
“That’s not what I said. He was spouting Manicaean heresies before he was baptized by St. Ambrose, not afterwards.”
Which is basically what I already said, though I didn’t mention Ambrose. So I’m wondering now what the point of this post is, or what the point of your previous posts are. And why you are telling me things that I told you, and asking me to look them up on the Augustine thread, when really I’m enough of a library myself already. So you ought to consult me instead if you want to know the details about anything.
By the way, to say he was “spouting Manichean heresies before he was baptized” is actually inaccurate. It was a very long process, this conversion, which started with the fact that the Manicheans were unable to satisfy his questions. After having his confidence broken in them, he then, slowly but surely, got on the path to Christianity. He wasn’t spouting one day, and then was a Christian the other just because Ambrose caught him and dunked him in water.
Like all the priests who have molested boys and STAYED in Roman Catholicism? How hypocritical that he's being so maligned.
If he had stayed with the church, nobody would have known; he would have been shuffled from parish to parish and promoted. Maybe even been made pope cause the track record of popes in the history of Roman Catholicism is enough to make any normal people blush with shame, but all we get from Catholics is excuses of, *Nobody is perfect* and *He's just human, too*.
It's obvious that the problem isn't his moral integrity, but rather the fact that he left the church.
Catholics have quite the double standard of behavior for their clergy and that of non-Catholics. They should hold their own clergy to the standards they hold others to.
Seems that Catholics will tolerate anything but dissension. Then they turn on the poor guy and eat their own.
It’s your world that incorporates paganism not mine. They say so themselves.
Usually meaning they marry, but which is the norm in Scripture, and is not impugned, contrary to Rome. While not being continent does not necessarily prevent men friom remaining as priests.
Then when they leave they discover all they really knew was how to run a church so they become Protestant preachers and even sometimes become stridently anti-Catholic to become well known and make money
So this is fact and is the norm for ex-roman-catholic priests, and some former Prots who became Catholic could not be charged with the same?
In any case, it is the norm to RCs here to impugn the motives of any who leave Rome for evangelical churches, imagining they do so because Rome is too strict, which is not their testimony overall but that they found Rome deficient in grace, while converts to Rome are earnestly sought after to enliven their dead pews.
The fact is that it is liberalism that Rome most effectually fosters, and counts and treats them as members in life and in death (like Ted Kennedy).
Protestant anti-Catholicism is filled with liars and frauds. It’s just like John Henry Newman said: Protestants have to lie.
Actually, Rome itself is substantially guilty of being a liar and a fraud, though she infallibly declares herself otherwise, and has made good use of forgeries (Donation of Constantine ; Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals , etc.)
And it is because of the lack of clothes for this self-proclaimed assuredly infallible "emperor" that Newman had to resort to his specious extrapolations. As your EO brethren state,
Roman Catholicism, unable to show a continuity of faith [context] and in order to justify new doctrine, erected in the last century, a theory of "doctrinal development."
Following the philosophical spirit of the time (and the lead of Cardinal Henry Newman), Roman Catholic theologians began to define and teach the idea that Christ only gave us an "original deposit" of faith, a "seed," which grew and matured through the centuries. The Holy Spirit, they said, amplified the Christian Faith as the Church moved into new circumstances and acquired other needs....
On this basis, theories such as the dogmas of "papal infallibility" and "the immaculate conception" of the Virgin Mary (about which we will say more) are justifiably presented to the Faithful as necessary to their salvation. http://www.ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/reading/ortho_cath.html
For history is seen as showing the deviations of Rome from it, which is why Newman had to work at the theory of the Development of Doctrine due to lack of actual unanimous consent ” of the fathers.
For as conveyed by Manning (and provided here), history is what Rome says it is,
It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine.... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation,” (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.
Thus rather than objective examination being the means of assurance of truth, the RC is to rest upon Rome and her premise of her self-declared (if restricted) assured . Newman again,
the immediate motive in the mind of a Catholic for his reception of them is, not that they are proved to him by Reason or by History, but because Revelation has declared them by means of that high ecclesiastical Magisterium which is their legitimate exponent.” — John Henry Newman, “A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation.” 8. The Vatican Council http://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section8.html
The irony is that there are priests who remain in Catholicism who can’t keep their pants on either.
And it is not relations with women that their issue is, but the homosexual rape of little boys.
It’s kind of staggering, the criticism that people leave Catholicism for moral failure when the moral failure WITHIN the church is the greater. At least getting married is a normal desire built into man.
There is something about Protestantism or anti-Catholicism that makes those afflicted by both to become dishonest or just stupid.
You posted this:
“For as conveyed by Manning (and provided here), history is what Rome says it is,
It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine.... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. — Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation,” (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.”
The problem is that this quote is clearly taken out of context because the very sentence before the quote is:
“And from this a fourth truth immediately follows,
that the doctrines of the Church in all ages are
primitive. It was the charge of the Reformers that
the Catholic doctrines were not primitive...”
This EXACT theme, “that the doctrines of the Church in all ages are primitive” is already highlighted on roman numeral page XXI of the same book (edition = London: Longmans, 1865). You are entirely unfamiliar with the book and its contents aren’t you? What website did you lift the quote from without checking to see if it was even genuine or properly quoted?
Since Protestant anti-Catholics can’t be relied on to tell the truth or get the facts straight, here is the whole passage:
“4. And from this a fourth truth immediately follows,
that the doctrines of the Church in all ages are
primitive. It was the charge of the Reformers that
the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their
pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal
to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a
treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the
Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies
that voice to be Divine. How can we know what
antiquity was except through the Church ? No individual,
no number of individuals can go back through
eighteen hundred years to reach the doctrines of antiquity.
We may say with the woman of Samaria,
‘Sir, the well is deep, and thou hast nothing to draw
with.’ No individual mind now has contact with
the revelation of Pentecost, except through the
Church. Historical evidence and biblical criticism
are human after all, and amount at most to no more
than opinion, probability, human judgment, human
tradition.
“It is not enough that the fountain of our faith be
Divine, It is necessary that the channel be divinely
constituted and preserved. But in the second chapter
we have seen that the Church contains the fountain
of faith in itself, and is not only the channel
divinely created and sustained, but the very presence
of the spring-head of the water of life, ever fresh
and ever flowing in all ages of the world. I may say
in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It
rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness.
Its past is present with it, for both are
one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and
modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves.
The Church is always primitive and always modern
at one and the same time; and alone can expound
its own mind, as an individual can declare his own
thoughts.
‘ For what man knoweth the things of a
man, but the spirit of a man that is in him ? So the
things also that are of Grod no man knoweth, but the
Spirit of Grod.’ l The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the
Church at this hour.”
End paste of the actual quote rather than the deceptively edited Protestant anti-Catholic version.
Thus, we can see once again how Protestant commonly misrepresent things by falsely editing quotes. And it doesn’t surprise me that this quote apparently was first deceptively edited by William Webster - who does that sort of thing all the time. Nor does it surprise me that daniel1212 apparently never bothered to compare it to the original and has now posted it here. Same old, same old.
And now let’s move on to the Newman quote:
Here is the actual quote:
What has been said of History in relation to the formal Definitions of the Church, applies also to the exercise of Ratiocination. Our logical powers, too, being a gift from God, may claim to have their informations respected; and Protestants sometimes accuse our theologians, for instance, the medieval schoolmen, of having used them in divine matters a little too freely. Still it has ever been our teaching and our protest that, as there are doctrines which lie beyond the direct evidence of history, so there are doctrines which transcend the discoveries of reason; and, after all, whether they are more or less recommended to us by the one informant or the other, in all cases the immediate motive in the mind of a Catholic for his reception of them is, not that they are proved to him by Reason or by History, but because Revelation has declared them by means of that high ecclesiastical Magisterium which is their legitimate exponent.
End paste of the original quote untouched by the deceitful hands of Protestant anti-Catholics.
Here, by the way, is how the quote appears in a reader’s comment at Beggars All - the Pro-Protestant and strongly anti-Catholic website:
“...in all cases the immediate motive in the mind of a Catholic for his reception of them is, not that they are proved to him by Reason or by History, but because Revelation has declared them by means of that high ecclesiastical Magisterium which is their legitimate exponent.” — John Henry Newman, “A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone’s Recent Expostulation.” 8. The Vatican Council http://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section8.html
posted here: http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2011/08/canon-as-infallible-sacred-tradition.html
It is obvious that you took the quote - deceptively quoted - from Beggars All, or a website that used the same deceptively edited quote, and that you accidentally cut the ““...in” from the beginning of the quote. It is so obvious because you have exactly the same citation - word for word - and yet you have only the closing quote marks and not the opening quote marks.
Sometimes I’m not sure what is worse - that Protestant anti-Catholics are stupid or that they are deceptive. It has to be the deceptive part because that tends toward sinfulness. Stupidity is perhaps blameless.
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