Posted on 06/15/2014 4:12:26 AM PDT by markomalley
There was the man inspired by the written words of Pope Francis. There was the agnostic professor. And there was the widow of a Baptist preacher.
All of them Tennesseans, and all of them recent converts to one of the world's oldest Christian faiths.
In the South, Catholicism is growing. The Diocese of Knoxville was recently ranked among the top 10 in the nation for its rate of adult conversions.
All Southeast Tennessee Catholic parishes, including Chattanooga's, fall under the umbrella of Knoxville's diocese, one of 195 in the United States. A diocese is a geographic collection of parishes grouped together under the governance of a bishop. And many of the dioceses producing the most converts to the church are right here in the South, according to a recent study by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.
Rates of Catholicism have always been strong in the Northeast and Midwest. But not in the protestant-heavy South.
So it's no wonder that Catholicism is growing faster here.
Mark Gray, a senior research associate at the Georgetown Center, said marriage is a common driver of Catholicism, as non-Catholics marry Catholics. And in Tennessee, non-Catholics and Catholics are more likely to marry simply because there are not enough Catholics to marry only other Catholics.
In the Volunteer State, about 8 percent of people are Catholic. That compares with 40 percent in Massachusetts and the national average of 24 percent.
"Tennessee is the third-least Catholic state in the country, which is exactly where we would expect these conversions to occur, because that 8 percent are likely marrying non-Catholics," Gray said.
In the Catholic Church, conversion is a commitment. It's more formal and involved than switching from one protestant church to another. And conversion is a commitment to the faith, not necessarily a particular church.
Before joining the church, converts take part in a college-like class that can last from nine months to a year.
"It is a very long program, and it's not something we take lightly, nor do the people becoming Catholic take it lightly," said Marvin Bushman, the director of religious education at Cleveland's St. Therese of Lisieux. "It is a big commitment."
Knoxville Bishop Richard F. Stika said the church is growing from rising minority populations, mainly Hispanics. Knoxville recently established a Vietnamese parish. And this part of the country is attracting more retirees and families, many of whom are Catholic.
"We're a growing Church, both in people who are choosing to become Catholic as well as people moving in from out of town," Stika told the diocesan newspaper, The East Tennessee Catholic.
At St. Therese, Brenda Blevins oversees the Catholic conversion program, called the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, or RCIA. The Diocese of Knoxville, which includes 47 parishes, receives about 350 adult converts each year through RCIA.
Some come after marrying or dating a Catholic, but Blevins said many of their recent converts were single. And the RCIA program doesn't want people to just marry into the church.
"We want people to be here because they want to be and because they feel a call," she said.
And each convert has his own story. There are the college-age brothers who just joined together. And the widow of a Baptist minister who married a Catholic. Some come from protestant churches; others have never been baptized into any faith.
"I think part of the reason the Catholic Church is growing so much in Southeast Tennessee is because Southeast Tennessee is part of the Bible Belt," Blevins said. "And there are a lot of faithful Christians here."
It's not meant as a diversion. I've read many of your posts. Some go so far as to blame the migration of Catholic peoples from Europe in the 19th century as a source of our current predicament. The issue of the migration of Catholic hispanics is just the current iteration. Now, I don't believe you to be racist, so I want to know is it your contention that being Catholic is a threat to the continued existence of the United States? It's a perfectly legitimate question seeing as how it's the fact of being Catholic that ties your argument together.
That is close enough to what I was pointing out about Catholics and immigration at FR.
So unless I accept the premises and positions of the FR WASP contingent I'm an amnesty supporter?
It seems that now you want to find a way to attacking my anti-immigration position, still without you stating one, using the "Nazi" gambit.
No. No Godwin's law violation here. But I will refine my question for you: Do you believe Catholicism to be primarily a religion or an ideology?
There are two reasons to ask you whether you were infallible:
1) Your argument was wrapped up in another argument of infallibility; so it's obvious to ask if you claim it; and,
2) If you are not claiming infallibility - i.e., you could be wrong, then how is this "assurance" in your choice of words?
So it is entirely in context with the debate.
Roman logic means whoever makes a truth claim must be claiming infallibility..
Well, yes, it is a claim to truth isn't it? And particularly when the truth claim is "the basis for your assurance of truth," the caveat "but this could be error" is beyond weak, it negates the argument.
So, your objection seems to me to be that I'm requiring you to answer your own question and, at the least, in a better fashion than whatever you claim to be arguing against.
I think if a debater challenges, they most certainly are not immune from being given the same challenge.
How well they meet their own challenge is not only fair and revealing, but is required to avoid descending into a double standard.
So it is diversion, although I think you have probably revealed your position on immigration.
Importing Catholics and their resulting offspring by the tens of millions feeds the democrat party, you can be something that we can’t find on FR, an anti-immigration Catholic, that want to end all mass immigration for a few generations. that means allow administrative cases of a few 10s of thousands of situations that don’t really figure into the issue of immigration, bringing in wives, some scientists, etc., and sure isn’t “mass” immigration.
If you are pro-life, then do whatever you can to cut off the supply of pro-abortion voters.
“However, if there is one man who can take the most credit for the 1965 act, it is John F. Kennedy. Kennedy seems to have inherited the resentment his father Joseph felt as an outsider in Boston’s WASP aristocracy. He voted against the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, and supported various refugee acts throughout the 1950s.
In 1958 he wrote a book, A Nation of Immigrants, which attacked the quota system as illogical and without purpose, and the book served as Kennedy’s blueprint for immigration reform after he became president in 1960.
In the summer of 1963, Kennedy sent Congress a proposal calling for the elimination of the national origins quota system. He wanted immigrants admitted on the basis of family reunification and needed skills, without regard to national origin.
After his assassination in November, his brother Robert took up the cause of immigration reform, calling it JFK’s legacy. In the forward to a revised edition of A Nation of Immigrants, issued in 1964 to gain support for the new law, he wrote, “I know of no cause which President Kennedy championed more warmly than the improvement of our immigration policies.” Sold as a memorial to JFK, there was very little opposition to what became known as the Immigration Act of 1965.”
No, it has been not been by you as well, while the obsession via programming is that of RCs which continue to make polemical assertions that we need to submit to Rome in order to determine what Truth is, seeing she possesses historical descent, gave us the Bible, etc, without considering the presuppositions that this entails, but cannot or will not comprehend, or forthrightly own up to and deal with.
Let's try the negative form.
Do you deny that an assuredly (if conditionally) infallible magisterium is essential for determination and assurance of Truth (including which writings and men being of God) and to fulfill promises of Divine presence, providence of Truth, and preservation of faith, and authority. (Jn. 14:16,26; 15:26; 16:13; Mt. 16:18; Lk. 10:16, etc.)
Do you deny that being the historical instruments and stewards of Divine revelation (oral and written) means that Rome is that assuredly infallible magisterium we should submit to? If not, what import does the "we gave you the Bible" assertion have?
And that thus those who willfully dissent from the latter are in rebellion to God.
This deals with what is essentially is argued so often, and should not require so much hand wringing and equivocation.
Ain't gonna happen, so these infallibility attacks are at best, attempts to apply double standards.
Obviously if someone or some theology claims truth - but they could be wrong, we can take their claim as self-consciously weak, most definitely not "assured." Hence, my question back to daniel1212. I think it fair to characterize his response is not completely assured, and therefore failing his own challenge.
So, now that we have, apparently, received daniel1212's best answer to the question "What is the basis for your assurance of truth?" I think it time to give a simple Catholic reply:
Our basis for our assurance of truth is Christ, the head of his Church, from Him and through His Church, the pillar and foundation of the truth.
as if the Bible gets up off the table, talks to you in an audible voice, and tells you, “No you’re reading me wrong. This is how I should be read...”?
Well put. Sola scriptura - scripture alone - does not exist in reality, ever.
It is also unscriptural and as dogma it is self-contradictory. So, it is completely expected that it should also fail in practice to result in the most basic requirement for Christ's Church: one Lord, one faith, one baptism.
Perhaps we can infer that this is why our Lord did not teach or establish the doctrine of sola scriptura for His Church.
tiki: :o)
RF rules disallow actually continuing a dispute from another thread, but if i may summarize what you did: I asked my standard questions of you on 5-30 and received no reply from you.
I then reminded you of it again later in that thread , and your answer was that an tangible visible magisterium was necessary to resolve differences.
But which i pointed out that this is what Westminster itself affirms. And then provided the forthright RC answer that, that "an infallible magisterium is essential for this [to settle disputes], for determination of assurance of Truth," and which you affirmed is your position, though without dealing with the presuppositions behind that claim.
I then asked , "..if so then how could any souls before Christ have assurance that Elijah or John were prophets, and that Jesus indeed the very Christ? How could both writings and men of God be recognized as being so before there was a church in Rome?"
And that "if an infallible magisterium is essential for determination and assurance of Truth, and the stewards of Scripture are it, then it follows that the church began upon a faulty foundation, as the church actually began in dissent from those who sat in the seat of Moses over Israel, who were the historical instruments and stewards of Scripture..."
I thus asked, Do you understand the problems with your position?," but to which you gave no reply.
On another thread, and not in direct response to these questions, your resorted to arguing,
You demand Scriptural proof of an infallible magisterium but when given to you by other Catholics you reject it because you don’t agree with it. You don’t agree with it because you reject the idea of an infallible magisterium to begin with.
And that "Whoever hears you hears me” translates into a perpetual assuredly infallible magisterium.
Thus my response that, "while i do as 1st century souls did, (Acts 17:11) you affirm that a perpetual assuredly infallible magisterium (AIM) is essential for assurance of Truth, and that Rome is that AIM, and that I need to submit to her in order to know that she is that AIM, since she has infallibly declared that she is."
That was followed by your attacks on Prots and use of straw man which avoided actually dealing with the fundamental problems of your position. i think you also argued faith was a gift, and invoked personal experience as basis for assurance. And while this summarizes the exchange on the subject that has arisen here since you said you answered it, if you want to consider that your answer, then you can, but i see the a faulty foundation conclusion of this position as being unanswered.
but is the instrumental basis for your assurance of Truth that of the assuredly infallible magisterium of Rome, or can one rightly discern Truth without this
...based on evidence that again, was and is (still) from my own personal experience! Which is the method of Christianity all along anyway, how the Gospel is spread truly. NOT via Scripture study, but from one witness to another. I gave this to you before, said this to you before in the context of my own testimony, and you STILL dismissed it,
And as before, try to understand that while personal testimony can be part of Scriptural substantiation, in the sense of the manner of experiential attestation that God is shown giving to Truth, (Ps. 40:3) yet the Mormons also have their "testimony", but the subjective must be subject to objective, all things considered, and it was appeal to the established transcendent assured word of God that Christ and His church established their Truth claims upon, implicitly and explicitly, including what manner of supernatural testimony may be considered to be of God.
Again, how did 1st c. Jews know John the Baptist was a prophet indeed? Why should he be considered different from some Hindi scribe? Could one follow Muhammad if one was literate in the Scriptures? But your fundamental instrumental basis for assurance of Truth cannot be your personal experience, nor the weight of evidence, as that marginalizes the infallible magisterium, the premise behind that being that it is needed to assuredly determine Truth, by which RCs have assurance that it is infallible.
SoI was right. We return to what I predicted all along. Predicted based on past experience with you. "Scripture says what I say it says because when I study it, it says what I say it says
No, that is another one of your straw men, as Roman reasoning here fails to see the distinction btwn claiming personal infallibility as the basis for assurance, so that Scripture must say says what I say it says, and calling others to assent to that, which is what Rome does, versus being persuaded by the degree of apostolic "manifestation of the Truth," which is what they appealed to, (2Cor. 4:2) and making Truth claims upon that basis.
And which is what is Scriptural, versus Rome, in which the assurance is upon the premise of her assured veracity, thus (again ) as Keating asserts (and affirmed in other RC teaching), "The mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as definitely true is a guarantee that it is true.” "Catholicism and Fundamentalism" (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), p. 275.
. As long as it doesn't say what the Catholic Church says it says, it's fine."
Which is more recourse to straw men. Evangelicals have actually historically strongly contended for the many core Scriptural Truths Rome also affirms, if not always consistently. Thus we deny such things as that Muslims adore the same God as us.
This is essentially your position. And it is circular, not mine.
It is not at all circular, expect via the use of straw men of lack of cognition, while that of RCs is. For unless you want to allow that souls may be obtain assurance of Truth (not that this cannot increase) based upon the weight of evidence, even in dissent from the magisterium, then assurance of Truth must be upon the basis of the assured veracity the infallible magisterium provides, including that it is infallible.
And evangelicals shared assent to many basic truths have historically set them in opposition to liberals as well as Rome. But which RCs ignore in the interest of focusing upon difference, and while Rome and the EOs are in closer agreement, their differences are far more substantial and broader than RCs realize of admit, including no less a cardinal doctrine as papal infallibility and power.
Now, I think perhaps you brought the EO position into the discussion because you thought it highlighted a foundational division in how we see the work of the Holy Spirit It
was a side issue, except that the foundational issue pertains particularly to Rome due to the appeal by RCs to her magisterium.
(I mention this because I can only LOL at your idea that the RC Church was always crushing independent thought and stomping on questioning.
Actually, it is the idea of a unified church that is presented by RCs who do not even mention the division btwn east and west, while i am the one documenting the disunity within Catholicism and Rome, beyond the limited or largely paper unity.
It is there polemic with its presuppositions that presents the infallible magisterium as essential for determining Truth that begs to be examined.
I alluded to Blessed John Henry Newman in one of my earlier remarks, and I'll now take Newman as my model (LINK). His "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine," acknowledged as a key work in understanding the Catholic Church, he wrote and virtually completed when he was a Protestant (!
Which specious work was necessary to reconcile contradictions and justify Rome as his new home. As your brethren state,
Roman Catholicism, unable to show a continuity of faith 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
And as Webster states ,
At first, this clear lack of patristic consensus led Rome to embrace a new theory in the late nineteenth century to explain its teachings — the theory initiated by John Henry Newman known as the development of doctrine. In light of the historical reality, Newman had come to the conclusion that the Vincentian principle of unanimous consent was unworkable, because, for all practical purposes, it was nonexistent. To quote Newman:
It does not seem possible, then, to avoid the conclusion that, whatever be the proper key for harmonizing the records and documents of the early and later Church, and true as the dictum of Vincentius must be considered in the abstract, and possible as its application might be in his own age, when he might almost ask the primitive centuries for their testimony, it is hardly available now, or effective of any satisfactory result. The solution it offers is as difficult as the original problem. — John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., reprinted 1927), p. 27.
He ended up satisfied with the definition that did come out of Vatican I, since it was right-sized. I was not some despotic monarchialism;
It, as part of the Roman premise of assured infallibility, means that Tradition (from whence comes the Roman magisterium) Scripture and history mean what she says they mean in any conflict.
As saith Manning,
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. ..The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour. — Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, “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 as Newman says,
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 lhttp://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section8.html
And “Christians have never gone to Scripture for proof of their doctrines until there was actual need, from the pressure of controversy...” — Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey" contained in Newman's "Difficulties of Anglicans" Volume II, Dignity of Mary.
And thus Keating, "The mere fact that the Church teaches the doctrine of the Assumption as definitely true is a guarantee that it is true.” — Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), p. 275.
I'm pinging don-o into the discussion because he is Orthodox and might want to correct or add to it from the EO point of view.
OK, but this is still an excursion from the questions i asked.
As said to another, the Roman reasoning here fails to see the distinction btwn claiming personal infallibility as the basis for assurance, so that Scripture must say says what I say it says, and then calling others to assent to that, which is what Rome does, versus being persuaded by the degree of apostolic "manifestation of the Truth," which is what they appealed to, (2Cor. 4:2) and making Truth claims upon that basis.
If you hold that lack of personal infallibility means that one cannot have assurance, then for once answer a question and explain how souls could have assurance that Elijah or John were men of God, or that Jesus was the Christ, without an assuredly infallible magisterium to tell them.
Or how Apollos "mightily convinced the Jews, and that publickly, shewing by the scriptures that Jesus was Christ." (Acts 18:28)
Be consistent with your reasoning.
So, your objection seems to me to be that I'm requiring you to answer your own question and, at the least, in a better fashion than whatever you claim to be arguing against.
What absurdity is this?! Your "better fashion" turns any truth claim into a claim to personal infallibility, versus veracity being dependent on the weight of another, which is why Scripture was so much appealed to in by the NT church, while your Roman reasoning is as absurd as even thinking it is a better argument!
I think if a debater challenges, they most certainly are not immune from being given the same challenge.
Which is why i asked my questions, only to be met with lack of cognition or avoidance by absurdity.
Aren't you, likewise, calling others to assent to what you say Scripture says?
If not, what is your point - and why should we bother listening to you?
No it isn't. How much closer to Christ can we get than having Him dwell in our hearts by faith?
A priest isn't needed for that.
Ephesians 3:14-19 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
No it isn't. Also, there is only ONE mediator between God and man and that is Jesus.
1 Timothy 2:5-6 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.
California, Pelosi, NY, Gillibrand, Massachusetts, Kennedy, Kerry, Venezuela, Chavez, Bogota, Colombia, the Philippines, Haiti, Dominican Republic......
Do you want more?
I worked with and live next door to faithfully, weekly and more, mass attending Catholics and to a person voted Democrat and registered as liberal, by their own (proud) admission.
When asked point blank why they voted for dems when the Democratic party endorsed and supported abortion, the answers I got were that 1) dems are *for the poor*, and 2) *I know what the Church says but......* (in the one case it was that nobody has a right to tell a woman what to do with her body.
How does it feel to be mistaken for being on the *other side*.
Welcome to Catholic love.
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