Posted on 10/08/2014 11:39:09 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
Why would intelligent, successful people give up their careers, alienate their friends, and cause havoc in their families...to become Catholic? Indeed, why would anyone become Catholic?
As an evangelist and author who recently threw my own life into some turmoil by deciding to enter the Catholic Church, I've faced this question a lot lately. That is one reason I decided to make this documentary; it's part of my attempt to try to explain to those closest to me why I would do such a crazy thing.
Convinced isn't just about me, though. The film is built around interviews with some of the most articulate and compelling Catholic converts in our culture today, including Scott Hahn, Francis Beckwith, Taylor Marshall, Holly Ordway, Abby Johnson, Jeff Cavins, Devin Rose, Matthew Leonard, Mark Regnerus, Jason Stellman, John Bergsma, Christian Smith, Kevin Vost, David Currie, Richard Cole, and Kenneth Howell. It also contains special appearances by experts in the field of conversion such as Patrick Madrid and Donald Asci.
Ultimately, this is a story about finding truth, beauty, and fulfillment in an unexpected place, and then sacrificing to grab on to it. I think it will entertain and inspire you, and perhaps even give you a fresh perspective on an old faith.
(Excerpt) Read more at indiegogo.com ...
Can you prove that? I'm still waiting for the proof of the indiscriminate slaughter you spoke of in #2389. But I don't want you to worry I won't be holding my breath for that.
As an aside if all of faith could be proven it wouldn't be faith would it? So keep on protestants with the scientific method. You just might reason your way to God at some point...
All the rest of your words are just so much more ugly (and illogical) noise.
Well, you're certainly free to ignore them and not respond.
I do. Do you understand what was written?
That sounds a lot like Roman Catholicism as commonly spoken of by many (but not all) Catholics.
Really? Can you point to the Catholic who says they can will their way to God without His Grace? Protestants see "faith" and "works", put two and two together and get five. But if one knows better (which can be inferred by the use of the modifier, "by many but not all" then it is their duty to fraternally correct them.
Protestants wouldn't want to leave these poor Catholics in ignorance and material heresy now would they? Or, does the protestant say, "Not my Church, not my problem." I think we know which is the more likely scenario.
But the Waldensians were not murdered for this. They were murdered for not bowing down to Roman Catholic claims to 'authority'.
I think you mean the authority of Alfonso II, Pedro II, Francis I, Charles Emmanuel II, etc.
Since as you've said, you have no problem removing heretics from our midst--- what next?
Oh we already know what's next. We're living it right now. "Your truth, my truth, no truth.
I did want to say this, however. If protestants want to look back to the Waldensians then perhaps they should also look back to their anti-Donatist sentiments. It certainly has implications for the modern era.
Was it murder to apply the death penalty for horse thievery in 19th century America, the bastion of protestant post-enlightenment thought?
There is NO justification found anywhere, including Scripture, for the murder of someone rejecting a denominational affiliation.
Are you aware that there was a time where "denominational affiliation" was not merely a matter of opinion but had severe civil and societal implications?
Thus we can be assured that a professed member of ISIS would be welcome to set up residence in your neighborhood?
Yes it does. I've sent messages to my Bishop, the USCCB, and the Holy See regarding the lack of enforcement of Canon 915 and the grave scandal it has created for the Church in the United States.
Not at all.
"Kill them all, God will know his own"...?
Who said that?
It was a Roman Catholic during the Albigensian/Cathar crusades -- or so it is said to have been uttered. But that's not the "indiscriminate slaughter" against the Waldenes themselves, is it?
As for indiscriminate killings of Waldenes, for that one need only look to the crusades which were launched against them, wherein people were killed for allegedly being 'heretics' and worse (those of the RCC included Waldensians in accusations of witchcraft --being as they couldn't pin much of anything else on them) but without any Inquisitional trial...although under torture, there was extracted out at least a couple of individual Waldensians confessions [cough, cough] of witchcraft. Leaving even any "trials" which may have been conducted against them being worse than kangaroo court proceedings. see p.100 thru 108, with 106-107 as for the accusations of witchcraft
Here's Schaff, from History of the Christian Church
With occasional exceptions, the Waldensians of Italy and France were left unmolested until the latter part of the 15th century and the dukes of Savoy were inclined to protect them in their Alpine abodes. But the agents of the Inquisition were keeping watch, and the Franciscan Borelli is said to have burned, in 1393, 150 at Grenoble in the Dauphiné in a single day. It remained for Pope Innocent VIII. to set on foot a relentless crusade against this harmless people as his predecessor of the same name, Innocent III., set on foot the crusade against the Albigenses. His notorious bull of May 5, 1487, called upon the king of France, the duke of Savoy and other princes to proceed with armed expeditions against them and to crush them out "as venomous serpents." It opened with the assertion that his Holiness was moved by a concern to extricate from the abyss of error those for whom the sovereign Creator had been pleased to endure sufferings. The striking difference seems not to have occurred to the pontiff that the Saviour, to whose services he appealed, gave his own life, while he himself, without incurring any personal danger, was consigning others to torture and death.Writing of the crusade which followed, the Waldensian historian, Leger, says that all his people had suffered before was as "flowers and roses" compared to what they were now called upon to endure. Charles VIII. entered heartily into the execution of the decree, and sent his captain, Hugo de la Palu. The crusading armies may have numbered 18,000 men.
It was the execution of the crusades against them (the Waldenes) and crusades, open warfare against the people themselves, bringing that to their those peoples towns and villages ---that I had in mind when I spoke towards the indiscriminate slaughters of those persons, though those are not quite as well documented as were the wholesale murder or the Albigensian and Cathars.
I could provide more links -- but I don't see why I should bother -- most RC'ers around here will either argue endlessly and justify past atrocities (while dishing out present-day insults) or just run away when the truth goes against them.
I'm already acquainted with the Lord.
As for your words which I called -- what was it? ugly noise? something like that, you reply;
Since you were in effect -- justifying murders of persons guilty of nothing much -- other than not submitting themselves to Romish sacerdotalism -- the remainder of your words were not worthy of response.
In the future -- keep your sneering insults about "Protestants" to yourself.
"It is said"...okay. But the crusade was conducted only after the assassination of a papal emissary by the Cathars. War was declared."
But that's not the "indiscriminate slaughter" against the Waldenes themselves, is it?
No it is not. I hope you are not expecting sympathy for such evil gnostic dualist death cultists? Because you will not get it. If protestants want to align themselves with people who practiced homosexuality, fornication, suicide and euthanasia that's their business. Excesses occur in war. Not to mention the resulting civil war due to the interference of French nobility.
But this is what I've been driving at. The Protestant treats the issues of faith and morals as issues of individuality. The post-modern secular protestant can't even conceive of a time when these matters were not just an internalized belief system. They amounted to something real. So they adopt the Cartesian mindset.
Franciscan Borelli is said to have burned, in 1393, 150 at Grenoble in the Dauphiné in a single day.
"It is said"...Okay. Although I do appreciate your intellectual honesty in acknowledging when necessary that these historical citations are not complete so we can never really know precisely what happened. But I'm not prepared to hang my hat on that little bit of technicality.
I could provide more links -- but I don't see why I should bother -- most RC'ers around here will either argue endlessly and justify past atrocities (while dishing out present-day insults) or just run away when the truth goes against them.
I'm sure you could. I have no doubt that your scholarship is of good caliber. But then I'm not here to win arguments, I leave that to protestants who exemplify the use of modernity to attempt to ridicule their theological opponents by using the methods of Feuerbach.
Since you were in effect [is this one of those material vs. formal things again?] -- justifying murders of persons guilty of nothing much -- other than not submitting themselves to Romish sacerdotalism -- the remainder of your words were not worthy of response.
Are you sure this statement isn't a case of conclusion-selective mind-reading? I said I have no problem with keeping heretics out of our midst. I didn't say which method that should entail. And since we do not agree on what constitutes murder in these matters I don't think its proper to reach the conclusion that I justified murder. You can say it and capitalize it all you want but it doesn't make it so.
In the future -- keep your sneering insults about "Protestants" to yourself.
Or what? You're free to leave at anytime. Just stop posting.
AND -- show us where and when this one known as Peter Waldo ever "returned to the Church".
He was ex-communicated. And according to historians, no one knows precisely where he breathed his last.
So go fetch. Back your own statements up, before I need to bother untangling ever more messes.
Though I will say, that all one needs to find is one Inquisitor among those you mentioned;
for there were a pair of papal bull written -- authorizing Inquisitors to ---in addition to jailing/imprisoning suspect heretics, to do most anything they saw fit.
On small phrase like that, often turned much violence committed against those the RCC perceived as challenges to their own claims of authority, characterizing them any way they could as "enemies of the Church".
That the persecution of the Waldenses persisted for centuries with no real correction, and even support (through bishops and Inquisitors) ties it all back right to office of papacy.
But I KNEW the wiggle-worm serpentine RC apologetic (such as characterized by that which is highlighted in brown text, above) in attempt to distance the wholesale murders from the Roman Catholic Church -- would come out, doing it's usual snake-footed, slithering tap-dancing. I've seen it a thousand times.
BUT-- you answer to what I've set before you in previous note, and include proof that this Waldo "returned to the church" instead of (eventually) being ex-communicated -- and then I may entertain some rebuttal you may have to offer as to under what authority these people were murdered -- and what their theology consisted of -- for that theology can be seen to change over time & place.
Meanwhile -- to any rebutal and additional claims you may wish to make -- bring proper documentation. I get sick and tired of doing all the work around here -- combating erroneous & twisted assertions. The half-truths, with a cunning twist to them -- which turns what truth there is of a thing into misleading statements which obscure or turn things sideways -- take much time to straighten out.
Like this sort of confused garbage;
pretends that the Waldensians even believed THAT.
Oh, they believed they needed to live a pure and sanctified life alright, but it is highly doubtful they believed they could do so "without His grace".
Even today --- there are many Roman Catholics, and others also -- who although they say they believe in Grace --- still believe they must also work to earn it.
An RCC counterpoint to this -- to be effectually granted this Grace you speak of-- need receive forgiveness for sins through the auspices of a Roman Catholic priest -- and no one else.
A wise, all-knowing God (which He is) would not have set up such a system -- as the Romanist one, as that was known (and functioned!) in centuries past.
God is good.
Not stupid, and cruel.
Is that what you are hear for?
Nobody wants to hear that kind of unsubstantiated, broad- based, highly generalized, accusatorial GARBAGE -- where some marginal tendency perceived by your own self to belong to "Protestants" be smeared all over pretty much every single soul of the "Western" portions of Christianity -- who are themselves not Roman Catholic.
You keep inviting me to leave.
If you are here to merely continue spewing such insults -- why don't YOU just leave?
That sort of perpetuated and continuing habit which you've been at for months now -- is abuse of the persons here, and abuse of the forum (and the management thereof) being as it is abuse of the privilege.
We protestants don't have that purgatory thingy.
It must be mentioned in the books that Luther removed.
Could you use your bible and post the verses that explain it?
Many?
Just how 'many' is that?
I think you said you HONORED the Sabbath.
well, there is a commandment to keep holy the sabath, Christ founded a church which established what was expected of thier followers and that the way to keep the sabath holy was to attend Mass....under penalty of sin for not doing so.
Oh?
How does THAT work?
And yet there is no official Catholic teaching that specifically states this.
In fact; in this thread...
???
Doesn't Last Rites take care of that little problem?
Details...
Da debble is in 'em!
....they didn't start printing anything for years after the press was invented,
Oh?
That seems; shall I say; strange.
The VAST majority of the people coulddn't read mostly because they had nothing to read.
Then they should have been JEWISH; not Catholic.
The Jews had no problem, it seems, in having their people literate.
And yet you were NOT impressed with WHAT WAS TAUGHT shown in #1463???
HMMMmmm...
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