The Resurrection & The Eucharist

Observations....

Metmom does the usual Bible Christian thing and lets loose a cascade of scriptural quotations without realizing that he is implicitly telling us that he alone knows the “definitive” interpretation of these verses.

Does not every priest, Sunday School teacher, preacher, etc do this on Sundays or possibly Wednesdays or whenever they teach/preach? Take time to think about this.

Every priest around the world gives the same message on Sunday.

Every priest.

The same message.

No deviations whatsoever.

Does this guy get his stuff cleared by the pope before he writes and publishes it? Msgr. Charles Pope

Unless you're willing to tell me that every message from every priest, or every catholic thread that is posted, is signed off by the Vatican, then you have no ground to stand on your assertion and you diminish your position even further.

In fact, the opinions as stated on this forum indicate catholicism does not speak with one voice as claimed.

Of course his own Protestant colleagues will disagree. Just go and ask the Grahams, Sharptons, Osteens, David Koreshs, and Jim Jones. Each will offer us “his” definitive view.

Maybe we could ask Pope Urban II why he promised salvation for those who died in battle in the Crusades....a form of Christian jihad.

Maybe we could ask all those priests who've molested children what was on their minds.

Maybe we could ask all those popes why they committed murder, adultery, taught/allowed indulgences and offices to be bought; continue to advocate and even encourage the worship of Mary contrary to Scripture's injunctions against praying to false gods.

Maybe we could ask the catholic church why they continue to promote Mary as advocate, helper and co-redemtrix when no where in Scripture do we see this attributed to her....nor is it found in "sacred tradition".

This line of absurd logic only helps cement that infallible and one authority: The Catholic Church. The Church that formally and authentically declared the canonical texts as the word of God in AD 382.

This has been discredited so many times it is embarrassing you continue to post this.

I’ll leave boatbums with his B.A. in Biblical Education & Theology to answer that. Somehow Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and Benedict’s explanations are not good enough. Nor should we bore our Protestant friends with the beliefs and practices of the early Church Fathers.

And if the ECFs were in 100% agreement on the issues we discuss you and other catholics would have a point. However, they are not. And it is easily proven. So upon which ECF do you lean upon? The one you agree with? Or disagree with?

Unless there is 100% agreement from the ECFs we have no recourse but to default back to the texts.

This was nearly four centuries before the canonical texts were assembled under Petrine authority and affirmed as the true written Word of God by cross checking the hundreds of written fragments with the sacred oral tradition, also the Word of God. And just to be clear, some of the early Church fathers were contemporaries of John the Evangelist. Now, we don’t need a B.A. of any kind to know that.

You would serve yourself well to do a real in-depth study of how the NT canon came into being. In addition, some study of the 1st century would serve you well also.

Metmom does the usual Bible Christian thing and lets loose a cascade of scriptural quotations without realizing that he is implicitly telling us that he alone knows the “definitive” interpretation of these verses.

Your credibility more than tanked when you use the pronoun *he* for metmom

Can you now give me any reason at all to have any confidence in anything that you have to say on spiritual matters?

Metmom must admit that, in a sense, each person really has “his” or “her” own version of the Bible. You can say they all have different Bibles. I am not sure which one boatbums uses.

No, I must not admit what you claim. There are only so many versions of the Bible in existence so each one of us does not have his or her *own* version of the Bible, nor would I unless I translated it myself.

Additionally, multiple translations does not amount to much of anything.

Here's a link to many parallel versions of Scripture where you can compare any verse of your own choice with many other versions and see just how great the differences are between versions. For the record, there is precious little difference in translations and where the original is unclear, virtually any Bible printed these days states so.

http://biblehub.com/genesis/1-1.htm

Then we have smvoice and metmom wondering if it is true this New Covenant of Christ was established at the Last Supper or the more profound query comes from metmom “where the does the blood that Catholics claim come down from” during the Sacrifice of the Mass where under the appearances of bread and wine, we receive the true body and blood of Christ?

If you're going to quote someone, do have the integrity to quote accurately because that's not the wording I used in post 406.

I’ll leave boatbums with his B.A. in Biblical Education & Theology to answer that. Somehow Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and Benedict’s explanations are not good enough. Nor should we bore our Protestant friends with the beliefs and practices of the early Church Fathers.

That's another cop out answer. It's not up to bb to answer theological questions about a religion of which she is no longer a part. Catholics make the assertions about their faith. It's up to THEM to defend their own faith, not someone from a different denomination.

If you can't or won't then all it tells people is that there is no good answer and it's not a faith worth defending.

Nice try but you are flat out wrong. We have the Credo and the Catholic Catechism. This is a set of firm beliefs that identify us as Catholics. Of course, one can take a Parable of Christ and drawn several lessons from it but this does not mean a different “belief” interpretation. Indeed, you contradict yourself, the priest like every other priest in the Catholic Church affirms the Credo, and participates in the Sacrifice of the Mass and the central belief in the Eucharist, the alpha and omega of Catholic worship and adoration: The risen Christ Himself under the appearances of the consecrated bread and wine. Unbelief in the Eucharist, is unbelief in what the Resurrection is all about.

Your credibility more than tanked when you use the pronoun *he* for metmom

In fairness, Elsie is a guy.

Oh, so that’s your basis for why my credibility tanked. So very sorry! Wish you had corrected that a year ago and not allowed it to pass as if the gender nomenclature was correct.

Anyway, Catholics have been defending their faith for 2000 years and this rock is still standing. We have a single Credo and Catechism. If you only read it maybe you’d understand Catholic beliefs.

So now instead of different interpretations, we have different versions of the Bible. This is becoming interesting. Tell that to Jim Jones, Billy Graham;, David Koresh, Joel Osteen, and TD Jakes and mainline Protestant denominations that ordain married gay and lesbian pastors. This is what occurs when each time Bible Christians try to extract themselves out of the inherent contradictions posed by Protestantism. So now blame it on “different” versions, not different and conflicting interpretations. So the thousands of Protestant sects are suing thousands of different versions. Which one do you use?

Nice try but you are flat out wrong. We have the Credo and the Catholic Catechism.

This is the same CCC that says catholics and muslims worship the same god?

or this?

337 God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine "work", concluded by the "rest" of the seventh day. On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation, permitting us to "recognize the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God."

Really, have you read the whole thing??

If you can't get Genesis right, you probably won't get the rest right.

If this what the ccc has to offer, you can keep it.

Yes, I am aware he has a girl’s screen name.

However, the *mom* part ought to be a dead giveaway.

No, it tanked a long time before.

But with that it MORE THAN tanked.

We have a single Credo and Catechism.

One? Which one?

Trent?

Or Vatican 1?

Of Vatican 2?

Apparently, then, the Catholic church does not even take seriously the same Scripture that some claim it painstakingly assembled and decided was canon.

You know....this assumption that catholics have a "deeper" theology that Christians is nonsense.

This is the theological work of one man, I have half a dozen of his books, they're eight and nine hundred pages long. In all I've read of his I don't think he wasted a word. Then consider the theological work of the last pope. It's some amazing stuff with insights that are leaps and bounds beyond my simple understanding.

Your list of what we can hopefully agree on is agreeable to me, but there's so much more... I'm sure I'm wasting words here but Benedict XVI's three books on "Jesus of Nazareth" are phenomenal. Borrow the first one from your local library. (Here I got caught up reading the account of the Crucifixion so I've lost my train of thought)

Benedict's Christology is beyond "profound". Give it a chance, just skim through his Encyclical on Love (Sorry, got caught up reading that too. I have no idea where I was going with this.)

In early Christianity the term "mystikos" referred to three dimensions, which soon became intertwined, namely the biblical, the liturgical and the spiritual or contemplative.[1] The biblical dimension refers to "hidden" or allegorical interpretations of Scriptures.

If this is part of the mystical that your boy was writing on, we're off to a rocky start already.

The allegorical interpretation of scripture is what has produced so much that is wrong in Catholicism.....Mary being the new Eve for starters.

22.We do not perceive by an immediate intuition that God exists, nor do we prove it a priori. But we do prove it a posteriori, i.e., from the things that have been created, following an argument from the effects to the cause: namely, from things which are moved and cannot be the adequate source of their motion, to a first unmoved mover; from the production of the things in this world by causes subordinated to one another, to a first uncaused cause; from corruptible things which equally might be or not be, to an absolutely necessary being; from things which more or less are, live, and understand, according to degrees of being, living and understanding, to that which is maximally understanding, maximally living and maximally a being; finally, from the order of all things, to a separated intellect which has ordered and organized things, and directs them to their end.

Did your boy read Romans 1:18-21??

But that by no means proves that Catholicism has a DEEPER theology than anyone else.

All it does is show that some Catholics do.

And some non-Catholics do.

It’s NOT based on religious affiliation. It’s based on the person’s individual relationship with Christ.

Boatbums post 398:I am proud to be a "Bible Christian". I have a BA degree in Biblical Education and Theology I sacrificed and worked hard for. I see that as a badge of honor and laugh at those who would try to make it something wrong or undesirable.

Will boatbums now be subjected to scorn and derision, or that is reserved for Catholics that have earned degrees in Theology/ Religion?

It’s not the degree that’s criticized.....it’s what one does with it.

Your credibility more than tanked when you use the pronoun *he* for metmom

Can you now give me any reason at all to have any confidence in anything that you have to say on spiritual matters?

Thank you for demonstrating the Red Herring logical fallacy so well.

You do realize that Elsie is a male named after the Borden cow right?

So now we have ealgeone giving us “his” definitive interpretation of scripture whereas before metmom keeps repeating “her” definitive interpretation of scripture, and then when asked to explain how come we have every Protestant sect offering us “their” definitive interpretations of scripture, we are treated to the supreme nonsense that all this is the result of different versions of the Bible.

As if to counter attack all of this, we are told that Catholic priests offer different homilies. True, but no matter what Church you attend anywhere in the world you will be attending the same Sacrifice of the Mass where the consecrated bread and wine is the true living resurrected Christ. Indeed, the consecrated host is the resurrected Christ. All Catholics share this belief.

Belief in the Resurrection without a belief in the Eucharist is not only vapid nonsense, it flatly contradicts the beliefs and practices of the disciples of Christ, the contemporaries of the Evangelists, and those who used these very same beliefs to infallibly establish the written word of God.

Indeed some two centuries before the Bible was assembled by the Catholic Church, St. Irenaeus in AD 183, and as a Church Father wrote that “the Eucharistic elements become the body and blood of Christ, by which our bodies live and grow.”

Protestant have no answer to any of this.

No one: saints, martyrs, stigmatists, theologians, historical scholars ever questioned this belief until ELEVEN CENTURIES later.

2000 years later Catholic continue to believe this, and now a whole constellation of eminent Protestant scholars and theologians have embraced this belief and converted to Catholicism.

If a Catholic dislikes a particular pastor he/she may migrate to another parish but make no mistake its the same Mass, the same sacraments, the same canon.

Protestants on the hand will hopscotch from one local neighborhood Foursquare Church to another until the pastor of the church (married gay and lesbians pastors included) they attend provides a scriptural integration that comports with “their” beliefs. Hence the thousands of “beliefs” and consequently thousands of different “bibles” from the ones used by Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright to Billy Graham and Joel Osteen and Jim Jones. None of them swears to uphold “a” particular teaching or belief.

Its all a free-for-all. We have seen this from metmom and boatbums etc inundating us with waterfalls of scriptural quotations.

So please don’t try to justify the thousand of different and conflicting Protestant interpretations of scripture. This is why when Lutheran Dr. Anders purposefully sought out to prove Catholicism wrong he ended up finding about the starkly inherent inconsistencies of core Protestant beliefs that he ended up converting to Catholicism. Or another Lutheran theologian Dr. Richard Neuhaus who said at his conversion to Catholicism that he found “the fullest expression of Christ in the Catholic Church.”

The metmoms etc on this thread have never provided us with any refutation of this although we have one who to his credit (with a B.A. in Divinity) tells us they are all wrong. Yes, all of them, those who assembled the books in the Bible, the great Catholic theologians, saints, martyrs, the thousand of brilliant intellectuals from other faiths (agnostics and atheists included) who converted to Catholicim. They, we are told all got it wrong. So who is right? Al Sharpton or Joel Osteen, or met mom’s, boatbums, ealgeone’s interpretation of sacred scripture?

Catholic priests may offer different variation of homilies but they all take ONE oath required of them.

Here’s a sample:

“I, in assuming the office of __________, promise that in my words and in my actions I shall always preserve communion with the Catholic Church.
With great care and fidelity I shall carry out the duties incumbent on me toward the Church, both universal and particular, in which, according to the provisions of the law, I have been called to exercise my service.

In fulfilling the charge entrusted to me in the name of the Church, I shall hold fast to the deposit of faith in its entirety; I shall faithfully hand it on and explain it, and I shall avoid any teachings contrary to it.

I shall follow and foster the common discipline of the entire Church and I shall maintain the observance of all ecclesiastical laws, especially those contained in the Code of Canon Law.

With Christian obedience I shall follow what the Bishops, as authentic doctors and teachers of the faith, declare, or what they, as those who govern the Church, establish.

I shall also faithfully assist the diocesan Bishops, so that the apostolic activity, exercised in the name and by mandate of the Church, may be carried out in communion with the Church.

So help me God, and God’s Holy Gospels on which I place my hand.
I shall foster the common discipline of the entire Church and I shall insist on the observance of all ecclesiastical laws, especially those contained in the Code of Canon Law.

With Christian obedience I shall follow what the Bishops, as authentic doctors and teachers of the faith, declare, or what they, as those who govern the Church, establish. I shall also — with due regard for the character and purpose of my institute — faithfully assist the diocesan Bishops, so that the apostolic activity, exercised in the name and by mandate of the Church, may be carried out in communion with the Church.”