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.”
Could you show us somewhere where ealgeone and I have differing interpretations of Scripture?
And who ever said that differing interpretations were a result of differing versions of the Bible?
So while we're at it, how about we compare the Catholic church's Douay-Rheims version of the Bible with some of newer more recently translated versions by the Catholic church.
And of course, we'd find them all perfectly consistent in translation, now wouldn't we? (not)
Show us some of those. Pick a verse, any verse, of your choosing, and show us the *thousands* of different interpretations that verse has.