Heh heh heh
Even them Mormons is smart enough to have elders!
Posted on 04/28/2015 8:36:56 AM PDT by RnMomof7
It’s a question that requires little thought to answer; are you infallible? It ranks right up there with, “Are you God?” But to Catholic apologists the question is quite serious; that’s because they believe that there is a man on earth who, on the subject of faith and morals, is infallible; they call him, “holy father.” See, it does rank right up there with, “Are you God,” at least when coming from people who think their leader is equal with God on deciding issues of faith and morals.
According to Catholic apologist, John Martignoni, this question should cause Protestants to suddenly doubt everything they believe, and Catholics should take comfort in knowing they and only they, have an infallible leader here on earth. But how can they know? Is there one Catholic person out there, besides the pope of course, who will confess to being infallible? And if a Catholic is not infallible, how can he or she “know” their pope is infallible? They can’t! So if they cannot infallibly declare their pope to be infallible, then their assertion is nothing more than a fallible opinion. And if they are wrong, which my fallible counter-assertion says they are, then they are being deceived.
The logic that so often accompanies claims of papal infallibility goes something like this: “Jesus did not leave His people vulnerable to the doctrinal whims of competing leaders.”
The logic used is quite revealing; it indicates very strongly that those who use it have no idea what it means to have the gift of the Holy Spirit, because if they had the gift of the Holy Spirit they would not be looking to Rome for infallible direction. It also reveals that they think everyone else is like them, wanting to follow the whims of their leaders. It also denies the notion that Christ has relationship with man through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Their magisterium reserves that privilege for themselves and people buy into it. It’s no different than Mormons following their prophet in Utah.
The pope is the head of the Roman Catholic Church, but the Apostle Paul explicitly said that Christ is the head of His Church and He reconciles all things to Himself. To wit, Catholics will be quick to agree that Christ is the head, but then immediately contradict themselves by saying, “but He established the papacy through which He reveals His truths .” Based on what? If Christ is the head and we are the body, where does the papacy fit in? I see no evidence of this claim in Scripture or history, so if the evidence is not there the papacy must belong to a different body; one that is not associated with Christ and His church.
In his newsletter on his website where he shares chapter one of his new book, “Blue Collar Apologetics,” John Martignoni instructs his faithful followers to establish the fact that Protestants are not infallible early on in discussions with them. The purpose of doing this is to attempt to convince the Protestant that he could be wrong about what he believes. The funny thing is Martignoni never tells his readers what to do if the Protestant turns the question back on them; and that is most certainly what is likely to happen.
Does Martignoni really not see this coming, or is he simply at a loss for how to address it? Once a Catholic apologist is faced with admitting their own fallibility, they will immediately be forced to deal with the realization that their claim of papal infallibility is itself a fallible opinion; so they must, therefore, admit that they could be wrong as well. And once they realize the playing field is level, the evidence will do the talking.
A Catholic apologist who is willing to concede that his belief regarding papal infallibility is nothing more than a fallible opinion will likely ask another similar question, “What church do you belong to and how old is it?” In their minds this is the true “gotcha” question. They believe, in their fallible opinions of course, that they belong to the church founded by Christ nearly 2000 years ago. But the fact is, and yes it is a fact, there was no Roman Catholic Church 2000 years ago; it took a few hundred years for that to develop. Furthermore, by their own admission, the doctrines they hold equal in authority to the Bible, which they call “sacred traditions,” did not exist at the time of the apostles; that also is a fact.
There is something, however, that is clearly older than any Protestant or Roman Catholic Church and that is the written books of the Bible. If a person bases his or her faith on these written works then no supposed authority that came later can undermine the power of God working through them. It is unfortunate that when a person comes to Christ in faith through reading the Bible, that there are so-called Christians who come along to cast doubt in their minds. For example, in a tract on the Catholic Answers website called, “By What Authority,” it is stated, “In fact, not one book of the Bible was written for non-believers.”
Not according to the Apostle John who explicitly wrote, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name”? He did not say these are written because you believe; he said, these are written that you may believe. John’s gospel is a firsthand written testimony of the ministry of Jesus for the purpose of bringing people to Him, and Catholic apologists are telling us it was never John’s intention for us to become believers by reading it? Amazing; isn’t it? The Catholic Answers philosophy seems to be to make up facts rather than face them.
So for the sake of the next John Martignoni disciple who wants to ask me if I am infallible, the answer is no; and incidentally your answer to my identical question is also no. Thus I am not interested in your fallible opinion that your pope is infallible when speaking on faith and morals. Perhaps one of you can go tell Mr. Martignoni that chapter his one is incomplete, and that he might want to consider adding a realistic response to his question rather than a bunch of scenarios where the Protestant is simply dumbfounded. His current scenarios might have been fun for him to write, but they are only going to embarrass his readers when they go out armed with the Martignoni sword.
Rather, it is an old canard that "the Catholic Church did not keep the Bible from people" concocted by seemingly willfully blind devotees to Catholic-Church .
For the issue is not whether Rome kept the Bible from being printed, even sometimes in the vernacular, or from hearing the Bible being read, but whether it allowed the laity to continue being illiterate, and largely made it impossible overall or difficult for them to personally read Scripture by either not printing them in the common tongue for the laity to access, or restricted the reading of the Bible to a few who obtained the special permission needed to do so.
It is indisputable that in Apostolic times the Old Testament was commonly read by Jews (John 5:47; Acts 8:28; 17:2,11; 3Tim. 3:15). Roman Catholics admit that this reading was not restricted in the first centuries, in spite of its abuse by Gnostics and other heretics. On the contrary, the reading of Scripture was urged (Justin Martyr, xliv, ANF, i, 177-178; Jerome, Adv. libros Rufini, i, 9, NPNF, 2d ser., iii, 487); and Pamphilus, the friend of Eusebius, kept copies of Scripture to furnish to those who desired them. Chrysostom attached considerable importance to the reading of Scripture on the part of the laity and denounced the error that it was to be permitted only to monks and priests....— New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia
“There was far more extensive and continuous use of Scriptures in the public service of the early Church than there is among us.” (Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, The Catholic Publication Society, 1887, page 509)
It is only in the beginning of the last five hundred years that we meet with a general law of the Church concerning the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. On 24 March, 1564, Pius IV promulgated in his Constitution, "Dominici gregis", the Index of Prohibited Books . According to the third rule, the Old Testament may be read in the vernacular by pious and learned men, according to the judgment of the bishop, as a help to the better understanding of the Vulgate.
The fourth rule places in the hands of the bishop or the inquisitor the power of allowing the reading of the New Testament in the vernacular to laymen who according to the judgment of their confessor or their pastor can profit by this practice.
Sixtus V reserved this power to himself or the Sacred Congregation of the Index, and Clement VIII added this restriction to the fourth rule of the Index, by way of appendix.
Benedict XIV required that the vernacular version read by laymen should be either approved by the Holy See or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned and pious authors. It then became an open question whether this order of Benedict XIV was intended to supersede the former legislation or to further restrict it.
This doubt was not removed by the next three documents: the condemnation of certain errors of the Jansenist Quesnel as to the necessity of reading the Bible , by the Bull "Unigenitus" issued by Clement XI on 8 Sept., 1713 (cf. Denzinger, "Enchir.", nn. 1294-1300); the condemnation of the same teaching maintained in the Synod of Pistoia, by the Bull "Auctorem fidei" issued on 28 Aug., 1794, by Pius VI; the warning against allowing the laity indiscriminately to read the Scriptures in the vernacular, addressed to the Bishop of Mohileff by Pius VII, on 3 Sept., 1816.
With the appearance, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, of the Albigenses and Waldenses, who appealed to the Bible in all their disputes with the Church, the hierarchy was furnished with a reason for shutting up the Word of God. (Philip Schaff, Bible reading by the laity, restrictions on. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. II: Basilica – Chambers)
Pius IV (1499 -1565) required bishops to refuse lay persons leave to read even Catholic versions of Scripture unless their confessors or parish priests judged that such reading was likely to prove beneficial.” (Catholic Dictionary, Addis and Arnold, 1887, page 82)
During the Middle Ages prohibitions of books were far more numerous than in ancient times. Their history is chiefly connected with the names of medieval heretics like Berengarius of Tours, Abelard, John Wyclif, and John Hus. However, especially in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there were also issued prohibitions of various kinds of superstitious writings, among them the Talmud and other Jewish books. In this period, also, the first decrees about the reading of translations of the Bible were called forth by the abuses of the Waldenses and Albigenses. What these decrees (e.g. of the [local] synods of Toulouse in 1229, Tarragona in 1234, Oxford in 1408) aimed at was the restriction of Bible-reading in the vernacular [the common tongue; the only language most could read] A general prohibition [in any language] was never in existence. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, (v3, pg. 520; http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Censorship_of_Books)
While it is claimed that a general prohibition of Bible reading was never unconditionally forbidden, yet not only was reading forbidden without special permission, but since the laity usually could not read Latin, not making much of an effort to make the laity literate, and provide the laity with much access to Scripture in their own language, much amounted to the same thing a prohibition on reading Scripture did.
The Bull Unigenitus, published at Rome, September 8, 1713, as part of its censure of the propositions of Jansenism*, also condemned the following as being errors:
80. The reading of Sacred Scripture is for all.
81. The sacred obscurity of the Word of God is no reason for the laity to dispense themselves from reading it.
82. The Lord's Day ought to be sanctified by Christians with readings of pious works and above all of the Holy Scriptures. It is harmful for a Christian to wish to withdraw from this reading.
Council of Trent
Session XXV: Rule IV of the Ten Rules Concerning Prohibited Books Drawn Up by The Fathers Chosen by the Council of Trent and Approved by Pope Pius:
Since it is clear from experience that if the Sacred Books are permitted everywhere and without discrimination in the vernacular, there will by reason of the boldness of men arise therefrom more harm than good, the matter is in this respect left to the judgment of the bishop or inquisitor, who may with the advice of the pastor or confessor permit the reading of the Sacred Books translated into the vernacular by Catholic authors to those who they know will derive from such reading no harm but rather an increase of faith and piety, which permission they must have in writing. Those, however, who presume to read or possess them without such permission may not receive absolution from their sins till they have handed over to the ordinary. Bookdealers who sell or in any way supply Bibles written in the vernacular to anyone who has not this permission, shall lose the price of the books, which is to be applied by the bishop to pious purposes, and in keeping with the nature of the crime they shall be subject to other penalties which are left to the judgment of the same bishop. Regulars who have not the permission of their superiors may not read or purchase them. (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/trent-booksrules.asp)
The most stringent censorship decree after the Reformation was the Papal bull “Inter Solicitudines,” issued by Pope Leo X, December 1516, which Leo X ordered censorship to be applied to all translations from Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Chaldaic into Latin, and from Latin into the vernacular. [While its focus is on singing, its injunction against singing "anything whatever in the vernacular in solemn liturgical functions," as "the language proper to the Roman Church is Latin," would likely also apply to reading of Scripture.] (Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550 [1967] 90).
In addition to the printed books being seized and publicly burnt, payment of a hundred ducats to the fabric of the basilica of the prince of the apostles in Rome, without hope of relief, and suspension for a whole year from the possibility of engaging in the printing, There Is To be imposed upon anyone presuming to act otherwise the sentence of excommunication. Finally, if the offender's contumacy Increases, he is to be punished with all the sanctions of the law, by His bishop or by our vicar, in such a way that others will have no incentive to try to follow His example. (Papal Bull, Inter Sollicitudines; December 1516) [Wiki Translation].
“When English Roman Catholics created their first English biblical translation in exile at Douai and Reims, it was not for ordinary folk to read, but [primarily] for priests to use as a polemical weapon.—the explicit purpose which the 1582 title-page and preface of the Reims New Testament proclaimed. Only the Jansenists of early seventeenth-century France came to have a more positive and generous attitude to promoting Bible-reading among Catholics" (Oxford University professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History, 2003, p. 406; p. 585.)
The Douay–Rheims Bible...is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English undertaken by members of the English College, Douai in the service of the Catholic Church.
Which translation we do not for all that publish, upon erroneous opinion of necessity , that the Holy Scriptures should always be in our mother tongue, or that they ought, or were ordained by God, to be read impartially by all, or could be easily understood by every one that readeth or heareth them in a known language; or that they were not often through man's malice or infirmity, pernicious and much hurtful to many ; or that we generally and absolutely deemed it more convenient in itself, and more agreeable to God's Word and honour or edification of the faithful, to have them turned into vulgar tongues, than to be kept and studied only in the Ecclesiastical learned languages. ....
In our own country, notwithstanding the Latin tongue was ever (to use Venerable Bede's words) common to all the provinces of the same for meditation or study of Scriptures, and no vulgar translation commonly used or employed by the multitude , yet they were extant in English even before the troubles that Wycliffe and his followers raised in our Church,..(http://www.bombaxo.com/douai-nt.html)
While it is true that independent reading of Scripture is a (comparatively) recent turn in Catholicism, all liturgical texts were based on Scripture. That's something I think most people don't grasp the significance of.
The more Scripture reading the better. The Catholic missionaries were all Scripture-translators: Cyril and Methodius into Slavic, Matteo Ricci into Mandarin, Isaac Jogues into Mohawk, Charles de Foucauld into Tuareg. I think the reason why this prospered more on the "peripheries" than in Europe, --- perhaps --- is because in Europe people saw the splitting and wrecking that occurred in the wake of the Protestant revolt: continent-wide warfare and the proliferation of belligerent movements: Lutherans against Anabaptists, Anglicans against Levelers, and on and on.
The Wars of Religion left Europeans exhausted and disgusted, and paved the way for the militantly antireligious "Enlightenment", the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars in its wake, and the secularization of Europe. You can see the results in the historic strongholds of the Reformation: the die-out of the faith in the British Isles, Scandanavia, northern Germany, the Netherlands.
It became appallingly clear that people who think they can appropriate Scripture for their own purposes, independently, may unwittingly be following the deceiver, the splinterer, Satan, who, as we know, can quote Scripture for his own purposes--- and does.
It doesn't have to turn out that way. With more charity, Scripture would lead to unity. That's what I would like to see.
The source for that was the Catholic Encyclopedia>Scripture
While I agree that would be good, Rome will have to ditch a lot of its "tradition" and bogus teachings for that to happen.
But I don't see that happening.
No way the RCC would ever admit its understanding of Mary is wrong. They would lose way too much credibility.
Yes, it sounds familiar. It amazes me that so many so called religious experts can't understand this. Maybe it is too simple, that they can't see the forest because there are trees in the way. You and me, and a bunch of others understand it perfectly. 🇵🇭😃
Rather, Scripture NOWHERE records the ordination of priests ("hierus") by the NT church ! To deny that is more proof of the dangers of Rome's tradition of Sola Ecclesia.
Read the link before attempting a reply.
All believers are called to sacrifice (Rm. 12:1; 15:16; Phil. 2:17; 4:18; Heb. 13:15,16; cf. 9:9) and all constitute the only priesthood (hieráteuma) in the NT church, that of all believers, (1Pt. 2:5,9; Re 1:6; 5:10; 20:6).
Which is a concern but not a valid reason for keeping it out of people's hands.
The enemy will ALWAYS prompt people to abuse Scripture. It is not the fault of Scripture nor is it a reason to keep it from the people for whom God intended it, which is EVERYONE.
You mean they would lose some of their in-credibility!
Do you realize a forest is made up of trees?
Rule #3:Rome and it's minions are not the only ones authorized to carry His message and do His work.
I’m just SURE that a Catholic will try to trump these quotes with later ones; all the while prattling on about unchanging the church is...
Heh heh heh
Even them Mormons is smart enough to have elders!
Would you 'know' by reading the Book?
On Bruce’s is says MAYBE...
The first few chapters of Revelation sure as hell were!!!
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