Posted on 06/12/2015 6:18:39 AM PDT by ADSUM
All pardon for sins ultimately comes from Christ’s finished work on Calvary, but how is this pardon received by individuals? Did Christ leave us any means within the Church to take away sin? The Bible says he gave us two means.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholic.com ...
You are too kind!
Sigh....
What ELSE is down in that rabbit hole you’re in?
{{{End of Elsiethon}}}
Now wait a minute.
The chief criticism and condemnation of Protestantism as a whole is their lack of unity. And Catholics brag on their unity of belief under one headship.
And from the church that in its catechism demands agreement with it or anathemas are pronounced on the hearer?
And now it's up for grabs? Y'all can take it or leave it?
I hope that you will get the whole truth when you die.
We have the truth.
John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 17:17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
If y'all are teaching the truth, there had better be 100% agreement in the writings of the ECF's. If there's not, someone is wrong, in error.
How do you determine who that one is? To what standard of truth is the claim compared and verified or rejected?
The Catholic church is not responsible for giving us the Bible.
The Holy Spirit is responsible for giving us Scripture.
The Catholic Church has followed the instructions of Jesus for 2000 years with some ups and downs. And many heretics and self=professed followers.
Like this one?????
Matthew 23: 8-10 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.
If it is not the Truth, then it should be easy to prove the Catholic Church teachings from God as false, and you can’t. Just have your personal opinion and anti-Catholic feelings.
Sure we can. We compare it to Scripture.
Mary said she had a savior.
She didn’t need a savior if she had not sinned.
The whole concept of Mary’s sinlessness is wishful,romanticized thinking on the part of Catholics.
The only requirement concerning Mary and Jesus is that she be a virgin at the time she gave Him birth.
The convoluted rationalization explaining why Mary needed to be sinless shows that there’s no support from Scripture for it.
Therefore it is not binding that anyone believe it.
Good question MHG, but I think we both know the answer.
After that, Mary and Joseph had a ton of natural children, and not one was conceived immaculately, and everyone of them was a sinner, including Mary and Joseph. 😂😱😇😀
You are allowed to believe whatever you want. It is called free will. I just hope it doesn’t get you into trouble.
For your information:
From Catholic Answers: http://www.catholic.com/tracts/immaculate-conception-and-assumption
The Immaculate Conception
It’s important to understand what the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is and what it is not. Some people think the term refers to Christ’s conception in Mary’s womb without the intervention of a human father; but that is the Virgin Birth. Others think the Immaculate Conception means Mary was conceived “by the power of the Holy Spirit,” in the way Jesus was, but that, too, is incorrect. The Immaculate Conception means that Mary, whose conception was brought about the normal way, was conceived without original sin or its stain—that’s what “immaculate” means: without stain. The essence of original sin consists in the deprivation of sanctifying grace, and its stain is a corrupt nature. Mary was preserved from these defects by God’s grace; from the first instant of her existence she was in the state of sanctifying grace and was free from the corrupt nature original sin brings.
When discussing the Immaculate Conception, an implicit reference may be found in the angel’s greeting to Mary. The angel Gabriel said, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). The phrase “full of grace” is a translation of the Greek word kecharitomene. It therefore expresses a characteristic quality of Mary.
The traditional translation, “full of grace,” is better than the one found in many recent versions of the New Testament, which give something along the lines of “highly favored daughter.” Mary was indeed a highly favored daughter of God, but the Greek implies more than that (and it never mentions the word for “daughter”). The grace given to Mary is at once permanent and of a unique kind.Kecharitomene is a perfect passive participle of charitoo, meaning “to fill or endow with grace.” Since this term is in the perfect tense, it indicates that Mary was graced in the past but with continuing effects in the present. So, the grace Mary enjoyed was not a result of the angel’s visit. In fact, Catholics hold, it extended over the whole of her life, from conception onward. She was in a state of sanctifying grace from the first moment of her existence.
Fundamentalists’ Objections
Fundamentalists’ chief reason for objecting to the Immaculate Conception and Mary’s consequent sinlessness is that we are told that “all have sinned” (Rom. 3:23). Besides, they say, Mary said her “spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:47), and only a sinner needs a Savior.
Let’s take the second citation first. Mary, too, required a Savior. Like all other descendants of Adam, she was subject to the necessity of contracting original sin. But by a special intervention of God, undertaken at the instant she was conceived, she was preserved from the stain of original sin and its consequences. She was therefore redeemed by the grace of Christ, but in a special way—by anticipation.
Consider an analogy: Suppose a man falls into a deep pit, and someone reaches down to pull him out. The man has been “saved” from the pit. Now imagine a woman walking along, and she too is about to topple into the pit, but at the very moment that she is to fall in, someone holds her back and prevents her. She too has been saved from the pit, but in an even better way: She was not simply taken out of the pit, she was prevented from getting stained by the mud in the first place. This is the illustration Christians have used for a thousand years to explain how Mary was saved by Christ. By receiving Christ’s grace at her conception, she had his grace applied to her before she was able to become mired in original sin and its stain.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that she was “redeemed in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son” (CCC 492). She has more reason to call God her Savior than we do, because he saved her in an even more glorious manner!
But what about Romans 3:23, “all have sinned”? Have all people committed actual sins? Consider a child below the age of reason. By definition he can’t sin, since sinning requires the ability to reason and the ability to intend to sin. This is indicated by Paul later in the letter to the Romans when he speaks of the time when Jacob and Esau were unborn babies as a time when they “had done nothing either good or bad” (Rom. 9:11).
We also know of another very prominent exception to the rule: Jesus (Heb. 4:15). So if Paul’s statement in Romans 3 includes an exception for the New Adam (Jesus), one may argue that an exception for the New Eve (Mary) can also be made.
Paul’s comment seems to have one of two meanings. It might be that it refers not to absolutely everyone, but just to the mass of mankind (which means young children and other special cases, like Jesus and Mary, would be excluded without having to be singled out). If not that, then it would mean that everyone, without exception, is subject to original sin, which is true for a young child, for the unborn, even for Mary—but she, though due to be subject to it, was preserved by God from it and its stain.
The objection is also raised that if Mary were without sin, she would be equal to God. In the beginning, God created Adam, Eve, and the angels without sin, but none were equal to God. Most of the angels never sinned, and all souls in heaven are without sin. This does not detract from the glory of God, but manifests it by the work he has done in sanctifying his creation. Sinning does not make one human. On the contrary, it is when man is without sin that he is most fully what God intends him to be.
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was officially defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854. When Fundamentalists claim that the doctrine was “invented” at this time, they misunderstand both the history of dogmas and what prompts the Church to issue, from time to time, definitive pronouncements regarding faith or morals. They are under the impression that no doctrine is believed until the pope or an ecumenical council issues a formal statement about it.
Actually, doctrines are defined formally only when there is a controversy that needs to be cleared up or when the magisterium (the Church in its office as teacher; cf. Matt. 28:18–20; 1 Tim. 3:15, 4:11) thinks the faithful can be helped by particular emphasis being drawn to some already-existing belief. The definition of the Immaculate Conception was prompted by the latter motive; it did not come about because there were widespread doubts about the doctrine. In fact, the Vatican was deluged with requests from people desiring the doctrine to be officially proclaimed. Pope Pius IX, who was highly devoted to the Blessed Virgin, hoped the definition would inspire others in their devotion to her.
“What if someone finds out?” ... Behold, you are a new creation in Christ Jesus. Old things are passed away. All things are become new. When you are born again, from above, you are a new creation, a babe in His Family, so His Holy Spirit indwells you to ‘raise you up in the Way that you should go.’ Paul liked that ‘metaphor’ so much he referred to babes and milk waiting their growth so he could offer meat.
So do you just make up your opinion without facts? The Immaculate Conception of Mary has been with the Catholic Church since the beginning:
It is you who must make up your opinion without facts if you will contend that the matter was put to bed very, very early in the life of the church, as in fact it was not.
http://www.christiantruth.com/articles/Testimony.html The Roman Catholic Church claims that Mary was immaculately conceived (that is, she was born free of original sin) and that the Fathers likewise held to this teaching. This teaching should not be a dogma of the faith. It originated in the fifth century with the heretics Pelagius and Celestius34 and was universally rejected by both Fathers and popes of the early church, as evidenced by its rejection by Augustine and Gregory the Great, and in later centuries by Anselm, Bernard of Clairveaux, and Thomas Aquinas.
http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=1550 J.N.D. Kelly asserts that Ireneaus, Tertullian, and Origen all felt Mary had sinned and doubted Christ (Early Christian Doctrines, 493). In any case, Ott asserts on the same page that the first explicit assertion of the doctrine as believed today is found in the British monk Eadmer at the beginning of the 12th century! Even then, he notes it ran into much opposition, including the rejection of Bernard of Clairvaux. Certainly, it’s a doctrine absent from the early 4th century and the Church of Nicea.
A phenomenon of great significance in the patristic period was the rise and gradual development of veneration for the Saints, more particularly for the blessed Virgin Mary... The first Orthodox writer to give her theological prominence was Ignatius of Antioch. While the other apostolic fathers made no mention of her, he was emphatic that Jesus had by God's design been carried in Mary's womb, stressed the reality ever childbearing, and made the cryptic remark that both it and her virginity, like the Savior's death, had escaped the notice of the prince of this world..
The apocryphal literature (late first and early second century) on the fringe of the 'great church' eloquently attest the preoccupation of certain circles with the blessed virgin. Thus in the Ascension of Isaiah refine the earliest affirmation of the belief that she was a virgin. Not only in conceiving Jesus but also in bearing him (virginity in partu): 'her womb was found as it was before she became pregnant'. The same idea of the supernatural birth involving no physical travail occurs in the odes of Solomon.
But the work which most richly embroidered the gospel narratives and was destined to exert a tremendous influence on later Mariology was the proto-evangelium of James. Written for Mary's clarification, this described her divinely ordered birth, when her parents, Joachim and Anna, were advanced in years, her miraculous infancy and childhood, and her dedication to the Temple, where her parents had prayed that God would give her 'a name renowned for ever. Among all generations'. It made the point that when she was engaged to Joseph [page 492] he was already an elderly widower with sons of his own; and it accumulated evidence that both she had conceived Jesus without sexual intercourse and that her physical nature had remained intact when she bore him.
These ideas were far from being immediately accepted in the church at large. Irenaeus, it is true held that marriage, childbearing was exempt from physical travail, as did Clement of Alexandria (appealing to the proto-evangelism of James). Tertullian, however, refuted the suggestion, finding the opening of her womb prophesied in Exodus 13:2,in Origen followed him and argued that she needed the purification prescribed by the Law.... While Tertullian assumed that she had normal conjugal relations with Joseph after Jesus birth, the "brethren of the Lord" being his true brothers, Origen maintained that she had remained a virgin for the rest of her life (virginity pot partum), and that Jesus so-called brothers were sons of Joseph but not by her.
In contrast to the later belief in her moral and spiritual perfection. None of these theologians had the least scruple about attributing faults to her. Irenaeus and Tertullian recalled occasions on which, as they read the gospel stories, she had earned her son's rebuke, and Origen and insisted that, like all human beings, she needed redemption from her sins; in particular he interpreted Simon's prophecy in Luke 2:35 that a sword would pierce her soul as confirming that she had been invaded with doubts when she saw her son crucified. (J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian doctrines, pp. 490,492, 493)
The Fathers of the Church taught that
Tertullian 215 AD “God alone is without sin. The only man who is without sin is Christ; for Christ is also God” (The Soul 41:3
Pope Gelasius (492 a.d.) “ It belongs alone to the immaculate lamb to have no sin at all.”(Gellasii papae dicta, vol. 4, col 1241, Paris, 1671)
“If the Scriptures be duly considered, and the saying of the doctors ancient and modern, who have been most devoted to the glorious Virgin, it is plain from their words that she was conceived in sin,” (Cardinal Cajetan, De Loc TheoI. parts c. 2.)
Schaff lists seven Roman bishops who rejected her sinlessness (The Creeds of Christendom [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998], Vol. I, p. 123).
“It belongs alone to the immaculate lamb to have no sin at all.” (Gellasii papae dicta, vol. 4, col 1241, Paris, 1671)
Pope Leo 1 (440 a.d.) “The Lord Jesus Christ alone among the sons of men was born immaculate”(sermon 24 in Nativ. Dom.).
Of course if one is to take nothing as belonging to the Christian faith but what is plainly or unquestionably stated in the Bible, on will not believe or accept it [the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception]. (George M. Searle, Plain Facts, Paulist Press, New York, page 85)- http://www.letusreason.org/RC1.htm
And as regards being perpetual sinless, Chrysostom faults Mary in his comments on Matthew 12:46-49 and John 2:3-4:
For while He yet talked to the people," it is said, "one told Him, Thy mother and Thy brethren seek Thee. But He saith, who is my mother, and who are my brethren?" And this He said, not as being ashamed of His mother, nor denying her that bare Him; for if He had been ashamed of her, He would not have passed through that womb; but as declaring that she hath no advantage from this, unless she do all that is required to be done. For in fact that which she had essayed to do, was of superfluous vanity; in that she wanted to show the people that she hath power and authority over her Son , imagining not as yet anything great concerning Him; whence also her unseasonable approach .
See at all events both her self- confidence and theirs. Since when they ought to have gone in, and listened with the multitude ; or if they were not so minded, to have waited for His bringing His discourse to an end, and then to have come near; they call Him out, and do this before all, evincing a superfluous vanity, and wishing to make it appear, that with much authority they enjoin Him. And this too the evangelist shows that he is blaming, for with this very allusion did he thus express himself, "While He yet talked to the people;" as if he should say, What? was there no other opportunity? Why, was it not possible to speak with Him in private? (Homilies on the Gospel According to St. Matthew, 44; emp. mine)
Regarding John 2:3-4,
And therefore He answered thus in this place, and again elsewhere, "Who is My mother, and who are My brethren?" (Matt. xii. 48), because they did not yet think rightly of Him; and she, because she had borne Him, claimed, according to the custom of other mothers, to direct Him in all things, when she ought to have reverenced and worshiped Him . This then was the reason why He answered as He did on that occassion....And so this was a reason why He rebuked her on that occasion, saying, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" instructing her for the future not to do the like; because, though He was careful to honor His mother, yet He cared much for the salvation of her soul. (Homilies on the Gospel According to St. John, 21; emp. mine)
Bernard of Clairvaux on the Immaculate Conception: People say that one must revere the conception which preceded the glorious birth-giving; for if the conception had not preceded, the birth-giving also would not have been glorious. But what would one say if anyone for the same reason should demand the same kind of veneration of the father and mother of Holy Mary? One might equally demand the same for Her grandparents and great-grandparents, to infinity. Moreover, how can there not be sin in the place where there was concupiscence? ... (emp. mine)
She could not be sanctified in the moment of Her conception by reason of the sin which is inseparable from conception, then it remains to believe that She was sanctified after She was conceived in the womb of Her mother. This sanctification, if it annihilates sin, makes holy Her birth, but not Her conception. No one is given the right to be conceived in sanctity; only the Lord Christ was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and He alone is holy from His very conception .
Excluding Him, it is to all the descendants of Adam that must be referred that which one of them says of himself , both out of a feeling of humility and in acknowledgement of the truth: Behold I was conceived in iniquities (Ps. 50:7). How can one demand that this conception be holy, when it was not the work of the Holy Spirit, not to mention that it came from concupiscence?http://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/bernard-of-clairvaux-on-the-immaculate-conception/
Justin Martyr
The Odes of Solomon
Which is not Scripture, but The Odes of Solomon is a collection of 42 odes attributed to Solomon. Various scholars have dated the composition of these religious poems to anywhere in the range of the first three centuries AD. The original language of the Odes is thought to have been either Greek or Syriac, and to be generally Christian in background. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odes_of_Solomon
And it only infers being sinless by being preserved from pain in childbirth, but which God could do in any case. Moreover, it is contrary to the RC assertion that the women of Rv. 12, Jeremiah 4:31 and Micah 4:9-10 is Mary “[Jesus] became man by the Virgin so that the course which was taken by disobedience in the beginning through the agency of the serpent might be also the very course by which it would be put down. Eve, a virgin and undefiled,
"Undefiled" by sexual relations does not translate into being perpetual sinless.
Despite RCs invoking Scripture and or church "fathers" (they were not), neither is the basis for the veracity of RC teaching, which is the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial infallibility as per Rome (and basically in primary cults).
In fact, RCs teach that you cannot even assuredly correctly know what Scripture consists of and means apart from faith/reliance upon her.
I did some research on that book and John 20:23 does not mean that men can forgive sins. Only God can do that. I think I had typed “what does John 20:23 mean?”. I have studied the whole book in the past.
You are allowed to believe whatever you want. It is called free will. I just hope it doesn’t get you into trouble.
Read post 273.
It is this type of sideways, pseudo-factual argument that is then assumed to be true, that riddles most Catholic theology:
“We also know of another very prominent exception to the rule: Jesus (Heb. 4:15). So if Paul’s statement in Romans 3 includes an exception for the New Adam (Jesus), one may argue that an exception for the New Eve (Mary) can also be made.”
That posters on this board copy and paste it without personal clarity of logic or understanding the totality of Scripture, speaks volumes.
“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” I Tim 2:15
Because Jesus was a man tempted in every way just as we are and yet was without sin.
*Reason* doesn't demand that Mary be sinless. *Reason* could just as well conclude that Mary needed to be a normal sinful human being who have other children so the Jesus being raised in a normal everyday big family, by imperfect parents, would be tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin.
How could he sympathize with our weaknesses if He never experienced them?
The whole theology of Mary being sinless is just wishful thinking on Catholic's part and has ZERO support from Scripture, where Scripture tells us that Mary called God her Savior, and it tells us that ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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