RandyPNW
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- Jun 8, 2021
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Yes, that's the entire problem brother--they do deviate in such matters. And that's why these "weak spots" need to be regularly revisited. Otherwise, these "additions" will become part of the regular "tradition," even though it did not begin as such.The only “weak spots” that occur in the practice of church are when churches deviate from Holy Tradition, by engaging in innovations of a liturgical or doctrinal character.
I grew up in a Protestant Lutheran Church denomination and repeated liturgies and creeds from birth. And they were very effective, true, and beautiful except that the spirituality in the congregation was near dead. People seemed to be mouthing the words and showing no real change in their lives to become more like Christ.For example, the two main problems in the Roman Catholic Church at present are Traditiones Custodes, which suppresses the beautiful traditional Latin mass, which unlike its replacement, is an ornate and exquisitely beautiful liturgy comparable to those of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the liturgical Protestants such as the Evangelical Catholic Lutherans and the High Church Anglicans; this encyclical being introduced by Pope Francis in 2021 and superceding previous bulls, encyclicals, pastoral instructions and so on of both Pope St. John Paul II and Blessed Pope Benedict xVI, memory eternal.
I had to leave when I approached adulthood. But I'm not opposed to the gist of what you seem to be saying.
If such a document was available prior to Pope Francis' new instructions, then it was just as bad if not worse, because it set the precedent for blessing same sex couples. You think a slight alteration from a previous same sex couple blessing is worse? Homosexuality is wrong period.The more serious problem is the result of a document issued by the “Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith”, the latest rebranding of the Holy Office, which when it was known as the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith under the leadership of Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become Blessed Pope Benedict XVI, did superb work in support of the traditionalist papacy of St. John Paul II, in his arguments in defense of sexual morality and in opposition to abortion, and this excellent work was continued by Gerhard Cardinal Muller, who was fired by Pope Francis and replaced by a liberal cardinal with unusual ideas, who has at Pope Francis’s instruction issued a new document, Fiducia Supplicans, that directly contradicts one issued two years ago, which allows priests to bless, in a non-liturgical setting, same sex couples as well as other couples in “irregular” (that is to say, sexually immoral) situations.
To bless those who abuse you, or sinners who disagree with you, is not a church function, but an outreach to the pagan world! We are not to bless same sex couples within or without the church. But we are to treat others respectfully *despite their sins.* We find the good in them, and bless that, rather than bless the part that is, beyond dispute, sin. And we should not play a part in covering up sin with a "blessing."
Yes, but I thought you just said an early document was okay that blessed same sex couples? Blessing same sex couples "in a non-liturgical setting" is nonetheless blessing the "couples!"Now some members will be quick to argue that the blessings are not of the relationships but of the couples, however, that is itself the problem, because the blessings are of the couples, together, as a couple, and not as individual members of the church, and what is more the blessings are not made in an effort to help the persons separate from those who they are in an immoral sodomitic or adulterous or other form of perverse relationship with.
Well, there are a whole lot of interesting issues in there. I like Augustine, Anselm, and even Aquinas. They spoke within the context of their own times. And the fact their influence loomed much larger than their own times was not their fault. Their teachings are obviously going to look worse in different times with different problems.Both of these issues constitute an attack on the Holy Tradition of the ancient Church, including the received tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, which itself suffers primarily to the extent that it innovated and thus departed from the ancient tradition of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, through the introduction of novel doctrines like Papal Supremacy, Scholastic Theology (in particular the Satisfaction-based soteriology of Anselm of Canterbury, later refined by St. Thomas Aquinas, which takes the least profitable writings of St. Augustine of Hippo, a pious church father who was not perfect, as indeed no one is, but some of his works are much more useful than others, and expands and distorts them, creating a new approach to theology, Scholasticism, which indeed the Roman church goes so far as to differentiate from Patristic theology, with the last Church Father according to Rome being St. John Damascene (who in the Orthodox Church we refer to as St. John of Damascus).
But I do agree that Scholasticism can be a problem, and I don't agree with Augustine on some matters. Who can agree on everything with someone so prolific!
And I also agree with you that the supremacy of the Pope is a huge, huge problem. As I've been saying, sectarianism divides the Church, separating good Christians from good Christians within different denominations.
There is no one single denomination of the Church! The Gospel was designed to reach out to every nation, which in itself implies that there would be many church denominations. Politics unavoidably separate Christian communions into separate organizations, even though they are each of the same Spirit.
There was bound to be different beliefs within the ancient Roman Empire. They were all of a single Church tradition originally, being within a single Empire. Different beliefs were not necessarily divisive matters, though they certainly could be.Scholastic theology in turn led to other innovations, such as Purgatory, Indulgences, and Papal Infallibility, and the veneration of the Sacred Heart and then of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and for that matter the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is an artifact of the way St. Augustine dealt with original sin in opposition to the heretic Pelagius, by suggesting that it spreads like a venereal disease.
Later, however, aberrations from the creedal basics became a threat from one denomination to another, when the various communions lived in separate political environments. When an aberrant view of the Eucharist or of Mary is presented in defense of the fundamentals of the faith I have less of a problem, as opposed to when it is demanding strict adherence to its own oddities.
For example, it may be argued that the wine became Jesus' blood in order to prove that we partake of Christ for real, and not just sacramentally. I have less problem with this unless a demand is being made that I assent to Transubstantiation.
Same thing with Mary's perpetual virginity. If this is just an attempt to prove that Mary was the Mother of God, ie mother of a divine Jesus, I have less problem with this if it is only trying to prove that Christ, her son, was divine. But if it is demanded of me that I accept the perpetual virginity of Mary as a doctrine, then I have a problem with this.
Scholasticism is a problem only if it claims to have absolute immunity to all rebuttal. So much can simply be stated as true, even if it is not proven by reason alone. I personally believe that reason must include faith in order to operate as proof for any doctrine. If doctrine is just stated to be true, by force of an imagined spiritual "reason," then anything can be declared to be true and proper tradition.
DNA does not include "sin," which is a spiritual disease. My view is that any physical act, including sex, is initiated through the imperfect hearts of men, who have corrupted spirits. Sin is transmitted from generation to generation due to procreation. But the sin is transmitted by spiritual means, by "spiritual DNA," as it were.In contrast, another Latin father, and a contemporary of St. Augustine, St. John Cassian, proposed that original sin is not transmitted through coitus but rather is inherited, and this allows for the Blessed Virgn Mary to have been, in Orthodox theology, sinless, while being conceived in ordinary process of sexual reproduction.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. We certainly have some agreement there.Thus, the only weak spots on Holy Tradition are those places where people fail to maintain it, but instead introduce novelties and innovations, often under the pretext of ill-advised “reform”, or to keep the church “relevant” to a “changing world.” The severe problems with the Roman Catholic and Episcopalian liturgical reforms in the 1970s, both of which caused schisms which still persist, are a case in point.
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