Hi Peter. Please try to fix your quote tags in the future.
dzheremi saus:
In 860 it says: the office of the apostles there is one aspect that cannot be transmitted: to be the chosen witnesses of the Lord's Resurrection and so the foundation stones of the Church. But their office also has a permanent aspect.
Aren't you the one that has told me many times that there is no such thing as the
"office of apostle". Well, I would call this game, set, and match, at least on this aspect of our discussion. The Catholic church certainly confirms the "office" of apostle.
Yeah, I dealt with this already in the very post that you're intending to reply to with this mess. It states unequivocally in the RC catechism that
bishops are the successors to the apostles. Period. End of story.
Both in 860 and in 862 the council confirms the "office" of apostle.
What council? Do you mean catechism? This is a catechism, not a council.
862 confirms that Jesus set Peter up with the "office" of first apostle.
Yes, as I pointed out in that post, that is the language that they use in their catechism (probably because they don't expect it to be used against them by Mormons who don't know how to read it, whereas Catholics themselves would know how to read it; remember: I was Catholic myself for years before converting to Orthodoxy, I both owned and read a printed copy of the Catechism, and I know what it says and does not say), but their practice and indeed the actual hierarchy of their Church does not match what you as Mormons claim is the case following from their use of language in this way. This is really not so different from how Christians more generally will talk about Jesus and Mormons will say "See, we're Christians; we believe in Jesus, too!" Well any Christian who knows enough about Mormonism will know that it's as simple as saying "We're Christians too because we believe in Jesus", since the Mormon Jesus is not the same as the Christian Jesus.
Well, the Mormon "Office of apostle" is not the same as the RC catechism's use of the phrase "office" to describe the apostles, either. You are becoming confused and conflating the two because you, like your coreligionist I was originally responding to, have latched onto the presence of specific words while completely ignoring their context.
He was the leader or president of the apostles. Many scriptures confirm that the 3 apostles, Peter, James, and John, were pillars of the church, and were chosen by Jesus to have special things happen to them in his presence. They were like a presidency of the apostles. It is undoubtedly true from the NT.
That's you claiming that. I can 100% guarantee without even having to ask them first that the Roman Catholics themselves do not see your religion's organizational structure testified to in their catechism or the Bible. You're just reading into these documents what you want to be there, in an attempt to give Mormonism some apostolic backing.
I thought this was interesting, read 820 "Christ bestowed unity on his Church from the beginning. This unity, we believe, subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose, and we hope that it will continue to increase until the end of time."277 Christ always gives his Church the gift of unity, but the Church must always pray and work to maintain, reinforce, and perfect the unity that Christ wills for her. This is why Jesus himself prayed at the hour of his Passion, and does not cease praying to his Father, for the unity of his disciples: "That they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be one in us, . . . so that the world may know that you have sent me."278 The desire to recover the unity of all Christians is a gift of Christ and a call of the Holy Spirit.279
820 tries to explain how Jesus bestowed unity on his church from the beginning, but it misses the scriptural point of what creates unity.
See
Ephesians 4:11-14 King James Version (KJV)
11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.
Alright. I'm not here to argue with you or anyone over the correctness of a catechism produced by a Church I don't even belong to. My only point was that it is not proof of what your coreligionist said it was proof of. (And it's not proof now that you are making the same claim, either.)
Notice bolded: We need the "office" of apostle until we all come in the unity of the faith. That is the key unifier that Christ built into his church to keep the unity. Notice it did not mention bishops or priests or deacons or cardinals, but apostles.
Again:
bishops are the successors to the apostles. This is one point on which the RC and the Orthodox definitely agree. Since the Bible was written at a time when the Church itself was first being set up (see again Titus, et al.), and the apostles were still living, why on earth would we expect it to mention bishops specifically? That's saying no one was talking about the internet back in the 1970s. Duh. It was still in development as a communications medium. It doesn't mean anything to point that out.
Besides, the Greek word from which bishop descends,
episkopos, is definitely found in the scriptures (not often, but it is there), in contexts that make it clear that the structure of the nascent Church was forming in the time of the apostles themselves, as in the introduction to St. Paul's epistle to the Philippians:
Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons...
Notice bolded: one aspect cannot be transmitted, to be a chosen witness of Jesus
I'm not RC anymore, but I take 860 to be saying nothing more or less than while apostolic succession assures that a bishop can trace his ordination back to one or more of the apostles, it doesn't mean that he can somehow lay claim to the experiences of the apostles, since what is transmitted is the responsibility to safeguard and pass on the faith and the authority that comes with that as part of their particular role as bishops (distinct from priests, deacons, readers, etc. who are entrusted with the same, but in different ways), not the necessarily limited-to-one-time-only experiences that any individual apostles had. It's like pointing out that it was St. John who received the Theotokos as his mother, not St. Thomas or St. Mark or whoever. That's why it is contrasted with the aspects of the office (of
bishop) that are permanent.
IOW to see Jesus face to face and know without doubt that he is real, and that his voice actually tells you that he is sending you forth to the world to be a special witness of his reality.
Again, I'm not RC anymore, but I don't think that's what they're going for. Certainly most people were not witnesses to the resurrection, yet they believe he is real and all this other stuff you say. But I dunno...maybe get a Catholic to talk with you about this stuff.
None from around 120 has seen Jesus face to face like Paul did, and was vocally sent by Jesus himself as a special witness of his reality.
Wrong. St. Bishoy famously carried Christ on his back, and met and talked with Him many times in the desert (4th century AD), and even washed His feet. We commemorate these things in our iconography:
I'm sure there are other saints who have similar stories in their own lives, but that's the big one who jumps out at me because of how famous he was for his encounters with Christ, in his own time and ever since. Even those we have not yet canonized like Tamav Irini, the abbess of Abu Seifein Coptic convent who only departed in 2006, are known to have met Christ face to face. She herself testifies to visitations of Christ as well as of St. Pachomius (the founder of cenobitic or communal monasticism). Such things are not unknown, though they are not exactly common either.
That is because as time went on and by about 120, Jesus determined not to keep the "office" of the apostle going because of the wickedness of the world. He then put into affect his alternative saving method of work for the dead, so that all these good and righteous people of these ages can still be saved.
I can't for a second believe that the incarnate God-man Who sacrificed Himself willingly on the cross for the salvation of sinners suddenly had an about-face concerning the world He made in 120 or any year and decided to shut everything down and replace it 1,710 years later with a religion that substitutes His perfect sacrifice and glorious resurrection and defeat of death with a gnostic cult ritual of baptism for dead people.
I'm sorry, that's the least believable thing ever...and I believe that Someone once died and resurrected three days later! (...and was born of a virgin, and brought the dead back to life, and walked on water, and creates and sustains everything that is!)
So the form continued, but the transmission of the keys did not take place.
I don't believe in your ideas concerning 'the keys' in the first place, so you could claim this proves whatever about them and I still wouldn't budge. Take it up with the Roman Catholics, if you wish. I'm not one anymore, so I have no need to defend their also erroneous ecclesiology.
Acts 20:28 is a warning from Paul to the elders, not bishops.
That's funny, because the word in that particular verse that is often translated in English as 'elders' is
episkopous -- the masculine singular of
episkopos, the word that we get 'bishop' from! So yes it is a warning about bishops (overseers), they just didn't translate the word that way in that particular verse in many English translations.
It is from among the active elders of the local area that Paul would eventually choose a bishop to oversee the flock
Yep.
but at this time he called the elders and warned them, apparently no bishops yet.
How do you get that from a verse that directs those who would be overseers? "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers" sure sounds like it's something the Holy Spirit
has done.
(The
form of the verb in Greek is tricky because we don't have an aorist middle voice in English;
here's a website to puzzle over which explains it using examples from the NT. Personally since I am more well-versed in Slavic languages after having taken 6 years of Russian courses, I find it hard not to equate it with aspect, though I know that's improper, since voice and aspect
aren't the same thing.)
So not a good scripture to talk transmission of apostolic keys. I don't know the sources other than that, if you do, let me know.
Scriptural sources other than Acts 20:28? The Blue Letter Bible website uses Strong's concordance to identify incidences of
episkopos (and any other word you might to search for, of course), and finds that the majority of times when that word is found in the scriptures, it is referring
explicitly to bishops, as in the salutation that opens Philippians, Titus 1:7, and 1 Peter 2:25.
This was an interesting read of the vatican council. One other interesting note that "anyone outside the church cannot be saved". 838 seems to want to include Orthodox churches as lacking so little as to permit a common celebration of the Lords Eucharist.
Yeah, that's Rome's go-to to try to appeal to Orthodox to become Catholics, or 'Orthodox in union with Rome' (bleh) or whatever buzzword they're using now. We don't care, obviously. I mean, it's nice. It's better than the alternative, when they were trashing everybody and everyone was heretical by virtue of not joining Rome and all of that nonsense. But speaking specifically as an (adopted) Coptic person, nothing could be less enticing or convincing to me. They tried it first with us at their Council of Florence in the 15th century (before that no western churchmen had met with a representative of my communion in about a thousand years), but the hoped-for union fell apart pretty much as soon as the representatives got back to Egypt and were able to present it to the Church there, and people realized that what Rome thought of as union (becoming subordinate to the Roman Catholic Pope and his Church) is not what we think of as union (sharing the same faith as equals in all respects).
So it's an improvement in the sense that it's nicer, but I don't really buy it. Any concelebration with Roman Catholics is canonically punishable, since they're not members of our communion and we're not members of theirs, and it definitely matters who you're in communion with.
Anyway, this is far from the topic of the thread...
Yet that communion remaines difficult even until today. But gone are the protestant religions, too bad, they have many righteous people too
I don't think I agree with either of those clauses. Communion is sustained among those who share the same faith, which isn't really thought of in terms of easy or hard to begin with, but also it is made very transparent what is needed to show that you are doing that. In my old parish, St. Bishoy (hey, there he is again!) Coptic Orthodox Church in Albuquerque, NM, there was a big sign over the door stating the rules for communion in English and Arabic (I guess as a reminder for us and a notice for any who may be visiting from other traditions that are less serious about guarding the chalice than we are). It was very basic stuff, like "The believer is a baptized and confessing Orthodox Christian" and "The believer behaves and dresses appropriately in the house of the Lord" and so on.
Regarding the existence of Protestantism, obviously it still exists. Don't be silly. I would wager that probably most of this website is composed of various kinds of Protestants, as it seems quite America-centric (as most of the English-language internet is), and Protestantism is America's favorite kind of Christianity.
(BTW, 
