Catholics, what exactly do you believe about Mary?

JacksBratt said:

Well there could be................they are not limited by scripture

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Quite true. There also could be the possibility of getting baptized for dead folks so they can get out of Hell and into Purgatory.

bbbbbbb said:

Quite true. There also could be the possibility of getting baptized for dead folks..

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Like the Corinthians did?

Otherwise, what will they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead do not rise at all? Why then are they baptized for the dead?

FenderTL5 said:

Like the Corinthians did?

Otherwise, what will they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead do not rise at all? Why then are they baptized for the dead?

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You got my drift. Our Mormon friends take that view, but that is hardly the orthodox Christian understanding.

bbbbbbb said:

I recommend reading the Wikipedia article on Jerome here - Jerome - Wikipedia

In the lengthy article we find this -

"By 390 he turned to translating the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew, having previously translated portions from the Septuagint which came from Alexandria. He believed that the mainstream Rabbinical Judaism had rejected the Septuagint as invalid Jewish scriptural texts because of what were ascertained as mistranslations along with its Hellenistic heretical elements. He completed this work by 405. Prior to Jerome's Vulgate, all Latin translations of the Old Testament were based on the Septuagint, not the Hebrew. Jerome's decision to use a Hebrew text instead of the previous translated Septuagint went against the advice of most other Christians, including Augustine, who thought the Septuagint inspired. Modern scholarship, however, has sometimes cast doubts on the actual quality of Jerome's Hebrew knowledge. Many modern scholars believe that the Greek Hexapla is the main source for Jerome's "iuxta Hebraeos" translation of the Old Testament. However, detailed studies have shown that to a considerable degree Jerome was a competent Hebraist."

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Yes. Jerome was using the sources available to him. They did not include the Massoretic Text. The Massoretic Text would not exist until the Massoretes. The Massoretes were probably Karaites (a heretical Jewish sect) - of the ben Asher clan who lived in and around Tiberias in Galilee (indeed, traditional Jews think that THIS was the "Light that rose in Galilee" - the Massoretes who wrote down the definitive Hebrew form of the text. The Massoretes did not get started until the 600s, two hundred years after Jerome, and the current definitive Massoretic text is the Leningrad Codex, which has the date it was prepared written on it: 1008. This is the oldest complete Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible. The Aleppo Codex, from the 900s AD, is more authoritative because it used by Maimonedes, but it is no longer complete).

So the Massoretes are a much later development and did not figure in any way in Jerome's work.

The oldest complete text of the Bible is the Codex Vaticanus, from the mid 350s, followed by the Codex Sinaiticus, from the same time period. They are both written in Greek.

The oldest complete text of the Hebrew Bible is the Leningrad Codex, from 1010 AD.

Before these dates, there are only Hebrew and Greek fragments.

Vicomte13 said:

Yes. Jerome was using the sources available to him. They did not include the Massoretic Text. The Massoretic Text would not exist until the Massoretes. The Massoretes were probably Karaites (a heretical Jewish sect) - of the ben Asher clan who lived in and around Tiberias in Galilee (indeed, traditional Jews think that THIS was the "Light that rose in Galilee" - the Massoretes who wrote down the definitive Hebrew form of the text. The Massoretes did not get started until the 600s, two hundred years after Jerome, and the current definitive Massoretic text is the Leningrad Codex, which has the date it was prepared written on it: 1008. This is the oldest complete Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible. The Aleppo Codex, from the 900s AD, is more authoritative because it used by Maimonedes, but it is no longer complete).

So the Massoretes are a much later development and did not figure in any way in Jerome's work.

The oldest complete text of the Bible is the Codex Vaticanus, from the mid 350s, followed by the Codex Sinaiticus, from the same time period. They are both written in Greek.

The oldest complete text of the Hebrew Bible is the Leningrad Codex, from 1010 AD.

Before these dates, there are only Hebrew and Greek fragments.

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And, based on the texts available, Jerome made a very reasonable decision that the seven questionable books were not canonical - a decision which he later recanted under direction from church authorities.

tadoflamb said:

Altogether sola scripturists, is Mary the Mother of God or isn't she?

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bbbbbbb said:

And how do you know this? The answer, of course, is because that is what your denomination teaches. Where do they get these ideas? From their Magisterium, of course. Where does the Magisterium get these ideas? From Holy Tradition, of course. Where are these ideas found in Holy Tradition? Not at all in the Bible, but merely from various non-canonical writings.

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And my Church has Lourdes and Lanciano and Fatima and Guadelupe - miracles, some of which have left physical things that can be, and have been, studied to verify their reality. And my own miracles too. So, on the side of my God and the Church from whom I learned about God, I have nature-breaking miracles to vouch for the fact that God is HERE, and God FAVORS this Church - why else would he do public miracles in Catholic holy places for the world to see? I have the miracles of my own life by which I have talked to God.
This is persuasive.

What have you got against all that? Your opinion about a book. I've read that book too, and I don't think that it says the same thing you say it does.

So, it's your opinion and words and arguments f your church, versus my own opinions and words and arguments of my Church, and my Church has all of these miracles just like I myself have had in the flesh.
Who is more believable to me? You and your arguments from a text I have also read - and have come to different conclusions than you - and your church, which has no miracles - or me, my miracles, my own logic concerning the text, and my Church full of miracles and the manifest power of God?

And then there is the matter of attitude, comportment and grace.

I will quote Hillaire Belloc on this:
Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There's laughter there, and good red wine,
Or I have always found it so
Benedicamos Domino!

What have you got? Not the truth - I have that. God has touched me, talked to me, healed me miraculously, sent an angel to rescue me. He did this for me, a Catholic. What do you offer that is equal to that? Nothing. You have nothing.

Text? I have the text, and mine isn't abridged.

Charity? My church has the hospitals and schools and hospices and orphanages all over the world, always has, always will.

What, then, exactly? A stubborn set of arguments, that do not ring true and that do not comport with the miracles I have experienced, or that I have studied, and that are endlessly hostile to the Church in which all of these miracles have happened.

What you have are the arguments of the Devil. No miracles. No glory. Not even any good red wine - indeed, your type is always kvetching about "demon rum" and other ridiculous nonsense. "My tribe can't handle it's liquor - therefore God condemns drinking!" That's what it amounts to. Where are your miracles? Where is there ONE SINGLE SIGN at all that God is with you?

That YOU think so. I - a baptized kid little more than a pagan at the time - dove into a lake and broke my neck and was paralyzed and to die there, alone, drowning, and God simply reached down and healed my neck. You tell me that my God isn't real. What do YOU have that can compare to that.

Nothing. Because your God does not exist outside of your own mind. The real one is not like what you say, He is what I say - because I have met him. And he expresses himself openly, and happily, with fountains of miracles and rivers of red wine - the blood of communion.

That's why Catholic/Protestant arguments are so sterile. You have nothing to offer at all, but bad humor based on arguments based on a book that you treat as though it were God Himself, but that actually is just a book that only has the authority that God gives to it when it is wielded properly, as a tool of God's Tribe, which is mine.

You can always join mine. I would no more join yours than I would leave off being an American to go live in squalor with the headhunters of New Guinea. They have nothing to offer me.

This thread was about Mary. Mary appeared, and God opened a fountain of healing right there, on that spot, and made the girl who saw her incorrupt - more explicit signs of divine favor have never been granted. At Lourdes God does the SAME HEALINGS that Jesus did, the same healings that the Pharisees could not answer. They ignored them and called them satanic, and they were wrong.

Lourdes alone proves the truth of the Catholic Church, for a God who hates idolatry would not make an explicitly Catholic, Immaculate Conception Marian shrine the one and only open fountain of healing miracles anywhere on the face of the earth for the last two hundred years unless he was making the point that this Catholic Church to whom she appeared and in which this is happening is the One and Only True Church, the Real Thing.

The Immaculate Conception was revealed by God at Lourdes through the mouth of Mary. THe miracles prove that this is God. The lack of such a place anywhere else proves that this is God's opinion. None of it is in the Bible, because the Bible was written long ago, but God did this NOW, and because God did it, is has exactly the same authority as revelation - as the written Gospels of Jesus Christ, and it is an immediate truth that can be verified.

That is why the only rational thing one can be in the world is a Catholic.
And that is why your arguments can get precisely nowhere against any devout Catholic.
Your book is old and incomplete. You have to answer Lourdes. And you can't, because your book does not contain it. But Lourdes reveals the Power of God directly in real time, and it revealed the Immaculate Conception and the singular importance of Mary, which your church foolishly rejects, because you have made an idol out of the Bible and closed your eyes to every bit of reality since then.

All you can do in answer to Lourdes is to repeat the error of the Pharisees in the face of Jesus' healing miracles, and claim that the healing is the work of demons. And THAT, Jesus said, is blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

You cannot win, and you would be a much happier, healthier person if you abandoned your silly, crabbed religion, which lacks the facts and the answers and the truth - and you know this because you have no miracles - your God is powerless - the REAL God is Catholic, and you should leave your idol and come follow the real one.

The feasts are happier, the wine is better, and the promise is sweeter.

Don't write some snarling thing back. I don't care what you believe - it's foolishness and idolatry. GOD HEALED MY NECK. Your Bible god doesn't exist.

bbbbbbb said:

And, based on the texts available, Jerome made a very reasonable decision that the seven questionable books were not canonical - a decision which he later recanted under direction from church authorities.

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A decision he later recanted because he realized he was wrong.

JacksBratt said:

So, maybe this is The problem... Catholics not being limited to scripture. Where, then, does it end.....?

You can just keep on adding and adding and assuming and whatever because you are not limited by scripture?

As far as I'm concerned scripture is the foundation. If it does not line up with scripture.... I'm out.

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You better throw out your Bible, without Tradition you wouldn't have one.

JacksBratt said:

I understand the timing issue. However, when we are baptized, what are the words that are quoted?
"In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" ...........Right?

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My post was not intended to be argumentative but only intended to bring out the dynamics of the public act of Baptism a bit--- that John preached a baptism of repentance (trusting in God) for forgiveness of sins BEFORE Christ's ministry even got started and that Christ APPROPRIATED a ritual that was already in practice and then expanded on it with a "Baptism by Spirit."

So there were people, in the distant past, who were baptized but not Christians. The Bible tells us that some of John's disciplines transferred to Jesus... but then again, some did not. So what about these folks who had public baptisms but never became Christians? I find them an interesting category.

JacksBratt said:

So, maybe this is The problem... Catholics not being limited to scripture. Where, then, does it end.....?

You can just keep on adding and adding and assuming and whatever because you are not limited by scripture?

As far as I'm concerned scripture is the foundation. If it does not line up with scripture.... I'm out.

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Catholics are limited to scripture, but scripture is not divorced from the Spoken Word of God, which you reject, and the Magisterium (teaching authority) is the custodian of scripture. Catholics are limited to scripture in it's proper context, without following any one of thousands of questionable interpretations. It is IMPOSSIBLE for the Church to invent doctrines, that's just Protestant propaganda. However, sola scriptura and sola fide are inventions, they are extracted from scripture by means of private interpretations. This is why sola scriptura is so limiting.

It is true that any proposed tradition which contradicts Apostolic Scripture is a false tradition and must be rejected, but this does not make Apostolic Tradition inferior to Scripture for that reason. It is also true that any proposed scripture which contradicts Apostolic Tradition is a false scripture and must be rejected.

This was, in fact, one of the ways in which the canon of the New Testament was selected. Any scriptures which contained doctrines which were contrary to the Traditions the apostles had handed down to the Church Fathers were rejected. Between the Gnostic gospels (like the Gospel of Thomas) or Marcion's edited version of Luke and Paul's epistles, there were a lot of heretical writings that different groups wanted to see in the New Testament. But the Fathers said, "No, this contradicts the faith that was handed down to us from the apostles. Thus it must be a forged writing."

So while tradition must be tested against Scripture to see if the tradition is apostolic, it is also true that scripture must be tested against Tradition to see if the scripture is apostolic. There is complementarity here, and one mode of teaching is not automatically inferior to the other.

Tangible said:

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And God is His own Father.

kepha31 said:

It is IMPOSSIBLE for the Church to invent doctrines, that's just Protestant propaganda. However, sola scriptura and sola fide are inventions, they are not even found in scripture.

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Well, various doctrines have found their way into the Catholic church which are not found in scripture at all. If the church didn't invent them, who did?

Germatria1128 said:

My post was not intended to be argumentative but only intended to bring out the dynamics of the public act of Baptism a bit--- that John preached a baptism of repentance (trusting in God) for forgiveness of sins BEFORE Christ's ministry even got started and that Christ APPROPRIATED a ritual that was already in practice and then expanded on it with a "Baptism by Spirit."

So there were people, in the distant past, who were baptized but not Christians. The Bible tells us that some of John's disciplines transferred to Jesus... but then again, some did not. So what about these folks who had public baptisms but never became Christians? I find them an interesting category.

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Interesting. I would say they just got wet. Taking a bath is not such a bad idea.

kepha31 said:

You better throw out your Bible, without Tradition you wouldn't have one.

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Right. Without Tradition you wouldn't have the Pope.

Vicomte13 said:

A decision he later recanted because he realized he was wrong.

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Yes, he was told he was wrong by the church authorities and he obeyed them.

bbbbbbb said:

Quite true. There also could be the possibility of getting baptized for dead folks so they can get out of Hell and into Purgatory.

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No that's what this is for. All that for $9.56 delivered on eBay? What a bargain!

Vicomte13 said:

And my Church has Lourdes and Lanciano and Fatima and Guadelupe - miracles, some of which have left physical things that can be, and have been, studied to verify their reality. And my own miracles too. So, on the side of my God and the Church from whom I learned about God, I have nature-breaking miracles to vouch for the fact that God is HERE, and God FAVORS this Church - why else would he do public miracles in Catholic holy places for the world to see? I have the miracles of my own life by which I have talked to God.
This is persuasive.

What have you got against all that? Your opinion about a book. I've read that book too, and I don't think that it says the same thing you say it does.

So, it's your opinion and words and arguments f your church, versus my own opinions and words and arguments of my Church, and my Church has all of these miracles just like I myself have had in the flesh.
Who is more believable to me? You and your arguments from a text I have also read - and have come to different conclusions than you - and your church, which has no miracles - or me, my miracles, my own logic concerning the text, and my Church full of miracles and the manifest power of God?

And then there is the matter of attitude, comportment and grace.

I will quote Hillaire Belloc on this:
Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There's laughter there, and good red wine,
Or I have always found it so
Benedicamos Domino!

What have you got? Not the truth - I have that. God has touched me, talked to me, healed me miraculously, sent an angel to rescue me. He did this for me, a Catholic. What do you offer that is equal to that? Nothing. You have nothing.

Text? I have the text, and mine isn't abridged.

Charity? My church has the hospitals and schools and hospices and orphanages all over the world, always has, always will.

What, then, exactly? A stubborn set of arguments, that do not ring true and that do not comport with the miracles I have experienced, or that I have studied, and that are endlessly hostile to the Church in which all of these miracles have happened.

What you have are the arguments of the Devil. No miracles. No glory. Not even any good red wine - indeed, your type is always kvetching about "demon rum" and other ridiculous nonsense. "My tribe can't handle it's liquor - therefore God condemns drinking!" That's what it amounts to. Where are your miracles? Where is there ONE SINGLE SIGN at all that God is with you?

That YOU think so. I - a baptized kid little more than a pagan at the time - dove into a lake and broke my neck and was paralyzed and to die there, alone, drowning, and God simply reached down and healed my neck. You tell me that my God isn't real. What do YOU have that can compare to that.

Nothing. Because your God does not exist outside of your own mind. The real one is not like what you say, He is what I say - because I have met him. And he expresses himself openly, and happily, with fountains of miracles and rivers of red wine - the blood of communion.

That's why Catholic/Protestant arguments are so sterile. You have nothing to offer at all, but bad humor based on arguments based on a book that you treat as though it were God Himself, but that actually is just a book that only has the authority that God gives to it when it is wielded properly, as a tool of God's Tribe, which is mine.

You can always join mine. I would no more join yours than I would leave off being an American to go live in squalor with the headhunters of New Guinea. They have nothing to offer me.

This thread was about Mary. Mary appeared, and God opened a fountain of healing right there, on that spot, and made the girl who saw her incorrupt - more explicit signs of divine favor have never been granted. At Lourdes God does the SAME HEALINGS that Jesus did, the same healings that the Pharisees could not answer. They ignored them and called them satanic, and they were wrong.

Lourdes alone proves the truth of the Catholic Church, for a God who hates idolatry would not make an explicitly Catholic, Immaculate Conception Marian shrine the one and only open fountain of healing miracles anywhere on the face of the earth for the last two hundred years unless he was making the point that this Catholic Church to whom she appeared and in which this is happening is the One and Only True Church, the Real Thing.

The Immaculate Conception was revealed by God at Lourdes through the mouth of Mary. THe miracles prove that this is God. The lack of such a place anywhere else proves that this is God's opinion. None of it is in the Bible, because the Bible was written long ago, but God did this NOW, and because God did it, is has exactly the same authority as revelation - as the written Gospels of Jesus Christ, and it is an immediate truth that can be verified.

That is why the only rational thing one can be in the world is a Catholic.
And that is why your arguments can get precisely nowhere against any devout Catholic.
Your book is old and incomplete. You have to answer Lourdes. And you can't, because your book does not contain it. But Lourdes reveals the Power of God directly in real time, and it revealed the Immaculate Conception and the singular importance of Mary, which your church foolishly rejects, because you have made an idol out of the Bible and closed your eyes to every bit of reality since then.

All you can do in answer to Lourdes is to repeat the error of the Pharisees in the face of Jesus' healing miracles, and claim that the healing is the work of demons. And THAT, Jesus said, is blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

You cannot win, and you would be a much happier, healthier person if you abandoned your silly, crabbed religion, which lacks the facts and the answers and the truth - and you know this because you have no miracles - your God is powerless - the REAL God is Catholic, and you should leave your idol and come follow the real one.

The feasts are happier, the wine is better, and the promise is sweeter.

Don't write some snarling thing back. I don't care what you believe - it's foolishness and idolatry. GOD HEALED MY NECK. Your Bible god doesn't exist.

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Well, God completely healed a young girl I met in China from autism. She had been diagnosed by the top specialists in the field in China - men who had been trained in the top medical schools in the United States.

He also healed another man in China who was given a few days to live by his doctor. He also healed a young Chinese man completely from a fatal disease.

He also healed me from fibromyalgia. I can give you details if you wish.

Don't tell me that God cannot heal or will not heal infidels like us and only heals you and your co-religionists.

bbbbbbb said:

And God is His own Father.

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Kenny'sID said:

Then who is the father of God? And I'm not being a smart *** if it's taken that way, seems a fair question.

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The pertinent parts from the Nicene Creed.

And in ONE Lord Jesus Christ, (Acts 11:17)
the Son of God, (Mathew 14:33; 16:16)
the Only-Begotten, (John 1:18; 3:16)

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and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, (Luke 1:35)

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Kenny'sID said:

Honestly, that doesn't seem biblical at all, but maybe I can understand some of it.

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Maybe the sola scripturist above me can explain it better. (post #444) He seems to think all sola scripturists agree on the Mother of God.