Question for Catholics

Albion · May 30, 2012

lulu88 said:
Jesus is the only person who ever lived who was perfect and did not sin. He is the only one who should be looked upon as being holy. We dont see the pope as incapable of sin, however we feel doctrine, regarding apostolic sucession is infalliable.

Now you're only speaking of doctrine concerning Apostolic Succession? This began with you saying that 'Church and tradition are infallible..,'

Well, no, you don't. That is to say, you may be under this impression, but it's not the position taken by your church. If you don't want to believe this when I tell you, you could consult some official church material and find out for yourself.

lulu88 · May 30, 2012

Albion said:
Now you're only speaking of doctrine concerning Apostolic Succession? This began with you saying that 'Church and tradition are infallible..,'

Well, no, you don't. That is to say, you may be under this impression, but it's not the position taken by your church. If you don't want to believe this when I tell you, you could consult some official church material and find out for yourself.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the pope is infallible when he speaks from his position of authority on a particular issue or doctrine (speaking ex cathedra).

Many misunderstand papal infallibility as indicating that everything the pope says is infallible. This is not what the Roman Catholic Church means by papal infallibility. According to the Roman Catholic Church, this infallibility of the pope, only when speaking ex cathedra, is part of the Roman Catholic Churchs Magisterium, or the teaching authority of the Church which God gave to the mother Church to guide her infallibly.

lulu

Albion · May 30, 2012

lulu88 said:
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the pope is infallible when he speaks from his position of authority on a particular issue or doctrine (speaking ex cathedra).

I already said that. The point was that the RCC does not teach that all statements made by the Church are infallible (per your wording in earlier posts). End of controversy.

lulu88 · May 30, 2012

Albion said:
I already said that. The point was that the RCC does not teach that all statements made by the Church are infallible (per your wording in earlier posts). End of controversy.

sorry, a bit busy, thank you.

lulu

Abrahamist · Jul 7, 2012

Tatian said:
I was wondering about the Catholic Churches view on science as compared to most Protestants. It seems Protestants to a greater extent see a struggle between their faith and mainstreem science. However, it seems to me that the Catholic church doesn't seem to wrestle with it so much. The pope has organized conferences with lecturers such as Stephen Hawking and also have many Clergy who maintaine advanced degrees in all fields of science. This is much less for the Protestant movement, and it's something I lament.

The Catholic View is, in a nutshell, "Where our understanding of scripture conflicts with proven scientific truths, it is our understanding of scripture that is in error.

When I was contemplating this, I began to wonder what the difference maker is. I tinkered with the idea that perhaps it's because Catholics don't maintane a few of Sola Scriptura. Protestants will read the scriptures, such as Genesis and come to the "plain meaning" of it and conclude that science is at odds with scripture. They will say that sense this is God's only infallible word and that there is no other word of God but scrpture, than all other truths must submit to it.

So could it be that because the Catholic Church maintains that God's spoken word is through other means, such as the church itself, that they can allow science to be informative to what scripture means? For example, sense science overwhelmingly agrees that evolution is how life developed that the Catholic church can allow that information to help them conclude that Genesis 1 and 2 are not a literary account of how everything actually developed?

Please feel free to correct and inform me where I am mistaken.
Thankyou.

The Catholic Church doesn't maintain that God's word is through means other than scripture but rather includes means other than scripture. The scripture is a "coded" text and the Traditions of the Church are the "key" for understanding scripture and serves as a guide to interpret it.

Abrahamist · Jul 7, 2012

HereIStand said:
Well, I'm not Catholic either, but would classify myself as a something of a high church evangelical (within the PCUSA). I also believe in a 6 literal day creation according to Genesis. And I would by implication see the earth as young, seeing Genesis and Adam and Eve as historical. Yet, I think it is probably difficult to persuade someone to accept a young earth scientific argument if that person is not already predisposed to accept such an argument.

Some form of theistic evolution or more likely a form of intelligent design are probably more widely held to within the evangelical world than a 6 day creationist belief. I take the evangelical magazine Books and Culture and that seems to be the prevailing consensus in it.

I think holding to a 6 day creation belief is important for affirming our faith that we are created in the image of the Trinity. It becomes more problematic to affirm that if Adam and Eve are seen as metaphorical instead of as literal historical beings.

I believe just the opposite. I think it's important for Christians everywhere to stand up and denounce both Creationism and IDism for the fraudulent pseudosciences they are and to publicly disassociate with people who call themselves Christians but still espouse these fraudulent pseudosciences. We should do this so that Creationism and IDism would no longer be associated with Christianity but only with fringe groups pretending to be Christian.

The reason for this is because so long as people associate Creationism with Christianity, Christians will appear to nonChristians as being no different than the fools that believe that the earth is flat or that the moon is made of cheese.

I emphatically believe that creationism and IDism are both anti-Christian to their very core. Creationism because it assumes that God lied to us by creating a universe that looks very old when it is in fact very young and IDism because it's lazy and slothful.

IDism amounts to a scientist is working on a problem but isn't finding an answer and so throw up his hands and says, "Well then God probably did it and that's that."

No one calling themselves a Christian has any business at all conducting themselves this way. A Christian ought to be the hardest worker of the bunch, not the laziest.

Abrahamist · Jul 7, 2012

asiyreh said:
Anyone interested in this topic these two lecture series are a must.
I used to be a Roman Catholic btw but I've had to leave behind my faith mostly because of this series and the truth contained within.

The first explains how the various bibles came to exist.

213B - Battle of the Bibles / Total Onslaught - Walter Veith

This one explains how and where the Word has been sabotaged by the forces of Satan

214B - Changing the Word / Total Onslaught - Walter Veith

Btw if you're a Catholic this might make you a little sick, so prepare yourself.
As morpheus put it so aptly. All I'm offering is the truth.

So do you want the red pill or the blue?

Apologies I'm a newbie here so I can't post links. Just search the title on youtube.

I'll watch the videos out of curiosity. I can tell you though that I'm pretty solidly convinced against the Protestant view as I find the doctrine of Sola Scriptura to be absurd on several points and I have to date come across no historical support whatsoever than any of the key doctrines of Protestantism existed before Martin Luther.

Abrahamist · Jul 7, 2012

Albion said:
Maybe you should know to whom you are writing such a silly retort before reaching for the keyboard. However, I'll concede that "nothing" was too strong a word, and it would be better to say that much of what is doctrine in the RCC today has little to do with the Bible. Of course it is true that some of her better-known doctrines do not have anything at all to do with the Bible.

I've yet to come across anything in Catholicism that was not Biblical.

Abrahamist · Jul 7, 2012

Albion said:
You can have your personal interpretation, and the rest of us can have ours. it doesn't have anything to do with whichever denomination each of us belongs to. The point here not to be missed, however, is that the Bible is not the source for many Catholic doctrines, whereas it is the basis for all Protestant doctrines. It's not a lot more difficult than that.

The basis for Protestant doctrine, the five solas, are all antibiblical.

Albion · Jul 7, 2012

Abrahamist said:
The basis for Protestant doctrine, the five solas, are all antibiblical.

Really?

Scripture, Faith, Grace, Christ Glorified...all" antibiblical?" They're all over the New Testament.

But "Holy Tradition?"

That concept appears nowhere in Scripture, but that doesn't stop people from claiming that it is Scriptural. You have one word that is similar, that's all. It isn't used in the same way, but that's good enough for the "Tradition is a second source of Divine Revelation" folks.

Abrahamist · Jul 7, 2012

Albion said:
So the Roman Catholic Church is empowered to determine which other churches are valid? What a strange notion. Why don't we ask one of them which other denominations THEY consider to be valid?

The Catholic and Orthodox Church both have a history that goes all the way back to the beginning. None of the Protestant denominations do.

Abrahamist · Jul 7, 2012

Albion said:
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Where in the Bible do we find that explained to us? Or is it a nice theory that some men came up with long after the Ascension?

Try long before the Ascension.

Long before Jesus was even born, Rabbinical Judaism held that the Torah was given in two parts; the oral and the written Torah. The Oral Torah was mostly given first. The only part that was written down was the Ten Commandments (and Moses destroyed the original tablets they were written on.)

In Jesus' lifetime, the Pharisees still maintained this view while the Sadducees had abandoned this belief in favor of just the written Torah, excluding the rest of the OT cannon. Jesus taught to observe the teachings of the Pharisees as the sat on the chair of the Moses but not to follow their example as they didn't practice what they taught. By the time he was born, the Oral Tradition had become corrupt and so Jesus stripped it back down and then established the Church to maintain it.

Jesus never taught to observe the Sadducees and it was the Sadducees that sentenced Jesus to death.

I came to believe in the Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church not because of the claims of the Church but because the Jewish History and version of events, as well as their doctrine and practices closely matched that of the Church.

Abrahamist · Jul 7, 2012

Albion said:
Really?

Scripture,Faith, Grace, Christ Glorified...all" antibiblical?" They're all over the New Testament.

You are right in that all these concepts are all over the New Testament. But I never said that scripture, faith, etc was antibiblical. It's when you add the "Sola" in front of them that they become antibiblical.

There are verses in the NT stating to observe both the written AND oral traditions, contradicting Sola Scriptura.

In the epistle of St. James, there's a verse that says faith without works is dead, contradicting both Sola fide and sola gratia.

Jesus introduced the sacraments and established the Church and placed Peter in charge of it, contradicting sola Christo.

As for Soli Deo Gloria, that one might actually be biblical as I cannot think of a counter example in the NT right off hand. I'll have to research this one further.

But "Holy Tradition?"

That concept appears nowhere in Scripture, but that doesn't stop people from claiming that it is Scriptural. You have one word that is similar, that's all. It isn't used in the same way, but that's good enough for the "Tradition is a second source of Divine Revelation" folks.

I covered this in an earlier post but Tradition was the first source of Divine Revelation. Scripture was the second. And this is backed up in the Bible in that Exodus records the Oral Tradition being given to the Jews at Sinai and the Gospels record Jesus starting the Church through oral tradition instead of writing the NT himself.

Albion · Jul 8, 2012

Abrahamist said:
You are right in that all these concepts are all over the New Testament. But I never said that scripture, faith, etc was antibiblical. It's when you add the "Sola" in front of them that they become antibiblical.

We've been all around these issues on one thread or another. This extremely far-fetched claim that there is a second source of revelation equal to the Bible and indicated in the Bible itself, merely because one verse has one word that's similar to the term the Catholic church later adopted for its theory, plus an admonition for people to hold to unidentified customs, is like comparing the characteristics of the Atlantic Ocean to blood. Yeh, both have something to do with fluids, and that's all.

In the epistle of St. James, there's a verse that says faith without works is dead, contradicting both Sola fide and sola gratia.

And that passage is a caution meaning that Faith without Works is not really Faith, not that Works do anything whatsoever to save us.

Abrahamist, there's nothing in this that has the makings of a discussion. You have a new church and naturally want to try out what you've learned. You know the verses that you are supposed to use, and so do we. It's not new to us. You notice that no one had to actually quote chapter and verse here for us both to know exactly what the basis of your contention was going to be.

I'm sure there'll be some other discussion we can both roll up our sleeves and go to work on, but this isn't it.

AHJE · Jul 8, 2012

If by "Sola Deo Gloria" is meant that To God be all the glory and that the Saints to do not share in this glory by grace and that the Saints, especially the All-Holy Mary, do not have secondary merit by collaboration with the grace of God ... this is error. If by "Sola Deo Gloria" is meant that we are not to render veneration to the Saints in Heaven and to the All-Holy Mary the honor of Hyper-Veneration, as if it would rival the Latria/Worship/Adoration that we give to God Alone ... this is error. It is what it is.

Praised be Jesus Christ.

Cjwinnit · Jul 9, 2012

Abrahamist said:
The Catholic and Orthodox Church both have a history that goes all the way back to the beginning. None of the Protestant denominations do.

My Anglican parish church celebrated its 1,100-year anniversary before I was born. Nice try

bbbbbbb · Jul 10, 2012

Cjwinnit said:
My Anglican parish church celebrated its 1,100-year anniversary before I was born. Nice try

You have to give the poor guy some credit. He was really gracious to include the Orthodox Church with the Catholic Church. Most Catholics maintain that the Orthodox Church actually began with the Great Schism. I wonder what he thinks about the Oriental Orthodox churches.

Albion · Jul 10, 2012

bbbbbbb said:
You have to give the poor guy some credit. He was really gracious to include the Orthodox Church with the Catholic Church. Most Catholics maintain that the Orthodox Church actually began with the Great Schism.

...and not only that, but implicitly to agree that the Roman Catholic Church is not the "one, true church."

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