Questions regarding Catholic decision making

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Shane Roach

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Originally posted by VOW
And there, my Friend, you have summed up the total of the results of MY search for a church when I was in my investigative days. In my eyes, I could see an ocean of the different Protestant churches, all waving their hands in my direction, saying, "Pick me! Pick me! Pick me! *I* have the True Faith!"

That would be the difference in your experience in mine, that I include the Catholic church as one of the many, and I don't characterize any of them really as hopping up and down shouting "pick me!" :) Makes for a cute story though, I have to admit it made me giggle!

That and obviously I am still struggling with the whole Papal inerancy question, although as I mentioned the very concept of Pope now is understandable to me, whereas before it used to bother me.
 
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SSPX

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Originally posted by Shane Roach
Point is, there used to be some interplay at the top and more than one aposlte, but now there appears to be only one. Can you give me some sort of historical perspective of how we lost the other 12 apostolic seats and they all got centralized to just one Pope? [/B]

What is most commonly associated with the Catholic Church these days, the Roman Church, used to be one of 5 patriarchates before the schism with the eastern churches. Each patriarchate was independant of the others and self governing, although from time to time the bishop of Rome did intervene in the affairs of other patriarchates to settle disputes. Even though some eastern churches have returned to communion with Rome, they are small in comparison to the Roman patriarchate and are usually overlooked. There are in fact about 40 "sui juris", or self governing, churches in communion with Rome in the Catholic Church right now. The largest, like I said, is the Roman which accounts for 98% of Catholicism.

Joe
 
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Wolseley

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I have a problem calling this "popular myth". It may be a popular lie spread by authorities, but it is taught everywhere from church to secular school. Hardly the type of thing one refers to as a "myth" in my experience. I'll have to look into it more deeply now, as you are the first person ever to imply it is a myth that I have ever talked to. I remember specifically that a big part of the reformation as it was taught me was the right of the people to read the Bible for themselves.
Prior to the Reformation, there were Church-approved vernacular transalations in Spanish, Italian, Danish, French, Norwegian, Polish, Bohemian, and Hungarian. In English alone, we have the Anglo-Saxon translation of Caedmon of Whitby in the 600's AD, the Saxon versions of Bede of Jarrow, Eadhelm of Sherbourne, Guthlac of Peterborough, and one Egbert in the 700's AD; then the free translations of Alfred the Great and Aelfric of Canturbury, the Book of Durham, and the Rushworth Gloss from well before the Norman Conquest; the Orm Paraphrase of 1150 and the Salus Animae of 1250, and the Middle English translations of William Shoreham and Richard Rolle, both from the 1300's.

All of these, you will take note, existed centuries before John Wycliffe's flawed English translation of 1525, which was full of translationsal errors and was in fact, so bad that Henry VIII ordered eavery copy of it within the realms to located, seized, and burned. The idea that the Church kept the Bible out of the language of the people in order to keep them in the dark is a load of baloney. Were there Bibles in Latin? Sure; it was the Church's litrugical language. Were Bibles chained to pulpits in churches? Sure they were. They were copied by hand and often decorated with precious stones and metals, and ergo represented both decades of work and of extreme monetary value---they were chained up to keep thieves from stealing them---but anyone who could read was free to enter the church and read the village Bible at any time. Which brings up the point of literacy; most common people during the Middle Ages couldn't read anyway, so it really didn't matter much if their Bible was in Latin, English, German, Hindustani, or Klingon, did it? If you can't read, you can't read.

You might want to pick up a copy of Where we Got the Bible, by Henry G. Graham (TAN Books, Rockford IL 61105), which debunks loads of these Reformations fables concernign the Catholic Church and the Bible.
As an aside, I have always understood that the reason Protestants don't accept the Deuterocanonical books is because at the time of Christ they had already been rejected by the Jews, and Christ put a stamp of approval on the Old Testament as it stood during His lifetime
The version used by most Jews in the 1st century was the Greek Septuagint, which contains the Deuterocanonicals. (Again, 90% of the OT quotes in the NT follow the Greek structure rather than the Hebrew.) The Masoretic Text, containing only the Hebrew books, was favored by the religious/political faction in Jerusalem, which included the Sadducees and the Pharisees, in part because they hated the Romans, and the Deuterocanonicals contain references to friendship treaties between the Jews and the Roman Republic in the 2nd century BC. After the destruction of Jerusalem, this religious faction met in a place called Jamnia and formalized their version of the Jewish Scriptures; they excluded the Deuterocanonicals, in no small part because the Deuterocanonicals contain a large number of prophecies which clearly point to Christ; and of course, the Christians were making use of these prophecies in application to Jesus. The Pharisaic faction in Jamnia wanted to discount the Christians and their Messiah, so they discounted these books, thus disposing of the troublesome messianic prophecies they contained.

There are more things in history than are covered in high school classes, Horatio. :)

Blessings and peace,
---Wols.
 
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Shane Roach

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I'm beggining to get the idea that the main difference between Protestants and Catholics is the opinion of exactly what causes problems in the church. All churches have problems, but the structure of the Catholic church is hard to understand and ultimately the appearance is, for all its tradition and closest ties to the ancient church, it still has problems, and not only that but traditionally has problems admitting when there's a problem.

I'm sorry if that last comment seems a little sharp but I'm still thinking in the back of my mind of a statement on another thread regarding just how far some folks seem to think confessional privacy should go.

I can imagine a situation where, as long as you fulfilled whatever penance the Priest set out for you in the confessional that it would remain private, but that in criminal cases always the penance would include turning yourself in to the authorities, and if you didn't do that then you forfeit your right to have the confession remain private and the Priest must report it to the authorities.

I make this comment here because as I said, I feel it relates to the whole issue of the structure of the Catholic church and why some of us really have a hard time understanding it all. :)
 
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Wolseley

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:D Well, while you're at it, Shane, pick up a copy of Unabridged Christianity by Mario Romero (ISBN 1-57918-056-6), and Why Do Catholics Do That?, by Kevin Orlin Johnson (ISBN 0-345-39726-6). They both contain good information about the development of the Bible and the Canon.

Stick with me, kid---you'll learn things. ;)
 
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