RE: Protestant vs. Catholic

[KephaMeansRock]

This is aphisherofmen,

What happened to the protestant v. Catholic debate forum that was going on here?

I just worked last night for over an hour on a post, and now it's gone, and my account is deleted!!!

Did we break a rule'? We were on topic and being respectful....

Anybody? HELP?!

[samuelbb7]

Two things should be clear.

One the common people were not afraid or made scared by the acts of JESUS. Children did not run away it was literally the fear of GOD that drove the hypocrites out. Not JESUS hitting them.

Secondly while the RCC claim Peter they should give him up. Since today he could not be a priest being married. A fair number of popes were married. Many more engaged in unbiblical sexual practices.

[MagusYanam]

One the common people were not afraid or made scared by the acts of JESUS. Children did not run away it was literally the fear of GOD that drove the hypocrites out. Not JESUS hitting them.

Amen to that, especially considering that Jesus' message was a comfort and a blessing not only to the 'common people', but to the people most despised and persecuted by the society in which they lived. Note what Jesus did right after the dove-sellers and the money-changers left the temple, which I think is equally if not more important: he invited in everyone who had been excluded from the temple, to be healed and comforted!

Secondly while the RCC claim Peter they should give him up. Since today he could not be a priest being married. A fair number of popes were married. Many more engaged in unbiblical sexual practices.

Personally, I think those who marry should indeed be eligible for pastoral ministry, from a simple utilitarian perspective. Pastors have already made a sacrifice, not of their sexuality but of their lives, devoting them to the service of others. If he (or she) is able to have a family who are willing to make that journey with him / her, so much the better. A pastor who by his office stands alone is ultimately handicapped in speaking to or for a community of faith. (Even Jesus had his 'family' - the brothers and sisters who gave up everything to accompany him in his kerygma.)

I think that's part of the reason why you see so many abusive clergy in the Catholic Church, is because they have been emotionally handicapped and frustrated by their efforts to create connections within the communities which they are supposed to serve.

But I'd be careful about falling into the same trap the Catholic Church does, of seeing sex as something 'bad' or 'dirty' (if not done for the express purpose of procreation, inside a marriage properly sanctioned by a celibate priest), which is a bad metaphysical perspective and definitely a skewed ethical one.

[KephaMeansRock]

Alright, it's been a LONG week thus far, but I'll try to get to this now...

I think I'll borrow Stanley Hauerwas' view on this and say that I can sympathise with this POV, but still consider it wrong. Inflicting bodily harm on another human being was not sanctioned by Jesus, and not even in the Temple is it said that Jesus inflicted bodily harm on anyone.

Yet it was Christ who said upon the night of his betrayal that it was the time for he who had not a sword to sell his cloak and buy one. Sure, we are not to "live by the sword", lest we die by the sword, but using a sword and living by the sword are two utterly different things.

There is also a difference between anger and force.

Your constant appeals to emotion aside, Justin, I still think that nonviolent solutions can work even in some of the most extreme cases.

Operative word: SOME.

I'm not advocating violence as the end-all solution. It IS a last resort. That is the Church's opinion too. You might benefit from reading the actual teaching of the Church on this matter. Read paragraphs 2303-2317.

How many black people do you think wanted to fight back against the policemen who were hosing them down, beating them, etc.? How many Hindus and Muslims wanted to fight back against the British when they were mowing them down with rifles by the thousands? How did Martin Luther King and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan respond to such attacks? Did they preach that when a man strikes you on one cheek, you strike him back? Did Jesus?

There is a categorical difference between fighting back against those oppressing you, and stopping others from being oppressed who are not yet prepared to go two miles and love their enemies.

We have a RIGHT to protect ourselves, but it is better to submit (just as we have a right to marry, but it is better to remain celibate); both are giving up something good for the sake of a higher good. But that deals with our relationship with the oppressor, not another's relationship. They can only submit if they are aware of this teaching and able to bear it, otherwise they are merely suffering injustice for the sake of your unwillingness to help, which makes you an implicit contributer.

As it was said, "All that is needed for Evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

Small, but growing, and often considered dangerous enough by the Romans that they would execute people simply for refusing to honour the Emperor. What better way to do that than to say, 'hey, these people honoured the Emperor by serving, why can't the rest of you?' I get the feeling that it was more of a psychological system of oppression than anything else.

I'll read your doctoral disputation when you write it on this subject, but until then, you're going to have a tough sell in me.

Bull. If that had been the case, it would have happened centuries earlier, when the Muslims were doing some really advanced work in the fields of physical science, mathematics and medicine. As it was, playing politics against the Orthodox and Muslim kingdoms was more important to the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages than science ever was.

That's not quite right.

I'm also thinking of names like Galileo, who had to defend the ideas of heliocentrism against the Catholic clergy, and was condemned as 'formally heretical' because of his idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

Actually, Copernicus, who developed the notion of heliocentrism a generation before Galileo dedicated his work on the matter TO THE POPE, who was one of his largest patrons - and it was well received.

What Galileo got punished for was insisting one how the church interpret scripture.

And I'm also thinking of when Pius X made the Catholic clergy officially fundamentalist by making them swear to this oath. Particularly intriguing is this little gem:
Pius X wrote:

I reject the opinion of those who hold that a professor lecturing or writing on a historico-theological subject should first put aside any preconceived opinion about the supernatural origin of Catholic tradition or about the divine promise of help to preserve all revealed truth forever; and that they should then interpret the writings of each of the Fathers solely by scientific principles, excluding all sacred authority, and with the same liberty of judgment that is common in the investigation of all ordinary historical documents.

The Catholic Church has been anti-science and anti-modernity for a very long time, arguably up until the Second Vatican Council. They required scholars to take a supernatural view of science and of human history, which is antithetical to the basic practise of science! Science can make no claim on the supernatural, being a discipline whereby natural causes and relations are discerned for natural phenomena, and yet this is exactly what the Catholic Church demanded of the people who did its scholarship.

All this is saying is that Catholics must be Catholic...not a big news flash there.

This isn't against "science", its against a materialistic reading of church history. It's against "the historical Jesus" being favored over "Jesus".

The 'Enlightenment' mindset was nothing new by the 1700's, and while it was related to the Reformation it was not a direct result of it. It was merely a popularisation of the ideas of Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and John Locke - who synthesised the pagan and Muslim learning that Catholics of the Middle Ages so readily and so often dismissed.

Are you not aware of the Medieval University system? Of the massively well received texts of pagan and Arabian influx that shaped the greatest minds in the church, like Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas, who themselves shaped the very way education was structured in the church?

Also, to say that the Enlightenment sought to remove religion from all matters and create a 'relativistic quagmire' is a dismissal, and an unwarranted one at that. Only someone who picked up Hume and passed over Kant could come away with the conclusion that the Enlightenment was relativistic.

Ever study Pragmatism? Read Rorty or Quine or Dewey? That's precisely what they did.

But Kant build upon the Cogito foundation of Descartes, making the world unintelligible outside of our head, and having all intelligibility utterly self-imposed on the world. That's relativism implicitly in the making, Kant just couldn't see it. That is a mind-set that sought to keep Newton's Physics but implicitly denied that it could happen.

I move (at the risk of being labelled a Eurocentrist) that humanity and Christianity as a whole (including Catholicism) have benefitted immensely from the pioneering of such ideas by people like Bacon, Newton, Locke, Hume, Galileo and Kant. And yet you want to dismiss them and all their works as being relativistic?

I do not deny that from them others have been inspired in ways that have shaped good things in the world. I do not even deny that they were on the whole good men (Though I've heard that Locke was a bit of a scoundrel), and that they had good ideas about many things like setting up democracy or that science was good.

I dismiss parts of their work which have fed our modern conceptions of philosophy (which ultimately begins at Descartes, admittedly - or William of Ockham) as mere word-games.

Firstly, I think I should say right here that I don't trust any statement that begins 'history will judge', because history never judges anyone. Historians do, and people do. And the viewpoints of people do change.

I didn't say "history will judge". I said "history will bear that out" meaning that the evidence from history will show my side more than yours. Believe me, I'm the last person to say that "history self-interprets" for the same reason that I'd deny that "the bible self-interprets". Both are just bodies of knowledge, upon which an intellect must draw and extrapolate (which is one reason why scripture never was and cannot be a stand-alone proposition, and why the Church is necessary as "the pillar and foundation of the truth").

Even in the Bible, there was the need for God to make successive covenants with mankind. Was this because God changed? Process theology aside, most people would answer that this was not because God changed, but because people did.

Amen. I teach precisely that in my RCIA classes.

I'm sorry if you felt I attacked you in any way, because I assure you that was not the case. But there is an alternate viewpoint with some basis in scholarship, so that's an assumption you don't necessarily get to make.

I don't feel attacked. But I think the position you propose is ultimately not born out by the facts.

Ugh. I'm detecting the underlying assumption here that sex is automatically not preferable to celibacy and therefore bad or dirty.

NO! Not in the least! Remember I'm married with two kids.

No in fact, according the church teaching, human sexuality IMAGES THE VERY LIFE OF THE TRINITY, which is why "in the image of god he made them, male and female he made them" (Gen 2), and why it is said that the two become one.

For a beautiful and indepth dive into the Church's understanding of humans sexuality, you might read JPII's foundational Theology of the Body, or get a copy of Christopher West's "Naked Without Shame" CD series, which a conference he gave on the Theology of the Body. The CD set is like $7 including shipping...I'd send you a copy if you'd listen to it...

Sex is NOT bad, it is GOOD! It is SACRAMENTAL! In the context of a marital relationship, it gives GRACE as the form of the Sacrament of Marriage! Very, VERY far from "dirty" and "prudish".

My reading of that 'point of the matter', as you call it, is that Jesus is saying that you give what you can give, and if that that is sensual pleasure, that is fine. Indeed, Jesus made a much greater sacrifice; sacrificing sexual pleasure would have been superfluous to the death on the Cross, wouldn't you agree? But the 'point of the matter', I think, is that he is not condemning sex as bad or beneath him. Think for a moment about circumcision. The Jews who practised this were essentially saying, 'we are giving up sensual pleasure for the sake of our covenant with God', but sex was still not considered bad or dirty.

The practice of celibacy has less to do with sacrifice (thought that is a big part of it), but more to do with being free to serve God and pastor a community.

Marital Relations are GOOD and the "right" of the faithful, but such a good thing is GIVEN UP for the sake of a greater good (much like fasting).

The assumption that Jesus must have been celibate because sex is bad or dirty and such a thing would be beneath him is bad theology, plain and simple,

Amen, and you've utterly knocked that straw man down!

Good thing for me I'm not positing that straw man...

I think there are other reasons to think Jesus may have been celibate - I agree with your points about the lack of mention in Scripture, by the way - but I see no reason for this counterproductive and Gnostic attitude towards human nature. The reason I even brought it up was not because I agree with it, but more to get a sense of where we stand on the issue.

Do you now see that it has very little to do with Gnostic attitudes towards the body...

As to the last, I'm sorry that you feel that way, but I feel that I do have a sound grounding in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A sound grounding does not mean that I cannot question what I think I already know. Indeed, St. Paul urged all his followers to test all things and hold fast to what is good.

And I feel that to be apart from the Church is to not be fully grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Nevertheless, good show! I'll post this, then answer anything that has happened since my botched post...

Pax Christi

-Justin

[MagusYanam]

Hi Justin. Glad you got it working and could post! You're definitely one of the more interesting people I've gotten to debate with on this forum.

Yet it was Christ who said upon the night of his betrayal that it was the time for he who had not a sword to sell his cloak and buy one. Sure, we are not to "live by the sword", lest we die by the sword, but using a sword and living by the sword are two utterly different things.

Yes, but he expressly forbade them even from using the sword. Not fifteen verses later, when 'one of them' (presumably Peter) cut off the ear of the high priest's slave, Jesus shouted at him to stop and proceeded to heal the damage he'd done.

It is inappropriate in the Gospel to take any happening, even if it may have happened literally, to be devoid of symbolic meaning. Luke uses 'the sword' as a metaphor for division, animosity and hostility. When he encourages them to take up a purse and a bag (NB St. Luke 9:2-3) and a sword, he is telling them to make preparations for their mission to spread the Gospel after he is dead, peacefully, but to expect hardship and animosity. The Abingdon commentary notes that 'the dullness of his disciples leads them to misunderstand his teaching by taking it literally, leading to [Jesus'] exasperated, "Enough of this!"'

Operative word: SOME.

I try to be modest and you take it as an admission. Perhaps I should have been brazen and said merely, 'in the most extreme cases'. But I get the feeling that you still would have been missing the point of what I was trying to say.

There is a categorical difference between fighting back against those oppressing you, and stopping others from being oppressed who are not yet prepared to go two miles and love their enemies.

We have a RIGHT to protect ourselves, but it is better to submit (just as we have a right to marry, but it is better to remain celibate); both are giving up something good for the sake of a higher good. But that deals with our relationship with the oppressor, not another's relationship. They can only submit if they are aware of this teaching and able to bear it, otherwise they are merely suffering injustice for the sake of your unwillingness to help, which makes you an implicit contributer.

As it was said, "All that is needed for Evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

And therein lies your complete and utter misunderstanding of what it means to be non-violent. Non-violence is not cowardice, and non-violence is not apathy. Do you honestly not think that Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. (and Christ!) were never put in this position?

They were stopping others from being oppressed, who were not prepared to suffer the way they were prepared! They took action - non-violent action - to shame their oppressors out of their oppressing. They fulfilled both what they saw as their moral duty to stop a great wrong, and they realised the ideals they found in their religions that saw non-violence (or satyagraha or Ghaffar Khan's conception of islam) as being the best method for stopping that great wrong.

I recognise the categorical difference between self-defence and the defence of another, but what I'm telling you is this: by taking non-violent action, these people did defend others, and they succeeded.

Another interesting example is that most if not all successful attempts during the Nazi regime to rescue European Jews (for example, the rescue of the Danish Jews) were non-violent. The military actions of Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the U.S. were ineffectual, if not detrimental, from a humanitarian perspective (as it is, we'd be lying to ourselves if we said that the reason we went to war was to save Europe's Jews).

Believe it or not, I am aware of the Catholic stance on violence in the Middle East, and in this case I applaud it. However, I think that it doesn't really go far enough.

I'll read your doctoral disputation when you write it on this subject, but until then, you're going to have a tough sell in me.

Ad hominem will get you nowhere.

As it is, I already have several good sources for my arguments. Assuming that you are already familiar with the Early Church fathers like Ignatius, Origen, Justin Martyr, Gregory of Nyssa, etc. I also have some secondary literature on the subject: Mark Kurlansky (okay, a popular author and not an historian), Edward Gibbon (old but in many cases still good), Heichelheim and Yeo and A. H. M. Jones. So, if you've managed to convince yourself that you're not dealing with a slacker or an ignoramus, perhaps you'd deign to make an actual argument that backs up with something other than a book review on Amazon.com.

All this is saying is that Catholics must be Catholic...not a big news flash there.

This isn't against "science", its against a materialistic reading of church history. It's against "the historical Jesus" being favored over "Jesus".

It said a good deal more than that. It became the means by which modernist Catholic scholars of natural history and theology were squelched by the authorities, and it set the Catholic Church back a good fifty years. And yes, it was against science, insofar as it became informative of theology (or theologians). The Catholic Church (between 1910 and 1967) came down against the study of evolution, for example.

One of the central themes of the Gospel is agency - the idea that even though we are sinful, even though we are in need of salvation, we have within us, as demonstrated through the life and works of Jesus Christ, that which seeks salvation: the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit to work requires a certain level of freedom. What Pius X did with the anti-modernist oath was to replace that freedom, given by the Holy Spirit, with a kind of moral and scholastic heteronomy, something which Jesus did not teach.

Are you not aware of the Medieval University system? Of the massively well received texts of pagan and Arabian influx that shaped the greatest minds in the church, like Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas, who themselves shaped the very way education was structured in the church?

Yes, and both were heavily criticised in their day (by the Church) for doing this synthesis of pagan and Muslim ideas. Pierre Abelard was charged with Sabellianism in 1121 and later persecuted on various other grounds, including his moral-influence theory of the Crucifixion, which borrowed heavily from Greek philosophy.

Ever study Pragmatism? Read Rorty or Quine or Dewey? That's precisely what they did.

But Kant build upon the Cogito foundation of Descartes, making the world unintelligible outside of our head, and having all intelligibility utterly self-imposed on the world. That's relativism implicitly in the making, Kant just couldn't see it. That is a mind-set that sought to keep Newton's Physics but implicitly denied that it could happen.

You're being disingenuous about the Kantian philosophy of mind. He was trying to lend a sense of epistemological humility to the Enlightenment, which had up until that time been concerned with what sense objects are like in themselves, or in other words to look at it from a God's-eye view, a view which inevitably leads to scepticism. What Kant did was to simply acknowledge that we are not God: when we experience something, we have no choice but to experience it from our own perspective. This distinction allows both for scientific inquiry (when we see objects in nature, from our own phenomenal perspectives) and for moral objectivity (when we consider humans as potential, noumenal beings which perhaps have free will).

And he did go on to assert a moral objectivity in the categorical imperative. We could dissect Kant to see if he really did or didn't know what he was talking about, but that's a topic for another thread. For now, I think it's clear that he knew enough of what he was talking about to have saved the Enlightenment from the decline into relativism which you seem to have picked up from Hume (at least until Nietzsche, but Nietzsche has different problems than Hume).

I didn't say "history will judge". I said "history will bear that out" meaning that the evidence from history will show my side more than yours.

To whom and for whom?

History in and of itself 'bears' nothing out. All things must have a context and they must have an audience.

Sex is NOT bad, it is GOOD! It is SACRAMENTAL! In the context of a marital relationship, it gives GRACE as the form of the Sacrament of Marriage! Very, VERY far from "dirty" and "prudish".

Yet I wasn't the one who compared it to force, and celibacy to nonviolence. Is sex something only to be used as a last resort (presumably in the procreation of children)? That seems to me to be making the same kind of implicit assumption. For the same reason, I have problems with the Augustinian theology of sex being the source of original sin (or worse, original sin itself).

The practice of celibacy has less to do with sacrifice (thought that is a big part of it), but more to do with being free to serve God and pastor a community.

If that's the case, then why did Jesus (and Paul) frame celibacy in the language of sacrifice? And I think I also made the point before that celibacy doesn't leave one free to pastor a community, but may in fact handicap a person from fully serving a community. I noted above the admittedly extreme example of the disproportionate abundance of abusive priests in the Catholic clergy, but even a mundane example will suffice. Suppose a couple with marital difficulties seeks out their community leader, a celibate, for advice. A common enough occurrence, and something a community leader should in practise be able to do. What advice is he supposed to give them that isn't at best abstraction or theory?

Do you now see that it has very little to do with Gnostic attitudes towards the body...

No, not when you still compare sex to violence.

Jesus made provision for sexuality. He did not do so for violence, as I can read it in the Gospel.

And I feel that to be apart from the Church is to not be fully grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I personally think that's backwards. To be Gospel-minded, regardless of one's background, is to be closer to the Church, which has its centre in Jesus Christ.

Peace of Christ be upon you,

Matt

[KephaMeansRock]

Alas, I don't have time to reply currently, but wanted to share this and get your thoughts...

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.

[MagusYanam]

That quote was taken from back when Gandhi was doing recruitment work - in India - for the British Armed Forces, before he developed his ideals of satyagraha. There, you're dealing with a Gandhi who is immature in his beliefs. Actually, some of the British who tried to discredit Gandhi pointed to that specific quote to 'reveal' his non-violent stance as hypocrisy.

As such, does this quote have any relevance here? When I speak of Gandhi I don't speak of Gandhi the British recruitment officer but Gandhi the non-violent resister to British rule.

[samuelbb7]

Howdy Justin I would like your replies to post 46 and 56.

[MagusYanam]

I came across an interesting article online, and I think it reflects quite well what I think is wrong with 'just war' theory and justifications for war in general, at least as they tend to be justified in this country, though I think the myth of the 'Christian soldier', the holy knight or the crusader fits in well with the Myth of Redemptive Violence as well. The author, Walter Wink, portrays it is a form of idolatry, and one which supposes a notion of evil which is simplistic, irrational and counterproductive.

[samuelbb7]

Howdy Justin this is post 46 I did not find where you answered it. Also last night a priest was speaking of meritourous suffereing. That when a person suffers or dies in great pain that it give merit for them to answer or get answers to prayers for others. Would you explain the basis of thsi?

Howdy Justin

I agree with you JESUS was celibate.

I will have a hard time getting back. But I have copied your previous post to my hard drive and I will be getting to it. In the meantime from the NASB something to ponder.

1Th 4:13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.
1Th 4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.
1Th 4:15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.
1Th 4:16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of {the} archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
1Th 4:17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.
1Th 4:18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.

Here is the definintion of worship from the Catholic encylopedia.

http://www.catholicapologetics.org/ap09 ... m#ap090601

# if it is addressed directly to God, it is superior, absolute, supreme worship, or worship of adoration, or, according to the consecrated theological term, a worship of latria. This sovereign worship is due to God alone; addressed to a creature it would become idolatry.
# When worship is addressed only indirectly to God, that is, when its object is the veneration of martyrs, of angels, or of saints, it is a subordinate worship dependent on the first, and relative, in so far as it honours the creatures of God for their peculiar relations with Him; it is designated by theologians as the worship of dulia, a term denoting servitude, and implying, when used to signify our worship of distinguished servants of God, that their service to Him is their title to our veneration (cf. Chollet, loc. cit., col. 2407, and Bouquillon, Tractatus de virtute religionis, I, Bruges, 1880, 22 sq.).
# As the Blessed Virgin has a separate and absolutely supereminent rank among the saints, the worship paid to her is called hyperdulia (for the meaning and history of these terms see Suicer, Thesaurus ecclesiastics, 1728).<<<<

The worship is lesser but I do not read these variations in the Bible.

Please provide the doctrine. The Catholic Church has always taught we are saved by the Grace of God.

980 It is through the sacrament of Penance that the baptized can be reconciled with God and with the Church:
Penance has rightly been called by the holy Fathers "a laborious kind of baptism." This sacrament of Penance is necessary for salvation for those who have fallen after Baptism, just as Baptism is necessary for salvation for those who have not yet been reborn.<<<
We consider both the sacrament of Penance and of Baptism to be the grace of God.

[Catharsis]

To Samuel and Magus

Venerating Icons and Saints
http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/i ... ation.aspx