I never said that. I do believe, however, that if any Christian organization is on the money theologically, it’s the Catholic Church, and any group that strays greatly from it, risks falling off the edge into non-Christianity. Mainline Protestant denoms have not done this. Fundamentalist bigot death-cults, in my opinion only, most certainly have.
They have no priesthood, they preach a false gospel of OSAS, they blabber about myths like the Rapture, and their communion is nothing more than grape juice and crackers, a meaningless ritual with no sacramental value. In my opinion. Which renders them, at best, pseudo-Christian. In my opinion.
His4Ever, sometimes I believe you have a hard time “worshiping Him in spirit and in truth” yet I would not have the temerity to say you do not believe in God. I have told you my understanding of what Muslims believe. I do not expect you to embrace Islam; I don’t even expect you not to deny them salvation.
Christians continue to slaughter other Christians. The Bloody Sunday massacre in Ireland was Christian against Christian, just to take one example. Just because a person embraces a religion does not mean they are a good person or someone who cannot commit atrocities. To me, the prospect of a Rapture is as much rooted in reality as the prospect of x number of virgins in heaven. I could argue that a born-again Christian is capable of commiting an atrocity because he or she is assured salvation regardless of their actions in this lifetime. If anyone cares to tell me that’s a distortion and true Christians don’t act that way, I’ll point out that there are moderate Muslims who feel the same way about their co-religionists who commit atrocities.
Masonite, you’re scaring me!
Diogenes, thanks for the exact term. None of my versions of the Gospel have it.
Kirk, are you suggesting that if a group of Christians were to get “it right”, they could then call themselves the “Catholic Church”? Also, then, could the Roman Catholic church stray to the point that they would simply be the Roman Church?
Opinion. Fair enough. However in the spirit of debate, could you cite for me where exactly Jesus declares that he requires Priesthood? (I’m not looking to dispute your opinion, I am just curious on what it is based.)
Also, Once saved always saved has always sat a little funny with me, but then again, “you must confess your sins to a priest” has always sat funny with me too. What’s your cite for the RC view on this?
Not going to touch the rapture… in the long run, what does it matter what you think about the reality of rapture?
Lastly, explain to me how the Eucharist (sp?) is a biblical principal. Thanks.
(Again, I am not loading up to launch an attack, I am legitimately ignorant on the RC views for these issues.)
No, the grape juice and crackers are not a meaningless ritual. Jesus said to do this in rememberance of Him and by doing so we are showing HIs death till He comes. Where does it say that a RC priest has the authority to say a few words or whatever and all of a sudden a wafer and wine turns into the actual body and blood of Christ though the appearance remains the same? A priest has the authority to call Christ out of heaven and come dwell in a wafer? I don’t think so. He dwells in the hearts of those who accept Him, not in a cracker or wine or grape juice. It is symbolic.
Ok, I am more spesfically talking about the idea that a priest can change something into the literal body and blood of Christ. During the last supper, I’m fairly certain that Christ was using bread and wine. I don’t see the connection between Christ using symbolism with his diciples and the Eucharist.
Once can take on the name of a Christian, or any religion for that matter, and it doesn’t necessarily make them a true Christian in God’s eyes. If there’s no change in the life, and they’re committing atrocities against people, it makes me wonder.
No, there is only one Catholic Church, and it is that which is led by the successor to Peter.
Doctrinally, the Catholic Church cannot fall into error.
Why should there be a cite? Christianity is not a book religion. Doctrines need not be found in the pages of a dusty holy text. In any case, in the Bible, if you must rely on that portion of Christian revelation, there are many instances where Jesus sets others in leadership, such as his conveying the name “Rock” upon Simon and giving him, and later the others, the power to bind and loose sins. That, taken in context with the fact that the Early Church had a episcopal hierarchy clearly indicates that Christianity from inception had a specific structure.
Jesus gave certain of his followers the power to bind and loose sins – to forgive sins. In John, I do believe. That, combined, again, with historical precedent, clearly states that this is how Christianity was done in the beginning, and how it should be done.
It matters because people who are so stupid as to think that God’s gonna reach down and grab 'em up into Heaven at any moment don’t bother to think long term about the Future. I’ve heard some Christian, Rapturists to the one, babble about how environmentalism is just “polishing the brass on the Titanic,” ie, why care about the Earth when its gonna be toasted real soon now anyway? Short-sighted, and evil, point of view.
Again, being “Biblical” is meaningless – Christianity is NOT confined solely to the text of the Bible. However, the Eucharist is very Biblical – John 6 Jesus says explicitly that people must eat (literally, chew and gnash) his flesh and drink his blood, and at the Last Supper he instituted the divine manner in which this consumption would take place by stating “this IS (not REPRESENTS, not CONTAINS, not IS LIKE) my Body… this IS my Blood.”
Because it is the only Church, aside from the Orthodox Church, that was actually there when this stuff went down. All the references regarding the Church in the Bible mean the Church that was there – the Orthodox Catholic Church. Including the promise that the Church would never be overcome by evil. The Protestant Churches recieved no such promise, nor protection.
I do not know enough about Mormonism to make an informed decision.
How nice that you think that. Too bad that the entire Christian Church disagreed with that spurious ntoion for the first 1500-plus years of the religion’s history.
Then use mezzum (spelling?), which is technically wine, but has no perceptible alcoholic content.
Jesus didn’t use grape juice, he didn’t use crackers, he didn’t use Doritos. To truly do what he did, you must use the same substance: bread and wine.
ah. Never heard of that.
My church does use bread, in fact we go rip off a piece of the loaf!
our 2 cents.
No matter what my beliefs, and how they differ from yours, I still believe I am a christian (as are you).
I Think all denominations can get along, as it were.
There was no symbolism. In John 6 Jesus said that he would give his followers his flesh to eat and his blood to drink, and that his followers would have to eat his flesh and drink his blood. At the Last Supper he presented them with the miraculous form in which they would consume them – under the appearances of bread and wine.
But there was no symbolism, nor anything in the text to indicate that there was any symbolism implied. Jesus said, flatly “this IS my body… my blood.” And the earliest Christians took him at his word. In fact, it was centuries before we have any record of anyone even questioning the notion of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. That’s what the Earliest Christians doctrinally held to, that the bread and wine, upon the words of consecration, become the body and blood.
Why do you set your own opinion above the teachings of the men who were there with Christ, and those who learned at the feet of the Apostles?
Kirk, I think then, that my problem with Catholicism is my inability to allow a “Church”, in this case the Catholic Church, to be considered infallible.
I suppose the difference here is that your faith is based in the Bible and from that the infailibility of the Church and more recently the Pope. Based on that, your belief makes sense.
However, you have to understand that your inability to accept anything outside your belief, does not necessarily make you correct.
I believe that the Bible is the only reference to Christ’s life on earth and therefore is the only backing needed for my decisions. If a new issue comes up, look at it through biblical principal, and decide from there.
If you have a problem with my system, that’s fine. But can you see my problem with yours?
I’ll let Kirkland address the other points (and I do want to compliment you for taking his anger at your apparent condemnation of his church and returning peace for it – I hope he can see now that you were not insulting Catholicism so much as disagreeing with it – though I do wonder what you meant about the Pope that got things so hostile earlier, and hope you’ll explain your earlier remark in a non-adversarial context.
“The Eucharist” is the English term for the Greek noun that might be translated “Thanks-giving” as a verbal noun (not the holiday but the act of giving thanks) and specifically refers to the celebration of the Lord’s table with bread and wine which all Christians participate in under one name or other – “the Lord’s Supper, the Mass, the Divine Liturgy, the Eucharist, the Holy Communion” are some of the titles used.
As to whether it’s a Biblical principle, I’d say that hearing one’s Lord say, on the day before His Crucifixion, “Do this in remembrance of me,” constitutes not only authorization but a pretty strong order to do just that. There are some debatable questions about what goes on in that service and why we do what we do – but that we do it is about as Biblically ordained as it’s possible to get without having an angel carrying a Bible show up to remind you whenever you forget to do something.
Oh, and while I said I’d leave the rest to Kirk, it’s worthwhile to give you the Anglican perspective on confession, and my understanding of what the Catholic view is as a comparison.
First, nobody from the Patriarch of Ethiopia to the Pope to Franklin Graham to Harry Emerson Fosdick thinks that anybody but the Triune God has the power to forgive sins. However, any power held by anyone can be delegated. Christ evidently delegated his power to the Ten Apostles (less Judas and Thomas, who was absent on this occasion):
Now, it’s the understanding and tradition of the liturgical churches who hold to the Apostolic Succession that the authority that Jesus gave to the Apostles was delegated by them to the overseers (episkopoi) and elders (presbyteroi) whom they named as they went about founding local churches. And that this power to pronounce God’s forgiveness (or to refuse it) was among the powers they delegated to them. The episkopoi, in turn, were equipped with the power to carry on the apostles’ task of authoritative teaching and regulation of the ministry of the church in the apostles’ absence and fortioris after their deaths, Christ having not come again in the interim.
As to why this might be the case, there are a variety of explanations, but the one that makes most impact on me is that there are scrupulous people who feel such a sense of guilt for their sins that the overall pronouncement that God does indeed forgive the sins of all who repent of them does not make a personal impact on them. But having told Christ (listening through a priest’s ears) all the skeletons in their closets of which they’re feeling guilty, and him authoritatively pronouncing God’s forgiveness for precisely those sins, and equipping them with a spiritual exercise to perform for strengthening against sin, does make them “feel forgiven” in a way that that generic announcement does not.
Roman Catholicism, for reasons of its own, requires as a Law of the Church that its members do this private confession once a year to a priest. Anglicanism does not, but makes the option of private confession available to those who want or need it.
In documentation of my statement that it is not the priest but God who forgives sins, the priest merely “absolving” – formally pronouncing God’s forgiveness in His Name – I offer the following three quotes from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, the first the absolution formula used on Ash Wednesdays and the second two the two alternative absolutions from the Reconciliation of a Penitent:
At the Easter Vigil the pastor of the parish washes the feet of several parishoners. Or maybe that’s at the Good Friday mass… come to think of it, I think it’s at Good Friday.
For shame, Kirk. It’s on Maundy Thursday, the “Maundy” being Elizabethan English for “Mandatum” – the instructions to do as Christ did, including the footwashing.
And I agree wholeheartedly – it’s a most poignant, moving, humbling experience to go through.
Yes, they are. There is no change in substance, there is no real presense. All it is is a snack you eat in “church.”
Oh my God, would you stop getting your information on Catholicism from that sub-human troll Jack T. Chick. Catholic priests DO NOT pull Jesus out of Heaven and stick him in a wafer. They do what Jesus did – in fact, they don’t even do it, Jesus does it, through them. Through the same form as the Last Supper, the sacrifice at Golgatha is transported through time and made present in present day. The one sacrifice is made present for all time – in effect, time is bent – there is no continual sacrifice, there is no further sacrifice, there is no further suffering.
I agree. And as a Catholic, I would ask you to stop making up derogatory references to their beliefs that ignore the theology–much of it ancient–that lies behind it. The Rapture is a particularly silly modern invention, but your claims about all Fundamentalist beliefs are both over the top and frequently in error.
This is Great Debates which implies a cetain respect for at least the expression of one’s opponents’ ideas; take ranting and slurs down the corridor to the BBQ Pit.
