CHRISTS MESSAGE: God Hates Religion!

Great Debates
221

Polycarp, I used the example of the Pope to explain my displeasure with any heirarchical system built upon the teaching and example of Christs life. I believe that such pervisions of Christs message is an example of mans desire for personal gain here on earth.

It was, I feel, clearly my opinion on the matter and not an attack on the Pope. It was also an example of something I see in many religious perversions of Christs teaching. (Religious perversions, as determined by my opinion)

I guess it comes down to the fact that I just can’t accept that ANY human can hold a “higher place” before God, such that I would need to go to anyone besides Christ through prayer for repentance.

222

One quick point each to Kirk and His4Ever, both based on the Eastern perspective which more and more the Anglicans are accepting:

The priest has absolutely nothing to do with what happens to the bread and wine other than being the authorized presiding officer of the church gathered to celebrate the Eucharist. It’s in response to the prayer (said by him in behalf of all gathered) that God may send the Holy Spirit upon “these gifts” that they “may be for us a communion in His Body and Blood” that any change takes place – and, His4Ever, out of respect for what your church and pastor have set apart for communion, you would not then take the food from the communion table and use it at a party, would you? Their outward identity has not changed, but their purpose has, because they’ve been offered to God as the means of taking Communion in remembrance of Christ’s offering of Himself. At rock bottom, that’s what the doctrines of the Real Presence and of Transubstantiation mean.
The key passage (and I use Eucharistic Prayer D of the Episcopal Church which is in this part identical to Eucharistic Prayer II in English of the Catholic Church):

223

For Kirk, my point would be the Orthodox formula that “We know where we can find the Truth” – i.e., in the Orthodox Church – “but we do not presume to know where the Truth is not.”

If God spiritually nourishes and guides into greater grace and knowledge of Him His4Ever and her fellow religionists through their communion service, that’s a step for good. I certainly would not limit Him to what our churches do. (And, like you and me and the rest of us, she certainly stands in need of it.)

224

I found an interesting site on the Roman Catholic eucharist:

http://members.aol.com/jasonte3/rceuch.htm

225

You can keep repeating this hype all you like. It doesn’t change anything one whit. I know better and that I’m doing more than just eating a snack. That’s just your opinion and I wholeheartedy disagree with it. As everyone around here keeps telling me, you aren’t the final authority on all truth, nor the authority on this particular subject. Perhaps you should read the link I posted.

226

Oh for crying out LOUD, His4ever, it’s an obvious anti-Catholic site.

You know, I would REALLY appreciate it if you’d quit it with the half-truths about Catholicism.

All right?

227

This is total baloney! The Catholic church isn’t God or His word. It’s not infallable no matter how much you say so. It’s made up of people who can and do fall into error if they depart from the word of God. You appear to be making a god out of the Roman Catholic church. How sad, in my view.

You can bet your sweet bippy that if a Catholic priest tells me something and I see just the opposite in the word of God, I’m not going to believe the priest. He is not infallable nor will he ever be.

228

Excuse me??? Everybody else is allowed to post sites and that’s okay, but the minute somebody posts a site with an opposing view, everyone gets all in an uproar? Did you ever stop and think that maybe what the site says is true?

I have as much right to post websites that support what I’m saying as anyone else who posts websites that agree with what they say. So, please stop getting on my case. I haven’t done anything horrible except express a viewpoint that differs from yours.

229

You have every right to post websites, yes. But you do NOT have the right NOT to be called on it, if your websites tell half-truths.

Did you ever stop and think that perhaps that someone who was born and raised Catholic, who went through NINE YEARS of Catholic school, and later attended a Catholic college MIGHT know a little more about Catholicism than you do?

A LOT of what that website said was untrue-implying that Catholics bow down to saints and get salvation through works.

If you don’t want people to get on your case, I suggest you not post disreputable websites, honey.

230

So how come when I posted a book that was written by a woman who was born and raised in a fully Mormon household, no one wanted to hear what she had to say? Even has photocopies of mormon documents stating their beliefs. It works both ways, my dear.
This woman was raised and indoctrinated in the teachings and beliefs of Mormonism yet, she’s just dismissed as being a mad ex mormsn. Well, honey, that’s just you guys’ opinions. You don’t know for sure. So if you won’t accept the testimony of someone raised and taught in a particular religion why should I accept the authority of the person you named above?

And as for what you said above about Catholics, that’s what they appear to do in my view. You have men deciding that someone is a saint and they’ve made the simple gospel a lot more complicated than it needs to be imho.

231

OK, His4Ever, here are a few questions for you:
[ul][li]When your church celebrates The Lord’s Supper/Eucharist/whatever your church calls it, who hands out the bread and the wine? [/li][li]Is anything said before it’s distributed?[/li][li] If so, by whom? [/li][li]How is the person who does this selected?[/li][li]Does this person preach sermons as well?[/li][li]How you determine who does get to preach sermons?[/li][/ul]

If there’s one or perhaps two people in your church who do this, you have given them authority over you. These are also among the things Catholic and Episcopal priests do.

While I don’t buy into literal transubstantiation, I do realize that something special happens. Also, the miracle which saved my life and my soul 9 years ago took place while my priest was saying the Eucharist. In your terms, it would be very closely akin to being born again. My priest asked for God’s blessing upon the bread (actually communion wafers) and wine. I barely heard her words at first, and could not speak above a whisper. As she said the familiar words of the Eucharist, as they have been said for centuries, I felt a Power, strong and sure beyond all measure, pass through me, and almost literally pull me out of the prison of pain and fear I’d spent the past 48 hours in. I could speak, I could hear, and I could feel, and that miracle touched me profoundly. I was already a devout Christian, and I would have called my faith irrevocable before hand; this cemented that bond and my calling. I don’t think I was capable of doubt beforehand; I now know I’m not.

I can’t tell you if it would have been different if a lay person had consecrated the bread and wine. I don’t think God listens to priests’ prayers more than mine. I do think priests have a special ability to tap into the Divine and make use of it. I have felt God’s Power flow through me, sweet and strong as any music this chorister has ever heard, and I feel a trace surrounding me even as I type (it was stronger while I was describing the miracle). Perhaps, and I’m searching here myself, blessing the bread and wine is transferring some of that glorious Power into the earthly components, and thereby transferring that energy to the congregation. Again, I don’t know what it is, but I do know it’s something far outside the ordinary.

I’m afraid I didn’t read the link you posted because I’m not going to take any link which starts with “members.aol.com” seriously. While there could be legitimate, well researched information on it, it could also be full of what my father refers to as “codswallop.” A members.aol.com link is a link to a private individual’s website and I have no way of knowing what value, if any such a site contains. Given your predjudice against the Catholic church, I’m even less likely to assume it will be a fair or unbiased website.

Look, I’m not a fan of Catholicism. I wouldn’t even convert for a man I loved very dearly because I disagreed with them on certain doctrinal issues. Among other things, I’ve considered the priesthood, and that’s not going to happen in the Catholic church. You don’t have to like it, but the existence and history of the Catholic Church have been documented back to the days of the Early Church itself. The slanders you have been spreading have been going on for hundreds of years, and the church has survived them. Yes, the church went through a period when it became corrupt and the house-cleaning Martin Luther tried to get it to do was badly needed. Nevertheless, Catholics do not worship saints, and they no more practice cannibalism than do Protestants or any other major religion. Come on – the charge of cannibalism has been levied against the church since its earliest days, mostly by non-Christians, and I must admit, the words, “Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you.” and “Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant” could easily sound cannibalistic to me if I didn’t know what was going on behind them.

Oh, one final thought. King James, who commissioned your preferred version of the Bible, was Catholic, and a very ardent one.

CJ

232

Actually, James was Protestant, wasn’t he? It was his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots who was a devout Catholic.

Although, he tended towards the more Catholic version of Anglicanism.

233

Excuse me! That was my mistake. In that period of British history, monarchs seem to have kept switching between Anglican and Catholic and, since King James I was Mary, Queen of Scots’, son, I assumed he was Catholic like his mother. I may also have confused him with King James II who tried to introduce toleration of Catholicism.

Catholicism and Anglicanism/Episocopalianism are still pretty close together, with High Church being even closer than Low Church. I’ve always been Low Church Episcopalian myself, but I can still remember my ex-boyfriend being amazed when I talked him into coming to my church one Christmas Eve. It seems my Episcopal Church’s service was identical to his Catholic Church’s. Since he’d been an alter boy just as I’d been an acolyte, he knew the service word for word.

CJ

234

Prove it. Prove the Catholic Church has fallen into doctrinal error. However, showing that its teachings don’t agree with those of your worthless death cult are meaningless. Show where the Catholic Church has abandoned a historically promulgated doctrine of the Christian faith.

No. However, if by “word” you mean the Bible, then that is merely a work canonized by teh Church. The Church, having assembled the Christian Bible, is in fact the authority over the Christian Bible. The Bible didn’t create the Church, but vice versa.

And in that book you worship, Jesus declares that the power of Hell will never triumph over his Church. The only Church at that point is today known as the Catholic, or Orthodox, Church. Neither you, nor your demonination.

The Bible is merely the collected writings of humans, yet you claim it to be infallible. Or, actually, inerrant, becuse a book cannot be “infallible,” for that implies the ability to think.

The Church’s proclamations which put forward formal doctrine, either in Council or ex cathedra, are the only infallible teachings of the Church. No priest is infallible, unless that priest is the pope, in very, very, very extreme circumstances.

Kirk

235

Because what your dingbat ditty claimed Mormons believed directly contradicted the plain teachings of the Mormon church, as evidenced not only by the testimony of Monty, but by the publicly available documents of the Mormon church.

Who are we supposed to believe, the documents of the Church and the testimony of Monty, or the word of a fundamentalist (known liars) who has an ax to grind?

Give me three hours, Microsoft Word, Adobe Illustrator and my iMac, and I’ll show you documents stating that the Luthern Church really worships the ancient Greek god of Ares.

Only because what she claims does not match what is widely and publicly known by all people of even average intelligence about the Mormon religion.

Damit, H4E, that’s total BS. You cannot have an opinion about a fact. Something is either true or it is a lie. And what you posted about Mormons, and EVERYTHING YOU’VE EVER POSTED ABOUT CATHOLICS are lies, as evidenced by the testimony not only of members of those religions present here, but by the very documents of those organizations.

What you would have us believe is that not only is every Catholic and Mormon on SDMB lying about what they believe, but that these two organizations have COMMITTED GREAT FRAUD and MISLED EVERYONE about their true beliefs in their public documents, and secretly, when no one’s looking, actually do the things you say we do. That is absolutely absurd. How can you not see that?

Here’s a tip. Never trust an “ex.” That’s one of the basic rules of life. Never go to someone’s ex-spouse to find out the truth about that person. Never go to a company’s ex-employee to find out about the truth about that company. And for God’s sake, never go to someone who has left a religion on bad terms – in the case of your biddy, having been torn out of it by a brainwashing fundamentalist hate cult – for the “truth” about that religion.

Because the official documents of those organizations ALWAYS AGREE with the people in the argument who are not YOU. Have you not noticed this?

Or would you claim your nonsense little anti-Catholic website is more authorative than the documents and teachings of the Church itself, which make mincemeat of the arguments your little website presents?

Given how much knowledge of Catholicism you’ve shown on this board, that’s not surprising.

You don’t know a damn thing about Catholicism, you don’t understand a damn thing about Catholicism, all you can do is regurgitate the nonsense that you are spoonfed by the evil men who educate you, because you seem lack the ability to discern between a reliable source (the documents of the Church, for instance) and a non-reliable one (a piece of human filth like Jack T. Chick, for instance).

The Catholic “gospel” is just as simple as that of any other Christian body. One needn’t do anything with the Saints, needn’t ever pick up a Rosary, to be a Catholic, if they don’t want to. The Catholic religion is a more complete religion, so of course its going to be more expansive than the anemic faith you call Christainity.

Kirk

236

Whoa, calm down Kirk.

237

It’s not that you post sites, its the type of sites you post: lie-filled sites written by hate cult bigots.

You know, H4E, if Catholicism were really as diabolical as you seem to claim, it would be obvious. Damn obvious. You wouldn’t need to go to garbage sites like that, or read comics-for-the-simple-minded like Jack T. Chick nonsense.

I challenge you to prove your evil claims against the Christian nature of the Catholic Church, by proving that your arguments are true using the only authoritative source on Catholic teaching: The documents of the Catholic Church itself.

Why should I? The site falls flat on its face in its analysis of the Council of Trent, in its representation of the Catholic position, in its internal coherence. It is a poorly-worded assortment of logical fallacies held together by strawmen arguments. I could write a better anti-Catholic screed in an hour.

I know the teachings of the Catholic Church. This site you posted DOES NOT REPRESENT THEM. So why should I even give it, or you, the time of day?

That site is beneath my consideration.

Find me something that DOESN’T misrepresent the teachings of the Church, that DOESN’T fail in its description of the position of Trent, and then I’ll consider it. But when all you have to offer are exercises in sophistry, why should I?

And you have done a horrible thing, many times over: you have spread lies, about Catholicism, about Mormonism, about gays, about the Bible, about Christianity. You have done this, and you continue to do this, with abandon.

Kirk

238

You’re right, I need to calm down, and I’m sorry for flying off the handle. But, dang it, this situation with His4Ever has become intolerable. I’m also sorry if I offended anyone (and if I didn’t, I’m still story for going overboard).

However, I think H4E’s charges against Catholics, gays and Mormons went far beyond going overboard a long, long, time ago, and no one’s done anything about it.

Kirk

239

You are not paying attention.

His4ever has been Pitted rather more frequently than you have (although I predict that you will soon rectify that situation). As long as she does not violate SDMB policy, the only thing to be “done” is to refute her errors or (if one feels the need) take her back to the BBQ Pit. Such refutations do not require absolutist statements that will be laughed at by those who do not accept your presentation of the validity of Catholicism, nor do they require the constant claim that all Fundamentalists are liars (which tends to make you look shrill–and perhaps a bit desperate).

240

Here we have something very important. The feeling of Power, Energy, something that immediately changes the receiver. Mine felt like electricity running through the body, warm, beautiful.

This is what NDEers experience, this is surely the most important thing going when in the presence of God.

Love
Leroy