P
Peace-bwu
Guest
Yes, very similar to the pope, he is well educated in Scripture, history, theology (and the current Pope, theater as he was in the underground theater as well as the underground seminary in Poland, interesting.) He doesn’t need to be “fired.” He has authourity as the Vicor of Christ, in succession of St. Peter he doestn’t just pull pull stuff out of his Pope hat. The Pope has the deposit of Sacred Tradition which includes, most importantly, Sacred Scripture. Sacred Scripture cannot conflict with Traditon because they were formed from the same body of knowledge and Apostolic Authoirty. (there are extensive threads on the limits of authority)
One of the interesting things I noticed from my before mentioned friend, it seemed at times she came to the same conclusion as me with Scripture, but she was lacking the fullness of the faith, such as historical information to use for help in interpretation, and she had alot of misconceptions about the Catholic Church because she didn’t know any better, and her minister could only answer her questions with the typical “They worship Mary, etc.” Thankfully our discussions helped her understand that Catholics don’t actually worship Mary and that we call our priests “father” in the same way St. Paul called himself “father” sorta like the “Dad” of the Church, rather than the blasphemy of calling a priest father as same as God the Father. That was another thing she was really worried about.
The closest understanding I got of her Non-denominational church is that from my perspective they were taking on the noble cause of reinventing the wheel through reinterpreting Scripture, fresh for themselves, because every denomination they have tried left them searching for better. I hope I didn’t sound too disrespectful in my earlier posts, but it was frustrating to see people condemn Catholocism yet struggle with what St. Paul meant by “Body of Christ” in his letters which we were studying in her Scripture study class.
Martin Luther had some good points about the abuse of indulgences, but the first protestant schism threw out the baby with the bath water. Can leaders make bad decisions? Yes, they are human. Does that make the entire body of Apostolic Traditon bad, does it mean they needed to throw out entire books of the Bible? I don’t think so. Does it mean that the Universal (Catholic Church) needed to be thrown out? In my opinion, no.
My point is that I feel a compassion toward my protestant brothers and sisters because they are struggling to understand Scripture standing alone without the help of the Sacred Tradition it was written out of. For example, How can one possibly understand Revelations without understanding that the imagery was taken out of the liturgy of the Mass? Without that simple understanding one comes up with all kinds of frightening images and conclusions. The Book of Revelations is a book of love and hope a promise that Christ will not leave Christians but will welcome them into the Kingdom. How can one understand what the Body of Christ means without knowing what the Apostles, themselves, believed it to mean. It makes me want to cry to think of people who love and are devoted so much to Christ and Scripture not to be able to receive Communion the way Christ established it. My friend was so pinned on little details about Noah’s Ark that she couldn’t see the amazing bigger picture, that it prefigures Baptism, that Noah was saved by his faith and obedience to God, among others. She loved the Gospels but unintentionally skimmed over important details and when I pointed them out she was amazed, but it was only because I had been taught to find them. I was OK with our different religious backgrounds, we prayed together, etc. but she didn’t like that we used the sign of the cross and used both rote prayer and spontaneous, she thought it should *all *be spontaneous. Yet, when her minister taught about the trinity she was so excited! She thought I didnt’ know about it and when I explained the sign of the cross she was shocked. I wish we were still friends but I guess the differences were too much for her.
At the end of the day, when Jesus sent out his Apostles he said “go out and teach” not “hurry up and invent the printing press so you can write all this stuff down and hand everyone a Bible so they can decide for themselves.” God loves us too much for that and gave us so much more with the Sacraments and Apostolic Tradition. I feel badly that throughout history the sins of a few hurt the Body of Christ by causing people to turn away from Truth. My heart is in the right place and I hope this doesn’ t read otherwise.
What??? Tim Lahaye actually wrote a favorable piece about the Sacraments? Is this the same Tim Lahaye I know???
