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mark_a
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With all the termoil in the Presbyterian Church(es) these days, I believe the term “Presbyterian” is reverting back to the adjective it originally was.
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mark_a
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Catholics have certain non-negotiables to help with the thought process.
Otherwise. . . . . .well, nevermind.
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mark_a
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Jim Jones and David Koresh come to mind, along with JW’s.
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manualman
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You quite simply fail to see the office of the papacy in anything but a political light. The pope can teach nothing except catholic doctrine. John Paul II highlighted this fact in his response to the agitators for “women priests” when he basically told them to save their breath because no pope could confer Holy Orders on women - he simply doesn’t hold the power to do so.
Protestantism as a whole DOES effectively treat each individual as his own pope because the movement generally recognizes one another as fellow equal christians. Thus an individual can (and frequently does) simply change his denominational status to fit the beliefs and convictions he personally believes he has found in the bible.
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cooterhein
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Hee hee…Let me get that for you. :banghead:Where is the smilie for wanting to bang my head against the wall.
Well, I happen to think it’s an example of false equivalence and that you’re making a beeline from the broadest of similarities (ie., We both have leaders) to a completely untrue conclusion (ie., You have people who function as popes in your churches).
At risk of stating the obvious, if we did have leaders who functioned like popes in our churches, we would leave them. That’s why we’re Protestants in the first place.
I aplogize if I upset you at all. On a scale of 1 to 10, this is probably a 3 for me. Relatively speaking, I didn’t feel like I was jacking it up very far. I’ll keep you in mind, though. In the past, I have asked people to stop doing certain things when they interact with me. It always bothered me when they kept doing it, so I’ll do my best to honor your request in the future.Clear your minds, lay off the coffee, and take a deep breath. I wasn’t intending to start WW III
To that end, are there any specifics that I should avoid when I happen to disagree with you about something? Would it help if I made a point of asking for clarification before expressing that disagreement? If so, what kinds of questions could I have asked about the pastor-pope equivalence?
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mark_a
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Refreshing!!
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hizstory
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There was a bit of sarcasm in my previous post.Hee hee…Let me get that for you. :banghead:
Well, I happen to think it’s an example of false equivalence and that you’re making a beeline from the broadest of similarities (ie., We both have leaders) to a completely untrue conclusion (ie., You have people who function as popes in your churches).
At risk of stating the obvious, if we did have leaders who functioned like popes in our churches, we would leave them. That’s why we’re Protestants in the first place.
I aplogize if I upset you at all. On a scale of 1 to 10, this is probably a 3 for me. Relatively speaking, I didn’t feel like I was jacking it up very far. I’ll keep you in mind, though. In the past, I have asked people to stop doing certain things when they interact with me. It always bothered me when they kept doing it, so I’ll do my best to honor your request in the future.
To that end, are there any specifics that I should avoid when I happen to disagree with you about something? Would it help if I made a point of asking for clarification before expressing that disagreement? If so, what kinds of questions could I have asked about the pastor-pope equivalence?
I don’t have a problem with people disagreeing with me (it would just be nice if they knew what they were disagreeing about) I think the following quote sums it up: Not 100 in the United States hate the Roman Catholic Church, but millions hate what they mistakenly think the Roman Catholic Church is. – Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
Let me ask you this cooter. For you personally, where do you go for answers for spirtitual matters? Does praying alone to God do it for you? Do you go to a pastor? Do you take a vote at your church? Whatever your answer to these questions are, that is the place of the Pope for Catholics (and I’m not talking about the Pope’s role as a Head of State of Vatican City).
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cooterhein
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JW’s aren’t Protestants, Jim Jones worked from within a quasi-religious context to advance an agenda that was both atheistic and socialist, and while David Koresh at least claimed to be a Christian, I don’t know that I’d call the Branch Davidians a Protestant group. In order to be Protestant, you need to “protest” (that is, declare or believe in) the basic tenets of Protestantism. Branch Davidians may or may not have done this at their inception in the 1930’s (I’m not entirely sure), but they certainly didn’t do so when David Koresh was fighting for control of it.
I’m surprised that JW’s come to mind when you think of Protestants. That shouldn’t happen. If this is what you think of Protestants, I guess it shouldn’t surprise me when you say there’s popes among us.
Aside from doing a better job of coming up with names of actual Protestants, you would have done yourself a favor if you’d included quotes to the effect of “I claim supreme, full, universal power over my people.” Or something like that. It’s all over the Catechism- I had no problem finding a few paragraphs that were full of it.
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cooterhein
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All right, I understand. There are certain actions that the pope cannot take and beliefs that he can’t hold to. I’d probably disagree with you on the success that certain popes have had in preserving Catholic doctrine, but I get the gist of your point- the catechism specifically states that the pope enjoys supreme, full, immediate, and universal power over his church, so while there’s no one in the world who can claim to share his complete power and authority, he can’t wake up one morning and decide to confer Holy Orders on women.
And this makes him the same as Protestants because…Protestants can choose to confer Holy Orders on women (or whatever passes for Holy Orders…probably ordination, in general).
I think that’s where I lose you. Do you see why I might lose you there?
Don’t you recognize other Catholics as your fellow equal Christians? If so, I doubt that you treat each of them as their own individual pope.
I seriously don’t understand why you look at Protestants who recognize each other as fellow equal Christians and conclude that we’re effectively treating each individual as his own pope. The fact that your brain was able to form that thought without screaming “non sequitur” at you…just seeing it makes my brain hurt.
Yes, this is true of Protestants, to a certain extent. The way you phrased it precludes the possibility of someone actually finding something useful in the Bible, but yeah, Protestants are free to do this. This is true of them.
And if I remember correctly, you say it’s absolutely not true of popes.
But remember what this thread is about? I thought you were looking for similarities between Protestants and popes rather than differences.
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Dave_Noonan
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Yes, I have a master’s degree from a Catholic seminary and have taken classes at various Protestant seminaries.
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cooterhein
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No worries, I enjoyed it.
I’ll assume that I disagreed with something that you didn’t intend to say. What do you intend to say?
I’m seen this a bunch of times before. I think it’s intended to communicate two things.
One- that among Protestants in America, a bare fraction of 1% of them know what Catholicism is all about. I wouldn’t go quite that low, but I do agree that it’s low.
Two- if you do know what Catholicism’s all about, you can’t hate that. I’ve actually gotten to know quite a few Protestants who really do know what Catholicism’s all about, and most of them have doctorates in religious studies to prove that they’re experts. If the number reported by Bishop Sheen is accurate, I must know almost all these people.
But if this is the sorry state that Protestants are in, how many Catholics are catechized to the extent that they don’t fall in the same category? But I digress. Of all the non-Catholics I’ve met that really know a lot about Catholicism, I don’t think any of them hate it. None of them agree with it to the extent that they can be Catholics, but I think that’s totally understandable.My answers are expected to reflect something of a papacy in my life, and I will keep that in mind. If spiritual matters pertain to Scriptural matters, I’ll begin with really good lexicons. I think the third edition of BDAG is the best one. There’s also a number of grammatical tools and word study sets that are of value. Can the pope produced anything that can compete with BDAG?
I’ll go through around a half-dozen resources just in the process of finding out exactly what a particular passage says. After that, I might make judicious use of historical resources (is the pope a historian?) and possibly some commentaries. I vastly prefer commentaries that include back-and-forth responses between eminent scholars that disagree with one another and present enlightened arguments and thoughtful rebuttals. Does the pope engage in this kind of discourse?
Nope. I do believe prayer needs to play an integral role in all steps of such study, but I don’t think prayer and wise use of resources are mutually exclusive. I do think they should be done together.
I spend a lot of time with my pastor. He’s really great about that. We discuss a wide variety of topics. I can usually help him a lot with ancient Christianity because that’s a bit of a blind spot for him, and he’s introduced me to some valuable resources and tools that I didn’t really know how to use before. He’s also helped me explore certain kinds of ministry and gotten me involved in them.
If I spent time with the pope, is that what I could expect?
Anyone in a leadership position has to be approved by a certain percentage of the voting body in the church. That consists of everyone who is a member. For certain positions, a search committee is formed that does the initial vetting process, and then (usually for positions like senior pastor or youth leader) the congregation has a meeting and puts it to a vote after a few weeks of getting to know the candidate/s. Is this how the pope is selected? From what I understand, that’s voted on by a college of cardinals, but they themselves are unelected. Oh, if the situation calls for it, a vote might be required to remove someone from a leadership position. This almost happened about 8 or 9 years ago, but as it was coming to a head, the pastor resigned before it ever went to a vote. Can a pope be voted out of office in this manner?
Additionally, there’s a doctrinal statement for the church that sometimes gets revised and/or updated. Something tends to come up every 3 to 5 years or so, although it can take a little longer. A committee (usually the elders) will generally have a number of meetings over the course of a couple of months in order to propose and discuss potential changes, and then the congregation as a whole will be called upon to hear the explanations of what they did and put a number of proposed changes to a vote. Those meetings tend to be on the long side, and there’s usually more than one of them. If I ever meet the pope while he’s dealing out doctrine, will he preside over some kind of committee that ultimately puts the proposed changes to a vote among the laypeople who are members of the Catholic Church?
What kind of pope would do that, anyway?
I eagerly await further exposition and clarification on these points. Although, if I may, let me just say this. If I was a Catholic and I wanted to spend time talking to non-Catholics in this setting…
Trying to convince them of the presence of popes within their own churches would not be at the top of my to-do list. I appreciate the way you’re doing this and I do think you know how to interact and communicate with people very well, but if it was me, I would be a little hesitant in saying “This is how my time is best spent on CAF.” It may have to do with a failure to fully understand what you’re trying to get across, but as of right now, I’m not sure what reasons you could have to believe you’re currently pursuing something of great value.
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mark_a
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They are the fruit of the Protestant SS tree.
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gurneyhalleck1
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I share your reluctance to put JW’s, Mormon, and Adventists in the Protestant category as well. Calvinists, Lutherans, Methodists, etc. are my vision of Protestant—a reaction to the Catholic Church and, at one time, there was even talk in the early days of the Reformation of a possible reunion with Rome. Men like Luther and Melancthon died believing they were still Catholics, Anglicans as well in many cases. Protestantism, whether good or bad, had the goal of reform and cleaning house, they were reactionary and were wholly different than the JW, Mormon phenomenon that is wholly other-worldly in their view of the basic fundamentals of even Christology!
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Reservoir_Dog
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Argument by incredulity isn’t sound reasoning.
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Nine_Two
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What turmoil? I don’t see anything particular to them. Every single last Church in the world has major issues, especially dealing with modernity. That doesn’t prove their system of rule wrong. Besides, the OP said all Protestants have a pope, I gave an example of one where such a set-up does not exist. Outside of Protestantism my own Orthodox are also primarily Oligarchic (though in a very Aristotilian mold) rather than monarchic.
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Nine_Two
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Seems the storm passed me by.Get ready for a blitzkrieg with this post, Nine! Duck! Incoming!
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manualman
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I haven’t gotten the knack of separating quotes, so I number:
- Yes, I think I see where we misunderstand each other there. Let me rephrase it for you. In the catholic understanding, the pope holds the role of preserving and interpreting Scripture and Tradition infallibly via the grace of the Holy Spirit. When there is debate and/or confusion, he stops the buck, so to speak. In the protestant way of thinking (generally speaking, and generally is always riddled with exceptions), God hasn’t left us with any person or office to hold this role. Scripture is thought to speak for itself and the believer trusts in the Holy Spirit to give him the correct understanding of it. THIS is how catholics see every protestant as his own pope. The pope is not the source and dictator of catholic doctrine, he is the protector and interpretor of it. So while the pope sees and considers Scripture and Tradition on, say the idea of women priests and finds it impossible, in protestant circles you have some congregations who accept the idea of ordained women and others who don’t. Each person decides for himself and (often) chooses a congregation who already sees it his way.
- OK, my bad for unclarity. Yes, you and I and the pope are equal in absolute value before God. But much of Protestantism extends that to mean that we each have identical roles. Therefore Luther’s opinion on doctrine is equal to the pope’s and each person weighs the arguments of each and decides which holds more merit. What boggles MY mind is how protestants can think that way and still believe that God loves us like his own children (who abandons their children with nothing but a book to guide them?).
- It WOULD be true of popes if popes were just really lucky and skilled politicians who managed to get elected in a conclave. (As an aside, that would be crazy since being pope is a virtual living martyrdom) Catholics don’t believe that it is the human wisdom of a pope that makes him infallible. We believe it is a Grace that God grants to the OFFICE for the sake of the Church out of love. Absolutely, protestants find the truth in Scripture sometimes (I’ll even say on most of the critical issues). But being a little bit wrong in matters of eternity is kinda like being a little bit pregnant! In my experience, protestants believe that the Holy Spirit will guide them to a correct understanding to Scripture, but they seem not to notice when sincere and dedicated believers around them (also presumably guided by the Holy Spirit) sometimes come to different and contradictory conclusions. How does that NOT rock your confidence in your ability to rightly comprehend Scripture?
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gurneyhalleck1
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about that, not a 
!!
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manualman
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I agree (except maybe the 7th day Adventists whom I don’t know enough about to say). It is inaccurate and perhaps lazy to presume that everybody who claims to be christian, but is neither catholic, nor eastern orthodox is a protestant. Any group that accepts the idea of any “general revelation” newer than the apostolic period probably shouldn’t be classified as protestant.
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manualman
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Sounds like you were HOPING for a storm.Seems the storm passed me by.
Sorry, not biting. I don’t do land wars in Asia…
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