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KjetilK
Guest
No, and that is why we do not say that four legged animals and dogs are the exact same thing.Couldn’t have said it better myself.I guess all four legged animals are dogs.
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SteveVH
Guest
Okay. I think we’ve beaten this one into the ground. I give.
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QNDNNDQDCE
Guest
Just to add, I consulted the German-Latin bilingual edition of the BC on BookOfConcord.org, and “catholicam” is used in the Latin of the Small Catechism and “christliche” (Christian) in the German.
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KjetilK
Guest
Well, if someone is saying that “Chinese and Asian is one and the same,” they are saying that the Chinese are Asians, and that Asians are Chinese. The former is correct, the latter is not.
So, when Pope Pius XII, in Humani Generis, says that “the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing,” he is saying that the Mystical Body of Christ is the Roman Catholic Church, and that the Roman Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of Christ. There is nothing historically controversial about this. Pope Pius XII actually did use the term ‘Roman’ for all Catholics in communion with the Roman Pontiff, including all sui iuris churches. He was citing his own encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, which was adressed to “our venerable Brethren, Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and other local Ordinaries enjoying Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See.” In that encyclical, he is even more explicit: “If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ - which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church - we shall find nothing more noble, more sublime, or more divine than the expression “the Mystical Body of Christ” - an expression which springs from and is, as it were, the fair flowering of the repeated teaching of the Sacred Scriptures and the Holy Fathers.” Here the Pope is using the term Roman for every Catholic Christian in communion with him, including Eastern Catholics.
I know that one have changed the language after this, but my point is that this is unfortunate. SteveVH wrote:
My answer was this:
The point of this, is that ‘Roman’ (as in ‘person who is in communion with the Roman Pontiff,’ following Pope Pius XII’s use of the word) provides us with a word that actually distinguishes between a Catholic who is in communion with the Roman Pontiff, from a Catholic who is not.
Because ‘being in communion with the Roman Pontiff’ is not a part of the definition of the word ‘catholic.’ I have given arguments for that position. St. Ignatius gives us the definition of ‘catholic’: Being in communion with a validly consecrated bishop. From that, it follows that the Orthodox are Catholic, since their bishops are valid. And since the Roman Catholic Church actually do acknowledge this validity, the Roman Catholic Church actually do acknowledge the catholicity of the Orthodox. And from this it follows that PRmerger’s claim - following Roman Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong, that it is “ridiculous to claim that there are Roman Catholics, and then a subgroup of Catholics who are not subject to the Roman Pontiff” - is wrong.
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PRmerger
Guest
No, Kj.
There is no special dispensation given to a special group of Catholics who get to disagree freely with the vicar of Christ.
That’s gaga lala nonsense.
That’s Protestantism. That’s part of the rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation.
I might as well say that there’s a group of Lutherans who profess the Trinity, and then there’s another group of Lutherans who don’t have to believe in the Trinity.
That’s gaga lala nonsense, too.
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Per_Crucem
Guest
The Catholic Church in Germany used christliche in the creed for years before the Reformation. Of course, this would have only been in German translations. Since Mass was in Latin, catholicam would have been used in the liturgy, of course.
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GKC
Guest
Or, there’s the idea that Catholic refers to all Churches holding valid apostolic succession, and that there is a subset of those, who are the Catholic Churches in communion with the Bishop of Rome, for which a common, inclusive title is Roman Catholic.
Sure, no one need accept that. Doesn’t bother me what people might call me. And that has been a variable, over the years, to be sure.
GKC
Anglicanus-Catholicus
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KjetilK
Guest
Again, that doesn’t change the fact that (1) Pope Pius XII used ‘Roman’ in the sense of ‘being in communion with the Roman Pontiff,’ and (2) that ‘Catholic’ is a term that doesn’t in and of itself involve being in communion with the Roman Pontiff, for the reasons I have already made. Can you please engage with my points? Where, for example, am I wrong in my interpretation of St. Ignatius?
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commenter
Guest
Keyword “variable”.
An argument that might have been persuasive in C. S. Lewis’ time might be abandoned based on recent data that he didn’t have.
Suppose there has been one main steamboat, and several other boats that, for centuries, had been floating very close to the main boat. The people in the small boats might well argue we don’t need to be in the main boat, we are floating in the right direction anyway. But for 50 years or so the journey has been getting much more difficult for everybody. Floating isn’t reliable anymore, as evidenced by the majority (not all) of Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran, Old Catholic and other generic Catholic type churches that went astray.
Not only is floating not reliable anymore, there are enemies more powerful than ever before. 99% of the attack on Christianity today is attack on the main boat. One might argue that if his own small Catholic boat later floats astray he can make another plan at that point. But in the meantime the main boat is specifically under attack and needs all hands on deck now to defend it.
So yeah, variable.
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GKC
Guest
Well, I had another category of variability in mind, but ok.
Which certainly suggests unity is a good idea (other things suggest it , too). but it doesn’t bear on whether the boats (with the generic qualifications) might be called Catholic, as in my nomenclature, described above. It is what I do. No one need agree.
GKC
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PRmerger
Guest
I am amusing myself merrily imagining a thread here in which a JW professes that he’s a Lutheran. Just a Non-Trinitarian Lutheran.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a designation under his Profile as: “Lutheran Jehovah’s Witness”?
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Novocastrian
Guest
It’s nice to know that you take us all seriously.I am amusing myself merrily imagining a thread here in which a JW professes that he’s a Lutheran. Just a Non-Trinitarian Lutheran.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a designation under his Profile as: “Lutheran Jehovah’s Witness”?
That said, here’s the difference.
The historical contention that there have ever been orthodox Lutherans who didn’t believe in the Trinity is not only laughable, but demonstrably and obviously false.
Whereas the historical contention that there have been orthodox Catholics not in full communion with Rome, and/or who have not held the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff to be part of the revealed Christian Faith, and/or who have not held that the supreme, immediate and universal jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff is held as of divine right as part of the divine constitution of the Church, is not demonstrably and obviously false, however laughable you may find it. There are many of us who are reasonably well informed who hold this historical question to be, at least, open to debate.
To wit, I offer the example of St. Gregory of Narek (950/51 - 1003 A.D.), an Armenian Oriental Orthodox monk and theologian, present in the Roman Martyrology, and recently recognised as a Doctor of the Universal Church by Pope Francis.
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LutheranScholar
Guest
Ugh. No, no it wouldn’t…:hypno:I am amusing myself merrily imagining a thread here in which a JW professes that he’s a Lutheran. Just a Non-Trinitarian Lutheran.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a designation under his Profile as: “Lutheran Jehovah’s Witness”?
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Praedicare
Guest
Hello,
I’ve been reading this thread with great interest. The semantics are quite boring, but the spirit behind the fight is helpful.
I’d just like to offer a tentative correction to the quote from S. Augustine that’s been used in this thread on numerous pages, and then a statement about the C-word in general.
Only with the advent of Pietism, Wesleyanism, “Evangelicalism”, and the “Low Church” in the 18th century did the Church of England start to deal with men who declared themselves to be very proudly Protestant and very loudly not Catholic. In short, the Non-Conformist spirit took over many hearts and minds. A blasé period followed. What Rev. J.H. Newman reacted to – in the 1830s-1840s – was this rather recent Protestantizing of his Church. Suddenly, High Church came to mean Roman-esque Ritual, and no longer “reformed catholicism”. Interesting.
I’ve been reading this thread with great interest. The semantics are quite boring, but the spirit behind the fight is helpful.
I’d just like to offer a tentative correction to the quote from S. Augustine that’s been used in this thread on numerous pages, and then a statement about the C-word in general.
- Augustine doesn’t say that heretics and others ask for “the Catholic Church”. He says that people came into a city looking for “the christian church”, and he laughed at the idea because there were so many “denominations” (heresies) that the name “Christian” wasn’t specific enough. Any given city had donatists, arians, and other non-Catholic “Christians”. When Augustine said he’d point people to “the Catholic Church”, he meant* the parish which belonged to that communion of churches which professed the Nicene Creed*.
- The early Anglican “Divines”, at least, were very proud to use the word Catholic. John Jewel, in his famous apologia for the Church of England (1562) repeatedly uses the adjective and says that the reformed C. of E. is much more Catholic than the Roman Church, which (he says) was rejecting true, pure, and patristic Catholicism. Laud, Andrewes, Cosin, Hooker, and many others were adamant about the C-word being used to designate the tradition they were in.
Only with the advent of Pietism, Wesleyanism, “Evangelicalism”, and the “Low Church” in the 18th century did the Church of England start to deal with men who declared themselves to be very proudly Protestant and very loudly not Catholic. In short, the Non-Conformist spirit took over many hearts and minds. A blasé period followed. What Rev. J.H. Newman reacted to – in the 1830s-1840s – was this rather recent Protestantizing of his Church. Suddenly, High Church came to mean Roman-esque Ritual, and no longer “reformed catholicism”. Interesting.
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PRmerger
Guest
Here is my source: books.google.com/books?id=EwI2AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
“Against the Epistle of Manichaeus”
It does indeed state “Catholic”.
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Praedicare
Guest
Thanks for the source.
I must’ve read another work, because I distinctly remember “my” version, above.
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Novocastrian
Guest
Hence the regrettable tendency to refer to Roman Catholics as ‘Papists’, etc. The English Reformers were unwilling to surrender their own claims to Catholicity.
This is broadly true. That said, the Reformers are adamant in their status as a reformed/Reformed Church, as well as professing their Catholicism. In this sense, they’re actually largely in step with Calvin & co! In other words, neither the English nor the Continental Reformers fit into the nice, neat categories that generations of Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Calvinists, etc. have wanted to keep them in.
Of course, this doesn’t make their claims to Catholicity true; Roman Catholics are still at full liberty to deny them. But it doesn’t make any sense to think that Protestant interest in Catholicity and membership of the wider, historic Church is a recent concern or innovation.
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GKC
Guest
That last was was the flowering of the distinct Ritualist movement of the mid 19th century, which followed on the tractarian/Oxford movement of roughly 20 years before, which emphasized continuity of doctrine. I personally use High Church to mean primarily the Ritualist, Anglo-Catholic to refer to the preceding doctrinal movement ; the two strands which formed the classic Anglican position, from that point, in contrast to the reformed side of the spectrum. The distinction is not hard, but can be useful.
GKC
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PRmerger
Guest
We are agreed.
But when one is CATHOLIC, then one is in union with Rome.
There is no immunity for some subset of Catholics who get to say, “We deny the authority of the pope”.
Just like there’s no subset of Lutherans who get to say, “We believe that Mary is the 4th person of the Trinity. But we’re still Lutherans! We’re MaryWorshipping Lutherans!”
That is correct, with my correction above.
Sure.
Indeed.
Your error lies in assuming that St. Ignatius is defining Catholicism.
He is simply stating ONE OF MANY things which makes someone a Catholic. (Curious why you would state it’s THE one thing. He never makes such an assertion).
You ignore all of the other things which make someone Catholic (like submitting to the authority of the pope0
Take this example: to be a Lutheran one must profess that the Bible is the Word of God, yes?
Yes!
JWs profess that the Bible is the Word of God.
Therefore JWs are Lutherans using your logic.
Are you willing to concede this?
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