Any Catholic ever been out debated by a Protestant?

[Isaiah45_9]

It seems if a Catholic tries to debate Protestants through Scripture alone, then a Catholic is no longer holding to the Catholic Faith as revealed through Sacred Scripture + Sacred Tradition + Magestrium = Catholic Faith.

I understand the fear of looking at the history of Christ’s Church, the need to ignore how our Lord has worked through its Church throughout the centuries. The need to hold on to my own private interpretation and those that align with it.

Thanks and Praise be to God when He opened my eyes:

[bibledrb]John 5:39-40[/bibledrb]

Our Lord here is teaching the hardest teaching of them all. In order to follow Him we must abandon ourselves.

I got tired of living a life that had to find something against the Catholic Church, like putting blinders so that I can go on ignoring the calling. It was staring at me the whole time.

I’m finally Home.

Thanks be to God.

 

[PRmerger]

It seems if a Catholic tries to debate Protestants through Scripture alone, then a Catholic is no longer holding to the Catholic Faith as revealed through Sacred Scripture + Sacred Tradition + Magestrium = Catholic Faith.

No, CU. We are simply scratching you where you itch. It’s like we’re sparring using only one hand, but we certainly can spar.

We are no more denying Catholic teaching when we use Scripture alone to refute your errors than we are denying Catholic teaching when we use Science Alone to refute atheistic errors.

 

[Christian_Unity]

No, CU. We are simply scratching you where you itch. It’s like we’re sparring using only one hand, but we certainly can spar.

We are no more denying Catholic teaching when we use Scripture alone to refute your errors than we are denying Catholic teaching when we use Science Alone to refute atheistic errors.

I thought the Catholic Church taught that the world was flat?

 

[Isaiah45_9]

I thought the Catholic Church taught that the world was flat?

Your true colors are finally coming out.

[bibledrb]Matthew 7:3-5[/bibledrb]

 

[PRmerger]

I thought the Catholic Church taught that the world was flat?

Source, please. (From a Magisterial document).

 

[Christian_Unity]

Source, please. (From a Magisterial document).

“The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church." Ferdinand Magellan*

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=58298

 

[PRmerger]

“The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church." Ferdinand Magellan*

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=58298

Epic fail, CU. Epic fail.

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/files/2010/02/double-facepalm.jpg

You have so many errors about Catholicism it makes your comment here about knowing a lot about our faith to be ludicrous.

 

[Christian_Unity]

Epic fail, CU. Epic fail.

John Paczkowski - AllThingsD

You have so many errors about Catholicism it makes your comment here about knowing a lot about our faith to be ludicrous.

Did you see that Catholic Answers link that went back to a Catholic Answers thread on not being infallible on science? How can you debate an atheist with science alone when your science views are very fallible? It is the same with the issue of debating a Protestant through Scripture alone… you are outside the realm of your beliefs.

 

[PRmerger]

It seems if a Catholic tries to debate Protestants through Scripture alone, then a Catholic is no longer holding to the Catholic Faith as revealed through Sacred Scripture + Sacred Tradition + Magestrium = Catholic Faith.

It is because of comments like this that I believe that your general tone of “let’s just all be Christians and some of my very best friends happen to be Catholic!” masks your true agenda.

As others have been proclaiming, we see through your superficial bonhomie, CU. It not that hard to see your true colors.

And because of that I will never join your Facebook page because I think you really do NOT work for Christian Unity.

 

[PRmerger]

Did you see that Catholic Answers link that went back to a Catholic Answers thread on not being infallible on science? How can you debate an atheist with science alone when your science views are very fallible? It is the same with the issue of debating a Protestant through Scripture alone… you are outside the realm of your beliefs.

We use all truths to evangelize, CU. We use philosophy. Although it is fallible.
We use mathematics. Although our understanding is fallible.
We use science. Although our views are fallible.

You are operating under some weird notion that we have to be infallible in order to refute someone’s errors. Where did you get that concept from?

 

[Christian_Unity]

It is because of comments like this that I believe that your general tone of “let’s just all be Christians and some of my very best friends happen to be Catholic!” masks your true agenda.

As others have been proclaiming, we see through your superficial bonhomie, CU. It not that hard to see your true colors.

And because of that I will never join your Facebook page because I think you really do NOT work for Christian Unity.

A call for ecumenism is not a call to give up your theological distinctive in what you believe. Just because I do not share all your Catholic beliefs does not mean I have a hidden agenda. Of course our theological perspectives will clash at times because we are Christians with some essential differences. However, at the end of the day, we all are able to pray to God as our Heavenly Father through Christ… as adopted children of God.

 

[Isaiah45_9]

It is the same with the issue of debating a Protestant through Scripture alone… you are outside the realm of your beliefs.

How dare you

ARTICLE 3
SACRED SCRIPTURE

I.      CHRIST—THE UNIQUE WORD OF SACRED SCRIPTURE

101 In order to reveal himself to men, in the condescension of his goodness God speaks to them in human words: “Indeed the words of God, expressed in the words of men, are in every way like human language, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when he took on himself the flesh of human weakness, became like men.”

102 Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely: (65, 2763; 426–429)

You recall that one and the same Word of God extends throughout Scripture, that it is one and the same Utterance that resounds in the mouths of all the sacred writers, since he who was in the beginning God with God has no need of separate syllables; for he is not subject to time.

103 For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord’s Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God’s Word and Christ’s Body. (1100, 1184; 1378)

104 In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, “but as what it really is, the word of God.” “In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them.”

II.      INSPIRATION AND TRUTH OF SACRED SCRIPTURE

105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. “The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”
“For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.”

106 God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. “To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.”

107 The inspired books teach the truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.” (702)

108 Still, the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book.” Christianity is the religion of the “Word” of God, a word which is “not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living.” If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, “open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures.”

Catholic Church. (2000). Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Ed.) (30–31). Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference.

 

[Isaiah45_9]

III. THE HOLY SPIRIT, INTERPRETER OF SCRIPTURE

109 In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.

110 In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking, and narrating then current. “For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression.”

111 But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. “Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written.”
The Second Vatican Council indicates three criteria for interpreting Scripture in accordance with the Spirit who inspired it.

112 1. Be especially attentive “to the content and unity of the whole Scripture.” Different as the books which comprise it may be, Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God’s plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart, open since his Passover. (128; 368)

The phrase “heart of Christ” can refer to Sacred Scripture, which makes known his heart, closed before the Passion, as the Scripture was obscure. But the Scripture has been opened since the Passion; since those who from then on have understood it, consider and discern in what way the prophecies must be interpreted.

113 2. Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church.” According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God’s Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (“according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church”). (81)

114 3. Be attentive to the analogy of faith. By “analogy of faith” we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation. (90)

Catholic Church. (2000). Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Ed.) (32–33). Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference.

 

[Isaiah45_9]

IV. THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE

120 It was by the apostolic Tradition that the Church discerned which writings are to be included in the list of the sacred books. This complete list is called the canon of Scripture. It includes 46 books for the Old Testament (45 if we count Jeremiah and Lamentations as one) and 27 for the New.91 (1117)

The Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zachariah and Malachi.

The New Testament: the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the Acts of the Apostles, the Letters of St. Paul to the Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, the Letter to the Hebrews, the Letters of James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, and Jude, and Revelation (the Apocalypse).

The Old Testament

121 The Old Testament is an indispensable part of Sacred Scripture. Its books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value, for the Old Covenant has never been revoked. (1093)

122 Indeed, “the economy of the Old Testament was deliberately so oriented that it should prepare for and declare in prophecy the coming of Christ, redeemer of all men.” “Even though they contain matters imperfect and provisional,”94 the books of the Old Testament bear witness to the whole divine pedagogy of God’s saving love: these writings “are a storehouse of sublime teaching on God and of sound wisdom on human life, as well as a wonderful treasury of prayers; in them, too, the mystery of our salvation is present in a hidden way.” (702, 763; 708; 2568)

123 Christians venerate the Old Testament as true Word of God. The Church has always vigorously opposed the idea of rejecting the Old Testament under the pretext that the New has rendered it void (Marcionism).

The New Testament

124 “The Word of God, which is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, is set forth and displays its power in a most wonderful way in the writings of the New Testament” which hand on the ultimate truth of God’s Revelation. Their central object is Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Son: his acts, teachings, Passion and glorification, and his Church’s beginnings under the Spirit’s guidance.97

125 The Gospels are the heart of all the Scriptures “because they are our principal source for the life and teaching of the Incarnate Word, our Savior.” (515)

126 We can distinguish three stages in the formation of the Gospels: (76; 76)

1. The life and teaching of Jesus. The Church holds firmly that the four Gospels, “whose historicity she unhesitatingly affirms, faithfully hand on what Jesus, the Son of God, while he lived among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation, until the day when he was taken up.”
2. The oral tradition. “For, after the ascension of the Lord, the apostles handed on to their hearers what he had said and done, but with that fuller understanding which they, instructed by the glorious events of Christ and enlightened by the Spirit of truth, now enjoyed.”
3. The written Gospels. “The sacred authors, in writing the four Gospels, selected certain of the many elements which had been handed on, either orally or already in written form; others they synthesized or explained with an eye to the situation of the churches, while sustaining the form of preaching, but always in such a fashion that they have told us the honest truth about Jesus.”

127 The fourfold Gospel holds a unique place in the Church, as is evident both in the veneration which the liturgy accords it and in the surpassing attraction it has exercised on the saints at all times: (1154; 2705)

There is no doctrine which could be better, more precious and more splendid than the text of the Gospel. Behold and retain what our Lord and Master, Christ, has taught by his words and accomplished by his deeds.

But above all it’s the Gospels that occupy my mind when I’m at prayer; my poor soul has so many needs, and yet this is the one thing needful. I’m always finding fresh lights there, hidden and enthralling meanings.

Catholic Church. (2000). Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Ed.) (34–36). Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference.

 

[PRmerger]

Just because I do not share all your Catholic beliefs does not mean I have a hidden agenda.

Oh, just to be clear, CU. It’s not that hidden. It’s quite transparent. You might have noticed all the comments other posters have made to that effect.

And it’s not because you don’t share our Catholic beliefs (which, sadly, you are quite misinformed about) that we call you out on your agenda.

I suggest you take a more honest approach, like some of our other non-Catholic brethren who have been on the CAFs a long time and have been able to provide truly fruitful dialogue: remove this act from your posts. Don’t act as if all you want is for us to get along, and then post some really inane, ignorant questions, like “But don’t Catholics believe that women are inferior?” (example is hypothetical, ok?) masquerading as, “Well, what’s wrong with asking that? I really want to know!”

 

[Miriam1947]

It seems if a Catholic tries to debate Protestants through Scripture alone, then a Catholic is no longer holding to the Catholic Faith as revealed through Sacred Scripture + Sacred Tradition + Magestrium = Catholic Faith.

I don’t get this statement. If a Catholic debates a Protestant with the Bible alone then he/she is going where that person is.

They will not understand nor care about Sacred Tradition or the Magisterium. The Bible is the only authority they will honor.

Since the Bible came after the Church, it makes sense that nothing in the Bible contradicts the Catholic Church. So using just the Bible in no way means that a Catholic does not hold to the Catholic faith.

We are not talking about the Catholic’s understanding but the Protestant’s.

 

[JonNC]

It seems if a Catholic tries to debate Protestants through Scripture alone, then a Catholic is no longer holding to the Catholic Faith as revealed through Sacred Scripture + Sacred Tradition + Magestrium = Catholic Faith.

Why would you think this? It would be like saying a Lutheran cannot debate a Calvinist without the Lutheran confessions.

Jon

 

[solarguy17]

You do realize, solarguy, that you, too put “faith” in the teaching of the fathers of the Catholic Church. You show that faith each and every time you quote from the NT, proclaiming that verse to be the Word of God.

For the ONLY way you know that, say, 1 Timothy is an inspired book, and that the Shepherd of Barnabas is not inspired, is because the Catholic Church told you it was inspired.

The of course is the other side of the argument.

God knew that over the centuries following Jesus, Gnostic gospels and extra Biblical sources would start to become popular. He also would know that for the new 1000 years the Catholic church would be the only church to use His inspired word and that the influence of the Catholic church would be enormous throughout the world. So He choose to use the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397 and 419) to help make sure that the Bible was set as He wanted it. Even Catholics believe that Holy Spirit guided those men into determining what was Biblical and what wasn’t. Thats no different that what I or Christians believe, God, through the Holy Spirit, protected the scripture in the form he wanted it.

 

[solarguy17]

Kindly tells us the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in regards to Catholicism? A priest who converts to another faith doe not equate into an expert. That is a bogus assumption.

One of the most interesting I find is the idea of when to take Eucharist (referred to as communion or Lord’s Supper by non-catholics). The Bible clearly indicates the Eucharist to be taken on the 1st day of the week to remember Jesus’ death.
The Catholics have Mass (or service in which Eucharist is served) every day of the week. But Sunday is the big day, you have to attend Mass on Sunday. Which is consistent with Biblical record and teaching. However, then Catholics have recently added a wrinkle to the Sunday Mass. Mass after a certain time on Saturday evening (5:30PM EST in the local parish) is permitted to fulfill your 1st day attendance obligation. Permitted a service on Saturday to count for the Biblically required attendance on Sunday isn’t consistent with Biblical teach or even historical Catholic teaching. This is simply something change for convenience.

Now, of course this isn’t the biggest problem I have with the Catholic faith and teachings, but this is one of the simplest.
A permission by the Catholic church (or maybe the American catholic church?) that in isn direct contradiction to Biblical teaching.

 

[Nicea325]

One of the most interesting I find is the idea of when to take Eucharist (referred to as communion or Lord’s Supper by non-catholics). The Bible clearly indicates the Eucharist to be taken on the 1st day of the week to remember Jesus’ death.
The Catholics have Mass (or service in which Eucharist is served) every day of the week. But Sunday is the big day, you have to attend Mass on Sunday. Which is consistent with Biblical record and teaching. However, then Catholics have recently added a wrinkle to the Sunday Mass. Mass after a certain time on Saturday evening (5:30PM EST in the local parish) is permitted to fulfill your 1st day attendance obligation. Permitted a service on Saturday to count for the Biblically required attendance on Sunday isn’t consistent with Biblical teach or even historical Catholic teaching. This is simply something change for convenience.

Now, of course this isn’t the biggest problem I have with the Catholic faith and teachings, but this is one of the simplest.
A permission by the Catholic church (or maybe the American catholic church?) that in isn direct contradiction to Biblical teaching.

Ah wrong! The church changed nothing for convenience. That is your opinion and nothing more. Show me one CC document stating the Saturday Vigil Mass was added for convenience? And the founding of thousands of denominations is not a contradiction to Biblical teaching? Where is that taught in the Bible?