Anyone Else Read "Romanism"?

[BlueMit11]

In response to the ever-valuable resource of Catholic apologetics, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Robert M Zins has written *Romanism: The Relentless Roman Catholic Assault on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. *I was directed to this book by a protestant, with whom I am in discussions with about the propitiatory nature of the mass, who said that it completely refutes Keatings book. Out of curiosity, I purchased it and just received it today. Man, this thing is full of everything that has been disproven here. One example, from the chapter titled “Scripture Over the Church”: “Christians believe that the Bible established the Church and the Church exists to obey the Lord through an obedience to His Word found in the Bible. The Bible sits over the Church to protect the Church from the error to which all men are disposed in their reasoning.”

How the heck can anyone believe that logically when, as Henry Graham says in Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church, “The Bible was not printed in any language at all till about 1,500 years after the birth of Christ,” and when the creation of the Church is found in scripture? Furthermore, where is Zins’s biblical support for this claim? Is it found in the passages of the New Testament which Keating and other Catholics have already addressed?

If I open this book to numerous misrepresentations of the Catholic doctrine, how am I to take seriously anything it says? It would be great if someone on these forums could attempt to justify this book to me.

 

[Ignatius]

BlueMit11:

In response to the ever-valuable resource of Catholic apologetics, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Robert M Zins has written *Romanism: The Relentless Roman Catholic Assault on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. *I was directed to this book by a protestant, with whom I am in discussions with about the propitiatory nature of the mass, who said that it completely refutes Keatings book. Out of curiosity, I purchased it and just received it today. Man, this thing is full of everything that has been disproven here. One example, from the chapter titled “Scripture Over the Church”: “Christians believe that the Bible established the Church and the Church exists to obey the Lord through an obedience to His Word found in the Bible. The Bible sits over the Church to protect the Church from the error to which all men are disposed in their reasoning.”

How the heck can anyone believe that logically when, as Henry Graham says in Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church, “The Bible was not printed in any language at all till about 1,500 years after the birth of Christ,” and when the creation of the Church is found in scripture? Furthermore, where is Zins’s biblical support for this claim? Is it found in the passages of the New Testament which Keating and other Catholics have already addressed?

If I open this book to numerous misrepresentations of the Catholic doctrine, how am I to take seriously anything it says? It would be great if someone on these forums could attempt to justify this book to me.

Don’t worry about it. “And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

 

[jimmy]

BlueMit11:

One example, from the chapter titled “Scripture Over the Church”: “Christians believe that the Bible established the Church and the Church exists to obey the Lord through an obedience to His Word found in the Bible. The Bible sits over the Church to protect the Church from the error to which all men are disposed in their reasoning.”

That is impossible to believe, especially since the books in the bible speak about the Church, like Paul says that the Church is “the pillar and ground of truth”. Christ talks about building his Church in Matt.16. Christ mentions the Church in Matt.18 when he says to “tell the Church and if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as a heathen and publican.” There are many other instances where the Church is mentioned within scripture. How could the bible possibly establish the Church if the bible itself speaks of the Church as if it already exists? It makes no sense at all.

 

[Dang]

Tell a protestant that the Catholic Church is older then the New Testiment they laugh. Tell them that the Church picked what to put in the NT they deny and refuse to believe it. Most protestants love ant-catholic material. I’m afraid some love the bible more then God. Its always "the bible says this…the bible says that…the bible, the bible the bible,…if it aint in the bible, it aint so.

 

[Contarini]

jimmy:

That is impossible to believe, especially since the books in the bible speak about the Church, like Paul says that the Church is “the pillar and ground of truth”. Christ talks about building his Church in Matt.16. Christ mentions the Church in Matt.18 when he says to “tell the Church and if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as a heathen and publican.” There are many other instances where the Church is mentioned within scripture. How could the bible possibly establish the Church if the bible itself speaks of the Church as if it already exists? It makes no sense at all.

Jimmy, you need to study your own Church’s teachings better. Vatican II said (and this is quoted in the Catechism) that the Church is the servant of the Word of God and not its master. Granted, for Catholics the Word comes to us in Tradition as well as Scripture. But in itself, the statement that the Bible stands over the Church and judges it is perfectly orthodox Catholic theology. To deny it is to distort Sacred Tradition and flatly contradict the Fathers. Thus, just as a radical doctrine of Sola Scriptura fails because it is not itself found in Scripture, so the claim that the Church is above Scripture fails because it contradicts the clear teaching of the historic Church (absent some extravagant late medieval and early modern canon lawyers and over-eager polemicists).

In Christ,

Edwin