Arguing with a Protestant?

[PRmerger]

BTW, OHIO STATE BUCKEYES WERE UNDEFEATED IN 2012 They were simply, unjustly persecuted for something extremely trivial, because East Coast media has a grudge against Ohio State and Michigan. Then again, Notre Dame? Can you say “Divine Providence”?

Yep.

Did they lose their position because they sold their rings for tattoos? That’s what I heard??!!

 

[irisfromohio]

Yep.

Did they lose their position because they sold their rings for tattoos? That’s what I heard??!!

Yes. A few 19 year old, inner city, poor kids, playing college football and making millions for their school AND the NCAA, were relentlessly pursued by a reporter and they blew the whole thing out of proportion. These young men were so clueless, the reason their coach and team were aware of it is because they did not know it was a serious transgression. Ignorance of the law may be no excuse, but greedy, pompous judgement and punishment is barely defendable. Moreover, while they where hot on the trail of The Ohio State football program, they let a vicious, lecherous monster loose on children in Pennsylvania for years… Just my humble opinion.

They will be back next year in fine form. Even though our dear, Catholic coach, Jim Tressel, is no longer at the helm, Urban Meyer is no slouch. How’s this? A FITTY NAYN YR OLE BROAD talking football on an apologetics thread?

 

[Ruthie_again]

Iris Marie, I got you beat. I am the big six oh! I have attained the old age, while you are merely middle! And I kin talk football, too. Go Broncos/Redskins! If they wind up meeting in the Superbowl, I’ll just cheer all good plays and scorings, and boo all fouls and bad calls.

Interesting to see that m3rc3d3s190 and 4tytwo are now banned. I hope they are still reading; I pray for them. I thought I’d go ahead and address some of their issues.

m3rc3d3s190, you keep insisting that we are idolaters. Here is the official teaching of the Church, the Catechism:

Idolatry

2112 The first commandment condemns polytheism. It requires man neither to believe in, nor to venerate, other divinities than the one true God. Scripture constantly recalls this rejection of “idols, [of] silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see.” These empty idols make their worshippers empty: "Those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them."42 God, however, is the "living God"43 who gives life and intervenes in history.

2113 Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, "You cannot serve God and mammon."44 Many martyrs died for not adoring "the Beast"45 refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.46

2114 Human life finds its unity in the adoration of the one God. The commandment to worship the Lord alone integrates man and saves him from an endless disintegration. Idolatry is a perversion of man’s innate religious sense. An idolater is someone who "transfers his indestructible notion of God to anything other than God."47

And you asked, “Then what exactly are images doing in your church?”

This is contradictory. There are images everywhere. I’m sure you have at least one in your home. You see them every time you turn on your TV. The images in our churches are there to turn our minds towards God. They are not there to be worshiped any more than the images in your home are. The respect we give them is because of those they represent, whether it be Jesus, His parents, His Apostles, or other saints. We don’t believe that our statues are the actual persons. We are not idolaters.

What? Should churches be ugly places, unattractive, places that repulse us? Why? Do we, and here I’m speaking of all Christians, want to drive people away? Don’t we want to bring them inside?

4tytwo, you said, “Does God in your understanding not want his children to ask questions or are you afraid of questions because it might be uncomfortable to the church?”

How funny. I asked question after question – and the answers led me to the Catholic Church. I still ask questions. The answers only strengthen my faith.

You also said, “…Jesus was so much more than just playing tricks with matter…”

Yes, Jesus is much, much more than just His miracles. That does not mean He did not make them happen. He wasn’t playing tricks on them. How is it a “trick” to say to a cripple, “Pick up your bed and walk,” and have the cripple do so? It would be a cruel trick to make that man believe he was walking when he wasn’t. Besides, Jesus healed him to prove a point. If he hadn’t actually gone from a cripple who couldn’t leave his bed to a whole person walking, Jesus would have proved nothing, no matter how fantastically the cripple had been enlightened by his contact with our Lord. Why don’t you read that passage, and think about it? It’s Mk 2:3-12.

My clock has ticked past midnight, and it is officially Christmas Eve. 24 hours from now, I will be at Mass. May you all be blessed, and may all of us here keep our Lord in our hearts all year round.

God rest you merry, gentlefolk!

 

[PRmerger]

Iris Marie, I got you beat. I am the big six oh! I have attained the old age, while you are merely middle! And I kin talk football, too. Go Broncos/Redskins! If they wind up meeting in the Superbowl, I’ll just cheer all good plays and scorings, and boo all fouls and bad calls.

Interesting to see that m3rc3d3s190 and 4tytwo are now banned. I hope they are still reading; I pray for them. I thought I’d go ahead and address some of their issues.

m3rc3d3s190, you keep insisting that we are idolaters. Here is the official teaching of the Church, the Catechism:

And you asked, “Then what exactly are images doing in your church?”

This is contradictory. There are images everywhere. I’m sure you have at least one in your home. You see them every time you turn on your TV. The images in our churches are there to turn our minds towards God. They are not there to be worshiped any more than the images in your home are. The respect we give them is because of those they represent, whether it be Jesus, His parents, His Apostles, or other saints. We don’t believe that our statues are the actual persons. We are not idolaters.

What? Should churches be ugly places, unattractive, places that repulse us? Why? Do we, and here I’m speaking of all Christians, want to drive people away? Don’t we want to bring them inside?

4tytwo, you said, “Does God in your understanding not want his children to ask questions or are you afraid of questions because it might be uncomfortable to the church?”

How funny. I asked question after question – and the answers led me to the Catholic Church. I still ask questions. The answers only strengthen my faith.

You also said, “…Jesus was so much more than just playing tricks with matter…”

Yes, Jesus is much, much more than just His miracles. That does not mean He did not make them happen. He wasn’t playing tricks on them. How is it a “trick” to say to a cripple, “Pick up your bed and walk,” and have the cripple do so? It would be a cruel trick to make that man believe he was walking when he wasn’t. Besides, Jesus healed him to prove a point. If he hadn’t actually gone from a cripple who couldn’t leave his bed to a whole person walking, Jesus would have proved nothing, no matter how fantastically the cripple had been enlightened by his contact with our Lord. Why don’t you read that passage, and think about it? It’s Mk 2:3-12.

My clock has ticked past midnight, and it is officially Christmas Eve. 24 hours from now, I will be at Mass. May you all be blessed, and may all of us here keep our Lord in our hearts all year round.

God rest you merry, gentlefolk!

Beautifully said, Ruthie! :clapping:

 

[Rosinante]

No I only submit to the authority of Christ alone. The “church” as an institution has prooven it’s corruptness far too often thus disproven it’s claim to authority. In fact in it has on occasions dishonoured the name of Christ. In the end, hier stehe ich und kann nicht anders.

What you really mean, is that you only subscripbe to YOUR INTERPRETATION of what ‘the authority of Christ’ is.

You implicitly disregard the interpretation of what ‘the authority of Christ’ is, according to the hand picked successors of Christ’s hand-picked successors (i.e.–the Apostles).

Spin it as you will, your interpretation of the Faith, is fruit of the perversion of Martin Luther and HIS disciples–the reformers–according to sola scriptura, and is at complete variance with the manner in which Christ Himself, chose to diseminate HIS Faith. Yeshua did not assemble a Bible, and hand 'em out to his Apostles. In fact, the only record even the Bible itself has of Yeshua writing anything down at all, was in the sand, with his finger (or a stick). He instructed them by word and deed, and insturcted them to do as He had done.

The Bible came about as a necessary foundational collection of the written record of the salvation narrative in order to settle conflicting claims of authencitiy regarding claims of various church communities, and serves as the endo-skeletal structural integrity of the Body of Christ–not as the exo-skeletal containment of the entirety of the Faith.

It should be worth noting that the Bible prophesises so much…yet it does not prophesize itself. There is no mention whatsoever, of the Faith ever being reduced to writing; of the Church, being supplanted by a book, or collection of books; or anything of the sort. Sola Scriptura would have everything measured in terms of whether or not it was prophesized or even menioned in the Bible…yet sola scriptura fails its own test, since the doctrine itself, is conspiclously no where to be found within the Bible…but I digress…

The bottom line, is that your claim to submitting only to Christ, suggests a false dichotomy, and a straw man–implicitlly suggesting that following the One True Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church that Yeshua Himself founded and established, is somehow not following Christ.

IOW: this is YOUR INTERPRETATION of the Faith, according to the reformers, vs. the interpretation of the Faith according to the Church Fathers, as directly bequetehd to and inherited by them, directly from the Apostles, and as passed on to their hand-picked successors, on down the line…

Or, simplified further still (and as always): The reformers vs. the Church Fathers.

VIVAT JESUS!

 

[Rosinante]

…

4tytwo, you said, “Does God in your understanding not want his children to ask questions or are you afraid of questions because it might be uncomfortable to the church?”

How funny. *** I asked question after question – and the answers led me to the Catholic Church. I still ask questions. The answers only strengthen my faith***.

…

God rest you merry, gentlefolk!

This has been my experience as well. I am married to a pro, and have discussed the diffences with many pros–I dug and dug…and still dig and dig, and ask and ask…

…had I not been able to find satisfactory answers to my questions–had there not been a basis in the Church Fathers for virtually every pillar of Catholic doctrine–I might have been swayed away. Instead, I have found the Truth of the Faith, in the Cat. Church, and my faith in her, ever more solidified.

VIVAT JESUS!

 

[Used2beSherryG]

:

This has been my experience as well. I am married to a pro, and have discussed the diffences with many pros–I dug and dug…and still dig and dig, and ask and ask…

…had I not been able to find satisfactory answers to my questions–had there not been a basis in the Church Fathers for virtually every pillar of Catholic doctrine–I might have been swayed away. Instead, I have found the Truth of the Faith, in the Cat. Church, and my faith in her, ever more solidified.

VIVAT JESUS!

:clapping:I fell away, then received the miracle of conversion (some say RE version). I asked tons and tons of quesitons, went to many other religions searching for an easier softer way, but in the end, studying the history of Christianity led me back home to the Church Jesus founded. How blessed I am and how much more well grounded I’ve become. Studying the Catechism thoroughly, the papal encyclicals, the early Church Fathers, all only deepened my love of God and His church.