I am not saying that there’s a good chance they’ll be saved. I’m merely cautioning those who wish to declare for certainty that each and every unbaptized infant MUST de facto go to hell because they were not baptized.
I am in total agreement with you. It takes knowledge and intention when committing grave sins to have it be a mortal sin, one which takes away charity in us. Thus, if he grew up in the tradition, he is not at fault as simple as that. However, like you said, if he now knows, that is a different matter. God could be pleased or He could be permitting something he does not please. Who are you or I to know? Unless you really do know, then that would be enlightening. However, since I do not know, I do not presume to know. And if you are the same, then it is interesting to talk about but it is not evidence.
Here you are forgetting the context of your previous comment. You spoke about Billy Graham as one who proclaims some of the truth but not its entirety as a person that God may be pleased with that he is doing good. However, here you point out that doing the same by talking about obedience without mentioning grace (which is separate from faith btw) is not correct. You are using a double standard by promoting Billy Graham as doing good while stating the person you quoted as cause misguidance.
Any words can be used against anything if one is willing to do so, even at the expense of morality. That is simply how humanity has been working. However, it is not the words in itself that matters, it is the objective truth conveyed by the words. What I quoted was Jesus’s words. Jesus is Truth Himself. And along with the person Jesus, He built the Church. Because this Church is an extension of His incarnation, it is an extension of truth and belongs to the one Truth. The people who broke away from the Church deliberately and freely of their own will is choosing to break away from Christ. This is another aspect of “Without the Catholic Church, there is no salvation.” The one statement is deep and rich in multiple meanings. It is good that more and more of it comes out as we wrestle with it.
Did we cover this on this thread because I have never heard the Church teach this. The Church teaches me that we entrust all who has died to the infinite, divine, and just mercy of the Lord. It is only Him who judges and only Him to say who is in Heaven and who is in Hell.
I never said he was misguiding anyone. Someone else said that. I said maybe “God is pleased with him and loves him just as he is?” which is also a hymn that is frequently sung at his meetings: Just As I Am.
Every major schism has occurred when the Church was unbearably corrupt for long periods of time. The bible gives specific instruction handed down by the apostles on how to run the Church. Popes, cardinals and bishops who ignore those teachings are just as responsible for division as those who break away.
The Holy Spirit is with many members of churches who broke away just as He was with Cornelius before he was joined to the Church.
When we sin, how do Christ’s merits of intercession from the cross get applied to us? By faith? or by confession with contrition?
Please meditate on the last verse and its meaning. Its original intended meaning in the context is that there shall be one Church of both Jews and Gentiles. I think it can also be understood of bringing people into the one fold of the one true Church in the one flock under the one shepherd. This verse indicates not sepearate flocks but one flock. You see that is the danger of trying to interpret sola Scriptura without the tradition in which it was written and was understood. Everyone just interprets it to fit and support what they already believe.
Both. The sacraments mean nothing to a person who receives without faith. If you don’t really believe you are forgiven then you still carry the guilt. If you don’t believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus why would the cross have any significance?
Good answer. It is both, but to clarify, I would say in response to your last paragraph that if we have contrition we can confess without a priest and if our contrition is perfect and coupled with the intention of going to confession as soon as possible, then we can be forgiven apart from the sacrament. Nevertheless, we must follow through with our intention to go and must go at our next possible time. One cannot know with absolute certainty, apart from a special direct revelation from God, that he has made an act of perfect contrition. Obviously, if the person is confessing their sins through prayer and going to confession, the person would have faith. The people who I see who are going to confession have faith.
You’re right about the context but also Peter never assumes the position of Chief Shepherd.
I’m not an advocate of sola scriptura but neither am I an advocate of no scriptura which is the way the Church operated for centuries.Church leaders through human imperfection have abused their God given power and authority by either manipulating loyal followers or neglecting to teach the whole truth which they claim to possess. Limbo is a perfect example of this. Limbo was taught generation after generation with certainty. If we go back in Church history we find that it was never a certainty but it served the Church well because they were able to frighten people into being Catholic.
I’m not saying the Protestants are infallible or it’s OK to be a Protestant. I’m saying there is a lot more to know by reading the bible than we’ve been told about. I’m not saying they’re right about everything.
It’s funny because I didn’t even have to mention the pope, but you knew that was how those verses could be understood. Peter says that Christ is the “Chief Shepherd.” He does not say that he is not a shepherd for that would go directly contrary to Christ’s threefold instruction to Peter to feed his sheep! Peter is the representative of Christ on earth. You must understand that the letters in Scripture were never meant to be full explanations of what everyone needs to believe. They were specific letters written to specific groups with specific purposes. If people were at that time questioning Peter’s authority, then I’m sure he would have addressed it, as St. Paul addressed the source of his authority in his letters. That would be outside the scope and purpose of his letter.
I do not think the Church is out to get us or that there is some big conspiracy as you seem to imply… I believe that there are and have been and always will be some within the flock who are just bad people, even among the clergy. However, Christ promised to always guide and lead his Church.
If a child dies without baptism they are eternally separated from God and their family. Is that frightening enough?
I was a Catholic before Vatican II. I went to Catholic high school in the 1960’s when they had printing presses and we all knew how to read. The bible was never once mentioned. It’s ironic that a Catholic book became a Protestant book.
We were never given that information and my parents certainly didn’t know that. They never missed Mass on Sunday so we can’t say it’s because they were not faithful Catholics.
If we take context into account then Jesus never says that all His followers will ultimately be united under His earthly representative the pope. He says He Himself will gather them to Himself. Is the Church guilty of bending scripture to fit their own understanding?
Jesus also tells us to evangelize to *all *nations. I think it’s a subtle difference between uniting all people under the pope and gathering all into Christ. We, the Catholic Church, have one great mission, which is to spread the Word and give the Gospel to all nations so that all *might *hear and be saved. Ultimately it is Christ who will gather in His sheep just as it is the Holy Spirit who converts people’s hearts. There is a physical reality and a supernatural reality. We need to do our physical duty to the Lord in loyal obedience. What happens then is only God’s privy. [Maybe some of the gathering may happen at the particular judgment when the Lord shows each of us the truth behind our lives. At that point, things could be very different for individuals.] Here on earth though, we have a job to do and we just need to do it. The Lord is King, we are His army. Our weapons are the love and teachings of the Lord, given to us in our knighting ceremony as we fully initiate through Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Communion. Our shield and support are the Sacrament of Reconciliation, when we fall in battle, the Sacrament of Matrimony and the Sacrament of Holy Orders for our particular military role in life. And our rest, is the Anointing of the Sick.
I am young so I have never scene first hand the life before Vatican II. Nevertheless, I believe that the Church has always promoted the Scriptures on the upper levels, think way back to Thomas Aquinas and Augustine. These two great Saints delved deep into the Scriptures right? But maybe on the lower levels, somewhere between the Vatican, the Bishops of the World, and the local parish Priest, the message got lost. I am not surprised because there is much I did not learn when I was young. But I did learn much in the Mass, I attended Vietnamese Masses most of my youth and there is a lot of teaching form the pulpit as well as clear scriptures in the Liturgy. When I first came to college and attended Mass in English, man I was suffering and I did not know why for years. I still go to English Mass but I’m much better informed now and found a better parish. All NO Mass.
Actually, if the children burn in hell like St. Augustine said they would, then most of the time its because their parents either were not Catholic or were indifferent in which case odds are those people will be in hell and they would be together. But again the purpose of this teaching is not to frighten. It was formulated in order to try to be as faithful to revelation as possible. The new teaching that it’s possible to hope for the salvation of unbaptized infants, however, was not formulated for the purpose of figuring out the truth. The stated intentions were to placate the many people who lamented at the loss of their children and give them some comfort. I applaud the compassion, but we can’t change the truth in order to please people.
Protestants follow the Bible as the sole rule of faith based on their own private subjective interpretations. The Church, which compiled the Bible, uses Scripture as a tool, not to figure out all that God revealed, but to support her already existing Tradition and to help purify its members through its moral teachings. For 2000 years, you will not find the Church fathers instructing people to read their Bibles. Why? Because 1) the vast majority couldn’t, 2) the ones that could could potentially not understand it, 3) the lack of understanding was used by heretics who claimed the Church was a lie and that people should just follow the Bible, which conveniently only the founders of the heresies could read. Many sects that broke away from the Church corrupted the Bible by changing its passages to support their heretical ideas. Martin Luther himself did this by inserting the word “alone” after a verse that says you are saved by faith. There are numerous other examples. One does not need to read the Bible in order to be saved or in order to know the truth about God. Again for the first 300+ years of Church history there was not even an existing canon! If Christ intended people to just read their Bibles he would have written it himself and given it to them and told them to read up. He didn’t. He founded a Church and commissioned its leaders, the apostles and their successors, to teach all nations to observe all things he commanded. They did this primarily by word of mouth. When the entire Church all over the world in the early days practiced certain traditions given the poor communication one can safely conclude that they came from apostolic Tradition. How else would everyone believe that Jesus was really present in the Eucharist or that praying for the dead was a laudable action.
Sorry they weren’t well informed of the Church’s teachings. You also rarely ever hear the Church’s teaching that one is not to receive Communion if not Catholic or if a Catholic conscious of grave sin without prior sacramental confession. Does that make it untrue? Obviously not. It just means that priests are doing a poor job, for which they will be held accountable by God.
No, the Church is “guilty” of interpreting Scripture according to apostolic Tradition. Christ gathers to Himself through his Church, which brings salvation to them through her sacraments, which Christ instituted for our salvation.
I won’t touch that one with a 50 ft. pole.
It was the duty of the Church to teach the Word of God to the people and the early church did that.
The Baltimore Catechism seems to contradict “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”
I won’t touch that one with a 50 ft. pole.
It was the duty of the Church to teach the Word of God to the people and the early church did that.
rc.net/wcc/readings/fathers.htm
The early church Fathers on the Scriptures
The Baltimore Catechism seems to contradict “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”
Jerome, c. 347-420