Catholic Church Sex Abuse Scandal Is Demonic, Likely to Get Worse: Leading U.S. Exorcist

[kainosktisis]

I would argue that somewhere on down the line, someone didn’t adhere to Church teaching on people called to the priesthood. And the sheep have paid for the poor lack of judgment of the these leaders who’d allowed in the wolves, & the wolves need to be dealt with as wolves.

 

[2towers]

It was promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church but it was not promised that the gates of hell would not attack the Church.

Exactly. And the Devil had to grease a lot of skids to get it to happen on this scale… in the Universal Church. Even the lowest demons in their hierarchy are more intelligent than our very brightest. The are masters of human observation. They still retain their angelic powers. Yes, in the end, abusers did it with full consent, but they had quite a lot of help getting there.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

I would definitely agree that there were those who did not agree with or follow Church teaching when allowing people into the priesthood. It is the reasons behind their choices. If they were not paying attention to Church teaching, they were paying attention to something else. In their free-will they chose or allowed in evil.

 

[slyboots1]

2towers
“Exactly. And the Devil had to grease a lot of skids to get it to happen on this scale… in the Universal Church. Even the lowest demons in their hierarchy are more intelligent than our very brightest. The are masters of human observation. They still retain their angelic powers. Yes, in the end, abusers did it with full consent, but they had quite a lot of help getting there.”

YES! This is how I see it. The whole thing smacks of demonic attack against the victims, the perpetrators and those who stood by doing nothing or insufficient actions. Pray for the victims, and the priests and bishops. All stand in need of prayer.

 

[Ridgerunner]

And there in lies the caveat. How are we to know this is a true belief?

Because Jesus said so and because, for 1500 years, no one doubted it.

Let’s look at non-denominationalism, since that’ s your religion. Why should anyone believe anything ever said by anyone purporting to have authority in one of those churches. Their very name tells us that they are “protesters” of the “protesters”, and of other congregations as well.

There’s no unity. No continuity. No authority except that each man is his own authority in doctrine and morality. Even scripture itself is held to be of no authority since each man decides for himself what it means. That’s like a history book that says things like “There was a war and somebody won” The bible means no more to non-denoms than that.

As between that and a Church founded by Christ himself and said by Him to be inerrant, I’ll take the latter.

And you still don’t seem to know what the “Magesterium” is. Please do some research on that.

 

[setarcos]

Sorry for the delay. First let me thank you for your insightful discourse with me.
I have questions yet though and a few things to clarify.

The accuracy of the teachers’ statements, under certain circumstances…

What then do we base the accuracy of the teachers statements on? If we base it on personal understanding then the teacher becomes nothing more than a fellow student with which we reason out the accuracy of his statements. The student becomes the teachers intellectual peer through reasoned understanding. If we do not require the teacher to be qualified in their morality to teach even though what they teach is how to be moral then we merely make the teachers qualifications intellectual and not spiritual. If not spiritual then we place our faith in the teacher and not in God. Why should we place our faith in an immoral teacher to accurately teach morality?

Catholicism does not regard the discrete ethical (or unethical) decisions of individual hierarchs as magisterial…

It is my understanding that the Magisterium IS the source, interpretive or otherwise of the Magisterial. Is this wrong? Are they merely institutional ornamentation?
I understand the ancient excuse that you cannot judge the Authority of the Magisterium by judging the individual failures of its members but then what can we judge their authority to teach by? The accuracy of their statements alone? What if the Magisterium acts according to their interpretation of divine revelation but are shown to be in error later? Do we then judge them by the inaccuracies of their earlier understanding? Do we then disqualify them whoever them is from teaching? If then a teacher can later be shown to be in error in the truth of their teaching by what criteria do we judge their teaching as accurate in the first place?

 

[setarcos]

Let’s take this apart into IF and THEN.
Broken down into just an IF and THEN, this statement is:

1)IF Teachers’ Statement of “X” can be understood despite teachers’ Y
2)THEN you do not need teachers to teach X.

Actually, if the first premise were true, that would be a pretty strong argument FOR teachers, not against them. We can all see that 2 does not follow from 1.

Ah the follies of language…given that language at best is an approximate model of reality a person can use it for hours and still fail to accurately represent what they mean. This is good though, I like that you are reconstructing what I’ve said in order to understand its logical inconsistencies. For lack of a few appropriate words one can turn a sailing ship into a sunken one.
Lets see if I can revive a little this sunken ship.

1)IF Teachers’ Statement of “X” can be understood despite teachers’ Y

Seems to me an important question to ask is, How does the teachers Y effect the accuracy of the teachers X if at all and how can we determine this?
A more preferable example for me…

1. IF A Teachers’ statement of “X” can be determined as true or false despite the teachers good or bad actions “Y” AND the teacher is not the sole person capable of proving the statement true or false
2. Then that teacher is superfluous as a teacher to understanding the truth of any statement “X” made about the subject being taught. AND may actually be detrimental to the determination of X’s truth due to the incongruent correspondence of the teachers Y with the teaching of X.