Catholic to Mormon to Catholic?

[po18guy]

Have you ever heard of a little group called the Danites?

That just goes to show that you know nothing about the various inquisitions (there were more than one and they were all very different from one another). The Church never killed anyone, though in at least one inquisition people found guilty were imprisoned or executed by the civil government.

The Danites, on the other hand, were an official LDS death squad that murdered anyone who opposed the “prophet”. The Danites "blood atoned " opponents in the name of God and the LDS Church.

Those who live in glass churches should not throw stones.

Our friend mf has begun to lapse into the delusional, it seems. He rages about infallibility, while conveniently ignoring the fact that each Pope is elected. Who elected JS?

 

[1holycatholic]

Oh come on, I know you can do better than this!

You mean Sacred Tradition reinforces Sacred Tradition?

Wow, that’s a surprise!

The authority of the Church which holds the entire deposit of faith (which includes Sacred Tradition) refutes heresy.

Mormons have no foundation in truth. They are an amalgam of various heresies and conspiracy theories morphed into a previously unknown non-Christian religion.

 

[1holycatholic]

Our friend mf has begun to lapse into the delusional, it seems. He rages about infallibility, while conveniently ignoring the fact that each Pope is elected. Who elected JS?

Oooh! Oooh! I know!

Joseph Smith appointed Joseph Smith on the authority of Joseph Smith as a prophet of Joseph Smith sent by Joseph Smith to reveal the teachings of Joseph Smith to the followers of Joseph Smith.:hypno:

Simple!

 

[C2M2C]

Well God bless you. I think the more you really study catholicism, if you go by the same standards and look back far enough, the problems will only get bigger and bigger and bigger. Go ahead and REALLY study it. Go to some anti-catholic websites just as you have to the anti-Mormon ones. If anything, it’s worse in my opinion. You have 2000 years to cover instead of 200. And they controlled the “history”.

I’m not saying that there isn’t any Catholic history that hasn’t been swept under the rug, I am sure there has been, but what is out there is pretty ugly in some instances, and yet it’s out there, for everyone to read about (if you didn’t already learn it in school). With Mormonism if a Mormon didn’t write it, it’s ant-Mormon. There are people out there who can write objectively on a subject and if it happens to not shine the best light on the subject, that does not in any way make it “anti”. I did mention earlier that I have stayed away from the openly anti Mormon sites because I can see them for what they are (i.e. Tanners). I have however seen a lot of information that is written objectively and in some cases simply states the facts. That is the information I am using to base my decisions on.

People talk about atheism. I am not an atheist because I know there is a God because I have felt His presence. There is no other proof for God than that.

 

[C2M2C]

CONTINUED

But for me, the clincher is the temple. No way Joseph came up with that himself, and I have studied the masonry angle a LOT. There are a few similarities, no question but the temple is totally about Jesus Christ and Masonry is not at all. Masonry was lifted from Solomon’s temple, but the meaning was lost totally.

Every Egyptologist that I have seen write on the subject states that the Book of Abraham doesn’t even close resemble what was written on the papyri…except those that are LDS

 

[C2M2C]

Oh yes, and I’d like to check your sources especially on the first vision stuff

Thanks

Well the most damning sources are probably just the Journal of Discources. Brigham gave many sermons on the angels that came to JS and told him not to join any other church.

 

[C2M2C]

QUOTE=mfbukowski;4243096]Well, just for the heck of it, here are two more sites about the first vision. I honestly don’t know how you can persist in NOT accepting these accounts if you get into it. But “a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still”

Well I am 100% positive that ALL LDS source’s that are readily available to the “seeking” soul, will state that JS had God and Jesus Christ come to him. But just because the church polishes it and refines it doesn’t make it true. Again, as stated earlier, look at BY’s JoD. many sermons on how JS was visited by angels, not God or Jesus Christ. BY and JS were tight, I have to believe that JS told BY about the first vision in great detail, I can’t imagine that BY would get it wrong. There is no historical record of the first vision before 1835. If JS aroused everyone like he said he did why is there no record from his family or newspaper on this happening, yet after 1835 it’s all over the place. Most of the prophets have stated that it all hangs on JS. Either God and Christ visited him, therefore you must believe, or they didn’t and the church is false. Even in JS’s original words God and Jesus did not visit him, therefore I no longer believe…

It is hard for me, because it is so clear, and to you it is not at all clear. And to me, Catholicism is “a mass of confusion”, God atop a topless throne, all a mystery.

Let me ask you this: Are you really ready to believe the Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Fatima? And that people have the stigmata? And that you need other people like saints to pray for you? And that you should adore a piece of bread? And original sin-- that we are punished for something Adam did? And that babies are born with it and need to get baptized to get clean before God? And that some priest can forgive your sins? Where do you think the sign of the cross came from? (temple ordinances) What about the lost doctrines I mentioned? (pre-existence and 3 separate persons in God) And that praying the rosary does more than put you to sleep? (very Buddhist) And that prayers can be written down and just repeated because the Church tells you this is how you should pray? Novenas, candles, indulgences, praying people out of purgatory?

To me, that’s a whole lot more to swallow than worrying about what Joseph Smith’s mother MIGHT not have said. (subject to interpretation)

Even if you buy apostolic succession, with all that crazy history, there is a whole bag of stuff that comes with it.

Anyway, these handle all your first vision questions

en.fairmormon.org/First_Vision_accounts

fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2006_Joseph_Smiths_Foundational_Stories.html

I have also stated that even though I am convinced of what is not true I have yet to determine what I believe to be true. So yes, there are questions and concerns…and I have in fact visited more than a few anti-Catholic web sites. An just like the anti-Mormon sites that are out there, I can see what’s trash and what’s not.

 

[mfbukowski]

The authority of the Church which holds the entire deposit of faith (which includes Sacred Tradition) refutes heresy.

Mormons have no foundation in truth. They are an amalgam of various heresies and conspiracy theories morphed into a previously unknown non-Christian religion.

And the moon is made of green cheese. You saying so does not make it so. You are out of arguments, so you resort to bare assertion and name calling.

 

[mfbukowski]

Have you ever heard of a little group called the Danites?

That just goes to show that you know nothing about the various inquisitions (there were more than one and they were all very different from one another). The Church never killed anyone, though in at least one inquisition people found guilty were imprisoned or executed by the civil government.

The Danites, on the other hand, were an official LDS death squad that murdered anyone who opposed the “prophet”. The Danites "blood atoned " opponents in the name of God and the LDS Church.

Those who live in glass churches should not throw stones.

There is no evidence of this whatsoever.

On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that heretics were murdered and tortured by the inquisition. You are saying that all the stories of burning witches and heretics are lies?

 

[Prodigal_Son1]

And the moon is made of green cheese.

With 6 foot quaker looking people living there?

 

[1holycatholic]

And the moon is made of green cheese. You saying so does not make it so. You are out of arguments, so you resort to bare assertion and name calling.

The moon isn’t made of cheese of any color, and Mormonism is demonstrably false.

Many posters, including myself, have demonstrated the philosophical defects in Mormonism using only Mormon teaching published on lds.org and human reason. When confronted with a contradiction in Mormonism you go pear shaped and never address the issue. You do attempt to hide your untenable position in a cloud of epistemic uncertainty.

 

[1holycatholic]

There is no evidence of this whatsoever.

On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that heretics were murdered and tortured by the inquisition. You are saying that all the stories of burning witches and heretics are lies?

Numbers?

 

[mfbukowski]

Our friend mf has begun to lapse into the delusional, it seems. He rages about infallibility, while conveniently ignoring the fact that each Pope is elected. Who elected JS?

I think you are confused.

What does infallibility have to do with being elected? I never mentioned anything about that.

Now that you mention it, it does present an interesting problem however. If the pope is infallible and the cardinals are not, how can non-infallible cardinals elect an infallible pope? Or are the cardinals also infallible? Why then are there often multiple ballots until the pope is elected? You know, the white smoke black smoke thing----

Why don’t the infallible cardinals always get it right the first time?

 

[mfbukowski]

Well I am 100% positive that ALL LDS source’s that are readily available to the “seeking” soul, will state that JS had God and Jesus Christ come to him. But just because the church polishes it and refines it doesn’t make it true. Again, as stated earlier, look at BY’s JoD. many sermons on how JS was visited by angels, not God or Jesus Christ. BY and JS were tight, I have to believe that JS told BY about the first vision in great detail, I can’t imagine that BY would get it wrong. There is no historical record of the first vision before 1835. If JS aroused everyone like he said he did why is there no record from his family or newspaper on this happening, yet after 1835 it’s all over the place. Most of the prophets have stated that it all hangs on JS. Either God and Christ visited him, therefore you must believe, or they didn’t and the church is false. Even in JS’s original words God and Jesus did not visit him, therefore I no longer believe…

en.fairmormon.org/First_Vision_accounts

fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2006_Joseph_Smiths_Foundational_Stories.html

C2M2C:

“I have also stated that even though I am convinced of what is not true I have yet to determine what I believe to be true. So yes, there are questions and concerns…and I have in fact visited more than a few anti-Catholic web sites. An just like the anti-Mormon sites that are out there, I can see what’s trash and what’s not”

mfbukowski:
As I said, those issues are handled on those sites, but it appears you are not even interested in reading them.

Frankly, there doesn’t appear to be much more of a reason for carrying on the discussion.

 

[Prodigal_Son1]

I think you are confused.

What does infallibility have to do with being elected? I never mentioned anything about that.

Now that you mention it, it does present an interesting problem however. If the pope is infallible and the cardinals are not, how can non-infallible cardinals elect an infallible pope? Or are the cardinals also infallible? Why then are there often multiple ballots until the pope is elected? You know, the white smoke black smoke thing----

Why don’t the infallible cardinals always get it right the first time?

You know better as it’s been discussed before. You are evidently twisting things in an attempt to somehow add validity to your argument.

You can read about Papal Infallibility in a one page explanation by following the link I’ve provided.

If you have a source for anything different, please provide it otherwise quit making stuff up. :tsktsk:

 

[PaulDupre]

There is no evidence of this whatsoever.

On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that heretics were murdered and tortured by the inquisition. You are saying that all the stories of burning witches and heretics are lies?

The Catholic Church never burned witches, that was the Protestants.

The Catholic Church never burned heretics. But civil governments did execute some heretics who posed a threat to the delicate social order.

Get your facts straight.

 

[PaulDupre]

There is no evidence of this [Danite atrocities] whatsoever.

You really are sheltered aren’t you? There is a great deal of documentary evidence from LDS sources about the activities and atrocities of the Danites. There is also much evidence that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were the original leaders of the Danites. The Danites later morphed into Brigham Young’s “avenging angels” who left a lot of dead bodies out in the Utah desert.

Do a google search on Danites and ignore the white-washed LDS accounts, and you might just learn something.

 

[po18guy]

I think you are confused.

What does infallibility have to do with being elected? I never mentioned anything about that.

Now that you mention it, it does present an interesting problem however. If the pope is infallible and the cardinals are not, how can non-infallible cardinals elect an infallible pope? Or are the cardinals also infallible? Why then are there often multiple ballots until the pope is elected? You know, the white smoke black smoke thing----

Why don’t the infallible cardinals always get it right the first time?

My friend, you do not understand the doctrine of infallibility. Like everything else that’s fun to make fun of, it is greatly misunderstood and maligned. Please, please, please take 5-10 minutes and digest the true and accurate teaching on this subject:

oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Infallibility

Infallibility is extremely rarely used. To listen to Protestants and those of other religions, you’d think it applied to the proper color to paint your house!

The Pope enjoys such a status when he speaks to the entire Church, and then only in the areas of faith and morals. 1. Entire Church. 2. Faith & Morals. That is it. When the Cardinals are in union with him, they represent, with his leadership, an inerrant teaching authority. That is why the Catholic Church remains after nearly 2,000 years, while others have come and gone and are even now failing. They lack the God-given authority to teach.

OK, so you disagree on articles of faith. Please show an example of a Catholic Church teaching on morals that is in error. You may disagree, but we are concerned with moral error here.

 

[Contrabass101]

The first part says essentially, that all human institutions must change, (let’s call this “rule 1”) and that it was “inevitable” that Christianity would change.

No, not institutions, ideas. And not just human ideas, even divine ideas would necessarily be affected by the minds in which they reside. For better or worse.

So you have admitted that the gospel has changed from its original state. We call that “apostasy”

No, I have not stated that it has changed, but that it has developed. As in the parable of the mustard seed, that which was in the beginning is smaller than what it later becomes.

Perhaps it is more precise to say, that doctrine has become “unfolded” over time. Indeed, all Revelation was contained in the person of Jesus Christ, but not all of Revelation is easily grasped by the human mind. That is what I mean by development - the faith grows; the Spirits leads us into all truth (of which the Church Christ instituted is the pillar and foundation).

Apostasy is rejecting the Faith.

Heresy is believing in un-natural (i.e. not according to the nature of the Christian revelation of Jesus Christ) developments. As in the human body, not all developments are for the good. Tumors are developments, but they are destructive and not good for the organism. But if no development took place at all, the Church would still be an infant.

The earliest Church may not have believed in the Trinity. But then again they certainly didn’t disbelieve in it either. The Trinity was implicitly contained in what they believed, but it had yet to be unfolded, to be explained and stated clearly.

Since someone else disagreed with me, that doctrines develop, I should like to note that I speak solely as a lay-person and present one of the traditions within the Church, namely that of John Henry Cardinal Newman. Some people do not agree that doctrines develop and indeed, I may be wrong here. I try to give our critics the benefit of the doubt, and play along…

"Christ is indeed the fulness of God’s revelation, but Christianity developed - it had to - because it was still an infant. Christianity was an idea, and it was a living idea. On every idea that a man holds, he will excercise the power of thought. When thought is excercised on an idea, it can most certainly not stay the same (in a strict sense), but rather it must develop."

And yet this “development” was OK because you have an infallible pope guiding you.

I hadn’t jumped to that conclusion yet . I merely noted, that development is inevitable. Some development will be true to the original idea, some will not. Indeed, all development might be false, if we were left to ourselves.

I do not, however, think that God would give us his Revelation and then just leave it to decay.

But you only have an infallible pope if Catholicism is true.

That is the other way round… Catholicism is true only if the pope is infallible. I have at no point pre-supposed that Catholicism is true.

What I argue is, that an infallible interpreter is necessary, and that one is to be expected to arise after Christ ascended to Heaven. I then noted that Peter and the bishops of the NT act exactly the way I would expect an infallible guide to act, and this makes sense, since it is to those that Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to guide in all truth. Unfortunately, eventually Peter died, leaving his office vacant. But an interpreter is still necessary. Now, I wonder if there are any likely candidates for his office in Church History, and lo and behold I find that from very early on, the bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter, and the bishops who claim succession also from the apostles, are acting with extraordinary authority in exercising exactly this role in the Church. Condemning heresy, defining orthodoxy, protecting the sheep from the wolves and acting as the visible bond unity of the Church.

So Catholicsm is a self-referring infallible system that evolves over time, and it is true because it says it is.

The pope is infallible because there really are no other candidates for infallibility. I never made your circular argument.

And I guess that pope is not subject to rule 1, which is that all institutions must change, because he is an “external authority”.

The Pope may hold a heretical doctrine, but he is by a special charism of the Holy Spirit unable to teach error. The Popes role is ultimately not about making the development, but judging the development. “What you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven…”

In order to judge which development was good and what was bad, it is neccesary that there exists an external infallible authority. This is exactly the role that the Papacy has been playing ever since the first pages of Acts.

So the pope is not Catholic?

External meaning here that the “inner guidance of the Holy Spirit” is not sufficient as history shows us quite clearly. There must also be an external, that is a visible, authority.

Interesting argument.

On one hand it is a very Mormon way of looking at the world.

On the other hand, if I made the same argument, you would laugh me off the boards. Any doctrinal change is ok because it was made by an “infallible external authority”. So we kick out Arianism, the pre-existence, say that Mary was Immaculately Conceived

Indeed if I made the same argument, I would laugh myself off the boards. But you misunderstood me on several points, and have been beating up a lot of strawmen. I hope I have made it a bit clearer now.

• CB

 

[Contrabass101]

Vincentius of Lérins (5th century) describes well this development.

In his Commonitory he writes the words for which he has become most famous: Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est: that which has been held everywhere, at all times by everyone (that is the Catholic Faith).

Now, naturally, one might ask whether this would not hinder any form of progress in the Church - it seems to support a “status quo” definition of faith, and taken out of their context, that seems to be what Vincent is arguing for. But actually, he himself addresses this issue later in the same writing:

[54.] But some one will say, perhaps, Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ’s Church? Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on condition that it be real 148progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alteration, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning.

[55.] **The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same. **There is a wide difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age; yet they who were once young are still the same now that they have become old, insomuch that though the stature and outward form of the individual are changed, yet his nature is one and the same, his person is one and the same. An infant’s limbs are small, a young man’s large, yet the infant and the young man are the same. Men when full grown have the same number of joints that they had when children; and if there be any to which maturer age has given birth these were already present in embryo, so that nothing new is produced in them when old which was not already latent in them when children. This, then, is undoubtedly the true and legitimate rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth, that mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant. Whereas, if the human form were changed into some shape belonging to another kind, or at any rate, if the number of its limbs were increased or diminished, the result would be that the whole body would become either a wreck or a monster, or, at the least, would be impaired and enfeebled.

[56.] In like manner, it behoves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age, and yet, withal, to continue uncorrupt and unadulterate, complete and perfect in all the measurement of its parts, and, so to speak, in all its proper members and senses, admitting no change, no waste of its distinctive property, no variation in its limits.

Vincent of Lérins ; The Commonitory of Vincent of Lérins, For the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith Against the Profane Novelties of All Heresies. Chapter XXIII, 54-56 (emphasis mine)

• CB