Middlebear, who are you responding to? The tree shows that you responded to Liberian, if I’m seeing things right, but it seems out of place, and I don’t see anyone on this board who is suggesting that you shouldn’t take pains to inform your conscience.
Read the link once more, particularly:
So no, just because I am Catholic and intend to remain so, doesn't mean I check my mind at the door because I am one. No, I choose to examine for myself if what I am being told and presented stands the test of early church history, the church fathers and the scriptures themselves. :)
Ladies and Gentlemen,I am a Catholic and I certainly do not agree with all the teachings and practices of our church today. Our church STILL continues to ordain homosexuals, which I do not agree with. I do not pray directly to Mary, but to our heavenly, Father in heaven. I believe that the mass should be in English as Vatican 2 decided and not revert back to the Latin as traditionalists Catholics want today. I feel a priest SHOULD have the right to marry and still serve his parish, if he so chooses. For St Peter himself was married and celibacy wasn’t enforced until many centuries after Christ founded the church.
So no, just because I am Catholic and intend to remain so, doesn’t mean I check my mind at the door because I am one. No, I choose to examine for myself if what I am being told and presented stands the test of early church history, the church fathers and the scriptures themselves.
Tell me something, were the apostles and the early church fathers mostly correct in what they wrote and died for? Did they admit homosexuals into the priesthood? Did they allow bishops to be married? Were Rosary recitals unheard of then? Was Peter himself married? Well, if your answer is yes, then that runs directly contrary to what the church practices today, now doesn't it? Yes or no?
If one turns a blind eye to what the early church REALLY believed and practiced then we are no different then Pastor Billy Bob at Duckworth Baptist church. That preacher can simply tell his flock anything and the dumb sheep will follow. Is that not also true?
To be even more emphatic, if a Catholic chooses to believe and follow everything that Rome does without question today, then what difference is that Catholic, from the brainwashed Jehovah Witness who follows blindly everything that the Watchtower organization tells them? Answer-None at all.
That is why it is IMPORTANT to examine just what the early church REALLY taught and practiced. Otherwise you are just whistling in the wind. Your quote; "Our practices MAY CHANGE, but that doesn't mean that the Catholic Church has betrayed the early church or has strayed from what the early church believed. I personally prefer a celibate priesthood and think that there is more historical evidence for it than you seem to acknowledge, but that is really a topic for another thread."(emphasis mine)
Reply-Excuse me, but any time the modern church makes a dramatic change from the beliefs and practices of the early church THAT IS straying from what the church once held to. Allowing homosexuals as ordained priests is at the top of the list and not allowing priests to marry is another.I am a Catholic and I certainly do not agree with all the teachings and practices of our church today. Our church STILL continues to ordain homosexuals, which I do not agree with. I do not pray directly to Mary, but to our heavenly, Father in heaven. I believe that the mass should be in English as Vatican 2 decided and not revert back to the Latin as traditionalists Catholics want today. I feel a priest SHOULD have the right to marry and still serve his parish, if he so chooses. For St Peter himself was married and celibacy wasn’t enforced until many centuries after Christ founded the church.
So no, just because I am Catholic and intend to remain so, doesn’t mean I check my mind at the door because I am one. No, I choose to examine for myself if what I am being told and presented stands the test of early church history, the church fathers and the scriptures themselves.
I am a Catholic and I certainly do not agree with all the teachings and practices of our church today. Our church STILL continues to ordain homosexuals, which I do not agree with. I do not pray directly to Mary, but to our heavenly, Father in heaven.
So no, just because I am Catholic and intend to remain so, doesn’t mean I check my mind at the door because I am one. No, I choose to examine for myself if what I am being told and presented stands the test of early church history, the church fathers and the scriptures themselves.
By refusing to pray to Mary, you are going against the teaching of the Fathers. You can look on this web site in the library. Here are a few examples: Your quotation failed to mention any church father who wrote that we are to pray to Mary or recite the Rosary. Cyril did mention that we are to pray for those who have gone before us or have fallen asleep, but no mention of praying to Mary at all.
Here’s what it boils down to.
Where in any document does it say that conclusions or observations must be expressed verbatim from another document?
Piety,
I would draw a distinction between “turning a blind eye” and “following slavishly.” After all, if we are to follow like sheep the teachings and practices of the early church–and not even those teachings and practices directly, but some modern person’s reconstruction and interpretation of those teachings and practices–then we are in worse shape than the person who implicitly trusts the modern Church.
The difference between the Catholic who follows Rome blindly and the Jehovah’s Witness who follows the Watchtower blindly is that the Catholic is following the true Church and will wind up in Heaven. Saying that they are equivalent is religious indifferentism, like saying that “it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe something.”