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Eric_Hilbert
Guest
Cease the personal remarks please and stick to the topic
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Angela77
Guest
Yeah, I think so. They made the Catholic counter reformation happen with the Council of Trent. It’s too bad that the Church hadn’t responded to Luther’s protests before he started his own church. Perhaps Christians would have been united then.
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Telstar
Guest
Sorry, Eric. Mea culpa.
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steve_b
Guest
Of course not. One can’t clean up sedition and heresy, by calling it reform. Besides, scripture condemns division and those who divide from the Church.
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As one poster already eluded, St Francis, 300 years before the Protestant revolt, was already involved in his day, in reformation. And Francis did his work properly, within the Church NOT dividing from the Church. As all those who work properly for reform.Where would the RCC be without the reactive Catholic-Reformation?
Competition often help us ‘improve our game’ and God knows humans better than we do
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JustaServant
Guest
Very VERY good point.
Reading the life and works of St Francis is enlightening considering the corruption of the Church at the time. He reformed from within, not without.
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Telstar
Guest
I’m not so sure we can say they didn’t try to respond, but as is typical in the Catholic Church, some things take a while to get through the proper channels. We also need to keep in mind that at that point in time, the means of communication were very slow and tedious, so a ‘quick response’ to any problem was fairly impossible. Allegations of wrongdoing need to be investigated thoroughly before any decision can be made, or any action can be taken to correct it.
Martin Luther just wasn’t willing to follow through with the slow process required to address the problem. It was his impetuous nature that caused him to take matters into his own hands, and cause an even greater scandal, by making his public denouncement. He really didn’t leave the local Church authorities much choice in how to respond to his actions. If he had been more patient, there would likely have been a better outcome, but we’ll never really know. Perhaps his tendency toward scrupulosity, lead to his urgent need to ‘get it done’ faster than was even possible, under those circumstances.
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Telstar
Guest
Amen! I love St. Francis.
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SteveVH
Guest
The Protestant Reformation certainly did not “save” the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church cannot and will not be destroyed because it is Christ’s own Church, not man’s Church. The Reformation did not save the Church any more than any of the heretics of old saved the Church. If you are making an implication to the Council of Trent, all councils were held to defend the true faith against error and heresy, the Council of Trent being no different. Nothing in the Reformation changed one iota of doctrine. Was it more specifically defined? Yes. Changed? No.My question is “did the Protestant Reformation save the Catholic Church?”
Where would the RCC be without the reactive Catholic-Reformation?
Competition often help us ‘improve our game’ and God knows humans better than we do
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Tony888
Guest
Sally,
I think of Matthew 7:18-20*
“A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.* Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.* Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”*
Since Protestant, RC and OC churches “bring forth good fruit” they cannot be the work of Satan. While not perfect, God has a hand in all of them (Yes, Satan has corrupted individuals in all the faiths though)
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steve_b
Guest
:coffeeread:
Re: sees
Here are the ancient sees
- Rome
- Constantinople
- Alexandria
- Antioch
- Jerusalem
s:
- there is no OC. There are many OC’s. And they continue to split into other autocephelous churches. They are NOT one. A byproduct of their division from the chair of Peter
- speaking of THEIR issues and scandals would derail this thread. So I won’t comment.
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sallybutler
Guest
I’m sorry I was not clearer. My comment about the ‘competing’ churches meant that I don’t think God was creating them to compete with His Church. Man is quite capable of creating things that go against God.
My comment about Satan was in response to your implication that God set up the Protestant churches because He knows man so well. He does. But Satan also know man very well and knows how to distract them from God. (tele-evanglists may be the best example of this)
Of course there are good people everywhere, as there are bad people. There are good people that behave badly and bad people that behave well. And the Euchrist, Confession, and the Church are still there to help us when we behave badly, in spite of the Reformation.
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ConstantineTG
Guest
Well, now that you mention comparing Rites, it is true that Western praxis is scholastic, and does seek to define everything. It is a point of friction sometimes between East and West, but I don’t believe it should be that big of a deal as long as one praxis is not pushed on the other. But scholasticism doesn’t mean legalism. Scholasticism aims to define what we believe in as much as possible so people can understand the faith. What happened with the Reformation and Sola Scriptura is that the practice of Sola Scriptura has crept into Catholicism, mainly Roman Catholicism, corrupted scholasticism into legalism. So now people read Church documents the way they Protestants read the Bible. If its not in the words or be interpreted from the words, then its not what the belief is. I don’t believe for one second that is the way the Church has ever intended all the documents to mean. But we the lay people, infected by Sola Scriptura, treat it as such.I suppose I took many of your latest posts in previous threads and read between the lines. I even agree on some of your points there, but I often come away with the feeling that you are comparing the Latin Rite to the Rite you attend. I was trying to convey that it’s not necessarily true. We are all affected by the wounds of reformation, but I don’t necessarily think that legalism is involved, rather, that humanity itself within the Church is to blame.
I apologise for bringing in the baggage from other posts. A human fault that I have is that I don’t know when to shut up sometimes. I really should have treated this post separately. That’s one of the things I’m known for in person… reading between the lines within conversation, and reading body language to the point of it affecting my own emotions. Doesn’t work so well within a forum
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SteveVH
Guest
God had a hand in all of them? The Catholic Church is a DIVINE institution. It was founded by Christ himself. God did not just have a hand in it, as if he were helping a man-made church along the way. It is His Church, He is the head, we are the body. This is why the very idea that Christ’s Church needed to be restored is false. It’s basis is the new and everlasting covenant.
This does not mean that those who are not in full communion with the CC do not receive his grace. God gives his grace to anyone who seeks him with a sincere heart and I know many Protestants who do just that. But they do not have the fulness of truth present in the Church he founded.
The Reformation needed to occur in the hearts of men, not in separating one’s self from the true Church because of the sinfulness of some of its members. Some here have referred to St. Francis of Assisi. He changed men’s hearts by living a truly Christ-like life. When he preached, bishops wept. Division was not God’s will. Conversion, the turning away from sin toward holiness, was God’s will. The Reformation wounded the Body of Christ, and every subsequent division wounds it even more.
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CopticChristian
Guest
Lets do some basics.
There is good and there is evil.
There is a God of good and a God of Evil, sorry that is Manichiesm.
There is but one God, for God alone is good. God allows evil. Reference Job. Job was a faithful servant.
God is not the cause of evil. Sin is evil. Heresy is evil. God can bring good out of what has been done that is evil.
Your paradigm of God being in lock step hand in hand in the production of the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant allows you to believe that God produced Mormon thought. This is the fallacy of your thinking.
God produced one Church. Man and sin caused schism. God can bring good from that sin. Protestants did not reform anything, they invented something new in their doctrine, denying the Church, denying and mangling the Bible, leading people astray and all that is evil. God can produce good from evil but God is not the cause. God therefore does not cause doctrines like the trinity to be explained in other than the way it was explained centruries ago or create new Scripture or secret knowledge.
By one mans sin we were made sinners and that continues…by one mans obedience we were made righteous…and in that obedience we are to follow Christ…so ponder if all were obedient at all times would there be schism and heresy…for to do the Will of God is Veritatis Splendor…to do otherwise is to do our will and then let God pick up the pieces to produce good from the evil that man has done.
Can we do evil to produce good?
What shall we say then that we should sin that grace may abound?
Your paradigm needs correction.
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adytum
Guest
But that actually started in the Catholic church, the Evangelicals were simply imitators.
So what do you refer to for “good, sound Catholic teaching?”
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CopticChristian
Guest
I am not so sure about that. I would not reference canon law. This was brought up in another post
Re: Western christianity and total failure in ascetism & mortification
This was my posting…
This is what Ithirst added…
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Contarini
Guest
Well, first of all, as someone else has said, the translation into Latin originally was a translation into the vernacular. As Christianity spread to non-Latin areas, there were translations of parts of the Bible into the vernaculars, even though worship remained in Latin. Most literate people, until the later Middle Ages, only read Latin anyway. In the later Middle Ages there wasn’t as much translation of the Bible as there might have been because of concerns about heretics misappropriating the Bible (from the Catholic Church’s perspective). However, there were more translations than most people think, and there was a lot of paraphrasing and exposition in the vernacular, especially carried out by the mendicant orders.
It appears that there wasn’t a complete Bible–but significant parts were translated: there was a paraphrase of the Pentateuch from the early 14th century and one of the Acts from the late 14th century, and there were more literal translations of some of the other historical books as well as Revelation, made at the end of the 15th century. See *The Nordic Languages: An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages, *ed. Oskar Bundle et al.(De Gruyter, 2005), vol. 2, pp. 1204-5 (you can find this on Google Books, which is where I found it).
Edwin
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ConstantineTG
Guest
No it didn’t. We didn’t have all these hand raising and waving and shouting “Praise the Lord!” stuff until the Evangelicals became popular. Mostly through TV evangelists.
The Church Fathers
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ConstantineTG
Guest
Thanks. I already have good resources on fasting. But I was referring to many posts and most recently one where I engaged in pages of circular arguments when I was arguing for understanding Fasting and its purpose in our spiritual life to guide us how to fast and know when to fast and when not to (like when you are sick). A priest actually just argued on the side of the canons, as in, “this is what the canons say, thats all you need to know and do” kind of discussion. To me that is sad. I’ve personally witnessed many people fall away from the Catholic faith because they do not understand it. They do because they’re told. You do not reap spiritual benefits from legalism. We must understand the why behind every practice.
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GaryTaylor
Guest
Well the Torah was stable by the 5th century BCE, 132-135 BCE come the Masoretic Texts and are very stable. They read almost exactly as the earliest Hebrew Bible which is the Leningradensis manuscript. This then continued as stable to the Septuagint.
Thus the first testament of the early church, was the Septuagint, or Greek Translations of early Jewish literature, such as Torah, Prophets, Apocrypha etc.
Thus comes the question of “canon”. When one says cannon, one has to be clear on “which” community they are speaking about. Oral tradition is always adopted as Sacred text. For example Abraham didn’t read or write, this didn’t happen till Mose’s came along and the Jews were taught by other cultures which is a combination of three.
So then, the nationalization of Christianity came in the 4th century CE, earlier texts were relatively fluid, but the accurate copying started with Constantine, and shortly after Christianity became the accepted religion of Rome. The stabilization from the Septuagint continued with Origens work in the Hexapla, then later the works of Jerome who carried his idea of Hebraica Veritus forward. So it would in language go from Hebrew/Aramaic to Greek to Latin and then foward. The early as I said a combination of 3 other cultures.
So then you have a combination of events which occured over time. The stabilization as we know it today is due to Constantine with “Christianity” and you get the idea with the Jews above. However its still has to be considered in “whom” you are referring to with Christianity. Again you have Oral tradition/Sacred tradition=the written word.
For example the ethiopian canon has 81 books, doesn’t include 4-Maccabees, but 1-2-3. The Jewish canon is the smallest, the next is the Protestant, then the Catholic, then various Eastern Orthodox Churchs.
The Jewish communites considered the Book of Enoch of significance. right within that period of Quram also. Here a split of Jewish/Christian, mostly Jewish though, which also seems to have insight into John the Baptist and a few aspects of early christianity. I’ve heard much about this though I haven’t found the time to read it. Book of Giants which is mentioned in the OT etc.
However you have to consider the amount of illiterate during these period. Really the idea everyone reading comes along way down the road from where I’m talking about.
However when you back before Constantine, to me it seems sketchy. For example why isn’t St Peter or St Pauls deaths recorded? Not that its of great significance or the point of the NT. However its make one wonder just how old some of these texts are. I don’t think any scholar could state for certain which came first in regards to much of the NT Gospel.
Revelation is a wonder in itself.
Thus the first testament of the early church, was the Septuagint, or Greek Translations of early Jewish literature, such as Torah, Prophets, Apocrypha etc.
Thus comes the question of “canon”. When one says cannon, one has to be clear on “which” community they are speaking about. Oral tradition is always adopted as Sacred text. For example Abraham didn’t read or write, this didn’t happen till Mose’s came along and the Jews were taught by other cultures which is a combination of three.
So then, the nationalization of Christianity came in the 4th century CE, earlier texts were relatively fluid, but the accurate copying started with Constantine, and shortly after Christianity became the accepted religion of Rome. The stabilization from the Septuagint continued with Origens work in the Hexapla, then later the works of Jerome who carried his idea of Hebraica Veritus forward. So it would in language go from Hebrew/Aramaic to Greek to Latin and then foward. The early as I said a combination of 3 other cultures.
So then you have a combination of events which occured over time. The stabilization as we know it today is due to Constantine with “Christianity” and you get the idea with the Jews above. However its still has to be considered in “whom” you are referring to with Christianity. Again you have Oral tradition/Sacred tradition=the written word.
For example the ethiopian canon has 81 books, doesn’t include 4-Maccabees, but 1-2-3. The Jewish canon is the smallest, the next is the Protestant, then the Catholic, then various Eastern Orthodox Churchs.
The Jewish communites considered the Book of Enoch of significance. right within that period of Quram also. Here a split of Jewish/Christian, mostly Jewish though, which also seems to have insight into John the Baptist and a few aspects of early christianity. I’ve heard much about this though I haven’t found the time to read it. Book of Giants which is mentioned in the OT etc.
However you have to consider the amount of illiterate during these period. Really the idea everyone reading comes along way down the road from where I’m talking about.
However when you back before Constantine, to me it seems sketchy. For example why isn’t St Peter or St Pauls deaths recorded? Not that its of great significance or the point of the NT. However its make one wonder just how old some of these texts are. I don’t think any scholar could state for certain which came first in regards to much of the NT Gospel.
Revelation is a wonder in itself.
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