C
Contarini
Guest
For what it’s worth, I don’t have a problem with your basic argument, as many people here seem to have. I think you have summarized Lumen Gentium quite well.
Edwin
- Status
Edwin
S
spauline
Guest
thanks. Glad to hear there is at least someone on my page. I feel bad that I have upset some people. I didn’t want to judge the subjective condition of anyone, I just wanted to give a way to rank the objective goodness in the various categories.
G
Genesis315
Guest
This doesn’t seem to be any different than what Pope Paul VI did in his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam. He uses the images of circles to show how close others are to Catholics. Catholics are the innermost circle. Then, a larger circle surrounding that is titled “Christians.” Then a larger one around that is for those who worship the one true God and finally the largest circle is simply titled “mankind.”
Likewise, in the document Dominus Iesus by then Cardinal Ratzinger, non-Catholics are said to be in an objectively gravely deficient situation.
Likewise, in the document Dominus Iesus by then Cardinal Ratzinger, non-Catholics are said to be in an objectively gravely deficient situation.
G
Genesis315
Guest
I tend to have this opinion too in some sense concerning those Muslims who, in good faith, have yet to embrace the Gospel. Muslims tend to have much more supernatural faith than many modern Catholics. They receive what they believe to be God’s revelation (even though they are in error) in faith and submission whereby many Catholics judge revelation with their limited and error-prone natural reason and then choose whether or not to receive it based on that. Catholics often talk of “agreeing” or not “agreeing” with what the Church has handed down–even if you agree with everything, that’s not faith but a coincidence. We need to believe with supernatural faith, without which it is impossible to please God. It seems to me sometimes that Muslims are more likely to adhere to God in this way (even though the are in error as to the truth about Him).
S
spauline
Guest
AMEN! Put another way, many Muslims have a true fear of God, which cannot be said for alot of Catholics in this country.
M
Mijoy2
Guest
Oh I don’t know. I might suggest an “agnostic” with over 3000 posts is certainly “searching” which would not put you in the “guaranteed hell” category.
Either that or you have waaaayyy too much time on your hands
.
M
Mirdath
Guest
If we did not grow in our own ways, nobody would have any posts here. But considering I’m no closer to returning to the Church, I’d have to say your second guess is probably more accurate!Oh I don’t know. I might suggest an “agnostic” with over 3000 posts is certainly “searching” which would not put you in the “guaranteed hell” category.
Either that or you have waaaayyy too much time on your hands
S
spauline
Guest
What I intend to get at with this post is that I do not believe that history is aimless. I believe there is a “Plan.” The Plan is obviously spiritual, seeing as the spiritual condition of men and humanity is the driving force of human history.
A person interjects, “History is not all roses, there is also sin. Do you think God ordains sins or Plans sin and antagonism to His People?”
Absolutely not. But what does a “Plan” mean except that antagonism is FORESEEN, and there is a ”plan” to deal with it as it comes. And in particular, looking at the history of Salvation, it is very much the case that God’s Plan has many steps, because the nasty sin keeps coming back again and again, like every time God slays a head of the beast, another one is healed. Or derivatively, as I mentioned before, the sun keeps setting after every day. Seems to be an unavoidable pattern. No day lasts forever. There is always sundown to be awaited (or dreaded if you are not a child of the night.)
Now, I don’t have time to give a full discourse, but obviously, since God is all-knowing, He knows how to BEST respond to man’s successive major manifestations of sin throughout Salvation history, so that, in the end, the greatest possible good is attained, which is of course spiritual. So then God’s successive responses to the darknesses are calculated and with purpose.
But it would then also seem that, by way of implication, even the darknesses are driven according to an order, and are not arbitrary, seeing as iniquity can be analyzed theologically. Hence, the “mystery of iniquity” of 2 Thess. 2. That is, there is even order to the darkness. The darkness is not random either and does not follow a random path.
I don’t have time, seeing as other threads of mine in Patmos have delved deeper, but I would like to summarize this:
When the Church attained her freedom from the major purgation of pagan Rome and triumphed over paganism in it’s first big way, it is clear that the objective of the forces of darkness is to dethrone the light that had shone greatly the first time, that is, the light of the Church, that is, the light of truth and grace. But remember, we can’t boil a frog immediately. Have to turn up the heat gradually. So then, the sun must GRADUALLY set on the light of the Church.
And herein is the thesis I intend to use this grading system of this thread toward: that the manner in which the truth and grace of the Church is progressively obscured by the darkness of opposition is ORDERED, and not random.
And it almost follows the order of my grading, except that Islam comes first, before Orthodoxy. Apart, from this, the grading scale given is followed in history in that very order.
Of course, the objection must come: “But if it doesn’t completely follow the order, seeing as Islam is out of place, then the order you claim is not fully there.”
Admittedly, yes, that is, if the sun’s setting must follow from 4.0 to 0.0.
BUT, I’ll modify the rule of the sun setting by observing a deeper reality to the religions.
If we follow the order of the major doctrinal attacks on the Church from Constantine to present, there IS a logical order when we look at the TARGET of these attacks. Toward that end, I propose that these targets are the major SOURCES of Divine Truth and can be ordered according to a pyramid, such that, in general, the higher a source is on the pyramid, the more reliable is the truth available but it is, in general, less evident.
So then the pyramid is as follows:
The Trinity and Incarnation
The Papacy
The General Apostolic Succession and Oral Tradition
The Scriptures
Reason
So now my argument for ranking the sources in this order from most reliable to least reliable.
…continued below…
A person interjects, “History is not all roses, there is also sin. Do you think God ordains sins or Plans sin and antagonism to His People?”
Absolutely not. But what does a “Plan” mean except that antagonism is FORESEEN, and there is a ”plan” to deal with it as it comes. And in particular, looking at the history of Salvation, it is very much the case that God’s Plan has many steps, because the nasty sin keeps coming back again and again, like every time God slays a head of the beast, another one is healed. Or derivatively, as I mentioned before, the sun keeps setting after every day. Seems to be an unavoidable pattern. No day lasts forever. There is always sundown to be awaited (or dreaded if you are not a child of the night.)
Now, I don’t have time to give a full discourse, but obviously, since God is all-knowing, He knows how to BEST respond to man’s successive major manifestations of sin throughout Salvation history, so that, in the end, the greatest possible good is attained, which is of course spiritual. So then God’s successive responses to the darknesses are calculated and with purpose.
But it would then also seem that, by way of implication, even the darknesses are driven according to an order, and are not arbitrary, seeing as iniquity can be analyzed theologically. Hence, the “mystery of iniquity” of 2 Thess. 2. That is, there is even order to the darkness. The darkness is not random either and does not follow a random path.
I don’t have time, seeing as other threads of mine in Patmos have delved deeper, but I would like to summarize this:
When the Church attained her freedom from the major purgation of pagan Rome and triumphed over paganism in it’s first big way, it is clear that the objective of the forces of darkness is to dethrone the light that had shone greatly the first time, that is, the light of the Church, that is, the light of truth and grace. But remember, we can’t boil a frog immediately. Have to turn up the heat gradually. So then, the sun must GRADUALLY set on the light of the Church.
And herein is the thesis I intend to use this grading system of this thread toward: that the manner in which the truth and grace of the Church is progressively obscured by the darkness of opposition is ORDERED, and not random.
And it almost follows the order of my grading, except that Islam comes first, before Orthodoxy. Apart, from this, the grading scale given is followed in history in that very order.
Of course, the objection must come: “But if it doesn’t completely follow the order, seeing as Islam is out of place, then the order you claim is not fully there.”
Admittedly, yes, that is, if the sun’s setting must follow from 4.0 to 0.0.
BUT, I’ll modify the rule of the sun setting by observing a deeper reality to the religions.
If we follow the order of the major doctrinal attacks on the Church from Constantine to present, there IS a logical order when we look at the TARGET of these attacks. Toward that end, I propose that these targets are the major SOURCES of Divine Truth and can be ordered according to a pyramid, such that, in general, the higher a source is on the pyramid, the more reliable is the truth available but it is, in general, less evident.
So then the pyramid is as follows:
The Trinity and Incarnation
The Papacy
The General Apostolic Succession and Oral Tradition
The Scriptures
Reason
So now my argument for ranking the sources in this order from most reliable to least reliable.
…continued below…
S
spauline
Guest
… continued from above…
At the top is the Trinity and Incarnation. The Catholic Church declares that the Trinity is the Supreme Mystery upon which the Catholic Faith is based. All religion begins with a discussion of God, for God is the origin of all things. God and Who he is the first and primary subject of the Creed. God, in His Trinitarian and now Incarnational Nature as Son, is the central mystery. To see the Unseen God who is an Infinite Family of Love, and the Son, Who, from all eternity, was foreseen and now bears the marks of the One who suffered Immeasurably for creatures, from these incomprehensible mysteries, all truth in religion flows. There is no higher source than God. To see God face to face is to know as you are known, to understand as you are understood.
Moving down the pyramid, Christ is no longer with us in a Direct Revelatory presence, as before the Ascension. Therefore, Christ mediates His truth through visible sources. The mediated sources flow from the Church. The two primary sources are the Oral Word of God and the Written Word of God. The Oral Word of God is preserved through the formal Apostolic Succession, that is, the Bishops. But the Revelation of the Oral Word of God has two degrees, the special mediated fatherhood of Peter, and then the general mediated fatherhood of the Bishops in general. Even though the Oral Word of God is not “above” the Scriptures, but rather the servant of the Scriptures, nevertheless, in terms of reliability, the Oral is far more explicit than the Written. Several Fathers explicitly testify that the Oral Word of God is a vital source of truth, seeing as men see different meanings from the Scriptures. That is why taking the Scriptures from the tree of life giving Tradition is a prescription for chaos, for without the Sacred Tradition, the implications of what Scripture MEANS are far less evident.
There was a Catholic article about this. It suggested a scenario of a person in an airplane traveling as a missionary to a distant Island that has never been reached by any form of Christianity. There is a crisis of fuel shortage, and there are two pods in the plane, one full of Bibles, and the other full of Catholic Catechisms. The Missionary does not have enough fuel to save both. One must be ejected if he is to reach the remote tribe. But which? He struggles and struggles, and finally he pushes the button and off the Bibles go into the Ocean. The Bible Answer Man and James White, and Reverend Fallwell, and all the conservative evangelicals, lament, “woe is that island, no chance now for the Gospel.”
But the Pope and the orthodox Bishops in union with him sighed a relief and said, “he did he right thing, for if he leaves them with merely Scripture, and comes back in 200 years, the tribe will have divided into countless competing sects over how to interpret it. With the CCC, the chances of unity are far greater.”
But, of course, PETER is a more reliable source than the general Fathers, for whereas the Orthodox are quite close to the Catholics, still, with the absence of Peter’s special mediated authority, there is less that is clear in Orthodoxy. Much more is clear than in Protestantism, but still less than the Catholic Church.
Next in line is Scripture, which is indeed far greater than mere reason. For at least with Scripture, one has Christ. With Scriptures, still much can be gained, yes much.
…continued below…
At the top is the Trinity and Incarnation. The Catholic Church declares that the Trinity is the Supreme Mystery upon which the Catholic Faith is based. All religion begins with a discussion of God, for God is the origin of all things. God and Who he is the first and primary subject of the Creed. God, in His Trinitarian and now Incarnational Nature as Son, is the central mystery. To see the Unseen God who is an Infinite Family of Love, and the Son, Who, from all eternity, was foreseen and now bears the marks of the One who suffered Immeasurably for creatures, from these incomprehensible mysteries, all truth in religion flows. There is no higher source than God. To see God face to face is to know as you are known, to understand as you are understood.
Moving down the pyramid, Christ is no longer with us in a Direct Revelatory presence, as before the Ascension. Therefore, Christ mediates His truth through visible sources. The mediated sources flow from the Church. The two primary sources are the Oral Word of God and the Written Word of God. The Oral Word of God is preserved through the formal Apostolic Succession, that is, the Bishops. But the Revelation of the Oral Word of God has two degrees, the special mediated fatherhood of Peter, and then the general mediated fatherhood of the Bishops in general. Even though the Oral Word of God is not “above” the Scriptures, but rather the servant of the Scriptures, nevertheless, in terms of reliability, the Oral is far more explicit than the Written. Several Fathers explicitly testify that the Oral Word of God is a vital source of truth, seeing as men see different meanings from the Scriptures. That is why taking the Scriptures from the tree of life giving Tradition is a prescription for chaos, for without the Sacred Tradition, the implications of what Scripture MEANS are far less evident.
There was a Catholic article about this. It suggested a scenario of a person in an airplane traveling as a missionary to a distant Island that has never been reached by any form of Christianity. There is a crisis of fuel shortage, and there are two pods in the plane, one full of Bibles, and the other full of Catholic Catechisms. The Missionary does not have enough fuel to save both. One must be ejected if he is to reach the remote tribe. But which? He struggles and struggles, and finally he pushes the button and off the Bibles go into the Ocean. The Bible Answer Man and James White, and Reverend Fallwell, and all the conservative evangelicals, lament, “woe is that island, no chance now for the Gospel.”
But the Pope and the orthodox Bishops in union with him sighed a relief and said, “he did he right thing, for if he leaves them with merely Scripture, and comes back in 200 years, the tribe will have divided into countless competing sects over how to interpret it. With the CCC, the chances of unity are far greater.”
But, of course, PETER is a more reliable source than the general Fathers, for whereas the Orthodox are quite close to the Catholics, still, with the absence of Peter’s special mediated authority, there is less that is clear in Orthodoxy. Much more is clear than in Protestantism, but still less than the Catholic Church.
Next in line is Scripture, which is indeed far greater than mere reason. For at least with Scripture, one has Christ. With Scriptures, still much can be gained, yes much.
…continued below…
S
spauline
Guest
… continued from above…
Next in line is the final source that no man can claim innocent ignorance of. For it may be presumed that pagans in obscurity who have never been reached by Christians may be excused by God for not knowing Christ, for they have not even Scripture. But even they cannot be excused from the one source of truth that bears even a natural light to man: REASON, the unaided human intellect. For even with natural philosophy, Vat I affirmed, man can discern that there must be a higher power, a supernatural designer, even in as much as this world bears design. Hence, no man can say, “I did not know that there must be a Divine Being or Presence, and a natural moral law that is evident from the things seen, and that disrespecting authority, and murder, and adultery, and theft and lying are not wrong.”
So then, these sources have been attacked from top to bottom, beginning from the point of freedom from purgation to the present:
To elaborate:
The first heresies mostly attack, in one form or another, the Trinitarian or Incarnational Nature of God (while, of course, retaining the existence of the monotheist God, or even aspects of the Trinity or Incarnation, as the case was sometimes). Of this period, I see two primary subdivisions: The initial heresies, and then Islam. For the initial Trinitarian or Christological heresies, may have attacked some essence or sense of the Trinity or Incarnation (even more or less fully, as with Arianism), but they all retained Christ as Messiah, and as the final revelation to humanity.
Islam, however, represented the worst and most utter attack on this source of truth, for Islam not only UTTERLY denied the Trinity, and UTTERLY denied the Incarnation, but they went on to dethrone Christ as Messiah, and, if that were not enough, they imposed an EXTRA-Christological Revelation, namely, Muhammed. For Catholicism affirms that if God has become Man and Revealed Himself in such manner, there can be no further Public Revelation. For what source can exceed God Himself? Therefore, the Church always affirms that in her dogmatic development, she is not asserting Revelations that SURPASS Christ, but only that make CLEARER, DEEPER, and more EXPLICIT, that which Christ passed on to the Church through the Apostles. That is, only the deeper IMPLICATIONS are what is shown in doctrinal development, not “new” Revelation, as is the claim of Muhammed and the Koran.
After Islam, the next great spiritual assault was clearly the Great Schism, which appropriately is primarily an attack on the Chair of Peter.
Next, following the devil’s sowing of scandal amidst the higher clergy in the RCC, came the assault of the whole of the General Bishops and Oral Tradition itself, that is, Protestantism, who retained but Scripture.
Next was the Enlightenment, which rejected the whole notion of Divine Revelation and Intervention, and hence, Scripture, and retained only the last source of truth, the Unmediated source, the most evident, but the least reliable, Reason.
Finally, the modern age is utterly depraved, not even recognizing reason, seeing as the Global North is under the dominion of (where applicable) atheistic materialism and relativistic materialism.
So then, the sun, from a Catholic view, has truly set according to an ORDER, a LOGICAL Structure. That is, the Church’s history has not been random and aimless, as many dismissive and liberal Catholics would like to claim. There is order even in the darkness, as the darkness progresses
Next in line is the final source that no man can claim innocent ignorance of. For it may be presumed that pagans in obscurity who have never been reached by Christians may be excused by God for not knowing Christ, for they have not even Scripture. But even they cannot be excused from the one source of truth that bears even a natural light to man: REASON, the unaided human intellect. For even with natural philosophy, Vat I affirmed, man can discern that there must be a higher power, a supernatural designer, even in as much as this world bears design. Hence, no man can say, “I did not know that there must be a Divine Being or Presence, and a natural moral law that is evident from the things seen, and that disrespecting authority, and murder, and adultery, and theft and lying are not wrong.”
So then, these sources have been attacked from top to bottom, beginning from the point of freedom from purgation to the present:
To elaborate:
The first heresies mostly attack, in one form or another, the Trinitarian or Incarnational Nature of God (while, of course, retaining the existence of the monotheist God, or even aspects of the Trinity or Incarnation, as the case was sometimes). Of this period, I see two primary subdivisions: The initial heresies, and then Islam. For the initial Trinitarian or Christological heresies, may have attacked some essence or sense of the Trinity or Incarnation (even more or less fully, as with Arianism), but they all retained Christ as Messiah, and as the final revelation to humanity.
Islam, however, represented the worst and most utter attack on this source of truth, for Islam not only UTTERLY denied the Trinity, and UTTERLY denied the Incarnation, but they went on to dethrone Christ as Messiah, and, if that were not enough, they imposed an EXTRA-Christological Revelation, namely, Muhammed. For Catholicism affirms that if God has become Man and Revealed Himself in such manner, there can be no further Public Revelation. For what source can exceed God Himself? Therefore, the Church always affirms that in her dogmatic development, she is not asserting Revelations that SURPASS Christ, but only that make CLEARER, DEEPER, and more EXPLICIT, that which Christ passed on to the Church through the Apostles. That is, only the deeper IMPLICATIONS are what is shown in doctrinal development, not “new” Revelation, as is the claim of Muhammed and the Koran.
After Islam, the next great spiritual assault was clearly the Great Schism, which appropriately is primarily an attack on the Chair of Peter.
Next, following the devil’s sowing of scandal amidst the higher clergy in the RCC, came the assault of the whole of the General Bishops and Oral Tradition itself, that is, Protestantism, who retained but Scripture.
Next was the Enlightenment, which rejected the whole notion of Divine Revelation and Intervention, and hence, Scripture, and retained only the last source of truth, the Unmediated source, the most evident, but the least reliable, Reason.
Finally, the modern age is utterly depraved, not even recognizing reason, seeing as the Global North is under the dominion of (where applicable) atheistic materialism and relativistic materialism.
So then, the sun, from a Catholic view, has truly set according to an ORDER, a LOGICAL Structure. That is, the Church’s history has not been random and aimless, as many dismissive and liberal Catholics would like to claim. There is order even in the darkness, as the darkness progresses
S
spauline
Guest
Liberal Catholics utterly dismiss the apocalyptic concerns of evangelicals over the spiritual condition of the modern Global North with the following myths:
Liberal Catholic myth #1:
The Catholic Church has always had opposition. There have “always been apostasies”. What is new? For the Arians were apostate, so were the Muslims, the Orthodox, the Protestants, the Enlightenment. What’s New? The Church has always had problems, and always will. There is no difference between the modern age and any other. Problems are problems.
Answering Lie #1:
yes, if we define “apostasy” by simply “standing apart from the Church”, then that is true. Under that very VAGUE definition, there have “always been apostasies”. But you liberal hypocrites! There are obviously DEGREES of “standing apart from the Church”. Yes, the Orthodox stand apart, the Protestants stand apart, the Deists and Rationalists stand apart, as do the atheists and relativists. but to the same DEGREE? by no means! hence, the liberal who scoffs and says, “we don’t know how bad things could get!” Hypocrite!
First, we DO know how bad things can get doctrinally, because we have an OBJECTIVELY KNOWN and bounded set of SOURCES OF DIVINE TRUTH.
Their orders are:
The Trinity and Incarnation
Peter’s Office
Oral Tradition
Written Tradition (Scripture)
Reason
The above five are the only major sources of Divine Truth. They have an objective ranking in terms of their reliability, in terms of the evidence of them, and of the truths that can be gained.
There are also the objective sources of grace, namely, the Sacraments. the manner in which one stands apart from the Church has absolutely everything to do with what grace is available, if any, given the primary disposition of the category of faith (or lack thereof).
Therefore, the liberal myth that “we don’t know how bad things can get spiritually” is a statement of indifference that could be mortal sin. In effect, the fundamentalists have been crying wolf for so long, that they are now ignored. But are their concerns utterly without basis? I do not mean to infer that we are now in the times of Antichrist, or that the world could not be healed of the spiritual condition. BUT, the reality of the minor apostasy cannot be escaped. Atheistic materialism and relativistic materialism are not simply “apart from Catholicism.” They are UTTERLY apart from the Church. Secular Messianism is not merely PARTIALLY false. It is utterly false. It is UTTERLY of antichrist.
Therefore, yes, there have always been those who stand apart from the Church. But in many cases, grace and truth remain in such a manner that those of the applicable conditions who are not culpable for their separation from the True Ark could yet be saved. But the condition of secular messianism is an utterly black condition. A person who dies in such a condition cannot be saved. For there is no room for religion in any sense.
I use these statements as a prelude to applying the ranking of religions toward the apocalypse later.
Liberal Catholic myth #1:
The Catholic Church has always had opposition. There have “always been apostasies”. What is new? For the Arians were apostate, so were the Muslims, the Orthodox, the Protestants, the Enlightenment. What’s New? The Church has always had problems, and always will. There is no difference between the modern age and any other. Problems are problems.
Answering Lie #1:
yes, if we define “apostasy” by simply “standing apart from the Church”, then that is true. Under that very VAGUE definition, there have “always been apostasies”. But you liberal hypocrites! There are obviously DEGREES of “standing apart from the Church”. Yes, the Orthodox stand apart, the Protestants stand apart, the Deists and Rationalists stand apart, as do the atheists and relativists. but to the same DEGREE? by no means! hence, the liberal who scoffs and says, “we don’t know how bad things could get!” Hypocrite!
First, we DO know how bad things can get doctrinally, because we have an OBJECTIVELY KNOWN and bounded set of SOURCES OF DIVINE TRUTH.
Their orders are:
The Trinity and Incarnation
Peter’s Office
Oral Tradition
Written Tradition (Scripture)
Reason
The above five are the only major sources of Divine Truth. They have an objective ranking in terms of their reliability, in terms of the evidence of them, and of the truths that can be gained.
There are also the objective sources of grace, namely, the Sacraments. the manner in which one stands apart from the Church has absolutely everything to do with what grace is available, if any, given the primary disposition of the category of faith (or lack thereof).
Therefore, the liberal myth that “we don’t know how bad things can get spiritually” is a statement of indifference that could be mortal sin. In effect, the fundamentalists have been crying wolf for so long, that they are now ignored. But are their concerns utterly without basis? I do not mean to infer that we are now in the times of Antichrist, or that the world could not be healed of the spiritual condition. BUT, the reality of the minor apostasy cannot be escaped. Atheistic materialism and relativistic materialism are not simply “apart from Catholicism.” They are UTTERLY apart from the Church. Secular Messianism is not merely PARTIALLY false. It is utterly false. It is UTTERLY of antichrist.
Therefore, yes, there have always been those who stand apart from the Church. But in many cases, grace and truth remain in such a manner that those of the applicable conditions who are not culpable for their separation from the True Ark could yet be saved. But the condition of secular messianism is an utterly black condition. A person who dies in such a condition cannot be saved. For there is no room for religion in any sense.
I use these statements as a prelude to applying the ranking of religions toward the apocalypse later.
- Status