I’ll reiterate – you need more love and compassion in what you say. You need to be more concerned with the people you’re speaking to, and not so much about proving your beliefs to be right.
I am concerned about both. I believe that you need this information. I know that I have been harsh. I get like that and I am perfectly willing to start toning it down and appoligize if I have injustly imagined too much malignant intent in your post. I believe that the Lord has lead you here so that the information we give you might touch your heart. I only ask that you accept the possibility that the Church is right.
Also remember, there’s a difference between admonishing someone, and simply insisting that they are sinning, over and over again. Part of admonishment is love, which your posts appear to be lacking – I can’t speak to your intentions, but only as to how I perceive them. You’ve mocked me, attacked me repeatedly, and just generally shown disrespect for me – all this because I disagree with your views?
I realize what you are saying and I think that I have tried to point out to you why what you are doing could be sinful. I do not confront you because you disagree with me but because I honestly believe that you are wrong.
The whole of your arguments are based on the concept that the RCC is Christ’s Church, and while this is fine to believe, you reject even the slightest notion that this is incorrect, while at the same time acting as though it’s not even an issue worth considering. You treat it as established fact, recognized by all. You base your entire premise of what truth is around this assumption. If this happens to be wrong, then all your other assumptions may be wrong as well. It’s this central point that I’m suggesting you could be wrong about. After all, you’re human, are you not? This seeming blindness to any possibility that you could be wrong in your most central belief means that the entirety of your argument must be evaluated in this way.
That the Catholic Church is Christ Body is one of the Many, Many truths of the Catholic Church. I understand that you do not yet accept this as the truth but I do. I accept it as the truth after many, many years of study and reflection. I can concieve that I might be wrong, but I know that I am not. I know that I am not wrong because every objection to being Catholic has gone through my head thousands of times.
I am not going to put asside the truths of the Catholic Church so that I can have a debate with you. I now that I have the pillar of the truth and you are still building it on brick at a time but I will not put aside the truth of Christ.
In order for me to become a Catholic I had to severe ever connection to every single family member that I have. I had to know that Protestantism was not true before I could even begin to concieve that the Catholic Church was true. Otherwise I could have stayed put and been happy. But no, I wanted the truth and the protestants were not giving it to me. Neither did the Muslims, nor the Buddhist. I went from going to protestant Church with my family and not knowing anything at all, to believing in God but NOT Jesus to eventually coming to become Catholic after I had read the Entire Bible, Koran, teachings of Gautame Shidartha (Buddha). I wasn’t looking to prove the protestants wrong and I probably would have accepted simple reasoning to stay but I wanted the truth, the objective truth. That objective truth lead me to reject protestantism and for a while I thought that Christianity as a whole was wrong. I became Catholic at 13 (or 15 if you mark if from the day of my baptism since I had not been baptized before). From the day that I became a Catholic, my family turned their backs on me and some were very, VERY violent twards me. I became a 14 year old kid living by myself and taking care of myself, because I became a Catholic. Not believing in God was OK. Reading the Koran was OK. Learning about Buddha was OK. That was even when I started to learn Japanese and I now live in Japan. However, becoming Catholic was the ONLY not ok thing that I could do and I was put on the street to take care of myself, finish my education myself and eventually I became the only person in my family to finish High School and finish College.
Becoming a Catholic is not a light matter for me.
All of your arguments are based around the premise that the RCC is the one true church, and your goal is to defend this “truth” at all costs. Since I don’t accept the premise, and in fact would base that premise off of the things I’m examining, your logic doesn’t work.
My logic works fine if in objective reality the Catholic Church is indeed the ONE TRUE CHURCH.
As for the issue of trust – I haven’t lied to you (that is, intentionally spoken something I know to be untrue). However, if you’re as learned as you imply, you have lied to me. You claimed, if I recall correctly, among other things, that kepha means “unmovable rock”, which is false based on the most rudimentary examination of the text – direct examples of a kepha being moved mean that kepha is not an “unmovable” rock. Truthfully, this single claim, so obviously false, yet so confidently asserted, is what caused me to approach your other claims with skepticism in the first place. Had I accepted that one claim as truth, based on your seeming knowledge of the facts, I would now be believing a lie. How am I to know that there are not similar errors in the rest of your arguments? This is why it’s important to study for yourself.
I don’t know how many times I have to say it. A kepa is an unmovable rock. That is the way I understand the word. If I am wrong, may the Lord show me the right way but that is what I know. I have posted about this to Rony who seems to know more of the language then I do and I hope he can give us some greater clarity.
As for the rest – I really don’t know what you think you’re gaining by all the ad-hominem. You won’t likely gain my trust, which would seem to be key if your goal is to discuss and share the truth with me. If your goal is simply to win an argument – I suppose you could claim you did that, though you didn’t convince anyone else of your position who didn’t already believe it, so I’m not sure that it matters. The assaulting of character just seems to be in poor taste to me, and is a sign of your lack of love. You’ll be in my prayers.
I am so glad you brought up this point about trust. I am not here just to win an arguement because I can just as well sit here and write my books, teach Latin, or play with my son then care about you not having the complete truth. I have a million other things to do as my wife keeps telling me. I certainly don’t draw any pleasure from these conversations. Any decent sholar should always be questioning his words and double checking and I send up a prayer that my words will be correct and I certainly don’t need that stress or any stain of sin in my life.
A couple of simple words need to be in mind. Trust; Reasonableness; and Communion.
As a Christian I believe that I have a Connection called Communion with all fellow Christians on the planet. We have a Connection called Communion with the Christians in Heaven who enjoy the beatific vision. We all have a relationship with one another. Having a relationship with others requires Trust. You state that you can not trust me, nor the Catholic Church in general and you specifically say that I have not earned your trust. This means that we are very quickly running out of things that was can possibly talk about. We can not have a relationship with one another if we do not have trust.
Also, I believe that what I have told you is very reasonable. I believe that a reasonable person will look at the facts presented, even looking past the emotions and see that the Catholic Church is right. Honestly, I just don’t see how you don’t see that. I honestly believe that objective reality proves the Catholic position. I have logically concluded based on what I know of objective reality that if the Catholic Church is wrong, then Christianity as a whole is wrong and indeed God probably wouldn’t even exist.
I have encountered this kind of thinking that you present here to me before. A protestant brings up Matthew 16:18 and we talk about it. I show how it can’t possible mean anything other then that the Church is built on Peter. This does not prove 100% the Papacy but it is a start. Other facts flow from it and from what we know of Church history and the Old Testament. The protestant though will not accent to my arguement but will conceed that they can not counter my arguement. So then we move onto another point, but no matter what other point we move onto, it is futile. Even once I get all the information and facts and we look at it and I prove that once again the Catholic Church is right they then tell me that it does not matter because Jesus didn’t build the Church on Peter the Rock. It then goes in a never ending circle.
I don’t think that you can tell me anything that I have not heard before. I am always willing to listen which is more then I can say for many protestants that I have meet in the years. It really begins to feel like when I had a next door neighbor who was convinced that a conspiriacy killed Kennedy. I didn’t know much about it all at the time but I looked over his facts and he was happy to have someone to share his hobby with. Unfortuanatly, after looking at those fact I had to conclude he was wrong. There were lots of things that suggested a Conspiricy but no real proof but the real proof in objective reality clearly says that Oswald killed Kennedy and probably acted alone. There were lots of points that we went over and over and over about but at the end of the day, the physical evidence was undeniable. The real clincher was the fact that the exit wound was on Kennedy’s face. I have seen many exit wounds from gunshot before and this clearly was one. My friend had never seen an exit wound before so did not recognize it as such. Now, that is not the only thing that convinced me but it was the icing on the cake. Now, certainly I did not see the exit wound and say, “oh, see no conspiracy.” All the facts had to work together, but as long as my friend could not see it as an exit wound, he just could not move on to the other bits of logic and reason.
By the way, the comment on Origen was only there for those who wished to consider the topic further – I have no intention of discussing it with you. The passage speaks for itself in my opinion, with what is basically undeniable logic. Origen was a very smart fellow.
Fine, then I won’t make plans to dicuss it with you but I will also say that before you dicuss it with anyone else, that you do some soul searching.
Could you become a Catholic? Would you become a Catholic if the facts of Objective Reality proved to you that the Catholic Church was the true Church?
If the answer is no, we really don’t have anything else to talk about, not between you and me, or between you and anyone else here. Until you can at least come half way to us, how can you expect us to come half way to you.
Could you conceed that the Catholic Church is right? Would you agree that that Catholic Church is right if the facts of Objective reality showed you such? Is it within your range of possibility that the Catholic Church Might be right and that you might be wrong?
If the answer is no, then we don’t have anything else to discuss. If the answer is no then you are not engaging in conversation in good faith. It is unreasonable to ask us to concieve that the Catholic Church might be wrong but you are not willing to ever conceed that the Catholic Church might be right.
If you really want to talk about this and learn the truth about the Catholic Church then please respond but if you really did only come here to lead Catholics astray, then the conversation as far as I can see is over.
To do this would be to descend the ladder a rung or two so that we could speak on the same level. Truth is always the highest rung. At this point, PC, please understand that rony’s ancestors have practiced this ancient faith since day 1. If it is wisdom you seek, you go to the oldest practitioner. You’ve read of the Chaldeans in the bible. Thus, you may comfortably respect the earliest of the Christians. Or, go to the Eastern Orthodox. There’s absolutely no papal influence there, and their beliefs are identical to ours. What you will see is that the trail stops at Christ. Many of us did what you are doing. You just have to place your faith and trust in the one Lord to guide you. You will never intellectually resolve every issue. The Holy Spirit is in charge of such enlightenment.