Is the Catholic Church a cult ?

[elvisman]

elvisman;3914758:

Mat 1:25. Joseph honored Mary and had no relations with her until after the birth of Christ. Then if you go to Mat 13:55 and Mark 6:34 you will hear of Jesus’s brothers. The greek here suggest of a relation not a friend.

Nothiing of what you listed has anything, absolutly nothing to do with a place called purgatory. Hell and the testing of works which is not the burning or the testing of ourselves btw, Finish reading it it is a beautiful text and connects to John 15
You have not offered and Biblical proof either for the asssessention into heaven of Mary who was not a virgin, Do you know why? because it is not there.
Luther left the CC because of the incident involving the purchasing of souls from Purgatory, and event that cannot happen from a place that does not exist. That was what motivated him to nail his decree to the door.
You asked for facts I have offered you impirical facts, data and evidence to prove my statements but you, on the other hand have offered no such thing. BTW read an old bottle and box of Christian brothers brandy and you will see that monks did and still do run that distillery. It was also a big court battle with the US government over not paying taxes. I am sure you can find that as well.
I stand by my comments firmly.

Calm down, my friend.

First of all, the text doesn’t necessarily mean “until” as we know it in English. This is a common novice misunderstanding. You would then have to believe that Jesus’ reign must come to an end:
Acts 2:34-35
For David did not go up into heaven, but he himself said: 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool."’

As for his “brothers” being Mary’s children – it doesn’t say that. It says:
"Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joses, Simon, and Judas"

Mark 15:40 speaks of Mary, the mother of James and Joses.
**She is referred to in **John 19:25 as the wife of Clopas. This is not Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Mark 6:3 speaks of these brothers as well.

As for purchasing souls for Purgatory - you REALLY need to do your homework. This was the work of corrupt within the Church such as Johann Tetzel - not the Catholic Church. Remember, there are bad apples wolves in sheep’s clothing everywhere (as Jesus warned) - even in your church(es).

**Lastly, an order of monks does not **the Catholic church make. Anyway - I don’t see why you have a problem with that. Christian Brothers makes Sacramental wine.

Study, my friend, then come back with facts - not fairy tales.

 

[elvisman]

Take your hands off your hips, Elvis…

Please don’t call me an anti-Catholic, because you are looking very ignorant.

Peace!

**If you spread falsehoods - such as the nonsense about priestly celibacy being linked to property rights - then you are anti-Catholic. **

**If you expressed it as something you were told and not as a fact, I humbly apologize. **

 

[estesbob]

It sounds to me like your gun is empty. As you are not willing to defend your position, I can only think you are posting it for the entertainment value you will receive by making people angry.

Not angry here, but very very amused at YOUR faulty logic!

Don’t you just love it when Protestants come her , cut-and-paste the same old anti-Catholic Garbage, and then accuse US of being angry when we asked them to back up the nonsense they post? fallenoverthebink have been confronted on many threads and asked to back up his opinion. All you will ever get from him is cut-and-pasted out of context Scripture verses followed by indignation when you don’t interpret them the way he wants you to.

 

[ljahns]

The married Episcopal Priest that have become married Roman Catholic Priest do not have to be celibate–correct?

Peace!

The married Episcopal Priest that becomes a Roman Catholic priest may stay married to his wife. However, upon her death he cannot remarry.

 

[ljahns]

This to backfrmthebrink:

I would like to hear how we misinterpret the passage concerning Peter being the foundation of the Church. For brevity’s sake I am only going to quote a small portion of the entire passage that begins at MT 16:13 and ends MT 16:19.

MT 16:17 Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you Simon sonof Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.

If the rock of the church is not Peter in this sentence then who is and why?

 

[flyersfan1088]

I have a very hard time with celibacy being a requirement for the priesthood. Wasn’t Peter married?

The Bible never says Peter was married. He could just have well been a widower.

 

[flyersfan1088]

I have a hard time with that as well and the Priests I know and talk with also do. Seems like a fire in the flesh that cannot be culled

What a strange statement. Surely any priest would have been aware of the whole celibacy thing before his ordination. Why did they still become priests?

 

[ljahns]

What kind of post is this? I offered you the assessment of what a cult is. I stated that In my opinion the CC fits this what is illogical and as you can see I have defended my position as I got roped into it. I am so easy.

Alright to answer your question -
In the order in which you stated your belief that the CC is a cult:

1. One of the largest businesses in the world. Every church is a business as it has to work in the “real world” as well as the Heavenly world. So this makes no sense unless you believe that all churches are cults.
2. Largest land owner in the world. What does land ownership have to do with whether or not an organization is a cult?

In my opinion points 1 & 2 are not germain to a discussion of cults so why put them in?

1. Altering the word of God. Doing so may not necessarily make a chuch a cult. Luther added the word “alone” to a passage in the bible to make it fit his doctrine. Does this make the Lutheran Church a cult?
2. Discrediting the Word of God makes one a heretic but does it make them a cult? unsure on this one.
3. Making their writings equal to Gods allowing it to add or change the message. A church cannot teach without authority. Within that authority, their message must be said to come from God. So are you saying that any church that does not just read the bible and do nothing else is a cult?
4. Once all of the above happens, then they have total control and one can no longer think and reason. So they can no longer make any decisions for themselves? If the above is true then they must have total control over them. IE what they eat, what movies they see, what they can read, when they sleep ad nauseum

Oh but since they cannot be denied protein, then well, they must create a dictator and thereby grab all power. it begs the question, power for what?

 

[flyersfan1088]

elvisman;3914758:

Mat 1:25. Joseph honored Mary and had no relations with her until after the birth of Christ. Then if you go to Mat 13:55 and Mark 6:34 you will hear of Jesus’s brothers. The greek here suggest of a relation not a friend.

I stand by my comments firmly.

First of all, the word “after” appears nowhere in Mt1:25. You added it yourself.

Second, I agree with you about relation, but it’s cousin, not brother.

 

[estesbob]

backfrmthebrink;3914846:

First of all, the word “after” appears nowhere in Mt1:25. You added it yourself.

Second, I agree with you about relation, but it’s cousin, not brother.

This from the guy who claims the Catholic Church altered Scripture to fit its doctrines

It is probable the relatives were indeed cousins or it could be that Joseph was a widower and is referring to Jesus’s stepbrothers. Had Mary born other children it is not likely Jesus would’ve turned his mother over to the care of John as he was dying on the cross.

 

[inthecloud]

The CC is complicated in that it is so accepted in our communitiesone of the largest business around. largest land owner and at one time the largest distillery.

Proof on each one of those assertions and why is does make the Church a cult?

The first rule in establishing a cult

Please tell us who make the rules for defining a “CULT”. The fundies themselves according to their whims?

is to alter the Word of God

Proof that the Catholic Church does that?

the next to either discredit it

Proof that the Catholic Church does that?

.or to make their writingsa equal to it as such allowing to add or change the message

.
Where is that in the Bible, who knows what is the real message. The Baptist, the Methodists, the Pentecostals?

Oncew that happens there is trremendous control and almost a complete inability to argue with reason. The area where it does not fit in type as you would usually find is that it does not prohibit its members of protein, essential for cognitive functioning. It will however establish a head and one that can claim exclusicve authority and therby power.

Just as the fundies do when dealing with science, history, and common logic? Have you looked at your ideas in a mirror? Now who is in a real cult?

I know I am in trouble.

Beautifull freudian slip.

but don’t worry you are in good company with Jehovah Witnesswes, Mormanism and Christian Science to name a few community accepted cults.

Accepted as cults by whom. By the fundies? Is a bit like the kettte calling the pot back.

Ok there. I can hear the guns clicking.

Im, shooting.

 

[IrishAm]

Everybody’s a cult to somebody, I suppose.

 

[inthecloud]

For an neopositivist atheist any belief system that does not fit the criteria for falseability of natural science can be a CULT.
Catholics if they do not believe in giving the other cheek can as well call fundieproddies a cult.

So I want to know if the propositions about the CC being a Cult because this or that are falseable. Or they are lying for Jesus.
And why the people calling the CC a cult are shure they are not in cults themselves.

No, I’m not an atheist, I slide between deism and Catholic Christianity.

But Im playing advocate know.

 

[emeraldcoast]

If you spread falsehoods - such as the nonsense about priestly celibacy being linked to property rights - then you are anti-Catholic.

If you expressed it as something you were told and not as a fact, I humbly apologize.

Here you go Elvisman, I read this information at the National Catholic Reporter. I don’t believe this is an anti-catholic site.

ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2002b/041202/041202s.htm

Peace!

 

[estesbob]

Here you go Elvisman, I read this information at the National Catholic Reporter. I don’t believe this is an anti-catholic site.

ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2002b/041202/041202s.htm

Peace!

Actaully many of us do considcer the National National Catholic Reporter to be borderline anit-catholic. Being the support married Priests and female ordination I would take anything they say about celbacy woth a huge grasion of salt.

The inheritaance argument is totally bogus-how could a Pirest leave Church property to an heir? Likewise why would the Church h have any claim on a priests private property?

 

[elvisman]

Here you go Elvisman, I read this information at the National Catholic Reporter. I don’t believe this is an anti-catholic site.

ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2002b/041202/041202s.htm

Peace!

I must apologize for this ignoramus because this is not only not true - it is not something that is backed up by history OR the Catholic Church.

Being Catholic doesn’t make you automatically inerrant or infallible - as is proven by the columnist’s opinions.

I know other Catholics who believe even more despicable fairy tales about the Church and its history.

I know Protestants who think that Martin Luther was a homosexual. Does that make it true? Absolutely not. There is nothing to substantiate that falsehood based on history and his status as a married man.

 

[ljahns]

Here you go Elvisman, I read this information at the National Catholic Reporter. I don’t believe this is an anti-catholic site.

ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2002b/041202/041202s.htm

Peace!

I would not give too much credence to NPC. They are decidedly “cafeteria catholic”. They want to change things like priestly celibacy (as that article attests), have women priests, allow contraception ad nauseum.

Priestly celibacy is not a dogma to the Catholic Church so at some point it may be changed, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

 

[IrishRover]

silly question celtic crusader; whom are you trying to bait? of course the Catholic Church is not a cult. though it was misdirected by Constantine in 313 ANNO DOMINE, and has been abused by those who sought their earthly pleasures at the risk of their eternal souls, it is clearly THE church founded by Jesus upon the shoulders of Peter. anyone want to say that which was founded by Him is a cult? are St. Anthony of Egypt, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi cult members?

 

[adstrinity]

From Wikipedia:
Cult

(religious practice)

(Etymology)
The term “cult” first appeared in English in 1617, derived from the French culte, meaning “worship” or “a particular form of worship” which in turn originated from the Latin word cultus meaning “care, cultivation, worship,” originally “tended, cultivated,” also the past participle of colere “to till the soil”. In French, for example, sections in newspapers giving the schedule of worship at Catholic churches are headed Culte Catholique; the section giving the schedule of Protestant churches is headed culte réformé.
The meaning “devotion to a person or thing” is from 1829. Starting about 1920, “cult” acquired an additional six or more connotatively positive and negative definitions that are separately discussed in other articles.
In Roman Catholicism, cultus or cult is the technical term for the following and devotion or veneration extended to a particular saint.
Some Christians make refined distinctions between worship and veneration, both of which can be outwardly expressed in a similar manner. Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy distinguish between worship (Latin adoratio, Greek latreia λατρεια]) which is due to God alone, and veneration (Latin veneratio, Greek doulia δουλεια]), which may be offered to the saints. These distinctions between deity and mediators are exhaustively treated at the entries for worship and veneration.
Among the observances in the cult are rituals, ceremonies, liturgy or audits, which may involve spoken or sung words, and often involve personal sacrifice. Other manifestations of the cult of a deity are the preservation of relics or the creation of images, such as icons (usually connoting a flat painted image) or three-dimensional cultic images, denigrated as “idols”, and the specification of sacred places, hilltops and mountains, fissures and caves, springs, pools and groves, or even individual trees or stones, which may be the seat of an oracle or the venerated site of a vision, apparition, miracle or other occurrence commemorated or recreated in cult practices. Sacred places may be identified and elaborated by construction of shrines and temples, on which are centered public attention at religious festivals and which may become the center for pilgrimages.
The comparative study of cult practice is part of the disciplines of the anthropology of religion and the sociology of religion, two aspects of comparative religion. In the context of many religious organisations themselves, the study of cultic or liturgical practises is called liturgiology.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_%28religious_practice%29

I would argue that there have been more than a few popes who were not charismatic at all.

No, but, some could argue that Jesus was.

 

[adstrinity]

Second, I agree with you about relation, but it’s cousin, not brother.

It’s not cousin, necessarily, just, “male relative,” at most. In the most broad definition, though, it could mean humanity/peoples.

And, concerning Peter not being married, I think in an epistle, it says he took his wife with him. I THINK.