Is the Catholic Church as an authority a circular argument? (Edited Title)

[PC_Master]

I don’t know how to do the quote thing, could you tell me how? For now I just copy and pasted what you said into my post I hope that’s allright.

No problem – just wrap quote] and /quote] around the text. You can find a post and click the “quote” button beneath it to get an idea of how this works.

[quoteAlso, I did think you were Sola Scriptura, sorry bout that.
[/quote]
Many people make that mistake.

You’re right! They did have the apostles, and those who learned from them, I.E. St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Polycarp, St. Clement of Rome.

Yep, they had those people.

But it didn’t stop there, it kept going in pristine fashion. Christ himself said so:

Matt. 28:18-19 “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations…” Matt 28:20 “teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

How can He just be with the apostles till the end of the age, clearly they will die within 50-70 years of His death. This must refer to the church. He doesn’t say I’ll give you a book till the end of age, He says I will be with you until the end of age.

Yes – and more specifically, it can be applied to each member of the church. Or, is there some reason you know that this can apply only to the supposed successors of the apostles, but not to anyone else?

Clearly, the final authority here is the church. He can’t be talking about some intangible church made of only spirit, because you can’t bring your brother in front of an intangible church to settle an argument.

True – but you can bring them in front of other believers as a collective.

There were many works floating around. The Gnostics, Acts of Peter, and so forth.

Well, some of those works do have later dates. However, the written evidence I can find doesn’t show the Acts of Peter, or most of the other non-canon works as having even a reasonable following in the church in the early centuries.

Many didn’t agree on the Gospel of John, Revelation, James and others. It took the Authority of the Church to settle the matter.

The gospel of John was in question by whom?

There is no reasonable way to prove the inspiration of the Bible without the Catholic Church. Trying to prove inspiration of the Bible from the bible is a circular argument.(I know this refers to SS). I’d like to know what your method of proving inspiration of the bible is?

What’s your means of proving the inspiration of the teachings of the RCC?

Further, the bible says nothing of the effect that it is the only authority. The bible gets its authority from the Church.

No, the contents of scripture come straight from God, through inspired men, to us.

I firmly believe the Holy Spirit is THE authority, but He chooses to practice it through the Catholic Church, just as Jesus said he would as mentioned above.

Whereas I believe the holy spirit is the authority, and God chooses to act, not through the RCC, but through revelation to individual believers. Can you show anything conclusive that can only apply to the RCC, and not to a church composed of individual believers?

If it is up to each individual to interpret the bible, only two things are possible.

1. We are not open at all to that inspiration, because there are over 30,000 different Protestant denominations, all because of certain aspects of doctrine.
2. Or, the Holy Spirit is Schizophrenic. I find this one highly unlikely.

In response to the first point – the amount of agreement between many of the supposed 30,000 denominations is incredibly high. If you’re looking for complete unity, you won’t find it, even in the RCC. Thus the problem is solved.

On the second point – agreed. There is only one truth.

I think God would have foreseen all this division, and probably would have done something about it. Like give us an Inerrant guide in these matters.

Based on what? How do you know that God would act this way? What makes the assumption that he’d act this way more reasonable than that he would act in some other way?

 

[Brady_W]

PC Master,
First, thank you for telling me to quote I appreciate that. I have written a rather lengthy response to your last post(sorry bout that), and I had to do quite a significant amount or reading and research to do it, so I hope that you will take the time to read it all.

[quoteYes – and more specifically, it can be applied to each member of the church. Or, is there some reason you know that this can apply only to the supposed successors of the apostles, but not to anyone else?
[/quote]

Christ had many disciples, but He didn’t tell all of his disciples this, He told the apostles. PC, you said in an earlier post, that before Christians had the cannon, they relied on the teachings of the Apostles, and their direct disciples I.E Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp…If Jesus didn’t give the Authority to the successors of the Apostle’s, why did people listen to the early Church Fathers? Because in your point of view, they would have had no Authority.

Acts 1:20 “For it written…‘May another take his office’”
Judas was enlisted in the ministry of Apostle. If Authority of the Apostles dies when the Apostles die, there would have been no need to fill the vacant office. The fact they did choose another for the vacant office means the authority was transferred to another.

This must be how the Apostles interpreted this, because from the testimony of St. Clement of Rome, who historically was known to be a disciple of Peter, he writes:

"The apostles have preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done so] from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe. Nor was this any new thing, since indeed many ages before it was written concerning bishops and deacons. For thus says the Scripture in a certain place, “I will appoint their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith.”

This can be found in the Letter to the Corinthians from Clement of Rome.

Also, Clement clearly demonstrates the order of ministry (hierarchy) that was present then, and it is the same now. This is also demonstrated by Clement in the same letter:

“Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry.”

[quoteTrue – but you *can bring them in front of other believers as a collective.

They could bring them in front of a collective beleivers, but this doesn’t help matters out, there is no authority to settle the matter in a collective of beleivers. For instance, take the Anglican Church. There is no rule of Authority, all the bishops and such are figureheads. When the dilemma of ordaining women to the priesthood broke out among them, they were clearly divided with no Authority to settle the matter. In fact, I have even heard a former Anglican Priest converting to Catholicism, precisely because of that matter. When this same dilemma broke out in the RCC, the Church ruled authoritatively that ordination of women could not be done. And the buck stops there.

 

[Brady_W]

[quoteWhat’s your means of proving the inspiration of the teachings of the RCC?[quote/]

Well while I was trying to persuse through all of the previous posts to see what had been covered, I noticed some people using the spiral argument, first using the Bible as a merely Historical book, then inspired…you know the argument. I won’t use that one because clearly you did not find it convincing. However, It is still a logical and valid approach. If I understand correctly, your whole purpose of this thread is that we can’t really use the bible in any way to validate the authority of the Church, because you think this is circular reasoning. (BTW if you take this approach, you have to concede the point that the bible is a document of RCC, otherwise we could certainly use it to validate authority.) Anyways, I’ll use the Church Fathers, they are not the bible, and as you say, they were the one true Church, and dissapated throughout history to what we have now. If thats true one would expect that Church to look different from what it does now, this is where I’ll start.

I already quoted St. Clement of Rome to a large extent above, which I beleive is sufficient, he clearly demonstrates the principle. But I’ll do some more work for ya:

St. Ignatius of Antioch, thought to be a disciple of the Apostle of John writes:

“See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop.”

“Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid.”

“It is well to reverence both God and the bishop. He who honours the bishop has been honoured by God; he who does anything without the knowledge of the bishop, does [in reality] serve the devil.”

The excerpts above can be found in St. Ignatius’ Epistle to the Smyreans.There a quite a few more examples of this but frankly I’m tired of reading for today ha ha.

[quoteWhereas I believe the holy spirit is the authority, and God chooses to act, not through the RCC, but through revelation to individual believers. Can you show anything conclusive that can only apply to the RCC, and not to a church composed of individual believers?
[/quote]

See a lot of stuff above.

[quoteIn response to the first point – the amount of agreement between many of the supposed 30,000 denominations is incredibly high. If you’re looking for complete unity, you won’t find it, even in the RCC. Thus the problem is solved.
[/quote]

I don’t see it as being quite as simple as this. For one there was division in the protestant church starting from the fathers of the Reformation on important doctrines. One of them being the cannon of the New Testament, Luther kicked James, Revelation, Hebrews, and maybe some others out of the Cannon, while his cohorts were tried and succeeded to bring them back. Calvin beleived in a very strict predestination, where our will is always trumped by God’s, and we are pre-determined to be damned or saved. This is clealy not the opinion of Luther, and many protestants down through the ages. To this day it still occurs, you yourself dismiss one of Protestant’s most important doctrines, I.E. Sola Scriptura. The RCC is not divided, by definition all rites of the Church are in full union with the Church and her doctrines, or else they wouldn’t be a rite of the Church.

Well I realize I’ve written a lot, and I’m sorry about that. I think I’ve given a pretty decent account of why the Authority of the RCC must be true. Now I ask you to do the same. You say you don’t beleive in SS, but you use to the bible to find Truth, correct. I think both you and I agree that the Bible is Authoritative, but not the only authority, (otherwise it would be SS), I have explained what I beleive to be my Authority (1 Tim 3:15), and ask you to do the same.

God Bless,

Brady

 

[Brady_W]

ah man, looks like i’m still not doing the quote thing right.

Sorry

 

[qui_est_ce]

Well I realize I’ve written a lot, and I’m sorry about that. I think I’ve given a pretty decent account of why the Authority of the RCC must be true. Now I ask you to do the same. You say you don’t beleive in SS, but you use to the bible to find Truth, correct. I think both you and I agree that the Bible is Authoritative, but not the only authority, (otherwise it would be SS), I have explained what I beleive to be my Authority (1 Tim 3:15), and ask you to do the same.

God Bless,

Brady

You did an amazing job.

Thanks for taking the time to put it all together.

 

[tdgesq]

You did an amazing job.

Thanks for taking the time to put it all together.

I agree. Good job posting up Ignatius of Antioch, who was born circa 50 A.D. Here is some more from Ignatius’ Epistle to the Ephesians for PC to consider:

It is therefore befitting that you should in every way glorify Jesus Christ, who has glorified you, that by a unanimous obedience “you may be perfectly joined together in the same mind, and in the same judgment, and may all speak the same thing concerning the same thing,” 1 Corinthians 1:10 and that, being subject to the bishop and the presbytery, you may in all respects be sanctified.Chapter 2.

Wherefore it is fitting that you should run together in accordance with the will of your bishop, which thing also you do. For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp.Chapter 4.

**For if the prayer of one or two possesses Matthew 18:19 such power, how much more that of the bishop and the whole Church! **He, therefore, that does not assemble with the Church, has even by this manifested his pride, and condemned himself. For it is written, “God resists the proud.” Let us be careful, then, not to set ourselves in opposition to the bishop, in order that we may be subject to God. Chapter 5.

**It is manifest, therefore, that we should look upon the bishop even as we would upon the Lord Himself.**Chapter 6.

Especially [will I do this] if the Lord make known to me that you come together man by man in common through grace, individually, in one faith, and in Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David according to the flesh, being both the Son of man and the Son of God, so that you obey the bishop and the presbytery with an undivided mind, breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but [which causes] that we should live for ever in Jesus Christ.Chapter 20.

I’ve asked before and I’ll ask again: Where are your bishops PC? Shall we trust the writings of one of the earliest ECF’s or not?

1. Paul’s collected works are known to have been circulating by the end of the first century, and the muratorian fragment indicates that four gospels, 13 Pauline letters, and other works were regularly read in churches by around 170AD.

The muratorian fragment comes later than Ignatius’ writings. The author of the muratorian fragment is unknown. It omits the Epistle to the Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter and James, and it doubts the authenticity of Revelation. It does not identify the authors of the first two gospels, which apparently you are willing to uncritically infer as Matthew and Mark.

Now, which of these two documents, the muratorian fragment or the Epistles of St. Ignatius, do you find to be more reliable?

By the way, the muratorian fragment states in part:

But Hermas wrote the Shepherd (74) very recently, [7c] in our times, in the city of Rome, (75) while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the [episcopal] chair (76) of the church of the city of Rome. [7d] (77) And therefore it ought indeed to be read; but (78) it cannot be read publicly to the people in church either among (79) the Prophets, whose number is complete, [8] or among (80) the Apostles, for it is after [their] time.bible-researcher.com/muratorian.html

It appears that the Church is a church made up of Bishops to me.

 

[qui_est_ce]

Here is some more from Ignatius’ Epistle to the Ephesians for PC to consider:
bible-researcher.com/muratorian.html

It appears that the Church is a church made up of Bishops to me.

That is a great link. I have added it to my favorites.

You know, this discussion reminds me of Luke’s Theophilus. PC is our Theophilus. By talking to him, we are learning. Today’s first reading was from Acts 8:26-40 about the Eunoch who needed to be taught to understand Isaiah by Philip. The homily used this reading to call us to know Scripture and to live Scripture. I had one of the “Holy Spirit” moments.

Thanks to you and to Brady W for your excellent work. Thank you CAF for providing us the means to grow, learn, and evangelize one another.

I find myself both awed and humbled by the graces with which God has filled us.

Christ’s peace to all.

 

[guanophore]

Yes – and more specifically, it can be applied to each member of the church. Or, is there some reason you know that this can apply only to the supposed successors of the apostles, but not to anyone else?

I think it is more a case of HOW it is applied to every member. Jesus appointed the Apostles, so that everyone who is in union with them can enter into the benefits of the promises He made to them.

True – but you can bring them in front of other believers as a collective.

I have witnessed this is Protesant Communities. It seems that it still defers to the elders of that community.

Whereas I believe the holy spirit is the authority, and God chooses to act, not through the RCC, but through revelation to individual believers. Can you show anything conclusive that can only apply to the RCC, and not to a church composed of individual believers?

I could not, because I do not consider the Catholic Church to be “Roman”. I am curious, though, why you might think that there are such specific instructions about authority and the appointment of heirarchy both in the NT and in the Early FAthers. Why do you suppose, after only one generation, the Early Fathers misunderstood the message so quickly?

Based on what? How do you know that God would act this way? What makes the assumption that he’d act this way more reasonable than that he would act in some other way?

This is what He actually did. He chose Peter, made him a rock for the foundation, gave him keys, then he gave all the Apostles authority. Why did Jesus always choose out his “bad boys” (Peter, James and John) and single them out to do special things the others did not?

 

[Brady_W]

this thread kinda died huh?

 

[Teflon93]

this thread kinda died huh?

It lapped itself some time ago, I’m afraid. Circularity tends to abound when clearly-articulated arguments are not engaged and forwarded but rather avoided.

The Catholic Church, contra the title of this long and incomprehensible thread, does not claim authority in its own right but rather has been invested with authority by Christ. One can torture Scripture all he likes, but it cannot confess to anything other than the fact that Christ himself intended to found, and did found, the Church, with Peter at its head, the same Church which has persevered two millennia in unbroken succession from Peter’s day to this, as Christ promised.

It is the claim to believe the Bible while rejecting its claims which is the flawed argument here.

 

[PC_Master]

Brady> If you’ll notice, several posters sorta bowed out of this thread. Prior to that point, we were having a very meaningful exchange. Unfortunately, after that, guanophore, qui est ce, Teflon93, and others came in. In short, I don’t feel that these individuals were fair in their comments, and that they employed a lot of rhetoric (which is typical for their posts). I understand that they feel their posts are accurate, and I don’t wish to fight with them over it, so I choose to simply not respond.

You’ll notice not one of them has addressed the question of how we can know that the apostles believe in confession to a priest for the remission of sins, transubstantiation, etc. This is very indicative of the goal here – it’s not about learning, as it is for me (and seems to be for you), nor is it about a meaningful exchange. It’s about winning arguments for these guys, and I simply won’t take part in that. I’m not trying to trash them – rather to explain why I won’t debate with them. It’s not that I have no response, or that they’ve proved me wrong and so I’m running away – to me, “I don’t know” or “you’re right” are valid responses. I just don’t see the point of debating something when the goal is not to discover and understand the truth, but rather to support the position of the RCC at pretty much any cost.

In other words, I don’t see this as a playground for honing my apologetics skills. Some others do. Once you get into apologetics, you usually reject the possibility that you could be wrong, and instead are focused on finding a way to prove that you’re right. To me, this makes the arguments of such persons rather useless and unreasonably biased.

If you would like (please do respond to let me know either way), I would be happy to respond to your posts, as thus far you seem to be a fair individual who isn’t out to win an argument, but rather to discover the truth of the matter. (Whether or not we agree on what the truth is, at least we seem to both be after it.) Again, please let me know if you wish to hear further from me.

In the mean time, I’ll wait for pneuma and others to return (which may or may not happen, as people all have lives to attend to – lives which keep them very busy). If/when they do, I suspect that the thread might pick up again.

God bless.

 

[Teflon93]

You’d be a lot more persuasive in your desire for elevated debate if you’d actually engage in it yourself from time to time, PCM.

Unless, of course, your definition of “elevated debate” is “a discussion where PCM’s arguments, evidence, and sentiments go unchallenged.”

The nice thing about a thread is that anybody who cares to check your assertions above can scroll through at their leisure and do so.

I must have missed where this thread became about the sacrament of penance, of which there have been any number of threads (on-topic) no less and where the Catholic position has been explained and justified through Scripture repeatedly.

Once again, anyone coming late to this debate can avail themselves of the Search feature to find these threads and judge the discussion for themselves.

It is not the Catholics on this board who seek to limit such discussion; indeed, that’s the whole reason this board exists. If there is a Protestant board which approaches Catholic Answers’ standards for charity and comity, you are free (as always) to provide a link. We are ever in search of good examples.

 

[Br.Rich_SFO]

Ok. So I see the likelihood that there needs to be an earthly authority. Question is: How does one determine who has that authority?

There are many churches claiming to be The One True Church/Earthly Authority. Why should I believe the CC is that authority?

I think the problem, at least for me and perhaps others, is the tendancy to believe that the best way to determine where the authority is, is to compare it to the early church; the apostolic church; the church of the Bible… Or, is that really a problem?:

This is circular reasoning. If there needs to be an extra-biblical, eartly authority, we still need to determine where that authority is, and the bible is the only infallible source to turn to. The rest is heresay and more self-interpretation.

No matter what angle I try to come to the Catholic Church from, I run into a wall - or should I say - I come back to the same place b/c I’m running around in circles.

It can’t be proven. But then again, neither can God’s existence be proven. You can show me what you think is more probable, and I can show you conflicting things that I think are more probable, but neither of us can prove anything at all and we all have to rely on our own, flawed judgement.

So, perhaps it looks more probable that the CC is the OTC, but the problem there is that when you introduce crafty Satan into the picture it throws a monkey wrench into the whole thing. Perhaps the CC looks like the most probable answer (I say “looks like” in that many of the reasoning, apologetically, historically, etc. is somewhat convincing), but I always ask myself (and what is keeping me from accepting the Catholic defense) if the Catholic defense of “supposed” scripture contradictions are not simply crafty ways of excusing herself. There are many, what appear to me to be, blatant contradictions in some very plain verses. Inevitably someone will say “what is so plain about that verse? You are looking at it too simplistically. You need to look at history, culture, etc to understand how to interpret that”. But is that all scripture is? A mere picture of how things were in particular circumstances at a particular time in history?

It seems to me that the Bible is simply viewed as old letters and early church writings with no more value than present church writings. If that is the case (as it seems to be – to Catholics anyway) then there is no way to really determine if the Catholic claims of authority, current teachings, etc. are valid or not b/c you can’t prove they didn’t fall into error somewhere along the lines w/out a point of comparison/rule of measure that the average Joe can turn to.

That, I believe, is where non-Cs determine that the Bible must be that authority. We know it comes from God. We’re not all so sure the CC as we see it today is.

Anyone else dizzy?

God must be taking into account our flawed evalutations. If we can’t infallibly interpret scripture, then we can’t infallibly interpret the earthly authority either.

.

 

[qui_est_ce]

Brady> If you’ll notice, several posters sorta bowed out of this thread. Prior to that point, we were having a very meaningful exchange. Unfortunately, after that, guanophore, qui est ce, Teflon93, and others came in. In short, I don’t feel that these individuals were fair in their comments, and that they employed a lot of rhetoric (which is typical for their posts). I understand that they feel their posts are accurate, and I don’t wish to fight with them over it, so I choose to simply not respond.

You’ll notice not one of them has addressed the question of how we can know that the apostles believe in confession to a priest for the remission of sins, transubstantiation, etc.

Had the subject come up, I would have been glad to oblige. Now that it has come up,
"John 20:23:

Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."

We believe the Apostles were the first Bishops. How can the sin be forgiven unless it is confessed? If you would like to continue in this discussion, start a thread on this Sacrament. Also, I would be happy to further research St. Ignatious of Antioch and St. Clement for references on the practices of the Early Church.

This is very indicative of the goal here – it’s not about learning, as it is for me (and seems to be for you), nor is it about a meaningful exchange. It’s about winning arguments for these guys, and I simply won’t take part in that. I’m not trying to trash them – rather to explain why I won’t debate with them. It’s not that I have no response, or that they’ve proved me wrong and so I’m running away – to me, “I don’t know” or “you’re right” are valid responses. I just don’t see the point of debating something when the goal is not to discover and understand the truth, but rather to support the position of the RCC at pretty much any cost.

"qui:

You know, this discussion reminds me of Luke’s Theophilus. PC is our Theophilus. By talking to him, we are learning. Today’s first reading was from Acts 8:26-40 about the Eunoch who needed to be taught to understand Isaiah by Philip. The homily used this reading to call us to know Scripture and to live Scripture. I had one of the “Holy Spirit” moments.
Thanks to you and to Brady W for your excellent work. Thank you CAF for providing us the means to grow, learn, and evangelize one another.

PC:

In other words, I don’t see this as a playground for honing my apologetics skills. Some others do. Once you get into apologetics, you usually reject the possibility that you could be wrong, and instead are focused on finding a way to prove that you’re right. To me, this makes the arguments of such persons rather useless and unreasonably biased.

How do you reconcile the above with:

Well, I have no problem with recognizing parallels – I just have a problem with using assumed parallels as a means of proof. “We know X is true because Christianity is a perfected Davidic kingdom, and in that kingdom, Y happened, which we can clearly see prefigures X.”

Do you see what I’m getting at? The parallels, while in context can be evidence to support the validity of a position, should not be uses as the reason for a belief.

You have expressed your desire to stick to logic in many of your posts here and on other threads. There is nothing wrong with using Aristotelian arguments, but please don’t accuse others of “honing” their skills, and you wish no part of it.

Your ad hominem attacks are uncharitable, and it appears to be YOU who like honing your skills at the expense of learning Truth.

 

[PC_Master]

Note that I was well aware I’d be attacked ad hominem at this point, and that I’d be accused of having done the same thing.

You’d be a lot more persuasive in your desire for elevated debate if you’d actually engage in it yourself from time to time, PCM.

Elevated debate? I’m not sure what you’re getting at here? I’m simply looking for open and honest debate, concerned with understanding the truth, whether or not it agrees with the RCC party line.

Unless, of course, your definition of “elevated debate” is “a discussion where PCM’s arguments, evidence, and sentiments go unchallenged.”

I don’t mind challenge, and in fact I welcome it, as it improves my understanding and opinions, but what I’ve had from you and others is a situation where my arguments, evidence, and “sentiments” (whatever you mean by this) have gone unaddressed, critically, accurately, or otherwise. You guys usually just gloss over them in an effort to present your own point of view, without really understanding what I’m saying in the first place. In such cases, what useful discussion can actually be had?

I’ve actually gone to the extent of addressing virtually all posts made in some threads, to be sure that it was clear that I understood, and wasn’t simply ignoring arguments that didn’t fit with my thought process. Besides, if I had to ignore things to make my ideas fit, what good would my ideas be anyway? All I’m saying is that you guys should do the same – ask valid questions, and for goodness’ sake please stop with the excessive rhetoric and baseless assertions. (A recent example would be the assertion that Protestants claim scripture as the authority while rejecting what it teaches, a point that you claim, but have provided no evidence for aside from your own, possibly flawed, interpretation.)

The nice thing about a thread is that anybody who cares to check your assertions above can scroll through at their leisure and do so.

That’s correct, and I encourage people to do so. I get heated at times, no doubt, but the vast majority of my posts are almost insanely logical, and my points are supported with history and fact. When I make use of supposition, I clarify that such is what I’m doing.

And regardless, I don’t really care who else sees you as one who doesn’t fairly debate – my point was only that I see you this way, and this is why I won’t debate with you. Because of that, this thread has died down, causing Brady to inquire about it, and me to respond.

I must have missed where this thread became about the sacrament of penance, of which there have been any number of threads (on-topic) no less and where the Catholic position has been explained and justified through Scripture repeatedly.

1. It’s not specifically about penance, or about anything else. The general point I was making is in relation to the main topic – I asked how we can know that the practices that the RCC claims the aposltes followed are actually what the apostles followed. That’s the point. It’s not about the specifics – those are only examples which exemplify the point being made. To establish that “the church” did certain things and was structured a certain way, we need more than rhetoric.
2. The other threads mentioned employ the usual tactic of “well we don’t believe scripture has to prove anything, because we have church tradition too”. And that’s fine…for those threads. But here, the question is whether or not having the RCC as an authority is a circular argument – for it not to be a circular argument, you must have an external source of authority which clearly establishes the authority of the RCC. But Roman Catholics rely instead on “we know this is how it was because the RCC’s tradition has been the same for 2000 years”. You rely on the RCC to interpret scripture, but scripture is supposed to validate the RCC. It just doesn’t work – it’s insanely circular, and thus proves nothing at all.

It is not the Catholics on this board who seek to limit such discussion;

I never said you were trying to limit discussion – I simply am saying that your responses did not foster it, due to the distasteful methods of debating that you employ. I simply have no wish to be a part of that kind of discussion. I have no problem with you honing your apologetics skills, and no problem with you being willing to do whatever it takes to defend what you believe – I just don’t want to be involved in it, because I’m here to objectively (as much as possible) look at the evidence and figure out what the truth is.

Continued…

 

[PC_Master]

If there is a Protestant board which approaches Catholic Answers’ standards for charity and comity, you are free (as always) to provide a link. We are ever in search of good examples.

Nice. Very smooth.

In any case – whether or not there are Protestant forums that can be compared, that doesn’t change your behavior, or the fact that I don’t wish to debate with you.

Br. Rich> Was there a particular point in that post you wanted to respond to? It looks like you just quoted it for us to see, without a response? Is this correct?

What’s so confusing?

Had the subject come up, I would have been glad to oblige. Now that it has come up,

If you actually had read the thread, you would see that it’s been an issue for pages.

Second, that passage in John doesn’t speak directly to any priests – so now you have to establish apostolic succession, and that this “special gift” from Christ is communicated to priests as well as the successors of the apostles (bishops). Further, even given all of that, it says nothing of this being necessary for the remission of sins. The difference between availability and necessity is important here.

We believe the Apostles were the first Bishops.

Yes, I know you do. That doesn’t make it so, however. This is the problem I was speaking of above – “I believe” is all well and good, but it’s not fact.

How can the sin be forgiven unless it is confessed?

1. God is free to forgive whatever he wishes in whatever manner he wishes.
2. Even if confession were necessary, why does that make it necessary to confess to a priest?

If you would like to continue in this discussion, start a thread on this Sacrament. Also, I would be happy to further research St. Ignatious of Antioch and St. Clement for references on the practices of the Early Church.

If you’d like to do so, please do. I have no desire to start a new thread, since the topic is integral to the key point of the thread.

You have expressed your desire to stick to logic in many of your posts here and on other threads. There is nothing wrong with using Aristotelian arguments, but please don’t accuse others of “honing” their skills, and you wish no part of it.

I call it as I see it. Admittedly, I’m fallible, and could be wrong, but I don’t believe I am. And as long as you continue to approach things from the position of “we know the RCC is right, now let’s just figure out how to defent that teaching”, I’ll continue to see it that way.

Anyway, that’s it for me for now. I hope others will return and discuss some more. If so, I’ll return and post more. If not, I guess that’s it for this thread (at least, for me).

 

[Teflon93]

And if PCM’s posts above strike anyone besides himself as “insanely logical”, please feel free to chime in.

There’s nothing even approaching a logical argument there, nor in the thread above, I’m afraid.

One must make an argument before one can claim an argument one has made has gone unchallenged.

It would be better if the argument PCM chose to make didn’t simultaneously eviscerate his own faith community’s beliefs in any case, to whit:

1. Protestant beliefs, at least for those hewing to sola scriptura, have their source in the Holy Bible, especially the New Testament of the Holy Bible.
2. The Catholic Church assembled the Holy Bible, and wrote the New Testament.
3. If the Catholic Church simply invented apostolic tradition out of whole cloth, the Holy Bible, the written record of a significant portion of apostolic tradition, is clearly fictional.
4. If the Holy Bible is a work of fiction, Protestant beliefs based upon the Holy Bible are fictional as well.

Let me put it much more succinctly:

If the Catholic Church was wrong about Christ in the 2nd century, Protestants relying on the written record of this error cannot possibly be right.

Martin Luther recognized this simple fact, as my signature notes.

Someday, PCM will recognize it as well, by which time he will no doubt apply his insanely logical approach to another line of attack.

That’s the trouble with logic—conclusions follow from fact and inference, not from woolgathering.

 

[SCALCO]

I am referring to Ignatius. Episcopacy is cristal clear in his writings.

I’ll have to re-read that.

Hi PCM,
Have you had a chance to read Ignatius again? If so, what is your interpretation of Ignatius with respect to episcopacy? I think this is the direction the thread is going anyway.

Hopefully, the others will come back to the discussion. I am counting on others to carry on the debate because I probably cannot in great length or depth. I wish everyone would focus on an honest debate.

 

[PC_Master]

Hi PCM,
Have you had a chance to read Ignatius again? If so, what is your interpretation of Ignatius with respect to episcopacy? I think this is the direction the thread is going anyway.

I’m not sure that’s the case, however I do still intend to reread Ignatius – I’ve just been pretty busy with life (work, school, etc) lately.

Hopefully, the others will come back to the discussion. I am counting on others to carry on the debate because I probably cannot in great length or depth. I wish everyone would focus on an honest debate.

Same here.

 

[qui_est_ce]

"QUI:

What’s so confusing?

Are you looking for a logical extra-biblical argument on every teaching? If Apostolic Succession can be proven, would that be sufficient?

qui:

We believe the Apostles were the first Bishops.
pc:

Yes, I know you do. That doesn’t make it so, however. This is the problem I was speaking of above – “I believe” is all well and good, but it’s not fact.

qui:

OK,the Magesterium teaches that.
pc:

and I could be wrong, but I don’t believe that I am

I am tempted to put your above assesment of what I believe is not on the same level as what you believe. The problem is you are picking apart the argument based on words, and not the entire meaning of the post. One poster compared the Isrealite’s wanderings in the desert for 40 years with Jesus’ 40 days in the desert. You jumped on the discrepancy of 40 years vs. 40 days. Do you see I am confused?

Many of us here are converts and reverts. Do you not believe we have examined all the issues and come to a logical leap of faith? I work with RCIA, I have heard a lot of stories of people searching for faith, and finally finding it in the CC. Every single thing that you have brought up I have researched. And it always brings me back to Rome. There are many teachings I don’t understand, but if the CC is right about so many other things, I will trust her to be true. One does not have to be a great intellect to recognize Truth. All I have to do is see Pope Benedict XVI while he is here and I know he is true. If intellectuals such as Thomas Acquinas and St. Augustine believe the the CC, who am I with my little pea-brain to outsmart them? There are some who will never be convinced of the truth of the CC, and maybe you are one, but please do not belittle the faithful as being merely rhetorical or not seeking truth, or simply blindly defending our Church. The richness of the history of the CC is impossible to condense into a Forum such as CAF.

Perhaps you are seeking a soulmate with whom to discuss philosophy over brandy?