Factor analysis is likely to play a part. But those mathematicians and analysts are going to need a lot of help from sociology, theology, and history. Math can help you count the divisions. But the dividing principle is not a mathematical one.
Goodness… There have been divisions since the beginning…
So Arians, Gnostics, etc…are Christian brothers… You seem to embrace divisions…oh except those divisions those aren’t the good kind.
This is very similar to the point I’ve been making. I notice that you have also opened another pot of worms – to wit, the question of whether having-been-in-something-and-then-left-it is a credential for telling others that it is wrong.Hear, hear ye.
What hope is there for us here if Mother Angelica, a Catholic religious and Protestant converts like Hann and Staples are not persuasive?
Yes, but I think you can argue that Christianity emerged out of Judaism, so it shares pre-Christian Jewish history with Judaism, otherwise there would only be a New Testament.
From a purely historical/sociological perspective, I think all of the splitting in the Church may have “saved” Christianity as a whole while undermining unity. I think of the French case. Here the Reformation was seriously repressed and the eventual outcome was the aggressive, militant secularism of the French Revolution. So, I’d rather have a split Church than that, if that is the alternative history.
I do not appreciate the false accusation as I have expressed nothing of the sort.
Just as there are Protestants who are more about being anti-Catholic than about being Protestant, so too I fully expect there to be Catholics who are more about being anti-Protestant (or anti-ecumenism as the case may be) than about being Catholic. If that’s where your coming from with ^^ these comments, then I respect your right to free speech but it makes little or no impression on me, because it simply doesn’t matter to me. What the Church said through Vatican II matters a great deal though.
Did the apostles just let the judaisers continue…did they say, to each his own…same with the heresies.
I don’t understand how you can take that at all from my post…Just as there are Protestants who are more about being anti-Catholic than about being Protestant, so too I fully expect there to be Catholics who are more about being anti-Protestant (or anti-ecumenism as the case may be) than about being Catholic. If that’s where your coming from with ^^ these comments, then I respect your right to free speech but it makes little or no impression on me, because it simply doesn’t matter to me. What the Church said through Vatican II matters a great deal though.
I think what is being disputed is not that divisions are good or should be accepted but your statement that there were no divisions for 1500 years. There were divisions which still exist. The Assyrian Church of the East after the Council of Ephesus, the Oriental Orthodox after the Council of Chalcedon and then with the Orthodox. Nobody is saying these divisions are good. They are merely saying it is wrong to say there were no divisions for the first 1500 years,I don’t understand how you can take that at all from my post…
I am a former evangelical, I was baptized evangelical, I love very much what my evangelical upbringing gave me. my family is entirely baptist or evangelical, I have no doubt they will be in heaven they very much love the Lord.
That doesn’t mean that we need to accept division as norm contrary to Christs words for unity. It doesn’t mean we should not in our ecumenism be truthful.
If we believe the Catholic faith we should want the whole world to know it, and we should not settle for it being ok that people have only pieces of the truth of Christ.
Personally, I was more interested in affirming Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio – and, I would now like to add, in encouraging people to read it in order to form a proper view of what it says. (Personally, I’m sure that the amount of time I spend on the CA forums in a single day would be more than enough time to read through it!)
Well, I thought I had posed 1000 years with the major divisions about 1500 years. I think there is a fundamental difference between the eastern schism (which aren’t multiplying exponentially) and the 16th century reformation.
So, it is based on a number game? 1,000 is bigger than 242? The Roman Catholic Church is just as divided as the Lutherans or Calvinists or Orthodox or any other religion. Whether they are “in or out”. A Roman Catholic cannot say they disagree with doctrine, but they can think it. Just a thought, logically if Rome allowed for separation *from *Rome(minus the fear of anathema) there would be significantly more than 242 Roman Catholic denominations.
Jon, you are changing the subject.
