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Angainor
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I think those two statements are functionally the same… At least I can’t tell the difference.
“Seems good to us” doesn’t sound particularly authoritative.
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Ambrose
Guest
I’d like to submit that freedom and truth (in this case I would mean the Catholic Church) are opposite sides of the same coin and I’d show why, especially in light of the context of being an ideologue.
Say you want to learn to play the piano. You want to be free to play all sorts of music, jazz, classical ect. So you take it up. You begin to practice and it’s a pain in the *****. You have to learn chords, scales, practice is tedious, the ideology of the piano doesn’t make sense but you want to play so you stay with it. Pretty soon, as you practice more and more you begin to pick it up and it slowly starts to get easier. As you continue to practice, the fundamental stuff, chords and scales become easy and you can almost do it without thinking. You’re learning the ideology of the piano (or the moral law or truths) and before you know it you can do it without thinking. As you continue to practice you’ve incorporated that law into yourself, you’re more or less set free from it because you now do it without thinking and low and behold, you’re free to play all sorts of music. If you didn’t learn the ideology of the piano, you never would have been able to be free to play all the beautiful music you now play.
Paul seems to be saying that to be free and you and I both know I could find passages to support this, you must learn, know and internalize the moral law. Do not use my freedom to indulge in a sinful nature - you bet. Don’t go up and pound on the keyboard of a piano and insist it’s music because as humans we know what music is since it’s written in our hearts.
Another quick observation. Is there any and I mean any reason for my wife and I to feel more of a sense of freedom since she got off the pill ? As a Protestant you’d probably say, it’s no big deal to be on the pill and we were for quite some time but thats all changed. Everything and I mean everything the Church teaches is meant to give us joy. What you might call meaningless ideology is actually there to bring us to Christ and we have found that following the rules or ideology has given us more a sense of blessedness (sp) in our lives.
That ideology or those rules that you might disdain and call being strictly human in nature can set you free. I believe that 100 %
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Thomas_More_1
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It is very interesting to hear this, as the Constutition / Supreme Court example is one used by Catholics.
There are three ways to look at the Constitution.
- The Constitution is a document we should interpret for ourselves, and apply to our daily lives. This would lead to anarchic chaos, and would make our nation a terrible place to live in without the rule of law.
- The Constitution is a document a Court must reasonably interpret. But we have to set up a careful system of interpretation whereby the interpreters stick to what the Constitution says, and then issue binding interpretations on others. If someone passes an unconstitutional law, it must be struck down not suggested down or the Constitution would have no teeth.
- The Constitution is a living document that we need to interpret to fit our modern society, blah blah blah liberal gasbag stuff. It should still be interpreted by a Court however.
- This is the Protestant view! The Bible is the only authority. We get a gajillion different interpretations, lots of chaos. If I became a Protestant I’d have NO IDEA where to go or what to believe, I’d be lost at sea. I know too much about Protestant differences to know where I’d even start. I could just carve out my own church.
- This is the Catholic view. God bless the Magisterium. Interpret the Bible, but stick to its meaning. The bible very clearly teaches faith and works, heaven and hell etc., so we believe it. It also teaches some things in less clear ways: the binding/loosing power of the Church, or even the most important doctrine of the Trinity, so we rely on the Church for these interpretations. From the Protestant Reformation we already have groups that deny the Trinity and/or the Divinity of Christ. The Church for all her faults, will NEVER do that.
- This is the view of churches that believe that a Court should intrepret the bible, but they don’t much stick to the text itself. Like those who see a secret nifty super-duper right to privacy, that I never found in my reading of the document.
The major difference of course is that the Court is not at all infallible or directly ordained by God. But without it, the Constitution would be toothless.
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Angainor
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Very nicely put. I think that is exactly what Paul and Peter had in mind, but I don’t think it is particularly Catholic or unCatholic. I personally have no quarrel with Catholic moral teaching, including (believe it or not) contraception. A marriage without contraception probably is more beautiful music. I don’t quite know yet if it is for everyone, but for those who can achieve it, I have no doubt it enriches their lives. Catholic moral teaching is one thing I admire.
There is, however, more than one way to learn the piano. In New Testament times, Jewish Christians thought it was sinful to eat [thread=66628]food sacrificed to idols[/thread]. For them, that rule was a tool to help them get the music right. Paul knew it wasn’t really a sin–idols aren’t real so food sacrificed to them is just food. Paul told the Gentile churches it was OK, but don’t eat it around Jewish Christians because it might cause them to stumble.
The two groups of Christians used different toolboxes to help them play beautiful tunes on the piano. Does this mean they were divided? No, they were still one Church. True Christians, Lutheran, Catholic, Methodist, whatever, who happen to use different toolboxes to learn the piano are still one Church–as long as they are truely promote good music. Of course, those who fall into traps like relativism no longer promote beautiful tunes and are not part of the Church.
It would be better if Christians were more unified in a more visible way, and maybe someday we will be.
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Ambrose
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Thank you and I like your analogy as well. There’s no question our two faiths have come along way in agreeing on important issues since the reformation and I hope we continue to do so. After all, we agree on much much more than we disagree on and as my hero John Paul II would have it, dialogue is the way to go.
Thanks for a nice discussion, I’ve enjoyed it.
God Bless. :tiphat:
- Ambrose
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Angainor
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Thomas More:
The Supreme Court does have authority. It is a legitimate authority if and only if their rulings are consistant with the text of the Constitution. If the Court makes something up, we might all end up doing what they say, but there is an unreconciled injustice hanging out there. If their decisions are way out there all pretense of authority might be shattered. As an extreme example, what do you think would happen if the Court declared “The Constitution says that persons with last names beginning with G may not drive motor vehicles on Fridays.”? I find it unlikely that declaration would be enforced. Most likely it would be universally ignored. When the court misbehaves it only has as much authority as we allow it to have. There are limits.
What does this have to do with the Magisterium? Let’s just say Luther no longer saw it as a legitimate authority.
As a practical matter, number 2 is what we must live by, with the following understanding:
The Supreme Court does have authority. It is a legitimate authority if and only if their rulings are consistant with the text of the Constitution. If the Court makes something up, we might all end up doing what they say, but there is an unreconciled injustice hanging out there. If their decisions are way out there all pretense of authority might be shattered. As an extreme example, what do you think would happen if the Court declared “The Constitution says that persons with last names beginning with G may not drive motor vehicles on Fridays.”? I find it unlikely that declaration would be enforced. Most likely it would be universally ignored. When the court misbehaves it only has as much authority as we allow it to have. There are limits.
What does this have to do with the Magisterium? Let’s just say Luther no longer saw it as a legitimate authority.
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Angainor
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As did I.
God Bless you, too.
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itsjustdave1988
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Ah, so there’s nothing wrong with the Ebionite heresy. I see.
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Angainor
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What do you mean? The Ebionites’ teaching is false.
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Eden
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You actually asked this same question in the Apologetics forum several weeks ago. Your original thread was moved to the Popular Media forums because it was discussing a movie. There were many responses to the first thread. I was wondering if you were going to come back. Nice to see you again! Here’s the original thread that you started:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=72020
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itsjustdave1988
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That would certainly be the Catholic view. However, the reason it is known to be false is because a group of humans at Jerusalem in the first century said so, authoritatively…which you deny can happen.
The Ebionites insist that the Mosaic Law is binding and that the apostles were wrong at Jerusalem. They reject St. Paul as an apostate and only accept St. Matthew’s gospel.
In other words, the Ebionites rejected the councilar decrees of the visible hierarchical apostolic Church and omitted many books from their personal “canon” of Sacred Scritpure. Isn’t this exactly what Luther did?
You seem to deny that any group of human beings can discern with authority what is true from what is false. Yet that’s exactly what the apostolic men at Jerusalem did, which the Ebionites rejected.
Furthermore, your view also is congruent with the Arian heresy, who rejected the authority of human beings at the Council of Nicea. Without the authority given to human beings by God himself to discern what is true from what is false, a canon of Sacred Scripture is no canon at all, but merely an opinion.
Your epistemology is flawed and there are numerous examples of this throughout the history of heresies in the Holy Church.
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Angainor
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Can you help me find out when and how this happened. I looked in the Catholic Encyclopedia, but it doesn’t really mention how the issue was resolved.
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itsjustdave1988
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Angainor,
I don’t understand your question. Are you asking how the Judaizer issue was resolved by the Catholic Church?
I don’t understand your question. Are you asking how the Judaizer issue was resolved by the Catholic Church?
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