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spina1953
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Hi Annie 39: Thanks for the thumbs up!
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benjohnson
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That’s certainly your communions definition. However, If ‘Lutherans’ didn’t claim to be Catholic, we would immediately have to stop and reassess where the Catholic church was and run toward it.
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Annie39
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Actually the Eastern Rite Catholics “cling” to the True Church are truly Catholic but many if not most get their collective feathers get ruffled if you call them “Roman Catholics” they are not. We from the west don’t correct them when they refer to themselves as Catholic because that is indeed what they are. The founder of your religion was an ex-communicated Catholic his Church is not a member of the Catholic Church in any sense of the word. He and they spread a false gospel.Not quite. A better example would be that Evangelical Catholic is akin to the word American. Is the latter exclusive to U.S. citizens? No. Mexicans, Canadians, and anyone in the Western Hemisphere can rightly be called American. Yet, U.S. citizens use it so often to refer to themselves, the word has gained a meaning specific only to them. Make a little more sense?
Early Lutherans, and Lutherans today, never thought of themselves as Lutheran (a term invented by Rome to imply that those who hold are beliefs are ‘followers of a heretic, rather than Christ’); rather, we see ourselves as the rightly continuing Catholic Church. Similarly, Roman Catholic was attached to those Catholics who stuck to Rome.
The most ironic part of this conversation is that Roman Catholics in other threads have accused Lutherans of blindly following one man. “See?” they say, “You even name yourselves after him!” Yet when we try to call ourselves by what we truly are -Evangelical Catholics- we are accused of dishonesty. Just can’t please some people.
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spina1953
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But apparently you haven’t yet. If one belongs to the Lutheran church than one is Lutheran not Catholic since the Lutheran church is not in union with the CC. So, it would be like me saying I am a catholic Lutheran but I am not in union with the Lutheran church, does not make any sense with that type of logic.
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benjohnson
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What you are saying, doesn’t compute with us Lutherans. We make a non-exclusive claim to be a valid continuation of the western church. We’re in communion with the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church by virtue of being in communion with ourselves.
Granted, Catholics don’t see us in that light - otherwise you’d all become Lutheran.
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Annie39
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Something has happened to at least some of the LCMS folks because never did I experience any Lutherans who claimed THAT close of an association with the Catholic Church. Granted they did say they were catholic (small c) but never did I hear anyone call their church any kind of Catholic. This is a new thing. Much like, me thinks, that somewhere along the line the definition of Sola Scriptura was changed and expanded because the Lutherans, and many Reformed folks realized how very impossible it is to come to the truth with “just me and my bible”. But only Catholics are Catholic and Sola Scriptura means just that.
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Annie39
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Novocastrian
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Yet they believe that they do accept the authority and teaching of Catholicism. It’s just that Catholicism does not equal Rome.
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steido01
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Your timeline is backwards, here. We’ve always admitted that the church exists in Rome and Constantinople and Canterbury and Moscow and anywhere else that the Gospel is preached and the sacraments rightly administered. It’s only in America -and only in the last 150 years- that there’s been some fear of ‘appearing too Catholic,’ and along with that a distancing from “Catholic” things. I’m sorry that the church you attended was apparently so touched by that peculiar phenomenon. That’s not how it’s supposed to be.
Once again, your timeline is backward. We Lutherans have explained to you, several times, that our church’s practice of Sola Scriptura has always meant what we have explained it to mean. The “me and my bible” folks have no place within Evangelical Catholicism, as should be apparent from our Confessions, if you’d take the time to read them.
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Annie39
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So did you distance yourself from Luther too? Did your church begin with the guys who wrote the Confessions? Do you acknowledge that the Arians in Egypt were also Catholic? If not why not?
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Annie39
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You do not believe in objective truth or you think that objective truth is not knowable?
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spina1953
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Oh I understand your argument but it holds no weight since your church started by Luther was some 1500 years after the Catholic Church started and by the way, there is only One Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church and that is the CC. The Lutheran church can’t hold that title no matter what you claim that your church is one holy and apostolic and Catholic. The Lutheran church hold doctrines that are not and do not have the same understanding that the Catholic Church teaches. BTW, Luther was not a apostle just a monk, a priest with no authority, to decide doctrine.
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Novocastrian
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I’m struggling to see how you could possibly infer that from what I’ve said.
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spina1953
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Hi Novocastrian: Oh I agree! They want to pick and choose what they want but refuse to the authority of the CC and use the excuse that it is Rome and the Pope’s authority that they question. Yet, many of their doctrines are not the same as the CC; take the sacraments the CC has seven while the Lutheran church does not acknowledge seven but only two I think. Also I would like to add if they were Catholic as they like to say as one holy and apostolic and Catholic, like the Orthodox they would also have seven sacraments.
Rome really has nothing to do with Catholicism, it is only that the head of the CC happens to be in Rome. If the Pope decided for good reason to move to another city, he would still be the Pope and head of the CC.
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Novocastrian
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I don’t think they do want to pick and choose; they just identify Catholicism with a smaller set of dogmatic truths, i.e. the Gospel itself, the reading and teaching of the Scriptures, the sacraments (however they’re numbered), along with the Trinitatian and Christological doctrinal definitions of the early councils.
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spina1953
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You maybe correct about that but some of the doctrines they hold do not conform with what the CC teaches. it does seem to me that had Luther chose to stay in the CC and help to resolve the problems of that time there would not have been a Lutheran church. But Luther decided that he was correct in everything he thought concerning the Gospels and doctrines and what the Church was to be and it all ended up that those who had any disagreements with the CC decided they to could just leave and start their own church with their own doctrines and beliefs, and just use Scripture as the final authority instead of the CC.
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Novocastrian
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You are, of course, entitled to that view. There are those of us who are careful to say that the Scriptures, rightly interpreted, are the supreme authority in the Catholic Church.
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spina1953
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Yes of course, but did Luther correctly interpret Scripture? and who can rightly interpret Scripture since it my understanding as a catholic that Tradition and Scripture go hand in hand in teaching since when the Apostles were teaching there was no NT to refer to as a supreme authority in the Church.
You also said they didn’t use the confessions in adult education, so I’m not sure that parish is a good example.I was a member of the LCMS Lutheran Church for 10 years and still have LCMS Lutheran friends. I NEVER heard anyone including the Pastor of a Church with whom I had a social relationship with he and his wife refer to their church or themselves as Evangelical Catholics. I’m interested in when some Lutherans began refering their church or themselves as Evangelical Catholics. Can you help me out here?
Thats probably not very good English but I’m in a hurry
Annie
Jon
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