Pope Clement I & Veneration of Saints

  • Thread starter Thread starter kainosktisis
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
K

kainosktisis

Guest
I need to know how to answer someone who believes that the Church is in error with the veneration of saints/sacred images/Rosary as regards Recognitions Book V Ch. 26:

From New Advent:

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/080405.htm

"Chapter 26. Sixth Suggestion.

But it is said: We do better, who give thanks both to Himself, and to all with Him. In this you do not understand that there is the ruin of your salvation. For it is as if a sick man should call in for his cure at once a physician and poisoners; since these could indeed injure him, but not cure him; and the true physician would refuse to mix his remedies with their poisons, lest either the man’s destruction should be ascribed to the good, or his recovery, to the injurious. But you say: Is God then indignant or envious, if, when He benefits us, our thanks be rendered to others? Even if He be not indignant, at all events He does not wish to be the author of error, that by means of His work credit should be given to a vain idol. And what is so impious, so ungrateful, as to obtain a benefit from God, and to render thanks to blocks of wood and stone? Wherefore arise, and understand your salvation. For God is in need of no one, nor does He require anything, nor is He hurt by anything; but we are either helped or hurt, in that we are grateful or ungrateful. For what does God gain from our praises, or what does He lose by our blasphemies? Only this we must remember, that God brings into proximity and friendship with Himself the soul that renders thanks to Him. But the wicked demon possesses the ungrateful soul."

I want to add that this person posts arguments from here:


The History of the Rosary:


Thank you.
 
Last edited:
I looked at the link and these are all old arguments. Nothing new here.

He asks should we Worship Mary?

Totally agree with him the answer is no.

He claims only pray to God.

Pray just means to ask. Tell him to look it up on the Meriam Webster website, God isn’t even mentioned until the 4th definition.

Just because he defines the word differently doesn’t prove we worship anyone other than God. If he doesn’t like seeing the term “Pray to Mary” too bad. Ask him if it would be OK for you to look through his website pick out a term and redefine it’s meaning to prove his theology wrong?

Repetition please??? This one just proves the guy has no ability to read scripture in context. The context of that verse is the word VAIN. I would ask him if he ever repeated the Our Father.

Ask him if Jesus is guilty of vain repetition in…
Matthew 26:44 So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words.
Click to expand...
Yep same prayer three times in a row. Heck I would even argue Jesus was in such agony that He probably said that prayer more than once each of the three times He went back to pray.

Bathsheba seriously?? Dude do a little history study. This is why you can’t just read the scripture without knowing the History. His argument is ridiculous. He shoots down the typology because Adonijah was put to death. This actually proves the King can’t deny the intercession of the Queen mother. Adonijah requested to be given Abishag because by doing so this would give him the place of succession to the throne if Solomon were killed. Solomon saw that his mother was duped into a conspiracy to overthrow his kingship. Seeing that he was obligated to fulfill her intercession, which would most likely end in a war and his demise, he had no other choice but to end Adonijah’s life. Tell him to reread the scripture and point out where Solomon told her NO?

I stopped there, saw no sense in reading any more of his biased opinions.

God Bless
 
Recognitions wasn’t actually written by St. Clement of Rome. Clement was the subject of many literary compilations of legend and imagination in the early Church. Recognitions is simply one of two noteworthy works of Clementine literature, the other being called Homilies. These works, while pious in their attempt at portraying the Saint, were of a precursor style to the novel and primarily the fabrication of the author. The earliest record of the content of Recognitions is in 325, where Eusebius states that there is no evidence in amongst the Church Fathers that these events actually happened. The Church has specified that only two letters have been traditionally authored by Clement of Rome. These are the Clementine Epistles to Corinth. Even then, the Church has found, through modern study, that the second of these was not, in fact, written by Clement, but was a sermon written by an unknown author who was a contemporary of Clement to the Church in Corinth. No other works of Clement has survived.

The ideas portrayed in Recognitions are from a time period rife with heresy, before the Church was able to call Councils to combat them. It appears that this text in Recognitions is specifically geared towards combating Gnosticism and infiltrating pagan practices in which the faithful sacrificed to and worshiped the saints and angels as pseudo-gods with distinct powers.

In all honesty, I am surprised New Advent archived this under the authorship of Clement of Rome instead of simply an ancient legendarium about him, somewhat like the Flowers of St. Francis is to St. Francis of Assisi, but much further removed from the source with regard to their places in history.
 
Last edited:
@ MT1926 @ CRM_Brother

Thank you both for your replies. I tried looking up info on the matter in any old threads, but I didn’t quite find what would be the answer. I had actually found the info you refer to earlier today on the New Advent Website here:

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/index.html

And this is what came up under Clement of Rome:

Clement of Rome [SAINT]
Other research turned up this on the Catholic Culture Website:

Fathers of the Church

A complete set of documents from the Fathers of the Church: saintly writers of the early centuries whom the Church recognizes as her special witnesses of the faith.
www.catholicculture.org www.catholicculture.org

The ten books of Recognitions are a spurious autobiography of Pope St. Clement, the third successor of Peter as bishop of Rome. They narrate the attempts of Clement’s family to discover each other’s whereabouts after being separated, and their eventual reunion through Peter’s intervention. The title refers to the various recognition scenes in which the members of the family are reunited. The Recognitions pertain to the pseudo-Clementines, which were a comprehensive didactic novel attributed to their protagonist, Clement of Rome. They cannot be dated accurately, but seem to have grown out of a substantial nucleus originating in Syria in the early third century. The other major part of these writings that is now extant—twenty homilies attributed to St. Peter and supposedly transmitted by Clement—portray Christianity as nothing but a purified Judaism. This element is toned down in the Recognitions, which also include a clear statement of faith in the Trinity. However, the Recognitions are extant only in Rufinus’s translation, and as he generally worked to edify the reader rather than as a scholar, it is not clear whether the orthodoxy of his translation is due to the translator or to the original. (Quasten)

Also here:

Church Fathers: St. Clement of Rome:

www.catholicculture.org

Church Fathers: St. Clement of Rome

Sometime towards the end of the first century A.D., two men made a journey from Rome to Corinth. Claudius Ephebus and Valerius Vito, a pair of freed slaves from the household of the deceased Emperor Claudius, carried a letter to the Christian community in Corinth from Bishop Clement of Rome –...
www.catholicculture.org www.catholicculture.org

While some of these arguments may be old, the matter of Recognitions is unfamiliar to me, hence the need for assistance on this one.

Thank you again. Much appreciated. God bless. 🙂
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top