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Man
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Yes, non-Catholic. This is accepting Amish and so forth, where the disagreement is mostly in child baptism. They often remain ignorant of a great deal of other things, which is beside the point…You mean n-C churches?
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gus
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Actually, I thought Jesus founded the one faith that was the pillar and ground of truth. Then the RCC went into schism from that (after some innvovative doctrines) and then from the RCC schism came Protestant schisms. As Bishop Kallistos Ware notes a 19th Century Russian Theologians said “The Pope was the first Protestant” and that RCC/Protestant were just two sides of the same coin. Therefore the church founded by Jesus Christ still exists in its fullness and that is the Eastern Orthodox faith. Come home brother!
I guess it is all perspective.
PS I know I am being a little provocativebut that does appear to be the EO perspective as I have read it.
BUT…both the RCC & EO revere the Mother of God (though they disagree about certain doctrines) since this is clearly taught in scripture and tradition.
Your spending far to much time on the Eastern Board
Rev North
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Roger_Wissinger
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Ofcourse, this is your opinion. I think there are a number of reasons other faiths do not like the Catholic Church. One reason is what the church claims. No other denomination can state that their church was started by Christ. Another reason is Catholics that fell away from the church. Either from being hurt by people or they didn’t like the churches doctrine. The best anti-catholics are ex-catholics. One reason that just popped into my head is moral relativisim. " There are not over a hundred people who hate the Roman Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Chruch" Acrchbishop Fulton J. Sheen
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Man
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Also, they would like to deny that Papal Primacy is pretty much a historically truth. Yet that is one of the things that disturb them so. The EO never denied the Popes position, but disagreed strongly with the way it was used. Thus, our tragic situation.
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Roger_Wissinger
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Allweather
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30,000 is probably an exaggeration, but it depends on how you define “denomination.” It needs to be kept in mind that most Protestants have an awful lot in common, doctrinally. Just because two “denominations” are independent of one another doesn’t mean they aren’t virtually identical doctrinally, and this is definitely the case among American Protestants, if not throughout the world.
As for it taking a lifetime to study it all, I’d say it’d take several lifetimes. In fact, this has been brought out before recently in another thread… can’t remember who put it very eloquently… that it is impossible for any individual to comprehend the entirety of Catholicism. One can comprehend quite a lot, but never all of it.
Maybe this is partly why some people get side-tracked into the sects. Modern man thinks he has to comprehend his religion totally. He can’t do it with Catholicism, so he opts for a simpler, stripped-down sect which has a crude theology and limited set of doctrinal stances, that he can more easily swallow whole, and thus feel satisfied that he’s got it “all figured out.”
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Roger_Wissinger
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Maybe denominations was not the right word. Maybe independant is better.
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RevDrNorth
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Gus said:
Your spending far to much time on the Eastern Board
You made me smile Gus and you also may be right.
North
Your spending far to much time on the Eastern Board
You made me smile Gus and you also may be right.
North
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Ahimsa
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The seductions of Eastern Orthodoxy.Gus said:
Your spending far to much time on the Eastern Board
You made me smile Gus and you also may be right.
North
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LittleDeb
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You know I was just thinking along these same lines today. I have been mostly just reading this thread and have only posted once.
I noticed that all of the devout Catholics here have been saying that The Church holds the fullness of Truth and then expounding on that Truth. Our separated brethren (both Catholic and non-Catholic) seem to be saying that they, personally, know all truth. They haven’t offered an authority other than Scripture and their personal interpretation of it. It seems to be an emphasis of what the Pope said.
I know when I was a lukewarm Catholic I thought I knew better than the Pope. I thought MY truth was THE Truth. I thought I could personally know all Truth for the reasons mentioned here. I discovered I was a Protestant attending a Catholic Church. It wasn’t until I really discovered that I, personally, lacked a fullness of Truth and needed The Church to guide me, that I came running home.
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Roger_Wissinger
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I wish I knew all truth. Catholics interpretation comes from the teachings of the Catholic Church. That’s is why there are so many other non-Catholic christian denominations because someone has their own personal interpretation. After jumping from church to church I discovered I was missing something and I discovered his church. 1 Timothy 3 14-15 I am writing you about these matters, although I hope to visit you soon. But if I should be delayed, you should behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth.
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Man
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Dulcimer
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Here’s what I don’t understand: Jesus said to the thief on the cross “TODAY you will be with me in Paradise.” Is Purgatory Paradise? Or did Jesus give the thief some kind of ‘Get-Out-Of-Purgatory-Free’ Card?
Honestly, I don’t understand how both of these things can be true simultaneously, unless Jesus broke the rules…
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buffalo
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Free thinking can only take man so far since he is so limited. Revelation and free thinking intersect in the Catholic Church.
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Allweather
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Jesus, being God, made the rules, and probably is able to “break” them whenever he chooses. I believe the overriding message is that Jesus saves, and that he has the power to save whom he will.
Personally I would avoid being over-literal as to the meaning of “today” and “paradise.” Things in Scripture have to be reconciled with one another. Other Scriptures speak of a state of afterlife that is neither Heaven nor Hell, and this is a place of purging, or cleansing, which we understand to be Purgatory. All of these things have to be reconciled, because we know that there are no contradictions in Scripture. Things which seem contradictory are not, but rather, our understandings of them are insufficient. This is another reason we need to place the Scriptures into the setting of the Catholic Church which wrote them, protected, assembled, and interpreted them for our good.
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Tantum_ergo
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There are two very good explanations for this seeming contradiction.
First: Are you aware that the Bible did not contain punctuation as we know it in its original and earliest forms? Verses, for example, were not ‘formatted’ until the “Middle Ages”.
So, if one reads, “I say to you today, you shall be with me in Paradise”. . .this not only makes complete sense linguistically speaking but takes care of any confusion. . .
Second: “Today” is the ‘linear’ time where both Jesus and this thief will die out of the world. But that does not mean, when both ‘die’, that the thief will then be ‘today’ in Paradise. Linear time does not exist in Heaven. Once one is ‘dead’ one is ‘out of time’. When I die, I will not on “that day” be in any place with ‘time’ and therefore, when (and I pray it is when) I am in Heaven it will not be in any kind of ‘temporal’ line. it may be something entirely diferent which we cannot imagine as we cannot perceive something ‘beyond time’.
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Grateful4mercy
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Dulcimer
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That’s as may be…but it still does not state that the thief goes to Purgatory without seriously bending the Scripture into a pretzel…
And I’d like to know Jesus’s teachings on the subject…He seems to speak a great deal of Hell and a bit of Heavan, but not of Purgatory at all.
What am I missing?
And I’d like to know Jesus’s teachings on the subject…He seems to speak a great deal of Hell and a bit of Heavan, but not of Purgatory at all.
What am I missing?
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LittleDeb
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Actually now you are getting into the whole theology of suffering which deserves its own thread. Purgatory can begin here, in this life too. My loving grandmother was in a purging state while in her last years due to Alzheimer’s disease. Without understanding Purgatory it can be very confusing to understand human suffering. The phrase about “when bad things happen to good people” is more able to be comprehended when one understands a purpose in suffering. It isn’t a “punishment” to have bad things happen to good people, as some Protestant sects claim. It can be a cleansing or “purging.” Cleansing an open wound hurts, but it is made clean by doing so.
An argument can be made in addition to the above explanations that the thief’s purging began on the cross. He was completely repentant for his sin, or was he? Did he have a kernel of sin left to repent from?
What a lot of other Christians do not realize is that as a Jew Jesus would have believed in Purgatory. That book, 2 Maccabees, was part of Jesus’ Old Testament Scriptures. Purgatory is pretty clearly understood there. He spends most of His teaching time clarifying those doctrines that were misunderstood. The idea of a purging was clearly understood by the Jews of His time. It wasn’t until the deutero-canon was removed in the 1500s that so many people started to be confused. (This was another consequence of sola fide.)
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Dulcimer
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Do you have any Scripture to quote Him doing so? Chapter and Verse, please? (I’m ignorant of it; please help me out!)
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