Protestants, just what did the early Church look like?

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Why should I believe that my private interpretations of the CCC are better than the interpretations of someone officially ordained by the Catholic Church, charged specifically with teaching the church, and in good standing?
 
T. More said:
“You protestants don’t seem to understand that it does not matter what one preist or one theologian thinks.”

I would suggest that you are denying your own authority structure. Who should have a better understanding of official church teaching - a layman or someone ordained by the Catholic church and charged with teaching Catholic dogma? If I want to know official Catholic teaching, who better to go to than the living church, the authorized teachers of the doctrine, all of whom are in good standing with the church?
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But this person could be speaking out against Offical Church Teaching. So, if one of your pastors says that Jesus in not God or did not raise from the dead we should draw from that that your church does not believe that Jesus is God and that he raised from the dead?

Peace
 
“That preist is a heretic and should not be saying the mass.”

That is your private view. You are not authorized to make that judgment. There are people who are authorized to make these judgments and they have not come to your conclusions. The people who are do not act to remove the priests. This implies ratification, or at least tolerance, of their position.
 
What dennisknap says is true. It is both frustrating and embarrasing that there are professing Catholics-- influential theologians and priests-- who openly contradict Church teachings. This is very confusing for uninformed Catholics, as well as for all non-Catholics.

Faithful Catholics must seek to spread the true teaching of the Church, which is available to anyone by referencing the Catechism of the Catholic Church. If a “catholic” in any way spreads teaching that is contrary to the official teaching, that person does everyone a disservice, spreads confusion, and will have to answer at the judgment.

That being said, the fact that there sadly are many dissenters does not mean that there are many Catholic positions. In order to find out true Catholic teaching one must of necessity go to real Catholic sources-- approved by the magesterium.

Yours, Jessica
 
“But this person could be speaking out against Offical Church Teaching. So, if one of your pastors says that Jesus in not God or did not raise from the dead we should draw from that that your church does not believe that Jesus is God and that he raised from the dead?”

It is the job of the heirarchy, and ultimately the Pope, to make that judgment. It is not the job of the private judgment of the individual. That is an essentially individualistic view.
 
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jimmy:
The Church teaches the True Presence in the form of Transubstantiation and it does not matter what a preist in California thinks.
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Hey! Why’s it gotta be a priest in California? We’re not all cooky!
 
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jimmy:
The Church teaches the True Presence in the form of Transubstantiation and it does not matter what a preist in California thinks.
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Hey! Why’s it gotta be a priest in California? 😃
We’re not all cooky!
 
“Hey! Why’s it gotta be a priest in California? 😃 We’re not all cooky!”

I think the sad issue is that the better questions is where are they not? Traditional, conservative Catholicism is a minority in the US.
 
T. More said:
“That preist is a heretic and should not be saying the mass.”

That is your private view. You are not authorized to make that judgment. There are people who are authorized to make these judgments and they have not come to your conclusions. The people who are do not act to remove the priests. This implies ratification, or at least tolerance, of their position.
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Or that they don’t know.
 
T. More said:
“You protestants don’t seem to understand that it does not matter what one preist or one theologian thinks.”

I would suggest that you are denying your own authority structure. Who should have a better understanding of official church teaching - a layman or someone ordained by the Catholic church and charged with teaching Catholic dogma? If I want to know official Catholic teaching, who better to go to than the living church, the authorized teachers of the doctrine, all of whom are in good standing with the church?
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Actually I am very correct about the Catholic Church structure. The magisterium supercedes a preist or a bishop. If a bishop is preaching contrary to the Church his opinion means nothing and we have an obligation to reject it. The bishops are the teachers of the Church, but that does not mean that one bishop has the authority or the ability to change a 2000 year old doctrine. The Doctrines go deaper than the bishops.

There are very few bishops that teach heresy. There are some but not many. There may be some preists but they are not bishops. Granted, many American bishops are not real firm teachers of the faith, but they are not heretics.

A theologian has no authority in the Church. In fact I am a theologian. I may not be a professional theologian, but a theologian none the less. Theologians are lay.
 
T. More:
I think the sad issue is that the better questions is where are they not? Traditional, conservative Catholicism is a minority in the US.
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According to whom? There are several conservative Catholic parishes around where I live.
 
“Or that they don’t know.”

Sure, in some cases. I am speaking of something that is endemic, even as reported by conservative Catholic sources (again, see for example Michael Rose’s Goodbye, Good Men). And I am not speaking only of ordinary priests, but very senior people, like the Archbishop Rembert Weakland, those charged with oversite.
 
T. More said:
“That preist is a heretic and should not be saying the mass.”

That is your private view. You are not authorized to make that judgment. There are people who are authorized to make these judgments and they have not come to your conclusions. The people who are do not act to remove the priests. This implies ratification, or at least tolerance, of their position.
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Or it implies that there heresy is not known to higher authority. A preist can will not be removed if the bishop does not know of his heresy. The bishop is not telepathic.
 
Have you read Good Bye, Good Men? He documents some of the interesting views taught in Catholic seminaries today and held by many of their ordained students.
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Please nobody read the book T. More has mentioned here. T. More seems very eager to accept anything that bashes Catholicism. Hear is an excerpt from an unbiased review on this book. You’re probably better off reading “The Da Vinci Code”!

One difficulty in dealing with the allegations of ex-seminarians is that of checking facts. Often when a man leaves or is dismissed from the seminary with good cause, the seminary officials are bound either canonically or by the common duty of charity to remain silent about the reasons for his departure. That leaves the author with only the ex-seminarian’s version of the story. From the standpoint of journalistic accuracy, this is a highly problematic situation. Just as in any other area of reporting, one simply cannot rely on one person’s version of an event. A case in point: while in seminary I knew a seminarian who was quite devout: he prayed for literally hours of the day in chapel. However, he did this at the cost of the complete neglect of his studies. When confronted by brother seminarians and seminary officials about this problem, he was dismissive, saying that he didn’t “need to bother about that stuff”. What mattered, he said, was that he be holy. This man was eventually dismissed, and rightly so. While it is certainly true that seminarians should strive for holiness, the church also expects them to be diligent in their studies. But after his dismissal, this man told anyone who asked (and some that didn’t) that he had left because they “wouldn’t let him pray.”

Rose does not take adequate account of these precautions, and can be shown not to have checked his facts in some instances, and thus he has a very serious credibility problem. I know some of the individuals mentioned in the book. Most are known to me as men of integrity and truthfulness, and their stories are presented accurately. But there is also evidence of inaccuracy and perhaps even selective attention to the facts. I also know individuals that Rose interviewed for this book, again reliable men of integrity, whose version of events would have called into question certain accounts found in the book. Rose omitted their version from his book: one can only conclude that Rose selectively presented only the evidence that tended towards his conclusion. Furthermore, he relies upon testimony which is known to be unreliable or even untruthful.
 
Mickey: Actually the book was recommended to me by Catholics on this board. I think Scott Hahn recommends it as well. And no, I am not trying to find anything that bashes RC. I am fairly ecumenical. Hence, a desire to demonstrate a commonality in the practices of Protestant and RC churches.
 
“Or it implies that there heresy is not known to higher authority. A preist can will not be removed if the bishop does not know of his heresy. The bishop is not telepathic.”

Jimmy: This stuff is widespread. It is not a matter of people not knowing. It dominates Catholic seminaries today, at least in the West.
 
T. More:
Mickey: Actually the book was recommended to me by Catholics on this board. I think Scott Hahn recommends it as well. And no, I am not trying to find anything that bashes RC. I am fairly ecumenical. Hence, a desire to demonstrate a commonality in the practices of Protestant and RC churches.
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Not the tone I gathered T., but okay then. I’m going to check with Scott Hahn to see if he calls this recommended reading. That would surprise me considering all the claims of faulty research and credibility problems by the author.
 
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