SPLIT: Questions Catholics Will Not Answer.

[guanophore]

So then the Jehovah’s Witnesses are just as accurate as the Roman Catholic Church in their teaching. The Watchtower uses the same approach as the RCC. They simply change the Bible to mean whatever they want it to mean and that parallels the RCC point of view. How else could you come up with such ridiculous ideas as the assumption of Mary, the perpetual virginity of Mary, Purgatory, the papacy, praying to the dead, indulgences and all the other things the RCC does that can’t be found in Scripture. Even the early church fathers believed that if it can’t be found in Scripture, then it is false. Too bad the church changed so much.

And the Church of The Latter Day Saints are just as accurate in their beliefs as the Roman Catholics because it the Scripture doesn’t fit, they simply rewrite it. The same as the RCC.

I think you have it backward, OS. No, these beliefs and practices (beloved by us that you call “ridiculuous”) are not based on the Bible. they are based on sacred tradition, as is the entire contents of the NT.

What makes you think the Church has changed?

 

[geraldffff]

I think you have it backward, OS. No, these beliefs and practices (beloved by us that you call “ridiculuous”) are not based on the Bible. they are based on sacred tradition, as is the entire contents of the NT.

What makes you think the Church has changed?

You better “watch it” or I’ll compare you to a Jehovah’s Witness and that would be ridiculous.

 

[Good_Fella]

You know, moving this post was just great. There have been 25 pages so far—lots of interest and I only posed 13 questions.

But as of yet, the 13 questions remain unanswered, just as I predicted. It seems all the RCC members simply ignore them. Isn’t that what I said in the very first post?

These questions aren’t yours. That’s why nobody wants to answer them.

Pax vobiscum
Good Fella

 

[kapitangkiko]

You know, moving this post was just great. There have been 25 pages so far—lots of interest and I only posed 13 questions.

But as of yet, the 13 questions remain unanswered, just as I predicted. It seems all the RCC members simply ignore them. Isn’t that what I said in the very first post?

I am new here and while I am Catholic, I am not as eloquent as most of the members here are. Thank you all for your sharing and patience.

I almost lost my faith when I was in college and was therefore “wanting to find myself.” I could say that for some reason, I almost lost my faith in the Catholic Church and even in God, Himself.

But I found out that the more doubts I tried to resolve, the more questions I wanted answered, the more they brought me back to the Church.

This discussion is one fine example of it. In my continuing search for answers, I have again found a lot here.

And I am sorry to disagree with OS. Many of your questions which in fact I shared with you have actually been answered in this thread - I wonder how many more are in other threads and fora are there just waiting for us to discover.

Based on your posts, however, and I may be wrong - I do not think you would ever find the answers you are looking for from our brothers here because you already have your own.

God bless us all.

 

[Church_Militant]

You know, moving this post was just great. There have been 25 pages so far—lots of interest and I only posed 13 questions.

But as of yet, the 13 questions remain unanswered, just as I predicted. It seems all the RCC members simply ignore them. Isn’t that what I said in the very first post?

I don’t see how you figure this.

I call your comments wishful thinking at best and in point of fact, you have not answered the vast majority of my posts which directly address your so-called (and plagiarized without citation of source or even acknowledgment of same.)

So… basically, just like your initial allegation, this post is nothing more than anti-Catholic rhetoric.

Post 2, 4, 12, and post 16 all address your copy and past allegations, which you didn’t even come up with on your own, so don’t try to make that stick. It won’t. I spent quite a bit of time taking on that rhetoric and I frankly don’t appreciate your lack of honest so far.
You said:

Ask Roman Catholics these questions and see how many answers you get. I’m betting you get ignored…

But at this point I’m prepared to say, "Ask Old Scholar these questions and see how many answers you get. I’m betting you get ignored…"

This is a fairly regular a-C debate trick when they discover that Catholics aren’t as ignorant as they have heard they are. It’s a dishonest tactic called “raising the bar” that just ignores all the facts presented so far and says…“it is not enough”.

Maybe you should change your name to “Old Polemicist” at this point.

 

[Church_Militant]

I am new here and while I am Catholic, I am not as eloquent as most of the members here are. Thank you all for your sharing and patience.

I almost lost my faith when I was in college and was therefore “wanting to find myself.” I could say that for some reason, I almost lost my faith in the Catholic Church and even in God, Himself.

But I found out that the more doubts I tried to resolve, the more questions I wanted answered, the more they brought me back to the Church.

Glory Be To God![SIGN]Welcome Home![/SIGN] :clapping: :dancing: :extrahappy:

This discussion is one fine example of it. In my continuing search for answers, I have again found a lot here.

And I am sorry to disagree with OS. Many of your questions which in fact I shared with you have actually been answered in this thread - I wonder how many more are in other threads and fora are there just waiting for us to discover.

Excellent point my friend, and the forum has a working search engine that will assist in that, not to mention the absolute HOST of links that have been offered so far which I doubt OS has even bothered to read because just as you pointed out…

Based on your posts,

however, and I may be wrong - I do not think you would ever find the answers you are looking for from our brothers here because you already have your own.

God bless us all.Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum.

 

[Teflon93]

Given all of the responses, it certainly seems odd that Old Scholar hasn’t admitted he’s lost his bet from the OP.

One cannot claim that 26 pages of response is ignoring the OP.

Unless one has difficulty with both pride and veracity, that is.

 

[davidv]

You know, moving this post was just great. There have been 25 pages so far—lots of interest and I only posed 13 questions.

But as of yet, the 13 questions remain unanswered, just as I predicted. It seems all the RCC members simply ignore them. Isn’t that what I said in the very first post?

That is because they are not really questions. They are accusations made to appear as questions.

 

[CentralFLJames]

So then the Jehovah’s Witnesses are just as accurate as the Roman Catholic Church in their teaching. The Watchtower uses the same approach as the RCC. They simply change the Bible to mean whatever they want it to mean and that parallels the RCC point of view. How else could you come up with such ridiculous ideas as the assumption of Mary, the perpetual virginity of Mary, Purgatory, the papacy, praying to the dead, indulgences and all the other things the RCC does that can’t be found in Scripture. Even the early church fathers believed that if it can’t be found in Scripture, then it is false. Too bad the church changed so much.

And the Church of The Latter Day Saints are just as accurate in their beliefs as the Roman Catholics because it the Scripture doesn’t fit, they simply rewrite it. The same as the RCC.

Nice Try - deflect the pressure to another wounded animal. How cowardly. Answer MY question. WHAT IS YOUR PEDIGREE!?

The answer is you have NONE! You are as a hot bladder of air who will answer no one and just flap his lips in the breeze when pressured. You have over 25 pages of responses and all you can say is “no, its not so” and puff yourself up with multi-syllabic words to impart a sense of intelligence where there is none.

I’d recommend you start reading some of the excellent answers you have been given and learn something before you get too much older. No where in the scriptures does it say scholarship saves one from the fires of hell. Get smart - start fearing God, understand the truth and don’t ever try again to attack God’s Church with such childish nonsense as you spout here!

James

 

[mercygate]

"VociMike:

Yes, I agree with everything you’ve written. I would only add that the Tradition existed before a single word of the New Testament was written.

What tradition does your church hold to that isn’t found in the scriptures?

The statement was not: "All Catholic tradition is found in Scripture, full blown, in its theologically complete form " VociMike said that “Tradition existed before a single syllable of the New Testament was written.”

Paul taught “Tradition” (2 Thess 2:15) – that Jesus was raised from the dead. The gospel was preached by the apostles for 20 years before the earliest epistles were penned. That is Tradition.

 

[Teflon93]

The statement was not: "All Catholic tradition is found in Scripture, full blown, in its theologically complete form " VociMike said that “Tradition existed before a single syllable of the New Testament was written.”

Paul taught “Tradition” (2 Thess 2:15) – that Jesus was raised from the dead. The gospel was preached by the apostles for 20 years before the earliest epistles were penned. That is Tradition.

True, and the doctrine of the Trinity of course is an example of Tradition not explicit within Scripture.

We should also consider the perception of the Apostles. For them, Scripture WAS the OT. What Peter and Paul and the others spent so much time preaching was actually Scripture PLUS Tradition. It wasn’t until later of course that much of the apostolic Tradition was incorporated into Scripture.

 

[Teflon93]

Nice Try - deflect the pressure to another wounded animal. How cowardly. Answer MY question. WHAT IS YOUR PEDIGREE!?

The answer is you have NONE! You are as a hot bladder of air who will answer no one and just flap his lips in the breeze when pressured. You have over 25 pages of responses and all you can say is “no, its not so” and puff yourself up with multi-syllabic words to impart a sense of intelligence where there is none.

I’d recommend you start reading some of the excellent answers you have been given and learn something before you get too much older. No where in the scriptures does it say scholarship saves one from the fires of hell. Get smart - start fearing God, understand the truth and don’t ever try again to attack God’s Church with such childish nonsense as you spout here!

James

No need to get riled up, James. Old Scholar’s not fooling anybody; even if he were he stands no chance against the Church founded by Christ himself, abiding 2,000 years.

God builds to last.

 

[heisenburg]

Arrogance and pride abound…

Where does the issue lie if questions have been answered, but you did not like them? Is that a failing of those that answered? or those asking?

I do not see any listening going on here…

Only rhetoric…

OS, your questions where answered, please do not deceive yourself into thinking that because you don’t like the answer, that it is untrue, and/or that it remains unanswered.

its like saying what is 2+2

it is 4

I don’t agree with you, therefore you didn’t answer my question.

Thank you for your participation in this thread. Please do not let personal pride get in the way of your journey… And this goes to all in this thread…

IN Christ

 

[mercygate]

I believe you meant eisegesis. Actually my method is exegetical and my hermenuetics is the basis for my stage of truth.

Incidentally I would welcome any Scriptures you may list that tells us someone else(other than Christ, God, the Holy Ghost and the angels) is in heaven. Please list them all…

For starters, Rev 6:9: I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne.

 

[mercygate]

Here are a few of the early church believers:
The Early Church Fathers on The Assumption

Pseudo – Melito
(The Passing of the Virgin 16:2-17 [A.D. 300]).

Timothy of Jerusalem
(Homily on Simeon and Anna [A.D. 400]).

John the Theologian
(The Dormition of Mary [A.D. 400]).

Gregory of Tours
Eight Books of Miracles 1:4 [A.D. 575]).

Theoteknos of Livias
(Homily on the Assumption [ca. A.D. 600]).

Modestus of Jerusalem
(Encomium in dormitionnem Sanctissimae Dominae nostrae Deiparae semperque Virginis Mariae [ante A.D. 634]).

Germanus of Constantinople
Sermon I [A.D. 683]).

John Damascene
Dormition of Mary [A.D. 697])

Gregorian Sacramentary
Gregorian Sacramentary, Veneranda [ante A.D. 795]).

It’s all pre-protestant rebellion. Let me guess though - this is not going to be early enough right?

James

The dating of the earliest of these quotes indicates that the Marian teaching (as with the teaching of the 3rd Ecumenical Council on “Theotokos”) followed directly upon the definitions surrounding the definition of the Person of Jesus Christ as One Person with two natures. ALL Marian dogma arises from Christology.

 

[Newbie2]

I believe you meant eisegesis. Actually my method is exegetical and my hermenuetics is the basis for my stage of truth.

Incidentally I would welcome any Scriptures you may list that tells us someone else(other than Christ, God, the Holy Ghost and the angels) is in heaven. Please list them all…

Typo, sorry. You are correct, sir. Eisegesis. I dn’t spel so gud somtims.

Thanks, but I’m tiring of the game. I can’t provide you with scriptural support for my position that you’ll accept and you cannot do the same for me. Same with all the other forumites in this post.

Besides, as a Catholic, I get my Revelation from sources other than Scripture.

I just hope that you’d concede that in your OP, those are questions are questions that Catholics will indeed answer, unless your definition of “answer” means to agree with your interpretation. That, of course, would only be “baiting” the forum with the motive of pointless argument, rather than genuine chartiable theological discussion.

 

[Teflon93]

The surest sign of phony argumentation is the need to rely upon terms like “hermeneutics” and “exegesis” where “interpretation” or “explanation” would do.

Pointy-headed jargon does not increase one’s credibility, nor their authority. It’s often an indication that one’s arguments are so weak as to require shoring up by frequent reference to a dictionary (whoops, that would be “lexicon” in pointy-headed jargonese).

Simple, clear arguments which can be critically assessed by one’s opponents carry considerable weight among reasonable people. Tarted-up propaganda statements aren’t worth anything unless you’re trying to convince yourself of something against all evidence.

I’m not sure what people who ignore responses and claim they don’t exist—despite the fact that everyone following a message forum thread can see every single response—seek to accomplish beyond destroying their own credibility. In choosing between belief in somebody else’s claim or your own eyes, who here would go with the former?

I’ve got some Florida wetlands available for sale if so.

 

[guanophore]

I am new here and while I am Catholic, I am not as eloquent as most of the members here are. Thank you all for your sharing and patience.

I almost lost my faith when I was in college and was therefore “wanting to find myself.” I could say that for some reason, I almost lost my faith in the Catholic Church and even in God, Himself.

But I found out that the more doubts I tried to resolve, the more questions I wanted answered, the more they brought me back to the Church.

This discussion is one fine example of it. In my continuing search for answers, I have again found a lot here.

Thank you so much for letting us know, and welcome to CAF. I hope you will take courage, and post anything that is on your mind. In spite of Old Scholar, whose heart is clearly hardened against Catholicism, I not that the reading ratio is unusually high on this thread. There are 16 times as may lurkers /readers as there are posters, so I hope that there are others who have been benefitted.
And I am sorry to disagree with OS. Many of your questions which in fact I shared with you have actually been answered in this thread - I wonder how many more are in other threads and fora are there just waiting for us to discover.

Based on your posts, however, and I may be wrong - I do not think you would ever find the answers you are looking for from our brothers here because you already have your own.

God bless us all.

May God bless you in your journey home.I had a similar experience when I went away to college. I wish I had a CAF back then!

I noticed that the lurking/reading ratio on this thread is much higher than it is on most. There are 16 people reading for everyone who is posting. So, I hope that the discussion has been of benefit to many, even though it does not seem to have helped the OP. I can bear witness that it will not help justasking4, either, because he is not here to learn, but to tear at the Catholic Church, not realizing that he is part of the same body on which he is biting and chewing. May God have mercy.

 

[guanophore]

For starters, Rev 6:9: I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne.

Hebrews 11 constitute a list of some persons in the Communion of Saints. then Hebrews 12:1 begins “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…”

How does someone “surround” others if they are sleeping? How can anyone be a witness if they are sleeping? Jesus has already given His asnwer to those who believe the saints are dead:

Mark 12:27
27 He is not God of the dead, but of the living; **you are quite wrong." **

 

[Tomster]

I asked for evidence that the early church held to a belief in the assumption. Can you tell us who the first father was that saw Mary as the woman in Revelations 12?

Pwrlftr,

Please pay attention and follow this if you can.

The assumption of Mary is a historic event that took place in time. But is in vain for us to try and determine this, for facts must always be put on record by eyewitnesses or by hearsay; otherwise if these events took place a long time ago we have to try to reconstitute them by weighing carefully everything that is left to us in the way of written witness. Both ways are as impossible in the case of the bodily assumption of Mary as they are in the case of Jesus’s Ascension. DID YOU GET THAT!

Holy Scripture relates Jesus’s Ascension in detail and likewise mentions the Apostles as duly qualified witnesses of it. But even so, if we had asked the Apostles to give evidence of all they had been present at, they would have been able to witness under oath to having seen Jesus rising up into the air, and not returning. But they could have given no evidence as to the point under discussion: his going into heaven. Yet while they were staring up at the sky, angels appeared to them and said: “Men of Galilee, why do stand here looking heavenwards? He who has been taken from you into heaven, this same Jesus, will come back to you in the same fashion, just as you have watched him going into heaven.” (Acts 1:11) So that the Apostles are not witnesses for us to the historic event of Jesus’s Ascension: they could not be; but certainly they are witnesses for us to the DIVINE REVELATION of that Ascension, which we also confess in our Creed.

Therefore it is even more impossible to produce witnesses of Mary’s Assumption: no one but God and his angels say her joyous entrance into eternal glory. And for that reason we need not be in any way perturbed because experts have not been able to agree among themselves about it, or because among the remains of writings that have come down to us from the first five or six centuries, therre is practically no word of bodily assumption, strictly speaking, of Mary into heaven. And, forgive the paradox; even if we had witnesses of this kind, we should not be able to use them. The historic fact of Mary’s Assumption, just like Jesus’s Ascension, escapes once and for all every control by eye witnesses or hearsay.

continued