The devil was part of the Reformation

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An essential thing to bear in mind is that the Real Minister of all sanctifying activity is Christ - not a Church, cleric, or congregation. The sacraments are His acts, into which we are incorporated, to effect what He effects, for His Glory, not ours.​

Which is why He can be as savingly present among Protestants (say) as among us. He is the bond of union between all Christians, no matter what they may think of each other’s Churches. That is why Catholics are weakened by schisms or scandals among Anglicans, and why Orthodox Christians are strengthened every time a Presbyterian missionary baptises a new Christian: we are part of one another, inescapably, because we have al received the same saving grace forom the same Lord. This is why squabbling between us is so suicidal. Every blessing on the Church of England, strengthens us too. This is why what an Anglican such as C. S. Lewis wrote, can be so helpful to many who are not Anglicans.

So, there can be a living and fruitful unity of Christians in Christ even without full visible union - invisible communion, is not no communion. The Church is a mystery in Christ - not a club or party. If it is a party, how can it be Catholic ? If there is no invisible communion, how can the Churches grow into visible communion ? If Christians could not receive grace outside the CC, how could they hear and recognise the voice of Christ inviting them to join it ? ##
How can a minister, who is part of a church that is not a part of the body baptise someone into it? When Pastor Alex Jones and dozens of his flock converted to the RCC, they also were baptised again, as they considered their first baptism invalid. (Or, at least suspected it might be.)
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Yes, the RCC allows for valid Baptism outside of the church. I do not agree. But I accept this stand by the church because it has authority to say so. ## I see things the other way round - the Church is for expressing realities (by announcing them, say); that is a reality; so, she says it is a reality. I don’t trust theologies which stress the part of the Church - because she can do nothing of her self.

That “the Church says”, is not why I believe; but because the Church is in accord with reality. This is why the witness of the Spirit and of the Bible is so vital: for the Spirit, Who moved men to compose and preserve and interpret the Bible is in the individual, in the world, in the Church. People believe, not primarily because of the Church or Bible, but because of the work of God in them, Who is present in them, and everywhere else, in many ways - the Church included. ##
What is disturbing to me is what appears to be a weakness of the church by accomodating Protestant sects in ways that undermines, or at least diminishes the RCC’s authority; if not at least the value of that authority. But this is a subject for a different thread.
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Thal59## That needs discussing, so that we can all look at it together 🙂 ##
 
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OriginalJS:
I have a question. Are people who are informally referred to as “Cafeteria Catholics” and by that I mean those who pick and choose what they will believe and follow and reject teachings of the Catholic Church in their lives really Protestants at heart even if they show up at Mass from time to time and go through the motions?

For example: is a man who requires his wife to use artificial birth control really Catholic? How about the couple who agrees to uses artificial birth control?

How about divorced Catholics whose marriages have not been annulled receiving communion?

How about Catholics who receive communion who are in a state of mortal sin? (I have been at Mass many times when 400 or 500 people all receive communion. I can’t believe they are all in a state of grace.)

How about CEO Catholics who attend Mass on Christmas and Easter Only?

It seems to me that all of these folks are really not Catholics but are protestants at heart.
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People are Catholics by God’s gift - their own deeds, good or bad, are not the reason He chooses them. God chooses them, because it is His Will to do so. Their sins, like the good they do, are irrelevant to that.​

Same with staying Catholic, to whatever degree that we do - that is God’s gift too. God is the True Cause of:
  • our being chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world
  • our being effectually called
  • our free decision to obey that call
  • our loving corespondence to God’s Will
  • our desire for God
  • The stability of our living in Christ, and of our good use of all that we receive from God’s mercy
  • our final perseverance
  • all this, is entirely the gift of God; as is our, secondary, activity within God’s Causality. Merit is a gift - never something we bring to God to enrich Him, that we have done all by our own unaided strength (as though He did not own Heaven & earth and all that is in them, and so, us also): for even that strength, whatever it may be, is God’s gift.
Therefore, our sins and deficiencies and imperfections and failings and unChristlikenesses, do not make us “not Catholic” - that can’t happen; to be Catholic at all, is to be Catholic by God’s gift of grace alone, from start to finish.

We cannot read hearts, not even our own; so how can we read those of others, whom we have never even met, of whom we know nothing ? God alone, Who sees from the height of Heaven to the bottommost depths, sees into the hearts of us all. Let’s leave others to God, and hope for mercy for ourselves and for them. We all need it.

If Christ does not cast someone out, we have no business to do so.

BTW - “Protestant” does have a definite set of meanings; and there is nothing distinctively Protestant in any of the things mentioned. Unless one is to define “Catholic” by restricting its meaning to something such as “person who is clean-living, chaste, obedient, Mass-attending, orthodox” - that would put the people who need the Church, the people for whom Christ designed it, outside it.

The Church is not for respectable, pious, devout people - it’s for people who are not like that at all. It’s for cowards and liars like Peter, persecutors like Paul - people like that. Like us. Not for the “holy people” with God in their pockets who have Him all sorted out and nicely calibrated; to define as Catholics only so-called “good Catholics”, is to restrict the Church to the “pure”, or the “holy” - which is not an orthodox position, but incipient Donatism. Christ mixed with disgusting people like Samaritans and tax-collectors; with unclean heathen Romans and other Gentiles; with lepers; and He died the death of a common slave on a Roman cross with the taunts and jeers of the “True Church” of the day in His ears. His most bitter enemies were the religious establishment of His own People.

Christ is not a Christ Who rejects all those who fail to obey every last syllable that proceeds from the mouth of the Magisterium or who use condoms and birth control or don’t go to Mass. He is better than we are, just as His judgement is infinitely more searching and more terrible and more kind than ours. He welcomes the heavy-laden, so we must burden them or scare them away. ##
 
Gottle of Geer:
Christ mixed with disgusting people like Samaritans and tax-collectors; with unclean heathen Romans and other Gentiles; with lepers; and He died the death of a common slave on a Roman cross with the taunts and jeers of the “True Church” of the day in His ears. His most bitter enemies were the religious establishment of His own People.
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This is one of the things that really confused me when I began the spiritual journey.

Our message to children continues to be that they should not associate with anybody “icky” and to do so is to risk ourselves and to enable the icky person and likewise. We teach them to be careful, to be suspicious, to tattle on each other whenever an authority figure asks (of course we say not to tattle, but then we require it under circumstance X, then Y, then heck – anything suspicious), to protect themselves by preparing to go to court. We give them artificially contrived circumstances to punish them for a perceived transgression under the guise that they are logical consequences. We teach them that if adults or authority figures say so, then we are in fact guilty and we deserve punishment – thereby teaching them that EVERY worldly discipline system including the ones we use in the Catholic Church and school are based on getting caught and not on a clean heart – which gives every liar a leg up.

Basically we teach kids to spend their lives avoiding doing anything remotely like what Christ would have done, associating with no strangers and ready to call authorities on a hair trigger. THEN we wonder why they don’t grow up as a friendly, unified body.

I think some kids see through all this, but after a few years especially post-high school and they all are pretty much assimilated. Look no farther than this thread to see how much we like to demonize those who don’t come to our clubhouse, and let’s examine ourselves in the context of how Christ TRULY acted.

The way we train children in the name of “good moral upbringing” is probably responsible for more hatred among Catholics and between Catholics and others, as anything else. We hand satan a victory every time we tell children to categorize people as “good” or “bad” and to shun the latter.

One thing that boggles my mind is your point that Christ’s worst enemies were the Church authorities. In many ways I don’t think that has changed. During my lowest hour, the angry intolerant behavior of the smooth writer and theologian but otherwise liar and angry twit Monsignor <edit: removed name>, for example, literally sent me screaming and crying away from the Cathedral. There are good priests but many of the ones most concerned with keeping the status quo of the power structure are no more open to honesty and truth than they were 2000 years ago. And yet, we Catholics tend to pedestalize these people and automatically take their word for anything that happens – you see that here in CAF too; people used to bring in their personal problems with Church authorities only to find that if they see a problem it is in their own making or mind because we have the presumption that priests are always acting perfectly.

I’m not going off here about corruption in the Church; that is unavoidable. I am going off about the way we INSIST on training our children by mixing good with bad teachings, thus they either end up bipolar or lukewarm. We absolutely refuse to answer these questions.

I’m not interested in training my six children to be yet more mind-numbed lemmings who spout off all kinds of nice things about Christ’s love, but don’t get any closer to an actual poor person than bringing in obligatory free-will offering of a can of food to school on various occasions. Even here, while we do charity, the message is, “you don’t have to get near an actual poor person – just pony up a couple dollars or canned good and the professionals will handle it.”

Humph. Professionals. I’m not impressed, and neither are my children. In this generation they will be expecting more than the same old formulas that were broken when Christ tried to teach us better but we still haven’t caught on to the Good News that we actually CAN change.

What seems even stranger is it seems that some Church authorities cannot help themselves from turning into an exact characature of those against whom Christ unleashed the “seven woes.” They relive the condescending attitudes with uncanny accuracy, which means to me that nothing has really changed in the hearts of many men – those attitudes come with the worldly roles and very few men actually escape to find the narrow path. We need to pray for our priests, for they are liable to a stricter judgment than we.

Alan
 
Gosh, as long as I’m on a limb I might as well find out how far I can go.

I still think the Reformation was a good thing, but now I have different evidence.

This thread is perfect evidence that God’s Church NEEDED the Reformation to test and purify her. The way we treat people and talk about them and the assumptions we make about them are not only AGAINST CATHOLIC TEACHINGS but they are exactly what Christ came to fix the first time.

If we had only one Church and everybody participated, we would not have any way to know whether we are Christian because we would never be given the opportunity. This very forum is an excellent way we can begin to reach out in a grass-roots type of Christianity that can transcend denominational boundaries. That doesn’t mean I’m asking anybody to jump ship, for certain. It means that as long as we stay compartmentalized and harbor an air of personal and moral superiority to them, we are actually deepening the chasm of the Reformation so if the Reformation is satanic then we play along well and sustain it.

We pray for Christian unity, but hold ourselves and our beliefs superior to any others. We pray for unity, but only on the condition that the lost sheep whip themselves into line and get back home because these shepherds aren’t about to stray from their fold because they’re askeered of all the boogy-men that they will find in other churches who may (gasp!) actually have a crucifix without the body on it! That is a faulty “mental immune system” that has not been trained to think properly but to knee-jerk react according to the operant and classical conditioning of the trained lab rats we turn our children into.

We teach kids we cannot change other people but we can change ourselves. One variation is that only God can change us. We must not think this is true because so many people think “Christian unity” means that we must either change or vilify those who Do Not Think Like Us. We cannot change them, but we can reward and punish them even unto death if necessary in an attempt to try. Further, we teach kids not to be swayed by the opinions of others and hold our ground, but only until the child decides not to accept an “official” opinion at which time the child must be punished or bribed until he/she conforms. Then we wonder why people become mentally ill trying to sort out all these disparate, anti-Christian value systems. This is the modern-day authoring of confusion. No wonder so many people don’t believe in the devil; many of us are his willing accomplices. I have more respect for people who confess to be atheist or even agnostic, than those who claim to be orthodox Catholic and look down at non-Catholics and/or other Catholics and shake their heads. You know who the unfortunate losers are in that situation? Those who look down; those who are looked down upon are already taken care of in heaven.

Alan
 
Gottle of Geer said:
## People are Catholics by God’s gift - their own deeds, good or bad, are not the reason He chooses them. God chooses them, because it is His Will to do so. Their sins, like the good they do, are irrelevant to that.

Same with staying Catholic, to whatever degree that we do - that is God’s gift too. God is the True Cause of:
  • our being chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world
  • our being effectually called
  • our free decision to obey that call
  • our loving corespondence to God’s Will
  • our desire for God
  • The stability of our living in Christ, and of our good use of all that we receive from God’s mercy
  • our final perseverance
  • all this, is entirely the gift of God; as is our, secondary, activity within God’s Causality. Merit is a gift - never something we bring to God to enrich Him, that we have done all by our own unaided strength (as though He did not own Heaven & earth and all that is in them, and so, us also): for even that strength, whatever it may be, is God’s gift.
Therefore, our sins and deficiencies and imperfections and failings and unChristlikenesses, do not make us “not Catholic” - that can’t happen; to be Catholic at all, is to be Catholic by God’s gift of grace alone, from start to finish.

We cannot read hearts, not even our own; so how can we read those of others, whom we have never even met, of whom we know nothing ? God alone, Who sees from the height of Heaven to the bottommost depths, sees into the hearts of us all. Let’s leave others to God, and hope for mercy for ourselves and for them. We all need it.

If Christ does not cast someone out, we have no business to do so.

BTW - “Protestant” does have a definite set of meanings; and there is nothing distinctively Protestant in any of the things mentioned. Unless one is to define “Catholic” by restricting its meaning to something such as “person who is clean-living, chaste, obedient, Mass-attending, orthodox” - that would put the people who need the Church, the people for whom Christ designed it, outside it.

The Church is not for respectable, pious, devout people - it’s for people who are not like that at all. It’s for cowards and liars like Peter, persecutors like Paul - people like that. Like us. Not for the “holy people” with God in their pockets who have Him all sorted out and nicely calibrated; to define as Catholics only so-called “good Catholics”, is to restrict the Church to the “pure”, or the “holy” - which is not an orthodox position, but incipient Donatism. Christ mixed with disgusting people like Samaritans and tax-collectors; with unclean heathen Romans and other Gentiles; with lepers; and He died the death of a common slave on a Roman cross with the taunts and jeers of the “True Church” of the day in His ears. His most bitter enemies were the religious establishment of His own People.

Christ is not a Christ Who rejects all those who fail to obey every last syllable that proceeds from the mouth of the Magisterium or who use condoms and birth control or don’t go to Mass. He is better than we are, just as His judgement is infinitely more searching and more terrible and more kind than ours. He welcomes the heavy-laden, so we must burden them or scare them away. ##
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Hi Michael,

If I was a much better writer, this is exactly the post I would like to have written. Absolutely beautifully stated and a great reminder that Jesus didn’t come for the righteous as the “well don’t need a physician”.

And Alan, your insights in followup are right on, summed up in the statement " Further, we teach kids not to be swayed by the opinions of others and hold our ground, but only until the child decides not to accept an “official” opinion at which time the child must be punished or bribed until he/she conforms." You are right that we constantly create the next generation of neurotics by these supremely mixed messages. Indeed “the sins of the fathers are visited unto the children” for exactly this reason.

Thank you both for your clarity and understanding. I’m sure God is smiling that someone “gets it” so well.

Peace,
 
quote: AlanFromWitchita
It just occurred to me that Catholics who think this way probably don’t consider them “fellow Christians,” but some sort of counterfeit Christians, or Christian wannabees.
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Exactly. “…some sort of counterfeit Christians, or Christian wannabees.”

I’ve been trying to articulate an expression of that mind-set for years, Alan.
Thanks for the phrase.

It never ceases to astound me - how the possession
of truth may, at times, render the other demands of
Christ…irrelevant?

“But, Lord, didn’t I possess the truth? Didn’t I proclaim
same? Didn’t I defend You and Your Church, Lord?”

Hopefully, our “efforts” [in this regard] will *not *be replied to, with:

“*Whatever *you said -and the way that you said it - to
these, my little ones - you said and did unto Me.”
This scenario is often met with - in my experience - the
notation ----> the truly loving thing, toward another,
is to convey the truth.
While I have no quarrel with the concept, I have a BIG problem
with the way this “mandate” is occassionally - carried out.

A kind of carte blanche - for rudeness, intemperateness,
self-inflation, judgmentalism and [what I regard as the Queen
of sins] - spiritual pride. [Perhaps I recognize same,
because I am faulted, similarly?]

They’ll be many who will come to Me and say…
"Lord, did I not teach the truth…?
Reminds me of the old saying:

You can always tell the one’s being “done good to”…
by the haggard expression on their faces." :coffee:

Just my take, on matters catechetical.
.

reen12
 
reen12 said:
****************************************

This scenario is often met with - in my experience - the
notation ----> the truly loving thing, toward another,
is to convey the truth.
While I have no quarrel with the concept, I have a BIG problem
with the way this “mandate” is occassionally - carried out.

A kind of carte blanche - for rudeness, intemperateness,
self-inflation, judgmentalism and [what I regard as the Queen
of sins] - spiritual pride. [Perhaps I recognize same,
because I am faulted, similarly?]

They’ll be many who will come to Me and say…
"Lord, did I not teach the truth…?
Reminds me of the old saying:

You can always tell the one’s being “done good to”…
by the haggard expression on their faces." :coffee:

Just my take, on matters catechetical.
.

reen12
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This hits me funny because I’m in a strange mood today. Julie and I are completely devoid of moods – not good nor bad – just one big abyss or huge empty warehouse or something.

Of course you know that I listen I “feel” opposite ideas interpspersed, so of course I had to think what would be just the opposite of what you said.

I believe that I have exhibited those characteristics to people at times when I had no idea I was doing so, nor did I mean to. The “judgment” is too subtle to even really address when concerns about lack of worldly control overrides them.

In other words, I can see how I have been guilty such as this in the past. It reminds me of the wonderful verses I saw once, in which we thanked God for making us sinners – so that we will know mercy.

Alan
 
quote: AlanFromWitchita
It reminds me of the wonderful verses I saw once, in which we thanked God for making us sinners – so that we will know mercy.
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You never spoke a truer word.

For, how can we know the joy of salvation, until we realize - fully -what forgiveness
[and therefore mercy and salvation] is.

Best,

reen
 
I’m sorry, I haven’t been involved with this thread but thought I would share how I take things.

First, I largely agree with Alan from Witchita’s arguments about treating our separated brethren with respect and *love *and really trying to get to know and understand them instead of just walking up and breathing condemnations of their beliefs or other things. Indeed, I know what it’s like to be Protestant because I went through a terrifying Protestant phase in my reversion story (which you can read here) where I didn’t trust the RCC and was reading my Bible to figure out “what must I do to be saved?” I don’t know who said it, but it’s a great saying: “No one cares how much you know, unless they know how much you care.” I also have essays on my blog (here) that go into how probably most Protestants who are devout are just following their conscience and are more committed to what truth they do have than a lot of Catholics. I also discuss the similar case even with non-Christians.

I also agree that whereas it may be true the devil is behind all attacks on the Church, to be sure, the scandal of the hypocritically and morally lax leadership of the CC was the main root cause of the Protestant Rebellion, and I would have to believe that many of these individuals left the Church because they were following their conscience.

That is not to say, however, that I agree that the RCC does not in fact have the fullness of truth, however, as one poster pointed out, it is a “fullness” that is constantly developing, not in the sense that anything is ever contradicted, but rather that the full philosophical and theological implications of the original deposit become clearer, or more specific.

But, on that note, about God drawing a greater good from all this mess, I definitely believe that is possible. The way I see it, the devil has been attacking the sources of Divine Truth from top to bottom in this age of the “illuminative phase” (see here) of the Church’s doctrinal development, so that, as time progresses, the attacks cause a greater and greater rejection of the Deposit of Truth. For example, we have the following major affronts:

I. The Great Schism (throw away authority of the Pope)

II. The Protestant Rebellion (then throw away also the authority of Bishops and Oral Tradition, leaving only Scripture and reason)

III. The “Enlightenment” (then throw away all of above plus even Scripture, leaving only reason and natural religion)

IV. The Secular Apostasy (total or near total rejection of religious truth)

(continued next post…)
 
(continued…)

Again, this isn’t to infer that the individuals involved in the above (excluding the last category, of course) can always be said to “enemies of God” or that they had no excuse. For example, bad popes fuel #1, the hypocritical scandal of the CC drives #2, and the well-meaning but tragic confusion, chaos and bloodshed of the chaos ensuing with #2 leads to #3, that is, a disillusionment with the pursuit of supernatural truth, thus leading to a belief that only natural religion is certain. I cannot say, however, that there is an excuse for #4, for, in that case, we truly have the children of the devil himself, that is, those with the “mark of the beast.”

But, I believe in the power of learning lessons. Through this gradual falling away, man is now largely in apostasy, but I believe God can abandon man into the consequences of his sin through the Minor Chastisement (as the mystics call it) and teach him a lesson that, like or not, even though it has weeds as well as wheat, the RCC is the true home for the human race, and then actually end up vindicating the truth of the RCC and bring a great era of peace, including the Reunion of Christians.

But, anyway, sorry for the diatribe, but just wanted to share!

GB,

Scott
 
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spauline:
I don’t know who said it, but it’s a great saying: “No one cares how much you know, unless they know how much you care.”
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Dear Scott,

Your “diatribe” was wonderful and very comprehensive, I thought.

This particular saying interests me greatly because if I had understood it many years sooner a lot of things would be different.

Once a nervous manager at Boeing who didn’t know me well was concerned about preparations for a trip that he would take with another engineer and a Weapon Control Equipment Test Set (WCETS, we called “wickets”) I was in charge of. The preparations were complete and correct, and done in advance but he actually bugged me because I WASN’T NERVOUS ENOUGH to suit him. I told him I have no need to be nervous because I know what I’m doing and everything is ready. He kept nagging me and I got very upset and refused to deal with him except via my boss – which he then didn’t even respect – and he was twice my age so I thought he was just totally rude. This turned into my first major altercation with a coworker after I had been there seven years – supposedly it’s because I was “passive-aggressive.”

Since then I’ve seen the same phenomenon elsewhere, and ultimately in great concentration on this forum. In my professional life, people who knew my work would accept it and trust it, because they knew it was thorough. People who didn’t would actively thwart it because it was not like another canned by partial solution that was being pitched or whatever. Finally I realized that it had nothing to do with the quality of my work at all, but that people prejudge the value of what is said by their opinion of the speaker.

Maybe I was socially clueless, but I would normally listen to arguments on their own merit, thus any given speaker may say something I find brilliant or ridiculous. When I started seeing it on CAF I thought it was some sort of idolatry, or some simple way of dividing the truth into “if he says something it’s true” and “if he says something it’s false.” The problem is that in the faith realm there are not always any objective measures forthcoming, so we tend to follow who we believe. Now that I understand, I realize that when people resist what is clearly true, it isn’t necessarily their superior logic and reasoning where they have caught a problem, but that they don’t “feel” right about something.

Having said that, I also see a lot of posts more like what I used to write, where I would go straight for the truth, not deterred by word games and emotions getting in the way – but because of our social programming (this person good listen to him, that person bad don’t listen to him) this barrier prevents anything useful from going across. Then each side thinks the other one is being obstinate. Now I may not always succeed, but I try to read in if there is any emotional content as well and address that – it’s becoming more natural now – and I don’t seem to get as much real flak. I still get good, wise people making corrections for me, and without that I would hate to have a discussion because there wouldn’t be one. What I don’t seem to have is people who get all mad and frustrated and call me names and everything else for being honest. CAF overall I think is improving in this regard, and this is one of the things it has taught me to where I now get totally different – and not threatening or belittling – reactions as compared to before.

Alan
 
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