Does the smile mean you’re joking? I hope so because there are no protestant verses anywhere in the NT. There is the Word of God on the one hand and there are protestant interpretations, justifications, excuses and inventions on the other, but there are no protestant verses.You missed the “protestant verses” of John 6!
Peace to you, too brother. Please know there are thousands of us praying daily for your safety and your safe return.anna, you have nothing to worry about. your too sweet to end up in hell. :console: the Blessed Mother wouldnt allow it. peace
Ah, Mr. Bonaparte, if I may side-step the glaring issue of your asserting that Gnosticism was a part of the loose conglomeration of Christianity for a moment and thrust right at the heart of the issue, given that, as you have stated, Catholicism and/or the Eastern Churches are the Christianity eventually defined by the early Church, how can one assert as valid anything else? If Christianity is true, then it has been true since 33 AD. If it isn’t one of these options, then what is it, and where has it been for the past two millennia or so? I still haven’t seen a convincing reply to this conundrum - not that I expect one from an agnostic (I find your interest in the topic to begin with surprising).
It could be a function of locality in space and/or time. Given that you cite California as a location, I’d expect the schools to be more… secularized there. Perhaps it’s generational, then. I’m something of a young’un. Casting even a neutral light on Christian Europe would’ve been considered too religious in the system I experienced. It wasn’t that facts were concocted, really, it’s just telling which ones were omitted. For a long time, I had no idea that Islam was so militaristic in antiquity. I had just assumed they were in the Holy Land to begin with (because that’s the picture that was painted for me by our government betters).Funny. I went through the same public education system K-12 all the way. I never heard that wacky version of history? Sounds Glen Beckian to me. I was always taught that the Crusades were a series of wars between Islam and Christianity. We were given the facts, the battles, the results, and left to draw our own conclusions.
Doctrine can only be defined as those tenants of faith which have been affirmed by Council or a statement, ex-cathedra by the Pope. Why did this document lable it’s self “development of doctrine”? My guess is that it was designed to answer the objections of our seperated Eastern brenthern concerning this practice. The charge most typically regards the development of doctrine (from which they’ve profited much, but now they scorn because I guess they figure it’s “developed enough”, which seems arbitrary to me).
More like Gotta make the Church look bad. . . .(recollect that after the reformation much of history was influenced by the Protestant/Anglo-Saxon perspective).
Fr. Hardon is one of the most prolific, proficient Catholic writers in the world. Anything by him is an education in the Catholic Faith. The problem here seems to be the assumption that the two phrases in his title are connected and that the second identifies the first. That reads it the wrong way.
So, you believe Hell is a literal physical burning as an eternal torment?
The CCC states the primary punishment is seperation from God, but I certainly think it’s not going to be very colder there
In one of her appearances at Fatima, the Blessed Virgin Mary showed the children a literal, physical burning as an eternal torment. Do I believe it? Let’s just say I’m not prepared to deny it. There are a lot of very hot spots out there in the universe and the Lord said what He said.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion. Maybe a good research into the actions of the orthodox should be done. If you do start back with Constantine then move forward. You will notice several things. First, every heresy in the church up to the end of the first millenium was started in the East. Second after the schism the eastern church did not recognize any Council as a binding General council. The first eight councils they did because they dealt with eastern heresies. They accepted the authority of the Pope up to the schism. Then denied it afterwards. Still when they were attacked by Islam they appealed to the West to save their butts. But when the West was overrun by barbarians the East did not even lift a finger to help. It is no secret that Constantinople wanted to be the head of the Church since the Roman Empire, after Constantine, was centered there. They even went as far as to call themselves “The New Rome”. Also it is no secret that the emperor was heavily involved in church affairs in the Eastern Church. Look up the word Caesaropapism or Byzantiumism and see what it means. The fact is the emperor had control of the Orthodox Church to the point that the emperor would name who the Patriarch would be and frequently appointed his hand picked candidate. Other rulers like the Russian Czars did also. All of this is attested to by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, who claimed that this was not Orthodox doctrine but rather the confusion of the Byzantine Empire with the Kingdom of God and the zeal of the Byzantines "to establish here on earth a living icon of God’s government in heaven was the reality behind it all. In short they thought they were better than the West and that has not changed.
Because, quite frankly, protestants misinterpret John 6. They do so because they have to. John 6 is inherently Catholic. Notice, Jesus compared Himself to the manna of the OT which the Jews knew was literally food that they could eat and sustain their material bodies. So when Jesus says that the “Bread from Heaven” was His flesh the Jews immediately thought along the same lines as the OT mann that it was literal and material food. That is why they recoiled from Jesus. They were thinking cannabalism. But notice what Jesus does. He corrects their thinking by sayingthat his words were spirit and life. This was not material food Jesus was talking about. It was spiritual food and just as material food gives life to the body spiritual food gives life to the spirit. Jesus never corrected the Jews or His disciples from taking His words literally. He only corrected them taking them as meaning material food. This teaching of John 6 is not new. It was present in the church from the earliest of times and was so well accepted that it did not need a whole lot of explanation. Of course when protestantism rejected church authority it had to reject the doctrine of Transsubstantiation because Transsubstantiation required a church with the authority to consecrate the bread and wine. That meant that John 6 could not be understood as literal because that would be unprotestant.To play devil’s advocate, the same thing can be said of Catholics. A Protestant can’t figure out why Catholics take John 6 literally when Jesus says that his words are “spirit and life” and that the flesh is of no consequence? Yet they believe “I am the vine” to be symbolic. It goes both ways. Sorting out metaphor from reality in Scripture is a full-time job!
Heresies were always in existence,both West and East,but the East,if I am correct,normally was riddled with more heresies,than the West.
Very true.If one takes the time to read many of the writings of the eastern church fathers,one will easily detect how many of the heresies or doctrinal issues were brought to Rome or Rome was informed. Nonetheless,many will argue,especially Orthodoxs that bishops always consulted each other when issues arrived? True,but what makes Rome different is that those eastern bishops took or presented the issues to Rome to make the final decision on the matter. If Rome has no jurisdiction over other regions or bishops,then why even bother taking it to Rome to settle it?
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