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svoboda
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You’ll have a hard time convincing Catholics of this. Sabbath is in the commandments anyway. Which is what Sunday worship is really all about.
The pope, apparently, has the power to send people to hell
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CrossoverManiac
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I’m sure it was hard to convince Catholic that there wasn’t something wroung with being charged money to get your time in purgatory reduced (indulgences) during the 15th century. Doesn’t mean you had to go along with it.
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Aaron_I
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Romans 13:1-5 “Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. Therefore; whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear to good conduct, but to evil. Do you wish to have no fear of authority? Then do what is good and you will receive approval from it, for it is a servant of God for you good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer. Therefore, it is necessary to be subject not only because of the wrath but also because of conscience.”
Perhaps if people would spend more time listening to authority instead of whining about it, they might actually benefit from good leadership. If someone doesn’t know that a day is a holy day of obligation, then they are not culpable. But if they choose not to go in order to do something trivial, then that certainly says something about their character. God will spew the lukewarm out of his mouth. Someone who won’t go to mass they recognize to be a holy day of obligation can at best be regarded as lukewarm.
Perhaps if people would spend more time listening to authority instead of whining about it, they might actually benefit from good leadership. If someone doesn’t know that a day is a holy day of obligation, then they are not culpable. But if they choose not to go in order to do something trivial, then that certainly says something about their character. God will spew the lukewarm out of his mouth. Someone who won’t go to mass they recognize to be a holy day of obligation can at best be regarded as lukewarm.
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Alterum
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Svoboda is just trying to cause trouble by blurring the line between the Pope acknowledging what is sinful and the Pope creating a new sin (i.e., by presenting them as one in the same dilemma – which of course they are not. The Pope may often do the former, but he never does the latter).
If you read her other posts, you’ll see that she’s clearly hostile to the Catholic Church and has a heavily warped understanding of our basic theology.
Regardless, I know Svoboda personally (she was suspended from these forums not long ago under a different alias), and myself being a Catholic who professes to be completely faithful to the Magisterium, I assure you that she fails to understand many of the tenets of Catholicism, or even just faith in God. If it’s not already apparent, I think it will soon become apparent that she is only trying to cause trouble. Hence the irrelevant quotation from Pope Boniface VIII (which, from the frequency with which she employs it in debates, you would think is one of her favorite quotations).
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CrossoverManiac
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Aaron I.:
2). there are limits to what authority figures are allowed to do, and this is what this debate is about.
1). that’s a reference to civil authority
2). there are limits to what authority figures are allowed to do, and this is what this debate is about.
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svoboda
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Aaron I.:
Authority is most definitely not from God
But this argument can be applied to justifying communist rule, and for that matter forced abortions by Chinese authorities.
Authority is most definitely not from God
You don’t understand. Things like fast and abstinence and attending Mass on holy days of obligation are disciplines of the Church. That’s why the Pope can dispense with them.
What’s happenning is that if you’re bound by the discipline of your Church and you, say, intentionally miss Mass on Sunday, you’re not guilty of missing Mass per se. You are guilty of disobeying the Church, which is indeed a sin. And since the Pope has the power to bind and loose, what he binds to be a serious matter becomes a grave sin when done with impunity. The pope cannot “create new sins” my goodness! What he can do is bind you to something, the authority for which comes from Christ himself. So if you disobey, you commit the sin of disobedience. And if you remember, this was the very first sin recorded in the Bible.
So when you stand before God in judgment, he will not condemn you to hell for missing Mass. Rather you will choose to go to hell because you chose to disobey Christ’s Church.
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CrossoverManiac
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Double speak for ‘Pope can send people to Hell’. And I would like to know why missing Mass on November 1 is suppose to be more serious than missing Mass on July 7 or May 15?
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LilyM
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Missing Mass on a Holy Day of Obligation is no more or less serious than missing any Sunday mass. Holy Days of Obligation were created in the first place because important festivals (like celebrating HIS birth and events in HIS life, and HIS mother’s life, mostly) don’t always conveniently fall on a Sunday. These are events that for many different reasons the Church thinks important enough to commemorate - did you ever ask anyone WHY each event is commemorated?
Holy days are all part and parcel of Sabbath observance - after all, the Jews also had holy days that weren’t on Saturdays, and I don’t think all of them are named explicitly in the Old Testament. Heck, a fair number of people go to church every single day of the year. They have this funny feeling of love for God and they actually WANT to spend time with him even if they don’t have to - imagine that!
As it is there are only a handful of non-Sunday Holy Days. Quit whining and offer it up as a sacrifice and a heroic instance of obedience if you don’t actually like going.
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Ray_Scheel
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Perhaps, but the way I see it, “good people” wouldn’t make a public spectacle of declaring, in advance, both their knowing rejection of God’s decision to hand authority to the designated leaders of his Church on earth and assuming that decision-making authority for themselves.
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svoboda
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But there are so many arguments to go either way. Does God exist? Maybe maybe not. Does he reveal himself to human beings? Maybe maybe not. Is the Catholic Church the one God founded? Maybe maybe not. That is now I see it.
There are so many arguments for various different positions.
Can people be blamed for not acknowledging an authority that cannot prove it has anything to do with God?
I can see how you can always blame people for doing things that harm human beings (ie. rape, murder, abuse). But the more technical things such as the mass, such as remarrying after having been abandoned, such as use of birth control are harder to make a case for.
From my perspective there are so many valid arguments for atheism, deism, pantheism etc. that no one can knowingly reject God by rejecting Catholicism. (Unless of course they’ve had private revelation)
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Ray_Scheel
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And slandering someone isn’t equivalent to unloading a full clip of hollow points into them, but intentionally injuring someone’s spirit is considered to fall under the “Thou shall not do murder” command. Lifting a candybar doesn’t amount to armed robbery of a bank, but both are violationsof “Thou shall not steal”. Likewise, a lustful thought looking at a lingere catalog does not amount to seducing your neighbors wife, but those too are both mortal sins covered by the same commandment. Since it looks like you are starting from the position that moral equivalence and practical applicability are identical concepts, of course this is confusing.
From another post:
It seem to me as if this part of your argument ignores the fact that the Jews also have several mandatory religious holidays not coinciding with the Sabbath. Since the establishment of Christian Holy Days does have clear Jewish precedent, it looks like an intentional prejudice in your argument to dismiss the establishment of HDO’s as being “invented” “out
of nowhere”.
No, it means that if you deliberatly reject the authority Jesus gave to the apostles, you’ll have some serious explaining to to as to why you thought you should buck the chain of command and disobey legitiamte orders without a really good reason
Dragging out “Spanish Inquisitions, Protestantism, and Galileo” in a discussion about Catholic practices is equivlaent to the practical rule of declaring as forfeiting whoever made the first stretch of accusing their opposition of being Nazi’s.
To re-word the question that you responded to with this net full of red herrings: If you reject Jesus’ decision to put Peter in charge of the apostles and to give the apostles at large authoirty to run his Church on earth, why in the world are you raising a stink about the Catholics establishing mandatory religious observances in a pattern remnicent of similar events on the Jewish calendar?
Right. The establishment of HDO’s is an exercies of the authoirty of hte Church to make sure folks are getting the message in the proper context and drawing lines for what isn’t acceptable behavior basedon what has been revealed to us. God still has judgement, but since we’ve been given guidance by God’s designated authoirty about what to do, it is probably going to take more than an “I didn’t wanna” line of reasoning to explain away refusing that guidance when you show up at the gates.
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Ray_Scheel
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Not on topic for a thread started by questioning the pope’s authority to make a practical decision regarding mandatory religious observations for Catholics based on their (the Catholic’s) collective agreement that God did give authority to his Church. Switching to ponderings on whether Jesus was really God is a radical enough shift from the opening question to warrant being addressed in a different thread, preferably one of the threads you’ve already discussed that matter on to avoid forcing others to start over on covering the same ground with you once again.
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svoboda
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I agree, I should have been more focused. I apologize.
Because the Church binds you to do so on Nov. 1 and not on July 7 or May 15. So if you miss Mass, you are not so much guilty of missing Mass, but of disobedience to the authority of the Church.
That authority should be obeyed because it comes from Christ. Now as the other poster said, quit whining and trust in Christ who instituted the Pope’s power to bind and lose. Otherwise, declare once and for all your refusal to submit to Christ’s Church, but one way or another, either obey or stop calling yourself Catholic. The Lord spits out the lukewarm.
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Fergal
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The Holy Father has the power to bind and loose, people send themselves to hell.
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Friar_David_O.Carm
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Thats right. The pope does not send anyone to Hell. People chose Hell over Heaven.
They do this by not repenting.
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jrabs
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Excellent post Byz!
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Brendan
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I forgot one other part. What is bound on Earth is bound in Heaven.
Since sin cannot exist in Heaven, it follows that sin cannot be bound to on Earth.
This is one of the key (excuse the pun) aspects of Papal Infallibity. The ability to bind and loose are a reflection of what already exists in Heaven.
If the Pope binds the Church to a teaching, that teaching is already pre-existant in Heaven as Truth.
All a Pope really does during the ‘bind and loosing’ is the be the temporal agent of a Heavenly decision.
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1ke
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I’d say he changed the title because that’s descriptive of your question. And just as the pope has authority over Catholics, Fr Vincent has authority over his forum questions.
Disobeying the Church authority IS a mortal sin. He didn’t decide that-- Jesus did.
God ratifies what is bound on earth. The authority comes from God. No one “tells” God who can go to Heaven and who can’t.
You have funny ideas. A person sends HIMSELF to hell by purposeful rejection of the Church, God, and the purposeful commitment of mortal sins.
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