The So-Called Unity of the Catholic Church

[CaptainPicard]

Speaking of division, I find it curious that a Catholic would pick and choose what should be heard from the ambos and dare criticize bishops and priests as unholy and as those who do not know the truth and are afraid to speak the truth. Your priests don’t tell the truth from the pulpit? You called those over you in the church unholy,ignorant, cowards and possibly liars. You call the beliefs of fellow Catholics to be a cancer. You judge the leadership of the church as inadequate and apparently you could do better, as per your above advice. Yet you claim to be in communion with them. If a Protestant said these things you would instantly brand them as anti-Catholic. These are divisive and rebellious comments and display disloyalty to the church leadership.

I suggest you take the log out of your own eye.

You’re likening the disunity between Catholics faithful to Church teaching and Cafeteria Catholics with the disunity between Protestants denominations. In some ways, there are similarities. Both are sources of sad division. Both scenarios help to obscure God’s truth and make it difficult for well meaning Christians to find the truth amidst a heap of errors. Both scenarios breed confusion and distrust amongst people. I don’t like the fact that there are Catholics supporting abortion any more than I like the fact that there Protestants who reject what I believe to be important doctrinal truths. I also recognize that I probably have more in common with you that with many Liberal Catholics. I see that.

However, there are obvious differences between these two scenarios. I’ll try to illustrate them with a hypothetical example. Let’s say that in the United States, Republicans and Democrats had a disagreement on, say, free speech. Democrats said that people don’t have a right to free speech and Republicans say that we do. Obviously we’ve already decided once and for all as a nation that people have a right to free speech.

Despite this disagreement, there’s still only one country. It’s not a Republican country and a Democrat country. They still recognize the authority of the President (or maybe they don’t), they still live in the same land, and call the same country home. In this example, obviously the democrats are wrong and are clearly at odds with the basic principles that our country was founded upon, but they remain Americans until they either disaffiliate themselves and move away, or are kicked out. It’s sad that there would be those who argue against free speech, but just because they argue something that’s unamerican doesn’t mean they aren’t Americans.

Protestantism would be more like if the South had successfully broken away from the Union and then proceeded to break apart itself so that Georgia is its own country, Alabama is its own country, maybe Miami is its own country, one apartment building is its own country. They all have their own constitution or form of government or ruler… or maybe very little constitution or government at all, depending on the situation. Perhaps the vast majority still have a few basic beliefs in common, but vary wildly on many other issues. Maybe most of the Southern states get along well with each other, but a few don’t. Some like the North pretty well despite a few disagreements, some loathe the North.
You see? There is true disunity in the Catholic Church (and looking back in history, you’ll find that there always has been), but it is categorically different from the sort of disunity of Protestantism. I believe that both types of disunity are is contradiction of our Lord’s wishes for full, visible unity among believers.

Jn 17 20-28
"“I pray not only for these,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
so that they may all be one,
as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that they also may be in us,
that the world may believe that you sent me.”

 

[idrum677]

Abortion is murder.
Artificial Birth Control is intrinsically evil.
Homosexuality is a sin.
Marriage is between a man and a woman.
Women cannot be priests.
The Eucharist is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ.
Confession and absolution are required for those who have committed mortal sin.

Sounds like my pastor’s homily 3 of of 4 Sundays a month.

 

[BEHanner]

First off there is actually no such thing as Protestantism. It is an old classification to group together non-Romanist churches in western Europe after the reformation. They are divided into two groups the conservative/catholic’s consisting of Lutherans and Anglicans, and the radicals consisting of Calvinists and Baptists. The conservatives are to a certain degree from a Roman centric point of view schismatics. Meaning the entire church of a state broke away from Rome and kept its heiarchy and what not. Both did this through legal means Parliament in England and Diets and declarations of Charles V in Germany.
The radicals sought to undermine the established church and eventually were able to take control of some towns and small states. Outside of those states that became Calvinist they were generally unsuccessful and did not grow much until they were able to thrive in the US.
So to compare Roman Catholic unity in any way shape or form with Protestant unity is completely false as there isn’t really such a thing as pretestantism so it can’t really be in unity.

One does not have to accept or follow all the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church to be Roman Catholic and that has always been true. One must accept and adhear to the doctrines of the Church, and you can even argue about what is a doctrine and what is not. The Church is not intended to be a dictator, it is there to be the embodiment of Christ’s sacraments and teachings on Earth.

 

[dmelosi]

First off there is actually no such thing as Protestantism. It is an old classification to group together non-Romanist churches in western Europe after the reformation. They are divided into two groups the conservative/catholic’s consisting of Lutherans and Anglicans, and the radicals consisting of Calvinists and Baptists. The conservatives are to a certain degree from a Roman centric point of view schismatics. Meaning the entire church of a state broke away from Rome and kept its heiarchy and what not. Both did this through legal means Parliament in England and Diets and declarations of Charles V in Germany.
The radicals sought to undermine the established church and eventually were able to take control of some towns and small states. Outside of those states that became Calvinist they were generally unsuccessful and did not grow much until they were able to thrive in the US.
So to compare Roman Catholic unity in any way shape or form with Protestant unity is completely false as there isn’t really such a thing as pretestantism so it can’t really be in unity.

One does not have to accept or follow all the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church to be Roman Catholic and that has always been true. One must accept and adhear to the doctrines of the Church, and you can even argue about what is a doctrine and what is not. The Church is not intended to be a dictator, it is there to be the embodiment of Christ’s sacraments and teachings on Earth.

What is an example of a what could be considered a doctrine or not?

 

[Archie]

Somehow this whole discussion liberally salted with terms like “unity”, “unity of the Catholic Church” and all of this seems to have nothing to do with trying to understand’s Jesus’ words regarding “unity.” Why are we not trying to understand what Jesus said and meant by “unity”?

All the chaos and dissension within all churces is the work of the devil. This state of affairs is crafted by Satan and his minions to effect “change” and “hope” in “another Jesus.” We would do well to remember that when the devil comes knocking at our door, these days he will be demanding more “tolerance”, “diversity” and “unity.” Those are the ingredients of this witches brew to bring about peace and love and world unity and a one world religion.

In Genesis, Chapter 3, the Serpent says “hath God said?” He wants us to start questioning and dialoging to concensus about what God has commanded. He wants us to become “politically correct” and start caring more about what other human beings think than His word. The devil wants us to all just “get along” and “agree to disagree”. That is NOT what Jesus taught us.

All churces including the Catholic Church have been “chaosed” from within to transform it into something more spiritually pliable, socially useful and dialectically accommodating.

The rebellion and disobedience and arrogance and discord among people and groups comes from within each individual who does not bow directly to God and obey without question His royal law with the help of the Holy Spirit and the blood of Christ regardless of what our church commands we must accept to be part of their group. Only when we first worship (obey) God in truth and righteousness can we be truly loving and caring for other human beings.

“Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law” Matthew 10:34-35

 

[tm30]

Speaking of division, I find it curious that a Catholic would pick and choose what should be heard from the ambos and dare criticize bishops and priests as unholy and as those who do not know the truth and are afraid to speak the truth. Your priests don’t tell the truth from the pulpit? You called those over you in the church unholy,ignorant, cowards and possibly liars. You call the beliefs of fellow Catholics to be a cancer. You judge the leadership of the church as inadequate and apparently you could do better, as per your above advice. Yet you claim to be in communion with them. If a Protestant said these things you would instantly brand them as anti-Catholic. These are divisive and rebellious comments and display disloyalty to the church leadership.

I suggest you take the log out of your own eye.

First, I don’t see where the previous poster was criticizing priests and bishops as being “unholy, ignorant cowards and liars”. Did I miss a post somewhere? It appears, actually, that YOU’RE calling our priests and bishops unholy, ignorant cowards. Maybe you think that, maybe you don’t, but the person you were responding to didn’t say anything of the sort.

As for the others who take communion (or don’t) with one hand while crossing their fingers with the other - hey, we just like to think of them as closet Protestants. The only thing that can really unite a faith is common beliefs. As long as those beliefs don’t change, the rest is up to the flock to decide whether they are inside or outside the sheepfold. Jenkins, et al. can refer to themselves as Catholic all they want. I can call myself the re-incarnation of John Calvin; it won’t make it true. If they contradict the faith, they are effectively outside the sheepfold. The bishops are all that need to be unified, because the bishops have canonical jurisdiction. What happens at the parish and university level can be troubling, but since they do not speak for the Church, it’s not true to say that the Church is divided. Parishes close. University boards are elected and booted out. The bishops must always be in communion with Rome, and they are.

Calling the beliefs of a bunch of heretics a “cancer” is arguably a charitable way of putting it. The Bible says God “spits out” the lukewarm like so much inedible and displeasing food.

 

[tm30]

You’re likening the disunity between Catholics faithful to Church teaching and Cafeteria Catholics with the disunity between Protestants denominations. In some ways, there are similarities. Both are sources of sad division. Both scenarios help to obscure God’s truth and make it difficult for well meaning Christians to find the truth amidst a heap of errors. Both scenarios breed confusion and distrust amongst people. I don’t like the fact that there are Catholics supporting abortion any more than I like the fact that there Protestants who reject what I believe to be important doctrinal truths. I also recognize that I probably have more in common with you that with many Liberal Catholics. I see that.

It’s very simple. There is One Body in Christ, and that Body is the Church, begun in the upper room with the words of Our Lord, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” The Holy Spirit came and sanctified that Body on Pentecost Sunday, and that Body either died with the Apostles, or it carried on with their successors. Anyone breaking from the Apostolic line of succession is no longer united with the Body. There is only unity in the Body, because Christ implored the Father of it in the Garden of Gethsemane. The canard that “there’s disunity in Catholicism just like Protestantism” misses the meaning of unity - what’s being united? The Body of Christ. What is the Body of Christ? The one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. If that’s not the Body of Christ, then the Body of Christ never existed in the first place and the Scriptures tell lies.

 

[BEHanner]

What is an example of a what could be considered a doctrine or not?

The pinacle of what is doctrine is the Nicene Creed.
Then you have the anathamas of the early ecumenical councils dealing with beliefs.
After that it gets complicated because not everyone agrees as to what councils are fully binding to the whole Church, and they sometimes don’t completely agree with one another and have very time specific things thrown in there.

 

[Catholic20064]

I wrote this in March in response to someone:

---

Now we see the spectacle of the head of Notre Dame, a Catholic priest, ordering campus police to arrest Catholic priests protesting the invitation and honoring of Obama. I note that what ND is doing is absolutely contrary to Catholic teaching and instruction. How can you claim to be one? There seems to be widespread disregard for official Church teaching and discipline (which, to this observer, is never enforced).

Notre Dame, premier Catholic institution. Notre Dame, honorer of Obama. The deep divisions within Catholicism are sharply shown to the world, and the Catholic leadership does little if anything about it.

Catholics point to divisions between Protestants, but it is nothing in comparison to the superficial unity among Catholics.

Our unity is based on those who faithfully follow the Pope. It’s not based on those who dissent. We all fall short in some respect – the wheat and the tares will grow together within the Church until the final harvest.

 

[IronHammer]

I wrote this in March in response to someone:

---

Now we see the spectacle of the head of Notre Dame, a Catholic priest, ordering campus police to arrest Catholic priests protesting the invitation and honoring of Obama. I note that what ND is doing is absolutely contrary to Catholic teaching and instruction. How can you claim to be one? There seems to be widespread disregard for official Church teaching and discipline (which, to this observer, is never enforced).

Notre Dame, premier Catholic institution. Notre Dame, honorer of Obama. The deep divisions within Catholicism are sharply shown to the world, and the Catholic leadership does little if anything about it.

Catholics point to divisions between Protestants, but it is nothing in comparison to the superficial unity among Catholics.

Truthstalker (judging by your post count you do seem to enjoy stalking those who hold to the Truth.)

You are completely missing the mark. When you see catholics voicing their disregard for official church teaching and discipline you are, in fact, witnessing these individuals in the very act of becoming Protestant. The reason things are not enforced these days is because the Catholic Church of 2009 is kinder and gentler. If I were you, I would be glad it is. In times past, these people would be soundly disciplined for leading Christ’s “little ones” into sin.

 

[Archie]

"
“It’s very simple. There is One Body in Christ, and that Body is the Church, begun in the upper room with the words of Our Lord, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” The Holy Spirit came and sanctified that Body on Pentecost Sunday, and that Body either died with the Apostles, or it carried on with their successors. Anyone breaking from the Apostolic line of succession is no longer united with the Body. There is only unity in the Body, because Christ implored the Father of it in the Garden of Gethsemane. The canard that “there’s disunity in Catholicism just like Protestantism” misses the meaning of unity - what’s being united? The Body of Christ. What is the Body of Christ? The one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. If that’s not the Body of Christ, then the Body of Christ never existed in the first place and the Scriptures tell lies. “
I do not subscribe to your either / or, vise-like propositions. I see a rather stark difference between the biblical Body of Christ and today’s “Catholicism.”

 

[Ridgerunner]

As one who has participated in Protestant vs Protestant litigation, (usually fights over church buildings, but they do it over cemeteries too) I was simply rendered slackjawed at the assertion that Protestants are somehow less hostile to one another than are Catholics among ourselves.

Having said that, I will add that I was raised among many more Protestants than Catholics, and I found many of the former, as well as the latter, devout and admirable.

I will also say that, while many Catholics dissent from the Church’s teachings (an admitted scandal) at least some time in their lives, (and no one really knows the ebb and flow of that) there is really no serious question what those teachings actually are. Beyond some few very basic understandings, Protestant sects, even internally, do not hold very much in common, and perhaps necessarily so lest there be as many Protestant churches as there are Protestants.

I purport to no expertise on Protestantism, but it seems to me that the primacy of private interpretation of the Bible (not held by all, but by many) is inherently centripetal and, in fact, is likely the reason why there are so many Protestant sects and why doctrine is so rarely developed beyond the extremely basic.

The alternative strategy one sometimes sees is an extreme eclecticism hardly short of that of Hinduism; something to which “mainline” churches now seem attracted. I think W.F. Buckley’s remark about Anglicans said a great deal. He once said “The Anglican Church is so eclectic that no one, from the Pope to Mao Tse Tung, can assert with any real degree of assurance that he is NOT an Anglican.”

Therefore, while it may amuse a Protestant to see dissidence among the members of the Catholic Church, and perhaps somehow feel his own group is elevated by that spectacle, he might do better to reflect on why it is that non-agreement on matters affecting faith and morals is, itself, the only truly universal agreement among his own.

He might reflect, too, on the sources of agreement among Protestants, when agreement exists, since many commonly-held beliefs are nowhere stated doctrinally. I have, on an number of occasions, loaned a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to a Protestant, and later asked the person what portions of it he/she disagreed with. The disagreements are (in my experience at least) quite few, once one gets beyond the “heirarchical” stuff. So, if one’s Protestant group has no position on a vast array of issues, yet a Protestant finds very little with which to quarrel in the CCC, then where did the Protestant in question get his/her concepts of what “ought to be” his tenets beyond the very basic, vast numbers of which were, indeed, derived from the Catholic Church’s biblical interpretations, not his own?

I think the answer to that question is obvious. It’s part of the “cultural overlay” of Western Civilization, as developed by the Catholic Church, often against the seemingly greater forces of paganism. It’s the “background” against which Protestants “Protest”, but only in small part. That ought to cause both Protestants and Catholics to reflect on what truly is the shallowness of dissent. It’s like one riding in a carriage, yet oblivious to its movement, contemplating how he might invent the wheel.

 

[joe370]

Truthstalker, you said:

All told, the rancor and theological divisiveness within the Catholic Church is far greater than that within Protestants. You have a superficial unity

**And the protestants have absolutely no unity. Catholics have a right to disagree with one another and this is what happened at Notre Dame, but all of them still attend just one church, after all the dust settle, and defer to the teachings of the Catholic church. **

Yet you claim to be one. Pelosi, animistic syncretists in Central America and dissident Catholics of all stripes and you drink from the same cup. Doesn’t that strike YOU as problematic?

**Saying that you are Catholic and practicing Catholicism are 2 entirely different things. When Pelosi finally takes her personal beliefs to her church, she will either conform, or fail to be a Catholic. This is what you call division within the C.C.? The bible tells us to defer to the church to settle disputes, and that is exactly what we do, and if someone claiming to be catholic says something that contradicts the C.C. we simply compare their claim to the teachings of the C.C.; if the teachings of the C.C. agree with said claim then we agree with the claim; if it doesn’t then we don’t agree with the claim. We then proceed to tell that person where they have erred. Protestants do the same thing, but they take it to their bibles where a free-for-all ensues, regarding doctrinal interpretations. **