What Jesus actually SAID

[Eufrosnia]

Very astute answer and thank you. One problem I have is about Doctors: every graduating class has someone at the bottom. We can’t just blindly trust them.

No problem. Glad if it helped!

So what you have to understand is with Doctors, even when you say “bottom of the class”, you are still speaking in terms of the standard the other Doctors had established. Essentially what you are referring to is that some Doctors were considered bottom of the class according to the testing standards they established. So you are still giving assent to the authority of the Doctors, yes?

The Church itself has such a hierarchy in authority. The Pope has the highest authority. Then the Bishops and then the priests etc. So you won’t say that what a priest teaches has the same authority level as that of a Pope for an example. This is not much different from you treating the a Specialist Doctor as having a higher authority over a Family Doctor.

In the case of the Catholic Church, after you discover that this is the Church that Christ instituted, you believe everything it teaches by faith and do what it commands in obedience. It does not necessarily have to make sense to you immediately. But you know that since it is the True Church, what it teaches must also be free from error.

What you have to remember is that you do not believe in the Church as the True Church because its teaching makes sense to you. You believe in the Church because that is where reason leads you (as I explained in my previous reply). Then you accept everything it says by Faith. We cannot question the Church on issues such as plenary indulgence or being too legalistic because we do not know, apart from the Church, how it should be like. We know who God is and we understand God and his teachings through the Church. Without the Church, we have nothing.

So the way we know if our spirit is indeed from God and whether it is properly formed (possibly more appropriate to refer to it as conscience than spirit), is by looking at whether it agrees with the Church. If our feelings about what Christ would do does not agree with the Church, it is a good indicator that we need to become more closer to the Church and read her teachings to understand better what kind of a person Christ is. Then we grow in faith and our feelings conform to be more in line with the Church.

Always remember, without the Church, we do not know Christ in a clear manner. It is only through the Church that we get to know Christ. So it would make little sense for us to say that Christ would be very displeased with what her Church teaches and requires of her faithful.

 

[St_Francis]

Elizeena,
I don’t know if it’s because of the Protestant/Puritan influence in the US or because I came to Catholicism as an adult or what, but I am now working on changing my tendency to acoid sin to loving God. It’s an uphill climb; I’m not good at changing habits!

But look at it this way: a wife will do little things to please her husband, her beloved, and not worry too much about sinning against him. She knows if she just loves him and shows her love that even if she meets a heart-throb movie star who shows interest in her, she will just think of her beloved husband and see that what the star is offering is just ahes compared to what she has.

So to me, and I am totally still working on this, it’s not a matter of cutting by our own strength each attachment to sin to get to that point of being able to receive the entirety of the plenary indulgence; it’s a question of turning our attention*towards *God, which as a corrollary turns our attention away from sin.

I can see that you are feeling frustrated in a way that seems similar to my own frustrations in the past, and I hope this helps you as it has helped me.

 

[PrayForMeStJude]

Still, to be totally “free of all attachment to sin” in order to obtain a plenary indulgence…well, **how does one do that unless one is in a coma when just about everything is a “sin”? **I have attempted dozens of plenary indulgences in the past two years, with sincerity; I have been to sacred shrines all over Europe, I have lit candles in those shrines, I have served as Eucharistic Minister at Sacre Coer and at Lourdes, I have served as Cantor at Fatima. These pilgrimages had intention. It is absolutely impossible for me to believe that the God I know, Who touches my life and always has, would refuse to honor these efforts because of some minor thing such as not leaving a good tip or having a glass of wine! Or other such …

I’m tired of rules and regulations that my spirit tells me would offend Jesus. I can almost hear Him saying “What’s WRONG with you people? Didn’t you listen to Me?” Thus, this post, and then you all for participating.

The part I have emphasized gets to what I think is really at the heart of the matter: the sense you seem to have that everything is a sin. I think you may be suffering from a serious case of scrupulosity. I think the examples you gave back this up; leaving a small tip or having a glass of wine are not sins, and certainly not mortal sins that would do major damage to your soul.

I’m not sure where you may have picked this up - it could perhaps be related to what you were taught by family members, maybe you picked it up from one of the harsher Protestant sects, and it is likely, of course, that the devil is trying to exploit your weaknesses. But if you are suffering from a case of the scruples, I can certainly understand how you could become frustrated with the Church and blame your feelings of failure on “the rules.”

I also want to offer some guidance on the meaning of “attachment to sin.” It doesn’t mean that you never sin, or that you’ll never sin again. God knows we cannot reach that high of a bar. What it means is that you have done everything you can to beak your ties to what leads you to sin. Think of it in terms of Confession. If you confess that you have been viewing pornography, but you still have pornographic magazines in your closet, you have not broken that attachment to sin. If you confess that you have cheated on your spouse, but you have a “date” set up with someone else that weekend, you have not broken that attachment to sin. That is what it means.

If this is hitting home for you, perhaps you do have some scruples you need to deal with. The best way to do this is to find a priest you trust, tell him youstruggle with scruples, and ask him to be your regular confessor so he can help you deepen your understanding of what is and is not a sin.

 

[trevor1055]

The OP referenced learning more about the Bible as a protestant than in 12 years of Catholic school. I am a convert, having grown up primarily Pentecostal as a youth and teenager. Yes, I knew Scripture, indeed – I knew the words, anyway. The problem is that, even though you know the words, what do those words mean? I think you see where I am going with this … ultimately to the Magesterium. Just something to keep in mind.

 

[Gorgias]

In the “Our Father” what Jesus REALLY was doing was reciting the Shema with His own editing because He was GOD and was speaking for GOD to God’s “people”.

Actually, I would say that the Lord’s Prayer is closer to the ‘Eighteen Benedictions’ than it is to the Sh’ma.

The Bible has been grossly mistranslated, we know this because there are scholars who can read Aramaic (even ancient Aramaic) and Greek and have proven these mistranslations. I don’t hear too much about this in the Roman Catholic church, why not?

As others have noted, this is quite a claim – and you’re making it without a citation or a reference or a shred of evidence! I would assert that the reason you’re not hearing about it in the Catholic Church is that it’s not true.

Jesus was, first and foremost, a JEW and a Rabbi (teacher)

No. Jesus was first and foremost the incarnate Son of God.

I think He is jumping up and down out of total frustration because THIS church, the RC Church, is misrepresenting

Well… that’s an interesting take on it. Tell me – if Jesus gave the disciples proxy powers (i.e., to act on his behalf – “what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven”), what does that imply? Either that Jesus is OK with whatever his apostles and successors have said (under the protection and guidance of the Holy Spirit)… or that Jesus himself was mistaken, gullible, and foolish. Which is it?

is essentially “teaching” that we cannot possibly even earn a “plenary indulgence” because we cannot possibly be in the absolute “state of grace” for this. My question: WHO ASKED GOD, or WHO TOLD GOD the rules?

Hmm. So, then… where do you see God talking about plenary indulgences? If the rules have to come straight from the mouth of God, then you have something that you can point to, that says, “God meant this”… right?

What would JESUS say about this legalism?

As I’ve already suggested, what Jesus has already said is, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven”.

Most priests are thoroughly indoctrinated, those who are not may be in apostasy.

Let me be certain I understand what you’re saying: either a priest is faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church (i.e., ‘indoctrinated’) and therefore can’t be relied upon for answers, or a priest is unfaithful to the Catholic Church (i.e., ‘in apostasy’) and therefore can’t be relied upon for answers. That doesn’t leave you any room – that’s quite a tautology you’ve constructed for yourself!

 

[ellzeena]

Hmm. Perhaps you are extremely humble. However, to me it sounds strange for someone to say “I am extremely humble” because people who are humble don’t usually say so… that’s part of what it means to be humble. I intend no insult but to speak frankly you don’t sound humble at all to me.

As to rules and regulations… what ones are so hard? I’m no saint but I don’t find most of the rules that difficult. I don’t want to rape or steal, I don’t want to worship false gods, I don’t want to defraud laborers or have sex with a man, I don’t want to cheat on my wife or take things away from other people. I don’t even have a particular desire to kill anyone.

Have you ever fasted during Lent? The first and the last weeks are the hardest for me, but even then it isn’t that hard, and it’s not even a requirement anymore. There are only 2 days of fasting in the Church in the USA. Eating meat on Fridays? I am not especially fond of fish but I can scarcely say that it is a hardship. I think most American bishops let you substitute a different penance anyway, though I suppose that you would have to check with your chancery to find out what it is.

So what, specifically, is so hard?

All this talk of “rules and regulations” and “legalism” makes me think that you’re tired of being told what to do. That is just Original Sin talking. I don’t think anyone particularly likes being told what to do… it’s just part of life. Doing the dishes is another such thing: I haven’t met anybody who really likes it, but everyone must come to terms with it because it has to be done.

No. Simple. Just, NO. I am so self deprecating that I think it offends God. You know nothing of me. Your view of “sin” is disingenuous my friend because, yesterday, I learned for the first time (and I am 66 years old) about the “sin” of “deprecation”. Who sits around all day and thinks this stuff up? How can the average person know all the definitions of all the “sins” the RC Church has inflicted upon us, yes, inflicted, by stating that they are, indeed, “sin”? You’d have to memorize the Catechism. Have you even READ it? Let he who is sinless among you cast the first stone…without a bit of understanding, you condemn me. Much like all these rules and regulations no one has ever heard of, and certainly NOT what Jesus taught.

 

[ellzeena]

*“I was amazed to learn that in the 1960’s there was a list of “official sins” that seminarians studied. Give me a break! This concept of sin and the Pharisees I define as “the observance of form” and not, I repeat not, the practice of faith. What is the key to the Two Greatest Commandments? Love. Simple–love. Two statements the first of which encompassed 1-3 of the Decalogue and the second 4-10. Is the only sin then an act or thought in which someone turns away from love? God is love. Therefore, turning away from love is turning away from God.”
*
Disciple I Hope:

Thank you. I am exactly your age. I think that is part of our inability to be “conformed” to what is so obviously - well, just plain - “wrong”. You are correct and you are educated, a prized combination. I will request to befriend you. As I mentioned in answer to someone else, yesterday I read about the “sin” of “deprecation” in the church bulletin. HUH? In my entire life I have never heard of this! So…all this time - whenever I look for sympathy because of something cruel someone did to me - I’m sinning? By reporting the actions of that person to a third party? I guess anyone in psychotherapy is going straight to hell, then. Hmmm. It’s absurd and it chases people away. If you can’t be free of sin, why try, that seems to be the biggest complaint I’ve heard in ex-Catholics who are now in other Christian denominations. Evangelical Protestantism says (sola scriptura) 'NOT BY WORKS BUT BY FAITH, LEST ANYONE BOAST"…and yet, a priest I greatly admire and love said yesterday from the pulpit that we can “easily lose our salvation” by our acts. Whom do I believe: Jesus, or him? Not that I am incapable as a human of doing something heinous and paying for it with my eternal life with God because (due to my humanity) who knows what anyone is capable of? BUT to make every day life a “lose-lose” experience by telling us that just about everything is a “sin” and we can “lose” our salvation, the Church diverges from its Master Teacher like a huge, unwieldy train cut off from the engine and out of control.

 

[ellzeena]

No problem. Glad if it helped!

Without the Church, we have nothing.

So the way we know if our spirit is indeed from God and whether it is properly formed (possibly more appropriate to refer to it as conscience than spirit), is by looking at whether it agrees with the Church. If our feelings about what Christ would do does not agree with the Church, it is a good indicator that we need to become more closer to the Church and read her teachings to understand better what kind of a person Christ is. Then we grow in faith and our feelings conform to be more in line with the Church.

Always remember, without the Church, we do not know Christ in a clear manner. It is only through the Church that we get to know Christ. So it would make little sense for us to say that Christ would be very displeased with what her Church teaches and requires of her faithful.

We know Jesus from His words, the same way the Church knows Him. We know Jesus from His actions; we know Him from the Holy Spirit which moves in us, should we open the door (and yes, it is a conscious and daily decision and it is extremely difficult and can leave a person wide open to horrific attack, trust me.) The Church is not infallible in every single thing nor are its priests, its bishops, etc. We are taught that when the Pope speaks Ex Cathedra, he is infallible. Does Jesus agree? I don’t know. But I do attempt to follow the traditions and teachings except…once in a while, the ridiculous goes to the sublime and I hear a voice saying, “Didn’t you people HEAR what I said?”

 

[ellzeena]

Elizeena,
I don’t know if it’s because of the Protestant/Puritan influence in the US or because I came to Catholicism as an adult or what, but I am now working on changing my tendency to acoid sin to loving God. It’s an uphill climb; I’m not good at changing habits!

But look at it this way: a wife will do little things to please her husband, her beloved, and not worry too much about sinning against him. She knows if she just loves him and shows her love that even if she meets a heart-throb movie star who shows interest in her, she will just think of her beloved husband and see that what the star is offering is just ahes compared to what she has.

So to me, and I am totally still working on this, it’s not a matter of cutting by our own strength each attachment to sin to get to that point of being able to receive the entirety of the plenary indulgence; it’s a question of turning our attention*towards *God, which as a corrollary turns our attention away from sin.

I can see that you are feeling frustrated in a way that seems similar to my own frustrations in the past, and I hope this helps you as it has helped me.

THANK YOU, I feel every word you have written. Fundamentally and in my deepest spiritual place, I know that God sees and honors and cherishes my efforts, whether or not I fall short of perfection.

 

[mark_a]

May be wrong forum, don’t know where else to put this. Left a question for apologists but my questions are never answered.

In the “Our Father” what Jesus REALLY was doing was reciting the Shema with His own editing because He was GOD and was speaking for GOD to God’s “people”. See this:
jewfaq.org/prayer/shema.htm

Fairly clear, isn’t it? And Jesus commandment appears to have been “Love the Lord with your whole heart and soul, and love one another as you love yourself.” This pretty much fits into the Shema but in a form modified BY ITS AUTHOR God Himself.

The Bible has been grossly mistranslated, we know this because there are scholars who can read Aramaic (even ancient Aramaic) and Greek and have proven these mistranslations. I don’t hear too much about this in the Roman Catholic church, why not? Jesus was, first and foremost, a JEW and a Rabbi (teacher), He even wore the tassels (as spoken of in the NT especially when the woman with a flow of blood touched his “tassel”). He knew (of course!) what the “commandments” actually said and, moreover, what they actually MEANT. He knew the outrageous legalism inflicted on the Jews by their leaders (who were unable to follow this themselves) and it angered Him!. I think He is jumping up and down out of total frustration because THIS church, the RC Church, is misrepresenting, has inflicted rules and regulations its own leadership do not follow, and is essentially “teaching” that we cannot possibly even earn a “plenary indulgence” because we cannot possibly be in the absolute “state of grace” for this. My question: WHO ASKED GOD, or WHO TOLD GOD the rules? What would JESUS say about this legalism?

I spent time in Protestant Christianity; I spent time seriously studying Judaism; I have seen through the lies of other faith systems. I am always led back to Roman Catholicism but I know, in my heart, SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE. SO, what say you? Do you slavishly follow whatever is told you because you are taught it is from God? And how do you KNOW it is from God? And…what if your relationship with God (which, in my case, is lifelong, quite deep, very complex and even a tad unbelievable) tells you that SOMETHING is WRONG? WHAT do you do? WHERE do you go? Most priests are thoroughly indoctrinated, those who are not may be in apostasy. WHAT TO DO? Any helpers out there (and please, pray before answering)?

Do you find the incarnation untrue, the Resurrection, the virgin birth, Church authority?

 

[JamesCaruso]

May be wrong forum, don’t know where else to put this. Left a question for apologists but my questions are never answered.

In the “Our Father” what Jesus REALLY was doing was reciting the Shema with His own editing because He was GOD and was speaking for GOD to God’s “people”. See this:
jewfaq.org/prayer/shema.htm

Fairly clear, isn’t it? And Jesus commandment appears to have been “Love the Lord with your whole heart and soul, and love one another as you love yourself.” This pretty much fits into the Shema but in a form modified BY ITS AUTHOR God Himself.

The Bible has been grossly mistranslated, we know this because there are scholars who can read Aramaic (even ancient Aramaic) and Greek and have proven these mistranslations. I don’t hear too much about this in the Roman Catholic church, why not? Jesus was, first and foremost, a JEW and a Rabbi (teacher), He even wore the tassels (as spoken of in the NT especially when the woman with a flow of blood touched his “tassel”). He knew (of course!) what the “commandments” actually said and, moreover, what they actually MEANT. He knew the outrageous legalism inflicted on the Jews by their leaders (who were unable to follow this themselves) and it angered Him!. I think He is jumping up and down out of total frustration because THIS church, the RC Church, is misrepresenting, has inflicted rules and regulations its own leadership do not follow, and is essentially “teaching” that we cannot possibly even earn a “plenary indulgence” because we cannot possibly be in the absolute “state of grace” for this. My question: WHO ASKED GOD, or WHO TOLD GOD the rules? What would JESUS say about this legalism?

I spent time in Protestant Christianity; I spent time seriously studying Judaism; I have seen through the lies of other faith systems. I am always led back to Roman Catholicism but I know, in my heart, SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE. SO, what say you? Do you slavishly follow whatever is told you because you are taught it is from God? And how do you KNOW it is from God? And…what if your relationship with God (which, in my case, is lifelong, quite deep, very complex and even a tad unbelievable) tells you that SOMETHING is WRONG? WHAT do you do? WHERE do you go? Most priests are thoroughly indoctrinated, those who are not may be in apostasy. WHAT TO DO? Any helpers out there (and please, pray before answering)?

I read your link and IMHO it’s a stretch to say one was taken from the other. They seem, at least to me, to be entirely different, and I doubt Jews of Jesus’ time would see the similarity that you see-- more so the contrast. I have to run and get ready for Church, but I will return to this thread to read the various posts.

 

[ellzeena]

If this is hitting home for you, perhaps you do have some scruples you need to deal with. The best way to do this is to find a priest you trust, tell him youstruggle with scruples, and ask him to be your regular confessor so he can help you deepen your understanding of what is and is not a sin.

Thanks for your concern but I do not suffer from scrupulosity. What I suffer from is far worse and cannot be taken away. Without Jesus I would not be sitting here. I object to the legalism and that is what drove me away 30 years ago. I am beginning to understand how to get around this objection due to a few posts here on this thread. I must keep my eyes on Him and stay in HIS WORD. I do have such a priest and confessor. No one but God can ultimately answer my questions, one day hopefully He will.

 

[devoutchristian]

Just another Catholic who thinks that they know better than the Church, they’ll be proven wrong in the end.

 

[St_Francis]

THANK YOU, I feel every word you have written. Fundamentally and in my deepest spiritual place, I know that God sees and honors and cherishes my efforts, whether or not I fall short of perfection.

I feel like I can relate to some of what you are saying because I have felt such similar frustrations, but the pain I felt was an indication that I was doing something the wrong way. In the first of the 3 stages of the spiritual life is the time we get rid of our major bad habits. It is the time we stop robbing banks and holding grudges and envying our neighbor’s goods and all that sort of thing. It’s a hard process, but it is not the entirety of the spiritual life. Once we have finished cleaning ourselves off, it is time to start dressing ourselves up, right? Otherwise we will not be ready for the party (Heaven).

It may be that the pain and frustration you are feeling is like those of a student who is kept plaing scales for two or three years without being allowed to move on to playing songs.

I would suggest that the best thing would be for you to find a spiritual director who can guide you, but because they are few and far between, it may take a while. The Story of a Soul by St Terese of Lisieux is often recommended, as her counsels are more easily adapted for lay people. Spiritual reading should be reflective and prayerful, often it is very slow.

I hope that you will be able to find someone to guide you along… if there is a convent or monastery near you, they may be able to help–a spiritual director does not need to be a priest.

 

[PaulfromIowa]

The Bible has been grossly mistranslated, we know this because there are scholars who can read Aramaic (even ancient Aramaic) and Greek and have proven these mistranslations.

What mistranslations, exactly? What scholars? Citations?

You cannot toss bombs like that and run away.

 

[Eufrosnia]

We know Jesus from His words, the same way the Church knows Him. We know Jesus from His actions; we know Him from the Holy Spirit which moves in us, should we open the door (and yes, it is a conscious and daily decision and it is extremely difficult and can leave a person wide open to horrific attack, trust me.) The Church is not infallible in every single thing nor are its priests, its bishops, etc. We are taught that when the Pope speaks Ex Cathedra, he is infallible. Does Jesus agree? I don’t know. But I do attempt to follow the traditions and teachings except…once in a while, the ridiculous goes to the sublime and I hear a voice saying, “Didn’t you people HEAR what I said?”

Actually no. We know Jesus through the Church. That is what you seem to be missing and that might be what is causing the problem. We do not even know what Jesus spoke if not for the Church.

The only thing we know apart from the Church is that Jesus died and rose from the dead and that he had Apostles, Apostolic Successors etc. This is what I wrote to you about in my very first post to you.

So it is ESSENTIAL that you understand that because it is the foundation of your faith. We assent to the Church because it is the only entity that can tell us about Christ. Then we accept every teachings, every law, and every command that is made by the Church because she has the Authority of Christ. What you have mistakenly done is reverse the order. You have accepted some of the teachings of the Church, constructed a view of Christ that you think is the true view, and then you see it as being contrary to that of the Church. Do you see the problem?

 

[JillianRose]

Relax. There is nothing wrong.

The Lord’s Prayer, what we call the 'Our Father" has nothing to do with the Shema Yisrael. The Shema is opening lines of Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

The words Shema Yisrael are the first words of Deuteronomy 6:4 - Hear, O Israel.

The Shema Yisrael is opening line of the Jewish morning and evening prayer, and every faithful Jew would have prayed it. Faithful Jews still pray the Shema Yisreal (in red above) as part of the morning and evening prayer to this day. As a faithful Jew, Jesus would have prayed these words twice daily. He would have been intimately familiar with them. Jesus’ Mother and Father would have taught him these words at an extremely early age. Jesus probably learned to say “Hear, O Israel” right after he learned to say mama and dada.

But the Our Father prayer has nothing to do with the Shema. Yisrael Jesus says that the Shema Yisrael is the greatest commandment of God in Mark 12, Luke 10 and Matthew 22. Mark even has Jesus quoting the Shema Yisrael directly.

One of the scribes, when he came forward and heard them disputing and saw how well he had answered them, asked him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied, "The first is this: 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ (Mark 12:28-30)

There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test him and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” He replied to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” (Luke 10:25-28)

The Shema has nothing to do with the Lord’s prayer, nor anything to do with slavishly following the rules of any Church. The Shema is Moses instruction to Israel that they are to put God first, remember God always, and to teach their children to love God above all things.

Many faithful and devout Catholics, including myself, have very deep personal relationships with God. We just believe that loving God includes being faithful to the authority which Jesus gave to Peter, the apostles and their successors.

-Tim-

Great Job TIm!! Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition…Oops did I say that?

BTW Serviam!

 

[JamesCaruso]

…In the “Our Father” what Jesus REALLY was doing was reciting the Shema with His own editing…

I went back and read the Shema again, and trust me, Jesus’ prayer did not come from the Shema. God is in heaven, that’s for sure, and we should love Him, that, too, is for sure. But that is where the resemblance, if you can call it that, ends. Jesus is addressing God as your and my Father; the Shema gives no hint of close family tie, of God being our Father. There is no petition for our daily bread, seeking of forgiveness, or request for help in resisting temptation or avoiding evil. The Shema is God commanding us what we must do. The Our Father is teaching us how close He is to us, how familiar we should be with him, not distant and all powerful like the Shema, how good He is, how we should talk to Him. how interested He is in our well being, and how comfortable we should be in enlisting His help and support. For me it represents a radical departure from Jewish thought and practice.

…The Bible has been grossly mistranslated, we know this because there are scholars who can read Aramaic (even ancient Aramaic) and Greek and have proven these mistranslations.

Grossly mistranslated?! This is a grossly inaccurate statement. Meaningless mistranslations are not relevant even if they are many, and even in those instances where they rob us of some little nuance or other, we can rest assured that the whole truth of the message of God has been captured in the Church’s translations. This idea you put forth sounds like it comes from sitting under false teaching about the Bible and its translation by those who wish only to discredit the Church’s hand in the original translations. I have heard this before, but by Protestants turned atheist. And that is precisely where it will lead anyone who believes that the Scriptures are unreliable and therefore must not fully contain God’s words as written. Either one believes in the inerrancy of God’s established Church on earth, or one doesn’t. If you don’t then you are left to your own devices as God clearly did not wish to establish a Church to lead us in all truth, never mind that both the Word and Tradition affirm just the opposite.

I don’t hear too much about this in the Roman Catholic church, why not?

Because its mission is not to undermine the reliability of the Scriptures as translated by the early Church. To be sure, Catholic scholars study the Scriptures as well, and they have not found the need to caution the faithful that the Scriptures, as translated, pose a serious risk, or any risk whatsoever, to the understanding of God’s message contained in them. It’s strange that the ancestors of the Reformation Protestants believed in the inspired Word of God, as translated, for 15 centuries. Then suddenly they are all wrong, grossly mistranslated, and not to be relied upon. Before one wades into the charges of those outside the Church on complex issues like translations of ancient writings, one should take with him a capable Catholic scholar who has training in those same translation issues. Otherwise, you have about as much chance as reading the 9/11 conspiracy theories apart from any resources that debunk them; you will be overwhelmed by one scholarly expert after another asserting with a multitude of “proofs” how the Catholics botched it up.

…My question: WHO ASKED GOD, or WHO TOLD GOD the rules? …

Rules do not equate to legalism. The ten commandments are rules. Love your neighbor as yourself is a rule. Jesus showed us how to live the rules by living in the Spirit of God that leads us to always fulfill the rules, the laws, the commandments. The Church, God forbid, does not teach us to ignore the Spirit of God and only keep the commandments out of some sense of duty, it teaches us to love in all things, which will bring us to keeping all the commandments because love impels us to, because we want to, not because we are commanded to, even though we are commanded to. (If you love me, you will keep my commandments.)

Before we go to confession, the Church advices us to mentally go through the commandments. If we see our failing to keep them perfectly strictly as a failure of our will power, then I’d say we are thinking legalistically, that is, thinking that certain outward observances somehow makes us holy. But if we see our failing as a failure of love, then we are seeing through the eyes of the Spirit and we know how we must amend our lives in order to show forth more the love of God and neighbor. If we are led by the Spirit, and if we live our lives in the Spirit, we will see the self same Church in an altogether different light. Pray for those around you who still carry that legalistic view of the Church that their hearts will be converted allowing them to see the Church in spirit and in truth. The problem is not with the Church, it’s with us, including both lay people and clergy./

… Most priests are thoroughly indoctrinated, those who are not may be in apostasy…

You seem say that the Church is 100% right, so much so, that it saves our priests from apostasy. So, IOW, you seem to be saying that something is wrong, but it’s not with the Church. That’s a relief, anyway, if that’s what you meant. For sure there are those in the Church who get it wrong and some of those are religious and priests. All the more reason that we must stay in the Church and show by our example what it means to follow what Jesus actually said, not what some think He said. But if there is any doubt, what the Church teaches** is** what He said. And stay, too, because in the Catholic Church we not only have the fullness of truth, we have Our Lord’s marvelous gift of Himself in the Holy Eucharist.

 

[ellzeena]

Do you find the incarnation untrue, the Resurrection, the virgin birth, Church authority?

Have you read MY POST? How can you ask these questions? If the Incarnation, the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth are “untrue”…I would not be sitting here right now because I live my life for the Lord and Mammon Marie. You put “church authority” on the same level as the life, death, and resurrection of JESUS?

 

[ellzeena]

Just another Catholic who thinks that they know better than the Church, they’ll be proven wrong in the end.

Such arrogance, my friend. I’m not “just” anything. Nor are you. Jesus would have gone to the cross for me, alone; for you, alone. I don’t think I “know better”, I have legitimate concerns. I make apt observations shared by others of faith. I don’t go to church because I have to, I go because I need the Lord and love Him, and I try to go often during the week. This is hubris, and it’s also (if I might be so bold as to say) extremely indoctrinated. Think. That’s why we have elaborate cognition, to think. Jesus told us many would be “led astray” by false teaching. He is the Authority.