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PRmerger
Guest
Indeed. I hope and pray that I am not stuck with some folks FOREVER. That would be…well, hell.
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Auntie_A
Guest
But no way can you wrap Auntie A in a Hegelian synthesis!::bigyikes::bigyikes::bigyikes:Well, sometimes I think about things and change my mind. I’ve been known to change my mind in mid-sent -no I …O the INHUMANITY OF IT ALL!!! No bias here. Agreed. Part of the trick there is to develop a commonality that we can all agree on, more than that Commies eat tacos and if you eat tacos you love Fidel. I am not sure there is a Hegelian synthesis strong enough to wrap in A and Anti-A. Yeah!
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pablope
Guest
The question is then: Have the aims of the Refomation been fulfilled? If so, what is left to protest?
If not, then how come they have not been fulfilled and what is needed to see them fulfilled?
This are both good reads:
ignatiusinsight.com/features/mbrumley_bouyer1_nov04.asp
Why Catholicism Makes Protestantism Tick: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation | Mark Brumley
Here’s what seems a fairly accurate but simplified summary of the issue: The break between Catholics and Protestants was either a tragic necessity (to use Jaroslav Pelikan’s expression) or it was tragic because unnecessary.
Yet we can go further than decrying the Reformation as unnecessary. In his ground-breaking work, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, Louis Bouyer argued that the Catholic Church herself is necessary for the full flowering of the Reformation principles. In other words, you need Catholicism to make Protestantism work–for Protestantism’s principles fully to develop. Thus, the Reformation was not only unnecessary; it was impossible. What the Reformers sought, argues Bouyer, could not be achieved without the Catholic Church.
crisismagazine.com/2012/what-the-reformation-has-wrought
What the Reformation has Wrought
ARCHBISHOP CHARLES J. CHAPUT, O.F.M. CAP.
Gregory also shows that while the Reformers lit the fuse, medieval Catholics laid the dynamite. Late medieval laity were, quite often, profoundly pious. And because they were pious, they minded when their leaders weren’t. Pious laypeople had an appetite for reform precisely because of their devotion. Late medieval clergy too often preached one thing and did another. Greed, simony, nepotism, luxury, sexual license, and schism in the hierarchy created an intolerable gap between Christian preaching and practice.
Many Catholics worked for reform from within. Some had success. Franciscans, Dominicans, and Cistercians owe their origins to medieval reform. Humanists such as Erasmus and Thomas More were part of an international community of letters determined to renew Christian life from the inside. Saints such as Catherine of Siena and Bernard of Clairvaux spoke truth to ecclesiastical power.
But one key difference separated these Catholic voices from the Protestant Reformers: The Catholics believed that the Church had her teachings right. She just needed to actually live them. The Catholics believed that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist and other sacraments, in the Scriptures, in the saints, and in the Church’s historic doctrines offered an authentic, all-encompassing Christian way of life sufficient to sanctify human existence—if it was actually embraced and shorn of its abuses.
The Protestants, preaching sola scriptura, threw much of it away. The Protestants believed that the deposit and structure of Catholic faith were fundamentally flawed, that Christ no longer abided in the Roman Church, and that Scripture alone communicated God’s will. Sola scriptura changed everything for Western Christendom. The Church became the churches, and the process inadvertently, but relentlessly, fueled individual sovereignty and relativism.
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PRmerger
Guest
Indeed.
And why is the fruit of this Prot Ref so tragic–tens of thousands of different Christian denominations, each of them claiming that their right to interpret Scripture is the correct one?
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JRKH
Guest
Amen.
This is, IMHO, the the 600 lb gorilla in the middle of the room for protestantism.
If we allow that the goals of the reformers were noble ones…and I believe in general they they were…we are still left with the results of their experiment. The experiment being Sola Scriptura, private interpretation and decentralized authority.
These principles did not lead to a common understanding of Scripture or greater unity among Christians.
Instead, there are multiple sects each with it’s own set of doctrines and each claiming the Bible and the guidance of the Spirit as their authority.
This is the reason that I, personally, cannot be Christian and NOT be Catholic.
Peace
Jame
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Per_Crucem
Guest
More like the 600 lb record in the room that keeps skipping any time Catholics engage in dialogue with non-Catholics, almost as if it’s an on-queue script that issued to apologists and Catholic converts. Of course, that it makes dialogue meaningless and impossible with non-Catholics is largely irrelevant.
And singular authorities within an infallible, apostolic body is the greatest force for unity in Scriptural and Traditional interpretation - said no Orthodox, Old Catholic, Polish Catholic or other apostolic body, ever.
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PRmerger
Guest
That it makes some Christians bristle is more of a testament to the truth of its implications, rather than a conversation-stopper.
It ought to give any Protestant pause. Any Protestant.
This, like the question “Who decided for you and me that there are 27 books that belong in the NT?”, are questions that need to be posed, often, and every single time we can insert it into an apologetics dialogue, we ought to insert it. Every time.
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Per_Crucem
Guest
Right…as if anti-Catholic screeds that make Catholics bristle is a testament to the truth of the statement.
Right…that it’s a prima faciae argument aside, of course.
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PRmerger
Guest
Ok. Let’s step back a minute.
It’s not the fact that something is repeated over and over again that makes it true–on that, we are agreed, yes?
But if an argument is a good one, and it’s one that no one can refute, do you not think it bears repeating? Over and over?
Let’s just talk principles here. Do you not believe the statement in red is true?
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PRmerger
Guest
I don’t know what you mean here, in the context of a response to my post.
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Novocastrian
Guest
And yet there are those among the Eastern Orthodox that would say that Rome is the mother of Protestantisms, and that if it weren’t for the egregious power-grab by the Roman Church during the Middle Ages, there would have been no such crisis of authority producing tens/hundreds/thousands of different Christian denominations. After all, Luther, Zwingli, Cranmer, Calvin; these were all sons of the Roman Church that the Papacy - supposedly the guarantor of the unity of the Church, no less - allowed to break apart the Latin Church. Some guarantor; good job it’s infallible.
The polemics of the Reformation is all a matter of perspective.
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Per_Crucem
Guest
Perhaps. However, that the statement is made over and over (and over and over), says more about the attitude of the one saying it over and over ad nauseum than it does about the merits of the argument itself. While it’s perfectly appropriate to raise issues around the canon, biblical interpretation, etc., one person may do so in a sincere attempt to speak with another fellow human being, and the other may be doing it to look spiffy in an online debate. Know what I mean?
Of course, that doesn’t mean the argument is a good one to begin with.
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Novocastrian
Guest
Nonsense is often nigh on impossible to refute.
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PRmerger
Guest
Well, Per Crucem, you may think that the posts are addressed to you and only you, and that you have heard this argument ad nauseum…however, you might be interested to know that each and every time this (irrefutable and important) argument is made, there are a multitude of new eyes that read and consider the argument.
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PRmerger
Guest
Incidentally, this technique is a paradigm that has been espoused by a professional Catholic apologist named John Martignoni.
Check out his youtube videos entitled: “Questions Protestants Can’t Answer”.
youtube.com/results?search_query=questions+protestants+can%27t+answer
It is quite effective to offer questions to Protestants that can’t be answered.
Perhaps it will make them go…
At the very least, any intellectually honest seeker will pause to consider the question, and understand that these questions will have no answer, unless one answers through the lens of the CC.
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PRmerger
Guest
That the EO and CC are in schism is a testament to the sinfulness of men in the Church.
It, however, does nothing to refute the fact that these tens of thousands of Christian denominations arose from the mantra, “I can read the Bible and can come to my own interpretations, thank you very much, without any authority to tell me what to believe!”
Tens of thousands of denominations is an obscenity, and just what the devil ordered, IMHO.
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Novocastrian
Guest
Any more than one is just that.
And, again, I’ll remind you that the majority of Protestants don’t believe your extreme version of private-interpretation sola scriptura, and never have. That belongs to (particularly American) evangelical protestants, to anabaptists, and perhaps (though historians can debate whom, and to what extent) to certain reformers at the very beginning of the Reformation era.
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Per_Crucem
Guest
No disagreement there. However, it doesn’t solve the problem if those tens of thousands of denominations disappear, you’re still left with two church bodies (at least, not counting the OO, the PNCC, the OC’s, etc.) that disagree with each other about fundamental dogma. So while it’s a testament to sinfulness, it’s also a testament that supposedly infallible councils and bishops are no better at resolving disputes over doctrine.
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PRmerger
Guest
Right. You guys can’t even agree on what Sola Scriptura means.
That’s what happens when you divorce yourself from the Faith, given once for all, to the saints.
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Novocastrian
Guest
Muslim: You guys can’t even agree on how to run the Church. Clearly this shows the absurdity of the Christian religion! Now if you would all just obey the Qu’ran and the Prophet…
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