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JimR-OCDS
Guest
But Jesus did not exclude God in the forgiveness of sin business.
In fact, the CCC says in bold, “Only God Forgives Sin.”
Yes, Jesus gave the apostles the power to forgive sins, and to discern what is sin and what is not.
However, over the centuries, the Church abused this. As an example, the hierarchy made Holy Days of Obligation as a means to fill the coffers. Most of those Holy Days of Obligation no longer exist. So, did those who didn’t go to Mass and donate their money end up in hell, were we who are no longer bound by those days free ? Bottom line is, in many cases the clergy placed yokes on the backs of people that Jesus came to remove.
In fact, the CCC says in bold, “Only God Forgives Sin.”
Yes, Jesus gave the apostles the power to forgive sins, and to discern what is sin and what is not.
However, over the centuries, the Church abused this. As an example, the hierarchy made Holy Days of Obligation as a means to fill the coffers. Most of those Holy Days of Obligation no longer exist. So, did those who didn’t go to Mass and donate their money end up in hell, were we who are no longer bound by those days free ? Bottom line is, in many cases the clergy placed yokes on the backs of people that Jesus came to remove.
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JimR-OCDS
Guest
Faith is the motivation for works, the two go hand in hand
However, the Church over her history, made rules and laws which Jesus never intended
Heck, the abuse of indulgences is what caused the divide as Luther saw it first hand and wrote against it, which got him excommunicated. He never intended to leave the Church BTW, he was essentially thrown out.
I love the Catholic Church, don’t misunderstand me. However, I’m not not going to turn a blind eye toward the dirty laundry that she’s created at times. I don’t hold anything bad toward those who are not Catholic, but have faith in Jesus Christ and worship Him in a different non-Catholic denomination. I still see them as brothers and sisters in Christ.
However, the Church over her history, made rules and laws which Jesus never intended
Heck, the abuse of indulgences is what caused the divide as Luther saw it first hand and wrote against it, which got him excommunicated. He never intended to leave the Church BTW, he was essentially thrown out.
I love the Catholic Church, don’t misunderstand me. However, I’m not not going to turn a blind eye toward the dirty laundry that she’s created at times. I don’t hold anything bad toward those who are not Catholic, but have faith in Jesus Christ and worship Him in a different non-Catholic denomination. I still see them as brothers and sisters in Christ.
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phil19034
Guest
Two words: The devil.
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74giant
Guest
I agree the sale of indulgences was one of a list of big problems. My understanding is it was never a part of Church doctrine and was practiced by some who abused Church teaching probably for selfish reasons. That is why doctors of the Church and councils (that would hold firm that those sales were indeed abusive shortly after Luther’s departure) are crucial and part of what I consult for wisdom rather than what various Church leaders or Church here-say might claim. And of course Church doctrine and the Bible are foundational as well. I can say more, but I don’t really have time rn
I think there’s a lot of truth to what you say. I would agree especially on the “some kind of reassurance” angle — you have a lot of people who don’t want Catholicism to be true, because of what it would mean for them, so they find every way possible to find something wrong with it.
The only wrinkle I can see, is where another Christian belief system points to the Catholic Church as evil and is able to point out things here and there that, to them, contradict the Bible. When I was in college, a group of missionaries from out of state “invaded” our parish one Sunday morning during Mass and blanketed the cars with lengthy tracts, I would say three or four legal-sized sheets, printed on both sides, neatly typewritten, stapled in the upper corner. These tracts were really pretty sensible, well-written, and contained quite a bit of research on their part. They proceeded to take apart Catholic beliefs one by one, and there was quite a bit of internal logic to it. Not bad apologetics by any means.
I read this tract, and it took me the better part of a year, by sheer force of will, not to have massive doubts and misgivings over Catholicism and Catholic practice. Every time I would say the rosary (and I said it every day), I would have to assuage my conscience — “this isn’t wrong”, “this isn’t a sin”, “God wants us to invoke Mary”, “these aren’t vain repetitions”, and so on. If my faith had not already been strong, and if I hadn’t read many, many books and articles on the Faith, I would have been lost. Even to this day I have pangs of involuntary doubt from time to time. If I had not adhered to the Church, stuck to her like glue, forced myself to believe, I might well have snapped spiritually — “These missionaries are right! Catholicism is evil! I need to get saved and leave the Church!”
And to belabor what is being discussed in other threads at the moment, would this have been my “conscience”?
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74giant
Guest
I actually experienced everything you just described and it does take willpower for sure. I watched a 90 minute vid on a priest’s conversion story and the part where he was traveling to the hill of crosses where he and his mom would experience miracles, he felt panic and desperation to flee when approaching this destination. He said he thinks it was satan’s last ditch effort to keep him from converting. That is my view of these doubts as an attempt to keep me from bettering my life and my faith. I already know Catholicism is true and Jesus would never lead His Church astray. As with every challenge in life, I see it as an opportunity to trust God more deeply. I do not believe it is your conscience at all.
Are you saying, then, that there are no “incorruptibles” whose preservation cannot be attributed to mummification?
Don’t get me wrong — I’ve always been skeptical of the phenomenon myself. I have been able to comprehend how someone who has lived a life of holiness, and has not ravaged themselves by lives of sin, would have been calmer and more at peace as death approached, and their bodies would reflect this. Just a theory I have. Peace of soul has a certain physical dimension to it, a tranquility for which I don’t have adequate words.
It does not help, though, for saints to be represented as “incorruptible”, yet have their features enhanced by such things as wax coatings, flesh-like masks, and so on. Not to sound cranky or cynical, but I’m interested in knowing how incorrupt the saint’s body is — or not — and not with the quality of manmade preservation or mortuary art. The body of St Bernadette Soubirous is the first example that comes to mind. The wax coating on her face is very nice, and they did a good job of preserving her features, but that doesn’t tell us a whole lot about how her body actually looks, 140 years after her death.
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AHapka
Guest
To be honest, one weird thing does it for me.
The fact that the Church still exists after all of the scandals. Let’s be honest, any private organization that not only had the scandal, but both the scandal and coverup would have been ended long ago.
The fact that the Church still exists and goes on proves (in my eyes) that something is helping her go on in spite of internal and external destructive acts.
If the bad priests can’t destroy the Church from the inside, then that means something big.
The fact that the Church still exists after all of the scandals. Let’s be honest, any private organization that not only had the scandal, but both the scandal and coverup would have been ended long ago.
The fact that the Church still exists and goes on proves (in my eyes) that something is helping her go on in spite of internal and external destructive acts.
If the bad priests can’t destroy the Church from the inside, then that means something big.
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74giant
Guest
Everything in life has plausible deniability. That’s why it’s called faith. In the case of the Catholic Church, I believe it is clear and obvious that it is true and it’s much easier to see with an unhardened heart. John Henry Newman said “To be deep in history is to cease to be protestant” and I would say definitely atheist. Eucharistic miracles such as The Lanciano miracle where blood tests have confirmed the true presence; the miracle of Fatima; all the miracles in saints’ lives (perhaps the most shocking to me still is the history of St. Joan of Arc); countless private revelations; as others have pointed out, Jesus’s own words that the gates of hell will never prevail against His Church among MANY other things both in the Bible and The Church that all point to Catholicism as the fullness of truth and the bride of Christ. To me anyone who “doesn’t believe” in Catholicism after a genuine search for truth in history is trying to kid themselves.
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Justin_Mary
Guest
No one can come to the Father except through the Son. & no one can come to the Son but through the Father.
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TheLittleLady
Guest
There are some YouTube vids from Ask A Mortician that explain the processes, even one specifically about Saints
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Dan_Defender
Guest
Many reasons. Some people are too proud and think they know better. Some people want to enjoy many luxuries and earthly power. Some people enjoy the occult. The list goes on… but this world can never give them peace.
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Peebo
Guest
I came into the Catholic Church from a Protestant /Pentecostal background when I was 50…I know without a doubt the Holy Spirit led me to the one true church…
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tafan2
Guest
Please provide a source for this claim.
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tafan2
Guest
The world does not recognize the Church because both the world and the Church has too much sin in them.
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JimR-OCDS
Guest
Go read book on Church history
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MNathaniel
Guest
I agree with the commenters who mentioned you’re oversimplifying here.
One big reason I’d give for the world’s blindness (besides sin and simple ignorance, etc), is…
Catholics are often uneducated about their own faith, and mislead people who try to come to them. Shut them down with some variation of “Well if you don’t see the obvious, then actually you’re just lying because it’s impossible to not see what’s obvious to me, so I’m not going to put in any work to helping you understand, I’m just going to drop a faith statement in language you don’t understand, then consider my work here done.”
I’m an adult convert, and when I was a teenager, I was curious about Catholicism… and reached out and emailed a nun. In sincerity (and ignorance, but sincere ignorance), I expressed my bafflement about the Catholic teaching regarding Christ’s ‘real’ presence in the Eucharist. I stated that he’s clearly not “literally” there as flesh and blood, and probably had some ‘under a microscope’ type of mental assumptions about what the Church was claiming occurred on a material level, and that was what I was objecting to.
This nun completely missed the boat, and instead of introducing me to the notion of a distinction between ‘substance’ and ‘accidents’, instead just kept repeating, “We believe the bread is literally flesh.” She used my word “literally” back at me, even though it seems to me (now a Catholic) a dead giveaway that I was objecting to an interpretation of the teaching that isn’t what Catholics truly believe. But she failed to educate me about what Catholics truly believe, and so I walked away sad, having to give up on the idea of Catholicism because it was ‘obviously incoherent’.
It wasn’t until years later that I met my first educated Catholic, and he got me looking into Catholicism again. And then it was further years before I became Catholic, because I needed to work through a lot of apologetics, to understand that there really were coherent answers to my questions, and that the Church could be trusted to continue to be the source of these answers.
So again, and I mean this without accusation (but I do think it’s so important that we examine ourselves)… one major reason the world cannot see the true Church, is that Church members fail to tell the world about it in a coherent, rational way. Especially, in my case, I can vouch that the Catholic I approached fell back back way too heavily on assuming that the answer was just ‘obvious’ (and it wasn’t). I mean, in my case God ultimately guided me around that stumbling block, but it took years and years (and lots of unnecessary pain and confusion in the world), and frankly I imagine He would have preferred for His nun to just spend an extra 5 minutes explaining transubstantiation to me. Because I was actually sincere, actually wanted to know… and the Catholic I asked not only didn’t tell me, but gave me an answer that made me think there was no point in asking another Catholic, because I assumed the answer she insisted on repeating was the Catholic answer, and it was just inadequate and incoherent.
One big reason I’d give for the world’s blindness (besides sin and simple ignorance, etc), is…
Catholics are often uneducated about their own faith, and mislead people who try to come to them. Shut them down with some variation of “Well if you don’t see the obvious, then actually you’re just lying because it’s impossible to not see what’s obvious to me, so I’m not going to put in any work to helping you understand, I’m just going to drop a faith statement in language you don’t understand, then consider my work here done.”
I’m an adult convert, and when I was a teenager, I was curious about Catholicism… and reached out and emailed a nun. In sincerity (and ignorance, but sincere ignorance), I expressed my bafflement about the Catholic teaching regarding Christ’s ‘real’ presence in the Eucharist. I stated that he’s clearly not “literally” there as flesh and blood, and probably had some ‘under a microscope’ type of mental assumptions about what the Church was claiming occurred on a material level, and that was what I was objecting to.
This nun completely missed the boat, and instead of introducing me to the notion of a distinction between ‘substance’ and ‘accidents’, instead just kept repeating, “We believe the bread is literally flesh.” She used my word “literally” back at me, even though it seems to me (now a Catholic) a dead giveaway that I was objecting to an interpretation of the teaching that isn’t what Catholics truly believe. But she failed to educate me about what Catholics truly believe, and so I walked away sad, having to give up on the idea of Catholicism because it was ‘obviously incoherent’.
It wasn’t until years later that I met my first educated Catholic, and he got me looking into Catholicism again. And then it was further years before I became Catholic, because I needed to work through a lot of apologetics, to understand that there really were coherent answers to my questions, and that the Church could be trusted to continue to be the source of these answers.
So again, and I mean this without accusation (but I do think it’s so important that we examine ourselves)… one major reason the world cannot see the true Church, is that Church members fail to tell the world about it in a coherent, rational way. Especially, in my case, I can vouch that the Catholic I approached fell back back way too heavily on assuming that the answer was just ‘obvious’ (and it wasn’t). I mean, in my case God ultimately guided me around that stumbling block, but it took years and years (and lots of unnecessary pain and confusion in the world), and frankly I imagine He would have preferred for His nun to just spend an extra 5 minutes explaining transubstantiation to me. Because I was actually sincere, actually wanted to know… and the Catholic I asked not only didn’t tell me, but gave me an answer that made me think there was no point in asking another Catholic, because I assumed the answer she insisted on repeating was the Catholic answer, and it was just inadequate and incoherent.
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Michael2929
Guest
I recently discovered The reason as preached by St. Paul:
2 Corinthians 4:
1Therefore, since we have this ministry through the mercy shown us, we are not discouraged. 2 Rather, we have renounced shameful, hidden things; not acting deceitfully or falsifying the word of God, but by the open declaration of the truth we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. 3 And even though our gospel is veiled, it is veiled for those who are perishing, 4 in whose case the god of this age (satan) has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For we do not preach ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for the sake of Jesus.6 For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to bring to light the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of [Jesus] Christ.
So here St. Paul explains quite clearly that The Gospel is ‘veiled’ to those that are perishing. As we know, religious indifferentism is a grave sin against God. Even Vatican II states that ‘those outside the Church Jesus Christ founded “may” be saved’. It is not by any means a sweeping endorsement, quite the contrary. In the spirit of Love we approach those outside The Church and should always be looking for opportunities for evengelization. However, those who do come in were called by God and not us. Truth is Truth no matter how hard it is to understand The Holy Spirit makes up for the lack if any if God truly calls them. One thing is certain, as Jesus said in Matthew: Hard is the road that leads to eternal life and few there are who find it. This goes for Catholics as well, there is no guarantee of salvation we can only hope for The Mercies of God IF we humble ourselves and make use of ALL The Sacraments NOT JUST THE ONES WE LIKE. Hope this helps.
God Bless.
2 Corinthians 4:
1Therefore, since we have this ministry through the mercy shown us, we are not discouraged. 2 Rather, we have renounced shameful, hidden things; not acting deceitfully or falsifying the word of God, but by the open declaration of the truth we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. 3 And even though our gospel is veiled, it is veiled for those who are perishing, 4 in whose case the god of this age (satan) has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For we do not preach ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for the sake of Jesus.6 For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to bring to light the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of [Jesus] Christ.
So here St. Paul explains quite clearly that The Gospel is ‘veiled’ to those that are perishing. As we know, religious indifferentism is a grave sin against God. Even Vatican II states that ‘those outside the Church Jesus Christ founded “may” be saved’. It is not by any means a sweeping endorsement, quite the contrary. In the spirit of Love we approach those outside The Church and should always be looking for opportunities for evengelization. However, those who do come in were called by God and not us. Truth is Truth no matter how hard it is to understand The Holy Spirit makes up for the lack if any if God truly calls them. One thing is certain, as Jesus said in Matthew: Hard is the road that leads to eternal life and few there are who find it. This goes for Catholics as well, there is no guarantee of salvation we can only hope for The Mercies of God IF we humble ourselves and make use of ALL The Sacraments NOT JUST THE ONES WE LIKE. Hope this helps.
God Bless.
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tafan2
Guest
I have read many. You made the claim, I was just asking for a source, trying to do so without any judgement on your claim at all. By your snarky response, I can only assume you made it up.
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