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TheExorcist
Guest
The doctrine that God was once a man and has progressed to become a God is unique to this Church. (Teachings of the President of the Church: Brigham Young, p34)
- Status
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PaulDupre
Guest
Paul H. Dunn
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PaulDupre
Guest
There is no such thing as “official Mormon doctrine” but the teachings of Joseph Smith include the King Follet Discourse.
One section from this discourse (given in General Conference by the Prophet Joseph Smith) teaches:
“In order to understand the subject of the dead for the consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary they should understand the character and being of God; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined that God was God from all eternity. That he was not is an idea incomprehensible to some. But it is the simple and first principle of the gospel-to know for a certainty the character of God, that we may converse with him as one man with another. God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did, and I will show it from the Bible.”
It is interesting to a non-Mormon that Joseph never did, in this discourse, demonstrate from the bible that God the Father dwelt on an earth similar to this one.
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TheExorcist
Guest
P
PaulDupre
Guest
Bingo!Of course not because it’s not in there
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RebeccaJ
Guest
This is taught in the LDS Institute of Religion still, in the section where they cover the New Testament…
Inquirer
Am I to understand that God has not always been a
God?
Joseph Smith
“. . . it is necessary we should understand the
character and being of God and how he came to be
so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be
God. We have imagined and supposed that God was
God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take
away the veil, so that you may see.
“These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they
are simple. It is the first principle of the Gospel to
know for a certainty the Character of God, and to
know that we may converse with him as one man
converses with another, and that he was once a man
like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all,
dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself
did; and I will show it from the Bible.” (Teachings,
pp. 345–46.)
Inquirer
I can see from what you say that God was once a
man; but was he really like us, limited and finite?
Brigham Young
“While He was in the flesh, as we are, He was as we
are. But it is now written of Him that our God is as a
consuming fire [Hebrews 12:29], that He dwells in
everlasting burnings, and this is why sin cannot be
where He is.” (JD, 4:54.)
Inquirer
Then perhaps it is possible for me to become like Him
If God was once finite and just as we are now, how
did he become what he is now?
Joseph F. Smith
“It is absolutely necessary that we should come to
the earth and take upon us tabernacles; because if we
did not have tabernacles we could not be like God,
nor like Jesus Christ. God has a tabernacle of flesh
and bone.
“. . . We must go through the same ordeal in order to
attain to the glory and exaltation which God
designed we should enjoy with him in the eternal
worlds. In other words, we must become like him;
peradventure to sit upon thrones, to have dominion,
power, and eternal increase. God designed this in the
beginning. We are the children of God. . . . We are
precisely in the same condition and under the same
circumstances that God our heavenly Father was
when he was passing through this, or a similar
ordeal.” (Gospel Doctrine, p. 64. Emphasis added.)
Inquirer
If we must go through the same ordeal to reach the
glory that God has, then it must be that when he was
a man and lived on an earth, he was baptized,
ordained, received his endowments, and was
married.
Wilford Woodruff
“. . . He has had His endowments long ago; it is
thousands and millions of years since He received
His blessings. . . .” (JD, 4:192.)
Can you see why your strivings to become like God
must not be lessened by any fear that you cannot
make it, or that his mortal situation was different?
(40-6) Our Goal Should Be to Become as God
“We have been promised by the Lord that if we know
how to worship, and know what we worship, we may
come unto the Father in his name, and in due time
receive of his fulness. We have the promise that if we
keep his commandments, we shall receive of his
fulness and be glorified in him as he is in the Father.
[See D&C 93:11–20, 26–28.]
“This is a doctrine which delighted President Snow, as
it does all of us. Early in his ministry he received by
direct, personal revelation the knowledge that (in the
Prophet Joseph Smith’s language), ‘God himself was
once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits
enthroned in yonder heavens,’ and that men ‘have got
to learn how to be Gods . . . the same as all Gods have
done before. . . .’ [Teachings, pp. 345–46.]
“After this doctrine had been taught by the Prophet,
President Snow felt free to teach it also, and he
summarized it in one of the best known couplets in the
Church in these words:
“‘As man now is, God once was;
As God now is, man may be.’
(Institute of Religion manual, New Testament, pg 327,Published by
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day SaintsSalt Lake City, Utah
© 1978, 1979 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc.)
PDF version here.
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Sariah
Guest
RebeccaJ - Awesome citation. I’ve never gone through Institute, but am happy to see they are honest about that particular topic.
Have you heard of the Adam-God doctrine, Tony888? It’s a teaching that was propagated by the early prophets, especially by Brigham Young. It fell out of “popularity” sometime around the death of Young, as it is a pretty controversial teaching.
It goes like this: Adam (who was Michael the Archangel in the Pre-Existance), brought Eve (one of his plural wives in the P.E) into the Garden with him. Adam is not only our mortal common ancestor and creator of our human race, but is also literally Our Father In Heaven, having beget our spirits in the Celestial Kingdom. After Adam and Eve created the human race, they returned to their Celestial Glory and rule over us as Gods.
Our God, according to LDS doctrine, is not the creator of the universe, of the plants and animals, etc…Our Gods are Adam and Eve (Our Mother In Heaven…or one of them)
While it is not expressly taught as doctrine by the mainstream Mormon church, the basic tenets still hold. They become clearer when one participates in the temple rituals and when one examines more closely the teachings of the Church.
It is sad how much is hidden, whitewashed and just plain lied about (especially to investigators) in order to get a warm body into the Chapel and their cool, cool tithes into HQ.
See Further:
The Plan of Salvation: Understanding our Divine Origin and Destiny by Matthew B Brown (Seriously, buy or borrow this book. It’s amazing.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam%E2%80%93God_doctrine (I know, I know…just read it. It’s a good entry!)
The Unknown God: Adam-God - Theory or Doctrine by Nate Taylor amazon.com/God-Adam-God-Theory-Doctrine/dp/143825122X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1310192558&sr=8-4
Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pg. 181, pg. 312 pgs. 369-373
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (Note - this is a different book than the above) Pg 40
Temple Worship: 20 Truths That Will Bless Your Life by Andrew C. Skinner: Pg.83-84, pg. 103
Doctrine and Covenants 93
Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants by Steven C. Harper Pg. 345-350
The Journal of Discourses (All 26 are available for almost nothing on Amazon!!) - I haven’t read past the 4th book yet, but there is one talk by B. Young that sticks out in my memory. I’ll have to try to dig it out and cite/quote from it for y’all.
Yes, I’m a big, fat nerd.
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Telstar
Guest
Pacos Pete, what you fail to understand is that Catholics and other Christians don’t believe in the concept of ‘pre-existence’, or anything that it teaches, at all. It’s not really theologically sound as a Judeo-Christian belief, nor is it Biblical. Some things that God does may not seem ‘logical’ to us, but they are perfectly theological to Him. They will only become clear to us when we ‘cross over the veil’ that separates us from knowing all of the mysteries of God. That’s when we will gain full understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation. But, this LDS concept is totally inconceivable to the minds and hearts of most traditional Christians, not just Catholics.
Catholics don’t believe that angels are spirit-children waiting to be born to fulfill Joseph Smith’s ‘Plan of Salvation’. Angels are separate spirits, created by God long before Adam & Eve. They can’t be human. Angels have been sent to the earth in the past, using our human form to act as messengers (one way that they serve God), but they will never live on earth. That was only done so the people of that time wouldn’t be scared to death by seeing them in their true form, so they could relate to them more easily.
The human soul is a completely different type of ‘spirit’, than an angel. Even the words used in the old scriptural writings were different. God creates every human soul (from nothing) at the moment that baby is conceived in the womb. He can do that because He’s an all-powerful, spiritual God (the Father never had a ‘body of flesh & bone’, only Jesus does, but His is Glorified, now). The soul is the spiritual essence that gives a human being its ability share in God’s spiritual (eternal) life. It’s what separates us from all animals. The soul is that part of a human being that is made ‘in the image of God’. It’s not our physical body, as Joseph Smith claims it to be.
Let’s look at a hypothetical situation, just to see the concept of the tests applied to souls according to the ‘pre-existence’, from a little different perspective. What if one of your kid’s teachers gave them a very difficult test, to be 100% of their final grade for the year. Those who failed it got a -0- and were expelled from school. After the whole class took it, he made all those who passed take an even harder test to determine their final grade, again. Wouldn’t you and the rest of the parents of this class be on the phone, ASAP, to find out what kind of an idiot the school had teaching your kids? Doesn’t the term ‘final’ mean ‘the last one’? If I was a parent of one of the kids that failed the first test, I’d be even more irate that they weren’t even allowed to take the second test! Is it right for any teacher to retest the ones that passed, instead of the ones who failed? What about the kids that pass the first test with flying colors and fail the second one? Is that sound teaching? What if the teacher decided to give them another test worth 100% of their grade on the last day of school, without any warning?
Why would God ask his own children to make a choice between good and evil to show their full obedience to His Will, twice? What’s the purpose of the second test in the physical world, if they had already made the right choice? Why retest them when they retain no knowledge of what happened, before? It makes absolutely no sense to me, whatsoever. IMHO, the entire premise just smacks of total injustice perpetrated on souls, by ‘god’. It sure makes that kind of a god seem insincere. You might even see him as a sadistic jerk that’s just toying with souls for his own amusement. That’s certainly not a sign of a benevolent god that loves his children. Is it? It looks more like an example of a vindictive tyrant that will probably never be satisfied by anything we might do, who can’t be trusted to keep any of his promises without changing the rules, and the playing field of the game, once again. If you can’t trust God to tell you the truth, who can you trust?
Catholics (or other Christians) certainly don’t have to believe in Joseph Smith’s theory, because God never told us anything about it, anywhere in Holy Scripture. However, we do have to believe in the ‘hereafter’ (the resurrection), because God told us a lot about that, many, many times. But, you can certainly exercise your ‘free agency’ to believe anything you like. It’s your soul. This is why I always pray for all my Mormon friends to rethink who they choose to believe.
K
Kismetji
Guest
I don’t think societal pressures should be the “lever” by which to push people into having fewer kids or more… Really, this is a personal thing, ain’t it?
I seem to think its bringing out more souls into this painful, haphazard world.
But, such is destiny.
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Telstar
Guest
Hello again, Pacos Pete:
Do you really believe that the only possible reason for any of us to have children, is to provide a means for God’s so-called ‘spirit-children’ to take on a physical body as a step toward completing the process of becoming gods? I’m sorry, but that only works if one chooses to believe that Joseph Smith’s word has greater authority, not only over Holy Scripture, but everything else that Jesus taught us, Himself. He most certainly does not have any such authority, and neither does any other man on this earth. He is not, nor will he ever be seen as being equal to, much less placed above Jesus Christ, in any way. That is exactly the kind of thinking that caused Lucifer and his fallen angels to be cast out of Heaven. He thought that he was equal to Jesus, if not superior to Him, too. He was also very wrong. That’s a very dangerous path of thinking for any mortal soul to follow.
Yes, Catholics most certainly do have a Mother in Heaven. We take the words that Jesus spoke to the Virgin Mary and to John the Apostle, while He hung on the cross, “Son, behold thy Mother.”, and,“Woman behold thy son.”, as His way of giving His Own Mother to be the Mother of all mankind and our very own Heavenly Mother. The Apostles were all very close to her. She constantly watches over us from Heaven, standing there beside her Son. She helps to protect us from the influence of the devil by her constant prayers for us, before the throne of God. Jesus has a hard time denying her whatever she asks for her children, much like He had a hard time resisting her request when she told Him that there was no wine at the wedding feast. His Heart melts whenever she asks Him for favors. He really loves His Mom.
The real purpose of having children is for them to share in our lives, our joys, and our deep love for each other, and for God, while we’re here on this earth. When we leave this earth, we hope that they will also be able to share our everlasting joy in Heaven, perfectly happy to be enfolded in the loving arms of our amazing God, forever. God created us to share His Eternal Love with us, to be ‘All in All’ for us. We have children to enlarge the biggest and most loving family that has ever existed, with God as our Father. There is no greater purpose than that for any man or woman. He is all that we will ever need, to make our joy complete. :grouphug:
Do you really believe that the only possible reason for any of us to have children, is to provide a means for God’s so-called ‘spirit-children’ to take on a physical body as a step toward completing the process of becoming gods? I’m sorry, but that only works if one chooses to believe that Joseph Smith’s word has greater authority, not only over Holy Scripture, but everything else that Jesus taught us, Himself. He most certainly does not have any such authority, and neither does any other man on this earth. He is not, nor will he ever be seen as being equal to, much less placed above Jesus Christ, in any way. That is exactly the kind of thinking that caused Lucifer and his fallen angels to be cast out of Heaven. He thought that he was equal to Jesus, if not superior to Him, too. He was also very wrong. That’s a very dangerous path of thinking for any mortal soul to follow.
Yes, Catholics most certainly do have a Mother in Heaven. We take the words that Jesus spoke to the Virgin Mary and to John the Apostle, while He hung on the cross, “Son, behold thy Mother.”, and,“Woman behold thy son.”, as His way of giving His Own Mother to be the Mother of all mankind and our very own Heavenly Mother. The Apostles were all very close to her. She constantly watches over us from Heaven, standing there beside her Son. She helps to protect us from the influence of the devil by her constant prayers for us, before the throne of God. Jesus has a hard time denying her whatever she asks for her children, much like He had a hard time resisting her request when she told Him that there was no wine at the wedding feast. His Heart melts whenever she asks Him for favors. He really loves His Mom.
The real purpose of having children is for them to share in our lives, our joys, and our deep love for each other, and for God, while we’re here on this earth. When we leave this earth, we hope that they will also be able to share our everlasting joy in Heaven, perfectly happy to be enfolded in the loving arms of our amazing God, forever. God created us to share His Eternal Love with us, to be ‘All in All’ for us. We have children to enlarge the biggest and most loving family that has ever existed, with God as our Father. There is no greater purpose than that for any man or woman. He is all that we will ever need, to make our joy complete. :grouphug:
Code:
To answer the OP's question, Mormons do *not* 'do it better' than Catholics. They just have a totally different reason for doing it at all. They do it to become 'exalted'. The only reason for anyone to want to be 'exalted' in the highest level of the "celestial kingdom", according to Joseph Smith, is *not* to be happy just to *share* in God's Love, but to eventually become equal to God, with the same omnipotent power and glory that the Father possesses, so they can rule over their own 'world' full of 'spirit-children' that will worship them in the same way that we worship Him. IMHO, that's blasphemy. :(
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Pacos_Pete
Guest
So what I am reading is; since we in the pre-existence chose to follow Christ’s plan and come to earth, we can do as we please an still be welcomed back into God’s presents. Since we chose Christ’s plan in the PE and are saved, we can rob, murder, lie, cheat, steal and that is okay? What are Prophets and scriptures for, if not to remind us of our Father in Heaven and what is required to return to him.Pacos Pete, what you fail to understand is that Catholics and other Christians don’t believe in the concept of ‘pre-existence’, or anything that it teaches, at all. It’s not really theologically sound as a Judeo-Christian belief, nor is it Biblical. Some things that God does may not seem ‘logical’ to us, but they are perfectly theological to Him. They will only become clear to us when we ‘cross over the veil’ that separates us from knowing all of the mysteries of God. That’s when we will gain full understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation. But, this LDS concept is totally inconceivable to the minds and hearts of most traditional Christians, not just Catholics.
Catholics don’t believe that angels are spirit-children waiting to be born to fulfill Joseph Smith’s ‘Plan of Salvation’. Angels are separate spirits, created by God long before Adam & Eve. They can’t be human. Angels have been sent to the earth in the past, using our human form to act as messengers (one way that they serve God), but they will never live on earth. That was only done so the people of that time wouldn’t be scared to death by seeing them in their true form, so they could relate to them more easily.
The human soul is a completely different type of ‘spirit’, than an angel. Even the words used in the old scriptural writings were different. God creates every human soul (from nothing) at the moment that baby is conceived in the womb. He can do that because He’s an all-powerful, spiritual God (the Father never had a ‘body of flesh & bone’, only Jesus does, but His is Glorified, now). The soul is the spiritual essence that gives a human being its ability share in God’s spiritual (eternal) life. It’s what separates us from all animals. The soul is that part of a human being that is made ‘in the image of God’. It’s not our physical body, as Joseph Smith claims it to be.
Let’s look at a hypothetical situation, just to see the concept of the tests applied to souls according to the ‘pre-existence’, from a little different perspective. What if one of your kid’s teachers gave them a very difficult test, to be 100% of their final grade for the year. Those who failed it got a -0- and were expelled from school. After the whole class took it, he made all those who passed take an even harder test to determine their final grade, again. Wouldn’t you and the rest of the parents of this class be on the phone, ASAP, to find out what kind of an idiot the school had teaching your kids? Doesn’t the term ‘final’ mean ‘the last one’? If I was a parent of one of the kids that failed the first test, I’d be even more irate that they weren’t even allowed to take the second test! Is it right for any teacher to retest the ones that passed, instead of the ones who failed? What about the kids that pass the first test with flying colors and fail the second one? Is that sound teaching? What if the teacher decided to give them another test worth 100% of their grade on the last day of school, without any warning?
Why would God ask his own children to make a choice between good and evil to show their full obedience to His Will, twice? What’s the purpose of the second test in the physical world, if they had already made the right choice? Why retest them when they retain no knowledge of what happened, before? It makes absolutely no sense to me, whatsoever. IMHO, the entire premise just smacks of total injustice perpetrated on souls, by ‘god’. It sure makes that kind of a god seem insincere. You might even see him as a sadistic jerk that’s just toying with souls for his own amusement. That’s certainly not a sign of a benevolent god that loves his children. Is it? It looks more like an example of a vindictive tyrant that will probably never be satisfied by anything we might do, who can’t be trusted to keep any of his promises without changing the rules, and the playing field of the game, once again. If you can’t trust God to tell you the truth, who can you trust?
Catholics (or other Christians) certainly don’t have to believe in Joseph Smith’s theory, because God never told us anything about it, anywhere in Holy Scripture. However, we do have to believe in the ‘hereafter’ (the resurrection), because God told us a lot about that, many, many times. But, you can certainly exercise your ‘free agency’ to believe anything you like. It’s your soul. This is why I always pray for all my Mormon friends to rethink who they choose to believe.
Thank you for your prayers since I am already saved because of my choice in the PE, I wonder what I am doing here?
What difference does it make whom we choose to believe?
V
valient_Lucy
Guest
There is no pre-existence.
We did not exist unil we were conceived. We were not floating up in heaven as spirit children waiting for bodies.
Pre-existence is a Mormon idea. But it is not a Catholic teaching, because it isn’t true.
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RebeccaJ
Guest
Mormons are so messed up…to even come up with questions like this. Seriously.
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Telstar
Guest
You’re welcome for the prayers. I have a few Mormon friends that I love dearly, but trying to get through to them, myself, is like talking to the wind. I’m beginning to understand the frustration that St. Francis felt when he decided that it was much easier to preach to the animals, because they listened a lot better than people did. That’s why I usually just pray for them and leave it up to God to sort out.
What I’m saying is that there is no pre-existence because it’s never been taught throughout all of Judeo-Christian history, until Joseph Smith decided to create his interpretation of the “plan of salvation”. Doesn’t that strike you as the least bit odd? Don’t you think Jesus would have told us that this was so, and not left something that profound for a mere mortal boy to introduce to the world, almost 2000 years after Jesus walked the earth, Himself? That just reinforces the notion that Joseph Smith is seen by Mormons as at least an equal, or even better, than Jesus Christ. His theology backs up that fact by implying that Jesus made huge errors, and He (being God) had lied to us, “That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Yet, Joseph Smith claims that that is exactly what happened after the Apostles died. Who do you think is more trustworthy, Jesus or Joseph Smith? I’d put my money on Jesus, any day of the week, tyvm.
Our life on this earth is the only test of faith that God has ever set forth for mankind to take. The reason that JS had to create an alternative, was because he knew that it was the only way that he could get anyone to believe in the rest of his fantastic story. It was the only way that he could conceive of to build upon the presumption that all Christian churches were wrong. His ‘system of beliefs’ had to be completely opposed to anything else previously believed, in all of Christianity. If he really had the visions that he claims to have had, then I would seriously have to question just who, in fact, those ‘personages’ that he saw, were. No offense, but it is a very well known truth that the devil can come to any of us as an “angel of light”:
Matthew 24:24 “For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect.”
That’s exactly what the devil tried to do to Jesus when He was in the desert for forty days! He tempted Him to *bow down before him as if **he *were God!! Poor Joseph Smith (if the visions were real) was a very young boy that could have easily been mislead by the cunning lies of the devil, who is highly intelligent. Lucifer was the highest angel in Heaven, second only to God in beauty and intelligence. JS was desperate for answers, and at that point in his life, was vulnerable and very susceptible to being mislead into believing that all of the Christian churches were wrong. I almost feel sorry for him, but after all that I’ve seen and read about him, I just can’t bring myself to do it.
The main reason that most Mormons are so confused when they see the truth staring them in the face, is because they are told to never question their faith, because they’ve been taught from the beginning that it’s a sign that the devil is trying to deceive them (o, the irony). That’s why I have to rejoice, when I see all those brave souls that knew in their hearts that there was something wrong with what they’d been taught, and actually listened to that ‘inner voice’ of God that was leading them to the real truth.
Maybe that’s why you are here… or not. I tend to think you (and other LDS) are actually here to proselytize your own faith, but that’s JMHO.
BTW… I think Mormons may need to take more reading comprehension courses in school, because they all seem to read things into what’s written, that were never the intended meaning of the author.
V
valient_Lucy
Guest
hehe.BTW… I think Mormons may need to take more reading comprehension courses in school, because they all seem to read things into what’s written, that were never the intended meaning of the author.
V
valient_Lucy
Guest
spiritual-politics.org/2010/10/back_from_logan_utah.html
Interesting comment on the views of marriage within Christianity and Mormonism.
"It’s important to recognize, though, how big a deal homosexuality is in the Mormon belief system. In the Christian tradition, gender is not central to the main message, though some seem to pretend that’s so today. Celibacy was the preferred option: Better not to burn, was the best Paul had to say about the institution of marriage. In Roman Catholicism, marriage was the johnny-come-lately sacrament.
But as my friend and host Phil Barlow, USU’s new Arrington Professor of Mormon History and Culture, emphasized to me, in Mormonism, ontology and soteriology–the theories of being and salvation–are heterosexually gendered. Where Catholic and Eastern Orthodox bishops have to be unmarried, Mormon bishops have to be married. Families exist for time and eternity. One might call Mormonism the apotheosis of 19th-century familialism."
Interesting comment on the views of marriage within Christianity and Mormonism.
"It’s important to recognize, though, how big a deal homosexuality is in the Mormon belief system. In the Christian tradition, gender is not central to the main message, though some seem to pretend that’s so today. Celibacy was the preferred option: Better not to burn, was the best Paul had to say about the institution of marriage. In Roman Catholicism, marriage was the johnny-come-lately sacrament.
But as my friend and host Phil Barlow, USU’s new Arrington Professor of Mormon History and Culture, emphasized to me, in Mormonism, ontology and soteriology–the theories of being and salvation–are heterosexually gendered. Where Catholic and Eastern Orthodox bishops have to be unmarried, Mormon bishops have to be married. Families exist for time and eternity. One might call Mormonism the apotheosis of 19th-century familialism."
V
valient_Lucy
Guest
I do, in a sense, disagree with the author’s decision to lump Protestantism in with Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The Protestant view of marriage and family is somewhat in between that of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. It’s closer to Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, but much more family centered than Catholcism and Eastern Orthodoxy. But still nowhere close to the Mormon view of the family.
Z
zaffiroborant
Guest
How so?
V
valient_Lucy
Guest
nytimes.com/2011/03/22/us/22pastor.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all
This is an article about how Evangelical churches are very reluctant to hire single men to be pastors, some even specifically exclude single men from ministry.
*“Some evangelical churches, in particular, openly exclude single candidates; a recent posting for a pastor by a church on Long Island said it was seeking “a family man whose family will be involved in the ministry life of the church.” Other churches convey the message through code words, like “seeking a Biblical man” (translation: a husband and a provider).” *
Obviously, this would never happen in a Catholic or Orthodox church. Protestants, like Mormons, have a poor concept of the Church, so they substitute it with the family. For them, the role of pastors and others in the church is manmade, while the family was ordained by God.
In Catholicism, and probably Orthodoxy, the family is a far less important structure, **which in many ways is a good thing. **
P
Pacos_Pete
Guest
Why didn’t you put in the complete statement that prompted the above reply? Anyone reading your reply would take it completely out of co-text, I know I do.
My only reason for joining CAF was to get answers to Catholic questions. I worked with a Catholic and what she was telling me defies logic. So far that is all I am getting from CAF. So far some of the statements border on rule infractions, that’s okay I can live with it.
Where can I get the quotes from Catholic scripture that supports what you are telling me.
Is it true that Pope Joan had a baby? Where did I get this from? From here; Catholic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia! I know how to get information from the KJV and the other 20 plus versions. However all I can find for the Catholic Bible are sites that want to get paid for information.
Now you know my feelings on the matter, don’t expect further replies. Are there any of you out there that wants to answer my questions without the usual barbs, do so? If not my only source of information will have to remain “Catholic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” I still have 3 questions pending that no one cares to answer.
- Status