Is The Papacy Threatened?

[Thinkingstuff]

Personally, I would think that Christians were hunted down during the 1st - 3rd centuries as ample proof that the church didn't operate openly everywhere. I know you're not doubting that persecution and martyrdom really happened. But wouldn't the corollary be that they didn't make it easy for Nero and the other Caesars to capture them?

If I am not mistaken the catacombs are filled with Christian symbols such as the fish that most historians take as places where believers met secretly and quietly.

Yes there is but unfortunately it doesn't give us the style of Christianity. So we can't detect if they were baptist, Catholic, Prebyterian, or whatever. We have christian writings that unfortunately sound Too Catholic During that time but why not baptistic writings? I would be thrilled to find some.

 

[lori4dogs]

Yes there is but unfortunately it doesn't give us the style of Christianity. So we can't detect if they were baptist, Catholic, Prebyterian, or whatever. We have christian writings that unfortunately sound Too Catholic During that time but why not baptistic writings? I would be thrilled to find some.

If 'baptistic writings' ever existed, you would think some would have surfaced by now. Plenty of heretical writings survived so it wasn't (as DHK insists) because of a 'purge' of such documents.

The reason so many of the christian writings in the first few centuries sound so Catholic is because the Church WAS Catholic.

 

[DHK]

If 'baptistic writings' ever existed, you would think some would have surfaced by now. Plenty of heretical writings survived so it wasn't (as DHK insists) because of a 'purge' of such documents.

The reason so many of the christian writings in the first few centuries sound so Catholic is because the Church WAS Catholic.

The Catholic Church as we know it never existed until the fourth century. Check your facts. Read your Bible. Peter does not believe as the RCC does. The RCC preaches a false gospel. You won't find that coming out of the mouth of Peter.

 

[Zenas]

The Catholic Church as we know it never existed until the fourth century. Check your facts. Read your Bible. Peter does not believe as the RCC does. The RCC preaches a false gospel. You won't find that coming out of the mouth of Peter.

Do you really believe Peter wrote down everything he believed in eight short chapters (4,029 words to be exact)? DHK, you can write more than that in one day on the Baptist Board. And aside from what he wrote, you don't know what Peter believed. He admitted he had difficulty understanding some of Paul's writings. So for all you know Peter believed in the sacraments and the communion of saints. He also could have had personal knowledge that the body of Mary disappeared from the earth. The Catholic Church has 2,000 years of tradition that is pretty well documented going all the way back to Jesus Christ. You have nothing to disprove these things other than that they aren't in the Bible. Not that they contradict the Bible, they just aren't in there so you think they could not be true.

DHK, not everything we know about is in the Bible. The Bible is silent on the destruction of Jerusalem, although some of it was written after 70. The Bible doesn't mention Caligula, Nero and Domitian although these men were rulers of all the earth during Bible times. There is nothing in the Bible about trading Sunday for Saturday, it's a Catholic tradition. If you don't think so, just ask BobRyan. There is nothing in the New Testament about using musical instruments in worship. There is not even anything in the Bible that directly validates New Testament scripture. We take it to be true based on tradition. We also take it on faith but that faith is mostly out of tradition.

So don't try to say what Peter didn't believe because you have nothing but your own ideas, clouded by your own mysterious hatred of the Catholic Church, to back it up.

 

[DHK]

Do you really believe Peter wrote down everything he believed in eight short chapters (4,029 words to be exact)?

Far more than "eight short chapters." Peter is the central figure in the first twelve chapters of the Book of Acts. We can learn much about Peter and from Peter in the first half of the Book of Acts.
Peter was the most vocal of all of the Apostles. There is much written about him in the gospels. Jesus talks about Peter, and talks to Peter. Peter talks about Christ, even in the gospels. What makes you think that I would confine myself to just eight chapters??

DHK, you can write more than that in one day on the Baptist Board.

It is not how much he wrote; it is what he wrote. His words are the words of God; words inspired by the Holy Spirit. Let me give you an example. I have a commentary on the book of Jude, one of the smallest books of the NT--one chapter. This commentary is approximately 1500 pages in length, each page the approximate size of an encyclopedia page, double columned, small print. But wait, Jude only wrote one chapter. It is not the quantity. It is the quality; for the quality is God's quality.

And aside from what he wrote, you don't know what Peter believed.

I know exactly what he believed, and it is diametrically opposed to the teachings of the RCC. The RCC teaches a works-based salvation (heretical), and Peter taught salvation by faith alone. He taught the new birth through the word of God, and never likened the new birth to baptism. His teaching was not the heresy of the RCC.

He admitted he had difficulty understanding some of Paul's writings.

"You do err not knowing the Scriptures,..."
Peter never said that. He never said that he had difficulty understanding some of Paul's writings. He said that some of his writings were hard to understand, the implication being for others, not for him. He goes on to say that those that are unlearned take Paul's letters and wrest them to their own destruction as they do the other Scripture. He was talking of those that do not know the Scriptures--the unlearned in the Word of God. He was not referring to himself.

2 Peter 3:15-16 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;
16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

Shakespeare is hard to understand too; but I don't have difficulty. Do you? It doesn't matter what you answer. I am not expecting an answer. The fact is that for most people, Shakespeare is difficult to understand, and that was Peter's point concerning Paul's writings.

So for all you know Peter believed in the sacraments and the communion of saints.

No such things are taught in the Bible, and therefore not taught by Peter.

He also could have had personal knowledge that the body of Mary disappeared from the earth. The Catholic Church has 2,000 years of tradition that is pretty well documented going all the way back to Jesus Christ. You have nothing to disprove these things other than that they aren't in the Bible. Not that they contradict the Bible, they just aren't in there so you think they could not be true.

Peter taught the Word, not fiction and Sci-Fi.

DHK, not everything we know about is in the Bible. The Bible is silent on the destruction of Jerusalem, although some of it was written after 70.

Actually it isn't silent about the destruction of Jerusalem. It is prophesied in many places.

The Bible doesn't mention Caligula, Nero and Domitian although these men were rulers of all the earth during Bible times. There is nothing in the Bible about trading Sunday for Saturday, it's a Catholic tradition. If you don't think so, just ask BobRyan.

Bob is wrong. The first day of the week mentioned in Acts 20:7 is Sunday. The believers started meeting on the first day of the week in the time of the Apostles. That can be demonstrated by the Scriptures. I don't buy into Bob's SDA Catholic conspiracy theories.

There is nothing in the New Testament about using musical instruments in worship. There is not even anything in the Bible that directly validates New Testament scripture. We take it to be true based on tradition. We also take it on faith but that faith is mostly out of tradition.

You take one side; Ill take the other. I can argue both sides of that debate. I am quite familiar with the facts. And yes there is Scripture about using musical instruments in worship.

So don't try to say what Peter didn't believe because you have nothing but your own ideas, clouded by your own mysterious hatred of the Catholic Church, to back it up.

I believe the Bible.
Peter preached the Word; so do I.
The RCC preaches a message which sends people to hell; that do I detest.

 

[Zenas]

I believe the Bible.
Peter preached the Word; so do I.
The RCC preaches a message which sends people to hell; that do I detest.

I'm sorry, DHK. Heaven will surely be a miserable place for you with so many Catholics there who followed the teachings of "the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."

I'm also sorry you take such delight in the difficulty the Catholic Church now finds itself. I know they brought it on themselves by the shameful conduct of a few of their clergy. They have handled it all badly, from the moral issues to the legal issues to the public relations issues. But when the world sees this as related through the press, the world has a lower opinion of all Christians everywhere. This should be a source of great sorrow for you, not one of glee.

And Happy Easter, DHK. I guess you celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, even if the Bible has no record of such a celebration and Easter is an invention of the Catholic Church. Or do you?

 

[DHK]

I'm sorry, DHK. Heaven will surely be a miserable place for you with so many Catholics there who followed the teachings of "the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."

When did God appoint you the gate-keeper of heaven, or are you just another god with the attribute of omniscience??

I'm also sorry you take such delight in the difficulty the Catholic Church now finds itself.

It's on the news everyday. It's horrid. It's sickening. It always has been.

I know they brought it on themselves by the shameful conduct of a few of their clergy. They have handled it all badly, from the moral issues to the legal issues to the public relations issues.

Public relations issues for the last several centuries has been to cloak everything in a great shroud of secrecy. That in itself is a crime.

But when the world sees this as related through the press, the world has a lower opinion of all Christians everywhere. This should be a source of great sorrow for you, not one of glee.

The world is more discerning than you think.

And Happy Easter, DHK. I guess you celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, even if the Bible has no record of such a celebration and Easter is an invention of the Catholic Church. Or do you?

The resurrection of our Lord was "celebrated" in every sermon that Paul preached and in every sermon that Peter preached. It is the crux of the gospel. We are commanded to remember it every time we "celebrate" the Lord's Table. We are commanded to remember it every time one is baptized. We don't need a special day, for every day one is saved, baptized, or we celebrate the Lord's Supper we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord.
That being said, I have no problem giving occasion to extra time to the celebration of his resurrection. But Easter comes from the celebration of a pagan goddess called Astarte.

 

[DHK]

How sickening is it?

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI has surrounded himself with a small group of men he feels he can trust, but he acts very much on his own.
That isolation and shunning of advice have frequently created problems and are increasingly under scrutiny as the clerical sex scandal inches closer to him.
Early on in his 5-year-old papacy, Benedict provoked a furious reaction from Muslims when he linked the Prophet Muhammad to violence in a speech Vatican officials said he wrote himself.



Then he enraged Jews for the "unforeseen mishap" of being unaware that a bishop whose excommunication he lifted was a Holocaust-denier. The pope similarly is unlikely to have known that his personal preacher, during a solemn Good Friday sermon, would compare the uproar over the church's sex abuse scandal to persecution of Jews.



Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi - who has frequently had to put out these fires - said Saturday that such a comparison was not the line of the Vatican, the Catholic Church or even the intent of the preacher himself, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa.



That the Vatican has had a communications problem during Benedict's papacy is fairly well-established. Amid a swirling scandal at the pope's feet, Lombardi recently said he hadn't spoken to the pontiff about his letter to Irish Catholics, and that his information on Benedict's views on it was second hand.
While part of the problem is Benedict's reserved personality, perhaps more to blame is a culture of secrecy at the Vatican, rooted in church history for centuries, and its tendency to shun being held accountable to the secular world.


The Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer who has testified in U.S. court cases about Vatican secrecy and sex abuse, has written about the medieval-era canonical concept of the "privilege of the forum" - whereby clerics accused of crimes were tried by church courts, not civil courts.



"Although this privilege is anachronistic in contemporary society, the attitude or mentality, which holds clerics accountable only to the institutional church authorities is still active," he wrote in a recent article.



"There is a cult of secrecy in Catholic Church. It's a paranoid culture," Doyle, who worked as a canon lawyer in the Vatican's U.S. nunciature in the 1980s, said in an interview Saturday.



Against that backdrop sits Benedict's inner circle.
It is formed principally by the Vatican's No. 2 official, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Benedict's trusted deputy during his long years as a Vatican official; and Benedict's private secretary, fellow German Monsignor Georg Ganswein. The pope also is known to still consult his former personal secretary, Monsignor Josef Clemens, now the No. 2 at the Vatican office for the laity.



Benedict's closest friend is his older brother, Georg, a retired priest who often visits from Germany but who himself has been drawn into the scandal stemming from his years leading a pre-eminent German choir.
"The pope listens to his collaborators, but then he's very autonomous in his decisions - above all on questions of doctrinal and theological nature," noted Ignazio Ingrao, the Vatican columnist for Italy's Panorama newsweekly.



The top adviser is Bertone, a 75-year-old soccer aficionado who used to give play-by-play commentary on local television when he was archbishop of Genoa.
The pope trusts him deeply, and shows a real affection for him. Two days after Benedict broke his wrist last summer in the Italian Alps, the pontiff kept an appointment to visit Bertone's hometown of Romano Canavese, where he had lunch at the Bertone family homestead.



Just last month, he referred to Bertone as "my dearest secretary of state" when the city of Romano Canavese conferred an honorary citizenship on him.
But Bertone has also been accused of not shielding the pope enough from pitfalls.



"Tarcisio Bertone, the cardinal who was supposed to help the pope," Vatican watcher Sandro Magister wrote in 2007 after a particularly bad gaffe involving the botched appointment of a Polish prelate suspected of being a communist collaborator.


Ganswein, a former ski instructor often satirized because of his good looks, is extremely solicitous and protective of the 82-year-old pope.
But Vatican insiders say he lacks the political savvy of his predecessor as papal secretary, the Polish Stanislaw Dziwisz, now cardinal-archbishop of Krakow, Poland. Ganswein also has a more formal relationship with the pontiff than Dziwisz did with John Paul.



Ganswein once described his job to friends as "living in a gilded cage."
"John Paul met a huge variety of people from all walks at his breakfasts and lunches," said Marco Politi, a biographer of the late pope. The future pope Benedict would stay for dinner after their regular Friday afternoon meetings.
As pope, Benedict is known to eat alone.



"In reality Benedict doesn't have an inner circle. He has collaborators, not advisers," said Politi.
His 2006 speech to an audience of professors at a university in Germany where he once taught is a case in point.
A theologian known for his intellect, Benedict strayed into new territory when he quoted a medieval text that characterized some of Islam's Prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith." He later expressed regret that his comments offended Muslims.
Vatican insiders said at the that time that even those who considered the speech could be taken as inflammatory would not cross the line and press Benedict to change it.



Benedict was out of the loop on another major incident involving his rehabilitation of British Bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, which broke away from Rome because it opposed the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
Williamson has said no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust.


Amid the uproar his rehabilitation created, the pope took the remarkable step of admitting to mistakes that Williamson's views could have been known by an Internet search - had his aides done one or told him about it.
"I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news," he wrote at the time.



The case of Cantalamessa is yet another chapter for a pope who has prided his outreach to Jews yet routinely ends up enraging the Jewish community with incidents such as the Williamson affair.



In his Good Friday sermon, Cantalamessa likened the tide of allegations that the pontiff has covered up sex abuse cases to the "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism." Both Jewish and victims' groups responded that it was inappropriate to compare the discomfort being experienced by the church leadership in the sex abuse scandal to the violence that culminated in the Holocaust.
On Saturday, the affable and cultured Lombardi was at it again, trying to stem the damage. Cantalamessa is by no means a papal adviser, and is known to have provocative views that he often expresses when he interprets the Gospel on Italian television each Saturday.


"A comparison between the criticisms to the Catholic Church for the scandals of pedophilia and anti-Semitism is absolutely not the line of the Vatican and of the Catholic Church, and was also not the intention of Father Raniero Cantalamessa, who had the intention to bring only a witness of solidarity to the Church by a Jew from his personal experience of suffering," Lombardi told Associated Press Television News.

http://start.shaw.ca/start/enCA/News/WorldNewsArticle.htm?src=w040347A.xml
No doubt this is tame compared to what has gone on in past centuries under that cloud of secrecy never exposed to the public eye.

 

[lori4dogs]

He is risen! Alleluia!!

 

[billwald]

Anyone who thinks there is less internal politics in protestant denominations than in the RCC might be smoking green veggie matter.

 

[Agnus_Dei]

!المسيح قام Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Christ is risen! Хрїстосъ вос&#1082

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!

IC XC NIKA
-

 

[Grace&Truth]

He is risen! Alleluia!!

Do you believe that Jesus rose from the grave once? Which I think you do, so how then can you believe that Jesus is ever dying in the continued sacrifice of the mass and yet have only risen once? Would not that mean that He is ever dying, then ever rising? Can you please explain what you believe about this?

 

[lori4dogs]

Do you believe that Jesus rose from the grave once? Which I think you do, so how then can you believe that Jesus is ever dying in the continued sacrifice of the mass and yet have only risen once? Would not that mean that He is ever dying, then ever rising? Can you please explain what you believe about this?

Thanks for asking. ". . . who made there, by his one oblation of Himself once offered, a full perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world."

He died once for us, rose once for us. The mass re-presents that sacrifice ONCE OFFERED. No more suffering, no more dying.

 

[lori4dogs]

Do you believe that Jesus rose from the grave once? Which I think you do, so how then can you believe that Jesus is ever dying in the continued sacrifice of the mass and yet have only risen once? Would not that mean that He is ever dying, then ever rising? Can you please explain what you believe about this?

You appear to be (based on number of posts) fairly new to the board. I think your question may well be answered within the posts on the thread "Another discussion on John Chapter six". It has been discussed extensively on this board over the years.

 

[Trotter]

Thanks for asking. ". . . who made there, by his one oblation of Himself once offered, a full perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world."

He died once for us, rose once for us. The mass re-presents that sacrifice ONCE OFFERED. No more suffering, no more dying.

So... when the bread is transformed into the flesh of Christ and the wine into His blood, it is being ripped from His body now? yeah, that makes perfect sense... not.

If Christ has made the sacrifice and has risen, why do Catholics depict Him as continually on the cross? The cross, just like the tomb, is empty. Keeping Him on the cross denies His finished work.

 

[lori4dogs]

So... when the bread is transformed into the flesh of Christ and the wine into His blood, it is being ripped from His body now? yeah, that makes perfect sense... not.

If Christ has made the sacrifice and has risen, why do Catholics depict Him as continually on the cross? The cross, just like the tomb, is empty. Keeping Him on the cross denies His finished work.

No one is 'keeping Him on the cross', no one 'denies His finished work on the cross'.

You don't understand the Eucharist. It was foreshadowed in the Old Testament and was instituted by our Lord on the night in which He was betrayed.

I have a crucifix in virtually every room in my home to remind me what He endured for my sins.

Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, Orthodox and others have crucifixes for this reason. None of these denominations deny the resurrection.

I hope you had a wonderful 'Resurrection Sunday' Trotter.

 

[Trotter]

I have crosses, empty crosses. They are to remind me of what He endured for me, the price He paid, and that His sacrifice was complete and need not be repeated. The cross is a symbol of pain, torture, and humiliation... and it is the place where the price of my sins were paid.

I do not assume that you, the RCC, or those you mentioned deny the resurrection, Lori... but using images of Christ hanging on the cross is completely backward to what He did for us. His redemptive work is finished... and yet He is shown hanging on the cross. I realize that my point may sound simple, but it is a huge thing to me. The combination of His depiction of still being on the cross, and using an image of Him at all, truly bother me deeply.

And I do hope you had a wonderful day of worship, adoration, and time with loved ones on this day of the resurrection, Praise the Lord, He is risen indeed!

 

[Grace&Truth]

You appear to be (based on number of posts) fairly new to the board. I think your question may well be answered within the posts on the thread "Another discussion on John Chapter six". It has been discussed extensively on this board over the years.

Lori, I could not find this thread. Can you give me a link to it, if not where exactly would I find it?

 

[lori4dogs]

Although this is more of a discussion about the 'Real Presence' of Christ in the Eucharist, it discusses what Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Orthodox believe in common about 'the mass'. It also discusses some differences in viewponts in these churches regarding defining the 'Real Presence'.

http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=58270&highlight=discussion+john+chapter

 

[Alive in Christ]

Lori...

DHK posted...

"The Catholic Church as we know it never existed until the fourth century.

When Oh when are you going to get a grip on that, Lori? Come out of the land of fairy tales and enter reality.

The church known today as the "Catholic Church" of Rome was invented in the 4th century.

"Check your facts. Read your Bible. Peter does not believe as the RCC does. The RCC preaches a false gospel. You won't find that coming out of the mouth of Peter."

These statements are TRUE Lori.