Roman Catholicism , cult or not?

[Eliyahu]

Originally posted by Matt Black:
There is no way that a Cathar could have been saved and still adhered to their fundamental beliefs; it was a dualist system which, along with many other gnostic cults, viewed all matter as evil and only the spiritual as counting.

How do you know it? By hearing from Inquisitors? or from Adolf Hitler the devout Roman Catholic? or from Mussolini and Franco, devout Catholics? may be from Buddhists or Muslims?

Do you have any literature written by themselves?

 

[Chemnitz]

Cathar Texts

Cathar.net

If the modern Cathars bear any resemblance to the ancient Cathars, they definitely have some odd beliefs. Some of these teachings are not consistant with orthodoxy, primary of which is the insistance of the Kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of Heaven. In fact, this particular teaching sounds quite simalar to the dualism of the material kingdom and spiritual kingdom of the Gnostics.

 

[Matt Black]

Originally posted by Eliyahu:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Matt Black:
There is no way that a Cathar could have been saved and still adhered to their fundamental beliefs; it was a dualist system which, along with many other gnostic cults, viewed all matter as evil and only the spiritual as counting.

How do you know it? By hearing from Inquisitors? or from Adolf Hitler the devout Roman Catholic? or from Mussolini and Franco, devout Catholics? may be from Buddhists or Muslims?

Do you have any literature written by themselves? </font>[/QUOTE]What the heck have Hitler and Mussolini got to do with it? They didn't exactly have a good relationship with the Catholic Church.

And you want literature - read Montaillou as I suggested. Or follow Chemnitz' link

 

[DeclareHim]

Originally posted by Eliyahu:
I know you are standing on the wrong ground:

Erasmus' were on the list of books forbidden by Roman Catholic.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/indexlibrorum.html


Erasmus was a Catholic on the surface, but his fellowship remained in the circle of reformers.


Rule on the forbidden books:

http://www.myfortress.org/CouncilofTrent.html

Also they prohibited Bible since 1229, until they declare the change officially in 2nd Vatican Council 1962

They didn't forbid his books until after his death and it is actual fact that Erasmus was corresponding with a friend I believe a Cardinal in the Vatican. That Cardinal would send him readings from B. Erasmus only affiliation while alive was that of an RCC though they condemned him later. Yes but Erasmus wasn't translating the Bible into the language of the People but rather producing a Greek text. The RCC never prohibited the Bible they just made it illegal for the layperson to read suggesting that they should trust the church to interpet Scripture for them.

 

[Eliyahu]

Originally posted by DeclareHim:
They didn't forbid his books until after his death and it is actual fact that Erasmus was corresponding with a friend I believe a Cardinal in the Vatican. That Cardinal would send him readings from B. Erasmus only affiliation while alive was that of an RCC though they condemned him later. Yes but Erasmus wasn't translating the Bible into the language of the People but rather producing a Greek text. The RCC never prohibited the Bible they just made it illegal for the layperson to read suggesting that they should trust the church to interpet Scripture for them. [/QB]

\

I disagree with you.

Erasmus had much more fellowship with the reformers.

 

[DeclareHim]

Originally posted by Eliyahu:
I disagree with you.

Erasmus had much more fellowship with the reformers.

Erasmus did have more fellowship with the reformers than with RCC but the fact remains he was a former Catholic priest and while working on and compiling the TR he was in correspondence with an RCC Cardinal in the Vatican.

 

[Matt Black]

Originally posted by DeclareHim:
The RCC never prohibited the Bible they just made it illegal for the layperson to read suggesting that they should trust the church to interpet Scripture for them.

Not that pretty much anyone outside of the clergy or ruling classes could read anyway...

 

[DHK]

Originally posted by Matt Black:
Not that pretty much anyone outside of the clergy or ruling classes could read anyway...

Now that's a real compliment to all the English and European people of the day. I guess it was the Catholics that invented language as well. Can the Catholics trace their lines back to the tower of Babel, where the different languages came from?

 

[DHK]

Originally posted by DeclareHim:
Erasmus did have more fellowship with the reformers than with RCC but the fact remains he was a former Catholic priest and while working on and compiling the TR he was in correspondence with an RCC Cardinal in the Vatican.

This statement is quite ridiculous. I was a Catholic for twenty years. Your statement is akin to saying that 100 years from now people will look down the annals of history and say that DHK was a Catholic, and that somehow has a bearing on my writings and work. This is pure hogwash. Erasmus was not a Catholic in the light that you are painting him. He was a scholar in search of the truth, one of the most brilliant scholars of his time. His obsession for collecting manuscripts of the New Testament led him on travels far and wide. He was no devout Catholic. Catholicism had nothing to do with his research. The fact that he knew a cardinal gave him access to the Vaticanus. But he didn't use it because he knew it was flawed.

A brilliant scholar who lived in the 16th century by the name of Desidierus Erasmus was the first to publish the Greek NT in printed form. He initially did so in A.D. 1516 with four more editions following in 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535. His printed Greek NT was that of the Received Text. Erasmus did not have a great number of manuscripts at his disposal, but he had traveled across Europe extensively and had examined many biblical manuscripts from Italy to Britain and most points in between. In his day, he was the foremost authority of biblical manuscripts. ... Erasmus was well aware of Vaticanus and other Alexandrian manuscripts and rejected them out of hand. Over the final 20 years of his life, Erasmus continued to edit and refine his initial publication of his Greek NT. During the course of those years, he came into contact with considerably more manuscripts than the ten which he initially used. The work of Erasmus as a textual editor was not on the same plane as modern textual critics. He sought only to transmit the preserved Word of God. Unlike modern textual critics, he was not trying to reconstruct a lost NT by "scientific" means. (Touch Not the Unclean Thing, David Sorenson, pp.69,70)

 

[Matt Black]

Originally posted by DHK:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Matt Black:
Not that pretty much anyone outside of the clergy or ruling classes could read anyway...

Now that's a real compliment to all the English and European people of the day.</font>[/QUOTE]Yeah, but it's true! I have absolutely no idea what your point is here?

 

[Eliyahu]

Originally posted by DeclareHim:
Erasmus did have more fellowship with the reformers than with RCC but the fact remains he was a former Catholic priest and while working on and compiling the TR he was in correspondence with an RCC Cardinal in the Vatican. [/QB]

Why doesn't RC use TR as text for NT today?
Ciniquy was a former Catholic and therefore is he accepted by Rc today?

Martin Luther was a former Catholic too.

 

[DHK]

Originally posted by Eliyahu:


Martin Luther was a former Catholic too.

Is Martin Luther known as a Catholic or a Lutheran (follower of the teachings of Luther--his own teachings)?

 

[DHK]

Originally posted by Matt Black:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by DHK:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Matt Black:
Not that pretty much anyone outside of the clergy or ruling classes could read anyway...

Now that's a real compliment to all the English and European people of the day.</font>[/QUOTE]Yeah, but it's true! I have absolutely no idea what your point is here? </font>[/QUOTE]I don't believe your point is valid.
Tyndale was one of Erasmus's students. To one of the Bishops of that time he proclaimed his the ambition of his life that drove him in his work for the Lord. Here is what he said:

"If God spare my lyfe, ere many yeeares I wyl cause a boye that drveth the plough shall know mre of the scripture than thou doest."

On May 21, 1535 Tyndale was kidnapped, arrested, imprisoned, and on Oct.6, 1536 he was strangled and burned at the stake. His dying words were: "Lord open the King of England's eyes." He could not know that just a year earlier it was his translation that had begun circulating in Englaind with the approval of King Henry VIII. The martyr's prayer had been heard. (Introduction of Dixon's Analytical Bible)

The fact of the matter is, it is not just the clergy and the leaders of the country that could read and write. It was the goal of Tyndale to put the Bible into the hands of the common person. Notice that Tyndale himself mentions "the plowman." There were dozens of sects outsided the Catholic Church that already had the Bible and were vigoroulsy preaching it with little or no seminary training. There were anabaptists and other groups that had a heritage stemming from the Waldenses which according to the Catholics own historians existed for the first 1200 years of early church history. All of these people were not illiterate. This is what your post infers. To infer that only the so-called clergy were literate is highly arrogant.
DHK

 

[Eliyahu]

Martin Luther never gave up his priesthood of RC until he died, as far as I know.

 

[Melanie]

Martin Luther was ordained a priest and a priest he died.

He was/is a heretic in the eyes of the RCC.

 

[Chemnitz]

Luther was neither as the RCC didnot exist until Trent and he despised the name "Lutheran." Instead, he considered himself an Evangelical Catholic.

 

[Eliyahu]

That is why the surface denomination doesn't mean very much even in the case of Erasmus.

 

[I Am Blessed 24]

Roman Catholicism , cult or not?

Yes! It fits all of the definitions and it is a cult!

 

[Matt Black]

Care to elaborate?

DHK, I was referring to the bulk of the European population in the Dark and Middle Ages, who were illiterate. Being able to 'read the Bible for themselves' would have been irrelevant to them since they were wholly unable to read anything for themselves.

 

[I Am Blessed 24]

Cult

A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader.

A system or community of religious worship and ritual.

The formal means of expressing religious reverence; religious ceremony and ritual.

A usually nonscientific method or regimen claimed by its originator to have exclusive or exceptional power in curing a particular disease.

Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing.
The object of such devotion.