So what about all that saving teeth and toenails from dead people?
What the hell is up with that?
Well, help us with Matt. 5:48. "You are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."
I admire and esteem the Orthodox Churh --- and they are so close to us, our dearest kin for sure -- and yet they caved on divorce/remarriage and, evidently, contraception, a long time ago. Gave in at just those points where the secular culture was pressing hardest.
We don't always practice what we preach. Fersure. But if only we preached what we believe!
Thank you, Ross Douthat, preach on.
“...Roman Catholicism is the expression of Christianity that has kept faith most fully with the early church and the words of Jesus of Nazareth”
Statements like this insults our intelligence. We’ve all got history books, for heaven’s sake. We all know about the thousands, some would say millions, burned alive at the stake by Roman Catholicism in cahoots with various emperors in the middle ages.
Where, pray tell, did Jesus of Nazareth or the early church, in cahoots with secular kings, have people killed who didn’t agree with them?
Only one of many things we could name, which the RCC does NOT keep faith with Christ and the early church.
The focus must be on Yashua, nothing else.
thank you for posting Ross Douthat’s excellent article on why he is Catholic.
1. Progressives
2. Greedy Pragmatists
We're all well aware of the pernicious effect through history of progressives, but we should probably be even more concerned about the greedy pragmatists.
As more and more Christian doctrines get labeled illegal it will be more and more difficult for churches to exist as profitable, or even non-profit, organizations. If a church's doctrines start to approximate the zeitgeist they will be able to continue as a going concern with tax breaks, federal support of their ministry, and public support with no fear of picketing or law suits.
There may be some cardinals in the hierarchy who wish to keep the money flowing and are afraid that if the church's beliefs stray too far from modern beliefs that the spigot will be shut off.
So if you asked me, as a secular or Protestant reader might be inclined to do, “do you believe that marriage is indissoluble because the pope is infallible and he says so?”, I might answer: “Mostly the reverse: I think the papacy might well be guided on the Holy Spirit because it has taught so consistently that marriage is indissoluble, while almost every other Christian body has succumbed to the pressures and political incentives to say otherwise.” (And those incentives were powerful long before modernity.) I respect the papacy’s authority precisely because it has kept faith with one of Jesus’s harder teachings, in other words, and shown flexibility or made compromises only in a way (through an err-on-the-side-of-the-petitioner annulment process, most recently) that I think has left the teaching’s basic integrity intact.
Catholic ping!
[Why I Am Catholic]: Because Vincent de Paul Was Once A Muslim's Slave
[Why I Am Catholic]:Welcome to the Ever Persecuted Church! [Catholic Caucus]
[Why I Am Catholic]: Lent And Holy Week (A Primer) [Catholic Caucus]
[Why I Am Catholic]: Because God Became Man (Despite His Flawed Human Ancestors)
[Why I Am Catholic]: Because of the Protestant Reformers Beliefs On Mary
Why I Am Catholic: For Purgatory, Thank Heavens (Ecumenical)
(Why Am I Catholic?) For Peace While Suffering (A Few Words for Wednesday)
[Why I am Catholic]: Because I Love the Bible
(why am I Catholic?) Because I Awoke from a Long, Bad Dream
Why I Am Catholic: For All the Saints: Bernard of Clairvaux