Posted on 01/27/2007 6:12:35 AM PST by NYer
"And Can It Be" is the unofficial theme song of Asbury Theological Seminary, of which I am a graduate.
Chapel services regularly included this wonderful Wesley hymn. There is nothing quite like nearly half a thousand (mostly) male voices, many of whom understanding harmonizing, singing that song with all their hearts.
One hardly needs any more of the service than that.
Bravo.
"I think that is because there is an aversion to looking too closely at the Fathers, for fear of what could be recognized therein."
I don't think that's what it is. Reading the Fathers is a particularly dangerous thing for Protestants to do if they want to remain Protestants, that's true. When some of them are introduced to the Fathers at seminary by a Protestant preacher, they read and pray and understand and many thereafter enter The Church. In that context they aren't afraid of the Fathers. But when the subject is presented to them as "Catholic", they immediately think "Roman Catholic Church" and that is the hated Whore of Babylon. Immediate rejection and attack. It is a situation for which both the Latin Church and the protestants are to blame. Rome spent centuries anathemizing anyone who wasn't in communion with the Pope of Rome, including other particular churches within The Church. It arrogated to itself the term "Catholic Church" and that worked so well that whenever the term is used in general parlance, everyone takes it to mean the Church of Rome. The Protestants, meanwhile, seem to have defined themselves at base by denying what they think of as being teachings of their bogeyman the Roman Catholic Church, no matter what the teaching is, simply because they think the teaching is quintessentially Roman when in fact it isn't.
Even here on FR, where there has been something of an orthodox witness for some years, most, but by no means all, Protestants still don't make any distinction between their bogeyman and the Pre-Schism Church. Its a real problem, S.
Yes, that is how I handle disruption on closed threads - remove and warn.
BWA HAHAHAHA
It's broadbrush, strawman arguments like this that keep me from even considering the arguments presented by lay Catholics and Orthodox such as yourself.
I have no problem reading and learning about the Church Fathers. It's their great-great-grandchildren that give me severe problems.
Alex, that's why I said "most, but by no means all, Protestants". You've read what the Orthodox here have to say and reject it. For that matter, you reject much of what the Fathers wrote. But it is quite apparent, at least to me and for some time now, that your objection is to our and the Fathers' theology in and of itself and not because you think Orthodoxy is some spin off franchise of the Latin Church.
There are a number of Protestants here who fall into that category. In any event, my comment was not directed at Protestants but rather at the persistent Latin practice of using the term "Catholic Church" when either, a) they mean Roman Catholic Church and its dependencies or b) mean the Pre Schism Church and simply assume everyone knows what they mean when in fact, as this very thread demonstrates, that is not at all true.
Boy, if that doesn't smack of "reading the mind of another poster", I don't know what else it could be. I doubt even a heavy re-wording could fix that.
"Boy, if that doesn't smack of "reading the mind of another poster", I don't know what else it could be."
Comes from 30 years of mind reading in court and with clients, Alex...and talking with Protestants, active laity, ministers and minister and lay Protestant converts to Orthodoxy.
"I doubt even a heavy re-wording could fix that."
No need to re-word it. It means precisely what you said.
Ever wear dogtags? Ever live in a community where everyone knows everyone else?
Why do you have anyone on oral contraceptives?
I've already answered that elsewhere on this thread. Clean your own house first.
IMO you can't claim that and simulateously claim that the Catholic Church is the largest Christian body in the USA. Take your pick.
My point when I said the RC church numbers 323 people.
You said contradictory things, you said you had people on ABC and then you said you didn't write the scripts. It was a bit confusing. So do you agree, that doctors should prescribe abortaficiants, at least for the purpose of acting as abortaficiants? This really isn't a house cleaning issue, it is a moral issue that transcends denominations, much like abortion or segregation.
The first mistake lies in the confusion of modern "evangelical" Christianity--almost universally identified by Catholic apologists as "fundamentalism"--with the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Many Catholic apologists have honed to near perfection the technique of blasting to smithereens the anti-creedal, anti-historical, anti-intellectual positions of "Bible-Only" fundamentalists. By focusing their attention on the "no creed but Christ" foolishness of the latter and wrongly equating it with the classical Protestant formal principle of Sola Scriptura, they attempt to expose what they believe to be a glaring inconsistency in something they rather generically call "the Protestant view".
And while we're talking about sexually related issues, why are nuns acting as pimps?
you said you had people on ABC and then you said you didn't write the scripts
No contradiction there. They are on the pill, I see some of them as overflow, I didn't put them on the pill, someone else did.
Denominations? Are you calling the Roman Catholic Church a denomination???
Someone get me some popcorn! This could get interesting!
This was carried to the extremes of foolishness in the Army in my early years on active duty. For a variety of systemic reasons, the RC's pretty much owned the Army Chaplaincy from WWII until the 90's....and probably still have pretty much of a strangle-hold on it.
In short, if it wasn't Catholic or Jewish, it was "Protestant." (They never were sure what to do with the Orthodox.)
Even for an evanglical like me, it was absurd seeing a Mormon presented as a "Protestant."
Interestingly, that is what Dante (who was Catholic) felt as well. He has several popes in hell in his book. As it is, when you bring a huge amounts of pagans into a different religion, they are bound to integrate some of their customs into the new faith. Nothing wrong with it.
I don't know about corrupting it. Although Catholics and many Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus on Dec 25, we're still celebrating the birth of Jesus, not the death of the Snow God or whatever previous festival took place at that time.
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