Posted on 10/28/2009 12:33:39 PM PDT by Gamecock
If he is referring to the Catholic Church in this phrase, D.G. Hart is a liar.
To the author's credit he probably assumed that this would only be read by other anti-Catholic bigots, I don't think he expected anyone to actually challenge his thesis.
Yes, precisely.
Sure, you might not hate the Jews now, citizen, but sit and watch this film and you can learn to hate them because of the (false) things we're about to tell you.
Sure.
This news will come as a shock to my ancestors who fought in the Civil War in the 1800s as Americans.
And to Charles Carroll of Carrolton who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
See Fallacy of False Generalization for Further Information.
Catholics of U.S. citizenship, generally speaking, were not "un-American" when
they planted all of those crosses in the U.S. cemetery in Normandy in World War II.
Although Catholics had been in the English colonies in North America since the 1600s, the bulk of Catholic emigration occurred in the 1840s, quite a while
before "on the way to the 21st century." So, a funny thing happened to the study
of History in certain non-Catholic circles somewhere on the way to the 21st century.
Deweyites in the NEA again perhaps.
Considering that it was posted on the Machenite website, it was a relatively-wise assumption.
Sorry to break the news to you,dear brother, but the Catholic Church understood the meaning of TRUE Liberty and it does not exactly match the founding fathers of this country
From Pope Leo XIII
Libertas
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_20061888_libertas_en.html
Excerpt
As the Catholic Church declares in the strongest terms the simplicity, spirituality, and immortality of the soul, so with unequalled constancy and publicity she ever also asserts its freedom. These truths she has always taught, and has sustained them as a dogma of faith, and whensoever heretics or innovators have attacked the liberty of man, the Church has defended it and protected this noble possession from destruction. History bears witness to the energy with which she met the fury of the Manichaeans and others like them; and the earnestness with which in later years she defended human liberty at the Council of Trent, and against the followers of Jansenius, is known to all. At no time, and in no place, has she held truce with fatalism.
5. Liberty, then, as We have said, belongs only to those who have the gift of reason or intelligence. Considered as to its nature, it is the faculty of choosing means fitted for the end proposed, for he is master of his actions who can choose one thing out of many. Now, since everything chosen as a means is viewed as good or useful, and since good, as such, is the proper object of our desire, it follows that freedom of choice is a property of the will, or, rather, is identical with the will in so far as it has in its action the faculty of choice. But the will cannot proceed to act until it is enlightened by the knowledge possessed by the intellect. In other words, the good wished by the will is necessarily good in so far as it is known by the intellect; and this the more, because in all voluntary acts choice is subsequent to a judgment upon the truth of the good presented, declaring to which good preference should be given. No sensible man can doubt that judgment is an act of reason, not of the will. The end, or object, both of the rational will and of its liberty is that good only which is in conformity with reason.
6. Since, however, both these faculties are imperfect, it is possible, as is often seen, that the reason should propose something which is not really good, but which has the appearance of good, and that the will should choose accordingly. For, as the possibility of error, and actual error, are defects of the mind and attest its imperfection, so the pursuit of what has a false appearance of good, though a proof of our freedom, just as a disease is a proof of our vitality, implies defect in human liberty. The will also, simply because of its dependence on the reason, no sooner desires anything contrary thereto than it abuses its freedom of choice and corrupts its very essence. Thus it is that the infinitely perfect God, although supremely free, because of the supremacy of His intellect and of His essential goodness, nevertheless cannot choose evil; neither can the angels and saints, who enjoy the beatific vision. St. Augustine and others urged most admirably against the Pelagians that, if the possibility of deflection from good belonged to the essence or perfection of liberty, then God, Jesus Christ, and the angels and saints, who have not this power, would have no liberty at all, or would have less liberty than man has in his state of pilgrimage and imperfection. This subject is often discussed by the Angelic Doctor in his demonstration that the possibility of sinning is not freedom, but slavery. It will suffice to quote his subtle commentary on the words of our Lord: “Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin.”(3) “Everything,” he says, “is that which belongs to it a naturally. When, therefore, it acts through a power outside itself, it does not act of itself, but through another, that is, as a slave. But man is by nature rational. When, therefore, he acts according to reason, he acts of himself and according to his free will; and this is liberty. Whereas, when he sins, he acts in opposition to reason, is moved by another, and is the victim of foreign misapprehensions. Therefore, `Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin.’ “(4) Even the heathen philosophers clearly recognized this truth, especially they who held that the wise man alone is free; and by the term “wise man” was meant, as is well known, the man trained to live in accordance with his nature, that is, in justice and virtue.
7. Such, then, being the condition of human liberty, it necessarily stands in need of light and strength to direct its actions to good and to restrain them from evil. Without this, the freedom of our will would be our ruin. First of all, there must be law; that is, a fixed rule of teaching what is to be done and what is to be left undone. This rule cannot affect the lower animals in any true sense, since they act of necessity, following their natural instinct, and cannot of themselves act in any other way. On the other hand, as was said above, he who is free can either act or not act, can do this or do that, as he pleases, because his judgment precedes his choice. And his judgment not only decides what is right or wrong of its own nature, but also what is practically good and therefore to be chosen, and what is practically evil and therefore to be avoided. In other words, the reason prescribes to the will what it should seek after or shun, in order to the eventual attainment of man’s last end, for the sake of which all his actions ought to be performed. This ordination of reason is called law. In man’s free will, therefore, or in the moral necessity of our voluntary acts being in accordance with reason, lies the very root of the necessity of law. Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature. For, law is the guide of man’s actions; it turns him toward good by its rewards, and deters him from evil by its punishments.
Glad you agree.
There are two fundamental root issues why orthodox Christians will never be on the same page as Catholics:
1- hermeneutics (the method of biblical interpretation)
2- church history (Would the rel church that Christ died for, please stand up? The RCC, or the ones they persecuted; i.e., the Donatists, Montanists, Pauliscians, Priscillians, Nestorians, Cathars, Waldenses, Anabaptists, and others?
So there are two church histories in academia. Those two will always be at odds with each other: the RCC’s version, and that of orthodox Christians. I do not subscribe to Protestantism, because in doing so, one has to conclude that the Christian church suddenly “reformed”; and the lives of the faithful mentioned above had nothing to do with holding to the Scriptures, sowing the seeds for the Reformation in 1517, by their blood.
The 3rd possibility, is the LDS; but that doesn’t deserve serious consideration outside of Utah.
Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against his church (Mt 16). Accepting the RCC as the true church means that hell did prevail, and that the trail of blood of the faithful, their testimony, mean nothing.
As surely as God confronted Cain on murdering his brother Abel, from the blood crying out from the earth; so must the blood of those mentioned be reconciled (Ge 4:10). White washing it is unacceptable, it must be judged.
Ref: “The Torch of the Testimony”, John W Kennedy
However, in doing so, we must challenge Catholicism respectfully, in truth and in love. Protestants have wholly failed to present the case factually via scholarship, without using venom.
Well, at least it wasn’t attributed to a “Roman Catholic website” and offered as “proof” that Catholics oppose liberty.
The reversal of attitudes toward unborn children even more so.
How many protestant sects teach that abortifacients like the IUD and the pill (in some cases) are acceptable for use by Christians?
In short, how many abortions have protestant sects blessed in the name of Christ?
If Protestant Christians in America believed in religious liberty, they had a poor way of showing it. Catholic Mass was illegal throughout most of the colonies. Maryland was founded by Catholics, so that state tolerated it for a little while in the mid-1600s until it was taken over by Calvinists. After that, the Calvinists who had enjoyed liberty in Maryland up until that point denied it to the Catholics.
By the early 1700s only Quaker Pennsylvania dared tolerate a public “Popish Mass”. And was roundly scorned for it.
It was not until the French contribution to the Revolution, the patriotism of prominent Catholic Founding Fathers like Charles Carroll, and actually some of the Founders’ experiences with Catholic Mass in Philadelphia, that the animosity began to break down.
“According to this view, Protestantism was chiefly responsible for the advancement of political liberty and cultural progress. It stood for freedom, open inquiry, learning, and impartiality, while Roman Catholicism symbolized the opposite: tyranny, ignorance, superstition, and bigotry.”
Objective article here... yea right.
There is a third possibility. The church that Jesus refers to are the believers of The Gospel, irrespective of the church they attend here on earth.
Is there another side to this coin?
The religious groups that fled to America did so because the state run churches in Europe were not very accommodating. Was their prejudice influenced by this, or was Rome the one state church that was warm and fuzzy while all the rest were cruel?
Quite right. I included them in the “and others”, but point well taken.
I thought that might have been the intent but wasn't sure.
The blood calling out from the ground is a chilling point. I hadn't thought about it that way before.
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