Posted on 09/29/2011 7:48:46 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Edited on 09/29/2011 9:22:12 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
VATICAN CITY — In an attempt to head off a tidal wave of lawsuits stemming from the sexual abuse of children by priests within the Roman Catholic Church, and Rome’s attempt to cover up the crimes, the Vatican is planning to replace all priests with robots.
Initially the priests to be replaced will be in the United States, but if the program is successful, it could be extended to other countries, said Marco Batelli, a lawyer for the Vatican.
Batelli said human priests wouldn’t be arbitrarily ousted from their positions, rather they would be replaced by robots as they retired or died.
The church has been developing robot priests for the past two years, Batelli said. A live test took place recently in Japan, he said. In the ceremony, which was held in a restaurant to avoid protests from devout Catholics, bride Satoko Inouye was married to her groom Tomohiro Shibata by I-Fairy, a four-foot robot wearing a wreath of flowers. This was the first time a marriage had been led by a robot, according to a statement issued by RoboPriest Japan, a joint venture between the Vatican and robot manufacturer Kokoro Co.
Vatican observer Kristof Klein said, “The beauty of RoboPriests is that they can be programmed to perform almost all the sacramental duties of priests. Their ultimate virtue, of course, is that they don’t molest little boys.”
No one is sure if the RoboPriest ploy will turn the tide for a church under severe pressure in the courts, but most experts on Vatican affairs agree that desperate times call for desperate measures.
“The church is running scared,” said Walter Lysburn, an ecclesiastical scholar in Rome. “They are desperate to do anything they can to placate victims of sexual abuse. The lawsuits could cost them billions. I know for a fact that Sotherbys has visited the Vatican and put preliminary prices on the Pieta and the Sistine Chapel. [snip]
PS: In regard to your accusation of “googlesterium,” I did not do an Internet search to find “anything to impugn Catholicism.”
I have long been aware of the many, many sources of truth out there (besides the Bible, of course), including the Berean Call.
Again, you come to us as a wolf in sheep's clothing. You feign defending those who deeply and carefully study the Bible while attacking the Episcopacy of the Catholic Church calling them a "corrupt, lying, murderous papacy".
There have been a few among the billions who have claimed to be Catholic, both laity and clergy alike, who have have been evil, but that is a human condition present in every faith and denomination. All are sinners, yet you see fit to cast the first stone. What would Christ write in the dirt about your darkest secrets? Even the Apostles, hand chosen by Jesus fell short. The denied, doubted and betrayed Jesus, yet their ministries bore fruit. St. Paul advised us that the Treasure would be held in such earthen vessels.
Jesus established the Catholic Church upon St. Peter to preserve preserve and defend the Revealed Word of God. He promised that His Church, the Catholic Church, would prevail against the gates of hell. It has and will. No $3.00 pamphlet or two bit harpie will change that.
Mark, I have already made it clear that my source for knowledge is the Word of God—the Bible. The Holy Spirit teaches us its meaning. Jesus is the ONLY mediator between God and man—the ONLY way to God.
There is nothing fruitful that can come from a discussion betwee you and I. You are firmly wedded to Catholicism, and I am firmly wedded to the Word of God, and neither of us is likely to change our position.
Some Roman Catholic apologists will not believe anything that impugns the claims of Romes, and require that, 1. Establishing books as being Scripture requires a perpetual assuredly infallible magisterium, as per Rome. 2. Being the instrument and steward of Scripture assures that the former (via a supreme magisterium) will always be infallible in its definitions and worthy of assent of faith. 3. That assurance of the claim of Rome to perpetual formulaic infallibility, that whatever the church will ever speak on faith and morals to the whole church, will be infallible (incapable of being in any error), is not based upon itself. 4. That this assuredly infallible magisterium is necessary for the preservation of Truth. 5. The canon was infallibly settled prior to the Reformation, thus precluding debate, and thus Roman Catholics had a infallible canon for most of her claimed history, and thus enabling an infallible canon to have been given to the Protestants prior to Trent, and which canon was not debated by notable Catholic scholars therein (with a vote of 24 yea, 15 nay, with 16 abstaining (44%, 27%, 29%) as to whether to affirm it as infallible an article of faith with its anathemas on those who dissent from it.) 6. The first canon (that is asserted to have been) published by the Catholic Church approx 300 years after the resurrection of Jesus represented the entire church, and so its Old Testament canon was consistent with earlier lists such as by Melito (c. 180), Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 350) Athanasius (367), Jerome (347 420) prologue to his translation of the Old Testament, and "Against Rufinus", and placed the apocrypha separately in his Vulgate) and John of Damascus, Gregory the Great, Walafrid, Nicolas of Lyra and Tostado and others who continued to doubt the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books, and possibly (debatable) the canon of the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 364). 7. That there is no debate as to whether the canon of Trent is exactly the same as that of earlier canons such as that of Carthage and Hippo, or that all that Trent declares is infallible, including the attribution of Biblical authors. 8. That the Vulgate has the same authority as they original text (Divino Afflante Spiritu, #17), and that there is no dispute as whether any verse in the Vulgate is properly Scripture. 9. That there is no dispute as to whether all that Trent declares is infallible, including the attribution of Biblical authors. 10. That the infallible magisterium of Rome is effectively not the supreme authority on earth for Catholics. 11. That Roman Catholics have an infallible canon of all infallible decrees by the infallible magisterium, and thus how many there are is never a matter of interpretation. 12. That Protestants cannot be at least as certain as to what books belong in their canon as Roman Catholics can be as to how many infallible pronouncements there are. 13. That Luther had no support from church fathers or Roman Catholic scholars in questioning or rejecting certain books as Scripture (which as with Jerome and the Apocrypha, he nonetheless included in his Bible, as of a lesser rank than Scripture.) 14. That the Protestants could not have rather quickly overall coming to affirm a 66 book canon (more than Luther had), out of a prior disputed canon, as Rome claims to have done with that of the Jews, without being bound to accept all that the entity held to through which the prior canon came. 15. That the Christian church was itself not born out of division, and that the authenticity of the church is based upon formal decent, versus effectual Scriptural faith, (Mt. 3:9; Rm. 2:28,29) primarily attested to by effecting manifest regeneration, (1Thes. 1:3,4ff) and by which the true church exists and has its members, (1Cor. 12:13) as the kingdom of God is not in self-declaration, but in power. (1Cor. 4:20) 15. And that those who Rome treats and will bury as members today are far more liberal than their evangelical counterparts. 16. That the catholic church of the 1st century was the same church as that of the later ages, defined by holding to an supreme head claiming supreme (basically autocratic) power over all Christianity and the world, and using the sword of men to chastise (including torture) Catholics and kill theological dissenters, and universally officially consenting with the fathers (as is required) to such things as the use of images, the perpetual sinlessness and virginity of Mary, and the papacy being infallible whenever speaking in accordance with her criteria, etc., and otherwise being consistent with herself, without resorting to her claim that she defines what is a contradiction, and the extrapolations of her development of doctrine. |
That Rome did not overall promote Biblical literacy is true, and until recently little of the Bible was read in Mass, and today this is still not much. The average Catholic does not even get to Mass weekly, less alone daily as would be needed to get just 12.7% of the Bible over the two year reading cycle, and it has already been established that historically Rome did not encourage Bible literacy among the laity, and even discouraged it. Even by 1951 just a little of the gospels and the epistles were read on Sundays, with just 0.39% of the Old Testament (aside from the Psalms) being read at Vigils and major feast days in 1951. (http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Statistics.htm) Also at mid-century study of Bible texts was not an integral part of the primary or secondary school curriculum. At best, the Bible was conveyed through summaries of the texts. (The Catholic Study Bible, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. RG16) While that amount has increased since Vatican Two, just going to Mass will NOT give a functional knowledge of Scripture.
While accusations of censure of the Bible by Rome are sometimes exaggerated, and while Roman Catholicism did print Bibles in the common (vulgar) tongue (and in a notable encouragement, Pius VI in his letter to Martini, commended the printing and reading of his translation of his Bible into Italian), yet for most of her history she evidences that she not only did not place a priority upon personal Biblical literacy among the laity, but she actually hindered it, including by requiring permission to privately read Scripture, or more rarely, in some places outright banning the laity from reading it. Translations in the language of the laity was typical judged as doing more harm than good. This suppression based upon the position of sola ecclesia, that the Roman church only is the supreme authority and sufficient infallible authority on faith and morals. As stated in 1528 by Dominican Johannes Mensing, "Scripture can deceive, the Church cannot deceive. Who does not perceive then that the Church is greater than Scripture and that we can entrust ourselves better to the Church than to Scripture." (Gründliche vnterricht: Was eyn frommer Christen von der heyligen Kirchen, von den Vetern vnd der heyligen schrifft halten sol) However, while Rome infallibly declares she is infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula (but which does not insure infallible interpretation of her), Scripture is the only transcendent material authority on faith and moral that is infallible, being wholly God-breathed, and which was established as being so due the supernatural attestation given them from God, and their unique heavenly qualities, and conflation and progressive complementarity to what was previously established as being from God. Moreover, while today Bible reading is somewhat encouraged in Roman Catholicism, its authority is yet impugned by inculcating the idea that what Rome says it means is all that really doctrinally matters, and by the overall liberal interpretive approach to exegesis of most of her modern scholars, such as is seen (below) in the approved commentary in the official Roman Catholic Bible for America. ► Historical view:
The Council of Trent broadly prohibited all Latin translations of the New Testament coming from what she decreed were were heretics, and also prohibited all their books, even those free from objection, i.e. not treating of religious questions, as well as future publications. Any person reading or keeping a book prohibited for other reasons commits a grievous sin and is to be punished according to the bishop's discretion. The ten rules remained in force until Leo XIII abrogated them by the Constitution "Officiorum ac Munerum" (January 25, 1897) and replaced them by new general decrees. However, consistent with other hindrances, Trent did allow reading of Scripture, that of reading of Latin translations of the Old Testament edited by heretics, and for the use of Bible-versions in the vernacular written by Catholics, but only after a license in writing was obtained from the proper ecclesiastical authority: Council of Trent
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INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS:
The Bull Unigenitus, published at Rome, September 8, 1713, as part of its censure of the propositions of Jansenism*, also condemned the following as being errors:
INTER PRAECIPUAS (On Biblical Societies) of Pope Gregory XVI, MAY 8, 1844:
Providentissimus Deus: On the study of Holy Scripture, Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII , November 18, 1893,
Comment: While the above encyclical was partly motivated by the rise of the historical-critical method of analyzing Scripture, which impugns its authority, yet liberal scholarship reigns in Roman Catholicism. See below for more.
Vatican Two: With Vatican came a marked difference in the Roman Catholic stance toward general Bible reading.
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* a distinct movement within the Catholic Church from the 16th to 18th centuries. It opposed Pelagianism (and semi-Pelagianism), and what is saw as the "relaxed morality" of Jesuitism and its frequent communion, and it followers identified themselves as rigorous followers of Augustinism, and it thus shared some tenets of Calvinism (though its pious Catholic founder, Jansen, rejected the doctrine of assurance). Its key conflict with Roman Catholic soteriology is that it denies the role of free will in the acceptance and use of grace. The United Bible Society announced that as of 31 December 2007 the Bible was available in 438 languages, 123 of which included the deuterocanonical material as well as the Tanakh and New Testament. Either the Tanakh or the New Testament alone was available in an additional 1168 languages, and portions of the Bible were available in another 848 languages, for a total of 2,454 languages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations#Modern_translation_efforts |
Negative. What you have posted is that you believe that Catholicism is not Christian have found supporting websites that bolster that belief.
There is nothing fruitful that can come from a discussion betwee you and I. You are firmly wedded to Catholicism, and I am firmly wedded to the Word of God, and neither of us is likely to change our position.
I see no indication of belief in the Word of God in your posts. You prate about a viciously antiCatholic website and smugly sit upon that tuffet.
You may be overestimating the price.
Jesus did no such thing. That is a gross misinterpretation of Jesus' words.
As I told Mark, there can be nothing worthwhile that comes out of a conversation between us. You are stuck firmly to your Catholicism, and I will not budge from the Bible. Your insults at me ("wolf/sheep's clothing," "you feign" "two bit harpie") don't make you look any better, either. If you would like to descend into hateful, juvenile name-calling (how very "Christian" of you!), you can ease on down the road. I'm not interested.
I do not need any “supporting website.” The Bible alone is clear. As I said, there will be no agreement between us—NONE AT ALL. It is only a waste of time for us to talk. So, I’ll move along.
What is your authority for that interpretation?
Thank you Alex. I appreciate it. I am managing to take care of myself and my needs pretty well, just the darn fingers and brain seem wobbly.
As the cooler weather comes in, I am doing better than a couple of weeks ago when we were at the tail end of a long blazing hot spell..
I have little doubt that the exposure to the freedom Protestants have to own and read a Bible was instrumental in that V2 decision. The Catholic church simply could not keep its membership shielded any more from other's life and beliefs.
I find it peculiar that the very Bible the Catholic church takes responsibility for is the one that it fights tooth and nail people reading and interpreting on their own.
Jesus did no such thing. That is a gross misinterpretation of Jesus' words.
As I told Mark, there can be nothing worthwhile that comes out of a conversation between us. You are stuck firmly to your Catholicism, and I will not budge from the Bible. Your insults at me ("wolf/sheep's clothing," "you feign" "two bit harpie") don't make you look any better, either. If you would like to descend into hateful, juvenile name-calling (how very "Christian" of you!), you can ease on down the road. I'm not interested.
You may be interested in posting etiquette in that those referenced should be courtesy pinged to the post. I am stuck firmly to Christianity. I think that I know what you are stuck firmly to and it bears little resemblance to Christianity.
You think to interpret the words of Jesus by gazing into your navel? 2000 years of the Magisterium prove you wrong. Your lack of consideration simply adds to your posting persona.
The Bible is very clear. The Church is the authority that Jesus Created and left on Earth. The very fact that you reject it indicates that you reject the Word and instead substitute your own.
As opposed to Calvinism where everyone is replaced with robots and living a simulacrum.
Very well analyzed. Have you been following some of the failed Christians posting on this thread?
2 Peter 13 14-16. The Reformation is a convincing proof.
ooops. Make that 2 Peter 3.
AND..my thread on Jeff the mormon was pulled????Hmmmm.
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