Posted on 05/13/2002 6:27:38 PM PDT by Siobhan
How true, we must get back to the basics. One would hope to see the Ten Commandments once again posted in our schools and public buildings. Not merely to hang as a decoration but to be firmly adhered to by one and all.
Most Protestants believe that the 'church' referred to by Jesus meant the body of true Christian believers worldwide. For Protestants, that includes Catholics. Protestants and Catholics have far more in common than not.
The fundamentalists are the folks who fight the good fight against secular humanism which Pope St. Pius X called modernism or the Modernist Heresy or the synthesis of all heresies. They are a substantial part of the bedrock of our American community, our brothers and sisters in Christ, our fellow Christians, who, despite some doctrinal differences arising from good faith disagreement with us over the meaning of Scripture have joined with us on about 85% of doctrine nonetheless.
Those fundamentalists are the ones, including genuine Catholics, who reject the notion that support of welfare state politics is as important, somehow, as the fight against abortion, homosexuality, wanton levels of divorce and an obsessively materialistic society. They also tend to be the ones who welcome our fellow human beings, fellow Christians and fellow children of God from south of our border. They are the ones who understand that the standard has never changed and that homosexuality is an abomination not to be engaged in by any Christians much less by those who act as priests or ministers of Jesus Christ whether with "consenting adults", teenage children or prepubescent children.
They are our sisters and brothers, despised by the world as our Savior promised us we would be. These are a few of the things that make them genuinely orthodox as opposed to trend of the week Amchurch "Catholicism" and its counterparts in the similarly decaying and dying "mainline" churches. They are the people who understand with the late great Baptist Reverend Mr. Criswell of Dallas: "A church starts to die when its throat is grasped by the palsied hand of liberalism." God bless them, each and every one.
No disagreement there, certainly, except to add Pius XII's support for historical criticism in the study of Scripture.
Inerrancy doesn't require a literal interpretation.
Won't matter...say JPII hangs around for two, three more years. The next Pope will have to convene a Council just to deal with the financial destruction of the present Crisis.
Anyone who thinks this isn't the tip of the Iceberg is deluding themselves. Do the Cash Flow projections...Dallas alone has had to remortgage Church property just to pay the settlements and Judgements through the end of...are you ready for this...year 2000!
The you-know-what hit the fan in January of 2002. In reality, the Church sealed its fate by "doubling down" its risks...by ordaining HUGE numbers of Homosexual priests.
In the "old" days, the Heteros understood the rule that if you are gonna cop a little, you do it AWAY from where you are a priest. Vacations were routinely used for activities allowed Eastern Rite (but NOT in the US since 1927) priests.
The NAMBLA types just couldn't keep their hands off.
Lawyers I've spoken to say we are looking at Asbestos and Breast Implants COMBINED!!
It will be a Miracle if the US Catholic Church survives in its presant form...and if the Lawyers can somehow "pierce the Veil" and hook up Vatican activity in the liability, WATCH OUT!!
The New Testament wasn't canonized until 350 years after John wrote the book of Revelation. So when he states that,
"I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book."
he is speaking of the book of Revelation the book he was writing.
The New Testament canon that you use is the canon that was determined by several Church Councils in the late 300s. The Old Testament canon that you use was supposedly determined by a group of rabbis meeting in Jamnia around the year 100 the same group of rabbis that rejected the New Testament altogether.
How do you reconcile the invisibility of Christ's Church with the following passage:
Matthew 18:17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
Exactly.
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