“…gets to crack open the pages of the Bible authoritatively put together by Catholics…”
NO! Put together by the Holy Spirit!
“The rubbish you written “Communion with my Lord and Savior requires no middleman,” is typical of shallow Bible Christians.”
You are writing rubbish. You are writing the party line of agnostic Catholic Theologians.
“Today Bible Christianity has been reduced to a caricature. Each person, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets to crack open the pages of the Bible authoritatively put together by Catholics and feel free to toss out scriptural quotes, ignore altogether the received sacred oral tradition (against which the written texts were silted) and then each according to “his” mind “authoritatively” interpret them in contradiction to what the Church Fathers and early disciples did. What an absurdity!”
I will pray for you that God opens your eyes and gives you a taste of true communion with Him, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus, the Christ. What God has given me, and many like-minded brethren of mine, is NOT Caricature! I may open the Bible, put together by the Holy Spirit, inspiring the words there, and not by Roman Catholics. That much is housed in a library in the Vatican does not make it ‘Catholic’! And we know, both you and I, that Catholic Tradition does not necessarily mesh with the Word of God!
“The rubbish you have written…”
Again, you subvert yourself to condescending tripe.
“Surely if you dismiss with a wave of the hand the vast constellation of Catholic theologians from Augustine to Aquinas to Newman…”
I know Newman…Cardinal Newman. A great man in the faith. Cardinal Newman was 21 years an Anglican Priest. He was contemporary with others in the 1800’s in England. I have studied him, about him and his family. John Henry Newman is well known on college campuses in this country. I have studied Augustine and Aquinas and those in between. They were true followers of Jesus Christ. And they would have been so, with or without any connection to the ‘Catholic’ Church.
‘So now we have another dissing the works of St. Ignatius!’
You subvert the truth. I did no dis the works of Ignatius. Ignatius was one of the great early church fathers, and I have read his writings.
“Petrine Authority”
Peter was a stone, a pebble. Jesus built his church on a rock…He Himself the Rock…the First Cornerstone…
“I am sure you know the books in the Bible did to fall from the skies and re-assembled themselves in the order we find them.”
No, they did not ‘fall from the skies’…they were given to us by the Holy Spirit, who inspired their writing, and inspirationally gave them to us.
“The infallible authority of the Church…”
There is no infallibility in the Roman Church. Infallibility is in the Word of God as given to us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit fell on all who were there (Jews). Period. It had nothing to do with Peter.
At the house of Cornelius, the Holy Spirit fell on all who were there. (Gentiles). It had nothing to do with Peter.
“Apparently, we Catholic have no stones left to throw on the personal lives of Protestant leaders and local pastors, adulterers, and murderers.”
We addressed that in a previous comment. It is not about throwing stones. If we were to do that we would dredge up the Inquisitions in Spain…we would talk about Joan of Arc…we would resurrect the ‘Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini’.
Each person, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets to crack open the pages of the Bible authoritatively put together by the Holy Spirit and use them for edification and for instruction, as the Holy Spirit leads.
So every Tom, Dick and Harry can crack open the pages of the Bible and with no singular teaching authority, “use them for edification and for instruction.”
Of course that’s what Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, Jimmy Swaggart; Billy Graham, Jim, Jones David Koresh, Benny Hinn, and every kind of “First” (First AME; First Presbyterian; First Methodist; First Unitarian; First Baptist) with all their contradictory teachings instruct, to say nothing of the mainline Protestant and Evangelical denominations that now use scriptural warrant for ordaining married gay and lesbian pastors, are all using scripture “foe edification and for instruction.”
Do you now see the sheer rubbish you write? It upends the entire teaching of Christ to Peter and his successors to found One Church to teach ONE truth for all times.
This is precisely why leading Protestant pastors have branded it a “shallow” exercise and anyone with an intellectual curiosity converts to Catholicism. Protestantism today in any of its variations is an embarrassment.
Ulf Ekman one of the world’s largest Lutheran congregations of some 4000 members in Sweden explains more of the reasoning behind his conversion to Catholicism:
“I discovered how little I really knew about [Catholics], their spirituality and their beliefs. Unconsciously I carried many prejudices and bad attitudes and have been quick to judge them without really knowing what they actually believed. It has been good to discover and to repent from nonchalant and shallow opinions, based not on their own sources but on their opponents, and to discover a very rich heritage, a strong theological foundation and a deep love for Jesus Christ among them.”
See also Dr. David Anders Protestant historian who tried to prove Catholicism wrong and ended up converting!
“I thought there could be no better preparation for assaulting the Catholic Church and winning converts than to thoroughly understand the minds of the great leaders of our faith — Martin Luther and John Calvin”
Stellar List of Converts to Catholicism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_converts_to_Catholicism
The large mustard tree keep growing while every kind of wild mushroom of Protestantism withers and dies. Their leaders decamp, and the poor souls are left stranded in the pews reciting the shallow rot as Ulf Ekman says