Posted on 01/06/2017 8:06:18 AM PST by ebb tide
AMEN!
I am guessing you are not Catholic, since you have just spoken historical truth about the Church.
Martin Luther was a deeply flawed individual. But he performed a necessary service. At the time he tacked up his 95 theses the Church was selling indulgences....frankly a financial racket, and something they had absolutely NO Biblical authority to do. Since the Vatican was extremely arrogant and refused to listen to dissent from within (dissenters had a nasty habit of ending up dead) he really had no other options.
His contemporaries who sat in judgment of him were equally disdainful of the Jews.
ALL churches are flawed and fallible. Because they are run by flawed and fallible human beings. Many of my fellow Catholics live in a state of denial about this.
Not this Catholic!
He’s a drooling South-American Marxist.
P4L
I don’t have any problems with individual Catholics, I know and have befriended quite a few whom I accept as brothers and sisters in Christ. The Church, however, I do have some problems there. Not insurmountable for the most part, outside of a few theological sticking points that are not salvific matters when you boil it down, on the individual level. On the Church level, though, there is what I perceive to be deceit driven by pride and there has been for a very, very long time.
Our Church’s biggest problem IMO is the leadership’s utter inability to look in the mirror and admit that they have been wrong about ANYTHING.
For example, they claim they don’t allow divorce. Which is a sound and admirable position if they were consistent.
But they allowed Henry VIII to get up to wife #8 before raising objections. And you will find all sorts of other Catholics who divorced and remarried.
Because they have created this legal fiction of an annulment where you can go before a tribunal of clergy (who themselves have never been married) and make the argument that your twenty-five year marriage NEVER EXISTED. Because when you took your vows your spouse was immature. Or something.
But it achieves the Vatican’s desired objective of letting them off the hook from admitting that they’ve ever been wrong or inconsistent about anything.
Away in a Manger....a hymn written by Luther....is now played in Catholic Churches at Christmastime. A tacit admission that he may have had a point or two with his 95 thesis. Something they will never admit openly.
Our second biggest problem IMO is a handful of extremely motivated nutjobs who are willing to die on the hill of EVERY insignificant issue. Some of them actually want to take the Liturgy back to Latin.....a dead language spoken by 0.005% of the global population.
Those folks will be distressed to know that I have it on VERY good authority that the Catholic Church is deeply engaged in serious talks with the Lutherans about reunification.
Careful about which Lutherans you’re talking about reunifying with. I doubt the devout Lutherans are engaging in such talks. You’re fixing to get a pig in a poke.
The Catholic Church is a State Church to it’s very core. It’s *been* the government throughout much of western European history. Love of pomp, love of power. It leads to repeated attempts to gold-plate the priesthood and to hoodwink the faithful in order to retain that power.
Just my opinion, of course, but shared by many.
This is terrible bordering on heresy.
I think it has already crossed the border.
DeCatholizing the Church. We are all Heretics and Protestants now!
Huh? Henry had six wives, total. And he NEVER got an annulment of his first marriage. He had to go into schism in order to marry #2, Anne Boleyn.
Rome "invented" and "perfected" something that you need a Russian word to describe? I don't think so.
However, on this "Pope is the antiChrist" stuff ... hmmm ... have to think about that some more, specifically in reference to the current incumbent.
I think you need to read up on your history. Henry VIII only had six wives and broke with the Catholic Church when he could not get an annulment for his first wife.
One word: NO!
Roman Emperor Claudius, Pontifex Maximus, expelled Jews in the 1st century AD. This behavior did not improve under future Pontiffs. Quibble over linguistic source for the word “pogrom” all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Catholic Church embraced the practice, and vigorously. Martin Luther was no better, but he was the product of his time and upbringing. Apparently that’s tough to admit, for some.
Yes; I know about the ELCA document; I was not certain that Lutherans accepted the ECLA as their authorized dealer, so to speak.
Let me help you out. Anti-Semitism has been a problem in Europe for 2000 years. This is true whether we're talking pagans, Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, and worse by far under the neo-pagan Nazis.
By the standards of his time in *Catholic* Europe, Luther's animus against the Jews was way beyond the mark. That was his doing, not the Pope's. Most of his biographers admit that.
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