Replies

Thank you for your many responses.

I still haven’t found any non-Catholic able to explain any errors of the teachings of Jesus in the Catholic Church.

You may have your personal opinions that are contrary to the teachings of Jesus and His Catholic Church, but you haven’t provided any logical reasoning for your personal opinions. You may have many quotes from the Bible, but obviously no authority to back up your personal and sometimes contorted opinions.

Your postings seem to lack insight into History of Christ’s Church and you just seem to deny what you do not like. I hope that you would open your mind and try to understand things from a different viewpoint so that you can find the real Truth, I sense that you think you know the Truth, but from your postings I don’t think that you truly understand.

I did not deny that Jesus used symbolism and metaphor to teach in various parts of the Bible. When Jesus uses “Amen, Amen” (Latin for So be it)the statement is being emphasized as being very important and Jesus did not use metaphor or symbolism to tell us about and give us the gift of HIS BODY AND BLOOD in the Eucharist. He repeated it.

Why are you any different from the Jews at Capernaum? “But there are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him.” As a result of this, many [of] his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. John 6

Tell me what is “magic thinking”? If you have faith in Jesus, you have to accept all of Jesus. You can’t pick and chose what you believe. It is difficult to follow Jesus and do God’s will and many are persecuted for their beliefs. You profess loudly, but do your actions reflect your beliefs.

As Jesus said many times: “Peace be with you.”

John 6:33 For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 “Sir, they said, “give us this bread” at all times. 35 Jesus answered, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and whoever believes in Me will never thirst."
Does the Catholic Priest get hungry and thirsty? Yes, you say? Well then, Jesus was not referring to the carnal meaning, rather HE was using metaphor and symbolism to teach Spiritual Truth ... not carnal truth, Spiritual Truth.

The carnal gets hungry and thirsty. Spiritual need is not carnally solved ... eating the flesh and blood of Jesus would not address the spiritual need. BELIEF in Jesus ends Spiritual hunger, cures the poison of sin ... let's look at JESUS teaching this lesson to one of the Sanhedrin members:

When Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again, Nicodemus chose to leap for a carnal explanation because he did not have a spiritual focus, and asked The Lord From Heaven, (John 3:4) "How can a man be born when he is old? ... “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time to be born?”
Jesus turned Nicodemus's focus to the spiritual, but still Nicodemus was confused: (John 3:5) Jesus answered “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh is born of flesh, but spirit is born of the Spirit. 7 Do not be amazed that I said, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." 9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. Jesus used wind as a metaphor or did Jesus call the Holy Spirit just wind?
Put your Catholic Priest mind in the place of Nicodemus for a moment: John3:10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” Jesus replied, “and do you not understand these things? ... 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the One who descended from heaven—the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life..."

Jesus directed Nicodemus's educated mind to a scene int he Desert after Moses brought the Israelites out of Egypt. The camp had settled in a place where thousands of snakes dwelt. These were poisonous vipers and they were biting people and the people were dying from the poison. Not until Jesus points to this scene is there any explanation for the lesson throughout the entire Bible! The lesson is so clear even a Catholic Priest can see it: it is the act of human will to turn to the Promise of God that activates The Grace of God. It is not eating snakes or drinking poison of the snakes, it is the willful act of turning and believing in The Promise of God to heal from the poison!

Sin is poison to the soul of man. Sin oozes from the spirit of man, unregenerate man, UNTIL the will of man believes the Promise of God and lifts the eyes to JESUS the author and finisher of our FAITH. It is not eating The Son of Man or drinking His blood. IT IS THE SPIRITUAL that is in focus, with Nicodemus and with us in these final days.

What you just sail is at least puerile, if not infantile. Jesus did often use figurative speech when using the word "Verily" in the certifying sense. The definition of "amen" used this way is as follows:

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Strong's Number G281
ἀμήν
amēn
am-ane'
Strong's Definition: Of Hebrew origin [H543]; properly firm, that is, (figuratively) trustworthy; adverbially surely (often as interjection so be it): - amen, verily.
Thayer's Definition: 1) firm
. . 1a) metaphorically faithful
2) verily, amen
. . 2a) at the beginning of a discourse - surely, truly, of a truth
. . 2b) at the end - so it is, so be it, may it be fulfilled. It was a custom, which passed over from the synagogues to the Christian assemblies, that when he who had read or discoursed, had offered up solemn prayer to God, the others responded Amen, and thus made the substance of what was uttered their own.
Part of Speech: particle indeclinable
A Related Word by Thayer’s/Strong’s Number: of Hebrew origin H543

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Indisputably figurative truisms that Jesus made in the Gospels, the ones in which "verily" preceded the proposition, are as follows:

Mt. 5:26,13:17,17:20,18:3,24:47,25:40,25:45
Mk. 6:11,9:1,10:15,10:29-30
Lk. 18:17
Jn. 3:3,3:5,5:24,6:32,6:47,6:53,10:1,10:7,12:24

You aver wrongly that to use "verily" makes the following postulate to be of the literal sense only. Thus you wrongly induce your reader to think that a Biblical truth given by Jesus cannot be couched in figurative terms. For you to do so is a sly way of falsely forwarding your argument, that John 6:53 is absolutely literal and cannot be a figurative-literal stated truth.

Going forward from this moment in this thread, for you to continue to make this claim is to deliberately choose to propagate falsity and lie; and you would be believed only by a crass, credulous fool.

And now, to take up your ensuing ridiculous application of that misstatement:

The picture of John Chapter 6 is quite different than the one of great disservice to God that you give.

It is totally clear that the people who then turned away from following Jesus were the ones (on 3 Nisan of 32 A. D.) who, like the unbelieving crowds of Matthew 13 (of the previous Heshvan of 31 A. D.), and like you in this thread (of February 2017 A. D.), took His figuratively stated proposition to be a literal command, and thus contrary to the Mosaic Law, thus decertifying Him as a Rabbi. These were of the sort who could not discern the figurative sense of coming to Him and believing in Him and His teachings to obtain spiritual food and drink, and thus not an unlawful concept. So these people, without the spiritual gift of faith, on the basis of their misperception, left off following Him about.

But those to whom He had entrusted the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven (Mt. 13:11-12), those to whom He had given practice in seeing and applying the figurative spiritual sense of His teachings, men who believed in Him and His teachings as nourishment in the "strong ~~meat"~~ food" of the Gospel (Heb. 5:14), clung to Jesus as their trustworthy Master Teacher. Quite painfully obvious, not one of them had ever literally eaten His flesh or drunken His Blood, had they? But they, perceiving the figurative spiritual application, remained in His Company of The Committed as students for the remainder of their training period.

Your thesis is absolutely and positively without foundation or credibility.