The Neverending Story (The Christian Chronicles)

Associated Press ^ | 3/24/01

[malakhi]

The Neverending Story
An ongoing debate on Scripture, Tradition, History and Interpretation.

Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue. - John Adams

Previous Thread

[Invincibly Ignorant]

Translation: "Once the teaching against divorce and re-marriage became inconvenient for me, I found it expedient to go elsewhere. Now I am constrained to slam Catholicism to justify myself." 2024 posted on 4/8/02 11:27 AM Pacific by allend

Here's what set me off. If you're too much of a coward to call your own on their infractions don't bother posting to me. I've enjoyed our conversation in the past. But don't single me out. If you're gonna police the threads do it righteously.

[Havoc]

You know, I actually think you enjoy being obnoxious, Havoc. Did you have a crappy childhood or something that causes you to be that way ? Whatever it was that happened to you, you shouldn`t be so quick to pass judgement on others. (Or did you forget to read that part of Scripture?)

For one thing, passing Judgement as that passage states is about passing judgement on one's sould, not on the dangers of what one believes. I think even your sect teaches that. So let's not try to pervert it into the common finger pointing of the secular who are dumb with regard to such matters and don't know any better.

One of the main differences between the Catholic Faith and most Protestant Faiths is that we Catholics do not believe that once you die, you stop being a part of the Church.

Where did you learn this fraudulent notion? Christians who Die in Christ who have been given eternal life are spiritually part of the body of Christ; but, their Bodies are gone and our ability to interact with them is cut off till we get where they are. That is scriptural. And Ecclesiastes Chapter 9 (yes read the whole chapter!) states plainly that those dead in the flesh have no more part in what goes on here. Deuteronomy among other books of the Bible expressly forbids attempts at communicating with the dead in all it's forms. Jesus taught us to pray to God, not to other People. Moses taught what God wrote with his own finger, that you shall not make images, you shall not bow to them, you shall not worship them, etc. Note that Not bowing nor worshipping in the wording is an either or. Two seperate things expressly forbidden in the same statement. These things we can find in scripture.

What can we not find in scripture? How about statements revoking all these commands of God for 100 Alex!

Instead, you are an even more complete part of the Church, and can still serve in its mission.

Nice spin. Still doesn't make praying to the dead any less a sin. Wow, poetry.

[Invincibly Ignorant]

I, for one, don't appreciate folks taking cheap shots over this issue ... no matter what side of the coin you're on. It's just not Christian behavior, IMO. Sad.

And pedaphilia is? Not cheap in the least bit. If my pastor was criminally involved I'd be out of there in a heartbeat. You claim the whole of catholicism so it doesn't matter whether or not your local priest is involved or not. In other words, if you're comfortable and have been comfortable despite years of your organization covering up crime, don't be surprised if I'm a bit suspect about your judgement on what's christian behavior or what isn't. Capiche?

[RobbyS]

Latin was the language of the Church, but it was also a language that enjoyed high prestige among the German aristocracy that conquered the western Empire because it was accociated with the high culture of the Empire. Furthermore, it symbolized the continuation of the Empire. We say that the western Empire "fell" in 476(whatever). To the people of the time, however, the Empire remained a living presence, and they regarded Charlemagne's ascension as emperor to be a revival of it. In fact, of course, it was a German-Roman Empire, the First "Reich," and it last a thousand years until it was finally put to rest by Napoleon. Every educated European, in or outside that Empire, was familiar with Latin. In some places, such as France, it remained also the language of the people. 11th Century French was still recongizably a form of Latin and only gradually changed into something else. In England until the 15th Century, official documents were written in Latin in part so that they could be understood abroad as well as by all literate men at home. Just as German has a "high" form as opposed to local dialects (which are difficult for someone with only school german to understand even today). In the Middle ages. Latin was the "high" language in every country, and even the masses had some understanding of it through church services and even commerce. With the Reformation this changed, although Latin remained the common language of scholars and diplomats until the 18th Century, when it was finally displaced by French and now in our own times by English.

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

sounds like a regular conspiracy...till you realize that early Christians and Catholics are synonymous. There were not other early Christians, except heretics, such as those who rejected the divinity of Christ or His virgin birth, or one of the other central tenets of the 5 fundamentals of Christianity.

Pure Barbra Streisand.

BigMack

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

This PROVES the early Church, even during the life of the personal disciples of the apostles, was

1)Sacramental (The Holy Eucharist IS the Body of Christ) 2)Hierarchical 3)given authority by Christ Jesus 4)CATHOLIC

Here's a quarter, call someone who cares what you think.

BigMack

[Brian Kopp DPM]

See post 2119. Thanks Barb.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Thank you for your time. Please see:

Regarding the Sins of Catholics, A Secret Apologetics Weapon, and Our Separated Brethren

and

Regarding the Sins of Catholics, and a Paradigm Shift in Catholic Apologetics

[Havoc]

Spoken pronunciation is meaningless in written translation. Latin was and is a phonetic language. The two Latin-based languages closest to the original (Italian and Spanish) are also phonetic languages, while Portugese and French are not. Pronunciation really isn't all that important in written documents (if you mispronounce something in Spanish, it can still be understood to the native speaker if you write it down). I'm a translator and I can tell you that the more you translate, the more susceptible to error a thing becomes.

Which is why its so nice that we have the original greek of the NT documents to read. The most precise language written. Nice too that we have originals of the OT texts bearing out the accuracy of that language so we can see that Exodus 20 really does say Don't bow and don't worship.

Especially when translating into English where there may be 10 different words for one word in the original. The translation then becomes somewhat subjective and based on the reader/hearer's loose definition of the word being translated. ex. bonita...can be pretty, lovely, beautiful, attractive.

Again, good thing we have the original Greek. Latin is phonetic but not as precise as the Greek. Greek, like English, has multiple understandings of the word Love, where English does not. We understand differentiations of types in English by assigning adjectives. Such things are built into the state of being words of Greek.

Similar words that have different meanings based on one's perception and opinion. In Spanish, bonita is bonita but in English it can mean more things depending on the translator's spin. Even in English, people have different ways of pronouncing English words. A Brit sounds different from an American, an Australian and an Irishman.

Again, why there is structure to language. Differentiations are derived by tense, gender and application and are at times modified by cultural norms (ie sayings like 'the cat's outta the bag).

Heck, a person from Brooklyn prounounces things differently from a person in Dallas, but they'll write it out the same.

This is just accent, and is common to other languages as well. It's just tougher to cut through when it's someone elses language you're dealing with.

Latin isn't a bad language, as I said before. But that doesn't mean that imposing all latin on everyone attending church is warranted. And that's what history says happened. And history backs it up. If it wasn't to keep the congregations dumb, then why such a fuss over getting it into all common tongues until it became a major devisive issue. If one were going to keep a single language, why latin instead of Greek, the language that the Apostles saw fit to have their works written in? Because, I would suggest, The people at the heart of these things could not read Greek or found it easier to read in their own tongue. The standard was set for themselves and obviously ignored for everyone else. I'm aware that in some areas, The scriptures were taught in Greek from the earliest times. And from a scholarship perspective, it's much more important if one is going to garner true meaning and if one is going to impose one language, that it should be the native languag e in which all the texts were written - what a notion, huh? Ideas and speculation; but, it would seem to fit the picture better than the handwringing.

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

See post 2119. Thanks Barb.

I did, see post 2126.

BigMack

[RobbyS]

The Church is highly centralized so that individual members have an immediate connection with one another. Churches that have a congregational form lack such a connection, so that the cover up is local. "Preacher Bill" suddenly has to depart because he has been caught with his hand in the till, or his other member in the pants of a parishoner, and there are no headlines, only gossip that lasts a while until he is forgotten, and the cover up extends no further than the Board of deacons. This happens all the time. Growing up in a small East Texas town with many churches, I heard of at least three sexual scandals involving preachers and one more involving money. The last I knew about personally, as a young "Bible Baptist" preacher took off after a revival with $1000 that had been collected from his small and admiring congregation, including $5 from my normally tight-fisted Grandmother. Evidentally, Elmer Gantry had made another score.

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

Thank you for your time. Please see:

No thanks, I've already wasted too much time on your posts.

BigMack

[Havoc]

So to say that Aquinas didn't believe in the Immaculate Conception but neglect to point out he did believe she was sanctified before her birth, is being deceitful.

Deciet is picking and choosing from what he wrote and selecting things you like instead of what lines up with scripture and then selling it as gospel truth. That is deciet. Not to mention the fact that this guy on His best day didn't have even a measure of the authority of the Apostles. Nothing in scripture says that Mary was sanctified from birth - not even close.

[Invincibly Ignorant]

The Church is highly centralized so that individual members have an immediate connection with one another. Churches that have a congregational form lack such a connection, so that the cover up is local.

So local that I can watch it on TV every night on the left side of the country.

"Preacher Bill" suddenly has to depart because he has been caught with his hand in the till, or his other member in the pants of a parishoner, and there are no headlines, only gossip that lasts a while until he is forgotten, and the cover up extends no further than the Board of deacons. This happens all the time.

Fine. You're talking about churchs I'm not affiliated with. Another one I'm gonna stay away from. Thank you for sharing.

Growing up in a small East Texas town with many churches, I heard of at least three sexual scandals involving preachers and one more involving money. The last I knew about personally, as a young "Bible Baptist" preacher took off after a revival with $1000 that had been collected from his small and admiring congregation, including $5 from my normally tight-fisted Grandmother. Evidentally, Elmer Gantry had made another score.

Good you're not attend there and neither am I. Next time have a point.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

May God Bless you abundantly. When you answer my thesis on one of those other two threads, only then can you preach to Catholics here. Non-Catholic Christianity mars the marital bed by the mutual masturbation of sodomitic sin. Your reformers would turn over in the graves (if they weren't already mouldering in purgatory for the fruits of their doctrines---I'm being charitable here) if they knew the reprobate moral theology teachings of modern non-Catholic Christianity.

[Havoc]

Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, a disciple of John, a Christian writing around 110 ad, less than 80 years after the death of Christ, was very clear:

One, you missed the long version/short version conversation of some time ago which notes the fact that some of these things are not in the other version. Neither can be positively and conclusively attributed to Ignatius. The capitol "C" in catholic is a lower case 'c' in the original text and is used as an adjective rather than a proper noun, so either you cut and pasted from a dishonest site, or you forged the cap. And lastly, the work has no original to my knowledge and belongs to a group of works of which over half have been proven frauds and the rest are tied up in long/short version struggles to say nothing of the fact that attribution is not 100% certain.

In other words, at best your quoting from no authority.

[OLD REGGIE]

You might have chosen more carefully than to bring forth any letter of Ignatius for your "proof" of anything.

A few quotes from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"At intervals during the last several centuries a warm controversy has been carried on by patrologists concerning the authenticity of the Ignatian letters."
==========================================================================================

"The two letters to the Apostle St. John and the one to the Blessed Virgin, which exist only in Latin, are unanimously admitted to be spurious. The great body of critics who acknowledge the authenticity of the Ignatian letters restrict their approval to those mentioned by Eusebius and St. Jerome."
===============================================================================================

I am sure you are aware there are two versions of the Ignatius letters, The Shorter Form and The Longer Form and no one knows which or even which parts of either are authentic.

The following is a decent web site for the study of the Early Church Fathers. Early Church Fathers

In any event, you could do better than to start with Ignatius. BTW There was no Catholic (noun) Church for hundreds of years.

[RobbyS]

The point is simple: Scandals that are not publicized are nonetheless scandals and in the tens of thousands of Protestant(whatever) churches across the country, they are not rare, just unknown to you because they are NOT on TV. Don't be surprised if it happens in your own congregation,or even in your family because the devil is not chained in hell.If he has not struck near you, he has struck across town, and if not in your house, then next door.

[RobbyS]

And just to remind you, there still IS considerable controversy over the canon of the New Testament, right?

[Havoc]

Latin was the language of the Church, but it was also a language that enjoyed high prestige among the German aristocracy that conquered the western Empire because it was accociated with the high culture of the Empire. Furthermore, it symbolized the continuation of the Empire. We say that the western Empire "fell" in 476(whatever). To the people of the time, however, the Empire remained a living presence, and they regarded Charlemagne's ascension as emperor to be a revival of it. In fact, of course, it was a German-Roman Empire, the First "Reich," and it last a thousand years until it was finally put to rest by Napoleon. Every educated European, in or outside that Empire, was familiar with Latin. In some places, such as France, it remained also the language of the people. 11th Century French was still recongizably a form of Latin and only gradually changed into something else. In England until the 15th Century, official documents were written in Latin in part so that they could be understood abroad as well as by all literate men at home. Just as German has a "high" form as opposed to local dialects (which are difficult for someone with only school german to understand even today). In the Middle ages. Latin was the "high" language in every country, and even the masses had some understanding of it through church services and even commerce. With the Reformation this changed, although Latin remained the common language of scholars and diplomats until the 18th Century, when it was finally displaced by French and now in our own times by English.

In other words, it was an elite language of the highly educated and of court to the extent that it needed to be. IE it was an elite language, not a language of the commoner. See, eventually after all the defense, you get to it.