re: Pope Francis permits Priests to bless same sex couples in major Vatican doctrine change

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“I am not the God of the dead but ov the living” Mary is still alive as are all of the saints.

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Not in the same way you and I are alive. They are alive in spirit, but dead in body. We are alive in spirit and body. The verse you quoted in Matthew 22 was referencing Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who all died. The passage is on the resurrection, which assumes bodily death, as well.

Mary is dead as well as all Christians who have gone into glory (the Bible refers to Christians broadly as saints).

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Do you ask your congregation to pray for you?

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Yes, because we as living Christians are commanded to pray for each other and we, as living human beings, have the capacity to speak to each other and hear each others' requests so that we can make our petitions to God.

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Mary is part of our congregation.
She is a great asset. I would recommend you include her into your congregation.

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Mary has died and is in glory right now, worshipping her savior. She has no divine qualities given to her (like omniscience or omnipresence) to make it possible for her to receive prayers from the living.

The object of prayer is reserved for God alone, not man and not the dead who passed before us. When I speak to my wife and ask her to pray for me, I am not praying to her in order for her to pray for me, I'm merely speaking to her. Prayer always has a sense of worship associated with it, which is why we are to pray to God alone, who alone is worthy of worship.

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Ehhh, the solas were not present in the early church.

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Neither was the complete doctrine of the Trinity, yet the doctrine was right there in the Scriptures all along. Same with the Solas.

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At least not sola scriptura, and not sola fide in the way its defined today by modern evangelicals. The rest could be workable with some nuance added.

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All of the Solas are taken from Scripture. What you are arguing with is the early church's understanding of them.

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I mean you have Irenaeus, who learned from Polycarp, who learned from John, stating in the 2nd century that the pillars of orthodoxy are scripture AND tradition, but the surest source of orthodoxy is the church in Rome.

Sounds a lot like scripture + tradition + magesterium to me.

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Irenaeus used tradition to support the Scriptures and he taught that the Scriptures were foundational to the faith.

What's interesting to me is that Catholics teach that the doctrines and dogmas of the RCC developed over many centuries yet always seem to take the full-fledged understanding of modern Catholics and anachronistically impose them back on the early church fathers, as if they had the same understanding as the modern Catholics do. That's simply not true.

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You seem to forget that God Almighty Himself ordered the carving of images when he commanded that the Cherubim figures adorn the Ark of the Covenant and He commanded Moses to make a figure of a serpent.

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Very true, and it is God's prerogative to define exactly how He is to be worshipped. We don't have such liberties to come up with our own versions of what He has specifically commanded in other historically-specific contexts.

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Your understanding of this is where we disagree.
John 6
The last supper.
The early church fathers all disagree with you.
1500 years of the mass (up to the reformation) are proof to any dispassionate observer that the Christian understanding of the eucaharist and the mass have always been the Catholic understanding from the beginning.

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John 6 is so butchered I honestly hate discussing it any longer.

The context is that Jesus just fed several thousand people with a miracle (1-15), and those people followed Him around looking for more food. He did what He frequently did in John with the "I am" statements by relating what they were looking for to Himself to show that what they really needed was Him. Just like the living water, and the entrance through the door, and the bread of life, etc., Jesus was merely using a word picture to explain that He is the messiah and that people should be seeking Him as God rather than water or bread.

He said as much in verses 26 and 27: "truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”

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He said as much in verses 26 and 27: "truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”

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One subject at a time. Let’s stick to the Septuagint before we move on to your poor interp of Jesus words.

O come desire of nations bind
In one the hearts of all mankind
O bid our sad divisions cease
And be yourself our king of peace
Rejoice Rejoice Emmanuel
Shall come to you o Israel

Merry Christmas

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One question: did Jesus leave us a Bible or did he leave us a church? Answer : he left us a church. The church gave us the Bible. It’s not the other way around as you seem to think the Bible is the ultimate authority but the Bible LITERALY says the church is the authority . So if you are correct and the Bible IS the ultimate authority, then listen to what it says and accept the church as the final authority. Really simple

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Did the Church “give” us the Bible, or did the Church simply acknowledge what the Holy Spirit had already given us?

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As A. A. Hodge states, when a peasant recognizes a prince and is able to call him by name, it does not give him the right to rule over the kingdom. In like fashion, a church council recognizing which books were God-breathed and possessed the traits of a God-inspired book, does not give the church council equal authority with those books.

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The second a priest or pastor starts preaching things that go against the word in the Bible, because they themselves feel they have authority over it, is the second it’s time to find a new church.

When Jesus was preaching he constantly referred back to the OT. He himself can to fulfill that scripture. When there were disputes about “tradition” he referred back to scripture to settle debate. When he was in the wilderness with the devil, he quoted scripture to repel his advances. And on and on.

There are numerous examples of Jesus himself calling out the Jewish leaders for their traditions and how they went against scripture.

Mark 7:1-13

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1Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, 2they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3(For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, 4and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) 5And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 6And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
7in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ 8You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
9And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! 10For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 11But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)— 12then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, 13thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

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More on this.

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Never does Jesus use religious tradition to support His actions or teachings. Before the writing of the New Testament, the Old Testament was the only inspired Scripture. However, there were literally hundreds of Jewish “traditions” recorded in the Talmud (a collection of commentary compiled by Jewish rabbis). Jesus and the apostles had both the Old Testament, and the Jewish tradition. Nowhere in Scripture does Jesus or any of the apostles appeal to the Jewish traditions. In contrast, Jesus and the apostles quote from or allude to the Old Testament hundreds of times. The Pharisees accused Jesus and the apostles of “breaking the traditions” (Matthew 15:2). Jesus responded with a rebuke: “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matthew 15:3). The manner in which Jesus and the apostles distinguished between the Scriptures and tradition is an example for the church. Jesus specifically rebukes treating the “commandments of men” as doctrines (Matthew 15:9).

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What's interesting to me is that Catholics teach that the doctrines and dogmas of the RCC developed over many centuries yet always seem to take the full-fledged understanding of modern Catholics and anachronistically impose them back on the early church fathers

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You do the same from your perspective.

The person surmising that would be a retard.

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Literally everything you have said in this post is factually incorrect

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Not quite.

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You said there was no council that determined the Old Testament scriptures and yet Jesus read from them.
You obviously do not know what the Septuagint is or where it came from. The Septuagint is the Bible that Jesus read from. It is the Greek translation of th Jewish Old Testament. It was commissioned by the Jewish authorities prior to Christ for the purpose of formalizing the books of the OT for the faithful Jewish community .
Septuagint is a numerical title assigned to this Bible to signify the 70 Jewish scholars who were commissioned to compile the true and full text of the OT.

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I think you're a little off here. First, I'm very familiar with the LXX and its use by Jesus and the Apostles. Judea was a Roman territory and Koine Greek was the language of the Hellenized Jews at that time.

The Septuagint--according to tradition at least--was not commissioned by Jewish authorities. Again, according to tradition, it was commissioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus who was Pharaoh of Egypt at the time, to translate the Scriptures into Greek.

I was factually true in my statement that there was no council that determined the OT Scriptures by the time of Christ. The LXX was not a church council that was formed for the purpose of determining what the Scriptures were. It was a translation project.

The translation project also included more books and writings than what Jews of antiquity like Josephus acknowledged as canonical. Interestingly enough, the Septuagint includes books that even the Roman Catholic church doesn't see as canonical (1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, Psalm 151, and Prayer of Manasseh).

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Ironically the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls confirmed the Catholic Churches use of the Septuagint as the correct version of the Old Testament.

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Did they? Does Rome use all the texts that were part of the DSS?

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This information is historical scientific fact acknowledged by Bible scholars universally both Jewish scholars and Protestant. It is an inconvenient truth that no one talks about because it is so embarrassing to the Protestant faith. If you don’t believe me please google Septuagint

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So your argument is that Catholicism is correct with its inclusion of some books that were written as part of the non-prophetic period of time in Israel because those books are part of the Septuagint, and the Septuagint was what Jesus and the Apostles were familiar with, even though they would also have been familiar with other books of the Septuagint that Rome doesn't include in its canon?

I don't see how that's very embarrassing to the Protestant faith. I can see how that argument would be embarrassing to Catholics if they understood what they were saying.

The exclusion of any book from the Septuagint nullifies the entire argument you are making.