re: The Vatican is Evil and it’s part

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Also, logically:

1) We need a final authority,

2) Scripture, because of its unique attributes, is the best candidate,

3) Therefore, Scripture is the final authority.

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So you're saying that scripture is the pillar and foundation of true teaching?

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the reformers were attempting to remove the man-made error from Catholicism to get back to what the scriptures taught,

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Which man-made error?

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The Vatican is Evil and it’s part..Of the criminal enterprise actively working against the people.

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3 for 3 on the TRUTH. (which is overwhelming were even 1% of the total "burden of truth" demanded.)

No one can prove otherwise: Evil. Criminal. Actively working against (saving the souls of) the people.

*(The following brief critique is NOT a condemnation of those who consider themselves "Roman Catholic")

All who consider themselves "Christian" need to re-examine and apply critical thinking and logic to the true identity of who and what "Pope" Francis AND the Vatican are -- and their respective MO.

Francis, the designated Vatican overlord, is an avowed Communist /anti-Capitalist. He is anti-Sovereignty. Francis is a Jesuit (which is a deceptive identity and NOT "Jesus Christ-Gospel" centered or directed.)

Francis (as well as is the entire Vatican MO) is one that is actively working in cahoots with the tyrannical, anti-Freedom, anti-Christian agenda of the UN of a ONE WORLD System of CONTROL. The Vatican / Francis are open about actively promoting the UN vision for a One World RELIGION, One World CURRENCY, and Pagan-Secular worldview.

Francis and the Vatican aggressively man a giant observational telescope name "Lucifer" (odd name, no? And for WHAT logical reason?)

Francis has promised to baptize "Aliens." (why even mention that?); He and the Vatican are prioritizing & promoting "Chrislam" (something Jesus Christ would *never* do), NOR would Jesus Christ ever share HIS House with Pagan, Gnostic religions and cults.

Great Mystery: Why doesn't Francis and the Vatican ever share and promote the soul-saving message Gospel of Jesus Christ (in His name) first & foremost in their respective position of influence and seat of vast power?

Of ALL art and settings by which Francis seats himself, does this disturbing nightmarish Vatican "art" and imagery inspire Divine beauty and glory? OR, does it connotate spiritual rebellion?

What's your immediate honest instinct and sense?

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FooManChoo

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Leotiger725

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I'm going to try to respond to both of your responses to my initial questions at the same time.

I'm also going to stay fairly conceptual, especially with my response to all the scripture posted by Leotiger. This isn't because I'm not responding to your different versus, rather because your fundamental assumptions about how to read scripture are different from mine. Thus, I think quoting scripture as an argument is fruitless. My responses aim to be beneath that--they deal with the question of how one should approach scripture in the first place. That's one way I can approach why you need something like the Catholic Church rather than just the Bible.

Finally, I'm just going to pick out certain parts of your response that feed into my initial charge (arguing for the Catholic Church). If you think I should address some specific piece of your post that I did not address, please point that out directly. I can't respond to all the points each of you make in both of your posts. It's just too much and a lot of it is tangental to what I was asked to do by Leotiger725.

First Up: Leotiger

1. None of what you cite indicates Sola Scriptura without passing it through the opinion of the reformers or modern protestant pastors. It's just not there. It requires one to adopt a particular opinion about what those writings mean--and that particular opinion is born of other men rather than the scripture you claim is the only authority. I'd argue that if Christ meant for written scripture to be the only form of authority for thousands of years, he definitely would have stated that plainly. He did not do so. Instead, he spent his time teaching men how to pray and giving them authority to run his church when he died.

2. Your response to the second question doesn't ring true to me. Christ taught all kinds of things that were not explicitly stated in the OT. So why didn't he make it clear if that was the means by which future generations would understand his teaching?


FooManChoo

1. My response to Leotiger is just about sufficient to respond to your response to question one. You're admitting Sola Scriptura is not explicitly stated. I agree. But I think that makes it's true origin very obvious: it was a doctrine invented by the reformers. I'd argue that you only believe it because very fallible men have told you that it is so. Scripture has been passed through their opinion and interpreted a particular way and you have accepted their interpretation as fact. This is exactly what protestants dislike about Catholics.

The truth is there is no escaping this. There is no getting out of trusting someone to help you understand the Bible. It's just a matter of who you trust.

2. Like Leotiger's response, I don't really understand how yours answers my question. We aren't talking about OT prophets, we are talking about God himself coming down to earth. He could have easily written instructions for years before leaving, but he didn't. Why?

I suppose it's not a question many people ask themselves, and I've honestly never heard a protestant offer a response to it. The Catholic response is pretty simple: He was establishing a church of men and preparing them for the authority he would give them, and there's something about such a church of men that's necessary for his Church to endure through the ages. Is there not a comparably comprehensive answer from the protestant side of the aisle?

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Okay, so maybe this is an oppertunity for me to understand your ritual. So what do you do with the bread and the grape juice after you consume it? I assume the communion is in the form of unleavened bread and wine? It is wine, right? The unleavened bread being a carryover from the Jewish Feast of the Passover. Remember Jesus was a Jew. The Passover Feast being when the Jews ate unleavened bread and bitter herbs as the Angel of Death passed over the homes of the Jews. At least those Jews with the blood of an unblemished lamb painted on their doorpost.

So Jesus is often referred to as the 'Lamb of God'. So can we begin to connect the dots between the Jewish Feast of the Passover to the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the Altar? So by the Blood of the Lamb, the Jews were saved from the Pharaoh's terrible edict, and we Catholics are saved by the Body (concecrated bread) and Blood (concecrated wine) of the Lamb.

So does the preacher say any words of consecration (or prayers) over the bread before the congregation consumes it. And if so, by what 'authority' does the preacher perform this ritual.

Just curious. I'm just asking for clarification.

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I'd like to invite you into my golf foursome. May I call you Zark? I thought I understood my own faith. I do not.

We eat unleavened bread and some sort of grape juice. The congregation stands together, and a prayer is said that is essentially the words Jesus said at the Lord's Supper.

We do it in remembrance of the sacrifice made at Cavalry, as prescribed by the words of Jesus.

Before I respond, I want to thank you for your courteous and well-written response. I have fundamental disagreements with what you said and what you believe, but I appreciate you expressing yourself well.

I will have to break this up into two posts, since I decided to quote all of your words as to not miss context.

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I disagree and I'll tell you why. Before the Bible, there was 'the authority'. That authority is God (revealed to us in the person of the second person of the Blessed Trinity - Jesus Christ). We're all on the same page up to this point, right?

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Yes, we're in agreement that the authority has always been God. The point of sola scriptura is to recognize that God (through His word) is the final authority on faith and life.

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In 1910 the protestant denominations took on the task of attempting to determine which books of the Bible were divinely inspired. After much research and effort, they concluded there was no 'authority' on earth (there's that word again) who could do that. Their effort took them to the door of the Catholic Church (the authority), where they stopped. So you see the Bible is a child of the Catholic Church. Given to humanity for its edification and holiness. Plus, it's a record of a peoples in search of God. Don't believe me? Do your own research. But please be open minded and honest.

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I disagree with your conclusion about the Bible being the product of the Catholic Church.

First, the Catholic Church was initially called catholic (universal) to distinguish itself from other heretical or heterodoxical sects and splinters that were forming early on. It was a designation of the orthodox and apostolic Church. Even Protestants can agree with that designation as the early Church looked very little like the modern (Roman) Catholic Church. Because the early Church looked so little like the modern Catholic Church, it's unfair to say that what they produced was the product of our modern view of the Church of Rome.

Second, the word 'canon' simply means "a rule". It's essentially a standard. When we speak of the canon of scripture, we're talking about the standard of that which is God's revelation given to us. The canon, technically, wasn't created by the Church, but created by God and received by the Church. The canon was complete as soon as God completed His revelation through the writings of the apostles, not a few hundred years later when an official list was certified. Therefore, the Church didn't create the Bible, but merely accepted it for what it was. Not every individual congregation had all of the Bible at one time initially, and therefore there were disputes as to what constituted scripture, which is why the proposed writings had to be examined for the marks of scripture.

Lastly (but related to the first point), the acceptance of the scriptures as the scriptures was done well, but it was God's work of providence working through fallible men who gave us the scriptures, so we really do need to recognize that it wasn't the work of the Roman Catholic Church as it exists today, but the Church Catholic (universal) that recognized what God had already provided.

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It wasn't until Johannes Gutenburg invented the movable-type printing press (the Gutenburg Printing Press) in 1440 did the capability exist to mass produce copies of the Bible. Prior to that the job of generating copies of the Bible fell upon the shoulders of Catholic Monks who went about the painstaking labor intensive task of transcribing and binding the Books of the Bible. So instead of cursing the Catholic Church you should thank her for bringing you the Bible.

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The monks played their part, but they were just copying what came before them. The early Church copied what they could get their hands on and did so as much as they could under the shadow of persecution. It wasn't until after Constantine and his toleration of the Church that it began to get organized so that there was enough peace to have monks be left alone in scriptoriums to hand copy the texts over and over again. This was another providence of God that allowed His word to be preserved.

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Are all the clergy in the Catholic Church perfect? Some (a few) are deeply flawed. Many many more are following in the footsteps of their Master as they tend to Our Lord's Flock. They act Personna Christi (in the person of Christ) and they receive their power when they are ordained by their Bishop. The Bishop conveys the power which Jesus himself conveyed upon the Apostle Peter which is passed on to the Bishops (in effect they help the local Bishop in the call to evangelize). So what we have here is a continuous uninterrupted conveyance of divine authority across millenia.

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The authority is from Christ, for sure, but it isn't a special, uninterrupted conveyance from Peter alone. The earliest Church didn't have regional bishops that eventually developed into the Papal See. There were elders (presbuteros, and episcopos in the Greek, which were used interchangeably in the Bible) who, with the Apostles, shepherded the churches. After about a century, bishops began to have regional control over groups of churches/elders, and the bishop of Rome didn't have a separate or greater authority at the time. It wasn't until a few hundred years after Christ that the Papacy as we know it today emerged.

With that said, I have no doubt there there are many priests who are faithful to what they believe to be true. My condemnation of them isn't necessarily moral, but doctrinal. However I believe the difference in salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone and salvation by faith and man's works is a different gospel. The entire world believes that whatever salvation that exists is attained by our good works. What makes Christianity unique is that we are not saved by our own good works. We are saved by the work of God alone, and that makes a big difference in our doctrine.

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Having said all this, I regret Martin Luther felt compelled to nail his 95 thesis on the door at the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany. That action launched the Protestant Reformation. A Reformation that haunts us to this day. Remember God did not intend for us to be separated like this. Did some clergy and laity stain the Catholic Church? Absolutely. But God did send reformers - Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, among many others. If only Martin Luther had been patient.

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I should remind you that Luther did not nail the 95 theses to the door in order to separate from Rome. He was a monk and a doctor of theology within the Catholic Church who wanted to reform it from the abuses he saw. It wasn't until his concerns were rejected and he was called to repent of his criticisms (and was excommunicated) that the division happened. Catholics these days seem to think that Luther started off as an enemy of Rome. He was made one by the Church, herself, by not addressing the abuses but by attempting to cover them up by silencing him. Nailing the theses to the door (which was essentially the town bulletin board) was his way of starting a debate and discussion about abuses.

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the reformers were attempting to remove the man-made error from Catholicism to get back to what the scriptures taught,

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Which man-made error?

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Many. It started with the erroneous teachings on indulgences that got Luther going, but the primary issues were reclaiming the scriptures as the final authority for Christians, and the teaching that faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone is the basis for our salvation.

If the Vatican is evil, then you’re saying God is evil. Simone Peter is the first pope anointed by God himself.

Facts are facts. Me personally, my faith is in Jesus and I accept his will whatever it maybe regarding the Catholic Church.

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Do I think the arguments for the legitimacy of the largest religion in the world that’s over 2000 years old will hold up to scrutiny? Look at my name. Of course I do!

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large and old do not translate to absolute and legit.

"Beginning by asking questions" is a well known distraction technique.