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Post by Toronthab on May 2, 2005 1:00:15 GMT -5
That's why Christ gave Peter the keys. The point I was addressing was that the church has always been hierarchical, including the orthodox, etc.
You haven't seen a Catholic charismatic group I see.
Agreed , but my point was that Holy Spirit quides to all truth,. In other words, the church is not jsut a bunch of people trying to live good lives, but rather god is at the centre of the church and central How could it be otherwise? The resurrection signals a living reality. Infallible guidance was promised to the apostles and through them to all of mankind. it would otherwise be the church of pleasing probabilities offering majors in history. Without certain teaching, why bother?
The church is the body of Christ. You are describing habs fans. I would say leafs fans, but they obviously are satan worshippers with no reasonable grounds for hope.
The church is not a group of like-minded people trying to follow the teachings of Christ.
Look, franko, I don't know what model of leadership you envision, but the church deliberated extensively and still does. Leadership doesn't mean you're never wrong 24/7. Leadership means that you are the leader. Your claim about James is I rather suspect more than a little tendentious in this context, but I will respond to it later.
I have no idea what possibly you can mean in this.
Evident means there was evidence.
The church, yours too, insofar as it is church, is in no way a man-made institution.
[qutoe]No, it mearely means that God has such faith in His creatio[n that He allows us to search for Him without having a direct/hands-on say in the ways of men (free will). He didn't/doesn't fail; we did/do.[/quote]
So the church did not receive the command to teach all nations, and "He who hears you hears me"? I'm afraid that I am not followig what you said above.
The vast majority of living Christains disagree with you on this. The teaching of the apostles is, was and always will be authoritive, in that it comes from the Author.
Accordingly my point that Protestantism in claiming fundamental error, negates Christianity stands. It only fails to hold if there is no Christain teaching,
As to the Jewish religion fialing, I'm sure you know the bible well enough to know that no infallibility is ascribed to Judaism. Thats' rather the point of the incarnartion, after all. The NEW Testament
I inadvertantly lost your reference to my view of the church being the Roman Catholic Church and enjoying special gifts that other churches or Christians don't enjoy.
The Catholic church I believe has the fulness of Christ's gifts and promises to man. It is a simple locical fact that among churches with conflicting claims, they cannot both be true concerning the same object considered from the same aspect.
There can only be one FULLY true church. I most definitely think, that this is the very same Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. I have never come across a single good argument or thesis maintaining otherwise, that was in any way compelling.
I don't have to be a Catholic, except as I am given the faith and further as a necessary component of personal integrity. My assent is reasonned as it has been for hundreds of millions before me, including some of the greatest intellects of human history.
So, when I speak of the church, it is necessarily primarily, in a sense including the Roman Catholic church. The orthodox churches are sister churches apostolic in origin, and very close. The church does not exclude people outside, or deny that other religions, not just Christain religions, have truth to offer mankind.
If I didn't think the Catholic was true, and I have an well nuanced understanding of this concept, then I would not be a member. Why on earth would I ?
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Post by franko on May 2, 2005 6:52:03 GMT -5
Haven't caught it. Is it about the Book of Revelation? The X-Files meets apocalyptic Christianity.
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Post by franko on May 2, 2005 7:13:36 GMT -5
You haven't seen a Catholic charismatic group I see. Seen and been with. A small splinter group within the larger church; welcomed by some in the leadership; vilified by others as being inflitrated by "those Pentecostals". And my point is that just because infallible guidance is offered (the promise of the Spirit to lead into all truth) doesn't make a person's dictates infallible. What else is a body? It was an aside -- you had said that Jesus commanded to teach, make disciples, marry, and proclaim the Gospel; I corrected to say that Jesus said nothing about marriage. An unimportant fact. You deny the corruption of the church that was Lutehr's final nail? The point of the Incarnation was the Resurrection, without which our faith is in vain. Even His meritorious death on the cross loses meaning without the empty tomb. You are confusing faith in the Risen Christ with faith in the institution. We would believe the same basics of faith, I imagine (say, the Apostles Creed). Beyond that . . . does it matter? The old saying In essestials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity holds true (though we may disagree on essentials). An interesting statement to make, since Jesus said I am the way, not a way. Indeed. But more than Catholocism is true, and more than Protestantism is ture, Christianity is true, in all of its nuances.
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Post by M. Beaux-Eaux on May 2, 2005 8:13:35 GMT -5
The Way is the Way. It belongs neither to Jesus or anyone else. Jesus was/is a conduit for the Way: There have been, are, and will continue to be others.
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Post by Toronthab on May 2, 2005 8:40:12 GMT -5
Franko I had no time for the quote format thing, but here you go.
Seen and been with. A small splinter group within the larger church; welcomed by some in the leadership; vilified by others as being inflitrated by "those Pentecostals".
It was a small response to an inaccuracy of yours re gifts. Don't feel you have to use words like "villify".
And my point is that just because infallible guidance is offered (the promise of the Spirit to lead into all truth) doesn't make a person's dictates infallible.
You were implicitly denying this in a number of your comments
What else is a body?
It was an aside -- you had said that Jesus commanded to teach, make disciples, marry, and proclaim the Gospel; I corrected to say that Jesus said nothing about marriage. An unimportant fact.
I don't recall mentionning "marry". And Jesus said a great deal about "marry", and the bible is the book of the church, not the church. You have no idea what Jesus said, beyond what he is purported to have said in the bible. It is vastly more likely that much more of what he said and did is not in the bible.
The church through the authoritive teaching of the apostles says he put a critical emphasis on marriage.
You deny the corruption of the church that was Lutehr's final nail?
Fopr the third time. Evident means there was evidence. Evidence means there was obviously a lot of bad stuff going on. Have you missed all of my other posts on this basic of western history.
The point of the Incarnation was the Resurrection, without which our faith is in vain. Even His meritorious death on the cross loses meaning without the empty tomb.
That was at least partly my point. Glad you agree
You are confusing faith in the Risen Christ with faith in the institution. We would believe the same basics of faith, I imagine (say, the Apostles Creed). Beyond that . . . does it matter? The old saying In essestials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity holds true (though we may disagree on essentials).
That is the complete opposite of what I and The Roman Catholic Churc hold. You miss Christ as head of the church.
We do indeed disagree on primary issues.
An interesting statement to make, since Jesus said I am the way, not a way.
You have misunderstood again
Indeed. But more than Catholocism is true, and more than Protestantism is ture, Christianity is true, in all of its nuances. [/quote]
More than Christianity has truth. I think the fulness if you will of the God and us relationship as to nature and definition if you like, and these are not meant to be scolarly and exhaustive words, is found as fully as one can get, in Roman Catholicism. This does not deny any truth found elsewhere, including any other source of truth or knowledge including other religions, philosophy and science.
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Post by Toronthab on May 2, 2005 8:54:02 GMT -5
The Way is the Way. It belongs neither to Jesus or anyone else. Jesus was/is a conduit for the Way: There have been, are, and will continue to be others. I agree that the Way is the WAY. Jesus and those who were closest to him were left with the idea that he Was the Way in a unique and inimitble manner. I accept this interpretaion for which they were mostly martyred as true. There is a very real sense in which your metaphor of "conduit" is I think reasonable, but I think most apostles and disciples knew dead when they saw it, resurrection when they saw it, and probably got most of Jesus' thoughts on the nature of things pretty well. Tom Harpur with whom, as a Torontonian banished from heaven (Montreal0 where reside the holy ones, you are I'm sure a little famiiar leaps through wide and geratly misinformed and some would say, dishonest hoops to try to defend a similar and very common idea. I think one has to assume a lot of highly implausible propositions to hold that view.
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Post by M. Beaux-Eaux on May 2, 2005 9:30:27 GMT -5
I agree that the Way is the WAY. Jesus and those who were closest to him were left with the idea that he Was the Way in a unique and inimitble manner. I accept this interpretaion for which they were mostly martyred as true. There is a very real sense in which your metaphor of "conduit" is I think reasonable, but I think most apostles and disciples knew dead when they saw it, resurrection when they saw it, and probably got most of Jesus' thoughts on the nature of things pretty well. Tom Harpur with whom, as a Torontonian banished from heaven (Montreal0 where reside the holy ones, you are I'm sure a little famiiar leaps through wide and geratly misinformed and some would say, dishonest hoops to try to defend a similar and very common idea. I think one has to assume a lot of highly implausible propositions to hold that view. You go your Way and I'll go mine. Dogmatists just get in the way.
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Post by franko on May 2, 2005 9:43:42 GMT -5
The Way is the Way. It belongs neither to Jesus or anyone else. Jesus was/is a conduit for the Way: There have been, are, and will continue to be others. You go your Way and I'll go mine. Dogmatists just get in the way. And in the end, we leave it all to the grace of God. I most certainly do not have the right to make the final decision as to "who makes it and who doesn't". But I'll "err" on the side of "just in case . . . " . . . and I'll live my life to honour (my) God by . . . well, by doing the things that I am doing, and by trying to do a better job of it, too.
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Post by Habs_fan_in_LA on May 2, 2005 11:56:40 GMT -5
He was a great man. He died. Let him rest.
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Post by franko on May 2, 2005 12:17:22 GMT -5
He was a great man. He died. Let him rest. Earlier today I went back to discover from whence this discussion arose. I began with the primacy of Biblical interpretation, developed quickly into Papal infallibility, and then morphed into the infallibility of the Roman Catholic Church. These are controversial issues to say the least. But you are right -- he was a good man and spoke proudly for his church, regardless of how we mortals see Catholicism.
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Post by M. Beaux-Eaux on May 2, 2005 13:35:18 GMT -5
Earlier today I went back to discover from whence this discussion arose. 3 April 2005 My Greatest Journalistic MomentBy Gwynne Dyer In the days to come we will be hearing a great deal about Pope John Paul II's impact on the Catholic Church, the candidates for the succession, and what kind of straw they burn with the ballots to get that black smoke. This is also the first time that a pope has died in the past 27 years, however, and that finally gives me a hook for my story about how the last pope died. Or rather, about how I covered the last pope's death. Or actually, how I didn't cover it. It was late September of 1978, and we had been driving across the Alps all night from Germany, three hot-shot young journalists who were all destined for medium-sized things. We were doing this radio series on war, and we were just passing through Italy on our way to Ciampino airfield and an aircraft carrier out in the Mediterranean, but we were planning to stop in Rome for a day or two, so I'd arranged for us to stay at a friend's flat up in Trastevere -- quite near the Vatican, in fact. We stopped at a service area an hour north of Rome to phone her, because we needed to get the key before she left for work. We left Mati sleeping in the car -- and when we came back he told us this weird story about how a truck-driver had tried to tell him something. Mati hadn't understood a word (the only languages he spoke were Estonian and English), but he was a great mimic, so he just parroted what the man had said. "Il papa e morte," the man had said, and Mati had looked blank, so he'd repeated it in German: "Der Papst ist gestorben." Then he'd put his hands together and sort of laid his head on them, as if he were going to sleep -- or dying. "That means The Pope is dead'," I said, and we all laughed at the poor truck-driver. How could anybody be so out of touch? The pope had died over a month ago; Luciano Albino had already been chosen in his place, and had taken the name John Paul. - tinyurl.com/c4pu9
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Post by franko on May 2, 2005 14:18:54 GMT -5
It was a small response to an inaccuracy of yours re gifts. Don't feel you have to use words like "villify". From personal experience . . . the word fit. I'm sure it isn't the case in every circumstance, but in enough. Only a few times, in regard to divorce and to the final resurrection. Interesting thought. And I agree. In three years of itinerant teaching/preaching who knows what further was said? To other disciples as well as to Peter. But there is a difference between what Jesus said and what the church says for Him, no? For example, the Catholic church is instructed not to practise contraception (an ignored injunction these days, I would posit), yet Jesus Himself -- no, the Bible itself -- says absolutely nothing about such. The closest inference is to Onan spilling his seed, and the context there is that he displeased God not because of coitus interruptus as much as because he refused to father a child in his brother's stead. I do not deny the horrors of history, but this discussion is in regards to one part of the historical record. "Other people were evil too" is no excuse for godly leadership to participate -- especially leadership that is supposedly infallible. Do we? Maybe we disagree on what the primary issues in Christianity are. As I see them, - There is one Creator, God, who reveals Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
- Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity, He died for our sins, and He rose from the dead physically and returned to heaven.
- The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, He rebukes, reproves, corrects, chastens, and guides our lives.
- The Bible is the inspired and relevant word of God.
- All people need God�s grace and forgiveness.
- God calls people to love Him but each person chooses to respond or not (free will).
- There is a heaven; there is a hell.
- The Church is to be a Christian community, and is to model Christ�s ideals in the world.
More concisely, perhaps, The Apostles' Creed. Beyond that, we interpret.
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Post by Toronthab on May 2, 2005 20:02:51 GMT -5
The X-Files meets apocalyptic Christianity. Yuk-yuk.
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Post by Toronthab on May 2, 2005 20:06:11 GMT -5
He was a great man. He died. Let him rest. Heh-heh.
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Post by Toronthab on May 2, 2005 21:36:52 GMT -5
It is probably not a great idea to attribute a position to a church of over one billion something that isn't even true. It sure wastes my time. You continue to draw conclusions based upon the false premise that the church is the people of the bible and miss the fact that the bible is the book of the church, the Catholic church in fact. Both aspects are condemned as against nature and therefore god. All protestant denominations oppsoed artificial means of contraception until the 1930's. You seem to accept a proposition implicit in the New testament, that of free will. So do I. Do you think that people can't lose thier faith, succumb to temptation, especially within the context of medieval society when the church was in many respects the most powerful institution in the world, as, on a certain level it still is, by influence and sheer numbers. I think its was a natural human tendency to try to instantiate the so-called "kingdom of God" on earth, and what better way than to have the church run the whole ballgame. Corruption is virtually certain in such a scenario, and indeed, the church as a great earthly prize in an otherwise unbelievably static societal structure became a much desired plum. No one is seeking to 'excuse" corruption. That the church has endured over two millenia with human beings involved, is proof enough of divine origin. But what the hell. That's how it is. Period. The gospels are clear enough that hand-picked apostles can sell out for thirty peces of silver. Some say he (Judas) was mostly a political ideologue. The church is made up of sinners, that greek word for people who "fall short" like arrows hitting the ground in front of the target. We all fail to be what we could be. Every day. That doesn't mean that there were no apsotles and no resurrection. If anything it reinforces the rather obvious antithesis. On papal infallibility: it is the office of the papacy that has the charism of infallibility. The pope is a normal, limited person like you and me . Gee! You were doing so well until the last line. It's interesting to consider just how much of the agreed, and you are right, truly primary precepts of christianity, interesting to consider what these precepts really mean. Much is great mystery. What is it to be creator, a trinity. How is it someone "dies for our sins". More trinity...reproves, corrects...Love God? what the heck is that all about? A heaven, a hell.....all such ..intelligible mysteries, but necessarily mysteries. Aquinas spoke of the analogy of proper proportionality. We know a little what love is, what a father is, what justice is...the analogy of proper proportionality holds that God's love is conceivable dimly by analogy, but that the difference is such that it is more unlike than like human love. Our understanding of what church is is different. I agree with me. The apostles and their successors interpret. Else why have apostles? I don't thnk that believing a set of propositions, even a true set of propositions about Jesus is salvific. It is the response in faith that is fundamental. To be a disciple is to choose to follow the objective good in all circumstances, in good weather and bad. You are right about what is truly primary Franko.
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Post by blaise on May 2, 2005 21:46:20 GMT -5
I can agree with the headline of this thread. Yes, John Paul II is dead--and buried. It's time for the thread to be interred, too, because it has degenerated into a rambling dialogue by a process of reductio ad absurdum.
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Post by franko on May 3, 2005 7:33:11 GMT -5
I can agree with the headline of this thread. Yes, John Paul II is dead--and buried. It's time for the thread to be interred, too, because it has degenerated into a rambling dialogue by a process of reductio ad absurdum. As do most of our threads. Of course, you aren't forced to read this one.
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Post by M. Beaux-Eaux on May 3, 2005 7:42:08 GMT -5
He is drawn to it, as if to a burning bush.
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Post by franko on May 3, 2005 7:44:25 GMT -5
You continue to draw conclusions based upon the false premise that the church is the people of the bible and miss the fact that the bible is the book of the church, the Catholic church in fact. Herein lies our greatest difference: you believe that the church defines the Bible; I believe that the Bible defines the church. 1. Against nature? So is man's ability to soar -- we should keep our feet on the ground. So are transplants and other extraordinary medical advances -- we should just die when our bodes wear out. Obviously, I disagree. 2. All Protestant denomniations did not oppose [artificial means of? what's that?] contraception until the 30's. For example, my denomination has never taken an anti-stand on the issue. Your claim, then, is that edicts proclaimed by the Pope are infallible . . . if you wish I will remind you of changes made by Popes regarding previous statements and issues. Right. Anyone can follow a set of propositions, a set of doctrines, a set of rules and regulations. Me, I follow Jesus.
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Post by blaise on May 3, 2005 10:47:16 GMT -5
As do most of our threads. Of course, you aren't forced to read this one. I hadn't read it for several days. I was curious that it was still going on, stoked by two posters (hence my use of the term dialogue).
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Post by blaise on May 3, 2005 10:51:03 GMT -5
He is drawn to it, as if to a burning bush. Why are you drawn to this thread? You haven't been an active contributor. And as I just posted, I neglected it for several days. I was just curious to see if the same ping pong game between two players was still in progress. It is.
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Post by M. Beaux-Eaux on May 3, 2005 11:39:11 GMT -5
Why are you drawn to this thread? You haven't been an active contributor. And as I just posted, I neglected it for several days. I was just curious to see if the same ping pong game between two players was still in progress. It is. It is my duty to read all active threads.
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Post by blaise on May 3, 2005 20:27:43 GMT -5
It is my duty to read all active threads. I guess you're right. Some of them you don't comment on must make your eyes glaze over.
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Post by Toronthab on May 3, 2005 21:01:57 GMT -5
Herein lies our greatest difference: you believe that the church defines the Bible; I believe that the Bible defines the church. 1. Against nature? So is man's ability to soar -- we should keep our feet on the ground. So are transplants and other extraordinary medical advances -- we should just die when our bodes wear out. Obviously, I disagree. 2. All Protestant denomniations did not oppose [artificial means of? what's that?] contraception until the 30's. For example, my denomination has never taken an anti-stand on the issue. Your claim, then, is that edicts proclaimed by the Pope are infallible . . . if you wish I will remind you of changes made by Popes regarding previous statements and issues. Right. Anyone can follow a set of propositions, a set of doctrines, a set of rules and regulations. Me, I follow Jesus. Hi Franko Whatday say we call this loaf baked and turn off the oven. It had been and interesting exercise for me, as I have attempted to show that the primacy of the bishop of Rome is consistent with the practice of the very first centuries of the church and don't really have a lot more to say on the issue. I have further attempted to give an understanding of the church that is, again, consistent with her historical practice. The bible is after all the holy scripture of the Catholic church and rest assured that I find the church to be completely and totally consistent with same, be it implicit or explicit. I obviously don't consider apostolic authority to have been a requirement early in church history that was not needed in perpetuity. As I consider some of your observations, like the above three for instance, , it would seem to me that this forum is really probably not the place to exhaustively attempt to explain or consider the history of western civilization, catholic docrine or apologetics, and reformation theology in toto. There are, sites that do deal extensively with such issues, and often with a scholarly discipline and depth that sheds light. I would consider some private exchanges if you like, but this thread has indeed achieved a reductio ad duo. You and me. Two strands do not a thread make, so if you are in agreement, let's move any futher stuff off the main board. I can think of a question or two I might like to hear your response to now that I think of it. Thanks Franko
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Post by Toronthab on May 3, 2005 21:59:09 GMT -5
from an earlier post of M.BoZo ..an article posted
Luciano Albino didn't reply, so the brief reign of Pope John Paul I was declared over and Karol Wojtyla got the chance to remake the Catholic Church in his own authoritarian and ultra-conservative image. His rock-star charisma deflected attention from the collapse in church attendance, the haemorrhage of priests (an estimated 100,000 quit the priesthood during his papacy), and the breaking of the Catholic monopoly in Latin America (where up to a quarter of the poor have converted to evangelical Protestant sects in the past quarter-century). But how different it might have been if Albino hadn't had his heart attack. _______________________________________
John Paul II was neither autoritarian nor ultra-conservative. He was the visible head of the Roman Catholic church and in the course of an astoundngly infulential life remained just that, the pope of the Catholic Church.
I rather assume that most non-catholics do not accept the founding premises of Catholicism, the revealed divine nature of Christ and the institution of the church withe the command to teach and the assurance that the church would not left endlessly debating both the plausible and the possible or the improbable.
I would agree that any claim that there has indeed been a real, witnessed and hence historical resurrection from the dead should be approached with just about as much skepticism as you can possibly muster. A person would have to be an idiot to take such claims lightly. And less than thorough to lightly dismiss the most dynamic force in world history.
Also any adult considering the claims of Catholicism, which it predicates on the prior claim should also be taken with a most exacting demand for confirmation. Especially that of sure guidance, a charism of the divine, not simply human.
If one holds the first, sees the logical consistency of the second, and further considers the claimed divine election of the See of Peter which has a lot of historically consitent weight behingd it, then one presupposes, makes an act of faith, or as most do most of the time, claims personal infallible guidance in referring to Pope John Paul II as autoritarian.
If the three at least highly plausible premises are true,.then ipso facto the pope is a legitimate authority, not authoritarian. To refer to the pope, we are I remind you referring to the pope as "ultra-conservative ", unless the intent was to be completely vacuous suggests a deviation from mental clarity or basic western history.
Is our erstwhile reporter harkening back to a time when abortion was a good thing, marriage a hobby, and homosecxual acts sacramentalized? Attitude. His. It was great to laugh with the lovely pope who was laughing Luciano. He was, (and is?) great, but it is really naive to think that there would have been a doctrinal shift in the offing.
We might still be enjoying a cold war too. It takes a certain confidence, a certain certainty to be the pope. That the eminently reasonable and morally consistent tennets of Catholicism are labelled by many as "ultra-conservative" only serves to indicate that the moral ground has shifted for many. Different premises about the nature and purpose and therefore acceptable means in life are assumed. A very great many, myslef included see much of this as a revolt against reason and human nature itself, a revolt that has spawned not much that I can see of much value.
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Post by Toronthab on May 3, 2005 22:08:31 GMT -5
You go your Way and I'll go mine. Dogmatists just get in the way. Interesting dogma!
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Post by M. Beaux-Eaux on May 7, 2005 9:04:24 GMT -5
8 April 2005
What the Pope Really Did
By Gwynne Dyer
It was the biggest photo-op in world history, and everybody who is anybody was there. Even the Protestant president of the United States and the Muslim clergyman who is president of the Islamic Republic of Iran felt obliged to show up for the Pope's funeral. But the media circus has already moved on to the next global event -- two divorced British people in late middle age getting married in a registry office in Windsor -- and there is one last opportunity to consider the life of Karol Wojtyla.
Forget all the stuff about how he smothered all the new thinking and decentralisation that were beginning to transform the Catholic church when he was chosen pope in 1978. It's true, but he was elected precisely to carry out that task. The conservatives in the Curia who had been sidelined by Vatican II were determined to stop the rot (as they saw it), and they were well aware that Wojtyla was a man in their own mould when they pushed him forward as the dark-horse candidate to succeed John Paul I.
He acted as they expected that he would, and it would be foolish to condemn him for it. He held those beliefs long before he became pope, and he never hid them. But there was one thing he did that astonished and appalled the conservatives. It was also the one thing he did that will still define the Catholic church's policy centuries from now.
Most of John Paul II's policies are eminently reversible, if a subsequent generation of church leaders should decide that a different line on contraceptives or women priests is more in accord with divine teaching. That isn't likely to happen any time soon, given the way that he has packed the College of Cardinals with like-minded individuals, but with enough time many things become possible. What later generations are most unlikely to reverse is his acknowledgement that Judaism is a valid alternative path to God.
We are not just talking "apology" here -- although Christians certainly owed apologies to the Jews for two millennia of slander and persecution -- nor even "reconciliation". John Paul II went far beyond that, though few members of the general public realised it at the time: he recognised Judaism as a true religion.
There is an old saying, beloved of Catholic theologians, that "error has no rights." It drives the ecumenical crowd crazy, but it is perfectly logical: if you believe that your religion is true, and the others are different, then the others are false. John Paul II was perfectly affable and hospitable to various Protestant Christians who came to visit, but he truly believed that they were wrong, wrong, wrong -- and he refused to enter into the equal relationships that they fondly imagined to be possible between the various Christian sects.
He was more open to the Orthodox Christian world, both because he came from eastern Europe himself and because the quarrel between the Orthodox churches and the Church of Rome has always been about hierarchical and stylistic matters, not about basic doctrinal issues. It was in his relations with the non-Christian religions that are also in the lineage of Abraham, however, that John Paul II broke decisively with Christian and Catholic tradition.
In fourteen hundred years of constant and intimate contact between the Muslim and Christian peoples around the Mediterranean, he was the first pope ever to enter a mosque. He doubtless continued to believe that Christianity was the one true successor to Judaism and that Islam was a post-Jewish, post-Christian heresy, but he was the first pope to argue that cordial relations between them were possible and desirable. And in the case of the Jews, he went much farther.
It's understandable that the new religion of Christianity, struggling to distance itself from its Jewish roots, should have insisted that the Christian revelation had invalidated and replaced the older faith. By implication, however, that meant that those Jews who refused to convert were in revolt against God -- and from that mind-set came the Christian image of Jews as "Christ-killers," and two millennia of savage Christian persecution culminating in the European holocaust of 1942-45.
Karol Wojtyla was a witness to that holocaust, which may be why he did the extraordinary thing that he did. On his visit to Israel in 2000, he posted a prayer in a niche in Jerusalem's Wailing Wall which said: "God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your name to the nations. We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the covenant."
By posting that prayer in the wall, he acknowledged that this uniquely Jewish method of communicating with the Almighty is valid -- and by its contents he accepted that the Jewish covenant with God is still in force. It was a thing done in a moment, but it ended two thousand years of Christian rejection of Judaism. The Catholic church, while still advocating the conversion of everybody else, no longer seeks the conversion of the Jews, which is as close as it can come to acknowledging the essential validity of the Jewish faith.
That was the Big Thing that John Paul II did, and it is more important and will last far longer than all the other things he did put together.
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Post by blaise on May 18, 2005 14:11:01 GMT -5
I have found something positive to say about Benedict XVI. According to Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss, chairman of the physics department at Case Western Reserve University, Benedict (and all the popes from Pius XII to John Paul II) have reaffirmed that the process of evolution in no way violates the teachings of the church. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger presided over the church's International Theological Commission, which stated, "since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism."
This is an important difference between the Vatican and conservative Christians in the US who cling to the notion of no change since creation. Catholic theology allows for the fact that life has evolved through natural selection. This conclusion allows for the separation of scientific insights derived from empirical evidence (which the creationists stubbornly deny) and the concept of purpose. The adherents of intelligent design aver that there is a controversy between evolution and creation. There is no controversy. The intelligent design folks offer no evidence, just a dwindling stockpile of nitpicks as more and more of the so-called gaps they point to are filled in.
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