And now the Catholic Counterpoint to 500 years ago.

[DoomYoshi]

So you acknowledge that the idea of Rome being the solitary place for Peter's apostolic succession was foreign to Peter and came much later.

You seem to be hopelessly hung up on this point. I will definitely acknowledge that your strange hangup on "solitary place" comes later.

It's not a strange hangup at all. As you already acknowledged the church of Antioch has a more rightful place to have the utmost patriarch. That kind of undermines the entire papacy. Peter was only concerned with the apostolic succession of Judas. Only a Judas would be concerned with the apostolic succession of Peter.

No one person has to be that keystone. Why did Jesus appoint twelve apostles? Why are all twelve promised seats in heaven judging the twelve tribes of Israel?

Twelve is important because of the twelve tribes and mostly because the number was thought to represent completeness. However Jesus does more with Peter than with the other eleven. During his ministry he gives the "keys" to Peter and then after the resurrection (post Peter's three time denial of him) he gives him the three fold commission.

Remember that Peter and the others were "apostles" (one who is sent). This differs from Overseers. There are no apostles alive today. All "public" revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle. The issue is the structure of the Overseers. If the Apostles have a hierarchy, why should the overseers not?

They don't have a definite hierarchy. Even if they did, Peter is not the beloved disciple. "So the last will be first and the first will be last".

Central authority doesn't actually have anything to do with truth. The Catholic position is not based on theology. The Catholic position is that unless you acknowledge that the pope is the vicar of Christ on Earth, then you aren't a Christian. It has nothing to do with truth.

But wait a second. The term "vicar" means representative. In Catholic nomenclature all the "bishops" are representatives or "vicars" of Christ and the Pope is a bishop. No seriously, to quote from the Catechism ...

894 "The bishops, as vicars and legates of Christ, govern the particular Churches assigned to them by their counsels, exhortations, and example, but over and above that also by the authority and sacred power" which indeed they ought to exercise so as to edify, in the spirit of service which is that of their Master.

Fair enough.

As you mentioned above, there are still debates in Catholicism. One thing that is never debated is the primacy of the pope. That's the chiefest difference between Catholics and Protestants. If it was about theology, there wouldn't be that back and forth borrowing and arguing about theology. In South America and Africa, Protestants and Catholics both kill homosexuals without a trial. In North America, they don't. The Christian experience is obviously very local and always will be.

It's more than whose number one. (Primacy definition, by the way.) At least we don't say "that would be telling." The biggest difference is that Catholics have one number one and Protestants have millions of them. Every Protestant is their own Pope. Every Protestant is their own supreme authority on what has been passed down from the Apostles, only they don't care about what is passed down from the Apostles (except for a few epistles) but from the Evangelists and their own interpretation of the Old Testament.

By the way, can you give a solid link on the allegation of "Catholics" killing homosexuals in Africa without a trial? I'm pretty sure that is in violation of Catholic tradition, but obviously in the everything goes world of Protestantism it's perfectly fine for someone else to do it. Why you think that some people randomly killing other people in one part of the world and not in the other is a good thing is totally beyond me. Is there a different God in Africa and South America? I think not. God is God always and everywhere.

No Protestant is their own authority. It's not like the prescription is "read your bible, come up with your own theology and then you are a church unto yourself". It's "let the Holy Spirit guide you as you read your bible communally and come up with a theology." We do care about what was passed down by the apostles (although admittedly not all). The Ante-Nicene Fathers collection and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers collection were both printed by and still in print, by Protestant publishing houses. The argument is that through the years the Roman Catholic church made up their own stuff and then got off course (more on this later). For example, the Donation of Constantine influenced papal policy even though it was an obvious fabrication and then there is the similar Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals which is one of the grandest fabrications in the history of the world. One of the proofs that this corruption was happening is that many monastic orders (I mean the originals, not the Orders of later) were started because the monks thought that the church was being corrupted. This isn't surprising. The corrupting influences in God's people are always there. Take the story of Exodus-Joshua. After all that happened, all the punishments, all the idolatry in the journey back to Palestine, one would think the Israelites had figured out that obeying God was something they should do. Rather, Joshua right before he dies has to tell them that maybe they should destroy the idols they brought with them from Egypt. In every generation, at all times the church is in a process of corruption and reformation. If there isn't enough reformation, the corruption takes over. Since the Roman Catholic church is so fixated on papa and so large, the reformations come slowly and the corruption takes over.

I never said it was good that Christians are killing others. I said that it was proof that the Catholic/Protestant divide isn't about theology or even practicality since you can find similar theology and worship styles across the board. I can't find any news links or whatever, but I know that it is happening through various researches and testimonies over the years.
Here's a couple articles that gives some decent information about the state of gay rights in Africa:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/23/africa-homophobia-uganda-anti-gay-law
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/african-bishops-challenge-western-homosexual-indoctrination

[Dukasaur]

At least we catholics know that the bible is a scam and read it for fun.
You moronic huguenots take it a bit too seriously.

Bravo!

I was framing out a 1000-word essay making exactly that point.

You said it in two lines.

Either way it isn't exactly true.

Of course it isn't exactly true. It's a flippant way of making a point, so it's largely true but not completely.

And a lot depends on time and place, too. It's mostly true for a modern-day European Catholic, but the farther one gets from the 20th century and the farther one gets from Vienna, the less true it is. In the back woods of Guatemala one finds plenty of people who are just as serious about their religion as their Protestant equivalents in Missouri.

One of the first Christians to call the Old Testament a scam was Marcion and he was deemed a heretic. More recently, almost all of the "liberal" theology is formed in Protestantism and then borrowed by the Catholics.

For example, Reimarus was a Protestant. He is famous for his idea that Jesus thought of himself as the Messiah, but at the cross he realized he wasn't and that is why he said "why have you forsaken me?" Then, his apostles "invented Christianity" simply because they didn't want to return to work.

Wellhausen was a Lutheran also. He came up with the "documentary hypothesis" that indicates that rather than being written by Moses, the Torah was stitched together over hundreds of years by disparate groups with differing aims. Tzor has mentioned that very hypothesis in this forum.

The Jesus Seminar was a Protestant thing too. That's the people who determined that the historical Jesus "Probably" said less than 20% of the words ascribed to him in the Bible.

The incarnational model of Scripture, the phrase "the bible isn't information, it's character formation", the debate over authorship of Paul's letters... these are all Protestant things.

The Nova Vulgata is based on texts by the (protestant) German Bible Society. So, if Catholics think the Bible is a scam anyways, why would they bother changing the Bible they use based on the currentest Protestant research?

Your spiel about all these alleged triumphs of Protestant Biblical Scholarship precisely agrees with Betiko's point -- y'all huguenots take it a bit too seriously.

I could argue these points -- Wellhausen did not write in a vacuum but in fact was standing on the shoulders of Catholic scholars like Jean Francois Houbigant and Jean Astruc -- but I won't bother. Which is precisely the point. I find it a mildly interesting debate, but not enough to invest a great deal of time and effort into it. I have experts at the Vatican who are paid to work on this shit full time, and I trust they're doing their jobs.

For most normal (and again, I'm aware that my definition of "normal" necessarily includes "European" and that my conclusions are less completely valid outside of Europe) Catholics, being Catholic is about having a great feast on St. Joseph's Day or the feast day of St. Lawrence of Rome and watching or perhaps marching in a great parade on Corpus Christii or the Day of the Immaculate Conception. It's also about supporting the world's largest charitable organization, the greatest patron of the arts in all of history, the organization that held civilization together through the dark days after the fall of Rome, the organization that negotiated more peace treaties and brought about more truces and prisoner exchanges than anyone who has ever gotten the Nobel Prize for it.

Debating about the true meaning of the prayer to Onisephorus is no part of the normal Catholic's daily routine. It's Protestants who whip themselves up into a rage over it. To me, the Church's official interpretation of 2 Timothy and Onisephorus seems reasonable enough, whilst the opposite position seems contrived. Not speaking Hebrew or Greek, however, I can't debate the nuance of the translated words. I would not care all that much if I could. The Bible is collection of fables, myths, just-so stories, and just enough actual history to be interesting. Debating what Peter meant in 2 Timothy is a bit like debating what Tolkien meant with Tom Bombadil. It's literary criticism, interesting in its own way but not life-changing.

[tzor]

It's not a strange hangup at all. As you already acknowledged the church of Antioch has a more rightful place to have the utmost patriarch. That kind of undermines the entire papacy. Peter was only concerned with the apostolic succession of Judas. Only a Judas would be concerned with the apostolic succession of Peter.

Yes it is a very strange hangup. Antioch is no longer a major city. The oldest Canon Law does have the city in the three Patriarchs: Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. Nicea and Chalcedon added Jerusalem. Constantinople added Constantinople.

It was Peter's obsession with the significance of the number twelve that gave rise to the selection of a replacement for Judas. (And this was before the descent of the Holy Spirit) We don't have many writings post Apostolic deaths. The only apostle to die in the life of Peter was James the son of Zebedee in A.D. 44. Once more "a replacement" does not equal "apostolic succession." The Pope is not "Peter's Replacement."

They don't have a definite hierarchy. Even if they did, Peter is not the beloved disciple. "So the last will be first and the first will be last".

There are so many things wrong with that statement it's hard to begin. "The beloved disciple" has a lot of internal significance in the Gospel of the Apostle that doesn't want to use his name.

So this is going to deep dive into complex numbers. It is generally believed that he was born A.D. 15. (It is generally believed that he died in A.D. 100 at the extremely old age of 85.) If we go through the numbers and say that Jesus' ministry started at A.D. 30 (or less) that means that John was just barely at the age of adulthood 15 at the time. (That's why I tend to call him St. Johnny.) Peter is like married at the start of the ministry. John was like 18 when Jesus gives his mother to his care at the foot of the cross, and around that same age when Jesus tells the others that John might live a long life.

No Protestant is their own authority. It's not like the prescription is "read your bible, come up with your own theology and then you are a church unto yourself". It's "let the Holy Spirit guide you as you read your bible communally and come up with a theology."

But how do you know if the Holy Spirit is really guiding you. It is not just the Bible but history that tells us that Satan can appear as an angel of light. Read the so called words of Gabriel to a madman in the dessert and you will see that this is no Gabriel but a demon (and in fact the madman thought as much until this first wive, a Christian heretic, told him otherwise). That's why we as a church get together and hash things out. All of the major beliefs of the Church come, not from a single Bishop, or even the Bishop of Rome, but from the Ecumenical Councils.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/23/africa-homophobia-uganda-anti-gay-law
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/african-bishops-challenge-western-homosexual-indoctrination

http://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2014/uganda-s-bishops-reviewing-country-s-anti-gay-law-says-church-official.cfm

But he also pointed out that an anti-gay bill first introduced in 2009 was not condoned by Uganda's Catholic Church because it had proposed the death penalty and other harsh punishments for those convicted of homosexual acts.

Now in your second link it states ...

His Eminence also noted that while the African people "cannot condemn people who are homosexuals," they also "cannot promote homosexual marriages because God created male and female for procreation, so the Divine Order must be respected."

So tell me where the "Catholics" are "killing" homosexuals.

[DoomYoshi]

@Dukatzor:

I'm so glad you brought up the example of Tom Bombadil. Tom Bombadil is almost exactly like Mary, mother of Jesus. Mostly remembered for the poetry and the vividness of the imagery, but overall a minor character.

Tom Bombadil might not be life changing to Joe Public, but if you in the Tolkien fan club, it might become more important. If somebody wrote a fan fiction and it featured the character of Tom Bombadil as a sociopathic sex-crazed serial killer, you would be right to disregard that fan fiction as too preposterous, too far out of the system.

There needs to be a way to decide what Tolkien's canon was. (do the works of his son count? what if the originals and the works of his son are contradictory?)

There is a group called Christians, who as a whole, have decided that the Bible would be the canon. The very word canon implies a test that all other books are measured up to. My position is that it's ok if you have differences in perspective on certain points. Scholars argue, about everything, all the time.That isn't enough to cause a split from the overall group (it might cause smaller splits within the group).

The Catholic position is that Protestants aren't even Christians though. They won't go to heaven, they don't have a chance in purgatory, they are actually followers of false gods. Yet customs, theology, biblical scholarship and even clothing (the clerical collar is a protestant invention) are traded between Protestantism and Catholicism very regularly. At the level of the layperson and at the official level, it's a crass political debate but the truth is that both groups are actually Christians.

When you describe the normative Catholic experience, you are also describing the normative Protestant experience, although the holidays may be different. There isn't a real difference, it's pure othering of the political sort.

All of the major beliefs don't come from ecumenical councils. There was no ecumenical council that determined that communion with the pope was the gateway to heaven. The councils also squashed discussion on complex philosophical matters and turned them into political debates by declaring all opponents heretics, so even if that were true the ecumenical councils aren't the best option. Majority opinion is almost never right (you can check the Bible or CNN on that one). Furthermore, it changes all the time. It used to be that the majority opinion was that homosexuals should be arrested. Now the majority opinion is that homosexuals should be treated with respect. How can both be right? They can't both be right. To think that those in attendance in Nicea or Chalcedon had the final answer on God for all time is a great conceit. If Greek philosophy can't even explain the physical world, why should it be trusted to explain heaven? Positions need to be re-evaluated through history. However, at some point there needs to be a canon to turn to. The only thing that makes sense as the canon is the Bible, not the teachings of the fathers of the church (which all, without fail, refer to the Bible as the source of authority).

Can you provide a link that definitively proves that Protestants are killing homosexuals without a trial in Africa?

[DoomYoshi]

Debating about the true meaning of the prayer to Onisephorus is no part of the normal Catholic's daily routine. It's Protestants who whip themselves up into a rage over it. To me, the Church's official interpretation of 2 Timothy and Onisephorus seems reasonable enough, whilst the opposite position seems contrived.

After re-reading this with fresh eyes, I still have no idea what you are talking about. Is this meant to be a particular debate point between Catholics and Protestants or a generic example of a debate point? Many protestants pray for the dead so it's not really a whipping up into a rage. It's a nonessential point and I'll bet you'll find that most Protestant books on 2 Timothy only mention it in passing. It's the Catholics that are whipped up into the rage because they treat Purgatory as a doctrine, while the Eastern Orthodox consider it non-essential and Protestants insist that since it isn't in the Bible, it can't be a doctrine.

Here's a specific example of a debate point:
Council of Trent attributes the Epistle to the Hebrews as being by the apostle Paul. Very few hold that view today and Catholics haven't bothered trying to defend it since pre-WWII. Yet, at Vatican II, rather than addressing this they simply ignored the issue.

show

My point is that many issues (such as the authorship of Hebrews, or whatever issue you were trying to reference) aren't meant to be discussed in the form of councils and decrees. Many of these issues are complex, nuanced debates that demand full scholarly attention. Just like Global Warming, the public can't be trusted to understand what is at stake here, nor can some arbitrary authority figure (I'm thinking Mr. Trump here). In either case, all these nuanced perspectives aren't actually differences between Catholics and Protestants, rather they are differences both within and without the two groups.

[Dukasaur]

Debating about the true meaning of the prayer to Onisephorus is no part of the normal Catholic's daily routine. It's Protestants who whip themselves up into a rage over it. To me, the Church's official interpretation of 2 Timothy and Onisephorus seems reasonable enough, whilst the opposite position seems contrived.

After re-reading this with fresh eyes, I still have no idea what you are talking about. Is this meant to be a particular debate point between Catholics and Protestants or a generic example of a debate point?

Well, it is of course a particular debate point between Catholics and Protestants, and one that I've seen Protestants get into quite a rage over and walk out of a coffee shop without paying.

In this instance, however, I brought it up just as an example.

Here's a specific example of a debate point:
Council of Trent attributes the Epistle to the Hebrews as being by the apostle Paul. Very few hold that view today and Catholics haven't bothered trying to defend it since pre-WWII. Yet, at Vatican II, rather than addressing this they simply ignored the issue.

show

That may be the theory but it isn't the practise, at least not from what I've seen.

My point is that many issues (such as the authorship of Hebrews, or whatever issue you were trying to reference) aren't meant to be discussed in the form of councils and decrees. Many of these issues are complex, nuanced debates that demand full scholarly attention. Just like Global Warming, the public can't be trusted to understand what is at stake here, nor can some arbitrary authority figure (I'm thinking Mr. Trump here). In either case, all these nuanced perspectives aren't actually differences between Catholics and Protestants, rather they are differences both within and without the two groups.

Well, councils aren't composed of arbitrary people elected by the rabble. Cardinals are closer to the equivalent of tenured professors, not politicians. And even when stupid people become Cardinals, they presumably have assistants or whatever who are members of the scholarly class.

In one way or another, it is a problem of a scholarly class, not something that the average person has to trouble himself over.

[DoomYoshi]

Yet the mark of a scholar is that he recognizes he might be wrong. By making something a decree or doctrine you are indicating that there is no way you could ever be wrong. That is a conceited and anti-scholastic attitude.

[Symmetry]

Yet the mark of a scholar is that he recognizes he might be wrong. By making something a decree or doctrine you are indicating that there is no way you could ever be wrong. That is a conceited and anti-scholastic attitude.

I'd disagree with that on many levels. Plenty of scholars are stubborn bastards who will brook no criticism, DY, but whose work still holds validity. Of course, if you don't agree that you might be wrong, then you prove my point.

I think that you should read some modern historians, especially those who counter the prevalent anti-Catholic view of the Reformation.

[tzor]

I'm so glad you brought up the example of Tom Bombadil. Tom Bombadil is almost exactly like Mary, mother of Jesus. Mostly remembered for the poetry and the vividness of the imagery, but overall a minor character.

I don't recall mentioning him. Tom Bombadil is kind of in the Tolkien community like Voldemort in Harry Potter, someone whose name you don't mention. The reason why you don't mention him is when all is said and done, he remains. He is by far the most powerful being in all of Tolkien's story.

Here are some explanations of Tom, but bear in mind that Tom literally predates EVERYTHING in Tolkien's literary word and may just be that, he might even be the writer himself, time personified, lost within his own world.

Unfortunately, with the death of the author, all public revelation on this issue has ceased.

[Dukasaur]

I'm so glad you brought up the example of Tom Bombadil. Tom Bombadil is almost exactly like Mary, mother of Jesus. Mostly remembered for the poetry and the vividness of the imagery, but overall a minor character.

I don't recall mentioning him. Tom Bombadil is kind of in the Tolkien community like Voldemort in Harry Potter, someone whose name you don't mention. The reason why you don't mention him is when all is said and done, he remains. He is by far the most powerful being in all of Tolkien's story.

Here are some explanations of Tom, but bear in mind that Tom literally predates EVERYTHING in Tolkien's literary word and may just be that, he might even be the writer himself, time personified, lost within his own world.

Unfortunately, with the death of the author, all public revelation on this issue has ceased.

I first mentioned Bombadil. DY started conflating his answers to me and to you, which is funny since we're arguing from polar opposite position.

My point was that arguing about obscure points like the true meaning of 2 Timothy is like arguing about the point of Bombadil's existence. Which is to say, interesting literary criticism but not significant to anything that matters. Like you said, with the death of the author, all public revelation on this issue has ceased.

[notyou2]

You guys are arguing over a bunch of fairytales created to oppress the common man.

[Thorthoth]

I want to do my bedroom up like this.

[Dukasaur]

I want to do my bedroom up like this.

Yeah!

[Thorthoth]

Notes from the Counter-Deformation:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/sexu ... turns-ugly

[notyou2]

Propaganda to oppress the masses

Notes from the Counter-Deformation:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/sexu ... turns-ugly

[tzor]

You guys are arguing over a bunch of fairytales created to oppress the common man.

You know, the whole notion of oppressing the "common man" was dreamed up by an atheist for the sole purpose of oppressing the common man.

[mrswdk]

[Thorthoth]

[Symmetry]

You guys are arguing over a bunch of fairytales created to oppress the common man.

You know, the whole notion of oppressing the "common man" was dreamed up by an atheist for the sole purpose of oppressing the common man.

If you mean Marx, then you should read him.

[DoomYoshi]

You guys are arguing over a bunch of fairytales created to oppress the common man.

You know, the whole notion of oppressing the "common man" was dreamed up by an atheist for the sole purpose of oppressing the common man.

If you mean Marx, then you should read him.

This is terrible advice.

It'd be better to own a pet giraffe.

[tzor]

If you mean Marx, then you should read him.

I'll pass on that. Nothing good had ever came from 19th century London.

[mrswdk]

Apart from bare knuckle boxing and Robert Downey Jr.

[tzor]

Apart from bare knuckle boxing and Robert Downey Jr.

The bareknuckle era of boxing was in the 18th century, not the 19th. The Marquess of Queensberry Rules is 19th century, but that brought in boxing gloves and for the most part it was an illegal sport at the time.

[DoomYoshi]

RDJ: confirmed as 19th century.

[Bernie Sanders]

OMG! If I posted this porno, I would receive a perma-ban!