Aspen, none of the 3 verses you cite demonstrate prayers to other than God, and the Matthew and Mark references actually refute it. God's gentle rebuke of Peter for offering to build tabernacles to Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, leaving only Jesus alone...well, it seems a rather huge stretch to give as evidence of praying to other than God.
The problem with the Transfiguration verses I provided as an example of prayer is that you refuse to distinguish between prayer and worship. Only worship is reserved for God, prayer is a great way to talk with God, but it is not reserved for Him. God’s rebuke of Peter was a rebuke against worship – tabernacles are built for the sole purpose of worship. The fact that they were all in contact with Moses and Elijah, who were no longer alive on Earth, indicates prayer – how else are you going to talk with saints who have passed out of this world?
Regarding tradition, if it isn't Man's tradition, whose is it? God’s? One would think it would have been in the Word as scripture.
Yes, it is God’s. The church came before the Bible – the Catholic Church compiled the cannon of the NT. Technically, the NT texts that you are relying on were decided on by a group of humans called together by Constantine in 325 AD. The only reason you look to the Bible and refuse to look at the Church for authority is because Luther started the practice during the Reformation – ironically, the Bible doesn’t even support the doctrine of sola scriptura. Before you pull out 2 Timothy 3:16 – notice that the verse supports the Bible, but does not claim it to be the exclusive authority, or even the best authority in every situation.
What is the Protestant fascination with the written word? The OT was not written down until the Babylonian captivity in 500 BC – for 800 years before that time, all the stories were oral – does that make them any less inspired? The NT was not canonized until a group of men came together and decided which books should be included two hundred years after Christ died – many of the churches only used one of the gospels and lots of priests were teaching their congregations out of the Shepherd of Hermes, the Didache, and even the Gnostic book of Thomas – were the Christians daaammmmnnned (hoping to get past the editor) because of this?
I'm not sure how to answer the "how so" question regarding why praying to is different to praying for someone. To me it is self-evident and bespeaks of a far larger gulf between Catholics and other Christian faiths than I had thought.
I remember when I used to believe exactly like you. Then I learned that there is a big difference between prayer and worship, despite how self-evident I thought the condemnation of praying to saints was.
Remember, for 1,000 years, the Catholic Church was the sole Christian Church – then the Orthodox Church broke away – although they believe the RCC broke away from them – in any case, Protestants still consider them to be Catholic. Then 500 years later, as Kings were starting
to consider breaking away from the rule of the Vatican, the Reformers appeared and gave them the theological backing for declaring independence. You think King Henry the VIII, the head of the Anglican Church, which spawned Puritans, Baptists, Methodists, which spawned Pentecostals, really cared about the religion he so piously started? The guy wanted a divorce from his wife and the Vatican would not give him one. He was seeking power.
Luther was a different case, he was a monk who was constantly told to loosen up by his abbot in the monastery – now when a medieval abbot tells you to loosen up – you must be pretty tightly wound. After a pilgrimage to Rome, Luther returned to Germany disillusioned because of the decadence he found in Italy – he wanted people to be as austere as he was and he was right – the church had become corrupt. So he posted 99 reforms that Church needed to make, without intending for the list to be circulated widely. Someone got a hold of it and printed it in mass and circulated it all over Germany and even outside Europe – soon the Pope got a copy. The Pope was a corrupt man and demanded that Luther repent – Luther responded by telling the Pope that he had as much spiritual insight and authority as an “ass playing a harp”, and he did not mean donkey. To illustrate his statement, he illustrated his statement – and mailed the cartoon to the Pope. As you can imagine he was put on trial and excommunicated. So Luther had some good points, but he was known for being a stubborn jerk and was unable to get his reforms pasted in the Catholic Church. In order for him to legitimize his break from the Catholic Church, he decided to remove authority from Tradition and place it all on the Bible. He even added the word ”alone” after faith because he wanted to distance himself and his new church from relying on sacraments. He also considered removing all the books in the Bible that did not seem to support his new ideas – like the book of James, Hebrews, and Revelation.
Also, Lutherans, and Calvinists (Frances attempt to break away from the Vatican) and Presbyterians (Scotland’s bid for independence under Calvinist reformer, John Knox) had a nasty habit of murdering another group of break-away Catholics in Holland who believed that reform had not gone far enough – the Anabaptists, named for their rejection of infant baptism.
Here’s my point, (I love church history and I get carried away) we need to ask ourselves where our beliefs come from – Protestants think all their beliefs are confined to scripture alone, but it is far from the truth. God sanctified Tradition and even used politics to shape His will for us. The Bible is interpreted by Tradition – claiming that the Holy Spirit interprets only the Bible without using sanctified tradition is to risk private interpretation, which invites further schism and more denominations.
It goes beyond mere tradition into beliefs about the fundamental nature of God and our relationship with Him, as I understand it and as I see it written in the Bible.
You are relying on your own Protestant Tradition to interpret what you read in the Bible. Even the fact that you limit your theological understanding to what “I see…written in the Bible” is firmly rooted in the Protestant Tradition.
I'm not judging doctrine necessarily against the hypothetical "pew-sitter" but by the Biblical method of "test all spirits" against the Word.
You are judging the doctrine of the Catholic Church, based on the knowledge of uneducated members of the Catholic Church. I know this because you are taking their word over mine to support your misunderstanding of my church doctrine. Wouldn’t it give you a more accurate understanding if you simply went to the Catholic Catechism to find out what the church teaches, instead of consulting members who do not understand the teaching themselves? I am all for testing the spirits, but not testing one spirit and then using the outcome to make global statements. If I wanted to learn about Presbyterian doctrine, the last place I would go is to a member of the Presbyterian church – first I would read the Westminster Catechism.
Here is another perspective – how would you like me to judge the company you work for by the information I gather from a guy they should have fired years ago, but are forced to keep around because of political reasons? Not only is it not fair to the company, it would not provide me with accurate information.
I don't know if there are Catholics who don't believe the last rites, confession, and other trappings. I haven't met them but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Catholics who do not believe in the 7 sacraments, including Anointing of the sick (last rites) and confession are not educated about their religion or faith. The fact that you refer to them as ‘trappings’ shows me that you have an outsiders view of the sacraments. You are judging a book by its cover.
When I was referring to weak and fallible humanity and personal relationships, I was referring to 1 Cor 3-4...who do you follow? Whose word do you rely upon? Who speaks for God other than God?
Priests and Bishops are not prophets – the Catholic Church has never taught new revelation. However, Jesus did commission His disciples to go out and forgive sins and feed and clothe the needy. The Catholic Church is Apostolic – it teaches that the Keys to the Kingdom given to Peter have passed down through the ages in His church.
I guess I'm showing my Protestantism if I believe the Word of God is the sole authority in matters of man's relationship with God;
Indeed.
I know of no others that are not contradicted by the word.
Contradictions to the Bible are bad and need to be thrown out. The Catholic Church holds to no doctrines that are contradicted by the Bible. They do teach doctrines that are extrapolated from the Bible – in other words, the Bible my not explicitly state the teachings; or may not even support them directly, but none are contradicted by the Bible.
I certainly am not aware of any faith (I don't doubt you, I've just never heard of it before) that requires you to read the Bible completely before you die as a matter of Salvation, or even for any other reason. I know lots of people who hunger for the word, or who set themselves goals, but thats it.
Do you see what you are doing here? You are challenging me in the same way I am challenging you. In my post, I used an example of a doctrinal misunderstanding held by a hypothetical pew-sitter in the Protestant tradition – I agree with you that Protestants do not teach followers that salvation is contingent on reading the Bible all the way through, but I bet I could find a Protestant who personally believes it and claims vehemently that they learned it at church! Now, would it be fair to claim that I am just testing the spirits and use the information to make false claims of heresy towards Protestant doctrine, based on the erratic claims of a pew-sitter? A person who is also likely to believe that God cares about church attendance and that he is actually doing the man upstairs a favor showing up on Sunday? As convenient as it might seem to people outside the Protestant faith, Archie Bunker is not a reliable source of theological insight regarding the doctrine of the church he claimed to attend.
Romans 14 is the verse for "stand or fall on his own" and also answers the question about Saturday vs. Sunday as the Sabbath.
The verse states that a man does NOT stand or fall on his own. You seem to be claiming that Paul is justifying - practically suggesting? moving the sabbath from Saturday to Sunday? That is certainly reading into the scripture. If you are claiming that I am possibly putting a stumbling block in your way for criticizing the move, I am certainly not - I am simply pointing out the truth; the church decided to worship God on Sunday instead of Saturday - it is a tradition that we both follow. The most ironic part of Romans 14 is that Paul is telling us that disagreements among Christians to not matter - we certainly should not let things like clothing and manners of worship come between us........hmmmm....
I think we have different views of what constitutes "externalism." A person who reads and seeks to understand Gods word doesn't strike me as externalism. External trappings; special clothing, rituals, external expressions of materialism that I can't find basis for in scripture reminds me of Biblical descriptions of the Pharisees.
Here is a case of seeing the spec in your neighbor’s eye, while missing the beam in your own. Of course you cannot see how reading the Bible can be externalized – it is a Protestant trapping. It is much easier to look at the Catholic churches meaningless use of ‘special clothing’ and rituals – I am not surprised that you equate the ‘materialism’ you see with the Pharisees. Although, I am not sure how you equate materialism with legalism.....
I almost missed the bias in your statement – you justify a person reading the Bible as ‘trying to understand God’s word’ – what could be wrong or external about that? Especially, when you compare the sincere Bible readers – seekers, actually - with the Catholics who are mired in ‘external trappings’ and materialism. Indeed, subtle as a train wreck……
The fact is, people read the Bible for lots of different reasons – many want to memorize it with the intention of trapping people who have differing beliefs from their own; others, feel guilty about not reading it; some equate reading the Bible with their salvation – if they don’t read the Bible to learn about God, how are they going to know Him? There lack of knowledge about God might lead God to say ‘depart from me, I do not know you’. These are all examples of using the bible to manipulate or alleviate bad feelings – trying to change the heart by external means. In my case, I have been clubbed over the head with scripture by Calvinist claiming that they were merely loving me, to know that winning was what motivated their behavior, rather than giving a hoot about my soul.
Everything the priest wears and everything that decorates the church has deep symbolic meaning. It is sad to me that Protestant churches, depending on how far away from Catholicism they have moved, attempt to strip the church of all symbolism because they fear that people will start worshiping it – are become superstitious. All I can say is that Catholics see reverence, mystery, and the seasons of the church year, where you see frivolous clothing and materialism. All the rituals have incredible meaning to us – yet, because you do not understand what they mean, you interpret them as getting in the way of God. Well, written words get in the way of people if they are illiterate – they might claim that they are trying to get a job done and being forced to read the directions is slowing them done rather than helping.
The sin against the body is the sin against your own body. Where does it say confess to everyone, or more specifically, where does it say to confess to a proxy such as a priest? Where does it say that any man can tell you what atonement is necessary for forgiveness of sin? Who is the judge?
A Brother Who Sins Against You
15"If your brother sins against you,[b] go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.'[c] 17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector. 18"I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be[d]bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be[e] loosed in heaven.
19"Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them."
I'd recommend 2 Tim 3 5, Titus 1:16, and of course Matthew 15:8-9, "These people draw near to Me honoring Me with their lips but their hearts are distant from Me. And in vain do they worship Me teaching as doctrine rules made by men."
I see I haven’t made a dent…..despite the fact that I have pointed out the fallacies of the beliefs you have about Catholic doctrine, and encouraged you to seek out creditable sources – the Catechism and eventually educated Catholics – you seem to be even more convinced you know more about the church I belong to than I do.
As troubling as it is for me to realize that you seem to want to hold on to the belief that the Catholic Church teaches heresy and go as far as using the opinions of uneducated Catholics to support your negative opinions; you do have the right to your opinion. There appears to be nothing I can say to help you broaden you view or challenge your misconceptions about the doctrine of my church. It does make me wonder what you think of my decision to become Catholic.
Mary was honored, but not "finished."
She is in heaven – she is finished – sanctification is completed in heaven.
Christ on at least 2 occasions set the record straight.
Verses? What record?
But the main issue is this was a decision made by a council of men centuries after the fact, and is not supported biblically.
What council of men? When was it decided? What verse contradicts Mary’s perpetual virginity? Also, who cares if Catholics believe this to be true? Isn't it a stumbling block issue?
And, dare I say it, if more is required than what is revealed in the Word, you Catholicism is showing.
I hope so! I have chosen to be a part of the ancient church and I am closer to Christ than ever before.