The Not Ready-Catholic Dillemma

[siegfriedandroy]

DS, to be honest, despite my redic (but often true) posts), i like ur inquisitiveness, although you do make a joke of your atheism. you are derangedly fixated on religous matters, far more so than any legitmate atheist would be. clearly, you cannot honestly accept an atheistc world view. you are too honest. as for the difficulties w/ a religious view, i can relate moreso than anyone. although i find it far easier than an aheist attemptong to justify- most of them are jokers who couldnt make the nike tour. i heart flex. lol. i once made out w/ a greek stripper in vegas. she took me into the back room, free of charge (that is my boast), but now i love someone else. lol. i love you, david, but could not do so if i did not belive in a Supreme Being

[siegfriedandroy]

i dont hate you, phil, and dont think you are stupid (are you the nit phil in my games!/ LOL, JK, I PLAY LLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOW ). YOUR questions are fine. but in reality i think ure dumb, lol, forgot what i was to say! what in the evolutionary record is supposed to assure me that somehow all of this beauty (and horror) came from nothing? i will never believe it. it cannot be true.

[Bigdaddydvo]

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OK fine. I wasn't going to interrupt you two. Now what of that proclamation by the Pope?

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David,

I think this answer from EWTN's "Ask a Catholic Expert" forum sums up the Pope's proclamation quite well:

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I am wondering if you have read the actual text of the document. It is a statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, not directly from the pope, although it is issued under his authority.
I think that you are interpreting the text as saying that non-Catholic Churches and Protestant ecclesial communities have nothing good in them. This is not what the document is saying at all. Rather, it is saying that the fullness of truth and means of sanctification can be found in the Catholic Church, while various degrees of truth and sanctification can be found in other Churches and ecclesial communities.

This is a bit of an oversimplication, but it is like saying, "The Catholic Church has 100% of the truth, the Orthodox Churches 98%, the Anglican community 70%, Baptists 60%, Seventh Day Adventists 40%, Mormons 20%." I am just making up those numbers, but I think this might explain in a way that is less offensive.


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[David Sklansky]

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[ QUOTE ]
OK fine. I wasn't going to interrupt you two. Now what of that proclamation by the Pope?

[/ QUOTE ]

David,

I think this answer from EWTN's "Ask a Catholic Expert" forum sums up the Pope's proclamation quite well:

[ QUOTE ]
I am wondering if you have read the actual text of the document. It is a statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, not directly from the pope, although it is issued under his authority.
I think that you are interpreting the text as saying that non-Catholic Churches and Protestant ecclesial communities have nothing good in them. This is not what the document is saying at all. Rather, it is saying that the fullness of truth and means of sanctification can be found in the Catholic Church, while various degrees of truth and sanctification can be found in other Churches and ecclesial communities.

This is a bit of an oversimplication, but it is like saying, "The Catholic Church has 100% of the truth, the Orthodox Churches 98%, the Anglican community 70%, Baptists 60%, Seventh Day Adventists 40%, Mormons 20%." I am just making up those numbers, but I think this might explain in a way that is less offensive.


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The interesting question is whether Catholics admit to the possibility that the others have anything true to say about subjects that the Catholics have wrong, or that the Catholics don't address at all. The answer seems to be "no".
Thus your percentages reduce simply to the proportion of the time those other denominations agree with Catholics.

[Bigdaddydvo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
OK fine. I wasn't going to interrupt you two. Now what of that proclamation by the Pope?

[/ QUOTE ]

David,

I think this answer from EWTN's "Ask a Catholic Expert" forum sums up the Pope's proclamation quite well:

[ QUOTE ]
I am wondering if you have read the actual text of the document. It is a statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, not directly from the pope, although it is issued under his authority.
I think that you are interpreting the text as saying that non-Catholic Churches and Protestant ecclesial communities have nothing good in them. This is not what the document is saying at all. Rather, it is saying that the fullness of truth and means of sanctification can be found in the Catholic Church, while various degrees of truth and sanctification can be found in other Churches and ecclesial communities.

This is a bit of an oversimplication, but it is like saying, "The Catholic Church has 100% of the truth, the Orthodox Churches 98%, the Anglican community 70%, Baptists 60%, Seventh Day Adventists 40%, Mormons 20%." I am just making up those numbers, but I think this might explain in a way that is less offensive.


[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

The interesting question is whether Catholics admit to the possibility that the others have anything true to say about subjects that the Catholics have wrong, or that the Catholics don't address at all. The answer seems to be "no".
Thus your percentages reduce simply to the proportion of the time those other denominations agree with Catholics.

[/ QUOTE ]

Couldn't I postulate something similar for you with respect to other poker authors being in agreement with your strategy?

e.g. Mason Malmuth 100%, Mike Caro 95%, Doyle Brunson 80%, Ken Warren 7%

So think of it that us Catholics view the correctness of our Faith with the same certainty that you have for the poker strategy you teach.

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
OK fine. I wasn't going to interrupt you two. Now what of that proclamation by the Pope?

[/ QUOTE ]

David,

I think this answer from EWTN's "Ask a Catholic Expert" forum sums up the Pope's proclamation quite well:

[ QUOTE ]
I am wondering if you have read the actual text of the document. It is a statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, not directly from the pope, although it is issued under his authority.
I think that you are interpreting the text as saying that non-Catholic Churches and Protestant ecclesial communities have nothing good in them. This is not what the document is saying at all. Rather, it is saying that the fullness of truth and means of sanctification can be found in the Catholic Church, while various degrees of truth and sanctification can be found in other Churches and ecclesial communities.

This is a bit of an oversimplication, but it is like saying, "The Catholic Church has 100% of the truth, the Orthodox Churches 98%, the Anglican community 70%, Baptists 60%, Seventh Day Adventists 40%, Mormons 20%." I am just making up those numbers, but I think this might explain in a way that is less offensive.


[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

The interesting question is whether Catholics admit to the possibility that the others have anything true to say about subjects that the Catholics have wrong, or that the Catholics don't address at all. The answer seems to be "no".
Thus your percentages reduce simply to the proportion of the time those other denominations agree with Catholics.

[/ QUOTE ]


David and Bigdaddy,

I think the better thing to do is not to compare various denominations with each other, but to an absolute standard. I realize that this is really what Bigdaddy means to say. Thus if you were grading a test on matters of fundamental theology and where as normal the highest score possible is 100, we catholics are saying our church gets that 100, and the other churches and denominations various lesser scores. For them to get 100, they have to answer the questions the same as we do, which is equivalent to becoming catholic.

Now as to other things, such as perhaps the best way to live out a moral christian life, albeit without all of the graces provided by the sacraments of the catholic church (but which the orthodox and copts have), then it can very well be the case that those denominations have something we lack, not as to first moral principles, but their application in daily life. Also it is well known that in general, protestants tend to know the bible better than catholics which is of course a plus. They just don't know how to properly interpret same though in many cases becasue they lack an authentic interpreter.

Although only the catholic and orthodox churches have a formal process and usage of declaring certain people to be saints after their deaths, there are surely nonetheless a great many protestant saints and martyrs in history. And the one that always comes to my mind first is the Lutheran pastor and German resistance leader, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the nazis shortly before the end of WWII. Those protestant saints, as with protestants today, are truly christian and provide a witness to the faith and our common saviour. They just lack the fullness of divine truth that is present in the catholic church.

And the protestants here would realize the truth of the above if they would study the earliest church fathers, and see the falsity of protestant claims that the catholic church has only existed since 325AD when it corrupted earlier pure theology and practice. They would see as shown by the quotes I gave from St. Irenaeus earlier, that there is an unbroken apostolic succession of bishops and popes from St. Peter until today.

[beset]

As a person who really enjoys theological discussion I just wanted to say that the 3 or 4 of you carrying this thread are doing a very good job.

When Bluff says that that Catholics are confident in there faith because of the apostolic succession and the unchanging tenets of the faith, he isn't talking about the peripherals, the political choices, the new and cutting edge moral issues in response to new technology--he is talking about the apostles creed and the sacraments. The core of the faith. It is comforting to a Christian to have an authoritative time-honored voice giving you the essentials, the beautiful jewel at the heart of Christian faith. I feel like it frees me up to focus on what matters, prayer and growing in relationship with the divine and improving the way I speak, act, think and treat my fellow human beings most importantly my wife and kids (the domestic Church). Not whether my pastor has it right or whether I should jump ship with the most recent schism.

Moreover, I've read Benedict's recent writing and I feel the media presentation of it and the understanding that those uneducated in Catholic theology would get from reading it is off by a few degrees. EWTN greatly simplified it but discussing the body of Christ (all properly baptized Christians) and their relationship to the earthly church is a subtle and challenging issue. I am sure the passages from the catechism regarding the salvation of protestants and others have been discussed in other threads before. Attempting to have this discussion with those who do not have a theological background requires the use of a different vocabulary then academic theological writing and doesn't seem like a particularly fruitful avenue. Christians largely agree on the core of the faith--why not just focus on that for now because if we get in the ecumenical dialog on if and and if so where the fullness of the faith resides on Earth it is bound to dissolve into apologetics. I have 8 years of upper-level jesuit education under my belt and I had to parse a lot of the information in this thread very slowly and I've studied most of it already.

[asics]

Don't see how this so-called "apostolic succession" tilts the scale one way or the other. If DS gets an STD from Brandi, dies an untimely death, and a son going by the name Sklansky inherits 2p2, what stock are we to put in books thereafter published by 2p2 (taking MM out of the equation for the moment)? If subsequent books are inconsistent with TOP, are we to believe these books are correct anyway simply because they are published by 2p2? Similarly, ten years later you don't evaluate David Jr.'s latest book by how it compares to his first books, you evaluate it by how it compares to TOP.

[BluffTHIS!]

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Christians largely agree on the core of the faith--why not just focus on that for now because if we get in the ecumenical dialog on if and and if so where the fullness of the faith resides on Earth it is bound to dissolve into apologetics.

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A good question for which I have a good answer. The first part of which is that truth is important, and since God is Truth, misdescribing Him or His revelation is a slight to Him, even if unintentional.

And the second part is that with hundreds of differing denominations, which granted agree on many *but not all* of the esentials, it is still harder to share the faith with non-believers who mainly will see the differences, which are primarily due to the so-called reformation that was to correct so-called errors of catholic theology, but which protestant denominations can't even agree among themselves on what needed fixing and what the fixes should be!



P.S. It sure is pathetic that under the guise of whatever excuse, NR has chosen not to respond further in this thread, even if only to say he will have to study the matter more and respond later.

[NotReady]

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even if only to say he will have to study the matter more and respond late


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What matter?