RCC Priest says Jesus may have been married

Brian,

Not cranky at all. It just "offends" you that I proclaim boldy what I believe because it is true. Not because I have discovered it myself in the pages of the Bible (though I have in a secondary sense), for if I had "discovered" otherwise it would still be true. No it is not my discovery that has placed me in his truth but his grace and mercy which he wishes for you also. And so I must proclaim boldly rather than water it down with realativism.

It would behove you to get yourself a copy of the Jurgen's "Faith of our Fathers" and read through it and find out how uneduactated you are in this idea of the Early Church being so disjointed. (though not understanding Catholicism you may not pick up on how Catholic these guys really were anyway). When I read Augustine in Africa and Ignatius in Antioch and Clement in Rome and John Chrystrom in Constantiople and many othersand there are elements of all of them that are distinctly Catholic, while I find nothing in them contradictory to Catholicism, I think Irenaus was right about the great unity in the Church at that time. On issues such as the real prescence in the Eucharist, Baptismal Regeneration, and the Perpetual virginity of Mary among many other you can quote dozens who believed it throughout the world while those who don't you can even cover half of five fingers. Even on the issue of the Papacy, nowhere can you find the Petros arguement that Protestants like to use even among the heretics, most of whom look to Rome to resolve the issues they have also. It was far greater than the unity that exists now after the reforamtion. Disunity is not of God no matter how many protestant pastors have told me so (and they have). It is actually an icredible act of the spirit of God working through sacred Oral tradition that in spite of the miles between them the held "fast to the traditions that" they "had recieved, whether by WORD OF MOUTH or in writing from us". When we are supposed to "worship in spirit and truth" you say we can never know the truth. You say I am once saved always saved, yet you cannot even know that your interprutation that causes you to be OSAS is true. Therefore you are only OSAS if your interprutation is correct. You are no more sure of your salvation than the man on the moon by your system of salvatoin because you are not sure that that system is infallibly correct. If your OSAS doctrine is false it is worse than neutral, for it leads you astray. Only that your fallible interprutatoin of the scriptures has deemed it so.

Sorry got sidetracked.

Don't take the boldness of my posts as a dislike or crankieness of you Brian. I am quite certain that in person we would be quite good friends.

Blessings

 

I get the distinction, but I don't think that difficulties between brothers is something that would worry the universal Church either, for these things CAN be settled in a local manner. I don't see how this voids the possibility of a real live universal authority over the faith and morals of Christians, something that SHOULDN'T be different.

Thanks for checking up on me. I appreciate it. This semester is finally coming to a close (just wrote a research paper last night...yuck), but its going well. I'm still a good 7.5 years away from ordination, God willing.

 

Brian,

While I appreciate your honesty (VERY MUCH SO!), I don't see how your last argument works. With their being a local shepard only, that means (other than God), there is no one to keep him in line, to check on his work and repremand if necessary. You could argue that the assembly has this power, but what if the assembly does nothing, or the majority are in agreement with this shepard who may have gone astray?

Do to the lack of checks and balances, I can see (and have witnessed in local assemblies back at my small home town in AR) pastors who are obviously power hungry. I see it as an unavoidable consequence of positions with responsibility. Can the pope become corrupted? Absolutely, and we've seen it happen (although these corrupt men, by virtue of their office, could not teach error by prevention of the Holy Spirit, in spite of themselves). However, there is no valid argument that states that the leader of a local assembly cannot and will not suffer the same fate.

 

Excuse me for butting in but the local assembly model is not contrary to the Catholic teaching as the local Church must run it's own internal affairs such as the color of the carpet. We don't wait for the Pope to tell us what kind of carpet to lay and which brand. I haven't noticed any national contracts for installing carpet from home depot in all the Churches

The local Protestant radio station says that 25% of the pastors every couple of years are thrown out so it seems the Protestant system doesn't work too much with the pastor unless they like him. Can't remember the exact number but it's something like 30,000 pastors have left the ministery in the last ten years because the pressure is so high. I know of one instance where the guy wasn't a bad guy at all and they threw him out because he wanted to focus more on the OT than they had in the past. Here is the problem that I find with your local Church only system.

"Doctrinally it takes a full memebership vote to change something and so there is not swaying with the wind as pastors come and go. "

Perhaps you could find me a verse that says there was a vote by a local Church on doctrine in the Bible? (you may think Acts 15 but it won't get ya there bud. It wasn't local though there may have been a vote on what James proposed about eating meat sacrifiece to idols. )
Now the Apostles as a whole were given the power to bind and loose (matt 18) and passed this on to their successors. While you may say this is not stated in the Bible that they had successors (something I disagree with) there is even less reason to believe from the Bible that the local Church should vote on doctrine from scripture. Get me the verse or three.


I'm going to put smiley's and wavey's in so you don't think I'm cranky. I almost never am when I write to you or anyone else on this board.

Blessings

Gerald