It does not surprise me in the least that individual Catholics, especially if they have not studied the matter in depth, will get one or more of the particulars wrong.
and then
I took the liberty of correcting David because I happen to know more about the Catholic view of justification than a lot of folks.
This raises some questions in my mind, which are all serious questions, not rhetorical:
1) How do I know you're not getting it wrong?
2) Why doesn't your priest blog for you?
3) Come to think of it, why doesn't the Magisterium take care of this kind of thing so as to make sure RC dogma doesn't go astray?
4) Can you make the obvious connection between:
Magisterial teaching VS how it is represented by individual RCs
and
Biblical teaching VS how it is represented by individual Prots ?
Then he says:
But my opinions still remain my opinions and are subject to correction by Catholics who know more than I.
How about by the Magisterium? Why not by them?
And if by them, will you tell me with a straight face that you have a way to communicate with one or more members thereof? If so, how? Email? Telephone?
I guess I'm asking, echoing Steve Hays, why those of our RC readers who object to things we say here don't take those things to their priest in order to make sure we here at the blog can get the Magisterial answer to stuff. Why don't the Pope and/or Magisterium do their own apologetics?
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8 comments:
"Why doesn't your priest blog for you?"
The Pontificator is a priest.
Oh, I see. Well, he also said this, so my question still stands.
1) How do I know you're not getting it wrong?
You don't.
I don't even know if I'm not getting it wrong, which is why I always invite correction from folks who know the Catholic faith better than I do.
That's why there is conversation, argument, debate, and mutual correction.
It does help, of course, if one can invoke authoritative sources to support one's case. But Catholic theology is not a wooden, dead reality. It is living and creative. It cannot be rigidly captured in scholastic formulae. As Richard Neuhaus puts it: “The Church’s teaching lives forward, and no definition, including that of councils, is entirely adequate to the whole of the truth.”
How do I know you are accurately representing the Reformed faith? which Reformed faith? whose Reformed faith?
You may want to research exactly what the magesterium is before you post like this again. The Magesterium is not people. It is the teaching authority of the church, embodied in the Bishops of the Church.
The Bishops do not invent doctrine, they ensure continuity of Apostolic doctrine.
"The Bishops do not invent doctrine, they ensure continuity of Apostolic doctrine."
You mean to say that Papal Infallibility, the Dogma of the Assumption, indulgences, treausury of merit, veneration of images, etc. are APOSTOLIC? Isn't this an anachronistic claim? The APOSTLES knew nothing about them.
The Magesterium is not people. It is the teaching authority of the church, embodied in the Bishops of the Church.
OK, so the Magisterium is not people, it's just embodied in people. Fine. And the people are the ones making the decisions, writing the decrees, etc. That just strikes me as a funny thing to say.
Albert said: "You mean to say that Papal Infallibility, the Dogma of the Assumption, indulgences, treausury of merit, veneration of images, etc. are APOSTOLIC? Isn't this an anachronistic claim? The APOSTLES knew nothing about them."
Right, those things existed in "seed" form, "implicit" in the Apostles' teaching, and they developed over time, in the same way that an acorn develops into an oak tree.
That's the official story, and it's a very pretty one, and many people are deceived by it. The difficulty comes when you look at the individual "seeds". James's discussion of the Assumption of Mary on AOMIN is a good case in point.
"That's the official story, and it's a very pretty one, and many people are deceived by it. The difficulty comes when you look at the individual "seeds". James's discussion of the Assumption of Mary on AOMIN is a good case in point."
I agree. James has shown that the kind of development (e.g. Dogma of the Assumption) Roman Catholic apologists defend will not stand the test of both Scripture and history.
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