Posted by Phil St. Romain on May 18, 19101 at 09:44:38:
In Reply to: Re: Cease and desist from this Catholic-bashing of yours! posted by Gold Acacia on May 18, 19101 at 08:23:47:
: Phil, I'm afraid you misunderstood what I meant by "degraded system." I am not here to bash Catholicism.
: What kind of person do you think I am? Do you really think that a fellow believer would come to your bulletin board just to bash Catholicism?
Well, I don't know, but I didn't go for k's Catholic triumphalism either.
So, let's examine a few more of your statements to see where you are with Catholicism.
1) Historically speaking, did Jesus seek to start a new institution, or did He call people out of an established institution?
False dualism. Non-sequitor. The answer, of course, is neither. Jesus did not come to call people out of an institution or into an institution, but into relationship with the Father through communion with Him in the Spirit. But already, you have set things up, you see?
Now, I know that Catholic history records Peter as having been the first pope, and I won't argue that (although there is little evidence Biblically for this).
So what? The bible gives us only the first few years of Christian history, and not a comprehensive report, at that. That Peter was not called Pope then: so what? He was considered the first Pope by the beginning of the 2nd century, and he is always considered first among the Apostles.
Here we see the context for dialogue: anything outside the Bible "doesn't count." Good-bye Tradition. But even sticking with the Bible, you haven't proven anything. And so you go on:
But in light of his transgressions against the Lord (Jesus even called him Satan at one point) and his denial of the Lord at a most crucial time, would the establishment of a religious organization by Peter have been of divine ordination as the Catholic church claims?
It would indeed, if that's what the Lord wanted! Have you not read the end of John's Gospel, where he and Jesus are reconciled, and Jesus tells him to feed His sheep? Seems Jesus had a pretty high view of Peter!
2) Logic: I guess your asserting that it is illogical to be anything other than Catholic. I'm not certain what you are intending here. From what logical angle are you arguing that every believer should be Catholic?
K was wrong to be so blatantly triumphalistic, and I didn't see that post until a whole string of dialogue had happened. The Catholic Church certainly does not say that non-Catholics are not "real Christians." Why be more Catholic than the Pope, or the Catechism?
3) The Bible does not record any religious institutions being established after the Lord's resurrection and ascension, especially Catholicism.
Ha! Let's see Witness Lee try to form an institution with the Jews or the Romans trying to extinguish him! No institution, as such, but there WAS organization: first the Apostles, then the prophets, etc.
Now, there were believers meeting from house to house in the earliest days of the church (the Body of Christ); that's recorded in Acts 2:42-47 (notice also that vs.46 says "simplicity of heart?"). And later, Paul established church localities all over the Mediteranian (sp?). But there is no indication of a Catholic organization.
It WAS Catholic, in the sense of universal, and it WAS accountable to Apostolic authority, the leader of whom was Peter. Just plain historical fact, here!
In fact (historically speaking again) Catholicism was not established until hundreds of years after the Lord's death (circa A.D. 306 under Constantine).
Re-translation: the Catholic Christianity that existed before the conversion of Constantine, but which was hardly ever allowed to live in the light of day because various Roman emperors wanted to extinguish it, was finally able to emerge after Constantine's conversion. It did become institutionalized and even arrogant, at times, afterwards, for sure. But to say that Catholicism didn't exist before Constantine is nonsense: pure historical revisionism. There was already a papal lineage, a means of transmitting authority, a consensus on biblical canon, a common ritual, dogmas, etc. That was Catholicism, friend, and they didn't always meet in homes. They met in catacombs and larger assembly places when they could, and when they weren't being persecuted.
Perhaps you do want to dialogue, Gold Acacia, but it seems that you do so with some pretty significant limitations in your knowledge of Church history, and some pretty obvious biases against Catholicism. So even if this is not your intent, your intellectual formation has been such that this is what you end up communicating.
I'm off this thread now . . . not much else to say about it.