Some recent conversations in the blogosphere continue to show how being Roman Catholic boils down to "sola ecclesia". For Roman Catholics, once you put your faith in trust and Rome all else is true because Rome says so.

It is difficult at times for me to understand why the RC system would be attractive, but Hodge provides some good insight:

"Romanists teach that the Church, as an external, visible society, consisting of those who profess the Christian religion, united in communion of the same sacraments and subjection to lawful pastors, and especially to the Pope of Rome, is divinely appointed to be the infallible teacher of men in all things pertaining to faith and practice. It is qualified for this office by the plenary revelation of the truth in the written and unwritten word of God, and by the supernatural guidance of the Holy Spirit vouchsafed to the bishops as official successors of the Apostles, or, to the Pope as the successor of Peter in his supremacy over the whole Church, and as vicar of Christ on earth.

There is something simple and grand in this theory. It is wonderfully adapted to the tastes and wants of men. It relieves them of personal responsibility. Everything is decided for them. Their salvation is secured by merely submitting to be saved by an infallible, sin-pardoning, and grace-imparting Church. Many may be inclined to think that it would have been a great blessing had Christ left on earth a visible representative of himself clothed with his authority to teach and govern, and an order of men dispersed through the world endowed with the gifts of the original Apostles, — men everywhere accessible, to whom we could resort in all times of difficulty and doubt, and whose decisions could be safely received as the decisions of Christ himself. God’s thoughts, however, are not as our thoughts. We know that when Christ was on earth, men did not believe or obey Him. We know that when the Apostles were still living, and their authority was still confirmed by signs, and wonders, and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, the Church was nevertheless distracted by heresies and schisms. If any in their sluggishness are disposed to think that a perpetual body of infallible teachers would be a blessing, all must admit that the assumption of infallibility by the ignorant, the erring, and the wicked must be an evil inconceivably great. The Romish theory if true might be a blessing; if false it must be an awful curse." Systematic Theology

Ending the Silence

Well, today I have been unmotivated and just bouncing around online so I thought I would actually update this blog. It's been over a year since I've put anything substantial on this blog - hard to believe. Time sure flies.

I am hoping to get back to blogging again in 2010. Now I just need to decide how to incorporate this blog since I prefer blogging at Beggars All where there are more people to interact with. I've considering letting this blog just be a more personal outlet on my theological thoughts and interests, but I'm not sure if that is what I want to do. I also have some new projects in mind.

I guess I will see what 2010 brings. I still have some loose ends to tie up.

Where I have Been

Wow, it's been 4 months since I last posted. For the most part I have been absent from my usual online activities, but I have really missed it. I really hope to get back to posting at Beggars All again, but it may be a few more months before that happens.

So where have I been? Well, I have been trying to build up some online work so that I can someday work from home. I'm tired of working outside of the home, have lost interest in my field and would like to have a more time to spend with my family and to pursue personal interests. Top amongst these "personal interests" is a better theological education (which may just be more time reading) and online apologetics.

Unfortunately, my progress so far is not so great. I don't have alot of extra time to spend on building up projects so it will take more time. In the meantime, I need to put blogging aside to focus.

I do have plans to start some new sites focused around some of my apologetic interests. But again, it will probably be awhile before I get to them.

Quiet Time

While there is never a loss of things to write about, I just have not had the time to pursue a given topic. The fact that September is quickly approaching doesn't help - I feel like I really need to enjoy what remains of summer.

I have some new responsiblities at work and a child starting school (which will change schedules around at my house) along with the usual stuff (eating, sleeping, etc.) I will continue to focus my efforts over at Beggars All but haven't quite decided what to do with this blog. Perhaps change to a more personal angle. Perhaps not.

Just thought I would update the 2 people who happen to read this blog. I wish I had more to share.

Trust in Mary

At the hour of our death...

Pope Benedict said, "prayer was the secret" of St. Edith Stein, who knew she was headed toward death, but radiated peace and concern for others.

St. Maximilian Kolbe's last words were reported to be the beginning of the Hail Mary, he said.

"It is moving to note that the humble and trusting recourse to the Blessed Mother is always a source of courage and serenity," he said.

As the church prepared to celebrate the Aug. 15 feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the pope told his visitors, "Let us renew our trust in the one who, from heaven, watches over us with maternal love at every moment." Catholic News

Back at Beggars

I just realized my most recent post said I was on a break. I am back, sorta, but only posting over at Beggars All. Here are some of my recent posts over there:

The Alleged Magisterial Perspicuity
Faith is Optional?
Victory Through Mary
Venerating Bones
Follow the Pope

I am taking a break from blogging.

I'll be back in a couple of months.

Choosing Religion

Muslim converts to Catholicism:

The Muslim-born journalist baptized by Pope Benedict XVI at the Easter Vigil said he wanted a public conversion to convince other former Muslims not to be afraid of practicing their new Christian faith.

Why did he convert?

“While he moved definitively away from Islam five years ago, Allam said it was Pope Benedict's teaching that convinced him to become a Catholic.

’He has said the basis for accepting a religion as true is how it accepts the basic rights of the person, the sacredness of life, freedom, choice (and) equality between men and women," Allam said.’”

Well, I guess if you are just looking for “religion”, that’s a reasonable method for choosing.

Jewish Salvation Without Christ

Writing in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, in December 2000, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote, "As Christians we are the inheritors of their faith in the one God."

"Our gratitude," the future pope wrote, "must be extended to our Jewish brothers and sisters who, despite the hardships of their own history, have held on to faith in this God right up to the present, and who witness to it in the sight of those peoples who, lacking knowledge of the one God, 'dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.'"

Two years later, Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Commission for Relations With the Jews, told a U.S. conference that Christians cannot ignore their core belief in the universality of salvation in Christ.

However, he said, "this does not mean that Jews, in order to be saved, have to become Christians; if they follow their own conscience and believe in God's promises as they understand them in their religious tradition, they are in line with God's plan, which for us comes to historical completion in Jesus Christ."

-Catholic News

Relic Escort

“Led by 18 sharply dressed Italian military police on horseback, hundreds of people who care for the sick escorted a relic of St. Bernadette Soubirous into St. Peter's Square.

The procession down the main street leading to the square opened festivities at the Vatican marking the Feb. 11 feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and the World Day of the Sick.

The golden reliquary containing one of the French visionary's ribs was carried into St. Peter's Basilica, where midday prayers were led by Cardinal Angelo Comastri, archpriest of the basilica.”

-Catholic News

Canon Ratified at Trent

Yves Congars writes:" "...an official, definitive list of inspired writings did not exist in the Catholic Church until the Council of Trent..."Congars, Tradition and Traditions, p.38

The English translator of the Council of Trent, H.J. Schroeder: "The Tridentine list or decree was the first infallible and effectual promulgated declaration on the Canon of Holy Scriptures." The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, footnote #4, p.17

“The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.” Old Catholic Encyclopedia

The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the OT canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent.” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967

For my own bookmark:
[http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/01/legendary-alexandrian-canon.html]

“No two Septuagint codices contain the same apocrypha, and no uniform Septuagint ‘Bible’ was ever the subject of discussion in the patristic church. In view of these facts the Septuagint codices appear to have been originally intended more as service books than as a defined and normative canon of Scripture,” E. E. Ellis, The Old Testament in Early Christianity (Baker 1992), 34-35.

“As we have seen, manuscripts of anything like the capacity of Codex Alexandrinus were not used in the first centuries of the Christian era, and since, in the second century AD, the Jews seem largely to have discarded the Septuagint…there can be no real doubt that the comprehensive codices of the Septuagint, which start appearing in the fourth century AD, are all of Christian origin,” R. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (Eerdmans 1986), 382.

“Nor is there agreement between the codices which of the Apocrypha t include. Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus all include Tobit, Judith, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, and integrate them into the body of the Old Testament, rather than appending them at the end; but Codex Vaticanus, unlike the other two, totally excludes the Books of Maccabees. Moreover, all three codices, according to Kenyon, were produced in Egypt, yet the contemporary Christian lists of the biblical books drawn up in Egypt by Athanasius and (very likely) pseudo-Athanasius are much more critical, excluding all apocryphal books from the canon, and putting them in a separate appendix. It seems, therefore, that the codices, with their less strict approach, do not reflect a definite canon so much as variable reading-habits; and the reading-habits would in the nature of the case be those of fourth and fifth-century Christians, which might not agree with those of first-century Jews,” ibid. 383.

“At this point we encounter the Greek Old Testament in the three great codices of the fourth and fifth centuries: Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus…All exceeded the scope of the Hebrew Bible…In Vaticanus, however, all four of the books of Maccabees are missing and in Sinaiticus, 2 and 3 Macabees, as well as 1 Ezra, Baruch and Letter of Jeremiah—presumably only the result of lacunae in the text. Codex Alexandrinus, approximately one century younger, is, in contrast, much more extensive; it includes the LXX as we know it in Rahlfs’ edition, with all four books of Maccabees and the fourteen Odes appended to Psalms. The Odes also include the Prayer of Manasseh, previously attested only in the Syria Didaskalia and the Apostolic Constitutions,” M. Hengel, The Septuagint as Christian Scripture (Baker 2004), 57-58.

“It should be considered, further, that the Odes (sometimes varied in number), attested from the fifth century in all Greek Psalm manuscripts, contain three New Testament ‘psalms’: the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Nunc Dimittis from Luke’s birth narrative, and the conclusion of the hymn that begins with the ‘Gloria in Excelsis.’ This underlines the fact that the LXX, although, itself consisting of a collection of Jewish documents, wishes to be a Christian book. The relative openness of the Old Treatment portion of these oldest codices also corresponds to that of its ‘New Testament’: Sinaiticus contains Barnabas and Hermas, Alexandrinus 1 and 2 Clement,” ibid. 59.

Digging up Relics

“The body of St. Padre Pio will be exhumed, studied and displayed for public veneration from mid-April to late September, said the archbishop who oversees the shrine where the saint is buried.

Archbishop Domenico D'Ambrosio, papal delegate for the shrine in San Giovanni Rotondo, announced Jan. 6 that he and the Capuchin friars of Padre Pio's community had decided it was important to verify the condition of the saint's body and find a way to ensure its preservation.

"It is my personal conviction and that of the confreres of St. Pio that we have an obligation to give the generations that will come after us the possibility of venerating and preserving in the best possible way the mortal remains of St. Pio," Archbishop D'Ambrosio said.

…In addition to marking the 40th anniversary of Padre Pio's death Sept. 23, 1968, the public veneration of his remains also will coincide with the 90th anniversary of the day on which he was believed to have received the stigmata, bloody wounds recalling the crucifixion wounds of Jesus.”

-Catholic News

The Pope on Mary

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI called on Christians to turn to Mary, the mother of God, for help in being true friends of Jesus and courageous builders of peace.

…He invited the faithful to "carefully consider the importance of the presence of Mary in the life of the church and in our own personal life" and prayed that Mary would help "make us more keenly aware of her maternal presence."

…The incarnation through Christ's birth is not a past event, the pope said; like the Magi and the poor shepherds of Bethlehem, today's men and women drawn to the Christ Child are "full of joy because God wanted to be the God who is with us and who has a mother who is our mother."

…"In fact, being totally with God, this woman is very close to us and helps us like a mother and like a sister," he said.

Mary is also the mother of the church, the pope said, which makes her the mother of "every one of us who are members of the mystical body of Christ."

Pope Benedict asked audience participants to trust in Mary and pray to her to "guide our steps" during the new year and "help us be authentic friends of her son and that way also (be) courageous builders of his kingdom in the world, the kingdom of peace and truth."

"Supported and comforted by the Virgin's protection, we too can contemplate with renewed vision the face of her son, Jesus, and more energetically follow the path of the good," he said.

-Catholic News

Recovering the Bible

Hmmm...

"The world Synod of Bishops on the Bible should help reignite "passion for the word of God in the church," said Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, secretary-general of the synod.

…The archbishop said the responses show a widespread desire to recover the interest and enthusiasm for studying and praying with the Bible that marked the years immediately after the Second Vatican Council.

..."However, the responses indicate there have been gaps in the knowledge of the Bible, partiality in its interpretation (and) omissions in the area of the biblical apostolate," he said. "Our hope is that the synod assembly will help recover the passion for the word of God in the church."

…In his presentation at the December conference, Archbishop Eterovic said special attention should be paid to improving translations of the Bible, guaranteeing that they are accurate and that the faithful are furnished with commentaries that help them understand the passages the way the church understands them.

He said many of the bishops' responses to the outline focused particularly on the need to help Catholics understand the way the church has understood the Bible with the help of its tradition and what it has taught over time."

-Catholic News

I wonder if an official bible commentary would limit Catholioc e-pologist's interpretations? I also wonder how easy it will be to meld "what has been taught over time" and the now-fashionable "development of doctrine".

Just Say No to Ecumenism

I'm glad my denomination is not part of the BWA.

"…The pope met privately at the Vatican Dec. 6 with more than 20 delegates who were in Rome for a meeting of the joint international commission sponsored by the Baptist World Alliance and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Pope Benedict said if reconciliation and greater fellowship between Baptists and Catholics were to be realized certain issues "need to be faced together, in a spirit of openness, mutual respect and fidelity" to the Gospel.

He said some of the "historically controverted issues" that needed further discussion include "the relationship between Scripture and tradition, the understanding of baptism and the sacraments, the place of Mary in the communion of the church, and the nature of oversight and primacy in the church's ministerial structure."

… Catholics place great emphasis on the sacraments, with particular reverence for Christ's presence in the Eucharist. Baptists recognize baptism and the Lord's Supper but refer to them as biblical "ordinances," carried out in obedience to the Lord's commands in Scripture.

Baptists honor Mary as the mother of Jesus Christ, but they do not address prayer to Mary or the saints because Jesus is the only mediator between human beings and God."

-Catholic News

Sadly, it appears these Baptists are willing to compromise the gospel while the Catholics won't even compromise on Mary.

Lourdes Indulgence

"To mark the 150th anniversary of Mary's appearance to St. Bernadette Soubirous near Lourdes, France, Pope Benedict XVI authorized a special indulgence to encourage renewed holiness.

Catholics can receive a plenary indulgence for taking part in any public or private devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes, said U.S. Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican court dealing with indulgences and matters of conscience.

...An indulgence is a remission of the temporal punishment due for sins committed. A plenary indulgence is the remission of all punishment.

Cardinal Stafford said the indulgence can also be applied to the souls of the faithful in purgatory.

...Cardinal Stafford said that to obtain the special indulgence one must fulfill the normal requirements set by the church for all plenary indulgences; these include the person going to confession within a reasonably short period of time, receiving the Eucharist and praying for the intentions of the pope, all in a spirit of total detachment from the attraction of sin."

-Catholic News

Anonymous Commenting

I have disabled anonymous commenting on the blog. We were having alot of trouble over at Beggars All with belligerent anonymous commenters and I have had a few here myself, so I have decided to just get rid of the anonymous function. Of course, anyone can sign up for a blogger account and then be able to comment.

Mrs. LB, who had commented on a previous post, took the time to get a blogger account to post an invitation to the anonymous commenter she was interacting with in that post. Since she took the time to extend the invitation, I thought I would highlight it here so it isn't missed:

For anon, I'd like to extend an invite for you to join the Fresh Hope Apologetics Forum so as to continue discussing the errors of Catholic doctrines/practices. Fresh Hope Forums -Mrs. LB

I hope that "anonymous" will accept the invitation.

Quiet on the Blogfront

Just a quick note about this blog.

Since joining Beggars All my posting here has trailed off dramatically. I don't forsee that changing and will continue to focus my efforts there. I have cut back dramatically on my blogging time and don't have the time to spend here.

Instead I will continue to use this blog for keeping track of quotes and resources I find interesting. I will however try to keep up with any comments made here.

Catholic Quotes on the Bible

"Tradition, without Holy Scripture, Old or New, sufficed for years, and could still suffice. But Holy Scripture has never sufficed by itself; it always stood in need of Tradition. For it is only by Tradition that we learn that Holy Scripture is an inspired book. It is only Tradition that can give with authority and certainty the right meaning of Holy Scripture. Without Tradition the Holy Scripture may be made to speak in many discordant ways, thus destroying its authority altogether. "

-Catholic Belief