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Replying to marco]
At the risk of provoking Mr Chesterton by getting involved here, may I comment?
Marco, you know I can’t resist that kind of temptation.
Ecclesiastical claims are largely based on hope, and I agree with you, the closer the claim comes to modernity, the less truth is attached to hope.
I agree with most of that. I mean any religious claim regarding the supernatural is of course a matter of faith, but a religious claim based on historical record and human reasoning is a claim based on facts and logic.
But yes, the same faith that one might exercise to believe Jesus is who He says He is, is the same faith required to believe in His Church. To believe Jesus is the son of God is to accept the testimony of our fellow man. It is to accept the eye witness accounts and historical record of the dates and names and places in the Jesus narrative as adding up. The exact same reasoning process is used to know Christ’s Church.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
770 The Church is in history, but at the same time she transcends it. It is only "with the eyes of faith"183 that one can see her in her visible reality and at the same time in her spiritual reality as bearer of divine life.
771 "The one mediator, Christ, established and ever sustains here on earth his holy Church, the community of faith, hope, and charity, as a visible organization through which he communicates truth and grace to all men."184 The Church is at the same time:
- a "society structured with hierarchical organs and the mystical body of Christ;
-the visible society and the spiritual community;
-the earthly Church and the Church endowed with heavenly riches."185
These dimensions together constitute "one complex reality which comes together from a human and a divine element":186
779 The Church is both visible and spiritual, a hierarchical society and the Mystical Body of Christ. She is one, yet formed of two components, human and divine. That is her mystery, which only faith can accept.
As one who proudly chanted "super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam" and looked with disdain on Calvin's crowd as usurpers I have to say that "ecclesia", as Christ would have understood the term in his own tongue, is not a stone building but a gathering of people.
No one teaches that the Church is merely a stone building. Do you know the Church’s teachings regarding the Church? No where does she declare some building in Vatican City as the Church. Nor would she ever falsely declare church simply means a gathering of people or an invisible body of believers. The truth is the Church teaches the Church includes the body of believers, as well as the magisterium, as well as her Communion of Saints in heaven.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains how there are “three states of the Church … at the present time some of his disciples are pilgrims on earth. Others have died and are being purified, while still others are in glory, contemplating ‘in full light, God himself triune and one, exactly as he is'� (CCC 954).
Traditionally these three states have been referred to as the Church Militant, Church Penitent (also known as Church Suffering or Church Expectant) and Church Triumphant. Together, these three make up the Communion of Saints we confess in the Creed.
https://aleteia.org/2017/10/22/the-visi ... r-reality/
752 In Christian usage, the word "church" designates the liturgical assembly,141 but also the local community142 or the whole universal community of believers.143 These three meanings are inseparable. "The Church" is the People that God gathers in the whole world. She exists in local communities and is made real as a liturgical, above all a Eucharistic, assembly. She draws her life from the word and the Body of Christ and so herself becomes Christ's Body.
760 Christians of the first centuries said, "The world was created for the sake of the Church."153 God created the world for the sake of communion with his divine life, a communion brought about by the "convocation" of men in Christ, and this "convocation" is the Church. The Church is the goal of all things,154 and God permitted such painful upheavals as the angels' fall and man's sin only as occasions and means for displaying all the power of his arm and the whole measure of the love he wanted to give the world:
765 The Lord Jesus endowed his community with a structure that will remain until the Kingdom is fully achieved. Before all else there is the choice of the Twelve with Peter as their head.168 Representing the twelve tribes of Israel, they are the foundation stones of the new Jerusalem.169 The Twelve and the other disciples share in Christ's mission and his power, but also in his lot.170 By all his actions, Christ prepares and builds his Church.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/a ... 23a9p1.htm
And Peter, that worthy rock who sank in the sea, was probably not the first Bishop of Rome. Tradition makes him so
So, you agree Sacred Tradition (the Church) made Peter the first Pope? If Sacred Tradition (the Church) had made someone else the first Bishop of Rome, well then that would have been the Tradition and yet as history reveals that isn’t what happened, is it? Heck, there might have been a few chaps at the time who claimed the title of Bishop of Rome, but only Jesus and His Church chose Peter.
and presents his successor as the ghost Linus.
I do not understand your comments. Linus was the second Pope, as we know from history. What does your term
ghost mean?
Tradition speaketh not infallibly as we know from the sad sacking of poor Christopher, canonised for carrying the rather heavy boy Jesus. (Christopher of course means bearer of Christ), then de-canonised.
I’m afraid you once again have your facts wrong Marco. That is not exactly how it went down. You seem to be quick to believe perpetuated Protestant propaganda, while not understanding the truth of the matter. Christopher was not de-canonized, nor does the matter have anything to do with infallibility, nor have Catholics stopped their devotions to Christopher. You seem to have gotten a great deal wrong. And if wrong about this little affair, I wonder what else you might be getting wrong about greater matters . . .
St. Christopher is still recognized as a saint, though his feast day no longer appears on the Church’s universal liturgical calendar. He was one of the early martyrs about whom not much is known. Many of the early saints, including Christopher, were never formally canonized but were acclaimed as saints by Christian communities. In recent decades the Church has removed the feast days of obscure saints from the universal liturgical calendar, but the saints still remain saints, and their feast days may still be observed by parishes bearing their name and by those with a continuing devotion to the saint.
The Church never issued any kind of decree saying that Christopher never existed. Furthermore, competent hagiographers, including Protestant ones, tell us that there was a Christopher, but we just don’t know as much about him as some of the legends that grew up around him would suggest.
Second, it would not matter even if there were no Christopher. Papal infallibility applies only to those canonizations that a pope has done. Christopher was recognized as a saint in the period before popes became involved in the process, meaning his canonization is not subject to papal infallibility.
One can question whether Christopher should have been omitted. The devotions to him were broad-based enough that they would seem to make him a saint of “universal significance.� Nevertheless, nowhere in this reform is it implied that he did not exist or that he was not a saint.
https://www.catholic.com/qa/did-the-chu ... -is-a-myth
I think a Church that has Latin hymns, a beautiful missa cantata and a magnificent requiem mass with dies irae in the background, rises above the many offshoots.
I do too, however not because of any of those things. I submit those beautiful things are simply manifestations of many of the Church’s members in beautifully giving glory to God, which does along with other amazing works of art, all too often come from devout Catholics. I guess their love and understanding of our Lord simply gives rise to incredible masterpieces.
If indeed I am in error and my old Church is really the one, true, catholic and apostolic, that will be a nice surprise when God shakes his head at my folly.
I think nice surprise would be an understatement.
But having sweated blood over mathematical intricacies and glimpsed God's secret book there, I am a little less tolerant of traditional lore. The bible does not tell us so, as the hymn suggests: we interpret so.
Hmmm . . . and here many human beings do seem to see more clearly than others. Since we are nearing the end, I need to post some words from Chesterton . . .
“you make a reasonable case, but what a great deal you leave out.�
Chesterton had beautiful insight regarding believers . . .
“His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus, he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus, he believes that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.�
As well as accurate insight regarding non believers . . .
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.� ― G.K. Chesterton,
Also, in regards to your disappointment that you find God’s book confusing and full of hidden secrets, could that perhaps be why God gave us His Church? You know, in case we weren’t completely sure? And so that we wouldn’t have to sweat blood over the intricacies?
Back to the topic, hell remains for me what one of its present inhabitants taught me, a place of awful torture, particularly of boys who did not know the catechism word perfectly.
I’m not sure whether you are just trying to be funny here or you truly were mistreated or abused in your Catholic school experience. If it is true you had cruel nuns who delighted in torturing you, please accept my deepest apology. They were clearly ignorant wretches who should not have been working with impressionable young children who they should have been showing the beauty and truth of the Church and love Jesus Christ. If you are being serious, they failed miserably in their vocation. Of course, there is also the possibility that your perception has been clouded in an attempt to justify your rejection of God and His Church.
I’m inclined to give a passionate nun the benefit of the doubt in believing teaching and knowing ones catechism is the building blocks to future growth and knowledge. I will never forget the amount of time devoted to and given to memorizing our multiplication tables in 3rd grade. We were verbally quizzed in front of the whole class and day after day we had races and contests to see who could yell out the answer the quickest. The teacher made sure every student knew these facts inside and out. At the time, I thought it was overkill. What did it matter if I could say them in under 30 seconds? Years later I recognized the value of those drills. Everything else in math built upon them and it was usually necessary to know them without having to think.
Reducing the Church to an invisible
body of believers only is illogical. Yes, it is easy. It’s the easy path/way. It allows us to pick and choose, do as we like, etc. It leaves the door open and allows us to while claiming to be obedient to Christ only in reality means we are obedient to ourselves – our own feelings, perceptions, inclinations, and unfortunately deceptions. Unless Jesus is speaking audibly to you on a daily basis it simply means we do what we
feel is right, wrought with justification, rationalization, pride, etc. But as Chesterton reminds us . . .
"I don’t want a church to be right when I am right, I want a church to be right when I am wrong."
That is what a visible, authoritative, infallible, Catholic, Holy, and Apostolic Church gives us. And Christ knew that.
I'm pray'n for you Marco -- I'm pray'n for ya!
