 |
| Author | Post |
|---|
val4u
Member
| Joined: | Tue Jan 23rd, 2007 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 15 |
| First Name: | bill | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | cradle Catholic |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Tue Aug 21st, 2007 07:58 am |
|
Why do some Protestants refer to the Catholic Church as an apostate church and call us paganized christians and how do we answer those statements?
Thanks, Bill
|
|
|
David W. Emery
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Brownsville, Texas USA |
| Posts: | 1865 |
| First Name: | David | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Catholic |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Tue Aug 21st, 2007 10:50 am |
|
This has to do with the charges of corruption made by the original Reformers. The Catholic Church has acknowledged that there was corruption, and it worked for internal reform as a result. The Council of Trent was not exclusively about combatting Protestantism.
However, in order to justify their definitive separation from the Catholic Church, the Reformers had to go a step farther and declare that the damage to the Church was in fact irreparable. Hence the charge of apostasy rather than simple corruption.
The later charges of a “paganized” Church stem from the charge of apostasy. They are part of the polemics of the immediate post-Reformation period. There is not much truth to them; they can be dismissed as unhistorical. And if anyone persists, we can point to the de-Christianization of the Protestant and Evangelical sects as yet another example.
The simplest reply to the charge of apostasy is as follows: If Christianity was embodied for the first millennium and a half in the Catholic Church, then to claim that henceforth it would be embodied in the bible is not legitimate. It constitutes a disconnect from all that went before.
If indeed the Catholic Church became totally apostate and ceased to be the only vehicle of Christianity as it had been heretofore, then Christianity as a whole was apostate and dead as a religion. Christ’s word, “Behold, I am with you all days, even until the end of the world” and “When the Spirit comes, he will teach you all truth” will be proved false, and Christ himself would be discredited. Furthermore, any subsequent “restoration” is therefore not the religion instituted by Christ, but a new one created by its human founder.
The bible, for all its wisdom, then becomes a dead book, and its followers the proponents of sects: “Each one of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Corinthians 1:12–13).
David
|
|
|
CajunRick
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Houma, Louisiana USA |
| Posts: | 5157 |
| First Name: | Rick (& Kermie) | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Lifetime Catholic, Latin Rite |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Tue Aug 21st, 2007 03:00 pm |
|
David W. Emery wrote: The simplest reply to the charge of apostasy is as follows: If Christianity was embodied for the first millennium and a half in the Catholic Church, then to claim that henceforth it would be embodied in the bible is not legitimate. It constitutes a disconnect from all that went before.
If indeed the Catholic Church became totally apostate and ceased to be the only vehicle of Christianity as it had been heretofore, then Christianity as a whole was apostate and dead as a religion. Christ’s word, “Behold, I am with you all days, even until the end of the world” and “When the Spirit comes, he will teach you all truth” will be proved false, and Christ himself would be discredited. Furthermore, any subsequent “restoration” is therefore not the religion instituted by Christ, but a new one created by its human founder.
Many today claim that the apostacy began with the legalization of Christianity and the "paganization" of the Church by Constantine. Some claim it came even earlier. I recently had someone tell me that the first Christians were Baptists and the Church fell into apostacy as soon as the last apostle (John) died, but a "Baptist remnant" remained in hiding until conditions allowed them to surface in the 19th century. I asked for proof, and of course there is none since they were in hiding.
The idea seems even more ludicrous than the Da Vinci Code to me, but they believe it. And there is no effective answer, just like you can't prove that aliens have never visited earth, or that there is a vast worldwide conspiracy to do whatever it is the conspiracy theorists are afraid of this week.
____________________
Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
Luquette Lane
|
|
|
Racaela Fultz
Member
| Joined: | Sat Aug 4th, 2007 |
| Location: | Indiana USA |
| Posts: | 146 |
| First Name: | Racaela | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Nondenominational, will be Catholic Advent 2007 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Tue Aug 21st, 2007 05:47 pm |
|
Rick said:
"Many today claim that the apostacy began with the legalization of Christianity and the "paganization" of the Church by Constantine. Some claim it came even earlier. I recently had someone tell me that the first Christians were Baptists and the Church fell into apostacy as soon as the last apostle (John) died, but a "Baptist remnant" remained in hiding until conditions allowed them to surface in the 19th century."
I've heard this too! Not the same words, but the same idea. See, I'd always been told that the Church apostasized, so I started looking for when, and my date kept moving back and back. And low and behold, Catholic dogma and doctrine goes back all the way! If the Church right after the apostles died immediately apostasized, what hope have we of getting it right?!
Anyway, that's my thought.
____________________
"To be deep in history is to cease to be protestant" - Cardinal Newman
|
|
|
BettyBoopToo
Member
| Joined: | Mon Oct 9th, 2006 |
| Location: | Camas/Washougal, Washington USA |
| Posts: | 538 |
| First Name: | Betty | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Fist Baptist/Calvary Babtist/Secular Confusion/ Roman Catholic |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Tue Aug 21st, 2007 09:11 pm |
|
CajunRick wrote:
I recently had someone tell me that the first Christians were Baptists and the Church fell into apostacy as soon as the last apostle (John) died, but a "Baptist remnant" remained in hiding until conditions allowed them to surface in the 19th century. I asked for proof, and of course there is none since they were in hiding.
It is so funny that you mention this. I was taught this the entire time I was growning up. the other theory that I had been taught by another sunday school teacher was; "The trail of Blood" theory. It was not until I was on the way to becoming catholic that I found an explaination of it in Steve Rays web-site. http://catholicconvert.com/Portals/0/TrailOfBlood.doc
I will always be thankful for the sunday school teachers that I grew up with and their adament stand that the Baptist church was the church that Christ established and he did not establish more than one church. If they would not have been so firm on this, I may have thought that all the different churches were a normal result of the christian church, kind of like the many tribes of isreal.
Racaela, I don't know why I've not thought of it before, but considering you come from a baptist back ground, then you may really appreciate Steve Ray's web-site. He was a fundamentalist baptist and now he is Catholic. He has also authored some books that I have very much enjoyed along my jouney. http://catholicconvert.com/Default.aspx?tabid=36
If you go up to resources at the top of the page and click on Steve's writings, you will find a very long list of short writings on all different topics that may help you when your discussing with your parents.
Betty
____________________
Patience
"Whenever anything disagreeable or displeasing happens to you, remember Christ crucified and be silent."
St. John of the Cross
|
|
|
val4u
Member
| Joined: | Tue Jan 23rd, 2007 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 15 |
| First Name: | bill | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | cradle Catholic |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Wed Aug 22nd, 2007 04:04 am |
|
Thank you all, very informative, I have Baptist friends who tolerate me because I mean well and am a good guy. They wonder why I don't see their "truth" and I wonder why they can't see the truth. Now, I have some more knowledge. Thanks again
Bill
|
|
|
MichaelStEdmund
Member
| Joined: | Fri Dec 28th, 2007 |
| Location: | USA |
| Posts: | 98 |
| First Name: | Michael | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Convert from pentacostal/charismatic/holiness background |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Wed Mar 19th, 2008 02:15 pm |
|
The funny (as in peculiar) thing about the Great Apostasy is that no one can quite tell you when it happened. Each group has its own theory as to when and where the early Church (they'll probably never call it Catholic) went wrong.
1) It went corrupt as soon as the last apostle died. The Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and some Protestant groups hold to this idea. In the 1800's Darby put the idea forth as "the Church in ruins." It helps explain why the Apostolic Fathers in the early 2nd century were so darn CATHOLIC - there had been immediate corruption after St. John passed away! Sometimes a quote is pulled from St. Hegesippus to "prove" how immediate the corruption was:
Up to that period the Church had remained like a virgin pure and uncorrupted: for, if there were any persons who were disposed to tamper with the wholesome rule of the preaching of salvation, they still lurked in some dark place of concealment or other. But, when the sacred band of apostles had in various ways closed their lives, and that generation of men to whom it had been vouchsafed to listen to the Godlike Wisdom with their own ears had passed away, then did the confederacy of godless error take its rise through the treachery of false teachers, who, seeing that none of the apostles any longer survived, at length attempted with bare and uplifted head to oppose the preaching of the truth by preaching "knowledge falsely so called."
Actually, St. Hegesippus was referring to the problem of the gnostic cults ("knowledge falsely so called"), not the growing Catholic Church, so quoting St. H. at any length doesn't doesn't hold water at all.
2) Some try to pin the moment down to the time when Novatian left the Church, around A.D. 251. Novatian was actually a Latin theologian who was upset because he wasn't chosen to be pope. He found three bishops who would ordain him as bishop of Rome anyway, and he ruled his schism until his death in 258. Novatian is popular in some versions of the Baptist "trail of blood" theory as someone with high morals who left a backsliding Church.
3) Constantine in the 4th century, who, depending on who you listen to, either a) forced the doctrine of the Trinity on the Church, b) founded the papacy in Rome, and/or c) became the first pope. The first option is a favorite theory of non-Trinitarian sects such as the old Way International. The 2nd and 3rd theories can be found in the old Halley's Bible Handbook.
Theory, theory, everyone's got a theory.
____________________
"Faith seeking understanding" - St. Anselm of Canterbury.
|
|
|
Steven Barrett
Member
| Joined: | Tue Nov 14th, 2006 |
| Location: | Hadley, Massachusetts USA |
| Posts: | 812 |
| First Name: | Steven | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Catholic, Episcopal communicant, Baptist, Catholic |
| Status: |
Offline
|
|
Posted: Sun Apr 27th, 2008 08:37 pm |
|
Friends, Romans, and Fellow Apostates:
There's nothing like a protestantized version of Church history to replant the seeds of spiritual and historical sensibility in a wayward Catholic's head and heart. I'm almost afraid to begin this post thanks to the many pie-eyed "facts" I "learned" thanks to this course, taught by several leading people in the Baptist church my family belongs to.
A good Catholic public servant* once said, "You have the right to form your own opinions, but not to create your own facts." It's not bad advice for our Protestant friends to follow, especially when it comes to discussing church history. (Why, it might -- but let's not get our hopes up too high -- lead them to reaching the same conclusion John Henry Newman did just before his conversion to Rome: to be deep into history is to cease being a Protestant.)
Well, I did remind my separated brethern this, but all I got were polite nods. (One shouldn't complain: I'm alive to write this.) But let's face it, when it comes to getting around one's manufactured "facts" and realizing that they might've been at best, interesting opinions, I wasn't dealing with an "easy" crowd here. They remained predictably comfortable firm with their facts.
Ironically, they couldn't get enough stories about the early monks who fled to the hills once Constantine freed the church from persecution and let the good times roll. And to these good Baptists, evidently, the good times did roll and the city straddling the Tiber looked more like New Orleans. By listening to the lamentations of these sincere Baptists, I couldn' tell if they were happy for the Christians who weren't finding themselves hauled into the sulfur pits or feeling sorry for the pagans who all of a sudden found their Roman classical poetry and artwork turned into rubble and replaced by "catholic" statuary. (At least they were still made of marble then.)
All of a sudden the Roman Empire became the Catholic Roman Empire. (Funny, though, I always thought Protestants liked to call us Roman Catholics.) Oh, I get it: They're upset that the Romans didn't let the Greeks take over the church. No, maybe it was just that even though the western empire in two centuries went to rubble, the Bishop of Rome (pope's a word they can't say without needing a sudden Heimlich application) had the nerve to step into the chaos and take contol of the place, or what was left of it.
In the meantime, and this was ever so grudgingly admitted, the pope, er bishop of Rome, was the only cleric of major significance standing up to the barbarian kings weren't so kindly disposed to following the niceities of the law like the Romans did. Good heavens: these early popes, er roman-based bishops --(P's still have a hard time coming to terms with what Peter's valid successor's job title was, even back then ... I'm just playing along on their terms for a while here)--were acting like Baptists, upholding the independence of the Church from the state! Oh, but we know that didn't last forever since some pope allegedly pulled off a real estate scam to get the papal territories and they really went downhill to Roman Catholicism after that.
How significant was this alleged "scam"? Hell, it couldn't have been as much as our Protestant friends make it out to be because I can't even remember the name of this early papal-gate or who the pope they're blaming was. Some scandal. Tsk, tsk. Time they got over it, anyway.
Never mind that when the kings just gave up completely with dealing with the church, they went off plundering elsehere (and in other ways), leaving the popes and church to take on even more duties they didn't want in the first place. Oh, but didn't they get into politics, and parties, and all sorts of stuff that led to the Reformation? Well of course, and if the church hadn't become Romanized a thousand years before the Reformation, so much evil would've been rooted out much sooner, and so forth. Why, the Church would've been Christian all those years. (As if it was Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist and/or even Hindu, too. One ridiculous goose is as good as another nonsensical gander they want to lay at our doorsteps.)
Maybe since it was ROMANIZED, thus rendering it into the apostacized Whore of Babylon and Synagogue of Satan; quite an interesting, entertaining and amusing opinion--there's no need to worry about facing this little fact--a fact that EVERY BIBLE BELIEVING CHRISTIAN (or at least reading Christian) shouldn 't have trouble with--so long as he or she's been reading -- not cherry-picking -- the Good Book.
Jesus started Only One Church, and no matter how mischievous some of her children had become, no matter how often they trashed the family porceilain, hung from the chandeliers, debauched the house, littered the front yard and let the place go to seed, etc., etc. it's still the same church. The "footprints" of the building were still there in the Reformation and they're still there now, only in much better shape, but not with all thanks going to the Reformers rebellious nature and kibbutzing from outside.
All the original deeds to the property are still there, no matter how hard the kiddies tried to bust into the safety box in order to get at them and change them for all time. (And wouldn't there be hell to pay for that!)
The builder made sure the shapers of misguided opinions wouldn't get their hands on the facts. And, much to the consternation of the kiddies, they never will -- and they know it.
So what's left for them to do? They just keep jackhammering at the truth despite the builder's clearly stated intentions. (One of them was to stick together, and that was made the night before He was cruxified. How well have they done with that?) How one can finesse truth to fit his or her needs with a jackhammer remains a mystery of both faith and logic, but the Protestants keep at it.
And do they keep at it!
Almost every century since they broke away, the Reformers and their misled heirs never fail to come up with some new "imperative," or new "approach" towards spreading the Good News. Always some new spin, some new style, some new interpretation of what's already been put through the wringer of spiritual history for centuries.
Some Protestants have essentially "reformed" themselves right out of business ("UUs") either through liberalism, bordering on libertarianism or worse, libertinism (Ayuh, Episcys, heah that up in New Hampshire?) -- or they got enraptured with reforming us into the best we can but always in the worst way.
Why, they've done such a marvelous job of reforming all the "romish apostasy" out of their thousands of systems that they can't seem to put any breaks to this perpetual reforming machine that's managed to create some 35,000+ anti-apostate entities they call denominations or churches.
They've reformed the bible of apostasy. They've reformed the clergy of apostasy. They've reformed the music of apostasy. They've even reformed the church buildings of apostate statues or crosses with our suffering Lord affixed to them. Why, some post-modern, all-suburban, all Americanized anti-apostacized megachurchianity structures are so post-this, post-that and certainly post-any-romish-signs-of-apostasy have reformed even crosses out of their buildings.
But for all this trouble, some five centuries worth of all this trouble, and their tribulations of having to deal with Romish apostasy they forgot to do something: They forgot to get rid of the apostasy of the 2 x 4 that's been stuck in their eyes since Luther forgot to pull it out of his eyes before banging his list of complaints on the Wittenberg Cathedral door.
And the 2 x 4 is still there for a lot of Protestants, even if John Hagee, Tim LaHaye and John Ankerberg might take exception to this observation.
Catholics have had their Counter Reformation and Vatican II, but all they did was to put a more relevant face on truths that haven't changed since Jesus handed Peter the keys 2,000 years ago.
If this makes us "apostates," well, like a very naughty pope once said upon taking the keys to the palace for partying, "let's make the most of it." He got into the family liquor closet, but he wasn't dumb enough to raid the family lock box.
None of them were. This, my fellow Roman "apostate" friends, is a Catholic fact that all the Protestant opinions in the world can't reform into thin air.
*The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, (D-NY)
Last edited on Sun Apr 27th, 2008 09:00 pm by Steven Barrett
____________________
For anybody interested in reading commentary from a Catholic's socially conservative/fiscally liberal viewpoint, go to my new blog at http://www.politicsramble.com/ .
|
|
|
Current time is 04:49 pm | |
|
|
|
|
|
