Friday, October 17, 2014

...on necessity and authority of Catholic Church

Quoth tomcat:
"<>

This is not the teaching of the Catholic Church."
My answer
It is. It was solemnly defined by a council of the Church, to wit the council of Florence, the decree for the Armenians.

[Was not adressed to all of the council/all of the Church and not signed by all of the council.]
Quoth rose_beverly:
"What if I believe that the Catholic Church has lost the moral authority to lead and to teach and that Christians must seek Christ among true believers who have not been so tainted by scandal?"

[Note, what we are discussing is Catholic Church, not Vatican II Sect.]
My answer
Idiocy, since the public teaching authority of the Catholic Church is NOT immediately dependent on the kind of moral authority that a saint or a virtuous pagan philosopher has. St Peter did not lose Papacy on scandalising by association with judaisers, nor by the flight on Via Appia. His successor Alexander VI did not lose papacy by having a concubine.

Sincerely

Hans Georg Lundahl
@ rose_beverly ...
"What if I believe that the Catholic Church has lost the moral authority to lead and to teach and that Christians must seek Christ among true believers who have not been so tainted by scandal?"
dhux wrote on claim of Catholic Church to be the Apostolic Church:
"The Reformation did not happen without such causes. No one rationally argues that God allows such an institution to represent his will on Earth or maintain accurate beliefs."
My answer
I am reminded of a retort by Terence Hill, when challenged that nobody could oppose this or that crook and get away with it: "My name is nobody." (Nobody = no one)

I do rationally argue so.

God cannot make a Church of only Saints without taking away free-will and the possibility for people who lapse into sin to recuperate their righteousness. Therefore official authority in His Church cannot depend immediately and totally on being for the moment a righteous person. It cannot be the same as a merely moral authority, like the authority of a Saint or a righteous pagan philosopher as a model for others. Official authority rather implies that authority be obeyed irrespectively of whether the person wielding it be righteous or sinful. Just as the right to property implies that property be owned irrespectively of whjether the owner be righteous or sinful. The parallel is not totally flippant. The Valdensians, Petrobrussians and Lollards denied precisely both tenets by the subterfuge that this or that right be lost as soon as a man be sinful. The logic correlate would be that a sinner looses ALL right. Which is of course idiotic. Barbaric. Catholicism means that a sinner retains his rights at least in the external forum and when no heresy be involved until otherwise be judged by Church or State. Which in its turn means that sinners who are powerful are not always judged and condemned to lose their rights of public authority in Church or State or of property, even when such loss is an adequate punishment for the sin in question.

If you call this defense irrational, dhux, you are a mad fanatic.
Quoth Phil_Mtooth:
"Is it reasonable to represent a Church as the One True Church when that has effort has already failed?"
My answer
What do you mean "as effort has already failed"? Qué? You mean effort of persuading everyone? The Church has NOT the duty to succeed in persuading everyone, only the duty to teach every nation. If no nation had ever listened, but the Church done as much anyway (a practical impossibility, as well as a theological one, but assuming it for arguments sake) the Church had done its duty and would be reasonable in continuing this claim.

As a matter of fact LOTS of nations have listened - including the English, though most of it apostasised by Reformation by the time of the Gun-powder plot or the unrighteous hangings in CHarles II's time (against his conscience, as he was a secret Catholic)
Quoth Phil_Mtooth:
"The logic of the Church was not sufficient to forstall heresy........"
My answer
Wrong. The goodwill of some was not sufficient to make them see perfectly logical explanations to their difficulties - or answers to their outright blasphemies.

It is not truth and logic, only fable and prejudice, which forestalls heresy, and that by evading the very question of truth and exact definition.

[Grammatical clarification "which forestalls" = zeugmatic for "which forestalls or fails to forestall"]


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On Antimodernism : 10/20/2003 6:13 PM, 6:24 PM, 6:26 PM, 6:27 PM

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