A Catholic Mom in Minnesota

Hey ladies, if you get a chance go over and say "hey" to Tracy at A Catholic Mom in Minnesota. She has always been 100% supportive of us and now her little boy is going through a hard time and she could use a little TLC!







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The Dake Bible, and Catholic Editions

The Dake Annotated Reference Bible, which Candy recommends, is considered controversial. Dake was a rather shady character, with some unorthodox view. Elena has previous written two posts with the background information, which you can read here and here.

Candy does address Dake's views:
I believe Dake to be wrong about "planet heaven," his view of the trinity (3 Gods, instead of 3 in 1), and the gap theory.

Candy's highest criteria in a Bible is whether or not it can cause one to question the authenticity of the Bible. The last time Candy wrote on this topic, I asked her what she meant by that. She replied that it was in reference to those footnotes you often find in Bibles which say "This verse not found in the earliest manuscripts." She said that she felt, especially for new Christians, that this could cause one to doubt the authenticity of the Bible.

Personally, I think if you are recommending a Bible with the new Christian in mind, that Dake's heretical views on the Trinity alone would be enough to rule it out. I understand this isn't a problem for Candy, but I worry that her glowing review could lead others into believing that Dake is a trustworthy source. She did address that this time, with the above comment, but in previous editions of this article, she didn't add the disclaimer.

Her second choice Bible, the Scofield, comes from a similarly controversial choice. Scofield is primarily associated with the dispensationalist movement, and unlike Candy, he is a premillenialist.

It is fitting that Candy prefers the Dake and Scofield, because both lacked formal theological training. Candy has said before that she feels that theological study can hinder one from truly interpreting Scripture, because you bring preconceived notions to your study of Scripture.

I read the Bible through several times before I had any type of real Doctrinal Teaching. That is a blessing, because that means I was able to read the Bible several times on my own, without anyone else’s interpretations getting in the way. The first several to dozen times through the Bible, I used text only, or reference Bibles,- no study Bibles.

For those who may be interested, let's look over some Catholic study Bibles.

Personally, I think the gold standard is the Navarre Study Bible. The notes are so extensive, that the full edition runs to a 12 volume New Testament! The commentary is taken mostly from the Doctors of the Church, and Early Church Fathers, so you are really getting an education in history by reading through the notes. I have the medium edition, which is a 3 volume New Testament. I'd like to start chipping away at the Old Testament on my Christmas list.

A similarly well received project is the Ignatius Study Bible, which is primarily written by prominent Catholic apologist Scott Hahn, with several co-authors. However, it is still being written, and currently only available in a series of paperbacks, as far as I am aware. I use an inexpensive Ignatius Bible for when I want to read the Bible without the in depth study of the Navarre, because I prefer the Revised Standard Version.

The Catholic Answer Bible is written geared towards apologetics, but I have not actually looked through it personally.

The Oxford Catholic Study Bible also looks promising, but again, I have no personal experience with it.

For those of you with a King James Version bent, be sure to try out the Douay Rheims Study Bible. It's pricey, but look that list of contributors to the commentary!

Please chime in with your favorite Bible versions in the comments, especially if you've seen some of these that I haven't.

Mary Anne explains it all.

At Candy's suggestion, I did emaill Mary Anne Collins and to my surprise received an actual e-mail back today! I asked her why she calls herself a former nun when she never actually took vows.

She writes:

"Some people have asked me why I call myself a former nun when I never made vows. According to "The Catholic Encyclopedia," if a monk or a nun has been accepted by a religious order (which I was) and has been given a religious habit (which I wore), then he or she is a monk or a nun in the broad sense of the term. [Note 1] So I refer to myself as a former nun."

Note 1. "Novice" in the 1913 edition of "The Catholic Encyclopedia," Volume XI. This article is available on-line. The term "novice" refers to both monks and nuns who go through a period of training and preparation. In Section II, "Juridical Condition," the article states that a novice in a religious order is a "regular" in the widest sense of the word. (A "regular" is a technical term for a monk or a nun.)

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11144a.htm

NOTE: The article often speaks of "he" when modern usage would be to say "he or she". Section I, "Definition and Requirements,"specifically mentions nuns. And it gives instructions regarding married women who want to become nuns. So the article is about both novice monks and novice nuns.

So there you have it!  

Doc’s Sunrise Rants » Leaping The Comb

Doc’s Sunrise Rants » Leaping The Comb

We get mentioned elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Well since they asked...

One of Candy's commenters writes:

I have always found it interesting that Elena only comments when you discuss anything related to catholicism. Exercise videos, healthy living, keeping house, homeschooling, ect have no interest to her, at least not on this blog.

Well, I like exercise videos and own several.  I have reviewed a few on my other blog.   I write some about keeping house and we have links in the side bar as alternatives to Candy's home management binder.  Many of those resources are free.  I get a lot of hits looking for those links.  I believe that a home should be clean and orderly, but I also think that it should be lived in.  It should serve the people who live there, not the other way around! 

I also write A LOT about homeschooling.  In fact I write an article for the carnival of homeschooling just about every week on my other blog.  I also have many links on del.icio.us about homeschooling here and here.  I have a homeschooling blog too.

On this blog we have limited ourselves to discussing theology and Catholicism.  I'm afraid that if I were to comment on some of Candy's other posts, they probably wouldn't get posted anyway.  

Those "loving" Catholics.

Also in Amanda's comments Candy wrote:

So, they got to have their "voice" heard, and now I"m back to that good ole' delete key. And let me tell you - they are a nasty bunch, espcially the "loving" Catholics making threats to my person and family. I've NEVER seen such vial stuff.


Girl, we are in the midst of spiritual battle. Stay the course. I've seen too many good Christian blogs taken down because of these people. Don't let Satan win. Keep up the good work on your blog, you are doing God a service.

I replied:

Candy, I hope you were not referring to Kelly, or Kitkat, Angie or me? We stuck to the theology and the topic and even went into greater depth on our own blogs, but we were strictly theology and nothing else.

Sorry if I left any of you off the list - I have a summer cold and was under the influence of Nyquil when I wrote that.  Anyway.  

To which Amanda writes:

I'm not Candy so I don't know what particular individuals she's referring too, but there were people, from your own list there, who know they do not agree with Candy, came anyway and left sarcastic remarks, so unless sarcasm is part of Catholic theology, that's not a very accurate statement.

I didn't realize a little sarcasm could be considered a threat to family or "vile stuff."   shrug...

No Mother or Father

Although Candy allowed some comments this week she didn't allow all and she deliberately manipulated others.

In the Mary Collins thread toward the end, loyal Candyite Amanda wrote this as her way of explaining that Christ had no mother:

Another thought came to me as I was making supper (meatloaf and potatoes in the oven now smelling WONDERFUL!!!) As another commenter asked recently, about this fellow Melchisedec. Melchisedec was used repeatedly as an illustration of Christ.


" ...even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him; To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace; Without father, WITHOUT MOTHER, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually."
-Hebrews 6:20-7:3-


That's pretty strait forward!

Well, it's not quite that "strait" forward. Father William G. Most gives this commentary on the book of Hebrews:

Also the way the Epistle comments on Melchizedek as being without 
father or mother or end of days, is homiletic freedom.

Four kings had attacked five kings, including the king of Sodom. 
The four took spoils, and took Lot, nephew of Abraham as captive. 
When Abraham heard of it he gathered 318 of his retainers, and set 
out against the four kings, and defeated them. On his return the 
King of Sodom met him and suggested Abraham keep the goods, but 
give him the people. Abraham refused to keep anything, seemingly 
because of an oath he had taken when Melchizedek, king of Salem, 
met him. Melchizedek brought out bread and wine. Was that just a 
refreshment for Abraham, or was it meant as a sacrifice? Later 
Christian writers understood it as a sacrifice.

His name is taken to mean either King of Peace (Salem) or King of 
righteousness (sedeq). These are plausible etymologies.

Abraham gave him a tenth of all the spoils of the military 
expedition.

Melchizedek is described as without father or mother, without 
genealogy. Genesis indeed does not give any lineage for him. Thus 
he foreshadows the Son of God, a priest forever.

Then our author exclaims: How great is Melchizedek - Abraham gave 
him tithes, recognizing his superiority. The descendants of Levi 
received tithes too in later times, as the offspring of Abraham. 
Yet Melchizedek, who has not the same genealogy as them, received 
tithes from the father of the chosen people, Abraham. Further, 
Abraham received a blessing from Melchizedek - but one receives 
blessings only from a superior, not from an inferior. So again, 
Melchizedek, type of Christ, is superior to Abraham.

In fact since Levi who was to come from Abraham, was still in the 
body of Abraham, we can say that Levi too paid tithes to 
Melchizedek - and so the levitical priesthood is less than that of 
Melchizedek.

Amanda is trying to say that her verse is saying Christ had no mother, but it is really referring to Melchizedek.

I did write a comment pointing that out.  However, Candy did NOT allow that comment although it too was respectful.  Instead she lets Amanda have the last word on that. She also lets Amanda have the last word on my link to Catholic Answers which explains the Catholic perspective on the title Mother of God.

Elena out of a LARGE amount of quotes and references, only 1 or 2 were from the BIBLE. I really couldn't care less what such and such catechism or so and so person says, I am a follower of CHRIST (and the Bible says He is the Word-God's Word is the Bible- made flesh) not man, so I really don't care one little bit about what man has to say on the matter. And none of that addressed my point of dividing God into separate pieces. So....no, I didn't find that helpful in the least.

Yea...quotes from pesky men like the early church fathers.  Whatever. 

Just Asking . . .

Anne T. left a comment on Candy's blog which contained this bit of information:

I don't know any former nuns, but I know several former catholics. They left mostly due to the relationship the catholic church has with the mafia. Some people believe if they make a huge donation to the church that will forgive them of the knockoff they did.

I suspect that we have a majority of Catholics in our audience. Please confess--do you have any mafia connections or know people who do?!

I think I must be missing out, living in the Bible Belt for so long. I do admit, many of my relatives are caught up in the "good 'ol boy" network, but that mostly involves getting a good deal on a used Mustang which comes with a Confederate flag bumper sticker (which is considered a plus).

Challenging William Webster

In the article by Mary Ann Collins which Candy recently posted, the primary source for information was a book called The Church of Rome at the Bar of History by William Webster. Although Mary Ann Collins says in the article that "primary sources about Catholic doctrines and history come from the Catholic Church" this book is not written by a Catholic, but by a former Catholic.

She mentions several times in her article that she recommends recourses which are "respectful and gentle" in their approach. I appreciate that, in this article at least, some of the wilder anti-Catholic claims do not appear. William Webster is certainly a better alternative to Dave Hunt and Jack Chick.

William Webster is a former Catholic who converted to Evangelical Christianity. Since that time, he has written quite a lot about Catholicism, and he has come to the attention of Catholic apologists.

Stephen Ray, who is himself a convert TO Catholicism, has gotten into a sort of convert vs. convert battle of words with Webster. In his book, Upon This Rock, Ray challenges Webster's book and charges Webster with selective editing.

I wrote to William Webster and asked him if he knew of any Church Father who denied the primacy of Peter or of his successors. Mr. Webster's response was very telling, and I wish he had been forthright about this matter in his book. His return E-mail stated, "No father denies that Peter had a primacy or that there is a Petrine succession. The issue is how the fathers interpreted those concepts. They simply did not hold to the Roman Catholic view of later centuries that primacy and succession were 'exclusively' related to the bishops of Rome." [2] What an extraordinary admission; what an extraordinary truth. Many of the Fathers were in theological or disciplinary disagreement with Rome (for example, Cyprian and Irenaeus), yet they never denied Rome's primacy. They may have debated what that primacy meant, or how it was to work out in the universal Church, but they never denied the primacy.

Webster then wrote an article, refuting Ray's book. Ray now has a 17 part debate with Webster on the issue of papal primacy on his website. At this point, Dave Armstrong (another convert to Catholicism) weighs in with two different articles refuting William Webster.

One article which Webster wrote was regarding the development of the Bible canon, which the Catholic Monarchist responds to here:

As the article continues, Webster displays a most serious ignorance when it comes to the use of the terms "canonical" and "non-canonical." He makes use of quote after quote of church figures in the act of explaining that the deuterocanonical books are "noncanonical," supposedly to prove that they were not considered part of the Bible, but the reader can distinguish for himself what the terms actually mean, because Webster helpfully gives him the definition in this quote from one Cardinal Cajetan:

Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the bible for that purpose.

The Cardinal has explained it: Non-canonical doesn't mean "not in the Bible." It means "not confirming matters of faith." By this rule, of course Tobit and Judith and such are not canonical. But look at what he says a breath before the definition: "and any other like books in the canon of the Bible." So he has just called them canonical BEFORE calling them non-canonical--which means that he does NOT mean they are not to be included, but rather that they do not confirm the faith.

John Betts writes about the same article on his website, but from a different angle.

Another article, on Sola Scriptura and the Early Church is tackled by the American Catholic Truth Society.

While Mary Ann Collins does quote from it, William Webster wrote another book with David King titled Holy Scripture: Ground and Pillar of Our Faith. Phil Porvaznik writes about the misrepresentations in it here.

There are lots of resources available about William Webster, but this is plenty to get you started.

Organ-ic Chemist: Catholic Carnival 183

Organ-ic Chemist: Catholic Carnival 183

Will the real Mary Collins please stand up!

I was clicking and reading through the links Kelly put up yesterday (great job Kelly!) and fount this very interesting bit of information about Mz. Collins.

Here they have various samples of her "biography" where first she says she didn't take vows, and then it gets changed to she was asked to leave, and later for health reasons. So which is it? A very interesting read and if you have any doubts as to whether or not this lady is for real, this definitely won't alleviate them!







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Another comment I left on Candy's blog.

After years of no longer being a Catholic, I attended a Catholic funeral. When I went into the church something hit me hard. It had always been there, but I had never noticed it before because I was used to it. There were statues of Mary and the saints. They looked solid, real, as if they represented people of power. Jesus only appeared as a helpless baby in Mary’s arms, as a dead man nailed to a cross, and as little wafers of bread hidden inside a fancy box. Visually and emotionally the message was very clear - if you want real power, if you want someone who can do something for you, then go to Mary and the Saints.

Of course every church is decorated a bit differently. In my church we have a huge mosaic of Christ surrounded by the apostles. There is also a statue of the adult Christ as the Sacred Heart on the side.

Be that as it may, I thought Ms. Collins assessment was interesting. Because it seems to me from reading the scriptures that Jesus wants all of us to do what we "can do" to spread the gospel, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, minister to the sick etc. Jesus left US to do those things. Canonized saints in the Catholic church are ordinary people who have striven to do those things and have done them well.

There is a saint coming up for canonization soon Candy that you might be interested in. Her name is Zelie Martin. She was the mother of St. Theresa. She had five daughters. She also lost several children in infancy. She maintained her household, she took care of her children and her husband and she even ran a successful lace making business. She is an example of an ordinary person living an extraordinary life in Christ which is what we all strive for.

One Final Mary Ann Collins Post

Candy writes: For those who've heard the gossipy rumors that Mary Ann Collins (the ex-nun who wrote the below article) does not exist, please know that what you've read/heard are nothing more than rumors. Mary Ann and I are in email contact - and I can attest that she is real, genuine, and truthful. God bless her heart for putting herself out there, in spreading the Gospel, in telling the truth, and in the sharing of her experiences.

This is a bit of a red herring. Clearly, someone is writing under the name of Mary Ann Collins, and so she does exist. He/She/They may be using a pseudonym, or that might really be her name. Maybe she was a novice at a convent for a while, and maybe she wasn't.

It really doesn't matter. You know why? Because the information in her writing is still wrong. As I've written before, just because a person used to be a priest or nun doesn't mean that that person is an accurate source of information about Catholicism.

Mary Ann Collins On Mary Worship, Part II

Picking up where I left off, I had some time to try and track down this accusation:

In 495 A.D., Pope Gelasius issued a decree which rejected this teaching as heresy and its proponents as heretics. In the sixth century, Pope Hormisdas also condemned as heretics those authors who taught the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary.

I checked several secular history sources, and none mention anything to do with this. The Nestorian controversy was going on at this time, but that was the only thing remotely related to Mary. Pope Gelasius is mostly referred to for setting the setting the Bible canon, which historians now think was a later Pope, for declaring Manicheans heretics for not taking communion under both kinds, and for combating another Eucharist-related heresy.

Pope Hormisdas gets even less mention in online encyclopedias than Pope Gelasius. Pope Hormisdas is reunited the Eastern and Western Church, after he convinced the Eastern Church to repudiate the heresy of Monophysitism. Monophysitism says that Jesus has only one nature, and that is his divine nature.

I think this Webster guy that she quotes so much is just making stuff up, and I'm not the only one.

The next section concerns parallels of Mary and Goddess worship.

Mary Ann Collins does not use The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop as her source, but that is the original, completely discredited book which really started the Catholic=pagan argument. Many Bible Christians consider The Two Babylons as very authoritative on this sort of thing. Christians such as Ralph Woodrow, who has his own evangelistic association.

Mr. Woodrow found The Two Babylons so compelling, he wrote his own book about the pagan origins of Catholicism. But then, he started actually checking Hislop's citationsand they were not what they were purported to be. So Mr. Woodrow recanted his book, and wrote a different book called The Babylon Connection? debunking The Two Babylons.

The final section is How Did We Get Here:

The Early Fathers used Scripture as the standard against which they tested Church tradition. The modern Catholic doctrine that Church tradition is equal in authority with the Bible is contrary to the writings of the Early Fathers.

A survey of the Early Church Fathers does not support this.

She again cites Webster here, and this assertion of Webster was challenged in this article.

Notice the sleight of hand by Mr. Webster. He equates St. Irenaeus’s and Tertullian’s understanding of Tradition to mean Scripture. Both of these Fathers clearly understood Tradition as a substantive and coordinate authority alongside Scripture. These same Fathers believed that the doctrines of the Catholic Church are found in Tradition as well as in Scripture. However, they do not make the misguided conclusion that Tradition is equated to Scripture since Tradition includes the same doctrines that Scripture contains. The primary difference between Scripture and Tradition is that they convey the same teaching but through different mediums. One transmits the doctrines via the written Scriptures while Tradition transmits these same doctrines through the life, faith and practice of the Church. If Scripture is equated with Tradition than the writings of St. Irenaeus and Tertullian are reduced to nonsense.

The Pope is said to be infallible whenever he makes an official decree on matters of faith and morals. According to Catholic doctrine, it is impossible for the Pope to teach false doctrine. Catholics are expected to obey the Pope without question even when he is not making an “infallible” statement about doctrine. They are expected to submit their wills and minds to the Pope without question.

I covered Papal infallibility and other Pope issues here.

The history of the early Church shows that the Bishop of Rome was considered to be just another bishop. For example, Pope Gregory (590-604 A.D.) explicitly stated that all of the bishops were equal. He specifically repudiated the idea that any one bishop could be the supreme ruler of the Church.

No, that is not the case. Regarding Pope Gregory, Webster is again mentioned by name in this article.

In the seventeenth century, the Catholic church officially condemned Galileo as a heretic because he taught that the earth revolves around the sun. . .The “infallible” pronouncement of the Catholic Church regarding Galileo's teaching was wrong.

There was no infallible pronouncement about Galileo. For more information on the Galileo case, see this article.

There is a brief mention of Marian apparitions, however, she does not mention that Marian apparitions are considered private revelation, and are not required belief for any Catholic.

That concludes my survey of Mary Ann Collins lengthy article. If I didn't address something that you would like more information about, please leave a comment.

Catholic Answers on Mary Mother of God

This is a good article.  it also follows with quotes from the early church fathers who also considered Mary the Mother of God.  If I am blaspheming, as Candy says, then so were they!  At least according to Candy B.

• 
  

  Mary: Mother of God

  
  

  Mary: Mother of God Fundamentalists are sometimes horrified when the Virgin Mary is referred to as the Mother of God. However, their reaction often rests upon a misapprehension of not only what this particular title of Mary signifies but also who Jesus was, and what their own theological forebears, the Protestant Reformers, had to say regarding this doctrine. A woman is a man’s mother either if she carried him in her womb or if she was the woman contributing half of his genetic matter or both. Mary was the mother of Jesus in both of these senses; because she not only carried Jesus in her womb but also supplied all of the genetic matter for his human body, since it was through her—not Joseph—that Jesus "was descended from David according to the flesh" (Rom. 1:3). Since Mary is Jesus’ mother, it must be concluded that she is also the Mother of God: If Mary is the mother of Jesus, and if Jesus is God, then Mary is the Mother of God. There is no way out of this logical syllogism, the valid form of which has been recognized by classical logicians since before the time of Christ. Although Mary is the Mother of God, she is not his mother in the sense that she is older than God or the source of her Son’s divinity, for she is neither. Rather, we say that she is the Mother of God in the sense that she carried in her womb a divine person—Jesus Christ, God "in the flesh" (2 John 7, cf. John 1:14)—and in the sense that she contributed the genetic matter to the human form God took in Jesus Christ. To avoid this conclusion, Fundamentalists often assert that Mary did not carry God in her womb, but only carried Christ’s human nature. This assertion reinvents a heresy from the fifth century known as Nestorianism, which runs aground on the fact that a mother does not merely carry the human nature of her child in her womb. Rather, she carries the person of her child. Women do not give birth to human natures; they give birth to persons. Mary thus carried and gave birth to the person of Jesus Christ, and the person she gave birth to was God. The Nestorian claim that Mary did not give birth to the unified person of Jesus Christ attempts to separate Christ’s human nature from his divine nature, creating two separate and distinct persons—one divine and one human—united in a loose affiliation. It is therefore a Christological heresy, which even the Protestant Reformers recognized. Both Martin Luther and John Calvin insisted on Mary’s divine maternity. In fact, it even appears that Nestorius himself may not have believed the heresy named after him. Further, the "Nestorian" church has now signed a joint declaration on Christology with the Catholic Church and recognizes Mary’s divine maternity, just as other Christians do. Since denying that Mary is God’s mother implies doubt about Jesus’ divinity, it is clear why Christians (until recent times) have been unanimous in proclaiming Mary as Mother of God. The Church Fathers, of course, agreed, and the following passages witness to their lively recognition of the sacred truth and great gift of divine maternity that was bestowed upon Mary, the humble handmaid of the Lord.

  
  

  tags: Mary, Catholic, apologetics

  
  

Mary Ann Collins On Mary Worship

Candy's current offering is a copy of an article by Mary Ann Collins.


Because the article is so extensive, I'm going to break it into sections, rather than go through the entire thing point by point.

Introduction:

We get reminded of Catholic abuses of power:
I always thought that abuses of power by the Catholic Church were something
that happened long ago.

See our article on Catholic Atrocities.

She mentions statues in churches: There were statues of Mary and the saints. They looked solid, real, as if they represented people of power.

I wrote about statues here, and Elena covers statues and crucifixes here.

There is a section on Devotion To Mary, which begins with pointing out the riches of the church: Vast sums of money are spent on jeweled crowns and lavish clothing for some special statues of Mary.

I wrote about the riches of the church here. I noticed that her source here is Dave Hunt, who is not a reliable source of information.

She brings up Mary as Mediatrix: De Liguori said that people should pray to Mary as
a mediator and look to her as an object of trust for answered prayer.
The book even says that there is no salvation outside of Mary.

See my Something About Mary post.

Next section: Catholic Doctrines about Mary

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was first introduced by a heretic
(a man whose teachings were officially declared to be contrary to Church
doctrine). For centuries this doctrine was unanimously rejected by popes,
Fathers and theologians of the Catholic Church. (Note 13)

ALL-HOLY -- Mary, "the All-Holy," lived a perfectly sinless
life. ("Catechism" 411, 493)

In contrast, Mary said that God is her Savior. (Luke 1:47) If God was
her Savior, then Mary was not sinless. Sinless people do not need a Savior.

Mary Ann gives a Catechism citation, but doesn't show what it says:

411 The Christian tradition sees in this passage an announcement of the "New Adam" who, because he "became obedient unto death, even death on a cross", makes amends superabundantly for the disobedience, of Adam. Furthermore many Fathers and Doctors of the Church have seen the woman announced in the Protoevangelium as Mary, the mother of Christ, the "new Eve". Mary benefited first of all and uniquely from Christ's victory over sin: she was preserved from all stain of original sin and by a special grace of God committed no sin of any kind during her whole earthly life.

493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God "the All-Holy" (Panagia), and celebrate her as "free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature". By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.

These paragraphs of the Catechism show that the Catholic Church teaches Mary DID need a Redeemer.

Catholic Answers explains it in this way:

Consider an analogy: Suppose a man falls into a deep pit, and someone reaches down to pull him out. The man has been "saved" from the pit. Now imagine a woman walking along, and she too is about to topple into the pit, but at the very moment that she is to fall in, someone holds her back and prevents her. She too has been saved from the pit, but in an even better way: She was not simply taken out of the pit, she was prevented from getting stained by the mud in the first place. This is the illustration Christians have used for a thousand years to explain how Mary was saved by Christ. By receiving Christ’s grace at her conception, she had his grace applied to her before she was able to become mired in original sin and its stain.

Matthew 1:24-25 says, "Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS." "Till" (until) means that after that point,
Joseph did "know" (have sexual relations with) Mary. (See Genesis 4:1 where Adam "knew" Eve and she conceived and had a son.)

2 Sam 6:23 says that Michal had no child until the day she died. Does that mean that she bore children after her death? Until does not have the same connotation in the Bible as it does in modern English. It carries no implication of what happened after that time.

My Something About Mary covers these subjects, and this article contains links which show that these teachings were ACCEPTED, not rejected, for centuries by the Early Church Fathers, Popes, and theologians.

The Incarnation means that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. Mary
was only the mother of Jesus as man, and not the mother of Jesus as God.

I did an article on this just this week.

There is no biblical reference to the assumption of Mary.

If we are going by the criteria that "if it isn't mentioned in the Bible, it didn't happen", then I think you must also conclude that Mary is still alive, because her death isn't mentioned either.

The Bible contains everything we need to know in order to attain salvation. It does not claim to be an exhaustive compilation of all miracles which ever occurred, even just concerning Jesus.
John 21:25: And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.

There is actually historic evidence, or lack of it, for the Assumption or Dormition of Mary; lack of a body. While the tomb of Mary has been a tourist attraction since the earliest centuries of the Church, the tomb is empty. No early accounts mention there every being a body in the tomb. Certainly, there is Biblical precedent for a person being assumed into heaven. As we keep talking about Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant, it would be fitting if her body is hidden, just as the Ark remains hidden.

The early Church clearly considered the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary to be a heresy worthy of condemnation.

I think the testimony of the early Church would disagree.

Okay folks, I'm out of time. Feel free to discuss in the comments, and I'll work on part two later.

My comments on Mary- Not the Mother of God

Because I haven't done so for a long time, and because I figure, "what the heck"... I did leave a comment in Candy's com box.

www.keepingthehome.com: Mary - Not the "Mother of God."

So Jesus existed even before the world began. Jesus came first - not Mary. - Candy B.

It's a strawman argument. Catholics don't believe and the church doesn't teach that Mary preceded Jesus. So you can fight that fight if you want to, but Catholics would side with you on that one.

Nonetheless, Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans and many other Christians believe that the conception of God almighty, creator heaven and earth, in Mary's womb with her consent is a great mystery. And in that sense Mary indeed is the Mother of Christ, i.e. the Mother of God.

More Mary

Candy has two new Mary posts up, both by Mary Ann Collins, who is possibly a former nun.

I've noticed that though Candy places great emphasis on not relying on other opinions for Biblical interpretation, she posts a lot of articles that seemed to have influenced her opinion. I was actually surprised to see her quote Mary Ann Collins, because I was thinking she was going to cite an article from Jesus Is Lord titled Is Mary Jesus' Mother? I would link to it, but it seems down at the moment. Perhaps that is why she went with a different source.

I think my previous article more than covered the small piece Candy quoted from Mary Ann Collins. I did notice that this "The Incarnation means that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. Mary was only the mother of Jesus as man, and not the mother of Jesus as God." doesn't really explain Candy's adoptive mother comment. If Mary was the mother of Jesus as a man, then she still wouldn't have been an adoptive parent.

We have already covered most of the topics in the large article by Mary Ann Collins. I will try to put up a post later today with links to our posts on those topics, and cover anything we haven't done already.

A Moment of Catholic Beauty

This is my favorite piece of music. I listen to it mostly during Lent, when it is most appropriate, but I was also listening to it while I gave birth to my second son. This is the Miserere Mei Deus, or the 51st Psalm.



You can read a short history of the piece here.

The Medici Pope Leo X first mandated the silent recitation of Psalm 51 at the conclusion of Tenebrae. Each Catholic soul across the world considers, then, David's desperate poetic plea for God's mercy. The Pope's own singers, however, quickly adopted the practice of a fully polyphonic performance of the Psalm (later in the fifteenth century, Palestrina contributed a setting). Allegri joined the papal choir in 1629, serving for the rest of his life. In the 1630s he composed a setting of Miserere mei for Holy Week that eventually became his greatest musical legacy. The papal choir sang it every year from the seventeenth century until the choir collapsed in 1870. The penalty for copying its music, which the papal choir considered its exclusive property, was excommunication.

This is the piece which Mozart copied from memory, after hearing only once.

I did just comment on Candy's blog. My computer blipped and I'm not sure if it went through or not but I basically asked her to.

1. Explain why the Greek word used in the scripture is trigon, which literally means to eat, gnaw and masticate. It is a literal word.

2. No where else in scripture does of the spirit mean symbolic! Jesus literally means that this is literally spiritual food that is to be eaten.

3. That throughout scripture there are incidents and events that prefigure other incidents, events. It is not unusual then for Jesus to describe the Eucharist before he formally institutes it as the last supper.

Will she address these? I doubt it.

Mary Was Just A Vessel

In Candy's most recent post, on the 6th chapter of John, she included a note about the birth of Jesus.

Of course, in Jesus' case, He is not the son of Joseph. Joseph and Mary were the "adoptive" parents of Jesus while on this earth. Jesus’ Father is God.

She has now removed this, because she said it was being misunderstood. However, previously she wrote something similar:

Mary was just a chosen vessel to carry the flesh of Jesus, until he was born.

I was initially surprised at this, but I since learned that this is a common belief among some Fundamentalists. Catholic Answers writes:

A woman is a man’s mother either if she carried him in her womb or if she was the woman contributing half of his genetic matter or both. Mary was the mother of Jesus in both of these senses; because she not only carried Jesus in her womb but also supplied all of the genetic matter for his human body, since it was through her—not Joseph—that Jesus "was descended from David according to the flesh" (Rom. 1:3).

Since Mary is Jesus’ mother, it must be concluded that she is also the Mother of God: If Mary is the mother of Jesus, and if Jesus is God, then Mary is the Mother of God. There is no way out of this logical syllogism, the valid form of which has been recognized by classical logicians since before the time of Christ.

Although Mary is the Mother of God, she is not his mother in the sense that she is older than God or the source of her Son’s divinity, for she is neither. Rather, we say that she is the Mother of God in the sense that she carried in her womb a divine person—Jesus Christ, God "in the flesh" (2 John 7, cf. John 1:14)—and in the sense that she contributed the genetic matter to the human form God took in Jesus Christ.

To avoid this conclusion, Fundamentalists often assert that Mary did not carry God in her womb, but only carried Christ’s human nature. This assertion reinvents a heresy from the fifth century known as Nestorianism, which runs aground on the fact that a mother does not merely carry the human nature of her child in her womb. Rather, she carries the person of her child. Women do not give birth to human natures; they give birth to persons. Mary thus carried and gave birth to the person of Jesus Christ, and the person she gave birth to was God.

First, if Mary "was just a chosen vessel" does that really mean that there was nothing special about her? The Bible contains another account of a vessel which carried God, the Ark of the Covenant.

The Scripture Catholic website writes the Biblical parallels between the Ark of the Covenant and Mary:

Exodus 25:11-21 - the ark of the Old Covenant was made of the purest gold for God's Word. Mary is the ark of the New Covenant and is the purest vessel for the Word of God made flesh.

2 Sam. 6:7 - the Ark is so holy and pure that when Uzzah touched it, the Lord slew him. This shows us that the Ark is undefiled. Mary the Ark of the New Covenant is even more immaculate and undefiled, spared by God from original sin so that she could bear His eternal Word in her womb.

1 Chron. 13:9-10 - this is another account of Uzzah and the Ark. For God to dwell within Mary the Ark, Mary had to be conceived without sin. For Protestants to argue otherwise would be to say that God would let the finger of Satan touch His Son made flesh. This is incomprehensible.

1 Chron. 15 and 16 - these verses show the awesome reverence the Jews had for the Ark - veneration, vestments, songs, harps, lyres, cymbals, trumpets.

Luke 1:39 / 2 Sam. 6:2 - Luke's conspicuous comparison's between Mary and the Ark described by Samuel underscores the reality of Mary as the undefiled and immaculate Ark of the New Covenant. In these verses, Mary (the Ark) arose and went / David arose and went to the Ark. There is a clear parallel between the Ark of the Old and the Ark of the New Covenant.

Luke 1:41 / 2 Sam. 6:16 - John the Baptist / King David leap for joy before Mary / Ark. So should we leap for joy before Mary the immaculate Ark of the Word made flesh.

Luke 1:43 / 2 Sam. 6:9 - How can the Mother / Ark of the Lord come to me? It is a holy privilege. Our Mother wants to come to us and lead us to Jesus.

Luke 1:56 / 2 Sam. 6:11 and 1 Chron. 13:14 - Mary / the Ark remained in the house for about three months.

Rev 11:19 - at this point in history, the Ark of the Old Covenant was not seen for six centuries (see 2 Macc. 2:7), and now it is finally seen in heaven. The Jewish people would have been absolutely amazed at this. However, John immediately passes over this fact and describes the "woman" clothed with the sun in Rev. 12:1. John is emphasizing that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant and who, like the Old ark, is now worthy of veneration and praise. Also remember that Rev. 11:19 and Rev. 12:1 are tied together because there was no chapter and verse at the time these texts were written.

You can read a more in depth study about Mary as the new Ark of the Covenant here.


Second, if she only carried the flesh of Jesus, then she did not carry his Divinity. The early church found the issue of whether Mary was "Christotokos" the Christ Bearer or "Theotokos" the God Bearer very important. Nestorius said, like Candy, that Mary only bore Jesus' humanity, but that God was not contained in her womb. This Rock has a good concise history of the Nestorian controversy.

If Mary only bore the flesh of Jesus, then where was the Divinity? When did Jesus become both fully human and fully Divine?

Martin Luther had no problem with the title "Mother of God."

She became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed on her as pass man's understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among which she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in heaven, and such a Child . . . Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God . . . None can say of her nor announce to her greater things, even though he had as many tongues as the earth possesses flowers and blades of grass: the sky, stars; and the sea, grains of sand. It needs to be pondered in the heart what it means to be the Mother of God.

(Martin Luther, Commentary on the Magnificat, 1521; in Luther's Works, Pelikan et al, volume 21, 326)

Martin Luther is following in the footsteps of the early Christians by hailing Mary as the Mother of God. Here is a sampling:

"Many, my beloved, are the true testimonies concerning Christ. The Father bears witness from heaven of His Son: the Holy Ghost bears witness, descending bodily in likeness of a dove: the Archangel Gabriel bears witness, bringing good tidings to Mary: the Virgin Mother of God bears witness: the blessed place of the manger bears witness." Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, X:19 (c. A.D. 350).

"If anyone does not believe that Holy Mary is the Mother of God, he is severed from the Godhead." Gregory of Nazianzus, To Cledonius, 101 (A.D. 382).

"And so you say, O heretic, whoever you may be, who deny that God was born of the Virgin, that Mary the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ ought not to be called Theotocos, i.e., Mother of God, but Christotocos, i.e., only the Mother of Christ, not of God. For no one, you say, brings forth what is anterior in time. And of this utterly foolish argument whereby you think that the birth of God can be understood by carnal minds, and fancy that the mystery of His Majesty can be accounted for by human reasoning, we will, if God permits, say something later on. In the meanwhile we will now prove by Divine testimonies that Christ is God, and that Mary is the Mother of God." John Cassian, The Incarnation of Christ, II:2 (A.D. 430).

Also from Candy's previous writings:

Jesus holds believers more important that his mother - thankfully she is a believer also: "And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked [blessed in Mary]. But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it." -Luke 11:27-28 Candy

I find this a very interesting quote. Notice that Jesus did not say "blessed are they that hear the word of God, and have faith alone." He said "and keep it," which sounds like works. While Catholics do not believe we are saved by works, the importance of works is reiterated time and time again in Scripture.

A verse which Candy did not quote:

Luke 1:28: And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

Highly favoured? Blessed among women? I thought Candy said that believers were more important than Mary?

Luke 1:30: And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.

Found favour with God? I thought she was just a chosen vessel, randomly plucked from the mass of humanity.

Luke 1:42: And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

There's that blessed among women thing again.

Luke 1:48: For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

All generations will call Mary blessed. But Candy says she is not blessed, not at all. And in that, she is contradicting the Word of God.

Candy's specific look at John 6

Let's take a closer look at Candy's notes:


verse 35 To partake of the bread of heaven - one must come unto Jesus. He is that spiritual bread that feeds our souls. He is that living water that satisfies our spirits. If we partake of the bread and drink of Jesus, our souls will never thirst or hunger again. 

These verses are specifically:
35 Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.
36
But I told you that although you have seen (me), you do not believe.
37
Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me,
38
because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.
39
And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it (on) the last day.

I suppose Candy would be shocked to learn that there is a very popular contemporary Catholic Hymn that Catholics sing regularly that comes directly from these verses!!!
In fact it is one of my favorites and I find it to be very, very moving.



See verses 51 and 54. This cannot be referring to any Communion, Eucharist, or Mass - else, one would never have to eat or drink food again, after partaking of the "host" and wine. (Talk about saving money on groceries, if this were the case.)

I don't grasp her logic here. Obviously the Early Church Fathers, and the apostles realized that he was not talking about groceries! Catholics today understand that partaking in the Eucharist is mainly a spiritual food.


verse 40 This is the Gospel. This message is repeated over and over and over again, all over the Bible. Jesus wants it to be clear, that the will of God is that we partake of the bread of life, by believing on Jesus.

40
For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him (on) the last day."

Obviously Catholics have no problem with vs. 40. And because we BELIEVE in the Son, we do what He tells us to do in the rest of the chapter, which is to eat his body and drink his blood!

verse 42 This is a logical fallacy, called "Genetic Fallacy." This is when people dismiss what someone says, because of who that person is, where they came from, or because of actions of that person in the past. This doesn't change that what the person is stating at that very moment may be the absolute truth. Of course, in Jesus' case, He is not the son of Joseph. Joseph and Mary were the "adoptive" parents of Jesus while on this earth. Jesus’ Father is God. Notice how Jesus doesn't waste time correcting the wrong assumptions of the people. He stays with His point, and continues on with what's important.

Um...Mary was not an "adoptive" parent. Jesus was conceived and grew in her womb and he was "Born of a virgin" which is scriptural. I challenge Candy or any of her followers to find a single verse that describes Mary as "adoptive."

verse 45 Thus, those who really are seeking out the truth will come to Jesus.

I have no problem with that verse although I think how that happens can be somewhat of a mystery (although call me a cynic -I have a hard time believing it happens every weekend in a Meeze room!)

verse 48 Verse 47, again tells us that everlasting life is through Jesus. Verse 48 again makes the point that He is the bread of life. If we believe on Him (verse 47) then we have partaken of the bread of life - and our souls will be filled.

47
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.
48
I am the bread of life. 47
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.
48
I am the bread of life.

I note that there is a problem here for Candy and she never addresses it. How does one "partake" of the bread? I suspect that her answer includes some sort of vague rhetoric about believing and spirituality. But these verses are very, very graphic that Jesus is discussing actual eating and digesting. And she addresses it not, because she understands it not.

verse 49 God provided physical bread from heaven, when he provided manna to the Israelites in the wilderness. Yet, the Israelites chose not to believe on God, so they had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, until all of the unbelievers died. Then, the children of the unbelievers got to finally enter the promised land. The manna was a physical food. It kept them alive physically, but not spiritually. They died spiritually, when they chose not to believe God.

Read my prior article for a full explanation of how the Eucharist is prefigured throughout the Old Testament.

verse 50 Yet, if one believes on Jesus, then he is partaking of that spiritual bread of life, and though his body may die, the person them self will not. Their body will sleep in the grave, and the soul and spirit of that person will go to God, until the day of resurrection.


verses 52-53 Many of the people were not listening to what Jesus was saying, so they thought that they had to literally eat and drink Jesus. Their minds were still on the free bread they received earlier. Remember verse 26, our key verse? Reread verse 26, then go down and reread verse 42. These people weren't listening to Jesus. They wanted to eat some free bread. They dismissed what Jesus was saying about everlasting life, so they didn't understand what Jesus meant when He said he is the "bread of life."

The one who is not listening here is Candy. Jesus DID SAY THAT THEY HAD TO LITERALLY EAT HIS FLESH AND DRINK HIS BLOOD!!! That is LITERALLY WHAT HE SAYS:

53
Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
54
Whoever eats 19 my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.

and because they did not understand that He was speaking of His mystical resurrected body in the Eucharist they left. THEY LEFT BECAUSE THEY HAD THE SAME UNDERSTANDING THAT CANDY DOES! They thought he this was a reference to cannibalism. I submit that if Candy had been with that group of disciples with her current understanding, she would have agreed with them, and she would have left too.




verse 56 We partake of the bread of life, via believing on Jesus (see verses 40 and 47, where Jesus explained this). We partake of the blood of Jesus via accepting His death on the cross.

I called it! A paragraph of vague gobbeldy gook wrapped around scriptural feel-good talk that totally takes the focus of what is actually happening in these verses.

The rest of her take is pretty much summed up in my prior article.  Candy's explanation has to go through many gyrations which are only necessary if you are trying to find a way to avoid the correct Catholic interpretation.  Jesus said "

55

"For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink."

.  What Candy presents is a way of wiggling past what He Actually Said. 

But what is key in this passage, and what is one of the key points that solidifies the Eucharist for me and why I WILL ALWAYS BE CATHOLIC is this:  The word "Spirit"  IS NEVER used as a synonym with "symbol."  Ever.  Jesus is not saying here that this is symbolic!  If He were it would be a complete departure from how that is used anywhere else in scripture! 

And I have yet to read a non-Catholic Apologist, explain that away.  So it is not surprising that Candy is unable to do so as well.

A review of John 6 and the Eucharist for Candy.

In light of Candy's look at John 6 today, Kelly and I thought it was important to bring this article forward from last fall.  

John 6:51-55

A There is good news here. I don't have to have a "take" on it, I just need to read the Bible, and see what it says about said passage. Roman Catholics take these verses and try to use them to prove that their IHS cracker in each mass is Jesus Christ Himself. However, that is NOT at all what said passage says. RCs are stopping at verse 55 or earlier, and are therefore interpreting the scripture incorrectly. Lets follow the biblical principle of scripture interpreting scripture, shall we? Is it okay to drink blood? NO:

Well let's look at the entire passage then.


Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.
48
I am the bread of life.
49
Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;
50
this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.
51
I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world."
52
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?"
53
Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
54
Whoever eats 19 my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.
55
For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.
Remember this is where Candy says we Catholics stop and therefore misinterpret the passage.
56
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
57
Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
58
This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever."
59
These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
60
20 Then many of his disciples who were listening said, "This saying is hard; who can accept it?"
61
Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, "Does this shock you?
62
What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 21
63
It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh 22 is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
64
But there are some of you who do not believe." Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him.
65
And he said, "For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father."
66
As a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.

I find this quite stunning. The disciples reject Christ's teaching of the Eucharist at John 6:66. 666!

"
67
Jesus then said to the Twelve, "Do you also want to leave?"
68
Simon Peter answered him, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
69
We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God."
70



Now back to Candy Brauer's comments.

"Whatsoever soul it be that eateth any manner of blood, even that soul shall be cut off from his people." -Leviticus 7:27

"That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood." -Acts 15:29a

It is clear that it is a both Old and New Testament command that we are not to drink or eat blood. God is consistent, and He does not contradict Himself.

Since the Bible is the Word of God, it cannot contradict itself, thus, Jesus can't literally mean that we are going to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and he didn't mean that. He explains to the disciples that what he said was not literal. Read further in the same chapter:

If Candy has such a love for the Old Testament, she might learn something THE EUCHARIST’S LONG SHADOW ACROSS THE BIBLE (This Rock: January 1999)"from this article.

In the sacrifice of Isaac and the offering of Melchizedek there is a Eucharistic imprint that deserves serious consideration and prayerful meditation. In fact, the Eucharist is present in the three distinct stages of salvation history: In the Old Testament it is present as a type; with the arrival of the Messiah it is present as the event; and in the age of the Church it is present as a sacrament. The purpose of the figure or type was to prepare for the event, and the purpose of the sacrament is to continue the event by actualizing it in Jesus’ mystical body, the Church.

From the marital-covenantal theme that the Holy Spirit inaugurates in Genesis and develops in the succeeding books of the Bible until its culmination in the marriage feast of the Lamb (Rev. 21), the Eucharist is seen as the sublime consummation of Christ’s marital oneness with his bride. This union is anticipated in the covenants God established with the human race through Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Esra, and Nehemiah, all of which find their fulfillment in the marital covenant that Christ established with his church: "This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" (Lk. 22:20).

In a profound sense, as Raniero Cantalamessa points out in his book The Eucharist, Our Sanctification, the "entire Old Testament was a preparation for the Lord’s Supper" (p. 6). In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus proclaims the parable of the "king who gave a marriage feast for his son and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the marriage feast" (Mt. 22:2–3). In this light, those servants can be seen as the Old Testament prophets.

The first of these was Melchizedek. St. Paul declares that Jesus is "a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek" (Heb. 6:20) who, in offering bread and wine, is clearly a type of Christ (Heb. 7:1 ff; Ps. 110:4; Gen. 14:18). John’s Gospel (6:31) makes the connection between the Eucharist and the manna Yahweh sent to feed the Israelites in the desert (Ex. 16:4 ff), but it is Jesus who shows that the manna is a mere foreshadowing of the "true bread from heaven" (Jn. 6:32–33).

The greatest Old Testament figure of the Eucharist is the Passover (Ex. 12:23). That night when God smote all the first-born of the Egyptians, he spared the first-born of Israel. Why? "The blood shall be a sign for you upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you (Ex. 12:13). But was it the blood of the Passover lamb alone, into which a hyssop was dipped to sprinkle blood on their doorposts, that saved the Israelites? No. This was a type: What God foreshadowed by it was the blood of the Lamb of God—the Eucharist.

Catholics understand that we are not eating Christ's earthly mortal body the same as when he lived on earth 2000 years ago. We instead are partaking of his mystical body that, the resurrected body.

The word "mystery" is commonly used to refer to something that escapes the full comprehension of the human mind. In the Bible, however, the word has a deeper and more specific meaning, for it refers to aspects of God's plan of salvation for humanity, which has already begun but will be completed only with the end of time. The Eucharist is a mystery because it participates in the mystery of Jesus Christ and God's plan to save humanity through Christ. We should not be surprised if there are aspects of the Eucharist that are not easy to understand, for God's plan for the world has repeatedly surpassed human expectations and human understanding. For example, even the disciples did not at first understand that it was necessary for the Messiah to be put to death and then to rise from the dead. Furthermore, any time that we are speaking of God we need to keep in mind that our human concepts never entirely grasp God. We must not try to limit God to our understanding, but allow our understanding to be stretched beyond its normal limitations by God's revelation.

By his real presence in the Eucharist Christ fulfills his promise to be with us "always, until the end of the age" (Mt. 28:20). St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "It is the law of friendship that friends should live together...Christ has not left us without his bodily presence in this our pilgrimage, but he joins us to himself in this sacrament in the reality of his body and blood". With this gift of Christ's presence in our midst, the church is truly blessed. As Jesus told his disciples, referring to his presence among them, "Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it" (Mt. 13:17). In the Eucharist the church both receives the gift of Jesus Christ and gives grateful thanks to God for such a blessing. This thanksgiving is the only proper response, for through this gift of himself in the celebration of the Eucharist under the appearances of bread and wine Christ gives us the gift of eternal life.

We refer to this as the true presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, in the host.

Back to Candy Brauer:

"When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you? (The disciples made the same mistake Roman Catholics do. They thought Jesus literally meant that he should be cannibalized and vamparized)

Catholics don't make that mistake at all. We understand that we are partaking of Jesus Christ's true presence in the Eucharist in a divine in a holy mystical way. We understand that we are not cannibals or vampires.

But Candy is missing the point. What the disciples did not understand was that Jesus was speaking of his mystical body/true presence in the Eucharist, but he was very clear that it was himself that would be consumed and because the disciples did not understand it, they left.

And Jesus did not change his story.

Here is what This Rock Magazine had to say on this part of the chapter:
This Is a Hard Teaching (This Rock: September 1999): "Eucharist: Forceful Repetitions To many non-Catholics, the Eucharist is a thing to do occasionally as a remembrance of the Last Supper, but it is not the body and blood of Christ. They argue that passages such as John 6 are to be read symbolically.

So when Christ said, 'Eat my flesh,' he did not really mean, 'Eat my flesh' but 'Believe in me.' In defending the Eucharist to a Protestant, we can ask the same question we used in defending Christianity to a non-Christian: What did the people who saw and spoke with Jesus think he was saying? Did they think he was using symbolic language? If they misunderstood him, why didn't he correct them? Christ repeats himself to three different groups to emphasize his point. He does not withdraw it. When Jesus first made his claim, his hearers began to argue with one another. 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?' They thought he was saying to literally eat his flesh and drink his blood. And so they rejected this teaching and left. Did Christ change his teaching? Did he tell his hearers, 'No, no, you've misunderstood, here is what I really meant'? He did not. Many of the disciples who followed Christ-like many people of today-had this to say about the Eucharist: 'This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?' When they left Christ, did he try to correct their thinking? It is unlikely that he would have allowed them to remain in error. Unlike the Jewish leaders he would later stand before, these were his followers, the ones favorably disposed to him. But even to them he repeated rather than retracted this hard teaching (John 6:60-66).

Next, he challenged the Twelve Apostles on the issue: "Do you also wish to go away?" He did not correct the "misconception" of his audience or the Twelve. Why? Because their understanding was true. They had not heard him wrong. There was no misconception. Just like he didn't correct the members of the Sanhedrain when confronted over his Messiah-ship, he did not correct even the thinking of those who loved him most because there was nothing to correct. There was no misunderstanding; the teaching was true and to be accepted. The disciples responded, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the holy one of God" (John 6:67-69). They were saying in essence, "Yes, this is a hard teaching, but we will take it on faith, for you are the Christ."

When we look at how his audience, disciples, and the Twelve interpreted the teaching of Christ, we soon discover that there was no other option left open to them other than the literal teaching of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. The merely symbolic reading wasn't left open to them, and it isn't left open to us.

And why did they leave?

Christ in the Eucharist: "He continues: 'As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me' (John 6:57). The Greek word used for 'eats' (trogon) is very blunt and has the sense of 'chewing' or 'gnawing.' This is not the language of metaphor.

Mrs. Brauer:

What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: (Here Jesus is giving us a distinction between spirit and flesh) the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit Jesus just said here that we are not to literally eat his flesh and blood, but spiritually), and they are life. But there are some of you that believe not." -John 6:61-64a

Candy makes the classic Fundamentalist error:

For Fundamentalist writers, the scriptural argument is capped by an appeal to John 6:63: "It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." They say this means that eating real flesh is a waste. But does this make sense?

Are we to understand that Christ had just commanded his disciples to eat his flesh, then said their doing so would be pointless? Is that what "the flesh is of no avail" means? "Eat my flesh, but you’ll find it’s a waste of time"—is that what he was saying? Hardly.

The fact is that Christ’s flesh avails much! If it were of no avail, then the Son of God incarnated for no reason, he died for no reason, and he rose from the dead for no reason. Christ’s flesh profits us more than anyone else’s in the world. If it profits us nothing, so that the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ are of no avail, then "your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished" (1 Cor. 15:17b–18).

In John 6:63 "flesh profits nothing" refers to mankind’s inclination to think using only what their natural human reason would tell them rather than what God would tell them. Thus in John 8:15–16 Jesus tells his opponents: "You judge according to the flesh, I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone that judge, but I and he who sent me." So natural human judgment, unaided by God’s grace, is unreliable; but God’s judgment is always true.

And were the disciples to understand the line "The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life" as nothing but a circumlocution (and a very clumsy one at that) for "symbolic"? No one can come up with such interpretations unless he first holds to the Fundamentalist position and thinks it necessary to find a rationale, no matter how forced, for evading the Catholic interpretation. In John 6:63 "flesh" does not refer to Christ’s own flesh—the context makes this clear—but to mankind’s inclination to think on a natural, human level. "The words I have spoken to you are spirit" does not mean "What I have just said is symbolic." The word "spirit" is never used that way in the Bible. The line means that what Christ has said will be understood only through faith; only by the power of the Spirit and the drawing of the Father (cf. John 6:37, 44–45, 65).

Read ALL of chapter 6, and you'll see that there is no way that Jesus is saying that we are to literally eat and drink Him.

Yes, do read all of Chapter 6 and I think it's clear that Candy Brauer's take on the Eucharist is severely flawed. She may live to regret all the disrespectful times she referred to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament as a "cracker."

I could not believe my good fortune then for Candy calling on the early church as testimony for her stand!!

Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" (1 Cor. 10:16). So when we receive Communion, we actually participate in the body and blood of Christ, not just eat symbols of them. Paul also said, "Therefore whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. . . . For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself" (1 Cor. 11:27, 29). "To answer for the body and blood" of someone meant to be guilty of a crime as serious as homicide. How could eating mere bread and wine "unworthily" be so serious? Paul’s comment makes sense only if the bread and wine became the real body and blood of Christ.

Jesus clearly tells us that to "spiritually" eat His flesh and drink His blood is to BELIEVE ON HIM. Hence, saved by grace through faith (see Ephesians 2:8-9), you do not receive Christ by physically eating and drinking something or someone. Believe to Receive. See Romans 10:9-11 and Mark 16:16.

Meanwhile, in regards to communion...

The IHS cracker is not Jesus Himself. The Bible nowhere states this. Communion is done in remembrance of Jesus, and is modeled off of the Last Supper. Did the disciples cannibalize and vampirize Jesus at the Last Supper? Certainly not.

What Did the First Christians Say?

Anti-Catholics also claim the early Church took this chapter symbolically. Is that so? Let’s see what some early Christians thought, keeping in mind that we can learn much about how Scripture should be interpreted by examining the writings of early Christians.

Ignatius of Antioch, who had been a disciple of the apostle John and who wrote a letter to the Smyrnaeans about A.D. 110, said, referring to "those who hold heterodox opinions," that "they abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his goodness, raised up again" (6:2, 7:1).

Forty years later, Justin Martyr, wrote, "Not as common bread or common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nourished, . . . is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus" (First Apology 66:1–20).

Origen, in a homily written about A.D. 244, attested to belief in the Real Presence. "I wish to admonish you with examples from your religion. You are accustomed to take part in the divine mysteries, so you know how, when you have received the Body of the Lord, you reverently exercise every care lest a particle of it fall and lest anything of the consecrated gift perish. You account yourselves guilty, and rightly do you so believe, if any of it be lost through negligence" (Homilies on Exodus 13:3).

Cyril of Jerusalem, in a catechetical lecture presented in the mid-300s, said, "Do not, therefore, regard the bread and wine as simply that, for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the body and blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge in this matter by taste, but be fully assured by faith, not doubting that you have been deemed worthy
of the body and blood of Christ" (Catechetical Discourses: Mystagogic 4:22:9).

In a fifth-century homily, Theodore of Mopsuestia seemed to be speaking to today’s Evangelicals and Fundamentalists: "When [Christ] gave the bread he did not say, ‘This is the symbol of my body,’ but, ‘This is my body.’ In the same way, when he gave the cup of his blood he did not say, ‘This is the symbol of my blood,’ but, ‘This is my blood,’ for he wanted us to look upon the [Eucharistic elements], after their reception of grace and the coming of the Holy Spirit, not according to their nature, but to receive them as they are, the body and blood of our Lord" (Catechetical Homilies 5:1).



I think it's clear that there is a little bit more to the Catholic Eucharist that Candy Brauer's assessment. Candy's readers would do well to remember that she is no way a bible authority or scholar.

The Pope Sydney: Cliffnotes Edition

Wanting to know the best parts of the Pope's addresses to World Youth Day events in Sydney without having to track them all down and wade through all that text?

I found an excellent article by Sandro Magister which is an anthology of just that. Plus, the link to where all the texts are on the Vatican site, in case you do want the unabridged version.

On this page, instead, there is an anthology of the salient passages from the words spoken by Benedict XVI during his voyage.

The selection made here inevitably sacrifices other selections that are no less important from the speeches and homilies of the pope. For example, it would be obligatory to reread in its entirety the catechesis on the Holy Spirit presented to the young people at the nighttime vigil on Saturday, July 19: and in doing so, one would understand why, in presenting it, "L'Osservatore Romano" called it "one of the most beautiful texts of the pontificate."

John 5

Previous installments in this series:


Let's Study The Bible! (John 1)
John 2
John 3
John 4: Sanctifying Grace and Infant Baptism
John 6

The fifth chapter of John begins with Jesus traveling to Jerusalem for a Jewish feast. The notes in my Bible say that it was probably the feast of Passover, but possibly Pentecost. In Jerusalem, Jesus heals a paralytic next to the pool with five porticoes.

The John Chrysostom, in his homilies, sees this healing as a symbol of baptism:

A Baptism was about to be given, possessing much power, and the greatest of gifts, a Baptism purging all sins, and making men alive instead of dead. These things then are foreshown as in a picture by the pool, and by many other circumstances. And first is given a water whichpurges the stains of our bodies, and those defilements which are not, but seem to be, as those from touching the dead, those from leprosy, and other similar causes; under the old covenant one may see many things done by water on this account.

Candy has a note explaining the relevance of this healing:
verse 17 The Lord does not rest on the Sabbath. He rested on the seventh day of creation. Nowhere does the Bible say that God rested on any other seventh day after that. Jesus here affirms that God works on the Sabbath day, and therefore He does as well.

Though I don't think Candy has studied St.Thomas Aquinas, but she agrees with his interpretation:

The Jews, however, did not do any work on the Sabbath, as a symbol that there were certain things pertaining to the Sabbath which were to be accomplished, but which the law could not do. This is clear in the four things which God ordained for the Sabbath: for he sanctified the Sabbath day, blessed it, completed his work on it, and then rested. These things the law was not able to do. It could not sanctify; so we read: “Save me, O Lord, for there are no holy people left” (Ps 11:1). Nor could it bless; rather, “Those who rely on the works of the law are under a curse” (Gal 3:10). Neither could it, complete and perfect, because “the law brought nothing to perfection” (Heb 7:19). Nor could it bring perfect rest: “If Joshua had given them rest, God would not be speaking after of another day” (Heb 4:8).

These things, which the law could not do, Christ did. For he sanctified the people by his passion: “Jesus, in order to sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate” (Heb 13:12). He blessed them by an inpouring of grace: “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing of heaven, in Christ” (Eph 1:3). He brought the people to perfection by instructing them in the ways of perfect justice: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). He also led them to true rest: “We who have believed will find rest,” as is said in Hebrews (4:3). Therefore, it is proper for him to work on the Sabbath, who is able to make perfect those things that pertain to the Sabbath, from which an impotent law rested.

Verse 24: Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

Candy writes: THAT is how to get saved. God made it simple, because He desires that all come unto Him. How does one hear "the word?" By the spreading of the Gospel. Each Christian is given the job, by God, to spread the Gospel, so that more will hear, and believe, and get saved. Time is short - spread the truth of the Gospel of Christ while there is still time!

This is a clear difference in our theology. The note in my Navarre Bible explains the Catholic interpretation:

There is also a close connexion between hearing the word of Christ and believing in him who has sent him, that is, in the Father. Whatever Jesus Christ says is divine revelation; therefore, accepting Jesus' words is equivalent to believing in God the Father (Jn 12:44, 49).

A person with faith is on the way to eternal life, because even in this earthly life he is sharing in divine life, which is eternal; but he has not yet attained eternal life in a definitive way (for he can lose it), nor in a full way: "Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him " (1 Jn 3:2). If a person stays firm in the faith and lives up to its demands, God's judgment will not condemn him but save him. Therefore, it makes sense to strive, with the help of grace, to live a life consistent with the faith.

Again, the difference in our theology boils down to salvation resting on the action of our faith, our acceptance, or on God's grace. Catholicism puts the emphasis on God's grace, while not discounting the importance of faith in salvation.

CCC #161: Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation. "Since "without faith it is impossible to please [God]" and to attain to the fellowship of his sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life 'But he who endures to the end.'"

#183: "Faith is necessary for salvation. The Lord himself affirms: "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned" (Mk 16:16)."


In verses 31-39, Jesus is answering the objections of the Jews by appeals to four witnesses that what he is saying is true. Beginning in verse 39 through the end of the chapter, his fourth witness is the Scriptures.

In verse 39, Candy notes: Jesus is the word of God made flesh (see 1 John 5:7 and John 1:1). The Bible is the word of God in writing, for all to read, so that they will read of Jesus Christ, and be saved.

However, for verses 45-47, she says This is referring to the Old Testament, of which a large part was written by Moses. The Old Testament shows us that we are all guilty of sin, and that we cannot fully atone for our sins, without the shedding of blood. This is why Jesus came to this earth. This is why Jesus died on the cross. He shed His blood, so that we may have life eternal with the Heavenly Father.

I don't know if she intends to make it seem as if verse 39 is referring to the complete Bible, while verses 45-47 refer only to the Old Testament or if that is accidental.

However, it is worthwhile to note that all of this passage would have been referring to the Old Testament. Jesus may be found in the Old Testament, but not explicitly. Dei Verbum, a document of Vatican II, states it this way, "The economy of the Old Testament was deliberately so orientated that it should prepare for and declare in prophecy the coming of Christ."

Jesus clearly could not have been referring to the complete Scriptures in verse 39, because the New Testament did not exist at this time. Nor did New Testaments fall from the heavens after Jesus ascended, so that everyone could "read of Jesus Christ, and be saved." The early Christians had to rely on the oral Word, passed from person to person, in order to hear the message of salvation. You can read my defense of sacred Tradition here.

This does not mean that we differ from Candy in other aspects, such that the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God.

I thought to close, I would post a few selections from the Catholic Catechism on Sacred Scriptures.

#103-107

For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates Lord's Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God's Word and Christ's Body.

In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, "but as what it really is, the word of God". "In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them."

II. INSPIRATION AND TRUTH OF SACRED SCRIPTURE

God is the author of Sacred Scripture. "The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit."

"For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself."

God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. "To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more."

The inspired books teach the truth. "Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures."

and #131-133

"And such is the force and power of the Word of God that it can serve the Church as her support and vigor, and the children of the Church as strength for their faith, food for the soul, and a pure and lasting fount of spiritual life." Hence "access to Sacred Scripture ought to be open wide to the Christian faithful."

"Therefore, the study of the sacred page should be the very soul of sacred theology. The ministry of the Word, too - pastoral preaching, catechetics and all forms of Christian instruction, among which the liturgical homily should hold pride of place - is healthily nourished and thrives in holiness through the Word of Scripture."

The Church "forcefully and specifically exhorts all the Christian faithful. . . to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.

The Trail Home

Commenter Deeny pointed me to the blog The Trail Home. It is written from a former Baptist minister who converted to Catholicism.

It's very interesting to read, given his perspective. For example, one entry written by his wife contains this passage:

I had difficulty with the meanness towards all those who were not Baptist. WE HAVE TO SEPARATE from anyone, including friends and family who did not believe like us. WOMEN HAD TO KNOW THEIR PLACE and, I know mine as a successful business woman and wife/mother....totally out of line for them. I also had a mind and could think.....I could read, analyze, look at original text and language, read ancient history and Jewish text, and I could not make their theology work....premilllienal, memorial meal, baptism as a ritual that really didn't mean anything, a de-emphasis on doing good because it is all about faith (someday I'll talk about what that means)

.....AND, THE HATRED FOR CATHOLICS. At the heart of everything was the hatred of Catholics. They were all that was wrong and evil in the world. The whore of Babylon, the anti-Christ, etc. Our job was to convert people from the Catholic church because all of them were going to hell.

The most recent entry is on the doctrine "once saved, always saved."

The ‘doctrine’ of ‘once saved, always saved’ (OSAS), otherwise known as ‘eternal security’ was a teaching I found hard to abandon when I crossed the Tiber. It is an enticing philosophy that attracts people into a web that is hard to get out of. Behind the doctrine, of course is the teaching that you and I can ‘know for sure’ that our destiny is Heaven. Or as fundamentalist preachers love to put it: ‘you’re as sure for Heaven as Jesus Himself!’ Catholics shrink from such statements as they smack of the sin of presumption.

But this doctrine has a dark side. If I can ‘be sure’ who is going to Heaven (those who repeated a sinners prayer), than I can also be sure who is going to Hell (those who have not). This ‘knowledge’ of who is destined for Hell not only plays into the ‘Lie’ (using Malcolm’s language), it also plays into a destructive psychological pattern. . .

When some of the writings of Mother Teresa was made public, it revealed she had gone through (as St. John of the Cross did) a ‘dark night of the soul’.
Fundamentalists had a gleeful feeding frenzy. I remember one fundamentalist almost giddy with excitement: “See! This proves it! Mother Teresa is in Hell!!”. It is extremely important to fundamentalists that Mother Teresa be in Hell. If Mother Teresa is not burning in Hell, that would make their belief/doctrine false; hence she must be burning in Hell. . .

Catholics are told (many times with glee) that it is ‘certain’ they are going to Hell.
It reflects a lack of compassion, hope, and love. It feeds into a person’s unforgiveness and bitterness toward another. In dehumanizing them with the curse of “They’re going to Hell,” it relieves them of any responsibility.

Baptists are difficult to generalize about, because there are many different varieties, and a lot depends on the individual congregation. My intention in pointing you to his blog isn't really to read what he wrote about Baptists, but his former perspective on Catholicism. It's a pretty recent blog, so I was able to read through the archives pretty quickly, and there's lot of good writing there, if you're looking for something to keep you busy online during the slow blogging season.

Tree Blessed By Pope Blossoms

An unusual story:

Tel Aviv- A tree blessed eight years ago by Pope John Paul II during his visit to the Holy Land was the only one in its plot of land to produce olives this year, a Jewish National Fund official said. "It is a miracle," Yossi Karni from the JNF, which maintains the plot, told local media. During a visit to northern Israel, near the Sea of Galilee, John Paul blessed a tree that was planted on the Mount of Beatitudes, where according to Christian beliefs Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount.

Karni noted that all the trees on the plot were treated equally, but the ones that did not receive the blessing have not given fruit this year. "They get treated the same, watered the same," he said, adding that some trees had even started to wither, which he could not explain.

Ho Kai Paulos: I Love Being Catholic! (Catholic Carnival 182)

Ho Kai Paulos: I Love Being Catholic! (Catholic Carnival 182)








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Answering Fundamentalist Objections To Catholicism

Things have been a little slow over at Candy's blog, at least as far as Catholicism is concerned. Plus, it's summer, so people have better things to do than surf around on blogs for theological discussion. Still, I hate to go too long between posts, so I thought I'd dust off these two articles from Catholic apologetics magazine This Rock, which I've been saving for a slow time.

In The Heretical Roots of Fundamentalism, Carl Olson writes about a few topics of Catholicism which always raise the ire of fundamentalists. He uses Candy's favorite site, Jesus-Is-Lord as a starting point.

Recently I visited an anti-Catholic site (www.jesus-is-lord.com) whose home page proclaimed in bold letters: "God HATES images. ANY kind of image. . . . It is idolatry to venerate images. We are not even supposed to make them." This sums up the common Fundamentalist attitude towards the use of images to aid the believer in worshiping God. It is linked with a demand for stark simplicity in their meeting places. Fundamentalist services are noteworthy for lengthy sermons and impromptu prayers, led mostly by the pastor, while the congregation sits in an unadorned meeting place. The goal is freedom from distractions in order to focus on the sermon. There is a strong fear of idolatry, similar to the fear behind the Iconoclasm of the eighth and ninth centuries and the stripping of Catholic churches by the Reformers seven hundred years later.

The Catholic position is simple: If Jesus really is true God and true man, and if he has existed physically in this world, then he can be represented in visual arts. The Old Testament decrees against images were made when mankind was just beginning to understand who Yahweh was and how he related to humanity. The "fullness of time" had not yet been realized—humanity had much to learn before God would come as man and dwell among us. . .

For Fundamentalists, a visual aid is something placed between man and God, removing us further from a "personal relationship" with the Creator. Ironically, while God became man so we might know how to relate to him in a truly personal way, the Fundamentalist misses this by insisting on knowledge gained only through "spiritual" means, as though the humanity of the God-man has no effect on the entire person. "By avoiding the dangers of magic and idolatry on the one hand," writes Thomas Howard, a former Evangelical, "Evangelicalism runs itself very near the shoals of Manichaeanism on the other—the view, that is, that pits the spiritual against the physical. . . . But by denying to the whole realm of Christian life and practice the principle that it allows in all the other realms of life, namely, the principle of symbolism and ceremony and imagery, it has, despite its loyalty to orthodox doctrine, managed to give a semi-Manichaean hue to the faith" (Evangelical Is Not Enough, 5).

In She Just Knows Catholics Are Wrong, Karl Keating replies to a letter from an angry woman which he received. She makes several points which Candy has made before.

"Get the book A Woman Rides the Beast by Dave Hunt. It will open your eyes!"

Indeed it will. It will show the open-minded reader how poorly argued the anti-Catholic position can be. Dave Hunt, an inveterate anti-Catholic, has written many books, about half of them against the New Age movement and half against Catholicism. (Actually, I should rephrase "written": He has his name on books that were ghostwritten for him.) In a public debate he and I had five years ago, and in radio debates we had earlier, he never failed to use a technique perfected by Cato the Elder (234-149 B.C.). Cato ended every speech before the Roman senate with the admonition, "Carthage must be destroyed!" It didn't matter what the issue at hand was. The senators might have been talking about farm subsidies, but Cato always threw in his trademark line. Eventually Rome did destroy Carthage, perhaps partly to keep Cato quiet.

In his public remarks, Dave Hunt never seems to leave out "the Catholic-Nazi connection." The topic at hand might be the Immaculate Conception, but Hunt will make a side comment to the effect that the Catholic Church backed the Nazis and thus can't be believed on any doctrinal matter. His claim is groundless, of course. For a refutation of A Woman Rides the Beast, see James Akin's "Hunt-ing the Whore of Babylon," This Rock (September and October 1994).

"We do not claim Mary is not the mother of God. She is. She had children after Jesus-is that a perpetual virgin? She was a good and holy woman, I agree, but no better than we who try to live our lives according to the gospel. Matthew 13:55: 'Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And his brethren, James and Joses and Simon and Judas?' (Four brothers here.) Luke 11:27-28: 'And it came to pass, as he spoke these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps which thou has sucked. But he said, Yea, rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.' (We are blessed also, same as Mary.)"

There is an odd element of self-complacency here, maybe even presumption. "We are blessed also, same as Mary." If so, then it doesn't seem that Mary was very highly blessed-not if she was like the rest of us. After all, we tend to be more remarkable for our failings than our sanctity. It seems not to have occurred to Debra that God might have provided, as the mother of the Savior, a woman at least as heroic in sanctity as the other great women of the Bible, a standout among women, someone blessed in a way unlike the rest of us. It seems not to have occurred to her that Gabriel's greeting-whether translated as "Hail, full of grace" or as "Hail, highly favored daughter"-implies in its formulation a singularity: Yes, we may be blessed, but not the "same as Mary."

Both articles cover several other topics, so click through to the links, if I've peaked your interest.

Soccer pro retires to pursue Catholic priesthood

Soccer pro retires to pursue Catholic priesthood

A couple of neat conversion stories!

Standing on My Head: Man Healed by Becoming Catholic








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Good News!

Well, I guess it's good news. In checking over our stats, we are getting some regular search engine traffic for the terms "catholic cult" and "catholic atrocities." These people are directed to the articles which I wrote by the same name.

Now, when you type these terms into a search engine, we are one of the few pro-Catholic sites that come up. Most of the pages are telling about why Catholicism is a cult, or the atrocities committed by Catholics. With that in mind, I just edited the two articles to add more links to some of our other articles. For example, each one now has links to our resources on why Jack Chick and Dave Hunt are NOT reliable sources of information.

I'm very glad to think that we might really make a difference to people who are directed here for those search terms. This really goes beyond Candy's audience!

Catholic Atrocities
The Catholic Cult

Cancer's Unexpected Blessings | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

This was written by Tony Snow, the former White House Press Secretary who passed away from colon cancer earlier this week and was buried yesterday. Mr. Snow as Catholic. This is an amazing testimony and witness of faith in the face of his own mortality. I think Candy et al, if they read it, might be moved and surprised at how deep and how meaningful Mr. Snow found his Catholic faith to be in such circumstances. For everyone else, it is simply a must read.


Cancer's Unexpected Blessings | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Papal Answers

We've had a few comments about the Pope, so I thought it was time to reprint this one.

Some of these questions are from Candy, some from previous discussions from Amy, and some I just made up myself.

Richard Bennett says that the Papacy is a fairly recent development, not found in early Christianity. I responded to that here with some of these quotes:

Pope Clement wrote in the 90's AD that The Church of God which sojourns in Rome to the Church of God which sojourns in Corinth....If anyone disobey the things which have been said by Him through us, let them know that they will involve themselves in transgression and in no small danger."

Pope Damascus wrote in the late 300's "Why then do you again ask me for the condemnation of Timotheus? Here, by the judgment of the apostolic see, in the presence of Peter, bishop of Alexandria, he was condemned, together with his teacher, Apollinarius, who will also in the day of judgment undergo due punishment and torment. But if he succeeds in persuading some less stable men, as though having some hope, after by his confession changing the true hope which is in Christ, with him shall likewise perish whoever of set purpose withstands the order of the Church. May God keep you sound, most honoured sons."

From Candy: The Vatican repeatedly calls their pope "Holy Father."

You guys probably recognized that one, because Elena wrote on it recently, here.


Candy also wrote: The new Pope (Vicar of Christ - the Greek roots of 'vicar' is "ante", AKA Greek Vicar of Christ = antichrist) proclaimed the other day that you are saved ONLY by being a member of the Roman Catholic church. Of course, anyone who has read his or her Bible knows that that is not true.

Elena wrote about that here:

To summarize, the Catholic Church is a Christian church, organized and run on a biblical model as indicated by Jesus Christ himself. The word "Vicar" merely means a substitute, who stands in as an earthly agent.

Candy also wrote "It is false teaching to place a man in the role of head of the church. Christ is head." which Amy explained as "So the objection is to a man filling in for Christ as head of the church, and not an objection to having authorities in general. Just as a husband doesn't use another person to communicate with his wife, most Protestants don't see Christ as using a man to communicate directly with his church."

Elena quotes Scott Hahn explaining the idea of where Jesus gives Peter/the Pope the authority to act as his agent in Scripture:

Here's what he says, "Isaiah 22, verse 15, undoubtedly lies behind this saying of Jesus. The keys are the symbol of authority and Father Roland DeVoe rightly sees here the same authority vested in the vicar, the master of the house, the chamberlain of the royal household in ancient Israel. In Isaiah 22 Eliakim is described as having the same authority."

I wanted to point out that Jesus uses the idea of a steward in his parables. In Luke 12, the faithful steward rules over the household until his lord returns, as the Pope rules over the Church on the Lord's behalf, until his return.

Luke 12:41Then Peter said unto him, Lord, speakest thou this parable unto us, or even to all?

42And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season?

43Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.

44Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath.

The steward of Luke 16, is not a just steward, but he also rules over the household until his lord's return. Notice that the steward has the power to release men from debts, on behalf of his lord:

5So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord?

6And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty.

Compare this to the language in Matthew 16:18-19:

18And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

19And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

I think they read the same. Jesus is naming Peter as his steward, and giving him the power of binding and loosing from debts.



The difference with denominations having varied intervals between communion and the Pope changing church tradition is huge to me, because the 'protestant' churches do not hold to one man being Christ incarnate with the full authority to change tradition scripture, or whatever he chooses when he sits in the seat.

We do not believe the Pope is Christ incarnate. He is Christ's representative. The Pope cannot contradict scripture or Tradition.


No one in our churches is allowed to change anything that is considered doctrinal.

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "our churches." Protestant churches vary hugely on doctrine. Are there sacraments? How many? Does baptism save you, or is it just an outward sign? Once saved always saved? Are we saved by faith alone or by grace alone?

Instead of a protestant church changing doctrine, they just create a new church. In that way the doctrine is the same within a denomination. But if you put all the denominations together, you will see doctrinal change everywhere. Even Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli could not agree on basic doctrine.

The Catholic Church has retained the same view of Jesus' divinity and incarnation, of salvation and justification, number of sacraments, and even the same scripture canon.



If the pope(s) made decrees that no one can be saved without being under subjection to the pope, and they have the papal infallibility, then what they say has to mean what it says. Right?

Not exactly. The Pope speaks infallibly when he speaks in union with the magisterium on matters of faith and morals. This means that when the Pope upholds the Catholic teaching prohibiting birth control, for example, he is speaking infallibly.

To speak infallibly on his own, he has to use a particular formula to make it clear that that is indeed, what he is doing. This would be used to define a doctrine that has been questioned. While there is no list of infallible pronouncements, the two which are most often listed are defining the Immaculate Conception in 1854, and the Assumption of Mary in 1950. That doesn't mean that Catholics didn't hold these beliefs prior to that time. Again, these were doctrines which were being questioned, and so the doctrine was formally defined by the Pope.

When he is speaking on other matters, it is possible for the Pope to err. For example, one Pope wrote a document on music in the liturgy, where he said that the piano (back when it was a new instrument) was not suitable for liturgy, and spoke about how much better the organ was. This was not a binding document because the Pope did not use the infallible formula for the document, and because liturgical music is not considered a matter of faith and morals, but what we call discipline.

More recently, Pope Benedict wrote a book about Jesus, and he stressed that the book represented his own personal views, not an infallible Papal decree:

The Pontiff indicates in the book’s foreword that this should not be considered infallible from a magisterial point of view. "This work is not an absolute act of magisterial teaching, but merely an expression of my personal research into the face of the Lord. Therefore, everyone is free to contradict me," Pope Benedict stated.

Ecumenical councils can also be considered infallible. The Council of Nicea, for example, defined the nature of Christ, as both fully human, and fully divine, at a time when that doctrine was being questioned by the Arians.

The Catholic Church actually offers more stability than other churches because, as I said, it is almost impossible to change teachings on matters of faith. The Pope would not be able to say that Jesus was just a wise teacher, or that his resurrection should be understand metaphorically, as some protestants (okay, and I admit, heretical Catholics too) teach.

The various protestant churches have an ever changing theology. If you disagree with what your church teaches, you start another one. A church might have one theological direction under one pastor, and change under a different one. Usually the change is incremental, but if you look at the many varities you have now, versus where you started at the time of the reformation, you can see how far the theology has spread.

The Catholic Church does refer to an "unfolding" of theology. When you read the Bible, you see the seeds of what was later to be understood as the Trinity, even though it isn't explicitly stated. As time goes on, we better understand certain teachings.


Why would the Pope kiss the Koran? I really would like an answer to that one.

The Pope got a lot of criticism from Catholics about that, too. Remember that the Pope is not infallible in everything that he does. It is very possible that he made a mistake in this matter, and Catholic are free to disagree with him in that decision.


Why does the Pope insist people bow to him and kiss his ring? Did Jesus Christ teach that?

The Catholic Church is kind of like your great-Aunt's attic. We keep all kinds of old things in there. The practice of showing respect for someone, or for their office, through kissing their hand is actually pretty recent. It only developed around the 17th century, and was common in through the 18th and 19th century. Still once we got into the habit, it became difficult to stop. Just as we still bow to royalty, it is still common practice to kiss the papal ring.

However, the Pope does not insist that people bow and kiss his ring. You can see a picture here of President Bush simply shaking the Pope's hand. Hey, he's a nice guy, he understands!


Why does the Pope wear a Dagon fish hat?

I'm not sure anyone but Candy has that question, but I'll refer you again to a recent article.


Want some extra reading?

Dave Armstrong has lots to to say about the papacy.
Read Scriptural evidence for the primacy of Peter at Scripture Catholic.
Catholic Answers also has a section about the papacy.

Two birds, one stone

This site has downloadable Catholic sermons that you can listen to on your MP3 or computer! So if you're interested in what we actually listen to at a Catholic mass, here are some good examples!

But the double bonus- these sermons are focused on marriage and family life - which is a big theme of Candy's life. I'm guessing that she might even enjoy and agree with some of the points made in these homilies if she would ever listen to them!

Enjoy

Audio Sancto Sermons Series

If they'd just open their bibles and read for themselves!!

This is a pretty common comment to be found on Candy's blog. Candy herself has said it several times. It goes something like this.

"Those poor misguided Catholics tied by the chains of Rome, too stupid and too unaware to be able to read the bible for themselves! Because if they did, the scales would fall from their eyes and they would discover that Catholicism is wrong."

or something like that.

This week Tony Snow, former White House press secretary, conservative talk show host, and I am assuming, someone that Erik and Candy would have considered to be very well informed and well educated on political matters, died. He was 53. He also was Catholic. He converted last year during his fight with colon cancer.

Interestingly the Anchoress note that several well known and CATHOLIC newsmen, have passed away recently.

Tony Snow was a Catholic? | The Anchoress: "It just occurred to me that my four favorite journalists have died in the past few years, Snow, Tim Russert, Michael Kelly and David Bloom, and it turns out there were all practicing Catholics, which doesn’t mean anything at all - although it may explain why none of them fit comfortably into easy labels and categories - it’s just something I notice with sadness. Have we seen a writer to equal Michael Kelly come down the pike? I still miss him!


Savkobabe has more thoughts on Snow"

My point is that these are all gentleman of distinction, known for their intellectual curiosity, their good natures, their quick wits and their warm humanity - and they all chose to either remain Catholic or become Catholic. Were they all deceived? If they had read and discovered Candy's blog, would that have made the difference? Would they have seen the light?

or the bigger question...

would she have published their comments.

Pope's Welcome Message

I just read the Pope's welcome message, which he gave after sailing into Sydney Harbour for World Youth Day in Australia. I did trim the first few paragraphs, to get to the meat of the message.


Almost two thousand years ago, the Apostles, gathered in the upper room together with Mary and some faithful women, were filled with the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14; 2:4). At that extraordinary moment, which gave birth to the Church, the confusion and fear that had gripped Christ's disciples were transformed into a vigorous conviction and sense of purpose. They felt impelled to speak of their encounter with the risen Jesus whom they had come to call affectionately, the Lord. In many ways, the Apostles were ordinary. None could claim to be the perfect disciple. They failed to recognize Christ (cf. Lk 24:13-32), felt ashamed of their own ambition (cf. Lk 22:24-27), and had even denied him (cf. Lk 22:54-62). Yet, when empowered by the Holy Spirit, they were transfixed by the truth of Christ's Gospel and inspired to proclaim it fearlessly. Emboldened, they exclaimed: repent, be baptized, receive the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 2:37-38)! Grounded in the Apostles' teaching, in fellowship, and in the breaking of the bread and prayer (cf. Acts 2:42), the young Christian community moved forward to oppose the perversity in the culture around them (cf. Acts 2:40), to care for one another (cf. Acts 2:44-47), to defend their belief in Jesus in the face of hostility (cf Acts 4:33), and to heal the sick (cf. Acts 5:12-16). And in obedience to Christ's own command, they set forth, bearing witness to the greatest story ever: that God has become one of us, that the divine has entered human history in order to transform it, and that we are called to immerse ourselves in Christ's saving love which triumphs over evil and death. Saint Paul, in his famous speech to the Areopagus, introduced the message in this way: "God gives everything - including life and breath - to everyone ... so that all nations might seek God and, by feeling their way towards him, succeed in finding him. In fact he is not far from any of us, since it is in him that we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17: 25-28).

And ever since, men and women have set out to tell the same story, witnessing to Christ's truth and love, and contributing to the Church's mission. Today, we think of those pioneering Priests, Sisters and Brothers who came to these shores, and to other parts of the Pacific, from Ireland, France, Britain and elsewhere in Europe. The great majority were young - some still in their late teens - and when they bade farewell to their parents, brothers and sisters, and friends, they knew they were unlikely ever to return home. Their whole lives were a selfless Christian witness. They became the humble but tenacious builders of so much of the social and spiritual heritage which still today brings goodness, compassion and purpose to these nations. And they went on to inspire another generation. We think immediately of the faith which sustained Blessed Mary MacKillop in her sheer determination to educate especially the poor, and Blessed Peter To Rot in his steadfast resolution that community leadership must always include the Gospel. Think also of your own grandparents and parents, your first teachers in faith. They too have made countless sacrifices of time and energy, out of love for you. Supported by your parish priests and teachers, they have the task, not always easy but greatly satisfying, of guiding you towards all that is good and true, through their own witness - their teaching and living of our Christian faith.

Today, it is my turn. For some of us, it might seem like we have come to the end of the world! For people of your age, however, any flight is an exciting prospect. But for me, this one was somewhat daunting! Yet the views afforded of our planet from the air were truly wondrous. The sparkle of the Mediterranean, the grandeur of the north African desert, the lushness of Asia's forestation, the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, the horizon upon which the sun rose and set, and the majestic splendour of Australia's natural beauty which I have been able to enjoy these last couple of days; these all evoke a profound sense of awe. It is as though one catches glimpses of the Genesis creation story - light and darkness, the sun and the moon, the waters, the earth, and living creatures; all of which are "good" in God's eyes (cf. Gen 1:1 - 2:4). Immersed in such beauty, who could not echo the words of the Psalmist in praise of the Creator: "how majestic is your name in all the earth?" (Ps 8:1).

And there is more - something hardly perceivable from the sky - men and women, made in nothing less than God's own image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26). At the heart of the marvel of creation are you and I, the human family "crowned with glory and honour" (Ps 8:5). How astounding! With the Psalmist we whisper: "what is man that you are mindful of him?" (Ps 8:4). And drawn into silence, into a spirit of thanksgiving, into the power of holiness, we ponder.

What do we discover? Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption. Some of you come from island nations whose very existence is threatened by rising water levels; others from nations suffering the effects of devastating drought. God's wondrous creation is sometimes experienced as almost hostile to its stewards, even something dangerous. How can what is "good" appear so threatening?

And there is more. What of man, the apex of God's creation? Every day we encounter the genius of human achievement. From advances in medical sciences and the wise application of technology, to the creativity reflected in the arts, the quality and enjoyment of people's lives in many ways are steadily rising. Among yourselves there is a readiness to take up the plentiful opportunities offered to you. Some of you excel in studies, sport, music, or dance and drama, others of you have a keen sense of social justice and ethics, and many of you take up service and voluntary work. All of us, young and old, have those moments when the innate goodness of the human person - perhaps glimpsed in the gesture of a little child or an adult's readiness to forgive - fills us with profound joy and gratitude.

Yet such moments do not last. So again, we ponder. And we discover that not only the natural but also the social environment - the habitat we fashion for ourselves - has its scars; wounds indicating that something is amiss. Here too, in our personal lives and in our communities, we can encounter a hostility, something dangerous; a poison which threatens to corrode what is good, reshape who we are, and distort the purpose for which we have been created. Examples abound, as you yourselves know. Among the more prevalent are alcohol and drug abuse, and the exaltation of violence and sexual degradation, often presented through television and the internet as entertainment. I ask myself, could anyone standing face to face with people who actually do suffer violence and sexual exploitation "explain" that these tragedies, portrayed in virtual form, are considered merely "entertainment"?

There is also something sinister which stems from the fact that freedom and tolerance are so often separated from truth. This is fuelled by the notion, widely held today, that there are no absolute truths to guide our lives. Relativism, by indiscriminately giving value to practically everything, has made "experience" all-important. Yet, experiences, detached from any consideration of what is good or true, can lead, not to genuine freedom, but to moral or intellectual confusion, to a lowering of standards, to a loss of self-respect, and even to despair.

Dear friends, life is not governed by chance; it is not random. Your very existence has been willed by God, blessed and given a purpose (cf. Gen 1:28)! Life is not just a succession of events or experiences, helpful though many of them are. It is a search for the true, the good and the beautiful. It is to this end that we make our choices; it is for this that we exercise our freedom; it is in this - in truth, in goodness, and in beauty - that we find happiness and joy. Do not be fooled by those who see you as just another consumer in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps beauty, and subjective experience displaces truth.

Christ offers more! Indeed he offers everything! Only he who is the Truth can be the Way and hence also the Life. Thus the "way" which the Apostles brought to the ends of the earth is life in Christ. This is the life of the Church. And the entrance to this life, to the Christian way, is Baptism.

This evening I wish therefore to recall briefly something of our understanding of Baptism before tomorrow considering the Holy Spirit. On the day of your Baptism, God drew you into his holiness (cf. 2 Pet 1:4). You were adopted as a son or daughter of the Father. You were incorporated into Christ. You were made a dwelling place of his Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 6:19). Baptism is neither an achievement, nor a reward. It is a grace; it is God's work. Indeed, towards the conclusion of your Baptism, the priest turned to your parents and those gathered and, calling you by your name said: "you have become a new creation" (Rite of Baptism, 99).

Dear friends, in your homes, schools and universities, in your places of work and recreation, remember that you are a new creation! Not only do you stand before the Creator in awe, rejoicing at his works, you also realize that the sure foundation of humanity's solidarity lies in the common origin of every person, the high-point of God's creative design for the world. As Christians you stand in this world knowing that God has a human face - Jesus Christ - the "way" who satisfies all human yearning, and the "life" to which we are called to bear witness, walking always in his light (cf. ibid., 100).

The task of witness is not easy. There are many today who claim that God should be left on the sidelines, and that religion and faith, while fine for individuals, should either be excluded from the public forum altogether or included only in the pursuit of limited pragmatic goals. This secularist vision seeks to explain human life and shape society with little or no reference to the Creator. It presents itself as neutral, impartial and inclusive of everyone. But in reality, like every ideology, secularism imposes a world-view. If God is irrelevant to public life, then society will be shaped in a godless image, and debate and policy concerning the public good will be driven more by consequences than by principles grounded in truth.

Yet experience shows that turning our back on the Creator's plan provokes a disorder which has inevitable repercussions on the rest of the created order (cf. 1990 World Day of Peace Message, 5). When God is eclipsed, our ability to recognize the natural order, purpose, and the "good" begins to wane. What was ostensibly promoted as human ingenuity soon manifests itself as folly, greed and selfish exploitation. And so we have become more and more aware of our need for humility before the delicate complexity of God's world.

But what of our social environment? Are we equally alert to the signs of turning our back on the moral structure with which God has endowed humanity (cf. 2007 World Day of Peace Message, 8)? Do we recognize that the innate dignity of every individual rests on his or her deepest identity - as image of the Creator - and therefore that human rights are universal, based on the natural law, and not something dependent upon negotiation or patronage, let alone compromise? And so we are led to reflect on what place the poor and the elderly, immigrants and the voiceless, have in our societies. How can it be that domestic violence torments so many mothers and children? How can it be that the most wondrous and sacred human space - the womb - has become a place of unutterable violence?

My dear friends, God's creation is one and it is good. The concerns for non-violence, sustainable development, justice and peace, and care for our environment are of vital importance for humanity. They cannot, however, be understood apart from a profound reflection upon the innate dignity of every human life from conception to natural death: a dignity conferred by God himself and thus inviolable. Our world has grown weary of greed, exploitation and division, of the tedium of false idols and piecemeal responses, and the pain of false promises. Our hearts and minds are yearning for a vision of life where love endures, where gifts are shared, where unity is built, where freedom finds meaning in truth, and where identity is found in respectful communion. This is the work of the Holy Spirit! This is the hope held out by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is to bear witness to this reality that you were created anew at Baptism and strengthened through the gifts of the Spirit at Confirmation. Let this be the message that you bring from Sydney to the world!

Cardinal Pell's homily

Many of our nonCatholic readers have probably never been to a Catholic mass let alone hear a Catholic priest give the homily or sermon during the mass. This is the transcript of the homily given by Cardinal George Pell at the Mass of World youth Day that is going on now in Australia.

Candy once wrote:

: "A Yes. It was so sad and gut wrenching that it almost brought me to tears. I was the only one attending, that I could see, that brought a Bible, and even bothered looking up scriptures. The Bible ignorance in that crowd was astounding me as well. Most of them don't seem to read their Bible, they just follow what 'the church' teaches them. Everyone there looked to me like they were wearing masks with no eyes. :-( I suspect that there might have been more true reverence (as opposed to ritual) in a black mass (however they'd be worshiping the wrong guy, of course)."

In light of this comment, read the homily and weigh accordingly.


HT: A Cup of Tea With Anne: "SYDNEY, Australia, JULY 15, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is the homily Cardinal George Pell, archbishop of Sydney, gave today at the opening Mass of World Youth Day at Barangaroo.

The readings for today's Mass were: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 23; Galatians 5:16-17, 22-25; Luke 8:4-15.

SYDNEY, Australia, JULY 15, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is the homily Cardinal George Pell, archbishop of Sydney, gave today at the opening Mass of World Youth Day at Barangaroo.

The readings for today's Mass were: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 23; Galatians 5:16-17, 22-25; Luke 8:4-15.

* * *

We all know that Christ Our Lord is often described as the Good Shepherd of today’s responsorial psalm. We are told that he leads us near restful waters, revives our flagging spirits, enables us to rest peacefully.

In developing this image on one occasion, Jesus explained that such a shepherd was prepared to leave the ninety-nine sheep to search out the one who was lost.

Few countries today have a shepherd who cares for only 20 or 30 sheep, and in Australia with large farms and huge flocks Our Lord’s advice is not very practical. If the lost sheep was valuable and probably healthy, it might make sense to take the time to search for it. More usually it would be left behind or its absence not even noticed.

Jesus was saying that both He and His Father are not like this, because He knows each one of His sheep and like a good father he goes searching for the lost one he loves, particularly if he is sick, or in trouble, or unable to help himself.

Earlier in this Mass I welcomed you all to this World Youth Day week and I repeat that welcome now. But I do not begin with the ninety-nine healthy sheep, those of you already open to the Spirit, perhaps already steady witnesses to faith and love. I begin by welcoming and encouraging any one, anywhere who regards himself or herself as lost, in deep distress, with hope diminished or even exhausted.

Young or old, woman or man, Christ is still calling those who are suffering to come to him for healing, as he has for two thousand years. The causes of the wounds are quite secondary, whether they be drugs or alcohol, family breakups, the lusts of the flesh, loneliness or a death. Perhaps even the emptiness of success.

Christ’s call is to all who are suffering, not just to Catholics or other Christians, but especially to those without religion. Christ is calling you home; to love, healing and community.

Our first reading today was from Ezekiel, with Isaiah and Jeremiah one of the three greatest Jewish prophets. Many parts of Australia are still in drought, so all Australians understand a valley of dry bones and fleshless skeletons. But this grim vision is offered first of all to any and all of you who are even tempted to say “our hope is gone, we are as good as dead”.

This is never true while we can still choose. While there is life there is always the option of hope and with Christian hope come faith and love. Until the end we are always able to choose and act.

This vision of the valley of the dry bones, the most spectacular in the whole of the Bible, was given when the hand of God came upon Ezekiel while the Jews were in captivity in Babylon, probably earlier rather than later in the sixth century B.C. For about 150 years the political fortunes of the Jewish people had been in decline, first of all at the hands of the Assyrians. Later in 587 B.C. came the final catastrophic defeat and their transportation into exile. The Jewish people were in despair, powerless to change their situation.

This is the historical background to Ezekiel’s dramatic vision where the dead were well dead, whitened skeletons as the birds of prey had long finished their ghastly business of stripping off the flesh. It was an immense battlefield of the unburied.

A hesitant and reluctant Ezekiel was urged by God to prophesy to these bones and as he did so the bones rushed together noisily, accompanied by an earthquake. Sinews knitted them together, flesh and then skin clothed the corpses.

Another stage was needed and the breath, or Spirit, came from the four corners of the earth as the bodies came “to life again and stood up on their feet, a great and immense army”.

While we now see this vision as a pre-figuration of the resurrection of the dead, the Jews of Ezekiel’s time did not believe in such a conception of the afterlife. For them the immense resurrected army represented all the Jewish people, those from the northern kingdom taken off to Assyria, those at home and those in Babylon. They were to be reconstituted as a people in their own land and they would know that the one true God alone had done this. And all this came to pass.

Over the centuries we Christians have used this passage liturgically at Easter, especially for the baptism of catechumens on Holy Saturday night and it is, of course, a powerful image of the one true God’s regenerative power for this life and eternity.

Secular wisdom claims that leopards do not change their spots, but we Christians believe in the power of the Spirit to convert and change persons away from evil to good; from fear and uncertainty to faith and hope.

Believers are heartened by Ezekiel’s vision, because we know the power of God’s forgiveness, the capacity of Christ and the Catholic tradition to cause new life to flourish even in unlikely circumstances.

That same power glimpsed in Ezekiel’s vision is offered to us today, to all of us without exception. You young pilgrims can look ahead to the future stretching out before you, so rich in promise. The Gospel parable of the sower and the seen reminds you of the great opportunity you have to embrace your vocation and produce an abundant harvest, a hundredfold crop.

Matthew, Mark and Luke all place this story of the sower at the beginning of their collection of Jesus’ parables. It explains some fundamental truths about the challenges of Christian discipleship and lists the alternatives to a fruitful Christian life. Fidelity is not automatic or inevitable.

One detail makes the parable more plausible, because it seems the Jews in Our Lord’s time threw the seed on the ground before they ploughed it, so explaining a little better the seed being in unlikely places rather than just in the furrows.

Are we amongst those whose faith has already been snatched away by the devil, as Our Lord explained the image of the birds of the sky gobbling up the seed? No one at this Mass would be in that category. Some might be like the seed on rocky ground which could not put down roots. Those here in this second category are likely to be striving to start again in the spiritual life, or at least examining the possibility of doing so. But most of us are in the third and fourth categories, where the seed has fallen on good soil and is growing and flourishing; or we are in danger of being choked off by the worries of life. All of us, including those who are no longer young, have to pray for wisdom and perseverance.

I have no problem in believing that Our Lord spelt out the meaning of this parable to his closest followers and that he would have been asked by them regularly to do so. But the disciples’ enquiries provoked a disconcerting response, when Our Lord divides his listeners into two groups; those to whom the mysteries of the Kingdom are revealed and the rest for whom the parables remain only parables. This second group is described in words from the prophet Isaiah as those who “may see but not perceive, listen but not understand”. Probably the background to this is the amazement of Our Lord’s disciples at the large number who did not accept his teaching.

Why is this still so? What must we do to be among those for whom the mysteries of the Kingdom are revealed?

The call of the one true God remains mysterious, especially today when many good people find it hard to believe. Even in the time of the prophets many of their hearers remained spiritually deaf and blind, while any number over the ages have admired the beauty of Jesus’ teaching, but never been moved to answer his call.

Our task is to be open to the power of the Spirit, to allow the God of surprises to act through us. Human motivation is complex and mysterious, because sometimes very strong Catholics, and other strong Christians, can be prayerful and regularly good, but also very determined not to take even one further step. On the other hand, some followers of Christ can be much less zealous and faithful, but open to development, to change for the better because they realize their unworthiness and their ignorance. Where do you stand?

Whatever our situation we must pray for an openness of heart, for a willingness to take the next step, even if we are fearful of venturing too much further. If we take God’s hand, He will do the rest. Trust is the key. God will not fail us.

How can we work to avoid slipping from the last and best category of the fruit bearers into those “who are choked by the worries and riches and pleasures of life” and so do not produce much fruit at all?

The second reading from Paul’s letter to the Galatians points us in the correct direction, reminding us all that each person must declare himself in the age-old struggle between good and evil, between what Paul calls the flesh and the Spirit. It is not good enough to be only a passenger, to try to live in “no-mans land” between the warring parties. Life forces us to choose, eventually destroys any possibility of neutrality.

We will bring forth good fruit by learning the language of the Cross and inscribing it on our hearts. The language of the Cross brings us the fruits of the Spirit which Paul lists, enables us to experience peace and joy, to be regularly kind and generous to others. Following Christ is not cost free, not always easy, because it requires struggling against what St. Paul calls “the flesh”, our fat relentless egos, old fashioned selfishness. It is always a battle, even for old people like me!

Don’t spend your life sitting on the fence, keeping your options open, because only commitments bring fulfilment. Happiness comes from meeting our obligations, doing our duty, especially in small matters and regularly, so we can rise to meet the harder challenges. Many have found their life’s calling at World Youth Days.

To be a disciple of Jesus requires discipline, especially self discipline; what Paul calls self control. The practice of self control won’t make you perfect (it hasn’t with me), but self control is necessary to develop and protect the love in our hearts and prevent others, especially our family and friends, from being hurt by our lapses into nastiness or laziness.

I pray that through the power of the Spirit all of you will join that immense army of saints, healed and reborn, which was revealed to Ezekiel, which has enriched human history for countless generations and which is rewarded in the after-life of heaven.

Let me conclude by adapting one of the most powerful sermons of St. Augustine, the finest theologian of the first millennium and a bishop inthe small North African town of Hippo around 1600 years ago.

I expect that in the next five days of prayer and celebration that your spirits will rise, as mine always does, in the excitement of this World Youth Day. Please God we shall all be glad that we participated, despite the cost, hassles and distances travelled. During this week we have every right to rejoice and celebrate the liberation of our repentance, the rejuvenation of our faith. We are called to open our hearts to the power of the Spirit. And to the young ones I give a gentle reminder that in your enthusiasm and excitement you do not forget to listen and pray!

Many of you have travelled such a long way that you may believe that you have arrived, indeed, at the ends of earth! If so, that’s good, for Our Lord told his first apostles that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem and to the ends of the earth. That prophesy has been fulfilled in the witness of many missionaries to this vast southern continent, and it is fulfilled yet again in your presence here.

But these days will pass too quickly and next week we shall return to earth. For a time some of you will find the real world of home and parish, work or study, flat and disappointing.

Soon, too soon, you will all be going away. Briefly we are now here in Sydney at the centre of the Catholic world, but next week the Holy Father will return to Rome, we Sydneysiders will return to our parishes, while you, now visiting pilgrims, will go back to your homes in places near and far.

In other words during next week we shall be parting from one another. But when we part after these happy days, let us never part from our loving God and his Son Jesus Christ. And may Mary, Mother of God, whom we invoke in this World Youth Day as Our Lady of the Southern Cross, strengthen us in this resolution.

And so I pray. Come, come O Breath of God, from the four winds, from all the nations and peoples of the earth and bless our Great South Land of the Holy Spirit.

Empower us also to be another great and immense army of humble servants and faithful witnesses.

And we make this prayer to God our Father in the name of Christ his Son. Amen. Amen.

George Cardinal Pell
Archbishop of Sydney

[Distributed by the World Youth Day 2008 organizing committee

A Peek at Vision Forum

This caught my eye this morning.

SpunkyHomeSchool: A Vision For Women and Politics

Spunky homeschool is a very well known and respected blogger in the homeschool portion of the blogosphere. In light of Erik and Candy's grand conversion via Vision Forum I thought this article might shed some light on what that was all about.










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This is what happens when attitudes like Candy's are taken to the (even further) extreme.

Catholic League: For Religious and Civil Rights








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Catholic Carnival #181

Catholic Carnival #181 hosted by my wonderful blog friend Alexa!








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Anathemas, Part III

For our next installation of what may become a four part series, I wanted to address what the canons of Trent actually say, and not follow the red herring of the anathemas. As it is beyond the scope of this blog to go over all of the canons, I will stick to the four which Candy found particularly offensive. She uses two each for the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, and the validity of the sacraments.

Now, if Candy hadn't gotten distracted by the anathemas, I think she could have made a very good post out of this material. I don't deny that there are differences between Catholic theology, and the theology that Candy follows. Perhaps she could have explained why she believed we are saved by faith alone, and why the sacraments are not necessary instead of saying that Catholics who believe in Jesus are anathema, which just isn't true.


If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema.” Sixth Session CANON IX

“If any one saith, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ's sake; or, that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified; let him be anathema.” Sixth Session CANON XII

The Catholic Church teaches that we are saved by God's grace alone, through our faith, as is manifested by our works. We do not believe that we are saved by faith alone.

The only time that the words "faith" and "alone" appear together in the Bible are in James 2:14-26, where it is stating that we are NOT saved by faith alone. (Well, apparently not actually in the KJV, which I tend to use here in deference to Candy's preferences.)

James 2:14-26What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

You can read two excellent articles on the Catholic Answers website that deal with this issue.
Not By Faith Alone
Aren't We Saved By Faith Alone?

The Catholic Church DOES affirm the importance of faith:

CCC #161: Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation. "Since "without faith it is impossible to please [God]" and to attain to the fellowship of his sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life 'But he who endures to the end.'"

#183: "Faith is necessary for salvation. The Lord himself affirms: "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned" (Mk 16:16)."


So if the Catholic Church feels faith is so important, why did it condemn salvation by faith alone? Because salvation by faith alone discounts the work of God's grace in our salvation. Are we saved by God's grace, or do we save ourselves by OUR belief, OUR faith, OUR saying the Sinner's Prayer, etc. It is God's grace which prompts our faith, and therefore God deserves all the credit for our salvation, not our declaration of faith.

Grace is something that Candy doesn't really mention much on her blog, and I'm curious as to how she feels God's grace fits into the role of our salvation. Whereas, if you take the time to read the Canons of the Council of Trent, grace shows up time and time again.

Canon 2.
If anyone says that divine grace through Christ Jesus is given for this only, that man may be able more easily to live justly and to merit eternal life, as if by free will without grace he is able to do both, though with hardship and difficulty, let him be anathema.

Canon 29.
If anyone says that he who has fallen after baptism cannot by the grace of God rise again,[130] or that he can indeed recover again the lost justice but by faith alone without the sacrament of penance, contrary to what the holy Roman and Universal Church, instructed by Christ the Lord and His Apostles, has hitherto professed, observed and taught, let him be anathema.

Canon 32.
If anyone says that the good works of the one justified are in such manner the gifts of God that they are not also the good merits of him justified; or that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit an increase of grace, eternal life, and in case he dies in grace, the attainment of eternal life itself and also an increase of glory, let him be anathema.

Further, if you read more than four canons of Trent quoted by Candy, you will see that even at the time the Church was condemning the idea of salvation by faith alone, it took the time to also condemn salvation by works.

Canon 1.
If anyone says that man can be justified before God by his own works, whether done by his own natural powers or through the teaching of the law, without divine grace through Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.

Wow! The very first canon, huh? Must be important.



Okay, let's move on to sacraments.

“If any one saith, that the sacraments of the New Law were not all instituted by Jesus Christ, our Lord; or, that they are more, or less, than seven, to wit, Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Order, and Matrimony; or even that any one of these seven is not truly and properly a sacrament; let him be anathema.” Seventh Session CANON I

“If any one saith, that the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary unto salvation, but superfluous; and that, without them, or without the desire thereof, men obtain of God, through faith alone, the grace of justification;-though all (the sacraments) are not in deed necessary for every individual; let him be anathema.” Seventh Session CANON IV


As far as I am aware, Candy believes that there are two ordinances, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, but no sacraments. There are other churches besides the Catholic Church which affirm that there are sacraments, and some also affirm that there are seven, while others feel the number is fewer. I think that sacraments, like infant versus believer baptism, is something that mature Christians should be able to agree to disagree about.

What is a sacrament? The short answer which people usually give to that question is "an outward sign of an inward grace." Sacraments are all about grace.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
It is the teaching of the Catholic Church and of Christians in general that, whilst God was nowise bound to make use of external ceremonies as symbols of things spiritual and sacred, it has pleased Him to do so, and this is the ordinary and most suitable manner of dealing with men. Writers on the sacraments refer to this as the necessitas convenientiae, the necessity of suitableness. It is not really a necessity, but the most appropriate manner of dealing with creatures that are at the same time spiritual and corporeal.

What does that mean? Because we are corporeal creatures, we deal with the material world. We understand things best through out senses. God dispenses graces through visible, material sacraments, just as our salvation depended on God taking flesh.

A Primer On Catholic Sacraments
The Catholic Catechism on Sacraments

Anathemas, Part II

This is pretty short and sweet. In the comments section, Candy writes:

And, according to Mr. Charles M. Wilson, who is an associate member of the Canon Law Society of America and president of the St. Joseph Foundation, all of the anathemas still stand. He is a credible source.

Well, there is a Mr. Charles Wilson, who is a canon lawyer and President of the St. Joseph Foundation. He would be a credible source, if Candy can prove that he said that. However, she does not give any evidence to that effect.

I believe her source is good ol' Peter and Paul Ministries. From their webpage: Mr. Charles M. Wilson, an associate member of the Canon Law Society of America and president of the St. Joseph Foundation when asked if the Code of 1983 repealed the anathemas he stated, “I can find nothing in the Code now in force that explicitly or implicitly removes any anathemas of Trent.”

That's pretty word for word, isn't it? I could find no other quotation from him in an online search, and the St. Joseph Foundation website is not public access.

Jimmy Akin on anathemas:

In fact, anathema was a kind of canonical penalty involving excommunication that used to be found in Church law that could be imposed for various offenses, including certain doctrinal ones. It did not take place automatically but had to be imposed by an ecclesiastical court and, since Church tribunals have better things to do than millions of trials for purposes of excommunicating every Lutheran in the world, it was never applied to more than a handful of individuals. It tended to be applied--and then rarely--only to people who made a pretense of staying within the Catholic community.

Excommunication also does not damn people to hell--it's an equivalent of disfellowshipping (cf. Matt. 18:17, 1 Cor. 5:1-2) meant to prompt the sinner to repentance (2 Cor. 2:5-8).

Further, anathema no longer exists in Church law. It ceased to exist with the release of the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

The original article I linked to explains how anathemas ceased to exist with the new Code of Canon Law:

Yet the penalty was used so seldom that it was removed from the 1983 Code of Canon Law. This means that today the penalty of anathema does not exist in Church law. The new Code provided that, "When this Code goes into effect, the following are abrogated: 1º the Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1917 . . . 3º any universal or particular penal laws whatsoever issued by the Apostolic See, unless they are contained in this Code" (CIC [1983] 6 §1). The penalty of anathema was not renewed in the new Code, and thus it was abrogated when the Code went into effect on January 1, 1983.

Here's the current Code of Canon Law, Candy. Prove away!

Anathemas

Candy begins by giving a definition for anathema.

Definition of anathema: "A ban or curse pronounced with religious solemnity by ecclesiastical authority, and accompanied by excommunication. Hence: Denunciation of anything as accursed." - Source - Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

Normally giving a dictionary definition helps to clarify terms. However, this can be confusing with ecclesiastical terms. For example, some dictionaries define "celibacy" as refraining from sexual activity, while in the Catholic Church, someone who is celibate is someone who has taken a vow to remain unmarried. We have discussed before, how the meaning of "mediator" has changed, as well as touched on the difference between a discipline that can change, and a doctrine, which cannot. But we'll get to that in a minute.

Candy's big source of information for this article is Peter and Paul Catholic Ministries. Are they a Catholic source of information? Nope. They're passing along the same old misinformation. We've covered this before. She even quotes the canons from the Council of Trent from their website, and they are readily available from neutral sources.

An anathema is a form of what we would call today, excommunication. This is based on Scripture, specifically what St. Paul wrote in Galatians 1:8–9 and 1 Corinthians 16:22.

Peter and Paul says "An anathema on an infallible statement can never be changed, and is always binding; otherwise the statement is not infallible."

This is not true. An anathema falls under the heading of church discipline. Like the robes the priest wears, or whether or not he can marry, discipline involves things that the Church can change.

Peter and Paul continues, "As a matter of fact Vatican II referred to the Council of Trent dozens of times and quoted Trent's proclamations as authority."

This continues to confuse the two categories of doctrine and discipline. The doctrine of the Council of Trent still stands. But that does not mean that the anathemas are still in effect.

I would point you to This Rock, which has a very informative article on anathema, and explains why a Catholic with faith in Jesus would not be anathema for their view.

The anathemas of Trent and other councils were like most penalties of civil law, which only take effect through the judicial process. If the civil law prescribes imprisonment for a particular offense, those who commit it do not suddenly appear in jail. Likewise, when ecclesiastical law prescribed an anathema for a particular offense, those who committed it had to wait until the judicial process was complete before the anathema took effect.

6. Anathemas applied to all Protestants. The absurdity of this charge is obvious from the fact that anathemas did not take effect automatically. The limited number of hours in the day by itself would guarantee that only a handful of Protestants ever could have been anathematized. In practice the penalty tended to be applied only to notorious Catholic offenders who made a pretense of staying within the Catholic community.

7. Anathemas are still in place today. This is the single most common falsehood one encounters regarding anathemas in the writings of anti-Catholics. They aren’t in place today. The penalty was employed so infrequently over the course of history that it is doubtful that anyone under an anathema was alive when the new Code of Canon Law came out in 1983, when even the penalty itself was abolished.

8. The Church cannot retract its anathemas. Anti-Catholics love to repeat this falsehood for rhetorical flourish. But again, it isn’t true. The Church is free to abolish any penalty of ecclesiastical law it wants to, and it did abolish this one.

So rest assured, those of you who are Catholics who believe that we are saved by God's grace, through Jesus Christ. You are not anathema. You are just following Catholic teaching.

The Catholic Catechism states:

CCC #161: Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation. "Since "without faith it is impossible to please [God]" and to attain to the fellowship of his sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life 'But he who endures to the end.'"

#169: Salvation comes from God alone

#183: "Faith is necessary for salvation. The Lord himself affirms: "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned" (Mk 16:16)."

#1544: Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the "one mediator between God and men." The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, "priest of God Most High," as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique "high priest after the order of Melchizedek"; "holy, blameless, unstained," "by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified," that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross.

#1741: Liberation and salvation. By his glorious Cross Christ has won salvation for all men. He redeemed them from the sin that held them in bondage. "For freedom Christ has set us free." In him we have communion with the "truth that makes us free." The Holy Spirit has been given to us and, as the Apostle teaches, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." Already we glory in the "liberty of the children of God."

#620: Our salvation flows from God's initiative of love for us, because "he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins" (1 Jn 4:10). "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor 5:19).

Candy has used this argument several times lately, in her post to Angie and in comments. She seems to feel she really has us cornered. But really, she is not an expert on canon law, and by relying on anti-Catholic groups, she is just spreading false information. The Catechism is currently the standard for Catholic teaching, and by opening it, it is easy to find that our faith affirms the same belief as she holds.

Bible History

Sometime commenter at our blog, Mile Hi Mama unexpectedly dives into some Bible history, when a seemingly innocent homeschooling book promotes the King James Only version of history.

While there is a case to be made for the Majority Text (Masoretic Text), it is also a witness, not the original manuscript of the Hebrew Scriptures, just as the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus texts are witnesses to the Septuagint, and not the original texts.

Dr. Beechick claims to avoid the Vaticanus manuscript because it was written by Origen, but Origen lived in the second and third century AD and the Vaticanus is dated to the fourth century. Scholars believe that the Bible by Origen and the Vaticanus probably come from the same source manuscript.

She claims the Codex Vaticanus/Eusebian bible based on them disappeared until the 1800's, when it was rediscovered. Also not true; it was well known throughout the world that the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus were housed at the Vatican library. It was used to produce a Roman version of the Septuagint in the 16th century.

I think she hates it because it is probably Alexandrian in origin, and contains the Septuagint - the Old Testament canon used at the time of Christ by Greek Jews - and therefore contains the deuterocanonical books.

Dr. Beechick claims the Septuagint was written in the third century (She leaves off the "B.C." part, leaving readers to assume that the Septuagint was a manuscript written while the church leaders were trying to nail down the canon. The Septuagint was written and used by the Jews hundred of years before Christ's birth, a very important point.)

This is a version of the sort of argument Candy posts frequently, so I thought it was relevant.

Forthcoming Book

Last March, I posted a list of prominent conversions to Catholicism in the year 2007. One was Francis Beckwith, who had been President of the Evangelical Theological Society. He had to resign.

Anyway, Dr. Beckwith has a book about his conversion to be released in November. You can read about it on his webpage. He also has links to various news articles which covered his conversion.

From an interview in Christianity Today:

The issue of justification was key for me. The Catholic Church frames the Christian life as one in which you must exercise virtue—not because virtue saves you, but because that's the way God's grace gets manifested. As an evangelical, even when I talked about sanctification and wanted to practice it, it seemed as if I didn't have a good enough incentive to do so. Now there's a kind of theological framework, and it doesn't say my salvation depends on me, but it says my virtue counts for something. It's important to allow the grace of God to be exercised through your actions. The evangelical emphasis on the moral life forms my Catholic practice with an added incentive. That was liberating to me.

Dr. Beckwith is not a bitter ex-Evangelical. In an interview in Catholic World Report he says:

I do not believe I ceased to be an Evangelical when I returned to the Church. What I ceased to be was a Protestant. For I believe, as Pope Benedict has preached, that the Church itself needs to nurture within it an evangelical spirit. There are, as we know, too many Catholics whose faith needs to be renewed and emboldened.

There is much that I learned as a Protestant Evangelical that has left an indelible mark on me and formed the person I am today. For that reason, it accompanies me back to the Church.

I'm sure there will be another round of articles when the book is released, and I look forward to reading it.

My Domestic Church: 93-year old becomes Catholic

I've been going through my old archives and found one of my favorite conversion stories. Just wanted to share.

My Domestic Church: 93-year old becomes Catholic

Erik makes my point

The majority of the time, show me a former Catholic, and I'll show you one that was poorly catechized. Candy's husband Erik illustrates this point very well.


www.keepingthehome.com: "This article was written by my husband...

When I was growing up, going to church was something that you did for an hour on Sunday and then you got back to your 'Real Life'. Better yet, get church 'out of the way' on Saturday afternoon just before dinner so you can enjoy Sunday without interruption. I got the impression from my upbringing that it was impolite to talk about God outside of church. So much for spreading the gospel as Christ called every Christian to do.

That's sad. It sounds like Erik's parents didn't take their faith seriously so why should he be expected to. This is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about parental responsibility of raising their kids.

2223 Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery - the preconditions of all true freedom. Parents should teach their children to subordinate the "material and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones." Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children. By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them:

He who loves his son will not spare the rod. . . . He who disciplines his son will profit by him. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

2228 Parents' respect and affection are expressed by the care and attention they devote to bringing up their young children and providing for their physical and spiritual needs. As the children grow up, the same respect and devotion lead parents to educate them in the right use of their reason and freedom.

2226 Education in the faith by the parents should begin in the child's earliest years. This already happens when family members help one another to grow in faith by the witness of a Christian life in keeping with the Gospel. Family catechesis precedes, accompanies, and enriches other forms of instruction in the faith. Parents have the mission of teaching their children to pray and to discover their vocation as children of God. The parish is the Eucharistic community and the heart of the liturgical life of Christian families; it is a privileged place for the catechesis of children and parents.

In our family we go to mass every Sunday. Sometimes there is one of us at all the masses as servers and choir members! My husband also teaches Sunday School (PSR). We try to follow the liturgical year and we have special feast days that we like to commemorate. Life in the church permeates our home and fills our existence. It's so sad that Erik did not experience that! I invite all of you to write in the com boxes how your family lives out your Catholic faith!!

Actually reading the Bible was not encouraged, because neither I, nor anybody in my immediate family was 'expert enough' to really understand what it said anyway. The idea was that the experts in the church who studied the Bible 'professionally', would be the ones to tell us what it meant.

Without proper interpretation you get the whacked out crazy interpretations that we have read. There are tens of thousands of Christian churches all fractionated on bible interpretations. Obviously they can't all be right when they all disagree!

Again from the catechism:

110 In order to discover the sacred authors' intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. "For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."⁷⁶
111 But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. "Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written."⁷⁷
The Second Vatican Council indicates three criteria for interpreting Scripture in accordance with the Spirit who inspired it.⁷⁸
112 1. Be especially attentive "to the content and unity of the whole Scripture". Different as the books which compose it may be, Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God's plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart, open since his Passover.⁷⁹

The phrase "heart of Christ" can refer to Sacred Scripture, which makes known his heart, closed before the Passion, as the Scripture was obscure. But the Scripture has been opened since the Passion; since those who from then on have understood it, consider and discern in what way the prophecies must be interpreted.⁸⁰

113 2. Read the Scripture within "the living Tradition of the whole Church". According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church's heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God's Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (". . . according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church"⁸¹).
114 3. Be attentive to the analogy of faith.⁸² By "analogy of faith" we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation.
The senses of Scripture
115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: "All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal."⁸³
117 The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God's plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.

1. The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ's victory and also of Christian Baptism.⁸⁴
2. The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written "for our instruction".⁸⁵
3. The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, "leading"). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.⁸⁶

118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses:

The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith; The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.⁸⁷

119 "It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules, towards a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgement. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God."⁸⁸


The church encourages the faithful to know the scripture!!



131 "And such is the force and power of the Word of God that it can serve the Church as her support and vigor, and the children of the Church as strength for their faith, food for the soul, and a pure and lasting fount of spiritual life."¹⁰⁹ Hence "access to Sacred Scripture ought to be open wide to the Christian faithful."¹¹⁰
132 "Therefore, the study of the sacred page should be the very soul of sacred theology. The ministry of the Word, too - pastoral preaching, catechetics and all forms of Christian instruction, among which the liturgical homily should hold pride of place - is healthily nourished and thrives in holiness through the Word of Scripture."¹¹¹
133 The Church "forcefully and specifically exhorts all the Christian faithful. . . to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.¹¹²

Also, there are so many versions of the Bible, the fact that it could be translated in different ways was proof that the average person was wasting their time if they studied the Bible, but if they were going to try it, it better be done under the expert guidance of a 'professional'. If anybody quoted a part of the Bible to me in order to try and correct my lost spiritual condition, I could easily dismiss the Bible quote by thinking it was just 'their interpretation'. Also, since I was lost, I did not have the Holy Spirit to help me understand the Bible, the few times I did try to read part"

Poor kid. Probably didn't even know where to start.

Well for starters, if one really wants to understand scripture, some good bible studies are in order. How to know which ones are good.

The Fisheaters Site gives some good guidelines:

The Church, given teaching authority by Christ and as the conduit for fullness of Truth on this earth, has the obligation to preserve Her sheep from deviations from the Truth and to to guarantee them the "objective possibility of professing the true faith without error" (Catechism, No. 890). Because of this, the Bishops will look at books published by Catholics on Catholic matters in their dioceses, giving them their "okay" if nothing therein is found to be contrary to the Faith (relevant Canon Law: "Title IV: The Means of Social Communication," ¶ 822-832)

The procedure works like this: when a Catholic writes a book on faith, morals, theology, liturgy, books on prayer, editions of Sacred Scripture, etc., he will submit his manuscript to his diocese's Censor. If the Censor finds no problem with it, he will give it his stamp, which reads "Nihil Obstat," or "nothing stands in the way." He then sends it to the Bishop for his review. If the Bishop finds nothing objectionable, he gives the book his "Imprimatur" which means, "let it be printed."

If the Catholic writing the book is a member of a religious order, the manuscript is first sent to his religious superior before it is sent to the Censor and Bishop. If the religious superior finds no impediment to publication, he will give the book his stamp of "Imprimi Potest," which means "it can be printed."

Nowadays, after the Imprimatur, you might see these words:

The "Nihil Obstat" and "Imprimatur" are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the Nihil Obstat and the Imprimatur agree with the content, opinions or statements expressed.

Please know that the presence of an Imprimatur does not mean that a book is an official text of the Church. It doesn't make the book the equivalent of an encyclical, say. It's not the approval of the work by the Pope or a dogmatic Council, and it's not a stamp of infallibility. It doesn't even mean that everything in the book is accurate, only that there is nothing in it that contradicts Catholic dogma. But, while occasionally a book sneaks through and its Imprimatur later recalled, this procedure is an important way for Catholics to increase their chances of staying error-free with regard to doctrine. Sadly, because of the triumph of modernsists and liberals in the human aspect of the Church since the Second Vatican Council, books which could well contain a watered-down theology, a warped view of History, etc. now do receive the "Imprimatur."

Bottom line: When buying books on religious and spiritual matters, seek out those books written before Vatican II and which have the "Imprimatur," or those books which are known to be written by solidly orthodox traditional Catholics. Otherwise, be wary and take the book with a grain of salt. And, always, if you come across a book that says horrific things about the Church, Her teachings, or Her history, read the traditional Catholic point of view and dig up objective resources. There's a lot of lying going on out there, folks.

Aquinas and More has examples of acceptable Catholic bibles and explanation of the difference between the Catholic and Protestant bibles.

Also some bible studies available.

Kelly covered bible studies here.
Scott Hahn's Scripture Catholic.
Bible Study following the liturgical year.
Catholic Bible study Online Resources.

Erik's upbringing after Vatican II unfortunately was pretty typical. I think that after the council the bishops didn't know what to teach, and so they taught pretty much nothing and a couple of generations were lost.

I have theories about why people stayed too.  My family was devout.  We went to church every Sunday and we prayed every day.  We prayed for people.  I always felt that God was listening and that He was close.  Our faith was part of the fabric of our lives and when I did explore other Christian faiths,  I found nothing comparable.  How do you replace the Eucharist?  

Many thanks to Erik for illustrating the point that I have been making with a banana peel, beautifully.

Newsflash! Pope Reads Bible!

Pope Benedict to be first reader in six-day marathon Bible recitation

Pope Benedict XVI will take part in a continuous Bible reading for the Italian state broadcaster RAI, it has been announced. He will begin the six-day marathon recitation by reading the first chapter of Genesis in Italian on October 5.

The Pope’s reading will take about an hour. Organizers have not decided whether to broadcast the Pope’s reading live or to prerecord it, according to ANSA. Pope Benedict has reportedly expressed a preference to read live from St. Peter’s Basilica.

“I think the fundamental element that convinced Benedict XVI to take part in the television program was the fact that he will not be commenting but simply giving a pure reading of the text, a pure announcement of the Word,'' said Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, who is president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Monsignor Ravasi added that the Pope’s participation will be an “appeal” to the Catholic Church to return to “studying and deepening its knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, to find again that base element and point of departure.”

The Pope’s reading will be followed by a reading from Rome’s Chief Rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, who will read Genesis in Hebrew. The recitation will close on October 10 with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who will read the 22nd chapter of the Book of Revelation.

A total of 1,200 people will take part in the project, including cardinals, rabbis, politicians, academics, athletes, students, soldiers, and factory workers. Other languages will be used; for instance, the beginning of St. John’s Gospel will be read in Greek.

Giuseppe De Carli, the head of RAI’s Vatican Department, said Muslims too could participate in the project.

“Even though the Bible is not a sacred book for people of the Islamic faith, if they would like to read a passage we have nothing against it,” De Carli said, according to ANSA.

Addressing Comments

Candy has been getting lots of supportive comments on her blog, and I thought I'd take the time to address a few of them.

First, I would like to point out that all of these commenters seem to be under the impression that "the Catholics" are the one spreading this information about Candy. Other than one comment which Candy allowed, she has done nothing to correct this misunderstanding. Candy has continually posted about Elena by name, and her alleged persecution of her, along with characterizing our blog as being for "lies, gossip, and slander" so it is only natural that her readers think of us as she makes these two posts.

I think the charitable thing for Candy to do would be to point this out to her readers. After all, "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much" and interestingly, the verse continues "and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." Luke 16:10.



Candy I so totally agree with you about roman catholics not even knowing what their church believes..I too come from a catholic background and feel the same way as you, trying to give them the Word of God and they are just so set in their ways...they think as long as I am a good person I will go to heaven of course only after someone has paid for a mass to be said for me or for lighting a candle and after I get enough people to pray me out of purgatory....

There are lots of Christians who think that as long as they are a good person, they will go to heaven. They aren't all Catholic, either. That is certainly not official Catholic doctrine.

As much as Elena goes on about poorly catechized former Catholics, well, it's true! Most Catholics today haven't heard much about purgatory or memorial Masses in decades. Both are somewhat out of fashion at the moment.

Regardless, you can read the truth about purgatory here.

Memorial Masses are a form of praying for the dead. They are technically free, so anyone can have one said without cost. However, it is customary to pay the priest for his time, as priests are paid very little. This would be $5-$15. Certainly not enough to fill the Vatican coffers, as Candy has said.



You know what, I recall a while back, one of the anti-candy site people saying something along the lines of "Look, just stop speaking out against the Catholic Church, and we wont bother you anymore." or something like that. That has been BUGGING me to no end because I KNEW I had heard that before and I couldn't place it! Then I remembered!! Acts 4:13-21

Wow, pretty much word for word! We don't want the Truth preached, it might draw people away from RELIGION! Well, we can't really say anything AGAINST them, so let's just try to threaten and intimidate them into silence!! But what Peter and John knew, and what Christians know, is God is BIGGER than ANY religious terrorist, and as His servants we have nothing to fear from them :o) PRAISE GOD!!
Amanda

I think that classifying us as "religious terrorists" is a bit extreme. And while we do not make personal attacks against Candy, we do have plenty to say against what she is preaching. Please peruse the articles on the sidebar where we refute her Vatican Versus God and Whore of Babylon articles, and show that what she claims is Catholic doctrine is not actually Catholic doctrine.

We are NOT against Candy preaching the Gospel, as I have said before. I think she doesn't preach it enough! She posts against Catholicism much more than she posts general articles such as this.

Is the Gospel that the Catholic Church is a cult and the Whore of Babylon? Is it the Gospel that Catholics worship satan/Dagon-the-fish-god/Semaris and whatshisname? No. I don't think Jesus is mentioned anywhere in that gospel.

If Candy preaches that salvation is through God's grace, by Jesus Christ, the ONE Mediator, then Catholics will give a hearty amen. And if Catholicism is really about what she thinks it is about, then hearing this simple Gospel will be enough to draw Catholics out of the Catholic Church and into what she feels is true Christianity.



Hi Candy,

Wow, this whole situations is ....GREAT! I was going to say shocking and sad and that I am sorry for you. But I am not. My friend, my Sister in Christ(I consider you that because we both serve the Risen Lord), you must be seriously pissing off the devil. Good JOB, way to go and PRAISE THE GOOD LORD!

NO ONE has the right to tell Candy that they will "leave her alone" if she will just stop posting on a certain topic. That is called harassment and blackmail. Would a feminist blogger put up with that? A PETA blogger, anyone else that blogs about their beliefs. If you don't like it go somewhere else.

But you know that there is a reason you keep coming back, a calling to your soul.

Candy, I think you are in the midst of the battle. Don't become weary Sister. You are doing good. You are helping many. THAT IS WHY YOU ARE UNDER ATTACK. Keep going. You are in our prayers.


I don't believe we tried to blackmail Candy by saying we would leave her alone if she stopped posting on Catholicism. If she stopped posting on Catholicism, then there would be no need for us to correct her misinformation.

I don't see that we're doing anything to disturb her, that we would need to "leave her alone." We aren't bombarding her with e-mails. We aren't posting pictures of her home. It is been quite a while since any of us have even tried to post a comment on her site. And as she continually says that she doesn't read this blog, I don't see why she has to waste a moment thinking about us, if she doesn't want to.

As for us doing the work of Satan, this is a favorite defense from Candy's blog, after where do they find the time?

Does it not occur to anyone that we could as easily give the same argument? Candy is but one of a long line of attackers against the Catholic Church, which was founded by Jesus, Himself. She will not be the last. But Jesus assured us when He founded the Church, that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Personally, I prefer to err on the side of charity and assume that things like this are due to simple ignorance, not the prompting of Satan.

Besides, I hear that attributing the works of the Holy Spirit to Satan is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

Adrienne's Catholic Corner: Catholic Carnival

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Welcome!

While our regulars may groan, I see that we received close to 200 new visitors yesterday, looking for the juicy gossip that they think we are providing. Welcome, new visitors! I hope you will stay and read, though we are lacking in juicy gossip. Here are some past articles which you may find of interest instead.

Wondering why this blog is here? Why not just stop going to Candy's blog? I delve into our motivations here.

Where do we find the time? We get that a lot.

Got questions about Catholicism? We've got answers, and if you don't find what you're looking for, just ask in the comments.

Why did the Catholic Church ADD books to the Bible?

We didn't. Non-Catholics removed books from the Bible. Read more about the Catholic Bible.

Why does the Catholic Church believe in salvation by works when that is contradicted by Scripture. Why do you believe that Mary is a mediatrix when scripture says that Jesus is the ONE Mediator?

We don't, and we don't.

Why do you worship statues? Don't you know that's idolatry?

We might be kneeling in prayer, but we aren't worshiping.

Why do you pray the rosary with its vain repetition?

Because it isn't repetition that is the problem, it's the vain part.

But you have to admit that the word purgatory isn't found anywhere in Scripture!

The word might not be, but the concept is.

Requiring celibacy for priests isn't biblical. Even Peter was married!

Actually, we have married priests within the Catholic Church today. A picture of a priest with his family is the top picture of this post, explaining the tradition (with a small 't') of priestly celibacy.

Why confess to a sinful priest, when you can confess your sins directly to God?

Read the Biblical basis for Confession.

Plus, the ever-popular Tradition versus Scripture topic. Read here, here, and here for previous posts. Confused about the difference between Tradition and tradition, try here.

Finally, we have no problem with respectful disagreement with Catholic theology. I suppose you could say that we disagree with Candy on what constitutes accurate Catholic theology.

However, we found that Candy's series on the Gospel of John gave a great platform for discussing some differences in theology as we discuss infant baptism, sanctifying grace, and the Lord's Supper/Eucharist.

Let's Study The Bible!
John 2
John 3
John 4
John 6

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Our respone to Critics Answered.

Response to Critics Answered.

Candy did mention the Catholic issue a couple of times in today's response.

C "Hmmm. Just a couple of weeks ago candy posted this: "I dedicate the below song to Elena and the other anti-Candy-ites::  The Lord has called me to do a very special job, to spread the Gospel of Christ, and I WON'T BACK DOWN... :-D"http://myblessedhome.blogspot.com/2008/06/yay.html

We were treated to a music video intended to underline Candys bold determination not to 'back down' but to continue, presumably, to 'take the fight' to the 'anti-candyites'. it was a conceited and hubristic display that no doubt she is regretting."

A A common theme I find with most of my critics, is that they try to guess my motives, then judge me off of that. EVERY single time I've received a comment about my motives - it's been wrong. My motive for putting up the "won't back down" song, was purely as stated - I WON'T BACK DOWN. I will continue to spread the Gospel of Christ, and I won't be stopped. I'm not fighting anyone, or picking a fight with anyone, I'm just stating that my critics are not going to stop me from spreading the good news of Christ to as many people as I possibly can. Furthermore, this let them know that if they are trying to stop me, they are wasting their time, and would be better off pursuing more obtainable goals.

Well she obviously was picking a fight with me because she mentioned ME by NAME!  The commenter didn't really ask her a question but rather stated that it was a conceited and hubristic display and surmised that she must be regretting it.  Candy never actually says that she doesn't regret it, but I think that she has spent soooo much time on the firestorm that followed shows that it has taken her time and attention. 

C "Apologise to those people whom you have hurt."

A I did, in the very post you put this comment on. And I quote:

"I am a BLUNT person, so I often just state things bluntly, and sometimes, in harsh terminology. I do not do this intentionally. If my words have ever hurt anyone on this blog, please know it was not intentional, and please accept my apologies. I'm not out to hurt anyone."

That's more an explanation than an apology.  It's hard to believe that it was not intentional when it is done continuously.

C "Are you going to continue to post the anti-Catholic rhetoric?"

A I will continue to post the truth, and spread the Gospel. I will continue to tell the Gospel to Catholics and to Protestants. Like the song says - "I won't back down." However, I've pretty much said all I need to say about the Catholic church here. I think I have it all out on the table, so I don't have anymore RC articles planned for the near future.

Well that's comforting!  With Kelly's baby coming and homeschool looming for me this means we won't have to be on red alert all the time.  (Not that we can't be ready to whip facts and information up at a moment's notice if we have to!!!)

I should reaffirm here that this blog will also not back down.  We will continue to point out theological inconsistencies and the truth about the Catholic faith for as long as necessary.  Incidentally, our answers to her side bar articles are in our own side bar!  Each one of her attacks was thoroughly rebuked and she has never ever been able to rebut our rebuttals!

C I came to your site orginally linked from a dear friends page. It was on a day that you chose to testify against the Catholic faith.

I truly do not want to upset or hurt you either, but just want an honest answer. Why?

I won't try and argue the Catholic faith to you, it seems there are so many others willing to do that in my stead, but when there are so many truly lost souls, without faith, not saved by the Grace of God. Why choose a religion? Why?

I don't want a response filled with reasons why you and I differ on the Catholic faith. We can agree that we disagree. But rather I would want your heartfelt reasons why you feel driven to this mission rather than seeking those Godless souls?

Neither of which would address the Christian woman's home keeping, but I truly understand the tangent. I do.

Thank you for your candor in advance

A I've also posted about New Age, The Emergent Church movement, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. However, I have a special place in my heart for Roman Catholics, and love them so dearly.

 You cannot love someone that you do not know.  Candy does not "love" Roman Catholics because she does not know us, and she certainly does not understand us.  Oh, certainly she has met her fair share of Catholics who were on the verge of leaving the church anyway.  But she certainly has never met or gotten to know Catholics strong in their Catholic faith who could take her arguments on.  And I think that has stunned and frightened her.  It has also caused her to dig in her heels a bit like a stubborn child, "I won't listen, I won't learn, I won't back down!"  This is a battle of wills to her, not an intellectual or even spiritual pursuit. 

They are people who think they are doing God a service,


yet so many of them that I have spoken to (in person) had no idea that salvation is in Christ alone,


What we illustrated in our own com boxes last week is that they probably had no idea about HER very unique Protestant idea of what salvation is!









(Sorry, I couldn't find a MEEZE version of Catholic praise and worship!)


and that once one has accepted Christ's FREE gift, they are savED, not in a long, drawn out process, of "being saved."

 That certainly would have been news to St. Paul who was "working out" his salvation with "fear and trepidation" as he "persevered to the end " after running the "good race!"  

rejoice, because so many souls have come out of the RC religion, and testified to me that my writings had something to do with it. I saw a whole family's life change in just a 6 month period, after they came out of RC, and into true, saving faith.

I specifically target the RC Church, because its many members truly think they are Christians, but the very writings of the RC church say that if one believes that Christ alone is their Saviour, and they are savED by faith alone, then they are anathema. So many RCs don't know their own Catechism and writings of the Holy See. There are some truly saved Christians in the RC church, and God is calling them out of it. I am part of that plan. This is part of the path I am to walk, and part of my job from God. I take up my cross and follow Him gladly.

It's clear from this blog that we not only know our catechism, but we own a couple and know how ot use the online search engine!  Candy on the other hand, has a few snippets that she has been spoon fed from anti-Catholic sources and she is unable to do any sort of debate or discussion after those sources are totally discredited and rebutted.  That is why Candy claims not to read here - because if she did read here and admitted it she would have to answer our rebuttals such as Vatican vs. God and Whore of Babylon.  But as I said before, she does not, because she cannot.  Her messiah complex is just creepy.

C I have commented in the past to correct a couple of historical bloopers in your post on 'Catholic atrocities'. My comments were very moderate and polite in tone. I was certainly in no way rude.

I was surprised to find that you deleted my comment and banned me from commenting further.

This kind of comment control is very alienating. I am taking great care to word this in such a way as to give you no cause to be offended, but I also want to convey my point so that you can understand.

A Please read this for an explanation why. I don't recall your comments, but I would guess you possibly continuously reposted the same thing over and over, so I banned you, in order to have peace in my comments, or you started your comment off with some derogatory, incorrect statement, such as "why do you lie?", or "why do you hate Catholics?" or something along those lines. I will freely tell you that when comments start off with such trivial statements, I tend to reach for that delete key, without reading further.


This is classic Candy!  When Candy behaves badly it is because SOMEONE made her do it!  She had a similar reason for things she has done and said to me.

C "will you remove from your sidebar the links to sites that catholic readers find so repugnant and offensive?"

A No. Having an article that quotes what the Vatican says, and placing it side by side with what the Bible says is not offensive and repugnant. I will not stoop to the ecumenical lie. People have gotten saved from those articles. I love Roman Catholics too much, therefore I will continue to tell them the truth - they need to know.

In the interest of truth we will continue to tell our side of the story because, everyone needs to know. 

Time to move on. I hope my answers to the above questions helped clear things up for some people, and that those of my critics who are actually intellectual, and not just out there for "juicy gossip," will see that I'm not much different than the average person. I'm just a Christian, trying to do what is right.


Well, we see you're not much different alright.  For now it will continue as before and to coin a phrase, we are not backing down. 

The apology.

Candy has a very long post today. I want to only address this part.

I am a BLUNT person, so I often just state things bluntly, and sometimes, in harsh terminology. I do not do this intentionally. If my words have ever hurt anyone on this blog, please know it was not intentional, and please accept my apologies. I’m not out to hurt anyone."

I think I could accept the sincerity of this statement if it was backed by action. If Candy would remove the anti-Catholic links in her side bar and refrain from posting any more anti-Catholic articles, I would believe that she does not "intentionally" mean to hurt anyone, including her Catholic readers.










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FYI kids -

Kelly is away from the computer for the weekend. Discuss and debate accordingly.

More Year of St. Paul

The Pope normally gives a meditation during his Wednesday audiences, and for a while now, he has cycled through the Apostles, and then the Fathers of the Church. The former are available in book form, titled The Apostles, published by Our Sunday Visitor.

The Pope has announced that he will now turn to a series on St. Paul, in honor of the Year of St. Paul. See, this whole saints thing includes people who are in the Bible, too! And the beauty of the liturgical year, is that having a time to focus on a person or a topic can renew the interest of some people, who might not have taken notice before. How many Catholics will be prompted to dust off their Bibles and read through the letters of St. Paul because of this year in his honor?

“We must place ourselves,” said the Holy Father, “in the world of 2,000 years age. Under many aspects today’s socio-cultural context is not that much different from that of that time.”

First of all, Paul “comes from a culture that was certainly in the minority, that of the People of Israel.” In the ancient world in Rome, Jews were at best 3 per cent of the population.

“Like today their beliefs and lifestyle clearly set them apart from their environment. This can lead to mockery or admiration, something which Paul experienced as well.” For instance, the Pope noted that “Cicero despised their religion and even the city of Jerusalem,” whereas Nero’s wife Poppaea was considered as a “sympathiser. Even Julius Caesar had recognised their particularism.

Paul also lived immersed in the Hellenistic culture “which at the time was a shared heritage at least in the Eastern Mediterranean,” in a political situation in which the Roman Empire “guaranteed stability and peace from Britain to Egypt, and provided (a common fabric for super partes unification.”

And if the “universalistic vision that was typical of the Christian Paul owes its basic impulse to Jesus,” the cultural preparation provided by his environment must be remembered so much so that he was seen as man of three cultures: Jewish, Greek and Roman.”

The Pauline year has prompted not-quite-Catholic blogger at Catholidoxy to muse on how Biblical scholarship has influenced evangelical interpretations of the writings of St. Paul. Some good stuff, here. (Our Lutheran commenters might be interested in this one, along with the comments).

How does this bear on Ephesians? As follows: apart from issues of style, vocabulary, and the supposed difficulty of finding a Sitz im Leben in which Paul would have written Ephesians, a chief reason many scholars doubt Paul wrote Ephesians concerns the dominance of the church as the chief theme of Ephesians. Why? Supposedly the earliest church was a Spirit led, egalitarian, free-wheelin' movement. But then, late in the first century and in the second century, something called 'early Catholicism' [Frühkatholismus] develops: bishops, hierarchy, conservatism, the proto-orthodox/catholic Church. Thus, any document that takes the Church so seriously must not have come from Paul's quill (or one of his immediate understudy's).

And Ephesians does take the Church seriously. Consider what Paul writes in Eph 3:8-11 (NIV):

8 Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. 10 His intent was that now, through the church[!], the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, 11 according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Do you see that? The Church is the locus of divine revelation to the cosmos. Or try this, Eph 1:22-23:

22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Wow! Jesus heads everything for the Church, his body, and the Church is his fullness. Cosmic, dude. Of course, Paul couldn't have written the letter, since it's got such a high view of the Church.

So, Ephesians: basically, latent anti-Catholicism is a chief reason many scholars reject Pauline authorship. Something for evangelicals to think about.

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Personal Prophet

Candy's latest post is an elaboration on her views of prophesy and speaking in tongues. It doesn't directly relate to Catholicism in any way that I can see, nor is it something on which I have a strong opinion. But I read through Candy's post, and then I read through a translation of the Pope's Sunday homily, on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, and they seemed such a sharp contrast, that I wanted to share some of my thoughts.

I read the Bible through several times before I had any type of real Doctrinal Teaching. That is a blessing, because that means I was able to read the Bible several times on my own, without anyone else's interpretations getting in the way. The first several to dozen times through the Bible, I used text only, or reference Bibles,- no study Bibles.

I cannot claim to have read the Bible dozens of times, but I have noticed that it speaks over and over of the wisdom of the aged and learned, of the importance of being open to instruction.

Proverbs 1:7: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Proverbs 3:5: Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

Job 12:12: With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.

2 Peter 3:16: As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

Acts 8: 30-31: And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.

Titus 2:3-5: The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

The last one isn't strictly on topic, but I notice that it speaks of the older women instructing the younger, not the young women instructing everyone else.

Some people have been taught that we can no longer have the gift of prophecy, because "we are not to add to the Word of God." Certainly we are not to add to the Word of God. However, prophesying is not adding to the Bible, but confirming it. All true prophecy will always line up with the Bible

This seems to me, to be a good defense of Tradition, if we replace the word "prophecy" with "Tradition." Let's try it:

Some people have been taught that we can no longer have the gift of Tradition, because "we are not to add to the Word of God." Certainly we are not to add to the Word of God. However, Tradition is not adding to the Bible, but confirming it. All true Tradition will always line up with the Bible.

See? Sounds good to me.

1 Corinthians 12 tells us that each Christian is a different part of the Body of Christ, with different gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Where I think Candy's view is so very different from the Catholic view is her supreme view of the individual. It is up to her alone to correctly interpret Scripture, and her view is equal, or greater, than that of those who might be more learned in the subject. She clearly feels that learning can be a disadvantage when it comes to Scripture. But I'm not sure this fits in with ALL of 1 Corinthians 12.

14For the body is not one member, but many.

15If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?

16And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?

17If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?

18But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.

19And if they were all one member, where were the body?

20But now are they many members, yet but one body.

21And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.

22Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary:

23And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness.

24For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked.

25That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.

26And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.

27Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.

28And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.

Rather than the importance of the individual, Paul emphasizes the unity of the body, that they all depend on each other. Jesus created a Church, and Paul indicates that it does have a hierarchy. So it isn't every man does his own thing independent of each other, and somehow, they are all collectively the body of Christ.

As I mentioned before, after I read Candy's post, I read the homily from the Pope. I immediately noticed how he seemed to stress unity and the Body of Christ as much as Candy stressed the individual.

Here are the excepts that stood out to me. At this Mass, the Pope bestowed the pallium on some Archbishops. For those of you reading along who aren't Catholic, you can find information on this topic here. It is a custom rich in Biblical symbolism.

But the pallium which you will receive ‘from’ the tomb of Peter has yet another significance, inseparably connected with the first. To understand this, a sentence from the First Letter of Peter may help us. In his exhortation to priests to pasture their flock in the correct way, he calls himself a synpresbýteros – co-priest (5,1). This formulation implicitly contains the principle of apostolic succession: the Pastors who follow are Pastors like him; together with him, they belong to the common ministry of the pastors of the Church of Jesus Christ, a ministry that continues in them.

But the prefix ‘con-’ has two other meanings. It also expresses the reality that we indicate today by the word ‘collegiality’ among bishops. We are all ‘con-presbiteri’. No one is a Pastor by himself. We are in the succession of the Apostles thanks only to being in communion with the college in which the College of Apostles finds its continuation. The communion - the ‘we’ - of Pastors is part of being a Pastor, because there is only one flock, the one Church of Christ.

It speaks to us of the one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church, and of course, in linking us to Christ, it also tells us that the Church is holy, and that our work is in the service of this holiness. . .

“Peter”, the pope explained, “. . . left the leadership of the Christian-Jewish Church to James the Less, in order to dedicate himself to his true mission: to his ministry for the unity of the one Church of God formed from Jews and pagans. St Paul’s desire to go to Rome emphasises - as we have seen - among the characteristics of the Church, above all the word ‘catholic’. St Peter’s journey to Rome, as representative of the peoples of the world, falls above all under the word ‘one’: his task was that of creating the unity of the catholica, of the Church made up of Jews and pagans, of the Church of all peoples.

And this is the permanent mission of Peter: to make it so that the Church never be identified with a single nation, with a single culture or a single state. That it always be the Church of all. That it unite humanity beyond all boundaries, and, in the midst of the divisions of this world, make present the peace of God, the reconciling power of his love”.