Papal Infallibility

Discussion in 'Non-Anglican Discussion' started by Religious Fanatic, Aug 19, 2019.

  1. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    I know this has been discussed to death, but I wanted to be honest and say that papal infallibility, the way it's been defined, is a real phenomenon. The only question is whether or not it is theologically sound.

    One thing I want to mention is that Pastor Aeternus (the document defining it) says that it is a dogma divinely revealed and not something that everyone was aware of, but the phenomenon and points that were never contradicted in the criteria given were happening throughout history from the beginning.

    When it quotes the church fathers regarding the criteria for which the Bishop of Rome has supposedly been infallible, it does so in a historically accurate context, citing only their respect for Rome's early primacy. It does not say they knew the statements that fit the ex-cathedra definition would be the ones guided infallibly throughout history.

    -I am not sure if transubstantiation tries to claim what some accuse it of claiming. It seems to define more so the extent and duration to which the specimen will become the body and blood of Christ to address pastoral concerns about how it is to be handled, such as the question of when it starts/stops being the body and blood of Jesus. The whole mystery of what Christ's body and blood is really like and its mystery is probably not what is being addressed. I will have to clarify this later.

    -The Orthodox make one unsubstantiated claim against Rome's doctrine of the Assumption. They claim they teach dogmatically that Mary was kept alive and ascended physically without death but according to the catechism, whether she continued to live or died first is open to discussion. They never settled that point. It just says that when her earthly life was finished, she was ascended but it doesn't state whether that was in death or while alive. The Orthodox claim that it's more logical that Mary died since Christ died first, but like I said, this particular point is not part of the dogma taught by Rome about the assumption, just the assumption in general.

    -They say that different rites allow different rules of marriage for priests, and some can marry. The western rite, which is the most common that teaches celibacy, is modeled under the conditions they believe Paul suggested were ideal for men who would take up a celibate office, where as the Eastern one which allows married priests follows different rules and disciplines that accomodate a married priest.

    -Vatican II did not overturn the doctrines of Trent. I have seen quotations and articles from Trent's catechism that suggest that invincible ignorance outside of the church can save someone. Vatican II was pastoral, in that it was meant to address the current situation of the times in light of the church's already established moral and faith teachings. Lumen gentium teaches that Protestants and Orthodox are closer to communion with the church as far as their trinitarian baptism goes, and emphasizes this more strongly in that paragraph, in stark contrast to the following paragraph which speaks of everyone outside of the Christian spectrum. On that it mostly emphasizes the particular points of other religions that agree with Christianity and not every single thing they teach. When they say muslims worship the Abrahamic God, it seems to mean that they worship him only in an incomplete manner. They mention they believe in the Abrahamic God who will judge mankind on the last day, but leaves it open to discussion with them as to exactly how he will do that. This is because muslims believe that how involved they are in jihad will determine what God thinks of them at the end of the world on judgement day. Allah will send Jesus to kill people who worshiped him as something besides just a prophet. This is a crucial point, because it does not say they are right about this point, but if Christian-Muslim dialog were to occur, this would be important because it will help lead muslims away from their most vital practice and that is holy war. Someone mentioned that V2 was pastoral because in the past people were more educated on RC doctrine not to be ignorant, but by V2 came around, most people had lost touch so ecumenical relations was important in dialog with other religions and sects.

    -Irenaeus's rebuke of the Bishop of Rome (Victor) over the difference in holidays is not a matter of faith and morals since holidays are pastoral things that can be changed and not based in absolute faith and moral issues.

    -The development of doctrine could be defended in that the Old testament often had events taking place that did not become clear as to their meaning or why they happened until one prophet illuminated on it and explained why these things happened or their typology to explain why God allowed it before these patterns were explained as being important or having some meaning. So too do some say this about the patterns in the Roman church such as...

    -The idea that Peter founded multiple churches does not mean that every church he founded would end up infallible or preserved on some way or another, but just the fact that it had to be at least some kind of church founded by Peter. Jesus at the time did not explain the exact way it would be kept together.

    -Mary's immaculate conception does not necessarily require the idea that there had to be an unbroken chain of sinless women to give birth to a sinless woman and man. There are advocates who say that God did not need to keep Mary from Sin or her ancestors just to make Jesus sinless, but that he made Mary sinless as well as Christ to keep the Adam and Eve parallel consistent. She could've technically even given birth to children who had sin even if sinless herself. Again, it's about the parallel.

    -That the bible never explicitly says that Jesus is the only person without sin. They say Romans 3:23 cannot apply to all people because Jesus was both fully God and FULLY MAN. And, the verses that say Jesus is sinless say only that and that the sacrifice had to be sinless, and only the sinless sacrifice was among the sinless to be allowed to be worshiped. Angels and people in heaven are sinless yet we do not worship them. John the Baptist and Jeremiah are also cited as exceptional examples.

    -That we can't ask saints for intercession because they do not feel pain in heaven, yet God can feel a sense of righteous anger/sorrow and since their holiness is received and eminates from him, they too can feel a virtuous sense of sorrow or anger for the sufferings of people on earth.

    I also want to go into the counter points of Roman doctrine. There are certainly those, too. I just want to be honest. I've asked some questions about these things and people seem to brush them off like they don't matter. I hope we can get more in depth and understand the full scope of argumentation regarding this.
     
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  2. Tiffy

    Tiffy Well-Known Member

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    It seems to me that this is the only subject mentioned which is worthy of discussion. The others are (from the point of view of importance to the faith of Christ), irrelevant and not really worthy of consideration.

    The sinlessness of Christ is not really questionable since scripture clearly states that he was tempted but without sin. Heb.4:15. This enables us to define sin as everything and anything that Jesus didn't succomb to regarding human action in opposition to God's will. We know from scripture that no one else other than Christ is sinless because 'All have sinned and fallen short', Rom.3:23. yet Christ did not fall short but conquered sin and death. Ps.68:18, Eph.4:7-10. Gal.2:16-21.

    All the rest is dross and angels dancing on the heads of pins, by comparison.
    .
     
  3. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Pastor Aeternus comes 1800 years after the times of our Saviour. Not even the medieval documents state what it states. We are looking at a brand new doctrine, one that was so shocking that many in the Roman church could not abide by the robber council Vatican I. Even John Henry Newman almost had a crisis of faith, for he certainly was on the side against the proclamation of papal infallibility.

    The question is can something new even be defined 1800 years after God walked among us? I say, absolutely not. We are to live out the faith once delivered to the saints, and cannot accept any new revelations as from God. Leave that to the Mormons.

    Transubstantiation is pretty simple and clear. The host becomes the body and blood, physically. Your teeth bite into the flesh of Christ, mice gnaw on His body, and you expel the remnants of his body in the toilet. That's what the doctrine of transubstantiation says and means. I've seen trad Catholics say that, yes, this makes them vampires who drink the physical blood of a human being.

    The simple answer on 'invincible ignorance' is this: before Vatican II, it was not allowed that the Eastern Orthodox and the Protestants were the means of grace. And now it is. Doctrine was changed.

    Mod: please avoid making disparaging comments.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 20, 2019
  4. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    People, do not reply to this thread anymore. I have asked the mods to delete it. I am deeply disturbed, as I am going through a time of spiritual anguish, by how Stalwart has replied to me. Now is not a good time. I am leaving the forum. Do not contact me.
     
  5. Tiffy

    Tiffy Well-Known Member

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    Religious Fanatic: No one is obliged to reply to any posts in here. I'm sorry to hear you are suffering anguish. Be assured that no one in here is attacking you on a personal level. At most they may disagree with some of what you have written, but I'm sure there is no personal emnity in even their most robust rebuttals.
    .
     
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  6. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Sorry, no anguish was intended, if any was perceived. I make it an effort to speak forthrightly, because we live in an age where truth is no longer palatable. But nothing I say is meant to be a personal affront.
     
  7. Rexlion

    Rexlion Well-Known Member

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    The OP is, I think, leaning strongly toward the RCC. I will say, it's far better to be a Christian in the Roman church than to not be a Christian at all!

    A couple of points:

    Transubstantiation in the RCC means that the bread and wine are no longer bread and wine, but have become literally Almighty God the Son in the fullness of His divine Being. That is why they place the host in the monstrance and have the people worship it. This is far beyond even saying that the bread becomes literal flesh; it's a belief that the bread becomes actual God. This is a significantly large difference; it's the difference between feeding on Christ spiritually in our 'hearts' and eating the Creator literally in our guts.

    Muslims definitely do not worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Now, it is true that they see themselves as descendants of Abraham through Ishmael. And they have been led to think their god is the God of Abraham; but God's name is YHWH whereas the muslim god's name is Allah. Our God, the God of Abraham, foretold of the Messiah to come. Our God redeemed us by His "mighty arm," when Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a life without sin, gave His life on the cross, and rose from the dead. Allah has no son, nor has Allah any interest in performing a redemptive sacrifice for his followers. Our God is loving toward all; He is "merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy." Their god is vengeful, arbitrary, merciless, quick to anger, and short on mercy. Last July alone, zeal for Allah inspired 134 attacks (including 23 suicide bombings) with 761 killed and 1246 injured. I don't know of anyone attacked or injured last month out of zeal for Christ.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2019
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  8. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    I have felt at times that it might be true and want to resist it as much as possible due to mistreatment and consistently bad experiences with its members and 'evangelists'. I have even considered suicide/murder if it is true as I believe it might promote that God is a liar and oppressive spirit, the demiurge, and that the church tried to refute this accusation against the faith which was actually true because they knew it was a threat. I do not submit to just any faith. I do believe how God relates with us can determine whether or not we should even consider worshiping or obeying him or not. I don't buy the whole 'I will just follow the truth and obey it wherever it leads' thing. It DOES matter. Some people who reject certain images of God have good reason to do so and are not just being stupid or selfish. I feel the same hatred towards Calvinism or extreme predestination.

    Probably, but from what I understand Allah is a version of YHWH with arabic vowels. Muslims have a monopoly on the word in their countries even though Arabic Christians used it for God in their bible, because of accusations of blasphemy towards Christians.
     
  9. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    I heard this from someone:

    "I do not have before me on of the books to which I referred above, *Jurisdiction in the Early Church* by Dom Gregory Dix, but in it he treats both the meaning of the Latin verb “convenire ad” in Irenaeus and demonstrates pretty conclusively that it cannot mean in the context “to have recourse to” but rather “to agree with” (as in the Pauline “Quod conventio Christi cum Belial”), just as the word “principalitas” must translate “archaiotates.” He also discusses the Council of Jerusalem and significance (or lack thereof) in the order of James’s and Peter’s addresses to it. It is worth perusing — but unfortunately it is long out-of-print."

    Is this true? Most arguments discussing the word "convenire" to refute the Roman argument always cite texts that use a different form of it rather than "convenire" or "convenire ad" by itself.
     
  10. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I definitely believe, as do many Anglo Catholics, that the Eucharist does truly become the body and blood of our Lord, in accord with the dogmatic profession of my faith, although I would not call it transubstantiation because this requires Aristotelian categories, specificslly that the substance changes while the accidents, or perceptual attributes, do not; that fails to explain instances where the perceptual attributes have changed, but unlike Roman Catholics, the Orthodox consider it alarming and potentially very bad when for example the bread takes on a fleshy aspect during the liturgy, and I have read that our priests are required to pause the liturgy and send for a bishop if this occurs (this also happens if the priest dies during the liturgy; the liturgy must be completed, so another priest or the bishop will hasten to render assistance).

    I believe this because this is how many Fathers and the Orthodox interpret Scripture regarding Communion. However, as regards the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, Matthew 16:18 by itself is entirely inadequete as a proof text (to me, it looks like it is talking about the solid faith of St. Peter, rather than his person), and all it definitely shows is that the true Church Catholic (not to be confused with any local church, like that of Rome, as the BCP reminds us). So to me, the Doctrines of Papal Supremacy and later Papal Infallibility look like they are promulgated by the RCC “Because we say so”; they are arbitrary and contrary to the humility of the great Patristic bishops of Rome, none of whom even called themselves Pope until the 6th century. Archbishops Clement, Sixtus, Julius, Innocent, Hippolytus, Celestine, and later, Pope Gregory Diologos were saints respected by the entire Church, who for the most part did not try to act outside the boundaries of the Roman church. The two from antiquity who did I rather dislike (Leo and Victor).

    Until the Sixth Century, the only Pope in Christendom was the Patriarch of Alexandria, and this remains the title for the leaders of the Coptic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria and All Africa, which ranks second in precedence behind Constantinople in the diptychs.
     
  11. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    So even though you're not a Roman Catholic as per this thread, still since you made the statement above, I wanted to ask the following. Would you agree with what the Roman Catholics affirm below? I won't argue about it, just wanted to see if you'd affirm it.

     
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  12. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    No. It would be vampirical if we consumed the unresurrected flesh and blood of our Lord, or any other person, but our Lord is resurrected, and thus his flesh represents the glorified human form, which is why he in his resurrection appearances is able to move about instantly; what is more, St. Peter describes us as Partakers of the Divine Nature.

    This idea appears taken from a Nicene perspective as expounded upon by St. Athanasius, the Cappadocians (St. Basil, his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, and his best friend St. Gregory the Theologian, also known as St. Gregory Thaumaturgus), and Mar Theodore the Interpreter (Theodore of Mopsuestia, anathema to the EOs ane RCs and St. Cyril, but like Origen, anathematized post-mortem and unilaterally by Emperor St. Justinian, in the Three Chapters, which I consider to be unfair as it anathematized people who died in the peace of the church and were hitherto regarded as saints; Theodore was so popular in the West, for example, in Spain, that his anathema caused the Three Chapters Controversy which was a 30 year schism in the Roman Church, and he remains a saint in the Assyrian Church of the East).

    So the Cappadocians drew a very clear distinction between the human and the divine nature, which is incomprehensible, a boundless sea of being; Mar Theodore argued that the bread and wine became the deceased human flesh during the liturgy of Preparation, also known as the Prothesis, which is extremely elaborate in all of the Eastern churches, but the Assyrians enumerate the baking of the bread as a sacrament in its own right; this was then transformed into the flesh and blood of the risen Christ by the descent of the Holy Spirit (Antiochian liturgies like those of the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Church of the East tend to talk about the Spirit descending on the gifts). I do not agree with the Eucharistic theology of Mar Theodore, but I find it edifying anyway, moreso than the symbolic or memorialist Eucharistic theologies, which I consider wrong (in that while the Eucharist has symbolic aspects, and is an anamnesis, which means something slightly different from “remembrance” but rather from an Orthodox standpoint means that there was only one Eucharistic sacrifice by our Lord, and the divine liturgy, a mercy of peace and a sacrifice of praise, is bound to that sacrifice, vs. the Roman Catholic idea that our Lord is continually re-sacrificed).

    St. Athanasius also posits salvation by theosis, which should not be confused with the Pagan concept of apotheosis, in which someone like Alexander the Great or Caesar became a god in their own right, rather theosis is best explained in the West using John Wesley’s doctrine of Entire Sanctification.

    So I consider that we partake of the physical body and blood of our Lord in its resurrected form, and concurrently partake of the Divine Nature, which accounts for the Eucharist being “the food of immortality” or to be more precise, of salvation, owing to what in Chalcedonian Christology is called “hypostatic union,” or in the Miaphysite Christology of St. Cyril and the Oriental Orthodox is considered to be a union of the human and divine natures into a theandric nature without change, confusion or separation (these three keywords make the Christology of Chalcedon, the Oriental Orthodox and Mar Babai, who, contrary to popular belief, defimed the Assyrian Christology, not Nestorius, compatible, and separate them from Christologies like Eutychianism/Monophysitism, Apollinarianism and Monothelitism, in which you get a changed and confused composite nature back, or from Nestorianism, where there exists separation, in which the human Jesus and the divine Logos are either two persons in a union of will (monergism, another heresy which Nestorianism depends on), or else two separate hypostases in a personal union.

    I suspect this is why if the Eucharist takes on a fleshy appearance, we pause the liturgy, because it is a sign of possible demonic influence, whereas the Roman Catholics embrace that sort of event and proclaim it a supernatural miracle, like their excessive enthusiasm for dubious Marian apparitions (see Medjugorje).

    ~

    Any Roman Catholic who calls themself a vampire or cannibal with respect to the Eucharist is committing blasphemy and displaying an ignorance even of their own Eucharistic theology, because eating something with the substance of blood but the perfect accidents of wine, and likewise of bread, cannot be engaging in either act. But like much of the Summa, I feel Thomas Aquinas wrongly sought to explain a sacred mystery.
     
  13. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Also, one other thing; neither Catholics nor Orthodox nor Assyrians believe the Eucharist is fully digested, but is rather absorbed into the body, at least according to the substance, if not the accidents. So if anyone says anything about the toilet, they are also poorly catechised and are making a loathesome statement.

    I suspect Lutherans with their similiar Eucharistic theology would also be horrified, and rightly so.

    ~

    One other point; the Eastern Churches and Luther agree that the Eucharist is for eating and not contemplating. Ergo we reject the use of the monstrance. However, like most high church and Anglo Catholic Anglicans in the period 1900-1950, we do believe in the reservation of the sacrament, although for various reasons the Copts and most Syriac Orthodox stopped doing it (I believe due to Islamic desecration incidents), and the same is often true of the Assyrians. The exception in those cases is for the Presanctified Liturgy, which originated with the Oriental Orthodox St. Severus, along with the excellent Christological hymn Ho Monogenes, which is used as part of the Second Antiphon in the Eastern Orthodox and Armenian liturgies, and while it is being sung, the priest normally recites the Prayer of St. Chrysostom, which was included in the BCP; some priests now say this aloud, and in the rarely celebrated Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy of St. Mark, while the Second Antiphon is the same, the prayers of the antiphons are different; this also applies to the Liturgy of St. James in its EO recension. The Syriac Orthodox begin every liturgy with this hymn:

    Only-Begotten Son and Immortal Word of God,
    Who for our salvation didst will to be incarnate of the holy Theotokos and Ever-VirginMary;
    Who without change didst become man and was crucified;
    Who art one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit:
    O Christ our God, trampling down death by death, save us!

    The hymn is often mis-attributed to St. Justinian, who rather ordered it included in the Byzantine Rite as part of his effort to reunite the Eastern and Oriental churches (which also involved bloodshed; the OO were aided by his wife St. Theodora, but had it not been for this schism, the Muslims would not have been successful against New Rome).

    The Presanctified Liturgy used by the EO is credibly attributed to Pope St. Gregory Diologos, also known as Gregory the Great, who before becoming Pope spent much time in Constantinople. He is the last Roman Pope until Pope Pius X who I like, and the last one I consider a saint. Before Pope Pius XII ruined it in the 1950s, the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday (and the Vesperal Liturgy on the morning of Holy Saturday) used the same priestly prayers and a similiar number and sequence of Old Testament lessons during the Vespers portion, respectively, all of which constitute the most clear and obvious prophecies of the passion and resurrection of our Lord in the Old Testament (bombaxo.org provides a Tridentine and a Greek Orthodox lectionary you can use to see the similiarity).

    Like the Roman church and the Anglo Catholics, the Reserved Sacrament is also used by the Eastern Orthodox for communion of the sick, and one of the OO churches, I believe the Armenians, still do this also. The others rush to the home of the sick person after the liturgy. Instead of a pyx, the Eastern Orthodox use something on the altar called a Tabernacle to store the reserved sacrament, and the body is intincted with the blood.

    On no account however is the Roman practice of giving hosts consecrated in a previous mass to the people in subsequent masses followed, except in the special case of the Presanctified Liturgy (used only on some weekdays in Lent, usually Wednesday and Friday of each week, and on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week), and for the accomodation of the sick.
     
  14. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    Liturgyworks, what do you think about the Fatima prophecies? They say the claim that Ukraine would become an independent state was declared during a Marian vision in the past which came true, and that it was also prophesied that the Ukraine would be used to humble Russia into a stronger unity, which they claim is what is happening now with the friction between the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches.
     
  15. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    So wait, do you deny that the glorified human form is actually human? Because if I'm not mistaken, cannibalism is defined as consuming human flesh, simpliciter. And vampiricism is defined as drinking human blood, simpliciter.

    We all agree that the Divine Nature is consumed. I'm talking about his physical Human Nature.


    This is unclear to me. Are you saying that when the remnants of the Host are flushed down the toilet, that's just the accidents, while the substance is absorbed? And so would you say that it is possible to have the substance and the accidents be in two separate places? I thought you didn't like using Aristotelian categories.


    Agreed that it is loathsome and horrifying. Which is why the Anglican position, in accord with the Church Fathers, is that we do not consume the physical flesh, but the spiritual flesh only. It's the most logical and the least blasphemous position, and most in accord with the original teaching of the Church.


    I think you've got it backwards. It is cannibalism to consume human flesh, no matter what it looks like. And it is perfectly innocent to consume something which only looks like human flesh but really isn't. For example if a cannibal had human flesh which he cooked into an appearance of a perfectly normal rib-eye steak, an someone ate it not knowing what it was, they'd still be guilty of cannibalism. Thus "eating something with the substance of blood but the perfect accidents of wine, and likewise of bread" is precisely what fits the definition of cannibalism and vampiricism. Which is why the Anglicans don't teach it.
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2019
  16. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    That it is tragic to see the Roman church, which was at least until the 150 years after the death Pope St. Gregory the Great, with brief exceptions during the disastrous misrule of Archbishops Victor and Leo I, a bastion of piety, tradition and conservativism, esteemed throughout the oikumene, and a pilgrimage site even for Eastern Christians and Christians of the Church of the East as far away as India (the oldest church surviving in India dates from 50 AD), fall into what the Russians call Prelest, or spiritual delusion. The first vision is clearly demonic.

    I think all three are of the devil, because of the lack of our Lord in any of them, and the dependence of the second vision on the heretical Immaculate Heart devotion (which an 18th century Pope who correctly rejected the Sacred Heart devotion as crypto-Nestorian joked might be the next thing to be proposed in a private revelation; alas in short order such a devotion was proposed, as Roman Catholic Mariology went way beyond the hyperdoulia to which Our Lady is entitled and entered into the realm of neo-Collyridian Mariolatry).

    Who says that? The Fatima prophecies say nothing about Ukraine.
     
  17. Religious Fanatic

    Religious Fanatic Well-Known Member

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    I've studied the EO doctrine of prelest. Do you consider the rosary to be a demonic invention, since EOs do not use it? From what I understand the story of Mary delivering it to St. Dominic is considered apocryphal and the pre-Trent version only recites the Magnificat in the proper sense of it, relating to Mary's joy in being rewarded for obeying God and not the devotions with it we see today. Maybe it was not always that way. Let me know.

    Actually not Fatima but this: http://www.divinemysteries.info/our-lady-of-the-ukraine-hrushiv-ukraine-1914-and-1987/

    The vision which says that "Many souls go to hell because there is no one to pray for them" is one of the biggest problems with the Fatima ones in particular, IMHO.
     
  18. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    @Stalwart, I like you, but I would ask that going forward, we avoid polemics of this sort, considering that the real physical presence is widely believed in by Anglo Catholics, and Lutherans, and the Church of England has always had good relations with both the Lutheran churches and the Orthodox Churches (its main rivals being the three Ps, Puritans, Presbyterians and Papists); indeed Martin Luther’s liturgical texts and those of the Orthodox Church were used as references by Archbishop Cranmer and his team compiling the BCP, which is why we have the Prayer of the Second Antiphon appearing in Mattins, Evensong and the Litany; the manner in which you are debating this particular issue would, if I were less thick-skinned, strain our personal friendship which as you know I value greatly.

    That being said, my position is that cannibalism does not happen, because with cannibalism, specific flesh is consumed which does not regrow, and blood is drunk which is of a limited supply. The resurrected body of Jesus Christ is of a supernatural nature; our Lord has infinite flesh and blood to feed us with, and partaking of Him is not equivalent to cannibalism. This is also why the Eucharist does not pass through the digestion according to widespread belief. Also, as an aside, Catholics traditionally were taught to consume the host without pressing their teeth into it, and in the case of the Byzantine and Syriac Eucharist, where the body is served on a spoon with the precious blood, or the body is intincted beforehand, there would be no need. I have only had to use my teeth in partaking of the Coptic and Assyrian Eucharist, where the elements are served separately.

    I would speculate as a theologoumemnon that partaking of the flesh of our Lord represents the manner most in accord with the foundational aspects of creation and specifically God’s plan to destroy this world and create a new one in the Eschaton, of bootstrapping humanity to exist in the glorified, perfected form, which is superior to tnat of Adam and Eve. Because when we partake of the precious body and blood, we are connected with the sacrifice of God incarnate on the Cross, just as offerings were consumed physically in Israel, but because Christ has risen, trampling down death by death, the immortal and invincible flesh of his risen body, which is also consubstantial with His divinity, unites us to the Resurrected in the World to Come, and to God.

    I have PMed you a reply to the rest because I wish to avoid any Christological controversy on the public forum.
     
  19. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Not in its original form. And the Russian Orthodox have two versions of the Ave Maria, each with slightly different wording, a Nikonian, modern form and a pre-Nikonian form used by the Old Believers and Old Ritualists (Edinovertsy). There is also the Rule of St. Seraphim of Sarov, which uses a modified Lestovka (the Old Believer/Edinovertsy/pre-Nikonian leather prayer rope, of which I own three, but none configured for this rule), which is vaguely similiar to the rosary. And I have a single Rosary but when I use it I use it for the Jesus Prayer.

    What the Rosary was and what it has become are different. For what it is worth, St. Dominic is one of the last Roman Catholics who I consider a saint, as the schism slowly ripped the RC and EO churches apart (the others being St. Bernard and St. Bruno).

    Ah, an unsanctioned private revelation. Like Our Lady of Amsterdam and Medjugorje. In 1914 and in 1987 there were active Ukrainian nationalist movements largely connected with the Ukrainian Greek Catholics and opposed to the Orthodox church, so a prediction of an Independent Ukraine in a private Marian apparition is psychologically attributable to the desires of the person who experienced the hallucination.
     
  20. Rexlion

    Rexlion Well-Known Member

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    Have you read Jewel's treatise on the subject? The early Christians' quotes within that document definitely support the proposition that, although we surely do receive Christ's body in some manner, that manner is other than physical. Cyril, Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, and Chrysostom all stated that the bread physically remains bread.

    Christ's resurrected body is incorruptible, right? So it cannot be digested. It cannot be broken down. After you swallow Jesus' incorruptible body, where does it go? Saying that His supply of incorruptible flesh is infinite and supernatural, therefore it doesn't pass through the digestive tract, seems like weak logic. It's actually the Anglican position that Christ's body in the Eucharist is spiritual, which makes our reception supernatural because no physicality is received; physical reception of physical flesh is actually more natural than that.

    If one ingests Christ's incorruptible body nowadays, it is not the same as what Christ instituted at the Last Supper. When Jesus said, "Take, eat, this is my body which is given up for you," if we take it literally, He is giving them His mortal, corruptible flesh to eat. For He had not yet risen incorruptible; and besides that, He said "my body which is given up for you," indicating His mortal body about to be crucified. Isn't it more likely His mortal flesh to eat? Wouldn't that be more scripturally consistent? At least mortal flesh is digestible and could become part of the recipient's body (to some degree at least).

    Doctrinal insistence upon physical change from bread and wine to flesh and blood appears to involve some nearly-intestinal convolutions of sense, logic, church history, and scripture.
     
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