BSM

Expect the leader of the Christian Church to be honest (i.e., that he does not know the (T)ruth)? Silly me.



~BSM

hinduwoman

Chilli all your explanations simply support my point: the Church which is ruled by the Pope lays out the rules by following which a man becomes Christian.
But only in the playing field laid down by the Church it can happen.
Ergo, it is the RCC that is more important than their supposed Saviour.

If Christ came back and told the Church that these rules are not what he meant, I guess they would crucify him again, eh? . :wave:

Chili

Not quite. The Church lays out the rules of the game but the Church does not make anybody Christian. It never did, never will and used to (or still does) condemn those who try to this as witches.

Exactly, therefore only in the playing field laid out by the church can this happen.

Correct, no Church = no savior. This has to be true if they claim that there is no salvation outside the Church (they recognize that there is but not the fullness of salvation which is heaven on earth as opposed to hell on earth for those who can't quite get in no matter how hard they try).

But Christ doesn't have to come back because he is here already and dwells among us. We are a different breed, as you can tell, who let protestants do the crucifying for us. To give you a hint here, we do not believe in a crucified Christ but left Jesus hanging on the cross to remind us that Jesus was crucified instead of Christ.

BTW, I am happy for you with your new washing machine and hope that life goes well for you.

Stormlight

Not quite. The problem is not that they refuse the Pope, but that they refuse to accept that the Pope is the successor of Peter and that as such he has been (indirectly) appointed by Jesus.

And by refusing to accept this, they effectively reject Jesus's "command" (for lack of a better word).

Admittedly, it's only a fine difference to what you said, but the ramifications are important.

So, no, the Pope is not more important than Jesus.

Chili

. . . but there is no fullness of Christ to be embraced if Christ left the scene just after he came onto the scene. What is meant by embracing the fullness of Christ is to become a Christ -- and never mind 'the one' who once was because we are now.

Our evidence is that Jesus was not the Christ or we would not have left him hanging on the cross. It shows that Christ was not set free until Jesus died so the question really becomes: "how can anybody to be a follower of Christ if he ascended to heaven just after he made his appearance on earth? We can be a follower of Jesus, yes, but then we are Jesuits and not Christian and never a Christ until we have been crucified as a follower of Jesus.

The Pope as head of the Church is much more important than Christ because there is no Christ other than he who resides in us and therefore it is wrong to believe in Christ as a third person to believe in. Catholicism is the means (medium) to Purgatory where we become followers of Jesus who showed us the way through purgatory and on into heaven. Purgatory is where we "enter the race" and when we complete this race we enter heaven (obviously, or there would be no completion to this race).

Jesus showed us the way after religion had served its purpose which is why he returned to the temple only to upset the chaos there and promised to tear it down to the last stone and rebuilt it again on the other side of religion as a mansion in heaven. The reason why Jesus showed us the way was because the Jews in those days spend 40 years in the desert wavering between faith and doubt and in the end died nonetheless. We/I hold that the pope is more important because born again Christians outside the Catholic church will spend the rest of their life while torn in the saved sinner complex and just get buried after that . . . which in my view is crucifying Christ instead of Jesus and thus converting heaven into hell.

Now notice that Thomas was doubt and Peter was faith who were twins because faith cannot be conceived to exist without doubt. Peter was first chosen as the rock of faith when he identified the messiah beneath the person of Jesus to be crucified. Soon after that Peter was called satan by Jesus to show that faith is the enemy towards understanding during 'the race' (using this same metaphor for purgatory).

Later, when all doubt was removed with the exclamation by Thomas "my Lord and my God" Peter was defrocked, ie. no faith equals no doubt, which is about when Jesus ascended as Christ = why he was Christ (Lord and God designates Christ), while Peter remained loyal to the promise that his insight would be the rock whereupon the Church was to be built.

After this we see naked Peter put on his cloak of faith once again and dive headfirst into the celestial sea which makes the Church an inspired religion indeed. I call this the celestial sea because there was nothing to catch on religion side of faith outside inspiration.

Is Jesus more important than the pope? Yes but not until we enter the race and then we are done with the pope (we create our own temple ruckus). So there is no comparison to be made.