Wallener

One would expect to hear that from the RC side, since they were the ones mucking with the original formulation. Unfortunately, Orthodox Catholic disagrees, and since they've got the direct line back to Nicea, they get the benefit of the doubt.

Selsaral

No reason at all?! The bible looks exactly like any other myth. It has talking snakes and talking donkeys and people living inside the bellies of whales and absurd creation stories and stories that are clearly anthropomorphic explanations of natural phenomena. If there is no reason at all to doubt the reliability of the bible about the existence of Jesus, then there is no reason at all to doubt the reliability of the Illiad about the existence of Achilles, no reason to doubt the reliability of Lord of the Rings about the existence of Sauron, etc. Come on.

John A. Broussard

Which brings up a point of current interest. The theme of the recent papal funeral was "The redeeming power of suffering." Now, I'm well aware that this is an important Catholic belief, but I wonder if it has biblical justification. Do other Christian cults or sects share this view?

It's an interesting concept, since it clearly implies that we should be happy with misery--ours and others. The more suffering, the better including that "from wars, famine, crime, even disasters."

Albert Cipriani

If suffering was for suffering sake, the damned would be the blessed. Thus, your implication is clearly absurd. Rather than suffering being operative, it is the attitude one brings to suffering or the rationale for the suffering that counts. A person who chooses to suffer for suffering sake is masochist. A person who chooses God or Truth or a moral good and ACCEPTS the suffering that is concomitant with that choice is blessed.

The metaphysical fact of the matter is that nothing that is morally good can be chosen without suffering. The essence of free will is to suffer for God. It’s that simple. – Albert Cipriani the Traditional Catholic

Albert Cipriani

Not so fast! You haven’t reached a dead-end, you’ve reached a dumb-end. The claim of authority matters not. The rational basis for authority is all-important. If you honestly find L. Ron Hubbard authoritative, by all means, be his disciple. God will no doubt give you the grace to correct your error and not punish you for honestly erring.

All anyone is obliged to do is to honestly and rationally examine the conflicting claims to authority and choose the most authoritative. If that happens not to be L. Ron Hubbard, well, God help you.

At least you’ll be ahead of the curve of the vast majority of the herd who are seeped in the Frank Sinatra doing it my way school of theology. At least you’ll have risen above the cult of the individual that most moderns are trapped in without even realizing it. At least, even with an authority as bogus as Hubbard, you will have taken one step in the right direction, away from the illusion of human autonomy and towards hierarchical reality. – Sincerely, Albert Cipriani the Traditional Catholic

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John A. Broussard

I've often wondered what the flagellantes gained by beating themselves bloody, or the monks with hair shirts, or the anorexic fasts of the devout. Now I know. Self-torture, needles under fingernails, or just plain inability to breathe because of cystic fibrosis is really good--providing the rationale for the suffering is correct.

Albert Cipriani

Haven’t ya heard of carnal knowledge? Surely, you understand the sense of Mary’s retort when she heard that she was to become the Mother of God: “But I know not man.� You see, biblically, knowing means more than the narrow antiseptic encyclopediaic knowing we know it to mean today.

Ergo, your premise is wrong. Adam and Eve DID know of evil in the narrow intellectual and moral sense of the word as we use it today. They simply did not know it in the biblical experiential sense of the word. They did not know it in the flesh, so to speak, for they hadn’t committed evil until they partook of the tree. – Cheers, Albert Cipriani the Traditional Catholic

rexrex4

Here are 4 bible verses using ‘know’ and not one of them refer to sex. And Gen 3:22 , if using the idea of the tree giving carnal knowledge (rather than normal usage of good and evil which includes sex amongst numerous maters, as a moral issue), would seem to imply that the gods were engaging in carnal activities that were sinful as well as wholesome and ‘us’ got to stop them from getting to the tree of life and being able to know how to know each other forever.


BTW it just struck me that the reason ‘us’ is used there is simply because god saying: Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as ‘me’, to know good and evil… Would sound stupid especially since man is made in gods image, how can he complain that man has become like him?

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You plainly missed the point of my post. I regard claims by the Catholic Church as authoritative as those of Hubbard, Smith, and all the rest...hot air backed by dubious tradition and mythology.

I have done so regarding many religions. The Catholic Church seems to have confused "authoritative" with "authoritarian." The Catholic Church's claims are as ethereal as any others'.

And the point once again goes sailing overhead...

Traditional...you're not kidding. Let me make my position on this clear. As things stand, there is no objective method for determining which of the 30,000+ versions of the Christian faith is the "true" one. All make exactly the same claims: That all their beliefs have Biblical origins (even the despicable Rev. Phelps can point to the Bible and show you rationalizations for his psychosis), that their beliefs have "miraculous proof" of their validity (healings, Jesus sightings, bleeding or weeping statues, spontaneous artwork, visions) that are utterly non-verifiable, and that Jesus has either spoken directly to or somehow influenced the leaders of said belief. If one sets all these claims aside, what is left?

Answer: Not a heck of a lot. The only claim the Catholic faith has going for it over others is age...and if age were a proper criteria then we should all be Jewish.

You'll note I haven't even touched the Muslim or Judaic faiths yet. Add them to the mix and things become even more incoherent. Each of the three Abrahamic faiths claims absolute exclusivity...they are right and everyone else is wrong at best, evil at worst. The basis of the claim of exclusivity for each boils down to "because I said so."

An arguement like that convinces no one. Speaking for myself, neither does the "if you don't believe such-and-such, God will throw you into a lake of fire." That kind of thing is called duress, and I do not respond well to it.

Albert Cipriani

Shirley, you jest. The Latter Day Saints require you to believe in golden tablets that have disappeared. Jehovah Witnesses require you to accept their willful mis-translation of the Bible. Fundamentalist require you to believe in a literal (whatever that means) interpretation of the bible.

Part of your problem is that you are focused on the Bible as if it were the first principle of the issue, when actually it is at least 8 dominoes removed from the start of the intellectual linkage which connects Catholicism to the God of the Bible as a metaphysical necessity.

Your Bible fixation is the result of Protestant indoctrination. All they’ve got is that book Catholics gave to them. So like a dog in the manger, they jealously and idolatrously defend it as the be-all and end-all of salvation. When actually, you must deduce a philosophical understanding of God’s Nature first. Once you proceed from first principles to a working definition of God, the rest will fall into place rather easily. – Sincerely, Albert Cipriani the Traditional Catholic

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