Albert Cipriani

Correction ExPreacher:
There are two, count them, two points we agree on:
1) This ought to be a bible-slinging free zone
2) God is not in control and thus responsible for our history because He is not in control of our free will.

Yet true to your sneaky pinko ways, tho we're in agreement on #1, you've launch a nine-verse mortar attack on my position. In response, I shall merely post sentries on this flank and conserve my ammunition for another time. -- Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

ex-preacher

So why did you just sling a slew of verses over on the Shroud of Turin thread?

I do not agree that the Bible should not be quoted, although I can understand why you do since such a ban would certainly make the theist's position more tenable. You'll get no ceasefire from me.

I do agree that relying on the Bible is a poor substitute for thinking. Unfortunately for the honest Christian, the "word of God" must necesarily carry more weight than the word of man. I have more than once heard otherwise intelligent Christians declare that if the Bible stands in clear contradiction of reason or science, then reason or science must be ignored.

Albert Cipriani

Dear ExPreacher,


To show that I could be as much of a snake in the grass as you?!



Honesty has nothing to do with the false dichotomy you present. The law of God trumps the law of man. But the word of God, as all words, must be interpreted as the symbols they are by the mind of man such that man can put them into his own words.

Therefore, there is no necessary dichotomy between God's words and man's words that necessarily express our understanding of God's words. Weighting "God's word" more than "our words" of interpretation is the linguistic equivalent of a heavy thumb on the scales of a dishonest butcher



Such Christians should be ignored. They think what you say they think (which is to say -- not!) because they have no intellectual tradition. They're like sheep without a pasture.

But the Catholic Church teaches that Faith cannot contradict reason. The thought of St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century defeated this present-day Christian heresy proposed by the fundamentalist Catholics of his day who metastasized into the Protestant Christians of today. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

donnerkeil

But I am not ashamed to say that I find my reason fed by my senses; that I owe a great deal of what I think to what I see and smell and taste and handle; and that so far as my reason is concerned, I feel obliged to treat all this reality as real. To be brief, in all humility, I do not believe that God meant Man to exercise only that peculiar, uplifted and abstracted sort of intellect which you are so fortunate as to possess: but I believe that there is a middle field of facts which are given by the senses to be the subject matter of the reason; and that in that field the reason has a right to rule, as the representative of God in Man. - Thomas Aquinas

HelenM

Yeah, but what I quoted is a counter-example to what you said about God not hating anyone, isn't it?

love
Helen

ex-preacher

Your continual put-downs of Protestants does not impress me. Do you think by insulting the intellectual ability of Protestants you somehow raise your own? Believe it or not, Albert, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and atheists have intellectual traditions as rich as yours. So get off your high horse - but be careful where you step.

<strong> Tell that to Galileo. Guess what, Al, every religion in the world likes to believe that its tenets (and only its tenets) are in full agreement with reason and science. What does that prove?

<strong> Right. The upshot of all this: When the Bible and reality collide - fundamentalists deny reality, liberals deny the Bible, while Catholics are just in denial.

Albert Cipriani

Dear ExPreacher,


I apologize for that misrepresentation. Protestants having no intellectual tradition is as obvious and objective a fact as Catholicism having a papal tradition. Lacking an intellectual tradition in no way implies lacking intellectual acumen.

You said it yourself a short while ago in the debate thread: the Vatican is "an authoritarian empire of knowledge." An empire builds upon itself. Authoritarianism is the necessary consequent of having an infallible teaching Magisterium.

Thus the Catholic Church has the means and the methodology of guarding and expanding upon its knowledge ("the deposit of the Faith") without contradiction, whereas Protestantism, based upon personal judgment and subjectivism is necessarily a Swiss cheese of contradiction



Proves there are many pretenders to the throne. -- Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

99Percent

Throne? What throne?

Albert Cipriani

Certainly, 99Percent,
not the porcelain throne you sit on.

The throne I speak of is the one that makes a U-turn out of our fall from grace, the throne that gets us gets us thrown upwards -- Cheers, Albert

HelenM

Hey Albert, if you don't mind me asking: in what sense are you a traditional Catholic, because I thought Traditional Catholics believed the Bible is the Word of God?

We both believe in grace, anyway...

love
Helen