[Sca-cooks] Catholic/Christian, was: The Fallwell/Robertson statements

[Tara]

> Catholics do not worhsip saints. Never did. I specifically used the word
> "veneration" in my earlier post in order to draw this distinction.

Master Adamantius, I would like to apologize.  I do realize you do not
"worship" saints.  But, the level of veneration given, and the fact that
they are the recipients of prayers, is considered by many Protestants
absolutely to be worship.  I sincerely apologise for writing quickly and
not making that more clear.  I was, and am, trying to explain how many
*Protestants* see the practices of Catholics, not neccisarily how
Catholics view their own practices, and thus why they consider them to
be less than Christian.  Praying to Saints is most definately considered
worship of false idols by those who don't pray to them.

> Catholics study an awful lot of texts. They consider the Old and New
> Testaments to be Holy Scripture.

Same apology as above.  It's all a matter of perspective.  Some
Protestants don't consider the Old Testement to be Holy Scripture, but
only a history of the time leading up to the birth of Jesus.  That is
why many copies of Bibles contain only Psalms from the Old Testement.
While Protestants have many documents that they consider to be important
theological dissertations, they don't teach any of them to be as
unquestionable or infallable as they perceive some Catholic texts to be
taught.

> As far as I know, they do not forbid the reading of the Bible. Even if
> they ever did, which I question in any setting except, perhaps, for
> small villages in the Middle Ages, this would not have been done since
> Vatican II, which expressly provides for all services to be in the
> vernacular. Priests get drummed out of the corps, so to speak, for
> saying the Mass in Latin, specifically to make certain that the mass and
> the scriptures are accessible to the everyday person. The idea of any
> Catholic Church (i.e. a parish, I assume) even attempting to forbid
> people from reading the Bible seems _highly_ unlikely.

My father was brought up Catholic and went to Catholic school through
eighth grade.  He came from a very devout family, and was a good boy.
While he wasn't forbidden to read the Bible, he was significantly
discouraged.  He never once cracked the spine on a Bible until he
married my mother, who was Lutheran.

There are copies of letters, I wish I could remember the name of the
Bishop, from the 16th century, asking permission from the Pope to
translate the Bible into the local vernacular so parisheners could study
it directly.  The response was an unequivocable no, with the explanation
that then they would try to interpret it themselves, and it is not for
them to do so.  Only people trained by the church are equipt to
interpret it, so why let untrained people cause difficulties?  It was up
to the church to tell them what it means.  I wish I could remember what
book I found that in, I'll go looking.  The letters were quoted
directly.  Well, translated to English.  So, while today it may not be
as discouraged as it was in the past, it most certainly was verboten
historically, and still discouraged by many Catholic sects well into
this century.

> Regarding the question of Christians versus Judaeo-Christians versus
> Jews, the reality of that conflict is entirely based on the arguments
> between Saints Peter and Paul. Paul, who had been quite a zealous Jew,
> felt that Christians should be circumcised and otherwise adhere to the
> Law of Moses as closely as the teachings of Jesus allowed. Peter felt
> that a lot of this was unnecessary, and that it would be better to have
> many Christians that might be seen as imperfect under the Law of Moses,
> instead of a few perfect ones. Ultimately, though, the fact that
> circumcision, etc., has, for the most part, never been required for
> Catholics, along with the fact that Peter is regarded as the Church's
> first Pope, suggests that the division being spoken of did not last very
> long.

Yes.  How does this conflict with my comparison between the rift from
Judaism to Christianity and the rift from Catholicism to Protestantism?
Each was an example of a devout group from the core of the standard
religious community who developed a radical idea and happened to succeed
with it, thus creating a new religion.  The difference that is important
to this discussion is that the early Christians didn't want to hang on
to exclusive use of the title "Jewish," but instead became "Christians."

> Regarding the Host, I can only say that the transsubstantiation is
> considered by some to be miraculous, which is not the same thing as
> magical, and since all Christianity is based on the resurrection of
> Jesus from the dead anyway, why is necromancy any less magical and
> unholy than transmuting bread and wine into body and blood? Especially
> if you consider that the significance of both acts is probably largely
> symbolic.