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

[A F Murphy]

Just to clarify... not to start another holy war, here...

We do not consider the Church Fathers to be holy writ, just wise.

And I have been told several times about this "don't read the Bible"
thing by people who cannot then explain why I have half a dozen copies,
personally, including my father's and my grandmother's, why the
Catholics translated it into English at the same time as the King James
version (Though I agree he had better poets... I read that one for
language...), why my grandfather said it was the only book in his home
so he read it three times through by the time he was 12.

We have never, in fact, been forbidden to read it. By anyone. We
certainly are not now. We are encouraged to read it ourselves, and there
are three readings from it at every Mass. However, the other story
persists. It seems to hang on from the time when all copies were in
Latin, because anyone could read had read Latin. Literacy began to
spread, and speeded up with the printing press, and suddenly you had
many people who read their own language, but not Latin... It did take
the church a bit long to catch up with that social change. But reading
was still not forbidden, just not made as easy as it might have been.

Anne

Tara wrote:

>>Now if someone could only explain to me why the Catholics are not considered
>>Christains................................................
>>
>
>Catholics consider themselves to be Christians.  Some Protestant sects
>consider them to be Christian, too.  But, some Protestant sects consider
>Catholic worship of Saints and the elevation of the Pope to a status
>above normal humans to be worshiping false idols.  Catholics consider an
>awful lot of texts (i.e. the writings of Thomas Aquinas,) to be holy
>writs, which is antithetical to Protestants who consider only the New
>Testament to be the word of God.  Catholic rites such as the Host are
>considered magical or otherwise un-holy in some views.  And, the fact
>that many Catholic churches still forbid parishoners to read the Bible
>for themselves is a big sticking point in many Protestant views.  Most
>Protestants consider one's relationship with God to be of utmost
>importance, not to be interfered with by any other person or opinion.
>You are expected to read and understand the Bible and live by it.
>Catholics are expected *not to* read the Bible, but to let their church
>leaders explain it all to them.  So, those preachers theoretically could
>(and historically, sometimes did) teach anything that fits their agenda.
>
>Basically, it's the same sort of rift that long ago led certain Hebrews
>to no longer be Jews.  The first Christians were born and raised Jewish,
>and continued to follow Jewish ways of life and teach them to their
>children.  Jews were busy waiting for the coming of God, and these
>particular Jews considered Jesus to be that God.  As far as they were
>concerned, the Jews who didn't accept this were too un-holy, too worldly
>minded to notice an obvious fact.  Quickly the culture became so
>seperated from it's source that it was no longer distinguisable as
>Jewish, and they effectively became two different religions.
>Protestants seperated from the Catholics, and quickly became so
>different that they were obviously very different.  The difference is,
>the Protestants and Catholics are still fighting over who holds title to
>the word "Christian."
>
>-Magdalena
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