Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: March 2023

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Beginning of a video, a Catholic and a Protestant - About Antichrist and End Times

Why just the beginning, that I comment on? I'll give the Catholic the benefit of the doubt to be defending the Eucharist and other things adequately, even before hearing Glen Gauer.

Did the Holy Spirit reveal the anti-christ to a catholic priest?
The Glen Gauer Podcast, 23 March 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg9cR1ErXd4

5:02 stop this "working behind the scenes" nonsense!
Please!

Fr. Blount said the Antichrist is a world leader - if he's right, this means we have seen him on TV.

The idea "the Antichrist is working behind the scenes" is a perfect excuse for keeping someone in media obscurity, and, for a writer also poverty. You know, the fear "if we gave him or him or him a platform" (but I think that attitude rains down on me a lot), "'we would help the Antichrist seduce people, we would hasten his victory" (and therefore it becomes vital to keep this person who's obscure, obscure).

The honest thing to do if one believed Antichrist were still somewhere behind the scenes would be to treat it like Antichrist hasn't arrived, we have no idea who it is, we can't pinpoint anyone even secretly. But some are not honest. I had a few years ago to interact under a German video with someone who considered me a probable candidate for Armilus or Antichrist. He arguably was Protestant with lots of Jewish learning in the background.

Ergo, he asks me to repent. Some people think they could just possibly save the Antichrist from actually becoming the Antichrist (i e irredeemably the enemy of Christ's people) by second-guessing me as a probable candidate, and so, they have to keep me away from the bigger public. And lots of that for Protestant reasons, which wouldn't normally be persuasive with a Catholic. Like my saying Swedish social democracy is more evil than the early years of Mussolini or all of Franco, like my saying Jesus founded one Church and it's not a Protestant denomination, like my saying yes, the Catholics who were Inquisitors and for instance burned Tyndale were probably in a state of grace, as this was not a miscarriage of justice, or like saying Jews aren't formally the people of God, Catholics are. B U T then we have lots of "Catholics" doing ecumenism with these Protestants and helping them out for that reason, and other ones who have their own reasons (like Jacques Arnould's heavy support for Theistic Evolution and as heavy disdain for Creation science).

There are lots of things that do look like many aspects of the Illuminati conspiracy in our world today, but "someone else behind the scenes" is not the most plausible part of it.

The Antichrist is not hidden in the depth of Illuminati conspirators, like Christ was hidden in God before March 25 1 BC. Those guys like to admire well known and powerful guys. Yes, they may like discretion, and overall as a person Klaus Schwab is more discrete as in less visible than Vladimir Putin, but given Vladimir Putin has overall more opportunities to act, he also has more opportunities to act in discrete ways. And one of the ways in which such guys are discrete is doing things that will be seen through by only a few and counting on the few being ridiculed. Antichrist being more secret than Klaus Schwab doesn't remotely make sense. He's not Moriarty or Doctor Doom.

5:16 And again, stop the "he knows the answers" nonsense too!

Being a polyhistor is not a good qualification for being the Antichrist. It gives you an admiration from a few geeks, not of the masses.

Keeping someone back because he is knowledgeable, has unexpected answers and could sway some masses, well, that simply means neutralising the opposition we could have against the Antichrist.

The actual words are not admiration for someone's knowledge or solutions, it's admiration for someone's power:

And they adored the dragon, which gave power to the beast: and they adored the beast, saying: Who is like to the beast? and who shall be able to fight with him?

Not a word of admiration of the type a geek would be extending to a more knowledgeable geek.

Case in point: Per Albin Hansson of Sweden was not the politician with the best solutions, he was the one who got elected by flattering false hopes, which are since then dashed (as were some of his threats, like the threat of forced sterilisation).

5:25 I actually saw the video, and I do remember. Yes, he said it was precisely a world leader.

6:41 The late Rob Skiba II went through seven post-Flood Antichrists.

1) Nimrod
2) Pharao of the Exodus
3? King of Tyre?
4?) Sennacherib
5) Antiochus Epiphanes
6) Nero
7) Hitler

Mentioning the Antichrist will be the eighth, one of the seven - as in a repeat of one of the seven.

I tend to disagree with his choices for 6 and 7, preferring Domitian and Lenin over Nero and Hitler.

He thinks or thought that Antichrist would be Nimrod (aka Osiris and Gilgamesh) resuscitated from suspended animation. I would tend to be more apprehensive of a Lenin bis ... what was his first name again? Vladimir? Muscovy has a Vladimir II right now ... (all the Vladimirs of Kievan Rus were ruling from elsewhere than Moscow - no grand duke of Moscow and no Czar was named Vladimir).

7:11 Stop that too.

There are two orthodox or at least moderately so scenarios for "end times"

a) the millennium starts with a spiritual resurrection of believers in AD 33, and "at the end of the thousand years" = when the chapters prior to 20 start taking place, meaning the "Church Age" = the Millennium. A saint who was dead to the body in 1033 would be ruling with Christ for close to exactly 1000 years, and that would be the medium length of rule extending between 2000 and zero years, for St. Stephen and for someone martyred just before Christ returns, and when He does, the resurrection of the flesh will happen;
b) the millennium is upcoming after Christ returns, and the resurrection of the flesh happens in two stages, before and after.

The idea that there will be some kind of "new era" parallel to the New Covenant in importance before Christ comes back, on the clouds, in glory, is a horrible error.

I will not vouch for scenario b being fully orthodox, but neither say it is totally condemned.

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Pakman is Evil (So Are Some Others)

Who Was Audrey Hale? | Ep. 123
Candace Owens Podcast, 28.III.2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLdglUyIDg4

4:33 While I agree with you on David Pakman, go back to this timestamp, and ask yourself if it is reasonable to blame me for not routinely forgiving everyone who:

doesn't want me to have a platform, which would be a decent living
or (not necessarily mutually exclusive) abuses my situation without one, without a decent living, to expose me to practical jokes and general misery?

How many have gone "he's not really Christian, he's not forgiving his enemies" ...

Wait, Pakman is Jewish?

How do you feel about the Jews who are stamping me as Antisemite?

6:53 I find it ironic that that transnetwork speaks of "lashing out" - a word which has been used about me too ...

Magisterium and Polygenism

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Dr Joel Edmund Anderson - a Fraud or a Dupe?

Creation vs. Evolution: Is It Christianity at All? · New blog on the kid: "Inspiring Philosophy" pretends to trace YEC to Ellen White ·Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Dr Joel Edmund Anderson - a Fraud or a Dupe? · Magisterium and Polygenism · An Unexpected Turn

Old Testament Scholar Flattens Ken Ham's Foundation (feat. Dr Joel Anderson)
Paulogia, 1st of March 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEli1Tk-_uw

This is more interesting than Kent Hovind's "bows to Mecca" (no alcohol, four wives) ...

1:51 I saw he had written a book on the same topic as this title.

I was really interested in his bringing up Arius and St. Jerome's remark "all the world woke up and groaned astonished at being Arian" ....

Sorry, but I do not think Ken Ham "bowed to Mecca" in the sense of denying Our Lord's divinity, and as a comparison it is ridiculous.

It's like calling Greek Orthodox Arians for having bishops (which the Arians also had, remember, they weren't Protestants).

3:00 "a very childish approach"

I'm somewhat reminded of modernist Orthodox (Commie loyal) and their views on Evangelicals ...

As a Catholic, convert from Evangelicalism and Lutheranism, revert from Orthodoxy, to Catholicism, I am definitely not an Evangelical, however, whatever approach I might consider "childish" in ineptness, I would never lambast as childish, because I know that kind of ad hominem sits as ill with them as with me.

5:21 Except of course the Commies didn't quite execute people like the now Patriarch Kirill - a former KGB agent, who certainly was no time famous for supporting YEC so far, and actually a decade ago considered Evangelicals were looking for "Christian Shariah" when they wanted to ban abortion.

Since the Orthodox consider Constantine the Great a saint, not just his mother St. Helen, but lots of icons go "Sts Constantine and Helen" ... and since Constantine banned abortion, as well as putting out children to die, I think Kirill is not the greatest light of Sts Alexanders and Athanasius' opposition to Arius.

6:05 "they were still kind of pagan, they didn't go to Church that much"

Where did that one come from?

I think Sundays and feast days were pretty well observed. Including by people who outside Church or inside someone else's Church were still even so able to commit atrocities (which is what I think was the point of the picture).

There is a reason why Luther succeeded and Aretino didn't. Luther at least paid lip service to the Bible ... not totally sincere, given his Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen, but not totally insincere either.

8:41 "she was literally just like an oven"

I think this was not the opinion of all the philosophers. I am not sure whether Platonic or Aristotelic ones would have been likelier to agree, but I think Aristotle disagreed, since Aristotle was more of an influence on Arabic science, and from Arabic science, we have that pregnancies start when male and female semen meet inside the womb - which is approximately true, the approximation being that there is a difference between cells and the liquids they propulse inside which they didn't know of.

8:59 When does that life begin to be considered a person?

IF one pretends that the Church was misled by false science to a false conclusion, and we know this conclusion was shared by all the Church, one cannot actually consider oneself a Christian.

Btw, recalling some more lore on Late Antique and Medieval science, many actually did NOT consider that a newly conceived baby was a person, they considered the ensouling with a rational soul occurred at the quickening. This led to some considering early abortions less sinful than abortions after that time, but it was still both mortally sinful and a crime in civil law.

So, the false science was rather on the other side.

9:33 "the early Christians weren't trying to get the Emperor to outlaw abortion"

Well, they did precisely that as soon as they had an Emperor who wasn't persecuting them, i e one who would listen to them.

Russia forbade abortion under the Czars, and Lenin overthrew this. The law actually goes back to Constantine the Great.

I wonder, with some trembling, if Joel Edmund is as inept on OT as he is on Late Antiquity (as a Latinist partly Grecist, that's kind of "my field" ...)

9:59 "that's not a way to do it, and it creates a lot of problems"

Said after defending Kirill's policy of not approaching the "social issue" of abortion by criminal justice.

It can be mentioned, Russia was in 2000 the greatest aborting nation "of Europe" (not sure how they compare to China and India, that's another question). In 2018 I think it was, Russia was still one of the five greatest aborting nations. More than twice as bad as US prior to Dobbs. Why? Because Kirill was not willing to approach the "social issue" in a way he thought "insensitive" ...

ONE result is, in 2018 old age pensions had to be adjusted, people were going to get it later. And it raised 4 months of troubles, with Navalny blaming corruption - unfortunately not that of Kirill and other "sensitive approachers" and ensuing problems with repopulation, with population upkeep - for the bad financing of pensions.

It was a boon to Putin (Kirill's spiritual son, also a former KGB) that early 2020 featured Covid 19. The war in Ukraine is equally a boon to him.

He can deflect from not having done the proper thing for pensions (which would have been to ban abortions as soon as he came into power), first by his men going "we'll get a vaccine, we'll even call it Sputnik!" (Sputnik V has every dose made from viruses cultivated on fetal cells from an abortion), and now by "we must save the Russians in DonBas, we must de-Satanise Ukraine!"

10:34 First of all, Evolution is not scientific. I may be a Latinist myself, but ma and dad were med school, a stepdad and halfsister in pharmaceutics.

I'm not totally dumb in science. Before you say "Yersinia causes plague" you check patients with plague for plague symptoms and for presence of Yersinia pestis. Before you say "this penicilline cures plague" (or whatever the proper antibiotic is) you check it kills Yersinia and you check it doesn't kill the patient, and that both facts apply to same doses. That kind of check cannot be applied to a statement like "man having 111 + cell types and coming from single-celled organisms must have evolved cell types at a rate of roughly 1 every 3 million years" - it's a totally different type of statement.

But while not all Evolution believers are Atheists, nearly all Atheists are Evolution believers, in fact, if we analyse Atheism as a religion, which I do, we would consider its main credal statement isn't the absence of God, but the presence of "purely naturalistic factors" leading to universe as we know it and life as we know it and man as we know ourselves. And being able to do the job without God. This makes Christian Evolution believers a kind of Syncretists. Ken Miller (supposedly Catholic) actually pretended God just set the process into motion ... not even allowing Design arguments for a creator to be scientific.

10:50 "It's looking at how things work."

How things worK? Or how things workeD?

Ken Ham doesn't deny Darwin's finches, which are pretty close to real time observation. In fact, a real time observation involving a new hybrid proves that two of the finch species weren't speciated in relation to each other. They could reproduce.

Stating that man who can talk evolved from apes which can't talk is not "how things work" - we don't see men evolving language without language input (see feral children), and we don't see creatures other than men developing language like we supposedly did "while" a little more apelike than now. So, it is definitely not an observation of how things actually work. It's a guess of how they worked exactly just once against all odds.

10:55 "Atheism is a philosophical world view"

The Atheism we talk of here is a philosophy which involves Evolution ("long term" meaning) and millions of years in order to have a complete or near complete explanation.

Please note here methodological atheism. Some scientists and science adherents will state "we don't deny or affirm God - we just explain in natural terms" - well, if the explanation in natural terms is contrary to the real explanation being in God terms (and no, there are issues where you cannot have secondary causes for a certain thing under the primary one, since the number of secondary causes is limited, otherwise there wouldn't be a reason to arrive at a primary one) that's an explanation flirting with atheism and reached by this lab prejudice which could be called methodological atheism. Since Carnegie started funding science and education, Atheism in practise has been running the ropes in many scientific institutions. Start out with "methodological atheism" and end up with conclusions that are at least compatible with Philosophical World View Atheism.

Creationism and Geocentrism are challenging the process.

But it's noteworthy, it's already ten minutes in, and soon 11 minutes in, and the OT scholar has said plenty of modern concerns, and not a single word about his supposed expertise, being OT texts.

11:07 "Most people who accept evolution are Christians"

Most Christians these days are losing a culture war, by not banning abortion, by not making sufficient numbers of children to get old age pensions (US is in less trouble than France, though).

In 1900, most people who accepted Evolution were mainstream Protestants, which back then was even less supernatural than now, more like a polite alternative to Atheism - like Luther was a viable alternative to Aretino.

11:38 "You put this here, and you put this here and this is how it goes together."

So far there is no evolutionary scenario available - do scholar googles if you like - for evolving ten genes necessary for making a retina from creatures which cannot see. You do have another scenario in which certain Cichlids cannot see in caves in Mexico because two of the genes have perhaps one mutation each.

There is a reason why blind cichlids have become a less popular argument for evolution than they were when I first time arrived on Quora.

In other words, there is no evolutionary process at all for what Evolution is mainly promoting and Ken Ham mainly attacking. It's not even "oh, the instructions are in Chinese" - no, the instructions aren't even there in the first place.

12:58 I note that Joel Edmund is conspicuously not stating whether he thinks Genesis 3 a literally true event.

In the Catholic Church, you "technically" have to believe it.

Trent, Session V, canons 1, 2 and 3 about Original sin, all tie original sin to a literal and individual Adam.

This means, when I spot "Catholic priests" who state that Adam and Eve were not literally people like you and I, but more like a representation of lots more of people, I call that pseudo-Catholic out as a heretic.

Now, Joel Edmund has made a short cut. He claims that Ken Ham is tying original sin to literal reading of Genesis 1. What I would do is actually doing is more like:

original sin started with Genesis 3, which is a literal event
with millions of years, there is no precise room where Genesis 3 would fit
so Genesis 1 is also literally true.

OR what Ken Ham would do is this:

original sin started with Genesis 3, which is a literal event
but there was no death before that (as per Romans 5)
and all supposed traces of millions of years are traces of death
so Genesis 6 to 9 is literally true and how we got those fossils
so Genesis 1 is also literally true.

15:45 "It's an example of ancient near eastern mythological literature"

First, Norse myth has far more parallels to ANE myths than Genesis chapters 1 to 11 do. Plurality of gods, earth created from a killed monster,

Second.

How exactly does this tie in with "non-historic"?

We can agree that in a normal sense, Genesis 1 prior to verse 26 and Enuma Elish with the generations of gods are not historic. All of these are very obviously about what happened before there were men.

But after that ... why would Genesis 6 to 9 and tablet XI of Gilgamesh not both be purported history? Note, one of them has to be in that case fake history. The Ark captain cannot both have died at 950 years and have been immortal. He cannot have both the dignity of eternally living far off in Dilmud and the indignity of Cham looking and showing all the men who were present in the location after probably Canaan had served him deliberately too much of his wine. One of the accounts at least must be at odds with the historic facts. But this doesn't make it a non-historic genre.

Some have equated Nimrod with Gilgamesh. Without denying the equation Nimrod and Enmerker, I think there is something to it. And we cannot have this clear "gebor" both be such because born of a goddess and because he somehow began to be one after getting born as greatgrandson to Noah. But this doesn't mean Gilgamesh doesn't involve real feats of Nimrod.

Oh, archaeology? Haven't forgotten. Genesis 10:8 - 12 would refer to the Neolithic. North Syria and North Iraq with East Turkey.

15:58 It's "mythological in its genre" ... is there anything like a non-historic "mythological genre"?

Prove the "mythological genre" is non-historic before you presume on the genre to prove Genesis 1 to 11 non-historic!

16:37 Before you can say that Genesis 1 - 11 being non-historic is an issue of good exegesis, you need to prove that "mythological genre" exists and as such is non-historic.

And while "science" had nothing to do with your own view of Genesis 1 - 11, the modern world view, more centred on science than on literature (with effects like atheists asking how many independent medical testimonies I have to Christ curing lepers!) that led Joel to assume (without proof) there is an essentially non-historic genre which is called "mythology" ...

I considered Greek myth as fantasy back in my teens.

Since I read Greek tragedy, I don't. Much of it is a documentary on how demons who were worshipped as gods played around with heathens who had no access to God's law and truth, except a conscience they were searing by social conformity and idolatry.

Theseus would have felt like "cool, I have a superman as dad" ... and that fake dad ended up killing his real son, Hippolytus. That's why the Church preserved Greek tragedy. It's the black-book of Apollon. Whom St. John mentions in Apocalypse 9:11 (yes, pagans called Apollon Apollyon too, Homer did so in Iliad I). I am happy the human mind is not twisted enough to come up with this monstrosity while writing "heroic fantasy" ... but demons are twisted enough to do it, and the Greeks didn't get the protections Hebrews got from God.

The gerbil wheel is Joel's ... he's proving from mythology he never took a close look at that Genesis 1 to 11 is non-historic, and so avoids a real confrontation with the scientific ultgraweakness of Evolution.

17:33 If Christ is the foundation of the Christian FAITH, and Christ read Genesis 1 to 11 historically, then the Christian FAITH actually needs to do so too.

Now, he's saying (and I agree) that while the fullness of truth came only with Christ, the theological ground work, the foundation, was laid in Genesis 1 to 11.

This is not the kind of "not trusting Christ" that Joel Edmund is actually and spuriously accusing him of.

In a purely paedagogic way, "the bad news" is foundation for "the good news" ... Genesis 3 is in fact a propaedeuticum to John 18-21.

17:49 "you're creating that ideology, and that's theological idolatry in my book"

Ham's less creating that ideology, than Kirill creates yours, and it is less idolatrous.

Is Ham heretical? Yes, he's Protestant. What is heretical about Ham was heretical about B. B. Warfield.

But on some issues, Ham is back closer to the Catholic home. He's not a Calvinist and not an Arminian, he's both - and that's closer to Aquinas and Molina than to either Calvin or Arminius. And he is not partaking of the modern Atheism that came forth from Protestantism, the one called Evolution.

19:16 As a Latinist, part time Grecist, who has looked at Migne, I am peaking my ears when Joel Edmund says "Church history" ...

19:37 "At no point did the Church ever say 'Young Earth Creationism is a foundational tenet of Christianity' "

Would they have used that language?

Trent Session V certainly made a literal reading of Genesis 3 foundational for our understanding of sin and death.

Since before the Reformation, since the time when the martyrology used in Rome was called Usuardus and not Roman Martyrology by today's scholars (though Usuardus arguably would have called his martyrology the Roman one), it includes for December 25 a statement on Christ's birth, I'll give text in my English translation from Usuardus:

"Year from Creation of the World, when in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth, five thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine, which number of years was completed in the following year of March, in the 20th day of same month, for in that day the world was created. But from the Deluge, the two thousand nine hundred fifty seventh year, which number was completed seventeenth day of following April. From birth of Abraham, the two thousand fifteenth year. From Moses & the Exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt, the thousand five hundred tenth year. From the ruin of Troy, the thousand hundred seventy-ninth year. From the anointing of David unto king, the thousand thirty-second year. In the hundred ninenty third Olimpiad, and in the eight hundredth year from the first Olimpiad. From the founding of the city of Rome, the seven hundredth fifty second year. The sixty-third week, accorting to the prophecy of Daniel, that is the four hundred fortieth year or thereabout. Year of the rule of Octavian, the forty-second. Sixth age of the world, gates closed, all world composed in peace, Christ Jesus eternal God, and Son of the eternal Father, wanting by his most tender advent consecrate the world, conceived by the Holy Ghost and nine months gone through after conception (here it is said in high voice) is born in Bethlehem of Judah from the Virgin Mary, made man; (here higher voice and in passion tone:) Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh."

The Latin original provided by my scholar friend back in Sweden, Stephan Borgehammar.*

Is it foundational to Christianity that the Word of God was born in the flesh? Obviously yes.

The Catholic Church has said this very foundational thing happened 5199 after Creation, 2957 after the Flood, 2015 after the birth of Abraham. She proclaims that in Her liturgy.

20:33 "but other parts aren't meant to be historical, and that's where you have to become Biblically competent!"

Ironically, a PhD in Old Testament needn't be that, apparently.

He has no idea on whether the comparison to ANE myths or the testimony of the Church fathers is the better approach, and doesn't seem to realise they are at variance.

Unless of course you admit that:

Enuma Elish is fake prophecy, like Genesis 1 is true prophecy
Genesis 3 is true history, like Gilgamesh XI or later when a snake eats the herb is false history.

That's a valid comparison. Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 are fake and true examples of prophecy, since they deal with things happening before human observers; and Gilgamesh XI and later chapters of Genesis (6 - 9) are fake and real examples of history, as both deal with things with at least purported human observers.

But "Enuma Elish and Gilgamesh are both myth, therefore neither is remotely meant as historic, therefore Genesis 1 to 11 isn't historic either" - that's a very shallow comparison, very dependent on a very specific culture I and Joel were born in, and which Joel hasn't taken the same distance from, and it is clearly NOT what the Church Fathers taught.

But obviously, to Kirill and Joel, the Church Fathers are just names you can tag onto the ideology of Delitzsch.

21:04 "Enlightenment world view lense"

I'm peaking my ears again ...

21:17 "the first thing he does is ask scientific questions"

OK, tracing the Enlightenment back to St. Augustine of Hippo, are we?

In book I of De Genesi ad Literam Libri XII he deals with how there could be days before the Sun.

His answer is, the light (once God divided it from darkness) was limited to a halfglobe around one side of the globe earth. And started to circle earth, like the sun now circles earth. AND the creation days are even at this point counted from the Time Zone of Jerusalem, which is roughly speaking where God created Adam.

I think you'll be somewhat challenged to put either Newton or Sarpi or Voltaire or Locke before St. Ambrose of Milan's pupil, whichever of these people you prefer to trace Enlightenment to.

But wait ... "the first thing to do is to try to understand it from their point of view, try to understand the original context"

Do the Church Fathers or clergy today most excel in putting Jesus into the context of the Jewish education system? I saw the sermon of a Novus Ordo priest (one of the more pious ones, not an outright scoffer), who told me things about Beth Sepher, Beth Talmud and then studying under a rabbi, which years of Sts Augustine and Thomas Aquinas hadn't even started to tell me about.

I still think Our Lord was homeschooled rather than going to Beth Sepher - and that's part of why He astonished in the Temple - and I know the Beth Sepher didn't become obligatory prior to Joshua Ben Gamla who succeeded Hanan Ben Hanan, who martyred St. James. But this kind of minutiae of the Jewish context of Jesus is not exactly what Church Fathers or Scholastics excelled in - except in the contexts where it becomes relevant for doctrine or for piety.

The concern to understand a text from the viewpoint of the earliest hearers or readers is dated to Lorenzo Valla coming up with "wait, are we reading 1st C texts of Roman authors right?" - and Lorenzo Valla was obviously not the greatgrandfather of St. Ambrose. c. 1407 – 1 August 1457 is posterior, not prior to 339 – c. 397.

And some of the first guys to apply Lorenzo's lesson to the Bible were either Protestant Reformers or close to them.

21:38 "I can guarantee you, they weren't thinking 'wow, this refutes Darwinism!' "

That is not the question.

It's like saying St. John's first adressees reading Apocalypse 13 weren't thinking "wow, VLADIMIRB is so fitting for Putin, he's Vladimir II both of Muscovy and of his known paternal family!"

But Putin is the second Vladimir of the known Putin family (which begins with his grandfather, who was not a Vladimir), and any country ruled by Moscow has had only two Vladimir rulers, Lenin and Putin. And ASCII for VLADIMIRB does add up to 666.

Or like saying King David's choir weren't thinking "wow, this condemns abortion and Roe v Wade!" - And yet, "wonderfully and fearfully made" actually does that.

Some applications, like refuting errors or pinpointing fulfilments of prophecies of the future (from when the text was written) in fact only come up after the first audience is long dead. Precisely as social and moral applications. Abortion or slavery.

So, a Bible text may certainly apply in ways which the original hearers were in no position to know about. For the hagiographer himself, we would find it more pious that he did understand more than he could convey to the immediate audience. Like Jacob actually foreseeing Christ. Genesis 49:9,10.

21:46 "whoa, there is one God?!"

Seriously, they had seen Him in action when crossing the Red Sea with no wet shoes. They weren't polytheists. Some may have hankered back to it.

22:16 Indeed. That's one excellent repudiation against anyone stating Genesis 1 to 11 is a rip-off of ANE mythology.

However, in order to make it a "rip-off with an unexpected twist" - like you are trying to do - how come the closer parallel is to Mesopotamia and not Egypt?

Plus, did the Israelites all of them absolutely need to hear Genesis 1 to believe man had dignity? Sometimes people travelling in caravans have an exaggerated sense of dignity, and that's what their ancestry 215 years earlier was. Would they have all of them forgotten it in Goshen?

It is a big mistake to paint either Moses' followers or Abraham as "pagan as the Areopagus" and then either Moses or God as Paul in Acts 17.

With Moses, we do find some Paul writing to Corinthians ... who were already Christian.

23:06 "he wants the Corinthians to lead a godly life"

In context, he is actually warning them against false Apostles.

[2 Corinthians 11:3-4]
3 But I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted, and fall from the simplicity that is in Christ 4 For if he that cometh preacheth another Christ, whom we have not preached; or if you receive another Spirit, whom you have not received; or another gospel which you have not received; you might well bear with him.

In other words, it is in immediate context about doctrine, not about lifestyle.

23:21 You are misrepresenting Ken Ham's train of thought.

No, it's not because it has Eve that is has to be about the scientific reading of Genesis.

It's because Genesis is the word of God, up to recently taken as historical including in chapters 1 to 11 (or 2 to 11, if you prefer calling chapter 1 prophetic), that not doing so any more is like Eve not any more taking Genesis 2:17 as a real and earnest ban on eating from a certain tree. He is very far from taking this as the only parallel. He misrepresents the 16th C. by pretending indulgences were alien to the Gospel (read Tobit for indulgenced hospitality and II Maccabees for indulgenced prayers for the dead) and so casts Luther for St. Paul.

He is doing himself a real disservice by making himself the equivalent of that buffoon from a stingy miner family who made vows he was not fit to keep and finalised them so he couldn't get out of them while staying a Catholic either. But at least the preaching on the "Genesis 3 attacks" serves as a reminder that no, he is not concerned with creation science because Genesis 3 is in the passus Genesis 1 to 11. He believes Evolution is just one among many heresies, and the main one today.

And I agree.

He focusses on Evolution like St. Dominic of Guzman focussed on converting Albigensians, because Albigensians were a major heresy then.

That he hasn't the credentials of St. Dominic for giving absolution is another question, neither have I, but even so.

23:50 Our Lord Jesus Christ, St. Paul, St. Peter not only themselves affirmed the historicity of Adam and Eve and of Noah, BUT were starting (as Lord and as main Apostles of Him) a Church which continued to do this up to after 1920.

If you are into "Adam and Eve are mythological, therefore literary, therefore fictional" you are out - even the Dictionnaire de la Théologique Catholique had Teilhard de Chardin stating that Adam and Eve had to be historic, even if not the usual style ... even Teilhard de Chardin, the poster child of Theistic Evolution, was not allowed to put the historicity of Adam and Eve in actual direct doubt.

But you read the Bible with Kirill instead of the Church Fathers.

24:05 "you can not derive he's affirming the historicity of Eve from that verse"

You most definitely can if you put it in the historic context of the first century.

I think I'll skip
the final 15 minutes for now.

Pretending St. Paul did not affirm the historicity of Eve, or Our Lord of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, or St. Peter of Noah and the Flood, is like saying St. Irenaeus believed in ASCII code for Apoc. 13.

I think St. John had seen computers and ASCII, but I do not believe all that's to be finally revealed only when prophecy is fulfilled was culturally present to the early Church. Greek gematria was a standin, they could express the code needed to have numeric values for all letters, not just some of them (exeunt Roman Numerals), and to have a known spelling (exit Hebrew gematria).

But while ASCII is a 20th C. invention, which is useful, I'm using it right now, "Genesis 1 to 11 is mythology and therefore not history" is a 20th C. (19th to 21st C.) ideology, and useless. It was not only not present to 1st C. audiences, it should not be there in us either.

* Background to Christmas Martyrology · What Martyrology, by the way?

Sunday, March 26, 2023

Catholic Answers Claimed to Give THE Catholic Response

Karl Keating and "Catholic Answers" · Catholic Answers Claimed to Give THE Catholic Response

I think I give a better one.

“The Anabaptists Were the FIRST Christians” | The Catholic Response
Catholic Answers, 2 Nov. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9lBoXwcRqg

Elf-lord's Friar of the Meadowlands: For every claim that "We were the original church before the Catholics did X" this must be recorded in history which they can cite clearly, otherwise they are taking advantage of the vagueness of history to make a very bold assumption. So because there were ~100-200 years since Christ ascended that an early Church Father wrote something condemning people which believed some of their beliefs, they assume that all of their beliefs comprised "The Church" and that this church was like them.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Very good point, "Elf-lord's Friar" but here we were dealing with no specific claim of doctrinal superiority, but with a spurious claim of apostolic succession.

0:57 Actually that's only part of the rationale for Ruckmanism.

We'll see if you come to adress their real claim.

1:20 St. Peter wasn't Pope yet when he denied our Lord. The status then was the chief disciple, while Our Lord Himself was the actual leader of His Church - and after His arrest, it dispersed.

In Mt 16:18-19 he was promised papacy by "verba de futuro" and he only got the papacy by "verba de praesenti" - the order "feed my lambs" etc - after repenting. John 21.

3:01 There may be Ruckmanites who claim Anabaptist pastors have succession from Novatian. You know, the rival of Pope St. Cornelius.

3:15 You are obviously ready for the fact that Ruckmanites will state that Justin and Irenaeus and Clement still were part of the original Anabaptist Church?

They might imagine that they got some things wrong, or overdid the importance of sth which was tactically true, but they will say that what we refer to as the Catholic Church prior to the clement approach of St. Cornelius was "their" Church. How do you refute that?

4:08 "within the Anabaptist Tradition, the answer would be no"

That would be the true answer, but is not exactly how Ruckmanites would see it.

How would you refute the Ruckmanites? I know how I do that.

5:58 No, you did not answer Ruckmanites.

I happen to know more about them.

1) they would certainly claim St. Peter's pre-eminence was just temporary for his own lifetime, not for all generations
2) they would claim monarchic episcopacy were against the NT specifications of the leadership
3) most importantly for the caller's actual query, what she wanted to answer her friend, they would claim that the Anabaptists have always been around.

This is where the answer is to be found. They haven't. They will point to Novatians, Donatists, Circumcellions even perhaps, and later on Waldensians and even Albigensians, as the continued presence of the original Church. They will therefore deny that Menno or Smyth and Helwys founded Baptism / Mennonite Anabaptism as Luther founded Lutheranism, they will pretend Menno on the one hand, Smyth and Helwys on the other, simply joined a Church that already existed since Jesus.

BUT they will fail to identify documented doctrines and behaviours, most notably of Circumcellions and Albigensians, with their own tenets.

There is a reason that the appeal to Apostolic Succession was important at Trent - Anabaptists were a tiny trickle when it came to the sects of the Reformation.

There is also a reason why it was less of an issue than "two principles" with Albigensians - the Albigensians, like the Ruckmanites, made a spurious claim to Apostolic succession. AND the way they motivated that claim and its supposed priority over the Catholic one was their view of doctrine.

Now, the original reason given - you would be better off answering it by stating that Our Lord, during the last years of the Old Testament, told His disciples to actually obey what the Pharisees said, but not imitate what they do. Why? Because this shows that even sinful men can make doctrinally sound rulings.

Karl Keating and "Catholic Answers"

Karl Keating and "Catholic Answers" · Catholic Answers Claimed to Give THE Catholic Response

Here's How CATHOLIC ANSWERS Started! w/ Karl Keating
Reason & Theology, 26 March 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw3QtXGHjg4

FrJohnBrownSJ: Catholic Answers has done so much good. May God bless everyone involved.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: I ceased to be overimpressed when I had my account on their forum locked for defending Geocentrism.

2:17 I have a fairly shrewd idea how the Catholics saw Keating's flyer.

Catholics sometimes know Fundamentalists, so probably some of the Fundamentalists complained and some of the Fundamentalists approached from interest their Catholic friends.

The obvious exception to the rule is, Karl Keating himself who to this day confuses the Protestant stances of that Church (including on the Eucharist) with its Fundamentalist stances.

Hence his virulence against Catholic Fundamentalists.

2:39 Was it at the six tracts, the twelve tracts or the twenty-four tracts stage that Karl started attacking Fundamentalism in such items that aren't Protestant, that aren't condemned by the Church (except possibly very recent what he would and I wouldn't call authentic magisterium) and that have been held by most Catholics over the centuries, like Geostasis and a Universe that's thousands, not billions of years old?

Or perhaps the 48 tract stage?

3:10 Ah, by Catholicism and Fundamentalism, the step was taken across that line, whether it was so before or not.

3:54 Now, there is a parallel and opposite story.

In 2001, I had reasons to spend much time in the main library of Malmö (no, I am not a librarian).

I took to forums on the internet, some just for plain fun, like Prancing Pony (Tolkien fans, obviously) and some for debates, like yahoo boards Creation versus Evolution. A similar one on Netscape Boards.

After a time I found MSN Groups, made one, called it Antimodernism.

As one can imagine, it was by a Catholic Trad, that is by a man who represented both Catholicism and Fundamentalism and who therefore would feel misrepresented in both capacities by Karl Keating's infamous book. Which, like Karl Keating himself, I didn't know at the time.

In February 2009, MSN groups closed down. By then I had c. 30 group members, and was unable to have sufficient computer time to transfer all group activities to Multiply. I salvaged what I could to my (3:rd) blogger account. Some of my blogs have "Antimodernism" in the title - those usually are salvage work from the MSN Group of that name.

For some reason, Russia is topmost today, and viewers have gone down.

Russia 190 US 133 France 43
UK 10 Hong Kong 9 Canada 7 Singapore 7 Viêt Nam 6
Three views : Ireland, Morocco, 6
Two views : Japan, Netherlands, Bielorussia, Ukraine 8
One view : Ghana, Indonesia, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Australia, "Other" = 8
Total : 190 + 133 + 43 + 10 + 9 + 7 + 7 + 6 + 6 + 8 + 8 = 427

Russia about equal to a few days ago ...

Thursday, March 23, 2023

Debates on Russia

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Vigano and Some Other Right Wing Christians Don't Get Eastern Europe · Debates on Russia · New blog on the kid: Ukraine vs Russia : More Christian, Fewer Abortions

I: 8:41 "we know Zelensky's values in Ukraine"

That he has such bad values personally is possible.

They are not yet the values of the Ukraine as a society or as a state with laws.

And the society and the state with laws, not Zelensky's personal opinions, is what the Ukrainean forces are fighting to defend.
Eddie Schwab: For nearly a decade ethnic Russians in the eastern part of Ukraine have been persecuted by the Ukrainian military auxiliary's that have had full tacit support of the regime in Kiev.

Everybody just looks at February of last year as if Putin started the fight. The fight has been going on since 2014 when the United States put a friendly in charge of the government to put Ukraine in the western orbit. And remember Putin previously said that if Ukraine wanted to join the European union he had no objections to that. Membership in NATO for him was the only Red Line.

But ever since the Maidan revolution, ukrainians in the western part of the country have been firing on people settlements in the eastern part of the country that is heavily Russian by population, many of those areas are majority Russian including Crimea and the Donbass. More importantly the government in Kiev was forcing ethnic cleansing upon the Russian majority in the East trying to force them to their version of Orthodoxy as well as force them to speak Ukrainian.

The Maidan revolution is a modern offshoot of the moment by Stepan Bandera, which incorrectly believe that ukrainians were the descendants of the so-called Volga Germans that came into the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great. Individual ukrainians notwithstanding that has been largely disproven as many of the Volga Germans ended up in the caucuses as well as in the steppe between Russia and Kazakhstan (Bishop Athanasius Schneider is himself a descendent of the Volga Germans hence his name).

Ultimately the big difference between the ukrainians in the west and the Russians in the East versus the Poles and the lithuanians to the west and North in the case of them versus the ukrainians linguistically very similar spoken language but the ukrainians adopted Orthodox religion and Cyrillic alphabet obviously in Poland and Lithuania they use the Latin alphabet and are mostly Catholic. Small minority of the population notwithstanding but that is the large majority of the Russian population is orthodox and uses the Cyrillic alphabet so you can say they're cross cutting connections between the Russians and ukrainians on one side as well as the ukrainians versus the Poles and lithuanians on the other side, aside from that Ukraine historically has always been ethnically Russian in the east as well as long the Black Sea it's only the western part of the country that has had a separate cultural identity. A culture they've been trying to force upon the Russians in the eastern part of the country.

Plus the reason for the original special military operation was Putin was very careful to avoid civilian casualties. Even if it was riskier for the military. However the ukrainians are so determined to essentially Drive Russians out of their soil even though that is their Homeland that they are willing to risk nuclear war to do it. No rational people could possibly accept such an evil proposition. And the fact that our criminal government in Washington d.c. seems willing to up the ante even up to that point makes me believe that this government in Washington d.c. must be brought to an end, by any means necessary., even if it involves a military coup d'etat in Washington DC.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Eddie Schwab "More importantly the government in Kiev was forcing ethnic cleansing upon the Russian majority in the East trying to force them to their version of Orthodoxy as well as force them to speak Ukrainian."

I don't think this holds true.

Russian nationality was well tolerated in the East, up to the breakaway.

You have bought the Russian narrative about what happened in the Donbass.
Eddie Schwab: @Hans-Georg Lundahl it's 100% true bro. Don't take my word for it check Patrick Lancaster's channel. I was sympathetic to the Ukrainian position until I saw that.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Eddie Schwab Is he a journalist on the field?

Bc, if not, he may have been reading some Russian propaganda.
Eddie Schwab: @Hans-Georg Lundahl yes he's in the field where it's all happening. Frequently interviewing people caught in the middle of it whether civilian or military...
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Eddie Schwab I looked him up, here is one:

Child victims of Russia - Ukraine War In Donetsk
Patrick Lancaster, 16.III.2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRsiQi1JYT0

But missiles hitting civilians, including underage ones in Donetsk doesn't seem very different from Russian ones hitting civilians in Kyiv and that Northern suburb ...

Has he been there before the war, so he can personally testify Russians in Donbass were targetted for ethnic cleansing, or is that what he heard from them later on?
Hans-Georg Lundahl
follow up: @Eddie Schwab I checked his videos to answer the question myself.

It seems actually that when the war broke up he was in Armenia, so for Don-Bass conflict prior to war, he might be relying on the version given by his hosts.
II
Hans-Georg Lundahl: 9:13 NATO provoked this?

If you want to know the Russian interest in Ukraine, check out a city called Sevastopol, on Crimea. It's the largest and best naval base of the region, possibly of all the Black Sea.

Russia started to get really excited in favour or separatists suffering in Ukraine when a certain lease, leaving Russia the military access to Sevastopol, was going to expire and the new régime in Ukraine was lots less likely to let them continue the lease.

And in fact, as Mearsheimer was stating the other day, a certain time ago, NATO and Putin were friends.
Johan Trenier: @Hans-Georg Lundahl That’s the most reasonable explanation I’ve heard. Thank you.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Johan Trenier It can be added, already in 2020, Russian government needed sth to deflect from the old age pensions controversy that had caused rallies for over 4 months in 2018.

They are a bit similar to the ones in France, which may be better known.
Eddie Schwab: The status of Sevastopol was essentially a lifetime lease for the Russian Federation because that being their Naval port on the Black Sea. Otherwise they would have to based at a port in the sea of Azov, which could be easily blockaded in. Even more easily than Turkey blocking the Bosphorus.. but they had functionally a lifetime lease on the port of Sevastopol, plus the Crimea was heavily Russian by population anyway. I've got friends from college days that live in Simferopol, which is not too far from there and none of them identify as ukrainians they identify as Russians. But back to the lifetime lease that was negotiated after the breakup of the Soviet Union since obviously Russia had a substantial Navy, Ukraine not so much. But the terms of such a lifetime lease are it is theirs as long as they want it and at the time certainly it was advantageous because the Russians were paying a pretty handsome amount to the government in Kiev for its use. The same sort of arrangement that the United States has in Cuba with Guantanamo Bay. The only official dealing for many years was the United States sending the check to Castro for the rent for the bass, Chester might have said death to America or anything like that but you bet he took the money and ran...
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Eddie Schwab "But the terms of such a lifetime lease are it is theirs as long as they want it"

I have heard a radically different story about the terms of the lease.

The Hidden Reason Ukraine Is Optimistic about Crimea
William Spaniel | Dec 1st 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIE1g8kqIpk

Continuing the debate

Commenting on Taylor Marshall's "10 Differences" · Debate Under Taylor Marshall's "10 Differences" · Continuing the debate

Anne Francis Elizabeth: @Hans-Georg Lundahl Sir, are you not attempting to hide the truth in plain sight?

Never mind. Fourth question.

The task of defining Christian doctrine fell mainly to St. Paul. Paul wrote to churches he did not found, including a ground-breaking Epistle to the Church of Rome, without any reference whatsoever to Peter. No Cardinal would write a letter to the Vatican without any reference to Pope Francis.

On at least some questions, Paul expected his readers to accept his own viewpoint and reject Peter's. If Peter were to be Pope, where does Paul get his own pontifical infallibility from?

NOTE: Clement the Stromatist said, this was not St. Peter: that claim does not help the Romanist cause, at all. Because:
i. it makes no sense
ii. it makes Peter NOT a pillar of the Church!
iii. No Pope or any other Romanist commentator is known to have claimed that Cephas was not Peter.
iv. One of the sub-themes of the Epistle to the Galatians is the disagreement between Paul and Peter.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Anne Francis Elizabeth "Paul wrote to churches he did not found, including a ground-breaking Epistle to the Church of Rome, without any reference whatsoever to Peter."

Perhaps bc Peter arrived later and was still in Antioch?

Either way, St. Peter referred to him. And to his epistles being twisted, as is also the case with other Scriptures. People who are into the "Romans' road" - take note.

"No Cardinal would write a letter to the Vatican without any reference to Pope Francis."

One problem is your assuming Bergoglio is Pope.

But apart from that, why would protocol have been in place identical, for the doctrine to be so?

"On at least some questions, Paul expected his readers to accept his own viewpoint and reject Peter's."

And reject Cephas' - St. Peter had been called Peter as late as in previous verse.

"If Peter were to be Pope, where does Paul get his own pontifical infallibility from?"

St. Paul didn't have pontifical infallibility, but hagiographical inerrancy, which is a charism. It was vetted for all of his epistles by precisely Popes by as late as the 300's between the two first general or ecumenical councils.

"i. it makes no sense ii. it makes Peter NOT a pillar of the Church!"

Did you note "seemed to be pillars of the Church"? The hypothesis here is that James, Cephas and John were impostors.

"iii. No Pope or any other Romanist commentator is known to have claimed that Cephas was not Peter."

Clement the Stromatist counts as "Romanist" with us for obvious reasons. Like St. Thomas Aquinas who held the opposite view. How many Popes are known to have spoken in direct comment of Galatians?

"iv. One of the sub-themes of the Epistle to the Galatians is the disagreement between Paul and Peter."

Between St. Paul and Cephas.

Monday, March 20, 2023

On Calvin Robinson

Dr. G. Ashenden supports him:

"Cancelling Calvin Robinson at Easter:- A Catholic Choir strikes". 'Ashenden Scripted'
Dr G Ashenden, 19 March 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46prrod1C8w

4:33 "he has done a very good job of defending Christian marriage"

Not quite.

He has pretended homosexual persons cannot marry. Please note, I said persons, not couples, I agree same sex couples cannot marry.

Now, here is the question I posed him, on which he answered no:

Do you agree:

people with same sex attraction have the right to marriage, unless they have the gift of continence;
most of them have at least some ability to actual marriage, like Chaput of Philadelphia taught his flock and like Josh Weed practised (though that marriage has now ended in divorce)?

Note, on this, he said no.

That's not a good job of defending Christian marriage.

It's buying in to a determinist ideology which pretends, contrary to the faith, that homosexual people in general are people predetermined to be inable to normal and therefore marital sex. This idea of predetermination is a bit too Calvin-istic in my view.

In fact, the other Calvin, the Reformer, seems to have been homosexual, if he was the Calvin who was branded for sodomy in 1534, and even so, he actually did marry Ydelette de Bure and have children with her.

Guglielmo Marinaro: @Hans-Georg Lundahl Of course homosexual men can shoe-horn themselves into marriages with women (just as heterosexual men can shoe-horn themselves into gay relationships with men). I suspect, however, that those who approve of playing games of this kind with other people’s lives prefer the women chosen for the purpose to be OTHER people’s daughters, sisters, granddaughters etc., definitely NOT THEIRS.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Guglielmo Marinaro Look, if I had a lesbian daughter, I would prefer she married an otherwise decent gay man over her "marrying" a woman ...

I obviously prefer to not have the problem in my own family.

I also think the game of "you are homosexual, you should remain celibate then" is an even worse one, there are some who chose celibacy, not all do.

PLUS it's abused against people who are not homosexual.

Again, I don't recommend anyone pretending to be a heterosexual man to get married, and then the wife finds out too late. I do insist that in cases like these, the woman should know where the man is, and vice versa.

@Guglielmo Marinaro Plus, "shoehorn" suggests that homosexual means zero possibility of feeling attraction to the opposite sex - that's just the worst kind, and it still counts as homosexual, even if the same sex attraction is just stronger than the natural one.

Yes, there are men who could not feel attracted to women at all, and I don't think they should try marriage, as long as they feel like that. But I also don't think some other ones should be categorised as these in advance.

Plus, the few gay men heterosexually married I know of, Svante Pääbo and Josh Weed, that's not what happened, shoehorned is not the word.

8:05 There is a problem when "not in the marrying kind" becomes a euphemism for homosexual.

They are indeed less likely to chose marriage, but less likely is not the same as born a eunuch.

As I mentioned, Charles Chaput, former ordinary of Philadelphia, did encourage homosexuals to marry - and some did. Obviously, as he was attacked by a homosexual lobby, this meant real marriage. His action has been labelled "a form of conversion therapy" ... which, given, that marriage after the first good of offspring has a second good of remedy against concupiscence, is not totally off. It's awful his successor has been asking the gay lobby to excuse the diocese for his predecessor.

9:12 Looked up your catechism.

2357 is basically correct, except in so far as to identify "homosexuality" (it's a psychological term and in psychology refers to an inclination) with lived out sodomy (the classical term in moral theology and criminal justice).

2358 - "deep-seated" becomes a bit iffy. My country-man Svante Pääbo thought he was exclusively homosexual, until he met his wife. A lesbian, who had equally considered her lesbianism exclusive. Could these two people have joined fates and flesh and made a child, if they had been involved in your Catholicism, which would have arguably referred them to 2359 and not to Chaput?

Honorable mentions obviously to Philadelphia under Chaput.

This catechism is obviously also faulty in 283, which presents deep time, deep space and "big picture evolution" or "molecules to man evolution" or "microbes to man evolution" as scientific actual discoveries.

Just as in 283 the writers have caved in to superstitions of Galileo, Hubble, Lyell, Darwin, so in 2358 they have caved in to the superstition called psychology.

From Calvin Robinson's no, it is obvious that so has he.

That kind of cowardice is larger scale and therefore more damaging than the cowardice of that clergy in the face of that choir. It is also more direct and explicit.

Given your news, you cannot pretend that at present Catholic clergy are universally courageous and defiant of all error.

10:51 His offense was racism?

I quote the post:*

"There is an argument to be made that English is a nationality, a culture, and an ethnicity, but I argue against anyone who claims to be English, one has to be white."

Good point.

Too bad that to be English one has to be steeped in a culture of the superstitions that go under the label of science, or nearly has to ... but good point nevertheless.

15:18 When His Holiness Pope Michael died on Aug. 2 last year, he had not one time that I learned of backed me up as a blogger in public.

He had done so in private, telling me in PM that this or that post he had read was not objectionable, but never, as far as I know, in public.

As a result, some "well-intentioned" people (whose intentions aren't objectively that good) have been able to go on to treat my blogs as "private" when they are public ones and meant to be that. And as a result of that, I have not had one penny in royalties from books that could otherwise have been printed from them.

Did this stop me from adhering to Pope Michael? No. I didn't do so when I came to know him, back when I was Palmarian, but I did so when your communion "elected Pope Francis" or the months ensuing. Up to then I had been shilly shallying between "Pope Benedict" (both Ecclesia Dei and Novus Ordo), FSSPX, Romanian Orthodox Church.

I had the same problem with FSSPX as Calvin Robertson has with the ordinariate.

But I had one problem more. They were analysing me as perhaps homosexual (contrary to what I had stated myself) and praying to God for me to abide by 2359. Or if it was some other problem they considered as impediment against me marrying. I take this conclusion from the fact they several times over deflected from and joined hands to "keep a secret" every attempt I made both at getting a fiancée and at getting some money for my writing. Once they kind of tokenly opened up a possibility for me, but the one they probably hoped I could marry was one whose younger sister I found more attractive. I left the parish after this leading to an incestuous desire of both sisters, so I had to give up both.

Now, I'll admit, I did after this take the stance to first verify with the sedevacantists how they would support me before I joined them, and in fact, in the end, I didn't join them.

But they would probably say that it was materialistic and mortally sinful of me not to join them before making sure they would support me as a writer, which they didn't, and they would say so even after I had in fact suffered due to the SSPX, and here we have Calvin Robinson claiming this as his excuse for not converting at all, for remaining an Anglican heretic? Shall I find that innocent?

16:04 If you had read my blogs, you would have found me one of the most articulate defenders of the Catholic faith.

Unless of course you hold intensely to paragraphs 2358 and 2359 and obviously on the other issue 283.

* Note

Calvin Robinson's post is here:

Why Enoch was Right
Fr Calvin Robinson, Nov 30, 2022
https://calvinrobinson.substack.com/p/why-enoch-was-right

Saturday, March 18, 2023

Rohr's Religion is Not Chesterton's

The danger in believing the Bible is not reliable
Alisa Childers, 8 March 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyHOOzOMebQ

CMI has quoted Chesterton, even if AiG is collaborating with Ray Comfort and Chesterton would have said "that's not how you get saved" or "get right with God"' ...

So, just because someone quotes Chesterton doesn't mean he agrees with him.

1:40 "but the cosmos you live inside of"

Case in point : Rohr living inside a "panentheistic cosmos" lived in a different cosmos (mentally) than Chesterton who lived in a Catholic cosmos (which is not panentheistic).

2:20 "you don't need to be saved"

Definitely not a thing Chesterton would have agreed with.

3:39 Chesterton was speaking of the cosmos one mentally lives in.

In other words, he had a different religion than Richard Dawkins, because he mentally lived in a different cosmos than that of Richard Dawkins.

The cosmos of a blind watchmaker and a selfish gene is a different cosmos from the cosmos made by a Trinune God, not because He needed it (each Person having sufficient bliss in the other Persons), but out of generosity. And Chesterton very certainly lived in the cosmos where the Trinune God is self-sufficient and everything else (including oneself) is an extra that God provided to be generous.

Note, at a certain time, Chesterton was not yet Catholic, but belonged to the same Church as Dean Inge.

He was making the point that even then, he had a different religion from Dean Inge. (That means progressive Christianity, in which Christ is supposed to not have made any miracles).

Thursday, March 16, 2023

Jimmy Akin with Michael Lofton: Makes an Ass of Himself

Can Catholics Believe Theistic Evolution? w/ Jimmy Akin
Reason & Theology, 15.III.2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw0zdWZDK-k

I jumped straight to "Romans 5:12 on the historical Adam" ... so all my comments are after the first hour.

1:10:24 "the federal head of the human race"

1) When? You accept the evolutionary timeline and put Adam early he can realistically be ancestor to all, but we can't have realistically historical memories of Genesis 3, and no one in tradition pretended Genesis 3 is known by a revelation. You put him late and you have clearly human people dying before Adam, plus it's hard to imagine how pre-Columbian Americas and pre-Tasman Oceania descend from him.
2) The traditional theology is not he was "federal" head of the human race, but he was head as in actual common ancestor to all - including all of his contemporaries (if you call him Eve's "ancestor" that is not common usage, but she too was from him).
3) If "all men living in his time" (Akin's hypothesis) were God's image, why would their continued righteousness and conditional immortality depend on the behaviour of a "federal head"?
4) And with any chance of Genesis 3 being historical this would leave lots of God's images "before his time" (Akin's hypothesis X Adam sufficiently recent) dying in pains despite being God's image. And despite not yet having original sin.

"cause there is Eve"

Who was from his side.

Very different from being part of a larger population most of whom were not from him in any way.

"what does Genesis mean on its own terms"

1) The idea of intention being ahistoric is simply dumb, it doesn't the least follow from a comparison with ANE mythologies, because we have no reason to believe these were, when dealing with men, intended to be ahistoric, besides there are no ANE parallels to Adam and Eve.
2) It is also a reconstruction, and putting your reconstruction above St. Paul's inspired faith in the tradition from Genesis is making "science" a magisterium superior to Revelation, which is the one thing we actually have a magisterium in.

We don't have to reinvent the wheel, Genesis on its own terms, and as taken by St. Paul means there was a first man, from whom all other human beings come.

___________________

1:11:23 "what the author asserts, not what he assumes"

In fact, while the concept "what the author asserts" is §§ 11 and 12, Jimmy Akin's counterdistinction about "not what he assumes" is simply not in the text.

The text of what you take as a conciliar document counterdistinguishes things like figures of speech and literary forms.

a) sth difficult to analyse, if one assumes it has been lost over time to the actual tradition;
b) the most reasonable analysis as well as traditional interpretation is Genesis is as a literary form "history" and nothing else (not prophecy, not wisdom literature, not literary dialogue as some have tried to make Job a parallel to Consolation of philosophy);
c) some having proposed an alternative genre for the first 11 chapters being "myth" - and I don't care for their analysis of Homer or Virgil or the Tragedians.

Jimmy Akin is probably resurging the theory of "obiter dicta" not being inerrant. But a whole narrative cannot be an obiter dictum, whatever the merits the theory could otherwise have. Which actually is better suited for analysing infallible Church documents than inerrant hagiography.

1:11:41 "his assumption"

No, that's not how inerrancy in hagiography works, and it is also not what Dei Verbum even actually said in paragraphs 11 and 12.

1:12:32 Again, Jimmy Akin is heavily overdoing what Dei Verbum permits.

An author can assume "God's hand" means God's activity and in that manner not mean to assert that God (in His Godhead and apart from specific theophanies) is a physical being with a hand or two. That's assuming a figure of speech will be understood.

But assuming a fact to be true, on the part of a hagiographer, is also meaning to assert it - unless one just barely fails to verbally assert it.

In fact, a more reverent attitude towards hagiographers is assuming they knew what they were talking of. I e, if the Antichrist can be identified by ASCII gematria, we can assume St. John understood ASCII through some kind of time travel of information on Patmos. If Göbekli Tepe is Nimrod's Babel, and Classical Babylon is just a "relocation" and standin (like Rome for Troy), we can assume Isaiah and Jeremiah used the perfect form as about a past event already happened, not as a future tense only. If either Neanderthals or Denisovans were the Nephelim, we can assume Moses intentionally didn't use specifics about height in Genesis 6. If Nimrod's project was a rocket project, we can assume Moses knew that and deliberately said nothing about carrying stones to the tower to be built.

But assuming that St. Paul assumed Adam to be historical, and because this was not controversial, somehow did "not mean to assert it" is balderdash.

That's not how texts are interpreted. And Dei Verbum actually never directly says anything like the Holy Ghost not asserting such facts as the hagiographer for human reasons "assumes" ...

Again, Dei Verbum isn't authorising to state "Peter assumed the Flood was global, but didn't mean to assert it" ...

______________________

1:12:05 "I can appeal to a text without thinking the text is literally true"

This was definitely not the tradition about Adam and Eve among the Jewish nation of St. Paul's time.

The tradition definitely was, as reflected in Luke 3, Adam was a real person. Not a symbol.

Plus, if St. Paul had even remotely meant Adam as a symbol, he would have overdone his case and been misspeaking, by using the phrases in italics here:

Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned
For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just. [Romans 5:12,19]

If Adam were the symbol of the sin of many men, it would instead be true that by the sin of many, many were made sinners.

1:12:18 The case of "Sherlock Holmes is a great detective" ascribes a certain quality to the fictional character.

But a better parallel would be "Sherlock Holmes was my professor's professor's professor in criminology" - which would (falsely in Sherlock Holmes' case) ascribe to him a certain causal role in the real world. Because obviously, it is for sinners in the real world that Jesus came to atone.

________________________

1:13:14 If the Psalmist assumed the Sun was actually moving around us, then he also asserted it, and it is true, and Galileo lost a trial for saying otherwise.

1:13:25 "Just as the ancients assumed that the sky was a metal... a firm structure"

Thanks for not overdoing your assumptions on what the ancients assumed.

There was no such thing as a commonly accepted, supraconfessional, science, which all assumed to be true, like there is one now, which all assume to be true if you count out fundamentalists. So what "ancients assumed" is a totally moot point.

As to firm. Suppose "firm" can have meanings that do not equate to physical solid + non-brittle + not very pliable. Suppose heavens move around earth, as the Psalmist asserts. Then the "matter of place" - or aether - would be firmly holding stars and (classical) planets in their places at very high speeds (6.28 times the speed of light at star level), and it would really be firm, even if it only means non-brittle + not very pliable. Without the connotation to physical solid.

1:13:40 "they assumed a flat earth"

No text for that one.

Egyptians and possibly Babylonians did. But if Moses didn't, there is nothing in the text to contradict that. And yes, I have been over every type of passage (if not every single passage) which some have pretended proving the Bible expressed a flat earth belief or assumption.

____________________________

1:14:20 "authority delegated to him by Christ"

You are aware that that delegation only works onto persons that are actually Catholic?

St. Robert Bellarmine considers, if a Pope openly lost the faith, he would cease to be Pope, but this could not happen - however an invalid pseudo-election could happen if a candidate was heretical prior to election.
St. Francis of Sales considers a Pope openly losing the faith, he would cease to be Pope. Period.

____________________________

1:15:07 Pius XII to the PAS in 1941 stated, if Adam had physical ancestry, they would, as non-human, not be real parents.

This is a huge difference with the compromises he could envisage from what Jimmy Akin is proposing.

He arguably hadn't thought through what it meant, since that would mean God mistreated "baby Adam" before adult Adam sinned. But mistreated him very severely.

I think the clergy who started certain types of abuse against young boys in the forties believed in that type of "God" ... (see Romans 1).

What Jimmy proposes is sth very different and means Adam simply wasn't the first man. Which makes nonsense of original sin instead.

____________________________

1:23:07 I find it totally unimportant what Jimmy Akin considers "dicey" ground scientifically, as long as Jimmy Akin refuses to take a debate about the scientific methods and evidences involved.

Visually, Earth is the centre of a movement of the cosmos. So, prima facie, the Earth is in the centre because it's what the stars revolve around.

This prima facie impression holds, as long as the opposite is not proven - sth which is much easier for an atheist than for a Christian.

We can all agree, that if the famous Newtonian model of orbital mechanics were all there was to it, Earth would have to orbit the Sun, and not the reverse. But if God and angels are involved over and above physical factors that Newton accounts for, then this conclusion does not hold. Whenever I take the debate with an atheist, he shifts the ground to asserting God and angels don't exist.

____________________________

1:36:49 Mendel's laws have what kind of implication favouring molecules to man evolution or for that matter apes to man evolution?

By the way, if your one parent has brown eyes as he can have one brown-eye and one blue-eye gene, you could actually get his blue-eye gene and end up with two blue-eye genes, like your other parent.

I was taught Mendel's laws by a med school student mother who is also Young Earth Creationist.

Well, at least the most common ones (like laws for how recessive and dominant genes work).

1:41:28 So, Akin asserts we have vitellogenine producing genes, like recessive genes.

What do David Brawand et al assert?

"Embryonic development in nonmammalian vertebrates depends entirely on nutritional reserves that are predominantly derived from vitellogenin proteins and stored in egg yolk. Mammals have evolved new resources, such as lactation and placentation, to nourish their developing and early offspring. However, the evolutionary timing and molecular events associated with this major phenotypic transition are not known. By means of sensitive comparative genomics analyses and evolutionary simulations, we here show that the three ancestral vitellogenin-encoding genes were progressively lost during mammalian evolution (until around 30-70 million years ago, Mya) in all but the egg-laying monotremes, which have retained a functional vitellogenin gene. Our analyses also provide evidence that the major milk resource genes, caseins, which have similar functional properties as vitellogenins, appeared in the common mammalian ancestor approximately 200-310 Mya. Together, our data are compatible with the hypothesis that the emergence of lactation in the common mammalian ancestor and the development of placentation in eutherian and marsupial mammals allowed for the gradual loss of yolk-dependent nourishment during mammalian evolution."

That's the quotable abstract for PLoS Biol
. 2008 Mar 18;6(3):e63. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060063.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18351802/

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Commenting on Taylor Marshall's "10 Differences"

Commenting on Taylor Marshall's "10 Differences" · Debate Under Taylor Marshall's "10 Differences" · Continuing the debate

10 Differences between Catholics and Protestants
Dr Taylor Marshall, 2 March 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrZQHs7oCFY

1:17 Beginning in 1517 - wrong. In 1517 he was a Jansenist, not a Protestant.

This is pretty clear from Exsurge Domine.

I don't even have a Masters of Arts, and you are a Doctor?

However, five years later, after meating other Protestants and after the stay at the Wartburg castle, yes, by then he was a Protestant.

7:07 Please note, Lutherans and Anglicans generally tend to believe in the Real Presence in some sense, with positions ranging from rarely fullblown Zwinglian or Calvinist positions to nearly Catholic ones, accepting even Transsubstantiation, but not the Sacrifice of the Mass.

Once someone who accepts Real Presence comes to also accepts the Sacrifice of the Mass, he generally converts, either to Catholic or to Orthodox.

In some cases, it's the other way round, for instance I was in the process of converting before accepting the Sacrifice of the Mass.

12:55 Actually, Luther said there were three. Confession third.

Anglicans have a complicated theory : 7 sacraments, but only 2 "Gospel sacraments" ... it's because of them that Lutherans have as of late (about a century or century and a half ago) resumed having a rite referred to as Confirmation.

John-Otto Liljenstolpe: Actually Lutherans as well as Anglicans practice all seven of the religious ceremonies Catholics refer to as "sacraments."
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @John-Otto Liljenstolpe By now, this is true.

However, among Lutherans this was not always so, I heard confirmation was reintroduced by influence from Anglicans (more than 100 years ago).

13:37 While technically and nominally, all Protestants believe in "justification by faith alone" - Luther and Jonathan Edwards arguably didn't mean the same thing.

14:53 I'm reminded of a certain back then Lutheran Benedictine who preached synergy.

He was more rooted in Church Fathers than in Luther.

Perhaps no big surprise he helped to push me to Catholicism, and perhaps also no big surprise with some even longer protraction than I had shown as a teen, he converted too. Caesarius Cavallin is one of the more traditional leaning in the Diocese of Stockholm.

16:41 One who didn't take that extra step on converting, but who while technically Protestant believed in some kind of Purgatory (though it had to be different from the "Romish doctrine of Purgatory" but not necessarily from Dante), was C. S. Lewis.

Debate Under Taylor Marshall's "10 Differences"

Commenting on Taylor Marshall's "10 Differences" · Debate Under Taylor Marshall's "10 Differences" · Continuing the debate

7:07 Please note, Lutherans and Anglicans generally tend to believe in the Real Presence in some sense, with positions ranging from rarely fullblown Zwinglian or Calvinist positions to nearly Catholic ones, accepting even Transsubstantiation, but not the Sacrifice of the Mass.

Once someone who accepts Real Presence comes to also accepts the Sacrifice of the Mass, he generally converts, either to Catholic or to Orthodox.

In some cases, it's the other way round, for instance I was in the process of converting before accepting the Sacrifice of the Mass.

Anne Francis Elizabeth: THE SEVEN SOLAS OF THE REFORMATION

Sola scriptura (“by Scripture alone”)
Sola fide (“by faith alone”)
Sola gratia (“by grace alone”)
Solus Christus (“through Christ alone”)
Soli Deo gloria (“glory to God alone”)
Sola ecclesia (“through the church alone”) /Priesthood of all believers
Sola caritas (“by love alone”)

The primary difference is SOLA SCRIPTURA.

Let us apply "the Jesus Test" - by their fruit, you shall know them (Matthew 7:15-20)! The Apostolic Church had dispersed authority. James governed the Church, Peter provided leadership, while Paul wrote most of its dogma (James administered, Peter led, Paul taught). In today's apostate RCC, every authority is subsumed in an infallible Pope, with disastrous consequences. Let me start with consequences for society.

Both the Orthodox and the Romanists believe in the Supremacy of Tradition. Consequently, they both rejected the Reformation, by which the true Church returned to the Supremacy of Scripture which Jesus and the Apostles believed. The direct result of their heresy was that all the monsters of power in Europe (Adolf Hitler, Frances Franco, Benito Mussolini, Tito, Lenin, Stalin, the Napoleons, King Leopold, all the Communist dictators, and even today's Vladimir Putin) have been produced EXCLUSIVELY by those two denominations. The nations and sub-nationalities that accepted the Reformation were totally spared of these monsters. No nation of the Reformation became a victim of any of those radically evil -isms (Communism, Leninism, Fascism, Authoritarianism, Totalitarianism). Nazism was the brain child of a would-be RC priest. No nation of the Reformation has had a Head of State or Head of Government judicially executed or toppled by force of arms or via an insurrection since 1800.

What is the essential difference between Haiti (a basket case) and Jamaica (a thriving country). One is Romanist, the other mainly Anglican. What is the essential difference between South America (with so many "issues") and North America (with long-sustained stability and democracy). One is Romanist, the other largely anti-Romanist. Why was colonialism in Nigeria or Ghana so benign while in Congo or Namibia it was rapacious. The colonizers in Congo, etc. were Romanists, and the ones in Nigeria, etc. were Reformed (in fact, it was mainly because of relentless pressure from Britain that the Belgians were forced to reform their reign of terror in Congo). Why was there a movement for the abolition of slavery in the UK, but not in Italy. The populace of one nation has (or rather, used to have) a Bible-based conscience; the other has ritualist Christians. Same reason you have an intractable mafia problem in most RC- majority countries (including Italy) but not in the nations of the Reformation. The ill effects of Romanism are so profound that TODAY while all the nations of the Reformation retain the Cross of Christ on their flags, not a single RC-majority nation does so.

Have you heard the common joke in Italy that only Italians could have taken Christianity and turned it into the Roman Catholic Church? Even the Italians have enough self-awareness to understand the distance between Apostolic Christianity and Romanism. The license to (mis)interpret Scripture and the wild liturgical innovations of Rome were by-products of the Italian character (i.e., highly romantic, imaginative, and licentious). Good for art and architecture, but disastrous for a historical faith like Christianity which is founded on truth.

PS: Sola Scriptura does not mean that the Bible contains every truth nor that there is no truth outside the Bible. That is a popular Roman Catholic caricature of that fundamental doctrine. Sola Scriptura means that nothing can be taught as doctrine (i.e., saving truth) unless it is based on the Bible. Sola Scriptura is common sense. It is like saying that every law in a nation must agree with its Constitution. If saving truth can be found outside the Bible, then the Primitive Church (the Church nearest to Jesus) was not fully saved.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Anne Francis Elizabeth "The primary difference is SOLA SCRIPTURA."

Actually not.

"The Apostolic Church had dispersed authority. James governed the Church, Peter provided leadership, while Paul wrote most of its dogma (James administered, Peter led, Paul taught)."

St. James governed Jerusalem only after St. Peter had left for Antioch. St. Paul's epistles were approved by St. Peter, as teaching needs papal approval.

"Both the Orthodox and the Romanists believe in the Supremacy of Tradition. Consequently, they both rejected the Reformation, by which the true Church returned to the Supremacy of Scripture which Jesus and the Apostles believed."

The Reformation is contrary to Matthew 28:16-20, because its premise is contrary to it.

"The direct result of their heresy was that all the monsters of power in Europe (Adolf Hitler, Frances Franco, Benito Mussolini, Tito, Lenin, Stalin, the Napoleons, King Leopold, all the Communist dictators, and even today's Vladimir Putin) have been produced EXCLUSIVELY by those two denominations."

You forget that apart from Franco (who wasn't a monster), all of them owed doctrine to Revolutionary doctrines going back to ... the Reformation. None of them (except Franco and Napoleon III, who was also not a monster) was faithful to either of the two denominations.

You also forget monsters like Cromwell and Karl Marx being Protestant, and what Hitler owed to Protestants like Gustavus II Adolphus or Otto von Bismarck. Equally monsters.

"The nations and sub-nationalities that accepted the Reformation were totally spared of these monsters."

Tell the Irish and Scottish Highlanders all about how Cromwell and William of Orange were merciful and peaceful rulers ... or how the Reformation took root in Scotland, England and Sweden.

"No nation of the Reformation became a victim of any of those radically evil -isms (Communism, Leninism, Fascism, Authoritarianism, Totalitarianism)."

Eugenicism was only among Protestant nations. Hitlerism was Eugenic thanks to Germany's Protestant predominance. SS was c. 1/2 Protestants, 1/4 Catholics and 1/4 Nazi Neo-Mystics. Eugenicism continued in states of the US and of Canada, as well as in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland - these being Lutheran nations - into the 70's.

School compulsion and a state "Church" that promotes Evolution and the Gay Maffia are, with an overbloated psychiatry and CPS, the totalitarian burden of Lutheran Sweden.

"Nazism was the brain child of a would-be RC priest."

Anton Drexler seems to have had no such plans. He was a locksmith. Karl Harrer was from Beilngries in the Palatinate - a region with Protestant background. Since Harrer had background in the Thule society, that was founded by Rudolf von Sebottendorf, an occultist. You know the kind of thing that could flourish in England and Netherlands, because they had no Inquisition.

That Hitler ever planned to become a priest seems pretty taken out of nowhere. He admired Protestants like Karl May, Otto von Bismarck and the Hohenzollerns. Quoting the German wiki:

Den Religionsunterricht bei Franz Sales Schwarz verachtete er, nur der Geografie- und der Geschichtsunterricht bei Leopold Pötsch interessierten ihn.

He despised Catechism for Franz Sales Schwarz, and only the Geography and History for Leopold Pötsch was to his taste.

"No nation of the Reformation has had a Head of State or Head of Government judicially executed or toppled by force of arms or via an insurrection since 1800."

But they started the trend with the execution of Mary Queen of Scots.

After 1800, they are their own type of impersonal monster. No personal power = no toppling by force.

"What is the essential difference between Haiti (a basket case) and Jamaica (a thriving country). One is Romanist, the other mainly Anglican."

What is the essential difference between Haiti and Dominican Republic? The latter always had Catholic régimes, and Haiti had Revolutionary ones.

"What is the essential difference between South America (with so many "issues") and North America (with long-sustained stability and democracy)."

And in that "stability" evils like Eugenics and later Abortion ... both c/o Margaret Sanger.

"The colonizers in Congo, etc. were Romanists, and the ones in Nigeria, etc. were Reformed (in fact, it was mainly because of relentless pressure from Britain that the Belgians were forced to reform their reign of terror in Congo)."

Leopold II was the heir of a fairly Masonic and Liberal Belgium.

"Why was there a movement for the abolition of slavery in the UK, but not in Italy."

In 1830, no one in Italy owned slaves. The armed abolitionist in French service Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza was of Italian origin.

"Same reason you have an intractable mafia problem in most RC- majority countries (including Italy) but not in the nations of the Reformation."

You mean the Capitalist maffia anyway owns the governments in the nations of the Reformation?

And that by their riches they have long destabilised Catholic countries, creating maffia problems of a smaller reach?

"If saving truth can be found outside the Bible, then the Primitive Church (the Church nearest to Jesus) was not fully saved."

Sorry, but this is the exact reverse of the facts ...

I presume that by "Bible" you mean sth which includes 27 books of the New Covenant, and none of them existed on Pentecost day.

But the Church did, and therefore Her tradition.
Anne Francis Elizabeth: @Hans-Georg Lundahl Thanks for at least making an attempt to explain (even if you actually explain away) the stark difference between the results of Romanism and true (Reformed, biblical) Christianity. I was shocked when the truth struck me.

What you have done is to get stuck in minor details, whereas the big picture is very clear.

Perhaps I should allow you "finish" your explanations before I respond. Please keep your answers straight to the point.

First, please take a look at the flags of EU nations. Now explain why all the nations of the Reformation retain the Cross of Christ on their flags (the symbol of their ethos), while not a single RC-majority nation does so. Cheers.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Anne Francis Elizabeth "Now explain why all the nations of the Reformation retain the Cross of Christ on their flags"

Netherlands have a cross? Germany, which was Protestant majority in 1870, had a cross?

You have lots of cross flags in cities in RC majority countries.

But a clue might be, cross flags come from the Crusades, and there is a correlation between Northern Crusades, Teutonic Order and the Reformation.

@Anne Francis Elizabeth "What you have done is to get stuck in minor details, whereas the big picture is very clear."

Yes, preferring stability over justice is called Mammon, and it is clearly the ethos of Protestantism.

It couldn't achieve it straightaway, and when finally achieving it (after 1800, as you said) only did so by discarding most remains of Christianity.

Btw, you forgot the deposition of Gustavus IV Adolphus from the Swedish throne. It was in 1809.

Catholicism being Christianity prefers justice over stability, but ideally both. And used to have it, until infected by Protestantism at the Enlightenment. Since NOT completely dechristianised or Protestantised, the Protestant version of stability is obviously resisted, and rightly so. Hence upheavals.

In the end times, I think the most stable nations will be non-Christian nations of the East, followed by Protestantism, with Beast system mainly unchallenged.
Anne Francis Elizabeth: @Hans-Georg Lundahl I am eager to learn from you (provided you stick to verifiable facts).

If St. James began to lead the Church because St. Peter went to Antioch, how do you explain the first Catholic Council?

It is obvious that the task of governing the Early Church fell to St. James the Just, precisely because James was the Bishop of Jerusalem. At the Council of Jerusalem, St. James the Just, being the Patriarch of Jerusalem (the headquarters of the Early Church, later usurped by Rome) played 4 roles, viz:
i. Convener
ii. Host
iii. President
and iv. final Arbiter

REFER TO Acts 15.19 - the Apostolic Decree of St. James where James says “It is my judgment, therefore…” and NOT: “It is our judgment, therefore…”.

At what point did "Tradition" change and Peter's so-called "successors" (Peter was never Pope!) started usurping the role of the Bishop of Jerusalem?

RSVP!
Hans-Georg Lundahl: @Anne Francis Elizabeth réponse sera faite :

"how do you explain the first Catholic Council?"

It happened when St. Peter was already in Antioch.

"the task of governing the Early Church fell to St. James the Just, precisely because James was the Bishop of Jerusalem."

He became so when the 12 split up with for instance St. Peter going to Antioch.

"the Apostolic Decree of St. James where James says “It is my judgment, therefore…” and NOT: “It is our judgment, therefore…”."

First, it followed St. Peter's testimony.
Second, the decree was not taken by that judgement alone, but only in verse 22:

Then it pleased the apostles and ancients, with the whole church, to choose men of their own company, and to send to Antioch, with Paul and Barnabas, namely, Judas, who was surnamed Barsabas, and Silas, chief men among the brethren.

"At what point did "Tradition" change and Peter's so-called "successors" (Peter was never Pope!) started usurping the role of the Bishop of Jerusalem?"

Jerusalem ceased to be absolutely papal when St. Peter went to Antioch. But it ceased to be able to even function close to it on occasion, in AD 70. As the Church of Jerusalem fled to Pella, in Jordan. Today known as Tabaqat Fahil. By that time, Sts Peter and Paul had already been martyred in Rome and the Church had agreed that disagreeing with the Roman Church was disagreeing with Sts Peter and Paul. Hence 20 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, or in that area, you have St. Clement of Rome judging in a matter pertaining to the Church of Corinth.
Anne Francis Elizabeth: @Hans-Georg Lundahl LET ME REPEAT THIS ONE.

Thanks for at least making an attempt to explain (even if you actually explain away) the stark difference between the results of Romanism and true (Reformed, biblical) Christianity. I was shocked when the truth struck me.

What you have done is to get stuck in minor details, whereas the big picture is very clear.

Perhaps I should allow you "finish" your explanations before I respond. Please keep your answers straight to the point.

First, please take a look at the flags of EU nations. Now explain why all the nations of the Reformation retain the Cross of Christ on their flags (the symbol of their ethos), while not a single RC-majority nation does so. Cheers.

@Hans-Georg Lundahl I really appreciate the time and effort you put into your retorts. These are no "copy and paste" answers which many Romanists indulge in. They are your own well-considered opinion. Well done, Sir!

However, one of the principles of interpretation is to accept the least complicated explanation. Do you not see that much of your thesis is works towards a pre-determined conclusion?

SECOND QUESTION: Please explain GALATIANS CHAPTER 2 (without explaining it away!). Quote: “As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism—they added nothing to my message…For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles…James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. “

i. Verse 6: God has no infallible Apostle (no Romanist Cardinal or Bishop today would dare say: "the Papacy added nothing to my message")
ii. Verse 8: Paul regarded himself as the equal to Peter in his own jurisdiction (which included Rome)
iii. Verse 9: James' leadership at the Jerusalem Council was no accident as he is here again named first. No Romanist Cardinal or Bishop today would write solemnly to his flock: "Carlo Viganò, Francis the Supreme Pontiff and Marcel Lefebvre are pillars"?

Since throughout Church history, there is no instance of a Bishop presiding over a Council where the Pope was present, we must assume that identifying Peter as Pope was a fundamental mistake. No Chairman of a board would be at a board meeting and delegate the chair, precisely because that would render the meeting invalid. So James was not Peter's representative or nominee.

The simplest and best explanation is that the See (i.e., Bishopric) of Jerusalem was (and still is) the primus inter pares of the Church. Rome is a usurper (as predicted in the Apocalypse). Peter's role in the church was to lead its outreach ("Chief Evangelist", wielder of the key to eternal life). He was neither the chief doctor (i.e., teacher) nor the chief bishop of the Apostolic church.

May God continue to bless you with wisdom and courage to face the truth. Amen.
Hans-Georg Lundahl: Note: Part I is missing
Parts II and III: @Anne Francis Elizabeth Part II. Geneva was a possession of Savoy - with Crusader merits. Netherlands had a dynasty from Orange in France - with counts of Orange having been in the Crusades. Scotland had housed some of the disbanded Templars.

And if Switzerland used to have a Protestant majority, that would explain why it now has so many "No religion" ... to be fair, the numbers are not very far from Austria in that respect:

64.1% Christianity
________________
55.2% Catholicism
5.1% Orthodoxy
3.8% Other Christian
_______________
26.4% No religion
8.3% Islam
1.2% Others

Slovenia is better:

77.8% Christianity
______________
—73.4% Catholicism
—3.7% Orthodoxy
—0.7% Other Christian
______________
18.3% No religion
3.9% Others

"Do you not see that much of your thesis is works towards a pre-determined conclusion?"

That's true of pretty many who answer newcomers into their life, compared to what the newcomers would expect.

Galatians 2.

"Verse 6: God has no infallible Apostle (no Romanist Cardinal or Bishop today would dare say: "the Papacy added nothing to my message")"

A prophet certainly could say that. He could say the Popes never helped him edit, but only judged what he had submitted. Recall how St. Paul's calling made him a prophet-apostle? If in other conditions he had joined the Church after Pentecost, he would have been neither prophet nor apostle.

"Verse 8: Paul regarded himself as the equal to Peter in his own jurisdiction (which included Rome)"

No, he was regarding their work assignment as equally shared at that moment. Note, St. Peter is here called "Peter"

"Verse 9: James' leadership at the Jerusalem Council was no accident as he is here again named first. No Romanist Cardinal or Bishop today would write solemnly to his flock: "Carlo Viganò, Francis the Supreme Pontiff and Marcel Lefebvre are pillars"?"

Is the first Pope even mentioned in verse 9? The candidate for that role would be "Cephas" - which seems could have been a name shared by more than one (for instance Caiaphas seems to be the Hebrew version of Aramaic Cephas). Clement the Stromatist said, this was not St. Peter.

@Anne Francis Elizabeth Part III
"Since throughout Church history, there is no instance of a Bishop presiding over a Council where the Pope was present, we must assume that identifying Peter as Pope was a fundamental mistake."

Not really.

Hosius of Corduba, Nicaea I
Timothy of Alexandria, Meletius of Antioch, Gregory Nazianzus, and Nectarius of Constantinople, Constantinople I
Cyril of Alexandria, Ephesus
Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople; A board of government officials and senators, led by the patrician Anatolius, Chalcedon

At each of these, Papal legates were present, and in each case, it would seem they did not preside. But the question is somewhat moot, as we only conclude Hosius presided from his being the first signatary. I could not get who was papal legate from wiki. Here is Catholic Encyclopedia:

When the Council of Nicæa met, Hosius presided, together with the two Roman priests Vitus and Vincent. In what capacity he presided is a matter much discussed: Gelasius of Cyzicus is categorical in declaring that it was in the name of the pope (Hist. Nic. Conc., Bk. II, c. v). Hefele is of the same opinion. Chapman holds that he was nominated by Constantine. Leclercq inclines to the same opinion, but leaves the question open.

"No Chairman of a board would be at a board meeting and delegate the chair, precisely because that would render the meeting invalid. So James was not Peter's representative or nominee."

But local bishops are not essentially the Pope's representatives! By now they are most commonly his nominees, that's another issue, that's because local elections came to be abused in the Middle Ages, in the West, so this argument is already based on wrong assumptions on what the papacy is supposed to imply.

"The simplest and best explanation"

For a reconstruction, by mistrust of tradition, which in and of itself is not the simplest explanation.

"is that the See (i.e., Bishopric) of Jerusalem was (and still is) the primus inter pares of the Church."

Jerusalem was lots more than just that before St. Peter left.

As Jerusalem was where the council was held, the one who by then was heading Jerusalem was hosting.

"Rome is a usurper (as predicted in the Apocalypse)."

Those residing there now would be so.

"Peter's role in the church was to lead its outreach ("Chief Evangelist", wielder of the key to eternal life). He was neither the chief doctor (i.e., teacher) nor the chief bishop of the Apostolic church."

Pure reconstruction. And tactically chosen to contradict Catholicism.

The debate will be continued.

What was missing in part I of my response which got deleted?

1) A refutation of her final prayer, stating that I was actually facing the truth all the time as a Catholic. In other words, I am an Apologist, not her / their* adept.
2) An answer about cross flags.

This answer led up to part II and included a list of flags and an aside stating that Coligny was a war criminal. It is possible it was an aside to what I was stating, and it is possible that it was a direct answer to what she / they had written. But then edited out. The religious stats on Switzerland were here too. Remaining Christians more often Catholic.

I think this is the part where someone tried to wake me up after my internet session was over and push me to get back to the cyber. I didn't. Part I got deleted. Possibly that her "LET ME REPEAT THIS ONE." got edited so it didn't show what I had answered, or as said also possible what I wrote on Coligny was just an aside. Either way, part I of my answer should not have been edited out.

* Not sure if it is one person or three, with the middle one a man, since Francis is usually used for men.

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere

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