Why I'm not a Catholic
Biblical Studies and Reviews, Stephen Hackett | 8 Aug. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xBksHAy8cM
4:40 Two possible answers.
1) the Biblical rule gives the maximum, in "husband of one wife" (not two, not three, but on the other hand no wife at all is fine, see St. Paul)
2) the NT term "episkopos" might even mean "presbyteros" (and "presbyteros" may be one of the several NT terms for "episkopos") and in Eastern Rite, the presbyteroi are allowed to marry before, but not after ordination. Pope Michael I restored this for the Latin rite as well.
5:06 The passage just cited is obviously for the case that someone actually does have a family. It's not a ban on ordination of celibates, since St. Paul (Acts 13) was ordained, and (I Cor 7) was celibate.
5:51 Actually the requirement is not of ruling a family first, but of, if he has a family, showing he is able to rule it.
A celibate man who is not running into affairs but is instead chaste is also ruling his house, namely his own body.
6:37 As I hinted, it is possible that the NT usage of "episkopos" and "presbyteros" have been switched.
St. Peter was what we call a bishop, and he adresses his "synpresbyteroi".
St. Paul talks of "episkopoi" in manners that somewhat seem applicable to simple priests.
The solution one Apologist offered is, the NT had no unified word for bishop, but interchangeably spoke of:
- apostoloi
- euangelistai
- prophetai
- aggeloi
- presbuteroi
The word for priest however being "episkopos" ...
After the first generation, several categories died off, so, instead of chosing between "aggeloi" and "presbuteroi" one took the word "episkopoi" (the twelve were the first bishops and of Judas a prophecy ran "may his episcopate be given to one another"... while the original "episkopoi" got the demoted word "presbuteros" ...
6:51 The multiple bishops in Ephesus do not prove they were not what we call bishops, just that they were not all of them the ordinary.
7:39 And if he will not hear them: tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.
[Matthew 18:17]
And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven
[Matthew 16:19]
Also, Jesus is giving the first bishops, a select group within the believers, the task of perpetuating all of His teaching:
And the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them And seeing him they adored: but some doubted And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world
[Matthew 28:16—20]
To the twelve, in presence of their host:
But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you
[John 14:26]
7:38 apart from the Scriptures given in a comment that for some reason is taken down, but saved for publication on my blog, I'd add that the formulation in "CCC" (which is not the traditional format of a catechism, where the number of questions is more limited so as to make learning by heart a possible task, which is not Catholic, which is not of the Church) that you gave is both true and untrue.
It is true if you give "authentikos" its full Greek meaning.
Like in "the authentic text" not just meaning "a correct text" but an obligatory reference text.
However, in Protestantism, which has largely shaped the culture, and even more so in Protestant countries, learning has usurped the place of authority and become a kind of magisterial authority. Since learning is concerned with finding "the correct text" (as far as humanly possible), the word "authentic" has by now taken on this nuance.
Seen like that, the statement in CCC is absurd. The correct formulation is:
decrees, that no one, relying on his own skill, shall,–in matters of faith, and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, –wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church,–whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures,–hath held and doth hold;
So, the Church is giving a judgement, not just an expert opinion, and the magisterium has a monopoly of that kind of judgements, but it doesn't claim to have one on expert opinions. Also, the power of the Church even to judge is itself limited, namely to things that were already doctrine (at the minimum licit doctrine) from time immemorial even before the judgement was made. The council of Trent was very aware that the certainly valid bishop Cranmer and the at least possibly valid bishop Laurentius Petri Nericius (his consecrator had acted under constraint while being a frail man) had abused the magisterial authority that went with the consecration to impose a new sense which the Church had not previously held.
7:51 Come on, Beroea and neighbouring Thessalonica were Jews not yet converted to Christianity.
The intense research into the (OT!) Scriptures were within making the decision to become Christians.
The Catholic Church still to this day places a great worth on studying before making the final decision to convert. In a Susan fiction of mine, where Susan, who's going to get to Aslan's country from OUR world obviously converts, her coversion is actually very fast-forwarded, she's received a few hours after getting convinced, but this is a highly exceptional thing, indeed possibly an act of God. If she had waited a few months more between the trainwreck and the publication of LWW, that book could have ruined even her first confession. Her having been to Narnia could have been classed as a private revelation, and the Church exercises extreme caution with such. In real life experience of Catholic conversions, it takes at least one year or at the very least six months, unless the person was previously known to be an overall good theologian, and also to have a good grasp on Catholic doctrine. Newman fulfilled those conditions and even so:
In February 1843, Newman published, as an advertisement in the Oxford Conservative Journal, an anonymous but otherwise formal retractation of all the hard things he had said against Roman Catholicism. Lockhart became the first in the group to convert formally to Catholicism. Newman preached his last Anglican sermon at Littlemore, the valedictory "The parting of friends" on 25 September, and resigned the living of St Mary's, although he did not leave Littlemore for two more years, until his own formal reception into the Catholic Church. An interval of two years then elapsed before Newman was received into the Catholic Church on 9 October 1845 by Dominic Barberi, an Italian Passionist, at the college in Littlemore.
To my own conversion, delays after delays were put, the first one being, in 1985, before my 17th birthday, I asked a Jesuit what to do to convert, and his main response was "wait a year" and in 1986, another Jesuit told me the same thing, and I told him I had already been told that. My conversion studies made a false start just before Christmas in 1986, and another one in the Spring Term of 1987, after which I finally had two terms of conversion studies autumn 1987 and spring 1988, being received a few months before Marcel Lefebvre "was excommunicated" as people would have it over where they were editing the "CCC" ...
This is not by any means a warrant that someone who already is a Christian has a right or duty to regularly double check the magisterium with the Scriptures.
Moreoever, the checking that the Beroeans did was mainly about the spiritual senses of the OT, like, "can Jesus on the Cross really have been a Paschal lamb (as St. John says He was in chapter 19 verse 36)?" or "was Mary the new Jael and Judith" (traditional text of Luke 1:28) "and was She the woman foretold in Genesis 3:15?" ...
The OT was all they had and a straightforward literal reading only would not have immediately shown them that Jesus was the Messias, except for certain prophecies (and "did Churches of Jerusalem and Samaria show Isaias 11:13 fulfilled?")
Furthermore we know that Jesus Himself was not content with a literal only reading of the OT (Luke 24:27 shows Jesus exposing the spiritual and prophetic sense of even historic books and laws of the OT).
So, St. Paul was bringing the Church to them, something which at this time certainly had more structural similarity to the Catholic Church than to Protestantism today, he proposed a reading of the Scriptures which was new to them, and before converting, they needed to double check if that other reading was really compatible with the OT Scriptures as such. They were very far from being laymen double-checking whether people already their pastors agreed with how they already were reading the Bible, OT and NT.
Your error about the Beroeans is comparable to that of 7DA who from St. Paul preaching in Synagogues on the Sabbath to not yet converted Jews concluded that Sabbath (Saturday, starting with Friday evening, ending on Saturday evening) was his own day of worship.
8:31 The "ye" (Ephesians 3:4) is still very valid for an instructed Catholic reader.
None of the readers in Ephesus, and especially not St. Timothy, their first monarchic bishop (who is not designated as "episkopos" but more often as "thou" or as "Timothy" in three Bible books) who had already learned the OT Scriptures, was probably a Yanuka, and had probably already been taught the Christian reading of the OT by St. Paul, none of them were modern Protestants, brought up in Bible alone Christianity, and so it is not clear that the "ye" includes these.
8:37 St. Paul certainly expected that people back then could read his epistles and understand them at least in part, but St. Peter equally noted he was already back then misunderstood in parts.
My pet theory is that St. Peter was especially referring to the Epistle to the Romans here:
And account the longsuffering of our Lord, salvation; as also our most dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, hath written to you As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction
[2 Peter 3:15-16]
But even if every word St. Paul had written in his epistles had been perfectly clear to everyone in the First Century, this does not necessarily translate to them remaining so to a Modern and especially not instructed as Catholic reader. Context which was obvious to everyone back then has been lost, is no longer common cultural background knowledge. The Sitz im Leben of all the NT books, there are many guesses, and some of them very wrong, made about particular books in order to counter particular points, by Protestant scholars. However there is one huge and if you think of it very visible point that the Protestant believer as believer regularly forgets: they were all given in and preserved by and read by a Church which was certainly unified, well beyond what Baptists and Methodists could agree on as "core doctrine", which was certainly hierarchic, whether or not bishops and priests were two different things. And which was also receiving instructions in other ways than by the NT books, for instance for the liturgy. Three conditions that the Protestant reader is regularly short of, since the continuity with that Church was certainly broken at the Deformation.
8:56 Your quote is actually a vindication of his own apostolic authority. And of oral tradition.
But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema As we said before, so now I say again: If any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema
[Galatians 1:8-9]
Now "received" here does not refer to receiving a book, it refers to receiving a message. And especially, it's a corollary to "hand on" (paradidein, I think, tradere).
Every Catholic in England and Sweden who laid down his life rather than become Protestant was avoiding that curse.
Now, a Protestant may pretend that the Gospel Paul had handed on to the Galatians was the Protestant view of the Gospel, sorry, impossible, it would have been lost for too long, Jesus would in that case not have kept the promise in Matthew 28:20. It was in fact a Gospel which excluded Judaising.
9:28 "but those things have been now transmitted to us in Scripture"
You show a page of Romans chapter 1, presumably not as finding a prooftext there, but only as examplifying.
There was no such prooftext in Romans 1.
St. Paul never tells anyone, "I preach no more, from now on rely on my writings only" but on the contrary:
To the Greeks and to the barbarians, to the wise and to the unwise, I am a debtor So (as much as is in me) I am ready to preach the gospel to you also that are at Rome
[Romans 1:14-15]
So, while Romans is written, oral preaching and oral tradition is still an ongoing concern.
It's a talking point among Protestants that this is no longer the case. For instance, Gavin Ortlund is not willing to trust oral tradition beyond the first century. He thinks that by the time one appealed to it about the Assumption of Mary, it had been corrupted, like a bad text, and that now the only "good text" to the Gospel message is a "good text" (in the closer sense) of the actual NT books.
But this claim is actually nowhere made anywhere, neither about the then present, nor about the then future, which partly would include what's past to us. The NT authors take for granted that the Church that Jesus founded, Paul, Timothy, the men Timothy laid his hands on, later men that they laid their hands on, and so on, would continue to preach up to the end of time.
The quote from Galatians is a bad talking point for "grace not works" polemics, as St. Paul was very arguably speaking of "NT works, not OT works" .... but it's not even a talking point at all for Scripture alone or against the magisterium except (note it very well, like the Council of Trent did note, and the excerpt you gave from "CCC" didn't note) a magisterium that changes its mind in comparison to previous positions.
10:07 You are relying on NIV?
Because this is exactly how St. Paul treats tradition.
Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle.
[2 Thessalonians 2:14]
I'm not a fan of CCC, but what you just quoted is a straight off translation of II Thess. 2:14.
You may not agree with the claim that the present tradition of the Catholic Church is the same as that given by St. Paul. But it is obvious that whatever tradition is, needs to be on the same foot as Scripture. And before you say "but no tradition is that any more" you have introduced a position that is nowhere at all found in the NT as a prophecy of the future even, and which contradicts Matthew 28:16—20. Jesus said His tradition through the Apostles could not be lost.
Mark 7:9 actually has "paradosin ton anthropon" = tradition of men, but the pregnant point is, it is tradition of men ... Jesus denied the traditions he enumerated were from Moses. He did not deny to Himself handing down traditions through His apostles.
Colossians 2:8 is comparing Jewish tradition about the kashrut to Epicurean philosophy, to materialism.
1 Peter 1:18 is probably speaking of pagan traditions prior to the conversion of the Romans he was adressing.
In each of these cases "tradition" or "traditions" has a qualifier, which demotes it from authoritative dignity. "Of men" " of men according epicurean philosophy" "of your fathers" (not "our fathers", so St. Peter is adressing Gentiles, whose traditions had been in error). In II Thess. 2:14 there is no such qualifier, and "tradition" is in context a totally good thing.
κρατεῖτε τὰς παραδόσεις ἃς ἐδιδάχθητε , εἴτε διὰ λόγου , εἴτε δι’ ἐπιστολῆς ἡμῶν .
Itaque fratres, state : et tenete traditiones, quas didicistis, sive per sermonem, sive per epistolam nostram
Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle.
It's a sad thing that NIV gives another translation here.
And sure, a word can be polysemic in the NT, but I think generally speaking a tradition from back then is a better detector of polysemy and other semantic issues, than a reconstruction from much later on.
10:48 I find "traditions of men" in the sense you speak of in Protestantism.
Not in Catholicism.
11:19 "Jesus had brothers and sisters"
[correcting the diagramme shown here, below]
St. Joseph was a widower. Or these guys were first cousins, even.
When brethren dwell together, and one of them dieth without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another: but his brother shall take her, and raise up seed for his brother:
[Deuteronomy 25:5]
This Booz, with whose maids thou wast joined in the field, is our near kinsman, and behold this night he winnoweth barley in the threshingfloor
[Ruth 3:2]
Neither do I deny myself to be near of kin, but there is another nearer than I
[Ruth 3:12]
Whatever their exact degree of kinship was to Jesus, they would have been his brothers and sisters if the duty of levirate could fall on them. Being full siblings (or given they did not have God as actual father half siblings) is not required, as the book of Ruth shows. Elimelech and Noemi only had two sons, so neither Booz nor the other man were siblings to Mahalon or Chelion, these being each other's sole male siblings.
11:31 What you really think is not the rule of the Church.
And it is also not Scripture. And it is kind of disingenious to dismiss the Catholic answer as "verbal gymnastics" ... If Scripture interprets Scripture, the "brethren" in the Gospel can be interpreted from Deuteronomy 25:5, which in turn is further interpreted as not necessarily a sibling by Ruth 3:2, Ruth 3:12. So, when Scripture interprets Scripture and gives a Catholic result, it's suddenly "verbal gymnastics"?
11:38 Yes. Free from any personal sin, or for that matter original sin.
And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women
[Luke 1:28]
Now what does "blessed among women" mean?
After all, even Mary asked what it meant.
Who having heard, was troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be
[Luke 1:29]
Mind some double-ckecking? An OT search on "benedicta in mulieribus" gives 23 hits, and many are irrelevant, like Jeremias 20:14. The relevant ones are, and I'm switching back to English (which was offering 422 hits for "blessed among women"), these:
Blessed among women be Jahel the wife of Haber the Cinite, and blessed be she in her tent
[Judges 5:24]
And Ozias the prince of the people of Israel, said to her: Blessed art thou, O daughter, by the Lord the most high God, above all women upon the earth
[Judith 13:23]
Our Lady certainly new Scripture very well, so the thought must at least have passed Her mind "whom am I supposed to have killed?"
The answer that overjoyed Her was a repetition with a twist:
And she cried out with a loud voice, and said: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb
[Luke 1:42]
This is so close an echo to:
I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel
[Genesis 3:15]
She hadn't killed a man, She had killed the old serpent. What exact act of Hers could have affected Satan as a mortal headwound? Wielding a sword from Numenor? No. So, what about a non-act?
He that committeth sin is of the devil: for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil.
[1 John 3:8]
So, if She was totally NOT of the devil, that says something about Her relation to Sin. Total opposition.
12:14 OK ... Romans 3.
For all have sinned, and do need the glory of God Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption, that is in Christ Jesus
[Romans 3:23-24]
"all have sinned" doesn't mean Jesus has sinned. He's an exception, as per being the redeemer. But as redemption is a snake hunt, or connected to it in Genesis 3:15, and as this snake hunt also involves Mary, She is perfectly free to be also an exception.
12:43 300 years? Really?
Sub tuum praesidium / Ὑπὸ τὴν σὴν εὐσπλαγχνίαν / Under thy Protection
- 1) The earliest text of this hymn was found in a Coptic Orthodox Christmas liturgy. Rylands Papyrus 470 records the hymn in Greek, and was dated to the 3rd century by papyrologist Edgar Lobel and by scholar Colin Henderson Roberts to the 4th century.
- 2) The opposing view that the papyrus is from 8th C. comes from Hans Förster who has a detectable bias:
1997 Promotion zum Dr. theol. an der Ev.-theol. Fakultät der Universität Wien
By contrast, Edgar Lobel was simply a scholar.
Before papyri, Lobel’s elective field of research was Greek palaeography. In 1933, he published a book on the manuscripts of Aristotle’s Poetics.
- 3) The Greek text ends up by telling the Blessed Virgin She is uniquely pure:
μόνη Ἁγνή, μόνη εὐλογημένη.
Note, as the adjectives are feminine, this absolutely does not exclude Her Son, by definition masculine, from being pure and blessed.
But if you go to non-liturgic texts, many of them in the Ante-Nicene Fathers are reinventing the wheel to give an umpteenth:
- exposition of the Christian faith, in short form
- defense of the Christian faith, in short form
- dialogue defending the faith, in somewhat longer form (unless the Dialogue with Trypho is one in its kind).
In other words, the preferred formats would have excluded Mariology if it was traditional and taken in a stride, just as much as if (contrary to Matthew 28:16—20!) the Mariology was a later invention.
12:50 "these aren't things that were passed down by the apostles"
That's more than you know.
The genre of most Ante-Nicene Fathers like that of most NT books isn't prolix enough to involve a full fledged Mariology.
However, the OT with a spiritual reading is. And that's where we tend to go to for Mariology, starting with Genesis 3:15.
The kind of silence you state as condemning Mariology is the kind of silence that secularists tend to pretend as a refutation of the Exodus. Namely silence in a source material that's too scarce to judge, except by oral traditions having survived to later texts, or in the case of Exodus, texts attested only in later manuscripts. If you pretended that an 8th C. date for Rylands Papyrus 470 refutes the apostolic origin of Sub tuum praesidium, you could as well pretend that the 9th / 10th C. dates for Corpus Caesareum disprove the historicity of the Gallic wars or that the time between the Exodus and the oldest manuscripts of anything besides the Aaronite benediction disprove the Corpus Mosaicum.
Protestants who believe Moses wrote Genesis and Exodus but disbelieve an early date for Sub tuum praesidium are like saying:
- this criterium is very important when we want it
- this criterium is totally negligible when we want that instead.
13:28 There is a difference between mediating the redemption of mankind as such and mediating the graces needed for a particular man to be part of that redemption rather than excluded from it.
So, if you take this difference into account, you have to ask, are Jesus and Mary mediating in the same sense or in different senses, in Catholicism. If it's in different senses, you are equivocating when finding an opposition between Mariology and I Tim 2:5.
14:11 Mary's role was a spiritual one.
The Acts actually does mention Her in one very important place. Totally compatible with Mediatrix omnium gratiarum.
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount that is called Olivet, which is nigh Jerusalem, within a sabbath day's journey And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and Jude the brother of James All these were persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren
[Acts Of Apostles 1:12-14]
If such an initial mention is not a spotlight, what is?
Most of Acts are external events, the word "prayer" is mentioned in passing.
All these were persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.
[Acts of Apostles 1:14]
Now Peter and John went up into the temple at the ninth hour of prayer.
[Acts of Apostles 3:1]
But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.
[Acts of Apostles 6:4]
Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thy alms are had in remembrance in the sight of God.
[Acts of Apostles 10:31]
Peter therefore was kept in prison. But prayer was made without ceasing by the church unto God for him.
[Acts of Apostles 12:5]
And upon the sabbath day, we went forth without the gate by a river side, where it seemed that there was prayer; and sitting down, we spoke to the women that were assembled.
[Acts of Apostles 16:13]
And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain girl, having a pythonical spirit, met us, who brought to her masters much gain by divining.
[Acts of Apostles 16:16]
Seven times. First time Mary prays before Matthias is chosen to replace Judas and before the Holy Ghost falls on the Apostles. Last time before a demon is cast out.
So, while the word is mentioned very sparingly, it is still very important, and the very first mention involves Mary the mother of Jesus.
14:40 Was Jesus saying His mother was nothing special?
Or was Jesus saying "my mother prefers another compliment" (and some anonymity while in the earthly life).
There is nothing in Luke 11 to state that Jesus was not giving His Mother the compliment She liked best.
Elisabeth stated that Mary had already believed, namely that She was Mother of God. So, that's not the news that made Her so excited. The news was:
And she cried out with a loud voice, and said: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb
[Luke 1:42]
In other words, Her own Sisera was a snake, as per Genesis 3:15.
[Along his next point, he gives what he considers photo evidence]
15:10 A very beautiful procession.
It very much is part of official teaching on liturgy that such processions are licit.
And it very much does NOT constitute the worship of latria.
Precisely as carrying the Ark of the Covenant in similar processions in the OT did not mean one believed the Ark was the Lord God.
15:29 Matthew 6:7 has a Greek word that is
μὴ βατταλογήσητε
In the Syriac, this is "do not stutter", in the Coptic, this is "do not stutter" (I don't speak these languages, I checked on quora) and in the Latin it is "nolite multum loqui," or "speak not much"
The clue which clinches it can't mean repetitions like in the Rosary is "sicut ethnici" or "ὥσπερ οἱ ἐθνικοί" since Greco-Roman prayers to Olympic or Capitoline gods show no trace at all of repeating short phrases many times.
There is an example from the exact same year, by Velleius Paterculus. He isn't repeating any phrase. He's just repeating the main thought in very many variations, like if he was best served by adressing the prayers to Capitoline Jove or to Vesta and wouldn't it be best to add that "our projects" are just and noble ones, since the gods like justice and nobility.
Jesus isn't forbidding the Rosary. He's forbidding the use of speeches where you heap formulation on formulation because you nervously hesitate (i e stutter) on how to best make your case before the divine.
The translation "do not use vain repetitions" is a piece of biassed and ultimately fraudulent scholarship. It incporporates Calvin's personal dislike of repetitive prayers into the Bible translation, starting with the Geneva Bible. No previous translation, including Tyndale and Martin Luther, use this.
Luther 1545 has "sollt ihr nicht viel plappern"
Not a word about "vain repetitions" or any repetitions.
You are relying on a fake Bible text.
15:45 Just in case you haven't noted, Hail Mary is not composed of a hither and thither between different approaches to persuading God or Mary, it is just quoting the angel Gabriel and Elisabeth.
Plus adds the name Jesus "and blessed is the fruit of thy womb" (here Elisabeth ended) "Jesus" (which the Church knows from elsewhere than Luke 1).
Plus another prayer which acknowledges Her as Mother of God (i e is Trinitarian) and as Mediatrix of the Graces I personally need [in order for me] to be part of Christ's redemption.
15:57 No, on this topic, your conscience is bound to the word of Calvin as dishonest Bible translator.
You could just as well advocate Thnetopsychism while using the translation of the Watchtower society for Jesus' words to St. Dismas.
When Jesus went down to the Netherworld, His Soul went to the Bosom of Abraham, and St. Dismas' soul was there too. The exact same day, before Sunset in Jerusalem.
But the Watchtower society is just fiddling with what "today" refers to. Calvin is fiddling with what a word translates as.
You are following the traditions of men.
16:20 That text Matthew 23:9 is best translated as "don't make anyone your sensei or your mentor" ...
He is not forbidding children to call their physical male progenitors father and He's not forbidding St. Paul to call himself (and obviously to expect to be called) father of the Corinthian Christians:
For if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you.
[1 Corinthians 4:15]
So, what exact nuance does "father" have?
- physical progenitor? Not meant
- spiritual father in Christ? Not meant
- mentor or sensei ... very much meant.
16:32 "saints" refers to three concentric circles.
- all Christians
- died faithful whose souls are glorified
- those of these remembered by the Church, all in general on 1 November, other specifically designated on Biblical criteria.
Point 1, the Scripture you will cite.
Point 2.
And Jesus again crying with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost And behold the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top even to the bottom, and the earth quaked, and the rocks were rent And the graves were opened: and many bodies of the saints that had slept arose And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, came into the holy city, and appeared to many
[Matthew 27:50-53]
Point 3
a) Jesus canonised St. Dismas.
b) when the Church canonises criteria are the miracle workings of the relics.
So that even there were brought from his body to the sick, handkerchiefs and aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the wicked spirits went out of them.
[Acts of Apostles 19:12]
That's a second degree relic for each case.
And some that were burying a man, saw the rovers, and cast the body into the sepulchre of Eliseus. And when it had touched the bones of Eliseus, the man came to life, and stood upon his feet
[4 Kings 13:21]
That's first degree relics.
And obviously working miracles in life and in person as well counts as proof.
With St. Thomas Becket, as Gavin Ashenden noted, 703 miracles were recorded by notarians just during the first year [after his martyrdom].
16:44 "sainthood is sth that only a few Christians achieve"
Unless you add "canonisable" I would like you to give a source for it.
Btw, the canonised sainthood is already a thing in the Bible, namely the "Hall of Faith" in Hebrews 11 ending in the verse 12:1.
you can see 16:56 this trajectory in the early church 16:58 there was this very simple movement of 17:01 Christians who loved the Lord who were 17:04 dedicated they they wore simple garments 17:07 they were despised poor people
The "informal movement" never existed, is nowhere described in the NT.
Jesus made a hierarchy of seventy-two among the disciples in general, and of twelve among the seventy-two, and of St. Peter among the 12.
Wearing simple garments (in daily life, as opposed to liturgy) is clearly an adiaphoron. Also not true of St. Joseph of Arimathaea or of St. Nicodemus, both of whom were rich Pharisees, like the house possessors in all the house churches were rich, that being the structure of Roman society. Owning a domus, as opposed to renting an apartment in an insula in Rome was for the rich, for people comparable to Trump.
While liturgic garments are not directly mentioned in the NT, they can be implied as seen as appropriate with a comparison with the Aaronite priesthood, which St. Paul puts in parallel with the Christian clergy:
We have an altar, whereof they have no power to eat who serve the tabernacle
[Hebrews 13:10]
The NT has a few reproaches against OT clergy, but not one of them is being clergy and not one of them is a criticism of their liturgic garments while serving in the temple.
Father Wilhelm Imach who received me in the Catholic Church (or at worst Novus Ordo sect, but he was validly ordained, before Vatican II) had a simpler wardrobe than you seem to have. Like the wardrobe he wore in the kitchen or at catechism. Liturgy is different.
17:21 You know, the general outline of a basilica in the time of Constantine and later is the outline of a Roman market hall, not of a Roman pagan temple.
Getting your facts straight, like checking outside Bible scholars with specialists on Roman Antiquities might help if you have the honesty to try it.
Which I recommend.
Roman house churches, as archaeologists dig up, were fine villas, not poor men's cottages. In Jerusalem, a house could hold 120 people in one room, that's not a poor man's cottage either.
And if you are still concerned that Cathedrals look like Pagan Temples, how about the similarities between the Temple of Solomon and Egyptian architecture? The temple part of which was obviously dedicated to false gods who were humiliated in the Ten Plagues.
But part of your problem with a Cathedral is that it is big, it is meant to serve a Christian people basically coextensive with the general population, while you seem to think being Christian means being part of a fairly exclusive club, only a religious minority, like the Church started out as. Correct me if I get you wrong. The problem with your attitude is, you contradict Matthew 28:16—20, this time the words "teach all nations" ... your theology seems to be anchored in the New World translation: "teach you people from out of all nations" which is not what the Greek says.
μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη
While Notre Dame was built as a temple of God, it was big, because it was meant for a sizeable part of the ethnos of Paris. This is true whatever you believe of the new decition, which I did not participate in.
17:36 Special hats and special garments are found in Exodus~Leviticus.
Crucifixes are found since God allowed St. Helen to find the true Cross.
Yes, this relic of God's death worked miracles.
18:10 I went to Latomus' refutation of Tyndale about Romans 3.
Unlike the Counsel of Trent, later on, Latomus agreed with Tyndale that "works of the law" were simply works of the Decalogue, of God's law in general.
Tyndale "neither previous nor subsequent works are required"
Latomus "previous works are not required, subsequent are"
It's as if Tyndale read a fav. passage of Protestants. Ephesians 2:8,9.
Latomus read a fav. passge of Catholics. Ephesians 2:8—10
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