Can you answer the other question I just asked? I wouldn’t be asking questions if I weren’t seeking answers regardless of your assumptions.
The council itself rejected the writings of men who walked with men who walked with Christ.
No, because those people were acting as a gateway, selling the only sacrifices for the altar, so the faithful were stopped from worshipping God until they paid those people (and at exhorbitant prices), which is why he said they made it “a den of robbers.” The only near equivalent today is in Germany with the tax-tithe situation and some ministers denying communion for those out of compliance. But many of the German bishops have many issues going on with them these days.
This is a process that has been taking place for 500 years now since the protestant movement. “Catholic” just means universal, as in, the totality of the Christian Church in unity of faith as the different church traditions founded in different regions when the apostles spread the gospel around the world. For example, while Roman is the biggest one by far, I am in the Ruthenian church which practices the Byzantine tradition, yet we are of one faith and “Big T” Tradition with all Catholicism. It is not that “Catholic” is higher than “Christian” but they are one and the same, and those who take to new innovations are leaving what was considered the only valid definition of Christianity for 1500 years.
Saying God makes someone gay would be no different than me saying God made me a fornicator. I’d be lying to myself and to God.
The Pope could have expressed this in any number of carefully nuanced ways and the man misunderstood. We don’t know because the man is the only source. In the meantime, for what we actually have on record and are able to validate, Francis has always repeated the teaching of the Church when teaching on the subject.
I’ll just say lightbulbs were never in the mind of God. They may as well be glass prisons for the unseen made seen again.
who’s to say I haven’t prayed about it?
I have a theory about electricity but you’d probably think I was crazy.
I never said that you never do. I advised you to do it instead of posting stuff like that when such an inclination comes to you.You’re assuming again.
First, he was not caught in anything, a rumor was spread without confirmation. Second, we cannot assume nothing has been done when it is all occurring thousands of miles from us among people we are not directly associating with. Third, scripture says restore them gently (Galatians 6:1-2) and so we must have a mind for how that may look from the outside. Forth, if more strict discipline must occur (as per Mathhew 18), that is for the authorities of the Church to handle, not mob action of public opinion based on rumors.
A Eucharistic procession, in Italy on Corpus Christi, I believe.
A Eucharistic procession, in Italy on Corpus Christi, I believe.
I read somewhere in one of these letters today that knowledge of God is greater than worldly knowledge or something to that effect. Science attempts to make the “knowledge” of the world known with zero knowledge of God IMO.
Being “big balls of gas” is nonsense as no one’s ever travelled to a star nor can they so how could they know it’s gas?
I have read it. He is writing from times when Roman religion was still prominent and people committed idolatry through certain practices. You know who used the colors red and white before any man used them for idolatry? God, when he created them. In the most ancient times, men built altars and offered animal sacrifices to idols. God did not say stop building altars and offering sacrifices, he said to offer them to him. In fact, he gave explicit instructions for very elaborate places to make these sacrifices and some practices that could easily be thought of as spectacles. When Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire, many old practices were changed in meaning and direction. Instead of being offered to idols of the Roman pantheon, Christian meaning was taught through them, so they became vehicles of Christian education, expression, and celebration of Christ. White now being holiness and the light of God, red being the blood of Christ shed for us, etc, etc.
You see Paul here not even worrying about food that was scarified to idols, because he knows idols are fake gods that aren't real, so all that is truly there is just food, and God made food good. Tertullian was concerned about actual idolatry, not just using things that people once used as vehicles for their idolatry, otherwise we would not be able to use anything. He was also concerned about the sensuous nature of spectacles leading us astray by stirring the passions. Neither of these necessarily apply to something specifically being done to direct the mind and heart to celebration of Christ, even if we have capacity to sin through anything. There are Psalms that command us to celebrate God in various elaborate and skillful ways.
