A broken electrical line sends zero electricity to its needed destination.
A broken line that separates the people from the 2,000 year old line of
apostolic succession is the same type of dead line. In fact, it's arrogant
to claim that God personally commissioned you to suddenly start your
own church 2,000 years after the original apostles started Christianity.
To make such a claim is to claim yourself greater than all of the original
apostles. You're saying that the Church they started was worthless. With-
out the apostolic succession that dates back to Day 1 of Christianity, name-
ly Pentecost Sunday, there is neither truth nor sacramental grace nor any
form of salvation. There's only a lie that gets unfolded at death.
Life is simple. Only impostors make it confusing. Let us continue:
It's the same old American ... and also from the nether regions of the human
mind ... squeal out that the "Papist Church" was the great oppressor who hid
the Bible from all humanity, never applying the Bible to Church doctrine.
Of course, this hysteria was most spoken in those venues known for chattel
slavery, lynch mobs, white hooded cross burners, pelagra, moonshining, in-
breeding, low wages, low S.A.T. scores, Jim Crowe, gerrymandering, murder-
of the Michigan Freedom Riders, and plotting the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln.
To those people, Rome was seen as a hostile foreign entity. That is to say,
anti-Catholicism is largely anti-Italianism.
Now, concerning the claim that Catholics have nothing to do with the Bible, and
that the Catholic Church oppressively hid the Bible from humanity, take note:
The Bible was and is recited daily and repeatedly throughout the Catholic Church,
during:
1) the Mass, 2) the Liturgy of Hours.
This means that the Bible was and still is quoted at 1) Matins, 2) Prime,
3) Terce, 4) None, 5) Vespers, 6) Compline . . . and even at the Midnight
Office. Usually, it's between 3:40 am to 7:30 pm or so, EVERYDAY ...
. . . as well as two times at weekday Mass and three times at Sunday Mass.
News Flash: The official prayer of the Roman Catholic (and not the papist)
Church is the Office ... the Liturgy of Hours. Monasteries have to pray it at
least five times a day. All priests are to pray the Office daily. Thus, the 150
Psalms, as well as the Book of Proverbs, etc. are the major source of prayer
in the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church doesn't ignore the Bible, and it did NOT hide the Bible
from the Europeans of the Middle Ages or Renaissance Era. The Catholic
Church is far more Biblical in its orientation than that of Anglo American
Protestantism. After all, Protestantism ignores the fact that Christ said that
he who "puts away his wife and takes on another one commits adultery."
It also ignores, "Faith without good works is dead faith." BOTH things
are graphically stated in the Bible.
The aforementioned is merely a brief example of how Protestantism has
regularly ignored Biblical passages throughout the ages.
In addition, the Catholic Church heavily advocates meditating on the mysteries
of the Rosary. These are events in the life of Christ, his mother, and his church.
There are presently 20 mysteries of the Rosary. Eighteen of these are expressly
found in the Bible. Thus, the Catholic Church advocates meditating on events
conveyed in the Bible.
Incidentally, Protestant denominations of the darker regions of Anglo America
call church railings something that they're not. They call them altars. What they
call "an altar call" is merely a walk to a railing. Altars are for offering sacrifices.
Protestantism has no such concept of offering sacrifices.
In Protestantism, no altars exist and no priesthood vestments exist, outside of
the Anglican and Episcopalian denominations. Only worldly business suits are
worn by high income-bearing TV figures who dress like bankers. They are part
banker and part con artist, making up a religion that suits them ... pun intended.
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| The Sea of Galilee |
Of course, some of the TV and radio preachers think that repulsively screaming
out Bible passages in a teeth-gritted fashion reflects a God who is gentle enough
to have created starlight, flowers, butterflies, humming birds, and streams. This
means that when these types of TV and radio evangelists scream out their heresies
with Bible in hand, they blaspheme God twice over, disfiguring the face of the
God of Kindness.
Isaiah (or his disciples after his martyrdom) wrote that, when the Messiah comes
"not a crushed reed will he break, nor a fading wick will he extinguish. The
Book of Isaiah illustrates the gentleness of God.
The more obnoxious versions of TV and radio evangelists present a false image
of God. They cause people to hold animosity toward what they falsely assume is
Christianity. Of course, Protestantism is a mockery of Christianity.
Q: What does Protestantism mean? ANS: It means to protest..
Q: Protest against what? ANS: To protest against the Catholic Church.
Q: What is this Catholic Church which is despised? How much older is it
than Protestantism? ANS: The Catholic Church is the first Christianity,
and it was first called the Catholic Church in the Year 100 CE (AD) by
the martyr Ignatius of Antioch. The Catholic Church is not a Medieval
Invention. It is 1,500 years older than Protestantism.
Q: At the least, Protestantism protested against the Catholic Church of 1517.
Didn't the Catholic Church change a lot since the Ancient Roman days?
ANS: No. The Catholic doctrine of 1517 was the exact same in 60AD, when
the Didache was the prevalent teaching. The Didache was the original
teaching of the original Apostles and Judas' replacement, Matthias.
Catholic doctrine was the same in 620 AD, 1020AD, and even 1420 AD. To
be Protestant is to object to 1,500 years of Catholicism; not the Catholicism
of 1517. Being that Catholicism was the first Christianity, to protest against
Catholicism is to protest against Christianity itself. It's to create a slanted ver-
sion of it, by using its own property to condemn it. That property is the New
Testament. The New Testament is the property of the Catholic Church.
If not for the Catholic Church of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Centuries, there
would be no New Testament. Protestants use the property of the Catholic
Church to condemn the Catholic Church, all the while denying it to be the
property of the Catholic Church and equally denying that the Catholic
Church uses it.
Once again, the Bible is recited daily in Catholicism during Mass, Matins,
Prime, Terce, None, Vespers, Compline, and during the Midnight Office,
as well as during the occasionally used Office of the Dead ... and "Typica.".
In addition, monks throughout the ages made handwritten copies of the Bible.
Now, if the Catholic Church wanted to hide the Bible, it would have ordered
monks to not make copies of it.
In fact, Pius XII granted a plenary indulgence at the Hour of Death to any per-
son who spends 15 minutes a day reading the Bible. Of course, that person
needs to get absolution, if a priest is available.
First came the church headed by Saint Peter. At the Last Supper the Apostles
became ordained priests. Then came the baptizing of believers. Then came the
ordaining of deacons. Only thereafter came the Gospels of Luke, Matthew, Mark
and John, as well as the epistles of Jude, Peter, James, John, and Paul. Thus, the
Sacraments supersede the Bible. Without the sacraments ... or at least desire for
the sacraments, when such things aren't available ... there is no salvation. Yet,
without the Bible, one doesn't understand the sacraments.
Eventually came a council of bishops which stated which texts constituted the
official Bible. Thus, you first need a church to say what constitutes the Bible,
in the first place. It's a sin of idolatry to claim that all revelation is limited to
the Bible, and that Bible is the only thing needed for salvation.
Well, absolution from sin and good works are needed for salvation; not scream-
ing in public ever so obnoxiously, while holding a Bible in front of TV cameras
Such a thing is the act of worshiping the Bible.
Q: Okay then, what actually is the Bible?
ANS: It's a collection of testimony from those who had salvific encounters
with the Eternal God.
Q: Okay. Salvific comes from the word, Salvation. What's Salvation?
ANS: The salving ... the healing ... of the soul. Salves heal wounds.
Furthermore, stained glass windows often depicted Biblical events. This
means that the Church was NOT hiding the Bible from the people. It was
doing the opposite. Church art served the function of a school book for the
illiterate.
If the Catholic Church hid the Bible from mankind, Protestants would never
have had it handed to them by the followers of Luther and Calvin. Very sim-
ply, Protestants stole the New Testament from the Catholic Church, and as
thieves always do, they deny that their stolen object belongs to the person
from whom it was stolen.
Now, if Protestants refuse to believe in "one holy Catholic and apostolic
church," then they need to leave behind all that is Catholic. This includes
leaving behind the Bible.
The Bible was made for man; not man for the Bible. Therefore, the Catholic
Church doesn't take the Bible out of context and turn it into a god unto itself.
The church has been praying the Bible for centuries. Therefore, the Catholic
Church never hid it from the people. The Catholic Church has been reading
the Bible at every Mass for an equal amount of centuries. The Bible is a
Roman Catholic possession, as far as concerns the New Testament. To
state otherwise is to lie. Case closed.
There is only one Jesus Christ. Thus, there only exists one Church of
Jesus Christ, founded by the same Christ. All other churches constitute
either impostor churches or fractures within the only church founded by
Christ. This brings us to a question:
Which would be the true Church of Jesus Christ? ANS: The church that
was here first, dating as far back as the days of Peter, Paul, and the Roman
emperors who sent many a Christian to the Coliseums of martyrdom.
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