A fellow Catholic named James and I have been talking to PeacebyJesus (PbJ) over at the Catholicism website.
PbJ was throwing us off with some of his verbiage. One of which was that "...an infallible magisterium is essential for recognizing spiritual Truth...." A saying which is basically true. Without the infallible Magisterium, we would go the way of the 10's of thousands of Protestant denominations.
However, PbJ was putting a twist on what he was intending the phrase to convey. What he meant was that Catholics claim that no truth can be identified without the Magisterium. Well, that's not true. So I challenged him to provide the Catholic Doctrine which says such a thing.
And he said that the Jews had done just fine identifying the Scriptures without an infallible Magisterium before the advent of the Church. Well, that's not true. Because, before the advent of Jesus and the Church, the Jewish Scriptures were in disarray. There were hundreds of Jewish books which the Jews considered Scripture. It is because Jesus Christ used the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament that the Catholic Church also used it. And it is because Jesus Christ used the Septuagint, that the Jews rejected it and chose to use on the books written in Hebrew.
Anyway, here's how I answered that part of his response to James.
PbJ was throwing us off with some of his verbiage. One of which was that "...an infallible magisterium is essential for recognizing spiritual Truth...." A saying which is basically true. Without the infallible Magisterium, we would go the way of the 10's of thousands of Protestant denominations.
However, PbJ was putting a twist on what he was intending the phrase to convey. What he meant was that Catholics claim that no truth can be identified without the Magisterium. Well, that's not true. So I challenged him to provide the Catholic Doctrine which says such a thing.
And he said that the Jews had done just fine identifying the Scriptures without an infallible Magisterium before the advent of the Church. Well, that's not true. Because, before the advent of Jesus and the Church, the Jewish Scriptures were in disarray. There were hundreds of Jewish books which the Jews considered Scripture. It is because Jesus Christ used the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament that the Catholic Church also used it. And it is because Jesus Christ used the Septuagint, that the Jews rejected it and chose to use on the books written in Hebrew.
Anyway, here's how I answered that part of his response to James.
Great Job!
ReplyDeleteProtestants always seem to express Catholic teaching many times in their arguments, but then when you point it out to them, the deny that it is Catholic. I love how they usually twist the words of a passage or "read into" a passage of Scripture what is not there. My favorite is them "quoting" early Church Fathers as proof of protestantism, yet when you read the whole writing, it's completely Catholic LOL!
God Bless De Maria
sincerely
mark thimesch
That's true Mark. And that's so hard for me to understand. Don't they realize that the ECF's were mostly Catholic Bishops, priests and deacons who all accepted the authority of the Catholic Church and attended the Sacraments?
DeleteIts amazing when they tell me that these guys taught Sola Scriptura? So I ask them, "if they taught sola Scriptura, then how come they believe in the Eucharist, the Mass, the authority of the Church and all the Catholic distinctives while you don't? Does that mean that they learned all the Catholic Doctrines from the Scripture alone?"