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. Without the apostolic succession that dates back to Day 1 of Christianity, namely 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 squeal coming from the nether regions of the human mind. It's a squeal 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, pellagra, moonshining, inbreeding, 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, when the Bible is read EVERYDAY ...
In addition, a Bible passage is also read two times at each weekday Mass and three times at each 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 1 50Psalms, 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 a law of the Holy Roman Empire, in 1529.
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 the act of creating a slanted version of Christianity, by using the Catholic Church's 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. They then deny that the Catholic Church uses the New Testament.
As a review, 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 person who spends 15 minutes a day reading the Bible. Of course, that person needs to first 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 the desire for the sacraments ... when sacraments 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 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. Such a belief is the Worship of the Bible, instead of God.
Well, absolution from sin and good works are needed for salvation; not screaming 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 simply, 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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