On Reading Holy Scripture

[amarkich]

Jason, we do not seem to be disagreeing. We both assert the fact that the Bible is a [i]prayer[/i] and should be used by the laity as such! Further, I am not agreeing with any Saint, just to clarify. I love the Bible and think it is a great devotion for those who reflect upon it as a prayer. There is a reason that Scripture is included in the Mass (and the Brievary, etc). The Scriptures are beautiful, part of God's Word to us (the other part being Tradition, the Teachings of the Church, etc). I love Saint Josemaría Escriva and think that Opus Dei is a very conservative Order. I would be even more pleased with it if it would follow more strictly the life of Saint Josemaria Escrivia! He was a very holy man and as nearly all the Saints, practiced penances very often that were certainly Saintly. I wish more people would imitate him. This is not the issue, though. We agree on all that has been said here. My comment was simply that Thomas A Kempis was not referring to the laity (which he wasn't). I then went on to illustrate this using logic and a few decrees from the Church. I wouldn't argue with a Saint either (that is why I am such a strong supporter of the fact that the Church is the only way to Heaven). Likewise, I would not argue with a Council of the Church which asserted the scandal that can befall those who not only are "illiterate and uninitiated" but also the "educated and the gifted." God bless.
By the way, you seem to be very interested in the Lives of the Saints. If you have not already read it, you should pick up Memoirs of the Oratory (the Autobiography of Saint John Bosco); this collection of his memoirs is great. The only problem is that it is published by Modernists. It is interesting to note that in one of his memoirs (titled "A Jewish Friend"), Saint John Bosco writes of a Jewish boy with whom he was friends in his younger years. He told the Jewish boy that he could not be saved unless he converted to Catholicism. The publishers spent one paragraph in a foot note trying to explain how Saint Bosco did not really mean what he said and that the Dogma [i]Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus[/i] does not really mean that the Church is necessary for salvation (it is even so ignorant as to bring up Father Feeney, who was not "excommunicated"--it was not a true excommunication in the actual sense of the term--for doctrine but for disobedience and who was re-instituted into the Church by reciting the Athanasian Creed which begins, "Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith.", so he clearly was not excommunicated for teaching this!). I hope you enjoyed the aside His memoirs really are great, and you should consider reading them. I think I will now go start a thread to clarify some things about Father Feeney.

[Livin_the_MASS]

So who is Thomas A Kempis talking to?

I'm confused, throughout the book Christ speaks to the soul, and Thomas gives advise, and speaks back to Christ as if it were us.

So who is he talking to?

God Bless

Edited April 18, 2004 by Jason

[the lumberjack]

so much for being free thinking, eh?

be good little spoonfed sheep who don't question anything that is fed to you.

and don't read the Bible to learn anything...but read the documents that have already translated it for you...

like a motherbird who prechews food for her young...

say what you will, this only reinforces that fact that any Christian would be fully capable of carrying the Gospel of Christ with only the Bible...where as Catholics would not know what they believed were your Volumes of Verbiage were to be lost...and you were left with only the Bible.

try maintaining your "oral tradition" then....

[dUSt]

[quote]and don't read the Bible to learn anything...but read the documents that have already translated it for you...[/quote]
You know Catholics read the Bible. Why are you being so ugly?

[Livin_the_MASS]

[quote name='the lumberjack' date='Apr 19 2004, 10:46 AM'] so much for being free thinking, eh?

be good little spoonfed sheep who don't question anything that is fed to you.

and don't read the Bible to learn anything...but read the documents that have already translated it for you...

like a motherbird who prechews food for her young...

say what you will, this only reinforces that fact that any Christian would be fully capable of carrying the Gospel of Christ with only the Bible...where as Catholics would not know what they believed were your Volumes of Verbiage were to be lost...and you were left with only the Bible.

try maintaining your "oral tradition" then.... [/quote]
Heb 5:11-14

[b]Exhortation to Spirtual Renewal[/b]

[b]"About this we have much to say, and it is difficult to explain, for you have become sluggish in hearing.[/b] Although you should be teachers by this time, [b]you need to have someone teach you again the basic elements of the utterances of God. You need milk, [and] not solid food.[/b] Everyone who lives on milk lacks experience of the word righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for mature, for those whose faculities are trained by practice to discern good and evil."

LJ,

It looks like to me we are "spoon feed" spiritual things!

St. Paul talks about it right here!

God Bless
Jason

Edited April 19, 2004 by Jason

[the lumberjack]

Jason, Paul speaks to new Christians in that passage...not to every Christian.

he says that some teachings and knowledge aren't for new Christians...

but if thats the ways YOU want to use the passage, ok.

and dust....I'm sorry if I'm being ugly...I'm tired of being "just another dumb protestant on this board"

God chose a simple gospel to be preached...not one of religious mysticism, to be carried to the world. He chose simple men to carry it out, not papal representatives that sit in their regal dress, away from the laity...and this is my church.

a 2000 year old gospel for a sinful world.

not 1600+ years of papal documents, decrees and councils.

[Jake Huether]

[quote]God chose a simple gospel to be preached...[/quote]

Amen to that brotha'!

The Catholic Church would be soooo simple if it didn't have to fight off so much heresy!

But unfortunatly that's what happens when you have people thinking that they can privately interprate the Bible.


Jesus said my burden is light. And it is! Inside the Catholic Church it is soooo light.


But it becomes complex when you are handed a Bible and told to read it by yourself and interpret it by yourself.

If people would have just listened to the Church and practiced what she Taught, life would be much simpler.

But we are gluttons for a heavy burden. I don't think we can live without trying to make our burden heavier.

That is why Christ established a Church - so that we, the sheep, could just simply follow the lead.

But some sheep want to make themselves leaders, and so we now have many sheep leading sheep.

Come back to the flock under one Shepherd - the shepherd that Christ appointed on earth.

[Paladin D]

Lumberjack, I own two bibles... and I read the Holy Scriptures.

I don't understand. Just because I do not read the Holy Scriptures, expecting to [b]"make-up"[/b] my own doctrine, doesn't mean I don't read it with a sincere heart.

[Paladin D]

[quote name='the lumberjack' date='Apr 19 2004, 01:52 PM'] a 2000 year old gospel for a sinful world.

not 1600+ years of papal documents, decrees and councils. [/quote]
The Bible has always been around, before the first denomination. The thing you must remember is this...

[b]1.[/b] The printing press was not invented till much later, thus there weren't a vast amount of Bibles around. Each Bible had to be hand-copied.

[b]2.[/b] Because of this, a Bible was a very valuable book. People would try and steal them no doubt to make money, so they had Bibles attached to a chain inside a church.

...not to mention, the person who invented the Printing Press was Catholic. And the first Bible to be printed was a Catholic one.

[the lumberjack]

Paladin, how does any of the doctrine I've "made up" conflict with the Bible? if you can show me that, then I will say you are right.

context.

and you're very right when you say that the bible has been around for a VERY long time.

[maxk]

[quote name='the lumberjack' date='Apr 19 2004, 01:20 PM'] Paladin, how does any of the doctrine I've "made up" conflict with the Bible? if you can show me that, then I will say you are right.

context.

and you're very right when you say that the bible has been around for a VERY long time. [/quote]
The Bible never claims to be the sole rule of faith. [i]Sola Scriptura[/i] is never in the Bible...

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='the lumberjack' date='Apr 19 2004, 01:52 PM']
God chose a simple gospel to be preached...not one of religious mysticism, to be carried to the world. He chose simple men to carry it out, not papal representatives that sit in their regal dress, away from the laity...and this is my church.

a 2000 year old gospel for a sinful world.

not 1600+ years of papal documents, decrees and councils. [/quote]
The protestant groups do not defend against heresy like the Church, having no uniform creed to defend. They simply go start a new group.

So of course, there aren't 2000 years of protestant documents to be found.

And please don't say there is a simple gospel to be preached, that works if you are preaching to 7 year olds. God is not simple, and most people over 7 can come up with zillions of questions that aren't simple.
So dogma needs explained and clarified, and we have been doing it for 2000 years.

You cannot tell me you consider the epistles of Paul to be simple. They were letters written to communities with different problems, and he was not writing them to produce a book. They are not totally consistant.
Even Peter said they could be confusing. They certainly never meant to be a sole rule of faith. This idea didn't even exist before the 1500s, so that would be a tradition of men.

[amarkich]

[quote]The Bible has always been around, before the first denomination. The thing you must remember is this...[/quote]

This quote seems rather ambiguous. Are you referring to "denominations" of Christianity (in which you include the Church as a denomination and consider heresies as denominations) or are you referring simply to the different denominations of the Protestant heresy (as well as other heresies)? I expect that it is referring to the 'denominations' of heresy for a few reasons (I will be inclined to simply call them heresies rather than "denominations of heresy" throughout the post). The first thing that must be recognized is that the Bible did not exist before the Church. In fact, the Bible comes from the Church. In regard to Bible reading, it should be noted that the Protestant heresy as well as the other heresies which came earlier, e.g., Arianism, Manichaeism, Albigensianism, etc., and those which came after, e.g., Modernism and Americanism, the New Age and Charismatic movements, etc., all collectively dissent from the Church and therefore the Truth. Some of the more modern movements focus very strongly on the Bible (basically the Protestant heresy to modern heresies do this) and downplay or reject the authority of the Church, but as other individuals have stated, the concept of Sola Scriptura is an unbiblical, man-made doctrine, a "doctrine of demons" as it were (to use the diction of Saint Paul who, by the way, as cmotherofpirl has mentioned, does not write a simple message). So, lumberjack, it is very clear that your invented doctrines are contrary to the Bible, so are you prepared to admit to Paladin that he is correct? God bless.

[amarkich]

Also, lumberjack, as an aside, you have those numbers backwards. It should be: 2000+ years of Church teaching, 1600 years of the the Bible (which was, by the way, promulgated by the Church). Interesting, eh? God bless.

[Justified Saint]

Is it true that Kempis's work has been the most read/influential spiritual work besides the Bible? (Of course heaven forbid that we get spiritual discernment apart fromt he Bible, unless its [i]Left Behind[/i] of course. )