Why Do Some People Have A Problem With Non-Denom People Self-Identifyi

[Papist]

[quote name='cooterhein' timestamp='1314199748' post='2294196']
Not 100% of the time. That's why you have three legs on your stool.
[/quote]
But the stool is the Catholic Church, which is Jesus Christ, which is the Truth 100% of the time.

[cooterhein]

[quote name='Papist' timestamp='1314202817' post='2294210']
But the stool is the Catholic Church, which is Jesus Christ, which is the Truth 100% of the time.
[/quote]You say so.

[Archaeology cat]

I know you didn't mention Jamnia. I brought it up, though, because that is often used when discussing the OT canon. The Sadduccees were still around during Jesus' time, and we know the Jewish canon was not closed at that time. So deferring to the Jews after the Church had been founded seems somehow anachronistic.

I hadn't heard that Jerome was the one to choose which books - I'll have to read more on that. I had heard that he'd written to the Pope expressing that he didn't want to include them, but was told to do so. Regardless, it was not Jerome's translation that determined the canon - that was done in councils, and reaffirmed at Trent.

Per your question, I'm not sure how pertinent it is since, as I pointed out, Jerome did not determine the canon, just which books he translated for the Vulgate. There wasn't one individual who determined the canon.

God bless. Hope I'm making sense, since my daughter is climbing on me.

[Amppax]

tl;dr

[Papist]

[quote name='cooterhein' timestamp='1314203923' post='2294228']
You say so.
[/quote]
No. Christ says so.

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='Maggie' timestamp='1314197242' post='2294186']
Dude you really do write too long.
[/quote]
This, but one comment.
[quote name='cooterhein' timestamp='1314196074' post='2294184']And you should be talking about denominations in the US, because the vast majority of Christian denominations were either formed in the US or can trace their way back here.
[/quote]
You're completely right. Except for those pesky Lutherans. And the Anglicans. And the Methodists and Presbyterians and Anabaptists (including the Mennonites, Moravians, and Amish) and Quakers and all manner of Orthodox belivers and much of the rest of the vast majority of Christian denominations.
THIS JUST IN: The US is less than 250 years old. Christianity has been around for some 2000 years. The protestant heresy started nearly 500 years ago. You do the math on the probability of the "vast majority" of Christian denominations being American.

Edited August 24, 2011 by USAirwaysIHS

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='cooterhein' timestamp='1314202677' post='2294209'] there's a lot of Christians attending Catholic parishes
[/quote]
Also in recent breakthroughs, many fish live in water and a lot of the sky is made of air.

[cooterhein]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' timestamp='1314212257' post='2294348']You're completely right. Except for those pesky Lutherans. And the Anglicans. And the Methodists and Presbyterians and Anabaptists (including the Mennonites, Moravians, and Amish) and Quakers and all manner of Orthodox belivers and much of the rest of the vast majority of Christian denominations.
THIS JUST IN: The US is less than 250 years old. Christianity has been around for some 2000 years. The protestant heresy started nearly 500 years ago. You do the math on the probability of the "vast majority" of Christian denominations being American.
[/quote]Except for a few hundred denominations that formed in and around Europe, America was initially responsible and continues to be primarily responsible for the total number of global denominations jumping from hundreds to tens of thousands. Modern denominationalism is an American phenomenon, and the only reason that rapid growth went other places is because of American missions.

Of course, by "modern denominationalism" I mean the tendency for new denominations to form in ways that are non-sectarian and generally indicative of positive growth through evangelism rather than the schisms and splitting that characterized older denominationalism.

Ballpark figures, there's about 40,000 Christian denominations in the world today. Over 30,000 of them either started in America or can trace their way back to American missions. If you had a list of the 20 most prevalent denominations, none of them would have started in America and by the end of the list, you'd be looking at numbers in the neighborhood of 250,000 members. But after those first couple dozen, there's still another 40,000 to look at. Those are the ones that America is largely responsible for in some way.

[cooterhein]

[quote name='Archaeology cat' timestamp='1314207983' post='2294241']

I know you didn't mention Jamnia. I brought it up, though, because that is often used when discussing the OT canon. The Sadduccees were still around during Jesus' time, and we know the Jewish canon was not closed at that time.[/quote]Canons did not exist until the Jews came up with the concept, so it wasn't a matter of being "open" or "closed." Canons were not applicable until the concept was invented.

[quote]So deferring to the Jews after the Church had been founded seems somehow anachro nistic.[/quote]I'm really deferring more to the thousands-of-years process that they had of preserving a certain kind of religious tradition. The concept of "canon" was invented slightly after the "Church was founded" (though we may mean slightly different things by that), but my confidence in their process doesn't come from a solemn declaration by a council of ostensibly infallible men. My confidence comes from their millennia-long process of receiving divine revelation and stringently working toward full consensus on what was and wasn't God's Word. Because of that process, they're the ones to look at for consensus. They did reach a consensus (which honestly wasn't a swerve from what the vast majority of Jews held to prior to that), so I don't think that's anachronistic. What I do think is anachronistic is the very-common argument for the early infallibility of councils focused primarily on those responsible for canonizing the New Testament. That's anachronistic because no one even guessed they might be infallible until the 8th century (the idea didn't get really popular until the 9th) and there's also the matter of the Old Testament- you can quote all the regional councils you like, but Catholics in the Empire never reached consensus on an OT canon in the first millennium. Or the second one, for that matter. Seems odd that God would make them unwittingly infallible for the NT canon but wouldn't guide them into consensus on the OT.

[quote]I hadn't heard that Jerome was the one to choose which books - I'll have to read more on that. I had heard that he'd written to the Pope expressing that he didn't want to include them, but was told to do so. Regardless, it was not Jerome's translation that determined the canon - that was done in councils, and reaffirmed at Trent.[/quote]Seems that the councils (with the exception of the regional ones the the 1st millennium that affirmed a Greek canon) simply re-affirmed the books laid out in the Vulgate. That was the initial guide, and that's what they re-affirmed. They didn't come up with a new canon after that and there wasn't much in the way of new rationale for re-choosing the same books. They just re-affirmed the fact that in those parts of the world, those regional councils continued to use the Latin Vulgate as their guide.

I'll have to look into the history of it in a bit more detail as well, but I'm not aware of anyone else who could have chosen the Vulgate figure for DC's. I'm not aware that this was ever taken out of Jerome's hands.

[quote]Per your question, I'm not sure how pertinent it is since, as I pointed out, Jerome did not determine the canon, just which books he translated for the Vulgate.[/quote]This is what the Catholic canon is based on. That set of books is what either does or doesn't get affirmed. No matter who's doing the affirming, when they're doing it, or how they're doing it, they're either saying yes or no to the initial choices that were made in putting the Vulgate together. If those choices were wrong, you can't be right in affirming them. If those choices were right, you can't go wrong by affirming them. Temporally speaking, that's where you start. Speaking in terms of causality, that is the beginning as well. "What councils choose" and "the initial creation of the Vulgate" are not independent of each other. The former rests on the accuracy of the latter. Maybe not directly, since each re-affirmation piles on top of the next- I'm sure your modern affirmation is more directly related to Trent than it is to Jerome, for example. But collectively, they all go back to affirming the exact extent of the material that's found in the original Latin Vulgate. That's what it all goes back to, and that's what has to be right in order for you to be right.

[quote]There wasn't one individual who determined the canon.[/quote]I am familiar with how councils work. I know that it was a lot of men....in a lot of councils....over a lot of years who (in certain parts of the world but not others) who consistently upheld the content of the Vulgate. That's what councils do.

But it wasn't a council that initially determined that 7 deuterocanonicals should be included instead of 10. That was one guy. A guy who actually believed all of them were apocryphal. It was not the work of councils that led to the selection of 7 DC's- they followed after that. It was a myriad of councils [b]after[/b] that selection that chose to affirm the initial choices again and again.

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='cooterhein' timestamp='1314229217' post='2294522']
Of course, by "modern denominationalism" I mean the tendency for new denominations to form in ways that are non-sectarian and generally indicative of positive growth through evangelism rather than the schisms and splitting that characterized older
[/quote]

So you really believe that these new non-denominational are attracting non-Christians rather than merely dragging pre-existing Christians from other sects?

[Ice_nine]

you need to be more succinct homes. I'm sure you've convinced yourself of how right you are. It's cool. I've done it too, and will probably do it again in the near future, but you don't seem open to the possibility that perhaps you are quite incorrect making dialogue rather fruitless.

I was born Catholic, but in my teens years I ascribed to this non-denom mentality (though never attended a church) and in my own head I had Catholicism figured out and I knew exactly how corrupt and manipulative it was. I was CONVINCED. And my logic was sound, and if anyone tried to poke a hole in it I'd patch it up right away. At this time I was also scared to look for the truth, because I feared that if I dug to much, I might find out that what I'm believing is a crock of poo. But I KNEW in my heart that Christ was God, and that was the most precious truth I was afraid to lose. So until then I only really looked for evidence that would comfort my rightness.

Eventually my mental health deteriorated to the point where this was no longer a viable defense mechanism because I realized that eventually the questions become too weighty and complex for a spin-off series to respond to let alone answer. It was actually by reading another Christian forum and seeing how, to my shock and surprise, the Catholics there (who were outnumbered btw) were able to respond more thoroughly than intelligent non-Catholics most of the time, and how it just seemed more authentic. Modern day Christianity had a lot of things and contradictions that didn't make any sense to me (sola fide, OSAS etc). Also finding out Luther was kind of a Johnsonville brat and not really the freedom-fighter high school portrayed him as, among other things.

Now I'm a lot more comfortable with my faith because on a daily basis I am confronted with how much I don't know. It seems more human to me. I'm not afraid to dig because I know that scholars and mystics have likely already confronted these questions and their knowledge is accessible to me, and if the details don't make absolute sense the core doctrines of the faith are thoroughly explained and when combined with prayer and faith the fear is eliminated.

Just sayin' you talk a lot, but you ain't sayin' much. I"m guilty of the same thing so I'm not tryin' to disparage you,

hollaz?

[cooterhein]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' timestamp='1314237087' post='2294577']

So you really believe that these new non-denominational are attracting non-Christians rather than merely dragging pre-existing Christians from other sects?
[/quote]Worldwide, absolutely. In America, though, most people are affiliated with some form of Christianity and the overall gradient is currently one where more people are becoming non-religious instead of non-religious people becoming religious. I do think some Americans who would have otherwise abandoned religious affiliation altogether are landing in different non-denom churches; given America's current situation, though, you have to expect most converts to come from some part of Christianity just because most Americans hail from some part of Christianity. Any group that's growing is doing so at least in part by Christians changing affiliation; any group that's losing people is probably losing them to the unaffiliated camp or to some other part of Christianity.

It's not all about America, though. This is true for Catholics and for non-Catholics. We are right in the middle of a global shift in Christianity for both of us- we started the 20th century with 80% of Christians being white and we closed it with only 45% of Christians being white. The trend is continuing in that direction, too- most of Christianity's growth, for both Protestants and Catholics, is in the southern hemisphere and it largely involves developing countries. These are the places where new denominations appear every day- even if they are formally affiliated with a pre-existing denomination, they still count as a new one on the official tally sheet just because a denomination is represented in more than one country. More often than that, though, we're looking at independent churches (sometimes national churches in whatever nation it is) on the rise internationally. This should give you an idea of just how much that happened: Over the last 30 years, Independent affiliation strictly in America went from around 1% to a bit over 5%. It's a pretty big rise, relatively speaking, but that accounts for maybe 15 million people. Ballpark. Over the same period of time, Independents worldwide went from less than 100,000 to well over 300 million people. Independents are right at the same level as Protestants now in terms of meta-groupings of Christians in the world. As we saw this happen over the last 30 years, this can (and has) been characterized as one of the greatest global shifts in Christianity, comparable to what happened with the Reformation but far less violent.

When I talk about the new non-denominationals, and especially when I refer to the positive results of missions and evangelism, I'm talking about the 300 million people outside America over the last 30 years. It's kind of a big deal, you know. And while some of those people in a few of those countries may have been lapsed or non-practicing Catholics, it's not close to being a significant chunk of that figure.

Edited August 25, 2011 by cooterhein

[cooterhein]

[quote name='Ice_nine' timestamp='1314241785' post='2294607']

you need to be more succinct homes. I'm sure you've convinced yourself of how right you are. It's cool. I've done it too, and will probably do it again in the near future, but you don't seem open to the possibility that perhaps you are quite incorrect making dialogue rather fruitless.[/quote]I'm sorry if I don't seem open to dialogue.

[quote]I was born Catholic, but in my teens years I ascribed to this non-denom mentality (though never attended a church) and in my own head I had Catholicism figured out and I knew exactly how corrupt and manipulative it was.[/quote]I don't think it's corrupt and manipulative. Not at this time, anyway. It's a lot better than it was, but it could be better. I've seen a couple of posts on this thread already that basically express the idea that older is automatically better. I say sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, and you need to be open to a reality-based assessment of what's good and what's not so good. If you get it in your head that Catholicism is automatically superior, you're not exactly being open to truthful possibilities yourself.

[quote]I was CONVINCED. And my logic was sound, and if anyone tried to poke a hole in it I'd patch it up right away. At this time I was also scared to look for the truth, because I feared that if I dug to much, I might find out that what I'm believing is a crock of poo. But I KNEW in my heart that Christ was God, and that was the most precious truth I was afraid to lose. So until then I only really looked for evidence that would comfort my rightness.[/quote]I think you wound up back in Catholicism mostly because you were born into it initially. If you'd been born into anything else and searched for what the ancient church believed, I think you would have wound up being Orthodox.

Straight-out Catholic conversion is a really tough sell. That's why it doesn't happen a lot. Catholic reversion is quite a bit easier because you can feel better about ignoring other aspects of ancient Christianity. What you were born into influences you more than you might give it credit for; that's all I'm saying.

[quote]Eventually my mental health deteriorated to the point where this was no longer a viable defense mechanism because I realized that eventually the questions become too weighty and complex for a spin-off series to respond to let alone answer. It was actually by reading another Christian forum and seeing how, to my shock and surprise, the Catholics there (who were outnumbered btw) were able to respond more thoroughly than intelligent non-Catholics most of the time, and how it just seemed more authentic.[/quote]It's better if you actually do it than if you talk about it. This is a Catholic forum right here. You talk about these places if you happen to be somewhere else. When you're actually here, though, go ahead and do it.

[quote] Modern day Christianity had a lot of things and contradictions that didn't make any sense to me (sola fide, OSAS etc). Also finding out Luther was kind of a Johnsonville brat and not really the freedom-fighter high school portrayed him as, among other things.[/quote]Taken together (as they're supposed to be- it's intended as a package deal) I've found that the Solas are anything but self-contradictory and, if you understand them as well as you should, you know they're at least internally consistent. Far as Luther goes, there was a lot to dislike about him. He did have quite a bit of elderberry smell on him, as did most of the reformers in one way or another. Pretty often, I think that's part of the reason why non-denoms and other Independents are less likely to associate themselves really closely with those specific people- it's not just the centuries between us and them, it's not necessarily going to involve something with doctrine, and it generally has nothing to do with an irrational fear of committing to something. Pretty often, non-Catholics see the same things you see in the Reformers and take them as legitimate reasons to avoid getting too cuddly with them. From your end, you're probably more likely to talk about how they're pure evil; they're so corrupt and manipulative; they're enemies of God and His Church. From my end, we're probably more likely to say "Those are some pretty bad flaws. No disrespect to their doctrine or their work and service in God's name, but maybe some of the reformers give us good reasons to think twice about joining a mainline denom."

Truth is, though, the main things that initially fueled the growth of early Protestantism had very little to do with doctrine, with a particular church rite, or with charismatic leadership. Those were some of the things that mattered most to the Reformers themselves, but that wasn't what tended to matter for the average layperson. It was mostly politics, nationalism, and money. Those things influenced it more than anything- especially in the years prior to where individual people had the ability to choose their affiliation apart from a decision made by whoever ruled over them. The entire paradigm of how religion was chosen had to break down before anything truly meaningful could happen for the laity of the non-ruling class.

Point is, it was a whole different world then. It was an entirely different place and time. I look back on the first millennium of Christianity and some of the things I see make me say "Oh man, that's regrettable....I guess they did the best they could, though." That happens quite a bit throughout the Reformation, too. If I try to see the reformers as superheros that found "The Truth" and had everything figured out perfectly, that's not going to match reality and I'm going to be disappointed in them. What I can do, though, is see them as being on the side that was giving it an honest effort while actually working toward something better. In the long-term, I think they largely succeeded. Albeit not necessarily within the lifetime of any one man in particular.

[quote]Now I'm a lot more comfortable with my faith because on a daily basis I am confronted with how much I don't know. It seems more human to me.[/quote]Could you describe the less human side in a little more detail, please? And maybe include details about why it's less human?

[quote]I'm not afraid to dig because I know that scholars and mystics have likely already confronted these questions and their knowledge is accessible to me, and if the details don't make absolute sense the core doctrines of the faith are thoroughly explained and when combined with prayer and faith the fear is eliminated.[/quote]Fear of what, exactly? Fear of personally being wrong about any given thing? Fear of belonging to a tradition that has gotten some things wrong but adamantly refuses to acknowledge that? Fear that important individuals throughout Catholicism's history have done things- doctrinally, morally, or whatever- that are embarrassing to look back on? Fear that when the thing formerly know as the Western Roman Empire is compared to Christianity in any other place at any given time, maybe someone else did something a little bit better than them?

[quote]Just sayin' you talk a lot, but you ain't sayin' much. I"m guilty of the same thing so I'm not tryin' to disparage you,[/quote]I have made some long posts in an attempt to convey certain things. I thought I was doing all right with conveying them. If you don't want to hear it, maybe that's part of what's happening. If you do want to get something out of it, though, I hope it does something for you if you stick around and interact a bit more.

[quote]hollaz?[/quote]Wa da ta, hollaz.

Edited August 25, 2011 by cooterhein

[Archaeology cat]

[quote name='cooterhein' timestamp='1314247140' post='2294639']
I think you wound up back in Catholicism mostly because you were born into it initially. If you'd been born into anything else and searched for what the ancient church believed, I think you would have wound up being Orthodox.

Straight-out Catholic conversion is a really tough sell. That's why it doesn't happen a lot. Catholic reversion is quite a bit easier because you can feel better about ignoring other aspects of ancient Christianity. What you were born into influences you more than you might give it credit for; that's all I'm saying.
[/quote]
Just to address this point quickly - I was raised Southern Baptist. I converted after much study. Yes, I'd been around more Catholics than Orthodox, but my study of the Byzantine Empire means I also studied the entire Church pre-schism as well as looking at the post-schism Orthodox, yet I became Catholic. Yes, what you're born into influences you, but it is possible to lay preconceptions aside and actually look at the history, instead of just looking for what you want. It's not easy, it takes time, I still confront things to make sure I'm not just looking for the answer I want but looking for what the actual answer is.

ETA: I have to ask, but why aren't you Orthodox? I mean, you've mentioned a couple of times that you think the Orthodox Church is the closest to the NT Church.

Quick point on the canon - while the Jews may have developed the idea of a canon, I don't think that means they are the arbiters of that canon, especially since the Church was founded prior to their being a set canon. Again, I'll have to research more.

Gotta run for now. God bless

Edited August 25, 2011 by Archaeology cat

[dUSt]

[quote name='Delivery Boy' timestamp='1313722421' post='2291077']
So with that being said I have no problem as long as the non denominational churches aren't anti catholic.
[/quote]
If they are non-denominational, they are anti-Catholic. Period.