Calibacy For Priests - Vatican Secretary Of State

[Era Might]

It's mission going forward? You speak as if the Roman Church has a way out of this mess.

 

Christ is always the way out of any mess. I do not look at Christian history as a story of glorious triumph and shameful conquest, but as a lesson in humility. We've had 2,000 years of experience now to see what has opened the doors to Christ, and what has closed them.

[Apotheoun]

The West has always been good about growing its knowledge along with the world. Well, it hasn't always been good...in its best days it has been (and is) good at that. The west was not as closed in on itself as the Orthodox world was, nor as ossified.

The West has always reduced the knowledge of God to a discursive reality, while the East has seen it as an experience transcending thought. The former can be developed because it is simply a form of impersonal intellectual knowledge, while the latter is immutable.

[Apteka]

Christ is always the way out of any mess. I do not look at Christian history as a story of glorious triumph and shameful conquest, but as a lesson in humility. We've had 2,000 years of experience now to see what has opened the doors to Christ, and what has closed them.

 

I'm not sure your response makes any sense to me. All I see is the Roman Church conforming itself more and more towards the ways of the world, and we know what James said of such people.

[Era Might]

The West has always reduced the knowledge of God to a discursive reality, while the East has seen it as an experience transcending thought. The former can be developed because it is simply a form of impersonal intellectual knowledge, while the latter is immutable.

 

Well, the West has led the way in all the great breakthroughs of modern civilization. I do not discount any tradition of experience, but the whole world can't approach the world like the Orthodox do. There's a reason why the West was building modern civilization while the East is still trying to catch up.

[Apotheoun]

Well, the West has led the way in all the great breakthroughs of modern civilization. I do not discount any tradition of experience, but the whole world can't approach the world like the Orthodox do. There's a reason why the West was building modern civilization while the East is still trying to catch up.

So the West has created technology? I enjoy technology, but spiritually the West is vapid, and I am so glad that I have found a spiritual home that allows me to experience God in exactly the same way as He was experienced by the Apostles and Prophets, that is, by hymning His glory.

[Era Might]

So the West has created technology? I enjoy technology, but spiritually the West is vapid, and I am so glad that I have found a spiritual home that allows me to experience God in exactly the same way as He was experienced by the Apostles and Prophets, that is, by hymning His glory.

 

It didn't create "technology" itself but it created most modern technologies. I have no quarrel with your love for Eastern ways of being in the world, but worldviews have inherent capabilities and limitations. If you want to be mystic and traditional, I don't look down on you, but that is a different way of being in the world that could never had created modern civilization. And I don't think other ways of being in the world should disappear. One of the "projects" of modernity is finding balance and diversity.

[Apotheoun]

I should probably clarify my comment, because when I said that the West is spiritually vapid, I was referring to Western society and not to the Latin Church. Western society is quite dead spiritually.

[Apteka]

I should probably clarify my comment, because when I said that the West is spiritually vapid, I was referring to Western society and not to the Latin Church. Western society is quite dead spiritually.

 

But look at all the shiny gadgets it has created!

[Apotheoun]

. . . but worldviews have inherent capabilities and limitations. 

Now when I talk about a "worldview" I am talking about the phrenoma of Orthodoxy, which is itself just a fancy way of talking about what St. Paul referred to in his letters as "having the mind of Christ." All that a Christian does should be motivated by the faith, and when Christians live together in society their culture, their way of living, should also reflect this phrenoma.

[Era Might]

Societies are often quite dead. There were many periods of Christian history when Christian society was quite dead spiritually. I don't look at modernity as some threshold of iniquity. Christ is always moving in and out of society, where the sun shines on the just and the unjust, and the church is (or should be) there in the middle of it all, healing the sick, feeding the poor, raising the dead.

[Era Might]

Now when I talk about a "worldview" I am talking about the phrenoma of Orthodoxy, which is itself just a fancy way of talking about what St. Paul referred to in his letters as "having the mind of Christ." All that a Christian does should be motivated by the faith, and when Christians live together in society their culture, their way of living, should also reflect this phrenoma.

 

St. Paul also said that he became all things to all men, in order to win them all to Christ.

[Apotheoun]

St. Paul also said that he became all things to all men, in order to win them all to Christ.

Did he become a fornicator? Did he become an idolater? It is like when St. Paul said that all men sinned, well Christ was a man and He didn't sin. I think St. Paul would agree that he did not become a liar or a thief for all men in order to win them for Christ.   :evil:

[Apotheoun]

Statements like: "I became all things to all men in order to win them to Christ," only make sense if one has the mind of Christ. You must be living the phrenoma of the Orthodox faith to even read scripture correctly.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Apteka]

Give up Era, give in to the world. At that's left is a puny idea for you, and hasn't the world already demonstrated that it's false? What confidence do you have in the Bible? What certainty that the Christ you have in your mind was the historical Christ? There is no meaning to this life, so just give in, and eventually you will realize the meaninglessness of it is also meaningless.

[Aloysius]

those who don't see any way forward for the Roman Church must have blinders on to the many good things going on in the Church today, or totalizing blinders that fail to see the good stuff going on in the midst of (in spite of) some of the bad problematic things happening alongside them.  God continues to write straight with the crooked lines going on in the Church... the liturgy is not bad everywhere, in many places in many ways it is getting quite a bit better with the worst of the liturgical innovations decreasing.  the only way you don't see a way forward is if you're looking for the way backward, but the fact is that there is a traditional way forward for the Church and it's broadly moving in that general direction.  the doom and gloom in this thread seems quite without a firm hope in Christ and His Church, and does quite a bit of ignoring of many great and beautiful things, some people just can't seem to see that forest for the clowns.