Those Poor Backwards Materialists

[saemo]

I find a significant difference in tone between your comments and MiserereNobis as well as 3DOP and several Catholic friends I have. Are you suggesting they are not presenting the Catholic POV? Why would I want to read a different tone in your writings than all the rest of the Catholics I have consistently engaged over the years. To place blame on others when it is obvious that those on the board react differently to you than other Catholics is an interesting way to shift responsibility for your own choices.

Fine, for you. What I get here and no where else, are people who take whatever I say as an insult. I can say my favorite color is blue, and someone will take that as an insult against Mormonism. There was a time I'd try to fight the good fight, to try I and be understood, but that need has left me. So believe what you will, which is not me shifting the blame to you, but only commenting on the reality of internet communication. There are no eyes to look into or facial expression to see. If there were I think you'd see that I am far less threatening than some here make me out to be. I mean, IRL, most people describe me as calm and not easily rattled, which is, how I am writing 99% of the time here. With varying results, but I get it, the apostate who has ideas of her own and shares them should sit demurely In the corner and count herself blessed to be spoken to! But of course, never worthy. People here react differently to both women and to former LDS than they do prospective converts, like never Mormon Catholics. Except Ahab, who actually treats me like a possible convert, which is a compliment coming from this crowd.

Also people take me more seriously than I take myself....and I have a tendency towards harmless mischief, so there is that. I like dumb jokes, like, what did one fish say to the other fish when it ran into a wall? Dam!

That's it. I think. Keep on thinking of me as the demon spawn of All Things With Bad Tones. I know that is not who I am.

Edited April 2, 2014 by saemo

[mfbukowski]

My intent isn't to win, but to better understand. I respect that people believe in an "immaterial" God. In a way, I, too, believe in a non-anthropomorphic God.

 

I believe in a God whose spirit, which is God, is infinite and present everywhere.

 

To me, this doesn't conflict with my belief in an anthropomorphic God any more than believing that the Sun has a body of limited size, conflicts with the belief that the Sun's light, which is Sun, exist and shines throughout the universe.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Works for me as well.  But it seems that the two sentences using the word "anthropomorphic" conflict though what you intended makes sense I think.

[mfbukowski]

I have no problem with the Catholic position being presented, or even defended.  And I have no problem with Catholics believing in the supremacy or at least equivalence of Catholic Church tradition with respect to scripture.

 

My problem lies with someone claiming that scripture teaches (clearly an unequivocally) something that it does NOT, and to attempt to use that falsehood as a bludgeon against our position.

 

The scriptures do NOT teach the immateriality of spirit.  And the Bible does not clearly and unequivocally teach the materiality of spirit either.  It only implies the materiality of spirit in a few places.  Something that Latter-Day revelation clarifies.

 

And clearly Christ (who is fully God, to use Catholic terminology) has a material body of flesh and bone, according to the Bible, so the argument that God (which in some mysterious way, includes the material Jesus) is immaterial just is NOT persuasive to us "Materialists". 

Well said.

 

Plato was not much of a biblical scholar and those old Hebrews never heard of Plato.

[mfbukowski]

Their misunderstanding of what our Lord said to Peter about the gates of hell not prevailing against what they think he meant by rock.

You can try to straighten them out on that idea, and some will accept the correction, but those that remain Catholic stick to their traditional understanding while refusing to believe their church is corrupt and apostate.

That was really uncalled for and totally inappropriate.

[pogi]

I can only speak of why it works for me, pogi. Thanks for asking.

 

The Christians of the first three centuries arouse my never-ending admiration for the way their lives and their deaths eventually evangelized pagan Rome and indeed the Roman Empire as a whole. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Whatever they believed is what I want to believe. Whatever church they identified with, I want as my own. St. Irenaeus (2nd Century) gave the clearest road map for how one in the position of choosing between competing doctrines should go, and that road leads directly to Rome, in my opinion. I cannot identify with an apostasy theory that either discredits Irenaeus' view of Tradition, or how those who followed his view behaved and believed during the first three centuries after Christ. I suppose it can be argued that Irenaeus made the wrong identification, but his theory of the authority of tradition, if it can be identified, seems to me to be beyond dispute.

 

Irenaeus held that any Tradition that should be considered authoritative had to be apostolic. Obviously tradition can be false, as Jesus condemned that tradition of men that the Pharisees had embraced. We believe specifically in Apostolic Tradition. All authoritative Tradition has to have its roots with the Apostles. When other patristic evidence points to doctrines that are more compatible with Catholicism than any of the churches which oppose us, it lends more confidence to the idea that the Traditions of the Apostles were indeed kept, especially in Rome. For me, these Traditions would include in no order of hierarchy...1) A high view of the Holy Eucharist, 2) Pedobaptism and variety of mode, 3) Apostolic Succession in the office of the Episcopate, 4) A high view of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 5) Liturgical Worship, 6) Primacy of the Church at Rome. I might think of more later but you probably get the idea. Numbers three and six have strong evidence and they are the most important to me. 

 

None of these practises or beliefs are proved apostolic by resorting to Scripture alone. None of them. But every Christian has to make a decision about them. Of course I am aware that the Empire may have also persecuted innovators  with Traditionalists. I am satisfied to follow those who appear to be in a continuous line of believers who seemed to take for granted that others before them would be appalled at the very idea of innovation. Innovators have a problem. They have a habit of innovating. Innovators never arrive at what they like and then propose a tradition. That kind of authority is only appealing to those who know they have consciously retained what was handed down to them. I am drawn to a church which at least claims to have a desperate aversion to innovation.

 

But those are only comforting reasons. I don't say that I have unassailable proofs of my faith. If the proofs were enough, why was I twenty-two before I became a Christian and thirty-nine before I became Catholic and forty-nine before I became a Traditionalist? Why do my "comforting reasons" seem irrelevant to most people? I guess its a journey and I sometimes wonder why out of all the people I have known and respected as a Protestant and then in an interim as one considering Restoration movements, that other than family, I alone took this path. The evidence can't be enough alone.

 

3DOP      

 

Thanks for your explanation!  The bold and underlined part makes a lot of sense to me. I am not averse to tradition so long as it has it's roots in revelation.  Without revelation or the word of God at its root, tradition seems like it would be more of a stumbling block for me.  

 

It is interesting what you say about traditionalists vs innovators.  The way I see it, Christ demonstrated a perfect marriage between tradition and innovation as he established His Church.  As much as you take comfort in tradition (which I can respect), I take comfort in modern revelators (innovators) who continue to speak for God today as His purposes roll forth in a live and breathing way, without leaving tradition undone (in fact, restoring it to its purity). 

Edited April 2, 2014 by pogi

[3DOP]

Thanks pogi.

 

I saw your post on the other thread. Since you take an interest in this subject, you might enjoy perusing the pertinent passages of Irenaeus' writings to see how you understand them. You will want to read Book Three, Chapters 1-3 at least. They are fairly short and I think you might find them quite interesting. I think the link will take you to Book Three, Chapter 3, of his great work, Against Heresies.

 

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103303.htm

Edited April 2, 2014 by 3DOP

[mfbukowski]

Without those early Bishops, the world would never have heard of Christ.

There is no question they were doing the will of the Lord- the conversion of the Empire cemented the stories of Jesus into Western Civilization.

With all the frailties of communications in those days, it was a miracle in itself that the name of Jesus and the message of the atonement even made it to the 19th century, at which time the errors which had crept into the system were corrected by Joseph.

Indeed it was the hand of Providence that kept the message alive. I have no doubt of that whatsoever. I think Mormons do not appreciate the importance of the miracle that the history of Christ's message remained on the earth and was spread to all nations.

Without that, our missionaries would find no one who had ever even heard of Christ. Converting others would be nearly impossible.

We now have missions in areas of the world where people who have never even heard of Christ live, and conversion rates there are extremely low. I know one brother who's son is serving in a country where the people wear loin cloths and practiced cannibalism until a few years ago. Marriage does not exist, and the people worship tree and animal spirits.

Getting them from where they are to being "practicing Mormons" is, as you would expect, very very difficult

Edited April 3, 2014 by mfbukowski