Orrin:

"Protestantism long ago served its purpose."

And just as I, with help from our friends here, was beginning to see new purpose and significance in my boring old Protestantism. Oh well, given my track record, that's probably an indication you could be right.

I would love to see an exchange between you and Jimgooding on this, with the rest of us holding our fire for a while. A short while.

The most important battlefield for the Church is the U.S. because of the viral power of its culture. Unfortunately, Rome has long ago abandoned America to the indifference of its liberal bishops, an exact mirror of marxist academia, and about half its own baby-killing laity. Most U.S. Catholic parishes are caskets of salvation.

The best thing for Catholic America would be an attempt by the bishops to suppress the charismatics in the Church with the same smug certitude it suppressed the details of its actively gay hierarchy. Charismatic Catholicism is the only alternative to Ted Kennedy Catholicism. The gay hierarchy absolutely hates the redneck charismatics.
PUH-RRAISE JEEE-SSSUZ-UH.

Peter:

Your Protestantism can take you straight to heaven and make you God's hands on earth in teh meantime. Just know that, as I heard a while back, Protestants are only playing with 10 cards out of a 52-card deck, but they're generally playing them really, really well. Catholics hold all 52 cards, that's why I became one, but damned if they aren't inept at using them. My experience of parish life and Catholic elementary schools has left me wondering whether I didn't join a museum.

I've been Catholic for more than four years now, so I guess I need to start owning some of this catechized sleep walking we call a Church.

The new head of the NCCB, the Bishop of Spokane, ordered his diocese to file bankruptcy in order to avoid paying out lawsuits in the clerical pedophilia scandal, thereby cheating the victims of that diocese's employers from getting their just due.

Interesting take on moral responsibility, eh?

What does morality have to do with tort claims?

Next to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, RC and Protestant flavors look almost indistinguishable.

Bart: We have had presentations on faulty logic before and really do not need more examples.

Alas, the subject haveing been changed, we might as well respond. Statutes of limitations are "technicalities," but they are related to very real considerations of justice. Imagine that you are sitting at your keyboard and a process-server comes to the door with papers informing you that you are being sued for something which allegedly happened at 7:48 A.M., on Jauuary 15, 1974.

Do you remember what happened on January 15, 1974. Do records exist that would help you.? Could you find witnesses to what happened, or to where you were, if you could remember where you were? Now it gets worse. Can you investigate the background, veracity, or even the presence of your accuser on January 15, 1974?

My point here is that fairness has already gone out of the window in the rush to feed from the Church's assets. What is left is the duty of stewardship: someone who knows Canon Law a litle better than I could refer us to specific provisions on this. The bishop is obligated to defend Church property, and legal hardball is the way it is done.

But I had really wanted to say something about Protestantism. Theologically, there is very little that separates the Roman Catholic Church from any denomination which may be fairly called "Bible-based." This should not come as a surprise, for, unlike the Book of Mormon and the Koran, both of which came directly from angels in caves, the Christian Bible is a compilation of those books purporting to be inspired which were selected and approved by--the Church.

On of the ways Christianity is being attacked now is by pretending that various heretical books are newly discovered Sacred Scripture. This will not fool our Protestant bretheren, as they know they must cleave to the Bible as it already has been defined by the Catholic Church. [Repl. Obj.: Please do not waste our time sputtering about the Septuagint Apocrypha: Cristology matters, not Purgatory.]

Now to the bottom line: the impediment to to reunification is the question of who shall get to shake the money tree. A couple of years ago two of the Lutheran sub-demoninations re-united, and the result was a vocational blood-bath. Just imagine how Protestant-Catholic reunification would shake out.

Bart: We have had presentations on faulty logic before and really do not need more examples.

Alas, the subject haveing been changed, we might as well respond. Statutes of limitations are "technicalities," but they are related to very real considerations of justice. Imagine that you are sitting at your keyboard and a process-server comes to the door with papers informing you that you are being sued for something which allegedly happened at 7:48 A.M., on Jauuary 15, 1974.

Do you remember what happened on January 15, 1974. Do records exist that would help you.? Could you find witnesses to what happened, or to where you were, if you could remember where you were? Now it gets worse. Can you investigate the background, veracity, or even the presence of your accuser on January 15, 1974?

My point here is that fairness has already gone out of the window in the rush to feed from the Church's assets. What is left is the duty of stewardship: someone who knows Canon Law a litle better than I could refer us to specific provisions on this. The bishop is obligated to defend Church property, and legal hardball is the way it is done.

But I had really wanted to say something about Protestantism. Theologically, there is very little that separates the Roman Catholic Church from any denomination which may be fairly called "Bible-based." This should not come as a surprise, for, unlike the Book of Mormon and the Koran, both of which came directly from angels in caves, the Christian Bible is a compilation of those books purporting to be inspired which were selected and approved by--the Church.

On of the ways Christianity is being attacked now is by pretending that various heretical books are newly discovered Sacred Scripture. This will not fool our Protestant bretheren, as they know they must cleave to the Bible as it already has been defined by the Catholic Church. [Repl. Obj.: Please do not waste our time sputtering about the Septuagint Apocrypha: Cristology matters, not Purgatory.]

Now to the bottom line: the impediment to to reunification is the question of who shall get to shake the money tree. A couple of years ago two of the Lutheran sub-demoninations re-united, and the result was a vocational blood-bath. Just imagine how Protestant-Catholic reunification would shake out.

"Catholics hold all 52 cards"

Actually I think they are holding a lot more than 52 but every time I see the Pope kissing the "Holy Koran" and read his '94 encyclical I have to wonder who it is that's dealing.

Lou,

So in other words, stonewalling the victims in the 'pursuit of the greater good' is OK then?

If the Catholic Church would at least have the decency to be honest and say that their employees behaved badly but the 'mission of the Church' is of such earth-shattering importance that those victims should be denied their day in court, that would be fine. The rest of us could sit back and laugh at them, treating the Catholic Church with the disdain it so richly deserves.

We could end the fiction that there is anything Protestants or Orthodox Christians or Jews or any other faith group should have any more to do with that cancer on the Tiber known as the Vatican than they currently have to do with any other form of diabolism.

It would really simplify matters.

Bart:

Yes, the institution is more important than the victims.

OJ,

That's pretty much the same way the communists look at things too.

Yes, that's how everyone looks at it. The point is the ends of the institution.

Unfortunately the ends hoped for by the Catholic Church is heaven on earth and the brotherhood of man. Ditto the Communists. No question about what draws Catholic revolutionaries to Marx. The problem arises when men try to make that heaven on earth a reality. The ends will justify the means for the global spiritual leader we believe will come. That's why the Protestants, at least some of us can never be brought into the fold.

There's a reason there are so many Christian denominations. That leader will never get us all under one big tent. You can call me paranoid but actually I'm just a literalist. The RC institution will stand not because of legal shenanigans by some bishop but because it's part of God's plan. It's up to the Church in Rome to decide for itself exactly what part it plays.

In 2005 what I see from my seat in the little fundamentalist peanut gallery makes my think I should be pretty happy with the "ten cards" or so I've been dealt.

NC3:

That's simply false. The great insight of the Church is that Man is incapable of creating Heaven.

OJ: Re the article, I think some sort of amnesty for Protestant spiritual emigrants might help reduce the rebel horde, justified with the plea that "we need you all" for a strengthening of the parts of the Church that have dropped out of favor with American Catholics: bible study, decent songs to sing, unashamed charismatic spirituality. In return, the prodigals get the full teachings of their faith, especially the real-deal Eucharist, and a worldwide bulwark against contraception, abortion and euthenasia for an expansion of family well-being from beginning to end. Better yet, there's no luxury tax to worry about; let's drop all the ecumenical pretense and sign them the hell up before they invent another 30,000 brands of Christianity to aid the Devil in confusion.

In turn the Church likely has to ditch celibacy.

OJ,

Undoubtedly, Arthur Andersen would have liked to have used the same defense. The jury would have laughed to hard however.

OJ,

Undoubtedly, Arthur Andersen would have liked to have used the same defense. The jury would have laughed too hard however.

OJ,

Undoubtedly, Arthur Andersen would have liked to have used the same defense. The jury would have laughed too hard however.

"That's simply false. The great insight of the Church is that Man is incapable of creating Heaven."

Sorry oj I should have placed "scare quotes" around the word heaven. RC as well as Protestant amillennialism teaches that the time will come when the entire earth is Christian and THEN Christ returns. That would be "heaven" of sorts but I'm not holding my breath. Oh,and if that's the great insight then it stands to reason amillennialism is an unworkable theory and unbiblical eschatology.

Bart:

Arthur Andersen was a business, not an institution.

NC3:

Note that Christ's return is required.

OJ: re celibacy, the Church already grandfathers-in married pastors from certain faiths; celibacy is not a problem here; a more active deaconate would obviate the modern rationalizations for it; if GBush was Pope, he'd git-r-done.

As Protestantism's inevitable decline into secular modernism proceeds apace, the fruit is ripe for the picking; ecumenism becomes now an obstacle to millions of Methodo-Presby-Episcopo's coming home to the Church as they realize they have no spiritual home, and with their return, perhaps saving the Church from its own mordant lethargy. In the language of the haughtily dead, it's a "win-win." If the Church can steal the always-underappreciated Baptists and Pentacoscals in the later rounds of this draft, by God even the deranged caliphate muslims would be trembling in their boots.

"NC3:

Note that Christ's return is required."

According to the amillennialist viewpoint Christ's return is not a precondition of this vast global turning to the faith. Just the opposite. And therein lies the problem as anyone would know who's tried to witness to a Jew or Muslim, or a Hindi or a Mormon, etc., etc.

OJ,

As is the Catholic Church. Aren't they still selling indulgences?

"If the Church can steal the always-underappreciated Baptists and Pentacoscals in the later rounds of this draft, by God even the deranged caliphate muslims would be trembling in their boots."

The Muslims are trembling now because of the Baptists, Pentecostals and other fundamentalist Christian denominations that make up the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. You seem to think numbers are going to make a difference; not so. What makes the difference is the power of our faith. If the Catholic Church in Rome had that power the Muslims would not be overrunning Europe and the Pope would not be kissing the Koran.

You're dreaming a nice Catholic dream but the Catholic Church is rotting from within and those potential converts you speak of are joining the Evangelical circle. I don't mean to be cruel or flippant but I don't think you appreciate the gulf between Rome and Evangelical Protestant faith and that's troubling since it's an indication that you don't really know what you converted from or converted to.

NC3:

Turning to the faith doesn't create Heaven.

NC3:

“To know history is to cease to be a Protestant.” -- John Henry Cardinal Newman

"That word [Jesus, the Word of God incarnate] above all earthly powers, no thanks to them [15th Century 'papists'] abideth; The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him who with us sideth; Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; the body they may kill, God's truth abideth still, His kingdom is forever. --Martin Luther

In my evangelical Protestant Christian opinion, Jesus would be as pleased with and affirming of the contemporary Roman Catholic church as he was of the Scribes and Pharisees 2,000 years ago.

OJ:
Faith might not be able to create Heaven, but it can move mountains, and the rubble from those mountains can make the rough places into a level plain. Faith in Jesus Christ is powerful stuff.

But only human. Heaven requires more than us.