Beware the “Soloists”

Msgr. Charles Pope hits the nail on the head once again . . . and with such an edifying and eloquent analogy! I must also mention that his play on words about "singing solo" is wonderful! This well organized, easy to read, article is a "saver" for sure. The bolded RED words are my emphasis. I have also included my crib notes or "take-aways" at the end of this post.
Beware the “Soloists”  A Concern for the Protestant “Solos”: Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia Msgr. Charles Pope • June 7, 2018
There are a lot of “solos” sung by our Protestant brethren: 
1) sola fide (saved by faith alone) 
2) sola gratis (grace alone 
3) sola Scriptura (Scripture alone is the rule of faith)
Generally, one ought to be leery of claims that things work “alone.” Typically, many things work together in harmony; things are interrelated. Very seldom is anyone or anything really “alone.”

The problem with “solos” emerges (it seems to me) in our mind, where it is possible to separate things out; but just because we can separate something out in our mind does not mean that we can do so in reality.

Consider, for a moment, a candle’s flame. In my mind, I can separate the heat of the flame from its light, but I could never put a knife into the flame and put the heat of the flame on one side of it and the light on the other. In reality, the heat and light are inseparable—so together as to be one.

I would like to argue that it is the same with things like faith and works, grace and transformation, Scripture and the Church. We can separate all these things out in our mind, but in reality, they are one. Attempting to separate them from what they belong to leads to grave distortions and to the thing in question no longer being what it is claimed to be. Rather, it becomes an abstraction that exists only on a blackboard or in the mind of a theologian.

Let’s look at the three main “solos” of Protestant theology. I am aware that there are non-Catholic readers of this blog, so please understand that my objections are made with respect. I am also aware that in a short blog I may oversimplify, and thus I welcome additions, clarifications, etc. in the comments section.

Solo 1: Faith alone (sola fide) – For 400 years, Catholics and Protestants have debated the question of faith and works. In this matter, we must each avoid caricaturing the other’s position. Catholics do not and never have taught that we are saved by works. For Heaven’s sake, we baptize infants! We fought off the Pelagians. But neither do Protestants mean by “faith” a purely intellectual acceptance of the existence of God, as many Catholics think that they do.

What concerns us here is the detachment of faith from works that the phrase “faith alone” implies. Let me ask, what is faith without works? Can you point to it? Is it visible? Introduce me to someone who has real faith but no works. I don’t think one can be found. About the only example I can think of is a baptized infant, but that’s a Catholic thing! Most Baptists and Evangelicals who sing the solos reject infant baptism. 

Hence it seems that faith alone is something of an abstraction. Faith is something that can only be separated from works in our minds. If faith is a transformative relationship with Jesus Christ, we cannot enter into that relationship while remaining unchanged. This change affects our behavior, our works. Even in the case of infants, it is possible to argue that they are changed and do have “works”; it’s just that they are not easily observed. 

Scripture affirms that faith is never alone, that such a concept is an abstraction.

Faith without works is dead (James 2:26). Faith without works is not faith at all because faith does not exist by itself; it is always present with and causes works through love.  

Galatians 5:6 says, For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love.Hence faith works not alone but through love.  

Further, as Paul states in 1 Corinthians 13:2, if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.Hence faith alone is the null set. True faith is never alone; it bears the fruit of love and the works of holiness. Faith ignites love and works through it. Beware of the solo “faith alone” and ask where faith, all by itself, can be found.

Solo 2: Grace alone (sola gratia) – By its very nature grace changes us. Again, show me grace apart from works. Grace without works is an abstraction. It cannot be found apart from its effects. In our mind it may exist as an idea, but in reality, grace is never alone.

Grace builds on nature and transforms it. It engages the person who responds to its urges and gifts. If grace is real, it will have its effects and cannot be found alone or apart from works. It cannot be found apart from a real flesh-and-blood human who is manifesting its effects.

Solo 3: Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) – Beware those who say, “sola Scriptura!” This is the claim that Scripture alone is the measure of faith and the sole authority for the Christian, that there is no need for a Church and no authority in the Church, that there is only authority in the Scripture.

There are several problems with this.

First, Scripture as we know it (with the full New Testament) was not fully assembled and agreed upon until the 4th century.

It was Catholic bishops, in union with the Pope, who made the decision as to which books belonged in the Bible. The early Christians could not possibly have lived by sola scriptura because the Scriptures were not even fully written in the earliest years. And although collected and largely completed in written form by 100 AD, the set of books and letters that actually made up the New Testament was not agreed upon until the 4th century.

Second, until recently most people could not read.

Given this, it seems strange that God would make, as the sole rule of faith, a book that people had to read on their own. Even today, large numbers of people in the world cannot read well. Hence, Scripture was not necessarily a read text, but rather one that most people heard and experienced in and with the Church through her preaching, liturgy, art, architecture, stained glass, passion plays, and so forth.

Third, and most important, if all you have is a book, then that book needs to be interpreted accurately.

Without a valid and recognized interpreter, the book can serve to divide more than to unite. Is this not the experience of Protestantism, which now has tens of thousands of denominations all claiming to read the same Bible but interpreting it in rather different manners?

The problem is, if no one is Pope then everyone is Pope! Protestant “soloists” claim that anyone, alone with a Bible and the Holy Spirit, can authentically interpret Scripture. Well then, why does the Holy Spirit tell some people that baptism is necessary for salvation and others that it is not necessary? Why does the Holy Spirit tell some that the Eucharist really is Christ’s Body and Blood and others that it is only a symbol? Why does the Holy Spirit say to some Protestants, “Once saved, always saved” and to others, “No”?

So, it seems clear that Scripture is not meant to be alone. Scripture itself says this in 2 Peter 3:16: 

 . . . our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, also wrote to you, Our Brother Paul speaking of these things [the Last things] as he does in all his letters. In them there are some things hard to understand that the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction, just as they do the other scriptures. 

Hence Scripture itself warns that it is quite possible to misinterpret Scripture.

Where is the truth to be found? The Scriptures once again answer this: you should know how to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Tim 3:15).

Hence Scripture is not to be read alone. It is a document of the Lord through the Church and must be read in the context of the Church and with the Church’s authoritative interpretation and Tradition. As this passage from Timothy says, the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth. The Bible is a Church book and thus is not meant to be read apart from the Church that received the authority to publish it from God Himself. Scripture is the most authoritative and precious document of the Church, but it emanates from the Church’s Tradition and must be understood in the light of it.

Thus, the problems of “singing solo” seem to boil down to the fact that if we separate what God has joined we end up with an abstraction, something that exists only in the mind but in reality, cannot be found alone.

Here is a brief video in which Fr. Robert Barron ponders the Protestant point of view that every baptized Christian has the right to authoritatively interpret the Word of God.

Some quick "take-aways" for me:

Attempting to separate them (the 'solos') from what they belong to leads to grave distortions and to the thing in question no longer being what it is claimed to be. Rather, it becomes an abstraction that exists only on a blackboard or in the mind of a theologian.

SOLA FIDE: faith alone is the null set 

SOLA GRATIA:  By its very nature grace changes us. Again, show me grace apart from works. Grace without works is an abstraction. It cannot be found apart from its effects. 

SOLA SCRIPTURA: It was Catholic bishops, in union with the Pope, who made the decision as to which books belonged in the Bible. The early Christians could not possibly have lived by sola scriptura because the Scriptures were not even fully written in the earliest years. 

Until recently most people could not read. Given this, it seems strange that God would make, as the sole rule of faith, a book that people had to read on their own. Even today, large numbers of people in the world cannot read well.  

If all you have is a book, then that book needs to be interpreted accurately. If no one is Pope then everyone is Pope! 

Scripture itself says that it is not meant to be alone. 2 Peter 3:16

You should know how to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Tim 3:15). Read it again . . . and what is the pillar and foundation of truth? The church!

Thus, the problems of “singing solo” seem to boil down to the fact that if we separate what God has joined we end up with an abstraction, something that exists only in the mind but in reality, cannot be found alone. 

http://blog.adw.org/2018/06/beware-soloists-concern-protestant-solos-sola-fide-sola-scriptura-sola-gratia/

I’m Not Being Fed (aka Do You Have The Blahs?)

 The impetus for today's post was this article that a protestant friend of mine shared. It reminded me (again) that we are so very blessed to have found the fullness of truth in our Holy Roman Catholic Church. We are so blessed to have the real presence of Jesus at every Mass and at Adoration -- body, blood, soul and divinity.
Here is the article (with my comments in red):

Do You Have The Blahs?   by Ray Stedman

In Mark 8:17, Jesus asked some questions that help combat the spiritual“blahs,”
(you know, when you have no interest in reading your Bible, talking with God, going to church, etc…)

“Do you not yet see or understand?”  Use your mind. Stop and think about where you are, what’s happening to you and why. Read what God’s word says about it. God gave us a mind. He wants us to use it and He’s given us His word to study and apply (. . . . with the essential guidance of our Magisterium -- because God did not leave us alone to interpret His Word. In John 10:11 Jesus tells us He is our Good Shepherd. He has taken the ultimate responsibility for our souls.  Then in John 14 Jesus tells us He is leaving. But He tells us He is sending the Holy Spirit to guide us.  Did He leave it to the conscience of the individual to discover truth or did he leave a quantifiable deposit of faith and give His authority to certain people to pass it on?   He established authority. The pillar of support and Truth is the Church.  (1st Timothy 3:15)

Matthew 16:13 --  "Who do people say that I am?"  This was asked BY JESUS waaaaay before splits of churches. The answers were diverse, and this was DURING Jesus' time. The answers they gave were: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Those 4 answers were wrong.  And this was DURING Jesus' time!! We need more than our own reflection. We need more than an individual relationship between us and Jesus. As Peter tells us in his Epistle, "No revelation (prophesy) is of a private interpretation."  2 Peter 1:20

Then Jesus asks His apostles, "Who do you say that I am?" Remember Peter's answer?

"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God!"

And what did Jesus do right after that?  Jesus established, as the head of His  Church,

Peter. Jesus gave Peter "keys to the kingdom of heaven." Jesus continued, " Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  There is a special anointing on the Vicar of Christ to guide us and direct us. 

But I digress. Here is the rest of the article.

“Do you have a hardened heart?” In other words, analyze the state of your heart. Is it dull and unresponsive to God and the things of God? If the heart does not respond to what the mind has read and understood, it’s because you didn’t believe it. You’ve mentally understood the truth, but you haven’t acted on it. The Gospel truth always moves us when we believe. It excites us and gives us joy. If you don’t experience that, it’s because your mind has grasped it, but your heart hasn’t. So what do you do then? Pray. Ask God to open the eyes of your heart to see the truth of the Gospel and your own need for it. If you want to know Him, He will respond.

“You have eyes, do you not see? You have ears, do you not hear?” Jesus said these words again and again to the people he taught, and each time He means the same thing. Do not just look at the events you are seeing and think that is all there is to it. It is a parable, a parallel to something deeper and more important, concerning your spirit. We need to see beyond the physical to the spiritual truths. In this part of Mark the people were looking for Jesus to give them food, He wanted them to see the deeper truth, their more demanding need for daily replenishment spiritually that only He, the Bread of Life, can give.  This part of the Gospel of Mark is the story of the loaves and the fishes.  The loaves and the fishes are a prefiguration of the Eucharist. When you leave the authority of the Catholic Church you run into many paths    Only 60 years after the protestant revolution there was a book published entitled, 200 interpretations of the words, "This is My Body."

As is evident here in this article, by Ray Stedman, one can see how the author just misses a crucial understanding of the miracle of The Eucharist. 

And finally, “Do you not remember when…”  Hasn't God taught you things in the past through your circumstances? Hasn't he led you through events which have made you understand something about your life? Do you think that the things happening to you right now, whoever and wherever you are, are just accidents? Or is God saying something to you? Do you not remember the times He said things like that in the past? Well, remember them now, and interpret these events now, and recognize that you are in the hands of a loving Father who has put you right where you are to teach you a very needed truth. Learn to lay hold of that truth, and rejoice!”

"Forgive us, Father, for the dullness of our hearts, for the way we reflect so frequently the attitude of the pagan worldlings around us, who see no further than the surface of events, and never think any deeper. Forgive us for living like animals, in this respect, and help us to remember that we are men and women, that we have a spirit as well as a body, and that it needs strengthening, needs upholding, and needs to be fed. Lord, help us to give ourselves every day, afresh and anew, to this One who is the bread sent down from heaven, the One who can strengthen us and keep us and establish us. We ask in his name, Amen."

When you google Mr. Stedman, you may find this blurb:
"[The Ray Stedman Library] helps you move beyond religion, rules and rituals to become intimately connected with Christ -- this is authentic Christianity!"

Frightening!


A much better response to "Do you Have the Blahs?" is this excellent Catholic audio!
http://www.catholicscomehome.org/lighthouse-popup.php?song=NotBeingFed

The source is Lighthouse Media

In a dynamic talk, Jeff Cavins explores some of the reasons why so many have left the Catholic Church for evangelical Christianity. He responds to the most commonly heard complaint of these former Catholics – that they simply were not being “fed” by their Church. As he presents the story of his own return to Catholicism, Cavins builds a case for the unique character of the Catholic Church as the church founded by Christ.

I am Pre-Denominational

When someone tells me they are non-denominational -- I tell them I am pre-denominational.
For those who don't get it: pre-denomination means "before the Protestant Reformation (read: Rebellion).

The Protestants gave birth to the every multiplying denominations. Before them there was the pre-denomination -- the Catholic Church.

 

Hat Tip to Steve Ray!

A Review of Reformation Sunday

A very good article for Catholics and Protestants alike: Methodist theologian Stanley Hauerwas on 'Reformation Day' by Stanley Hauerwas  Source back link.

Wittenberg Door

I must begin by telling you that I do not like to preach on Reformation Sunday. Actually I have to put it more strongly than that. I do not like Reformation Sunday, period. I do not understand why it is part of the church year. Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.

Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ‘Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema. If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.

For example, note what the Reformation has done for our reading texts like that which we hear from Luke this morning (Luke 18:9-14). We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God’s free grace. And therefore we are better than the Catholics because we know they are sinners. What an odd irony that the Reformation made such readings possible. As Protestants we now take pride in the acknowledgment of our sinfulness in order to distinguish ourselves from Catholics who allegedly believe in works-righteousness.

Unfortunately, the Catholics are right. Christian salvation consists in works. To be saved is to be made holy. To be saved requires our being made part of a people separated from the world so that we can be united in spite of — or perhaps better, because of — the world’s fragmentation and divisions. Unity, after all, is what God has given us through Christ’s death and resurrection. For in that death and resurrection we have been made part of God’s salvation for the world so that the world may know it has been freed from the powers that would compel us to kill one another in the name of false loyalties. All that is about the works necessary to save us.

For example, I often point out that at least Catholics have the magisterial office of the Bishop of Rome to remind them that disunity is a sin. You should not overlook the significance that in several important documents of late, John Paul II has confessed the Catholic sin for the Reformation. Where are the Protestants capable of doing likewise? We Protestants feel no sin for the disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to confess our sin for the continuing disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to do that because we have no experience of unity.

The magisterial office — we Protestants often forget — is not a matter of constraining or limiting diversity in the name of unity. The office of the Bishop of Rome is to ensure that when Christians move from Durham, North Carolina to Syracuse, New York, they have some confidence when they go to church that they will be worshiping the same God. Because Catholics have an office of unity, they do not need to restrain the gifts of the Spirit. As I oftentimes point out, it is extraordinary that Catholicism is able to keep the Irish and the Italians in the same church. What an achievement! Perhaps equally amazing is their ability to keep within the same church Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans.

I think Catholics are able to do that because they know that their unity does not depend upon everyone agreeing. Indeed, they can celebrate their disagreements because they understand that our unity is founded upon the cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that makes the Eucharist possible. They do not presume, therefore, that unity requires that we all read Scripture the same way.

This creates a quite different attitude among Catholics about their relation to Christian tradition and the wider world. Protestants look over to Christian tradition and say, ‘How much of this do we have to believe in order to remain identifiably Christian?’ That’s the reason why Protestants are always tempted to rationalism: we think that Christianity is to be identified with sets of beliefs more than with the unity of the Spirit occasioned through sacrament.

Moreover, once Christianity becomes reduced to a matter of belief, as it clearly has for Protestants, we cannot resist questions of whether those beliefs are as true or useful as other beliefs we also entertain. Once such questions are raised, it does not matter what the answer turns out in a given case. As James Edwards observes, “Once religious beliefs start to compete with other beliefs, then religious believers are — and will know themselves to be — mongerers of values. They too are denizens of the mall, selling and shopping and buying along with the rest of us.”

In contrast, Catholics do not begin with the question of “How much do we need to believe?” but with the attitude “Look at all the wonderful stuff we get to believe!” Isn’t it wonderful to know that Mary was immaculately conceived in order to be the faithful servant of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ! She therefore becomes the firstborn of God’s new creation, our mother, the first member of God’s new community we call church. Isn’t it wonderful that God continued to act in the world through the appearances of Mary at Guadalupe! Mary must know something because she seems to always appear to peasants and, in particular, to peasant women who have the ability to see her. Most of us would not have the ability to see Mary because we’d be far too embarrassed by our vision.

Therefore Catholics understand the church’s unity as grounded in reality more determinative than our good feelings for one another. The office of Rome matters. For at least that office is a judgment on the church for our disunity. Surely it is the clear indication of the sin of the Reformation that we Protestants have not been able to resist nationalistic identifications. So we become German Lutherans, American Lutherans, Norwegian Lutherans. You are Dutch Calvinist, American Presbyterians, Church of Scotland. I am an American Methodist, which has precious little to do with my sisters and brothers in English Methodism. And so we Protestant Christians go to war killing one another in the name of being American, German, Japanese, and so on.

At least it becomes the sin of Rome when Italian Catholics think they can kill Irish Catholics in the name of being Italian. Such divisions distort the unity of the Gospel found in the Eucharist and, thus, become judgments against the church of Rome. Of course, the Papacy has often been unfaithful and corrupt, but at least Catholics preserved an office God can use to remind us that we have been and may yet prove unfaithful. In contrast, Protestants don’t even know we’re being judged for our disunity.

I realize that this perspective on Reformation Sunday is not the usual perspective. The usual perspective is to tell us what a wonderful thing happened at the Reformation. The Reformation struck a blow for freedom. No longer would we be held in medieval captivity to law and arbitrary authority. The Reformation was the beginning of enlightenment, of progressive civilizations, of democracy, that have come to fruition in this wonderful country called America. What a destructive story.

You can tell the destructive character of that narrative by what it has done to the Jews. The way we Protestants read history, and in particular our Bible, has been nothing but disastrous for the Jews. For we turned the Jews into Catholics by suggesting that the Jews had sunk into legalistic and sacramental religion after the prophets and had therefore become moribund and dead. In order to make Jesus explicable (in order to make Jesus look like Luther — at least the Luther of our democratic projections), we had to make Judaism look like our characterization of Catholicism. Yet Jesus did not free us from Israel; rather, he engrafted us into the promise of Israel so that we might be a people called to the same holiness of the law.

I realize that the suggestion that salvation is to be part of a holy people constituted by the law seems to deny the Reformation principle of justification by faith through grace. I do not believe that to be the case, particularly as Calvin understood that Reformation theme. After all, Calvin (and Luther) assumed that justification by faith through grace is a claim about God’s presence in Jesus of Nazareth. So justification by faith through grace is not some general truth about our need for acceptance; but rather justification by faith through grace is a claim about the salvation wrought by God through Jesus to make us a holy people capable of remembering that God’s salvation comes through the Jews. When the church loses that memory, we lose the source of our unity. For unity is finally a matter of memory, of how we tell the story of the Reformation. How can we tell this story of the church truthfully as Protestants and Catholics so that we might look forward to being in union with one another and thus share a common story of our mutual failure?

We know, after all, that the prophecy of Joel has been fulfilled. The portents of heaven, the blood and fire, the darkness of the sun, the bloody moon have come to pass in the cross of our Savior Jesus Christ. Now all who call on that name will be saved. We believe that we who stand in the Reformation churches are survivors. But to survive we need to recover the unity that God has given us as survivors. So on this Reformation Sunday long for, pray for, our ability to remember the Reformation – not as a celebratory moment, not as a blow for freedom, but as the sin of the church. Pray for God to heal our disunity, not the disunity simply between Protestant and Catholic, but the disunity in our midst between classes, between races, between nations. Pray that on Reformation Sunday we may as tax collectors confess our sin and ask God to make us a new people joined together in one might prayer that the world may be saved from its divisions.

(Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School.)

 October 29, 1995

Anne Rice as an Example of Typical Spiritual Pride

Father Longenecker puts it this way,

"After she publicly announced her renunciation of the Christian religion I wrote her another email saying how sorry I was to hear of her decision and reminding her that not all Christians or Catholics were idiotic, fundamentalist, homophobic bigots. I encouraged her to re-consider and admitted that sticking with the church required huge amounts of humility, stamina and good humor. Anne fell into the trap of mistaking Catholics for Catholicism, and then ruled against Catholicism because of the Catholics. Good heavens, if we all judged Catholicism on the Catholics we'd all come unstuck!

The problem is that, for whatever reason, we feel that we can be the judge of the church and not the other way around. We want the church to live up to our expectations, when in fact, we should be asking how we can ever live up to the church's expectations.

Beneath this problem is good old fashioned spiritual pride. Anne spotted the hateful hypocrites, the lying loonies, the uncaring apologists and pompous prelates and thought she was better than them. What she (and all of us) need to do is see these folks and mutter in shame, "Geesh, they're awful, but they're my brothers and we're all in the same lifeboat, so we'd better pull together." Anne couldn't do that, and like so many of her sort, thought she rose above it all, only now to end up saying stuff that's just as judgmental and shallow and uncaring as the people she was blaming."

Carl Olson's commentary over at Ignatius Insight is also well stated:

"Rice has, in essence, taken up a sort of secularized, liberal Protestantism that attempts—almost Marcion-like—to extract a Jesus from the dust and difficulty and reality of history and turn him into a private guru who is "freed" from and separated from the humanity he embraced, the Church he founded, and the authority he granted to mere mortals. Rice claims her faith is in Christ, but it is a Christ made in her likeness and image: politically correct and socially trendy, anti-Church, disdainful of authority, with an open hostility toward traditional morality."

and

"Note that Rice never, as far as I've seen over the past five years, provided any reasoning or arguments for her stances on issues such as "same sex marriage," contraception, and women's ordination. She simply assumes her position is correct and she apparently believes that clichés and emotive sound bites are all that are needed to demonstrate the validity of her position. Meanwhile, the Church has formally issued all sorts of documents about those various matters and numerous Catholic authors—both at academic and popular levels—have written articles and books explaining and defending Church teaching on these and other issues. Yet, apparently, folks should simply accept by faith Rice's statements as infallible pronouncements of objective truth."

SOURCES:
http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2011/02/anne-rice-catholic-church-is-dishonorabledishonestan-immoral-church.html


http://gkupsidedown.blogspot.com/2011/02/anne-rice-not-so-nice.html

http://www.creativeminorityreport.com/2011/02/anne-rice-catholic-church-is-dinhonest.html

 

Catholic Same as Methodist?

Justification and the Reformation

The Council of Trent insisted that justification brought about a real transformation in the soul of the new and developing Christian.
The Council of Trent speaks of justification in the literal sense, a making just.
Luther, however, insisted that Paul’s Greek word for justification was drawn from the law courts (true enough) and thus can never lose its forensic dimension.
fo·ren·sic 1. pertaining to, connected with, or used in courts of law or public discussion and debate.
By that it meant that the most central meaning of justification is God’s acquittal of the sinner in spite of and still in view of the Christian’s status as mired in sin, the verdict notwithstanding. This is drawing on the obvious fact that Christians continue to sin.
Luther’s point can be easily satirized and misconstrued—and by Catholic polemicists* was—as if he were saying that behavior doesn’t matter, and that God was “letting us off the hook.”

A polemicist is a person who deals with the history or conduct of ecclesiastical disputation and controversy. Polemics is a branch of theology
ec·cle·si·as·ti·cal 1. of or pertaining to the church or the clergy; churchly; clerical; not secular.
Let's look at a modern analogy. Was Luther’s view of God like the California jury that acquitted O.J. Simpson of charges of murdering his wife even though he was obviously guilty?
OJ is now living the high life and playing golf in Florida! Is that really the kind of justice we want to ascribe to God? Such an analogy does not clearly reflect Luther’s position. He was more than willing to insist that a Christian’s justification must be reflected in the transformation of his behavior if a genuine faith were really the material cause of his justification.
VERY IMPORTANT: The Council of Trent was extremely nuanced in its decree on justification. The Council of Trent had Paul’s letters to consider, which could hardly be made to say the opposite of what they do say. And The Council of Trent also had the overpowering authority of St. Augustine on the matter that could not be denied or disputed.
Thus the path to a superficial works-righteousness was blocked from the outset.
Protestant have claimed that Catholics were & are taught that they can“earn” salvation by doing works of charity, going on pilgrimages, and the like. But if Catholics believed that there is no support in Trent’s carefully crafted decree.

Over at Pontifications Edward T. Oakes, S.J. says, "When the Western Church fissiparated in the sixteen century, the Reformers took a portion of the essential patrimony of the Church with them, and they thereby left both the Roman Church and themselves the poorer for it."
pat·ri·mo·ny
1. quality, characteristic, endowment of a church, that is inherited; heritage.
fissiparated (from the word) fissiparity 1. to break into parts; "the fissiparity of religious sects"
Wouldn't it be nice if Catholics would be able to show our Protestant brothers and sisters that, of course, we know that justification must be reflected in the transformation of behavior if a genuine faith were really the material cause of justification. We live that concept in our Mass and Sacraments and prayers. The reformation took the root of our understanding of justification with them when they fissiparated (isn't that a great word?).
But they forgot somethings . . . .

Justification doesn't begin and end at saying some words and asking Jesus to come into our hearts. Justification doesn't equal being "born again".
Catholics are "born again" at every Mass and through the Sacraments and in every little and big decision we make to follow God and draw close to Him.
I love perusing the pages on line of : Catholic Catechism
That is where I found this information on Justification. Go there -- You will find a wealth of well written information.

A re-post from March 30, 2007 
http://catholicnotebook.blogspot.com/2007/02/justification-and-reformation.html

Martin Luther's Belief in the Immaculate Conception of Mary

Here are some surprising words. It seems that Martin Luther, that once Augustinian priest turned Revolutionary, upheld belief in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception Think of that for a moment -- this was even before it was declared a dogmatic doctrine in 1854 by Pope Pius IX.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception holds that Mary was preserved from original sin at her conception and from all sin during her life - that she was conceived, lived, and died without any taint of sin.

The eminent Lutheran scholar Arthur Carl Piepkorn (1907-73) has also confirmed that Luther believed in the Immaculate Conception even as a Protestant. Here is Martin Luther in his own words:

"It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin" 

- Martin Luther's Sermon "On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God," 1527.

"She is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin—something exceedingly great. For God’s grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil. 

- Martin Luther's Little Prayer Book, 1522.

Both quotations derive from Luther's writings after his break from Rome.

Far be it from me to approve of Luther.
I only list these quotes to show how far Protestantism has come from it's quasi-Catholic origin. If only Lutherans would return to this single doctrine of their founder; how quickly our Lady would turn them into true Catholics!

Queen conceived without original sin, pray for us!


SOURCE:
Canterbury Tales
This post was written by Taylor Marshall of Canterbury Tales. 
Please visit Canterbury Tales  -- it is an amazing website!

No copyright infringement intended. All posts are fully cited for source and author. I have provided links back to the original source whenever possible. This information is for my personal, Faith Formation, Confirmation class, OCIC and homeschool referencing.
I am so very grateful to the authors, website and blog owners for sharing this information, commentary, and knowledge.

Do You Know Why You are Called a Protestant?

The word itself is a big clue. . . . Protestant. Sister Mary Martha explains this in one of her latest posts. I love her down to earth, "tell it like it is" style. She is loving and very easy to understand!! I have included much of her post here. To read the whole post go to her blog - Ask Sister Mary Martha. Her post covered "purgatory" to some extent, also.
But as to that question, "Do you know why you are called a Protestant?" .... this is how she explains it .
Here's what happened:
In the early 16th century the Catholic Church was rife with corruption. (Don't worry. We've straightened out the problems and the corrupt clergy that caused the problem are probably still in the lowest rungs of Purgatory...or worse...) The really big problem for a man named Martin Luther was the fact that the Church was selling indulgences.

Indulgences are prayers and penances that the Church has the authority to give to get people out of Purgatory early. They are like Purgatory parole. We don't have a problem with indulgences or the Church's ability to grant them. But selling them? That's bad.

We can all agree on that.

So Father Luther -- a Catholic priest-- had a legitimate beef. He tacked a list of grievances up on the church door about all the things he was mad about. He wasn't trying to quit the Church. That's how you called for a debate back then. He was Protesting.

But the Church got mad and booted him out all together. So he started the Lutheran Church, which is why he was called and you are called a Protestant. He was so mad at the Church and the clergy that he decided to just cut them out of the picture. He decided we didn't need the clergy to understand the New Testament and all the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. He cut out the "middle man".

Could Martin Luther have been wrong about not needing a road map through the Bible? Hmmmmm.....

Anyhow, ex-Father Luther was so mad about Purgatory and the indulgences, he decided there was no such place. I wish I could solve all my problems so easily. Car broken? I'll just stay home. Children fighting with each other? What children?

Call me crazy, I follow the Church that was founded by Jesus while he was alive on earth, not the church founded on the teachings of a 16th century priest, or the next group who just wanted to change of couple of things from what Luther thought, like Calvin, and the next group who just wanted to change a couple of things from what Calvin thought until there were literally thousands of factions. I also don't follow the guy who wanted to get divorced but the Church wouldn't let him so he started his own church which is curiously similar to the Catholic church. But that's just me (and a few million other people.)

re-post: Original post October 17, 2007
http://catholicnotebook.blogspot.com/2007/10/do-you-know-why-you-are-called.html

How Old Is Your Church?

If you are a Lutheran, your religion was founded by Martin Luther, an ex- monk of the Catholic Church, in the year 1517.

If you belong to the Church of England, your religion was founded by King Henry VIII in the year 1534 because the Pope would not grant him a divorce with the right to remarry.

If you are a Presbyterian, your religion was founded by John Knox in Scotland in the year 1560.

If you are a Protestant Episcopalian, your religion was an offshoot of the Church of England founded by Samuel Seabury in the American colonies in the 17th century.

If you are a Congregationalist, your religion was originated by Robert Brown in Holland in 1582.



If you are a Methodist, your religion was launched by John and Charles Wesley in England in 1744.

If you are a Unitarian, Theophilus Lindley founded your church in London in 1774.

If you are a Mormon (Latter Day Saints), Joseph Smith started your religion in Palmyra, N.Y., in 1829.

If you are a Baptist, you owe the tenets of your religion to John Smyth, who launched it in Amsterdam in 1605.



If you are of the Dutch Reformed church, you recognize Michaelis Jones as founder, because he originated your religion in New York in 1628.

If you worship with the Salvation Army, your sect began with William Booth in London in 1865.

If you are a Christian Scientist, you look to 1879 as the year in which your religion was born and to Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy as its founder.

If you belong to one of the religious organizations known as 'Church of the Nazarene," "Pentecostal Gospel." "Holiness Church," "Pilgrim Holiness Church," "Jehovah's Witnesses," your religion is one of the hundreds of new sects founded by men within the past century.

If you are Catholic, you know that your religion was founded in the year 33 by Jesus Christ the Son of God, and it is still the same Church.







http://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/teaching.htm

Why Evangelicals Are Coming Home

A quote and a couple of comments from Matthew Warner's article in the National Catholic Register, A Deeper Look at the Many Evangelicals Turning Catholic.


"In my own experience, I’ve seen that more people who convert to Catholicism do so on account of their reason. Whereas those that leave the Church do so based on some emotion or negative experience associated with the Church.
When I ask an evangelical why they left the Church. The answer is almost always an emotion. Something made them feel a certain way. Or they just didn’t like the way something was done in Catholicism. Or it didn’t suit their lifestyle. Or some other experience made them feel nice."

A comment by Jason V. on Thursday, Aug 5, 2010 12:01 PM (EST):

On a recent “Journey Home” with Marcus Grodi program (on EWTN), a guest made the following observation (which I paraphrase):
1) The Protestants converting to Catholicism tend to be people who understand theology, Church history, etc. quite well, and who are seeking to take their Christian faith to a deeper level.
2) Catholics that leave the Catholic Church tend too be ‘poorly catechized’ and never really understood well the deeper aspects (‘mysteries’) of the Catholic faith.
While there are always exceptions, 1 & 2 align with the point of this article, with my observations, and with my own “conversion” story. :)

A comment by  Helmsman on Thursday, Aug 5, 2010 12:47 PM (EST):

I am a convert to Catholicism as well.  The Bible brought me to the Catholic Church and the Liturgy is what keeps me there…Christ in both Word and Sacrament.  I thank the Holy Spirit for drawing me into something deeper than Praise and Worship bands and power sermons, which no longer was quenching my thirst.  The old question is do we bring the church into the world OR the world into the church?

The complete article follows (source back link at bottom):

A Deeper Look at the Many Evangelicals Turning Catholic

by Matthew Warner
Is there a growing trend of Evangelicals converting to Catholicism?  Many think so, including this recent article:

[There is a large] community of young believers whose frustration with the lack of authority, structure, and intellectualism in many evangelical churches is leading them in great numbers to the Roman Catholic Church. This trend of “Crossing the Tiber” (a phrase that also served as the title of Stephen K. Ray’s 1997 book on the phenomenon), has been growing steadily for decades, but with the help of a solid foundation of literature, exemplar converts from previous generations, burgeoning traditional and new media outlets, and the coming of age of Millennial evangelicals, it is seeing its pace quicken dramatically. [source]

The article gives the example of many such notable Evangelical converts from our generation, such as Scott Hahn, Marcus Grodi, Thomas Howard, Francis Beckwith and others. (It also mentions Patrick Madrid, but he is actually not a convert, from what I understand.)
The common threads that seem to be drawing many of these Evangelicals into the Catholic Church are its history, the Liturgy and its tradition of intellectualism.
So is this trend significant?  Or is it dwarfed by what seems to be many more Catholics who seem to lose their faith or become complacent with it?

According to a 2009 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, four people leave the Catholic Church for every one person that joins it. Keep in mind that this stat doesn’t count those born into Catholicism as “joining” it. However, it’s still a sad statistic. But we shouldn’t be misled by it.

There are also studies that show Catholicism has a higher rate of retention than all other religious groups. In other words, when people convert to Catholicism, they don’t do so because they didn’t like where they were and just wanted to try something new. Their conversion is deliberate and intentional and they generally stick with it. On the other hand, when people leave the Church, they generally drift around a bit from one denomination to another.  This says a lot. The Catholic convert is actually experiencing real, lasting conversion. Those leaving the Church seem to be lost and searching souls that most likely had no idea what they were leaving in the first place.

I’ve long noticed, as have many others, a kind of trend as well. It’s not so much from “Evangelicals” converting to Catholicism necessarily. It’s that of intellectuals converting to Catholicism. And that’s not to say these intellectuals were strictly intellectual. But I mean it to say that they took their reasons for believing very seriously.  We only have to look back a few generations to find Chesterton, Merton, Newman, etc. as part of the same trend.

In my own experience, I’ve seen that more people who convert to Catholicism do so on account of their reason. Whereas those that leave the Church do so based on some emotion or negative experience associated with the Church.

When I ask an evangelical why they left the Church. The answer is almost always an emotion. Something made them feel a certain way. Or they just didn’t like the way something was done in Catholicism. Or it didn’t suit their lifestyle. Or some other experience made them feel nice.
There is a long list of protestant (and other) leaders and scholars who have converted to Catholicism. The list for those going the other direction is devastatingly short.

This is why I think we are seeing, and will continue to see even more, protestant thinkers converting to Catholicism. Protestantism is running its course. All the protest is getting tired. And they are running out of places to find answers that don’t lead them deep into Church history, back to the ancient liturgy, and into the intellectual tradition that ultimately leads to one place: Rome.

Protestantism has drifted far enough away from orthodox Christianity that it can now look back at the trees and recognize the forest. And if you’re not entirely in the Catholic Church, that just might be the next best place to be…

“There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place; and I tried to trace such a journey in a story I once wrote. It is, however, a relief to turn from that topic to another story that I never wrote. Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written. It is only too probable that I shall never write it, so I will use it symbolically here; for it was a symbol of the same truth. I conceived it as a romance of those vast valleys with sloping sides, like those along which the ancient White Horses of Wessex are scrawled along the flanks of the hills. It concerned some boy whose farm or cottage stood on such a slope, and who went on his travels to find something, such as the effigy and grave of some giant; and when he was far enough from home he looked back and saw that his own farm and kitchen-garden, shining flat on the hill-side like the colours and quarterings of a shield, were but parts of some such gigantic figure, on which he had always lived, but which was too large and too close to be seen. That, I think, is a true picture of the progress of any really independent intelligence today; and that is the point of this book.
The point of this book, in other words, is that the next best thing to being really inside Christendom is to be really outside it. ” - G. K. Chesterton (Everlasting Man)

SOURCE: National Catholic Register

I Don't See No Presence

H/T to Patrick Madrid for this find!


Classic lines:
I don't see no presence!
Cha-ching! All the way to the bank!
You're a superstar!

Reformation Sunday ( Sermon by Protestant Stanley Hauerwas)

I, very certainly, do not fully endorse the theology of Stanley Hauerwas but I think (hope & pray) that the Holy Spirit is working on his full conversion and return home to Rome.
That being shared  . . . . What an awesome "sermon" to read preached by a Protestant.
Please note that bolding and paragraph breaks are my emphasis.
Soutenus

29 October 1995

by Stanley Hauerwas

Joel 2:23-32 – 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 – Luke 18:9-14

Wittenberg Door

I must begin by telling you that I do not like to preach on Reformation Sunday. Actually I have to put it more strongly than that. I do not like Reformation Sunday, period. I do not understand why it is part of the church year.

Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.

Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ‘Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema.

If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.

For example, note what the Reformation has done for our reading texts like that which we hear from Luke this morning. We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God’s free grace. And therefore we are better than the Catholics because we know they are sinners. What an odd irony that the Reformation made such readings possible. As Protestants we now take pride in the acknowledgment of our sinfulness in order to distinguish ourselves from Catholics who allegedly believe in works-righteousness.

Unfortunately, the Catholics are right. Christian salvation consists in works. To be saved is to be made holy. To be saved requires our being made part of a people separated from the world so that we can be united in spite of — or perhaps better, because of — the world’s fragmentation and divisions.

Unity, after all, is what God has given us through Christ’s death and resurrection. For in that death and resurrection we have been made part of God’s salvation for the world so that the world may know it has been freed from the powers that would compel us to kill one another in the name of false loyalties. All that is about the works necessary to save us.

For example, I often point out that at least Catholics have the magisterial office of the Bishop of Rome to remind them that disunity is a sin. You should not overlook the significance that in several important documents of late, John Paul II has confessed the Catholic sin for the Reformation. Where are the Protestants capable of doing likewise? We Protestants feel no sin for the disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to confess our sin for the continuing disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to do that because we have no experience of unity.

The magisterial office — we Protestants often forget — is not a matter of constraining or limiting diversity in the name of unity. The office of the Bishop of Rome is to ensure that when Christians move from Durham, North Carolina to Syracuse, New York, they have some confidence when they go to church that they will be worshiping the same God. Because Catholics have an office of unity, they do not need to restrain the gifts of the Spirit. As I oftentimes point out, it is extraordinary that Catholicism is able to keep the Irish and the Italians in the same church. What an achievement! Perhaps equally amazing is their ability to keep within the same church Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans.

I think Catholics are able to do that because they know that their unity does not depend upon everyone agreeing. Indeed, they can celebrate their disagreements because they understand that our unity is founded upon the cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that makes the Eucharist possible. They do not presume, therefore, that unity requires that we all read Scripture the same way.

This creates a quite different attitude among Catholics about their relation to Christian tradition and the wider world. Protestants look over to Christian tradition and say, ‘How much of this do we have to believe in order to remain identifiably Christian?’ That’s the reason why Protestants are always tempted to rationalism: we think that Christianity is to be identified with sets of beliefs more than with the unity of the Spirit occasioned through sacrament.

Moreover, once Christianity becomes reduced to a matter of belief, as it clearly has for Protestants, we cannot resist questions of whether those beliefs are as true or useful as other beliefs we also entertain. Once such questions are raised, it does not matter what the answer turns out in a given case.

As James Edwards observes, “Once religious beliefs start to compete with other beliefs, then religious believers are — and will know themselves to be — mongerers of values. They too are denizens of the mall, selling and shopping and buying along with the rest of us.”

In contrast, Catholics do not begin with the question of “How much do we need to believe?” but with the attitude “Look at all the wonderful stuff we get to believe!” Isn’t it wonderful to know that Mary was immaculately conceived in order to be the faithful servant of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ! She therefore becomes the firstborn of God’s new creation, our mother, the first member of God’s new community we call church. Isn’t it wonderful that God continued to act in the world through the appearances of Mary at Guadalupe! Mary must know something because she seems to always appear to peasants and, in particular, to peasant women who have the ability to see her. Most of us would not have the ability to see Mary because we’d be far too embarrassed by our vision.

Therefore Catholics understand the church’s unity as grounded in reality more determinative than our good feelings for one another. The office of Rome matters. For at least that office is a judgment on the church for our disunity. Surely it is the clear indication of the sin of the Reformation that we Protestants have not been able to resist nationalistic identifications. So we become German Lutherans, American Lutherans, Norwegian Lutherans. You are Dutch Calvinist, American Presbyterians, Church of Scotland. I am an American Methodist, which has precious little to do with my sisters and brothers in English Methodism. And so we Protestant Christians go to war killing one another in the name of being American, German, Japanese, and so on.

At least it becomes the sin of Rome when Italian Catholics think they can kill Irish Catholics in the name of being Italian. Such divisions distort the unity of the Gospel found in the Eucharist and, thus, become judgments against the church of Rome. Of course, the Papacy has often been unfaithful and corrupt, but at least Catholics preserved an office God can use to remind us that we have been and may yet prove unfaithful. In contrast, Protestants don’t even know we’re being judged for our disunity.

I realize that this perspective on Reformation Sunday is not the usual perspective. The usual perspective is to tell us what a wonderful thing happened at the Reformation. The Reformation struck a blow for freedom. No longer would we be held in medieval captivity to law and arbitrary authority. The Reformation was the beginning of enlightenment, of progressive civilizations, of democracy, that have come to fruition in this wonderful country called America. What a destructive story.

You can tell the destructive character of that narrative by what it has done to the Jews. The way we Protestants read history, and in particular our Bible, has been nothing but disastrous for the Jews. For we turned the Jews into Catholics by suggesting that the Jews had sunk into legalistic and sacramental religion after the prophets and had therefore become moribund and dead. In order to make Jesus explicable (in order to make Jesus look like Luther — at least the Luther of our democratic projections), we had to make Judaism look like our characterization of Catholicism. Yet Jesus did not free us from Israel; rather, he engrafted us into the promise of Israel so that we might be a people called to the same holiness of the law.

I realize that the suggestion that salvation is to be part of a holy people constituted by the law seems to deny the Reformation principle of justification by faith through grace. I do not believe that to be the case, particularly as Calvin understood that Reformation theme. After all, Calvin (and Luther) assumed that justification by faith through grace is a claim about God’s presence in Jesus of Nazareth. So justification by faith through grace is not some general truth about our need for acceptance; but rather justification by faith through grace is a claim about the salvation wrought by God through Jesus to make us a holy people capable of remembering that God’s salvation comes through the Jews. When the church loses that memory, we lose the source of our unity. For unity is finally a matter of memory, of how we tell the story of the Reformation. How can we tell this story of the church truthfully as Protestants and Catholics so that we might look forward to being in union with one another and thus share a common story of our mutual failure?

We know, after all, that the prophecy of Joel has been fulfilled. The portents of heaven, the blood and fire, the darkness of the sun, the bloody moon have come to pass in the cross of our Savior Jesus Christ. Now all who call on that name will be saved. We believe that we who stand in the Reformation churches are survivors. But to survive we need to recover the unity that God has given us as survivors. So on this Reformation Sunday long for, pray for, our ability to remember the Reformation – not as a celebratory moment, not as a blow for freedom, but as the sin of the church.

Pray for God to heal our disunity, not the disunity simply between Protestant and Catholic, but the disunity in our midst between classes, between races, between nations. Pray that on Reformation Sunday we may as tax collectors confess our sin and ask God to make us a new people joined together in one might prayer that the world may be saved from its divisions.

(Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School.)

Source: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/10/stanley-hauerwas-on-reformation-sunday/
H/T Journey to Rome  author, Kevin Branson says:

Stanley Hauer was is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University. He makes some good points in the sermon reprinted here (there, and everywhere). Hauerwas comes out of the gate admitting that he doesn’t like the fact that the Protestant celebration of the Reformation is a perpetual event, because it is a celebration of failure on a cosmic scale. I’m not endorsing Hauerwas as a theologian, but I do believe he honestly, and bravely, steps out from the crowd in this sermon and boldly goes where not many Protestants are willing, or able, to go.

These are not his words, but it occurs to me that celebrating the Reformation annually (and I used to do so in a big way) is like celebrating the day you divorced your wife each year when the date rolls around. And no matter how lousy you might believe your wife was, wouldn’t it be twisted to annually whoop it up and celebrate the tragic event! Very strange. What was I thinking as a Protestant when I annually celebrated schism in the Body of Christ? Sometimes we have the opportunity to look back at ourselves and just shake our heads at our thoughtlessness. Thank you Lord!

What is so gloriously wonderful about division in the body of Christ? Really! Oh yeah, now I remember: Doctrinal purity (according to your own interpretation or that of your pet theologian) trumps Christian unity. Sorry, I forgot.