Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Who Was Pope John XXIII?

Catechism 101. The Church is comprised of all Catholics living and dead in unity with Christ. The pope is also called "The Vicar of Christ" meaning basically he's the top guy in the chain of command of the Church on earth. The pope's word is considered infallible only when he declares it so which is rarely. Reserved for essential (absolute) theological truths after much, much debate and prayer.

By enlightenment I mean one sees the "light" or the truth. After all Jesus (God) is suppose to be the "light" of the world. The "light" is truth that all of us seek in our own way.

That's true that one can belong to a Church and still be a Christian but I have found in any religion that peer pressure tends to make one conform to the Church. Hence, as a Pagan I march to the tune of my own drummer no matter how far way or measured the beat maybe.

Yes but it helps, a lot. It's easy enough to talk yourself into falsehoods even with a solid theology to serve as a framework around which to build your thoughts. Just recently talked with clergy to make sure my thinking hadn't gone astray; hadn't missed something or fallen into one of the many philosophical pitfalls.

Yup I know all that it was beat into my head in Catholic school. The Church is still a government and state and like our secular government and state the Church is whatever the ruling elite say it is.

What makes you think his thinking hasn't gone astray?

The Christian mystic like the Zen Buddhist doesn't rely on others to tell him what to think. The Church Christian on the other hand, like the Buddhist does rely on others to tell him what to think.

Maybe 1,000 years or so ago when there were divine right kings. Pretty much where Islam is stuck. Now rather than a government/state or political force the Church is better characterized as the world's oldest and largest bureaucracy. With all the problems a bureaucracy brings.

I don't know if his thinking has gone astray or not. Debate and logical thought - from heat comes light. If Fr. Jerry, and he's studied philosophy and theology to a much greater depth than I, sees a problem with my philosophical argument he will propose an alternative. I'll consider it and correct my argument or propose a counter to his. I will accept no other's world view on its face. That is not understanding (enlightenment).

I have belonged to several churches in my life bot do not belong to any now. When I did belong it was because my personal beliefs aligned with theirs. But, I walked to the drum of my personal beliefs according to the leading of the Holey Spirit. Peer pressure does not effect my walk. There are many frustrated pastors who can attest to this.

I was wondering why this thread?
Didn't take long to find...From Wikipedia:
One of the first acts of Pope John XXIII, in 1960, was to eliminate the description of Jews as perfidius (Latin for "perfidious" or "faithless") in the prayer for the conversion of the Jews in the Good Friday liturgy.
He interrupted the first Good Friday liturgy in his pontificate to address this issue when he first heard a celebrant refer to the Jews with that word.
He also made a confession for the Church of the sin of anti-semitism through the centuries.
While Vatican II was being held, John XXIII tasked Cardinal Augustin Bea with the creation of several important documents that pertained to reconciliation with Jewish people.
[...]
In 1965, the Catholic Herald newspaper quoted Pope John XXIII as saying:
We are conscious today that many, many centuries of blindness have cloaked our eyes so that we can no longer see the beauty of Thy chosen people nor recognize in their faces the features of our privileged brethren.
We realize that the mark of Cain stands upon our foreheads. Across the centuries our brother Abel has lain in blood which we drew, or shed tears we caused by forgetting Thy love.

Forgive us for the curse we falsely attached to their name as Jews. Forgive us for crucifying Thee a second time in their flesh. For we know not what we did.

But never a doozey? How about this one?


Quite a lot is wrong with that. First, Christianity was not "organized" in it's early days. It was, as New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce described in the title of one of his books, "A Spreading Flame." It was expanding too fast to be organized. The apostles, notably Paul and John, were clearly standing against Gnosticism in their writings, but that's because Gnosticism was the first threat to the gospel message Peter preached at Pentecost. Keep in mind that when the thousands of new converts returned home after gathering in Jerusalem 50 days after Jesus' resurrection, no hierarchy was controlling the message they took back home. So you cannot show any kind of organization of "ruling hierarchy" in the first generation of Christians.

Your doozey of a mistake continues in how you identify what you call the other "camp" in the early church. To repeat your words:

You clearly do not understand Christianity because early Christians were not "mystics." Mysticism is by definition has "ineffable" truths -- views which cannot be expressed but must be directly experienced and individualized so much that they cannot be explained to another.

To the contrary, the New Testament is not a mystical document and does not teach mysticism. The foundational truths it teaches are that Jesus was God, lived in the flesh, died a real death, and thus identified with us in every way except he was without sin. These are certainly not mystical teachings. Besides the inaccuracies in your description, you have left out those who believed salvation comes to those who accept Jesus guiltless death as God's substitute for their own guilt, and his resurrection as the vindication of who he really was. No New Testament writer would consider those to be mystical truths.

The bottom line is that there is not a word in the New Testament about salvation through some kind of hierarchy. It teaches that we access God through Jesus, our prophet, priest and king. Nor is there a word in the New Testament about some kind of mystical salvation. It does not come through some sort of personal "enlightenment," but it comes through Jesus' death alone. That is why the Cross is critical to understanding Christianity. The Cross is a footnote (if even that) in both "camps" you talk about, the "hierarchy" and the "mystics."

Steve.

Reinforcing that "mysticism" is not a New Testament teaching...

You'd have to agree then that, since New Testament Christians found the writings of Paul, Peter, James, John and others to be important and relied on them for clarity of understanding, these Christians were far from being mystics.

Steve.

The Church is still a state with a government that has a lot of bureaucracies just like our own secular state and government.

You cannot have an organized religion without some type of governing body and bureaucracy. What makes Catholicism different is that it is a religious state modeled on the ancient Roman Empire. The government and bureaucracy is the same as the Roman Empire which is not surprising when you consider the history of the Church. The Vatican is a nation state.

Never has, never will.

Ed

Well it sounds like you have a pretty good father type there.

Enlightenment is not understanding as such it's knowing, intuition. Enlightenment is knowing the course of action you are taking is the right one even though you can't explain that course of action to anyone.

You know that fallowing the spiritual path of Christianity and Jesus is the right path for you, the light, even though you can't explain to anyone.

Just as I know following the spiritual path of Pagan Deism (the Divine Feminine Principle, Goddess) is the right path for me, the light, even though I can't explain it to anyone.

I don't doubt that the same here.

The Vatican as a nation-state? As a matter of protocol, sure. No standing army unless you count a company or two of Swiss Guards, no political agenda, no influence outside it's 110 acres except regarding morality. And if people should reject statements on morality no repercussions except that they get prayed for. Just like Caesar's empire.

I would say that you cannot have an organized religion without some type of structure, not particularly what we might call a government. (See Islam for that.)

And ex cathedra declarations are strictly for the purpose of confirming what has always and everywhere been believed by the Church, not for inventing new teachings.

Most are, a lot of study of Philosophy and Theology. If they spoke academically they'd loose most parishioners attention instantly.


Well I could, but it would take a long time and a solid background in Philosophy. There are others who are very good at explaining it from a more every day point of view. That is a very important part of Church ministry particularly since Pope John XXIII, to bring it back to the title of the thread.

Where do I start.

It's true in the very early years probably the first thirty or so the religion wasn't organized but it didn't take long to start organizing especially once the Roman bureaucrats joined the Church and once Constantine made Christianity the official state religion it was all over but the shouting.

Remember, the Old Testament was written in only the first seventy years or so and isn't the complete history of the Church if it's history at all of the Church.

As to the second part I'm dead right and you prove my point. Of course orthodox Christianity is not mysticism at least for the rank and file. The books that were accepted into the New Testament were the books that would provide for a ruling hierarchy. The ruling hierarchy needs ignorance in order to survive.

Read my tag line it says it all: "Self-reliance, free thinking, and wealth is anathema to the power of the state (secular) and the Church (religious state)."

The last thing the Church (religious state) needs or wants is a bunch of self-reliant, free thinking, and wealthy mystics running around. Look what happened to the Cathars.

Not as a matter of protocol. Mussolini made the Vatican a nation state. One doesn't need an army to be a nation state. Europe has a number of nation states that do not have an army.