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| Heresy | |
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| Topic Started: Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 13:08 (158 Views) | |
| Mairtin | Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 13:08 Post #1 |
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As mentioned in another thread, I've recently been reading Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth by Alister McGrath - he's a Protestant theologian, who I regard as one of the best Christian writers around and I have found nothing in his works that is in any way offensive or contradictory to Catholicism. I found the book fascinating and it brought home to me how 'heresy' is one of those words that we bandy around without ever thinking about what it really means. I was trying to find time to write a review of the book but I came upon this review in Amazon - I hope nobody minds me taking the lazy route of quoting somebody else's review but it almost exactly sums up my own feelings about the book.
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| Angus Toanimo | Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 13:19 Post #2 |
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"The truth, McGrath points out, is far different. First of all, no Christian group of the first several centuries of the Church could be said to have any form of power, coercive or otherwise. It was simply beyond possibility for one Christian church to force its views upon another." I wonder how McGrath works this out, since before the Reformation the only "Christian group" was Catholicism (Orthodox aside)? We Catholics should not read any works from Protestant theologians, even if what you're reading sounds kosher. It should be remembered that Protestantism is heretical, and its theologians heretics. |
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| Gerard | Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 13:49 Post #3 |
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Looks like you need to read the book Patrick. Groups of christians with heretical doctrines have been around as long as Christianity has been around. The first was "the circumcision party". My reading is about 50/50. I think it essential that mature, intelligent, educated catholics read protestant writers. they have some good ideas - like saying Mass in English (beat us by about 400 years or so), translating the Bible into English (and actually reading it). Looks like a good book Mairtin. Gerry |
| "The institutional and charismatic aspects are quasi coessential to the Church's constitution" (Pope John Paul II, 1998). | |
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| Mairtin | Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 13:56 Post #4 |
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Read again what he was saying, Patrick. He's responding to the claims by people like Dan Browne and dismissing them as nonsense. Also, Christianity was actually quite fragmented in physical and logistical terms in those days. The points that McGrath makes are:
Speak for yourself, Patrick, your comments are charmingly medieval though your concept of heresy suggest you might actually gain something from reading that book! As it happens, I have no fear of any weakness in my Faith that might be revealed by reading a Protestant viewpoint. It also seems that I don't really have a lot of choice as our own church seems totally incapable of producing writers or orators of the calibre of people like Alister McGath or John Polkinghorne with the ability to tackle the sheer nonsense that gets promulgated by people like Dan Browne and Richard Dawkins. |
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| Rose of York | Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 14:12 Post #5 |
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Heresy is the refusal to believe that which the Church proclaims true, and one has difficulty in believing to be true. |
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Keep the Faith! | |
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| Clare | Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 14:21 Post #6 |
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Putting the "Fun Dame" into Fundamentalist
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I'm very reluctant to bandy around the word heresy, because I know it means something specific and is over-used when it doesn't strictly apply. I only use it when I'm sure something is a heresy. I tend to use the word heterodox. |
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S.A.G. Motes 'n' Beams blog Join in the Fun Trivia Quiz! | |
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| Anne-Marie | Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 14:38 Post #7 |
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I think one needs a little caution in 'dismissing' something, just because the Church tells us to. In 1950, an English Catholic priest was required to say Mass in Latin, with rare exceptions that had to be the Tridentine Mass - and the priest who had other ideas about saying Mass would soon be unfrocked if he persisted. In 1970, an English Catholic priest was required to say Mass in English, and in the Novus Ordo form - and the priest who had other ideas about saying a Latin Tridentine Mass would soon be unfrocked if he persisted. The Council of Trent (not just the pope of the day, but the 'Fathers' of the Church at that time) laid down the format of Mass 'for all time'. And following (if not as decreed by) Vatican 2, all that was reversed. Rightly or wrongly, the Church changes... so the issue of what is or is not set in stone for all time (or not as the case may be!) and for what a priest can be proscribed is actually a whole lot more fluid than those currently wielding power might like you to think. What a pope or a Council sees fit to decry and for which a person may be excommunicated (banned from Heaven), may later be reversed by another pope or Council - as happened with the de-excommunications by Latin and Orthodox popes on each other: what popes see fit to ban from Heaven is not necessarily what God will take any notice of by keeping them out! And that instantly gives rise to the issue of just what power over God popes and/or Councils actually have to bind God. Which necessarily leads on to the uncomfortable (for us all) question of what really is, or is not, heretical.... I did not create this situation: the one, true Church has managed that all on its own. And (for the record as a Catholic) I, for one, have no idea how to 'square that circle'. Edited by Anne-Marie, Wednesday, 25. August 2010, 14:44.
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Anne-Marie FIAT VOLUNTAS DEI | |
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| tomais | Friday, 27. August 2010, 19:12 Post #8 |
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The One True Church as described and as it was and always has been a figment of generations of desperate imaginations. A world,( and that word world is questionable too),flooded with " Chinese Whispers". The much later came historical archiologists et al,with the so called tools for DNA identification. Belief is and always will be in the individuals head; and in there? What mechanisms ??? |
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