How is magisterium different from Governing Body?????

by Terry 37 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  villabolo

  Agonus: "Yep. The only real difference between Benedict and Ted is that Ben won't shun you if you question him."

  Agonus, let me agonize over this point from the angle you indicated. Pope Benedict would have burned you at the stake a mere eight life spans ago (400 years). The Catholic Church in its current state is to weak to even excommunicate gross violators of its laws. This weakness on its part is not something to congratulate this institution for, due to the fact that it was earned by the blood of the Protestant revolution.

  villabolo
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  agonus

  villabolo, the RCC did away with shunning just like all the other Dark Ages practices (i.e. stake-burning) because even it is capable of reform for the better to adjust with changing times. You don't honestly believe that lack of organizationally-enforced shunning is a sign of weakness, do you? Unless your definition of "excommunication" differs from that practiced by the WT.
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  agonus

  Ther's a big difference between weakness and compassion, a lesson JWs always have to learn the hard way.
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  BurnTheShips

  This first half of my statement talked about the doing away of some of the very extensive and wide variety of documents that were considered Scripture (with a Capital S) to many Christian sects.

  Not by the end of the 4th century, they weren't. What non-canonical texts existed were mostly being used within orthodox Christianity. That's when the canon was defined (397).

  This weakness on its part is not something to congratulate this institution for, due to the fact that it was earned by the blood of the Protestant revolution.

  The Protestants of various stripes did quite a bit of burning and beheading as well, not that this justifies anything. There was more than a little religious totalitarianism in Europe during the period, and it made little difference whether you were living on Calvin's home ground, Felipe II's, or Henry VIII's.

  Excommunication isn't the same as shunning, by the way.

  Ther's a big difference between weakness and compassion, a lesson JWs always have to learn the hard way.

  Indeed.

  BTS
• 

  villabolo

  agonus:

  villabolo, the RCC did away with shunning just like all the other Dark Ages practices (i.e. stake-burning) because even it is capable of reform for the better to adjust with changing times.

  As I said, regarding what you euphemistically refer to as "changing times", the Catholic Church deserves no merit for it's reforms because the foundations of it were laid by the edge of the sword and the barrel of a musket. Also the Enlightenment did a lot to weaken the Catholic Church as well as fundamentalist Protestantism. So its reforms could be considered an act of submission after its Theocratic back had been broken a while before. Keep in mind that the Church MAINTAINS its authoritarian hierarchy, self congratulating doctrines concerning itself such as the Pope being the Vicar of Christ(!), infallibility of the Pope when speaking Ex Cathedra, etc.

  It is essentially an old serpent that has been defanged.

  You don't honestly believe that lack of organizationally-enforced shunning is a sign of weakness, do you? Unless your definition of "excommunication" differs from that practiced by the WT.

  No, except in the context of the Catholic Church THROUGHOUT ITS HISTORY, including its modern senescent history where it continues to sickenly congratulate the barbarism of its genocidal actions throughout the native populations of South America by having its Pope Benedict have the demonic gall to address himself to South Americans and say that they had been ready back then for conversion to Christianity. Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it even if they are too testosterone diminished in their current (last few hundred years) senescent stage to regress right away.

  villabolo
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  Mad Sweeney

  They also had this little thing called the Dark Ages where the rank and file weren't taught to read or allowed to own a Bible.
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  BurnTheShips

  Villa: Not to imply that growth is proof of exclusive truth, but currently, the "senescent", "defanged" Catholic Church is going through one of the greatest periods of growth in its long history. Whether you know it or not, you may have internalized a great deal of antiCatholic JW propaganda.

  BTS
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  BurnTheShips

  They also had this little thing called the Dark Ages where the rank and file weren't taught to read or allowed to own a Bible.

  The dark ages weren't quite so dark as is made out, and Catholic institutions were the only thing that preserved what knowledge and culture remained from classical civilization against incipient barbarism. Out of the Church grew institutions such as the University, which would pave the way for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. You have to understand that in the midst of the changes that followed the collapse of the Roman empire, migrations of peoples, foundings and overthrows of kingdoms, the Church was the only thing left standing through it all. Just about anything that the people of Europe did would have a context within Catholicism, and this includes bad things. Yes, institutionally the Church has been guilty of bad things, but 2000 years is a long time. It has also done many good things, and these don't often get recognized by one-dimensional bashers like what you seem to be.

  BTS
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  minimus

  What were the many good things? I don't want to be one sided.
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  BurnTheShips

  What were the many good things? I don't want to be one sided.

  I mentioned one above, the University, as an example.

  From a Libertarian website I frequent:

  http://www.lewrockwell.com/mcmaken/mcmaken107.html

  ....the increasingly broad consensus among historians that the image of the human race languishing in superstition and ignorance for a thousand years before Europe was suddenly and inexplicably thrust into the modern era is not only untrue, but contemptuously so. Nevertheless, popular representations of the medieval Church almost always feature an institution guided by irrationalism and hysterics, only to be reformed by later "enlightened" non-believers. They can get away with this, of course, because the public doesn’t know any better. It is indeed a shame that so little is known about the Catholic origins of modern science, or the role of the Scholastic philosophers in virtually every key element of sound economics, international law, and the universality of individual rights....

  In the Anglo world, more than a bit of the prejudice is fueled by vestiges of the "Black Legend", which in itself is also an overlapping prejudicial narrative against people of Hispanic origin like myself.

  BTS