Not shocked at all...
But oh how I do love the irony.
Catholics know more about WTS history than most JWs do!
by tornapart 24 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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still thinking
And if you try to show them the "truth" from their own literature, they label YOU an apostate.
The Catholic church uses the same label of apostate for people who dissent...they just don't use it so openly anymore.
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undercover
they got 1 thing wrong, it was't the return of jesus the jw's (bible students) were looking forward to in 1914, but the arrival of armageddon, jesus had already returned in the 1870s.
Considering how often the WTS changes beliefs and doctrines...and then tries to cover up that they changed anything, it's pretty amazing it's just one thing
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Chariklo
The Catholic church uses the same label of apostate for people who dissent...they just don't use it so openly anymore.
Not really, stillthinking. It's pretty well reserved for monks, nuns, priests and maybe theologians who completely give up on their vows.
In practice, it's hardly ever used. Even Archbishop Lefevre, although he was accused of schism and excommunicated, was never called an apostate, nor, I think, even a heretic. He was eventually reinstated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Lefebvre
It seems to me that in the WT anyone who disagrees even slightly on even a small point of teaching is at risk of being declared apostate, and also the term is used as one of general opprobrium by Jehovah's Witnesses. That usage is entirely absent in the Catholic Church, where it is in practice so obsolete as almost never to be used in modern times.
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still thinking
Since JW's do not have nuns, priests etc...the term is used more broadly because EVERYONE is expected to spread the word and preach...so when they leave the fold...they are treated in much the same way as if they were a nun or priest. However, if you check the information below you will see that apostasy for individuals is actually different to priests and nuns.
I know it is not widely used...but it still was used. The watchtower has not invented it. And basically, the catholic church didn't need to use it for people who didn't agree with them...they just killed, tortured and burnt alive any oposers. So much better than labelling people apostate, don't you think?
Personally, I think the label apostate is repulsive....but it is not unique to JW's.
this is from the Catholic encyclopedia...
Apostasy a fide, or perfidiæ
Perfidiæ is the complete and voluntaryabandonment of the Christian religion, whether the apostate embraces another religion such as Paganism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, etc., or merely makes profession of Naturalism, Rationalism, etc. The heretic differs from the apostate in that he only denies one or more of the doctrines of revealedreligion, whereas the apostate denies the religion itself, a sin which has always been looked upon as one of the most grievous. The "Shepherd" of Hermas, a work written in Rome in the middle of the second century, states positively that there is no forgiveness for those who have wilfully denied the Lord. [Similit. ix. 26, 5; Funk, Opera Patrum apostolicorum (Tübingen, 1887), I, 547]. Apostasy belonged, therefore, to the class of sins for which the Church imposed perpetual penance and excommunication without hope of pardon, leaving the forgiveness of the sin to God alone.
Today the temporal penalties formerly inflicted on apostates and heretics cannot be enforced, and have fallen into abeyance. The spiritualpenalties are the same as those which apply to heretics. In order, however, to incur these penalties, it is necessary, in accordance with the general principles of canon law, that the apostasy should be shown in some way. Apostates, with all who receive, protect, or befriend them, incur excommunication, reserved speciali modo to the Sovereign Pontiff (Constitution Apostolicæ Sedis, n° 1). They incur, moreover, the note of "infamy", at least when their apostasy is notorious, and are "irregular"; an infamy and an irregularity which extend to the son and the grandson of an apostate father, and to the son of an apostate mother, should the parents die without being reconciled to the Church
Apostasy ab ordine
This, according to the present discipline of the Church, is the abandonment of the clerical dress and state by clerics who have received major orders