Your continued posting here is proof.
LOL, no proof at all. Noted.
Sorry, never had any association with any "recently-invented, man-made non-Catholic sect". So try some other tactic, because tactics are all that you have.
Get lost Latin boy.
So, then, no actual proof whatsoever. That's what I thought.
Feel free, then, to actually disprove the content of the cited sources. No? Didn't think so.
Sure you have. That's where you derived your present assumptions, interpretations, and beliefs.
Do you have some sort of authority here on TOL that we should all know about? No? Didn't think so.
Because when I am praying with somebody I am not kneeling before them with my head bowed and my hands folded in prayer. Your analogy completely fails.
I already have which is why you are dancing on the head of a pin.
mainly because they would never see such a thing. I have never in any service seen anything resembling such a practice. They would see people with their bibles closed while the pastor leads the prayer.
Already addressed in my previous post.
Also already addressed in my previous post.
So, you're converting the Christians into Christians?
Seems that someone takes their posts here a bit too seriously. Why so serious?
Tell me, do you keep this saved in a file so that you can simply copy/paste it into every thread? This has nothing to do with anything I said. Non-sequitor.
Not an ad hominem, at all. That would require me to attack your credibility, which I did not. Merely observing that you are not here as a seeker, as your slogan would seem to indicate, but rather that you view yourself as a teacher.
Even if that were the case---and it's not, since most people who pray with someone bow their head and close their eyes, a clear posture of prayer---the other scenarios I mentioned apply at least as well as your wholly imaginary hypothetical. Try again.
You have actually proven exactly nothing, but have merely posted an entirely imaginary hypothetical scenario that you have yet to demonstrate actually exists in the real world.
It's entirely possible, and a scenario I witnessed many times as a Protestant. My question stands. What would you say to that person?
Really? Because in fourteen years as a Catholic, I have never actually seen anyone kneeling in prayer before a statue either, especially during the liturgy where it would have no place. No doubt some Catholics do so in other contexts, but I have never personally seen such a thing. Perhaps your "concern" here is just an exercise in creative imagination. In any event, you've been sufficiently answered regarding your desperate wholly-imaginary fabrication.
Okay. You take care now, and God bless. :up:
If that posture is before something/someone, it is a posture of worship. If that posture is next to someone then it is a posture of prayer. Do you really not see that difference? Do you honestly see no difference between a statue and a living person?
And yet cannot refute what I have said. Instead you have spent considerable time trying to make praying with somebody identical to kneeling in front of a statue identical acts. They aren't. You have spent time trying to say that its okay to pray before a statue of Mary because it only represents Mary. You have ignored the verse in scripture where God says do not kneel before anything man made that represents anything in heaven above or on Earth.
As I said, they would never witness it in my church. That is why I go to my church, it has solid theology based on entirely on God's Word. If such a person did come to me and ask about something they have seen in another church, I would sit down with a bible and start with Matthew 18:20 and go from there.
I have seen it in the foyer of many catholic churches from my childhood and to this day. I saw it a couple of years ago in the Cathedrals of Europe where the nooks of contained shrines to Mary and Holy Relics from others. More than once I have seen people kneeling before these things with heads bowed, rosaries clasped in their hands, heads bowed and eyes closed. What was in there mind? I have no way to know. Was what they were doing acceptable to God? I have to go with no.
Proof, please. (Sorry, the mere opinion of your preferred recently-invented, man-made non-Catholic sect just doesn't count.)
'fraid not. When I pray for/with someone, we often face one another with eyes closed, often clasping each other's hands.
Do you honestly see an essential difference between a person alive on Earth and a person alive in Heaven? Both are persons, are they not?
Your having posted nothing more than a wholly imaginary hypothetical that fails to reference the real world leaves nothing whatsoever to "refute." Try again.
"Identical" in the specific sense that both are examples of praying with real human beings. No one is praying TO a statue, so you can go ahead and abandon that glaring Straw Man Fallacy.
Rather, we have correctly and contextually interpreted the text. You mistake the opinions (interpretations) of your chosen man-made sect with "what the Bible teaches."
No, they would witness other things that---as apparently blank slates of absolute ignorance---they might very well misinterpret. According to your "logic," therefore, you need to immediately stop doing or saying ANYTHING in "church" that could possibly be misconstrued by adults who are apparently still somehow in a state of mental infancy. When, then, do you plan to cease virtually everything that you have up to this point done and said in your "church"?
It has an essentially man-made theology based on the assumptions and opinions of entirely non-authoritative laymen whose historically novel sect was invented by mere men more than eighteen centuries after the time of Christ.
You would begin by talking to them about ecclesiatical discipline? (That, after all, is what Mt. 18:20 is discussing, specifically the exercise of discipline by apostles/bishops of Christ's one historic and hierarchical Church.)
I don't doubt you on this. We have a few sacred statues (and other sacred objects) in my church, but I've never seen anyone kneeling before them.
I thought that Europe was so secularized by now that no one even went to church any more! :chuckle:
Of course you do. You could accurately learn what the Catholic Church actually teaches about such things. But you can't seem to be bothered with that.
This is your fundamental error, which has been fed to you by your preferred recently-invented, man-made non-Catholic sect, which you have uncritically swallowed, and have merely regurgitated here.
Rationalizing bad doctrine does not make for good doctrine.
Yes, a very large a s essential difference, they are no longer with us, they are in heave ( we hope). God tells us not to make statues to anything in heaven or on earth. God say no. God does say to pray for each other but never says to pray to each other.
interesting that you find scripture wholly imaginary.
All it takes is to how before it and you are in error.
No, you have taken it out of context and interpreted according to what you want it to mean to fit your wholly man made traditions.
Right back at you.
So? Referring to those who have died, Scripture states that "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." Those in heaven are more truly and fully alive than you or I.
Post #316.
Learn how to read. I said that it is your utterly fabricated hypothetical that is imaginary. And so it is. I said nothing whatsoever about "Scripture."
Post #316.
According to the wholly non-authoritative mere opinions of your preferred recently-invented, man-made non-Catholic sect, anyway. :yawn:
Again, every aspect of any one of which could just as easily be misinterpreted and misconstrued by an ignorant outsider as anything a Catholic might do. Try again.
If God "bans statues" PER SE, why then does God himself command the making of "graven images" for the purpose of worship and devotion in the Jewish Temple?
Already decisively answered in Post #316, your conditioned sectarian ostrich response notwithstanding.
To God, yes. To us, no. They are no longer with us. There is no verse in scripture that tells us to pray to the dead to ask them to pray to us. The verse actually says we are to pray for each other.
I accept your concession of the point.
Given that I simply quoted scripture, I find your characterization of scripture as "utterly fabricated hypothetical" disturbing.
I accept your concession of the point.
Again, I quoted scripture so yet again I find your characterizations of scripture disturbing and decidedly unchristian.
The RCC is no different in this regard other than that they have managed to institutionalize their misrepresentations and threaten anybody who disagrees with them with excommunication and the implication that excommunicated people go to hell.
Did God command Israel to bow before the serpent? No. Do you bow before a statue of Mary? If you answer yes you are doing exactly what God said not to do. No amount of rationalization nor justification can change that simple fact.
I accept your concession of the point.
As you are fond of saying, right back at you.Gaudium de veritate,
Cruciform
+T+
