/lit/ - Literature

>>19461118
Bringing up the church fathers without having read them is the worst thing a Protestant to do, because they bury all forms of Protestantism.

>>19371255
>anachronistically applying a modern political slogan to a valiant defender of orthodoxy
Basically the same as women comparing Trump to Voldemort. Are you unable to think outside of the context of what has happened within the last five years?
Of course, because "to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant".

>>19344155
>Just stop playing fucking games and agree on something dammit.

We all agree on pic related, or at least a billion of us do.

>It's either that or life is meaningless or subjective.

It would be a pity if you thought so, and lived the rest of your life that way.

Protestants claiming the early church is hilarious

>>19170022
Even a VERY simple text can be subject to MANY interpretations.*

If you're dealing with a complicated text, or multiple texts, the possibilities for interpretation are ENDLESS. Given this circumstance, each Protestant can work their way into some interpretation that makes sense for them.

Of course, the question is one of AUTHORITY. Who has the authority to interpret the scriptures? Well, the Church does, since "the church is the pillar and foundation of truth." 1 Timothy 3:15.

And what is the Church, pray tell? See pic related.


*E.g., "Fetch some soupmeat" ; see: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/72828643.pdf

>>19126200
1. Read this for starters:
https://www.catholic.com/tract/pillar-of-fire-pillar-of-truth

2. Read the Catechism of the Catholic Church

3. If you're interested in books that specifically refute Protestantism, read:

-Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism
-Francis de Sales, The Catholic Controversy (some 72,000 Protestants were converted by this book)*

4. Read Karl Adam, The Belief of Catholics

5. Pray. Ask God for the gift of faith.

6. If particular questions arise, make a post on /lit/ and ask for some good books or other reading materials.

7. Consider talking to a Catholic priest about being received into the Catholic Church.

*One of the most remarkable and well-documented events in Catholic history began when a young priest, St. Francis de Sales, volunteered to re-evangelize the Calvinists of the Chablais.

Finding his preaching forcefully rejected, St. Francis de Sales shrewdly switched tactics and began a written apologetics campaign, posting pamphlets on walls and slipping them beneath doors under the cover of night.

His defense of the Faith was so clear and thorough that at the end of four years nearly the entire population of 72,000 had returned to the Catholic Faith!

>>18968411
Anon, I come from a position and an experience much like what you sketch in the OP.

Pray. Ask God for light. Trust that God is good.

This is very important, and really the first step, before diving into the books. That said, my further remarks, step two as it were, are here: >>18968302

>>18955360

>>18936974
Good job in this thread, anon.

>>17531781
>In short, why must I have Judaism in order to have Christianity, and why must I accept Papism in order to file off the rougher edges of the Judaism?

The substance or at least one aspect of this objection seems to turn on what has been called "the scandal of particularity":

>Years after his 1893 dissertation, Blondel recalls how one of his fellow students put the question to him as to why anyone concerned with governing one’s life rationally for the good of human beings should show any interest in a contingency that occurred to one individual 1900 years previously in a shadowy corner of the Roman Empire.
https://johngbrungardt.com/2019/06/23/the-eucharistic-and-the-scandal-of-particularity/

>I didn't find the 1st Century Middle Eastern Carpenter, I found the Redeemer, the man in the Pieta draped over his mother's knee.

You found the God-Man, the eternal Son born in time, born of a woman, into a particular cultural context.

>>17531781
>Why should I countenance the keeping of slaves or the stoning of adulterers, or why should I countenance the divine interpretive authority of a priest in Rome, just because the people who touched on the divine idea of Jesus Christ first happened to lump that transcendent idea in with the rest of the baggage of their culture and religion.

The Jews did not just happen to discover a transcendent idea; it was revealed to them, gradually, over time, by God.

There is a book called The Meaning of Sacred Scripture by Louis Bouyer that contains a very profound exposition of the gradual revelation of God to Israel. Bouyer was a world-class theologian, and my intuition is that this book could help you resolve the dilemma you describe.

>why must I accept Papism in order to file off the rougher edges of the Judaism?

There is only one reason why you would do this: because the Catholic Church is the Church that Jesus Christ established when He walked the earth - a salvific instrument that is His chosen instrument to persist through time, His mystical body, although the members of that body are (strangely enough) sinners.

>"If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth."

Fortunately that dilemma is not imposed on the Christian, because Christ *is* the truth, indeed He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Do not neglect to pray that God would illuminate your mind, and lead you in the truth. And keep praying, in accord with Matthew 7:7-8, which was written in the imperative and might be more accurately translated: “Keep asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep seeking, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you.” Blessings, anon.

>>17475886
Saving the world for 2000 years, the one, the only, Catholic Church.

>>16952960
HIGHER TIER ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD:

https://carm.org/atheism/transcendental-argument

>>16833892
>What would be the point of praying for forgiveness if you are supposed to go to a priest?

John 20:22-23 speaks for itself. You might as well ask what would be the point of Jesus saying those words. The point is obvious: He invested the apostles with a power to forgive sins, which the early Church, following scripture, simply recognized.

Take it - it's free.

>>16651515
>I am currently studying all religions but I’m just stuck in this eternal dilemma.

The Catholic Church is the real deal, if anything is. Reflecting on the nature of the Church, Protestant and historian Thomas Maculay wrote:

>There is not and there never was on earth a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church.

>The history of that Church joins together two great ages of human civilization. No other institution is left standing, which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when cameleopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian Amphitheater.

>The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared to the line of Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back to an unbroken series from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extended till it is lost in the twilight of fable.

>The church saw the commencement of all governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all.

>She was great and respected before the Saxon set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshiped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.

The Catholic claim in brief: https://www.catholic.com/tract/pillar-of-fire-pillar-of-truth

>>16499232
Catholicism was the first Christian Church and the only one in the world for ~1500 years. The Didache and other sources all indicate the early Church had sacraments, a priesthood etc.

Tempus fugit.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Remember man that you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.

>>16477229
Catholics have one interpretation of the Bible mandated for all members of the Church. Their teaching is laid out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church which has remained largely unchanged. One Church, One teaching.

There are several hundred Protestant sects, all differing over which of their own interpretations is the correct one.