/lit/ - Literature

>>17149011
Catholics AND Orthodox believe the Bible is the Word of God. If not infallible, than at least inerrant. The idea that they don't is Protestant tripe.

What Catholics and Orthodox DO believe is that the Church is the final arbiter of WHAT the Bible says. Both of the great Churches reject Luther's stupid "priesthood of all believers" nonsense, as well as his idea that everyone can interpret Scripture for themselves. Only the Church has the true, authoritative interpretation of what the Scriptures say.

And they are of course correct. Look at the mess that's come from everyone being able to interpret Scripture however they see fit.

>hurr demon

God is real and Christ is Risen and you need to deal with it.

Every epistle was written by Paul. That is the opinion of the Church and it is my opinion, too. Fuck Biblical "scholars."

>>16924293
The Church takes absolutely no shit from modern historians. The Church maintains its ancient premises. The Church teaches that Paul wrote ALL the epistles, and that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and that Matthew was the first Gospel written.

Why the fuck should the Church take modern Biblical historians seriously? They weren't there when the Bible was put together. The Church WAS. Who has the greater claim to knowledge here?

I'll ignore OP's big tiddy girl because she's not even that good. Too skinny, tits look unnatural on her.

And I'll answer his question seriously:

Read Pope Francis. The Catholic Church has always confounded the perennialist types. Evola, Guenon, etc. can't fucking handle the Church because the Church actually HAS been around for thousands of years, unlike all the things they claim to support. But rather than descending into freaky, obscure gnostic occult nonsense, the Church has reacted to the times as they have changed, never altering its core doctrines and dogmas but addressing the shifting of the ages, as they occur around the Church. The Church is the ultimate lens with which to view the changes of the modern world.

Read Pope Francis. Read Evangelii Gaudium. Read Laudato Si. Read Fratelli Tutti.

Actually, read Pope Benedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger, too. Read all the 20th and 21st Century documents of the Church.

The United States is basically a philosophical enemy of the Roman Catholic Church.

The entire core of the United States, embedded in the Constitution, HATES the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is literally why the separation of Church and State exists in the Constitution. The Founders wanted to deliberately avoid the situation that existed in much of Catholic Europe, where the Church had a direct say in the affairs of the State.

Over the decades the United States has been an enemy of the Catholic Church over and over again. The No Nothing Party and the Ku Klux Klan were both explicitly anti-Catholic organizations. Racism against the Irish, the Italian, and the German immigrants was overwhelmingly driven by hatred of Catholicism. The United States hated almost every Catholic candidate for president up to JFK. The United States dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the "Rome of the East," the most Catholic city in Japan. The United States murdered and killed numerous Catholics in South America in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, all under the guise of anti-communism. The United States was directly responsible for the martyrdom of Saint Oscar Romero.

So you might appreciate the extent to which Catholics have an axe to grind against the United States. That we'd love the idea of the United States getting violently raped and pillaged. That we'd love the idea of the United States being gutted and ruined and destroyed. In the name of God.

Death to America, in the name of Jesus Christ.

>>15825336
This literally happens all the fucking time with Francis. He isn't the absolute best Pope ever, I don't like some of the things he says and does, but nine times out of ten when he seems to say something concerning it's really just the media (which has a strong anti-Catholic bias) taking what he's said and twisting it entirely out of its original shape.

If anything, I actually think Francis has gotten slightly MORE trad as he's been Pope longer. Not in a big way, but more than he was back in 2015.

Why wouldn't I trust that my Church is actively guided, controlled, and directed by Jesus Himself from Heaven? Why wouldn't I assume that Christ, who is God, continues to bless the Church with His Spirit?

Sola Scriptura is the mark of someone who does not believe in the active power of God. The entire reason Christ founded the Church was to do His will, to "make disciples of all the nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." Why wouldn't the Church, therefore, continue to receive active guidance and strength from Christ Himself?

It feels like this attitude can be attributed to someone who does not really believe in God, who does not believe that God is real and alive and active in the universe.

>>15658000
You don't even believe in God, why the fuck should I have any consideration for what you have to say, atheist trash? Get out of here before I take a chef's knife and stab you to death for blasphemy. I know you're more than guilty of it you disgusting French faggot.

>>15647913
Catholics in general need to realize that the United States has actively attempted to subvert and undermine the Church. All the CIA meddling in South America was fueled, in part, by anti-Catholicism. Fuck, the CIA is partly responsible for promoting Evangelicals and Pentecostals down there. And that's not even getting into the rumors that the CIA has tried to infiltrate the clergy. The United States government is not the Church's friend, and American Catholics need to come to terms with that.

>>15635891
>>15635901
>shitton

Because you are spending time on 4chan and /christian/ and the weirder parts of Catholic Twitter. Go to the average Facebook Catholic group, like >>15635913 says, and you will see a shitton of really harmless Boomer Catholics sharing silly memes.

Fuck, a lot of so-called Trads don't even attend weekly Mass.

>>15296353
/pol/ hates a lot of particular things about America, but these are just superficial things. The real dissonance between Catholics and Americans is quite a bit deeper than surface stuff.

One of the biggest things is that the "American Way" consists in rebelling against authority that you disagree with. This is literally the foundational ethos of the United States, and the spirit of rebellion, of resistance to authority we find odious, has persisted in the heart of America ever since. We believe rightful authority derives from "the consent of the governed," and when this consent is removed, the rightful authority of a power or institution or ruler goes away.

But that's not Catholic at all. There is a saying in the Church: "Rome has spoken, the matter is settled." This means that when the Pope and the institutional Church has weighed in and decided a dispute, that assertion has to be accepted. You don't obey. You don't decide that Rome is wrong and try to overrule them. You bow your head and obey, and submit, because Rome's authority comes directly from God. It's rightful and is not to be questioned. You have to have faith that Rome is correct, that God is with Rome, and because God is with Rome, Rome will not be steered wrong.

It's this rebellion vs submission dichotomy that generates so much tension between the "American Way" and the "Catholic Way." Catholics just aren't rebels. Period. The most famous rebel in the Church's understanding of the universe is Satan. To glorify rebellion, in other words, is to have, essentially, a Satanic spirit. Yet this is what America does.

>>15247999
The only interpretation of the Bible that matters is the Church's interpretation of it. To believe otherwise is to be a Protestant.

>>14807358
>heretics from the West and the East

Something has to be done about this.

>>14800492
I would suggest you actually read the things John Paul, Benedict, and Francis have written, rather than going by what is said about them in the media and in popular culture.

>>14784411
Your Church is a graveyard that has spent the last 500 years rotting in Greece, the Balkans, and Russia. Bartholomew has no power and no moral authority, Kirill is a stooge for Putin, and you are in schism over Ukraine. You didn't even manage to not have a sex-abuse crisis. We'll vacuum you up at the Third Council of Nicaea five years from now. Never come at us over our problems because yours are worse, you're just better at hiding them because your liturgy is more elaborate and more ornate. We'll get you, the Copts, and probably the Anglicans too, and then, THEN we'll deal with Islam. All united, just like old times.

>Muslims AND Protestants saying stupid shit ITT

Not so surprising, really. Protestantism is just a Christianized version of Islam. Look at the Puritans, literally indistinguishable from sharia law Muslims.

Pope Francis' encyclicals and exhortations are pretty good, but I wouldn't expect a dumb Neetch poster on 4chan to have read any of them.

>>14732140
It was about trying to evangelize the Amazon Rain Forest, which is a remote part of the world that it's difficult for the Church to reach. It's about reaching un-Christianized populations and being better at ministering to those populations that have already converted, because priests and the Sacraments are hard to get that far into the forest.

Two of the ideas being discussed were very exciting for progressives/Modernists/heretics: female deacons and married priests. There were a ton of priests and bishops (most of them bishops) that heavily recommended relaxing celibacy rules on a conditional basis to serve the Amazon region. There was a worry by traditionalists that if this had been approved, it would have served as a Trojan Horse to sneak an end to celibacy into the entire worldwide population of the clergy. Ditto for female deacons, which almost everyone who's serious knows is just a Modernist plot to eventually encourage female priests.

In the end Francis fortunately rejected both suggestions, and they do not appear in the final exhortation. Yet more proof that Francis is really not as progressive as many of his so-called supporters want him to be.

Threads like this are why the Church never wanted the average person to read the Bible. Look at what you fuckers get up to when you're left to your own devices, it's a disaster.

>>14512594
This is probably correct.

Also, midwits are more likely to be atheists, while both the stupid and the smart are more likely to be Christians, and every good Christian knows the Jews are a scam of a religion and Jerusalem belongs to Christianity.

There is seriously no justification for a Jewish ethno-state in the Holy Land other than white guilt over the Holocaust. Especially not if you're a Christian.

>>14230971
Honest answer: we have to wipe the United States, as it currently exists, off the face of the Earth.

America has been a totemic counterbalance to the Church ever since its founding. America's great influences philosophically are Roman (pagan), Masonic, and congregationalist Protestant. All of these blended together to create a nation almost perfectly calibrated to oppose the Catholic Church. Even seemingly mundane aspects of the American way of life are anti-Catholic. The First Amendment, for example, with its separation of Church and State, is an overt denial of Catholic Rome's claim of universal authority in spiritual matters.

And America's influence, both philosophically and culturally, has been a hindrance to the Church from the beginning. It inspired the French Revolution, with all the damage that did to Catholicism in Europe. Its rise as a hegemon has led to actions taken under its influence that are openly anti-Catholic. America has conducted a reign of terror in Catholic South America, murdering priests and nuns, including martyring Saint Oscar Romero.

Perhaps more insidious than America's political influence is its cultural influence. The toxic mix of Hollywood and Madison Avenue has wormed its way into every corner of the world, promoting and celebrating a Godless, empty lifestyle of hedonism and consumption. American culture promotes abortion, birth control, gay marriage, divorce, and countless other overt sins, and it makes these celebrated by an increasing amount of people all around the world.

America has even influenced the Church directly. Think of how much of the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council was shaped by American priests and bishops. Think of the awful guitar music, the felt banners, all the other aspects of the "spirit of Vatican 2." The Church in America, as a result of American influence, acts like some kind of corporate body, with the bishops seeming more like branch managers of a franchise than actual shepherds of the People of God.

America IS the problem. It has always been the problem. The most pressing question for the Church to answer is The American Question. The problem of America must be solved for the Church to end the doldrums it currently faces worldwide. This doesn't meant that America has to somehow be violently destroyed. But America, as we know it, is going to have to change.

I am an intensely devout Catholic and all my opinions flow from my commitment to my religion. This is especially the case regarding the Jews.

On the one hand, Jews are the ones with whom God made His first covenant. The Lord was faithful to the Jews for so very long, even amid all their sins and transgressions, and from them were raised up so many amazing patriarchs, kings, and prophets. We still regard so many of the great champions of the Jews as saints. We call them Saint Abraham, King Saint David, Saint Ruth, and on and on.

At the same time, when push came to shove they rejected the Lord. Their Messiah came and they put Him to death on the cross. This may have been part of the Lord's plan from the beginning, but the guilt of the Jewish leaders, the High Priest and the Pharisees, cannot be overlooked. And their abandonment of the Apostles, of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, cannot be overlooked, either.

In the end, to be a Catholic is to subscribe to supersessionism. The New Covenant absorbs the Old. The Jews had their shot at the Kingdom of God and they pissed it away. Now there is the new Israel, the new Judaism: the Church. Catholics are the new Jews, the new Israelites. The Jews who reject the baptism of the Church ultimately condemn themselves, and when their Messiah comes again at the end of time, the judgement against them will be harsh.

>>14108419
The Church in general does not fit into any major political party, at least in the United States. It supports some very right-wing policies, like outlawing abortion and banning gay marriage. But it also supports some very left-wing policies, like universal health care and state-funded child support. The Church can't be put into a box, especially within the framework of American politics. This is why it has such a weird relationship with the United States, because in America politics and the running of the government is essentially our state religion.