What's stopping you?

One question all Protestants need to ask themselves is what is stopping them or any other Protestant they know from going off and independently starting their own denomination. Most Protestants simply don't think about it, but every Protestant who has gone off and started his own church obviously has pondered this question and recognized their 'right' to do this. Ultimately, it reveals a fatal flaw in their system, and that flaw is that ultimately nobody is subject to anyone else. In fact, a well-informed Calvinist I spoke to recently came right out and said he doesn't submit to anyone but Scripture. But how is another Protestant going to stop him from believing this? I don't see a principled way out of this dilemma. And how can a Protestant truly accept texts like Acts 16:4 and Hebrews 13:17, along with the Pastoral Epistles, I truly don't know. I don't think they can. (So much for Protestantism being Biblical.)

This is one of those issues that the more informed Protestants like to keep hushed because it would completely expose the absurdity of their system. A lot of them know that they cannot challenge the 'pastorship' of even their most bitter enemies, because they know what would happen to their own claims to authority. And so they parade around as if their most bitter enemy with even less 'credentials' than themself is still entitled to be regarded as a pastor. When I've confronted Protestants on this issue, they'll often try to get around it by claiming their pastor was ordained by some board of elders or at a Protestant seminary, as if this sufficiently answered the question. But all they're doing is taking the question one step back to who authorized the board of elders or who authorized the seminary. Ultimately, it will always come down to a group of self-appointed pastors who made themselves into a board of elders or who founded the seminary, and acted as if their self-appointed authority was true authority. It's no different than a random dude starting his own mega church. It happens all the time. But the Catholic sees right through all this. The Catholic sees that this is one of the biggest hoaxes foisted upon the world.

In the end, this Protestant mindset ultimately says the visible Church isn't held together by anything concrete, since a person can break off into schism or heresy and be just as much part of the visible Church as anyone else. With this moral, doctrinal, and ecclesial relativism in full swing, the "visible Church" thus goes from something concrete to something abstract, and thus a self-refuting concept (since an abstract thing cannot be visible). And by this point you can realize that just thinking about such a world-wide hoax like this is exhausting. No wonder our society is so much in shambles when this kind of "logic" is running rampant.

St Cyril of Jerusalem gives an example of Tradition (Were the Early Church Fathers Protestant?)

Often times Protestants ask Catholics to "define Tradition," expecting to find some long drawn out list of teachings that weren't written down in Scripture. The problem is, that's not how Tradition is understood. Rather, a better understanding of Tradition is the Church's Liturgical life, seeing the oral tradition expressed in ancient prayers of the Mass. A good example of this can be seen in St Cyril of Jerusalem's Catechetical Lectures. 

Is there a link between abortion and Calvinism? (More Problems with Penal Substitution)

A famous politician made some ghastly remarks some years back when he spoke of the need for easy access to abortion since he wouldn't want to "punish his daughter with a baby" if she accidentally got pregnant. I was reminded of those remarks as I was pondering over a passage in Leviticus which spoke of the legal requirement for a woman who had recently given birth to offer a sacrifice to God. Since Protestants (particularly Calvinists) understand the Biblical sacrificial system to be a matter of transferring punishment from the sinner onto an innocent animal, this came off as suggesting that having a baby automatically merited a punishment (worthy of death, in fact) that had to be atoned for. 

The passage I had in mind was Leviticus 12:

2 If a woman conceives and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days. As at the time of her menstruation, she shall be unclean. ... 6 And when the days of her purifying are completed, whether for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting a lamb a year old for a burnt offering, and a pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering, 7 and he shall offer it before the Lord and make atonement for her. Then she shall be clean from the flow of her blood. This is the law for her who bears a child, either male or female. 

Clearly, at least two animals must die for what this woman did, give birth to a child. But does it make sense to think that in this situation what the woman did was sinful, especially so sinful that it warranted the death penalty? Could a baby really be a punishment, with the alternative being abortion? I suppose that twisted conclusion can be made if one espoused the theory of Penal Substitution. But clearly this conclusion (abortion) is so absurd that the premise (Penal Substitution) must be faulty. 

Really, there's no reason to think that giving birth to a child is a sin at all, and thus this 'burnt offering' and 'sin offering' must not be about punishing an 'innocent' animal in the place of the woman. And thus neither is this atonement about satisfying God's wrath by transferring it to a substitute. This means that the sacrifice and atonement must be about cleansing/expiation, making the person ceremonially clean again to be in the presence of God. This of course would 'map over' to the spiritual realm and indicate that a person's soul must be cleansed in order to be worthy to be in God's presence. 

This proper understanding would also explain the need for those with diseases or bodily discharges to make atonement, as instructed in Leviticus 14-15. Clearly having a disease or bodily discharge is not a sin, especially not a grave one. 

This is yet another good proof for why the Levitical sacrifices did not operate in a Penal Substitution framework. If you'd like to know more about the error of the Protestant doctrine of Penal Substitution, start with this link and search the blog for others.

Thoughts on Evolution

Evolution is a touchy subject, even among Catholics. Generally speaking though, traditional Catholics are against Evolution, and I'd like to talk about why I think this is so. And while Evolution can be a loose concept, I think the following 'blanket approach' is more or less fair.

The first reason is that Evolution originated as a way of explaining the origins of life from a purely atheistic-materialistic standpoint. In other words, there is a philosophy behind evolution, and that philosophy is that of atheistic materialism, the belief that everything can be explained without any reference to God. This is precisely why science is largely dominated by atheist-materialists. This isn't an accident, and it's not lost on traditionalists who are well aware about the link between bad philosophy and bad lifestyles. 

The second reason is that Evolution is taken as a secular dogmas that all are required to believe in. I use the term "dogma" on purpose, because Evolution is held as so important that if one were to even question it (even if they don't deny it), they are viciously attacked and slandered. You cannot get a job in certain fields, especially teaching on the university level, if you have any doubts about evolution. In many places, you're forced to learn it in schools, in the form they want it presented. If you deny evolution, you're slandered with the worst name calling and treated as a piece of ignorant garbage. This is taken by traditionalists as highly suspicious, since the truth doesn't need such force, and such an approach is usually a sign that some sinister agenda is taking place.

The third reason is that Evolution isn't even a specific and sturdy of a thesis, but rather contains many unanswered questions, both on the philosophical and experimental level. There aren't any specific explanations for how and why Evolution takes place, only that it must be so. There are no plain experiments that the average student can even engage in to witness evolution taking place, nor is there any way to verify astronomical numbers that are spit out by equations and instruments. When it comes to examining history, things become more and more speculative and uncertain the further you go back, and after a certain window of a few thousand years, one really cannot say much with confidence. Thus, traditionalists would view Evolution as more of a pseudo-science, masquerading as a open-and-shut case.

The fourth reason is that the Church has yet to give any stamp of approval on Evolution. The closest thing the Church has come to an official statement on Evolution is in a 60 year old Encyclical by Pope Pius XII called Humani Generis (On Human Origins), where the Magisterium said Evolution was by no means a given. All that the Pope said is that in the realm of scholarly debate, it is permissible to explore Evolution as a theory, and weigh its merits and demerits as objectively as possible (paragraph 36). In fact, Pius made it clear: "Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts." As any faithful Catholic should do, traditionalists have simply said we must carefully follow the Magisterium on this matter, and not go beyond it, especially not in the rash manner that many Catholics have done, treating evolution as a completely settled matter for Catholics. 

Some might ask: What about theistic Evolution? So called theistic Evolution teaches that God providentially guided the evolutionary process, and thus one need not be atheist to believe in evolution. This is implausible in my opinion for a variety of reasons. Recall that Evolution is founded upon the idea that what we see today came about as a result of billions of years of failed mutations and mass extinctions. Evolution teaches that fully 99.9% of every species that has ever existed has become extinct. So what does that make us? From the atheist point of view, we're a random accident, and that's the most logical thing to say given the premises. This is why so many of these men are also Nihilists, who see life as having no meaning, since we're just one (temporary) successful mutation. Given that, a theistic Evolutionist has to have the nerve to say that an all Providential God had to rely on billions of years of failed mutations and extinction of 99.9% of creation to eventually come around to His crowning achievement. As an analogy, it's as if someone wrote a massive 1000 page book and yet only the last sentence of the entire book (i.e. when man finally arrives on the scene) was relevant to the main issue (i.e. Salvation history). It really sounds quite silly, which is why those advocating theistic Evolution are never taken seriously by the atheistic science community at large. Rather, the atheistic scientific community sees these folks as poor confused and inconsistent individuals rather than robust academic thinkers. 

Solid Catholic theologians like professor Lawrence Feingold (an atheist to Catholic convert), has given a nice lecture on why he doesn't believe in Evolution (along with a Q&A session). One primary argument he gives is the fact that the way man's body is constituted, man's body is uniquely suited only for a being with the capacity of rational thought, which animals don't have. For example, man is born naked, as opposed to having something like a fur coat, because man can chose to end up living in any environment, rather than being restricted to either hot (no fur), moderate (some fur), or cold climates (a large coat of fur). Another example is man's hands, which are his primary means of survival, by which he can use to build all kinds of tools and such. The use of hands for survival only is possible for a rational being, because the being must be able to envision the concept of tools and formulate plans on how to go about achieving his desired ends. This is why man can build anything from a modest hut all the way up to a sky scraper. This would be impossible for an pre-human species that had hands but lacked the use of reason, because the animal wouldn't be able to make proper use of hands. 

On top of that, the notion that God's crowning earthly achievement was conceived in a non-human being, and was nursed and raised by that same non-human beast, is simply preposterous. It degrades everything about the fact man is superior to the animals. This is why Adam is depicted in Genesis as being created as an adult, since as a baby he would have been entirely helpless and not have reached the age of reason until at least 8 years old. So that's a huge strike against the theistic evolutionary idea that man evolved. Rather, that's a story more akin to the Jungle Book, where a human was raised by apes.
 

I personally am against Evolution for a variety of reasons, all encompassed above. I think Evolution gives away the farm by ceding too much ground to the atheist-materialist end, all for fear of being labeled "stupid" by the establishment. I don't mind being called stupid, but what I do mind is ceding to bad philosophy and dubious science out of fear. I think far more harm is done by blindly embracing Evolution. I think the heavy push for Evolution is akin to the heavy push to normalize homosexuality, because once it takes root in every day life, then the average citizen is radically corrupted and confused in their thought process. 

Is there a New Testament Priesthood?

In an earlier article I wrote on the Protestant inability to worship God since they lack a priesthood and cannot offer sacrifice. That was mostly a philosophical argument based on Natural Law. In this article, I'd like to talk about the Biblical evidence for the New Testament Priesthood, with the goal of helping Catholics have a deeper appreciation for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. 

Protestants object to the office of the New Testament Priesthood for various reasons, but their main argument against the priesthood is that they say it isn't taught in Scripture. However, the reason why they don't see evidence for it in Scripture is because they either don't know what to look for or they are so hardened that they cannot concede anything to the Catholic side. 

Many Catholics claim that the English term "priest" comes from the Greek term for "elders" in the Bible, presbuteros, and while that's probably true, I think more needs to be shown than just a name. Because of this, I'm offering the following three points to lay a solid foundation for the office of priesthood in the New Testament.