I believe you, Edward. Seek and ye shall find.

I do understand, being quite busy myself. I would also like to thank you and all here on this board for the very kind and irenic way in which I have been treated as I ask questions which are vexing me. I may appear to be just a gadfly trying to bother people, but these are actually things that cause me a great deal of personal angst.

I would like to say that it will get better. But to be blunt, haters have to hate.
It is the actual presence of our Lord and Savior in the most Holy Eucharist that will give you the strength to become the rampart that will defend the new faith that you are in the process of embracing.
I was brought up as a free will southern baptist and believe it or not my father kept a very large statue of our Most Holy Mother in the front yard. The members of the baptist church that we attended obviously did not approve of this, but my father was of the correct belief that if Mary was good enough for God then Mary better be good enough for us!
Remember that you are not alone. Besides those at the Catholic Church you are attending you have a great support system with the Blessed Virgin Mary and our Lord and Savior.
The Grace and Love of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit be with you.
Welcome home!

OFM, I am in the process of converting and I am struggling with Protestant fundamentalists in my family. The pure hatred of Catholicism is disturbing.

I must apologize, Edward, but I do not always have the ability to keep up with comments that are removed from the actual content of the post. I made a few simple points in this piece and you are asking about a handful of things that weren’t touched on at all. Again, I apologize. Just too many things to do.

On 1 Tim 3:15, the problem with interpreting a phrase that occurs only once in the New Testament is that we cannot know exactly what Paul had in his mind when he wrote these words.

I know that this is a very unpopular thing to say — we all want clarity — but what else can be said? Paul wrote these words. What was he thinking? He’s certainly making a strong statement about the authority of the Church to teach and preserve and hand down the “truth.” But exactly what he meant, the extent of that authority and how it works out in practical terms, we cannot know from that passage alone.

I guess I’m hung up on the verse in 1 Tim. 3:15 which describes the Church as the “pillar and ground of truth.” As such then, I cannot imagine that the Church would ever teach ANY falsehood, either through an ecumenical council or through the proper interpretation of the Scriptures. Am I wrong in this?

How do you understand this verse? Maybe I need your insight to help me understand where there is flexibility and latitude and where we simply MUST accept and obey certain teachings.

Let me give you an example of what I am discussing here. The Latin translation, which is the basis of all Western translations of the Bible, interprets the Greek word “aionios” as “eternal.” The problem is that Greek scholars have stated emphatically that it means no such thing. It has the meaning of “age-long” or “age-during” and comes from the root word “aion” which means “age.”

From this interpretation of one Greek word, the Western Roman Church has developed a doctrine of eternal, fiery torment in hell which never ends. Yet the same verses, if properly interpreted, speak rather of an “age” of torment for the sinner, not an eternity. Do you see the problem here?

Yes, this is the basis of apocatastasis, or the restoration of all things….i.e., that the fires of God’s love are not punitive, but restorative, however, the translation of “aionios” to mean “eternal” has created the doctrine of eternal torment, and I am told that since this is in the Catechism of the Church, I must accept this or be a heretic, even though the translation is horrid and an examination of Christian history shows that apokatastasis was the most common and widespread teaching of the first three centuries of the Church.

So what does this mistranslation of the Greek mean for the authority of the Church? Of course, even better is this question – what IS the Church? You Romans think the Church is the Roman Catholic Church and that’s it. Was that the opinion of the Early Fathers? I don’t think so. In line with them, I see the Church as 24 sui juris bodies, over which the Church of Rome has the headship, or leadership, due to the keys being given to St. Peter.

Still working through all this….thanks for bearing with me on my many questions.

Ken Hensley, that is right. We could think about 1 John 2:24: “Therefore, as for you, let that remain in you which you heard from the beginning. If that which you heard from the beginning remains in you, you also will remain in the Son, and in the Father”. How about Zwingli’s “infallibility”?
” In this matter of baptism—if I may be pardoned for saying it—I can only conclude that all the doctors have been in error from the time of the apostles. This is a serious and weighty assertion, and I make it with such reluctance that had I not been compelled to do so by contentious spirits I would have preferred to keep silence and simply to teach the truth. But it will be seen that the assertion is a true one: for all the doctors have ascribed to the water a power which it does not have and the holy apostles did not teach” (Zwingli, “Of Baptism”).

Yes, I have to think that John’s words about his spiritual children not needing anyone to teach them, because the Holy Spirit teaches them, must be interpreted so that they do not contradict all the other passages in the New Testament that talk about the need for believers to be “taught.” In other words,

In other words, John cannot mean, “Hey, you don’t need anyone to teach you the doctrines of Baptism or the Eucharist or the Trinity or Salvation or the Atonement or about the Second Coming, because the Holy Spirit just tells each of you the correct view of all these!” He must have something different from this in mind.

And lo and behold, when read that passage in the context of 1 John 2 we see that he is talking about the identity of Jesus. False teachers are denying that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:18-23) and contrasting this to those who have the Holy Spirit and who KNOW that Jesus is the Christ. This is what he’s talking about when he says that his spiritual children have no need of being taught because they have the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit has revealed to them Jesus’ true identity.

He’s not saying that all teaching is useless and that every Christian learns all of his doctrine from the Holy Spirit.