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~ If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. – Arthur Schopenhauer

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Category Archives: C2C IP

Are Protestants more Roman Catholic than Catholics?

13 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by Paul Bassett in Abortion, C2C IP, Darryl Hart

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Tags

abortion, Catholic church, Catholics, Patricia Miller, Rome

Catholic opinion survey vs Evangelical Protestants

Darryl Hart has picked up on an interesting work by Patricia Miller, here.  He notes how Catholics are leaving Rome for “another” Catholic church and how this exodus is being fueled by the great divide between Rome and (at least some of) her adherents.

 

The Catholic-Evangelical (Non-)Coalition | Religion Dispatches.

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Therefore, Go Ye Into All the World and Tell Them About Yourselves….

06 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by Paul Bassett in C2C IP, Hermeneutics, Papacy, Reformation, Roman Catholicism

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One of the complaints I have about the Roman Catholic Church in which I grew up is how “man-centered” its teachings are.  After all, the sacerdotal system is all about “you” going to Mass; “you” going to confession; “you” blindly following the Magisterium.   So it was with some little surprise that I saw this tweet today from Pope Francis:

 PontifexMe

 Yep.  Evangelization to Roman Catholics is apparently all about “you”, too.

Don’t be fooled, friends.  Evangelization is about giving witness to Jesus Christ.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. (Emphasis added; Matthew 28:18-20)

Soli Deo Gloria.

Scriptures, the Mass and the RC IP

21 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by Paul Bassett in Bryan Cross, C2C IP, Reformation, Roman Catholicism, Trent, Unity

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The concept of the Roman Catholic Interpretive Paradigm has intrigued me.  If true, it would solve the age old epistemological dilemma of “How do you know?” and “How do you know that you know?”  Such certainty might be a welcome relief in a world filled with uncertainty.

But the last time we were together we observed how the greater the Magisterial influence the less likely is Scripture to be present.  We noted that in the Papal States – that government completely and directly under the control of the Magisterium – bibles were regularly and ceremonially burned and the mere mention of a biblical story was cause for the banishment of a play.  We also discovered that no bibles were printed in the vernacular of the Papal States for something more than 200 years.  And this against a background of a wider Catholic church whose other segments – like the northern European Catholic churches – relied on the Bible for their very survival.  Apparently the great dioceses of Cologne, Mainz, Frankfurt, etc. were not aware of a magisterial IP.

Against this backdrop, a good Roman Catholic might well respond that our analysis, while correct, is not complete.  You see, the Catholics have institutionalized Scripture reading at the Mass.  And our Roman Catholic friend would be quite right.  For those of you not familiar, the Catholic Mass has three readings: a First and Second Reading and then a reading from the Gospels.  In between the First and Second one of the Psalms is usually sung or spoken in a responsive manner (at least part of one).  So the Scriptures are built into the normal practice of the Catholic religion.  That’s true.

In fact, that was a practice codified very early on by Rome.  In order to compensate for the lack of education of parish priests, Rome assembled and disseminated a playbook for the Mass – the Roman Missal.  The Missal contains the Scripture readings, prayers and other rituals to be performed based on the day of the year and the type of celebration.  The Missal was designed to repeat after a three year cycle and I believe that it was, for the time, a very good thing.

But here’s the question.  How do you get through the 73 books of the (Catholic) canon in what amounts to 156 Sundays?  If you were to get through it all, you would have to cover approximately one half of each Biblical book each Sunday.  While that might not be problematic for 1st, 2nd or 3rd John or Jude, it would be a huge problem for Genesis or Isaiah, to take two examples.

So what was Rome’s solution?  Although it may sound harsh it is nonetheless true that the Magisterial solution was to eliminate the Old Testament.

Fr. Felix Just, S J, PhD, has done extensive research on the Scripture readings used in the Missals both before and after Vatican II.  Here is his analysis:

OT Comparison Felix Just

At the time after Trent the Roman Missal excluded nearly all of the Old Testament.  And while that has improved post-Vatican II, today’s Roman Catholic is exposed to only 13.5% of the Old Testament (excluding what Psalms are sung responsively) when s/he attends Mass.  (How Rome can evade the charge of institutionalized Marcionism is worth pondering.)

Here is Fr. Just’s analysis of the use of the New Testament:

Comparative Use of NT Texts in Roman Missal

(Source:  http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Statistics.htm)

While the NT is certainly represented more fully than the OT, it is easy to see that today’s Roman Catholic still misses nearly 30% of it, if their only exposure is at the Mass.

Conclusion:

It is entirely unclear how the “Interpretive Paradigm” offered by C2C could have operated at all in the period between Trent and Vatican II.  And the reason for that is clear. As we have seen earlier, the Roman Church programmatically eliminated printed bibles from personal possession while it ceremonially eliminated 99% of the OT and 83% of the NT from its corporate worship.  How could any good Catholic have been expected to ask a question which might have been interpreted by the Magisterium when they had not the basic Scriptures about which to ask?

I am becoming more convinced as we go that this new “IP” from our friends at C2C is simply an anachronism.

Soli Deo Goria

How the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church Contradicts Called to Communion’s Interpretive Paradigm

18 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by Paul Bassett in Bryan Cross, C2C IP, Reformation, Roman Catholicism, Trent

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The fellas over at Called to Communion (C2C) are behaving like young boys with a new bike.  And that new “bike” is what they describe as their “Interpretive Paradigm” (hereafter, IP).  Just as a shiny new bike makes a young lad feel superior to his friends – at least until the first scratch or dent – so the C2C crowd seems to feel around their new IP.  But the funny thing – it’s really not funny – is that this new IP actually contradicts the history of the Roman Catholic Church.  And in so doing puts C2C in a precarious position vis-à-vis their intention of shoring up belief in the Roman Communion.

What I will attempt here is to define this novel, new IP as described by C2C.  Then, in keeping with the theme of Reformation 500, I will apply this IP specifically to the Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation.  What we will find is that not only did this IP not apply to Roman Catholics at that time, but the very subject matter intended to be scrutinized by the IP was systematically eradicated by Rome thereby making the IP worthless.  In other words, at the time of the Reformation the C2C paradigm would have had nothing to interpret.  We will also find that the IP used by the Roman Church in Italy was very different than that used by Roman Catholics in other parts of Europe which negates the very nature of the paradigm.

IP Defined

As nearly as I can tell, the C2C IP was born out of an analysis that Bryan Cross did with Neal Judisch on Keith Mathison’s book, “ The Shape of Sola Scriptura”.  You can read the whole thing here.  I believe an accurate reduction of the idea is this, in the words of the C2C authors:

The person becoming Catholic, by contrast, is seeking out the Church that Christ founded. He does this not by finding that group of persons who share his interpretation of Scripture. Rather, he locates in history those whom the Apostles appointed and authorized, observes what they say and do viz-a-viz the transmission of teaching and interpretive authority, traces that line of successive authorizations down through history to the present day to a living Magisterium, and then submits to what this present-day Magisterium is teaching. By finding the Magisterium, he finds something that has the divine authority to bind the conscience.

So there we have it.  The superiority of the Roman Catholic IP consists in the claim that,  1.) it can be located in history, 2.) it has divine authorization,  and 3.) it is consistent “through history”.  Fair enough.  C2C should be allowed to define its own terms and I hope I have been reasonable in my representation of them.

IP Tested

If we were to test this IP we would look for a laboratory that contained only those items needed by the IP but was free from any contaminants not needed by it.  And fortunately for us, history provides just such a laboratory – the Papal States.  The Papal States was a European country entirely under the control of the Roman church and its hierarchy.  It existed for 700 years until 1870 and was at its peak during the 16th century.  The Vatican exercised complete and total control over every aspect of life within those borders and therefore qualifies as the perfect laboratory to test the IP.  (And just to be clear, Bryan’s piece was in response to Dr. Mathison’s work on Scripture so we may confine our investigation thereto.)

Scripture in the Papal States

Implicit in the C2C IP is the availability of the Scriptures to every parishioner as is the case today.  That the Scriptures are available is the minimal requirement from which questions about Scripture can arise.  Today’s Roman Catholic has access to the Scriptures and to his/her priests and bishops in order to have their questions answered.  And that is what undergirds the C2C IP.  But such was not the case in the Papal States in the 16th century:

If an alert visitor from northern Europe tried to get to grips with the religious scene in Italy, one absence would be immediately obvious: there were no vernacular Bibles in the house of the laity.  Pope Paul V was perfectly serious when in 1606 he furiously confronted the Venetian ambassador with the rhetorical question ‘Do you not know that so much reading of Scripture ruins the Catholic religion?’[i]

I suppose that some may quibble over the phrase “so much reading of Scripture” but to the Supreme Pontiff of that day “so much” really meant “any”:

Bibles were publicly and ceremonially burned, like heretics; even literary versions of scriptural stories in drama or poetry were frowned on.  As a result, between 1567 and 1773, not a single edition of an Italian-language Bible was printed anywhere in the Italian peninsula.[ii]

It is worth a moment to pause and reflect at this point.  The boys at C2C want us to believe that the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church is the only God-given instrument whereby Scriptures can be properly and authentically interpreted.  And yet in a place and time where the Roman Catholic Church reigned supreme not only did they not exercise their alleged responsibility, but they used their temporal power to eliminate the Scripture to the greatest extent possible.  If the Pontiff thinks that reading the Scripture is the “ruin” of the Catholic religion, it is risible to maintain that he would stand as the head of an organization charged with giving “the divinely inspired interpretation” of that same Scripture.  Unless, of course, that “divinely inspired interpretation” is the burning of the Bible!

Scripture in the rest of Europe

The second nail in the coffin of the C2C IP for the period under investigation is that there was no uniformity of doctrine within the Roman Catholic Church in Europe.  For those Catholics who lived in northern Europe and had to interact with biblically literate Protestants, the Roman doctrine would have meant ecclesial suicide:

Even a visitor from the Catholic parts of Germany would find this astonishing: there a ban on Bibles would have been highly dangerous to a Church constantly confronting biblically literate Protestants[iii].

And one wouldn’t have to go as far as Germany.  The Republic of Venice vigorously maintained an independent stance from Rome.  The Catholic Church of Venice was outspoken against the reforms of the Council of Trent, which obviously included the Roman version of the canon of Scripture.

Reflect with me for a moment.  In northern Europe the availability of and familiarity with the Scriptures was necessary to the continued existence of Roman Catholicism.  But where the Magisterium was most powerful, Scriptures were the “ruin” of the Catholic religion and no Bibles in the vernacular were printed for over 200 years!  How could it even be possible for a Roman Catholic parishioner to avail himself of this marvelous IP when he would not have access to the very thing about which question might have been asked?  That is very troubling, indeed.

In Conclusion

The IP being promoted by the C2C crowd fails all of its own criteria.  The first of which is historicity.  Our examination has shown that the Popes of the Papal States in Europe had not the slightest interest in interpreting the Scriptures.  The historical record is clear that Pope Paul V especially, was committed to the eradication of Scripture from his domain.  The claim that Rome or its Magisterium would have exercised any interpretive authority is null and void.

The second criteria placed on the C2C IP is its alleged divine authorization.  That claim cannot be supported by virtue of the fact that Rome was engaged in the destruction and eradication of the Scriptures which have been central to the Judeo Christian heritage for 3,000.  Further, the “divine” nature of the paradigm is called into question because it was not used in the majority of Roman Catholic churches throughout Europe.  Neither the Catholic churches in Venice , nor the Catholic churches in northern Europe nor the Catholic churches in Spain would have granted a divine aspect to anything Rome did.

And lastly, the obvious fact that the C2C IP differs so radically from the historical record of the Roman Catholic church negates the third attribute claimed for it.

We must necessarily conclude therefore, that the Interpretive Paradigm offered us by Bryan Cross and the folks at Called to Communion is an anachronism.  And an historical investigation shows that the IP fails to display any of the three criteria which its authors claim for it and is therefore to be disregarded.

Soli Deo Gloria


[i] MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation.  New York: Penguin Books, 2003.  P. 406

[ii] MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Op. cit.. P. 406

[iii] MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Op. cit.. P. 406

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anactofmind

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Roger E. Olson

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Blogs – The Gospel Coalition

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

The Heidelblog

Recovering the Reformed Confession

The Jagged Word

Where the sacred & profane collide

"In verbo veritatis" (2 Cor 6:7)

Thoughts and writings of Fr. Joseph A. Komonchak

Old Life

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

John Bugay

God, life, politics, and business

Glass House

My lies will get better

Highlands Ministries Online Podcast

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Return to Rome

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

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If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

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If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

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A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward

Reformation500

Viewpoint

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Beggars All: Reformation And Apologetics

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. - Arthur Schopenhauer

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