I'm considering converting to Protestantism

[JohnT]

Shi: "Really? Aren't you the one who always talks about how good Luther and his reformation were?"

Yup. Still am planning on being in Germany late October, 2017. My secret is that I really don't care about the religious, the doctrinal stuff. All I want are the ethics, and as far as I can tell the ethical systems of all the Christian churches are pretty damned similar... so why change? Why even think about changing?

[ZaphodBeeblebrx]

Ach, don't get me started on Martin Luther!

Damn, Anti-Semite!

Adolf Hitler, quoted from him, way Too often!

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by JohnT
[philosophical ravings]Hell, deep down we're all Protestants anyway, so why bother changing? I have yet to find two Catholics who have the exact same opinion on religious matters

That's the beauty of catholicism - protestants tend to think its monolithic and "top down" - in other words the Pope or the parish priest speaks and everyone follows. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Take birth control. Every adult knows if priests could get pregnant the church's stance on that would be very different. So parishioners all over the world ignore the Vatican's views on that en masse. What the hell do celibates know about sex and reproduction in the real world? Nothing.

The difference between catholics and many protestent groups is we keep our dissidents in the tent pissing out. We love our clergy because most of them are great people who spend their whole lives serving others for nothing but a possible heavenly reward. But as for moral teaching, well, most catholics use their God given conscience the way God intended.

[DanS]

Ecthelion: In the States, you don't change your "state religion" as religion is not funded through taxes.

"Every adult knows if priests could get pregnant the church's stance on that would be very different."

I don't know, AH. Sounds like you're casting about for rationalizations...

[TCO]

I like the tradition of the Church. Just a vibe...

[JohnT]

Naw, AH is pretty spot-on correct.

[DanS]

"The pope could have stepped in with a strong hand and dictated a zero tolerance policy. He called together his cardinals, but all the Rome summit produced was a promise to not tolerate people who do this repeatedly molested children- saying nothing of whether people who molest a kid once should be reported to the police. The Pope was apparently fine with that settlement, and in fact I heard that Pope John Paul II may have even asked Cardinal Law to not resign."

By and large I agree with you. Some things to keep in mind...

1) The Pope has less power than you might think. The bishops have a lot of power and everything has to be done by concensus. No quick fixes.

2) "Zero tolerance" is not in the bishops' lexicon. While the laity is in no mood for nuances and is pretty much only concerned with protecting the children, the bishops make their life's work wrapped up in forgiveness. Just think what they have to listen to AH confess!

3) If proper treatment is given and accepted, the "fall off the wagon" rate for pedophelia is pretty low. That's why you hear distinctions from the bishops about "moral monsters" versus someone who is a treated offender. Personally, I wouldn't want them making those distinctions, but that's what they're paid to do.

4) If defrocked, there is nothing stopping the former priest from abusing others.

[ZaphodBeeblebrx]

Yeah, there is.

The Legal System!

Either that, or Angry Parents, with Guns, hey, it worked for the Oneida Tribe.

[Alexander's Horse]

Any church should refer allegations of criminal sexual misconduct to the police as a first step. Until they do that, they are all going to get into trouble over and over again.

[Ecthy]

DanS, I was quoting EU2.

[SnowFire]

You really don't understand Catholic teachings regarding the Eastern Churches at all do you-

The statement you were referring to was in direct response to your counter about the real popes being in a group of random Syrian Christians. You said that God wouldn't restrict the Holy Spirit to just that small group. I agreed, and then said that he wouldn't restrict it to just a small group of Roman cardinals, basically. I wasn't making any claims about Catholic doctrine.

Now, that said... you don't believe in Syrian popes because it's too restrictive. So why believe in Roman popes? God's Holy Spirit is available to all.

Right, but is the RCC's claim that they are especially attuned to it and that they are the main vehicle God uses to spread his word today.

Yupyup, which is exactly why you should listen to them and not do what you think is best. Sometimes this can be a good thing, at least arguably (no death penalty, birth control maybe, etc.). However, sometimes this can be a bad thing (hanging John Wycliffe, then digging him up 50 years later to burn his bones, just because he translated the Bible into English). This leads into...

Why listen to a minister whose powers comes from poeple most of whom are no more enlightened then you!

'cause we need somebody to lead the service and the church, and a minister has gone to seminary and generally knows a good bit more. As for enlightenment, in the religious sense, he should be enlightened, but we aren't going to make any blanket claims- it's quite possible that some people in his congregation are "as enlightened," whatever that means.

Look, what it comes down to is this. Do some people traverse their faith differently than others? Of course, it would be silly to deny that, although any kind of meter o "progress" would be virtually impossible to create, as people have different strengths and weaknesses.

However, everybody has equal access to this, no matter what gifts they have been given. And as said about the difficulty of making a scale, making distinctions in some random "godliness quotient" is ridiculously hard and can rapidly lead to good old Holier than Thou attitudes, literally! I mean, sure, everybody hopes that their church leaders are "more in tune with God" so to speak. But you need only look at the vast number of religions around the world to see what kind of disagreement that can spark.

So yes, with the example of searching for a new pastor, you better bet that "biblical knowledge, holiness, etc." comes into play, along with a lot of other things. Just don't forget that going to seminary is generally a prerequisite, so it's not too common you have a guy walk in off the street- although they aren't ruled out, knowing the early history of the church! And "elections" rarely come down to that, really, especially in churches that aren't too huge- it's more the comitees that vote on everything, and the general meetings (where everybody attends- usually held right after church) are usually only held twice a year. And they tend to be more of an "update" where everybody explains how things are going, and then vote by acclamation.

Anyway, this is a bit more of a uniquely Presbyterian thing the extent this goes to, so consult your local minister of other denominations for specifics elsewhere.

That seems to me that it would just beg to invite preaching to the people what they want to here and staying away from hard truths if there be any

Yeah, that can be a problem. There are certainly churches that do that. On the other hand, I'm not sure how to stop that- Protestants just go to anther church if they REALLY diagree with the "hard truth," and (at least according to AH) quite a few Catholics just ignore it, with regards to birth control or the death penalty.

But for what it's worth, our last full-time minister wasn't exactly a success in that regard. Our old minister was really great, but the replacement... well, she was _very_ liberal, which would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that she couldn't do it that eloquently and tended to piss people off who disagreed with her even a little (because this was a pretty liberal church anyway already). Nice person, and I don't have much against her, but she's somebody who would be an okay minister at a church where everybody was in lockstep with her, and one who can cut membership down somewhat decently at our church in the years she was here ('91-00 roughly).

But whatever. We're doing fine now and had a FANTASTIC intermic pastor the last year and 4 months.

How do you neccesarily know that God knows everything that will happen in the future?

(in heaven) *Bring Bring*
"Hello. This is God."
"Hi, this is Peter Ingraham. I was wondering... are you omniscient? I kind of need to know for this debate online."
"Nice try. You'll have to find out for yourself. I would recommend reading some Bible passages on the subject though, especially some of the OT stuff. I know that the pro-life crowd especially like the one where I tell Jeremiah that I knew him before he was born, although that might be specific and not general. So you've gotta work it out yourself."

Darn, I still need to unpack my books so I can get at my Bible. Anyway, the answer is no, I don't know for certain that God is omniscient. But there are some Bible passages that seem to indicate this pretty strongly, even if you throw away the Psalms which tend to be jubilantly joyous about the greatness, grandeur, wonder, etc. of God (and there would surely be lots of stuff in there).

Why bother trying? If you can't.

You're feeling warm-hearted today. Okay, example. You're out there freezing on the street as an orpahn when a nice person comes by, feeds you, gives you clothes, adopts you, gives you an education, and loves you like one of their "real" children. This kind of thing does still happen. Wouldn't you like to somehow "repay" this loving parent somehow? But considering you would have frozen to death had he or she not come along, and not to mention everything else, you owe them even more than your life. It's going to be really hard to "repay" these gifts.

So you would say "Eh, I'll never be able to repay 'em, so I might as well be rude and crass to this person who saved me and not give a darn for their welfare? No need to treat them like anybody special." Somehow I doubt this.

Now, you do a posit an omnipotent God? Why would God create people who had no other destiny other then the eternal fire?

Well, we're jumping off the deep end into theodicy style stuff. I'll only say that I haven't answered these questions conclusively for myself yet, never even mind the "eternal fire" stuff. I will say that your claim about free will being subverted by determinism is false and it comes from a facile definition of free will. Free will means "the choice came from me." Take as an example these statements:

1. I went to the police station after the policemen arrested me and took me there to be held.
2. I went to the police station on a tour to see if I would want to work there.

3. I didn't eat lunch today because I wasn't hungry.
4. I didn't eat lunch today because I forgot my wallet and somebody stole my lunch bag.

2 and 3 I'd say are examples of free will; the others aren't. But according to your claim, in a deterministic universe, none of these events had free will involved. That's silly; even if you were "determined" to want to go on that tour, then fine, the fact that you would have wanted to do that was known from the beginning of time, but the choice still came from you. Unlike the policemen arresting you, which might also be "determined," but the motive force came from outside the person.

And it's good that the RCC does not have this version of salvation

A modified version, from what I understand. At least back in the bad old days, whenever you went to confessional you could be cleansed of sins. You built your sins back up during the week. The point of Last Rites would be so that you would head right on into heaven sinless. If you didn't die on Sunday or died before a Last Rites could be adminstered, then you got to sit in purgatory waiting for your sins to burn off. Although if your relatives got themselves some indulgences, maybe your waiting would be reduced.

The reason why I brought up the bank account thing was that I always got confused when the Church started talking about mortal sins, and how they can make you not a Christian even with other things, but wait you can still repent, and... eh, it got a bit complex for me. Still, I'll agree with the general thrust of what you were saying, that some actions by their very nature suggest that you aren't taking Christianity seirously.

And BTW, SF, do you believe in the old Calvinist doctrine that it is a sign that you are saved if you are rich?

And where's this from? It ain't on any books that I know of anywhere these days, and anybody who reads the Gospels even remotely cursorily isn't coming up with that.

The only things I can think of might be the late 1800's, where I'm sure some of the Andrew Carnigie types probably celebrated doctrines like that happily, and maybe some of the late decay stages of Puritanism in America.

EU References

I remember one AAR at the forums talking about a Papal States AAR where a random event.. um... had the province of Rome convert to Luthernaism. I have to say that that would be about the most HUMILIATING thing ever to happen to the Pope- to be holed up in the Vatican while the actual citizens around him in Rome are Lutheran heretics!
So I actually did my own Papal States playthrough with that as some inspiration, and some save-file map state hacking. I conjectured a charismatic Italian missionary converting the peasants of central Italy to Swiss-style Calvinism, and the Papal States secular leader converting and taking direct control over them. It was really quite fun, turning central Italy Reformed. Rome I left, although eventually a random even turned it over to Reformed later, along with some of the Moslem heathens I had conquered in Africa. My alliance members were actually pretty cool with the change. They had been at around +200 opinions before anyway, so they just temporarily dropped to 130, still plenty to rejoin the alliance and have feelings start rising again. Really quite fun.

AH: I've seen you post that little rant about 4 times. Trust me, most people can read the newspaper. I think that most Protestants know that the Catholic Church does not command lockstep control over its followers.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Shi- most of the Protestant churches are riddled with scandal too. I'm in no hurry to to become a Christian, but if I was I'd head straight to the Quakers.

[Blisterz]

Originally posted by Ecthelion
Shi Huangdi turned his state religion to Protestant. We welcome him to our community!

LOL

I just finished playing a 4 hour game of EU2