How can we get rid of our sinfulness?

vinod1975

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The Orthodox Roman Catholic Position

When we draw that conclusion we find that Christians are then left with a cross followed by a question mark. Since people hate such question marks, and will then be asking what possible meaning could be found in the crucifixion if Jesus did not die for our sins, let us address the issue and find a way to plug that gaping hole in Catholic doctrine.

Now we know that Jeremiah stated that the Levite animal sacrifice was a deliberate forgery, cooked up by the priests of the time, who apparently were busy cooking up such documents as Leviticus in the Bible, and then passing those documents off as the work of Moses, or so Jeremiah insists was the case. ‘Burn your animal sacrifices and eat the flesh yourselves, for on the day that your ancestors came out of Egypt, they were given no instructions or commands concerning animal sacrifices. But they have persisted in their evil ways, with the most stubbornly rebellious hearts, and now truth has perished from their lips and is no longer heard in this land...How can you say, ‘We are wise, for we have the Laws of God', when, actually the lying pen of your priestly scribes has made it into a forgery. Now their religious leaders are dismayed, for they have been trapped and snared, but they rejected the truth, so what kind of wisdom did they have?' (Jeremiah 7:21, 8:8)

As the fiftieth psalm tells us, the doctrine of some god who eats barbequed animals for snacks is a stupid doctrine, for all the animals in the world belong to God, who therefore does not need to be snacking on livestock from some ranch, assuming that such a god actually required the nourishing sustenance of an animal snack from time to time in order to remain strong and well nourished enough to continue to hold the entire universe together. This is another form of criticism of that animal barbequing doctrine, that it is nonsensical, which is obvious.

Isaiah offers another reason to reject that doctrine, pointing out that those people only barbequed animals because they were religious hypocrites, and they ignored justice and the poor, while being real religious at the same time, and since they needed a religion, they started barbequing animals so they could have a religion while not having one, thus making sure they had something they could call a religion, so no one could say they didn't have one, because it was obvious they were very religious since they religiously barbequed animals doing it dogmatically just exactly the way Moses described thus showing how loyal they were to the one true animal barbequing faith by following those rules exactly the way they were written down.

So then we can see that there are numerous different ways that we can analysis the sacrifice for sin described in the Bible, and in each case draw the obvious conclusion that those barbeque rituals were actually an example of a canonized Biblical heresy.

Which then brings us to one of the foundational heresies of the Catholic Church, which apparently found it necessary to not break with tradition and thus decided that it would be better to have a heresy as a substitute for religion, thus avoiding the danger of having a religion, which obviously the Vatican just did not want for some reason. This heresy is found in the New Testament, for as we know, tradition dictates that heresy must be canonized, and is called the Letter to the Hebrews, which is based upon a far fetched interpretation of those animal snack verses in Leviticus, which are both irrational and a forgery, if we believe Jeremiah and the psalmist, which would then tell us that the Letter to the Hebrews is a canonized heresy, since you cannot base a doctrine upon irrational nonsense and deliberate forgeries like the Roman Catholic Church did in the distant past, without the end product being a heresy itself, by any reasonable definition of the term heresy.

According to that particular heretical document, Jesus came to bleed on the cross since it turns out that he was taking the place of the sacrificed cows, since while it was possible to wash the sin off of people and various utensils and appliances that had been touched by people, thus becoming sinful in the process, and requiring washing as well for that reason (since if you washed people and then they touched a sinful utensil, well you can see the problem that would result), with this washing accomplished using the blood of a cow, which was like a detergent for sin, thus explaining how those cow bleeding rituals wound up in the Bible, since people needed such a detergent, or they wouldn't be able to wash in the blood of a cow, or wash in the blood of a lamb, just depending on what livestock was being used on each individual occasion. Unfortunately, since a cow or a lamb was just a livestock animal and not a divine god, the cow blood would only work to remove sin for about one week, and so therefore the washing ritual would have to be done over and over again, which wasn't as good, which then explains why it would be required that we make a god bleed and then wash sin with a god's blood, since that god's blood is so powerful that just one washing would be enough to last a lifetime. It turns out that people only needed to wash weekly with the blood of some dead cow as a temporary measure to get rid of their sinfulness just to hold them over until a divine god incarnated in human form and then bled to death on a cross to solve that blood washing dilemma with finality once and for all.

I think that is a fair summation of the doctrinal position of that ridiculous ‘Letter to the Hebrews', wouldn't you agree, your Holiness, which then is also a fair summation of Roman Catholicism, which is based upon that ‘Letter to the Hebrews', wouldn't you agree, your Holiness? .

So the point then is that not only is the doctrine of original sin and the consequent blood washing of sin unhistorical, it is also irrational, and is based upon a great big pile of nonsensical heresy and forgery, which is a second reason to reject Catholic orthodoxy as actually not being ‘the one true faith', but in truth, Roman Catholicism is just an ancient heresy masquerading as a religion, and quite the ridiculous heresy, too, I might add..
 

vinod1975

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However I can still anticipate one objection that might be raised, in that certain religious types might point to all the really bad sin in the world and then claim that such sin needs to be explained, and then insist that if there is sin, well certainly justice demands that something be done about that sin, which will then lead them to conclude that there certainly must exist some connection then between this need for justice and the fact that Jesus bled to death on a cross.
 

L Gilbert

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Interesting comments, and very 2007 I might add. We now live in the time when if one wants religion, it has to be individualized, streamlined to fit the person. A most self-centred and selfish approach to adopting a belief system. No more must we conform to God! No, now He must conform to us.
Now that would make sense because humans invented gods, they should have a say what gods behave like. :D
 

sanctus

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So the point then is that not only is the doctrine of original sin and the consequent blood washing of sin unhistorical, it is also irrational, and is based upon a great big pile of nonsensical heresy and forgery, which is a second reason to reject Catholic orthodoxy as actually not being ‘the one true faith', but in truth, Roman Catholicism is just an ancient heresy masquerading as a religion, and quite the ridiculous heresy, too, I might add..


Indeed. I am afraid I'm just "popping in" quickly, but I assure you when I've the time, I'll reply to this bit of nonsense:)
 

sanctus

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The Orthodox Roman Catholic Position
e, your Holiness? .

So the point then is that not only is the doctrine of original sin and the consequent blood washing of sin unhistorical, it is also irrational, and is based upon a great big pile of nonsensical heresy and forgery, which is a second reason to reject Catholic orthodoxy as actually not being ‘the one true faith', but in truth, Roman Catholicism is just an ancient heresy masquerading as a religion, and quite the ridiculous heresy, too, I might add..

First off, your post does not reflect orthodox Catholic beliefs at all. Secondly, your exegesis of the Scriptures are so off based from what they teach as to make your points very odd, to say the least. In terms of the Christian faith, Holy Mother Church must certainly stand as the one beacon of truth in this matter, since it is the Church established by Christ Himself.,
 
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sanctus

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However I can still anticipate one objection that might be raised, in that certain religious types might point to all the really bad sin in the world and then claim that such sin needs to be explained, and then insist that if there is sin, well certainly justice demands that something be done about that sin, which will then lead them to conclude that there certainly must exist some connection then between this need for justice and the fact that Jesus bled to death on a cross.

The deposit of faith preserved by the Catholic Church includes: (1) Doctrines clearly taught in the New Testament; (2) Doctrines obscurely taught in the Bible, and requiring the authority of the Church to decide their true interpretation; (3) Doctrines not mentioned in the Bible at all—e. g., the abrogation of the Jewish Sabbath, with the obligation of observing Sunday instead; the practice of eating meat with blood, which was forbidden for a time by the Apostles (Acts xv. 20) ; the inspiration of each and every part of the New Testament. It is not that there is any antagonism between the Church and the Bible, as Protestants imagine, but that the two stand on a different footing. The Church derives its doctrine from the Apostles before the New Testament was written, and has followed the law of oral transmission ever since. The fact that the New Testament was afterwards written does not interfere with this principle, but only provides us with an inspired and historic witness to the claims of the Church and, in many points, to the accuracy of her teaching, without, however, supplying a substitute for her authority.

It is, however, sometimes alleged that the Church confesses a fear of the Bible by discouraging its use. This charge is entirely untrue. The Church never did discourage the use of the Bible, but only its abuse. Probably St. Peter would have recommended those who misunderstood St. Paul's Epistles to leave such difficult writings alone until they could use them with better discretion. No book has ever been so badly abused as the Bible. There is no heresy which has not claimed Scripture in its own support against the doctrine of the Church. The Arians and Socinians both relied strongly on Holy Writ.. When it became a fashion to use the Scripture in this way for the support of private views, the Bible, instead of being a help to faith, was converted into a source of confusion. Again, modern scholarship has proved the enormous textual difficulties which abound in the Scripture, and which require all the apparatus of science and Oriental languages to master. Simple Protestants think the Bible is easy to understand, because they can find some meaning or other in every verse. It is quite a different matter to find the true original meaning. The most extraordinary ideas can be drawn out of an English translation, which reference to the original Hebrew or Greek will show not to be in the text at all.

No wonder, then, if the Church considers the Bible anything but an easy book, which he who runs may read, the infinite capacity of the human mind to go wrong is sufficient reason for caution; but in spite of this, Catholics have always been free to read the Bible, and encouraged to do so, provided they use the original text or an authorized translation. No one can accuse the Douay Version of being a garbed version, though it is not without the defects incidental to all translations. Nor does the obligation of accepting the Church's interpretation, in those few dogmatic texts about which she has declared her mind, hamper or stultify the mind. For nowhere does such an interpretation do violence to the text, and in each case it will be found reasonable and likely, to say the least; and given that the Church is what Catholics believe she is, it is a distinct advantage to have an authoritative decision, where otherwise all would be left to uncertain speculation. But these decisions are comparatively few and far between; and, the freedom of discussion which exists in our theological and scriptural schools would surprise Protestants if they came to realize it.
 

sanctus

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So the point then is that not only is the doctrine of original sin and the consequent blood washing of sin unhistorical, it is also irrational, and is based upon a great big pile of nonsensical heresy and forgery, which is a second reason to reject Catholic orthodoxy as actually not being ‘the one true faith', but in truth, Roman Catholicism is just an ancient heresy masquerading as a religion, and quite the ridiculous heresy, too, I might add..


Particular Doctrines an Obstacle to Entering the Church
One who believes in the authority of the Church will naturally argue that therefore whatever the Church teaches must be true. But Protestants sometimes reverse the argument by saying that the doctrines taught by the Church are superstitious, or corrupt, or anti-scriptural; and therefore the Catholic Church cannot be the true Church of Christ, no matter what arguments may be brought in its favor; and so they cannot accept its authority. Hence, after expounding the Catholic view of the Church, it is necessary to show that those doctrines of the Church which run counter to Protestant ideas are not what Protestants imagine them to be, and that when rightly understood they ought to afford no obstacle to accepting the authority of the Church, as explained in the previous section.

Christ Our Sole Meditator and Source of Merit.
The Church strenuously maintains that Christ is our sole Redeemer, Mediator of reconciliation, and source of merit. Without the free gift of grace we can do nothing towards salvation, nor can we purchase the least title to grace by any exertion of our own. Our good works derive all their value from the grace which moves us to perform them, and any merit they possess or heavenly reward they secure springs entirely from the merits of Christ. The only way in which merit can be called our own lies in this, that by our free co-operation with grace we have fulfilled the conditions attached to Christ's promise of eternal life, and thus deserve to receive the fulfillment of that promise which God has freely vouchsafed to make. In this way St. Paul speaks of the crown of righteousness laid up for him by the just Judge, because he had finished his course and kept the faith.

Predestination and Reprobation.
But although grace is a free gift, the Church repudiates the idea that God acts so unequally in its distribution as to predestine some souls to salvation and others to damnation. God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. He wills also that no man shall perish. Hence Christ was given as a redemption for all (1 Tim. ii. 4; Rom. viii. 32; 2 Peter iii. 9). Consequently God will never allow any man to fall into hell for want of grace, but only through his own fault in refusing to make use of it. The lowest degree of grace ever offered to any man is amply sufficient for his salvation, and this grace is offered to all.

What Is Justification?
Justification consists in the infusion of grace into the soul, by which we are put into a new relation with God—raised from the state of original sin to the state of grace, from the position of servants unto that of adopted sons, brethren of Christ and children of God. God is no longer merely our Creator and Lord; He becomes our Father and our Friend. We are made heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, and our inheritance is the enjoyment of God face to face for all eternity.

Baptism the Means of Justification
The divinely appointed means of justification is regeneration by water and the Holy Ghost in Baptism. Since justification is a free gift not depending on the act of any creature for its bestowal, even infants can and ought to be baptized. Being baptized, these children are put into the state of justification, and would enter heaven if they died in infancy. On coming to the age of reason the Church denies the need of any further justification, and only requires them to cherish and preserve the grace already possessed by avoiding grievous sin.

A grown up person approaching baptism must do so with faith, sorrow for sin, and a desire to receive the grace of the sacrament. These dispositions of soul do not give any right to grace, but are the requisite conditions for the worthy reception of the sacrament. It is possible for those who cannot be baptized to receive the grace of justification without it, but only supposing they would be willing to receive baptism if they could do so; and the obligation remains of receiving it when it becomes possible.1

"Apprehending Christ by Faith"
It will be seen that Catholic teaching about justification differs from the view common among Protestants that justification consists of a subjective "apprehending of Christ by faith," and a conscious sense of being justified. According to the Church, justification is quite an objective thing—viz,, the infusion of grace; and the best means, we have of knowing whether this has taken place is the external act of baptism, to which the grace has been attached by Christ. The Church allows that justification may be attended by a sense of confidence; but such sentiments are not an infallible sign of justification, just as their absence does not prove the absence of justification.

"Once Justified Always Justified"
Again, the Church does not admit the maxim sometimes used by Protestants, that "once justified means always justified." The state of justification may be forfeited at any time by the commission of a grave sin. Moreover, the state of justification thus lost can, through God's mercy, be recovered by sincere repentance, and by the sacrament of penance. During this life no man is in an absolutely assured position of being guaranteed for eternal happiness, since he always retains his power of freely co-operating with grace or rejecting it, of sinning or abstaining from sin. Therefore, we must all work out our salvation with fear and trembling—not fear lest God should fail us, but fear lest by our negligence we should abandon Christ and fall away into sin.

Final Perseverance
Hence it is possible for a soul once justified to end by falling into hell. The final destiny of each man is directly determined by the good or evil state in which he dies. Theoretically speaking, an evil life may end with a good death, and a good life with an evil death. But practically, the probabilities are against this. It is not only risky, but criminal, to count on a deathbed repentance, and every Catholic is urged to make his last moments as secure as possibly by an earnest faith, which is the highest assurance we possess of final perseverance.
Sanctification and "Merit"

Besides putting us in a new relation to God, justification carries with it a true quality of holiness or sanctification, but not such as to dispense with the need of spiritual efforts to grow in holiness. We must stir up the grace within us, and use it as a means of advancing in God's service. The Church also holds that our reward in heaven will increase according to our increase of holiness in this life. Catholics ordinarily speak of this growth in grace and good works as growth in "merit"; but with the explanation already given—that all the "merit" springs from the grace by which we perform these works. The only credit due to ourselves is our willingness to co-operate with grace instead of rejecting it. Thus the faithful servant who gained the ten talents deserved his reward, not for the talents he used, which were not his own, but because of the good use he made of them, instead of putting them into a napkin.
 

sanctus

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Just google for this -: Flesh-Pleasing is a Sin

at man should daily perplex his mind with scruples about every bit he eats, whether it be not too pleasing or too much, and about every v. word he speaks, and every step he goes, as many poor, tempted, melancholy persons do; thereby disabling themselves, not only to love, and praise, and thankfulness, but even all considerable service

What the heck was all this supposed to be about?
 

Dexter Sinister

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What the heck was all this supposed to be about?
I think we might have a bit of a language barrier here my friend. English is almost certainly not vinod1975's first language, and while he's obviously a bright guy and is trying hard, I too find some oddities in his grammar and syntax that render some of his remarks undecipherable. On a complex subject like this one, there will inevitably be failures to communicate under such circumstances. Even you and I, who are both very fluent in English, sometimes misunderstand each other. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, them's the hazards. But I'm sure you'll agree that it's important to keep trying to communicate with each other.
 

sanctus

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I think we might have a bit of a language barrier here my friend. English is almost certainly not vinod1975's first language, and while he's obviously a bright guy and is trying hard, I too find some oddities in his grammar and syntax that render some of his remarks undecipherable. On a complex subject like this one, there will inevitably be failures to communicate under such circumstances. Even you and I, who are both very fluent in English, sometimes misunderstand each other. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, them's the hazards. But I'm sure you'll agree that it's important to keep trying to communicate with each other.

Thank you. You're correct, of course.
 

vinod1975

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Jan 19, 2007
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hey dexter what actually you are trying to achive by finding mistake in other's post instead you should pay attention to your own posts

by saying I have no mean to hurt or disrespect any one but must say sanctus Njoy ever ctric about any one
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