A Portsmouth Catholic

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  • AUTHORITY 3

    Now having chosen a group of men to spread his Gospel, there was the question of what to do if they disagreed. When a committee of any kind is chosen in life there always has to be a chairman, a leader who can direct policy according to the rules. So Christ chose Peter. It was not that he was more saintly than the others, but he appeared to have greater insight. “Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God” “Blessed art thou for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in Heaven” replied Jesus ” and I say to you Thou are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it, and I will give to thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, so that what you loose upon earth will be loosed also in Heaven”. And so it was on the authority of the Apostles and their leader that the Church lasted and will continue to last for two thousand years. But indeed there were many challenges to the Authority Jesus had given. Right from the start we had people in the very Church in Rome there were those who refused to believe hat the bread at the memorial of Christ did not change into the Flesh of Jesus. They were called Docitists.. But the real challenge came with the Arian heresy. Most heresies were usually confined to a small region But Arianism spread throughout the Christian world and many bishops supported them. The problem was that there was an opinion that Jesus was a kind of lesser God. His divinity they argued was created by the Father at the moment of his birth. The Pope rallied the Church and at the Council of Nicea the bishops agreed that Jesus was “God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, Begotten not mad, Consubstantial with the Father, and through him all things were made” Now these words are read at every Mass, but how many Catholics know where the words came from.

    Now we can see how the Church set up by Christ has lasted. Whereas scripture without authority has perished and there are over 25 thousand Protestant denominations. They all broke away from one another because scripture was not a safe authority without the Catholic Church. Now let me say immediately that I am not criticising Protestants. I grew up with Protestants and my best friend was Church of Scotland. We argued the Bible for years and that brought nothing for it was argument and not discussion. But I respected him. I used to do Parish visiting where we knocked doors looking for Catholics and often had friendly discussions with Protestants of all denominations. We spoke respectfully of their Faith for they are also children of God AND GOD LOVES THEM AND IS ALSO WORKING FOR THEIR SALVATION. When I listen to Songs of Praise on the tv I am often lost in admiration at the works they do, and I feel that God will look more kindly on them than on me.

    But back to Authority. There is an Essay by a writer called McAuley in which he praises the survival of the Catholic Church from the beginnings in Rome until today. He ends with this. “One day when a traveller is looking at the ruins of St Pauls, the Catholic Church will still be there” Yes it is the survival of the Catholic Church so loved and yet despised by others that is the real mystery.

  • ASuthority 2

    Now let me make something clear. I have no authority whatsoever in anything I may publish. I am not self taught. I bought my first Bible, the Catholic Bible, the Douai Rheims Bible when I was 11 years old. It was published before the King James Bible and has no relationship with that Bible whatsoever. I say this because there is misinformation going around that RSVs of this Bible are actually related to King James. Before the Reformation there were 8 Catholic Bibles published in Europe and the Douai-Rheims bible was one of them. But let us turn to this Bible which Catholics allegedly never read. In Matthew 28 we have an account of the Ascension where the disciples ran to the hill where Jesus was and when they saw him they fell to their knees. Jesus then said “All Authority is given to me in Heaven and on earth go you THEREFORE to all nations baptising then in them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (with my authority} and (with my authority) teaching them to observe ALL I have commanded you, and I am with you always even to the end of the world” So the Apostles went out to the world to teach nations on the Authority of Jesus, an authority that would last until the end of the world through those the apostles wold appoint in their place in a line we call the Apostolic Church. The Bishop of Portsmouth was therefore appointed by another bishop in this Apostolic line, who was appointed by another, and the line goes back unbroken to the Apostles. Now that is why I have no authority, it is my bishop if he is true to the teachings of Christ who is my authority. When Jerome wrote he Latin Vulgate he was not changing the Bible into Latin because there was not Bible. There was only manuscripts written by different people including the evangelists and many others could not be relied on. If a letter was signed by Luke, was it the real Luke the evangelist. Jerome sorted a number of them out, deciding that only contemporaries of Jesus should be included. But he did not include all he genuine like Ignatius of Antioch, or Pope Clement since he size of the Bible had to be workable. The Pope at the time, who was in the lineage of Bishops who were Apostolic, referred to Jeromes work as The Word of God.

  • Authority

    What does authority mean? I asked a group of Catholics whether the commandments were important since Jesus had said If you love me keep my commandments. The answers were “Well you are you and I am me”. Another felt the Commandments are too hard to live by. Now it seems the words of Jesus were therefore not clear enough to convince these Catholics he meant it. Now I cannot see any hidden message in the remark of Jesus. If you love me seems to imply to me that if you don t love me then you will not listen. This is the point we are all so nice to one another that we dare not contradict the obvious, so we get round to accepting the idea that everyone has a different opinion and it is nice not to contradict them. In the First Letter of John we can read in Chapter 5 “We obey the commandments of Christ, in order to become images of Him and able to spread the Gospel.” Now that is the point of the Church so that it can spread Faith, and our opinions are not Faith, in unison with Christ. A Church that fails to spread the truth and exists on opinions does not reflect Christ in any way whatsoever. “I know he died for my sins”someone might say, but I use my own conscience.” Perhaps Jesus then is just a joke “I have come to beasr witness to the truth”said Jesus to Pilate. Well he answered “What is Truth” Where Faith has gone there is no truth.

  • My infant and teenage years

    I really loved the Catholic Church of my childhood. At school we had a half hour of religious education every day. O Yes WE HAD A BIBLE. We learned all about Jesus and the stories of his life and miracles. But what I really liked was our visits to the chapel next door, especially when there was adoration for the Blessed Sacrament was exposed in the monstrance and there were not just candles on the altar but on stands all around the altar. It was so wonderful and with the flowers around also how could I not fall in love with Jesus. On Sunday there was the childrens Mass where we sat at the front and a teacher from our school explained what was happening and what the priest was doing. Yes the Mass was in Latin but we knew what was going on for we were bought missals where the Latin was changed into English. SO WE UNDERSTOOK WHAT THE MASS WAS ABOUT. On the question of the use of Latin, it is probably more welcome today when people can afford to travel all over the world but have little understanding of the Mass in French Italian or any other language. Documents are published in Rome in Latin so that when they are sent to Catholic countries they can be translated into the language of that country. BUT THEE NEVER AS ANY PROBLEM WITH LATIN. The real difficulty was that many of these countries did not translate the Latin properly and this helped dissenters take Catholics away from their faith. Vatican II was a prime example where the Latin texts of Vatican II were corrupted and a new understanding of the teachings of the Church were brought to the people. The fruits of this dissention was the loss of thousands of young people, the sudden fall in vocations, and Catholics being subject to a Protestantisation of their Churches. I will close now but I will continues this theme next time

  • Why This Blog

    This blog is written after 88 years of being a Catholic. I have been through many years of change in the Church and there have been changes some good and some bad and today I am confused. I will go through the changes, how they happened, and what fruits they bore.

  • Hello World!

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