What Religion do you follow?

[Alison]

Originally Posted by Paoli69

the Pope being God on Earth.

Minor point, the Pope is not God on earth, Roman Catholics believe that he is God's spokesman, which is not really the same thing.

[Rachael]

Originally Posted by Alison

Minor point, the Pope is not God on earth

Nope.. but as I understand it, certain of his utterences are supposedly God speaking THROUGH the Pope... and that includes on things like birth control and attending mass... such that a Catholic who defies those commands is actualy defying his/her own God.

Always struck me as interesting, that, given actual my (admittedly very limited) experience of actual Catholic practice: seems to be a Church with a rather large gulf between heirachy and practicioner!

[Ernest]

Originally Posted by cantplaycantalk

I'm an athiest, with a fondness for the Budhist outlook. My body seems to be migrating that direction as I get older too

Do you really meen you are going bald ?.

Originally Posted by Alison

Minor point, the Pope is not God on earth, Roman Catholics believe that he is God's spokesman, which is not really the same thing.

Sorry to be pedantic, but I had noticed Paoli's slight mistake, and your even more slight mistake, the Pope is
God's representative on Earth.

[Alison]

Originally Posted by Rachael

Nope.. but as I understand it, certain of his utterences are supposedly God speaking THROUGH the Pope... and that includes on things like birth control and attending mass... such that a Catholic who defies those commands is actualy defying his/her own God.

Always struck me as interesting, that, given actual my (admittedly very limited) experience of actual Catholic practice: seems to be a Church with a rather large gulf between heirachy and practicioner!

Well, personally I find that particular doctrine rather dubious theologically, but then I'm not Catholic.

[Alison]

Originally Posted by Ernest

Sorry to be pedantic, but I had noticed Paoli's slight mistake, and your even more slight mistake, the Pope is
God's representative on Earth.

Yes, representative is a better word to fit the doctrine, I just couldn't place the best word at the time I wrote the post.

[Rachael]

Originally Posted by Alison

Well, personally I find that particular doctrine rather dubious theologically, but then I'm not Catholic.

It might be theologically dubious... but it's pretty central to "high" Catholicism... and would certainly warrant some asking around if you've the time: Catholicism in practice (small "c" catholicism if you like) seems such a relaxed affair... without the intense doubts, angst and theological questioning that are at the heart of the protestant tradition.... and yet high Catholicism seems totally differennt again.

[Alison]

If I find time (amongst all the things I'm supposed to get done and never seem to get around to), I might dig out my notes on the history and development of those doctrines, we did look at them during at least one of the modules...

[Ernest]

The dubious thing about Roman Catholisism is that the Pope we were taught is infallible, which means they are not capable of making errors.
Yet when a Pope dies, we are told by religious commentators, that such a Cardinal is a liberal, and another could be described as a hard liner.
This to me does not square with being infallable, because the life span of a human being is so small, that one lifespan would not make the interpitation of Roman Catholic teachings, open to debate, yet this happens every time a new Pope is elected.

Anglicans are really catholics, it was only the fact the Henry11X, put simply, wished to rid himself of his 1st wife, and when the Pope would not sanction this, Henry11X took matters into his own hands, and declared himself head of the church in England.

So really the Church of Englands docterine, and all the off shoots of the Church of England, can also be classed as theologically dubious, due to it's foundation-The Reformation.

That is I suppose is why England has a low percentage of Roman Cathoilics, compared with the likes of Ireland, Italy and the Latin American countries

[Rachael]

Originally Posted by Ernest

Yet when a Pope dies, we are told by religious commentators, that such a Cardinal is a liberal, and another could be described as a hard liner. This to me does not square with being infallable

Not a bad line of thought.... but as only a very, very few very special Papal utterences are supposed to have the authority of the Catholic God... it's perhaps a blind alley. Add in the fact that the Vatican deliberations are supposed to take place in secret.... and are not part of the formal (re)presentation of the office... and this doen't really undermine Catholicism's self-image.

Originally Posted by Ernest

Anglicans are really catholics, it was only the fact the Henry11X, put simply, wished to rid himself of his 1st wife, and when the Pope would not sanction this, Henry11X took matters into his own hands, and declared himself head of the church in England.

Well.... Archbishop Laud certainly thought this way.... but he was high church... and in the century or so following the reformation.... it was far from clear just what scale of break had been made with Rome. Many Puritans clearly felt the break had been massive... and resented the regime of the 1630s for trying to turn back the clock.... but the arguments and divisions that came into the open from 1640-1660 suggest that this issue had no clear answer.

I often find High Anglicanism a pretty wretched thing... all social niceties and all too often rather bereft of any real engagement with the idea of "faith".... and generally find myself curiously torn between genuine (albeit "low church") catholicism... and the "happy clappy" end of the Anglican Church.

[Alison]

Originally Posted by Ernest

Anglicans are really catholics, it was only the fact the Henry11X, put simply, wished to rid himself of his 1st wife, and when the Pope would not sanction this, Henry11X took matters into his own hands, and declared himself head of the church in England.

So really the Church of Englands docterine, and all the off shoots of the Church of England, can also be classed as theologically dubious, due to it's foundation-The Reformation.

Not all, or even most Anglicans are 'Catholic', the Anglican church has developed into a very broad denomination over the centuries, to such a degree that I'm sometimes surprised it has managed to keep together to the degree it has!

And if you want to talk about political causes of the various splits in the Church overall, the Reformation was already happening when Henry VIII decided to split the English chruch away from Rome, and that had very different causes, he just took advantage of a movement which was already sweeping Europe. Granted a lot of the causes of the Reformation were political, but they were more about the degree to which the Roman Catholic church had become politicised. And if you look further back the major cause of the split between the Roman Catholic church and the Orthodox church, was because Rome decided, unilaterally, to insert a new clause in the creed, without a full Church council to debate the matter, and the Orthodox church took the position that any major doctrinal or credal change had to be debated and decided in a full council of all bishops. I should add at this point that the reason Rome chose to change the creed without a full council was because they were adopting the doctrine that the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, was or should be the leader of the whole Church, whereas prior to that point all major decisions had been made in council by all the bishops and the bishop of Rome was only one voice amongst many.

By the way, this is a very simplified version of what happened, if you want me to go into more detail I'll have to dig my notes out because the module I studied this in was quite a while ago now.