Christianity is neither a religion nor a temple; it is not a book or a place of worship. Christianity is the person of Jesus Christ Himself.
— St. Charbel
@UntoldFortune NFP has always seemed strange to me. If the moral question is about intent, then what matters is what you’re trying to accomplish. If a couple wants the sexual act without a child, then why should the particular method matter? The intention and the desired outcome are the same.
@hdpayens They can and they do. You’re simply assuming the Catholic interpretation is correct, which itself requires the very private judgment and interior assent you criticize in others.
@hdpayens But the Orthodox could say the same: Catholics are the schismatics muddying the visible Church. Claiming your assent to Rome is “a supernatural act moved by God’s grace” is still ultimately an interior conviction and private judgment.
@gatojeton The billionaire should empty himself now by filling the hungry with good things in this life, because to undergo that inversion in the afterlife will be hellish. But ideally, we should order society such that no one can accumulate such obscene wealth in the first place.
@UntoldFortune@SteveSkojec Some of us don’t really have the luxury of choice. Where I live, if you want high-church Christianity, Rome is basically the only serious game in town.
What I find compelling is the Eucharist, not papal encyclicals…
@dionysiusmaurus There is a true meaning in Christ’s words. I just don’t accept that it must be fully exhaustively captured in one clearly systematized interpretation for revelation to be meaningful.
@dionysiusmaurus Yes, Christ���s words are binding. But a specific interpretation of them is not identical with the words themselves. To equate the passage with one exoteric sacramental reading is an interpretation, not the text itself, and other readings are possible.
@dionysiusmaurus If an institution’s understanding of sacramentology is fallible, then God is not bound by potentially erroneous human understandings or formulations about the sacraments He instituted. Naturally, this depends on how infallible one believes a tradition or institution to be.
@gatojeton The things that make trads seethe are exactly what makes Catholicism appealing to me.
Pope’s a communist? Based! Believes all religions lead to God? Based and perennialist-pilled. Believes all will be saved? Fellow apokatastasis enjoyer, giga based!
@b0rtcask1 Even without literal Adam & Eve the Resurrection remains meaningful. With it Christ shows we are not our bodies: the phenomenon of death belongs only to the material body, not our true self. It also proves He is the Logos with total authority over creation and defeats death.
@JayDyer Calling them heretics is a later theological judgment, not a neutral historical category. So the argument only works if you already assume the Orthodox position is correct, which a Protestant obviously does not grant.
@UntoldFortune Traditional Christianity as a whole, at least from my limited understanding, seems to have suffered from dogmas and anathemas creating awkward spots where belief is forced to fit a predefined “infallible” presupposition, held mainly because it is required, not because it coheres.
@UntoldFortune Is that awkward patch specific to Romanides or part of the broader Eastern view? God’s love as a cleansing fire seems to point toward universalism, since a cleansing fire that never actually cleanses is awkward.
@JacobRingle@rex_aeterne@FeelsGuy2003 True freedom isn’t choosing anything, even what destroys you, but choosing what’s truly good, aligned with your telos. A will that rejects its own good isn’t free but wounded. It’s not coercion but healing the will of its insanity so it can freely return to the Good.