As Someone Said : You Catch More Flies with Honey than with Vinegar

1) New blog on the kid : As Someone Said : You Catch More Flies with Honey than with Vinegar, 2) Creation vs. Evolution : A Pretty Vile Attack on "Christian Fundamentalists" - but a Parodic One, 3) Great Bishop of Geneva! : Apostatic Rejection of "Fundamentalism" in 1994, 4) Dwight Makes a Calmer Attack on Catholic Fundies

Lita Cosner is a heretic. She does not believe Christ founded a Church with a Magisterium and promised to be with the Church, more precisely with the Magisterium all of the two thousand nearly years that have lapsed since Ascension Day.

Who would in normal times have been best qualified to tell her so?

Well, a Jesuit, someone like Father Brown, might come to mind.

Now, a possible Jesuit from Fordham University (it might be a man from another order, but Fordham is Jesuit and as Jesuits are into education and the priest - supposing his orders were valid - said he was planning to become an educator, he is very probably a Jesuit - supposing St Ignatius, St Robert Bellarmine, St Francis Xaver and Suarez could recognise the order that recently was under Arrupe and Wojtyla as "Jesuit general" and as "Pope"), a probable "Jesuit" then from Fordham wrote her.

Did he tell her how good it is that Protestants are at least Creationists?

Did he appreciate the good work she was doing and others were doing at both exegetics and science, like Catholic priests have been known to appreciate the Hebrew lexica of a Lutheran?

No, not quite so.

He accused her and the rest of the team of being hateful. He accused her and the rest of the team of brainwashing children, those of them who have such, that is.

His words bore very little resemblance to what was even remotely wrong with CMI even very seldom (like when John Gideon Hartnett promotes Heliocentric cosmology once every six months or so, or when their very licit and laudable tota scriptura is unfortunately, for once, about once a year, a bit too harshly attached to the indeed heretical and condemned thesis of sola scriptura) and none at all to what a real Catholic would have to answer on that.

And what he believes and cares about bears a MUCH higher resemblance to the Progressive Protestantism (of the Porvoo Communion style) from which I fled into the Catholic Church.

After seeing this site, it has become abundantly clear to me, and others who I have forwarded, that these pages of "blasphemy and immoral substance" is a complete contradiction to God's wishes.

He is guessing about God's wishes in an absence of reference to God's commands. A monk or nun is commanded to stay a monk or nun, is commanded to pray the hours, to stay (at least usually) in the monastery, to get along with others in the monastery as to their merely human frailties, and a few things more like that. Within such a framework, it makes perfect sense on more than one occasion to ask oneself (or if possible ask God) what God wishes one to do, concretely.

Holy Writte does not specify that brother so and so shall volunteer to wipe up the toilet after brother this and that was ill, but no command in Holy Writte or in Tradition contradicts brother so and so guessing that that is what God wishes of him.

But pushing this kind of empathy with God to the point where you set out to contradict what God has explicitly revealed is of course a diabolical illusion. And as obviously not what monks or nuns are encouraged to do.

Faith in Christ is to be discovered, and upheld in beliefs the of love and goodness faith provides. It is not to be beaten into one's head while ignoring any other thought, omitting information, blocking the opportunity for an opposing issue, bashing other human beings, spitting in the face of contextual backings, and distorting one's own mind in effort to stand upon a fanatical, blasphemous, dangerous, intolerable, hateful, bigoted, spiteful, vengeful, painful, etc. ideology that is truly a perversion of everything Christ stands for.

He presumes to know:

• what Creationists do to stay Creationist;
• that Christ Himself, despite being ("in his cultural context" as such Liberal Protestants like to say) Creationist stands for certain values (like Victorian gentlemen in philosophical debate) the correct interpretation of which has no real connexion with what Christ actually said, but with how people nowadays stand for these values, and that this correct interpretation of these values excludes Creationism.

I do NOT recognise the Oblate of Mary Immaculate for whom I did Catechism while converting about age 20. I very much DO recognise the progressives of the Swedish then State Church, like their way of dealing with questions like female "priests" or a bit later (after I left) "gay unions", the registered partnerships of which they DO "bless".

But there is a little pearl of quintessential apostasy which even Progressives among Lutherans have so far tended to miss out on (as far as I got their message, which might be in a lacunary fashion, and apart from extremes like the proto-Arischer Christ Adolf von Harnack):

As a Christian your responsibility is to the New Testament. This is the Word which God had sent Christ to confer upon us. To put in VERY simply, the Old Testament was the best of the worst. What I mean when I say this is that 2000+ years ago, people and little to no understanding of how the world worked and often supplemented folklore and "guesses" into oral stories in an attempt to make something coherent (and more believable). That being said (whether you have the courage, knowledge, insight, common sense to admit that or not), the Bible, as a tool of man, invented by man, for man, is and will always be corrupted and impure, simply for the basic reason that mortal hands can never reach the level of divinity. Man cannot understand or comprehend Divinity. To claim that anything created by the hand and minds of a non-deity (regardless of the deity one believes in seeing how Fundamentalist consider the book not the Lord) would not be corrupted by editing, censorship, misunderstanding, and blatant ignorance is foolish and borderline psychotic.

On reconsideration, his attitude is after all shared by Porvoo Communion progressives. The difference is they apply this to the Gospels and the New Testament as well. Logically.

Now, there is a problem in the Apostasy from Biblical inerrancy. It directly involves the kind of "man-therefore-NOT-God" dualism which also tends to deny the Incarnation. Which means, he is touching very clearly on an Apostasy from belief in the Divinity of Christ. From Dualism, as usual.

Actally, Protestants do (and Porvoo more than Evangelicals) tend to look ascance at people guessing what God wishes from them personally in such and such a moment. They would say that the human guess cannot in itself be identical to God's expression. They would say that hearing God's voice within your mind is a dangerous illusion, we cannot know God as a personal friend, only as a historic and invisible reality, like we know about bacteria as invisible enemies we cannot at all know by quarreling with them. A Catholic may piously hope that if he's anyway bound to do such guessing, God may use it - if he prays about that - so it does not lead him astray. But to the conventional Protestant, as they have been for centuries, this is too much of a confusion between the human and the divine, precisely like the idolatry of worshipping anthropomorphic deities.

The ultimate consequence of this Protestant mindset has been to attack the possibility of hagiographers to know what God wnated them to write and therefore to attack Bible belief too. Hence this Apostate's:

the Bible, as a tool of man, invented by man, for man, is and will always be corrupted and impure, simply for the basic reason that mortal hands can never reach the level of divinity

And if the Bible was the word of God, as Pope Leo XIII said? More precisely, in such a manner that God is author of every clause and sentence of which the hagiographer is human author.

Well, that is a bit like the Incarnation, isn't it? It is a bit like the finger writing in the sand in John chapter 8 being the "finger" who wrote the decalogue on stone tablets, twice over (Exodus 31 and 34, the two givings of the tables being a type of Old and New Covenant, Aron's idolatry a type of Caiaphas' apostasy).

But there is more likeness to Progressive Protestants here.

What I mean when I say this is that 2000+ years ago, people and little to no understanding of how the world worked and often supplemented folklore and "guesses" into oral stories in an attempt to make something coherent (and more believable).

Bible as word not of God, but of man, not of man at his best, but of men more ignorant than we are. Have I not heard that somewhere before, where "priests" were not called "Father" because of a Protestant disliking of that word?

I think I very much do have heard that before, in such a context.

That was the kind of people I was converting FROM, age 16 to 20. No wonder the Bishop of Stockholm wanted to delay my conversion. He was perhaps trying to apostatise his diocese TO that. Fortunately for me, he could not stop me from meeting Catholics who were, despite such a Bishop in such a diocese (no longer really part of the real Catholic Church), still Catholic. I was received into the Church, or what appeared as such, at a date in 1988 before Archbishop Lefèbvre had as yet been "excommunicated". And by a priest who, while celebrating Novus Ordo from obedience, still had no qualms about saying Archbishop Lefèbvre was not totally wrong.

But after reading CMI for a few years, I can consider the claim of this "priest"* of having done so - at all, he doesn't say "for years" - at least if meant to imply "with fairness" somewhat spurious.

"priest"

You use every logical fallacy ever, and have even seen to invent new ones, purely to falsely assert your claims.

fact

It is not logically fallacious to assert that a historic account from a credible source - God's word being that, and Genesis having some claim of being credible even as a human word - which has been attacked as incompatible with science remains credible if one can show that the attacks are unfounded. And it is not a logical fallacy to assert that for instance the attack from Carbon 14 dating giving dates prior to Biblical creation is unfounded if one can** ascribe such overlong ages as due to athmospheric Carbon 14 rising at some point and back then being lower than we can observe now. And so on for quite a few of their refutations of supposed invalidations of the Bible. I have in several years found no real fallacy. Except when incidentally very rarely defending Heliocentrism, which is not their core subject.

"priest"

Any and seemingly all "evidence" you provide is provided from similar pro-creationist sites,

fact

False. They do not boycott their colleagues any more than an Evolutionist Institution would boycott its Evolutionist colleagues, but they are not limiting themselves to these. They do refer to what Evolutionists have to say, pretty often.

"priest"

all of which take actual facts out of context in order to misguide people into your beliefs.

fact

When it comes to things like culpability and innocence, taking a fact out of its due context, especially if often thought to imply another context, is very dishonest. But when it comes to science, either context does not mean very much, or it is very largely ignored by the Evolutionist and Heliocentric community as well, as context in their business would be like philosophical context of ideas.

By context, the so called Father Jason presumably means "the big picture". And by "the big picture" he presumably means, in extension, if not intention of phrase, the world view into which the facts are projected by conventional scientists.

I am afraid, saying this about this "priest" is not likely to catch any fly at all.

I will not end with all vinegar. I will now turn to Lita Cosner. A heretic, but not an apostate. And very capable of responding to apostasy.

I believe our central point of disagreement is about the nature of the Old Testament. You say that the Old Testament was ‘the best of the worst’, and that in those times, people supplemented folklore and guesses to explain things of which they were ignorant. But that completely contradicts the New Testament’s view of the Old Testament—and you did say that as Christians we have an obligation to the New Testament.

She is really making the best of "Father Jason". She is somehow presuming he meant to the "New Testament as we have it in writing". He probably meant to sth like "values of the New Testament" or some such thing.*** But for more honest people than him, she is giving a point.

So what about when Peter says, “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by that Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Peter 1:20–21). What about when the author of Hebrews says, “God… spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways” (Hebrews 1:1). How can you claim to love the New Testament while dishonoring the Old Testament which is the foundation for literally every doctrine in the New Testament? And see this chart of Bible cross references—the blue are to the Old Testament, and the red are to the New Testament. Tell me how to untangle them, and I’ll listen to your argument about how we should respect the New Testament in isolation to the Old. But it’s impossible.

From: Priest calls CMI heretical by Lita Cosner Published: 27 February 2016 (GMT+10) http://creation.com/cmi-heretical

She failed only to mention that the idea of "respect[ing] the New Testament in isolation to the Old" is an Albigensian one. It is a Jewish prejudice about Catholicism/Christianity - a relative of mine was astonished to hear that monks recite the Psalms of David each day. And an Albigensian tenet about their own religion back then.

She made a few points, reminding of some I have a few years back heard about "cafeteria Catholics":

You say that “man cannot understand or comprehend Divinity”, and you’re absolutely right—but God has stooped down to our level, and while His ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, He has revealed Himself to us through His Word, and through His Son. So we can know what He has revealed, because the whole purpose of revelation was so we could understand.

Your view of what it takes to be a Christian is most certainly not a biblical one. But then again, anyone can decide what is truth for themselves and call it whatever religion they like. Our knowledge of God, our fallen state and what is required for salvation is derived only from Scripture. It’s not a salad bar where one can pick and choose what one wants to believe. Our Saviour, the Lord Jesus most certainly believed in the Old Testament as real history. He affirmed a real Adam and Eve (The NT called Jesus the Last Adam), a global Flood, (which he paralleled with Second Coming), Jonah’s three days in the belly of a fish that He used to foretell the three days and night He remained dead before His resurrection. So, if you think Jesus is wrong about such things, then by any definition it would be hard to call oneself a Christian. Unless you have made up your own definition of what Christianity is, which it appears that you have indeed done.

I disagree ONLY with one word.

Our knowledge is derived from ALL OF Scripture, but not ONLY from it. Christ, in Scripture, affirmed the Natural Law:

Matthew 7:11
If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more will your Father who is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him?

Luke 11:13
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father from heaven give the good Spirit to them that ask him?

The places above also affirm that this natural knowledge of the law is NOT sufficient to save ourselves from Hell.

But in fact, Scripture cannot contradict the natural law, if it is correctly understood. St Paul also affirms the natural law, even in the fallen state:

Romans 2:14,15°
[14] For when the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature those things that are of the law; these having not the law are a law to themselves: [15] Who shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts between themselves accusing, or also defending one another,

This place acknowledges that with natural law, if acted out, those ignorant of God may be saved, if that is not their fault.

Scripture can and often does contradict current fads and heresies about what the Natural Law says about such and such a thing.

Christ also affirmed the Magisterium:

Luke 10:16 [adressing the seventy-two°°]
He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.

But hearing the Magisterium being identical to hearing Christ has an obvious limit. One cannot be hearing that magisterium when a priest is directly contradicting what the original priests heard Christ say. One cannot presume "John Paul II" in 1992 represented the same magisterium as St Peter (aptly quoted by Lita) or as Pope Leo XIII (Providentissimus Deus, quoting §20):

For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
Monday after III Lord's Day in Lent
29.II.2016

* The priest whom I converted for was certainly validly ordained, since he certainly had been ordained before the Novus Ordo. The "priest" who wrote CMI may have been ordained in (or ordained by a bishop consecreated in) a rite which is new, not that of the Church and invalid. ** Yes, even just CAN, that is enough in the presence of a good historical claim. There is no need for CMI to use C14 to actually prove young ages of Cro Magnon. All they have to do is prove the measurements of C14-content is compatible. That said, they do use it to disprove the millions of years attributed to some fossils. *** And he's not meaning values like finding soap fairly secundary or like giving generous alms in private either, I fear. ° Credits to St Thomas Aquinas for quoting this in the Summa, I didn't know it by heart! °° Context is also key in understanding what kind of person can do what kind of thing, like context in whom Christ adressed certain words to.