/clg/ Catholic Literature General

Last Thread (Because I owe my Polish grandparents something)

Atheists and members of other Christian denominations are welcome to debate theology, faith, etc. But please keep it civil.

" 18 Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. 19 They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow."

Other urls found in this thread:

biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 19
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Maybe we should take a break and not string the threads together one after the other like this.

Yeah, maybe, but that aspect of Christ that is omnipotent and omnipresent was cool with me when I linked the threads.

Anyway.

If you haven't seen the actual Dali portrait in the OP you get yourself up to NY and see it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

What do you owe your polish grandparents?

Nothing I just thought it was a /clg/ thing to say. It's like [x edition].

You don't owe anything to your grandparents? Wowee

Was Tolstoy right about Dante?

Also, reminder that Catholicism is a religion, not a culture. If you do not believe in Christ, regularly attend Mass, and take the Church seriously as a force in your life, you are ultimately just a LARPer.

What can I read to get a basic but thorough synopsis of Catholic beliefs, preferably with a slight anti-protestant/calvinist slant. Things like salvation, prayer to mary/saints, Peter being the first pope etc.. Like Calvin's Institutes or Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology but a Catholic version

What happened to mere Christianity? I keep seeing these threads on Veeky Forums and it's Catholic this and Catholic that. Protestant or Orthodox seem to be insults, or at least on par with terms such as Muslim or atheist, that is, equally far from our, true faith. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-Catholic. I'm not against your stance, just trying to make sense of it. Is there such a thing as a religion called Christianity anymore? Or am I wrong to think there ever was?

Dogmatik by Scheeben.

Catholicism is Christianity, everything else is just schism or heresy, outside of salvation, unless we factor in invincible ignorance.

...

Why are the Orthodox guys trying to get to Turkey? Why are there toll-houses?

...

But what about the toll-houses? What's that all about?

So is the point of the meme that the ultimate goal of Orthodoxy is to convert Turkey? That's weird.

the ultimate goal is misrepresentation and memeing their way to victory
the only thing catholics know how to do

Why can't the Orthodox into philosophy?

because their theology is incoherent and they don't want to confront it

It's a meme on /Christian/. Some Latin kept acting like the only reason the Orthodox Church didn't reunite with the Roman Catholic church after the Council of Florence was that we loved the Turks, so after repeatedly responding to it we just started rolling with it. This version of the maze meme is mine, I added the tollouse aspect.
Tollhouses are something related to the way that Orthodox Christians view the afterlife. They have a deep symbolic meaning and an interesting history, but in recent times aversion of tollhouse theory has been pushed that's incredibley simplistic and literal, so I've been memeing on them
Nah I made that one and I'm Eastern Orthodox
>Butt status: hurt

you're a Pelagian heretic is what you are

How?

tell me how someone gets into heaven

you'll find out soon enough

Through a faith in Jesus Christ, this faith not being a dead faith. What meme angel you coming from?

meme answer, as expected from a Pelagian

so its through faith alone? No act or sacrament merits salvation?

Muh Augustine? Just part of his soteriology and none of his ecclesiology though?

muh bible? just part of james 2:24 and none of Romans 3:28?

OF THE LAW
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correct, thank you for finally coming to an emphatic agreement with me and the scriptures

ok then
now who are you shilling for?

proddy

As butthurt as I may be, the question still stands. Is there any Orthodox philosophy at all? Soloviev became Catholic anyway and had sympathies for it during his life, but he counts if we streach it, political theory isn't as applicable to theology so I wouldn't count that either and that part is mostly Russian imperialist wankery.

What is the best entry-level apologetics book for an agnostic like me? I'm currently reading Keller's The Reason For God, but it's from an American low-church Protestant perspective (which Keller calls "orthodox christian" lol).

I have Orthodoxy by Chesterton lined up next.

Okay, what's the real version of tollhouse theory?

I prefer these Protestants over Dante and Dostoevsky, including the Authorised Version over your Hippie Bibles. The fact that the best writer Orthodoxy has to offer is Dostoevsky is pathetic. His "masterpiece" Brothers K. is full of completely unbelievable, flat characters.

>inb4 Shakespeare was a secret Catholic
The man had an Anglican wedding and funeral, attended Anglican services, and his daughters all married Protestants, including a Puritan, which is even more removed from the Papists than the Anglicans.

Why not convert to Islam?

Augustine's confessions probably.

>protestants have no good literat-
*blocks your path*

These posts have made me think.

Is England the most Veeky Forums protestant country?

He may not have been Catholic (and if he was he couldn't have published anything as one), but his writings were. KJV is just a bad translation. Milton was extra heretical, even by heretical standards. The fact that just about every worthwhile praised Dosto for his characters speaks against you.

>but his writings were
What did he mean by this?

I just have an Anglo bias because I'm mostly unfamiliar with German and Scandinavian literature. Most great American writers were Anglican, Presbyterian, or some other product of the English Reformation such as Quakerism. I recall that Knut Hamsun from Norway was at least nominally a Lutheran. I'm also sure most of the great German philosophers were Lutheran. Frankly most of my favorite writers are either Anglican, Catholic, or Irreligious, but that's bound to be true for anyone born in an English-speaking country.

You must be a newfag if you haven't seen Nabokov's quotes against Dostoevsky. Nabokov is also not the only worthy to have written against Dostoevsky.

Just because Shakespeare has plays set in Italy with Catholics in them doesn't make them Catholic plays, you buffoon. If Kim Jong Un wrote a play about the Pope, would that make him a Catholic?

There is absolutely no proof that Shakespeare had private Catholic convictions. However, nominally he was an Anglican and his daughters and sisters married Anglicans without any controversial connection established to Rome.

>unironically using Nabokov as an argument
Lel

>The Holy Bible
>Protestant

Lol. Don't care if its KJV, it still has Peter being told to build the Catholic church.

Look, you're questioning my credibility because I'm just some guy on the internet. I get that, you want more sources of authority. But Nabokov is well-recognized as a great writer. I could cook up some more alphabet soup of great names of people who said Dostoevsky's characters are straw men, but why bother? You're obviously a cretin who doesn't know how to argue. You still fail to name another great Orthodox writer besides a few other lowly Russians from the 19th century. Face it: Orthodoxy, while it's probably a fine religion, has offered virtually nothing of literary note by comparison to major Protestant Churches and the Roman Catholic Church. You can't refute this.

> Seriously guys, stop asking who the bell tolls for. Its not funny anymore

16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

16:19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

We're talking about Peter. Does Jesus say anything about his successor as Bishop of Rome here?

Next thing you're going to tell me is that the Medicis had infallible judgement!

Also, I never implied the Bible is Protestant or inherently any ideology, but the translation certainly was made by the Church of England.

Okay so if that succession isn't valid, give me a non-meme reason the bible can be taken seriously.

>INB4 Joel Osteen told me so

Answer me this: from that text, where do you get papal authority? Peter was Bishop of Rome, no doubt, but where does it say his successor has authority?

Peter said so you dumbass. Given that you concede he had authority, I don't know how you can squirm out of his authority to determine a successor

Does Peter's successor inherit this power? It's obviously an ambiguous passage no matter how you look at it.

>Upon this rock I will build my church, but I intend it to last only as long as you live. Also, you're not actually allowed to build an institution with succession, you're just a figurehead for the next 50 odd years

Literally no ambiguity. Peter is in charge now and if he says he has a successor, he does

>Peter is in charge now in Rom eand if he says he has a successor in Rome, he does.

ftfy

Besides, it's the College of Cardinals who decides who is the next Pope, not the dead Pope. This is an absurd argument.

Do you reckon Gregory VI was an infallible pope? What about the ones who fathered bastards?

>Next thing you're going to tell me is that the Medicis had infallible judgement!
>Do you reckon Gregory VI was an infallible pope? What about the ones who fathered bastards?
Are you capable of googling what infallible means?

To all Catholic's please remember to do your daily rosaries and PLEASE don't miss out on one of the sweetest deals known to the church - The First Friday Mass. Seriously, look that stuff up, it's practically a hack into heaven, stuff's op.
(Though I recommend not taking advantage of it, because when you get down to it - it's a way of thanking Christ for all his love, try doing the First Friday more than once after the nine months.)

The proddy has been here all day long for the past three days.

I wonder how protestants don't see the contradiction in their epistemology, it's always based in being anti-Catholic, but it without Catholicism cannot provide self justification.

>How could they think they're right, when I'm so obviously right?

Protestantism is just yesteryear's leftism. It's not meant to make sense, it's only a temporary tool in destroying human civilization.

popekissingterroristfeet.jpg

Not so fast, Pedro.

G-guys we're Catholic t-too!

Not Catholic, not anti-catholic, but doesn't it seem a little odd that the Church would literally adopt the language, traditions, names, organization, etc of the entity used in the New Testament to represent everything corrupt and bad about the world?

I would argue this is true for protestantism, but as Assad has said in his critique of a Geertzian interpretation of religion, certain religions - Catholicism being one of them - focus on practice and rites more than they do genuine faith, which is the focus of most if not all protestant sects.

As the roman empire turned to christ, are we not similar being inherently sinful?

This wouldn't be the case with any other schism or heresy, none of the ones I'm aware of were so dependant on an arch rival.

It isn't though. I went to a congregational church and it was based on the relationship between the apostles and Christ, and meant to foster a personal relationship with God. I didn't know of Catholic doctrine until I met a roman catholic friend in high school.

>strawman hypocrite

How can Catholics even cope?

>Chad Briton vs Italian virgin

user's got it.

It's the pagan elements in Catholicism that do it for me desu. With maybe the exception of the black church, I find Protestantism to be sterile, irreverent, and unimaginative.

That post doesn't say that at all. To give an example of his logic:

>Biblical canon was established authoritatively by an early church council
>Early church split into oriental, orthodox, and catholic christianity
>Protestants reject all three as having the ability to declare things with authority
>Many Protestants now reject the capacity for there to be church authority that can declare things authoritatively at all
>Protestants focus all of their authority on the Bible
>How do they know the biblical canon?

All they can resort to is the research done over centuries, which makes for a long game of telephone and hoping the reason of man can choose what is the word of God, which they'd be appalled by if they took the time to think about it.

The Puritans shut down the Globe and you're claiming Shakespeare was a Protestant? Lol

i want to like catholicism because of the paganism, the art, the history, etc. but if you compare protestant countries to catholic ones, protestantism is clearly superior, just look at the areas in the northern united states founded by puritans and then compare it to some standard protestant dump in the south, and then compare both of those two any catholic shit in the americas...puritans outperform on everything

catholics talk a good theoretical game but anywhere they have power is a corrupt shithole filled with crime and vice, meanwhile puritans actually live by christian values

So you'd rather live in Detroit than Florence?

Rites and faith reinforce each other. "Genuine faith" with no outward signs ultimately becomes misplaced, incorrect, or wayward. This is because, as Aquinas teaches us, man is neither fully soul nor fully body, but rather a composite of the two. What is outward is connected with what is inward.

All roads lead to Istanbul.

I was reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky where he talks about the Skoptsky Christian sect that existed in Russia in the 19thC. They practiced voluntary castration, and justified themselves by Mathew 19:12 among other things.

>12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

In my reading it would seem the Skopsky sect took this idea literally, but Jesus seems to use eunuchs in a wider sense - meaning a way of life that is more humble and ascetic.

That passage comes from the section where Jesus talks about marriage and divorce. So I've always taken "eunuch" in this instance merely to mean someone who chooses not to have sex. I've always assumed he was talking about celibacy and chastity, which is something all non-married Christians are called to.

And, in fact, I just found the chapter on Bible Gateway: biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 19

In place of "eunuch," this particular translation has "incapable of marriage," which seems to drive the point home further.

>They practiced voluntary castration, and justified themselves by Mathew 19:12 among other things.

JUST

What is a good English translation of the Idiot?

Shit like this is why lay Catholics are not allowed to interpret Scripture themselves.

>the writer and the book acknowledged by almost everyone as having incredible psychological depth
>flat
Anglos

Do not interact with them

I read FDJ years ago but he was flat as fuck.
I guess films made his portrayal of characters completely moot.

Why do most of you Christians fear Spirituality?

Because it demands an acceptance of the idea that the world has a miraculous, supernatural dimension, and in our modern age most people can't handle that.

Everything on the big 7 (including the heart/love) is there to distract you and is besides the point. The Light of God is not the rainbow.

I'm reading Ignat Avsey's translation published by Alma Classics - no complaints, having no problem reading fifty pages or more a day. Avoid P+V. I've enjoyed McDuff's Crime and Punishment so I imagine his Idiot from Penguin is good.

It's full of New Testament allusions - and the way Dostoevsky builds things up is something to behold.

mostly just fear ones that are anti biblical like praying to dead people

Even when they appear before you?

People who aren't Catholic do dumb heretical shit so Catholics are at fault?

yes

No, I was praising Catholics for not allowing just anybody to interpret Scripture validly, because doing so leads precisely to shit like castrating yourself. Letting the average yuckster interpret the Bible for himself was one of Luther's worst ideas.

>No, I was praising Catholics for not allowing just anybody to interpret Scripture validly
you really think not being allowed to interpret scripture is a good thing? Especially when the "official" interpretations aren't even implicitly in the book

I think it's useful to have a standard interpretation to which all others should look. It's nice to have something authoritative.

thats what confessions and creeds are for, but "no personal interpretation" as part of the doctrine is cultish and non biblical