A bad argument

(1) Some Roman Catholics are bad or wicked or dangerous or wrong in some ways or something like that

(2) Some Roman Catolics use incense

(3) Therefore we must not use incense

Now, leave aside what you think about (1) for a moment. Just note that if were to grant this it would also prove:

(2a) Some Roman Catholics preach sermons using Bible texts

(3a) Therefore we must not preach (sermons using Bible texts).

As I said, a bad argument.

Perverse Penance

Glen Scrivner's sermon on Sunday evening (on Christ Alone from Mt 11 & Col 1), suggested that one of the perversities of a system of penance is that it tends to think of saying prayers as some kind of punishment (or a meritorious good work) rather than a privilege of grace.

Turretin on Prayers to the Dead

If I ask my living friends to pray for me, why shouldn’t I ask my friends who have died, or the other dead, to pray for me too?

invocation of saints has neither a precept, nor promise, nor example in Scripture for its foundation. Thus it is nothing else than a corrupt and damnable will-worship (ethelothre_skeia). Invocation of God is indeed everywhere urged, but mention is nowhere made of the invocation of creatures. (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 11.7.2, v2 p42)

… invocation supposes … knowledge … in the one invoked: knowledge to know all our necessities and everywhere hear our prayers (mental as well as oral) and be truly a searcher of hearts (kardiognwte_s)…. Now these belong to God alone (the one searcher of hearts [kardionwste_s], who alone is the object of faith and omniscient….. As to the saints, on the contrary, we have no proof of their knowledge…. Indeed, Scripture (which often ascribes to God alone omniscience, heart-searching [kardiognwsian] and omnipotence, 1 K. 8:39; 2 Ch. 6:30; Rev. 2:23; Jer. 17:10) clearly proved that these cannot belong to creatures and frequently ascribes to the saints and ignorance of the affairs of earth (Is. 63:16; Ecc. 9:6; 2 K. 22:20). 11.7.3 p43

From the mutual prayers of the living to prayers of the departed for the living, the consequence does not hold good. Among the former, there is a mutual communion of offices and necessities; there is none between the dead and the living. The former are enjoined and praised in Scripture, but the latter by no means. Nor does the perfection of charity (with which the saints are blessed) conduce their praying for us particularly because the condition of that life does not allow of it. 14.4.xxii, v2 p390

Gresham Machen on Roman Catholicism

I think I agree with this from Gresham Machen (an arch Reformed Conservative Evangelical bastion of orthodoxy if ever there was one) about Romanism and Christianity:

Far more serious still is the division between the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism in all its forms. Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today! We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own Church. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all.

(from Christianity and Liberalism, available free on line, towards the end of ch 2 on doctrine, HT: WB, JC, LG).

Whether or not the Roman Catholic church is a Church / teaches Christianity is of course debatable. I am inclined to think it might be a perverted church since while it has seriously corrupted the Gospel it does confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour etc.

Spiritual eating

Medieval Roman Catholic theology claimed that one can "eat" the Mass spiritually by desiring it without actually consuming the elements. This is not so far away from some Evangelicals who think that the whole point of the Supper is thinking about Jesus such that one almost might as well just think about Jesus and not bother too much with this bread and wine business. We must not forget the importance of eating if we would not be Gnostics or Papists.

Prayer To Mary

I have just been leafing through the Armed Forces Operational Service and Prayer Book (Ministry of Defence, JSP 587, Armed Forces Chaplaincy Policy Board), which contains some useful and some not so useful material, including funeral services from other faiths.

I'm afraid that with the best will in the world, it seems to me that the "Evening Prayer [sic!] to Our Lady" gives to Mary the place that belongs only to Christ. I don't think she or her son would like it!

Please don't "pray" it. You can read it here for research purposes only!

Hail holy Queen, Mother of Mercy! Hail our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To Thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve,
to Thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and wailing in this vale of tears.
Turn then, most gracious advocate, Thine eyes of mercy towards us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of Thy womb Jesus.

O clement, O loving, O Sweet Virgin Mary.
Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

(p22)

Capital letters for Mary seems to me to give her far too high a status.

Better to go straight to Christ, knowing that he is the only mediator between God and man and that anyone who comes to him he will by no means turn away.

This prayer seems to me obviously to pray to Mary whereas I have heard some try to distinguish talking to Mary and asking her to pray for us, which sounds like as a bit of a fudge to me anyway.

The hurt of hearing the mass

The other day I was at a clergy event where I was supposed to go to a communion service led by an anglican minister. To my surprise, it turned out afterwards that it had been from the Roman Missal.

I didn't walk out, but if I had been braver I might have done when the minister was holding up the wafer saying "this is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world". This seems at best confused and confusing to me and likely idolatry, if really believed.

There was also much careless talk of sacrifice. Whilst the service didn't say, "now I will offer a meritorious good work to propitiate God" it sounded like the minister thought he was helping the achieve the salvation of the world by what he was doing. To my mind the service needs to be much more explicit on the one perfect completed never to be repeated sacrifice of Christ and our unworthy sacrifice as one of thanks and praise.

Prayers for the dead and invocations of the saints are without biblical warrant and risk undermining the work of Christ.

And I'm nervous about kissing the table.

I didn't join in with the dodgey words but I did communicate. Amusingly there were 2 Roman Catholic clergy present who didn't communicate but all the Anglican ministers did.

What should I have done?

Think I need to read John Bradford, The Hurt of Hearing the Mass.

It is a real shame that one can't trust supposedly Anglican services to be the real thing.
There should be a law against it. Oh, oops, nearly forgot, there is, but no one bothers about that... Maybe I should have called the police, or the Bishop.

Language: Substance & Accidents

Aristotle’s distinction between substance (inner essence or reality) and accidents (outward appearance or form) is applied to the Lord’s Supper in the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.

Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-1292) applied also applied the same distinction to languages arguing that: “with respect to its substance, grammar is one and the same in all languages, although it does vary accidentally”.

Its not a very helpful way of thinking in either case.

RC views of justification (updated!?)

Dr Williams argued today that we must never get bored of making the distinction that our works are the non-meritorious (evidential) grounds of our future justification or we will find ourselves in Ratzinger's lap through ennui.

Apparently our RC non-brothers really do officially believe that we merit our salvation (in part ? and through God's grace ? or something blah, blah). This must be a different gospel and damnable heresy (depending on the relationship between nature, creation, and grace and the type of merit) and we must say that the Reformation was worth it after all. If Justification is the article by which the church stands or falls (as Luther argued) then we would have to say that the Roman Catholic church is not a Church although many of it members may be converted and it has the form of Christian Baptism. The sacraments alone cannot make a church: there must be the Word of the gospel of the Bible.

The RC church has apparently explicitly repudiated the work of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and has made no fully official authoritative statements on justification since The Canons and Decrees of the Council Trent except the Joint Declaration on Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ).

The official (presented by the Pope to the Church, though I think not infalible ex cathedra?) teaching of the present day Roman Catholic church can be found in its Catechism.

The Catechism, by the way, is dedicated "To The Immaculate"!:

At the conclusion of this document presenting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I beseech the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Incarnate Word and Mother of the Church, to support with her powerful intercession the catechetical work of the entire Church on every level, at this time when she is called to a new effort of evangelization. May the light of the true faith free humanity from the ignorance and slavery of sin in order to lead it to the only freedom worthy of the name (cf. Jn 8:32): that of life in Jesus Christ under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, here below and in the Kingdom of heaven, in the fullness of the blessed vision of God face to face (cf. I Cor 13:12; 2 Cor 5:6-8)!

Far too big for his RC robes

Revd Richard Perkins (Pastor of the Co-Mission church, Christ Church, Balham) has had a few Doctrine Slot blogposts on Roman Catholicism and quotes this amazingly overblown statement of official Roman Catholic teaching about the Pope:

The Pope takes the place of Jesus Christ on earth …. By divine right the Pope has supreme and full power in faith and morals over each and every pastor and his flock. He is the true Vicar of Christ, the head of the entire church, the father and teacher of all Christians. He is the infallible ruler, the founder of dogmas, the author of and judge of councils; the universal ruler of truth, the arbiter of the world, the supreme judge of heaven and earth, the judge of all, being judged by no one, God himself on earth

Now, I'm all for the authority of pastors as under-shepherds of Christ, even as his representatives (not substitute) on earth, and I could live with "Father" and "arbitrator" and stuff, but this is surely too much?

Does anyone happen to know the precise source? Is it Vatican I? Presumably the RC church can never change or repediate such authoritative teaching but has there been an attempt to "reinterpet" or soften this?