Don G  wrote:
> Ok, so the infallibility of the Pope only occurs when he speaks in union
> with the College of Bishops?  Is that right?  And he is fallible the
> rest of the time?

The pope is fallible nearly all the time.  The current pope, for 
example, has never spoken infallibly.  Infallible statements have been 
made by only two popes.  If popes made infallible statements every few 
years, it would get very hard to keep track of after a bit of time.

There are a couple other requirements for the exercise of thye charism 
of papal infallibility, as well.  They are:

1. The pope intends to speak ex cathedra -- that is, he intends to make 
an infallible statement that binds the church.

2. The pope is speaking on a universal matter of faith or morals.  The 
pope cannot make an infallible statement on a sports team, for example.

That said, I'm not the strongest supporter of the doctrine of papal 
infallibility.  Though I do believe that the Holy Spirit leads the 
church, I don't think that we can claim to apply rules to know when and 
how the Spirit does so.  I submit to the doctrine, and I don't believe 
it has been used in ways that are detrimental to the faith, but if 
you're looking for someone to defend the idea then you'll have to ask 
elsewhere.

> I guess I need to do some research on this matter.  I have heard
> differing accounts of how the current Prodestant Bible came about.  Some
> people say as you have said, that books were taken out, others say that
> those books were not there until a later date (much later that first or
> second century), and all that Martin Luther did was remove the books
> that were put in later, still others say that those books were not added
> until some time after Martin Luther.  I should research this, but I have
> to admit that it is pretty low on my priority list.
> 
> The books you mentioned, aren't they a part of the Old Testament?  My
> understanding is that, at least Macabees, isn't accepted as scripture by
> the Jews, so why should we accept it as scripture?

The truth is extremely complicated.  Nevertheless, it's clearly not true 
that these books were added to scripture after Martin Luther.  In fact, 
there are copious documents from the first five centuries of the Church 
listing them as scripture, including at least one that was promulgated 
by a local council and was binding for the entire African Church.  
Nevertheless, there was a good bit of disconnectedness between local 
churches in the early times of the church, and various of those books 
were not recognized by some authors from the early Church at various 
times.

In any case, it was Martin Luther's decision to move them to an appendix 
in his edition of scripture, and the decision of his later followers to 
remove them entirely.  Prior to that time, the vast majority of popular 
copies of scripture were based on the Vulgate edition, which does 
include those books.

> I don't know if all non-denominational churches are a joke, and I think
> that there are at least a few that have major doctrinal differences.
> Now, this differences can be good and bad (some can be down right
> freaky), and you don't know what you are going to get with a
> non-denominational church.

Yep, I said that wrong.  I meant that the term "non-denominational" in a 
non-denominational church is a joke.  I don't mean to say anything about 
the churches themselves, except that they do *not* promote unity.  In 
fact, most of the time they further divide the church.

> > Without even a celebration or belief in the Eucharist, the very
> > foundation of Christianity, how could we expect much more?
> 
> What do you mean?  I don't know of any Christian Church that does not
> celebrate Communion.

There are a number of churches that celebrate communion only very 
rarely, and do not consider it a big deal.  I grew up in a Baptist 
church that distributes communion only once per year, on the Wednesday 
after Easter.  (I've always thought that was odd.  It seems they could 
at least do it the Thursday before Easter!)

Furthermore, the majority of fundamentalist churches may celebrate 
communion, but don't do so in the believe that they literally receive 
the Body of Christ.  What they do may look the same, but it's entirely 
different.

> > There are, though, clearly churches that don't follow a specific 
> > personality.  In fact, there's a continuum ranging from churches like
> > the Catholic and Orthodox who follow a long and developed tradition with 
> > no specific human founder except Christ, ...
> 
> Oh, I guess I've been misinformed.  I thought that Peter was the first
> Pope and he started the Catholic Church.  Regarless, isn't the Pope the
> leader of the Catholic church?

The pope is the leader of the Catholic Church, and Peter was the first 
pope.  That much you have right.  It's incorrect to say that Peter 
started the Catholic Church, though.  The early Church was started by 
all the disciples in obedience to the commands of Jesus.  The communion 
of local churches that made up the early Church were started by various 
disciples, but certainly most of them, and several of the most 
significant, were started by Paul.

Though they were in separate locations, they worked out their disputes 
of doctrine and practice together as one Church (see, for example, the 
council of Jerusalem in Acts).  Peter acted as the leader of the church 
of Rome (though I don't think he specifically founded that local 
church), and also in a more general sense as the leader of the entire 
Christian community everywhere.  However, most of the theology and 
doctrine was passed on directly from Jesus through his disciples, or 
from the inspired accounts of Paul and John.

The other danger is to use the term Catholic Church to refer to the 
early Church.  The early Church was just the Church.  It wasn't until 
1054 with the great schism that it became necessary to distinguish 
between "the Church" and that communion of churches (at the time, it was 
practically all the western churches) that were in communion with Rome 
and went by the name "Catholic" as a proper name.  The Orthodox, which 
comprised the eastern churches at the time of the great schism, have 
equal claim to being the logical successors of the early Church.

There are certainly people who've made immense impacts on the theology 
of the Catholic Church.  We call them "doctors of the Church", and any 
partial list would have to include St. Gregory the Great, St. Augustine, 
St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, St. Athanasius (the latter 
two more for the Orthodox Church, but they had significant influence in 
the West as well), St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Sts. Teresa of 
Avila and John of the Cross.  Also making a great impact on the 
spiritual dimension of the church was St. Francis of Assisi, though he 
is not listed as a doctor because he was not involved in formulating 
doctrine but rather demonstrating how to live that doctrine.  
Nevertheless, these people and their theology influenced the Catholic 
Church.  They did not found it, and the church was never given the 
purpose of teaching their ideas.

> I am not a Lutheran, so I don't know exactly what Lutherans believe and
> how influenced they are by the thinking of Luther.  I've always thought
> that the philosophical shift that came with the Reformation from
> accepting whatever was taught by the Catholic Church to studying and
> interpreting the Bible for oneself.

There is definitely uniquely Lutheran theology.  Martin Luther also 
quite definitely taught that his theology was to be followed and taught 
in his churches, and took strong actions against those who introduced 
contradictory thoughts.  Sorry if that contradicts your idea of Luther.

Modern Lutheran churches are hard to categorize.  There really is no 
single Luthern Church.  There is the LCMS and ELCA, for example, which 
both have "Lutheran" in the name, but are at least as different as 
Baptists and Presbyterians are, for example.  I doubt you'd get away 
with sharing a unique and original personal interpretation of scripture 
in an LCMS church.  They are fairly strict about sticking to the 
thoughts and teachings of Martin Luther.  An ELCA church is likely to be 
much more accomodating, but would still stick to their own teachings.

> I agree, I think that seraration of communities is a bad thing, but I
> don't think that trying to shoehorn everyone into a mode of worship is a
> good thing either.

This strikes me as trying to have your cake and eat it too.  It comes 
down to whether you think it's more important to be able to worship 
together, or to be able to worship as you please.  I'd feel comfortable 
claiming Paul as an ally in arguing that as long as a group isn't 
teaching false doctrine or worship, personal preference goes way below 
unity on the ladder of priorities.

> My understanding is that the spread of the Gospel was almost viral in
> nature at the beginning.  Peter or Paul or whoever would teach a small
> group of belivers.  That group would grow, and eventually start their
> own Bible studies in their own homes, growing new believers, and the
> process would repeat.  They were unified, but that does not necessarily
> mean that they always worshiped together at the same place and time.

For reasons above, the idea of Christians starting bible studies in 
their homes is not realistic.  Where do you think they got these bibles?  
Such a thing didn't exist for several hundred years after the period 
you're describing.  Most early Christians, who were predominantly 
Jewish, heard readings from the Jewish scripture at the temple, where 
they went to worship on the Sabbath.  When they gathered on Sunday to 
celebrate the risen Christ, it was predominantly for the purpose of 
sharing the Eucharist.  If someone wished to join the community, they 
would be taught by existing members of the Church who had that calling.  
If the local church was lucky enough to have a copy of one of the 
accounts of Christ (which would eventually be recognized as the 
canonical Gospels) then they would probably use it; otherwise, the new 
Christian would be taught by word of mouth.

> What do you mean?  Do you think that all services should be conducted in
> the same manner (everyone should perform the same liturgy if they are
> Christian), or that some procedural differences can be heretical
> (denying or not keeping Communion)

I mean something between the two.  That, though, isn't the point of this 
conversation.  These serious differences are well-known at least among 
leaders of churches, and there are efforts in place at restoring this 
damage.  In some times and places there is even great hope that 
something will happen soon (and at other times there is less concrete 
hope, but always that hope that comes from knowing that God leads us).  
Nevertheless, all of that effort is meaningless without a firm 
preference for unity by individual Christians, which is what this thread 
is about.  That would be like giving your kids a bath and then sending 
them right back out to play in the mud before dinner.

> That said, though, there are instances when an existing church does not
> meet the needs of the community.  If a church is not serving it's
> community and it cannot be changed, another church may be necessary.

That's why it was so important in the early Church to emphasize that the 
Church is catholic (meaning something between universal and sufficient 
for all), as well as to refute the Donatist heresy and other challenges 
to the catholicity of the Church.

> > (and is somewhat unique in that the 1054 Great Schism was fairly 
>  > symmetrical, versus the 1500s which saw people leave unilaterally).
> 
> What exactly do you mean by this?

I mean that Martin Luther left the Catholic church; but the Catholics 
and Orthodox simply split; it would be hard to argue that one or the 
other left the original church to found their own.  They just stopped 
being in communion.

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   ----

[A number of Catholic writers believe that Ordinatio Sacerdotalis 
is infallible. See http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/w-ordination.htm
and http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Homiletic/12-96/1/1.html
It is possible that it is established as infallible in a different
way than some of the other statements, but there are a number of
commentators who believe that it meets all the criteria. One of the
odd problems of infallibility is that there isn't an infallible list
of infallible pronouncements. Nor is there a specific formula for the
Pope to define something as infallible. But the Responsum seems to
indicate that the Pope intended it to be infallible. --clh]
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