Leauki posts 357

If you are referring to the authoritative hierarchy, yes,.... it's set up much like the authoritative hierarchy in Biblical Judaism.

In the Old Covenant, there was the Chair of Moses...In the New Covenant, there is the Chair of Peter of which Pope Benedict XVI is now gloriously reigning.

By God's command Moses prescribed what sacrifices were to be offered together with the manner of offering them and the times they were to be offered. And By God's command the Jewish hierarchial priesthood was established.

Moses consecrated AAron as High Priest, his sons as priests, and the other men of the tribe of Levi as ministers of the Sanctuary.

Just as the New Covenant priesthood, Aaron wore sacred sacerdotal vestments as did all Old Covenant priests. Robes reaching down to their ankles, a girdle of linen as well as a turban or mitre with the inscription, HOly to the Lord." 

As to the ministers, at first it was the first born son who had been set apart for the service of GOd, but afterwards, a special priesthood had been set up, the tribe of Levi was chosen for the priestly office and the service of the Tabernacle.  

The priestly office was hereditary in Aaron's family. The first born of this family was always to be the High Priest, and the other male descendants priests. The other men of the tribe of Levi were to assist the priests in the service of God and were known as Levites.

The High Priest was the spiritual head of the people, the visible representative of the Lord God, and the mediator between the Lord God and the people. He had the privilege of entering the Holy of Holies once a year, and later on, of anointing of kings. As there in the Old Covanent, there was only one High Priest, so the New Covenant Church has only one High Priest, Bishop of bishops, the Pope who is the visible head of our invisible Eternal Supreme High Priest, Jesus Christ.

The Priests had the right and the duty to offer sacrifice, to enter the Sanctuary,  to keep burning the lights of the 7-branched candlestick, and the sacred fire for the burnt offerings. to bless the people and pray for them, and to instruct them in the law. the Hierarchial graduation in Christ's Chruch is twofold ....one of order...Bishops or High Priest, Priests and deacons or ministers. and one of jurisdiction....i.e. power of ruling. Pope, Patriarchs,Archbishops or Metropolitians, bishops and priests.

The Christian priesthood is far higher than the Jewish priesthood. The Jewish priesthood was propagated by natural descent, the Christian priesthood is perpetuated by spiritual descent i.e. by means of the imposition of hands, aka Holy Orders which is one of the 7 Sacraments.

The Jewish priests could only offer typical sacrifices. Christian priests offer up the the true Lamb of GOd who takes away sins. The Jewish partook of earthly meat-offerings, The Christian receive the priceless Flesh and Blood of the Divine Savior. The Jewish priests prayed for the people, the Christian priests remember them daily in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

So, here it's plain to see the authoritative hierarchial priesthood of the OLd Covenant was a "type" of the priesthood in the New Covenant. As their was a hierarchial graduation in the OC, there is in the New Covenant priesthood.  

lula posts 371

In Christ's discourse with His Apostles after the Last Supper, He said to them, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world gives, do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid."

Christ's peace is one of the great messianic gifts. The peace Jesus gives us completely transcends the peace of the world which can be superficial, misleading and compatible with injustice. The peace of Christ is above all, reconciliation with God and reconciliation of men with one another and it is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit (sorry, here I go again talking in language you most probably don't understand!).

Christ exhorted His disciples that is also a command, "Have peace among you." That exhortation is addressed also to us. Let us keep peace in our own little world..in our family, in our circle of friends and acquaintances, in our work, in our neighborhood, in our community, in our society.

St.Paul said, "If it be possible, as much as is in you, have peace with all men."  

Leauki posts:

Practically every Pope has written encyclicals on the subject of peace ...in the individual, in the family as well as societal.

Here's part of what Pope John Paul II wrote back in September 1979,

"Christ is our peace. Eph. 2:14, And today and forever He repeats to us My peace I give to you, My Peace I leave with you. Never before in the history of mankind has peace been so much talked about and so ardently desired as in our day. And yet, again and again, one can see how peace is undermined and destoyed.

Peace is the result of many converging attitudes and realities. It is the product of moral concerns, of ethical principles, based on the Gospel message and fortified by it. In his message for the 1971 Day of Peace, my revered predeccessor, Pope Paul VI, said: true peace must be founded upon justice, upon the sense of the untouchable dignity of man, upon the recognition of an indelible and happy equality between men, upon the basic principle of human brotherhood, that is of the respect and true love due each man, becasue he is man."

This same message I affirmed in Mexico and Poland. I reaffirm it here in Ireland. Every human being has inalienable rights that must be respected. each human community--ethnic, historical, cultural or religious---has rights which must be respected. Peace is threatened every time one of these rights is violated.  

The moral law, guardian of human rights, protector of the dignity of man, cannot be set aside by any person, group or by the State itself, for any cause, not even for security or in the interests of law and order. The law of God stands in judgment over all reasons of State. As long as injustices exist in any of the areas that touch upon the dignity of the human person, be it in the political, social or economic field, be it in the cultural or religious sphere, true peace will not exist.

Peace cannot be established by violence. peace can never flourish in a climate of terror, intimidation and death. It is Jesus Himself who said: "All who take the sword will perish by the sword." St.Matt. 26:52. This is the word of God and it commands this generation of violent men to desist from hatred and violence and to repent.  

KFC posts 372

KFC,

I just quoted from 2 Popes...it sounds to me like they hit the nail on the head as far as painting a picture of peace.

Is the spread of Christianity good for the world? I'd say so. Was the Chruch sent by Christ to teach His Gospel to all nations until the end of time? Yes. Did she do it? Yes. It is the Catholic Church who spread the leaven of Christianity and Christianized all of Europe and the better part of Asia that hadn't been been overcome by the advance of Islam. By Christianized I mean the permeation of the ethical, moral and social order of Jesus Christ. Is she still spreading the Good News...yes.

You are so misguided..you really need to stop this calumny against the Church. The Church is not the enemy that you try to portray it to be.  

lula posts

kfc posts:

Like I said, you can't do it.

"ALL CHRISTIANS" would include the Baptist who believes in one kind of baptism

"ALL CHRISTIANS" would include the Episcopalian who believes in a different baptism than the Baptist.

can you see now how your definition of "the one body is ALL CHRISTIANS" violates Ephesians 4:4-6  "one Baptism"?

Yet, there is only "one baptism" in every Catholic Church around the world.

 Protestantism is prone to endless divisions becasue of rival interpretations of the Bible. That's why the Baptists have their own beliefs, the LUtherans have their own beliefs, the Presbyterians their own, the Methodists their own, the Congregationalists their own, and even the self-styled Individualist her own. "All the Christians" in the Baptist Churches are not united in spirit with all the Christians in the Presbyterian Churches and you know it.  

All the Christians in all the different Baptists Churches aren't united in spirit.

Within Protestantism, unity is impossible and the splits just keep coming. 

WORLD PEACE...

leauki posts 183

kfc 187

lula 185

lula posts:

kfc 198

kfc  198

 You are right this hasn't happened yet and it won't ever happen. Becasue when Christ ushers in total peace of His kingdom, we will have been already judged, our bodies glorified and ushered into the heavenly realm, the New Jerusalem, the everlasting new heavens and new earth.

kfc posts;

You are missing the forest for the trees...that's becasue you think the last three blessings promised are yet to come.

The Prince of Peace has come and redeemed us....Christ's First Coming ushered in the Peace that was promised by the prophets. NO, We are NOT LIVING IN THE TIME OF THE GENTILES, BUT rather in the time of Grace...We are living in the millennial times of the New and Everlasting Covenant of Grace....of which the the Jews (and all unbelievers) if they truly want true peace,  as St.Paul infallibly teaches can still be drafted in..by repenting for their unbelief and being baptized in the New Covenant of Christ.    

The promises of Abraham have been fulfilled completely in his seed, Jesus Christ. All the 6 blessings promised have already been bestowed.

Again your grave errors all center around your false interpretation of Scripture. Whether or not it's your own interpretation or you're getting it from others who believe in Dispensationalism or Pre-Millennialism doesn't matter. The point is it's completely false and dangerous. After Christ's Second Coming, there is no future literal physical 1,000 year reign of Christ on earth.

Christ prayed that we may all be one but He never prayed for this earthly world.

"Now they have known that all things which Thou hast gavest Me, I have given to them; and they have received them and have known in every deed that I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send Me. I pray for them: I PRAY NOT FOR THE WORLD, but for them whom Thou hast given Me for they are thine. " St. John 17:7-11 

Jesus was not against the Judaic-Christian hierarchies. i've just quoted Scripture which proves He established the New Covenant Christian hierarchy. Jesus is God. Our Lord God established the Old Covenant Jewish hierarchy.

 Again, Jesus wasn't against the Jewish hierarchies, rather He was against the sins committed by the Jewish hierarchies (their unfaithfulness to Him and His law. ). Just as He is against the sins committed by the Christian hierarchies. "Woe to them" the Scriptures teach.  They will be judged more harshly  becasue they were given authority to rule over and guide His people.

Everyone is equal before God. The point is not everyone was/is given equal authority.

By that I mean both the Old Coveant Judaic/New Covenant Christian hierarchies were/was respectively given special religious authority that the lay person was not.

Religion, in the Judaic/Christian Biblical sense of the term, is a system of beliefs and practices that have reference to man's relation with the Lord God and his fellow humans. It must be an authoritative religion, that is a religion of God's making, the only kind of religion that the intrinsic dignity of man warrants him to obey. There have been only 2 such authoritative religions...in fact, one, Catholic Christianity is the historic outgrowth, perfection, of the other Biblical Judaism. Just as there can only be one GOd, so can there be only one religion of God at any time in history. From this it logically follows there can be only one Church of God's making in existence at any one time in the history of mankind; otherwise doctrinal contradiction would result, as exists ourside the Catholic Church.

The enemies of authoritative Biblical Judaism and of the Catholic Church (authoritative Biblical Christianity) who think they think rightly are devoid of this realization.

Putting it all together...

The hierarch of the Old Covenant Jewish Church could rightly command. as it did, in matters of faith and morals as proclaimed by God through Moses, in pre-Christian times when there was a Jewish hierarchy. The Jewish hierarchy was superceded by the hierarch instituted by Jesus, the Son of God, and commanded by Him to function throughout the world, during all time until the end of time.

That hierarchy, misjudged and maligned on these JU pages, was made up in the beginning of 12 Apostles of which Simon-Peter, bearer of the Keys, was the visible head; as AAron the first Jewish High Priest was the original priestly dignitary.

We, Catholics rightly think that that Christian hierarchy exists today. That is can be and has been traced historically back to the Apostles, through the occupants of the Chair of St.Peter...just as the authority of the occupants of the chair of Washington can be traced back historically from Obama to President George Washington.

Right reasoning causes the Catholic laity to accept the mandates of this Christ-delegated hierarchial authority in matters of faith and morals, bearing in mind the fact that Christ, My Lord, commanded them that if they have ears to hear...to hear the Chruch...and if they would not hear the Chruch they would be like the heathen and the publican, condemned. St.Matt. 18.   

Almighty God set up 3 spheres of His authority..the family, with the father as authority, the Chruch with the hierarchial authority, and the government or civil authority. Rebellion against these authorities results in choas, confusion, unhappiness, broken homes, hearts, no peace, and the list goes on and on and on.     

Either questioning authority is OK and it is therefor OK to question that the CC is "God's established religious authority" or questioning authority is not OK. But both cannot be true.

Jesus also questioned the authority of the priests. Was that OK or not OK?

And what about those Christians who first announced that the "Messiah" was G-d Himself? That went against everything Jews believed. Was such a questioning of religious authority OK?

Jesus never questioned the authority of the priesthood. Jesus is the Lord God and the Lord God gave the priests their authority. He railed against their abuse of their authority. That's why He made a whip and drove them out the Temple...they were misusing and abusing their authority profaning the House of God.

Read again what I wrote and note what follows "but".  

Questioning Catholic Church religious authority is one thing, but quite different from rebelling from it and establishing their own relligion. Not good.  As evidenced from history, Protestantism is prone to endless divisions becasue in the absence of such a central authoritative body there is no unity and the splits only keep coming. And so it will go on.

Protestantism grants the right of private judgment and they set themselves up as their own authority thinking it is just as good. It isn't becasue their authority is from man and the Church's is from God.

The world could care less of Protestantism which has always been ready to water down Catholic Christian obligations to suit it. But instinctively the world hates and fears the Catholic Chruch which for over 2,000 years will make no compromise but insists upon the fullness of Christ's doctrines (like the Holy Eucharist). The Church insists upon the strict obedience of faith, disciplinary submission of the human will to conform to the will of God, the impossibility of divorce, the sinfulness of using artificial birth control, the practice of abortion and homosexuality and so forth.

The Chruch's repitition of Christ's axiom, Deny thyself, and take up thy Cross and follow Me, interferes too much with the comfort of men. If Catholic Christianity demanded merely the admission of a few of Christ's doctrines, men would not object to it. But Christ's Church demands all of that which Christ taught and commanded in faith and morals in its fullness while the man-made churches with no central authoritative head offer no unity in doctrine or government. And while the CC keeps ticking along, they will either wake up and unite in union with the Pope and the CC or die and a new lot will arise.  

But I have seen you question the authority of the Jewish priesthood.

Several times you went as far as claiming that it doesn't exist any more.

I don't think those who question the CC's authority established their own religion. They remained Christians. They just don't think that the CC is Christian.

I decided to delete this response because it serves no purpose. 

KFC,

Your post 390 goes directly to the point of peace vs. war.

There isn't war in Heaven now though and hasn't been ever since Lucifer and his evil angels (now demons) were kicked out into the abyss of Hell. Our Lord is reigning over His kingdom from Heaven and so there can't be war in Heaven.

Regarding the highlighted....Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, not to rule and reign on earth. Eternity follows the final judgment, not a period of Christ's physical rule and reign on earth.

No Jew has ever waited for a Messiah who is a walking god.

The Messiah was predicted to be a man, not a god.