KFC POSTS on Feb. 9: His church is not man-made. Religion is. The CC is a religion.

I agree with your first statement that His church is not man-made. We know this because written Revelation (the Bible) clearly shows that Christ established “His Church”. “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build “My Church”.St.Matt.16:18. From this, we can surely say that His church is not man-made. From this passage, we see that Christ is the builder, the Cornerstone. Now following that, we know from history and from Apostolic succession that St.Peter was the first Bishop of Rome, later called Pope. Therefore, “His Church” and “My Church” can only be the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, the kingdom on God on earth. Christ established His Church for the purpose of teaching and sanctifying all people.

I would say that false religion is man-made and that the CC is a holy religion. Since written Revelation comes from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity) revealed that the Catholic Church was “the Church” instituted by Christ, who is the Word and Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, it follows that “the Church” is the one, holy, catholic and Apostolic religion. Only the religion that has these 4 marks is “the One” established by Christ. (By holy, I mean that by His grace, Jesus makes the Church holy, just as He is All-holy becasue she teaches, according to the will of Christ, holy doctrines. This doesn’t mean each member is holy for He said there would be good and bad members in the Chruch St.John 6:70 and not all members would go to heaven. St.Matt.25:31-46. The Chruch herself is holy becasue she is the guardian of the special means of grace Jesus established, the 7 Sacraments.

The word “religion” comes from a Latin word meaning ‘to bind’. An ancient writer, Lactantius, said, “We are tied to God and bound to Him by the bond of piety and it is this that religion has received its name. St.Thomas Aquinas says religion is the virtue which prompts man to render to God the worship and reverence that is His by right. Objectively, religion is the voluntary acknowledgment of man’s dependence on God through acts of homage.

False religion is man-made and since the Catholicism is the holy religion revealed from Sacred Scripture it cannot be false. False religion is the negation on the part of man of perfecting beneficent communion with the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LULAPILGRIM ASKS KFC: And for that matter, aren’t Protestants more closely aligned with the Sadducces with their “free thinking”, I.e. picking and choosing which of Christ’s Biblically revealed doctrines to accept or reject.

KFC RESPONDS: you've got that wrong Lula. I can tell you I accept them all. It's the CC church that does not. That's why their tradition usurps written scripture anytime there's a controversy.

LULAPILGRIM POSTS: Jesus' teachings like the one at the synagogue in Carpharnum St.John 6:48, 55,61, 65 when He said, “I am the Bread of life...He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life”. And v.65, “But there are some of you who believe not”. Those Jews didn’t believe Him and found this teaching “too hard’ to accept and left Him.

KFC RESPONDS: I agree with you but not how you want. Look at the verses you just picked from Chap 6. I've been around a long time debating this with other Catholics over the years and there's one thing that is so predictable. They always, always, always omit scripture to back up their belief. Always. Do you notice that you did not include v63 in your above quote? Why not? Because it puts a crimp in your message.

KFC, you do not accept them all...only bits and parts of them as you decide.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

there's no way I really want to get into a CC/Protestant argument here Lula. We should concentrate on those things we agree on. If you want, you should just research (I know you love to do that) "water" and "word" and see what you come up with.

Also, think about the thief on the cross. He was going to heaven sans baptism (of water only). I believe he was baptized with the spirit right there on the cross.

You may also want to check out Acts 10:44-48. Which came first? Baptism of the HS or the water?

You know how I believe. I beieve water is an external symbol of the inner baptism of the HS. One baptism is external, one is internal. The internal is the one which saves (thief on cross). The external is one that shows what's going on internally. Actually Nicodemus in John 3 would have understood this as an OT principle which is way too much to go into...if you do the word/water search you may figure that out. Ezek would be the go to book.

LULAPILGRIM POSTED: Christianity is Judaism fulfilled. Christ said He came to fulfill the Law.

KFC RESPONDED on Feb. 9: No Christianity is not Jusaism fulfilled. Where are you getting that from? Yes, Christ did say he came to fulfill the law. But he did not come to replace the Jews. Big diff




The Jewish religion of the OT and practiced at the time of Christ was essentially a prepatory religion meant by its very nature to merge into its perfect fulfillment when the Messiah came. Christ was that Messiah and He said, I have come not to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it.” He gave us the holy religion which the Jewish religion foreshadowed and said that it would last, just as He had given it, till the end of the world. It has lasted in the Catholic Church which alone has existed since His time in perpetuity.

So, yes, indeed, the religion of the OT prophets Isaias, Ezechiel, Jeremias, and Hosea and others is fulfilled in Christianity, specifically in Catholicism. God gave His true religion to mankind gradually so that men would be prepared by more simple doctrines for still more noble truths. He sent Moses the lawgiver, and after him a series of prophets to explain the law and to predict the coming of the Messiah. Christ fulfilled these predictions and taught the perfect law of God. The religion therefore known to the Jews before Christ was imperfect and prepatory. The religion of Christ was its perfect fulfillment. Some Jews at the time recognized and accepted it. The majority didn’t. Then Christ sent His Apostles to preach it to the Gentiles.

We know from Scripture that humans are related to God in a sacred partnership called a “Covenant”. Hosea is the first prophet to describe the marital characteristics to this sacred partnership. God wedded Israel in the desert. The Old Covenant also called the Old Law and sometimes the Old Dispensation was fulfilled in the New Covenant or New Law. The rabbinical rituals and laws of the Old Covenant being abolished now count for nothing, confer no grace, and save no one. Worse, they bring a curse upon those who obstinately cling to them. St.Paul warned the Jews: “for as many as are under the works of the law, are under a curse.” Gal. 3:10. St.Paul further declares: “there is an abrogation of the former commandments because of the weakness and unprofitableness thereof. For the law brought nothing to perfection.”

The beginning of the New Covenant in the Blood of the Savior Jesus Christ meant the end of the religion of the Old Covenant. At the moment of Christ Crucified, the Temple veil was rent from top to bottom St.Matt.27:51; St.Mark 15:38, God was making it known that the matter pertaining to the Law of the OT, its ceremonies, sacred rites, sacrifices etc. were made void by Christ’s death on the Cross. Jesus established a New Testament (Covenant) in His Blood shed for the whole human race. At that moment, there was a transfer from the Old to the New, from the Synagogue to “the Church” St.Matt.16:18, and from the many bloody sacrifices to one Victim.

It was by His Precious Blood shed on the cross that God’s anger was averted and the at all the heavenly gifts, especially the spiritual graces on the New and Eternal Testament could then flow from the Savior for the salvation of men. The Old Law gave way to the New Testament of which Christ as Supreme Head of all of humanity chose His Apostles . Only in the CC is the true worship of God now to be found St.Luke 22:13-20; St.Matt. 26:26-28; St.Mark 14:22-24. The Apostles were the first budding forth of “the Church”, the New Israel, the New Jerusalem, the Bride, the spouse of the Lamb.

St.Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians explains the relationship of the Christian Church to the Old Covenant. On the one side stands the Church with her freedom in Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the other, is the Law as practiced by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. St.Paul tells us the early Church had to struggle against “Judaizers” who thought they could combine the practices and rituals of the Mosaic Law under the Old Covenant with the holy religion of the New Covenant. This tendency had to be fought because the rituals of the Old Law only foreshadow the coming of Christ and the Sacrifice of the Mass and to persist in those rituals after His coming would be implicitly to deny that He had come. “O senseless Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been set forth, crucified among you...Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by the hearing of the faith?” Gal. 3:1-2.
The supersession of the Old Covenant and its rituals by the New Covenant is another of the Catholic dogmas present day Modernists are trying to “interpret” out of existence. Yet, St.Paul himself declared that if justification came from the Old Law, “then Christ died in vain.” Gal. 2:21.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------




LULAPILGRIM POSTS: Another difference is the Jewish and Christian outlook on life. The former is material and temporal, while the latter is spiritual and eternal; neither, of course, is exclusively so.

KFC RESPONDS ON FEB. 9: I think the Jews might have an issue with this. They also were a spiritual people and still are, not a belief in Christ but a strong belief in Jehovah God of the OT.

I may be wrong, however, I think the theology of the afterlife is not highly developed in modern Judaism and this is due in part to Jewish people’s emphasis on the importance of this life and the continuance of the Jewish people as a race and as a nation.
KFC, think seriously about this. How can God’s New Covenant people include both those who accept Him and reject Him? Didn’t the great Jewish convert St. Paul of Tarsus infallibly teach, “There is neither Jew, nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free; their is neither male or female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus” ?

Sacred Scripture tells us and history shows that there is no longer an Israelite nation constituting a distinct coventantal People of God, but only the New Israel of the CC to which all men embraced by the New Covenant belong, without distinction between Jew and Gentile.
Think about it. This is the mystery that Daniel could not fully understand in his final vision. This is what Jesus said the Old Covenant prophets longed to see, but could not. St. Matt.13:17. “The Church” is the spiritual kingdom of the Messiah on earth. This is the everlasting kingdom that accepts Jew and Gentile on an equal footing as long as they are willing to eat together at His Supper as one people. This is the Church redeemed in His Precious Blood.

The Church is God ‘s Bride and she is ultimately tied to the number 12. The Book of the Apoc, we’re told The Bride has 12 gates, and the gates have 12 angels, and on the gates the names of the 12 tribes, the city had 12 foundations and on them the 12 names of the Apostles. The most important appearance of twelve in the Old covenant had to do with God’s chosen people, His Ekklesia. They were the 12 sons of Israel, and they headed the 12 tribes of the household of God. St. John uses the symbolic number 12, and makes it crystal clear that this new Bride has superseded or is the completion of the 12 tribes of Israel. The new people of God have sprung historically from the old. There is no going back to the Old Covenant. The New fulfills the Old as Zechariah had predicted when he broke his two staffs. This is the strong covenant of Daniel made with the Church , rather than with ethnic Israel. The Church’s mission is the salvation of all men. Her eternal dignity stems from her choice as the Bride of the Lamb. The Old Covenant’s time is over due to unfaithfulness.

Israel of the Old Covenant was wedded to God in the desert. The Bride, “the Church” of the New Covenant was founded by Jesus Christ as did the Old Covenant upon God’s appointed Moses. The New is built upon a foundation of her Apostles, just as the Old had its prophets. The New has her priesthood just as the Old Covenant did. The New has initiation rites (Baptism) as did the Old, (circumcision). The New has essential ceremonies--the Eucharist, as did the Old--animal sacrifices. The New has human leadership--bishops, as did the Old---kings and high priests. The Church is a visible institution just like the Old. Just as the Old Covenant Israel was composed of imperfect humans, it was still the Chosen people of God. Just so, the Church is fraught with imperfect humans. The human and divine nature of the Church has been a mystery since time immemorial.


St.Peter brought thousands of Jews to their Messiah.We know that St.Paul brought hundreds of Romans, Corinthians, Galations and Thessalonians to “the law that is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb”. So, whether you like it or not, believe or not, agree or not, Catholicism is the completion of the Jewish religion. Had all of the Jews of Jesus’ time accepted Him as the Messiah and entered the Church, there would have continued to be one true religion. But because Jesus of Nazareth was not accepted as the Messiah by the majority of the Jews of His time, a split occurred. Pre-Christian Judaism was the divinely revealed true religion while post-Christian Judaism is an incomplete religion because it lacks recognition of the Messiah it anticipates.

The Jewish religion as practiced today has virtually nothing in common with the religion of the Israelites of the OT, the religion practiced by the Jews during the time of Christ. That’s because this OT religion came to an end with Our Lord’s death on the Cross by which He established His New Covenant that made obsolete the Old. I think the present day religion is primarily based not on the OT, but on man-made works called the Talmud and the Kabbalah.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

KFC POSTED on Feb. 9: They also were a spiritual people and still are, not a belief in Christ but a strong belief in Jehovah God of the OT.

Concerning “JEHOVAH God of the OT” ........

The Douay Rheims Bible has no such word, “Jehovah” in either the OT or in the NT.
I had to go to a Protestant Bible to find it --------Exodus 6:3; Psalms. 83:18; and Isaias.12:2; 26:4.

Douay Rheims Exodus 6:2-4, “And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, I am the Lord that appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, by the name of God Almighty; and my name Adonai, I did not shew them. And I made a covenant with them, to give them the land of Chanaan...”

King James Version, Ex. 6:2-4, “ And God spake unto Moses , and said unto him, I am the Lord. And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them. And I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan...”

DR footnotes explain “my name Adonai” as the name which is in the Hebrew text that is most proper name of God which signifies His eternal, self existing being Ex.3:14. The Jews out of reverence never pronounce because the name of God was considered too sacred. Instead of it, whenever it occurs in the Bible, they read Adonai, which signifies ‘the Lord’, and therefore they put the points or vowels, which belong to the name, Adonai, to the four letters of that other ineffable name Jod, He, Vau. Some moderns have framed the name Jehovah, unknown to all the ancients, whether Jews or Christians, for the true pronunciation of the name , which is in the Hebrew text , by long disuse is now quite lost.

Another explanation is that for the proper name of God, the OT uses the sacred tetragrammaton (literally 4 letters) in Hebrew that we moderns transliterate in English as YHWH, or using an alternative form of transliteration , JHVH). Ancient Hebrew writing contained only consonants and did not record vowel sounds. So when the ancient Jews read Scripture, as a sign of reverence, they would substitute for it the divine title, “Lord” in Hebrew, Adonai. The Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures used by Greek Speaking Jews throughout the world (and by the early Christians made the same kind of substittuion, using the Greek term for Lord, “kyrios”.


At the beginning of the 17th century, the translators of the King James Version of the Bible, follows a few earlier biblical scholars in attempting to make a complete word out of YHWH by adding vowels “e”, “o” and “a” to the JHVH for of the word (JeHoVaH). Today most scholars agree that this was a mistake calling it exegetical gymnastics in transliteration. The rendering Yahweh is probably closer to the original Hebrew pronunciation.

YHWH is, for the Jews, even today, a sacred name. Out of consideration for their sensitivity at this point and following the ancient custom, most Catholics Bibles translate YHWH as “Lord”. The Jerusalem Bible uses the Yahweh wherever the tetragrammation occurs in the text of the OT Books. In my opinion, JEHOVAH is a faulty transliteration and should not be used.

Rutherford used the term “Jehovah” for God. It’s an English misspelling of the Hebrew word for God. The Jehovah Witnesses say there is no God but Jehovah and Rutherford is His prophet.