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The Church and Science

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     You know how it goes...we complain. We complain especially about ‘medieval’ cellphone coverage, poor connectivity, and our much-vaunted tech - when it has gone wonky.       When that happens, people love to compare NOW to, "back then." And somewhow we always seem to imagine it was the very worst in the period we call the Middle Ages: between 500–1500 in Europe... Medieval Times.     Paradoxically, t his is because there is actually quite a lot of recorded information from that time, and most of our cultural norms arose then - it's a communal history for us all. Yet, we call them the, "Dark Ages" where we imagine it was all superstition, and leaders scorned scientific expertise.     H owever, modern research shows it wasnt total stagnation at all; it was also a period of impressive innovation and ingenuity.       For example, it’s still commonly assumed that medieval people thought the earth w...

Purgatory: 1 + 1 = 2

  From where do we get purgatory?     There are many today that  like to argue about purgatory. Since they cannot see the word, “purgatory” in the Bible, they reckon it cannot exist.... so they argue over it. This is often the case  with vocal, fundamentalist Protestants, aka, “Bible-only” Christians. They handily ignore that the words, “Bible,” “Incarnation,” and “Trinity,” among others, are likewise nowhere found in the Bible,... but they eagerly pounce upon purgatory for not seeing it there!     Yet friends, while the word, “purgatory, may not have made it into the writings that form the Bible - the reality of it certainly did!  Note:      “On the next day [after the battle with Gorgias]...Judas [Maccabee] and his men went to take up the bodies of the fallen and to bring them back to lie with their kindred in the sepulchers of their ancestors. Then under the tunic of each one of the dead they found sacred tokens of the ido...

Reformation Heresy and Sin

Recently, it was heard from a Catholic that the Protestant “Reformers” were justified in rebelling against the Catholic Church, because there was a lot of sin and corruption back then. That is merely a too-common notion in our day, one derived from the modern sense of entitlement. Essentially, it says that if you don't like something, you can do whatever you want to satisfy yourself. In response, however, we must distinguish between genuine reform and what was really schism and heresy. We Catholics admit there was recognized sin and corruption in the Catholic Church in the 1500’s, such as the selling of indulgences, which is the sin of simony. This is a liturgical and ecclesiastical abuse which should never have happened, though the Catholic Church itself never supported nor taught her support of simony. So it was never, the “policy,” of the Church itself. That is a modern, and often deliberate, misunderstanding after the fact. So it is crucial to recognize that these actions ...

The Bible Chained!

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  DID THE CHURCH CHAIN THE BIBLE AND BURN WILLIAM TYNDALE FOR TRANSLATING IT? _________________      A lot of ridiculous rumors and long believed fairy tales about the Catholic Church go around, coming from the earliest days of the Protestant breakaway, aka, The Reformation.      They're especially popular among the more vocal enemies and opponents of the Catholic Church, like fundamentalists and Evangelicals. These otherwise well-intended folks are especially fond of repeating their distortions, and nowhere is this as prominent as when it comes to the Bible.      Protestants have nothing but the Bible, as they have no Christian Tradition going back before the 1500's, and little to no accceptance of the Sacred Tradition that predates the Bible's appearance in 405 AD.      Their idea is that the Bible is all there can be for the Christian...., all that there can ever be...., and don't even dare to consider anything else. I...