Burn of the Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Most Protestants cherry pick select Scripture verses like the two quoted above and use those to establish their heretical theology. Time and again I saw that in the Assemblies of God, the Pentecostal sect in which I was born and raised. Nothing is done in context, and no consideration is given to what the Church Fathers – those whom the Apostles taught and handed on their mantle – said about such Scripture passages. Indeed, perhaps dividing the books of the Bible into chapters and verses has enabled this very thing to happen. Protestants – particularly Evangelicals and Pentecostals – often fail to take a passage of Scripture as a complete whole within its historical and cultural time frame.
Open mouth. Insert foot.
I remember witnessing a friend’s baptism at a megachurch once. The pastor gave a very disjointed and actually contradictory sermon about authority.
First part “call no man father” and bashed the concept of church hierarchy, then immediately afterwards talked about how the Bible sets up the church heirarchy with leaders and … blah blah blah.
Protestant “authority” has to come from somewhere I suppose 🤣🤣🤣
The crazy thing is that even if one didn’t accept apostolic succession, in John 20:23 Jesus explicitly gives the apostles the authority to forgive sins, so even on that level the meme would be wrong, since at least some men could forgive sins.
But then one has to deal with Jesus delegating His authority to the apostles analogously to His own, as He mentions in John 20:21, which would implicitly contain the ability and authority to delegate that authority as He had done, hence apostolic succession.
Pope Francis who rejected the position of Vicar of Christ acts “in persona Christi” in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It is Christ who forgives and redeems and only Christ because Jesus is true God and true man.