papal infalliblity

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/infallible-informal-how-binding-is-the-new-encyclical-on-catholics-24963/

Encylicals remain very important teaching documents. No pope since 1870 has designated an encyclical as an exercise of papal infallibility, which requires three conditions: 1) the subject is a matter of faith or morals, 2) the pope must be teaching as supreme pastor, and 3) the pope must indicate that the teaching is infallible

-- 

quote from comment 42 found here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/02/on-the-usefulness-of-tradition-a-response-to-recent-objections/

Thus popes are not personally infallible; rather, the Holy Spirit always finds a way to ensure that they do not bind the Church to doctrinal error. When they do use their authority to bind the Church to a doctrine, either unilaterally or, more often, by ratifying the decrees of a general council, the doctrines so propounded are truths.

There have been other, relevantly similar examples of how the Holy Spirit works in this regard. In the mid-4th century, Pope Liberius was coerced by a cruel, imperially enforced exile into excommunicating St. Athanasius and signing a semi-Arian confession of faith. He revoked those actions when, the Arian emperor having died, he returned triumphantly to Rome. Those actions could not have fairly been seen as binding on the whole Church, and everybody knew it. In later cases, such as the “Three Chapters” controversy in the 6th century involving Pope Vigilius, and the “monothelite” heresy freely endorsed by Pope Honorius in the 7th century, it was also clear that the popes in question were not binding the Church to their errors. In the 14th century, Pope John XXII wanted to define his heretical view about the “beatific vision” as dogma, but was prevented from doing so by the clever machinations of the canonists.

The Fathers of Vatican I framed their definition of papal infallibility with just such cases in mind. Protestant and Orthodox apologists have noted that, and accordingly accused the Catholic Church of writing that dogma retrospectively, as a transparent rationalization of a position that cannot be presented as the historic belief of the whole Church. What they fail to take account of, however, is that heretics have often said the same about many other doctrines rightly held by some Protestants and all Orthodox as well as by Catholics. This is why the “development of doctrine” is so important for a proper understanding of Tradition.

As Vatican II says:

This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her. (Dei Verbum §8; footnote omitted, emphasis added)

That passage makes Orthodox and conservative-Protestant hair stand on end, but it applies just as well to many doctrines of that “mere Christianity” which confessional Protestants, Anglicans, and Orthodox hold in common with Catholics, as to distinctively Catholic doctrines. So granted, as a matter of historical fact, that doctrine does develop in the way indicated, the question is only how we are to distinguish between legitimate developments of doctrine and corruptions. The dogma of papal infallibility is part of the Catholic answer to that question, and I haven’t seen a truly workable proposal from those who oppose that answer.

from comment 15 here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/02/the-papacy-and-the-catholic-act-of-faith/

“the act of Catholic faith includes faith in Christ regarding each successive pope, specifically faith that Christ will protect each pope in his exercise of the papal office from promulgating any false doctrine.”

Interestingly, the late Fr William Most, in an article on the “de auxiliis” issue (thomism vs molinism), points out two cases which show that, if necessary, this protection will even be at the expense of the Pope’s physical life. Quoting from:

http://www.ewtn.com/library/SCRIPTUR/2THOMIST.TXT

When debates became acute in Spain, and people were becoming disturbed, Clement VIII in 1597 ordered both sides to send a delegation to Rome to have a debate before a commission of Cardinals.

In March 1602 Clement VIII began to preside in person. In 1605 he very much wanted to bring the debate to a conclusion. So he worked long into the night, and finally came up with a 15 point summary of Augustine’s doctrine on grace, intending to judge Molina’s proposals by it. That would have meant condemnation of Molina and probable approval of the so-called Thomists. But according to an article in 30 Days, No. 5 of 1994, on p. 46, “But, it seems barely had the bull of condemnation been drafted when, on March 3, 1605 Clement VIII died.” Another Pope had died at the right time centuries earlier. The General Council of Constantinople in 681 had drafted a condemnation of Pope Honorius for heresy – which was untrue – Pope Agatho had intended to sign it. But he died before being able. The next Pope, Leo II, having better judgment, agreed only to sign a statement that Honorius had let our doctrine become unclear, in his letters to Sergius, which did not teach the Monothelite heresy, but left things fuzzy.

see also  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/02/the-chair-of-st-peter/


More than two times: http://nannykim-catholicconsiderations.blogspot.com/2013/08/papal-infallibility-more-than-twice.html

from comment 9 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/10/reformation-day-2013-the-most-love-filled-sect-i-have-ever-seen/

People criticize some of those old sin filled Popes:

If I say that adultery is a sin, and then go out a week later and commit adultery, that only means that I am a sinner. It doesn’t mean that my teaching was false. If someone rebukes me, he’s rebuking my sin, not my teaching. (In fact, if my teaching was false, he could hardly rebuke me at all.) When the Scripture says that all men are sinners, that includes church leaders, and that’s true whether those leaders are Protestant or Catholic. It is important to differentiate between the truth of the teaching and the sin of the actions. I have been Catholic for three years now, and I’ve met no one who goes around with a “romanticized” notion of a church of Perfect People and Perfect Priests and Perfect Popes. We are Catholic because we believe that what the Church teaches is true, not because we believe that everyone somehow lives it perfectly. That doesn’t happen in your church; it doesn’t happen in ours.

end of quote


  from Frank Sheed’s book, The Church and I.
“In the eyes of the onlooker, the Church is to be judged not by the sinners, not even by the average, but by the saints. That may seem like loading the dice, but it is not…A medicine, I said, is to be judged by those who take it, not by those who throw it down the sink: the Church is to be judged by those who know its teachings, obey its laws, receive its sacraments. The saints have done all these things with all their heart: those of us who have done them partially or not at all are less useful as evidence of their value.”

Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament.

http://catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0120.html  and then Taylor Marshall disagrees with that link here http://taylormarshall.com/2012/03/defending-the-book-of-tobit-as-history.html

also from comment 163 here:http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/01/holy-church-finding-jesus-as-a-reverted-catholic-a-testimonial-response-to-chris-castaldo/

I admit I am no expert of the history and development of the LXX, but I have read scholarship that suggests the LXX existed as a unified collection in the 1st century. For example, the prologue to the book of Sirach in the Deuterocanon, which was written somewhere between 200 and 175 BC, suggests the existence of the LXX. Jobes and Silva on p.34 of “Invitation to the Septuagint,” write,

The Greek text of the Wisdom of Joshua ben Sira (also known as Sirach or Ecclesiasticus)… contains a prologue that makes reference to a [Greek] translation of ‘the law, the prophets, and the rest of the books.’ “

Furthermore, in “The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible,” M. Abegg, P. Flint, and E. Ulrich note on p.xi that that fragments of the Greek text include the John Rylands Papyrus 458, which dates from the 2nd century BC, and Papyrus Fouad 266, which originated about 100 BC. Furthermore, other fragments of the Greek text include 2nd century BC fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957), and 1st century BC fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Minor Prophets (Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943). All that to say, I’m not convinced there is “no evidence” for LXX as a unified collection in the 1st century AD or earlier. At this point we may have to agree to disagree on the strength of the evidence.

see also http://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/deuteros.htm

The Church does not deny that there are ancient writings which are "apocryphal." During the early Christian era, there were scores of manuscripts which purported to be Holy Scripture but were not. Many have survived to the present day, like the Apocalypse of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas, which all Christian churches regard as spurious writings that don't belong in Scripture.
During the first century, the Jews disagreed as to what constituted the canon of Scripture. In fact, there were a large number of different canons in use, including the growing canon used by Christians. In order to combat the spreading Christian cult, rabbis met at the city of Jamnia or Javneh in A.D. 90 to determine which books were truly the Word of God. They pronounced many books, including the Gospels, to be unfit as scriptures. This canon also excluded seven books (Baruch, Sirach, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, and the Wisdom of Solomon, plus portions of Esther and Daniel) that Christians considered part of the Old Testament.

The group of Jews which met at Javneh became the dominant group for later Jewish history, and today most Jews accept the canon of Javneh. However, some Jews, such as those from Ethiopia, follow a different canon which is identical to the Catholic Old Testament and includes the seven deuterocanonical books (cf. Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 6, p. 1147).

Needless to say, the Church disregarded the results of Javneh. First, a Jewish council after the time of Christ is not binding on the followers of Christ. Second, Javneh rejected precisely those documents which are foundational for the Christian Church—the Gospels and the other documents of the New Testament. Third, by rejecting the deuterocanonicals, Javneh rejected books which had been used by Jesus and the apostles and which were in the edition of the Bible that the apostles used in everyday life—the Septuagint.

and

 The canon of Scripture, Old and New Testament, was finally settled at the Council of Rome in 382, under the authority of Pope Damasus I. It was soon reaffirmed on numerous occasions. The same canon was affirmed at the Council of Hippo in 393 and at the Council of Carthage in 397. In 405 Pope Innocent I reaffirmed the canon in a letter to Bishop Exuperius of Toulouse. Another council at Carthage, this one in the year 419, reaffirmed the canon of its predecessors and asked Pope Boniface to "confirm this canon, for these are the things which we have received from our fathers to be read in church." All of these canons were identical to the modern Catholic Bible, and all of them included the deuterocanonicals.

This exact same canon was implicitly affirmed at the seventh ecumenical council, II Nicaea (787), which approved the results of the 419 Council of Carthage, and explicitly reaffirmed at the ecumenical councils of Florence (1442), Trent (1546), Vatican I (1870), and Vatican II (1965).

see also http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/PCBIB.HTM

This list of 27 books along with the 46 books of the Old Testament (including) the deuterocanonical ones) was affirmed as the official canon of Sacred Scripture for the Catholic Church by the synods of Hippo (393), Carthage I and II (397 and 419). The letter of Pope St. Innocent I in 405 also officially listed these books. Although some discussion arose over the inclusion of other books into the Church's canon of Sacred Scripture after this time, the council of Florence (1442) definitively established the official list of 46 books of the Old Testament and 27 of the New Testament.

and http://www.fisheaters.com/septuagint.html

 Church Councils listed and affirmed the present Catholic canon, which was only formally closed at the Council of Trent in the 16th century.

and

Ultimately, the "Reformers" decided to ignore the canon determined by the Christian Councils of Hippo and Carthage (and reaffirmed and closed at the Council of Trent⁴), and resort solely to those texts determined to be canonical at the Council of Jamnia.

The Council of Jamnia?

Now we have to back up a bit: around A.D. 90-100, after the Temple fell, a rabbinical school was formed by Johanan ben Zakkai. The "Council of Jamnia" (also called "Jabneh" or "Javneh") is the name given to the decisions made by this pharisaic school. I repeat: the gathering at Jamnia was a Jewish, not a Christian,"council" consisting of Pharisees some 40 years after the Resurrection of our Lord. At that time, Jews were being scattered, and the very existence of Jewry per the Pharisees' vision of "Jewry" was being threatened. At this time, too, Christianity was growing and threatening that same Jewish identity, resulting in severe persecution of Christians by Jews. In reaction to these things and to the fact that "Nazarenes" (i.e., "Christians", who at that time were overwhelmingly Hebrew) used the Septuagint to proselytize other Jews, Zakkai convened the Jamnian school with the goals of safeguarding Hillel's Oral Law, deciding the Jewish canon (which had theretofore been, and possibly even afterward remained ⁵, an open canon!), and preventing the disappearance of Jewry into the Diaspora of the Christian and Roman worlds. So, circling their wagons, they threw out the Septuagint that they had endorsed for almost 400 years. Note that at the time of Christ, most Jews spoke Aramaic, Latin (the official language of the area), and/or Greek (the lingua franca at that time), not Hebrew, which was a sacred language used by priests for the Hebrew liturgy. In any case, a new Greek translation was created by Aquila -- but one without the ancient Septuagint's language that proved more difficult for the Jews to defend against when being evangelized by the Christians, the point being that any idea that a book "had" to have been written in Hebrew to be "Biblical" wasn't the issue.

Moving the story along: in other words, the Protestant "Reformers" decided against the canon held dear by the Apostles in favor of a canon determined by Pharisees some 40 years after Jesus rose from the dead -- the same Pharisees who denied the Truths of the entire New Testament, even accusing the "Nazarenes" of stealing Jesus' body from the tomb and lying to the world! (Interestingly, it was Zakkai's successor, Gamaliel, who forced the "Nazarenes" out of the synagogues. Gamaliel also made it obligatory for Jews to pray the "Prayer of Eighteen Petitions," the 12th petition, which is still prayed today, known as the birkat, being "For apostates may there be no hope, and may the Nazarenes and heretics suddenly perish.")

And do you know why the Book of Maccabees was thrown out by the Jewish Council? Because the Council was conducted under the auspices of the Flavian Roman Emperors and they decided that that particuar book, which tells of the Maccabean Revolt, might be inflammatory and incite rebellion by the Jews. So, all those Protestant Bibles are lacking the Book of Maccabees, which speaks clearly of praying for the dead, because a pagan emperor pressured the Pharisees, around 40 years after the Resurrection of Christ, to exclude it. And lest anyone is still tempted to think that it was the "Roman Church" that came up with these books and that they were not written by pre-Christ Jews (an assertion I've actually read at "Messianic" websites), Jews in other parts of the world who didn't get news of the Council of Jamnia's decisions still use those "extra" 7 books to this very day (research the canon used by Ethiopian Jewry).

and here http://onefaith.freeservers.com/deuterocanonical.htm

 Mileto, bishop of Sardis, an ancient city of Asia Minor, c. 170 AD created the earliest list of books identical to the Roman Catholic canon today. Following this Pope Damasus, 366-384, in his Decree, listed the books of today's canon. The Council of Hippo, a local north African council of bishops listed the books of the Old and New Testament in 393 AD, the same as the Catholic list today. The Council of Carthage did the same four years later and again in 419. Down through the ages Christians used Bibles, always with the Deuterocanonical books included. In fact, the Gutenberg Bible, the first Bible to be mass printed, contained these books and followed the Catholic canon. Finally, the Council of Trent DID reaffirm the traditional canon in the face of the errors of the Reformers who rejected seven Old Testament books from the canon of Scripture at that time."

and here http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/didnt-the-catholic-church-add-to-the-bible

  Around this time there were no less than five instances when the canon was formally identified: the Synod of Rome (382), the Council of Hippo (393), the Council of Carthage (397), a letter from Pope Innocent I to Exsuperius, Bishop of Toulouse (405), and the Second Council of Carthage (419). In every instance, the canon was identical to what Catholic Bibles contain today. In other words, from the end of the fourth century on, in practice Christians accepted the Catholic Church's decision in this matter.

see also   http://catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0120.html

also http://catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2012/04/which-books-were-in-early-christian.html

from here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/01/the-canon-question/ from comment 742

If I can boil down your argument, you are saying that Judith doesn’t seem to you like parable, legend, historical fiction, or parody; therefore the writer must have intended to relate history. And the author, though intending to relate true history, begins the book with a historical error of the greatest possible magnitude.

If I understanding you correctly, then the problem I have with this argument is that the conclusion is absurd. We can’t reasonably believe that that a Jewish writer in this time period intended to relate true history and yet began the “history” by confusing the two greatest enemies of the Jewish people (Nebudchanezzar and the kingdom of Assyria).

from comment 176 here   http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/03/world-vision-and-the-quest-for-protestant-unity/

So, it may be that the conversation should pause long enough to ensure mutual comprehension, and then proceed.

Ιn particular the issue of Scripture and its role in the Church (in EVERY era) needs to be clearly understood before anything else happens.

Will you please agree, specifically, to the following eighteen items?

On a point-by-point basis, you need to either affirm or deny that….

1. The Jews didn’t have a fixed canon in Christ’s time;

2. Some Jews regarded only the 5 books of Moses as authoritative;

3. Other Jews regarded something similar to, though not always identical to, the Protestant OT canon to be authoritative;

4. Still other Jews regarded something similar to, though not always identical to, the Catholic OT canon to be authoritative;

5. The “OT canon” question cannot thus be settled by appeals to pre-Christian Jewish authorities settling the issue, since they hadn’t;

6. By the time Jewish sages formed a consensus which included (for example) Esther but excluded (for example) 1 & 2 Maccabees, Christ had already come; Christ had already died; Christ had already risen; Christ had already ascended; the Holy Spirit had already come at Pentecost; the Proto-Council of Jerusalem had already exerted authority over the Christian faithful (Acts 15); the Apostles had already taught their message “by word of mouth, or by letter” as being “what it really is, the Word of God”; and all the original Twelve apostles had died;

7. There is therefore no just cause for a Christian to appeal to anti-Christian Jewish sages of the early 2nd century (over and against the authority of the early Christian bishops!) to get an authoritative OT canon;

8. When the Jewish sages started excluding the Deuterocanonical books (e.g., Wisdom), it was partly to undermine Christian apologists (since Wisdom contains a detailed prophecy of Christ’s suffering which was being used by Christian apologists to persuade many Jews that Jesus was the Messiah);

9. The New Testament books used by Protestants today, when quoting the Old Testament, mostly quote the Septuagint word-for-word…and either quotes or alludes to various OT books which are in the Catholic OT, but excluded from the Protestant;

10. Before 370 A.D. we have no record of any Christian authority using the same 27 NT books which Catholics and Protestants agree upon today, but after 370 A.D. everyone agreed for 1,100 years until Luther tried unsuccessfully to exclude James, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation in the 1500′s;

11. Before 370 A.D. we have varying OT canons from Christian witnesses but they invariably at least one of the books which Catholics regard canonical (Judith, Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees) is included, and usually all but one or two are included (and the one or two vary);

12. After 370 A.D. authorities agreed upon an OT canon of 46 books identical to the Catholic OT canon, and this continued until Luther and Calvin’s day;

13. After the death of the last of the Twelve (John) there was no way Christians could appeal to the Twelve to get a New Testament canon or an Old Testament canon (neither of which was yet known to the faithful), so, wherever Christians got their canon of Scripture, it wasn’t from the Twelve;

14. Until the Church had set the canon to show what was and wasn’t “Scripture”, it was impossible to take “Sola Scriptura” as a valid methodology for discerning whether a given doctrine was heretical or orthodox…and in historical fact, the Christian faithful did not do so;

15. The Christian faithful, instead, found out what was orthodox from “The Church” in the following way: They accepted what was said by their bishop (provided he had Apostolic Succession and could trace his authority and his teachings on the disputed matter back through his predecessor to the Apostles); and when there were disputes between bishops they appealed either to the bishop of Rome, or to a council called-and-conducted with the consent/agreement of the bishop of Rome, to resolve the dispute;

16. The reason that the Christian faithful accepted the 27-book NT canon and the 46-book (Catholic) OT canon when, after 370, these were finally standardized was because their bishop, and especially the bishop of Rome, had said so;

17. You cannot get a canon of Scripture from Scripture itself inasmuch as (a.) Scripture never says what the canon should be or gives any standard for determining it; (b.) even if it did, you wouldn’t know whether it was trustworthy because the book including the canon might not, itself, be canonical; and,

18. Consequently, any Christian claiming to have an infallible knowledge of which books should be in the Bible is ABSOLUTELY forced to admit that he’s relying, for that knowledge, on an infallible authority OTHER THAN the authority of Scripture itself.

link here defending deutero books: http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/deuterocanonicalpage.html
this includes different articles with links

Interesting on Judith: 781
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/01/the-canon-question/#comment-119988

Regarding our old conversation about Judith, I stumbled across an interesting point in Warren Carroll’s “History of Christendom” volume 1, and that made me want to come back to our conversation about Judith.

Re-reading your comment, it seems your point was that you considered it an error that the book says that Nebuchadnezzar was the “King” of Assyria, and that he ruled “from Ninevah”. I am curious what translation you have been using, because after reading what Carroll says, I wondered if we are reading similar translations.

Here is the translation of Judith in the New American Bible, Revised Edition on the USCCB website:

It was the twelfth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled over the Assyrians in the great city of Nineveh.

Verse 1 says that Nebuchadnezzar ruled over the Assyrians who lived in Ninevah. Warren Carroll’s history confirms that in the 12th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (593BC?), the Babylonian Empire did in fact occupy and rule over the city of Ninevah. Even Wikipedia confirms there is archeological evidence that Ninevah was sacked in 612 B.C. by a coalition which included the Babylonian empire, and we see in dates throughout the 6th century B.C., that the Babylonian Empire controlled the area around Ninevah.

Given these historical corollaries, a few of inferences seem very reasonable to make:

1. Nebuchadnezzar did rule over the Assyrians who lived in Ninevah (as attested by Judith and external sources)

2. In the context of Judith, it would be very reasonable to call him King of the Assyrians, because he was, in fact, the King over the Assyrians who lived in Ninevah, and that’s the group of Assyrians that are being talked about in the book. The book never states he was _not_ King of the Babylonians. A modern analogy is that the Queen of England is also called the Queen of Ireland in the context of Northern Ireland, even though most of Ireland is independent.

3. Being King over Ninevah does not make Nebuchadnezzar is of Assyrian origin, nor does the book ever say he is an Assyrian.

4. If Nebuchadnezzar was indeed waging military campaigns to the west of Ninevah, then it would make sense that he resided in Ninevah for periods of time during these campaigns.

see also http://www.holytrinityparish.net/RCIA/Divine%20Revelation.pdf

Just some other things I want to remember.  The Septuagint had the deuterocanonical books

some of the Septuagint copies but not all also had what we call 3 Esdras and some didn't --RC don't include it.  Ezra and Nehemiah were sometimes referred to as 1 and 2 Esdras and then there were 3 and 4 Esdras which normally are now called 1 and 2 Ezra.  RC does not include these last 2.   Our oldest full copies of the OT come from Septuagint translations--the Vaticans (325-350 AD) and Alexandrin (450 AD).  The Sinaiticus contains some too.  The Dead Sea Scrolls contain some (these are from around 168bc to 68 ad---need checking on dates). The oldest full Hebrew copy--according to wiki--The oldest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the 9th century CE,^[5] and the Aleppo Codex (once the oldest complete copy of the Masoretic Text, but now missing its Torah section) dates from the 10th century.

interesting article trying to show how Judith could be understood as historical: http://www.specialtyinterests.net/judith.html  this next one also ties in : http://raphael4911.newsvine.com/_news/2011/03/02/6172359-the-book-of-judith-fact-of-fiction  for example: 

There is, perhaps, another way to view the historical events presented in The Book of Judith, by positioning them in the range of the time of Judges during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I (circa 1150-1104 B.C.). Along with this realignment of Judith’s historical existence, there are several supporting textual, historical, geographical, and logical arguments that suggest Judith was indeed a real person who accomplished exactly those deeds reported in the “inspired” Old Testament book that bears her name.

1. Nebuchadnezzar I reigned in Mesopotamia some time from 1150 – 1104 B.C. (accounts vary as the period was constantly ablaze with war among Kassites, Elamites, Babylonians, Assyrians, and other peoples in the region). According to the Kings List, AssuriaNebuchadnezzar I held sway over the entire region for an interval after defeating the Elamites and Kassites, encompassing all of Mesopotamia including Nineveh. Then, in a sudden reversal, the Assyrian King, Tiglath-Pilaser I, defeated Nebuchadnezzar I and reclaimed Assyria. The archeological record shows that Nebuchadnezzar I, during his reign, reached Syria, coinciding with the detail in Judith that Nebuchadnezzar’s army destroyed Damascus.
2. The biblical genealogy of Judith fixes her time six generations after her great, great, great, great grandfather, Gideon. That might set Judith’s birth around 1125 B.C. and could make her about 19 years of age at the time of the events of Judith. If Nebuchadnezzar’s reign came to an abrupt end, as would be surmised after a humiliating defeat by the Israelites upon Judith’s triumph over Holofernes, then the reign and fortunes of Nebuchadnezzar I would coincide with the events of Judith. Additionally, the name of Nebuchadnezzar and his victories would probably have been erased from the Assyrian record by Tiglath-Pilaser I.
3. The Book of Judith contains a speech in the tent of Holofernes by Achior, leader of the defeated Ammonites, in which he accurately repeats the major events of the Hebrew race, beginning with the forefathers of Abraham in Chaldea and ending with the crossing of the Jordan and the Hebrew entry into Canaan after spending 40 years in the desert following the exodus from Egypt. Achior’s recount of Hebrew history at least implies he is making the speech in the time of Judges, for absolutely no mention is made of David’s or Solomon’s glorious kingdoms.
4. St. Jerome, Doctor of the Catholic Church (342-420 A.D.), said he had access to an Aramaic text of Judith when he translated it to Latin. Yet this claim by possibly the greatest biblical scholar ever (who lived 1,600 years closer to the events of Judith) is dismissed by current scholars because they cannot find such a text. Modern scholarship seems to give no weight to post exilic oral tradition.

Many persons would have benefited from the destruction of Jewish Holy Texts for reasons ranging from national hegemony, misogynism, and personal cult / reputation to anti-Semitism, and religious competition. Speculating on this aspect of “missing texts” might open many cans of worms:

If David was inspired by and raised on the deeds of Judith, not only would his cult and glory have been challenged by Judith’s, he also would have mirrored her prayers and the Judith Hymn of Praise in his own Psalm compositions. David’s character, as a king with a considerable harem and as a king who sent another man (Uriah, the Hittite) to his death so he could possess Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, would have stood in stark contrast to the very “God fearing” Judith. David’s fame has not suffered by missing texts of Judith.

The beheading of Holofernes by Judith and the following defeat of Nebuchadnezzar’s army by the Israelites would have, historically, freed the Philistines (then under the foot of Holofernes along the coastline), emboldened them, and eventually enabled them to defeat Saul, cut off his head, and hang it on the wall of Beth-shan (as Judith indeed beheaded her enemy, Holofernes, and hung his head on the wall of Bethulia). Perhaps the Philistines’ actions in beheading Saul and displaying his head was in response to Judith’s similar actions and David’s decapitation of Goliath’s after David had already killed Goliath with Goliath’s own sword.

The claims by scholars that the writer who composed Judith in the First or Second Century B.C. borrowed from Psalms, Isaiah, and others would be reversed, were Judith held as historical. Indeed, David, other Psalmists, Isaiah, and others would be indebted to Judith.

Nebuchadnezzar II would have every reason to have any record of the humiliated, former king of his name utterly destroyed, including all the cities, documents, and relics of the events.

When, in 1534 A.D., Martin Luther grouped the deutrocanonical books at the end of the Old Testament (of which Judith was considered one by the Catholic Church), Protestants came to regard Judith as noncanonical Jewish literature, “…not held equal to sacred scriptures and yet useful for good reading.” Catholic scholars might give the historical possibilities of Judith another look or join with the Protestants and determine Judith does not belong as part of the canon. After all, Pope Paul VI, in his endorsement of the notes introducing the New American Bible, states the texts of the New American Bible are, “Everything and only those things that He (God) wanted.” One word of is needed to remove the irritating question raised at the beginning of this note, and that word is, “Perhaps.”

Copyright @ 2011Kevin Mirek

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/judith/intro.htm

see also 

http://www.holynameofmaryparish.com/documents/Deuterocanonical%20Books.pdf

is man good or evil

389 The doctrine of original sin is, so to speak, the "reverse side" of the Good News that Jesus is the Savior of all men, that all need salvation and that salvation is offered to all through Christ. The Church, which has the mind of Christ, knows very well that we cannot tamper with the revelation of original sin without undermining the mystery of Christ.

405 Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence". Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.

407 The doctrine of original sin, closely connected with that of redemption by Christ, provides lucid discernment of man's situation and activity in the world. By our first parents' sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free. Original sin entails "captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the power of death, that is, the devil".Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social and morals.


The above is in the Catholic Catechism.

Below is from here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/07/a-reply-to-r-c-sproul-regarding-the-catholic-doctrines-of-original-sin-and-free-will/

The will of fallen man retains the ability to choose between good and evil, but it does not, on its own, have the power to choose man’s supernatural good.¹ Neither actual nor sanctifying grace are necessary to choose between courage and cowardice, between generosity and stinginess, between responsible parenting and neglect of one’s children. We see non-Christians freely choose between these, sometimes rightly sometimes wrongly, on a daily basis. Grace is necessary for choosing and attaining man’s supernatural end. That’s what Pelagianism denies. St. Augustine never denied that pagans have free will to choose between good and evil. Nor did he hold that every action by an unregenerate person was a sin. Rather, he held that persons without actual grace could not choose our supernatural end, and that persons without sanctifying grace could not merit our supernatural end, namely, heaven. Failing to distinguish between nature and grace, and between our natural end and our supernatural end, leads to concluding falsely that affirming fallen man’s ability to choose freely between good and evil is some sort of Pelagianism.

from comment 10 on the above blog

  I agree that there is a difference between the way Catholics and Protestants conceive of what it means to be “dead in sin.” Protestants (at least those in Sproul’s tradition) conceive of it just as you described, as being unable not to sin, or rather, as being able only to sin. And that is due to their notion of what happened at the Fall, namely, that human nature itself was corrupted, such that the power of the will to choose between good and evil was lost. By contrast, the Catholic conception of original sin is that human nature itself remained intact, but that sanctifying grace and the preternatural gifts were lost when Adam sinned. And therefore for the Catholic, “dead in sin” does not mean “being able only to sin,” or not having the ability to choose between good and evil. Rather, it means that man is without sanctifying grace, i.e. without the life of God. And contra Pelagianism, man cannot reacquire that grace that Adam lost, unless God gives it, which He has done for us through Christ.I have written a couple articles on this, drawing from lectures given by Prof. Lawrence Feingold. The first is titled “Lawrence Feingold on Original Justice and Original Sin.” The second is titled “Protestant Objections to the Catholic Doctrines of Original Justice and Original Sin.” I hope those are helpful to you.

righteousness discussed

a discussion of  righteousness--what it means. BryanC. answers the question about its meaning in the extended quote below --This is from Comment 56 found here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/01/holy-church-finding-jesus-as-a-reverted-catholic-a-testimonial-response-to-chris-castaldo/#comment-46965

So, if “righteousness” is not fundamentally “behavioral”, how should we define it? Is it a quality? Is it a state ?

In God, Righteousness is God Himself. When we are made righteous at the moment of justification, we receive by infusion a supernatural participation in God’s righteousness. In God, who has no parts, there is no difference between His very being and His powers. In us, however, our soul is not our will. Rather, our will is a power in and of our soul. We receive infused supernatural participation in God’s righteousness both in our soul, and in our will. As received into our soul, it is called sanctifying grace, and is a habitus entitativus because by participation in the divine nature the soul is given a new nature. As received into our will it is called agape (or charity), and is a habitus operativus, because by participation in the divine nature, the will is given a new operation, namely, loving God as He loves Himself.

Regarding the distinction between the supernatural virtue of agape, and sanctifying grace, St. Thomas Aquinas explains:

“[V]irtue is disposition of what is perfect–and I call perfect what is disposed according to its nature.” Now from this it is clear that the virtue of a thing has reference to some pre-existing nature, from the fact that everything is disposed with reference to what befits its nature. But it is manifest that the virtues acquired by human acts of which we spoke above (55, seqq.) are dispositions, whereby a man is fittingly disposed with reference to the nature whereby he is a man; whereas infused virtues dispose man in a higher manner and towards a higher end, and consequently in relation to some higher nature, i.e. in relation to a participation of the Divine Nature, according to 2 Peter 1:4: “He hath given us most great and most precious promises; that by these you may be made partakers of the Divine Nature.” And it is in respect of receiving this nature that we are said to be born again sons of God.

And thus, even as the natural light of reason is something besides the acquired virtues, which are ordained to this natural light, so also the light of grace which is a participation of the Divine Nature is something besides the infused virtues which are derived from and are ordained to this light, hence the Apostle says (Ephesians 5:8): “For you were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk then as children of the light.” For as the acquired virtues enable a man to walk, in accordance with the natural light of reason, so do the infused virtues enable a man to walk as befits the light of grace. (Summa Theologica I-II Q.110 a.3)

St. Thomas explains here first that a virtue is a perfect disposition, and that perfection is according to the nature of a thing. For example, it is not a perfection of the bones of a hummingbird to be capable of withstanding the weight of an elephant; the bones of a hummingbird are perfect when they are sufficiently light for flight powered by wings of the size and strength of a hummingbird. But natural virtues dispose man to his natural end (which is to know and love God as First Cause), whereas infused [supernatural] virtues dispose man to know and love God as He knows and loves Himself [as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit]. (On the distinction between man’s natural end, and man’s supernatural end, see “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and Clark.”)

So supernatural virtues are perfect in relation to a nature higher than man’s own nature. And it is in receiving this new nature by participation (while retaining our human nature) that we are said to be born again as sons of God, having (by participation) God’s own nature and thus rightly and truly being called “sons of God” and members of His family, not by the human nature we received when we were conceived in our natural mother’s womb, but the divine nature we received when were conceived again in the womb of Holy Mother Church, i.e. in the laver of regeneration. Only by receiving this new nature are the infused (supernatural) virtues (i.e. faith, hope, and charity) perfections according to our [new] nature, because if our only nature were the human nature in which we were first conceived, these supernatural virtues would not be perfections in relation to our nature.

end quote. Then in comment 87:

God does not receive His righteousness from something other than Himself, or by conforming to something other than Himself.

You talk about it being God itself instead of a gift from him or some seperate habit.

In God, righteousness is God Himself. But in us, righteousness is a gift, i.e. a participation in the divine nature, which we receive as sanctifying grace and agape, as explained in comment #56 above.

Is this the position of Aquinas?

Yes.

Did Aquinas understand it as being God instead of something behavioral?

Righteousness is not an either/or, nor did St. Thomas explain it as an either or. Behavioral righteousness is a participation in the perfect, eternal righteousness of God Himself, who is Love, and in Whom there is no motion. See the Feingold lecture at “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End.”

from one of  Nick's comment here http://www.creedcodecult.com/what-counted-as-abrahams-righteousness/  :

Righteousness can refer to different things in Scripture depending on the context. It typically refers to either a state of being (e.g. a righteous man) or to right-doing. In regards to the latter, note some examples from these passages,

Deut 24: 10 “When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not go into his house to collect his pledge. 11 You shall stand outside, and the man to whom you make the loan shall bring the pledge out to you. 12 And if he is a poor man, you shall not sleep in his pledge. 13 You shall restore to him the pledge as the sun sets, that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you. And it shall be righteousness for you before the Lord your God.

Romans6: 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. … 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

Matthew 6:1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

The idea that righteousness refers to sinlessly keeping the law is not something I see in Scripture. I’ve never found a Protestant who has shown me a Scripture for this, nor have they found a Scripture that says Jesus kept the Law perfectly in our place. So without that bias in mind, from the actual Biblical exaples we do have, this means that Abraham’s faith being regarded as righteousness means it was a righteous act or that it showed a righteous quality about Abraham.

When a person is dead in sin, they are justified by having their sins forgiven and being brought back to spiritual life (Titus 3:4-7), and so this righteousness refers to a state of being (Romans 8:10 is a good example of this). Trent calls God’s justifying righteousness the single formal cause of our justification, meaning that in the context of salvation, the only thing that is righteous in and of itself is God’s righteousness, and the only way to be righteous is having this infused into you. St James chapter 1 has an awesome example of this:

19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

Here the “righteousness of God” that St James is speaking of is a quality that subsists indies Christians, which is damped through sin; it is the “implanted word” that saves.

You asked what 2 Corinthians 5:21 refers to. It refers to being made righteous in justification, going from a state of spiritual death to that of spiritual life.

St. Augustine's view of Mt 25:35-40 and Acts 9:4

There is a helpful paper on St. Augustine's view of  Mt 25:35-40 and Acts 9:4 that is found here on PDF

http://aejt.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/225387/Canning_Christs_self_identification_GH.pdf

difference in Protestants and Catholics Steve Ray

a bit more here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2015/08/a-catholic-assessment-of-gregg-allisons-critique-of-the-hermeneutics-of-catholicism/

Why moving from reformed to Catholic

Below is an extended quote on why a reformed Christian became Catholic . It is found here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/01/holy-church-finding-jesus-as-a-reverted-catholic-a-testimonial-response-to-chris-castaldo/#comment-46550

from comment 18 quote of Christopher Lake:

Thank you for your comment, and welcome to CTC. I am not one of the official contributors to this site, but all of them, and many of the regular commenters (including myself) are former Protestant Christians who held to the “Five Sola’s of the Reformation” and to five-point Calvinist theology. (In my case, I am a former “Reformed Baptist.”)

In your comment, you make a very serious assumption about Casey– that, in returning to the Catholic Church, he was going for doctrine which “tickled (his) own ears after (his) own desires.” How do you know that he was not returning to the Church which he honestly believes to be Biblically sound and faithful to the true Gospel of Jesus Christ and to all of the teachings of Christ and the apostles? Why do you assume that Casey was simply returning to the doctrines which tickled his ears after his own desires?

I used to be a Catholic, and I left the Catholic Church, partially due to challenges from non-Catholic friends that I could not answer and that shook my own faith (largely due to poor instruction that I unfortunately received from more than one person in the Church). I eventually became an evangelical Protestant, and when I found Reformed Christianity, in particular, it was as if a whole world of Biblical theology opened up to me that seemed (at the time) to make better sense of the whole Bible that anything else I had encountered. I jumped right in, joined a Reformed Baptist congregation, and happily found myself in an intense and joyful atmosphere of serious Bible study, prayer, fellowship, and evangelism. This was, it seemed, what I had been looking for for years, because I wanted nothing more than to trust in God alone for my salvation, and to follow hard after him, with the encouragement of brothers and sisters in Christ, growing in obedience and holiness, while spreading His Gospel of justification by faith alone.

I could not have been more happy as a Reformed Baptist Christian. I had no desire to “justify myself by my own works” or to go after “doctrine that ticked my ears.” I firmly believed that justification by faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone *was* the Gospel, and I shared this Gospel with others, including meeting with a Catholic man and his wife for months, trying to show them the “Biblical, Reformed Gospel” from the Scriptures and praying for them to “see the truth.”

As the years went on though, I began to be increasingly troubled by more and more Scripture passages that created serious problems for my Reformed, “faith alone,” “imputed righteousness,” “limited atonement,” “Perseverance of the Saints” Calvinistic Biblical paradigm. I could go into all of these passages in this comment, but to do so would require a virtual treatise. (I can go into *some* of them in subsequent comments if you would like).

Despite being troubled by these passages, I knew that Reformed exegetes knew more about the Bible than I did, and, thankful for their knowledge, I delved further into Reformed exegetical and apologetic works which dealt with these “problem passages.” After reading these works, with my Bible close at hand to make sure they were “Biblically accurate,” I would be encouraged and reassured that Reformed Protestant Christianity did, indeed, still make sense of the whole Bible. Through all of my study, I never doubted that justification by faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone *was* the Biblical Gospel– and it was my Gospel, the Gospel for which I lived, and for which I would have died, if I had been asked to do so.

Eventually, through continued Bible study, prayer, and the discovery of the writings of the early Church Fathers (which include Biblical exegesis that far predates the Reformation), I began to sense that if I wanted to be truly honest with what God was showing to me, I had to make a commitment to re-study the entire Bible– but this time, setting aside my cherished Reformed presuppositions which I had long brought to the texts.

To be clear, I had originally *come* to these Reformed views *through* Biblical exegesis (of my own and others), but now, Biblical exegesis (of my own and others) was leading me to question some of these Reformed views, so to be honest with God and myself, I felt that I needed to re-study the Bible without my “Reformed interpretive lenses.”

After a careful, even agonizing, process of this Biblical “re-study”– involving serious prayer, and regular, lengthy meetings with one of my Reformed elders, and study of both Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox sources–, I realized that I could no longer, in good conscience, be a Reformed Baptist Protestant, or *any* kind of Protestant. The Bible itself had convinced me out of my Protestantism. In particular, through study of the four Gospels, the letters of Paul, 1 John, and Hebrews, I had been convinced that both justification by faith alone and the “Perserverance of the Saints” (the “eternal security” of Calvinists) were/are simply not the teachings of the Bible.

I had not *wanted* to reach these conclusions. I *wanted* to be reaffirmed that the “Reformed, Biblical Gospel” that I had embraced and spread for years *was* the teaching of the Bible. Reaching a different conclusion, *from* the Bible, was severely humbling, and even shattering, to me on many levels. It meant that I had been wrong about very serious teachings of the Bible for years, and that I had spread these errors to other people. It meant that I could not stay in my current congregation. I already had a strong sense, from my experience with these friends, that in renouncing my former beliefs as “unBiblical,” I would lose most of these friends– and lose them I did (as well as many, many Reformed friends in other parts of the U.S.) . I also lost a hoped-for career in Reformed “Biblical Counseling.”

Even after reaching my carefully studied, and prayed-through, conclusion that Reformed Protestantism (and Protestantism, period) is not Biblically accurate, I still was not completely convinced of the claims and teachings of the Catholic Church. I knew, though, that I had to leave my Protestant community, in good conscience, so I painfully did. It hurt so much to leave, but being firmly convinced that I was following God and Scripture in doing so, I found a measure of peace.

For about two months, I didn’t know *where* I belonged, ecclesially speaking, so I stayed home on Sundays and continued to study. On about 85% of what the Catholic Church teaches, I had found her to be Biblically accurate– far more so than any Protestant congregation–, but I had to ask myself, how long was I going to continue subjecting every ecclesial entity in existence to *my* own Biblical scrutiny, when I had once been an Arminian, and then a Calvinist, and now, a “non-Protestant” of some sort, having reached these conclusions through *my* own Biblical study, with other Protestant Christians, and with other sources (including the writings of the early Church Fathers), but still holding the Bible to be my final authority (at least on the matters that I deemed to be “Christian essentials”)? Was this really the way that the early Christian Church operated?

From reading the early Church Fathers (not as opposed to reading Scripture, but *while* reading Scripture), I had learned that “Sola Scriptura” was most definitely *not* how the early Church had operated. It was not how Jesus and the first apostles had operated– so why should I continue doing so? From 189 A.D., the words of St. Irenaeus rang in my ears:

“It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about” (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).

“But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the successions of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul—that church which has the tradition and the faith with which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. For with this Church, because of its superior origin, all churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world. And it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition” (ibid., 3:3:2).

(Source: http://www.churchfathers.org/category/the-church-and-the-papacy/apostolic-succession/)

I still was not 100% convinced of some of the teachings of the Catholic Church, but again, I had found her to be far more Scripturally accurate than any Protestant denomination (or “non-denominational church”), and the early Church had not operated through “Sola Scriptura” anyway. In that light, was I going to heed what the Spirit had shown me in Scripture (which was, emotionally, *not* what I had wanted to find there), and in the early Church Fathers, and in Church history, or was I going to stay with Reformed Protestant doctrines that, in a sense. tickled my own human desires to not have my life be so incredibly disrupted (by returning to the Catholic Church)?

I knew what I had to do. I had to follow God, my own desires for career and comfort and the affirmation of friends be damned. Therefore, I returned to the Catholic Church. It was *not* easy, and it has not *been* easy. It was, and is, the right thing to do though, because this Church has the fullness of Christian truth– which is only fitting, because Christ Himself founded the Catholic Church.

and from comment 24 by him:

I wrote of the early Church Fathers, “Did they do the ‘heavy work’ of bringing me to the point of seeing that justification by faith truly might be unBiblical? No. Jesus, St. Paul, St. John, the author of the book of Hebrews, and the Holy Spirit had to do that for me.”

However, I left out the word “alone”– and that makes all the difference, because the Biblical writers and the Holy Spirit brought me to point of seeing that justification by faith *alone* might be unBiblical. Now, I know that it *is* unBiblical. Luther’s misinterpretation of St. Paul in Romans led to the Reformed Protestant understanding of “Sola Fide.”

You have probably already heard this, but the only place in the Bible where the words “faith alone” are actually used (in James 2), they are *specifically denied, and specifically in relation to justification.* Now, as a former Reformed Baptist, I know very well that there is a Reformed explanation for this seeming exegetical dilemma. James is writing about about faith as pure “head faith,” intellectual, non-saving belief, and he is writing about works as simply being the “justifying evidence,” before man, of one’s already having been justified by God by faith alone. Meanwhile, Paul is writing about being justified before God by faith alone– even though he never *uses* the words “faith alone.” That is the Reformed explanation of Paul and James on justification, faith, and works that I was taught by my Reformed leaders, and I accepted it and believed it for years. However, after having made a conscious effort to re-study the Bible without those “Reformed interpretive lenses” (well before I ever returned to the Catholic Church), I could see that Reformed explanation as, unfortunately, little more than Reformed *eisegesis*, not exegesis. If God had wanted to tell us clearly in Scripture that believers in Christ are justified by faith alone, it is certainly perplexing that God, the Holy Spirit, inspired James to write man is not justified by faith alone.

I know that Reformed Christians love to read the letters of Paul. I certainly did, as a Reformed Baptist, and I still do, as a Catholic. The Church has been exegeting those letters for almost 2, 000 years. He is “St. Paul” in our Church after all– and I can assure you that we would *not* so honor Paul if he, in actuality, teaches things in Scripture that are opposed to Catholic doctrine! :-) In truth, he does not teach anything opposed to Catholic doctrine, because Paul himself was/is Catholic.http://pauliscatholic.com