Holt Dad

@iam_shwa @VadeadIesum At our three hour Easter vigil mass I was grateful for the Protestants tradition of wooden pews we now use.

Catholics! Say one NICE thing about Protestantism Protestants! Say one NICE thing about Catholicism

@ProtPhilosopher @FDerpenstein @ShamelessPopery "It means the authority is intrinsic to the text because of who authored it." If you have to assume who authored it you are still begging the question.

Those are good points to address. Self-authenticating doesn't mean, as you suggest, "a text that is obviously divine." It means the authority is intrinsic to the text because of who authored it. The Church recognizes that authority but doesn't create it. Yes, there were early debates about the canon. I've addressed the canon issue at length using the AIT. Ironically, though, the early debates about the canon don't disprove self-authentication. They support it. The disputed books (Rev., 2 Peter) were debated because the Church was seeing whether they had the properties of divine authorship. The undisputed books self-authenticated without a council forcing acceptance, unlike the deuteros. That's the AIT's prediction confirmed. It's not refuted. Regarding your Book of Mormon and Quran point, we can run the test. Do they have the properties the AIT predicts from essential divine perfections? Cross-traditional convergence without institutional coercion? Internal coherence with the prior deposit? The Book of Mormon fails. The Quran fails. The key isn't whether someone claims they're Scripture. The key is whether it has the properties that a text authored by God would possess. Anyone can claim self-authentication. But not every text survives the test.

I watched it. Joe (@ShamelessPopery) might have done better than Doug in their Sola Scriptura (SS) debate, but I don't find Joe's arguments very strong. The way I analyze Joe's arguments is framed by my Attribute Inscripturation Thesis (AIT), which argues that God's essential perfections determine what kind of text he authors through exemplar causality, so that denying any property of Scripture requires saying which divine perfection failed to do what it does. For instance, when Joe argues Scripture needs an infallible interpreter, he's saying God's wisdom failed to produce a clear communication. When he argues the canon needs the Church to certify it, he's saying God's aseity failed to ground a self-authenticating text. When he points to Protestant disagreement on baptism, he's saying God's love failed to calibrate clarity to salvific purpose. And when he calls SS a man-made doctrine that couldn't exist before the printing press, he's ultimately saying God's eternal nature couldn't entail anything about the text until Gutenberg showed up. Yikes! His arguments minimize God and make him little. They take an essentially wise, loving, truthful, self-existent God and say he couldn't produce a text that communicates what it was authored to communicate. Joe would never say that out loud. But it's what every one of his arguments requires. Doug lost because he never got to the doctrine of God. But the AIT asks the question neither of them asked, and it's the only question that matters, "Which divine perfection failed?" This matters because every Catholic argument against SS is downstream. It's at the level of institutions, interpretation, and unity. The AIT moves upstream to the doctrine of God, which is the one place the Catholic can't win. Why? Because punching back means saying a divine perfection failed. It requires saying that Scripture shows that God is not God. No Catholic will say God's wisdom failed to produce a clear communication. No Catholic will say God's love failed to make salvation accessible. No Catholic will say God's aseity failed to ground a self-sufficient text. But that's what their arguments require. The AIT forces the cost into the open. And my bet is that nobody wants to pay the cost.

@ProtPhilosopher @JT_Great21 @beCatholicc @ShamelessPopery On this definition of perspecuity the interpreter is ignored. You're just acknowledging the material sufficiency of Writ which Catholics don't deny. You're not acknowledging the commitment to successful reception that the doctrine assumes.

@JT_Great21 @beCatholicc @ShamelessPopery I'm glad you see where the reasoning leads and accept that Catholics can affirm the perspicuity of Scripture as an entailment from their own commitments. That's a W.

@ProtPhilosopher @ShamelessPopery The downstream problems are a result of the irrational premise smuggled in at the onset. The flowery prose of your AIT doesn't change that. Solo and Sola are distinctions without difference.

@CSistovac @ilikeitneat @sola_chad I'm glad you recognize the fallacy of your claim.

@backdoc47 @ilikeitneat @sola_chad Nice non sequitur. I’ll play, though. Most say it was between Tertullian of the Church of Carthage and Theophilus of the Church of Antioch. Both around 200AD. The RCC prefer Theophilus, of course.

Said no Bible verse ever.

@TMinchiata @Casey5122dark A simple observation is people who think selling the Pieta and giving the money to the poor is how to solve poverty are Marxist morons.

No, it’s a simple observation based in reality over more than a thousand years. If the Pope wants to pontificate about politics, he must expect some feedback. And my feedback is that he should put the enormous accrued wealth of the church to good use. Is not helping those in need a fundamental to serving God and being a good Catholic?

Your Holiness, let me put this as politely as I can: you don’t know what you are talking about. If you want to write on a subject—horse racing, say, or musical composition—it’s a good idea to know something about it before putting pen to paper or, these days, hitting the computer keyboard. The same goes for economics. You don’t have to know anything about economics, but if you don’t, you shouldn’t pontificate on the subject. What you have written gives evidence of a soft heart, which is a good thing, but soft hearts, if they are not to be destructive, should be closely associated with hard heads. Your post is an embarrassment to those of us who are Catholic and who respect and venerate the office you hold. You wrote: "Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world are immersed in extreme poverty." Yes, and that’s not good. However, almost all of the human race was immersed in extreme poverty for most of human history. The last two hundred years have seen the mass of people lifted out of poverty in a way that has never been achievable or achieved before. [see Hans Rosling’s Factfulness for some real information: [amazon.co.uk/Factfulness-It…] You wrote: "Yet, disproportionate wealth remains in the hands of a few." If wealthy people have obtained their wealth by honest means, issues of proportionality are irrelevant. They have provided goods or services that people are willing to pay for and they have been rewarded accordingly. What they do with that wealth is a moral issue for them and not a legal or political matter for anyone else. You wrote: “...the need to address solvable problems related to a more equitable distribution of wealth, to be achieved with moral sense and honesty.” [italics added] This is a classic example of the zero-sum fallacy. The solution to poverty is to make poor people un-poor, not to make wealthy people un-wealthy. [see stephankinsella.com/2023/06/casey-…] What you call 'equitable distribution' presumes that wealth is something that just sits there, waiting to be distributed. But wealth is something that is produced, and its production already determines its ‘distribution’. Your Holiness, there is much work to be done to sort out the problems in the Church. May I respectfully suggest that you direct your attention to the resolution of these problems.

@RonSCantor Aqchuallie Catholics care about the circumcision of the heart, Jew or Gentile. Also Peter was a pope.

Actually, without the Jewish people there would be no Bible. Even the New Testament was written by Jews, centuries before there was a pope.

@MoniFunGirl @Pontifex A transexual should sit out the religion vs politics debate. You prolly have other more pressing concerns.

As a Catholic, I am not happy with yet another “woke” political Pope. Hate to say it but I’m ignoring him. Until we get a Pope that isn’t political, so be it. I don’t pray to the Pope, I pray to God. @Pontifex

@CSistovac @ilikeitneat @sola_chad When was the first time Trinity was used.... And go

@ilikeitneat @sola_chad Every historian says the first time the term “pope” was used for a bishop of a church was the mid third century Church of Alexandria (founded by John Mark), Pope Heraclas. The RCC then usurped that term, 60 years later, for Marcellinus. Both churches then retconned that title.

@farmingandJesus It started Liberalism. The religion of the self ordained queer.

The reformation wasn’t the start of a new religion it was a return to the apostolic faith found in the scriptures

@BradWitbeck Calling him a martyr defiles actual martyrs. He had a gun and participated in a shootout. There is a giant chasm between him and St. Lucy or St. Stephen... Besides him being a grifter and sexual pervert.

Oh, so he actually doesn't know anything about the martyrdom 🤣 That makes more sense. Joseph Smith was murdered by a mob while being held in prison awaiting trial—not while trying to break out. He was killed over his religious beliefs and he is unequivocally a martyr. As for the question of how we can know what kind of angel visited Joseph Smith? Well, that's what the Book of Mormon is all about. It contains the testimony of 3 witnesses who also saw the plates and heard the voice of God testify to them of the truth of the translation of the record. It is a volume of holy scripture that testifies of the divinity of Christ, and attests the reality of His resurrection. It doesn't replace the Bible, but stands as an accompanying witness. Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.

@BreeSolstad Divine Mercy because opening Turkey Sunday wasn't an option.

Which do you most connect with in regards to worship tomorrow?

@rickbrennanjr The Reformation's bastard child is liberalism. IDC how many denominations there are, you spawned the most terrifying seed of Satan and you all own it like a badge.

A common trope among Roman Catholic apologists on X is the claim that “the Reformation shattered the Church into 40,000 Protestant denominations while Rome remains unified.” That claim trades more on polemical rhetoric than it does reality. First, the “40,000” figure is a cataloging artifact, not a theological count. It reflects how organizations are registered across nations, languages, and networks—not 40,000 distinct confessions. By the same method, Roman Catholic and Orthodox bodies would also be multiplied across jurisdictions. The number obscures more than it clarifies. Second, this trope misunderstands the nature of Protestant unity. Protestants are not united by a single earthly head, but by a shared confession of what Scripture teaches is central: — the authority of the Word of God — the full deity and true humanity of Jesus Christ — justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone — the necessity of repentance and new birth — the final authority of the gospel itself Across Baptist, Presbyterian, Reformed, and evangelical traditions, these are not peripheral agreements. They are the core. They define the faith once delivered to the saints. This is not superficial alignment. It is doctrinal unity at the level where the gospel actually saves souls and drives the church forward in obedience to the Great Commission given by Christ: to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all that he has commanded (Matt 28:19–20). By contrast, Rome’s unity is institutional and hierarchical. It is grounded in submission to the bishop of Rome as the visible principle of unity. But institutional cohesion is not the same as theological clarity. A body can be structurally unified while containing internal tensions on the gospel itself: particularly where justification, grace, and sacramental mediation are concerned. The truth is that the Reformation did not fracture a pure and unified Church. It exposed deep doctrinal divisions that already existed and called the Church back to the authority of Scripture and the gospel of Christ. So the real question is not: “How many denominations are there?” The real question is: “Where is the gospel rightly confessed?” On that question, Protestants stand united. Our unity is not built on a chair in Rome, but on a crucified and risen Christ. And that unity—spiritual, doctrinal, and grounded in the Word of God—is stronger than any merely institutional bond.

@mark_petereit @matthewdmarsden The Bible was canonized by Catholic priests. And mostly written by them. The Apostles were Catholic priests. So we're the bishops they conferred like Mark, Titus, and Timothy. John the Prebyter who wrote Revelation. Maybe Matthew and Luke were not, I'll give you that.

@matthewdmarsden Why would we quote a Catholic priest to dispute the Catholic Church when we have a Bible full of Scripture?

Quotes by Martin Luther that protestants should probably read. This isnt a jab, but if someone is going to quote Luther to a Catholic to try and dispute the Catholic Church, they should probably know the other things he said. “Accordingly, we concede to the papacy that they sit in the true Church, possessing the office instituted by Christ and inherited from the apostles, to teach, baptize, administer the sacrament, absolve, ordain, etc., just as the Jews sat in their synagogues or assemblies and were the regularly established priesthood and authority of the Church. We admit all this... yea, we confess that we have received these things from them...” (Concerning Rebaptism, 1528). “We on our part confess that there is much that is Christian and good under the papacy; indeed everything that is Christian and good is to be found there and has come to us from this source. For instance we confess that in the papal church there are the true holy Scriptures, true baptism, the true sacrament of the altar, the true keys to the forgiveness of sins, the true office of the ministry... I contend that in the papacy there is true Christianity, even the right kind of Christianity and many great and devoted saints... The Christendom that now is under the papacy is truly the body of Christ and a member of it. If it is his body, then it has the true spirit, gospel, faith, baptism, sacrament, keys, the office of the ministry, prayer, holy Scripture, and everything that pertains to Christendom. So we are all still under the papacy and therefrom have received our Christian treasures.” (Concerning Rebaptism, 1528). “This testimony of the universal holy Christian Church, even if we had nothing else, would be a sufficient warrant for holding this article [on the sacrament]...” (1532, emphasizing the continuity of the historic church

@matthewdmarsden Man I was hoping you'd get to his demonic stuff. Should have warned us it was going to be PG.

@TMinchiata @Casey5122dark Is that an infallible proclamation about the hearts of others Pope Tanto?

@backdoc47 @Casey5122dark The ones hording the treasures are at the vatican. The parishioners, not so much. But they always ask for more.

@LizzieMarbach With the guide rails of a Magesterium and Tradition over their private interpretation? Yes. An accidental Lizzie W.

They interpret the pope like they do scripture. 🤦🏼‍♀️

@PowerOwn45 Pews. It is their sole redeeming contribution to society. Sola pewtura.

“What did Protestants ever establish?” Well, America for starters

@Casey5122dark Unfortunately you cite zero sum fallacy and assume the Pope maliciously means something in his tweet because your anti-commie alarms went off. Confession is the best place for a Catholic who publicly talks past the Vicar of Christ assuming he wants to un-wealth.

@TMinchiata @Casey5122dark "Why wasn’t this perfume sold for three hundred denarii" -Tanto Minchiata

@Casey5122dark The Vatican has assets worth trillions of dollars including priceless art. Why don’t they sell it and do the work of Christ? The Pope’s words are meaningless.