KickPistons 🍞🍷

If you hear someone mocking Lent by saying we should give things up for God all year and not just 40 days, pray for them: there's a chance they're called to the consecrated life but may never realize it because their brand of Short-Bible Christianity denies the consecrated life.

@hdpayens My math is off. I was walking when I wrote this. Sorry. 🫠

@hdpayens 33.3% ignore it. 33.3% label it the first papal aggression. 33.3% quote it without context to make it look like Clement believed in Sola Scriptura (hilarious). 0.01% read it and honestly grapple with the implications for Christianity and themselves.

The earliest Christian document outside the New Testament treats rebellion against ordained Church authority as a grave sin. Not a matter of opinion. Not a secondary issue. A sin. That should tell you something. Around 96 AD, Clement of Rome wrote a letter to the church in Corinth. Clement is traditionally identified as the fourth Bishop of Rome. Irenaeus records that Clement "had seen the blessed Apostles and had been conversant with them" (Against Heresies 3.3.3). This places him within living memory of Peter and Paul themselves. So what prompted Clement to write? A crisis. Younger members of the Corinthian church had deposed validly appointed presbyters. They removed ordained men from their ministry. Clement, writing from Rome, intervenes with a letter of correction. Not a suggestion. A correction. Here is what he wrote. 1 Clement 44:3-4: "Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, having received complete foreknowledge, they appointed those already mentioned, and afterwards gave a rule of succession, so that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their ministry." Think about that for a moment. The Apostles themselves established a rule of succession. Not congregational voting. Not individual interpretation of Scripture. Apostolic succession, handed down through ordained authority. 1 Clement 44:6: "Blessed are those presbyters who, having finished their course before now, obtained a fruitful and perfect departure; for they have no fear lest any one deprive them of the place now appointed them." The presbyters hold an appointed place. It is not theirs by popular approval. It is theirs by apostolic appointment. And when the Corinthians violated this order, Clement did not mince words. 1 Clement 47:6: "It is disgraceful, beloved, yea, highly disgraceful, and unworthy of your Christian profession, that such a thing should be heard of as that the most steadfast and ancient Church of the Corinthians should, on account of one or two persons, engage in sedition against its presbyters." Sedition. That is the word Clement uses. Not "disagreement." Not "reformation." Sedition. Notice what Clement does not say. He does not say, "Follow your private reading of Scripture and start a new community." He does not say, "If you disagree with your presbyters, you are free to form your own church." He says submit to the ordained authority the Apostles established. Now consider this carefully and charitably. In the 16th century, ordained priests removed themselves from the authority of their bishops. They rejected the episcopal structure that Clement describes as apostolic in origin. They established new communities based on their own interpretive authority. Clement, writing within decades of the Apostles, would have called that sedition. This is not about questioning anyone's sincerity. Many who left Rome in the 16th century did so out of genuine conviction. But sincerity does not settle the question of authority. The Corinthians who deposed their presbyters were presumably sincere too. Clement corrected them anyway. The earliest post-apostolic witness we possess teaches apostolic succession, ordained authority, and submission to the episcopal structure. Not as a later Catholic invention. As the faith received from the Apostles themselves. If you are a Protestant who takes early Christianity seriously, this letter deserves your honest engagement. It was written before the last Apostle died. It reflects what the first generation of Christians believed about Church order. What do you do with Clement's letter?

@ArminiusFan @magicbyjiro "Then get back to me." If eternal matters weren't involved, it would be almost cute how you guys habitually appoint yourselves judge over what is or isn't biblical like it's no big deal.

@KickPistons @magicbyjiro You, unfortunately, don’t have a clue about what you’re talking about. Try distinguishing between Apostolic Tradition (contained in Scripture or long since lost) with man-made post-Apostolic Roman Catholic tradition unknown to Christ and the Apostles. Then get back to me.

Paul didn't write Acts. Luke did. It talks about Paul in the third person and doesn't say he "praised" the Bereans. Maybe don't make silly mistakes about the Bible while arguing that you're not too stupid to understand it.

@ArminiusFan @magicbyjiro You just volunteered to be Exhibit C of this characteristically Thessalonian habit.

@KickPistons @magicbyjiro On the contrary, the Bereans tested the oral teachings of the apostle Paul against Scripture and were praised for it. So much the more do serious Christians test (nonsensical) post-Apostolic Roman Catholic traditions against Scripture.

Protestants say we make Mary like God because their God is small. They say we worship her because their worship is pathetic. They mock Christ's sacrifice when they say her sinlessness diminishes it. They reveal that Christ is not their king when they despise her Queenship.

@Cinaboncrusader Protestants will tell you that you can be anything except Catholic with the same energy that demons will tell you that you can worship any God except Christ, and for the same reason.

You would think me being in OCIA the anticatholic evangelicals on this app would try their best to prove their arguments to me. Instead they just shout Catholic bad on repeat. They have no actual argument or fundamental belief other than hating the Catholic Church.

@magicbyjiro Protestants have no right to identify with the Jews of Berea. The Bereans were future Catholics who accepted Paul's apostolic authority to interpret scripture. The Thessalonians were proto-Protestants who insisted on their own interpretation and rejected both Paul and the Gospel

@KickPistons Not only that but Bereans accepted the oral traditions and teachings after putting them against the scriptures, so this doesnt work as a protestant gotcha like they think it does.

@WordProvesTrue Keep talking.

“The brothers immediately sent PAUL and SILAS away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now these people were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” Acts 17:10-11

@dbonneville @TLM_Ryan

@KickPistons @TLM_Ryan Also: you didn't spend 2.5 mins looking at the little red missal you passed on the way in, the one WITH ALL THE PICTURES OF EVERTHING GOING ON.

I don’t understand people who say “I don’t like the Latin mass because I can’t understand what’s going on.” What is this about? Is it modernist culture that is averse to mystery? Is it a type of pride seeking knowledge? Inability to learn? Genuinely curious your thoughts.

Jesus said many hard things. How can bread become His body? How can a church founded on a sinful man prevail against Hell? Catholicism, a divine institution, explains these paradoxes. "Bible Christianity," a man-made mashup of true and false doctrines, explains them 𝙖𝙬𝙖𝙮.

@Altered0x @grok @rickbrennanjr @Rblv73 Everyone who is not within the Catholic Church is a heretic, schismatic, or a heathen. I don't make the rules. Only the Catholic Church has the Gospel.

@Cath_SteelMan No. Total unforced error. Helps no one. Confuses everyone. Emboldens the enemies of God who want to remake the Church in their own image.

Ok Catholic twitter…. Yay or Nay on female alter servers. I’ll provide my input in the comment later for yall!

Remember that the Catholic Church's denial that other churches are right is really an invitation to the supporters of those churches to come to her, and get the full truth. It is not prompted by hatred, but by fidelity to Christ, and by a desire that all should possess the truth.

Jesus died for you to obey the Catholic Church and receive its sacraments - not for you to build a religion out of the Bible verses that most closely resemble your opinions and call it Christianity.

Sundays since Ash Wednesday: 3 False doctrines taught by the Catholic Church since the Last Supper: 0

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The fruits of private interpretation should be sufficient proof that God never intended it. For men have made the Bible support the most opposite doctrines and have established hundreds of distinct and irreconcilable sects, each claiming to represent the true religion of Christ.

@l_vliet72077 Any dope who thinks he's qualified to interpret Scripture can point to any verse in Scripture and interpret that verse to mean he's qualified to interpret Scripture. It says everything about his convictions and nothing about his qualifications.

@KickPistons Scripture itself testifies to its perspicuity. Rom. 10, Deut. 30. These passages prove your claim to scriptural fidelity is empty.

The Protestant God is false. The "Jesus" they claim to worship - born of an ordinary woman, founding no church, instituting no sacraments except a purely symbolic baptism and Eucharist, acknowledging no authority higher than Scripture (interpreted by themselves) - never existed.