Adrian Warnock does not often openly criticisize Catholicism, a fact that demonstrates his desire to emphasize unity in the body of Christ over differences in ecclesiology. So, when he does criticize the Catholic Church, it really catches my attention.
He points to a post by David Anthony, which is a commentary on Luke 11:27-28 and Luke 8:21. He believes that the former presents "Jesus prophetically speaking into where Catholicism will go wrong centuries later". Here’s what those verses say.Adrian tosses in his two cents:"…a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!’ But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’" - Luke 11:27-28
"My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it." - Luke 8:21
He’s very wrong. First of all, the Roman Catholic "system", i.e. Church, (as well as the Eastern Orthodox Church, which seems to be ignored by Protestant apologists) absolutely does not ignore certain parts of the book of which she oversaw the compilation. If anything, protestants are guilty of ignoring parts of Scripture by purging several Old Testament books, the deuterocanonicals (not to be confused with the true apocrypha). Secondly, any Catholic who would "simply skip over" a verse like this would be a poor Catholic indeed, for as St. Jerome said, "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.""It is amazing how flagrantly the Roman Catholic system seems (at least to the outsider, anyway) to ignore certain parts of the bible. Few protestants could understand a verse like this any other way than that Jesus is clearly challenging the notion of a special blessedness being attached to his mother by his followers. Yet Catholic doctrine says precisesly what this lady said to Jesus."
"I would love to know how my Catholic readers (if I have any!) interpret this verse. I suspect that most would simply skip over it…"
Let’s show Adrian that the parishioners of St. Blog’s Parish are no slackers when it comes to studying Scripture. Leave a comment or twelve, at his blog, this blog, or both, explaining Catholic and Orthodox exegesis of these passages.
Now, to Adrian’s credit, he didn’t stop with that presumptuous statement."…Of course we can easily sit here smugly at this point, but the challenge that sprung to my mind as I considered this was which verses do I neatly skim over in a similar way? Are there parts of the bible that due to their inconvenience to our theological systems we somehow ignore? New Catholic blogger navarrecatholic seems to think so."
"I am not against theological systems, but when we hold onto them so strongly that we blindly ignore parts of the bible that seem to disagree with them then we have turned them into idols."
Regarding the first part, Victor at Navar Catholic is right. Regarding the second, I offer this quote:
“I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church” - St. Augustine of Hippo
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