The real story of the papacy is a story of occasional virtue and piety but more frequently of venal characters, of power politics, of intrigue, and not even downright deceit.
The Galileo affair was not a controversy between science and the Bible, or faith versus reason. It was a controversy rooted in the huge difference between the Roman Catholic and Reformation principles of Biblical interpretation.
Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. All emphasis added. In the popular folk song, “Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In,” people love to sing the refrain: Oh, when the [...]
Bowing down, kneeling, and falling down before an idol are variations of the same thing: idolatry. They can do all kinds of spin, hocus-pocus, and gymnastics to distinguish “veneration” from “worship,” but this is idolatry, plain and simple.
Therefore, whether it be God or a creature that is imaged, the moment you fall prostrate before it in veneration, you are so far fascinated by superstition. For this reason, the Lord not only forbade the erection of statues to himself, but also the consecration of titles and stones which might be set up for adoration.
All our sacrifices of penance, which amounts to a return to Old Testament sacrifices, are to no avail because they can never remove our sins; indeed, they are not necessary because by Christ's perfect and complete "single offering he has perfected for all time" all believers (Heb 10:14).
"Quiboloy makes himself equal to Jesus by calling himself a begotten Son and the Son of God. Also, Quiboloy claimed to be ushered into sonship in 2003 in the same sense that Jesus has eternal sonship."
A friend, pastor of an evangelical church in Baclaran, Parañaque, Metro Manila, received a comment on his blog from a devotee of the Redemptorist Church in Baclaran. The comment has echoes of the evangelical mindset of big numbers and budgets as indicators of success and God's blessing.
Dr. Michael Horton, in the latest White Horse Inn broadcast ("Christianity Confronts Islam") on November 29, 2009, interviewed Muslim scholar and former professor of Shari'ah law Sam Solomon, who had to flee his own country after his conversion to Christianity.
5:13 PM Monday, May 20 2013
