An interesting blogger comment on the Catalonia vote...

Spanish government leaders seems strangely determined to cause an explosion in Catalonia by smacking the Catalonians down as they try to vote for independence. Odd.

I came across a blog comment here at this excellent article that seems to explain what REALLY going on with the Catalonian vote.

retired22  Matthew Mueller • 8 days ago

The problem stems from the financial issues which you won't read about unless you read the independent financial sites(not the MSM's usual suspects,but the alternate independent financial websites).

The independent financial sites that tend toward the real world & away from a lot of the political double talk.

Spain,along with the rest of the EU,is sinking under the weight of a monster currency called the EURO & the fear of being overrun by Muslim invaders.

Muslim invaders being brought in by the EU's own elite establishments in a vast 'Social Engineering' project that aims to destroy the European nation states.

These nations originally joined the EU for all of the entitlement benefits they were told they would receive.They didn't join to be impoverished through 'Austerity' imposed to pay for the leveraged debts run up by the financial elites.

Leveraged debts which are so huge that they can only end in default!

The EU was always a false set up that was bankrolled by & operated for the benefit of the wealthy establishment bankers & Oligarchs.Bankers & oligarchs whose wealth in turn is based on a corrupt financial system ready to collapse.

The ordinary citizens know that they will be ground down in poverty by the EU & the local politicians when the bottom falls out & they are rebelling.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Catalonia,....if the Catalans are

successful we can look forward to these issues catching on like wild fire across a disintegrating EU!

Seems to be on target to me. The EU is not, (was not, will not be) a nation. Nor even an empire. Whatever it is, it is soulless. It was born of money, giving it out to poorer countries and then hooking those countries, then forcing them into an ever closer "union". (They followed the idea started out with the free-trade zones and trading blocs between the various German states in the early 19th century that preceded the formation Imperial Germany.)

So, the EU. Spain. Push seems to be coming to shove. But why? The blogger above seems to now.

An Préachán

Part II Catholic and Protestant Differences Section II

PART II Section II
A More Detailed Background

For those who might desire more detail than the PART II Section I Overview:

Johann Eck (a Dominican friar) debated Martin Luther (and others) during the famous (and wide-ranging) Leipzig Debate in June and July of 1519. Luther had started the Reformation in 1517 (if we set aside the story of Jan Hus in Bohemia 100 years before 1517) by nailing his 95 Theses on a church door on 31 October 1517, in Wittenberg, Saxony. (Initially, of course, he had no idea how far it all would go;  but he was certainly a “man on a mission”.)

Most Protestants today probably never heard of Luther, though his name has been in the news because of the 500-year anniversary. But then, most "Protestants" wouldn't call themselves that, just "Christians". So in a sense, going into detail about Martin Luther is flogging a dead horse, one that isn't even there. But for the curious, I'll relate a few facts about him. He's sort of the King Lear of the Protestant Reformation, so important in its beginning, colorful, powerful, full of bombast, yet cast aside by smarter men (Zwingli first, then Calvin) and finally left behind by the tides.

In any event, during the course of this Leipzig debate, Luther admitted he would have to accept the Bible over a Church Council.

• At that moment I would think a number of gasps would have been heard from every corner of the room.
• Obviously, if you lay a Bible on the desk in front of you, it won’t open of itself and begin teaching you in a voice of its own. 
• Even if you open it and prod it a bit, it will just lie there. 
• Someone has to actually READ it and draw their own conclusions, or read it with associated learning materials containing his own denomination’s take on what the Bible would speak about if it could.

So by his assertion, did not Luther clearly set himself against a parliament of learned clergymen? (And one hopes an assembly of wise ones, but at least as a group having a collective understanding and insight, as any congress would).

• You see the hubris? 
• It’s actually staggering. 
• Martin Luther knew better than a Council with members from all sorts of backgrounds and indeed, from different nations, collectively possessing an extremely wide-ranging experience “skill set” regarding the Christian Faith. 
• Yet such a senate of elders could not collectively be smarter than he himself, Martin Luther, a 36-year-old academic who had been trained in a small, in-bred academic circle in two provincial universities in Thuringia and what is now Saxony-Anhalt.

It has to be one of the most hubristic statements ever made.

And as the apple never falls very far from the tree, so Protestantism asserts any individual can read the Bible for himself and chart his own Salvation course. Or at least Luther talked that up, but soon found it didn’t work very well. We’ll discuss that more in Part III, the section on the Bible. Here I’ll just point out the curious fact that Protestant Bible Societies have pushed Bibles on all sorts of folks, even leaving them in motel rooms (as do the Gideons, a group I myself am thankful for). Yet most folks getting these Bibles are not very educated in such a field as Biblical Studies. So it’s an odd thing to do when you consider that learned Protestants themselves have recourse to Protestant Bible commentaries, of which many have been published. They don’t push the commentaries, though, on the people who would need them most. Interesting.

• Compare that attitude to Romans 10:15 “How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher?” Or that great scene in Acts 8, (Acts 8:31 ‘"How can I," he said, "unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.”)

Significance

Luther’s astoundingly arrogant claim is where things get complicated. The Holy Bible is a wide selection of books, a portable library, and this library's volumes were written over thousands of years by a people living quite differently than people do today.

• So, naturally enough, some of its books are easier to read and understand than others, and among the New Testament authors, you also have the same reality. 
• St. Paul is hard-to-read, often leaving one clueless, and often seemingly contradicting himself (much to the delight of atheists in debate). 
• St. James is easy to read; couldn’t be easier. Yet I’ve read exegesis (Biblical commentary and explanation) done by Lutherans that stand James on his head. (And quite plausibly, too; I mean, they seem to make a good case for themselves, until you go back and read James himself again. The effect is startling.)

Now, Luther was a 34 in 1517 (his birthday was November 10), having studied theology and advancing through the academic ranks in about 7 years (he had earlier briefly studied to be a lawyer, and all his early higher education was at Erfurt, a city worth visiting today, both for its Lutheran heritage and the fact it is one of the best preserved medieval towns in Germany). He had begun to teach theology in 1508 (age 25) and made chair of the theology department of the newly established Wittenberg University in 1512 (age 29). These ages and dates of Luther are important here because they show how young he was and how much of a total academic he was. In other words, as an Augustinian friar never removed from the Cloister, Luther had no pastoral experience, living in a parish and dealing with everyday people. Nor, beside a short trip to Rome, did he travel much. So, as they didn’t have the Internet in those days, Luther’s world was a bit small. (Today his area of Germany makes up the states of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt.)

Indeed, the medieval University of Erfurt (closed in 1816 by the Prussians and reopened in 1994 after German re-unification), was in Luther’s young days a center of Nominalism, a late medieval school of thought that stressed God as essentially unknowable, remote, and imperious. (Sort of like the Islamic conception of Allah, actually; the idea was to stress the Sovereignty of God, something Calvin would become famous for.)

• Luther embraced Nominalism (which rejected Aristotle – and thus Thomas Aquinas – and he, Luther, used to say that William of Occam, a major 14th century Nominalist, was his master teacher. 
• It’s more than fair to say Herr Doctor Martin’s education was very one-sided.

Biblical Background to the Church’s Authority

Ironically enough for “Bible-only Christians”, as noted in Section one of this Part II of the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, the Living Magisterium predates the actual New Testament. In Acts of the Apostles, chapter 15, St. Luke records the Council of Jerusalem. This council met around 50 A.D. and before the New Testament was written. (St. Matthew might well have written his earliest version of his Gospel by then, in either Aramaic or Hebrew, and St. Paul probably had begun writing, as well.)

• But before the Council of Jerusalem, while Jesus was still on Earth, He had clearly mandated a hierarchical system. He had chosen 12 Apostles, which not only mirrored the 12 tribes of Israel, but also the ancient Israelite kings, who often had 12 councilors (again representing the 12 tribes). 
• Christ also signaled out three men of the Apostles, Peter, James and his brother John. They were at the raising of Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5:37, etc.) and at Christ’s Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, Luke 9:28–36) and the Second Epistle of Peter refer to the latter (2 Peter 1:16–18) as perhaps does the first chapter of the Gospel of John (John 1:14).
• Also, beyond the Twelve, there were a group of Seventy that St. Luke mentions; he might have been on of them (see Luke 10).

Now, the famous scene in Matthew, where in the region of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus gives Peter the Keys of the Kingdom in Matthew 16:17-19, every Jew present, and every Jew who heard of it later, would recognize Jesus as acting like an ancient Israelite king. Those kings had a special advisor who was given the keys of the palace and thus became a Grand Vizier or prime minister. Jesus actions could be taken – by the Jews who knew the old stories – that Peter was being given a very special place, indeed. A unique one.

• Read Isaiah 22, especially the verses 21-23, particularly verse 22, “And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder: and he shall open, and none shall shut: and he shall shut, and none shall open.”

Or simply read through St. Paul’s writings with an eye toward how often the Apostle himself asserts his own authority. It’s on every page, almost every sentence. Galatians 2:9 “And when they had known the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas (Peter) and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship: that we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision…”.

• He, Paul, has AUTHORITY, and so do the others, Peter, James, John – they’re recognized as leaders of the Church, indeed, overseers, or episkopos – and their recognition of Paul reinforces him authority. They are the Church’s overseers, or (singular) episkopos. 
• Our English word for episkopos is “bishop”.

Or see St. John in his Gospel, in Chapter 20:21-23, where he writes, ‘…Again Jesus said to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, so also I am sending you.” When He had said this, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.”’

• All these passages point to the Biblically-based fact that the early Church had a hierarchy, and was understood by everyone in the Church to have a hierarchy, one that had Authority. This is even proven by St. Paul’s boasting how he stood up to Peter and James.

Throughout the early Church, then, the episkopos of each city would refer back to the chain of bishops before him, going back to an Apostle. When the Gnostics disputed Church teaching, the Catholics, or those of the “Universal” Church (Catholic means universal) would say, “Our bishop is so-and-so, who succeeded Bishop Such-and-such, who followed Bishop X who was a student of the Apostle John (or Peter, or whomever). Where is your bishop list back to the Founder? By what right do YOU teach what the Faith is?”

• And of course they couldn’t argue that.

In the same way, one could argue with Protestants: “Where do YOU get your Authority from? What’s the line of YOUR bishops?”

But there of course the whole Protestant Project falls apart. It has no such history. It's all individuals, each believing what he will (sort of like Progressive Catholics, actually!). Against this ecclesial corporate history it does have arguments, ranging from “You’re wrong! Peter and James and the rest with just buddies or relatives of Jesus! He set up no organized body!” to the older, long-standing, “Well, Jesus set up the Church but then came the Great Apostasy, when everyone fell away from the Faith, except for a minority who are nameless but to God.”

In the end, in our current state of civilizational crisis, all this might seem too trivial to matter. But knowledge is a good in itself, true knowledge. And we're having a civilzation crisis precisely because people don't know this information.

An Préachán

Part II Catholic and Protestant Differences: Authority, Section 1

PART II

Authority

Section I

Why the Protestant Rejection of Catholic Authority Exists, and Why It Is Relevant Today

The Protestant rejection of papal and the wider Church authority occurred because Martin Luther and the other early Reformers couldn’t get the Catholic Church (either the pope or Church Councils) to accept the novel Protestant teachings about how Salvation worked. (N.B. Each Reformer had a somewhat different take on it, but more or less basically agreed with each other. See Part III of this series.) So Luther and Co. had to either recant – formally give up their ideas – or split from the Church. They chose to split. 

• The technical term for a Church split is Schism.

Basic Facts About How Authority Works in Catholicism and Protestantism

Protestants reject the authority of both the Pope and the bishops in Communion with him, whether that unity is expressed in a general way or in a Church Council.

• In other words, Protestants reject the Authority of the “Living Magisterium” (the pope and bishops of the current day) AS WELL AS the popes and bishops of each generation back to the Apostles – the collected writings, rulings, and theology of which are collectively called “Sacred Tradition” (Holy Tradition in the Orthodox Churches).
• For Catholics, Sacred Tradition serves much like English Common Law, something binding, yet itself slowly woven together over centuries, a built-up body of doctrine. It serves as a very strong support for the Living Magisterium, and when the Living Magisterium goes against it, as today with Pope Francis, there’s no mistaking were the heresy lies.

Protestantism, on the other hand, although individual denominations have certainly built up doctrine over the last 500 years, still claims to accept only the “Word of God,” the Holy Bible, as its real Authority. (They call Sacred Tradition "the works of men".) Each Protestant generation has to ask, “Show it to me in the Word of God!” as the old-time preachers would say.

• For Catholicism, however, the Bible forms the third branch of mutual support and teaching. Sacred Tradition is 2000 years of the Living Magisterium commenting on the Bible, yet both the Magisterium and the Tradition are older than the Bible itself.
• For example, when the Council of Jerusalem was held, as described in Acts of the Apostles, the New Testament had yet to be written. The Living Magisterium of the time decided an issue authoritatively – a black-and-white decision with no fudging or wordy misdirection as a modern Progressive would produce – and thus created a tradition of clear-cut and binding legislation, all done without recourse to a written Holy Scripture.
• Any review of Sacred Tradition shows no early Church Father taught the Protestant view of salvation; it is truly novel (or was as of 500 years ago).
• Summation: the history of Protestantism shows the dangers of rejecting clear dogmas and the Authority by which these are arrived. Today there are 20,000 some odd (depending on how they're counted) Protestant Denominations. Obviously, the Living Magisterium, Sacred Tradition, and Holy Scripture all three go together and cannot be separated, or only at great peril to the Church. Some modern theologians talk against strict adherence to such clear-cut, long-standing dogmas, calling it a “prepositional faith”, which they claim is Pharisaical: a legalistic religion rather than a religion of “love”. Pope Francis seems to be of that school. (He calls Traditionalists and Canon Lawyers and so on “Pharisees.” But a religion without dogma is a mushy thing enslaved to whatever social currents ripple though human society at any given time. It is "popular" precisely because it doesn’t direct vertically to God, but downward toward the whims of popular opinion. “Fundamentalist” Protestants have no more use for “mushiness” than Traditionalist Catholics do. Church "mushiness" is a mainline Protestant or Progressive Catholic platform: its adherents believe it make belief easier, whereas it easily makes belief impossible.

Protestant Authority

In contrast, accepting only the Bible as it does, Protestantism has thus tended to stress the authority of the individual. “Read the Bible for yourself” is its Authority Motto – though individual pastors can, if they have the right mix of charisma and chutzpah, dominate their flock more than any priest can do.

• Martin Luther himself wanted to be the sole interpreter of the Bible, even though he claimed anyone could interpret for himself. (That didn’t last very long! But the aura of it has stayed with Protestantism till today. For details, see Part III.) 
• Against the Church and all its “priestcraft”, Protestants like to invoke the Biblical passage (from 1 Timothy 3:15) that “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.” 
• In other words, one doesn’t need a “church” per se to be saved. (Someone once said to G.K.Chesterton that the Irish were a “priest-ridden people”, to which G.K.C. immediately replied, “precisely because they do not want to be a Squire-ridden people.”)

Conversely, in the Catholic world, as noted above, the Holy Bible is one of three legs of support. Thus, today, the Catholic Church is in full crisis mode (I’d say about DefCon 3, and edging fast toward 2) because the current pope (and many of his supporters) are clearly presenting teachings – teachings popular in some quarters – that go against both the Bible and Sacred Tradition. However, tthey’re actually teaching “mainline Protestantism” and it is a natural development of the “Spirit of Vatican II to make the Church more Protestant-like; i.e., the program initiated 60 years ago is about to achieve what it was started for.

• This could eventually lead to a Schism as Traditionalist and “Conservative” Catholics “step back from the brink”, but two Catholic Churches would be better than what you have in Protestantism: the reliance on the Bible alone (i.e., Sola Scriptura) has resulted in 20,000 some different Protestant denominations.

• A fragmented state (Schism) that Catholics deplore, Protestants institutionalized.

For more info, see PART II Section II.

Catholicism and Protestantism's Irreconcilable Differences: Five Aspects to Discus

Catholicism and Protestantism: Five Aspects to Discus

The Irreconcilable differences between Protestantism and Catholicism: INTRODUCTION

Index

This is the Introduction to this series.

For Part II, section 1, the issue of Authority, click here.

For Part II, section 2, click here.

For Part III, How Salvation Works, click here.

For Part III, section 2, click here.

Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, the highly respected scholar who passed away in 2006, was a life-long Lutheran (his parents were Lutherans) till in his last decade he converted to Russian Orthodoxy. Known as a prolific author, Church historian, and liturgical expert, he had a knack for coming up with surprising images. One such was when he wrote to describe the Protestantism as a baby in the arms of its Catholic Church mother. Kind of arresting, that image. (Maybe just a bit too Stephen King, actually.) I grew up with Protestants and would never have thought of it. Certainly it reminds me of King Lear’s famous line, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”

Differences

Different children of one mother, Protestant churches – whether those founded at the time of the Reformation or those ‘calved off” (like clouds) from those first Protestant churches, (generation upon generation of calving going on, by now, 500 years of it) – are all quite different from one another. Even so, however, all of them have certain basic “genetic traits” in common, as it were.

Therefore, five basic and completely irreconcilable differences between Catholicism and Protestantism exist, and these are found throughout the Protestant “metastasisophoria”. And while individual people of both can and do convert back and forth from one to the other (and even, sometimes, back again) the churches themselves cannot negotiate away (via modern ecumenicalism) these differences. They’re foundational. Baked into the cake. Mixed in the mortar.

The Differences are…

• First Point of Difference: Authority. What is the nature of Authority in Christian life? Who has it? The Church? Which church, or what individuals or groups within which church, and so on.
• Second Point of Difference: How Salvation Works. This difference arises from the first, as Martin Luther (and the other early Reformers) came up with novel ideas about how Salvation worked, and as the Church authorities rejected them, the Reformers in turn then broke with the Church in order to keep their own ideas “in play”.
• Third Point of Difference: How the Bible Is Read. Reading the Bible didn’t produce the crisis with Authority and the new ideas on Salvation, as one might think from 500 years of Protestant propaganda. Instead, the crisis in Authority resulted as a consequence of the new ideas; i.e., Luther read the Bible in such a way as to have it validate his own already-formed ideas about how Salvation works, rather than he himself somehow discovering how Salvation worked “locked away” or “hidden” in the Bible. (Protestants would strenuously disagree with this, as their whole program relies on it, but more more on that in the appropriate place.)
• Fourth Point of Difference: Church. What is it? What’s it for? Is it visible or invisible, an institution in history or a mystical body that history doesn’t record, but can only hint at.
• Fifth Point of Difference: The Rate of Change. Since its inception, Protestantism has been on an arc of change, dynamic, far-springing, ever-leaping change that steadily takes if farther and farther away from its Mother, Catholicism; and in all of its history, no Protestant Church ever evolved backward toward Catholicism, but always farther and farther away from it. By its very nature, then, it is irreconcilable with a Faith that is built upon a Rock, Unchanging, although ever manifesting itself anew in each age it finds itself in, but never changing doctrine, belief, or even (largely) its worship.

The Modern Mess Up
Now, that fifth point raises a word of caution, a warning, a caveat. And this is important, dear Reader.

• The Catholic heresy known as Modernism currently dominates the Holy Mother Church, and Pope Francis is its apogee. 
• But Modernism began among Catholic intellectuals in the later 19th century and it was energized and “idea-ized” by Protestantism, specifically the mid-19th century Protestant Tübingen School – and it consisted in large part of a relaxation of the Church’s perennially strict moral teachings – and the attempts to explain why these teachings could be changed.
• Protestantism can be said in general to have started out with the traditionally morally strict teachings, but from its beginning weakened them (Henry VIII being a classic example, or Luther’s infamous support for Phillip of Hesse, who wanted to marry one woman while still being married to another).

Also, and quite necessary for Modernism, the 19th century came saw the high tide of what’s called Higher Biblical Criticism, which was also a Protestant development (look up Historical Criticism or Adolf Harnack if you want) because Protestantism broke with the Church’s traditional interpretations of the Bible, rejecting the teaching authority of both the Living Magisterium and Sacred Tradition.

• But by doing so, the Protestants basically deflated the Bible as the sole rule of Faith for Protestants. 
• The Bible became a flat tire. 
• It could no longer carry the weight of Protestant belief. 
• Thus many “fundamentalist” churches were born; i.e., churches that rejected the more formal, more “educated” Protestantism because of its rejection of the Bible. Pentecostalism also developed at this time – the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th – and partly for the same reason. In either case, “Blind Faith” became the rule for these Churches.

Now, the Catholic Church formally rejected the attempts of Catholic Modernists to import all this unwanted Faith-killing misery into Mother Church, culminating in 1907 with several formal “smack-downs” of Modernism by Pope St. Pius X. But the movement, like various denizens of the order of Blattodea, survived “underground” to fight another day. In fact, they survived to take over the Church herself, beginning with the Second Vatican Council and culminating with Bergoglio.

So I’m writing here about Protestantism from a Catholic Traditionalist perspective. Jorge Bergoglio would send me in for a whipping, if not excommunication. But like Herod (“that fox”), Bergi’s days are numbered.

So in the next installment of this thread, I’ll discuss the Authority issue.

An Préachán

Did life arise from non-living materials? If not, why not?

Did life arise from non-living materials? Nope, ‘course not. 

Why not?

It should be enough to say that the very idea contradicts the philosophical principle of Sufficient Reason; i.e., you cannot give what you don’t have.

However, see this article: What Caused Life to Come into Existence, by James K. Watson, for some science-level (i.e., popular science) review of the issue.

Watson's article also has a couple excellent links, like this one to a James Tour essay,

Tour's opening paragraph (highlights/colors are my own):

LIFE SHOULD NOT EXIST. This much we know from chemistry. In contrast to the ubiquity of life on earth, the lifelessness of other planets makes far better chemical sense. Synthetic chemists know what it takes to build just one molecular compound. The compound must be designed, the stereochemistry controlled. Yield optimization, purification, and characterization are needed. An elaborate supply is required to control synthesis from start to finish. None of this is easy. Few researchers from other disciplines understand how molecules are synthesized.

Tour ends this article with:

We synthetic chemists should state the obvious. The appearance of life on earth is a mystery. We are nowhere near solving this problem. The proposals offered thus far to explain life’s origin make no scientific sense.

Beyond our planet, all the others that have been probed are lifeless, a result in accord with our chemical expectations. The laws of physics and chemistry’s Periodic Table are universal, suggesting that life based upon amino acids, nucleotides, saccharides and lipids is an anomaly. Life should not exist anywhere in our universe. Life should not even exist on the surface of the earth.

This essay is, like the one below, a (if I may be forgiven) tour de force. Just magnificent. 

And here's the second JamesTour essay linked to in Watson's article:

The opening:

Why is everyone here lying?

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

LIFE REQUIRES carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. What is the chemistry behind their origin? Biologists seem to think that there are well-understood prebiotic molecular mechanisms for their synthesis. They have been grossly misinformed. And no wonder: few biologists have ever synthesized a complex molecule ab initio. If they need a molecule, they purchase molecular synthesis kits, which are, of course, designed by synthetic chemists, and which feature simplistic protocols. 

Polysaccharides? Their origin?

The synthetic chemists do not have a pathway. 

The biologists do not have a clue.

Interesting reading, to say the least.

Both of Watson's essays are simply MUST READS for anyone remotely interested in the origin of life.  If for no other reason, read them because we have a long-running – as sort of constant "elevator music" in the background of this Western Civilization High-Tech World – incessant refrain that life came into being, and can come into being, randomly. My wife likes to watch documentaries about space on YouTube, and in just about every one of 'em (that I've watched with her, and these constitute a pretty random sample), they talk up – at some point, how in the pre-biotic "soup", life randomly generated. 

Also, looking for life in space, where it would be presumed to have randomly generated (if it is ever found) is a major driver of the entire space exploration industry. 

Anyway, interesting articles here. 

An Préachán