Very good, temp!temporal1 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 01, 2024 4:24 pm
i believe “i see” the Briar Patch coming along in the near future.
GAMEO / RCC
https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Roman_Catholic_Church
The final paragraphs:.. Despite these changes, in many Mennonite circles, rural as well as urban, lay as well as theologically trained, considerable residual suspicion of Catholicism remains. Theologically literate Mennonites are suspicious of Catholic understandings of priesthood, sacrament, tradition, and teaching office; grass-roots Mennonites continue elements of the traditional Protestant rejection of Catholicism as idolatrous and apostate.
Exceptions to the above generalizations are illustrated by the pamphlet by Hans-Jürgen Goerz. Goerz passes over the "Constantinian Fall" theory of church history, places the "fall of the church" in the Gregorian Reform of the 11th century (a viewpoint remarkably similar to recent scholarship on the growth of the papacy), and maintains a tone of cautious openness toward a wide variety of Catholic teachings.
Roman Catholicism has a high view of the institutional church, her tradition, and her teaching office.
Mennonites have similarly held a high view of the visible church, depending, however, on unwritten rules and structures, in contrast to the highly developed theology, priesthood, and canon law of the Roman Catholics.
Similarly, since the Anabaptist movement, Anabaptists and Mennonites have taught a memorialistic view of baptism and communion as mere signs rather than sacraments (dynamic symbols), which places Mennonites at the opposite extreme from the Roman Catholic understanding of the use of visible and physical things in sacral worship.
Practically speaking, Mennonites have also made use of created things in a sacralized way, failing however, to develop a theology of sacrament to explain the relationship of spirit and matter. -- Dennis D. Martin
Personally, i’m intrigued understanding how Luther and Simons were devout Catholics with no desire to leave their Church.
i believe this to mean it was grueling, not at all frivolous. For me, this is an important aspect. “They loved their Church so much” .. they wanted Truth to lead. i just can’t get over how significant that part was.
(i suspect) the worst factor was that the Church+State were one, this made it impossble for .. the Waldensians, and others, to appeal to scriptural Truth, it was all mixed up with government, government saw it all through political-power lenses, basic, raw, human reasoning. They saw it as an existential threat.
Lutherans and Catholics today (as i’ve met them, not state churches) .. have much in common with Anabaptists, they aren’t drowning others, and (mostly) would be shocked at the thought this ever happened.
i believe Anabaptists have had a huge impact in the world. Often unrecognized.
i believe anyone (who actually READS+BELIEVES scriptures) is bound to find common ground with Anabaptists;
after all, that’s what the big problems were about: men READING+BELIEVING.
it mostly seems hard to imagine now, literacy and scriptures are taken forgranted.
at that time, tho, the idea that common people’s beliefs would not be strictly controlled by the state .. was grounds for death.
The RCC then was The State. That’s a hard concept for most in the west.
Correct where i misunderstand.
Some of us never really had a clue of all this history until well into our adulthood, and we’re still trying to figure it out!
Nonetheless, all’s well that ends well! 
after the “apostolics” there like so: 