Newman vs Leo. Or, “visible”, but in an “invisible” way. Or, “a new fiction”…

The gang at Called to Communion are fond of telling us that Christ founded a visible church. This article is featured as the lead article at their Papacy Roundup. It’s all so clear to them now — the perspicuity of Roman dogma leaves no room for question. But at the end of the 19th century, …

Called Out of Confusion

I received this unsolicited email yesterday: Hi John, You don’t know me, but I wanted to thank you for the work you are doing on Triablogue and in comment boxes on various reformed blogs across the internet. If you don’t mind, I’d like to try to encourage you and share what a positive impact your …

Straining at a gnat, while swallowing the camel of centuries’-worth of ‘distinctively Roman accretions’

Continuing with my very long discussion with Michael Liccione at Called to Communion: Mike 286: That remark is as good a place as any to start for the sake of explaining what’s wrong with your approach at the most fundamental, philosophical level. There is nothing wrong with my approach at any level, much less “the …

How do we really know what God wants from us?

In response to a comment asking “how do we know?” I wrote: Who wants their faith to be formed around a legend? I certainly don’t. But that is the legacy of hundreds of years-worth of papal “history”. This the right question to ask. We all want to rest our faith on something certain, that’s not …

The Spice Woman and the Symmachan Forgeries

The Called to Communion guys have an article out by this long title: The Primacy of Peter According to the New Testament: and the Principle of Historical Fulfillment The article, “a guest post written by R.E. Aguirre, General Editor of Paradoseis Journal,” defends the notion that Peter was an important apostle, and it seeks to …

Not Called to Communion: “Jesus and the Church”

I’m continuing to discuss Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s work, “Called to Communion,” originally a series of messages that Ratzinger delivered in 1990, including a “theology course” for 120 bishop and some additional addresses to synods of bishops. Ratzinger described this work as “a primer of Catholic ecclesiology.” The header of this blog cites Calvin discussing “those …

Not Called to Communion: Outline of Chapter 1

I’ve been looking at Joseph Ratzinger’s 1990 work “Called to Communion,” a work whose title, at least, has become a kind of rallying cry for a self-annointed group of supposedly (and formerly) “Reformed” believers who became Catholic. In this work, Ratzinger, a Cardinal and head of the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” at …

Not Called to Communion: Dishonest about “Exegesis”

The Roman Catholic Church makes some astounding claims for its own authority. And if anyone could, in our day, be said to put forth the best argument for that authority, it would be hard to find a better person than Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the …

Looking at Ratzinger’s “Called to Communion”

I’ve accused Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) of being dishonest in his use of language and sources, and this is another example. I plan to do a more complete examination of Ratzinger’s defense of the papacy in his 1996 work “Called to Communion,” but I wanted to point out a particularly egregious example of …