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Thank you for your recent letter with enclosures. I'm pleased
that you take religious matters seriously, though I do think
your "indignation" regarding the Catholic Church's claim to
Infallibility quite misplaced.
If God has indeed founded a Church to "teach all nations" in
His name and by His authority (and we Catholics have believed
for 20 centuries that He did), what else
could that Church be but infallible (that is, not able
to err in its official teaching mission)?
Obviously, too, its Chief Pastor and Teacher (the Pope) must in
particular be infallible in the definition of doctrine. The
Pope comes with the Church since he is the visible head of the
Church on earth. He is not God nor does he claim to be the
equal of God as Seventh-Day Adventists allege; rather, he is
the "Servant of the Servants of God" as
the Successor of Peter on whom Christ built His Church, gave
the Keys of the Kingdom to, ordered to "confirm his brethren"
in the faith, and made the Chief Shepherd of the entire flock
of the disciples after the Resurrection (read: Matt. 16-18 ff.,
Luke 22:31; John 21:15-17).
Christ established only one Church and stated quite
clearly, "If any man refuse to hear the
Church, let him be as the heathen and publican" (Matt.
18:17). The Church Christ established must be able to trace its
history back to the Apostles themselves, and as history
demonstrates, the Catholic Church with its hierarchy, its
Creed, and its distinctive worship and sacraments alone can
trace its beginnings to Apostolic times.
We Catholics believe the teachings of that Church under pain of
not hearing her and being considered "heathens and publicans."
What was said to Peter and the Apostles is as true of the Pope
and the Bishops who succeed to the place of the Apostles in the
Church: "He who hears you, hears me"
(Luke 10:16 - words of our Lord).
I can only ask: What church do you hear and obey that can
trace its establishment to Christ Himself?
Since you do not believe that Christ established a real Church
with divine authority to teach, rule, and sanctify, it is not
surprising that you reject its decision to celebrate Christian
worship on Sunday. As your own pamphlet admits, it was indeed
the Catholic Church that determined Sunday to be the day for
commemorating the Resurrection of Christ because it was the
only Church around in Apostolic times as
"the pillar and ground of the truth"
(I Tim. 3:15). You write that "the entire New Testament speaks
of obeying His Commandments," but you fail to observe that
nowhere in the New Testament is the Saturday-Sabbath declared
obligatory on Christians. Instead, one reads that the early
Christians guided by the Holy Spirit celebrated the first day
of the week as the "Lord's day" (see St. Paul, I Cor. 16:2; and
Acts of the Apostles 20:7).
Obviously, the Apostles themselves ordered the substitution of
Sunday, the first day of the Christian week, for the Jewish
Sabbath seventh day. It is true that the Church cannot change
the Moral Law of God as found in the Commandments, but as the
infallible teachers of the new Christian Church (the
"teach-ye-all-nations" Church soon to be termed THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH by the year A.D. 107), they could and did change the
time, the motive, and details of the Sunday observance.
Attendance by these first Catholics at Sunday Mass is mentioned
by St. Paul himself in Acts 20:7.
If the Church has rulers (the Pope and bishops as successors of
the Apostles) who are not infallible (by the power of the Holy
Spirit) and can be possibly mistaken and can teach error, it is
[then a church] not worthy of any credence at all. A Church
that can err is unworthy of Christ and the belief of
Christians. The Seventh-Day Adventist sect came along 19
centuries too late to have any connection with the Church built
upon Peter and the Apostolic College. It came too late to be
credible concerning any interpretation of disputed biblical
texts.
For example, the pamphlet you sent concerning the Beast and the
Pope is really off the wall, to put it mildly. Most biblical
commentators agree that 666 probably refers to the Roman
Emperor Nero who was responsible for the martyrdom of Peter and
Paul who had watered the Church of Rome with their blood. You
may not find it amusing, but I recall reading that some writers
playing the "numbers game" about 666 concluded that it quite
fit the numerology of the visionary Ellen G. White, prophetess
(and plagiarist) of the Seventh-Day Adventists!
As the booklet "The Beast, the Dragon, and the Woman"
points out, it is indeed on the authority of the Catholic
Church that Sunday was substituted for the Sabbath for the
worship of the Blessed Trinity. One can try to argue that this
was wrong on the basis of certain scriptural allegations, but
it is useless to try and use Scripture against the Church whose
Scriptures they are.
The Old and New Testaments belong to the Church; they are her
Book. You would not even have "the Bible" were
it not for the Councils of the Catholic Church in the
fifth century determining the Bible's exact contents of 73
books! As it is, when you appeal to your Bible, you will find
that you do not even have all the Bible at all! You lack
seven divinely inspired books of the Old Testament. There is no
way a person living in the 20th century can know if God has a
divinely inspired Bible unless there is a divine authority
that can authenticate it, reveal its exact contents, and
interpret it without fail as to what Christians must
believe.
Where is your divine authority? We Catholics have it in the
Catholic Church Christ Himself established in this world as His
visible and Mystical Body and His virginal Spouse, and against
which the gates of Hell have not triumphed for 20 centuries.
The only real question to be considered in the religious
debates between Catholics and others who profess to be
Christians is, "Where is the Church Christ established
and which appears throughout the New Testament writings?"
Such a Church must have divine authority and be infallible if
the gates of Hell are not to prevail against it. What all
Protestants (28,000 sects stemming from private interpretation
of "the Bible") really profess is that they do
not really believe in a visible Church as established by
Christ or else they believe that the Church Christ did
establish somehow became corrupt (despite Christ's promise that
the gates of Hell would not prevail against it). They, in
effect, make Christ a liar and mock St. Paul's words about the
Church being "the pillar and ground of truth."
As early as the end of the second century, Christians (who
offered the Sacrifice of the Mass on Sunday as the Christian
day of worship) professed the Apostles' Creed in which we read,
"I believe... the holy Catholic Church." We modern Catholics
are in continuity with the earliest Christians because we are
members of the same Catholic Church professing that same faith
which "comes to us from the Apostles." Many laws, ritual
ceremonies, and practices have indeed changed across the
centuries, but never the doctrines that make up the "Deposit of
Faith" given in divine Revelation by Jesus Christ, the Lord of
History.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
— James Likoudis
President Emeritus
Catholics United for the Faith (CUF)
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