Author: Papa Giorgio

Mika Brzezinski Clothes Herself In Self-Righteous Confusion

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dennis Prager does a decent job in dissecting Mika Brzezinski’s call for Democrats to stop the madness not created by their own actions/thoughts, but by not giving in to what the President wishes them to do. She herself has been led down the primrose path many a time by following exactly the dictates of Donald Trump. For instance:

You see, this is playing Donald Trump’s game, you see. If you don’t admit Donald Trump is playing you, you then are being fooled by him… er… wait. At any rate, a good commentary by Prager.

“Trump Is Not A Fascist” – Change My Mind (Steven Crowder)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Steven Crowder takes Change My Mind to the White House to have real conversations with real people on hot button issues. In this edition, Trump is not a fascist. (See my post on “What Is Fascism” and “Is Fascism Right Or Left?“)

Some older videos by CROWDER:

You’ve heard it a hundred times: “TRUMP IS LITERALLY HITLER!” But when you look past the click-bait rhetoric and compare actual policies, it’s obvious the Hillary has far more similarities to the Führer…

Taken from episode #113 of #DailyCrowder at CRTV.com – Take media back and join the Mug Club: http://louderwithcrowder.com/mugclub

Comparing Two Crazed Killers (Gunman vs. Bomber)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This post is merely to compare intent and outcome by a “pro-Trump” supporter (Cesar Sayoc), and an anti-Trump hater (Robert Bowers).

When I heard that the Synagogue shooter had said this, “Jews are the children of Satan,” I knew he was influenced by Christian Identity. Here is a snippet of the racist ideology of this shooter, Robert Bowers (via CBN-NEWS):

…In the description on his account, Bowers wrote: “Jews are the children of Satan.” The cover photo featured the neo-Nazi symbol “1488.” The first two numbers refer to the white supremacist “14 Words” slogan, while “88″ stands for “Heil Hitler” since “H″ is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

Among his recent posts, Bowers posted a photo of a fiery oven like those used in Nazi concentration camps used to cremate Jews, writing the caption “Make Ovens 1488F Again.” But in other posts, he also featured memes containing false conspiracy theories suggesting the Holocaust — in which an estimated 6 million Jews perished — was a hoax.

Another post derided Trump for being “a globalist, not a nationalist” and added that “there is no #MAGA” as long as there is a Jewish “infestation,” using a slur for Jews. The same post also referenced QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory that started on the message board 4chan and has been spread by a fringe element of the president’s supporters…

As one of the four main racist cults I have studied, Christian Identity teaches that Jews and other ethnicities are from an act of sensualism with the serpent [Satan] in the Garden of Eden — similar to the ideology supported and taught in President Obama’s church the entire 20-years he attended and still embraced by many Democrat personages, in that the Jews and the white man were created by a big-headed scientist named Yakub on the island of Cyprus 6,600 years ago, thus white men are devils. Here is more from a good synopsis of the current issue via THE CLARION LEDGER:

…That was reflected in what the suspect Robert Bowers wrote on one social media site, calling Jews “the children of Satan.”

Christian Identity is the belief that Adam and Eve were white people and are “God’s chosen people.”

Jews, the religion claims, are imposters and actually descendants of Satan.

As for those who aren’t white, they are the “mud people” with no souls, the religion claims.

The Rev. Wesley Swift came on the scene in the 1940s, popularizing Identity in his sermons, recordings of which were mailed around the world.

In the 1960s, members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi played Swift’s sermons at what were called “Swift parties.”

Sam Bowers, imperial wizard for the White Knights, embraced Identity beliefs, shifting the KKK’s targets beyond African Americans to include those of Jewish descent.

[….]

In a six-hour interview with The Clarion-Ledger in 1990, Beckwith detailed his Christian Identity beliefs, claiming that Jews had Satanic powers and that one day the “true Israelites” (white people) would destroy the Jews…

For the record, no Republican supports the above crap, unlike Farrakhan’s shite and the Democrats. This is where the “Religio-Political starts to come out in my posts. So excuse me while I opine. I have in the past already noted why the KKK and Christian Identity and all white supremacist groups vote Left in their politics:

  • They are typically socialist in their political views, and thus support the welfare state for personal financial reasons (poor) and ideological reasoning (socialist); or for the reason that it is a way of controlling minorities (racist reasoning). A modern plantation so-to-speak; There is a shared hatred for Israel and supporting of groups wanting to exterminate the Jews (Palestinians for instance). (TRUMP SIZED MANTRAS #3)

But also, the theological closeness of Farrakhan and this shooter (an evil man) are unmistakable (see more at DAILY CALLER):

  • Farrakhan has consistently described the Jewish synagogue as the “Synagogue of Satan” and has claimed that “the Satanic Jews…control everything and mostly everybody.” In 2011, he said: “Some of you think that I’m just somebody who’s got something out for the Jewish people. You’re stupid. Do you think I would waste my time if I did not think it was important for you to know Satan? My job is to pull the cover off of Satan so that he will never deceive you and the people of the world again.”
  • “The Jews have been so bad at politics they lost half their population in the Holocaust. They thought they could trust in Hitler, and they helped him get the Third Reich on the road,” Farrakhan claimed in 1998.
  • “White people deserve to die, and they know, so they think it’s us coming to do it,” Farrakhan said in 2015. He has also called white people “white devils,” “potential humans” who “haven’t evolved yet” and “sinful by nature.”
  • Farrakhan has repeatedly accused the Jews of being behind the September 11 terrorist attacks, which he claims was a false flag attack. In 2015, for example, he claimed that “there were many Israelis and Zionist Jews in key roles in the 9/11 attacks” and claimed that “many Jews received a text message not to come to work on September 11.” Farrakhan claimed in 2016 that “Osama Bin Laden didn’t destroy the Twin Towers. That was a false-flag operation to take the world’s attention away from the great disunity in America after George W. Bush stole the election.”
  • “I’m not into integration. I ain’t for that. God told the Jews, he didn’t want you intermarrying with others. But you disobeyed him. He don’t want us uniting into this that he’s come to judge. You can’t integrate with wickedness if you want righteousness,” Farrakhan said in 2003, two years before he was photographed meeting Obama. Opposing interracial marriage has been a consistent position for Farrakhan. “Now God don’t want you intermarrying with [white women],” Farrakhan said in a 2016 speech posted to Facebook. “The fact is that God wanted us to be with ourselves, us with our women. He respected white people who wanted to keep their race white, because we sure want to keep ours from being any further mongrelized.”

This is probably the same stuff (except exchange black where Farrakhan speaks about white people) that Robert Bower believes with what I know of him so far. And many on the Left (more-so than the right) hate interracial marriage. Anyhew… let us segue to this bomber in Florida.

First and foremost, I am not defending this man in any way… I am merely comparing someone who like Trump to someone who hates Trump. First, let us deal with how the media deals with this bomber, Cesar Sayoc. Many headines read that the bomber was a registered Republican. Mind you, I never saw a headline saying that James T. Hodgkinson (the shooter of Republicans at a softball game) was a registered Democrat. President Trump noted what the media was doing:

  • “We have seen an effort by the media to use the sinister actions of one sinister individual to score political points against me and the Republican Party,” President Trump said at a rally in North Carolina. (BIZPAC)

NATIONAL REVIEW continues the thinking:

…Of course, even before Sayoc was identified, the media and the Left were blaming President Trump for the bombs. We’ve said it many times before, but it has to be said again: Harsh, overheated rhetoric is endemic to our political system, and it should not be confused with incitement to violence. When James Hodgkinson, a registered Democrat who campaigned for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election, attempted to assassinate a group of Republican congressmen at a baseball practice last June, we did not blame Sanders or Hodgkinson’s party. Instead, we wrote, “The person singly responsible for Wednesday’s horrors is the man who pulled the trigger.” Here, too, the responsibility for Sayoc’s bombing campaign rests with him alone.

The double standard in these cases is flagrant. Even though Republican majority whip Steve Scalise was nearly killed in the Hodgkinson attack and more than a dozen of his colleagues could have been killed but for security neutralizing Hodgkinson, the event was quickly memory-holed and the media didn’t resound with calls for Bernie Sanders, or, say, Rachel Maddow, to tone it down…

Cesar Sayoc said his bombs were inert, not meant to harm anyone. And so far this seems to be the case… so far. If they were real bombs, Cesar, as “former federal proseuctor Andrew McCarthy noted, if the mailed IED devices were ‘functionally explosive’ they would fall under the category ‘weapons of mass destruction’ [defined here by U.S. code] and the indictment would include 18 US Code 2332a [SEE HERE]. The absence of this charge infers the devices were not functionally explosive.” (<<< But more information will come out, but as of now, the indictment does not include what should be if these bombs were functional — see PDF indictment.)

The main point here is that Cesar, a registered Democrat till 2016…

CORRECTION — the MIAMI HERALD has him registered Republican since 2012: “He has been registered to vote in Miami-Dade as a Republican since 2012 and voted in recent primary and general elections.”

…and one who thinks Bush and Cheney are war criminals, sent fake bombs. He didn’t intend to hurt anyone. Whereas actual Trump haters and Republican haters, strap guns on and shoot people. Remember, I would put up the violence from the Left against Conservatives all day long… and the media’s covering up of leftist connections with violence compared to those on the right. Here are some recent examples of people who killed or intended to kill — who at first the media labeled “right-wing” but later buried the connections to left wing ideology or positions:

Many of the recent violent acts in fact are by person’s from the Left:

  • Elliot Rodger (“UCSB” shooter): Fan of the left-wing political talk show, The Young Turks.
  • James von Brunn (Holocaust Memorial Museum shooter): von Brunn hated Rupert Murdoch, Fox News, George W. Bush and John McCain.
  • Nidal Hasan (Ft Hood Shooter): Registered Democrat and Muslim.
  • Aaron Alexis (Navy Yard shooter): black liberal/Obama voter.
  • Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech shooter): Wrote hate mail to President Bush and to his staff, registered Democrat.
  • James Holmes: the “Dark Knight”/Colorado shooter: Registered Democrat, staff worker on the Obama campaign, #Occupy guy, progressive liberal, hated Christians.
  • Amy Bishop: the rabid leftist, killed her colleagues in Alabama, Obama supporter.
  • Andrew J. Stack (IRS bomber, flew plane into IRS building in Texas): Leftist Democrat, hated Bush and capitalism.
  • James J. Lee (who was the “green activist”): leftist took hostages at Discovery Channel – progressive liberal Democrat.
  • John Patrick Bedell: (Pentagon Shooter) registered Democrat, talked about economic justice.
  • Nkosi Thandiwe (Shooting spree targeting white ppl): Accepted “white priveledge.”
  • Floyd Corkins (LGBT Chic-Fil-A shooter): hated conservative and Christians.
  • Karl Pierson (school shooter): loved communism, self-avowed Keynesian, hated Adam Smith and supported gun-control.

(For a list of LEFT-WING murderers/killers, see this article.)

THANKFULLY, the shooter will be added to the “Failed assassins (whose politics we know)” column:

…Even I initially thought that whoever did it was either a Republican or some backwoods, tinfoil-hat-wearing pseudo-Libertarian. Now that it’s come out he is a Democrat/Independent, it’s no surprise; virtually every assassin or would-be assassin of American presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have been leftists (to the extent that their political views are known).

Successful assassins (whose politics we know):

  • John Wilkes Booth, a Democrat, shot and killed President Lincoln
  • Charles Guiteau, a member of the communist Oneida Community, shot and killed President Garfield
  • Leon Czolgosz, a leftist anarchist (similar to the useful idiots in the Occupy movement) shot and killed President McKinley
  • Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist, shot and killed President Kennedy.

Failed assassins (whose politics we know):

  • Severino Di Giovanni, a leftist anarchist, tried to bomb President-elect Hoover’s train
  • Giuseppe Zangara, a professed anti-capitalist, tried shooting President-elect Franklin Roosevelt
  • Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, two Marxists, tried killing President Truman at the Blair House
  • Samuel Byck, who tried joining the leftist Black Panther group, attempted to kill President Nixon
  • Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, member of the Manson Family and also a hippie environmentalist, shot at President Ford
  • Sara Jane Moore tried to kill President Ford as well because, as she said, “the government had declared war on the Left.”
  • Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, a leftist connected to the Occupy movement, tried getting a one-in-a-billion shot at President Obama by firing a gun at the White House

The only individual whose political motivations can be deduced as coming from the right side of the political spectrum is Francisco Martin Duran, who claims he was “incited” by conservative talk-show host Chuck Baker, but also claimed that he was trying to save the world from an alien mist which was connected by an umbilical cord to another alien in the Colorado mountains. So there’s that….

(POLITICAL OUTCAST)

SEE MORE!

Ebony Magazine Shows It’s “Colors” … Again

Published by Papa Giorgio

The oozing of bias is more noticeable now than ever, as DAILY CALLER notes:

Ebony Magazine profiled 18 black women running for Congress in early October but did not include any of the six black Republican women, including one sitting congresswoman, running.

Ebony suggested that their profile, which was published on October 11, was the definitive list of all of the black women running for Congress, titling the piece, “Meet the 18 Black Women Running for a Seat in Congress.”

“This midterm election is one to watch with all 435 seats in the U.S. House up for grabs. Meet the 18 black women vying for a congressional seat,” Ebony writer Sarafina Wright said.

The piece, however, does not mention any of the black Republican women running for Congress….

FLASHBACKS

Ebony Editor: Killing White People Shouldn’t Be Considered a “Hate Crime”

Remember LARRY ELDER’S letter to Ebony from some years back?

…Ebony magazine, a monthly staple of American black life since 1945, publishes an annual list of the 100-plus (now 150) “Most Influential Blacks in America.” Why not rename it the “Most Influential Liberal Blacks in America”?

Each year, Ebony leaves out conservative, heavyweight black intellectuals like Walter Williams, a distinguished professor of economics and former department chairman at George Mason University. In addition to his 10 books on economics and race relations, Williams writes a popular weekly syndicated column carried in about 200 papers. If another black person ran the econ department at any other major, non-historically-black college or university, I don’t know whom that would be! Yet you ignore Williams — because you think his politics hurt black people.

[…]

Each year, Ebony leaves out Thomas Sowell of Stanford’s Hoover Institution. He has only written some 40 books about economics, politics and race relations. His column appears in more than 300 papers, making him one of the most widely read writers in the English language. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet (“Glengarry Glen Ross”) called Sowell “our greatest contemporary philosopher.”

[…]

And each year, Ebony leaves out Clarence Thomas, who is one of only nine sitting Supreme Court justices. You leave him out, as you do Williams and Sowell, because you don’t like their politics….

Michael Medved Discusses Asia Bibi In Pakistan

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is uploaded because many do not know the reasons Asia was placed in jail and sentenced to death. The leftist university says all cultures are equal, and that the real evil in the world is American hegemony. I wish our influence was more in Pakistan. I like Michael’s comment, “these guys are a nuclear power” (rough quote). In a horrific update, we see that the religion of death is living up to its name:

The following was originally posted on my site November 25th, 2010:

LIBERTARIAN REPUBLICAN [<< LR is now, sadly, defunct] has a story about Islam that should keep us grounded in the nature of the Muslim faith and the turmoil the world faces:

This is about the most outrageous story you will hear this Thanksgiving weekend. And we ask that you turn that rage into action.

Asia Bibi is a mother of two (photo below), and a field worker from the Punjab Province in Pakistan. She is a Christian.

She has been in prison for 15 months, and is now facing a death sentence for the crime of Blasphame of Islam.

Christians persecuted in Muslim lands

SLANTRIGHT BLOGSPOT explains her alleged “crime”:

Blasphemy is usually related to insulting Islam, Mohammed or the Islamic deity Allah. Bibi’s blasphemy is based on her being directed to fetch water by a village elder from a well. How in the world did Bibi become charged for blasphemy for merely getting water out of a well? She drew water from a Muslim well. GASP! How dare a 45 year old Christian Pakistani mother get charged for blasphemy for going to a Muslim well? The MUSLIMS were offended and stated that they could no longer draw water from a well contaminated by Christian hands. The act of drawing water from a Muslim well then offended Islam because Bibi was a Christian.

On Monday, Bibi received a Death Sentence from a Pakistani Court for the crime of fetching water as a Christian for Muslim women.

And in January 2014 I posted this video Via CNSNEWS:

The Reluctant Hero | Nicholas Winton

Published by Papa Giorgio

This was posted last year – but I updated the file source on one of the videos.

Discover the inspiring true story of Sir Nicholas Winton in the award-winning film “Nicky’s Family,” now on DVD.

Doctrinal Differences Still Matter Between Catholics and Protestants

Published by Papa Giorgio

Difference Between

Going to Heaven?

Do you want to see some theological white-washing (postmodern approaches to the Bible) of important issues facing the Church… that is, salvation through Christ Jesus… here Josh C. posted the following:

If faith without works is dead, and if works are acknowledged as a necessary result of faith, then quite frankly, what does it matter when God “justifies” us? This to me seems a matter of pure theory, in some ways unknowable by human beings. And yet it has divided masses of Christians who could otherwise be joining hand in hand to obey Jesus’ commandments in a world that needs such things. Real Christians have been stymied in the doing of real works for the sake of purely abstract mental constructs of which no man will ever have full knowledge. I find this an insult to the very spirit of Christianity. Jesus’ clear and unavoidable command of obedience, and his clear and unavoidable wish and prayer for unity, has been disavowed in favor of defeating other Christians on the battlefield of metaphysical abstractions! Nonsense.

I responded simply by saying: ‘I hope your OP was not about Catholic doctrine compared to Protestant.”

Stephen C. commented later by noting that,

Fighting 16th century debates that no one cares about any more is an utter waste of time and a slanderous representation of our Lord and his intents for his church and its testimony in the world.

To which Josh C. thumbed up (Facebook ya’ know). Here I responded with the following:

Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses claim Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross was to merely remove Adam’s sin from us. And now they work towards building up their salvation through good works (differing levels of heaven for LDS or an opportunity to serve on a new earth for J-Dubs). Apologists and theologians rightly show that this is a misrepresentation of salvation in the Scriptures. So while I will invite these theological and dangerous cults into my home and discuss these issues… I cannot point out that infant Baptism in the Catholic Church removes Adam’s original sin and now Catholics get the opportunity to work towards lessening of time in Purgatory? That is an unimportant theological issue?

Josh clarifies a bit…

I think there are people on all sides who get it wrong. The point isn’t “there aren’t issues.” The point is people claiming to know with absolute certainty what I do not believe, even with the Bible, they can know. Even worse, and my main point, is the using of these debate points to divide people and break fellowship.

I respond to the above

My wife’s whole family is Catholic (accept for her dad). A person I admire greatly for his authorship converted (I posted on it here many years ago)

I understand about not dividing in issues of policy, politics, and relations. I also understand there are “Evangelical Catholics” who reject Mariology and the like. Fine. I treat everyone as individuals.

BUT, as an organisation, if a person were to believe doctrine as taught by the Roman Catholic Faith, or Eastern Orthodoxy… I would be as adamant as the Reformers that this doctrine is in the spirit of anti-Christ, as, it opposes the finished work of Calvary.

And?

Grace is another word for salvation and our status in sight of God being clothed with Jesus righteousness. Mary is not full of grace to be able to share with sinners. That is Christ’s (God’s) position alone to fill.

Am I suppose to not be able to express what the Bible teaches? Or how Jerome in the Latin Vulgate mistranslated a word and a pillar of Catholic doctrine is build on that false edifice (that the Greek corrects).

If that truth[s] divide, then so be it, but I am still close to my wife’s family ~ and her uncle, Father Joe, still asks me to convert at every family gathering (of which my wife is the oldest of about 44 grandkids/great-grandkids).

But on essential doctrine I do not budge. Sorry. 

  • In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, love

BTW, I have a whole chapter (my largest) in my book on Evangelicals that get it wrong.

Mariology

Purgatory

Are Roman Catholic Views of Tradition, Biblical?

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is from a larger debate between Ken Samples and Fr. Mitch Pacwa . I think this intro does it’s due diligence in explaining many of the false views I have heard from people as of late. In other words, one should not define Protestants as believing Sola Scriptura wrongly, and then responding to this false view.

The below is from an excellent book by William Webster:

  • William Webster, Salvation, The Bible, and Roman Catholicism (Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth Trust, 1990), 13-20

AUTHORITATIVE STATEMENTS OF ROMAN CATHOLIC TEACHING ON TRADITION AND THE WORD OF GOD

The Documents of Vatican II

Hence there exist a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit. To the successors of the apostles, sacred tradition hands on in its full purity God’s word, which was entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit . . . Consequently, it is not from sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of devotion and reverence. Sacred tradition and sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, which is committed to the Church.[1]

The Question and Answer Catholic Catechism

59. Where do we find the truths revealed by God?

We find the truths revealed by God in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

60. How does Sacred Scripture compare with Sacred Tradition?

Both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are the inspired word of God, and both are forms of divine revelation. Sacred Scripture is divinely inspired writing, whereas Sacred Tradition is the unwritten word of inspired persons.[2]

89. Why is Sacred Tradition of equal authority with the Bible?

The Bible and Sacred Tradition are of equal authority because they are equally the word of God; both derive from the inspired vision of the ancient prophets, and especially from the infinite wisdom of God incarnate who gave to the apostles what he came down on earth to teach, through them, to all of mankind.[3]

TRADITION AND THE WORD OF GOD – SUMMARY OF NEW TESTAMENT TEACHING

The first issue to be addressed in any discussion of spiritual truth is that of authority. To say something is true or false implies an authoritative standard by which we can make such a judgment. But is there such an authoritative stand­ard by which we can judge whether a particular teaching or system is true or false? The answer is an unequivocal ‘yes’. That authoritative standard is the Word of God, the Bible. Jesus Christ himself said of the Bible, ‘Thy word is truth’ (Jn. 17:17). In settling issues of spiritual controversy the Lord Jesus always appealed to the Word of God as an authoritative standard by which to judge truth and false­hood.

Mark’s Gospel records an incident in which certain Sad-ducees came to Jesus to question him. The Sadducees were the religious liberals of Jesus’ day and they rejected many of the teachings espoused by the more orthodox sect of the Pharisees. They did not believe in angels or in the resurrec­tion of the dead. A number of these men came to Jesus to ask him a trick question about life after death. Jesus demolished their trick question but went on to say this:

Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures, or the power of God?… But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken (Mk. 12:24,25-27 NASB 1963).

Twice in this passage Christ tells these men they are greatly mistaken in their views. The reason is that they do not understand the Scriptures. He appeals to those Scriptures to correct the false concepts these men held. He points to the Word of God as an authoritative standard by which to judge truth and error. These men are greatly mistaken because the views they hold and the doctrines they teach contradict the Word of God.

Here you have two opposing views of truth. One says there is no resurrection from the dead, the other says there is. How do you determine which is true? You go to the Word of God. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is God in human flesh and therefore whatever he teaches is absolute truth. And according to him the Word of God is the final and authoritative standard by which all claims to truth are to be judged.

This principle obviously has a direct bearing upon the whole issue of tradition. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that tradition as well as the Bible constitutes the revealed Word of God. It teaches that the teaching of the Church Fathers, the Church Councils, and the Traditions of the Church are all ‘one sacred deposit of the Word of God’.

John Hardon S. J. makes the following statements in his Question and Answer Catholic Catechism:

Sacred Tradition is the unwritten word of God that the prophets and apostles received through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and, under His guidance, the Church has handed on to the Christian world.[4]

Both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are the inspired word of God, and both are forms of divine revelation. Sacred Scripture is divinely inspired writing, whereas Sacred Tradition is the unwritten word of in­spired persons.[5]

Jesus Christ had some interesting things to say about tradition:

Then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem, saying, ‘Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.’ And He answered and said to them, `And why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, “Honor your father and mother”… But you say, “Whoever shall say to his father or mother, ‘Anything of mine you might have been helped by has been given to God,’ he is not to honor his father or his mother.” And thus you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men”‘ (Matt. 15:1-9).

In a parallel passage in Mark 7:5-13 much of the same teaching by Jesus is recorded. The Pharisees ask why the disciples do not walk according to the tradition of the elders. In response Jesus denounces the scribes and Pharisees and their observance of tradition which is in violation of the Word of God. In effect they have elevated the teachings of men above the Scriptures. The following sums up Jesus’ evaluation:

  1. You teach as doctrines the precepts of men.
  2. Neglecting the commandment of God you hold to the tradition of men.
  3. You set aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.
  4. You invalidate the Word of God by your tradition which you have handed down.

We should note that Jesus is not condemning tradition simply because it is tradition. All tradition is not wrong. What he is condemning is the elevating of tradition or the teaching of men to equality with the Word of God. He condemned the scribes and Pharisees for following tradition which violated and invalidated the Word of God. And then he rebuked them for so teaching others.

Tradition is not necessarily wrong, but tradition is not the Word of God, and for tradition to be acceptable to God, it must never contradict or violate the clear teaching of the Bible. All tradition must be judged by the truth of Scripture, including traditions which have their original roots in Scripture. The traditions that the scribes and Pharisees adhered to, but which Jesus denounced, were traditions which had their roots in mistaken interpretations of the Bible.

There is one obvious and definitive test which we can apply to all teaching and tradition to determine if it is true. That test is this: if the tradition or the teaching, even though it arises from the interpretation of a passage of Scripture, contradicts the clear teaching of another portion of Script­ure, then that particular tradition or teaching is incorrect, for Scripture never contradicts Scripture.

The Word of God alone is our final authority, never tradition. We are told in 2 Timothy 3:16,17 that ‘All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.’ All Scripture is inspired and is therefore authoritat­ive. And because it is inspired, that is, because it is the Word of a self-consistent God, it will never contradict itself.

Consequently, we can judge whether or not a particular teaching or tradition is true by comparing it to the Word of God. If it is consistent with the Word of God, then we can accept it as truth. However, if it clearly contradicts the teaching of the Bible or makes the Word of God contradict itself, then we know that it is error, and is to be rejected. Otherwise we shall fall into the same condemnation which Jesus uttered against the Pharisees.

One question this whole issue brings up is this: can the true church of God fall into error? The answer to that question, based upon the history of God’s people in the Bible is ‘yes’. It is possible for the church leadership to fall into error and be led astray from the truth. For example, the apostle Peter was publicly rebuked by Paul for the hypocrisy of which he was guilty (Gal. 2:11-14).

On an earlier occasion the apostle Peter was rebuked by Christ because he tried to hinder the Lord from going to the cross. ‘But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s”‘ (Matt. 16:23). The Lord Jesus actually addressed Peter as Satan, for Satan was using Peter to try to divert him from the will of God. This all transpired after Peter had been told that he was to be given the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 16:18-19).

Of course, the example of God’s chosen people, the Jews, during the time of the Lord Jesus himself, shows us clearly that it is possible for the church’s leadership to be deceived. Jesus’ words about tradition were spoken against the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leadership of God’s chosen people and the true church of that day. They had fallen into error and had become so blind that they failed to recognise

Jesus as the Messiah. They fell into the error of misinterpret­ing the Word of God and of elevating tradition and the teachings of the elders to a level equal in authority to the Scriptures, even though those teachings contradicted the Word of God. In addition to this Jesus claimed that the religious leadership of his day, because of their adherence to tradition and misinterpretation of Scripture, were actually responsible for hindering people from entering the kingdom of God: Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered’ (Lk. 11:52). ‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from men; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in’ (Matt. 23:13). If this was true of the religious leadership of God’s chosen people in the day of Jesus Christ, there is absolutely no guarantee that a church leadership will not fall into error and mislead people.

Were the Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ day intentionally trying to deceive people? Not necessarily! Many of them were doing what they sincerely felt was right. But they were wrong and consequently they were deceiving people and leading them astray. Sincerity is no guarantee against error. A man can be sincerely wrong. In the final analysis, as Christ taught, the Word of God is the final authority for determin­ing what is truth and what is error. Any teaching which contradicts the Word of God must be rejected: ‘To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them’ (Is. 8:20, A.V.).

Luke records that when Paul came to Berea, and preached the gospel in the local Jewish synagogue, the Bereans ‘were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily, to see whether these things were so’ (Acts 17:11). The Bereans compared Paul’s doctrines with the Word of God to see if his teachings were consistent with the teachings of the Word of God. Only then would they accept the gospel he was preaching. They knew that any teaching that truly originates from God would not contradict what he had already revealed in his Word.

It is in this spirit that we shall examine the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church….

[1] Walter M. Abbot S.J., The Documents of Vatican II (Westchester, IL: Follett Publishing Co., 1966), 177.

[2] John A. Hardon, S.J., The Question and Answer Catholic Catechism (New York, NY: Image Books, Doubleday, 1981), 37.

[3] Ibid., 41.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 41.

Affirmative Actions Unequal Consequences

Published by Papa Giorgio

UPDATE!!

The trial itself began October 15th in a federal court with Harvard as the accused (HOT AIR). FOX NEWS reports on the trial’s revelations so far:

Harvard University’s dean of admissions has testified the Ivy League school applies different SAT score standards to prospective students based on factors such as race, but insisted the practice is not discriminatory.

Students for Fair Admissions, a group headed by legal strategist Edward Blum, sued Harvard in 2014 claiming Asian-Americans, who have the highest academic records, unfairly receive the lowest admission rate at the elite school.

Regardless of the outcome of the three-week, non-jury trial in Boston that began Monday, the lawsuit involving affirmative action and backed by the Trump administration is expected to reach the Supreme Court.

William Fitzsimmons, the 30-year dean of admissions, who oversees the screening process of about 40,000 applicants and narrows them down to 2,000 acceptance letters that are handed out each year, testified that African-Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic high schoolers with mid-range SAT scores out of a possible 1600 combined math and verbal, are sent recruitment letters with a score as low as 1100, whereas Asian-Americans need to score at least 250 points higher – 1350 for women and 1380 for men.

“That’s race discrimination, plain and simple,” argued John Hughes, a lawyer for SFFA.

“It is not,” Fitzsimmons shot back, adding that the school targets certain groups to “break the cycle” and convince students who normally wouldn’t consider applying to the Ivy League school.

[….]

Chinese-American Harvard graduate Lee Cheng, a lawyer for the Asian-American Legal Foundation, supports the lawsuit as a simple and straightforward case for the right not to be discriminated against based on race.

“It’s about saying Harvard cannot set different and more difficult standards for admitting Asian students relative to students of any other ethnic group,” Cheng said. “It’s that simple – and it’s undeniable that Harvard has.”

Blum told Fox News he’s confident after four years of evidence gathering that Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policies are “unconstitutional.”….

Here is Mark Levin reading about this discrimination from August of last year:

Continuing with older post (from February 2017)

Here is part of a LOS ANGELES TIMES article regarding the above (hat-tip, CONSERVATIVE TREE HOUSE):

…“Let’s talk about Asians,” she says.

Lee’s next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term “bonus” to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant’s race is worth. She points to the first column.

African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 points, Lee says.

She points to the second column.

“Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points.”

The last column draws gasps.

Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.

Camille Paglia Speaks To The Importance of the Bible for Atheists

Published by Papa Giorgio

Michael Medved had Camille Paglia on his show discussing a new book of hers (“Provocations: Collected Essays“) and an atheist caller called in to express his *rational position on religion. At any rate, a well stated defense of the importance of the Bible by a secular feminist critiquing modern atheism. (For the record, Camille Paglia is an atheist.)

*Sorta rational… I believe he referenced “determinism” in his statement, an irrational position.