Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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And before the
break, I was talking about
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significant changes in
the Roman Catholic Church
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and how it
relates to other churches
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and governments
because of Vatican II.
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Now I'd like to just
go through some documents,
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but before documents remind you
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if you've forgotten
that was big at the time,
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Pope Benedict when he was first
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placed in that
office, made a lot of news,
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very negative
in the Muslim world
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by a speech that he gave
at Regensburg University,
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where he spoken
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or where he
taught for some time,
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I think it was
significant and perhaps chosen
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because it was
also a major center
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of the Counter-Reformation,
the Catholic pushback
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against the Reformation
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'cause I've learned
that nothing is by chance,
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in the way the
times and the places
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and the context that Rome
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chooses for these
speeches and documents.
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And he got into trouble
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because he cited the
historic conversation
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between a Byzantine
Emperor and the Iranian Muslim
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General besieging Constantinople
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as it was then,
now it's Istanbul
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and eventually
felt to the Muslims.
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And they got to
discussing violence in religion
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and the
assumption in the discussion
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was that Islam was violent.
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And when that
speech was broadcast,
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the Islamic world
started rioting right left
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and center, which
is sort of childish.
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You're accused of violence,
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so you become
violent in objection.
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But most people didn't
notice the real speech.
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That was just the setup.
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He didn't think he'd get
into trouble from a historic,
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factual discussion.
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It was a setup
for his discussion
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of violence within Christianity.
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And he said Christianity
too was once violent
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until it adopted
Hellenistic rationality.
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And I could say
until it adopted the ways
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of the empire and
adopted worldliness,
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but if you accept his logic,
then it was rather troubling
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where he ended up
because if it was once violent,
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became nonviolent with
Hellenistic rationality,
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and then he gave three reasons
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as to an incipient threat
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of violence in
Christianity again.
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The last two,
which is variations
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on his preoccupation at the time
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that secularism
was bringing violence,
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which I think is a
hard, hard line to follow.
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But his first point was ominous.
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He said the
reformers, this is exactly quote
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as I can remember,
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"The reformers
by their insistence
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on Sola Scriptura
exposed Christianity
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again to violence."
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And this is post
9/11 when we know that
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certain Islamic
fanatics reading very selected
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and self-serving
passages from the Quran,
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and listening to no other logic,
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no other rationality,
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no other humanity,
other than, you know,
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Allah wills it,
we're willing to fly
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into buildings
and destroy themselves
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and kill as many
other people as possible.
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The analogy is scary to
say now that Christianity
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through the Sola Scriptura model
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of the
Reformation, in other words,
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Protestants are essentially
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the next most
violent possibility
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in our modern world.
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Horrible, not borne out
by any facts, but, you know,
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facts don't determine
things as much as they used to.
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So, you know, that
was most interesting
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and particularly from then on,
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I started watching
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the documents
coming out of Rome.
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For example,
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this is all
within the last 25 years
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right up till the present.
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There was a document
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out of Rome
called Ad Tuendam Fidem.
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These are papal
documents to defend the faith.
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They were having
trouble with theologians
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who were denying both
the primacy of the pope
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and the inspiration of the Bible
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and as well as other
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foundational
aspects of Christianity,
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and they need to deal with them.
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The document outlines that,
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it said how they were
dealing with theologians,
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then it said how
they were dealing
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with those that were
problems within the church,
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and then it ended by
saying, "Whoever believes
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what the
magisterium of the church
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have rejected or rejects
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what the
magisterium of the church
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has recommended
is to be punished
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with an appropriate penalty."
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And to me, that's the
language of the Middle Ages,
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where the church
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has a preeminent
political position.
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And if you offend the church,
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they hand you off to
the state to be punished.
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Very ominous language.
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Then the next
document that's significant,
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that Seventh-day Adventist
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I know pay great attention
to was called Dies Domini,
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the Lord's Day.
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This specified or
the whole document
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was talking about the Sabbath,
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and it made no attempt
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to dodge the
obvious biblical reality
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that the
Sabbath was given by God
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and The Ten Commandments
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and really in a
larger Old Testament context
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to all peoples as the
seventh-day of the week,
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requirement of God.
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And in the past, I
know Seventh-day Adventists
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have been challenged
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on some of their
proof texts, not anymore.
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The Roman Catholic
Church adopted all of them,
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no challenge.
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It reinforced the
seventh-day Sabbath
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except about halfway
through it said this,
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"While the early Christians
had no direct instruction
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from the Lord, they felt that
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they had the authority
to change it to Sunday,
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in celebration of
the Lord's resurrection."
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Very interesting
admission, but at the same time,
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an assertion of an
inherited authority
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because with Rome,
as with governments,
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but here we're
talking about religion,
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authority is everything
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and they have
assumed the authority,
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the mantle, that,
by their interpretation
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was given to
Peter, the authority that
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they have granted
to the church fathers.
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And curiously, the
derivative authority
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from the magisterium,
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the power given to the church
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and the integrity
of the church fathers
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to the scriptures
that they have collected.
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So Sola Scriptura
is offensive to them
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because as I've often
read on Catholic material,
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they assembled these
documents, they assembled them
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so it's their authority
that determines scripture,
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not sort of the other way around
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judging the church by scripture.
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The next one, and
maybe I'll end this program
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in discussion of this
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and continue on another program,
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these are the documents.
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The next document
that really created a fuss
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within the Christian community,
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which at that
point was quite enamored
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with the idea of
the ecumenical movement.
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And some decades ago,
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its stated aim was to sort
of bring everyone together.
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I can remember even
in Australia in the 70s,
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hearing,
visiting church leaders,
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Protestant and
Catholic talking about
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healing the rift
within Christendom
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and coming back
to the Mother Church.
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It's not really the
way it's expressed now,
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but it was then.
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And quite some years ago now,
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but I'd say maybe
about 15 years ago,
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they came out with a document
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called memory
and reconciliation.
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And it was
reported widely in the press
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but not saying where it came
from that they had apologized
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for the inquisition,
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for the persecution of the Jews,
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for the Sack of Constantinople,
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where they sent one of
the Crusades to pillage
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and attack the other
half of the Christian Church.
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You know, whole thing,
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a series of things
were apologize for,
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but it says in the document,
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is it really
possible to ascribe guilt
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to the actions of another age.
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And then the clunker in
the middle of the document
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that really
troubled me it says this,
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"Just as Christ,
holy and undefiled
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and incapable of
error took upon Himself
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the sins of fallen human beings.
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So the
magisterium of the church,
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holy and undefiled
and incapable of error
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will apologize for
the acts of human beings."
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Basically, that
acted on its behalf.
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The intent I think, was good,
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but in so doing,
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they reiterated
this exceptionalism
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that Rome has always had,
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which is antithetical
to true religious freedom.
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And from my perspective
if it's not easily synthesize
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with Bible truth,
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the concept in the Old Testament
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and the New.
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No priest, no delegate of God
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has the right to say
that I know everything.
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Even Moses, the
greatest prophets
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before John the Baptist,
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and after his death,
he was taken to heaven,
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but even Moses was held at fault
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because he whacks
the rock and says,
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"Must I bring the
water out of the rock."
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So, you know, the
key is to St. Peter,
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however, that legitimately
or illegitimately they got.
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They don't confer
this absolutism on Rome,
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it's not to be.
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And so it's troubling to
me, in this post Reformation era
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when Protestants are forgetting
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what they were
that Rome is reiterating
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some of the bolder
claims of a prior day.
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And I must say that memory
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and reconciliation was really
quite a disappointing one,
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but it ended on a strange level
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because it says
we have apologized.
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Now Protestants
should reciprocate
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and apologize.
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And thereby hangs the tail
00:10:16.14\00:10:18.25
because in reality
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some of this has
already happened.
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The World Lutheran Federation
00:10:21.48\00:10:24.02
have had two
agreements with Rome the first,
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that the
disagreement with Lutheran Rome
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was sort of a mistake, a
doctrinal misunderstanding.
00:10:29.39\00:10:32.79
And the second
document said there is no longer
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any impediment to
full reunification.
00:10:35.40\00:10:39.57
We've come a
long way in 500 years,
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and not all of it good.
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And while Rome has
got an openness now
00:10:44.61\00:10:48.14
that we could have wished for,
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at the time of the Reformation,
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there are still some
deep misunderstandings,
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deep assumptions that
at the end of the day,
00:10:55.32\00:10:58.69
it might work against
continued religious liberty
00:10:58.72\00:11:01.92
and need to be
kept fully in mind,
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by all who are as
that speech spoke badly
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of all who are
insisting on Sola Scriptura.
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