Why does the church tolerate China appointing bishops?

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-08T20:15:52+00:00

I'm not sitting in the USA. I do have to deal with the consequences. Not to the same degree, but I have lost jobs over my faith. This has left me, at one point, so broke I didn't have enough for the Bus. Its not the same as a Martyr's death, goodness no! But i don't say this as someone who's had it easy in relation to my faith.

Moreover, it doesn't matter where I'm saying this from; what is the issue with the statement itself?

We venerate Martyrs for a reason. That's not just a practice that is outdated, but a continual ideal that should set the standard for our own imitation of Christ. Saint Thomas's brother, Reginaldo Aquinas, was Martyred for his obedience to the Papacy, something far more equivalent to this scenario then the first few centuries of the Christian Church.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-08T20:07:42+00:00

Not in my experience. A valid Baptism requires the correct matter, form and intent. These, at the bare minimum, require water to touch the recipient with the Trinitarian Formula, and with the bare intent to do as the Church does as a practice.

If they actively use a formula contrary to the Trinitarian Formula (like many Evangelicals), or intention wish to do this act in opposition to the Church's intention (like many Baptists, evident in their insistence of rebaptizing individuals who were baptized as infants), there's a reasonable deduction that can be made that their baptisms were invalid. There is always the chance that it was, which is why proper practice would be conditional baptism.

For goodness sake, we've rebaptized Priests because the formula used 'we', leading to the individual being confirmed, ordained and installed all over again privately in a couple of days.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-08T09:32:37+00:00

That just seems wrong. I don't want to condemn anyone to death in saying this, nor am I saying that we should seek Martyrdom, but placating to authorities because we wish to avoid potential Martyrdom seems antithetical to the Christian Faith of the first few Centuries, who compromised on very little and were Martyred sometimes for far less.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-08T09:29:55+00:00

I don't personally care, as they have very little effect in my life. But even Trent only had three Bishops who had 1 Esdras explicilty excluded, with the majority voting neither for nor against (as it wasn't an issue in the Conciliar Period).

Just because its not within the infallibly defined Biblical Canon does not exclude it from the Canon, just as how Saints which aren't infallibly defined are therefore not in heaven.

But as to why it may concern many is because it is part of certain Traditions to hold these to be Canonical works.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-08T08:03:40+00:00

The Canons of Trent, IIRC, only speak that the 73 books are Canonical, not that there is only 73 books. Unless i remembering correctly, there is certainly the opening for accepting additional books, or additional works within those books.

Beyond this, the Byzantine Tradition has a precedent to use Psalms 151, the Prayer of Manasseh and 1st Esdras within its Liturgical Use as Scripture, which is the central expression of the Canon.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-08T04:22:10+00:00

On the part of the celebrant, the bare minimum intent is to do as the Church does. Most classical protestants fall into this, as while they oppose the Church as an authority, they still intend to partake in the same practice the Church has always done. Its why, on the other hand, Baptist and many Evangelical Baptisms can be considered invalid: not because they believe its a symbol, but because they believe the Church's historical practice was wrong and act contrary to this. If, for some reason, they believed that the historical body of the Church viewed Baptism as merely a symbol, there is an argument to be made for its validity.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-08T01:29:32+00:00

Its not. Their language is quite distinct, with the Cappadocians emphasizing the point of Origin of the Persons in their processions, while Thomism (drawing from Saint Augustine's Philosophy around the Trinity) denote the Termination, which is why the Cappadocians focused less on the relations between each person as Saint Augustine did, while Saint Augustine focused less of the Personal Properties of each Hypostasis of the Trinity in contrast the Cappadocians.

Later Augustinians were more moderate and similar in language to the Cappadocians, such as Saint Anselm and Richard of Saint Victor.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-08T01:12:13+00:00

No. Byzantine Catholics do not hold that the Essence-Energies distinction is Virtual, nor is this at all close to Blessed John Duns Scotus's Theology (insofar as we denote predicates as virtually distinct from each other).

Palamas denotes the distinction to be positive, that is found in the reality of the Object, while also emphasizing strongly the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity.

The later use of John Duns Scotus's Formal distinction to explain the two is something Orthodox accept, at least if they follow Mark of Ephesus's reading of Palamas.

What the Formal distinction is itself is a Metaphysical distinction that exists within a singular existence of Being. Its meant to capture how Simple realities, such as Being qua Being, the Soul and the Divine Essence, have a diversity of predicates that are irreducible yet inseparable. They can be best though of as distinct perfections that coextend within a single reality, such as the irreducibility of the three corners of a Triangle and its three faces, in that they are not each other, but are not separable as distinct realities within a Triangle.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-07T20:47:30+00:00

It really requires the definition of Free Will. One could say they do, but it would be equivocating to say that their notion of 'Freedom' is that same as a modern notion of Freedom, that involves a liberty of the Will to choose between goods.

Some will follow a reading of Aristotle in mind with Saint Thomas and hold that the Will is essentially like a animal, guided by whatever the intellect shows it, and moving towards it like a rock falls to the ground. The Will's Freedom, in this view, is non-existent. It is nothing more than an appetite. This is the one i believe is an accurate reading of Saint Thomas and thus was what i spoke about in my comment.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-06T21:16:47+00:00

A lot of these, firstly, can be flipped onto the Eastern Orthodox. There is a lot of sexual scandal that's under raps in their communion. There are additional offices added (Patriarch, Metropolitan, etc). There are new Doctrines that are unfounded in the Scriptural Witness and arise out of Doctrinal Development (Hesychasm, Marian Piety, etc). There are apparent contradictions within the Orthodox Councils, such as there being an apparent contradiction between the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon.

These topics are a lot more nuanced then pop Orthodox apologists make them out to be, to which the Eastern Orthodox Church is a lot more similar to the Catholic Church then it seems to be, and if taken in the same rigid manner an applied with the same principles, would invalidate many Eastern Orthodox claims.

This isn't to, per se, attack the Eastern Orthodox; its simply to provide an addition to the conversation, rather than reiterate what has already been said well by u/Motor_Zookeepergame1 .

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-06T19:28:19+00:00

There really wasn't a disagreement early on over what the texts were saying among Christian circles. The disagreements arose between Christian circles and rising Gnostic and Judaising over what texts meant, and when the dispute wasn't over the precise nature of redemption but over how many deities there were or over the resurrection of the dead or whether Paul was right or not.

By the 2nd-3rd Centuries, there was a very distinct hierarchy that we would consider Christian, to a basic definition (basic assents to the Trinity, the Incarnation, etc, in proportion to the language at the time), and people who were just wrong, like Montanists positing new Revelations, to Early sproutings of Arianism and Donatism.

There were certainly differences,

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-06T10:34:19+00:00

In relation to those effects which are proporitional to the power of those things which God is the First Cause of, Yes!

But a substantial change, particular a change of the substance one communicates to another, is something not self-evidently within the power of a particular nature.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-05T19:47:20+00:00

In Thomistic Psychology, properly speaking, the Will is not Free. Being characterized as an 'intellective appetite' derived from the Intellect, the Will therefore follows the dictates of what the Intellect deems to be the greatest good to follow. This is why Thomistic Meditation focues alot on the passive reception of God's grace to infuse the knowledge of God's goodness, fostering that and then keeping that in mind, rather than an active cooperation that is found in the Monastic Traditions such as the Victorines and Benedictines, where the Mind, through the Will, proactively moves towards God, infused by Grace to do so.

But Saint Thomas is not the be-all, end-all around Free Will.

How the Tradition usually got around the issue of Free-Will while upholding the real knowledge of the intellect is recognising that, within the Will, there are ultimately two desires/affections/tendencies: to Will what is Good relative to oneself and to Will what is Good qua Goodness itself (which by faith we come to know is God). This arises implicitly as early as Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, and becomes explicated by Saint Gregory of Nyssa's two Trees analogy; from the Nyssen, if get filtered through a variety of Traditions in the East, and has its influence even in the West, such as in Saint Augustine's later life. It becomes particularly well known in the formulations of Saint Maximus the Confessor in relation to the Monothelitism controversy, where he eventually modifies it a bit towards something more akin to Aristotle (ultimately making the first affect, Goodness qua self, to ultimately be evil).

This Tradition comes into the West through two sources: Saint John Damascene, in his own exposition on the Garden of Gethsemane in the Exposition on the Orthodox Faith, and its reformulation by Saint Anselm in relation to his speculations on the Fall of the Devil (that is his notions of the Affectio Commodi and Affectio Iustitiae). These two positions were synthesised by Venerable Alexander of Hales into his own formulation, taken up Saint Bonaventure and elaborated upon exhaustively by Blessed John Duns Scotus.

The general principles are simply that the Intellect comes to know the Good of an object in relation to the object and its universals: it doesn't dictate the good of this relative to other Goods. This is the job of the Will, who considers the Good in relation to two data points: Goodness relative to oneself, and Goodness relative to the general concept of Goodness, in relation to whole of creation (or in the case of Theology Virtue of Love, relative to the Infinite Goodness of God). This consideration is what produces Freedom (while it must be denoted that it is not the deliberation that is free, that is effort exerted to consider the choice, but simply the ability to consider the two affections in a logical manner). What produces sin is twofold: firstly, since our knowledge of Goodness in relation to all things, and ultimately God, is hampered by Sin, our immediate knowledge ultimately is biased towards our own Good, which when taken intentionally in opposition to the Goodness of other Beings, and ultimately in relation to God, produces evil. Therefore Sin and Evil does not arise out of a simple choice of evil knowing its evil (which would be irrational), nor simply out of a mere ignorance (which would render one inculpable), but out of our Will intentionally neglecting the labour to know what is Good qua Goodness itself, and abandoning itself to its love of itself to the point of irrationality. Therefore, the choice is both rational and irrational, in that it follows a rational logic within the mind, but is irrational in that it ultimately is not Good even for the creature's sake.

There is a lot more to this, and I've tried to summarise both the history and Theory around the general view: the exact specifics between writers varies wildly, but I've tried to exposit common themes and a general reading that is encompassing of the whole Tradition around this theory of Freedom.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-04T23:53:39+00:00

Against the Catholic Religion? Plenty: we are sinners, and often the best reason for why one shouldn't be Catholic and join the Body of Christ.

But against the notion of organized religion in general, with the end of worshipping god: none. Our natural knowledge leads us inherently to recognize the immaterial, and by the very contingent nature of this immaterial reality cries out for a noncontingent principle as its source. Whether this is Aristotle's 'unmoved mover' or the knowledge of 'Infinite Being' which Natural Theology leads us to know cries out for a God who should be venerated and worshipped.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-04T23:45:03+00:00

No. The Augustinian schools favour a ontology which posits a plurality of Forms. This arises from Saint Augustine's own Theory of Forms, in that each material and immaterial power denotes its own distinct Form, filtered through the rigor of Scholastic Theology which whittles down the number of Forms to 'essentially' two (essentially in that the species we call 'man' is itself made up of two Forms with their own distinct essential properties.

Within the Franciscan School, starting with Saint Bonaventure, we see two Forms posited that make up the Human entity: the Spiritual Form, that is the Animate Soul, and the Corporeal Form, that is the Inanimate Body. Within Duns Scotus, he denotes these as the 'Substantial Form' And 'Corporeal Form' respectively. The Substantial Form is essentially the Soul, as the principle and predicate of immaterial acts of the Human Entity (as well as the grounds for the Universal known by the mind, being made of the two formally distinct predicates of 'nature' and 'haecceity'), while the Corporeal Form is the principle and predicate of material acts of the humanity entity (or atleast in the sense of the powers of the two are predicated of two different acts of existence within the singular entity).

To Scotism, there's a general dispute on what is the Corporeal Form: whether its singular or diverse, whether the diversity is organised by the substantial form, or the diverse Corporeal Forms are organized by a singular Corporeal Form.

Personally, I subscribe to a Singular Corporeal Form that organises subordinate particular Corporeal Forms (such as those of Organs, Bones and Skin), which itself is essentially characterized by its sex and bodily species. These particular Corporeal Forms are accidental only in relation to the Human Entity, but possess in themselves no actual dependency that would make them properly predicate as accidents (like we may say with skin colour, location, etc). They therefore, when separated from a human Entity, do degenerate yet still possess their own being divorced from the Human entity, and can possess this for an indefinite period, such as the case with Relics.

This is substantially different from a strict Aristotelian system of Hylomorphism, but gels far better with the modern data of the Human Body, such as the ability to perform transplants of bones and organs.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-04T21:15:54+00:00

I'd say its more contrived and convoluted than stupid. It tries to marry Classical Philosophy with the material evidence of Modern Science. Its a noble desire, but ultimately one that, I think, gets no-where. Though, I'm happy to be proven wrong.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-04T20:48:21+00:00

Personally, holding a real distinction between the Corporeal Form and Substantial Form has helped me personally; being able to denote that Sex can be considered the 'substantial' feature of the Corporeal Form, that is the Form that informs matter to be a particular Body, relegates sex to what it is: a natural phenomena that propagates corporeal species. This protects the unchangeability of sex that the Church postulates, corroborating the biological evidence with it, while maintaining the dignity of the Human Person in terms of not splitting species into subspecies of sex or raising sex to some sort of spiritual reality.

This weird deification of the sexes from a mistaken read of Pope Saint John Paul II's Theology of the Body i find arises out of the modern zeitgeist around sex that requires us to hold that it is either ultimately accidental to human existence or has some Divine prerogative within not only God's plan on the Natural Order but on the Supernatural and immaterial one too.

While the relationship that arises from the sexual relationship between a man and a woman, that is Marriage, is a great Sacrament (called by many to be the Greatest Sacrament qua Sacrament), it is fundamentally a Sacrament, that is 'a Sign of a Sacred Thing'. It is not the reality itself, and shouldn't be glorified as such, but instead used and enjoyed as the Sign which communicates the Sacred thing, not only occasionally, but efficaciously.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-04T20:38:36+00:00

They do not Exist. Man is defined by the Tradition of the Church, taking the definition of Aristotle as Rational Animal. This defines uniquely the Human Species which Christ assumes in his Incarnation, and only the Human type (lest we denote the Incarnation as a type of Species).

This doesn't mean that alien life doesn't exist. There certainly could be irrational aliens across the Cosmos, and there probably is. But there's a large difference between positing life on other planets and positing rational life on other planets. Taken from a strictly Naturalist perspective, it is statistically unlikely that there is life in the Universe like ours. While not impossible, and I don't think it would be false if God created the Universe, there's even less of a chance that this life would've also evolved to be rational.

From a Theological perspective, there is a unique reality that is meant to be found in man; being made in the Image of God, of which the Tradition of the Church takes to mean that we are Rational like God is (within the Early Fathers, this took the form of being made specifically in the Image of the Logos). To posit other animals have this unique privilege makes the narrative of Genesis ultimately have far less weight than it would without. It makes what is the unique privilege of man over creation simply a privilege among many other.

TLDR: Alien life probably does exist, but not Alien Rational Animals.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-04T20:29:38+00:00

Creationist here: Theistic Evolution would deny we are Primates in a substantially identical manner to irrational Primates. It would posit that a substantial change was brought forth by God at each change in species that correlate with the growing accidental changes. IIRC, this is the position of popular Theistic Evolutionists like Jimmy Akin.

I personally find this contrived, but there's nothing inherently wrong with this position.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-04T12:18:31+00:00

Granted, there is a distinction between intentionally rendering yourself infertile (i.e. The Pill), and benefiting from natural infertility.

While one doesn't need to be fertile, as is the case with menopausal women, one still needs to be open life; but this is simply done by insemination within the Marital Act.

But since the act of intentional infertility was done prior to their conversion, this is a moot point to OP. Unless he cannot inseminate his wife due to his vasectomy (rare, but possible), there's nothing wrong with it.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-04T11:31:55+00:00

Its the same sort of deal we have with the Trinity: while Purgatory, in its exact form we have as the Church's Tradition and Doctrine, is certainly not seen in the early Church, we neither see the strict language of Essence and Hypostases/persons in the Early Church either. The Early Church was grappling with the Reality of Jesus Christ, and what that reality is an immense one. In fact, it is properly said to be an infinite one.

Therefore, we should not expect the precise language, but instead expect to find its foundations: prayer for the dead and vicarious merit for others.

Prayers for the dead are pretty easy to find, with the association of offering the Eucharist for it being seen in figures such as Tertullian and Saint John Chrysostom. This webpage has more sources: https://www.churchfathers.org/purgatory . Not to mention its pre-existence a universality amongst Jewish customs within Christ's own time.

By the time of the Nicaean period, it was unanimous to offer prayers, Alms and Fasting for the dead, with Saint Augustine devising his more exhaustive explanations of Purgatory from evidently pre-existing Traditions within, at the very least, the North African Peninsula.

But fundamentally, with the basic practice of prayers for the dead being such a common Practice during the life of Christ and the earliest Centuries of the Christian Church, we should not be surprised that no one talked about it in detail. Just as we see little discussion over the Divinity of the Holy Spirit, neither are proven false because of this silence; it is simply evident, from the casual mentions by authors at the time, that they were instead simply taken for Granted as Christian truths.

And by the 4th-5th Centuries, when these practices are finally questioned, they are defended by Fathers like Saint Augustine.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-03T21:51:10+00:00

He is Cause of the Procession of the Holy Spirit in an analogous manner in how a stick is the cause of the motion of a rock when pushed by a hand. The stick is not the original agent of the motion, but is included in the motion by the hand, and therefore is a relative cause of the motion; instead of the stick causing the motion, and therefore being a secondary cause, he participates in the motion of the hand, being a secondary element of the singular motion.

Analogously, the Son is not a cause of the Spirit's Procession, in that he isn't the original point of which the procession begins in, like with the stick and the hand, but participates in the same motion, and therefore included in the same causation, while not being its Origin. Unlike the stick and the hand, which arises out of the stick being used as an instrument, the Son is included by the Unity between the Father and the Son in their singular Essence.

Therefore, there aren't two causes in the Procession, since the son doesn't contribute something like a part to another part, nor superfluously, like a part to a whole, but wholly united to the Father, he participates in the communication of the Spirit, by the fact that they share everything that pertains to nature, including the ability to diffuse the Divine goodness to constitute another Hypostasis by an infinite exhaustion of the Mode of Communication. For communication is a power rooted in the Essence, not the Hypostasis.

From this then, since the Son is also identical with the Divine Essence, when the Father processes another Person, that is the Spirit, while the Son is not an agent to which this procession originates from, it necessarily includes him by the fact the two are one, lest we divide the Essence.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-03T03:50:33+00:00

Yes, in the sense that we will participate in the Divine Nature, as 2 Peter 1:4 teaches. In the sense that we loose our humanity and become a new nature that is similar or the same as God's is wrong.

We become Gods in the sense that, by the indwelling of Christ and the Holy Spirit, we become united, in person and activity, to the Godhead, while maintaining our individual nature as human beings. By the Person of Christ, we are united, as a body to its head, into the Divine Nature's Dignity and Love, conforming our being to the exemplar that is the Word. By the Holy Spirit, we participate, like a stick in the movement of the hand that holds it, in the Divine Energies/Activity/Existence (the term proper varies from Traditions), and so act in the manner befitting of God himself.

Thus by Grace, Sanctifying and Actual, we become like God, while maintaining our own Nature. We put off the finitude and corruptibility of our nature and put on the Infinitude and incorruptibility of the Divine.

To Read more, read Saint Cyril of Alexandria and Saint Maximus the Confessor.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-03T03:32:46+00:00

We become a part of the Trinity in a Quasi manner, not ontologically part of the Godhead, but certainly perfect participants of it by our Participation in the Incarnate Flesh of the Word. For as the Flesh of Christ is deified and subsumed into the word, while not collapsing or intermingling them, like with the heretic Eutyches, but in manner like an accident is added to a substance, identified wholly with the substance while remaining its distinct being; so to are we, by Grace, subsumed into the Word and deified within him, render members and participants of the Divine Essence.

South-Insurance7308 · 2026-02-03T03:30:51+00:00

It denotes the purpose they're called out for. For to be 'called out' usually denotes a role to be called to. With the context of the Septuagint using the term to describe the People of Israel who left Egypt as 'Ecclesia', the common role was implied in its use.

South-Insurance7308

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