Not to spend too much time on this, but it does afford me an opportunity to attempt an address from a Mid Acts perspective:
:nono: It's blatantly 'appeal to authority.' Such will never, can never fly with evident truths. Scripture is very clear and it is very clear 'authority' has it often wrong.
But there isn't any biblical example of the office of bishop falling. When the New Testament ends the institution is in full swing. When the Apostles were all dead, beginning with the era immediately following the Apostolic era, the bishops and their office, instituted by the Apostles, was the authorized pastorate of the One Church /Body of Christ. For it to fall as a whole would i m o constitute the gates of hell prevailing against the Lord's own Church that He built.
I certainly am one of many who dispute papal infallibility (another thread but we need to at least show both where there is agreement (your offering in thread) and where these differ, offered here.
Probably, in a roundabout way, this does show Mid Acts contrast: Sins are completely forgiven at the cross, both past and future sins. What didn't the Lord Jesus Christ die for? (none, His work covers all of them). Then which do I need to 'ask' for forgiveness for?
Most Christian positions have 'grace' divied out 'as you keep coming for forgiveness' rather than 'all at once.' Mid Acts believes 'all at once' thus there is no such thing as a priest. Bishops were 'caretakers' of truth rather than 'dispensers' of, according to Protestants and Mid Acts.
The key idea is the type of consequences, punishments, penalties, or "harvests" (where "we reap [a harvest] what we sow"). There are eternal and temporal. The temporal penalties are self-evident, you touch a hot stove you burn your finger. You reap what you sow. You defraud a man, then he gets angry with you. You bear false witness against a man, and his family tries to burn your house down. You lust, your heart becomes corrupt.
Believing in Christ abolishes the eternal punishments of all our sins, past future and present, it is agreed, we agree, Catholicism agrees.
But temporal penalties and punishments are self-evidently, not always remitted or forgiven. In fact in 1st Corinthians chapter 11, Paul warns the Church that receiving Communion unworthily can be hazardous for your health, and that is another temporal consequence of our sins.
There are no 'lesser' sins.
That's your idea, and Catholicism disagrees with you, and only one of these Christian ideologies /theologies asserts plainly without any further explanation that murder, rape, adultery, bearing false witness under oath, are more serious /weighty /grave, than sins like petty theft, white lies, and getting buzzed on wine, and it's Catholicism and not yours and not MAD's ideas. Both of you need to elaborate to justify your idea because prima facie it strikes everyone but a nihilist as extreme and wrong.
The Catholic church confuses sins against man vs. sins against God.
Perhaps, but Catholicism definitely does not confuse the gravity of mass murder with that of taking a child's milk money.
While a good many Protestants do agree to varying extents with Catholics, Mid Acts, as far as I'm aware, see sin as completely taken care of, for all time. All who call on the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be (are atf) saved.
Offenses against people is different than sins against God (though the latter is of concern to God, we being His). Even the 10 commandments make clear there is offense to God (the first 5) and to man (the second 5).
And all I was saying is that if we pray the Our Father /"Lord's Prayer", we pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," which is forgiving others the temporal penalties, punishments, or consequences that their sins have deservedly earned them from us. MAD teaches against praying this prayer, wrongly. Do you agree with them, that you, that the Body of Christ ought not pray the Our Father? I don't think you do, but I don't think you understand how important it is to MAD that the Church Not pray the Our Father, because it's not for us, it was only for the lost sheep of Israel to pray, that's who the Lord was speaking to /teaching. Not the Church. (Again according to MAD.)
Thus, the church could never offer absolution for sins, but offenses that affected fellowship. The problem is and was, the continued confusion between 'God and man' in the RC.
It's as I said, it protects the purity of the Eucharist, the center of the Mass, and it protects parishioners, from partaking of the bread and the cup unworthily. Breaking communion is objective (when you objectively commit an objectively grave sin) and so your reconciliation to the Body is also objective (it's a sacrament).
