Calvinists: God gave man free will to reject Him in the Garden of Eden. Undeniable.

Just a few Protestant sects and religious movements that disappeared since the Reformation. There are more. Fifth Monarchists Glasites / Sandemanians Labadists Muggletonians Ranters Buchanites Osgoodites Philadelphian Society Society of the Woman in the Wilderness Ephrata Cloister's original congregation 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝗖𝗵𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗴𝗲. Times the Catholic Church ceased to exist since its founding: 𝟬 Times the Catholic Church ceased to exist since the Reformation: 𝟬 𝗙𝗼𝗼𝘁𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲: 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘀𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲. Schism is a rupture of ecclesiastical communion. Extinction occurs when a religious body ceases to exist as an identifiable, functioning institution. The Catholic Church has suffered major schisms, but it has never ceased to exist. Catholic teaching holds that the Church founded by Christ continues in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him (CCC 816). By contrast, the listed Protestant sects and movements eventually disappeared as distinct organized religious bodies. 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘀𝗺 𝘀𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗲𝗰𝗰𝗹𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗵𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲; 𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗰𝗰𝘂𝗿𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝗰𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗰𝘁, 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆, 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗿 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘀𝗺.

I have to add some points for context: 1. I was 300m from the blast that day in a classroom during my TaNaCh finals, don't let anyone lie to you, you can never forget the smell of burnd human blood. 2. The younger me probably 10 years earlier had Gazans in my home for dinners, had Gazans at my grandma's for Passover Seder night, I was in Gaza twice for a weddings and several other times for shopping, a restaurant, beach day with great falafel, I was playing soccer with 3 Muslim teammates from J&S and we had team events regularly over their Houses, I had a favorite ice cream place and favorite shop owner in Hebron. No checkpoint, no borders, no terror. 3. Line 5 terror attack took place in 1994, that was only one year after first Oslo accord that was all about the holy two state solution, Oslo agreement ended the first intifada that started at 1987 in 1993, it wasn't part of the first intifada. This horrific event wasn't part of the second intifada either, that one started at 2000 after camp David failed. It was in the in-between hudna (Islamic ceasefire) period to accommodate... Peace talks in Oslo. This is what Palestinian concept of peace looks like.

God was the very first Father of a Bride.

Book: Genesis, by Mary Healy. A Commentary

The Garden of Eden Location. The Garden of Eden’s location remains uncertain. Some scholars place it in southern Mesopotamia, others near the Persian Gulf, while others favor the mountainous highlands of eastern Turkey and Armenia. The mountain theory has biblical support. Genesis 2:10–14 describes a river flowing from Eden and dividing into four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates, whose headwaters lie in the northern mountains. Significantly, Ezekiel 28:13–14 associates Eden with the holy mountain of God. This makes a mountainous Eden a plausible interpretation, though its precise location remains unknown.

The Quiet Man Who Taught Me About Humility | National Catholic Register ncregister.com/commentaries/…

Notre Dame Law Takes a Wrong Turn on the Ten Commandments | National Catholic Register ncregister.com/commentaries/…

Protestantism is a 500-year-old tradition claiming to be the original form of a 2,000-year-old faith.

From Today's Gospel: Matthew 22:15–21: The Pharisees and the Herodians This passage describes an extraordinary alliance between two groups that ordinarily had competing interests: the Pharisees and the Herodians. In Matthew 22:15–21, they cooperate in an attempt to trap Jesus with a question about paying taxes to Caesar. 1. The unlikely alliance The Pharisees were a Jewish religious movement devoted to observing the Mosaic Law and preserving Jewish religious identity. Many resented Roman domination. The Herodians were associated with the ruling dynasty of Herod, whose political authority depended heavily on Roman support. Ordinarily, these groups had reasons to disagree. Yet opposition to Jesus brought them together. 2. The trap they set for Jesus They asked: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? (Matthew 22:17) The question was carefully designed. - If Jesus said yes, He risked alienating Jews who regarded Roman taxation as a symbol of foreign domination. - If Jesus said no, His enemies could accuse Him of encouraging resistance to Roman authority. Either answer appeared dangerous. 3. Jesus defeats their argument Jesus requested a coin and asked whose image and inscription appeared on it. They answered that it was Caesar's. Jesus then declared: Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. (Matthew 22:21) His answer recognizes legitimate civil obligations while insisting that God's claims are supreme. But there is a deeper theological significance. The coin bears Caesar's image, but humanity bears God's image (Genesis 1:26–27). Caesar may have a legitimate claim to taxes, but God has a claim upon the entire human person. 4. The Marcan parallel The same event appears in Mark 12:13–17, which is the Marcan account of Matthew 22:15–21. One important distinction is that Matthew says the Pharisees sent their disciples together with the Herodians, whereas Mark simply says that some Pharisees and Herodians were sent to Jesus. The central lesson: Jesus refuses to let political authorities claim what belongs exclusively to God. Civil government has legitimate authority, but it is neither absolute nor divine. "Should the demands of civil authority run contrary to the moral law, human dignity, or a properly formed conscience, the faithful also have an obligation to refuse obedience to any law that makes them complicit in sin." (CCC 2242,2419-2423) Didache Bible notes. This distinction is foundational to Catholic teaching on the relationship between political authority, conscience, and our ultimate duty to God.

Through Israel, God prepared the world for the coming of Christ by giving humanity: The covenants and divine promises. The Law, which revealed God's holiness and humanity's need for redemption. The prophets, who announced the coming Messiah. The Temple and sacrifices, which foreshadowed Christ's redemptive sacrifice. The Davidic kingdom, which prefigured Christ's everlasting kingship. The Virgin Mary, through whom the eternal Son assumed human nature. As Jesus Himself declared: "Salvation is from the Jews." (John 4:22, RSV-CE)

𝗚𝗼𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗜𝘀𝗿𝗮𝗲𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗵 through a covenant community possessing divine revelation and appointed authorities who taught and applied it. Christ fulfilled that preparation by establishing His Church upon the apostles, with Peter at their head. Their pastoral ministry continues in the bishops, in communion with Peter’s successor. The Old Testament supplies the precedent and foreshadowing; Christ’s institution and promises establish the New Covenant reality.

Actor Mel Gibson is getting major backlash after saying "removing all Muslim culture from the US is not racism. It is SURVIVAL." Do you agree?

Excerpt from Peter Kreeft book, Forty Rrasons I am Catholic

Happiness: Ancient and Modern Concepts of Happiness My topic today is Jesus’ concept of happiness. And we must begin with the dullest and most necessary preliminary: defining our term. Peter Kreeft Summary: Peter Kreeft’s central message is that Jesus teaches a deeper happiness than comfort, pleasure, wealth, or success. The Beatitudes describe blessedness: a genuinely good life rooted in our relationship with God, even amid suffering. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀? Everyone seeks happiness for its own sake. We want money because we think it will make us happy. We do not want happiness merely because it might make us rich. But what does happiness mean? Kreeft distinguishes two understandings: The typically modern understanding is subjective contentment. If I feel happy, I am happy. The ancient understanding is objective blessedness or human flourishing. Happiness concerns whether my life is truly good, not simply whether I enjoy it. Someone can therefore feel satisfied while living destructively. Conversely, someone can suffer while living courageously and well. 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 Drawing on Plato, Kreeft explains that injustice damages the person committing it. A dishonest man may gain money or power, but those gains do not repair the damage to his soul. Justice benefits us because it orders our inner lives rightly. Just as pleasant food can harm bodily health, pleasurable wrongdoing can harm spiritual health. True happiness therefore involves moral goodness, the condition of the soul, and the direction of an entire life. Feelings and favorable circumstances matter, but they cannot by themselves make a life good. 𝗝𝗲𝘀𝘂𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 Kreeft contrasts our usual ambitions with the Beatitudes: We seek wealth; Jesus blesses the poor in spirit, who recognize their dependence on God. We seek freedom from sorrow; Jesus blesses those who mourn and promises consolation. We seek control; Jesus blesses the meek. We seek satisfaction with ourselves; Jesus blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. We insist on receiving our due; Jesus calls us to mercy. We seek gratification; Jesus calls us to purity of heart. We seek victory over others; Jesus blesses peacemakers. We seek approval; Jesus blesses those persecuted for righteousness. We cling to earthly life; Jesus calls us to follow Him through the cross. These contrasts do not mean that health, pleasure, justice, or material goods are evil. Nor is suffering good simply because it hurts. Jesus challenges us to stop treating earthly advantages as our highest good. 𝗗𝗼 𝘄𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗲 𝗛𝗶𝗺? Kreeft’s sharpest question is whether we actually believe the teachings we admire. We praise the Beatitudes, but do we trust that mercy, humility, purity, and costly faithfulness lead to happiness? His message is that comfort cannot guarantee blessedness, and suffering cannot exclude it. What ultimately matters is becoming the person God calls us to be. The practical question: Am I choosing only what feels good now, or what makes my life truly good before God? Credit: Peter Kreeft, Happiness: Ancient and Modern Concepts of Happiness.

Explain ….Plato’s Republic: that justice, the all-inclusive virtue, is always profitable, that is, ‘happifying’. And injustice never is…. Plato’s point is that 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗽𝘂𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗹 𝗶𝗻 𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿. Here, profitable means beneficial to the person, rather than financially rewarding. And happifying means producing genuine happiness or human flourishing, rather than simply giving us pleasant feelings. In the Republic, Plato describes three parts of the soul: 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻, which seeks truth and judges what is good. 𝗦𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗶𝘁, which expresses courage, ambition, and a sense of honor. 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗲, which desires food, sex, possessions, and other pleasures. A just person has these working together properly: reason governs, spirit supports its judgments, and appetites accept appropriate limits. Justice is called all-inclusive here because it brings the whole person into harmony, with wisdom, courage, and moderation each doing their work. 𝗜𝗻𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗿𝘂𝗽𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘆. Someone who lies or cheats may gain money, power, or pleasure. But in gaining those things unjustly, he allows greed, fear, or ambition to govern him. His outward circumstances may improve while his inner life becomes worse. Think of bodily health: something can taste good while harming your body. Likewise, an unjust act can feel satisfying while harming your character. 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀. He is arguing that justice is always better for the soul, even when it costs us something, and that the rewards of injustice cannot make injustice itself good for us.

Questioner:  I’m getting lost a little bit. Could you define happiness again? [Unclear], is that right? Peter Kreeft:  Some things are hard to define. I can’t define it by genus and specific difference, I don’t think. But what I mean by “happiness” is a state of life in which you are truly blessed, that is, that which is good for you, that which you are designed for, is present and you know that it is present and you feel it present. That would be complete happiness. The most important ingredient is the objective blessedness, and then secondarily, if it’s complete, you also know it and feel it. I think our culture is after the second thing without the first, a kind of psychological masturbation without the real presence of the other.

Questioner:  What is the beginning of the next life? Is it the point that the soul leaves [unclear]? Peter Kreeft:  Baptism. When the new life enters our souls. It used to be the moment of creation. God created Adam and Eve in a state of at least preternatural if not supernatural happiness. They lost that. It has to be restored. We are born into this world deprived of it, that’s what original sin means. So Christ plants the seed only when faith and baptism, which are always connected in scripture, come together. And then it keeps growing, and in the next life it’s transplanted into a heavenly pot. Questioner:  I beg to differ. Peter Kreeft:  Okay.

Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.  It is one of those Gospel sayings that we can hear so often that we risk missing how radical it really is. The Pharisees and Herodians come to Jesus with a question designed to trap Him. Is it lawful to pay the tax to Caesar or not? If Jesus says yes, He risks appearing to approve of Roman occupation. If He says no, He can be accused of rebellion. Either answer seems to put Him in difficulty. But Jesus does not allow Himself to be drawn into their trap. He asks them to look at the coin. Whose image is on it? Caesar’s. Then comes His remarkable answer: Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God. The coin bears Caesar’s image. But we bear the image of God. That changes everything. We can give Caesar a coin. We can fulfil our civic responsibilities. We can be good citizens, contribute to the common good, and take seriously our responsibilities in the society in which we live. But there is something Caesar can never claim: our worship, our conscience, our ultimate allegiance. Those belong to God. And perhaps this is the question the Gospel quietly places before each of us this Sunday: What have I given to God? It is perhaps easy to give God an hour on Sunday. It is much harder to give Him our whole heart. It is easy to say that we believe in God. It is more demanding to allow that belief to shape the way we speak, spend, forgive, work, vote, serve, and treat the person standing before us. Everything we have ultimately comes to us as a gift. Our life, our abilities, our relationships, our time, our possessions, even the opportunities we sometimes take for granted. We are not the absolute owners of these things. We are stewards. And so Jesus' words are not simply about separating religion from politics. They are about putting everything in its proper place. Perhaps this week we might pause and ask ourselves: Where in my life have I allowed something other than God to become too important? Is it money? Success? Politics? Reputation? Comfort? The opinions of others? Even our worries can sometimes occupy a place in our hearts that belongs to God alone. The good news is that He calls us back to Himself because He knows that we become most fully ourselves when we remember whose image we bear.

I would like Protestants to consider this parallel between using our senses to contemplate God through the instruments of icons and crucifixes and using our senses contemplate God through the instrument of the Bible. When we read the Bible, we use our senses to encounter symbols and markings on a page that then bring to our minds images and ideas of Christ, which is to say that we use the ink on the page as an instrument to worship God. To highlight the fallaciousnes of rhetoric like, "You're worshipping statues!", would it not be fair to compare that to the ludicrousness of someone telling an avid Bible-reader, "You're worshipping ink!" Now you might push back and say, "It's not the ink I'm aiming my worship at... It's the words that the ink depict, and even here, it's not the words I'm worshiping per se, but the One who spoke them." Cool then, so you would say that the honor given to the physical artifact passes directly to its prototype... When you honor and love your physical Bible, you're not worshiping a book (I hope). You're worshiping whom the book points to. When you honor and love your physical crucifix, your not worshiping a crucifix. You're worshiping whom the crucifix points to. These sacred physical objects are windows that point us to a reality that is not found in the physical object itself. Whether your eyes gaze at the ink of Scripture or the statue of our Savior, they efficiently lead your intellect and will to make contact with Him and contemplate Him more deeply. If looking at the pages of a Bible is an act of honoring God, then why wouldn't looking at a statue of Him be? Paintings, statutes, and relics communicate and transmit the Gospel. What makes ink on paper your only norm?