Comments on: The Christian Perspective on Marriage — The Final Part: Sex, Children and a Happy Marriage

By: Sicarii

Sicarii — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 15:07:51 +0000

You are right, William. I think I might have missed out that big part pretty bad. Perhaps a follow-up should be in order, I’ll take note and do a piece on it some time soon.
There’s already a backlog of topics I’ve got written down on file as it is, lol!

By: William James Walton

William James Walton — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:40:08 +0000

I find it very interesting that, even though you mention a few scriptures in reference to the woman’s role in a marriage, the preponderance of your remarks seem to be geared toward husbands. I am not arguing against what has been said, for it is all true; but I do think that it is rather unbalanced. While the New Testament seems to divide itself equally between discussion of the respective roles of husbands and wives (i.e. Ephesians 5:22-33, Colossians 3:18-19, I Peter 3:1-7, in which the first gives more direction to husbands, and the last gives more directions to wives), the Old Testament speaks more to how wives are to behave - Proverbs alone contrasts the differences between virtuous wives and foolish ones, see Prov. 14:1 and the last part of Prov. 31 for examples). Focusing solely on one half of the marriage without equally addressing the other half may have/has had serious ramifications….

By: Sicarii

Sicarii — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 00:24:15 +0000

I believe that Christ was pointing to Himself as the Rock upon which the Church will be built. It’s most funny that Christ would choose a human being to build the Church upon, because Christ is the Cornerstone and the Rock.

Is it not Christ the Rock that smashes the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream?

I think we have many parallels in life — like you, my wife comes from a Roman Catholic family, but the difference ends there as I insisted on Protestant teachings.

There are many things I disagree with when it comes to Roman Catholic teachings which begets a few posts to explain.

By: Norski

Norski — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 19:03:43 +0000

There’s an interesting article, “Matthew Chapter 16, Verse 18: The Primacy of Peter” at ( http://www.catholicapologetics.org/ap050200.htm )

By: Norski

Norski — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 19:01:44 +0000

Short (!) version:

About a quarter of a century ago, my wife-to-be and I were going through the process of preparing for marriage. She was Catholic, and I was Protestant, so there were a few extra details to work out.

One of them was that I had to agree that the children would be raised with Catholic beliefs. Reasonable enough, but before agreeing, I had to know what those “Catholic beliefs” were.

I discovered that much of what I thought I knew about the Catholic Church was either about four centuries out of date, or flat-out wrong.

The teachings of the Catholic Church were either the same as what I had been brought up with, or seemed to make more sense and/or be more specific.

That wasn’t too surprising: I already knew that the Catholic Church had a continuous existence, going back to Jesus of Nazareth’s disciple Peter.

Then there was the matter of birth control. I read Humanae Vitae (in translation, of course) cover-to-cover, and some parts more often. I was looking for a logical flaw, or some part that had been mis-interpreted by the regional church: something, anything, to get around the rules.

I couldn’t find a thing. The only way to reject the reasoning behind the Church’s ban on artificial contraceptives was to first reject some basic concepts about the nature of reality.

I wasn’t willing to do that. I think that: reality is real; that causality exists; that free will exists; and that a self-aware, all-knowing, all-powerful, loving God exists. I’m not likely to discard any of those beliefs.

So I resigned myself to accept that which I could not defeat.

After many years of living like this, nominally Protestant but learning more and more about the Catholic Church.

I decided that my wife followed a faith which had been maintained for about two millennia by an organization which had been founded, not by Peter, but by the person who gave Peter the commission to build that church. (Matthew 16:18 , the ‘on this rock’ verse)

Not everyone thinks this way, but this is the way I saw it:

* Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, commissioned Simon to build His church, re-naming him Peter in the process (I know - that’s the English version of the name).

* Peter passed this commission on to his successor, and so on, until Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger received the commission and became Pope Benedict XVI. >>The Catholic Pope gets his authority from a chain of succession which leads all the way back to the Son of God, Second Person of the Trinity, Co-Creator of the world, and savior of all humankind.>It should have collapsed long ago. It hasn’t. Any human institution would have. Something’s holding it up.