Illuminator
Well-Known Member
Definition of institution
1a: an established organization or corporation (such as a bank or university) especially of a public character financial institutions
b: a facility or establishment in which people (such as the sick or needy) live and receive care typically in a confined setting and often without individual consent… the testator disinherited her siblings over their efforts to have her committed to a mental institution in the wake of several suicide attempts.— William M. McGovern Jr.
c: a significant practice, relationship, or organization in a society or culture the institution of marriage also : something or someone firmly associated with a place or thing she has become an institution in the theater
2: an act of instituting : ESTABLISHMENT
Institution | Definition of Institution by Merriam-Webster (merriam-webster.com)
Matt. 16:18; 18:18 – Jesus uses the word “ecclesia” only twice in the New Testament Scriptures, which demonstrates that Jesus intended a visible, unified, hierarchical, and authoritative Church.
Acts 20:17,28 – Paul refers to both the elders or priests (“presbyteroi”) and the bishops (“episkopoi”) of the Church. Both are ordained leaders within the hierarchical structure of the Church.
1 Cor. 12:28 – God Himself appoints the various positions of authority within the Church. As a loving Father, God gives His children the freedom and authority to act with charity and justice to bring about His work of salvation.
Eph. 4:11 – the Church is hierarchical and includes apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers, all charged to build up the Church. The Church is not an invisible entity with an invisible foundation.
All this is in harmony with "institution" as defined as an English word. You have a different language, making discussion impossible.
Sheer nonsense. Why do you think Paul went to see Peter, James and John in the first place? TO SEE IF HIS GOSPEL WAS TRUE, LEST HE PREACH IN VAIN. Galatians 2:2. Furthermore, Paul was always subject to the Church.
It is incorrect to regard St. Paul as some kind of spiritual “lone ranger,” on his own with no particular ecclesiastical allegiance, since he was commissioned by Jesus Himself as an Apostle.
- In his very conversion experience, Jesus informed Paul that he would be told what to do (Acts 9:6; cf. 9:17). Who told Paul what to do? Did Jesus appear to Paul a second time to tell him what to do? No. He was told what to do by Ananias, a representative of the Church divinely chosen by Jesus Himself to tell Paul what to do. Acts 9:17.
- He went to see St. Peter in Jerusalem for fifteen days in order to be confirmed in his calling (Galatians 1:18), and fourteen years later was commissioned by Peter, James, and John (Galatians 2:1-2, 9).
- He was also sent out by the Church at Antioch (Acts 13:1-4), which was in contact with the Church at Jerusalem (Acts 11:19-27).
- Later on, Paul reported back to Antioch (Acts 14:26-28). Acts 15:2 states: “. . . Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.”
- The next verse refers to Paul and Barnabas “being sent on their way by the church.” Paul did what he was told to do by the Jerusalem Council (where he played no huge role),
- and Paul and Barnabas were sent off, or commissioned by the council (15:22-27), and shared its binding teachings in their missionary journeys: “. . . delivered to them for observance the decisions which had been reached by the apostles and elders who were at Jerusalem” (Acts 16:4).
The attempt to pretend that St. Paul was somehow on his own, disconnected to the institutional Church, has always failed, as unbiblical. Protestant frown upon institutions, but we Catholics rather like the Church that Jesus Christ set up, initially led by St. Peter.*
I challenge you to provide from any Protestant historian written in the last 50 years, any kind of support for this LIE.
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector is a different topic to the discussion of authority.
This suggests that old, and rather anti-Catholic, prejudice - that the old Vulgate Latin Bible was part of a Catholic conspiracy to keep the Bible out of the hands of Christians, a conspiracy finally overcome at the "Reformation".
The Vulgate was so called precisely because it was written in the common tongue of all literate people in western Europe. If one could read at all, one could read Latin; so a Latin Bible, far from restricting medieval readers, made it universally legible.
Secondly a great many local vernacular translations of the Bible were made long before Luther produced his own.
In the fourth century, Ulfilas made a Gothic translation, a bishop of Seville produced an Arabic bible during the Moorish occupation of Spain, and most countries produced manuscripts of large sections of the Bible in their own tongues - in this country beginning with the seventh century Anglo-Saxon of Caedmon. The Norman- French Bible made at the University of Paris was widely used around 1250.
With the invention of printing, vernacular bibles multiplied.
-Of one German version alone, first printed in 1466, 16 editions had been printed before Luther's New Testament appeared in 1522.
-The first French New Testament appeared in 1478, five years before Luther's birth, and the complete French Bible in 1487.
- The Italians had theirs in 1471,
-the Dutch in 1477.
-The Swedes, the Bohemians, Slavs, Russians and Danes all had vernacular Bibles, circulated with full ecclesiastical support.
Whatever was going on in the 16th century, whatever the importance of Luther's own translation, it was not about putting the Bible in the hands of the people. Letter: Bible translations before Luther | The Independent | The Independent
How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization: A Review
It was, after all, in the High Middle Ages that the university came into existence. The university, which developed and matured at the height of Catholic Europe, was a new phenomenon in European history. Nothing like it had existed in ancient Greece or Rome. The institution that we recognize today, with its faculties, courses of study, examinations, and degrees, as well as the familiar distinction between undergraduate and graduate study, comes to us directly from the medieval world. And it is no surprise that the Church should have done so much to foster the nascent university system since, according to historian Lowrie Daly, it was "the only institution in Europe that showed consistent interest in the preservation and cultivation of knowledge."
This would not be possible under "enforcing strict obedience to self-declared authorities". That's Marxism, not Catholicism.
Astonishing Hostility to Higher Education in Early Protestantism
