@ Bruce: (Thanks for the coffee thing. That was funny.) I'm sorry the link did not work. Here it is, not surrounded by anything that may bother it:

http://catholicism.org/eens-fathers.html

The fact that direct references to the "Roman Pontiff, Bishop of Rome, Bishop [s/b "Patriarch"] of the West, Western Patriarch" etc. are not found in the references is not a problem(nor are "Pope of the Universal Church," "Metropolitan of the Roman Province," or "Supreme Pontiff," for that matter). Some of these titles for Peter's successor are of more recent coinage. But once one accepts what the early Christians accepted about the identity of the Church, it's a matter of filling in the blanks.

Ad rem to the identity of the early Church, here is something I wrote on the Catholicity of the Council of Nicæa.

http://catholicism.org/the-council-of-nicea-was-catholic.html

Pax vobiscum!

1. The whims of fallen and imperfect men do not bind us under mortal sin and, thus, eternal damnation.

2. None of the verses you give address the Roman pontiff, Petrine See, Bishop of Rome, Bishop of the West, Western Patriarch etc. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus says nothing about these titles or the necessity of subjecting oneself to the person who claims them. I can't get your link to work so I don't know what it says.

I almost spit my coffee on my keyboard when I read that. Modern man is an adolescent in almost every way.

I have no authority to speak of Church dogma. I will say that it is the revealed Truth that has created the dogma, not the dogma that has created Truth. Much as Christ has shown us the way, the Church has sought to lay down some pavement on this path so as not to lose it over time. Do not confuse the Church's path you see with salvation itself, which is up to the will of God. Do not be tricked either that the dogma confines the grace of God. The proof is that many a man has been converted out of his last hour or during his first day, so that God speaks to all in this way. How else could conversion be possible?

Being a Catholic is about living a sacramental life within the Church, not toeing perfectly a logical line, because all men will stumble in that effort. Nor is faith as rigid as an iron rod. Grow not slack in zeal, yet hate what is bad and love what is good.

You should get to know more priests.

At the risk of sounding like an adolescent liberal, let's get down to brass tacks. Are you saying there is no salvation outside the Christian Church, or even outside the Catholic Church? So a gentle Buddhist, observant Jew, pious Muslim, along with my pre-Christian pagan ancestors, all primitive animists, and even Socrates, are all in or going to Hell?

Even if that is official Catholic doctrine, you don't think that maybe, just maybe, such views arose out of contingent historical circumstances, perhaps even as necessary responses to external stresses, but for other than salvationist purposes? I know you probably believe that there is some sort of Divine guidance mysteriously working in the Church at all times, but such a view is rather difficult to prove, and most certainly everything man has learned through logic and science militates against its likelihood. I've known two priests in my life, one a trained philosopher. It is perfectly apparent to me that the courses of their lives (as I suspect with all others) have resulted from mundane and understandable causes.

My purpose is not to deny God, but to deny the notion that He is actively engaged in history, at least in the post-Biblical period. Ockham's "razor" has always defeated claims of divine intervention, even before science, which goes on to disprove them.

If Christians wish to successfully apologize for their Faith, at least among the intelligent, they are going to have to do better than merely assert doctrines based on archaic reasoning, or historically situated and influenced pronouncements. Modern man is a philosophical adult, and requires something more than mystery or faith.

I'm not trying to score points in a "debate." This is a gentlemanly exchange. I'll get to your points:

1. By "Moral Law" I mean the Natural Law. God's revealed law goes beyond this -- e.g., to the obligation to believe in the Trinity and the Incarnation, neither of which are knowable by nature. Human law clearly has the authority to bind man (Scripture is clear on this). Therefore, the minute prescriptions of the Mosaic Law were binding on the Jews, even though there were beyond the Natural Law knowable to all men.

Ecclesiastical law, which is human law of a very high authority, especially has the power to bind. The Sunday obligation, for instance, is a human law over and above the precept of the Decalogue that we keep holy the Lord's Day. For Catholics, it binds under mortal sin. (This law was not instituted until the time of Constantine, by the way.) In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke records the meeting of the Council of Jerusalem. There, certain human laws are enacted which bind Jews and Gentiles alike. Later, Saint Paul would make it clear that this particular human law was no longer strictly binding. Whereas, in earlier times, there was a strict prohibition on eating meats sacrificed to idols, St. Paul makes it merely an obligation in charity to avoid scandalizing pagan converts. (Cf. Acts 15:28-29: "For it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay no further burden upon you than these necessary things: That you abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication; from which things keeping yourselves, you shall do well. Fare ye well." Compare this to 1 Cor. 8:7-13, esp. v. 9). Certainly, the Apostolic human law prohibiting us from eating blood -- something the Jews were very sensitive about -- is no longer binding. (So... my Louisiana blood sausage gives me no qualms of conscience. Deo Gratias!)

2. While it was indeed medieval popes who began to define this doctrine with their highest authority, it was by no means anything new to Christians. It is contained in scripture (Mt. 18:17; Acts 2:47; 1 Tim. 3:15). It was affirmed by the fathers. St. Cyprian of Carthage (+258) is the one who gave us the formula "extra ecclesiam nulla salus" (there is no salvation outside the Church) -- Epistle 73,21. Other Fathers weighed in on the issue, too: http://catholicism.org/eens-fathers.html . Indeed, the horror of schism was based upon this dogma.

God bless.

I had no intention of getting into a theological debate (which as a new Christian and very "green" layman I have little ability to win)with you but I do have a few questions that are on my mind.

Re: #25. I don't understand. How can something that's a mortal sin not be part of the moral law?

Re: #23. The infallible magisterial pronouncements you site, particuarly the latter two, are all from the high middle ages (when we think you went most astray). Why did God take so long to make this point so clear? I suppose you might say that it wasn't in dispute until this time but these statements are several hundred years after the Great Schism. Nothing like this appeared in the great ecumenical creeds. Wouldn't God have foreseen such a huge stumbling block to so many and made it clear in the scriptures or the great councils?

I'm an American patriot, conservative ("paleocon," "traditional conservative," what have you). I love my land and its people. I love them so much, I want them freely and wholeheartedly to embrace the one religion that saves.

The Popes have condemned religious liberalism. (Pio Nono is one.) Popes have also condemned indifferentism (Gregory XVI is one: http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/pope0254d.htm ). Catholics have to accept these as their standards, rather than secular notions of liberty and "fairness" that have been imported into theology.

What I find noticeably absent from most of the liberal excogitations on this issue are (a) God's actual grace (including the doctrine of sufficient grace, which holds that all men are given what they need to be saved), (b) God's special providence, whereby He provides all that is necessary to the elect, (c) God's sovereign right to give an economy of salvation and our consequent duty to accept it from His Church. To divorce God's justice and mercy from his grace and providence -- as well as from the Church He founded and whose teachings He guarantees -- is a practical denial of the Incarnation. The "god" of one who believes this way may as well be the Great Clock-Maker of the Deists.

Pax tecum!

The kind of theological dogmatism (not infrequently sliding into "angels-on-a-head-of-a-pin" sectarianism) often seen here, and sometimes even in Chronicles itself (one of my friends some years back quit his subscription because he got tired of all the "preaching", as he put it, and couldn't discern its relevance to normal, mundane conservative politics and issues), is overwhelmingly rejected (perhaps incorrectly, though I think not) by most Americans, including self-designated conservatives. Indeed, a lot of good Americans really hate those religious types who constantly try to cram their dogma down other people's throats (another friend rejected the 2008 GOP ticket, not because of McCain's witch's brew of warmongering and xenophilia, but because he - unfairly - perceived Sarah Palin as fitting in that category).

I've said in previous posts that real conservatives have only two choices in which to locate or from whence to derive their 'proletariat' (there should be no need to explain that at this late date any serious conservatism must be revolutionary, and not 'conservative', at least in the Burkean mode). We can fight on Religion, or we can fight on Race. Religion, as Sam Francis argued long ago, will get us nowhere. Indeed, we've pretty much exhausted and saturated that option already.

Maybe we should start theorizing the other, untried option.