{"id":12957,"date":"2012-08-28T21:12:26","date_gmt":"2012-08-29T01:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/?p=12957"},"modified":"2012-08-28T21:13:05","modified_gmt":"2012-08-29T01:13:05","slug":"a-heresy-of-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2012\/08\/a-heresy-of-christianity\/","title":{"rendered":"A heresy of Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Ross Douthat via the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncregister.com\/daily-news\/ross-douthat-scores-ryans-catholicism-and-cardinal-dolans-election-year-str?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NCRegisterDailyBlog+National+Catholic+Register#When:2012-08-28\" target=\"_blank\">National Catholic Register<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Romney in particular, is a vindication of my premise. Mormonism is the defining American heresy. I think of it as a heresy of Christianity \u2014 partly to avoid the debate that Evangelicals have about whether Mormons are Christian or not. Instead, you can say, yes, they are Christian, but it\u2019s a heretical form of Christianity that dissents from the scripturally-based consensus of the early Church.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I quite enjoyed his book &#8220;Bad Religion&#8221;, but the debate about Mormons being Christians is certainly not just an Evangelical one.<\/p>\n<table width=\"500\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"597\"><strong><em>Question<\/em><\/strong><strong><em>:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Wheter the baptism conferred by the community \u00ab<em>The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/em>\u00bb, called \u00ab<em>Mormons<\/em>\u00bb in the vernacular, is valid.<strong><em>Response:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<em>Negative<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><em>The Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, in the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect, approved the present Response, decided in the\u00a0<\/em>Sessione Ordinaria<em>\u00a0of this Congregation, and ordered it published.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From the Offices of the\u00a0Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 5 June 2001.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">+ Joseph Cardinal RATZINGER<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><em>Prefect<\/em><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Baptism is the sacrament of Christian initiation. \u00a0Like Islam it is certainly fair to classify Mormonism as a heresy that grew out of the Christian faith and melded other elements. But you might as well classify Muslims as Christians if you are going to have such a loose definition of what constitutes being a Christian. \u00a0The virtues that many Mormons display is commendable, but it does not turn polytheism into Trinitarian Christianity.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ecumenical dialogue is dialogue between Christians. Dialogue with Mormons who represent official LDS teaching is interreligious dialogue.&#8221; \u2013 Fr. Richard John Newhaus<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ross Douthat via the National Catholic Register: Romney in particular, is a vindication of my premise. Mormonism is the defining American heresy. I think of it as a heresy of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12957"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12959,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12957\/revisions\/12959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}