Opinion of the American Apostolic Old Catholic Church

[Kingpoleon]

I think the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America is the most interesting of the independent Catholic churches.

[Kingpoleon]

Yes; I've read the Protoevangelium several times and there are good reasons why it's not canonical. That doesn't make Ernest's insistence that the perpetual virginity of Mary ipso facto renders her other-than-human make any more sense to me.

I like the perpetual virginity dogma because it makes Mary and Joseph out to be real weirdos (a sexless marriage would not have been seen as ideal or even as desirable, for anybody involved, in Second Temple Judaism). Real weirdos are, or should be, the demographic core of the Christian religion.

I concur on the first paragraph; it would be like debunking Deepak Chopra and then announcing that quantum theory is wholly invalid.

The “real weirdos” statement is absurdist, and the premise is itself flawed. It is fairly common, in different societies, for very young women to marry elderly men for property purposes. This was actually common in the 20s and 30s for poor families to secure pensions by marrying their daughters off to Civil War veterans - the perpetual virginity does not require some sort of absurdist marriage as you imply.

[Kingpoleon]

Speaking from the Protestant experience, new conditions for reunification have a strange habit of cropping up in microdenominations shortly after the original conditions have been met

Look at the UMC - no one I have met seriously argues that different interpretations of LGBT issues, including ordination, is grounds for division of the church. It is predicated upon intolerance for people who disagree AND a belief that those who disagree with you will not tolerate your own views. Most liberals and conservatives in the laity say of the unitive plan: “Yes, they say this would allow us to have gay pastors, but they won’t really let us./Yes, they say they won’t send us gay pastors, but they really will make us have gay pastors.” In general, grounds for church division are theological nonsense predicated upon intolerance of other viewpoints. In most churches, this might make sense. In the Methodist tradition, it makes none. Our very founders disagreed about predestination, about slavery, literally about a civil war (1776), and stayed united.

[Kingpoleon]

Mary was physically a virgin, with an intact hymen, even after giving birth to Jesus.

Which is as ridiculous as the "like light sliding through glass" phrase arguing Mary had no birth pains.

It is these rather nonsensical thoughts which broadly define miracles as a violation of probability and not possibility, at least in my view.

[Kingpoleon]

     From our perspective, an ecumenical council is a council of the Ecumene, or the Roman Empire. The Seven Councils were all called by the Emperor sitting on the throne of Constantinople. We cannot call an ecumenical council now, not because we are lacking something, for the Church lacks nothing, but because the imperial throne wherein the authority to call the council is vested lies empty.

Interesting. Is it possible to claim that the imperial throne of authority to call the council now lies somewhere else? I’m rather surprised Putin hasn’t tried something of the sort, and very surprised if the Romanov’s didn’t.