If Christ is our Paschal Lamb ... then ...
...Christians of my acquaintance are either not aware of, or manage to belittle or dismiss, that fact, as you are doing here.
The Church administers Jesus' sacrifice, as it has the right to do, as said by Jesus Himself. The 'whatever manmade carte blanche' I assume is you being provocative ... there's really more to the process than you might suppose.
Not correct. The Church has taken that upon itself with no right to do so. Burn me at the stake, my answer will not change.
Really, it's not. Once Christ established Himself as our Paschal Lamb, there logically follows ...
not anything that even remotely resembles Greek logic
it is bait and switch
Quite. Some terribly things have been done in His name.
Yeppir....and guess who was behind a great many of those occurrences?
The change was to the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon, not determined by pagan practice.
So it just happened to line up with a Pagan Spring Fertility Festival? And we just so happen to still chase Easter bunnies and hot crossed buns? It's all a coincidence...? I don't buy it.
Nope. Don't think so ... rather it is because Christ is our Pasch, as you point out, ergo ...
Word salad sidestep...since the Catholic Church does not recognize Jesus as the *Paschal* Lamb, it is disingenuous to lay claim now when the Church refuses to even recognize the Holy Day, let alone significance thereof! (Or are you disagreeing that the shift from Passover to Easter was specifically on the docket at Nicea? which is easy enough to prove)
If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with b.s....and if that don't work, riddle 'em with bullets. That has been the standard operating methodology of the Church since at least the time of Justinian, figuratively speaking. This is what I'm referring to as the 800 pound gorilla.
Until Martin Luthur, any dissent was violently put down. The only put down that failed was against the Muslims during the Crusades, all others up until Martin Luthur were politically expedient challenges that the Church viewed as threatening their stranglehold on power. The only reason you and I are even able to have this conversation is because of the Protestant Reformation, by which time the history of the Church from Constantine on had been whitewashed and mostly hidden from public consumption. I stand by my assertion that Christians remain ignorant of the history of their faith, and frankly I see you attempting to encourage that ignorance though to your credit (and I've credited you before) you are more willing than virtually all Catholics of my acquaintance to even consider the subject.
Martin Luthur only knew the Catholic Church, it was all he knew but he knew it better than most in his day. He was appalled, discouraged, disheartened and had his world turned upside down to visit the Vatican and to see firsthand what the Church had become versus what he believed it was supposed to be. Indulgences were the tip of the iceberg, the rot went to the core. The rot came from all of the Synods and Councils and political scheming behind the scenes that were not based on scripture in any more than the most oblique manner (as you are doing above)...and the common laity had no way to know any different, the teaching there was was in Latin (a foreign language to all but Italians). The poor went to Church, dropped their coins in the box, got a pat on the back from the Vicar and sent on their way believing they had done what was required of them before G!d because that is what they were told to do by those who should have known better.
Luthur is not without fault, but on a scale his faults were miniscule compared to those done in the name of the Church.
I was in Romans 4 this morning and believe I was led there.
