And then there’s the Baptist and Evangelical equivalent, the First Church of Borg. I was mixed up in a splinter “fellowship” like that back in the mid-Seventies; it takes its name from the total conformity required of all members.

St. Borg? That was actually a suggestion for the photo caption on the American Papist blog:

So, Headless Unicorn Guy, how did you stumble upon the Sooper Sekrit Plan and should we be sending the albino assassin monks after you? — Martha

Nah, I’ve already got too many hunted crocks after me as-is.

I stumbled upon the Sooper Sekrit Plan by seeing the Order of St Borg in action — “You WILL Become Catholic! Resistance is Futile! We’re Gonna Getcha! We’re Gonna Getcha! We’re Gonna Getcha!” One of my mentors in Catholicism was like that, and it got stale really really FAST.

It results in the same response as Wretched Urgency-driven Witnessing; the determination to get as far away from the Borg (Prot or Cath) as possible.

Trust me, Martha, you’ll hear exactly the same uproar and knock-down-drag-out Jihad if we do find microbes on Mars, Venus, or Europa that are unrelated to Earth life. (Substitute “ET life” for “America” in your two examples and add the corollary to (1) that “It’s all demons in disguise”.)

Just as you’re hearing the uproar over Evolution vs Creation, going strong a century and a half after Darwin. (Substitute “Evolution” for “America” in your two examples and check out IMonk’s “To Be or Not To Be”.)

I’m very sad to hear that. But truly absolutely nothing? Not the Incarnation? The Resurrection?

Then again, this is more Job’s Comforters stuff. And you are a courteous host to put up with the guests rummaging through the cutlery drawer and being sniffy about the quality of the silverware

It’s also a way of looking at Tradition – did Elisha immediately sit down with a pen and parchment and write down an account of what happened, or did he tell the people and it was written down at a later date?

I’m not too worried about “But it wasn’t explicitly written down in Scripture!” On a completely unrelated site, we’re having a discussion about an article written by an atheist regarding an interview done with Jesuit priest and astronomer Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, in which he said that it is not impossible that God created other intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Apparently, according to our friend the atheist, this is all part of a sinister Vatican plot to explain away the E.T.s when eventually the flying saucers land, because it was a big embarrassment to Christianity when America was discovered.

No, I don’t get the logic either, but it would seem that “The discovery of the Americas was hugely embarrassing to Western Christianity. Here was this vast and utterly unexpected landmass, and Scripture said nothing about it! Rationalists made great sport of that failure; in time, the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith undertook to remedy it, weaving America and its native peoples into the Christian salvation narrative. Smith’s handmade faith, now a fast-growing world religion, grew primarily by drawing converts from Catholic and Protestant ranks.”

I don’t think that either you or I would consider that, Holy Scripture having nothing to say about America (nor Ireland, comes it to that), this meant that (1) America did not exist (2) What? America exists? Then Scripture is completely false!

A Catholic way of using the Bible? I don’t at all mind you saying that. I’m a Catholic – yes, that’s how I’ll approach it.

Just as half-a-dozen Protestant denominations can interpret the same verse half-a-dozen different ways

That’s very sad, and frankly not very Catholic. You should not be made to suffer for her decision. It’s her responsibility to be especially charitable and not to endanger the marriage, but I certainly understand how zealous converts can be and sometimes silence is the best you can do. My marriage went the other way from only one believer to two – now we are much closer. My wife was very very careful about religion never pushing and we didn’t talk much about it. Now it’s the main topic. It’s inherantly worse for you because of your profession. Hopefully that’ll change in time, not your profession, but the silence.

Josh
This is like a bad joke:
“The use of the categorical absolute is a dogmatic assertion by definition.

No, it’s not. Dogmas, in the conventional religious use of the term …”

Actually it’s an error of word usage. I’m a Scientist by trade and in that context dogma (lower case) is used in the simple sense of a closed mind. This is a religious venue so it makes sense to use your interpretation of the word, my error.

As for the Pope’s careful writing I was referring to Benedict the XVI, not all Popes throughout time and nothing was intended with respect to the care other authors might take. Here the lack of an apostrophe (Pope’s should have been used instead of Popes) is the cause of the misunderstanding but it certainly makes my point well.

No, it’s not. Dogmas, in the conventional religious use of the term, are fellowship-defining teachings of an ecclesiastical communion. For example, I say it’s impossible for anyone who is well-informed about the physical world to believe the Earth is six thousand years old. However, I would unequivocally deny that anyone who said otherwise should be excommunicated. I don’t think the Church should divide over anything that isn’t in Scripture.

Similarly, it is impossible for anyone well-informed about early church history to assert that John passed the Assumption story to Polycarp, and it from there made its way into wider faith and practice. There’s no basis to assume that, and that includes Church authority, because it’s not something your Magisterium teaches. That’s why most Catholic scholars don’t.

I personally don’t care if someone believes in the Assumption or not. I think there’s no historical evidence for it, and that the available evidence suggests it’s a myth that originated at least a century or two after the apostles all died. However, and this is what makes me different than a pope, is that I’m not going to excommunicate or damn anyone who disagrees with me.

Sola Scriptura has another side–it means we don’t anathematize each other over things with a shaky basis. The main question this Lutheran has is not whether the Assumption happened (there are quite a few Lutherans who believe in it), but whether it’s really worth throwing people out of the fellowship of the Church and into the outer darkness over it when your very own scholars acknowledge there’s no historical record or explicit evidence of this event ever happening.

No wonder the Popes writings are so careful. He knows he how he will be read.

It sounds like you’re suggesting the pope writes more carefully than the Spirit-inspired authors of Scripture. In any case, I think Boniface VIII had no idea how Unam Sanctam would be treated in the 20th century.