It is clear to me that Cork left because he got burned...Im not sure what was the cause but I highly suspect that some overboard liberalism at some local Catholic parishes made him disgusted with the faith. That is one of the leading causes of "solid" Catholics going overboard. I believe the Church is now just starting to recover from the cultural revolution storm of the last two generations. Those of us who realize we must ride out eh storm are the Christians Jesus talks about who must persevere in the midst of godlessness, nobody said it would be easy.
The only reason why he went SDA was because his family is SDA, that is it. Sadly from the way he described his family they are Fundamentalists of the SDA variety, good intentions but cant think beyond "Catholic = Whore of Babylon. Case closed".
I am willing to bet in a few years he will come to his senses and realize that SDA doesnt really provide the answers where as Catholicism has its roots in critical thinking and spirituality. It is a waiting game right now.
It is one of the real problems potential converts face. They see how Catholic theology appeals to them but the Catholic church does not. The bishops and priests can be good or bad. They are very likely to think very differently than you do. You throw in a sex scandal or just some complaining Catholics and you can wonder if you have made a mistake. When you think about how different Catholic churches are from the churches converts come from it is truly amazing we don't see more of them go back. It is hard but for most true doctrine and true sacraments are enough to cover many issues.
Josh S. wrote:
----------------
Dave, Bill Cork wouldn't be the first Protestant I've read who cited non-fundamental reasons for going to Rome. A number of liberal Lutherans have jumped ship citing peripheral issues like "JDDJ resolved the justification crisis" or "they have clear moral direction." Wasn't he baptized already as an SDA? If he was, then he didn't get re-baptized as a Catholic.
Also, Bill's reasons are both moral and theological. In his judgment, the present and past behavior and teaching of the Magisterium completely overthrows their demand for absolute trust and obedience. I would tend to agree.
----------------------------
Of course you agree that the Catholic Church isn't worthy of your allegiance. So what? I think that could already be rather easily surmised! I'm calling for all Christians (not just Catholics) to follow the sensible injunctions of 1 Peter 3:15 and similar passages: to understand why they believe and to support faith with reasonableness, and not deliberately separate the two, which causes nothing but problems, and is grossly unbiblical.
You give as a reason for Catholic conversion:
"they have clear moral direction."
There is a valid, legitimate reasoning that can be done on this score. It was a factor in my own conversion. I examined what the early Church (and even early Protestants) taught about contraception in particular. I discovered that it had always been considered a grave sin till 1930.
Since I already accepted (in faith, but with historical data that could be brought to bear) the notion that God guides the Christian Church (however one construes it) in moral matters as well as theological, I thought it was quite implausible for the entirety of Christianity to get such a teaching dead wrong, and then a light went on in 1930 and Christians figured out that it was fine and dandy.
If the idea is to find a Church that continues to (officially) teach what the early Church taught, so that it can be rationally regarded as a continuation of the early Church, then that is an objective argument that can be presented by recourse to historical facts. One can either assert it or contend with it. But there is something objective, something to grab onto that can be disputed.
That makes perfect sense. But to just wake up one morning and say, "man, I'm in this wicked Church that had Jew-hating Church Fathers 1600 years ago [never mind Pope Pius XII's and the Catholic Church's saving of as many as 800,000 Jews in WWII], and conducted the Crusades, and so I hafta get out. What am I doing here?" -- won't do at all. That's fallacious because it assumes that other groups have not had plenty of sin in their circles too, which is sheer nonsense.
As Solzhenitsyn said, "the line between good and evil runs through every human heart." Evil ultimately comes from individuals, not institutions. Even if the latter is a bad thing (e.g., Naziism or Communism) it is because human beings made it that way. So if we are all sinners, it makes sense to see what a group teaches officially, and to not be surprised that there is plenty of sin [among individuals] in the history of any long-running institution.
The "sin argument" really doesn't prove very much at all. If you want total pacifism and no record of persecution of other Christians or religions, then about all you can do is go Mennonite or Amish or Quaker. They have no history of that.
Adventists, of course, haven't been around long enough (sine the 1840s) or had enough power or influence to even have the temptation to persecute anyone else. But they are strongly anti-Catholic, and that is no small scandal, either.
Thanks, Dave, for saying what I've been thinking about the Cork situation for the past few weeks.
I hadn't been following it at all (not in the slightest), but am not surprised at what I found out, reading the sermon. This kind of non-rational and irrational thinking in theology is very common. It's one of the reasons I am so passionately committed to doing apologetics.
The "sin argument" really doesn't prove very much at all.
Very true, especially since, even in the “pure” church of the apostles, great sin could be found:
“It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur EVEN AMONG THE PAGANS.” 1 Corinthians 5:1
http://www.biblestudytools.net/O...w=1&
showtools=1
Adventists, of course, haven't been around long enough (sine the 1840s)
Could be Augustine’s words have a certain application here (my emphasis):
“Now the carnal ones in the Church - the source of heresies and schisms – did indeed receive from the gospel the opportunity to be born, but the carnal error in which they were conceived and which they carry with them does not go back to the ancient truth…” -- Commentary on Galatians
http://books.google.com/books?id...rmfG65Zy4csgL-
A
I was trying to locate some stuff written by William Cork, to get more insight on his move. I found this:
"A Pilgrim's Progress", chapter one in Lynn Nordhagen's book, When Only One Converts (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2001).
http://web.archive.org/web/
20030...ms_progress.htm
I think a few portions are quite illuminating:
================
This decision provided me with the opportunity to face the other issue I had been trying to avoid, Hamlet-like, for so long. I told Joy that I was going to write a letter to Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston; her only response was, "I always knew it would come to this." I visited Law in early April 1992, and then told my Lutheran bishop, Bob Isaksen. I began to apply for jobs in Catholic settings; Cardinal Law put me in touch with friends of his in the business world. I wanted to wait until my family was taken care of until I did anything drastic; but as time went by, it became clear that I would just need to "jump."
[ recounts being unemployed for 18 months, looking for some Catholic-related job ]
Yet God was faithful. Whenever it seemed as if the darkness would envelop us completely, a ray of light would shine. My pastor would pay bills that I was unable to pay. Another priest friend would send me checks of $200 or $500. At Easter, I received a card from Cardinal Law. He told me he wished he could be doing more for us. He added, in a footnote, that there was a gift in the card, a token of his care; "Consider it a little Easter egg." It was a check for $900. He also arranged for me to receive a $600-a-month stipend from a special fund that the archdiocese of New York had set up for clergy converts.
In July 1994, thanks to a chance conversation between my daughter�s godfather and a priest in another diocese, I finally got a full-time position as a parish director of religious education. I was responsible for religion classes for kids of all ages, for sacramental preparation, and for classes for adults. Over the next few months, I found myself in the middle of a parish conflict that was unlike anything we had experienced in any other setting. I began to think that I had made a stupid mistake for putting my family in a situation where this could happen. I decided to investigate the possibility of a return to Lutheranism.
. . . The committee eventually decided to place me in a kind of second internship to feel me out a little further. Now was the time that I would have to make a decision: would I stay in the Catholic Church, or, now that the door was open, would I return to my previous life? Would going back be easier for my family, or would it be merely running from some troubles in my present situation? With these questions in mind, I met with the pastor they wanted to put me with and discovered that he was exactly the kind of pastor I had been, with the same questions and concerns that had sent me to Rome in the first place.
I
(cont.)
. . . needed time to pray, and the next weekend I went on a retreat. I had written to some Catholic friends, and some had sent letters of counsel. On the long drive to the retreat center, I reviewed all of this advice, and the history of the previous couple of years. About halfway there, it struck me that I was on the verge of making a very stupid decision. I had stayed faithful to Christ and his Church through eighteen months of unemployment, and now, after a bad experience in one parish I was ready to throw the towel in and go back. I thought of several Scriptures that touch on the theme of looking back; I realized that whatever God was calling me to, it was not a return to the Lutheran ministry. I thought to myself, "There is no going back. Christ never calls us backward; he only calls us forward."
. . . (Cardinal Law once said, "Joy must be a saint to put up with you!"). . . .
============================
Cardinal Law . . . I don't think I need to elaborate further upon the issues this raises . . .
"I thought of several Scriptures that touch on the theme of looking back; I realized that whatever God was calling me to, it was not a return to the Lutheran ministry. I thought to myself, 'There is no going back. Christ never calls us backward; he only calls us forward.'"
Well, the way that strikes me is that Bill doesn't seem to have converted to Catholicism because he actually believed the Catholic faith is true. If Catholicism is true, OF COURSE God couldn't have been calling him to leave truth and return to error. But all he comes up with here is an pious-sounding aphorism about God never calling you to go backward, only forward?
So, he becomes a Catholic without really being convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith . . . and now he returns to the SDA sect even though he knows full well that SDAism is a crock.
Yeah, it's postmodern mush and non-rational subjectivism alright . . .
I'll tell you why I think he left. He wanted to become a priest and applied for it. My guess is when they (whoever makes this decision) found out that his wife was SDA, that pretty much put the kibosh on that plan, so he chose his wife. The guy is a pretty nice guy, but also a bit of a "nut."
+J.M.J+
>>>It is clear to me that Cork left because he got burned...Im not sure what was the cause but I highly suspect that some overboard liberalism at some local Catholic parishes made him disgusted with the faith. That is one of the leading causes of "solid" Catholics going overboard.
It often is, but this case seems different. I read Bill's blog fairly frequently before he left the Church. Toward the end, he cited the claims of certain Catholic traditionalists that the Church's recent teachings on the death penalty, religious liberty and limbo allegedly contradict past authoritative Magisterial teaching on those subjects. From that he concluded that the Magisterium had clearly contradicted itself in matters of doctrine, so the Church's teaching authority must therefore be false. All he could do then, he said, was "fall back on the infallible word of God" (and apparently go rejoin a denom which has been misinterpreting the infallible word of God since it began in 1844, but I digress....).
So in this case at least, traditionalism rather than liberalism apparently played a part in his downfall. Now, this is quite ironic considering Bill never liked traditionalism before, so many of us were dumbfounded when he suddenly took someone like Thomas Drolesky as an unimpeachable authority on Catholic doctrine. Perhaps that was an example of an "Any stick to beat the Church will do" approach, though; Bill was probably just looking for an excuse to leave anyway.
In Jesu et Maria,
+J.M.J+
>>>Sadly from the way he described his family they are Fundamentalists of the SDA variety, good intentions but cant think beyond "Catholic = Whore of Babylon. Case closed".
Are you sure about that? Shortly after his return to SDA, his mother, father and brother started visiting some of the Catholic blogs in order to defend Bill's decision. Based on their comments, they apparently believe that it doesn't matter what religion you belong to as long as you believe in Jesus. Bill's brother Jim is also Catholic, so the family's attitude has long been one of tolerance, apparently; they don't discuss religious differences.
Then there was his interest in ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue, as well as his belief that Christians should not deliberately Jews as a group for proselyzation (he was a big supporter of that disasterous "Reflections in Covenant" document from the USCCB - practically considering it authoritative Church teaching for a while!). I was basically had the impression that Bill has been veritably marinating in a tremendous vat of relativism for a long time.
In Jesu et Maria,
The second paragraph of the last post refers to Bill, not his brother Jim. Sorry for the unclear pronouns - and the extraneous "was" in the last sentence! 
Anyway, if he was such a relativist then it is easy to see why he left. If he thought that any Christian communion is a-okay, he probably never had a truly compelling reason to stay Catholic. MHO, of course.
In Jesu et Maria,
Rosemarie,
It looks like you have a better understanding of what occurred. My comments were mostly speculation.
That part about his SDA parents not caring what denomination someone belongs to as long as it believes in Jesus is kind of hard for me believe. SDAs are very proud of their faith, they cant help but look down on "Sunday Worshipers" as deceived. The article I read from Cork had him saying how his SDA parents and relatives had been praying so long that he return to the SDA church. If I remember correctly he even made a few comments in that article about how Saturday is the true day of worship.
+J.M.J+
What you say about SDA's is generally true, and I remember him writing that about his parents. However, check out what is little brother, Jason, had to say on Mark Shea's blog:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...1327594/
#876441
and his mother Willie on the same blog:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...1327594/
#876473
Another from Jason at his brother Jim's blog:
http://www.jessnjim.net/wordpres...en#comment-
1219
And one from their Dad:
http://www.jessnjim.net/wordpres...en#comment-
1229
Not exactly your typical "The Papacy is the Beast of Revelation 13 and Sunday worship the mark of the Beast!" SDA rhetoric. Just a lot of fluff about spiritual journeys and finding Christ everywhere and how denominations don't matter at all.
In Jesu et Maria,
Wow, that is very interesting.
Comments by Jason such as:"I look forward to the day when we can tear down these denominational walls and worship our Lord and Savior for eternity in the New Jerusalem"
are very stunning considering the official teachings of their church regarding Sunday worship.
All I can think of is that this is one more example of Protestantism losing steam and unknowingly going into a sort of relativism where "it doesnt matter what you believe as long as you believe in Jesus". The good news about this though is that now people should be more open to seeing what the Catholic Church really teaches instead of being fed misinformation by second hand sources.
Thanks for your information.
As far as I can tell he became SDA simply because his parents were SDA, there doesnt appear to be a solid doctrinal case for doing so. And as I said above, I would not be surprised to find out he returns to the Catholic Church down the road.
Whatever the reason was, it wasn't based (far as we can tell from his report) on solid theological analysis, by any stretch of the imagination. That is my main concern; not his motivations or whether he did this for emotional or familial reasons or to get a pastorate, etc. (as people have speculated on other blogs; sometimes, I think, uncharitably and over the top).
That's none of our business in the end, but when he makes public claims as a public person, that have no basis, and adopts another view without serious discernible rationale, then that is open to scrutiny because he has made it so.
If the man hadn't been blogging, etc., we wouldn't know him from Adam and so we wouldn't be discussing him. But as soon as he posts a conversion account, it is fair game to critique it and defend the Catholic viewpoint, especially given how groundless his contra-Catholic remarks have been.
"Perhaps that was an example of an 'Any stick to beat the Church will do' approach, though; Bill was probably just looking for an excuse to leave anyway."
Yeah, I think that's what it was.
One impression I've gotten from reading his weblog and his accounts of his returning to SDAism is that he became a Catholic when he thouht the Church had adopted positions he agreed with and had abandoned positions he disagreed with -- but when he found out that some of those positions weren't actually abandoned or rejected, but were merely out of favor (or in fact were entirely acceptable positions a Catholic could hold), then he realised that the Church had not after all decided to agree with him . . . . and, coupled with any number of other non-rational factors, that led to him deciding to seek out something warm and familiar.
Interesting. Private judgment rears its ugly head again.
Bill was grasping at straws. Any 1 or 2 year Catholic apologists could have taken down his examples of Church "fallibility". Other arguments he used were just special pleading (Ex: I can't prove or disprove the existance of Juan Diego therefore I'm just going to say he didn't exist thus the Church's canonization of him was fallible.) Its just laughable.
But the thing is its not an intellectual problem. He's just shut down discussion of the matter. He doesn't want to hear convincing arguments that the Catholic Church is true, he just wants to be SDA. God be merciful to him because what Bill is doing is endangering his soul!
Hmmm. Interesting discussion. When I dared to suggest that people might want to figure out *why* Bill Cork left--because it was all so puzzling and, for some folks, disturbing and unsettling--Mark Shea jumped all over me, accused me of "running diagnostics" on Cork's soul (I had not said one word about his soul), and even wrote me privately to read me the riot act. And I wasn't even commenting on the Cork case myself--simply defending other people's right to do so.
Thank God this blog is more rational, more respectful toward comboxers--and more respectful of the First Amendment.
Diane
We try, Diane! It's always a pleasure to have you, my friend. And we can surely use more women (in that vein, welcome to Rosemarie too!).
I think it is all fair game as long as we don't get too personal. I've tried to restrict my analyses to purely theological rationales (or lack thereof). Like I said, if Bill hadn't had a blog, and had not been very vocal and visible, then no one would know him from Adam and wouldn't be discussing his conversion. But being a public figure changes all that.
BTW, good job Dave; you said in your post what needed to be said.
There was a time I thought that maybe Bill made a distinction between the science of apologetics & the apologetics culture of the past 10-15 years which he has critiqued. I accepted some of his criticisms of the latter, like when Sungenis went off the rails. But I guess he must have fuzzied that into a contempt for the very science of apologetics itself.
Plus I remember way, way back then his arguments that "Reflections in Covenant" was almost Magisterial, and the arguments were just plain weird. He could do excellent documentation work on Sungenis' plagiarism so he obviously has scholarly abilities. In this area, though, he has shut down discussion. Plus he's always run his blog like a bit of a fascist; he pre-approves every post & only allows the posts he wants to appear.
BTW, in hindsight I don't care if he ran his own blog that way, I just wish he were still in the Church. He can run his blog as he wants.
I thought that maybe Bill made a distinction between the science of apologetics & the apologetics culture of the past 10-15 years which he has critiqued. . . . But I guess he must have fuzzied that into a contempt for the very science of apologetics itself.
It's very fashionable to believe this way. I see it all the time. Throw the baby out with the bathwater. People see some loudmouth who claims to be an "apologist" saying this and that and maybe getting some things wrong, or being uncharitable, and then they generalize to all apologists and apologetics itself, and throw out the biblically mandated thing.
Either/or; one extreme to the other. This seems to be a strong tendency of human nature and "thinking".
"Plus he's always run his blog like a bit of a fascist; he pre-approves every post & only allows the posts he wants to appear."
Even more, he edits the posts he wants to appear, selecting which passages he will let in and which he won't.
That's one step away from rewriting the posts altogether.
Well, Bill has been giving his reasons for leaving Catholicism, albeit a bit late. He's taken his recent posts detailing his intellectual reasons for leaving the Barque of Peter and placed them at http://wquercus.com/faith/catholic.htm
casino in las new vegas casino in las new vegas casino in las new vegas. clonazepam 0.5 mg clonazepam 0.5 mg clonazepam 0.5 mg.
Commenting by HaloScan
