Tom Cabeen

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Posts by Tom Cabeen

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  501

  Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!

  by Dogpatch in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  having problem pasting this...

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  Tom Cabeen

  NHKnorr's nickname before he became President after Rutherford's death was "Brownie". Can you guess why?
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  501

  Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!

  by Dogpatch in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  having problem pasting this...

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  Tom Cabeen

  For Mary,
  
  RE your question: "Does the Governing Body/Writing Dept. send out letters to the "anointed" all over the world, when 'new light' is going to be released, before they put it down in the WT?"
  
  I used to think that same kind of thing. By dad was a believer in all the big Bethel legends about divine direction, etc. It is all a fairy story.
  
  The entire teaching about two classes was a Rutherford fabrication. It is all theory, no practice at all, a total fiction. And it always has been. The suits up there at HQ don't have any idea who the "anointed" are, except the ones they know personally, and perhaps they could guess in the case of JWs who were active prior to 1935. But most of the "born before 1925" set are more concerned with whether or not their Depends need to be changed, than they are with any "new light".
  
  One of the still-major figures up there (I won't say who to protect his tail) believes that the entire 144,000 number (which he still takes literally) was filled in the first century (most credible Christian historians think there were at least a million Christians by the end of the first century, when the Revelation was written), so this guy thinks that there haven't been anything but "earthly class" since then.
  
  One of the big surprises for me at Bethel was to find out that the vast majority of the material in the publications, including study articles in the Watchtower, study books and any other thing that could possibly be construed by JWs as "New Light" is written, published and enforced by "other sheep". The only notable exception besides Ray Franz was Freddie Franz, and you could always detect his stuff a mile away because its style is what one would expect from an author who was given to fantasy fiction.
  
  The other big surprise for we was that hardly any of the people who write the publications believe what is written in them in the way they expect the average WT reader to do. They are nearly all "apostates" in that sense. But they are all willing to publicly toe the party line to avoid the kind of unpleasantness that honesty begets in a place like that.
  
  In the mid-70, when I was at Bethel, my friend Dan Sydlik told me that the other sheep of John 10 were the Gentiles. That made so much sense to me, and it fit so well with the actual state of affairs, that I rejected the two-class fiction then and there, even when I thought that the WTS was still God's organization.
  
  Tom
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  60

  To ex-JW's who became real "Christians"

  by startingover in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have a question.. what is your belief now regarding hell?

  a place of torment?

  the grave?

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  Tom Cabeen

  Here is what I believe about hell, SO. I posted it before somewhere else.
  
  Catholics and the Orthodox, following the teachings of the earliest Christians, believe that it is impossible for God not to love us, his earthly children. Love is his very essence and he made us expressly so that he could love us. God loves us so much that he sent his only-begotten son to save us and demonstrate the length he would go to to show us he loves us.
  
  Out of love for us, he made us in such a way that our deepest longings, our most profound needs, are satisfied in Him. He made us to find our fulfillment in the best he had, Himself. He made us to be his lovers; thus we will never be satisfied until we are in perfect relationship with him. When that happens, we will also be in the correct relationship with all other creatures who are in relationship with him, a huge loving family of giving and shared experiences. That is why he made us, so that he could love us and share his life with us.
  
  Love, by its very nature, must be spontaneous. It cannot be forced or coerced and still be love. In order to meet that condition, God had to give us free will, along with the qualities of character we would need to exercise that free will, including intelligence, curiosity, and the capacity for faith and love. As a consequence, we must make a free choice to obey God; we must come to him in pure loving response to what he has done for us. God would never try to force us into obeying him, even though He knows we will never be completely happy until we conform our thoughts and actions to His.
  
  But free will also has a corollary. Since we have the God-given capacity for choice, He must also give us the right to reject Him. If that were not true, we would not truly have free will. If we choose to go down that path away from our Creator, God will use every means at his disposal, short of violating our free will, to call us to repentance. He offers free forgiveness and He demonstrates his love for us over and over again, in hope that we might come to realize that only in full, complete relationship with him will we ever realize our potential as his children, made in his own image. But ultimately, we have the right to reject him, even to hate him, to substitute love we ought to have for Him and give it to other, lesser things.
  
  In the words of C.S. Lewis on this subject, it boils down to this: "In the end, we either say to God: 'Thy will be done' or God will say to us 'Thy will be done.'" God knows (because he made us) that once we get to that point, despite all his efforts to demonstrate his love for us, that our hatred will grow until we hate Him with all our heart (just as Satan does). Those who ultimately will end up hating God will seek to be away from his presence, even if they would be welcome there.
  
  So as a final act of love for them, he provides them a place where they can be shielded from his love and light, which otherwise permeates all existence. God will abandon such creatures to their own devices. They will be in what Jesus called "outer darkness". Just "where" that will be is not the point at all. Even if God were to allow such people full access to his presence , they would hate to be there. Like a Rock & Roll fan at an opera, or an opera fan at a Heavy Metal concert, the same "place", God’s presence, would be heaven for one and hell for the other. Imagery like fire is used in Scripture to represent the pain of separation from God (which is the Catholic definition of hell, by the way).(BTW, some Christian mystics have suggested that heaven and hell are the same place, that only the perception of the individual makes them different.)
  
  A clarification about eternity. Eternity does not mean an endless succession of days; millions, billions or trillions of them. Eternity means being outside of time, timeless (that is the literal meaning of the word). All of our linear, sequential time is included in timelessness. One way to envision that is to think about the relationship of our linear time to the "time" in storybooks on a shelf. We can open a book and enter a particular "time", the succession of events found in that story. Then we can close the book and be completely outside of that "time", then later reopen it and be right back in it. That is how some orthodox thinkers have compared the linear time we live in to the eternity in which God dwells. It is mysterious but not impossible to imagine.
  
  Those who reject God will end up living in timelessness also, but without the one thing they need to be happy: God. But it will be their own choice about the matter. They will not just be sent somewhere because they inadvertently broke some little rule or other. It will be because they have made a fully informed choice, of their own free will, knowing full well the consequences of their choice, to live without God, and, when offered the chance to change their mind and repent, will refuse. Those who do that will be, completely as a result of their own choice, in hell.
  
  I would recommend C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce" for a more complete (and much better) exploration of this subject, which was also very difficult for Lewis. It was very helpful to me.
  
  Tom
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  8

  Tom Cabeen on EWTN's Journey Home tonight. I enjoyed it.

  by Seeker4 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  watched tom tonight, and thought he made some excellent points.

  i called, and actually got through, but the producer didn't put me on.

  i wanted to ask tom if his leaving bethel in 1980 had any connection with the whole ray franz/ed dunlap incident,which was happening then.. as tom knows, i'm one of those ex-jws who became an atheist, so i took quite a different path than he did in leaving the jws, and i certainly don't agree with his conclusions.

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  Tom Cabeen

  S4, Steve Lupo! There is a name I haven't heard in over a quarter century! Yes, I knew Steve, but not well. He was among the small group of people who were meeting together in small groups and happily questioning things, until the old guard got wind of it and, in standard WT style, set off the nuclear weapons as the first line of defense, frying friend and foe alike. I actually think that the WTS has never been the same since. Haven't heard a word about Lupo since 1980. If he is still a JW and an elder, that would explain it. Tom
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  21

  Catholic ex-JW's? Interpretation Questions for You.

  by bavman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in view of the much publicized conversion of tom cabeen on this website i thought i would ask a couple of questions.. do all catholics interpret the scriptures literally or do they allow for metaphorical interpretation?

  such as the miracles of jesus or the trinity understanding itself.

  i seem to see a difference between some believers and especially between certain traditions within the church itself.

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  Tom Cabeen

  Bav,
  
  Here are some ideas for you. You wrote...
  
  From what you wrote above I believe you are basing a lot of your faith in the Catholic interpretation on teachings being handed down faithfully. Would that be a fair assessment? I know you have said you have read the Early Church Fathers writings quite a bit so I assume you use that as a basis for that belief. I personally have only read a little from those writings online. I have ordered the 'dictionary' you talked about that your friend published. Hopefully it will be of some help since the writings of the early church fathers seem to be quite extensive.
  
  Reading the early Christian writings is not necessary at all to become a Catholic. In fact, I don’t usually recommend it. It just happened to be the way I came to the Church. There are much faster ways to come to grips with Catholic teaching. But I was so anti-Catholic, I doubt I would have read the modern ones. I sort of “came in the back door.” One can read the Catechism or other materials without having to wade through the early Christian writings. But they are helpful if, like me, you needed reassurance that any of the core Catholic teachings were not just made up somewhere between the first century and today.
  
  Your answer seems to tell me you personally take the miracles literally. What about stories of others who had powers from the same time period such as Honi the Circle Drawer or Hanina ben Dosa?
  
  There is no doubt that many other people besides Jesus have done miracles. But Jesus’ miracles were unusual first in that they were exactly what had been predicted for the Jewish Messiah to do. And of course the greatest miracle was his own rising from the dead. But they also have meanings beyond the actual miracle itself. For example, his healing of a man born blind was remarkable, but it pointed to the greater miracle, healing spiritual blindness. Not only could the man see literally, he could "see" that Jesus was the Messiah, even when the Pharisees could not. An important part of Catholic theology is that things are often signs. They point to hidden truths.
  
  I would like to ask how you would explain the pagan myths having many of the same stories in them? I realize not every myth is exactly the same as the stories of Jesus but enough of them are the same to cause me trouble believing these things ever did actually take place.
  
  Catholics love myths. Probably the most well-known Catholic myth is the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. (Tolkein was a devout Catholic.) A myth is a story that deals with great issues. It is etiological, dealing with the causes of things rather than simple historical facts, like out of a newspaper. But this is not an issue that can be explored in a few sentences. A wonderful book that deals with the very issue you raise is G. K. Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man". It was the book that influenced C. S. Lewis, an avowed but honest atheist, to become a Christian.
  
  Still, even if they didn't happen exactly as stated I see no reason to ignore them. I have read writings of Episcopalian writers (such as Marcus Borg) who make a great case for taking them metaphorically and I can still get benefit from that way of looking at it. Again I ask, would I be able to take some of those writings in a metaphorical way and still be Catholic?
  
  Of course. Rather than this or that, Catholics are more likely to view things as this and that. Many passages of Scripture have multiple meanings, on many levels. Since there are no dogmas regarding the interpretations of the parables, you are free to see any meaning in them that you want to. They are parables, after all, meant to communicate truths on many levels.
  
  What would these core dogmas be? Or where could I read about them?
  
  You can download a list of them here: holyjoe.org/dogmas.doc If you are the scholarly type, you can buy Ludwig Ott's "Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma" It gives a lot more detail, and also defines some widely held teachings that are not dogmatic.
  
  Even being pretty much agnostic (although I am coming to more of a belief in God) myself I still try and follow teachings of Jesus and Ghandi, and Buddha...
  
  Catholic scholars, philosophers and mystics respect all the great teachers and gurus of the world. Unlike fundamentalists, Catholics believe that all people are God's children, not simply by reason of being descendants of one first human pair, but that God loves them all. He reveals truth to any who ask him. That is why the earliest Christians accepted some of the ideas first expressed by pagan philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and Socrates. But they distinguish from among the various teachings of these philosphers those that fit properly with Christian teaching and those that do not. The OT does not talk about a separate soul, but Jesus did, and some of what Plato taught dovetails perfectly with what Jesus taught. So the early Christians used Platonic speech to communicate these ideas to Greeks and Romans who did not regard the Hebrew Scriptures to be authoritative at all. That is why Paul did not quote from the OT when he talked to the Greeks in Athens.
  
  How are people dealt with who commit a sin like say, commit adultery (from your example above) but want to change, perhaps they have been damaged by abuse or so forth? Also, what happens to those who come foward with abuse allegations?
  
  Every sin can be forgiven, period. The only requirement is that it be confessed to a priest and that the sinner be sincerely repentant (and there is no fooling God about that, of course). Priests are bound never to reveal something that has been confessed to them. The punishment for doing so is immediate permanent excommunication and defrocking. There are many stories about priests who had a criminal confess to them, and the priest has gone to prison rather than reveal the confession. Nor can a priest refuse absolution or make it conditional (like if you committed a murder, he could not say "First you must turn yourself in to the police, then I will grant absolution.") Priests can and will give you advice. They may and often do recommend that you get help, counseling or the like. But he can not make absolution conditional on your following his advice, nor can he reveal what you have told him in the confessional to anyone, ever.
  
  I do have a brother-in-law who is Catholic who believes in evolution and has a B.A. in Biology (so does his Dad who is a science teacher). He also takes the miracles of Jesus metaphorically but I am not sure if he tells his church this. Just curious, when you say Adam and Eve, do you mean that metaphorically or literally? So, would you say that Jesus taught the idea of a soul to his apostles who handed that teaching down and where does the bible say that? Or do the Early Church Fathers writings say that somewhere?
  
  Your brother in law can take them any way he wants to. Presumably, he would want them to be true at some level, but Catholics view truth very differently than do fundamentalists. A poem or a piece of art can be true in a very different way than court testimony at a murder trial.
  
  "Do not fear those who can kill the body but not the soul." Early Christians taught the immortality of the soul, widely and early, and there is no hint of anyone, anywhere, upset over the introduction of "new" doctrine. Just to show how significant that is, in the eleventh century, the Eastern and Western church split over whether or not the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, or from the Father only. That is how carefully they were watching the details of doctrine.
  
  Adam and Eve are to be viewed "historically", even if one believes that God used evolution to produce their bodies, over millions of years, then one fine day created a spiritual soul for a male and female, by which act they suddenly were made "in his image". Most Catholics do not try to fit events prior to Abraham into a time line, in keeping with the practice among the ancient peoples, who viewed truth about things like dates a bit differently from the way Greek-influenced Westerners do.
  
  Hope this is of help to you. Now I have to go to bed. :-)
  
  Tom
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  8

  Tom Cabeen on EWTN's Journey Home tonight. I enjoyed it.

  by Seeker4 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  watched tom tonight, and thought he made some excellent points.

  i called, and actually got through, but the producer didn't put me on.

  i wanted to ask tom if his leaving bethel in 1980 had any connection with the whole ray franz/ed dunlap incident,which was happening then.. as tom knows, i'm one of those ex-jws who became an atheist, so i took quite a different path than he did in leaving the jws, and i certainly don't agree with his conclusions.

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  Tom Cabeen

  Hi Grace,
  
  First of all, Happy Birthday! I wish you many long and happy years, with good health and peace!
  
  In answer to your question, I do not consider bowing before someone or kissing them to be worship or a form of idolatry. I kiss my wife, my kids and close friends, but I do not worship them. I also often bow to honor people, even to audiences when I sing in a concert. I rise when a judge enters a courtroom. I find it nice to have ways to show honor to people whom I respect. I have never considered any such things to be worship.
  
  Best regards, my sister!
  
  Tom
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  8

  Tom Cabeen on EWTN's Journey Home tonight. I enjoyed it.

  by Seeker4 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  watched tom tonight, and thought he made some excellent points.

  i called, and actually got through, but the producer didn't put me on.

  i wanted to ask tom if his leaving bethel in 1980 had any connection with the whole ray franz/ed dunlap incident,which was happening then.. as tom knows, i'm one of those ex-jws who became an atheist, so i took quite a different path than he did in leaving the jws, and i certainly don't agree with his conclusions.

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  Tom Cabeen

  Hi S4,
  
  I was at Bethel at the time but was not disfellowshipped then. Although I had close connections with Franz and Dunlap, evidently no one testified against me. I knew them both well, though (still know Ray, Ed died a few years ago). In fact, I knew all the people who were disfellowshipped at the time. Most were close personal friends. We left Bethel in June of 1980 and tried to slip away unnoticed, but were ultimately unable to do so.
  
  In 1982, the elders of the Lancaster, PA congregation (where we had moved) called me into a meeting. It was not a judicial hearing, they said. There were no charges filed, and no witnesses to any wrongdoing. They just wanted some information. They asked if I had any doubts about WT teaching. I said that to my knowledge, all thinking people had doubts about something. I always had and probably always would. They were on a fishing expedition, so they questioned me for about an hour and a half, but since they had no idea what "apostate" concepts had been bandied about at Bethel, they had no idea what to ask, and I wasn't about to help them by volunteering anything. The meeting ended with nothing resolved. By that weekend everyone in the congregation knew we were "doubters". (One of the elders' wives had told my brother-in-law's wife about it, and I presume that others had gossiped as well.)
  
  The elders called us into another meeting about two weeks later. Since it had become "common knowledge" that I had doubts, they had to take action. I said that prior to the meeting no one had any idea that we had any doubts, so they must have been responsible for that. They said it was not their concern how it came to be common knowledge, now that it was, they had no choice but to take action. They asked me if my (unspecified) doubts had been resolved. I replied that nothing had changed in the past two weeks, why should it? The meeting ended after five or ten minutes. On the way out of the room, the presiding elder turned and asked my wife if she agreed with me about most religious matters. She replied "Yes". (They had not asked her even one other question at either of the two meetings.) So they left, and returned. They said we had left them with "no choice" but to disfellowship both of us.
  
  That was the end of our JW career. We went out for pizza and beer after the meeting. They did not join us.
  
  Regarding the show, thanks for your positive comments. I guess I was glad to be able to show viewers that I have no hatred or bitterness toward my former companions in my life's journey. I also wished the questions had been more about my journey, rather than about what JWs believe and why. BTW, if you ever decide to revisit your choice to be atheists, let me know. We could have some lively discussions.
  
  Tom
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  9

  Fred Franz' Anti-Governing Body Gilead Talk...Help, Please...

  by Confession in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for those of you familiar with the talk mentioned in my title, i'd like a bit of help understanding what franz was trying to convey.

  yes, i know it seems to have been as a result of the ongoing discussions about whether or not to take full control of the wts away from the president and give it to the governing body.

  but i'm still not sure how he thought his points were doing that.

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  Tom Cabeen

  Hi Con,
  
  He saw power in the first century, but not vested in a committee-like arrangement. Evidently, Freddie saw himself and NHK as like the apostle Paul (free to do whatever he wanted without getting permission from the other apostles). In the WT scheme of things, the "other apostles" would be the rest of the "remnant". He didn't want to have to run his talks and articles past a board for approval prior to publication, which might happen if the GB committees went through. I doubt that he ever did that, but things did change to some extent for him after the GB committees. NHK died shortly thereafter (1976, as I recall) and that may have seemed to some as a confirmation that the GB changes were just in time.
  
  Tom
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  9

  Fred Franz' Anti-Governing Body Gilead Talk...Help, Please...

  by Confession in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for those of you familiar with the talk mentioned in my title, i'd like a bit of help understanding what franz was trying to convey.

  yes, i know it seems to have been as a result of the ongoing discussions about whether or not to take full control of the wts away from the president and give it to the governing body.

  but i'm still not sure how he thought his points were doing that.

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  Tom Cabeen

  Hey, Con,
  
  Freddy (Franz) gave that famous/infamous talk during the time that the newly-formed governing body were talking about how the Society ought to be governed, prior to the forming of the committees in 1975. Discussions among them were hot and heavy. Most wanted to divide the power of the presidency (N H Knorr) among them, but Knorr and Franz, the pres and vice pres, were dead set against it. In the midst of it all, Freddy gave that talk to prove that in the first century, there was no such thing as a governing body, nor any centralized authority. The apostles did whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted to, moved only by the holy spirit. He was using his "bully pulpit" to present his own idea of how the WTB&TS ought to be governed.
  
  Eventually, the other guys outvoted him, though, and after the governing body committees were formed, articles began to come out in the publications showing how there really was a centralized governing body in the first century (just like the one in Brooklyn, don't ya know) where new doctrines were decided and passed down through written materials to all the congregations.
  
  I was at that Gilead graduation (sometime in 1974, as I recall) when Freddie gave that talk. I was quite impressed by his reasoning. Perhaps that was one factor that eventually made me reject the whole JW "find a proof text to prove this week's new light" approach to understanding Scripture.
  
  Tom
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  47

  Wrote a letter to the Catholic Chruch.

  by Blueblades in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  it was 1969 when i answered that first knock.

  1970 when i got baptized.

  it was suggested that i write a letter to the catholic chruch where i was baptized and disavow my baptism,that i no longer considered myself a catholic.

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  Tom Cabeen

  Hi Blue,
  
  No, I don't think Jesus has ever made himself known to me without ambiguity. That would be too easy, and would not require faith on my part. I think the biggest component for building my faith is communication with other people. I love people. I love to talk to them or read what they have written down about what they believe and why. I think that is what drew me to the writings of the early Christians. Many of their writings just tell how they came to faith, what obstacles they overcame, what they found that they were willing to die for.
  
  You should be aware of a very significant factor at work in many former JWs. It is the negativity with which we were trained to think as JWs. I posted what follows a few days ago on another thread, but you might not have seen it.
  
  Many years ago, I ran across a quote which made a deep impression on me. I printed it out and it hung on my wall for several years. It is from Solomon ibn Gabirol, a Jewish rabbi who lived about a thousand years ago and had a good deal of influence on the Christians of his day. He said:
  
  "A fool rejoices when he discovers error; a wise man rejoices when he discovers truth."
  
  This quote impressed me. It conjured up in my mind a mental picture of the method so many use to analyze things. They seem to start by saying "I was tricked once; it won't happen again." Then they spend a lot of time trying to discover just where something doesn't fit, where the loophole or falsehood is. Every time they find something "wrong", they congratulate themselves on seeing through another lie. There is so little to be gained in proportion to the effort expended from that type of endeavor.
  
  If they would invest the same amount of effort in becoming informed about things that can be verified to a reasonable degree, then each thing they would learn would contribute toward building a more correct model of reality, which is what truth is. You gain something you can live by each and every time you do it. It doesn't have to be about religion. I studied physics, astronomy, art, music and a host of other things; anything that caught my eye. After awhile, I began to feel much more reassured that the universe was really designed, that ultimately everything did fit together. It gave me the confidence to reexamine religion with a new perspective, finding truth.
  
  I resolved to take Solomon ibn Gabirol's advice to heart. The result has made me so much happier than I was when I was looking for error.
  
  I wish you success, bro.
  
  Tom