Yes, a lot of imbeciles out there are stupid enough to fall for the "Trail of Blood’ nonsense and its competing BS-historical-revision-until-the-past-sounds-Protestant brethren, but that doesn’t make it so.
To make the Early Church Fathers sound Protestant, you have to do great contorsions to their words. To make them sound Catholic/Orthodox, you only have to read their words.
Protestant apologists don’t see this, becuase they’ve be indoctrinated into hogwash about Once Saved Always Saved, nonsense about mythical Raptures and other childhood fairy tales, and very few of them care to disrupt their comfortable world view by looking at the truth.
One very telling point in favor of Catholicism is that virtually ever Convert-Catholics-To-Protestants book, tract and paper ever written has been nothing more than a compedium of lies, damn lies and nonsense. James White, Tim LaHaye, and of course Jack T. Chick, are all purveyers of such nonsense.
“Protestants” above applies to Fundamentalist Protestants.
Mainstream Protestants are in all ways far closer to Catholics, and most accept the continuity of the Christian religion as espoused by Catholics, differing only in the idea that the Church is divinely guided, and thus infallible, at least in my experience. Thier position is debatable, but at least respectable.
The Fundamentalist “Trail of Blood” type horsepuckey isn’t respectable, and is below debate.
No, not really. Each person has to interpret and believe the way they choose.
Kirkland how do you know the early church was Roman Catholic? I see nothing that leads me to believe that. The word “catholic” means universal and I can accept that Christ has His universal (catholic) church made up of believers everywhere but this has nothing to do with Roman Catholicism.
Also please give the scripture where it says the church can’t ever fall into error. Any church can fall into error if it departs from God’s revealed truth in the Bible. It does say that the gates of hell will not prevail upon His church as a whole but I don’t see that that means that individual Christians and churches can’t fall into error. I mean no disrespect whatsoever, but the Roman Catholic church, nor the Pope is infallable. The RC church isn’t God and neither is the Pope.
Horse hockey. You do not have to be a member of Roman Catholicism to be a part of Christ’s church. Utter nonsense. I don’t find that teaching in scripture anywhere. Jesus said He would build His church period, not His Roman Catholic Church. You are the one who doesn’t understand Christianity. I don’t need Roman Catholocism to be a part of the church of Christ. I’ve accepted Him as my Savior and I am a part of His church/bride whether you or any other catholic accepts it or not.
The church of Christ is not nor ever been a building or a specific organization, including the Roman Catholic church. The church of Jesus Christ is made up of all those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells through faith in Christ. I reiterate, the Roman Catholic church has absolutely nothing to do with whether I’m part of Christ’s true church or not. That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.
Right. That would be the process. Kirkland’s point was that they haven’t quite got that last part down. Once they do, they can come talk all they want, but they don’t, so they can’t.
Seriously, St. Polycarp would probably be very surprised at a lot of developments since his time, including some of the practices of various national Orthodox churches, the monarchical Papacy, and almost all of Protestantism – in particular the rejection of bishops, his stance being that in any question of church doctrine, what one needed to do to be sure of orthodoxy was to subscribe to the belief held by the apostles and carried down by their appointed successors the bishops. Being a bishop appointed by an apostle, as were most of his contemporary bishops, he presumably knew what he was talking about in suggesting that their collegial understanding was key to understanding how to follow Christ. (Remember that the New Testament had not yet been canonized; there were a bunch of competing gospels and acts of various apostles out there, some pious fictions and some the straight dope.)
IMHO, this stance sounds a lot more like what the Orthodox and Anglicans subscribe to than either Protestantism or post-Reformation Roman Catholicism.
His4Ever, it might intrigue you to know that you are in total agreement with Vatican II, except for the idea that if there is only one Truth, then where various denominational churches differ, one will come closer than another to stating that Truth, and, quite understandably, the RCC believes that it “has the fullness of grace” in having a better understanding of what Christ intended His church to be than, say, the Free Will Baptists or the Associate Reformed Presbyterians do. All baptized Christians are part of the Holy Catholic (=Universal) Church; the RCC believes itself to be the most accurate representation on earth of that spiritually united but politically divided body. I say “understandably” because, obviously, if they did not believe themselves to be closest to the truth, they would change to become so.
At the risk of being too overtly an advocate for my own position, may I offer for the use of all participants in this thread who are willing to do so a prayer from the Anglican tradition that best encapsulates what I think we all can agree on:
So, lemme get this straight: Assorted Protestants routinely assure us that Catholics aren’t Christian.
Now, Kirkland1244 tells us that Protestants aren’t Christian either. This is backed up by several Protestants telling us they aren’t religious, since of course Chrsitianity is a religion.
I’m not sure about the Eastern Orthodox, but it would appear that there is a good chance that there are no Christians. What a victory for us atheists!
Well, I’ve seen at least one hardcore Sunni site which says Shi’ites aren’t Muslims; now all I need are some Shi’ites to say Sunnis aren’t Muslims either, and we’ll be ready to move on to Hinduism.
Mike, I appreciate your efforts, but you do realize that getting all these groups to disenfranchise each other won’t make the groups go away? The Catholics and Orthodox each condemned and excommunicated each other 949 years ago and they’re both still hanging around giving you grief.
Hinduisms tough…maybe we should go with Judaism. I’ve heard the Orthodox don’t exactly approve of Reform or Conservative. Plus, if you wrap up the Jewish faith, you get rid of the whole Judeo-Christian thing and western religion as a whole more or less.
I’d say yes they’re religious but theyr’e not Christian. They don’t see Christ as the only Savior from sin. They call their deity Allah (who doesn’t exist in my view) and Muhammad is his prophet.
Religion=man attempting to please God or a deity by his own good works or actions.
Christianity=God reaching down to man through Christ and providing the way of salvation.
