And this attitude/interpretation is a fine example of what Pantastic was talking about in Post #26 above.
Some of them believe the KJV is the original… :smack:
Yes we do, we call them advocates and Mary’s multitude of names are her advocations, from the same root.
Splitting hairs.
Catholic > Calvanism > Protestant/Lutheranism > Presbyterian.
Somewhere on the right there is the reformation group.
If you think the middle two are not big enough jumps, then you can have
Catholic > Presbyterian. After all the Presbyterian were imposing that the church out to be run by wise old men, and not by the King - they were proposing separation of church and state, and the British King was catholic. So they were there saying "We don’t want to be catholic… because it causes things like civil wars and regicide… "… You know all the murder and good people being hung drawn and quartered…
One reason for everyone being catholic before calvanism is that statesmen wanted to build their country and establish law and order… morality… and fight of polytheism and mysticism (like belief in witches and wizards and so on.)…and provide the people of their state a belief system which binds them together. The HRE was showing how its done… they were given the prescription and assistance… the HRE and the papist states threatened you if you didn’t wish to follow their lead… So the churches in each country had to be catholic… but varied as to how much they had to preach a culture as defined by papism… it was enough to be in the HRE … which was an easy, lazy way to get in with the pope and papist states.
If you are into splitting hairs, of course the Church of England calls itself protestant,and it is in many ways, but it notionally affirms the notional leader of the country, the monarch, as notional leader of the church… it pays homage to the catholic way but its only notional and there is no real power going along with the naming … the CoE is run by a group of elders… Presbyterian means “run by elders”. (and must be totally committed to separation of church and state.)
The protestants and church of england and all them can be called “Reformist”.
Not to be out done, the Catholics also have a “reformation” of their own, this is caused by the collapse of the HRE and giving up on the idea that the pope can intervene in papist countries… The vatican doesn’t try to run countries… They committed to separation of church and state too… So the current catholic church could be considered a daughter of the pre-reformation catholic church… You see what I am saying ?
The main differences that split the presbyterians from the catholics at the time have since become moot - the catholics have the same main differences now.
Of course they still have big differences such as beliefs in Saintdom of Mary and other catholic saints, and how one becomes a saint and how one wins redemption. (hail marys ?)… but the split was not because of such a big difference.
Isilder, the Counter-Reformation started before any collapse of the HRE and took place throughout all Catholic countries; it looks to me as if you’re mixing a religious process which took place in relatively few decades (the way the RCC usually moves it was lightning-quick) and with a political one which took centuries, and both involving very different areas. I also have serious problems understanding what that “>” is supposed to mean (well, the post in general is a mess, but that part is giving me a headache).
Another point to ponder - much of North American traditional culture gets its religious views from northern Europe. After the reformation, the politics sorted itself out such that the two major powers, France and Spain, were Catholic (and often, “hosted” the pope under one or another thumb). The northern countries generally were the heart of the protestant sects and usually the target of French or Spanish conquest ambitions.
The best analogy I can come up with is that the protestants of the day equated Catholic with French or Spanish expansionism; much like in the 20th century we equated communists in our countries with Soviet (or later, Chinese) agents or apologists or sympathizers. The American Communist party was not seen as a bunch of misguided do-gooders who wanted wealth redistribution - they were agents of Lenin and Stalin, trying to subvert the American way so Russian could take over. Even labour leaders were considered tainted. Similarly, Catholics in England were seen as those who wanted everyone to return to kowtowing to the pope, and hence to Spain and France, rather than people who simply believed in something different. Hence the whole giving the boot to James, and of course Guy Fawkes didn’t help matters.
I suspect a lot of this hostility followed the various protestant sects across the ocean to the new world. It probably didn’t help that they even clashed with the authorities over the Church of England and its closer-to-Catholic rituals, and for some that was the reason for emigrating.
Well, the argument I make against the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses comes to the text of the Nicene Creed, which is the last really ecumenical creed between East and West (as these things go.) The aforementioned groups are nontrinitarian and heretical. I think the world could use more ecumenicalism and don’t really care what someone believes as long as it doesn’t hurt others, but from a technical point of view I will argue that Mormons and Witnesses are not Christian. Not a value judgement, but a judgement on their specific beliefs and how they relate to the larger church that they descend from.
“You listen to a man in Red Robes…! You are Evil…!”
(Its generally not appreciated when you tell them that the men they listen to probably wear “pure” white robes.)
Jack Chic must be rolling over in his grave.
(Rotisserie style one would hope)
Did you miss my parenthetical? That was to acknowledge that although the church was monolithic in name, it was never united in doctrine.
It doesn’t get more hilariously profound than this post. Well put.
SWMBO is Catholic. I am agnostic. You would be surprised how many times we both have been told we’re gonna burn in hay-ull. Me because I’m a godless heathen and her because she’s not a Christian.
The level of stupidity in these people can boggle the mind sometimes. If you really want a walloping dose of it, read this. It’s a perfect example.
Yeah, you could say that that passage defines the basic Christian message. But there are plenty of other passages you could say the same of. Why not, say, John 1:1, “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”? Or Matthew 22:36-40, " ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' [2] This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.’ [3] All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
ALWAYS type in an offline app, saving often, when penning a huge magnum opus.
So how does that work exactly - were any churches Christian before the Council of Nicea or were they all non-Christian heretics from a technical point of view until it happened? Were the nontrinitarian Churches technically Christian until the Creed was agreed on and then stopped being Christian afterwards? The Arians, for example, claimed to be Christian but never accepted the Nicene Creed - were they never Christian, Christian for a while but stopped when the Council happened, or always Christian?
I find the image of him fronting a 1970’s funk band, wearing an Afro wig, more amusing to me, at least.
That’s the Catholic claim, but other people say that if you pray to a being then the act of prayer is a form of worship that means you’re treating them as a god or goddess. There’s an awful lot of hair-splitting and ‘ignore the man behind the curtain’ in setting what counts as worship or having multiple gods.
There’s two thousand years of tradition behind not doing that 
I’m Catholic. It’s not ‘bigotry’ for the small remaining faction among Protestants who make a theological finding that the RC Church (and presumably the Orthodox and others) is outside Christianity to do so. That word is among the most overused in the language now.
The RC Church has its own designations of whether the baptism and/or confirmation of sects which consider themselves Christian are valid when converting to Catholicism* or have to be repeated. For those judged not valid that’s kinda saying they aren’t Christian, those sects might take it that way at least (and, obviously, the Church at one time said stuff like that a lot more explicitly). But it’s not for the hell of it or to piss people off on purpose. And it’s not ‘bigotry’ either.
I’m not saying Catholic v Protestant bigotry hasn’t existed (like in quasi genocidal wars in the 17 century…) or still doesn’t in vestigial form, but theological distinctions the other religion doesn’t agree with are not necessarily ‘bigotry’.
*an example list, to summarize the vast majority though not all Protestant, proper, sects you’ve ever heard of’s baptisms are recognized by RCC. A few edgy Protestant-proper sects’ aren’t, the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses (who we might also lump with Protestants but Protestants probably don’t) aren’t etc.
http://www.dob-tribunal.com/uploads/4/4/8/1/44818299/validity-of-baptisms-and-confirmation.pdf
I don’t find it hard to understand. Protestantism split from the Catholic Church specifically because they thought that Catholic Church was wrong in its theology. While there have been great strides in ecumenism today, with the acceptance that you can disagree on the less important aspects of theology, not everyone holds to that, and not everyone agrees on what is and isn’t important.
I first encountered this belief in a pamphlet left in my doctor’s office by a Seventh Day Adventist, and it was the most extreme version of it: the Catholic Church was the Antichrist, the ultimate human enemy of the Church and Christ himself. Their argument involved two things–some numerology from Scripture, and the fact that the Catholic Church officially changed the day of worship to Sunday instead of Saturday.
That’s really important to them–their whole church is based on the idea that Sunday worship is sinful and that Christians must keep the Sabbath the way Jewish people do. But, to most Christians, we think the day is immaterial. So it makes ecumenism difficult.
I do note you left out other arguments. It’s just just the veneration of Mary which Protestants have a problem with. It’s the veneration of any of the Saints. They have a problem with the practice of praying to said Saints, quoting Scripture that says that Christ is the high Priest and mediator between God and man, not dead people who are in Heaven.
And they also treat all the icons and statues and decoration (especially pre-Vatican II) as idolatry. They see having them standing in churches to be more wrong than, say, the Jesus statue in Eureka Springs.
And I do wish to elaborate a bit on sola scriptura: That’s just one of the main divides between Catholicism and Protestantism. It’s why Protestantism is more flexible. We see the Traditions and such as flexible, just men interpreting the Bible, and they can easily get it wrong. It’s why I can say that abortion and homosexuality are not a sin, but a Catholic can’t–at least, they can’t and still be supporting Catholic views.
I have to admit, I was skeptical of Catholics’ Christianity until I went to College, went to a (much less opulent) Mass, and just met some Catholics who really showed the Fruits of the Spirit. I also had a roommate who, while not Catholic, had almost converted for a girlfriend, and explained a lot of the theology to me, and why he didn’t see it as wrong either way. (And why he had a Bible with the Deuterocannon/Apocrypha in it, despite not thinking it was definitely the “Word of God.”)
(His Catechism also helped me write a paper on why Hamlet should have known the ghost was not his father.)
Anyways, my point is that disagreeing on theology just isn’t something that’s unusual, and neither is thinking that your disagreement is so vast that it means the other group is not actually following Christ’s teachings, and thus aren’t Christian.
It’s no different than when you point out that certain bigots aren’t acting like Christians, really. Or how you say atheists seem to know more about the Bible than most Christians.
Well, another poster has shown us all that “other people” don’t always know what they’re talking about.
Nah, it’s more like “let’s misrepresent what others’ beliefs are so we can show how eeevuhl they are”. That also explains the bandying of the word “cult” so often by those accusing Christian groups of not being Christian groups.
Too true, friend; too true.
Having different beliefs about the theological and spiritual significance of certain acts is not the same thing as deliberately misinterpreting them.
To some, the very concept of praying to anyone else, even in the context of “having them pray for you” is wrong. You only pray to what you worship.
I still have a hard time with it, as ecumenical as I try to be (I even view Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons as Christians, which is unheard of where I come from. I just think most of their theology is wrong, and oppose specifically the cult-like aspects of the former.)
I respectfully disagree, at least with the first half of this sentence. Coming up with exclusionary definitions for different churches is absurdly easy. After all, we’ve been doing it for millennia.