Awesome words my friend. Clap clap 
Lol. Sad, but probably true. As a believer in Christ, this shames me too. I do believe most churches have gone astray and are following the way of the world and not the way of God.
You do realize, right, that the Protestant Reformation wasn’t the first time someone had the idea of disagreeing with Rome? There were people in just about every century who challenged the authority of Rome and disagreed with them on fundamental doctrines (going back to New Testament times- there were quite a number of Christians at the time, I guess you could call them proto-gnostics of sorts, who radically disagreed with Peter and Paul).
The Protestant reformation was just the first one that Rome and Constantinople couldn’t effectively quash, at least for five hundred years and running. (One needs not to conclude too much from that- Manichaeanism, after all, lasted for a thousand).
I believe The subject of Mary would have to be addressed before any unification could take place.
As in…?
I wonder what Galileo would say about this.
The Catholics hold Mary in HIGHER standing than do Protestants.
Example- like Jesus, Mary is without sin; Mary did not die but was caught up to Heaven like Jesus; Mary only had one child- Jesus.
In addition, Catholics pray to Mary…where did that come from? Does anyone believe Mary can even hear their prayers? Jesus taught us to pray to GOD, not to Mary.
How is that for starters?
I wonder why you think anecdotes count as evidence.
The problem with saying ‘Protestant Northern Europe had more scientific innovation than Catholic Southern Europe, therefore Catholicism stifled scientific discovery’ is that this isn’t a controlled comparison. There are all sorts of reasons why science might have progressed faster in northern Europe than southern, which have nothing to do with religion. (For what it’s worth, Isaac Newton’s views were heretical by the standards of the Anglican church as well as the Catholic, and he wasn’t all that public about them even though he lived in England). Just off the top of my head, northern Europe tends to be cooler than the south, and we know that (for example) students’ performance on intelligence tests drops if they’re in a warmer room as opposed to a cooler one.
‘You know what? I really shouldn’t have insulted the man who sponsored the publication of my revision of a more accurate model (made by a man who somehow managed to NOT get in trouble with the Church) in the very publication he sponsored. This seems, in hindsight, to have been a terrible choice.’
Don’t put all Protestants in one boat.
Many Anglicans (and probably some other Protestants) believe that Mary never died but was assumed into heaven, that it’s legitimate to pray to Mary and to the archangels, and that Mary only ever had one child.
I’m less of an orthodox Anglican than I was some years ago and have been drifting more in a quasi-gnostic direction, but I still believe those claims (I have no idea about whether Mary was sinless or not, and I’m not super interested), and I’ll defend them against your arguments if you want.
I was answering someone who said he believed the Protestant Church and the RCC should look to reunite. I don’t know how many Protestant churches believe as you do in Mary, but I’m not thinking many.
As for your personal belief in Mary, fine by me. Although, you do realize scripture is pretty clear in that Jesus did have brothers and sisters.
In case you are interested, this may direct you to a few of the passages should you desire to pursue this further. My favorite site at Gotquestions.org:
The New Testament teaches Jesus had brothers and sisters. Matthew 12:46 states, “While he [Jesus] was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him.” Luke 8:19 adds, “Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd.” Mark 3:31 offers a similar parallel account.
Specifically, Jesus was said to have four brothers: “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?” (Matthew 13:55). This James was the author of the book of James in the New Testament. First Corinthians 15:7 mentions that the resurrected Jesus appeared to this same James. This James was also mentioned in Galatians 1:19 as “James the Lord’s brother.” Judas (also known as Jude) was the author of the book of Jude in the New Testament.
Sigh.
You do realize that Aramaic (ancient and modern- it’s called Syriac nowadays) doesn’t have a word for ‘cousin’ right, and that they normally refer to cousins as ‘brothers’?
Now, the New Testament was written in Greek, not Aramaic, and Greek does a word for cousin, though apparently you can use ‘brother’ for ‘cousin’ in Greek as well. But the Gospels were either written by or (in Luke’s case) based on the accounts of native Aramaic speakers who no doubt thought in their native tongue, and might plausibly have used their native idioms and translated them directly into Greek. As an analogy, my mother (and many other relatives) are from a culture which doesn’t have a single word for ‘cousin’, and they often refer to cousins as ‘brothers’ or ‘sisters’ as well. Although English is her best language nowadays, she still commonly refers to her cousins as brothers or sisters because she translates the idiom of her mother tongue directly into English.
Given that the argument that ‘the bible refers to brothers!!!’ is ridiculously weak, I’d say that (in combination) the fact that John is delegated to care for Mary after the death of Jesus (not any of his supposed brothers), the fact that there were no serious claims by anyone in the early Christian era to be perpetuating Jesus’ bloodline, and the fact that the early church generally believed in Mary’s perpetual virginity (and pronounced on it at an ecumenical council) are evidence that he had no siblings. (I don’t think the early church was right about everything, not by a long shot, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary I think that has to count as a point in favour of the claim).
Yes:
An Episcopalian is a Presbyterian with a trust fund.
A Presbyterian is a Methodist with a college education.
A Methodist is a Baptist with shoes.
As someone who was raised Catholic (but now atheist), I find all the squabbling between the various Protestant sects to be rather humorous. But, if I were to suddenly feel the need to become religious and to find my way back to The One True God, I’d probably become Jewish. I find the whole business about Jesus being the messiah to be pretty hard to swallow (no pun intended).
Sorry…I wasnt trying to disprove your thesis. Im not informed enough on Green. Just wanted to contribute to the discussion.
Please, at least avoid egregious anachronisms in your attacks. The doctrine of infallibility, (which only applies to matters of faith and morals and has only been invoked twice in history), was only proclaimed 352 years after Luther’s break with the RCC.
Cheering Luther’s actions for something that occurred long after his death, (and possibly due to his interference), is silly.
Catholics pray to, (but do not worship), all saints, seeking their intercession in the same way that any good Protestant will ask members of his or her congregation for prayers of intercession.
A good start toward reconciliation would be to discover what each denomination proclaims rather than what others proclaim about them.
ETA: The notion of praying to saints to seek intercessions is common to all pre-Reformation Christian groups, (and continues among several groups who separated after the Reformation). Right or wrong, it is not a “Catholic” belief–the change to not believe it occurring within the Reformation.
Wow, I just learned something here. I didn’t realize the infallibility issue came into being around 1900. If that is true, I’m astonished. I will have to seek confirmation.
Now, getting back to praying to Mary…I am not aware of any Protestant church who Advocate praying to Mary or any other dead saint, and I’ve been a member of many Protestant congregations in my life time. You pray to GOD! My point remains- before there could be any reconciliation between the two denominations, I’m sure the issue of Mary will have to be resolved. I feel confident in saying this.
To compare saying prayers to dead saints, (oh by the way, according to the Bible, all believers in Christ are called SAINTS, not just some dead super heroes) with asking living people in your church to intercede for you to me is like comparing apples to oranges. I’m not aware of any doctrine (apart from Catholicism) that says dead people in Heaven can hear people talking who are living on Earth.
Lastly, you mentioned something about pre- Reformation groups who also prayed to dead Saints. What groups were these? Who else were they before the Catholics split? I know the Catholics split into two groups- Rome East and Rome West, but who else was there?
I found this from Catholic.com:
The infallibility of the pope is not a doctrine that suddenly appeared in Church teaching; rather, it is a doctrine which was implicit in the early Church. It is only our understanding of infallibility which has developed and been more clearly understood over time. In fact, the doctrine of infallibility is implicit in these Petrine texts: John 21:15–17 ("Feed my sheep . . . "), Luke 22:32 (“I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail”), and Matthew 16:18 ("You are Peter . . . ").
And just before the above paragraph was this:
Vatican II explained the doctrine of infallibility as follows: “Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they can nevertheless proclaim Christ’s doctrine infallibly. This is so, even when they are dispersed around the world, provided that while maintaining the bond of unity among themselves and with Peter’s successor, and while teaching authentically on a matter of faith or morals, they concur in a single viewpoint as the one which must be held conclusively. This authority is even more clearly verified when, gathered together in an ecumenical council, they are teachers and judges of faith and morals for the universal Church. Their definitions must then be adhered to with the submission of faith” (Lumen Gentium 25).
Infallibility belongs in a special way to the pope as head of the bishops (Matt. 16:17–19; John 21:15–17). As Vatican II remarked, it is a charism the pope “enjoys in virtue of his office, when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith (Luke 22:32), he proclaims by a definitive act some doctrine of faith or morals. Therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly held irreformable, for they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, an assistance promised to him in blessed Peter.”
The issue of the pope having the authority to speak for the church without being authorized by a council was first raised in the fifteenth century at the Council of Florence, which was an attempt to reconcile the schism between the Eastern and Western churches after the acrimonious break of 1054.
While the primacy of the bishop of Rome was acknowledged in the council, (ignoring, for the moment that the Eastern delegates were reviled on their arrival home and the decisions of the council were declared void by popular acclaim within the Eastern churches), there was no discussion, at that time of the pope having access to infallible approval by the Holy Spirit.
In the 1860s, Pope Pius IX appealed to the declarations of Florence to assert that the Holy Spirit would provide guidance to prevent a pope from speaking error when the pope spoke ex cathedra, (from the seat of the bishop of Rome), on matters of faith and morals. His assertion was hotly debated at the First Vatican Council, but was finally ratified at the end of 1869. The only two statements that have been recognized as being infallible have been the Immaculate Conception, (the idea that Mary, as the intended Mother of God, was conceived without Original Sin), promulgated by Pius IX to kick off the whole infallibility issue and the Assumption, (the ancient belief preceded by the stories of Enoch and Elijah of people being taken bodily into heaven, that Mary was taken bodily into heaven at the end of her life), promulgated by Pope Pius XII.
(Yes, those are both Marian issues that would get in the way of Christian reconciliation, but I did not claim that the views about Mary could not be a problem; I pointed out a factual error in your post.)
Are you under the impression that the Christian world is divided between Catholics and Protestants? The tradition of interceptors prayers to saints has always been a part of the beliefs of Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox (Miaphysite–erroneously called Monophysite), and a number of other groups. In fact, only Protestants among all Christians, reject the idea and a handful of people in the Anglican Communion also accept the idea. Dead is dead is a later idea. That people in the afterlife can be aware of the actions and words of the living go back at least as far as the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:19-31. (I am not going to argue the accuracy of the belief; I am merely noting that the belief was widespread (actually, universal), in Christianity prior to the Reformation.)
Do you think this is some little known idea? Generally, today, the word is applied to people who have died and gone to heaven, but it applies to all the people in heaven. The people who make it onto the church calendar are simply those who were sufficiently well known as to provide inspiration for those still living.