Catholicism is all about rules. There is a church official somewhere who makes up the rules, which may or may not line up with Scripture. For example, there is no Pope in the Bible, no Bishops, no Cardinals. Much of the ritual is based on a variation of the Old Covenant, such as confessing one's sins to a priest for forgiveness and having to perform some ritual as penance. And I won't mention the crusades, the Spanish inquisition, the sale of indulgences, burning heretics at the stake, etc., all of which are part of Catholic history.
Martin Luther was right! Sola scriptura.
The only reliable, consistent Christian truth is in the Bible -- God's written Word -- not in the minds of men who make it up as they go along.
Sola Scriptura is about a rule-it’s called the “rule of faith” And it doesn’t work because everyone applies the rule according to their own individual interpretation. For myself, I can no longer take that rule seriously, as I once did. Rules about church governance and administration, necessary for any entity in this world, have nothing to do with the core dogmas/doctrines of the faith. Bishops: church overseers, a role the apostles necessarily played, certainly have their roots in the beginning, and cardinals and popes are just higher level bishops, with the pope having a particular role to play as a central voice of authority within the church- for
overall oversight. Nothing particularly wrong with that. But even if I rejected any “Sola Ecclesia” brand of authority, I’d still have to reject Sola Scriptura as well.
The Catholic and Protestant inquisitions had their basis in the belief that heresy and unbelief were an absolute blight on society. This is harder to appreciate in a modern, more secularized world but we
are beginning to see the fruits of atheism play out increasingly in our midst now. Wrong-headed as it was, execution at the hands of civil authorities could be the penalty for adamant and continuous public heresy which was feared to lead the rest of society into darkness. And burning at the stake was the method of the day.
The crusades were fostered by the conviction that seeing the Holy Land in the hands of the “heathen” constituted an absolute atrocity-and outside the will of God. It took some painful lessons to find out that perhaps God didn’t really care who controlled that part of the world at that point in history. Meanwhile, anything the church members do that is inconsistent with church teachings, with God’s will, is objectively wrong. But God never guaranteed impeccability to any member of the church, from the top down, but only that hell would not prevail against it; it would continue to survive through thick and thin in a messed up world, carrying its core message, the light of the gospel, down through the centuries-
despite the bumblings, foolishness, weaknesses, greed, and sin of those members-and of their own failure to practice what they preach, to truly understand and live according to the light of the gospel rather than mixing in their own agendas and personal opinions.
The sale of indulgences was an abuse of the simple act of almsgiving, exploited and promoted by foolishness and greed and false zeal. None of these abuses resulted from church teachings on faith and morals which flow from the church’s understanding and interpretations of Scripture and Tradition. They’re examples of
not heeding the gospel IOW-failing to love to put it another way. People behaving badly, in the church or outside of it, will continue to occur unless and until we’re all perfected in love, not bound to fully occur in this lifetime, on this planet. To expect perfection in any human-related entity means we probably haven’t looked too deeply at our own failings IMO.
Also, Catholic teachings reject legalism, as we all should of course. Humans are drawn to legalism anyway, and may or may not practice their faith accordingly to one degree or another until we're fully sanctified/perfected.
