Catholic vs. Protestant – why is there so much animosity?"

[Major1]

Sorry, I do not wish to participate in insulting other faith traditions. As long as they are based on the Nicene Creed, the Trinity, and the canon of scripture; I welcome them as Christian brothers and sisters in the Lord.

So then, and I am just advancing the discussion and do not intend to argue, but based on what you just said, what do you do with those who accept the things that ARE NOT found in the canon of Scriptures such as...........
Purgatory,
The sinless ness of Mary,
The Perpetual virginity of Mary,
The Rosary,
Calling Priests "Father",
Mary as the Co-redeemer.

I am not saying that those are mis-interpretations but there Are in fact NOT IN THE CANON of Scriptures. What then does that do to your thinking of.......
"I welcome them as Christian brothers and sisters in the Lord".

 

[Goatee]

So then, and I am just advancing the discussion and do not intend to argue, but based on what you just said, what do you do with those who accept the things that ARE NOT found in the canon of Scriptures such as...........
Purgatory,
The sinless ness of Mary,
The Perpetual virginity of Mary,
The Rosary,
Calling Priests "Father",
Mary as the Co-redeemer.

I am not saying that those are mis-interpretations but there Are in fact NOT IN THE CANON of Scriptures. What then does that do to your thinking of.......
"I welcome them as Christian brothers and sisters in the Lord".

You have a fixation about all thing Catholic! Do you really hate the church that much?

 

[Vicomte13]

Am I to assume having three One True Churches is something like trying to determine (using an illustration here) the true World Boxing Champion?

Dunno.
Maybe it's a lot more like trying to figure out who, exactly, is the One True God.

 

[DreamerOfTheHeart]

IF you have been on this web site for any length of time you have seen that most of the conversations and debates revolve around the conflict between the Catholic faith and the Protestant faith.

There is constant back and forth banter and in the end the difference is still there.
IT seems that the debates always disintegrate into personal combat and verbal wars with the moderators finally ending the thread and in fact I expect that same thing to happen to this thread.

It seems to me that the conflict comes from our basic human nature in dealing with fundamental disagreements concerning eternal truths. The Protestants understand that the RCC teaches a "work-gospel" that can not save and the Catholic church thinks that Protestants teach a "greasy - grace" gospel that requires nothing more than a simple confession of wrong doing/sin due to the emotional preaching of a man.

However, looking deeper than just that the question must be WHY?
In My Opinion the real rift that ignites the debate is rooted in AUTHORITY!

How anyone answers that question always determines the answers to all the other questions.
I think that every Catholic believer will agree that when it comes down to deciding a theological issue about defined Catholic dogma, there isn’t anything to discuss on the Catholic's side because once Rome speaks, it is settled.

Therefore we have the ROOT of the conflict. Whenever there is a theological discussion when trying to debate a Roman Catholic – reason and Scripture are not the Catholic’s final authority; they can always retreat into the “safe zone” of Roman Catholic Authority.

Because of this, the arguments between a Protestant and a Catholic will revolve around one's “private interpretation” of Scripture as against the "official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church."

Catholics claim to successfully avoid the legitimate problems of private interpretation by their reliance on their TRADITION. But that never satisfies the difference but instead merely pushes the question back a step. The truth is that both Roman Catholics and Protestants must, in the end, rely upon their reasoning abilities to choose their authority and their interpretive skills to understand what that authority teaches in order to determine what they will believe. IMO, Protestants are simply more willing to admit that this is the case.

Catholicism is rigid, but many Catholics are not. Just as Protestantism is rigid, but many Catholics are not.

Rigid -- stuck in forms, moving slow, not at the speed of light by the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

[Vicomte13]

So then, and I am just advancing the discussion and do not intend to argue, but based on what you just said, what do you do with those who accept the things that ARE NOT found in the canon of Scriptures such as...........
Purgatory,
The sinless ness of Mary,
The Perpetual virginity of Mary,
The Rosary,
Calling Priests "Father",
Mary as the Co-redeemer.

I am not saying that those are mis-interpretations but there Are in fact NOT IN THE CANON of Scriptures. What then does that do to your thinking of.......
"I welcome them as Christian brothers and sisters in the Lord".

Purgatory: is in the canon of Scriptures. Gehenna is Purgatory. No matter how many times people stick their fingers in their ears and say La-la-la I can't year you, Gehenna will remain Purgatory.

Sinlessness of Mary: There are Protestants who say that God cannot be in the presence of sin. If so, what a horrible thing for God it must have been to "overshadow" Mary, with all of her sins, and then to repose within the flesh of Mary, dependent upon sinful flesh for his physical survival, then have to suckle upon sinful breasts and take orders from sinful flesh. What a long spiritual calvary for one who cannot be in the presence of sin at all, to have been physically encased in his mother's sin.

The Rosary? Seriously? Catholics praying bothers you? Does your religious service - what denomination, by the way? - have a set liturgy. Uh oh, you're repeating prayers and wearing garments and the like. Oh, the humanity! The rosary is a method of contemplative prayer. Does your denomination have no contemplative prayer? No? Pity.

"Father". What shall we call our own fathers? Jesus said "Call no man father."

Mary as co-redeemer. That's not a dogma of the Church. It's just an opinion of some Catholics.

 

[Vicomte13]

But, when the Roman Catholic Church negates justification by faith alone, it necessarily implies that we must do something for justification; for if it is not by faith alone, then it must be by faith and something.

Jesus said repeatedly that he will judge us on our deeds.
Therefore, we will be judged on our deeds, so do right and avoid doing wrong.

 

[truefiction1]

No, and this reveals the fallacy of your basis for Truth, for miracles themselves are not determinitive of what is of God: the Egyptian magicians duplicated the first 3 miracles of Moses, thus they could claim this was affirmative of their "gospel." And we are warned of the latter days antiChrist "whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10)

Read "New Age Medicine " ($4.00) by two Christian doctors investigating cases in S. America and you may realize how the devil can do miracles (video ) even claiming to do so in the name of Christ, while even miracles done by Christians with the gift of healing does not necessarily affirm all else they believed.

Thus miracles themselves are not determinitive of what is of God, by as with even the veracity of the apostle's teaching, they are to be tested, and by "affirmation of saving faith and not used as an affirmation of..." I mean saving faith as defined in Scripture, with writing being the God's means of reliable preservation, and as written, Scripture became the transcendent supreme standard for obedience and testing and establishing truth claims as the wholly Divinely inspired and assured, Word of God.

In contrast, in Catholicism "The Church" is the supreme judge on what is of God, effectively being above Scripture, thus no contradiction can be allowed as being true, but as in Roman Catholicism what the church says is the supreme law. nor must the veracity of doctrine rest upon the weight of Scriptural substantiation.

So no, your miracles do not affirm PTCBIH anymore than those seen by others of aberrant faith affirm the same, though I cannot exclude God from having regard to the cry for mercy to Him regardless of some of the baggage along side it.

You do realize that the scribes and Pharisees used this exact same rationale to justify the use of Scripture to discredit Jesus. He could not be from God, because He disobeys God's commandments, for he heals on the Sabbath and he, being a mere man, makes himself equal with God, which is blasphemy and forbidden in God's written Word? He casts out demons by the prince of demons --Beelzebub. Even where they admitted that someone may have been healed by Jesus, they attributed it to God only, but not to Jesus, for they knew that Jesus was a sinner and a blasphemer.

Using Scripture to justify yourself and deny the true faith of those whose faith is accompanied by the good works of the Holy Spirit, you fall in the same lot as those scribes and pharisees.

I've no further questions.

 

[redleghunter]

Put a bunch of Sola Sripture people / non-denoms and they will all come up with different interpretations, opinions, views etc on scripture. That is why we have 1,000s of different 'faiths'.

That's a mighty huge assertion.

 

[truefiction1]

What are the logos biases of the Roman Catholic church?

The manner in which they practice theology, their definition of the Trinity that results, and the many divergent doctrines that flow out of it, such as but not limited to: the absolute supremacy and infallibility of the papacy, satisfaction doctrine of atonement, created grace, purgatory, the immaculate conception, indulgences.

 

[Albion]

Purgatory: is in the canon of Scriptures. Gehenna is Purgatory. No matter how many times people stick their fingers in their ears and say La-la-la I can't year you, Gehenna will remain Purgatory.

Sorry, no. There is some similarity, but that's about it. You cannot simply stipulate, overtly or by implication, that Purgatory as taught by the RCC is just something in the afterlife that involves punishment.

Sinlessness of Mary: There are Protestants who say that God cannot be in the presence of sin.

There may be some, but don't make that atypical POV pass for a justification for belief in the sinlessness of Mary. It's no more compelling than the Catholic argument that God cannot be in the presence of sin so Mary must have been conceived without the stain of Original Sin (the Immaculate Conception dogma).

The Rosary? Seriously? Catholics praying bothers you? Does your religious service - what denomination, by the way? - have a set liturgy.

I am certain that no objection was being made there to the fact that Catholics pray. However, the rosary is believed to bring spiritual benefits that other kinds of praying will not (or at least have not been promised as is the case with the rosary). That is questionable, since the use of such a device has no Scriptural basis, as I assume you realize yourself since you did not have any to refer to.

 

[Blood Bought 1953]

Maybe. But then again, God has gone to a great deal of trouble to appeal to each of us in our individual courts, and he has succeeded in winning his case in many of our courtrooms. Whether or not our following him is all vanity is a different question. I rather hope it isn't.

I did not use the word “ follow”... at this point I will not allow my vanity to overcome me, I will not go on ,ad nauseum, to prove to the world that iam right and you are wrong,there would probably be some vanity in that. God bless

 

[Brian Mcnamee]

Hi that was a very well written piece and it does serve well to point out the source of where division takes place. The animosity I hope is never personal but against the specific doctrines that offends weather you are Catholic or protestant. I have more animosity than ever as I see a specific move by both Catholics and many protestants to unite again. IMO this is the one world church forming before our eyes that will be there for the 7 year tribulation. Here is a link to the Rosecrucian website who also go by the knights of Solomon. This is a scary page and takes some time to break it down but it unites Catholics. Pagans, Protestants with a more new age religion or gnostic church. This is very much like masonic teaching and has a specific agenda. When I see the Ken Copelands and others embracing the Pope and other faiths calling for world peace and unity it reads right out of the order of Solomon pages. Has the spirit on antichrist infiltrated many churches today?
Introduction « The Knights Templar – Order of the Temple of Solomon

HI I do agree with you that no website is going to post the secrets of the Illuminati on the web for you to read. It is a lot like Hillary Clinton who admits to having a public and a private policy. The information you get on sites like this is the sort of propaganda they are using to achieve specific objectives. Think about the move from moral absolutes to post modern moral relativism and how that was accomplished. That was a major shift in thought and made possible all the madness we are encountering today. The issues like climate change and immigration with the emphasis on equality and acceptance is tearing down cultural boundaries and national distinctives to create a global mindset. Not that we have to agree with one another such as the coexist movement we just have to accept all these differences as equal. The path this is taking is in fact a political and spiritual movement selling a sweet sentiment of tolerance and justice to prepare the world to accept what is coming. The Rosecrucian site I pointed to is not some wild speculative site but demonstrates many connections in this area.

By the way it is worth doing some research into the UFO area as this is more than likely going to come up as a reality in time. If or should I say when ET life comes out in the open will they be from another planet or another dimension aka fallen angles manifest or some hybrid? The top Catholic astronomer at MT Graham in AZ where the Vatican owns the largest infrared telescope in the world was interviewed by a guy named Tom Horn who was told not if but when our space brothers reveal themselves they will not challenge the authority of the Pope and they will be Gods creation too only without the sin of Adam and he claims they will fundamentally change our understanding of the Bible. Jesus siad a strong deception will come and fool even the elect if it were possible. The antichrist in 2 Thess Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin[fn] is revealed, the son of perdition, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God[fn] in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

Is he going to claim to be God almighty creator of heaven and earth or is he a god alla the Ancient Aliens sort? Dan 2 Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. 43 As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. 44 And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed;

What is mingling with the seed of man here? It is not man and they will not adhere to one another. This is at the time when the kingdom that will not end is set up described as a a stone cut without hands coming down and destroying the image and leaving no trace and this kingdom becomes a great mountain covering the entire earth. When the LORD Jesus returns as seen in Zech 14 he will crush this final kingdom and reign forever 1000 on earth while Satan is bound than one last rebellion is allowed and that
is the end of this age and the New Jerusalem comes down and all.

 

[truefiction1]

Agreed. However, I believe your position is one can only have those 'ears to hear' in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Am I correct?

No sir, I know that the ears to hear exist outside of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Jan Hus was not an Eastern Orthodox priest. He was a Roman Catholic priest who rejected the Roman divergences. They burned him alive. He was given the opportunity to recant his testimonies in order to spare his life, yet he refused because he had to tell the Truth. He had the ears to hear, and the Love of God, which is the same thing, in essence, and so he had all that he needed.

A lot of your theology is based on what the Patriarchs and early church fathers wrote. By your statement above I assume you see their writings as infallible? Or only infallible when there is consensus?

No sir, I don't hold any single individual to be infallible. Only the whole Church is infallible because it is the Body of Christ and "quickened" by the Holy Spirit. I don't depend solely on any consensus alone, but on the "mode of being" that a child of God participates in by the power of the Holy Spirit and the proclamation of the Word of God. This mode of being must be in agreement with Church teaching, Wherever an individual father's opinion contradicts the Holy Tradition (i.e. consensus plus the personal experience of Communion with God) then I reject that father's conjecture.

 

[redleghunter]

Exactly. Don't go along with a church, like the Anglican church, who allow openly gay ministers and women priests!

Homosexual clergy in the Catholic Church - Wikipedia

Catholic Church Grapples With Openly Gay Priests

 

[Goatee]

Homosexual clergy in the Catholic Church - Wikipedia

Catholic Church Grapples With Openly Gay Priests

You didn't link to any women priests in the CC?

Are in the same congregation as Major1?

 

[Albion]

Jesus said repeatedly that he will judge us on our deeds.
Therefore, we will be judged on our deeds, so do right and avoid doing wrong.

I don't see any contradiction between thinking that we may be saved by Faith in Christ and his sacrifice...and the idea that we will all face a judgment which will include an assessment of our deeds. Every Protestant pastor who knows his theology understands this (although the critics apparently do not), and I've heard some memorable sermons on that very point.

 

[JacksBratt]

"accepting Jesus and confessing Him as your Lord" however that may ultimately be expressed--but that is still a work. The emphasis still resides on the human effort, on the human decision, on the human act of will to accomplish X.

So, I guess, a person dying, on their deathbed, who can utter the sinners prayer, accepting Jesus, confessing Him as his Lord... is "works"? Really?

That's like saying that holding out your hand, to accept the keys to a new car, is working for the car...

Absurd concept.

Especially when you consider the infinite difference in Christ "work" on the Cross and someone uttering words of humble redemption.

 

[redleghunter]

The manner in which they practice theology, their definition of the Trinity that results, and the many divergent doctrines that flow out of it, such as but not limited to: the absolute supremacy and infallibility of the papacy, satisfaction doctrine of atonement, created grace, purgatory, the immaculate conception, indulgences.

Filioque?

 

[Albion]

So, I guess, a person dying, on their deathbed, who can utter the sinners prayer, accepting Jesus, confessing Him as his Lord... is "works"? Really?

That's like saying that holding out your hand, to accept the keys to a new car, is working for the car...

Absurd concept.

Especially when you consider the infinite difference in Christ "work" on the Cross and someone uttering words of humble redemption.

I think that Via Crucis was referring, with regret, to the nature of certain varieties of modern Protestantism. He was not endorsing what he described.

 

[redleghunter]

The top Catholic astronomer at MT Graham in AZ where the Vatican owns the largest infrared telescope in the world was interviewed by a guy named Tom Horn who was told not if but when our space brothers reveal themselves they will not challenge the authority of the Pope and they will be Gods creation too only without the sin of Adam and he claims they will fundamentally change our understanding of the Bible.

The top Catholic astronomer should know well the make up of the galaxies in our universe and come to the same conclusion most modern astronomers have come to. That is, our planet Earth in its place in our solar system and galaxy is the only planet that can sustain life.

 

[Goatee]

This thread should be closed.

Why? Because there is no real benefit of it. It's just a bashing ground. I myself am guilty of that in this thread! Can we all not put aside these things? Do we have to criticize each other's beliefs?

It is Christmas. A time of the birth of Jesus. A time to be warm and loving.

Let's all embrace each other with love and thanksgiving. Let's put aside our differences. We all love God. We all love scripture. We all believe in Jesus Christ.

God bless you all. Everyone of you. Especially Major1. You are all my friends in Christ and I humbly apologise if I have upset anyone in this thread for their way of thinking.

God bless you people.