What Is Their Error

DiscipleOfIAm

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I was thinking the other day that I do not know exactly what Protestants believe, or more correctly, why they believe the RCC to be in error.

What specifically are the errors? Scriptural reference? When did the error occur or when did they go astray?

In no way is this thread to bash another belief system, but more your opinion, beliefs, or reasons for why RCC is in error. That's it.

God Bless!
 

IronWill

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I was thinking the other day that I do not know exactly what Protestants believe, or more correctly, why they believe the RCC to be in error.

What specifically are the errors? Scriptural reference? When did the error occur or when did they go astray?

In no way is this thread to bash another belief system, but more your opinion, beliefs, or reasons for why RCC is in error. That's it.

God Bless!
-Purgatory
-Papal system
-Requirement for priests to be celibate
-Papal Infallibility
-Veneration of Saints
-Multiple Mediators between God and Man
-Confession of sins to priest
-Baptism of Infants
-Transubstantiation
-Mary as Co-Redemptrix
 
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arunma

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IronWill summed it up. Here are some Scripture references to those issues for which a specific passage of Scripture comes to my mind.

Purgatory

The Bible says that the judgment immediately succeeds death, without any need for purgatory.
And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, (Hebrews 9:27)
This Scripture also seems to suggest the same:
For we know that if the tent, which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened--not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (2 Corinthians 5:1-4)
Elsewhere (1 Corinthians 3:12), the Bible specifically says that our works will be tried by fire. Catholics have misinterpreted the Scripture to say that we also will be tried.

Papal system

The Bible says that Jesus himself is the head of the church:
And he is the head of the body, the church. (Colossians 1:18)
This one is a bit tricker, since the Bible does say that Peter was the head of the early church. I know some believe that Peter's confession was the rock on which the church, but as R.C. Sproul's commentary observes, but for Roman Catholic papal abuses, Christians would probably have never abandoned the passage's obvious reference to Peter. The problem for Catholics is that the Bible does not teach Apostolic succession. There's nothing in the Bible to suggest that Peter's authority didn't die with him.

Requirement for priests to be celibate

The Bible teaches us not to forbid marriage.
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. (1 Timothy 4:1-3)
In all fairness, the celibacy requirement is not a dogma of the Catholic Church. It's more of a Western tradition. To this day, Eastern Catholic priests, who are in full communion with Rome, are permitted to have wives (provided that they marry before their ordination). And when some married Anglican priests joined the Catholic Church due to the homosexuality controversy, they were fully accepted. Still, it's not a good idea for the church to encourage celibacy among people who aren't called to it, especially when the Bible says that people in ministry are not necessarily called to celibacy (1 Corinthians 9:5).

Multiple Mediators between God and Man

The Bible says that Jesus is the only mediator between God and man:
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, (1 Timothy 2:5)
Confession of sins to priest

This one isn't unbiblical, per se. The problem is not the encouragement to confess sins to a priest, but the requirement that you can confess sins only to a priest. The Bible does command the confession of sins to other Christians:
Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. (James 5:16)
Biblically speaking, confessing sins to any other Christian should be equally valid as confession to a priest. This tradition arose because in the early church, Christians would sometimes confess sins to people who would later blackmail them with the information (I suppose there were a lot of false brothers around back then, just as there are today). So pastors began receiving all confessions. The problem for the Catholic Church arose when they replaced the commandment of God with their human tradition.

Anyway, those are some reasons I can think of as to why Catholic doctrine is at odds with the Bible. I'm not as hardcore anti-Catholic as other Bible believing Christians, in that I don't think the Catholic Church is quite apostate (though it appears to be getting there, albeit slowly). But given Catholicism's apparent disdain for evangelism, I do think that the Catholic Church is defunct.
 
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DiscipleOfIAm

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Thanks guys! Good stuff.

So, when did the RCC go astray with these doctrines and why? Was it gradual, was it certain men? What makes it erroneous? For the sake of argument, the word Trinity is not in the Bible either, nor is the word Bible. Why did it take 1500 years before people suddenly decided the RCC was wrong?

Thanks to all!
 
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arunma

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Thanks guys! Good stuff.

So, when did the RCC go astray with these doctrines and why? Was it gradual, was it certain men? What makes it erroneous? For the sake of argument, the word Trinity is not in the Bible either, nor is the word Bible. Why did it take 1500 years before people suddenly decided the RCC was wrong?

Thanks to all!

I definitely don't think the RCC went astray overnight. At one time they were great evangelists and preachers of the Gospel. I'd say that they really went astray after the first thousand years of Christianity. This is when they invented the doctrine of purgatory. It's interesting to note that Eastern Orthodoxy's split with Catholicism (1054 AD) occured before the invention of purgatory, and now the EO church lacks this doctrine, and many other strange Catholic beliefs. The Protestant Reformation was a largely European phenomenon, probably because a lot of the other churches (including the EO church) distanced themselves from Rome over time. I guess the reason it took 1500 years for Catholics like Martin Luther to realize that their church practiced so much error is because the church's plunge into error was gradual.
 
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