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You act as though these people don't have a choice.
I'm sorry, last I checked I wasn't your spiritual advisor...
You act as though these people don't have a choice.
I think perhaps a crash course in Catholicism is in order.
For a better understanding of the papacy and the role of the Pope in the Catholic Church, carefully look over the 11 docs here:
http://www.catholic.com/library/church_papacy.asp
And for a serious discussion with some very knowledgable Catholics, here is a fantastic forum which welcomes people from all faiths and encourages good lively discussion over Catholic and non-Catholic apologetics:
http://forums.catholic.com/
I originally thought this was a serious question about the Catholic faith and how it interacts with the issues of the day.
Now I see it's just another expression of anti-Catholic bigotry.
How disappointing.
This thread is a witch hunt. I admire and respect the catholics I know, as well as the clergy I know, they are good people.
You are missing the point, on purpose I suspect.
You've done nothing here but wrap yourself in a smug sense of superiority with your religious beliefs, as they differ from the Catholic church.
Why don't you tell us a little about your church, so as to lend some credibility to your belief that Catholics not serious, intelligent believers in Jesus Christ .... unless you were not being serious.
As a strong, weekly Mass-attending, Confession-going, KofC member Catholic, I fully agree with the Church teachings on "gay matrimony" and abortion. As a Catholic, I also recognize that I'm a member of the original Christian church -- founded by Christ and given to St. Peter to lead in around 33AD.
As for other groups within the Christian family...
THE ORIGIN OF YOUR CHURCH
If you are a Lutheran, your religion was founded in Germany, by Martin Luther, an ex-monk of the Roman Catholic Church, in the year 1517.
If you are a Mennonite, your church began in Switzerland, by Grebel, Mantz, and Blaurock, in the year 1525.
If you belong to the Church of England (Anglican), your religion was founded by King Henry VIII in 1534, because the Pope could not grant him a divorce with the right to remarry.
If you are a Presbyterian, your religion was founded by John Knox, in Scotland, in the year 1560.
If you are a Congregationalist, your religion was originated by Robert Brown, in Holland, in 1583.
If you are a Baptist, you owe the tenets of your religion to John Smyth, who launched it in Amsterdam, in 1606.
If you are a Unitarian, your religion was founded in London, by John Biddle, in 1645.
If you are an Episcopalian, your religion was an offshoot of the Church of England, founded by Samuel Seabury in the American Colonies in the 17th century.
If you are a Quaker, your religion was founded by George Fox, in England, in 1647.
If you are a Methodist, your religion was launched by John and Charles Wesley, in England, in 1739.
If you are a Universalist, John Murray founded your religion in New Jersey, in 1770.
If you are an Evangelical, you owe the founding of your religion to Jacob Albright,in Pennsylvania, in 1803.
If you are a Mormon, a "Latter Day Saint," then Joseph Smith started your religion in Palmyra, New York, in 1829.
If you are a Seventh Day Adventist, your religion originated in New York, by William Miller in 1831. ,
If you worship with the Salvation Army sect, then you acknowledge William Booth in London as your originator, in 1865.
If you are a Jehovah Witness, then your church was founded by Charles Taze Russell, in 1872, as the "Millennial Dawnists." In 1931, Judge Rutherford, his successor, decided that henceforth they would be called, Witnesses of Jehovah, or Jehovah Witness.
If you are a Christian Scientist, then Mary Baker Eddy founded your religion in Massachusetts, in 1879.
If you belong to the Assembly of God religion, then a General Assembly in Arkansas started it in 1914.
If you claim the Church of the Nazarene as your religion, then Union at General Assembly launched it in 1919.
If you are an Evangelical Reformed, then Union at General Assembly created it in 1934.
If you belong to "Pentecostal Gospel," your religion is one of the hundreds of new sects founded by men in the last 100 years.
If you are a Roman Catholic, you know that your religion was founded in the year 33 by Our Lord Jesus Christ; the One True Faith, ". . . outside of which no one at all can be saved."
Jeeze, I just asked a simple question of Catholics...
the ressurected one always gets owned in the political forum, at least thats what i see from lurking 20 hrs a day
Good for you.
This is no different than any other Christian religion...none of them have cut the books of Acts or any of the Gospels from the Bible.
The Roman Catholic Church, however, has taken liberties with the scripture that cannot be supported by history or content.
The one point that irrevocably sets the Catholic Church apart from all other versions of Christianity is the issue of the papacy. Catholics believe that the pope is the direct successor to Peter, a concept known as the apostolic succession, which vests the papacy with a mandate to lead Catholicism which supposedly dates back to Jesus himself.
In its modern form, the most meaningful part of this mandate is known as infallibility. The doctrine of papal infallibility teaches that the pope is incapable of making an error when it comes to matters of religious teaching. In recent years, this concept has been sharply limited in its application and includes only specific kinds of papal proclamations.
The need for such a limitation became clear pretty early in Church history. By the close of Christianity's first millennium, the papacy had been occupied by some truly mindblowing hedonists and degenerates.
The phrase "died while committing adultery" appears surprisingly often when you review the annals of the Vatican. The list of popes includes such distinguished figures as John XII, who had sex with his mother and sisters; John VIII, who may have been a female transves e masquerading as a man; Clement V, who unleashed the terrors of the Inquisition against the Knights Templar in a naked grab for the society's valuable real estate; and Sergius III, who reportedly fathered an illegitimate child through incest and then installed that child as Pope John XI.
Many non-Catholics have trouble understanding how this extremely uneven track record can possibly reflect the divine mandate implied by the doctrine of the apostolic succession. The confusion deepens when you see just how spotty the actual succession can be.
For the first 100 years after the birth of Christ, there exists only a bare approximation of a historical record to vindicate the notion that the papacy goes all the way back to Peter. If you can get past that rather significant point, you then find that there is no particular indication that the early Christians gave any special or universal rank to the pope, who was then known simply as the bishop of Rome.
The most powerful early Christian bishoprics included Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, but many other bishops were well-represented and politically powerful.
When Constantine wanted to unify the church, he didn't rely on Sylvester, the Bishop of Rome at that time. He called in all 250-plus bishops from around Christendom, all of whom had their own special ideas of what cons uted a Church. Pope Sylvester I was barely a footnote to the proceedings.
Then there's the "unbroken succession" issue. For most of the Catholic Church's history, the selection of popes has been a haphazard affair. Sometimes popes were elected, at other times they were appointed. Some popes chose their own successors. On several occasions, popes were installed or deposed by the military might of Roman emperors and Italian kings.
Sometimes there were two claimants to the papacy at once, or even three. Such "antipopes" began to appear with alarming regularity as early as the third century of the Church. There were at least 30 before the election of popes was standardized in the 16th century.
The leading status of the Bishop of Rome was, at first, a secular political consideration. Rome was the heart of the Roman Empire, which became Christian in the wake of Constantine I. Naturally, the Bishop of Rome was in a position to represent himself effectively.
Up until the fourth century, the word "pope" wasn't even specific to Rome and applied to any bishop. Etymologically speaking, the beginning of the papacy can be traced to Pope Siricus — the 38th bishop of Rome installed at the end of the fourth century, according to the list used by the church, who ruled on various doctrinal matters as if his opinion was the one that mattered. The actual stated doctrine of infallibility evolved slowly over the centuries that followed, but it wasn't precisely codified until the end of the 19th century.
The nature of the papacy has also varied wildly throughout the years. From the eighth century through medieval times, popes frequently took an active role in global politics, even going so far as to launch wars from time to time. In contrast, the 21st century papacy is politically impotent, ruling a few square miles of Vatican City.
I know, I'm a heretic by Catholic standards and, were it not for progresses in civilization, I would be hunted down by the Vatican Army and made to answer for my heresy!
That's what they tried to do to Martin Luther in the 1500's after he posted his 95 Theses to the door of the Catholic church in Vittenburg, Germany in 1519. But, after Martin Luther made a convincing argument that Catholic "indulgences" (buying yourself and/or a dead loved one out of pergutory) in a trial held, thankfully, in Germany instead of Rome (where the church would have surely burned him at the stake), public opinion was forever changed.
Combined with the recent invention of the printing press, Christians -- all of whom, to that point, were Catholics were exposed to the written scriptures and to Luther's findings of Catholicisms shortcomings. This led to a bloody revolution in the church which resulted in...
Lutheranism...
This is reformation movement keyed on removing centuries of Catholic dogma and canonical nonsense that had ac ulated over the preceding 15 centuries of Papal nonsense and Governmental intrusion (the most significant of which was probably the co-opting of the church be the Roman Emperor Constantine in the 300's).
As has been stated, within the Reformation Movement, Reformed Churches are always reforming and that has led to the many other Reformed denomination splintering off the Lutheran Church.
A lot of the other "churches" mentioned by Gopher, which are not a direct offshoot of the Catholic or Reformed Churches were, generally, invented by a person or group of people who couldn't abide some of the specific doctrine upon which most Reformed and Catholic church agree.
The big ones are the Nicene Creed, followed by the Apostles Creed... Both similar in construct and both adhered to by most churches that consider themselves extensions of those first apostles, that band of 12, who moved out and spread the Good News!
*sigh*
So we know you've read Boettner. How nice.
Actually, I would deem the Holy Eucharist as the one point that irrevocably sets the Catholic Church apart from all other denominations. This is THE reason Catholics attend Mass every Sunday, or at least it should be.
The Catholic Church through the ages have had many well do ented trials and tribulations. I don't think any Catholic would be doing well to cover these up. They are there, period. But does anyone really believe that when Christ handed over the keys of the Church to a bunch of ordinary men with Peter at the helm, that everything would go flawlessly through the centuries? Because the Catholic Church is the Church Christ handed down, this does not mean that the human caretakers are automatically given the gift of perfection to lead the Church. It was and is going to get bumpy at times. To suggest otherwise is just crazy I tell ya.
Hey Resurrected One, I do encourage you to float some of your propositions at the Catholic Answers forum, you will get very informed responses. If you got the time and inclination that is.
Thanks NeoCon.
Reformed faiths celebrate the Eucharist as a sacrament. We just don't believe in the transubstantiation of the elements. We also cannot find scriptural support for much more than the sacraments of eucharist and baptism; albeit, some reformed faiths hold marriage to be sacramental. Catholics, on the other hand, have managed to arrive at 9, over the centuries...including Baptism, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Confirmation, Marriage, Holy Orders, and Extreme Unction (Last Rites).
Also, while I grant that no religion is without its flaws, as you suggested, the Roman Catholic Church and the modern Church of Christ are the only two who claim to have a direct lineage from the apostles; the rest of us are satisfied to claim that we adhere to Christ's teachings as informed by divine scripture through the Gospels, epistles, and Old Testament accounts.
So, even though the Roman Catholic Church has committed great sins throughout its known history, its greatest may be that it continues to claim to trace its roots from one person to another all the way back to Peter himself. When, in fact, it is well established that much of the papal history between 67 A.D. and about 310 A.D., with official coopting of the faith by the Roman Government, much has been made up out of whole cloth with little appreciation of the facts or absence thereof.
The term Pope is never mentioned in the Bible and the only time you see Holy Father is when Christ Himself is addressing His Father, God. The first "Pope," Peter, never behaved as modern Popes do. He was deferential and even counted himself as equal to his peers. No one bowed or kissed his ring...if, even, he owned a ring.
This difference is EVERYTHING.
There no scriptural support for the transubstantiation of the elements...sorry.
We'll just have to disagree.
Uh, umm..."Ressurrected"...there is.
John, Chapter 6:
Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.
For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever."
Are the puritans still burning witches in Town Square too?
Pope or President Quiz: Who Said It?
"You are either with us or against us."
Your reticence exceeds even Jesse Jackson's.
Game over.
WOW TRO, you really hate Catholics.
And to drive your point home, you quote Boettner, a bigot who has spent more than 50 years publishing hate-books about Catholicism.
Thanks for helping unify the Christian denominations with your posts. Very e enical.
Unification?! Haha.
Christians will always be divided.
Human nature (emphasis on nature) trumps God!
Last edited by Guru of Nothing; 06-07-2005 at 10:40 PM.
Unification!!
I'm with you fellers.
Not at all. I just don't think they are who they claim to be.
So, refute the points.
Any time...
Wait, wait...I'm sure I can ID TRO's next source for information on my Church...
JACK CHICK.
Or will you choose some other flaky bigot to quote?
Okay, give me the do entation that shows a direct link between Benedict and Peter.
Show me where the Church responded to Luther's 95 Theses. Yeah, 500 years later they claim to have responded but, alas, nothing in writing...
How long was it before the Catholic Church allowed parishoners to read the actual Bible? And, what happened when Luther provided one in their native tongue?
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