Thanks cloud, but it really is like water off a duck’s back. Perhaps he didn’t understand the link I was trying to make (it seemed as if he thought I was saying one was directly connected to the other for example) and he is also probably ignorant of Church teaching on the matter.
SO TRUE. Your approach, water off the duck's back, really is the best way. How else could it be since you seem most secure in your faith?
I am always amazed at how INTERESTED so many Protestants are about what our Pope says, does, doesn't say and doesn't do. Why do they even care as Pope Francis has NOTHING to do with them or their faith?
I sometimes think that they forget that the Catholic Church was the institution that put together the New Testament.
I read about how difficult that was, trying to sort out all the words from all the writers: which were true, which were not, which were heretical and so on. It took the Church a long time to do that.
Yet the criticism about the Church is puzzling since Protestants didn't even exist until the mid-15th century. And there have been and are innumerable denominations of their Protestant faith. How UN-UNITED they are. I wonder if they think that DISUNITY is what Jesus wanted for Christianity. There were/are some 30,000 (Catholic count) to 40,000 (Protestant count) different Christian denomination over the last 400+ years. Hard to imagine.
I sometimes think that they forget that the Catholic Church was the FIRST institution of Christianity, begun by Jesus Christ, as is His followers, Christians. So odd.
Oh well, God sorts it all out, doesn't He?