I did, fool. I said I was CHRISTIAN. One can be a Christian and not be 100% Protestant or 100% Catholic. Indeed, a Christian can be either or neither, or any combination of the two.
For sh!ts and grins, please explain to the thread your visceral hatred of Catholicism. Did you pine for a young girl in a Catholic school uniform, and were rebuffed? Is that it? Did some Catholic school football team clobber the living crap out of your public school eleven? Hell, boy: Those things have happened to most everybody, but virtually no one else is consumed by hate because of it. And I know scores of Catholics who have had the same experience re: a non-Catholic girl, and non-Catholic football teams. But they aren’t consumed by hate because of it.
In all candor, you may need professional help.
You said:
I did, fool. I said I was CHRISTIAN. One can be a Christian and not be 100% Protestant or 100% Catholic. Indeed, a Christian can be either or neither, or any combination of the two… please explain to the thread your visceral hatred of Catholicism.
Me:
I, too, am concerned for those who read this thread. Which is why I am going to post what this fellow says… shortened and edited a bit here and there by me. This piece is about the kind of liberal “half-way house” system of belief, you, and so many others nowadays have bought into:
“You may not like this. You may think me uncharitable, narrow-minded, bigoted, and so forth: be it so….I feel it a duty to bear my solemn testimony against the spirit of the day you live in.
It is not the system which says nothing is true, so much as the system which says everything is true that will damn people’s souls;
it is not the system which says there is no Saviour, so much as the system which says there are many saviors and many ways to God that will damn people’s souls.
It is the system which is so liberal that it dares not say anything is false; it is the system which is so charitable that it will allow everything to be true that will damn people’s souls.
It is the system which honors others as well as our Lord Jesus Christ, class them all together, and speaks well of them all. Confucius and Zoroaster, Socrates and Mohammed, the Indian Brahmins and the African devil-worshippers, Arius and Pelagius, Ignatius Loyola and Socinus, — all must be spoken of respectfully: none are to be condemned, that will damn people’s souls.
It is the system which bids us smile complacently on all creeds and systems of religion: the Bible and the Koran, the Hindu Vedus and the Persian Zendavesta, the old wives’ fables of Rabbinical Judaism and the rubbish of Patristic traditions, THE PAPACY AND ITS TRADITIONS and the book of Mormon of Joseph Smith, — all are truth: none are to be denounced as lies.
It is the system so liberal, so scrupulous about the feelings of others, that we are never to say it is wrong; it is the system that calls a man a bigot if he dares to say, “Let the word of God be true, and every man a liar.” This is the system which I desire emphatically to testify against and denounce.
What is it but a bowing down before a great idol called liberality? What is it all but a sacrificing of truth upon the altar of a caricature of charity? Beware of it, reader, beware that the rushing stream of public opinion does not carry you away.
Beware of it, if you believe the Bible… Has the Lord God spoken to us in the Bible, or has He not? Has He shown us truth plainly in the Bible, or has He not? Has He declared to us the dangerous state of those who bow at the altar of liberalism?
Gird up the loins of your mind, and look these questions fairly in the face, and give them an honest answer. Tell us that there is some other inspired book beside the Bible, and then we shall know what you mean; tell us that the whole Bible is not inspired, and then we shall know where to meet you.
But grant us for a moment that the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, is God’s truth., and then I know not in what way you can escape the doctrine of the text.
From the liberality which says everybody is right, from the charity which forbids you to say others are wrong, from the peace which is bought at the expense of truth, — may the good Lord deliver you!
I FIND NO RESTING PLACE BETWEEN EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY AND INFIDELITY, whatever others may find. I SEE NO HALF-WAY HOUSE BETWEEN THEM.
I can see consistency in an infidel, however much I may pity him; I can see consistency in the full maintenance of Evangelical truth: BUT AS TO A MIDDLE COURSE BETWEEN THE TWO,—I CANNOT SEE IT; and I say so plainly.
Let it be called illiberal and uncharitable. I can hear God’s voice nowhere except in the Bible. Outside of it, I hear none.”