Which would standing against one error while succumbing to another.
And while in past centuries obedience to the pope could mean having to exterminate all the heretics like Kim from the land, and condemning separation of church and state and freedom of religion, modern pope sound like this was never the case as they stand for the latter.
I am a Roman Catholic for nigh onto seventy years now and always have been and shall be one to the moment of my death. That is not criticism of your faith or of anyone else's faith that I do not share fully.
In the early days of Christianity, it was said by our mutual enemies that you will know the Christians. They are the ones that LOVE ONE ANOTHER. And so we should always be. I wish that people here of whatever persuasion would calm down, respect one another even when we belong to differing faiths, demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ in our daily lives and in exchanges with one another.
Heaven would be a far poorer place for me if it was not the eternal home of my mother's best friend Hilda, an old school Methodist, who loved everyone around her and returned love for each and every insult for more than ninety years. When Methodist Churches in the New Haven area no longer had pastors worthy of respect and instead all had relentlessly leftist pastors, Hilda repaired to her living room and her easy chair and took up her beloved Bible and read it lovingly digesting every word until the words were worn off the pages.
Heaven would be a far, far poorer place without the wonderful Reformed Christians who post here and, when I was in coma from Thanksgiving to Christmas last year, many of them and many of my fellow Catholics here prayed me back to a semblance of normal life despite my heart trouble, diabetes and kidney failure. For the first seventeen days of that coma, I was in Intensive Care and I was not expected to survive until the next day. With the help of those prayers and of the God that you and I worship, I can drive 20 miles each way to dialysis three times a week. Soon I will have an operation that will allow me to dialyze myself at home while I sleep. Thank you, Jesus!
I used to rail and rage against the more aggressive Reformed Christians here when they argued against Catholicism. You know what? I grew up at an advanced age. I stopped arguing like that and trading insult for insult. First of all, I respect your absolute right to choose your own faith commitment. I'm not going to stop being Catholic and you likely aren't going to leave your faith behind either. Let's try to get along anyway.
I'd love to see the entire world be Tridentine Roman Catholics but it is not going to happen any more than there will be a worldwide Caliphate under Mohammed el Kaboomski converting the whole world to Islam and any more than the entire world will be Reformed Christians.
As an attorney (now recovering permanently) I had the privilege of representing hundreds of people who shared your faith and sometimes your approach, taking the time to talk to each one to learn HIS or HER beliefs and to represent each person accordingly and not according to my Catholic beliefs unless the client was Catholic and of reasonable facsimile of my beliefs. That worked better for all of us and for the babies.
When the Inquisition burned Jan Hus and others who were Christian victims, the Inquisition also burned Catholics such as St. Joan of Arc and corruptly caused the death by being hanged, drawn and quartered and beheaded Sir William Wallace, the noble Scottish rebel and burned the Dominican monk of Florence, Fr. Savanarola for resisting the authority of the absolutely notorious Pope Alexander VI.
I agree with Alberta's Child that Kim Davis is soon to swim the Tiber, like many before her, maybe her husband as well. Many swim the Tiber in the opposite direction as well. Is that any skin off your nose? We should all: Catholic, Reformed and others stand in solidarity with her, regardless of her denomination, for her brave witness and in opposition to US District Court judge David Bunning, allegedly a Catholic although I see no Catholicism in the wretch. Whatever her Faith, she is one of us as the judge who jailed her is not.
I would gladly see Bunning arrested, jailed, tried, convicted, and sentenced to extraordinary time in jail or something more permanent, not because he is a heretic or a schismatic but because he deprives people like Kim Davis of her God given right to freedom of worship in violation of his judicial oath of office. He has thus violated his promises to God Himself. He is no more Catholic and no more Christian than Nancy Pelosi, the late Ted Kennedy, a lot of other Kennedys, Rosa DeLauro, Chris Dodd, Little Dick Durbin, Joe Biden, John (did you know he served in Vietnam but whom did he serve?) Kerry, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum ad nauseam. Off with their heads, each and every one and NOT for heresy but for crimes for which each citizen should expect to be hanged.
I would certainly condemn "separation of Church and state" which appears nowhere in the text of the US Constitution or its First Amendment which does mandate that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Please recall that Maryland was originally a Catholic colony but, when the leaders of Maryland invited Protestants into the colony as citizens thereof, they took over, terminated the status as the Catholic colony (from the grant to Catholic Lord Calvert by Charles I, king and martyr, as Catholic, moved the capital from St. Mary's to Annapolis. burned St. Mary's to the ground and plowed its wreckage under the ground, including its Church, and "established" Anglicanism instead. Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia. and other states had established Reformed religions.
When our Reformed Founding Fathers and the sole Catholic, John Carroll of Carrolton, wrote the Establishment clause of the First Amendment, they were assuring those states that there would be no establishment of any denomination in the federal government that would interfere with the various "established" religions of many states (all Reformed religions). It was never meant to be a weapon against religion as such as the ACLU advocates.
Nonetheless, despite the overwhelming numbers of Reformed Christians in the early US, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Jews, Bahai, Muslims, Mormons and many other religious minorities have enjoyed the hospitality here envisioned by the Founding Fathers and prospered by following the rules, working hard, and being good citizens, now with NO established Churches. We have flourished and made our contributions to this country each in our own way, blood on battlefields, service in the military, participation in public life, charities and many other things and, of course Reformed Christians have made stunning contributions as well.
I respect your zeal, your commitment to our Savior, to His Father in heaven and to the Holy Spirit and to Scripture. I may disagree with this or that tenet of your Faith but I will not insult you over any differences. If you are persistent enough or rude, I will simply walk away. That would be a shame not because I cannot convert you or because you cannot convert me but because we will be unable to stand shoulder to shoulder fighting the good fight against our actual common enemies for the wide cornucopia of beliefs that we DO share.