> Be better to focus on the 10,000 where there is unity <
Well said. Furthermore, there is unity among all the really important points.
There is not, and you are deceiving yourself to think that the really important differences can somehow be overcome. They cannot.
One of the failures of this article is to discuss it in terms of "Protestant" vs "Catholic<" both elevating these terns by capitalizing as proper nouns. Keeping the theme correctly narrow, the issue is "Romanists" vs "non-Romanists"; where the nature of the problem is the form of structure demanded by the polity of consolidating power by Gentile philosophers infiltrating it to become the religion-dispensing organ cash-cow of the State or not; in this case the supra-locality religious overseers answering to a Caesar/Kaiser/Emperor in whom all earthly power is thought to be personified, under the mistaken concept of the Divinely-given rights of a King.
It is under this theory that a portion of that insuperable force may be delegated to a select clergy aristocracy which alone is able to determine the kind of spiritual and/or moral life that the rest of the common citizenry may exercise, and what they may not.
The instance of that kind of episcopacy coagulating under the Roman Empire occurred under Constantine the Roman Emperor who paved its way to become the Roman State-funded Religion, which on the one hand professed "catholicism" (like-mindedness) which really meant "intolerance" of any other religious organization having different rules of operation and not answering for its spiritual authority to the Emperor or his appointees.
Such differences were labeled "heresy" or "apostasy" or "heathen," all of which were to be completely and quickly eliminated by such force as necessary to maintain a citizenry under that government every one of whom had to endorse and practice that religion alone.
If necessary, to refuse it became a capital offense for lack of allegiance to the State and its religion.
This kind of intolerance had to be negated when the policies of colonial Northern America bore their fruit in the Declaration of Independence from England (and its bastardized fatherless Romanistic state church, denominated the Anglican Church), and its newly-minted Constitution of the United Statesm which was formulated congregationally by "We(All Of) The People" whose philosophical core permitted any difference you want in spiritual state and its practice, as long as you did not inflict hurt on other fellow citizens, a freedom which embodied rational tolerances which still affirmed that all men are created equal, and where there is no Divine Kingly aristocracy granted to anyone.
Thus a critical thinker must come to the unavoidable ultimate conclusion that the intolerance of the Roman Empire's catholicity must come in great conflict with the North American citizen's tolerance of opinionated differences (aside from the necessary rules needed for a democratic republic).
What causes great stress in our present United States of America is the Roman Church headed by an "infallible" pope. This religion has clearly wished from the beginning to allow its clergy and their minions to overwhelm the common people of this country and the protesting of the many who resist having their beliefs forced on them from birth as unreasoned dogma. Lomg ago, our ancestors originally came here as pioneers to escape that smothering dominance of individuality that covered all of Europe. And such humans like me who have preserved the liberty to make up their minds as to the rules for their own behavior, will continue to resist Roman-type religious intolerance to the death.
As Patrick Henry said . . . (well, you know what he shouted).
My FRiend, there are oppositional theories that cannot be resolved by wedding them, differences under which people will survive only by arms-length tolerance both plainly physical and figuratively mental. The need for tolerance is the trap under which removal of that patient endurance, or removal of the intolerant person, is the hard choice that our Founding Fathers had to face.
How we react now will determine whether our freedoms will remain or not. Under Romanism, they cannot endure, but will have to be slaughtered with auto da fe or torture the same way that Muslims who similarly operate under their own version of intolerance. And communists as well do the same when they gain control. Or monarchies, if they revive.
God Bless the America of my youth, land that I loved so long ago that Kate Smith sang about, a theme memorialized by Irving Berlin.
My Heavenly Father, I beg You, stand beside her and guide her, I pray with all my heart.
Respectfully, no there isn’t agreement on the really important points between Christianity and Roman Catholicism.
Well said. Furthermore, there is unity among all the really important points.
Philip Melanchthon (born Philipp Schwartzerdt;16 February 1497 – 19 April 1560) was a German Lutheran reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, an intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and influential designer of educational systems.
No. There's not.
There's a list if "really important" differences. The first one that comes to mind is the RCC view of Mary's "immaculate conception" which many say means she was without sin. That is a "really important" difference and should be corrected by the "magisterium of the Catholic Church.
(the religion's authority that allegedly gives authentic interpretation of the Word of God, "whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition"; furthermore, according to the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, the task of interpretation is vested uniquely in the Pope and the bishops, though the concept has a complex history of development".)
How did the Bereans ever get by without the magisterium, the "bishops", and a "pope"?
Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Acts 17:11