First, I know the things you say about the ancient eastern and oriental churches (having worshipped at both an Armenian Catholic church and an Armenian "orthodox" church in the past). I am aware of uniatism, monophytism, nestorianism (and even of the various forms of the Syriac alphabet), etc. Let's just say that you're not telling me anything I don't already know. You seem to be saying that the former Protestant denominationalist who converts to Catholicism should be satisfied and not pay any attention to the claims of these other churches, and therefore the siutation with the various ancient churches is not analogous to the various Protestant denominations. I beg to differ. Why should the convert to Catholicism, who has rejected what he once considered absolute and unquestionable and accepted something he once regarded as absolutely beyond the pale of belief, suddenly draw the line at Chalcaedonian chr*stianity? Why investigate the claims of Catholicism but not those of monophysitism or nestorianism? I myself could only become a Noachide after becoming a Catholic. In a sense, converting to one's first "new belief" opens a door to an infinite number of possible conversions in the future. Why Catholics do not seem to understand this, why they think someone can just waltz into the Catholic Church and suddenly stop searching, is beyond me, since the claims of Catholicism are no more reasonable to the inquiring Protestant than those of the "heretics" is to a Catholic.
Huh?? Christianity: spread by the Apostles. St. Paul wrote a lot of the New Testament. how do you make that statement?
As you no doubt have learned by now, I don't accept chr*stianity, the authority of the apostles, or the "new testament."
Me: that now the belief is that evolution is almost required to illustrate that the Bible doesn't mean what it seems to say.
You: Quite untrue.
No, you are very wrong. Kindly allow me to quote an orthodox and creationist (if such thing is really possible!) Catholic web site:
We can trace back this process to the Reformation, when a certain suspicion of the Bible entered into Catholic circles because of the way men such as Luther and Calvin interpreted it. The cleavage between Catholics and Protestants developed into a huge chasm as the centuries passed and was still a major factor at the time of Darwin. Christendom had become a house divided in which, broadly speaking, Catholics base their faith on the teaching of the Church rather than the Bible. From a Catholic perspective this was not a question of seeing "the Church" or "the Bible" as opposing authorities, but of regarding the twin principles of Scripture and Tradition as normative in the life of the Church. But one result of this emphasis was that some Catholics were inclined to accept the idea of Evolution. Like the thin end of the proverbial wedge, this acceptance of the principle of Evolution has gradually entered into the practical life of the Church, and to speak frankly, "corrupted" it.As far as the teachings of the Magisterium are concerned, and the documents of Vatican II, the emphasis on the Bible as the inspired Word of God is still there. What has happened is that evolutionary ideas have undermined the general faith of the Church, and so this Biblical emphasis has been overshadowed.
Perhaps you wish to retract your statement?
You seem to have been driven out by one person who was not a member of a religious teaching order. You don't seem to have been driven out by the church's teachings, but by someone's attitude.
This is a most simplistic understanding. The person I mentioned merely drove me from the Latin rite church to the Armenian rite Catholic Church (where I later discovered a "conservative" seminarian who worshipped there because he didn't like liberalism, but who nevertheless did not know for certain that Noah ever actually lived, since the Bible's assertion was not enough for him). It was this latter that was the very final straw, though a great deal of straws had been building up for six years.
You're obviously a good, kind, and compassionate person, but why is it that you and other good people like you persist in seeing a stable and conservative Catholic Church with a few liberals here and there? The straws that had built up for over six years came from Catholics (including priests) in my home parish as well as those I encountered far from home at a liberal university. They came from Catholic Digest, Liguorian (home of Jim Auer, who tells kids that the stories in the Bible didn't actually happen), US Catholic, Our Sunday Visitor, This Rock, Catholic Answers, and every tract and pamphlet that defended Catholicism from Protestantism, each of which insisted that evolution and the purely parabolic nature of the Bible must be accepted at least in theory by the Catholic as opposed to the Protestant.
I can only shake my head at good people like you who cannot see that your dead fish is rotting from the top, and not from a few "malcontents" here and there.
I wish you were able, for just a few minutes, to place yourself mentally in the shoes of a rural Fundamentalist converting to an urban, educated, and over-intellectual Catholic Church. Why can't you understand the culture shock? Why don't you understand the scandal? Why can't you see?
I wish you good luck in fighting the good fight, but unfortunately an "infallible" Church that never acts infallibly and whose "unchanged" doctrines grow dustier and most obscure by the day is simply not satisfactory. I'm sorry.