Posted on 12/30/2008 4:47:26 PM PST by SeekAndFind
While Catholics and Protestants both fall under the broad umbrella of Christianity, they practice their faith in different ways.
A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of regular churchgoers found that 25% of Evangelical Christians read the Bible on a daily basis along with 20% of other Protestants. Just seven percent (7%) of Catholics do the same. At the other extreme, 44% of Catholics rarely or never read the Bible along with only seven percent (7%) of Evangelical Christians and 13% of other Protestants.
Consider the divergence among the faiths in other areas, too. (All the figures that follow are based upon those who attend church at least twice a month.)
Ninety-one percent (91%) of Evangelical Christians consider themselves to be born again. Sixty-three percent (63%) of other Protestants have been born again along with 25% of Catholics.
Forty-four percent (44%) of Evangelical Christians reflect at least daily on the meaning of Scripture in their lives. Thirty-six percent (36%) of other Protestants and 22% of Catholics do the same.
Fifty-two percent (52%) of Evangelical Christians have had a meaningful discussion about their faith with a non-Christian during the past month. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of other Protestants and 18% of Catholics also have held such a discussion.
Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Evangelical Christians attend a regular Bible Study or participate in some other small-group activity. Forty-seven percent (47%) of other Protestants take part in small groups related to their faith, along with 24% of Catholics.
Seventy-one percent (71%) of Evangelical Christians say their Church does an excellent job helping them understand the Bible. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of other Protestants and 52% of Catholics say the same.
Despite these differences, the overwhelming majority of all Christians believe that the God of the Bible is the one true God. Ninety-eight percent (98%) of churchgoing Evangelical Christians hold that view along with 94% of other Protestants and 92% of Catholics.
Forty-four percent (44%) of American adults attend Christian church services at least twice a month, and 92% of these regular churchgoers believe the God of the Bible is the one true God.
Sixty-one percent (61%) of adults also say life in the United States would be better if more Americans lived as Christians.
Tell me what other church does all these things?
Well, we do all these things. I attend other church activities twice a week actually (being perfectly honest, its also because I want to find a nice Godly woman, and Church seems like the best spot). We and several other protestants churches reach out to the less fortunate in conjunction with the local Catholic church via an ecumenical food bank. The only part you won't find in many Protestant churches is #7 (Celebrate a rich liturgy of both Word and Sacrament). This is because they have a slightly different view of sacraments than do Catholics and us Anglicans.
-paridel
“but since that never occured, the protestant deformation has resulted in hundreds of ‘bible only’ churches that DIFFER FROM ONE CORNER CHURCH TO THE OTHER, on the same piee of scripture regarding salvation issues.....
whereas the roman catholic church continues to teach the same essentials as was passed on to the apostles and their successors....
big difference.”
Well, I just can’t get past the fact that all of the Protestant religions were simply a splintering off from the mother ship, the Catholic religion. Everything else that came after were variations on the main theme. It appears to me that no one can claim, other than the Catholic Church, to be the original Christian Church. I believe it was on his deathbed that Martin Luther said (I’m paraphrasing here) now any milkmaid can start a religion. Even Luther foresaw what was about to come to pass.
So, as I see it, in order to create a differentiation, Protestants developed a new approach to justify their breaking off from the Catholic Church, and that approach was sola scriptura. Hence all the emphasis was put on bible reading, interpreting through the bible alone in order to justify breaking away from the heirarchacal structure of the Catholic Church. A new approach to the same old subject. I’ve seen both sides as raised a Lutheran and later becoming a Catholic, although I’ve never been a big churchgoer. However, I love studying religion and the theology behind it.
One might read something superficially one time and perhaps much later come back to it and all of a sudden understand it in a more meaningful way. That has happened to me many times (especially the part about reading something superficially).
See...now that's how you do it, you invite people. Tell me just once where an militant commie every invited someone to a nonbelievers meeting. LOL.
Nope...they are too busy trying to herd us all into little pens...all you good little Catholics over here...all you Protestants, Jews and Mormons over there in your separate little cubicles that we place you in. Now, start slinging mud at each other so we can show how stupid you are./s
I hope you are not serious.
John 1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God.
3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.
5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Don’t forget the Psalm and the consecration which is also direct quotes from the Bible.
Here we go again.
I know a heck of a lot more than 7% of my fellow Catholic parishoners and I guarantee there are a lot more bible readers than that in my church.
IOW, the Bible is a part of the our Christian faith but by no means the summit of our faith.
Jesus Christ, in the body and the blood, is the focus of our faith lives.
Our faith is alive and living. Our faith involves all of our senses and focuses on Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and all the saints that went before us. With the sacraments, encounters with Jesus can be a daily occurence.
What the survey implies, you’re coming in contact with it. You’re not reading it, for yourself, to enhance that part of your personal relationship with God that the snack waffer doesn’t.
Jesus said in Matthew that if two or more of us are gathered together in His name He is there with us. And "just reading His Words" IS receiving Him. He is the Word of God. (John 1). And that Word is LIVING and ACTIVE (Hebrews 4). We are meeting with the living, active God in the flesh (Romans 12).
Yes, extremely well put.
thank you..
Why, we can go to Mass everyday and receive Jesus in the Eucharist and hear the Word of God proclaimed.
We have Bible studies and prayer group and altar societies and groups that help the poor and theology studies and full libraries and untold other spiritual resources, both in the parish or from the diocese.
Please post something that supports this claim.
LOL
We used to do a Bible study with some Evangelical friends of ours and everytime we read they all had different understandings of what was read. I also have to admit that I got very annoyed when we prayed because they pretty much just prayed for themselves and what they wanted, not what God wanted and not FOR others. I figured that it wasn’t very good for my spiritual life. We stopped going.
I’d much rather go to a prayer group that does the rosary and the Divine Mercy chaplet, along with spontaneous prayer.
HUH?
As Catholics we are taught that while reading the Bible, we can have “personal revelations”. IOW, God can speak to us, directly through the words of the Bible and speak to us personally in a time of need or just to sustain us, but that that precise interpretation of the Word is meant for us a private conversation with God.
Don't mean to jump to conclusions, but are you conflating the "Word" in St. John's Gospel with, well, the Gospel According to...? Scripture with God?
You wrote:
“So how often must you be saved? Once a week? A day? A month?”
How often have you pushed God away through sin? We are redeemed ONCE. But most of us fall away through multiple times in our lives.
“How do you know when it’s enough?”
If you have a well-formed conscience, then this isn’t hard to know. People usually know when they’re mired in sin.
“I somethimes think the Protestant movement was started by people too lazy to follow all the rules you folks seem to have.”
We really have few more rules than early Protestants. We just believe they matter as discipline.
“By the way, is there Biblical basis for needing to be saved over and over?”
It isn’t that we are saved over and over again. It is that we are open to the salvation offered to us. Sometimes were simply not open to it because of sin. There are plenty of Protestants who believe that OSAS is a flawed doctrine. They’re right.
“Why don’t you tell me what you think “Praying the Rosary” entails and we can go from there.”
“When ye prey, use not vain repetition, as the heathen do.”. (Matthew 6:7)
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