[BlackElk]

God sends us some popes as punishment for our sins and this guy is certainly a punishment. He will make some of us fall ashamed on our faces and get right with God. I have no problem with "By grace, through Faith" or through Scripture for that matter. I suspect that is hard for you to believe of Catholics but we believe in and depend upon the grace of God, have the Faith that Jesus Christ founded and, believe that our Fqaith and our practice of it, however imperfect, makes us "right with God," and while my scholarship is in secular law and history and not in Scripture, I am satisfied that I depend also on Scripture. I do NOT invite theological argument, however. I leave that to those more learned than I.

If I did not respect you and your fine Christian faith, I would not gently needle you, my friend.

As to #185, if I understand you correctly to mean that the Baptist Church "is going fast," from the wilds of Illinois, I invite you to attend the Tridentine (Old Latin) Mass of your ancestors and mine at St. Stanislaus Church at the corner of State Street and Eld Street in New Haven on any Sunday afternoon, meet Bill Riccio, a lay leader in that congregation and say hello for me. You know my name as does he.

I have little doubt that you can and will make it to heaven as a Baptist, but I also believe that great graces are available through the Mass and sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church.

One way or the other, may God bless you and yours as the good man that you are.!

[RaceBannon]

I live in South Carolina now, there is a Baptist Church on EVERY corner of any main street!

and 50% of the people inside are Yankees, most southerners are going to the rock n roll churches! This is definitely NOT the Bible Belt like us Yankees thought it was, not any more.