That's why God designed us with the faculties to discern the truth.
Was it the intent of those who wrote scripture, that their interpretation be subject to multiple and frequently contradictory meanings?
I guess I'd phrase that differently: was it their intent that we read the scripture they wrote and take our authority from it, or was it their intent that we be content to have people in Rome tell us what it means?
or did Christ establish a single Church to insure that His “Great Commission” be truthfully disseminated?
If His intent was that the Catholic church be the sole carrier of the Great Commission, it didn't work very well. Tolerating serial child rapists as priests hasn't helped your cause much.
You'll likely have the temptation to think that I am ardently anti-Catholic. Not so. But it's hard not to mention some of these things when you refer to my church using phrases like "barren harvest."
You write: “If His intent was that the Catholic church be the sole carrier of the Great Commission, it didn’t work very well. Tolerating serial child rapists as priests hasn’t helped your cause much.”
I thought this was about doctrine and scriptural intepretation not about personal sin, repentance, and redemption. Of course there are sinful priests as there are among the flock. The early Church (as is the case today) is replete with the lives of saints and sinners.
As for giving each the “faculties” to discern the Truth. Of course. But this does not contradict in any way the unerring Spirit that guides the Church founded by the Christ and carried on by his line of apostles and disciples in discerning and preaching the Word of God so that errors will be discovered using our “faculties” as well. This is why we have a roster of innumerable and famous atheists; agnostics; Protestants of every stripe; clergy from other religious organizations including Hindu swamis, Buddhist priests, and rabbis, inventors; discoverers; playwrights; scientists; sculptors; painters; philosophers; musicians; and millions of lay people, who have “discerned” the truth and converted over to the Catholic faith.
I stopped reading when the ad-homonym attacks on Luther started. For the record, the guy had his problems, as humans do, unless that human is elected pope of course.
I'm curious. If Rome was selling "get out of purgatory [not exactly] free" cards because they wanted to do something humaitarian, like say universal health care, instead of a big beautiful building, would it be ok?
I am also amused by the self contradictory "barren harvest" claim in the same article that cites over 30,000 denominations, right along with the idiotic assumption that all of these disagree with each other.
This thing would be a great teaching tool regarding the taxonomy of logical falicies. The author probably is too, although I would withhold the word "great".
Did you know that sexual abuse by Protestant Clergy is five times higher than by Catholic clergy?
The three companies that insure a majority of Protestant churches say they typically receive upward of 260 reports a year of children younger than 18 being sexually abused by members of the clergy, church staff members, volunteers or congregants. Additionally, reports of sexual misconduct by Protestant clergy not involving children far outstrips that by Catholics.
The figures released to The Associated Press offer a glimpse into what has long been a difficult phenomenon to detail, the frequency of sexual abuse in Protestant congregations. Whereas the catholic Church has publicly admitted and addressed the problem the Protestant abusers remain secretive.