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I see no point in making this an open thread. It will quickly become a cesspool. As I have no desire to hear what the crazed evangelicals have to say, I will not be participating.

lol. Roman Catholic apologists doing what they accuse others of. Interesting.

Much of this article is on target. Many many Roman Catholics are leaving their churches for Protestant denominations because, as the article says, so many are...

".....obliged to move to a Protestant expression of faith because I experience God's presence more easily and more conclusively as a Presbyterian and began to do so over a dozen years ago." Presbyterianism works for him in ways Catholicism no longer did. "The Presbyterian confessions and order of worship are very left-brain and made me into a much better Christian," he says..."

and

"...much of Catholic teaching and tradition is made up."

You can fool some of the people some of the time...

EXCELLENT.

THX THX.

Much of this article is on target. Many many Roman Catholics are leaving their churches for Protestant denominations because, as the article says, so many are...

".....obliged to move to a Protestant expression of faith because I experience God's presence more easily and more conclusively as a Presbyterian and began to do so over a dozen years ago." Presbyterianism works for him in ways Catholicism no longer did. "The Presbyterian confessions and order of worship are very left-brain and made me into a much better Christian," he says..."

I couldn't agree more. This section particularly struck me (emphasis added):

Like Hewitt, Loconte felt he could get to God more directly outside of Catholicism. But for Loconte, the departure is more permanent. "There are many Catholics who are Christians," he says, "but they are [Christians] despite Catholicism." He believes that errant theology keeps Catholics from Christ.

.................. Take, for example, your grown son, Rick. You raised him in a good Catholic home, took him to Mass every Sunday, taught him his prayers, drove him to altar-boy practice, and made sure he attended CCD classes. You scrimped and budgeted so you could send him to a Catholic high school. You assumed he'd remain Catholic. Then you found out that in college he became friendly with a large, dynamic group of Evangelical Protestant students who met every week for Bible study.

"At first," Madrid writes, "you were happy to see him remaining interested in religious issues, so you didn't give it much thought when he began quoting Bible verses when he came home on weekends." But "eventually, you noticed his vocabulary changing." He started saying things like "The Lord spoke to my heart about this" and "Praise God about that.... Before long, he broke the news to you that he's no longer a Catholic. .........

Absolutely incredible, isn't it, that a Catholic parent should see it as a red flag when his kid is able to start quoting from the Bible? Worse, it's so sad that tell tale signs of leaving Catholicism include becoming aware for the first time that God is speaking to us or that we should give praise directly to God for specific things. But it does make sense that these things would be very threatening to the Catholic Church. Any time there is evidence of a direct and personal relationship with God that lessens the power and control of the Catholic clergy and hierarchy.

But in large measure, I don't even claim malevolence on their part. I'm sure most of them see their own insertion between the layman and God (and Mary's and the other saints') as being for the layman's own good. For some inexplicable reason they believe that God CHOSE to permanently insert sinners spiritually between Him and His children for salvific reasons and that this was good. Given the claim of following Christ's word, however, it defies all logic, reason, and notion of a loving God.