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There are some parts of Roman Catholic dogma, including the infallibility of the Bishop of Rome, which would keep me, in good conscience, from becoming a Roman Catholic. Frankly, in some respects I would be more at home in the Greek Orthodox Church. But I certainly consider Catholics to be my brothers and sisters in Christ. Many of them may not feel the same about Orthodox and Protestant Christians, and I believe “their way or the highway” is a tenet Rome still teaches, but so be it. I would rather see us all united against the real enemy, in all his many faces and forms.

Ditto.

The one strength that the Catholic side of the family has that is missing in the more experiential-focused Protestant communions is -- a focus on objective reality, and a conviction that the Christian faith applies to ALL of life, not just the "religious" part of life. The version of the dissertation I took before my committee had this conclusion:

A transcendent navel view will never suffice as a substitute for a world view, no matter how much it is feagued, overclocked and turbocharged.

Yes, I had to eliminate the vivid, precise, and charmingly obsolete verb feague from the version submitted for publication -- but the thought was retained.

Some protestants -- a faction that is, in God's great mercies inexorably losing its influence, its bearings, and its credibility (as well as its mind) -- has a brutally simple substitute for a world view. They simply write the whole world off, hysterically shriek that "All is lost! The End is upon us! Qui peut se sauvre!" We might call these the Prophecy pimps, the Rapturenauts, or, in one brother's elegant phrase, "Futurists who prefer Terror and Tarot rather than the Gospel to 'win souls'." It's the "sour grapes" approach. If you don't have a world view, just scream shrilly that the world that God so loved is not worth thinking about.

Sane, thoughtful, Christians find their way out of the hypnotic and addictive fun-house mirror world of experience-chasing, and start looking for other sane and thoughtful Christians to compare notes with. And frequently find such people on the wrong side of the Tiber.[1]

I was raised Catholic, and still process reality on deeply-embedded Catholic firmware. I still yearn to see things "according to the whole," and instinctively feel that a big-picture explanation makes sense of the immediate issues.

Providentially, the Catholics are not the only game in town. Reformed theology also addresses all of life, and challenges us to bring all we have to the game. Including our minds. My life, family, and vocation were transformed when a guy I'd evangelized ten years earlier turned me on to "Calvinism on steroids." There is a God, and I'm not Him. Neither, for that matter, are my religious experiences.

[1] When Norma Rae Covey, the "Roe" of Roe v. Wade was born again, she received baptism into the Catholic Church. So, too, did Bernard Nathansen, repentant abortionist. Chuck Colson, a Baptist, served as Bernard's sponsor. Roe v. Wade happened in the back yard of Dallas Theological Seminary, a leading "dispensational" school. They were so busy redrawing their pretty maps of imaginary futures that they were blinded to the significance of what was going on under their noses. An obsession with "prophecy" rendered them culpably incompetent to speak prophetically to the challenge right before them.

I understand the point of your post and that a "big picture explanation" in life "according to the whole" is certainly the way to go.

However, to believe that Rome embraces "the big picture" is somewhat misleading. It's like saying Stalin "saw the big picture."

He did. But of what?

After all this time on FR I've come to the conclusion that while dispensationalism is a mischaracterization of Christian expectations and actually works against the Holy Spirit's positive influence in men's lives and the world around us, it pales in comparison to the 24% of the American population who believe in "another Christ" and "a co-redeemer" and a works-based salvation and the alchemy of the mass and the necessity of a recurring sacrifice and confessions made to a hierarchical priesthood of elevated human beings and mystical relics and empty rituals and an infallible bunch of old guys dressed in long robes and funny hats who presume to be the sole conduit for the Holy Spirit while actually possessing a seat at the UN (thank you, Ronald Reagan,) all the while dismissing, denying and deflecting the holy Scriptures and their clear teaching of salvation by God's grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for God's glory alone, made known to us by His holy, perfect word, our only rule of faith and practice.

In fact, as is so often the case, the roots of dispensationalism flow from the counter Reformation. Up until then, Luther, Calvin and all the reformers taught that the antiChrist was the papacy as depicted in Revelation. Then along comes a Jesuit priest, Francisco Rivera, who writes that while the first three books of Revelation had already occurred, the rest of Revelations had yet to happen, thereby giving a convenient pass to the papacy as the beast of prophecy.

For anyone interested, here's an interesting site...

THE CATHOLIC ORIGINS OF FUTURISM AND PRETERISM

And in conclusion...from Topcat54's excellent homepage...

"The Reformation is dying daily in our day when the Ecumenical Movement, and other forces like unto it, wish to soften the antithesis with Rome, today. I want to assure you that it's not my pugnacious debating nature that makes me say we must exalt that antithesis and guard it. It's my love for the Lord Jesus Christ and the purity of His word.
"Rome has not essentially changed. Rome declared that what it said at the time of the Reformation was infallible and could not change. Declared it to be irreformible truth. Rome has not changed and precious truths of God's word are still worth upholding even at the cost of unity even at the cost of being considered "troublemakers" in the religious world. We need to guard the antithesis against the destructive error of Rome." -- Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen

Reformed theology also addresses all of life, and challenges us to bring all we have to the game. Including our minds. My life, family, and vocation were transformed when a guy I'd evangelized ten years earlier turned me on to "Calvinism on steroids." There is a God, and I'm not Him.

Amen, brother!

All for the glory of Christ alone. I once was blind, but now I see, all by grace and none of me.