You said:
Why do people do this? Please tell me EXACTLY, with URL and/or footnotes, where you find that that is our teaching. I deny it. I say we do not teach it. I say you speak falsehood. PROVE me wrong or cut it out.
My entire post said this after those two "choices":
I'd go with 2, mainly because I know what it's like living number 1. Personal faith in Christ was NOT a factor and many people I knew thought they could go to confession on Saturday, Mass on Sunday and then live like hell the rest of the week. There was no life-changing faith and no indwelling Spirit of God that worked within to compel good works. Once I DID accept Christ and receive him as my Savior, my life truly DID change and what used to feel forced became deeds out of gratitude and love for the grace and mercy of God. Go ahead and stick with your Religion that rejects what Scripture REALLY says in favor of what the leaders SAY it says. Place your faith in them. I'll trust God.
I was speaking from personal experience and I will not "cut it out". I have as much right to speak my thoughts as you or anyone else. At no time did I specify this was "exact" church teaching but from my own history as well as others I speak with. I'm glad that you understand the importance in a personal, faith relationship with our Savior, Jesus Christ, but that was not what I was taught was fundamental nor even necessary for salvation. It is obvious, to me, that this attitude exist even today and is proven consistently, for example, during elections. That Roman Catholics vote predominately for Liberal Democrats who promote abortion and homosexual "rights" is indisputable. You can insist that "they" aren't "real" Catholics, but they only prove my point that people are taught that going through motions and doing certain things are more important that what is within their hearts. But Catholics are hardly alone in this.
I CAN insist that Catholics who vote for Democrats are stupid Catholics.
It is not a defect in Catholic teaching that some people think they can get into heaven on a pro forma basis. If they rattle off an act of contrition without being or wanting to be contrite, they are deceiving themselves and playing with fire.
My ‘beef’ is that you opposed good non-Catholic thought not to good Catholic thought but to the corruption of our thought by ‘tares.’
You do have the right to make stupid unjust comparisons. You do not have a reasonable expectation of respect for your arguments if you do so.
“But Catholics are hardly alone in this.”
There is the one truth-—and the very important one truth.
If evaluation (judgment)of the lives of others becomes the personalized, experiential judgment of a whole people, something has gone wrong.
Using that criteria, I can say:
*come to my Holy Hour with me and see how many people, many of them young, come to the chapel at all hours of the night to pray...many of them still in their “scrubs”, on their way home from the night shift.
*come with me to noon Mass in the business hours of my city, and see how many people take their lunch hour to come to Mass and pray. (”Could you not spend one hour with me?”)
*come with me to the Young Mother’s Group which meets every Wednesday morning—little kids in tow—for Scripture study and prayer. (”...where two or more are gathered in My Name”)
*come with me to my parish at 11 AM every morning and help distribute free food to people in need.(”I was hungry and you gave me to eat”)
*stop by my house and head off with me to visit some of the very sick and home-bound of my parish. (”I was sick and you visited me”)
*come with me and my fellow parishioners as we gather to help prepare food and flowers to help a grieving family in our parish.
*come with me to the amazing Tuesday night Scripture study led by the young father of 7 who is a refugee from Lebanon.
If the experiential, anecdotal view of who is and who isn’t living by your #1 or #2, then I ask you to take into consideration all that is unseen by many but is ever present to the Living God.
I will never understand why “accepting Christ and receiving Him as my Savior” should, in a rather knee-jerk reaction, mean belittling what one left behind....as if to infer that those we “left behind” have not “accepted and believed”. I can see no reason for me to do that to my own Protestant siblings and family members nor for them to do that with me. And we don’t do that.