Posted on 11/03/2011 7:29:48 AM PDT by marshmallow
Simple question really but... Why are catholics so obsessed with getting protestants to quit their church and join theirs?
If you discovered that everyone who is biblical realized your organization was a cult, you might want them all to come back and play nice again, too. Sorry, marshmallow. What we returned to already is the biblical form of Christianity. Come and join us...if you can.
Personally, I don't care myself.
(1) Most Protestant groups rose up in areas PREVIOUSLY part of the Orthodox world, or converted by Orthodox missionaries after the various schisms that separated Rome from the Church.
(2) During a long period of Western political/imperial expansion North and East Rome appears to have failed to follow up with priests trained in the Roman tradition leaving many millions of people in Congregations without clergy which allowed them to develop their own independent Christian traditions of congregational self-governance ~ later missions may have not have effectively met the challenge.
Except for the British Isles, including Ireland, and Northern France and Western Germany there were some exceptions and Rome imposed/reimposed its authority in those regions. That process has been studied to death but is still worth reading.
I suspect we haven't seen the end of studies into the Protestant phenomenon, nor is it all that readily answered by reflecting only on the experience of the Roman church. Beyond the Orthodox links OTHER earlier Christian traditions were also absorbed, or "disappeared".
NOTE: I've been reading recently about the life and times of St. Gildas ~ he's one of those "bridge people" who lived during the end of the pre-Dark Age and into the beginning of the Dark Age itself (and who may have actually seen the comet or asteroid that destroyed civilization in China, Central Asia, and Northern and Western Europe at about 535AD.
As it has been since the fall of adam, it is the goal of carnal man to control religious doctrine rather than just taking YHVH at His Word. By separating that of old and calling it just that “old”, “outdated” & “only for Jews”, Christendom created their ‘new’ religious dogma. As it has always been, the one that controls the religious dogma of the ‘new’ is the one that holds the power over the religious class.
It existed at the time of Messiah via the House of Shammai & the House of Hillel. The House of Shammai was in control and were killing members of the House of Hillel for following Torah rather than the dogma(oral traditions) of Shammai. It was the House of Shammai that covertly worked to kill Messiah not realizing that his death was not of their control but in under the control of the Creator who was controling them via their ignorance of the prophecy of Messiah as they held their religious dogma as having higher authority than that of the Creator. The RCC is Christendom's House of Shammai and while they do not promote death, they do seek to regain control over all religious dogma.
I’ve never wanted people to “be a part of my particular church”, I’ve just wanted them to accept Jesus and find a church that teaches from the bible. Even if that means catholic. As long as they try to ignore that Apocrypha stuff and ever virgin Mary.
In the Roman Catholic Church, there are different “rites”, not just only the very well known Latin rites. There are Eastern rite Catholics and also Anglican usage rites as well.
There are conditions I would have of the Roman Catholic Church that I'm sure they would not be willing to abide by. I simply don't believe as they do on some things (i.e. works + faith, the eternal virginity of Mary, the physical presence of Jesus' body in the communion wafer, etc.)
If Catholics want to believe those things, that's their choice. I don't, and so will not become a Catholic.
The condition being "promote true doctrine"....
Few churches ever adopted the name “Protestant.” The most commonly adopted designations were rather “evangelical” and “reformed.” ... [W]hen the word Protestant came into currency in England (in Elizabethan times), its accepted significance was not “objection” but “avowal” or “witness” or “confession” (as the Latin protestari meant also “to profess”)....unfortunate as a name because it implies that Protestantism was mainly an objection. The dissenters in their own statement affirmed that “they must protest and testify publicly before God that they could do nothing contrary to His word.” The emphasis was less on protest than on witness.
-- from the thread History Lesson: Positively Protestant
Hence, the author’s question as it seems that reunion with your fellow Christians is not even an option.
The first premise ( the analogy that Protestants are like OWS) is wrong. Protestants are like the TEA Party.
I have no desire to try and turn a Catholic aaway from their obedience to Rome, I merely desire to be allowed to show my obdeniece to God
Certainly a commendable ambition...with some caution. Paul encountered some well-meaning Judaizers who simply wanted the new non-Jewish (you and I) converts to do these few Mosaic Law things. After looking carefully at the implications of their "small errors", Paul noted that the folks who took this position were making fatal mistakes. Christ would be of no benefit to them, if they made these add-ons a part of their theology. We feel the same way about Catholicism.
Had the organization not appended its own ritualistic, cult-like traditions onto the biblical message of grace (thereby nullifying true grace), they would be kissin' cousins. Unfortunately, things added to grace, end up replacing grace. You have noted a couple of nuisance items here (the goofy Apocrypha & the perpetual virginity of Mary), but there are more...many more. Collectively they disqualify the organization as a biblically based congregation and brought about the need to make the original truth known, again. The Reformation was not a "protest", but an utter rejection of error, a calling out of an entrenched monstrosity. It continues today.
You have no idea how much you and I agree. The hidden meaning of my post was that you cannot be a Catholic without accepting the things I mentioned. ;-)
We certainly invite these wandering folks to come into the light of Christ, alone. Then we may fellowship with them as believers. The author misses the point as much as the organization did.
When you look into the growth of that brand of Protestantism the disputes take place in terms of chapels and where those chapels were located, and who had authority to schedule the priests to go or not go there.
To us it seems rather innocuous, but next thing you know there were competing political movements supporting tradition or home worship, and within a single generation some quite serious civil war!
The other Protestant movements had an entirely different history.
Imagine that the Occupy Wall Street protest continued for years
What a sad and pathetically lacking undignified and phoney comparison.
The list of abuses, fraud, paganism, Satanism and Islamic (do I repeat myself) influences still permeating the so-called-”Catholic” Church are too numerous for the character limit of this post.
I protest them not because of some idiotic 500 year old forget me not nonsense but for their very apostate deeds precipitated to this very hour.
Good day sir.
It was a lot more than a disagreement over where to hold mass that resulted in the French Catholics massacring hundreds of thousands of Waldensians back in 1545.
I requested the moderator remove this article. It is deliberately provocative and insulting.
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