Simple question really but... Why are catholics so obsessed with getting protestants to quit their church and join theirs?
(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.
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
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
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.
Some of us haven’t forgotten what our brothers and sisters were burned at the stake for, and we find no basis for agreement between Christianity and Catholicism.
If we could just get some Mormons (keeping Mitt out of it of course) in here, this could top 1000
Maybe the same day when Catholics drop the nonsense and become Christians?
How Would Roman Catholics Know When to Return to Pure Doctrine and Sound Practice? That is the question.
The conditions were never "satisfied." In fact the RC response to the demands were to issue a series of Anathemas and declare a spiritual and physical war against the reformers.
When the Catholic Church comes back to the biblical doctrines of Grace Alone through faith alone in Christ Alone, then we can have that "full communion" the author mentions. The ball is in the court of the Catholics. The Catholic Church needs to reform.