Satan Understands.
He invented the flawed extrapolation and is thrilled with the results:
No confession of sins,
No praying for the dead,
No motivation for good works,
No motivation for fasting, penance, or mortification.
If you believe that your obligations end with “I believe”, then you fail to recognize that “belief” means living that faith.
If one were to choose between remaining a Roman Catholic and instead to become only a believer in and follower of Lord Jesus Christ but without a church home, what would one choose?
At least not to some paedophile claiming to be a priest.
>>No praying for the dead,<<
Praying for the dead is a pagan practice.
>>No motivation for good works,<<
That's one more example of Catholics not understanding the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Or you could just believe the bible and what the Lord says in John 6:28
Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”
Will kissing the desiccated skull of a “saint” help?
Talk about strawmen. Outside of praying for the dead or to departed saints, which is not of Scripture, Reformers and the Puritans would reprove thee.
In his Introduction to Romans, Luther stated that saving faith is,
a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever...Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire! [http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt]
And truly, I wonder exceedingly, how it came to be imputed to me, that I should reject the Law or ten Commandments, there being extant so many of my own expositions (and those of several sorts) upon the Commandments, which also are daily expounded, and used in our Churches, to say nothing of the Confession and Apology, and other books of ours. Martin Luther, [”A Treatise against Antinomians, written in an Epistolary way”, http://www.truecovenanter.com/truelutheran/luther_against_the_antinomians.html]
With the Puritans this could go an extreme opposite that of the antinomians. An account (http://www.the-highway.com/Early_American_Bauckham.html) of Puritans during the early American period notes,
“They had, like most preachers of the Gospel, a certain difficulty in determining what we might call the ‘conversion level’, the level of difficulty above which the preacher may be said to be erecting barriers to the Gospel and below which he may be said to be encouraging men to enter too easily into a mere delusion of salvation. Contemporary critics, however, agree that the New England pastors set the level high. Nathaniel Ward, who was step-son to Richard Rogers and a distinguished Puritan preacher himself, is recorded as responding to Thomas Hooker’s sermons on preparation for receiving Christ in conversion with, ‘Mr. Hooker, you make as good Christians before men are in Christ as ever they are after’, and wishing, ‘Would I were but as good a Christian now as you make men while they are preparing for Christ.’”
More .
No praying for the dead,
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It wouldn’t do the dead any good...
each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment Hebrews 9:27