Respect of course. But the doctrinal differences are irreconcilable. There can be only ONE truth and ONE Church.
In AD 382 the Synod of Rome on the basis of infallible Petrine authority assembled the canonical texts- the same texts we use to this day. If authenticating the Word of God after nearly three centuries of sorting out various writing (and many of them as the author in the article points in John 21: 25 were the spoken albeit unwritten Word of Christ) is the highest duty accorded the Church, this infallible authority to interpret did not suddenly disappear ELEVEN centuries later with the unfortunate events of Protestantism.
In the words of the brilliant essayist Hillaire Belloc, unlike previous heresies, “Protestantism spawned a cluster of heresies.”
Just look around fro the doctrinal interpretations of the Moonies, Jim Jones; David Koresh; and Jeremiah Wright to the vapid nonsense of Billy Graham; Joel Osteen, the TD Jakes and every other scam artist like the Jimmy Swaggarts and Benny Hinns to parlay their Protestant beliefs in amassing personal fortune for their families and in-laws. And of course, like the author tells it there are thousand of other varieties of Protestantism and their own off-shoots. Today, with mainline Protestant faiths having ordained married gay and lesbian pastors, Protestation has become a caricature.
No serious thinker can embrace its beliefs with any level of rationality. To do so would upend the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and Benedict.
St. Augustine himself remarked that were it not for the authority of the Church, he would not be a Catholic.
This is why like the author, droves of Protestant theologians, scholars, and preachers have left there former indefensible beliefs and converted to Catholicism. In the meanwhile Protestants still in the pews, keep swimming in the shallow end of the theological pool and are barely able to stay afloat except for citing out of context snippets of scripture for her and there to cast doubt on Church teaching.
At the end of the day absent Petrine authority, so well explained by the author, we descend into a chaos where every Tom, Dick, and Harry and their grandmother and your local Foursquare Church pastor cracks open the pages of the Bible and purports to offer his/her cockamamie “definitive” interpretation of scripture which is starkly at odds with that of the early Church fathers (some of whom were contemporaries of the Evangelist John) charged with assembling the canonical texts.
How absurd could this be?
Well,
a civil discourse,
what a pleasant surprise !
Well let's see.
Mary was sinless in contradiction of the Word and many of the church fathers catholics claim to cling to. That's just for starters.
“At the end of the day absent Petrine authority, so well explained by the author, we descend into a chaos where every Tom, Dick, and Harry and their grandmother and your local Foursquare Church pastor cracks open the pages of the Bible and purports to offer his/her cockamamie “definitive” interpretation of scripture which is starkly at odds with that of the early Church fathers (some of whom were contemporaries of the Evangelist John) charged with assembling the canonical texts.”
As matter of curiosity, why do you suppose that there was a Protestant Revolution, as the nuns of my youth used to call it, in the Church in the West where there was/is Petrine Authority and no such thing in the Church in the East where there isn’t and never was any Petrine authority, at least not as it is being defined here?
Thanks for your reply.
I agree with you regarding the Catholic church as the one founded by Christ which is the foundation of Christianity.
I wrote the above message in order to try to tone down the frequent bashing of each other’s positions here FR.