Every religion has rusty pipes conveying water of teachings. The Catholic Church has all kinds of rusty pipes carrying the best doctrine on earth. Like what? Every person is immortal. Every child deserves a mother and father. Every students deserves the freedom to study the Bible. Thus, we have human rights, safe communities and K-12 schools. Please do not blame abortion, divorce, dangerous cities and boring schools on the Catholic Church. Blame them on the citizens failing to study the Church and one of its products: the Bible.
I wonder if many non-Catholics know that there WAS NO New Testament until almost 400 A.D. The CATHOLIC CHURCH was busy trying to get/gather it together, going through the THOUSANDS of documents, deciding WHICH were true and which weren't.
Protestants are now reading the words of God as put to pen by the then "infant" Catholic Church. The Church decided on what Protestants would eventually read...and then, oddly enough, those same Protestants would protest against the VERY Church that gave them the glorious New Testament for them to protest.
Please do not blame abortion, divorce, dangerous cities and boring schools on the Catholic Church. Blame them on the citizens failing to study the Church and one of its products: the Bible.
People ALWAYS need someone to BLAME when bad things happen. The Catholic Church has been the "whipping boy" for a long time. Nothing new there.
You NAILED it, though, when you spoke about NOT studying the Bible.
It is also true that SOME folks like to, er, "ignore" SOME passages of the Bible. ONE example is Jesus' words about divorce-remarriage:
Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Matthew 19:6).
But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. (Matthew 5:32).
Henry VIII knew those verses as well but decided that Jesus' words weren't convenient to HIS plans.
Bravo. Excellent insights. Excellent html skills. St. Jerome, pray for us.
Sure, we have had some real losers in Rome. However, the gift of the papacy is to be appreciated as a permanent gift from the Lord.
Actually writings were Scripture regardless of lack of general acceptance, and it was the people in general who establish writings as being of God, while there was no indisputable canon for RCs until after the death of Luther, who was one of many scholars who doubted or rejected apocryphal books down thru as the centuries and right into Trent.
Regardless, what is import and argument behind your "we have you the Bible" statement? That if we agree with Rome in this then we should agree with all she officially teaches And that being the historical instruments and stewards of Divine revelation (oral and written) means that such (and those who claim to be their successors) possesses ensured veracity? Thus any who knowingly dissent from the latter must be in rebellion to God?
Likewise...
The Church decided on what Protestants would eventually read...and then, oddly enough, those same Catholics would decide that the glorious New Testament wasn't good enough and allowed all kinds of strange doctrine to creep into it's teachings.