Catholics Don't Believe You Can Earn Your Way to Heaven

A man commits a serious crime, then he gets released. He has "paid his debt to society". But wait a minute, he's only ready for the half-way house. He's unlikely to get a prestigious job in his new prison suit coat, or any job at all; he has civil impediments, he can't vote or hold certain offices. His crime was serious enough that he won't be presumed to have been completely rehabilitated until he performs a notable service to society, or at least spends many years on the straight and narrow, so that his crime can be truly overlooked or forgotten.

In Catholic faith, your "debt to society" is paid by Jesus Christ on Calvary. It's called "eternal punishment", without Christ it keeps you from going to heaven. Supposing that you do take advantage of His sacrifice, you're truly sorry, have a firm purpose of amendment, if you relapse, you go again for forgiveness (to the Sacrament of Confession).

But your sin leaves a strong trace at another layer of impurity called "temporal punishment due to sin", like the civil impediments facing the half-way house prisoner. Because "nothing impure can enter heaven", there is a place or a state, a condition of purification to render you fit for heaven after Christ has finally saved you from hell. The Catholic Church calls it purgatory.

(Where is it in the bible? Where is the word Trinity in the bible? Where does it say that you only need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Many valid principles aren't stated explicitly in the bible, but it does say to "hold fast to the traditions you have learned, whether by word or by letter", because much of the Gospel wasn't written down, as Jesus only wrote in the sand, the majority of the Gospel was taught from word to ear to people who couldn't afford expensive books, the exceptions were what tended to get written down. But the implication that there is a purgatory, is contained in the bible--see the comments.)

The ex-con can receive a pardon or commutation of his probation from a Governor, if he performs some heroic deed, saving numerous lives, or, like Chuck Colson, performs a long-lasting, valuable community service helping numerous people who can't help themselves.

In the Catholic Church there are 2 ways for the residual, temporal effects due to sin to be expiated: suffering in this life, or after life, undergoing purifying suffering along with other people who will finally be saved, but have to suffer for long without the vision of God--that is what causes them their pain.

Their suffering isn't meritorious enough to grant their release, the saints in heaven and those on earth suffering and practicing virtue can pray for the suffering souls in purgatory. In no way is their release by slow transfer of suffering or practice of virtue, "buying heaven". It's a long, excruciating process.

How the misunderstanding arose that Catholics think they can buy their way into heaven, is involved with history more than 500 years old. For a millennium of Christendom between roughly 410 and 1410, there was a Medieval civilization with harmony between faith and government.

Many small farmers would cluster around the manor house of a military lord who would protect them, in exchange for a certain fixed obligation of labor and agricultural produce. In most cases, those "serfs" had much more leisure than factory workers of the industrial revolution; there were a large number of holy days without work, and except for planting and harvesting, there were long stretches of idle time.

Another large sector of the economy surrounded monasteries, where the monks developed most of the farming practices that stabilized the serfs and their manorial lords. The monks who worked those monastic lands were sworn to poverty, so that monasteries built up large accumulations of economic value over decades and centuries of labor.

At the beginning, when lands were being cleared and put into production there weren't prominent town fairs ruled by merchants and bankers. Money wasn't used for sustenance, not even much barter occurred, life was mostly agrarian.

Charity was woven into the economy of monasteries. It was estimated that you only need travel 12 miles in medieval England between monasteries, where you could get a meal and minimal lodging for free, based on need. And the charity was also spiritual, including the ancient Catholic principle of prayer for the dead, which is biblical. (See "prayer for the dead" in the original King James Bible in the comment.)

There were foundations and benefices for praying for the dead, that allowed a person of means to support monasteries' charitable works, and in proportional response the monks would pray for the souls of the donors.

It happened at the close of the middle ages, that militarily strong nobles cast their eyes on the labor value accumulated by the poverty-sworn monks of the monasteries, which those nobles perceived as monetary wealth, especially where gold and jewels had been donated by the devout to adorn churches.

(Protestant writer William Cobbett wrote in his 1824 "A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland", an anecdote, that an incredibly valuable, hand illustrated bible was stripped of it's bejeweled, gold cover, the much more valuable hand-illumined manuscript, thrown in the mud and trampled by horses hooves by raiders suppressing the monasteries in Henry VIII's England.)

A new religion growing up around this seizure of monastic lands and valuables, that sought to discredit the Catholic Church, spread the black legend that the "sale of indulgences" was abusive. But this was very exceptional. Today the stipend of a Mass said for the dead is $10.

You are so blind in spirit and soul that you do not even realize you are affirming Catholiciism is about faith AND required works.

So in getting back to you, No, I am not blind, and that’s neither fruitful – or comforting - to someone who may actually know some who is truly blind.
I can see how some, even Catholics – have a confusion of “faith and works”- and it is partly because of any conversation that is had.. Check it out.
When you charge a Catholic with your “Works” Alone Salvation diatribe- which you know is incorrect to begin with – what you accomplish in the responder is the “oh no, hold on,, don’t forget the “Faith” part too” reply – so creedal or otherwise- your commenter backs in, or is backed into, the “Faith AND Works” misworded necessity of a Salvation position.
Which of course, Catholics, do believe they are necessary, together, and as CS analogized, as “co-dependent blades of a pair of scissors”. Both which are in fact necessary, (and alone from one another do not work properly), to allow us to cooperate, participate and be sanctified in that Saving Grace gifted to us by God - as we should always say, faith and works are never the cause of Salvation, as you can agree.

WE. ARE.SAVED.BY GOD’S GRACE. Period.
That IS the only way.
From God., unmerited – and not of or by our doing- whether by Faith, – OR – Works, – or Faith and Works.
It’s all grace.
Our Faith cannot cause or accomplish this- nor can our works… and thats what I'm affirming to you.
Grace.

By the way,, Catholic, you are focused upon your ORG. GOD focuses upon individual souls/spirits. Jesus went to that cross to redeem spirits, not behavior mechanisms.

Well for Catholics.. sin IS behavioral ... and obedience is behavioral... if you think Christ was UNinterested in our behavior, and always being in a right relationship with God- Then we are just talking about to separate religions here...

How is it you won’t agree that the accompanying true saving belief in God must be evidenced by Christ's words of obedience through love, and not just in a substance-lacking intellectual acceptance or assent to a belief in His name or person?
How can one say they believe in Christ, but yet then disregard many of all that he commands of us – and relegate that participation in Christ to just a psychological personalized understanding through a one time declaration?

The danger of that idea of a purely intellectual acceptance of a belief in Christ can easily lead to a belief in an imaginary God.

Your heretical ORG is all about the flesh. So maybe it is not surprising that so many in leadership positions (like priests and bishops) are tangled in the gutter with sexual degeneracy.

Like those first Apostles who ran from and denied Christ in HIS hour of most need?
You give the flesh to much credit sometimes…
And why are you so concerned with others sinfulness anyways? God forbid, tragedy comes to anyone of us- how could we know how we react?
How do we know what others have gone thru?
Yeah Forgiveness is a necessary command of Christ… Do we Forgive though, faithfully? (Read the Corrie ten Boom story to see where we fail Christ everyday)
He would tell you to cast the first stone...
We have to keep in mind- God created "flesh" - he invented it, he created our matter, our existence in HIS image..
God even INCARNATED his being into the flesh...
Remember God's intimate binding desire for us.... "and the two shall become one flesh... and let not any man separate."
So God does not hate the flesh,
but rather, the sin produced by the flesh...

Did yiou read what I posted for folks like you to read regarding the teaching from Hebrews? There is nio remembering our sin every year. God said He will remember our sins no more. Why? Because Jesus paid the penalty for ALL sin, past, present, and future. Remember, Catholic, all our sins were int he future when Jesus endured that cross for us.

You’re reading your ideology back into scripture. Yes God will not remember repented sins. Aren’t you all about the "judgement seat"? I think you are conflating Forgiving with forgetting- as our sins are remember on that day…

As you read .."For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

It sure does sound that the "evil done in the body" is to be adjudicated then at the Judgement, and so obviously has NOT been “forgotten” at this point.
How do you read that?

More to that idea, if all sins are automatically forgotten and gone through Christ....
why does he make such a big deal when he commands His 12....
"As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

This was the Basis to start the Church…
How does this commission make any sense then if all our sins are already forgotten? Why this need for any man- say Peter- to forgive sins? if Jesus has done this already- and has already forgotten sins- past, present Future?
It wouldn't make sense for sins to be forgiven by men then...and it doesn’t.
Unless of course if you believe the Sacrifice on the Cross involves the necessity of the confession, repentance, Forgiveness loop through the new covenant...

In why we profess that.."
"We acknowledge One Baptism for the Forgiveness of sins" and participating in his Sacrifice, in that we "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world... Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb." ...-

Yes, only through that participation are we free from sin,
And then if makes all the sense in the world.

You are right.

The new babe in Christ knows enough to be able to cast all his cares upon the Living Christ, for He careth for all His created humans, and be saved once and for all time; but in his/her newness should submit to a plan given by God, as exemplified by Jesus that He sent to conduct His earthly ministry, into a different Way to receive and implement His Truths.

Sadly, most denominations fail to carry out this plan for progressive sanctification. A very good plan is laid out in the "field manual" which gives the basics of Christian soldiery, but also tests and improves reading comprehension of Bible text:

HOW TO GROW IN CHRIST -- First Stage: Babes"; a guide for the discipler (a DI) and the new recruit who should be in training for the Lord's army to effectively contend for The Faith against a wily, subtle, deadly enemy, often invested in look-alike miscreants.

This new recruit not only needs individual basic training in recruit school, but also needs to have that training augmented by those who have gone before, as to how to listen to His Spirit speaking to the reader in His Word, rightly discerning the truths by correctly applying the science of interpretation (hermeneutics) to the text.

"HERE'S HOW! The Bible Can Make Sense to You Today!" is freely available upon request of a person prepared to receive it.

Otherwise, he/she may be disappointed in the outcome of false doctrines they may be fed from an erring pulpit in a drifting denomination, not able to discern it with a mind formed by Christ.

They Both impute Their Righteousness to me and all my saved Brothers and Sisters , of whom the Godhead Jehovah Elohim, the Triune God, is the Ultimate Judge THAT HAVE ALREADY COMPLETED THEIR JUDGING OF US.

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Nothing could be farther from the truth, and the below verses should make it painfully clear to you that IT HASN'T HAPPENED YET. But, don't worry, judgement will come soon enough for all of us, even you, Imardmd1, even you.

Your fate will be decided at your death, or if you live to the end, and take the MOTB, at that time, and not a second before. Or, you can believe Satan that you are good to go and sin has no effect on born-againers. Choose wisely.

Eccl 12:13Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. 14For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

Rom 2:11For there is no respect of persons with God. 12For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; 13(For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. 16In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.

2 Tim 4: 1I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom

Hebrews 10: 30For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people.

Hebrews 13:4 "Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge." Ravi obviously didn't care about this one because he was already OSAS AND SIN COULDN'T TOUCH HIM. If Ravi believed that, he chose poorly.

1 Cor 4: 4My conscience is clear, but that does not vindicate me. It is the Lord who judges me. 5Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.

1 Peter 4: 5Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.

Revelation 21:12-15And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. 1. Small and great. 2. Judged according to their works.

Rev 11:18And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth. 19And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.

OSAS and judged at the moment of grace? How biblically ignorant can you be to believe and TEACH such a thing?

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