Thomas A. Droleskey on the Lies of Protestantism

Protestantism is founded on many lies: (1) That Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did not create a visible, hierarchical Church. (2) That there is no authority given by Our Lord to the Pope and his bishops and priests to govern and to sanctify the faithful. (3) That each believer has an immediate and personal relationship with the Savior as soon as he makes a profession of faith on his lips and in his heart, therefore being perpetually justified before God. (4) Having been justified by faith alone, a believer has no need of an intermediary from a non-existent hierarchical priesthood to forgive him his sins. He is forgiven by God immediately when he asks forgiveness. (5) This state of justification is not earned by good works. While good works are laudable, especially to help unbelievers convert, they do not impute unto salvation. Salvation is the result of the profession of faith that justifies the sinner. (6) That grace is merely, in the words of Martin Luther, the snowflakes that cover up the "dungheap" that is man. (7) That there is only one source of Divine Revelation, Sacred Scripture. (8) That each individual is his own interpreter of Sacred Scripture. (9) That there is a strict separation of Church and State. Princes, to draw from Luther himself, may be Christians but it is not as a Christian that they ought to rule. These lies have permutated in thousands of different directions. However, they have sewn the fabric of the modern state and popular culture for nearly 500 years (I shudder to think how the Vatican is going to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Luther's posting his 95 theses on the church doors in Wittenberg fourteen years from now).

Here below are explanations of these lies and their multifaceted implications for the world in which we live:

(1-2) The contention that Our Lord did not create a visible, hierarchical church vitiates the need for a hierarchical, sacerdotal priesthood for the administration of the sacraments. It is a rejection of the entirety of the history of Christianity prior to the Sixteenth Century. It is a denial of the lesson taught us by Our Lord by means of His submission to His own creatures, Saint Joseph and the Blessed Mother, in the Holy Family of Nazareth that each of us is to live our entire lives under authority, starting with the authority of the Vicar of Christ and those bishops who are in full communion with him. The rejection of the visible, hierarchical church is founded on the prideful belief that we are able to govern ourselves without being directed by anyone else on earth. This contention would lead in due course to the rejection of any and all religious belief as necessary for individuals and for societies. Luther and Calvin paved the way for Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Revolution that followed so closely the latter's deification of man.

(3-6) Baptism is merely symbolic of the Christian's desire to be associated with the Savior in the amorphous body known as the Church. What is determinative of the believer's relationship with Christ is his profession of faith. As the believer remains a reprobate sinner, all he can do is to seek forgiveness by confessing his sins privately to God. This gives the Protestant of the Lutheran strain the presumptuous sense that there is almost nothing he can do to lose his salvation once he has made his profession of faith in the Lord Jesus. There is thus no belief that a person can scale the heights of personal sanctity by means of sanctifying grace. It is impossible, as Luther projected from his own unwillingness to cooperate with sanctifying grace to overcome his battles with lust, for the believer to be anything other than a dungheap. Thus a Protestant can sin freely without for once considering that he has killed the life of sanctifying grace in his soul, thereby darkening his intellect and weakening the will and inclining himself all the more to sin-and all the more a vessel of disorder and injustice in the larger life of society.

(7-8) The rejection of a visible, hierarchical Church and the rejection of Apostolic Tradition as a source of Divine Revelation protected by that Church leads in both instances to theological relativism. Without an authoritative guide to interpret Divine Revelation, including Sacred Scripture, individual believers can come to mutually contradictory conclusions about the meaning of passages, the precise thing that has given rise to literally thousands of Protestant sects. And if a believer can reduce the Bible, which he believes is the sole source of Divine Revelation, to the level of individual interpretation, then there is nothing to prevent anyone from doing the same with all written documents, including the documents of a nation's founding. If the plain words of Scripture can be deconstructed of their meaning, it is easy to do so, say, with the words of a governmental constitution. Theological relativism paved the way for moral relativism. Moral relativism paved the way for the triumph of positivism and deconstructionism as normative in the realm of theology and that of law and popular culture.

(9) The overthrow of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ as it was exercised by His true Church in the Middle Ages by the Protestant concept of the separation of Church and State is what gave rise to royal absolutism in Europe in the immediate aftermath of Luther's handiwork. Indeed, as I have noted any number of times before, it is arguably the case that the conditions that bred resentment on the part of colonists in English America prior to 1776 might never have developed if England had remained a Catholic nation. The monarchy would have been subject in the Eighteenth Century to same constraints as it had in the Tenth or Eleventh Centuries, namely, that kings and queens would have continued to understand that the Church reserved unto herself the right to interpose herself in the event that rulers had done things-or proposed to do things-that were contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law and/or were injurious of the cause of the sanctification and salvation of the souls of their subjects. The overthrow of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ deposited power first of all in the hands of monarchs eager to be rid of the "interference" of the Church and ultimately in the hands of whoever happened to hold the reins of governmental power in the modern "democratic" state. Despotism has been the result in both cases

The discourse is continued still; and this parable hath its connexion with chapter 17, concerning Christ's coming to avenge himself upon Jerusalem; which if we keep our eye upon, it may help us to an easier understanding of some more obscure passages that occur in the application of this parable. And to this doth the expression not to faint, seem to have relation; viz. that they might not suffer their hopes and courage to languish and droop, upon the prospect of some afflictions they were likely to grapple with, but that they would give themselves to continual prayer.

Where is "avenge himself upon Jerusalem" in Chapter 17?

I do agree that we are to pray "without ceasing" That is a general teaching of scripture..but the particular verse you cited had a specific application..(Which I pointed out)

This is not what you originally said.

I don't disagree that the parable is told in the context of how you wish to see it. But that is besides the point. The purpose of the parable is not to teach us about the end of the world, but to urge us to pray always, not pray always only at the end of the world.

It would appear that Mary was unaware of her sinless state.

No, Mary, being under the Law, was required to fulfill the precepts of the Law to avoid sin.

Just as she called Jesus her saviour indicates that she felt that she needed one.

We don't disagree she needed a Savior, nor have I have I ever said anything to indicate otherwise. Catholics just say that she was sanctified at conception instead of sometime during adulthood. She didn't sanctify herself.

the sin of childbearing.

THE SIN OF CHILDBEARING???????

God commands childbearing, ergo, God commands sin?

LOL Hermann ,how dense are you ? Circumcision Had nothing to do with forgiveness of sin..It was a sign of the covenant .

sign of the covenant = sacrament

Circumcision was one of the sacraments of the Old Law. Just as Baptism is the sign of joining the New Covenant, Circumcision did so for males in the Old Covenant. Just as Baptism remits original sin, circumcision remitted original sin.

Colossians 2.11 In whom also you are circumcised with circumcision not made by hand in despoiling of the body of the flesh: but in the circumcision of Christ.
12 Buried with him in baptism

Romans 4.11 And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the justice of the faith which he had

Leviticus 20.8 Keep my precepts, and do them. I am the Lord that sanctify you.

In either case it was a human sinful mother bearing a sinless child ..thus showing the sin status of the mother had no bearing on the child

The discussion is a sinful mother having a sinless child. According to your church Mary was sinless..and she was carried in the womb of a sinful mother..

The status of the mother has no bearing, the sin descends to us from Adam (Romans 5.12), not Eve, so it is passed by generation in the male seed, not the female ovum. The state of the mother has no determination on the status of the child. Just like all Israel received a blessing in Abraham's loins, all humanity was condemned in Adam's.

You have made Mary divine..as the ark of the covenant, and the mediator between God and man and the dispenser of grace and the co redeemer ...all of which have a direct reference to Jesus

I'm going to ignore your attempts to stir up further controversies. Mary is not divine. Don't lie from the Devil about what we believe.

Adam and Eve were not created Holy..they were innocent .

Ecclesiastes 7.30 Only this I have found, that God made man right

If Mary could be created sinless free of original by a work of God , could not Jesus too?

Jesus was sinless by necessity since He is God. Are you referring to creating His humanity in incorruption? We certainly don't teach Mary was created incorruptible and not subject to death, sadness, disease, etc.

You definition of original sin is not biblically supported..

How so? What is your "Biblical" definition?

The presence of God indwelling is what makes us holy. He makes us a worthy habitation for Him. He has made me worthy and fit to dwell in.

God will not dwell in a vessel of filth. He does perform the cleaning of sinners to make a fit habitation, but only to those who want it. For Him to dwell in us, we must be cleansed of sin by Him.

Jesus was to have a HUMAN nature..You make Him the son of a goddess not a human mother that could pass on to him all the human frailties that would make Him understand our temptations and weaknesses

And He received a real human nature from His mother, who is not a goddess.

Faith without works is dead. And God rewards works made in faith, not faith, with eternal life.

Thank you. So why are you castigating me for holding this position?

Mother Theresa believed all gods were equal

Please prove this with a quotation.

I am not as dense as you presume

Yes, you are. You said "He is being sacrificed anew daily because of a lack of Faith in the work of God."

We say Christ is sacrificed bloodily once, and that the sacrifice of the Mass is an unbloody re-presentation of the sacrifice of the Cross. We do not sacrifice Christ "anew".

He, therefore, our God and Lord, though He was about to offer Himself once on the altar of the cross unto God the Father, by means of his death, there to operate an eternal redemption; nevertheless, because that His priesthood was not to be extinguished by His death, in the last supper, on the night in which He was betrayed,--that He might leave, to His own beloved Spouse the Church, a visible sacrifice, such as the nature of man requires, whereby that bloody sacrifice, once to be accomplished on the cross, might be represented, and the memory thereof remain even unto the end of the world, and its salutary virtue be applied to the remission of those sins which we daily commit,--declaring Himself constituted a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchisedech, He offered up to God the Father His own body and blood under the species of bread and wine; and, under the symbols of those same things, He delivered (His own body and blood) to be received by His apostles, whom He then constituted priests of the New Testament; and by those words, Do this in commemoration of me, He commanded them and their successors in the priesthood, to offer (them); even as the Catholic Church has always understood and taught. (Council of Trent, Session 22)

I have been declared not guilty.. I have been given a right standing before God . I have been adopted into His family. God does not throw His children out the door..

If you continue to sin, you are none of His.

No one taught her to be a liar and manipulator , she was born with it..She inherited it from her father Adam

I agree with that, but I disagree strongly with the idea that she was able to reason between what she was doing as being "wrong" and what is "right". She isn't doing it out of malicious spite to God aside from His commandments, therefore, it is not a true sin.

So where do you see original sin there??

I use the Vulgate/Douai and Septuagint in the main. When you figure out the correct numbering of the Psalms according to their original numbering, and not the Protestant renumbering, let me know.

1.) Protestants believe that the reason Catholics have concluded that Mary was immaculately conceived is due to the fact that they believe that she must have been sinless to conceive, carry, and give birth to a sinless Jesus.

Would you say that this is accurate ?

I believe it's accurate that "Protestants believe" such. It is not accurate that this is what Catholics have concluded or teach.

2.) Protestants note, however, no Catholic claims for the sinlessness of Mary's parents.

Would you say that this is accurate ?

Yes. There is no requirement that Mary's IC be dependent upon her ancestors.

3.) The question is ... if Mary (Jesus' only human parent) had to be sinless to ensure Jesus' sinlessness, ... why didn't Mary's human parents have to be sinless to ensure the birth of a sinless Mary ?

The question is predicated on a false understanding. A confusion between sinless humanity and divinity.

You'll note that the issue of divinity is not a part of the Protestant discussion and questions above.

Yes, my point exactly. Mary being IC'd as a sinless human and Jesus being God Incarnate are treated as the same thing. That's my entire point.

Do you, as a Catholic, believe that the issue of divinity answers some of the Protestant questions posed on this set of belifs ?

Yes, exactly. Ding ding ding ding ding!

If so, ... how ?

Well, first we seperate the idea that a human being, perfected and without sin is somehow divine. Divine and human are two entirely different things, two different natures. A god does not become a human by sinning and a human does not become a god by not sinning.

Can we agree upon that?

Now, Catholics teach that Jesus was a special person who had two natures, divine and human all wrapped up in one indivisible person.

As such, it was impossible for Jesus to commit actual sins, because they violate His Divine nature. God doesn't sin. I think we agree on that, right?

Now Catholics refer to as "Original Sin" the lack of a presence of God's Spirit within our souls. We are born this way. As such, we are incapable of having a relationship with God. We are dirty, filthy, unrighteous, graceless, etc. We can not abide in the Presence of God.

Now Mary not only had a relationship with God, she actually carried and nursed Him. She gave her flesh, her humanity to God so He could become Incarnate. Because Jesus is divine, it is only fitting and right that the one who carried and provided her flesh to Him be free from Original Sin. It is impossible for it to be any other way. How could you be God's mother and be incapable of having a relationship with Him?

Now having this special relationship and this special grace allowed Mary to live a life without any personal sin. That was a consequence of the role chosen for her and her cooperation with the grace she received.

Jesus was born without original sin because of who He is. And He lived without personal sin because of who He is. It is His divinity that makes Mary's IC required, not the fact that He was a man who would live and not sin.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.