Posted on 09/30/2003 9:32:47 AM PDT by Fifthmark
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
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlecatholic.com ...
They lump all non Catholics into the same barrow . Heck I have even see the Mormons and Jw's thrown in..
The Church is not the appendage to the priesthood; but the minister is the steward of God to the Church. Man shrinks from too close contact with God; hence he willingly puts a priesthood between, and would serve God by deputy. The pagan (like the modern Romanish) priest was rather to conceal than to explain "the mysteries of God."
The minister's office is to "preach" (literally, "proclaim as a herald," Mat 10:27 ) the deep truths of God ("mysteries," heavenly truths, only known by revelation), so far as they have been revealed, and so far as his hearers are disposed to receive them. JOSEPHUS says that the Jewiwhile the pagans concealed from all but the "initiated" few, the mysteries of theirs.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown
Was Josephus wrong? Is the purpose of the church not to reveal God to men ? Or is it to keep men from the "mysteries" from men?
I'll go an earn some for you. How much are you willing to pay per day off in Purgatory? You can send payment via credit card to my paypal account.
Don't worry Patriot..Protestants have more that enough in the purgatory fund
An indulgence of 3 years is granted for reading the bible for 15 minutes i figure I am fully covered and the rest I can give to my Catholic family that will probably be in deep debt
Having just discussed this on another thread it was pointed out that the Jews did not believe in the after life..David was talking about the grave
So you do not think that scripture is the word of God?
This was given by the Holy Spirit to record and proclaim..
Oh really?
Eusebius, Life of Constantine, Book III, Chapter VI: How he ordered a Council to be held at Nicaea.
THEN as if to bring a divine array against this enemy, he convoked a general council, and invited the speedy attendance of bishops from all quarters, in letters expressive of the honorable estimation in which he held them. Nor was this merely the issuing of a bare command but the emperor's good will contributed much to its being carried into effect: for he allowed some the use of the public means of conveyance, while he afforded to others an ample supply of horses (1) for their transport. The place, too, selected for the synod, the city Nicaea in Bithynia (named from "Victory"), was appropriate to the occasion. (2) As soon then as the imperial injunction was generally made known, all with the utmost willingness hastened thither, as though they would outstrip one another in a race; for they were impelled by the anticipation of a happy result to the conference, by the hope of enjoying present peace, and the desire of beholding something new and strange in the person of so admirable an emperor. Now when they were all assembled, it appeared evident that the proceeding was the work of God, inasmuch as men who had been most widely separated, not merely in sentiment but also personally, and by difference of country, place, and nation, were here brought together, and comprised within the walls of a single city, forming as it were a vast garland of priests, composed of a variety of the choicest flowers.
Even so, the Bishop of Rome refused to call for it in Rome, instead choosing Nicea, where it would be freer of Constantine's influence.
Please tell me you aren't serious.
Constantine did not rule from Rome. After his defeat of Licinius, he made Byzantium his imperial headquarters. The council took place in Constantine's palace in Nicea. Constantine was present throughout the proceedings.
I don't know where you get your information from, but I'd suggest looking into more reliable sources.
Link, please? This is patently untrue.
Yes, I did, and that is why I never mentioned it and rather used the word scripture instead. Words mean things - ie the following.
Acts 9:32 And it came to pass, as Peter passed throughout all [quarters], he came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda.
Saint is a general term used to describe Christians both living and dead. This is the practical use in scripture. The definitions you gave out of the dictionary and out of your own religion in no way comport to what is shown in scripture. Your canonization process hasn't yet entered into it and is rather moot once your definition is shown to be wrong.
Sorry, to claim ALL Catholics can "finish a quote of any verse from Mat to Acts "is the lie..
I have too many in my family and know too many Catholics that are "active "in ministries to believe that is true . That was a lie and not just a lie but a stupid lie .
hey Havoc..how much scripture did you know as a Catholic?
Are they omnipresent and omniscient?
LOL LOL LOL...Sorry that is just two funny ..So you do not "know" it, you have no evidence of it but some one some time said it so it must be true..LOL
Attention Faithful
Turn brain off the pope is speaking" LOL
So how do we know what saint means? You tell me.
By the clear meaning given is scripture
Act 9:32 And it came to pass, as Peter passed throughout all [quarters], he came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda.
Act 9:41 And he gave her [his] hand, and lifted her up, and when he had called the saints and widows, presented her alive.
Act 26:10 Which thing I also did in Jerusalem: and many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I gave my voice against [them].
Rom 1:7 To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called [to be] saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Rom 8:27 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what [is] the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to [the will of] God.
Rom 12:13 Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.
Rom 15:25 But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints.
Rom 15:26 For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem.
Rom 16:15 Salute Philologus, and Julia, Nereus, and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints which are with them.
1Cr 6:1 Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?
1Cr 14:33 For God is not [the author] of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
2Cr 9:12 For the administration of this service not only supplieth the want of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God;
2Cr 13:13 All the saints salute you.
Phl 4:22 All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Caesar's household.
All that are saved by the Blood of Christ are Saints
Didn't like that stat huh?
Doubtfully; you have to register with your parish, just as you would if you were Protestant. Figures which say 22% of Americans are Catholics are not based on baptisms, but on self-reporting. The catch is most lapsed Catholics (who have not found another church) identify themselves as Catholics. Lapsed Protestants join the 45% of Americans who simply describe themselves as "Christian," "Protestant," or "Non-religious," along with you "unofficial members."
I still get literature from the Catholic church. The parish Priest was surprised I was a Protestant when we met..
The Vatican counts baptism
"(AGI) - Vatican City, Feb. 8 - The number of Catholics in the world is increasing. The number of people baptised, says the new Pontifical Yearbook, "has increased worldwide, from 757 million in 1978 to 1.06 billion in 2001." The dynamics of such an increase varies from continent to continent: while in Africa there was an increase of 148 pct, in Europe there was a situation of stability, while evident increases were seen in Asia, the Americas, and Oceania."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/979616/posts
And once you're counted that way, you can't get off the list. Even me, an excommunicate apostate, is still counted as a "baptized Catholic".
I've looked into it. The church will annul marriages, but there is no provision in canon law to annul a baptism. The best you can do is public repudiation.
The Jews of every century since the times of King David, have always revered this wonderful King of Israel and his teachings in the Psalms. In Psalm 104, David speaks of many of the living things the Father created and he says, (V.30), "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created" and in V.29, "Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust."
In Psalm 6:5, the great King David relates death to the grave and writes.. "In death there is no remembrance of thee; in the grave who shall give thee thanks?" Obviously King David’s perception of death was simply that of which he spoke in Psalm 115:17, "The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence (the grave)"
Surely if David was indeed a ‘man after God’s own heart’, he would know the truth about death and ‘life after death’. He did…..his view of death was very clear and is expressed in Psalm 146:4, "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth: in that very day his thoughts perish." These simple truths show clearly that when man dies he goes back to the ground to silence, not to heaven to praise God. The Apostle John made sure we learn of this by writing, "No man hath ascended up to heaven" (John 3:13).
Perhaps the poster looked to the Psalms also ??
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