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Thomas A. Droleskey on the Lies of Protestantism
Seattle Catholic ^ | September 29, 2003 | Thomas A. Droleskey

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

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TOPICS: Catholic; Ecumenism; Evangelical Christian; Mainline Protestant; Other Christian; Religion & Culture; Religion & Politics
KEYWORDS: catholiclist; popefrancis; romancatholicism; sectarianturmoil
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To: Jmouse007
Then some of the RCs here are using thrir own personal interpretation of the Council of Trent. I've seen it said that it only applied to those who were alive when it was pronounced and that it isn't in effect anymore.

81 posted on 09/30/2003 1:58:07 PM PDT by Wrigley
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To: Gamecock; LiteKeeper; George W. Bush
Show me where in the constitution it says "seperation of Church and State" and I will send $10.00 to your favorite charity.

I never said those words were in there.

The Separation Clause of the First Amendment is...

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."

Sure sounds like they were trying to keep the government out of the Church.

82 posted on 09/30/2003 1:58:25 PM PDT by ksen (HHD)
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To: Fifthmark; PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain
Instead of making snide, worthless comments, perhaps you'd like to defend Protestantism, or else post a list of Catholic "lies"?

The internet is not big enough to hold it all

83 posted on 09/30/2003 2:00:06 PM PDT by RnMomof7
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To: malakhi
Two notable examples. The author claims that Protestants see the Pope as the Anti-Christ. Even at the time this was written (over 100 years ago), this was not a univerally held Protestant belief. Further, the author claims that Luther admitted that his beliefs were inspired by the devil.

I don't now about the second claim but regarding the first: unless he used the superlative "all" preceding the word protestant, I don't see what you problem is with his assertion. You can find plenty of non-Catholic Christians that hold that belief today.

84 posted on 09/30/2003 2:02:24 PM PDT by conservonator
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To: LiteKeeper
Well, the fact the items 1-8 are Scriptural makes this an interesting debate. However, re: #9 - Protestants do not believe in the separation of Church and State.

Lite unlike Rome that demanded conversion of all the people in a captured lands I would point out that the constitution of the United States was written by Protestants..You get a zero in History and cause and effect.

85 posted on 09/30/2003 2:03:25 PM PDT by RnMomof7
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To: ksen
Actually, it sounds like it was supposed to be a neutral position, instead of the current hostile one.
86 posted on 09/30/2003 2:05:34 PM PDT by Gamecock (Paul was a Calvinist!)
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To: Fifthmark
So certainly know how to throw a food fight.
87 posted on 09/30/2003 2:05:53 PM PDT by xJones
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To: RnMomof7
I would like to see their biblical teachings to support prayer to Mary saints, Mary as Co redeemer, indulgences etc..

You've seen it countless times, and denied just as many times, what's the point?

88 posted on 09/30/2003 2:06:19 PM PDT by conservonator
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To: Hermann the Cherusker
We believe in one God the Father all powerful, maker of all things both seen and unseen. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten begotten from the Father, that is from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, cosubstantial with the Father, through whom all things came to be, both those in heaven and those in earth; for us humans and for our salvation he came down and became incarnate, became human, suffered and rose up on the third day, went up into the heavens, is coming to judge the living and the dead. And in the holy Spirit. (Creed of the Council of Nicea)

Pssssss Protestants use that creed..

89 posted on 09/30/2003 2:06:31 PM PDT by RnMomof7
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To: xJones
*87 You certainly know how to hold a food fight.
90 posted on 09/30/2003 2:06:56 PM PDT by xJones
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To: RnMomof7
Lite unlike Rome that demanded conversion of all the people in a captured lands I would point out that the constitution of the United States was written by Protestants..You get a zero in History and cause and effect.

Could you elaborate. I think we are talking about the same thing, just using different terminology.

91 posted on 09/30/2003 2:06:56 PM PDT by LiteKeeper
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To: Fifthmark; Hermann the Cherusker
Ah, I long for the days when a Council would condemn errors...*sigh*

Do you miss the burning at the stakes too?
92 posted on 09/30/2003 2:07:50 PM PDT by OLD REGGIE ((I am a cult of one! UNITARJEWMIAN))
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To: RnMomof7
Here is what I don't understand about the Mary thing. If she herself was pure and Holy, like her Son, who were her parents?
93 posted on 09/30/2003 2:08:18 PM PDT by Gamecock (Paul was a Calvinist!)
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To: ksen
Separation Clause of the First Amendment

That is your title to the Amendment...not the Constitution's. Too often your title has been used to justify the elimination of the Church from the Public Square, and that is NOT what the Founders had in mind when they wrote this.

94 posted on 09/30/2003 2:08:48 PM PDT by LiteKeeper
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To: Wrigley
Then some of the RCs here are using thrir own personal interpretation of the Council of Trent. I've seen it said that it only applied to those who were alive when it was pronounced and that it isn't in effect anymore.

Can you link to an example?

95 posted on 09/30/2003 2:09:14 PM PDT by conservonator
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To: Wrigley
I've seen it said that it only applied to those who were alive when it was pronounced and that it isn't in effect anymore.

This is implied in the Universal Catechism. See my reply #8.

96 posted on 09/30/2003 2:11:00 PM PDT by malakhi (Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.)
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To: Hermann the Cherusker
So much for "errant brethren" and Vatican II. This sounds like the familiar anathemas of Trent.
97 posted on 09/30/2003 2:12:27 PM PDT by drstevej
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To: Hermann the Cherusker
Now here's a Papist I can respect. At least he hasn't given way to this "ecumenism" crap. I certainly respect him more than Romanists who say that Protestants are "separated brethren," or try to downplay the differences between the Church of Rome and the Protestant Communions.
98 posted on 09/30/2003 2:14:02 PM PDT by The Grammarian
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To: conservonator
You'll have to take my word for it. I'm not about to go thru the countless threads to find the examples. I've seen them, and they've been commented on.
99 posted on 09/30/2003 2:14:14 PM PDT by Wrigley
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To: Fifthmark
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.

A concise encapulation of the presumptuous arrogance of some Catholics.

Dog, meet manger. Manger, meet dog.

100 posted on 09/30/2003 2:14:23 PM PDT by Pahuanui (When a foolish man hears of the Tao, he laughs out loud)
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