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There's a great difference between discussing matters of faith, including our differences, in Christian charity, and falsely accusing your opponent of every evil thing you can think of. Then, compounding the issue by refusing to accept objective evidence that one's accusations are false, and repeating them at every opportunity.

St. Paul tells us that when pagans observed the Christian community, their response was: "See how they love one another." When I look at this forum, my reaction is "What the hell is wrong with these people?"

This place is a disgrace and a scandal, precisely because of the disgusting image of supposedly Christian behavior it exhibits to the world.

Did you read the article? Because if you did, it would be easy to understand what’s going on here on the religion forum. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that not only are beliefs of Roman Catholics and non-Catholics ‘different’, they are POLES apart. If you would care to share how you think they are similar, and how that could be our path to unity, please, by all means, tell. I’m interested in what you have to say.

Do you think the deciples argued and debated in full view of the audience? I have learned over many years that oftentimes, in the real world, when there is a debate happening it is not the two or more debating the issue who is affected the most...rather the listeners to that debate.

There will always be those who falsely accuse...we are called to stand up to those accusations with the word of God. But you can never make someone believe...that is not your call. You can only present the evidence and then they are free to determine what they want to believe.

As far as unbelievers who might be observing....they will learn that when matters of life and death hang in the balance in a war of truth and falsehood there will indeed be battles and passionately so and as it should be. The name calling are just words and need to be ignored as they only evidence the inner battle raging, so identify it as so, or move into the next round.

Again the moderators are very clear about open religious threads getting hot and heavy and the thin skinned would do better at a devotional thread. They are wise to the arguments and what is at stake and generally know when things go too far...they are pretty thick skinned themselves so they ought to know what they are doing.

There is nothing “wrong” with those debating these issues...they are generally seasoned in their beliefs and the threads also provide opportunity for them to sharpen their stance for when they go out into the real world and face the powers that be.

I have fought in the front lines and in the enemies territory, you can believe the arguments here are certainly mild by comparison.

10-4!”St. Paul tells us that when pagans observed the Christian community, their response was: “See how they love one another.” When I look at this forum, my reaction is “What the hell is wrong with these people?” I brought up once without love your an empty cymbal from the epistles. The guy shows me once saved always saved “verse”. Thats it I guess you can then hate and God will figure it out for you . It’s like your not responsible any more. A Strange Christianity!

St. Paul tells us that when pagans observed the Christian community, their response was: "See how they love one another." When I look at this forum, my reaction is "What the hell is wrong with these people?"

Amen.

There are however, several items of the original article that seem ridiculous to me. What jumped out most was "Trying to earn Salvation" and "merit", these are bedrock claims against Catholicism made by Protestants and my mind boggles whenever I see them because they are so blatantly false. Seeing a priest make those claims just makes me suspicious.

It makes me suspicious because a priest before the liturgical changes would have said "not counting our merits, but freely granting us pardon" every day when he said Mass. Even after the new missal was introduced he would have said "do not consider what we truly deserve but grant us Your forgiveness".

I prefer the old usage because it explicitly gives the lie to this idea that Catholics believe we merit salvation or that we can earn what is freely granted.

Now, if I, a mere adult convert can pick up on this after a short period of attending Mass how can a priest excuse himself who says Mass daily? He may be going after low hanging fruit or trying to gain credibility with anti-Catholics but he must know that inserting this "earning" stuff must throw up red flags to any Catholic who's actually paying attention. His entire presentation of Catholic thinking on salvation is a stereotype, why would he do that if he actually wanted to speak to Catholics?

But never mind all that because there was one thing he wrote that really did ring true. He nailed something when he wrote that the reason he was insulted in the streets of Rome "was not because I stood for Christ as the early Christians did but because they saw in me the Roman Catholic system."

I was having exactly that conversation with a priest friend last week when talking about the press coverage and the hatred of the world against the Church. "Don't you wish they were attacking us because of Christ?" I asked. Our Lord doesn't even begin to enter into it because we've done such a horrible job. I don't care about the witness of the various protestantisms, it doesn't matter what their ratio of sexual immorality is, and the public schools aren't worth using as a defense either. Their failures aren't the issue, OUR failure is.

Humanly speaking the Church stands in ruins, her people are uncatechised, her priests are depraved, she has been abandoned by everyone who stood under her protection during the good times. In fact, one could draw a very telling comparison at this time to the Passion of Our Lord. It is Friday for the Church and it is very difficult to call it Good, only in the hope of Sunday can we remain faithful.

That wasn't at all what I intended when I started replying but there it is.