It appears that it is our time for Gods correction But, I could not become a Catholic, because the Catholic Church seems to go so far as to discount the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit, which is what truly drives me in the following of Christ.
>>How so? Most assuredly there are bad clerics and laity, but I think the Catholic Church reveres the scriptures every bit as much as Protestants do.
I’m a former Lutheran, so I have a degree of respect for Confessional Lutheranism.
But Luther’s schooling in Ockhamist Nominalism skewed his thinking.
Most assuredly the Western Church was a disaster in the 200 years following the Black Death, but Luther didn’t make the situation any better apart from forcing Rome to finally address the need for reform.
The state of clerical education in the early 16th century was non-existent, and Luther himself only had two years of schooling before being named a doctor in the university.
But what most Protestants don’t understand is that Luther sought to reform the Roman Catholic Church rather than start a new religion. His thought changed after he was excommunicated.
There are true traditions and false traditions. Luther saw this and never went to the extremes that Calvin and the later Reformers went to when they threw the baby out with the bathwater.
I think having been a Lutheran has made me a better Catholic because I appreciate the scriptures. But Lutheranism did not restore the primitive Church.
Luther is likely the reason I went East because I gained an antipathy for Scholasticism from my Lutheran past. A lot of things that Protestants call abuses existed long before the Middle Ages and the era of supposed corruption.
Thank you for #192.
That is helpful info.