My three questions to Catholics:
1)What, in the mind of a Catholic, was the proper response to the corruption of the pre-reformation Catholic church, including but not limited to the selling of indulgences? What was the proper response to a church that was violating the teachings of the Bible?
2)The bible tells us Saint Peter was granted infalability by Jesus. If Peter had passed on that infalability to the next Bishop of Rome don’t you think that might have been recorded in scripture or at least somewhere? It seems to me that such an event would have been chronicled in detail by the church itself.
3)The Pope does not choose his successor, the Catholics elect the next one. That would mean that primacy comes not from the Pope but rather from the church itself. If one does accept that there is a church with primacy, since the great schizm how do I know that the Catholics are it rather than the Eastern Orthodox?
These questions are not meant to be snarky or arguementative, they are simply my own logical problems with the Catholic claim to primacy.
Do not expect straight answers from RCs, as they are in bondage to defend Rome, and are not to engage in objective examination of evidence in order to ascertain the veracity of RC teachings, but are to simply submit to them under the premise of Rome being the infallible authority. Thus Scripture is subjected to being a servant to support Rome, versus the veracity doctrines being dependent upon the weight of Scriptural substantiation, upon which the church began.
All of which RCs cannot refute. And in fact Martin Luther was excommunicated for exposing corruption, that of doctrinal corruption, thus resulting in his excommunication by a recalcitrant Rome. While Luther was not correct in all he held to, nor did Rome reject all that he wrote (though much more from Luther would follow), but both purgatory and indulgences are simply not Scriptural.
All the verses which clearly speak of a N.T. believer's postmortem condition (Luke 23:43; Acts 7:59; 1Cor. 15:52; 2 Cor 5:8; Phil. 1:23; 1 Th 4:17; 1Jn. 3:2) show it is with the Lord, in whose presence there is fulness of joy (Ps. 16:11). All the Thessalonians would be the Lord if he had returned oin their lifetime, as expected. (1Ths. 4:17) Bless God. (Been through the arguments before.)
Moreover, is not simply suffering the produces righteous character, but being tempted, and which Scripture only shows this life is for with its manifold temptations, contrasting “now” being the time of trials, “now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations..might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: (1 Peter 1:6,7) and our “the sufferings of this present time” (Rm. 8:18) versus later, and thus the Lord Himself as made perfect through sufferings, in being “tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 2:10; 4:15)
As historian Philip Schaff wrote: By attacking the abuses of indulgences, Luther unwittingly cut a vein of Medieval Catholicismî (History of the Christian Church, Vol. VII, 160).
But the modern RC blithely dismisses such as fuss about nothing.
Also, in contrast to the imagination of modern RCs, Rome was far from clearly defined in its theology. As one researcher states, "Recent research on the Reformation entitles us to sharpen it and say that the Reformation began because the reformers were too catholic in the midst of a church that had forgotten its catholicity..." “If we keep in mind how variegated medieval catholicism was, the legitimacy of the reformers' claim to catholicity becomes clear." And between extremes “were many combinations; and though certain views predominated in late nominalism. In condemning the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent condemned part of its own catholic tradition." Pelikan, pp. 51-52.(Pelikan, pp. 46-47 ). — Jaroslav Pelikan, The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1959, p. 46)
See CFs on Scripture for one thing. The RC recourse of Rome is to presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares.
As no less a RC than Manning asserted,
"It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine...I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. Its past is present with it, for both are one to a mind which is immutable. Primitive and modern are predicates, not of truth, but of ourselves... The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour."] - The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, pp. 227-228
Also, the idea of a restoration being needed just before the Reformation hardly seems improbable, as they both mean the same thing, and even the poor spiritual and moral conditions necessitated it. See recent post.
2)The bible tells us Saint Peter was granted infalability by Jesus. If Peter had passed on that infalability to the next Bishop of Rome don’t you think that might have been recorded in scripture or at least somewhere? It seems to me that such an event would have been chronicled in detail by the church itself.
Indeed. Yet nowhere in Scripture do we see an apostolic successor except for Judas, which was to maintain the number of the 12, (Rv. 21:14; Acts 1:15ff) thus only one is chosen. And rather than supporting apostolic succession, the Holy Spirit conspicuously never mentions any successor for the apostle James who was martyred, (Acts 12:1,2) or preparations for another pope, despite its cardinal importance for Rome and the careful chronicling of important events and details of the early church.
And the RC recourse to tradition further indicts it as being contrary to the NT church, as the church became increasingly deformed as time went by, while even those early Cfs it invokes for support evidence the acorn turned into a different tree. Even Catholic scholarship provides evidence against the claims of Rome's perpetuated Petrine papacy to whom all the church looked to as its infallible head in Rome.
3)The Pope does not choose his successor, the Catholics elect the next one. That would mean that primacy comes not from the Pope but rather from the church itself. If one does accept that there is a church with primacy, since the great schizm how do I know that the Catholics are it rather than the Eastern Orthodox?
Good question, as they both claim to be the one true and infallible church. But division in Catholicism, is nothing new, and which includes on substantial issues that will never be fully resolved i am quit sure.
"The Orthodox Church opposes the Roman doctrines of universal papal jurisdiction, papal infallibility, purgatory, and the Immaculate Conception precisely because they are untraditional." Clark Carlton, THE WAY: What Every Protestant Should Know About the Orthodox Church, 1997, p 135.
Also, the Orthodox Church does not believe in indulgences as remissions from purgatoral punishment. Both purgatory and indulgences are inter-corrolated theories, unwitnessed in the Bible or in the Ancient Church, and when they were enforced and applied they brought about evil practices at the expense of the prevailing Truths of the Church. — http://www.goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith7076
See here for more.
The procedure for electing the pope is not the issue, and while it has evolved over the history of the Church. Rome has never even elected (TMK) any of her supposed successors by the non-political OT Scriptural method of casting lots (Prov. 16:33) used by Peter and the 11, but instead her elections have often involved political machinations, and electing manifestly immoral men who were not fit to be even church members.