Catholics, Protestants and the Bible

Almost always, it begins with a warm invitation, from nice people. You work with them. They live on either side of you. They are the parents of your children's friends. Most of the millions of Catholics who have defected to one form of Protestantism or other in the last thirty years did not intend to apostatize, when they agreed to "Come go to church with us!"

The individual Catholic frequently does not recognize the profound implications of the invitation. What is being proposed is a grave sin against faith, apostasy, exceeding in moral weight adultery, because faith is a gift received directly from God Himself. Nor does he realize what he is being asked: Does he take his faith seriously? Is he willing to give it up? Does he think the Catholic Church and the holy religion established by the Son of God no better than one founded sixteen centuries later by a man?

The process cannot be set in motion without the Catholic's cooperation. He must see a positive response to the friendly overture as the decisive step on the road that leads to loss of the Faith. Even one who senses danger may, all the same, fear giving offense, should he refer to the defects of false religions: "Exchange Christ, for Luther? The Church of the martyrs for some sect of the Protestant Reformation?" So most of us try something like the following: "I am a Catholic. I know what I have, I treasure the Faith, and I would never leave the Church."

Experience has shown that this will not end the matter; often, it will not even end the conversation. Why? Because the response is going to be, "But the Church is all believers in every church!" The Catholic has just collided with an invisible force: Protestant oral tradition.

This provisional answer-which the Protestant does not even believe himself, although, while he is saying it, he thinks he does-is a dogmatic decree from this infallible Protestant magisterium, which furnishes whatever is needed at any given moment to attack Catholic teaching. It will be followed by a conversation which, if put in graphic form, would resemble a bramble bush.

This oral tradition is a manufactured, unbiblical body of teaching, and it is passed on from one generation to the next. Its basic content; however kaleidoscopic and contradictory, is identifiable because it is unvarying. The essentials consist of what the Reformers denied, what they invented, and what they said the Bible says, mingled with the slanders and calumnies of the Church and of Catholics used by the Reformers to justify the establishment of a religion opposed to the one Christ founded. This body of inconsistencies and non sequiturs is the only thing each and every Protestant believes, whatever "denomination," a euphemism for "sect;" claims him at the moment

While Protestantism officially denies any obligation to accept Revelation, it guarantees Protestant adherence to the negatives of Protestantism by means of this unacknowledged magisterium. But because the very existence of an oral tradition in Protestantism is unsuspected, its deficiencies as a body of false, man-made dogmas which replaces the biblical teaching and Apostolic Tradition preserved by the Church escape notice.

What is actually written in Holy Scripture is never permitted to supplant dogmas decreed by the oral tradition. But this fact is similarly hidden behind the phrases, taken from the oral tradition, in which the Protestant continually proclaims his unshakable attachment to "the Word of God."

The control over the Protestant exercised by that tradition is a secret, even to him. Its operation is protective and wholly negative. It protects Protestant dogma by preventing the Protestant from believing anything the Reformers denied. It is wholly negative in that while the Protestant Bible reader is indoctrinated and remains immersed in error, he is systematically trained to reject only one thing: the truth. He is free to accept only those few doctrines left after the ravages of the Reformation, e.g., the divinity of Christ, the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth of Christ.' But it is not the things he believes which define his identity as a Protestant, but rather those revealed truths he rejects.

The oral tradition dictates the terms and direction in which any discourse between its adherents and Catholics will unfold. Thus, in his contacts with Catholics, the Protestant speaks only of what he does not believe, and why. He does not believe what all Christendom believed for fifteen centuries: the divine institution of a visible Church founded on Peter and his successors, who, acting in his official capacity as head of the Church, is guaranteed not to mislead us, with a separate, sacrificing priesthood and seven sacraments, through which flows the sanctifying grace which enables us to share in the life of God, and eventually, enter heaven. The repudiation of these truths is what makes him a Protestant, and this, his list of denials, is what he wishes to share with the Catholic. His hope is that the Catholic may be brought not to believe what he does not believe.

Because of the barely-concealed but broad and enduring Gnostic streak in Protestantism, the Protestant recoils from the flesh, imagining that he receives his doctrines from what he calls "the Spirit," all the while obeying Luther, and seeking support for Protestant denials of Revelation by quoting other revolutionaries who repudiated truths revealed by God.

The inventions of the Reformers are further safeguarded from exposure because of the Protestant's inability to distinguish what the Bible says from what these 16th-century revolutionaries, whose qualifications as religious leaders consisted largely of hatred of the Catholic Church, said it says. Luther claimed that his dogmas came from Holy Scripture, and since he is falsely portrayed in Protestant¬ism as the very one who "restored the Bible to the people," no one bothers to look and see whether the claim is true.

The Protestant Reformation had its birth and inspiration in Holy Scripture.
Protestantism rests its case upon the Bible.
It has a Bible Christianity.
Its final court of appeal is the Holy Scriptures . . .
No man or institution, no matter how great, can supersede the Word. For Protestants it is the Living Word.'

The first four statements above will be seen in their true light as we move through the following pages. To the first of the italicized assertions, Catholics answer: "Oh, yes, it can." Protestants consistently, habitually, and, wherever and whenever Protestant dogma is threatened, invariably allow their oral tradition to "supersede the Word." And to the second, we say, "Oh, no, it is not." It is Luther's, and/or occasionally some other Reformer's, word which is living; where Protestant dogma is concerned, it is the Bible which is a dead letter. This unexamined myth, that Protestantism is based on the Bible, so thoroughly deceives the Protestant that when he is reciting the dogmas of his oral tradition, he thinks he is quoting Holy Scripture, which he has infallibly interpreted through the guidance of the Holy Ghost

Therefore Protestants, wholly unaware of the oral tradition to which they are in thrall, regularly denounce Tradition in favor of the written Word. Moreover, they oppose, they tell us, any and all authority in matters of religion. They do not suspect that it is they themselves, and not, as they have been taught, Catholics, who scorn Holy Scripture.

The true role of the Bible in Protestantism remains a well kept secret It is a slave to the oral tradition. Those beliefs peculiar to Protestantism cannot be found in Holy Scripture. They are imparted solely by means of their oral tradition. The Bible is forced, whenever possible, to furnish support. It is never permitted to contradict the Reformers. The Catholic who accepts Protestant myths at face value, and believes that "Protestants know the Bible," is as much deceived as the Protestant is. An exposition of Protestant oral tradition will reveal the extent of the Protestant's knowledge of Holy Scripture, and the use he makes of it.

The presentation of Protestant tenets in the following pages will unveil the source of Protestant beliefs. The l6th-century roots, the contradictions, the lack of biblical foundation, and the negative terms in which Protestant dogmas are framed betray the hidden presence of the oral tradition. The negative premise is sometimes disguised: "Faith alone" is a repudiation of everything else. The "all sufficiency of Scripture for faith and life" is a repudiation of Christ's right to found a teaching Church and His right to delegate His own authority, plus a rejection of any authority but the hidden authority in Protestantism, perceived as the speaker's own. It is a dismissal of the sacraments, a dismissal of sanctifying grace. It is a denial of man's need for sanctification. It is a rejection of all, in short, which the Reformers rejected. It is rebellion dressed up and made to sound pious.

First, the Belief, Then the Written Reminder
As I set forth in the following pages texts from Holy Scripture in support of Catholic doctrine and practices, the question might well arise: How do we know that those in the Primitive Church read the Bible text the way the Catholic Church interprets it? The answer is that there was no text to read. First there was the belief, taught orally. And even as the Primitive Church grew, the writing came in only gradually. The Church, whose human representatives spoke for her, had the authority; they instructed and directed the faithful. The first statement below is Our Lord's:
And if he will not hear them, tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican (Mt 18:17); Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more now in my absence) (Phil 2:12); Obey your prelates, and be subject to them (Heb 13:17, falsified in the KJV).

What do Catholics mean when they say, "the Church"? According to St Robert Bellarmine, the Church is the visible society of the validly baptized faithful, united together in one organic body by the profession of the same Christian faith, by the participation of the same Sacrifice, and the same seven sacraments, under the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops in communion with him. Another definition says that the Church is comprised of the living faithful, united under an earthly head, who is the Vicar of Christ, who Himself remains the cornerstone (Ps 86:5). It is the Body of Christ, who is the head of the Church (Eph 5:23), which completes and continues Christ's mission (Col 1:24).

During the very time her bishops were committing to paper the writing which we call the New Testament, as confirmed by that handy history of the apostolic age, the New Testament itself, the Church was a functioning organism. Surviving documents of historians and the Church Fathers testify to the one Church with one set of unchanging doctrines, identical to those which have continued up to our time in the Catholic Church, despite the fact that the truth is constantly under attack.

How shall we respond to the well-meaning Protestant's declaration that "the Church is all believers in every church"? It demands, as an answer, a question: "Why, then, should I go to a Protestant sect of your choosing? I am a believer, and therefore, according to the Protestant definition, I am a member of the Church."

On the hidden prompting from the Protestant tradition, this response will be rejected at once. The rejoinder that the Church is all believers was only temporarily useful, to be discarded and forgotten as he proceeds to his next point. The Protestant will now solemnly assure you that one church is as good as another. The logical answer here would be: "That being true, you surely will have no objection if I continue to attend my own?"

Of course, he has an objection. He only says this, that one church is as good as another, but he wishes the Catholic to join him in Protestant error precisely because of his conviction that the Church is invisible, is made up of all believers in every Protestant church, and that it is actually one Protestant church which, in his estimation, is-more or less-as good as another, although his enthusiasm centers on the one he attends at the moment And if you point out to him that no church founded by a creature can possibly be equal to one founded by the Son of God, he will not be listening, or he will not be impressed with this simple statement of truth. The Catholic will feel himself falling through a series of trap doors, as solid ground gives way time after time. There is always another step, another hidden contradiction, another unspoken qualification: "One church is as good as another ... except the Catholic Church."

Protestants, that feeling you may be having right now is what it feels like to be on the receiving end of thread after thread of anti-Catholicism.

Which has been result of us seeing thread after thread of Catholic new and commentary and anti-Protestant propaganda.

The individual Catholic frequently does not recognize the profound implications of the invitation. What is being proposed is a grave sin against faith, apostasy, exceeding in moral weight adultery,

..this is an excerpt from a book that led me into the Catholic Church almost 20 years ago. THIS is what polemics looks like.

Which is frankly embarrassing.

This is not Scott Hahn/Tim Staples/Karl Keating/Patrick Madrid apologetics. This is EENS/you're all going to burn in hell material.

Meaning while they tell us to join the church of Rome under the present Pope and affirm Vatican 2, you interpret Rome differently and want to us to side with your sect, formal or informal.

If i may bring up some of your past comments i saw while quickly seeking to know what type of RC you are (as this can vary, so does the argument), I do not think they would say, "there's a reason the CCC is known as the Cataclysm of the Catholic Church...as a teaching tool I won't let my children be exposed to the CCC. It reads like it was written by a UN subcommittee for the most part." And "I agree the catechism is a disaster." (Imagine if that was the honest appraisal of one of us !). Yet others much recommend and point us to the CCC as being the sure authoritative compilation of RC teaching. One happy family.

You also said you said "We have very little worth saying to Protestants with the mess we're in. We do need to get our own house in order."

I respect your frankness and honestly here, and do not bring up your past statements to debate them, but because they relate to your argument. For unlike us you defend a particular church which we are to submit to versus engaging in interpreting Scripture and history to determine the veracity of RC truth claims. Yet you seem to be in some degree of disagreement with other RCs over what must be submitted to.

And as Rome treats even publicly know impenitent proabortion prosodomite pols as members in life and in death, then you must own them or be in some sort of dissenting sect. If not the SSPV schism.

have shelves of this stuff, if necessary I'll post all of it.

So you may join the likes of those who saw their Staple's type polemics exposed as fallacious - absurdity after absurdity, argument by assertions, straw men and question-begging rambling rhetoric, one after another, as your choice polemic is even more manifestly a work of sophistry than Staple's! That any one could be persuaded by this i see as in-credible, unless they were ignorant or deceived or driven by some animosity.

Thanks for the project. Stand by (my typing takes a while).

Part the second (typos, formatting errors, dropped italics and missing footnotes all my own fault):

Looking Through Protestant Spectacles
To make sense of this sequence, we must begin where the Protestant begins: four and a half centuries ago. It must be understood that Protestantism itself is defined in the terms dictated by the tradition. In order to justify the Reformation in the first place, the Catholic Church had to be branded an impostor. The Primitive Church, the Church of the New Testament, was Protestant and somehow, somewhere, sometime, it was overwhelmed and supplanted by a tyrannical organization known as the Catholic Church.

The Visible Church Disappears
This false history of the Church founded by Christ is balanced with one of Protestantism which is equally false. To sustain the construction, the testimony of Sacred Scripture itself, and that of all history, must be ignored and denied:
The Protestant Reformation broke the rigid pattern of the Roman hierarchy and reestablished in their minds, hearts, and practice the teachings and the spirit of the New Testament and the early church. Distinct features of the Reformation, such as the priesthood of all believers, . . . Justification by faith, and the all-sufficiency of the Scriptures for faith and life, had their rebirth in the rediscovery of the early Christian church. This return to the precepts of original Christianity....’

So the Reformation, says Protestant myth, was a restoration of the early Christian church-although a new attempt is made to restore it weekly, a fact whose significance escapes the Protestant-and the “believers” in all the Protestant sects combined manifest its presence in the world today. These believers being uncountable and known only to God, the Church is necessarily invisible.

The fable which says that all Protestant beliefs come from the Bible leads the Protestant to suppose that this one, the dogma that the Church is invisible, is written someplace in the Bible, too. But the Protestant definition of the Church is found not in the Bible, but only in the novelties of the 16th-century Reformers, as is confirmed by a Protestant reference book.’ The invisible Church originated in Luther’s imagination:
[Luther] was fond of picturing to himself the community of believers as an assembly of all those who had been awakened by “the Word,” and who, in spirit, were far above the compulsion of any earthly regulations. Thus, with him, the Church ... tended to evaporate into a mere union of souls, scarcely perceptible to earthly eyes?

Here is the same invisible, and imaginary, Church of modern Protestantism: “The true Church is of the Spirit; is of those who love Christ and obey His commandments ... The Kingdom of God ... is the concern of Protestants; along with the visible Church here upon this earth.”’ (My emphasis.)

And here, the one founded by Our Lord: “In the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow into it” (Is 2:2). Of this Church, the church of all nations, He said: “You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid” (Mt 5:14). What cannot be hid, can be seen. St Paul asks: “What have I to do to judge them that are with¬out? Do not you judge them that are within? For them that are without, God will judge” (1 Cor 5:12-13). The Primitive Church was one visible Church, whose members were within that Church, sinners, saints, and all. Those who were not in the Church were “without”

Some Significant Clues
St Paul speaks of “the Church” seventeen times.” St. Luke eight times, and St Peter and St John once each.” “The Church of God” appears eleven times, “in the Church” twelve times, “of the Church” eighteen times, and “to the Church,” five.” The “whole Church” is seen three times, of “the churches” twenty-seven times,” and “all the churches” seven times.” The writers of the New Testament point to this visible body, the Church, in one hundred and ten references.

“Scripture” appears in the New Testament thirty-two, and “scriptures’ twenty-two times.” In only one of the fifty-four is there even a possible reference to the New Testament:
As . . . our most dear brother Paul hath written to you:
as also in all his epistles ... in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction. You therefore, brethren, knowing these things before, take heed, lest being led aside by the
error of the unwise, you fall from your own steadfastness (2 Peter 3:15-17).

In the Gospels, “Church” occurs only twice, in St. Matthew 16:18 and 18:17. In every other case, says one Protestant scholar, it is spoken of as the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, and sometimes simply as the kingdom. He adds, “In the one Gospel of St. Matthew the Church is spoken of no less than thirty-six times as `the kingdom.’ “ So the visible Church, with good fish, bad fish, and cockle in the wheat (Mt 13), is the Kingdom of God.

Justification by Faith
According to Luther, all the “believers” in the sects are “saved.” And what is it they believe? The Great Reformer explained his new, rewritten Revelation:
God says in the Law: Do this, leave that undone, this do I require of thee. But the Evangel does not preach what we are to do or to leave undone, it requires nothing of us. On the contrary. It does not say: Do this or that, but only tells us to hold out our hands and take .... He has caused His own Son to take flesh for thee, has allowed Him to be done to death for thy sake, and to save thee from sin, death and the devil; believe this and accept it and thou shalt be saved.”

Here, Luther brazenly contrasts what God requires of us as laid down in Revelation, which he labels “the Law,” with his “Evangel,” which demands nothing but the “acceptance” of a guaranteed salvation, “faith, i.e., security of salvation.” One who can be persuaded that Christ’s death on the Cross made total satisfaction for all his sins, past, present, and future, and that merely believing this satisfies all the requirements for salvation, passes from the category of “lost” to that of “saved:’ Through a series of deceptions, he has been led to put his faith in Luther’s version of Revelation, and in the promises of Luther. The “faith” of which the Protestant speaks, then, the faith of those in the sects, is not a firm belief in the written Revelation they claim Protestantism upholds against Catholicism with its invented doctrines. Instead, it consists of faith in the Lutheran sense, i.e., personal28 trust in Christ and in the salvation He offers. Faith in the whole supernatural body of Christian truth comes here so little into account that it is reduced to the mere assurance of salvation ... The Christian is “free and has power over all” by a simple appropriation of the merits of Christ; he is purified by the mere acceptance of the merciful love revealed in Christ; “this faith suffices him,” and through it he enjoys all the riches of God. And this so-called faith is mainly a matter of feeling ....

Thus the “believers” in the sects need only believe that they are saved, i.e., they need only “feel like” they are saved-”I have accepted Jesus as my personal savior”-and saved without effort, and this “faith” is what saves them. According to Protestant dogma, Catholics may claim to be Christians, may claim to believe, but of them alone, of all “believers,” can it be said with certainty that they are not “saved.” Even worse, i.e, even more irritating to the Protestant, is the importance Catholics attach to the Church founded by Jesus Christ. As Pat Robertson says, Catholics are not without a religion, but they have “wrong ideas. “ They must be brought out of “the Church, or rather the thing that called itself the Church,” and brought to a Bible-believing church, with all thirteen of its Bible verses, if they are to escape damnation. That is why the invitations from your Protestant friend are so urgent and insistent; he must bring you to his sect in order to save you.

What is Faith?
One who has faith has accepted a gift: “The precious gift of faith shall be given to him” (Wis 3:14). This infused virtue of faith enables him to perform a supernatural act: he believes what God has revealed for the simple reason that God has revealed it. “I give you to understand ... that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man; for neither did I receive it of man, nor did I learn it; but by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:11-12).
Here, we again fail the hidden test. No, no; this answer, and this kind of faith, will not do!

Catholics reject Luther’s invention. It is actually a superstition (”a belief or practice resulting from ignorance”), this notion that one can be saved beyond all doubt, with no effort beyond the believing. And for this stand, we have good authority: “If the just man shall scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” (1 Pet 4:18). We add:
He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them; he it is that loveth me On 14:21); Love ... is the fulfilling of the law (Rom 13:10); He became, to all that obey him, the cause of eternal salvation (Heb 5:9); He who faith that he knoweth him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him (1 Jn 2:4).

It scarcely needs to be said that the good Protestant with whom you speak is without guile. He is only repeating the contradictions of Protestantism itself with which he has been programmed without letup since childhood. And we do not wish to impugn, even by implication, his sincerity. He is a victim of the hoax. There is a vast difference, however, between being sincere and being correct And the good Protestant we all know, who is himself proof that Protestants are very often better, and Catholics worse, than their religion, is simply wrong. The Church has the whole truth, along with everything we need for our salvation, and those outside her do not Whatever is true in Protestantism, the Reformers brought from the Church when they left Whatever is peculiar to Protestantism is false.

Protestants are in error, but the word having vanished from their vocabulary, they think error is found only in Catholicism. The one central idea to which they are wedded is that all Protestant beliefs, how¬ever they contradict each other, are true; all Catholic beliefs, with a very few exceptions, which excite little interest in their efforts to convert Catholics, e.g., Christ’s divinity, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, are false, and must be eradicated. This is because the world, and any information about the Church which comes from outside the Church comes from the world, hates Christianity and Christ, and hates His Church, the Catholic Church, most of all: “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you” On 15:18); “Wonder not, brethren, if the world hate you” (1 Jn 3:13).

Some Essential Thinking
The Protestant does not think about this, but we must. Revelation is just that It is the whole of that which God, the source, has revealed to man, the recipient: “For prophecy came not by the will of man at any time: but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet 1:21). The Bible is written Revelation; Sacred Tradition is unwritten Revelation.

Protestantism consists wholly of denials of, and substitutes for, revealed truth. So, as is noted above, the Protestant, in his proselytizing efforts, is necessarily restricted to declaring what he does not believe, without reference to Revelation. Next; uninstructed about Who does the revealing, and who accepts the Revelation, he erroneously identifies his own thoughts with divinely revealed truths. Then he mistakes his confident repudiations for proof that his refusal of Revelation, stated in the italicized negatives below, is equal in authority to the pronouncements of the prophets, Apostles, and God Himself:
Protestantism does not accept the seven sacraments as required by the Roman Catholic Church, because it finds only two, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, demanded by the teachings of Scripture.” Baptism is not, with most Protestants, necessarily a condition of salvation.” Protestantism repudiates “the miracle of the Mass” because it believes that no miracle occurs and that one is not at all necessary.” Protestantism ... denies that the priest has the right to forgive sins and believes that every sinner should make his confession directly to God.” (My emphasis.)

This is a misuse of the intellect, of freedom, and of Revelation. Satan bears witness that God did not give us the freedom to decide what is right and wrong, good and evil (Gen 3:5).38 This, He told us Himself Our freedom consists of freely choosing to do what is right or what is wrong, as guided by Revelation. With the intellect man can, and should, determine whether a doctrine has been revealed to us by God, i.e., whether a particular teaching is Revelation. An unhindered examination of Holy Scripture and history will aid him. A doctrine may be implicit in written Revelation. If its source is Sacred Tradition, or unwritten Revelation, the Apostles, who were instructed by Our Lord Himself, taught and believed it. Often references to it will be found in Sacred Scripture, and/or history will reflect it. One who has faith gives his free, internal assent to Revelation. When he accepts doctrine because it has been revealed, he is engaged in the exercise of freedom.

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