You are defending the indefensible. Protestantism is collapsing all around you and every faith except Catholicism is sinking into a mud-hole of conflicting beliefs.
Today Protestantism and Episcopalianism as are many mainline Evangelical denominations in a state of evil rut by claiming scriptural warrant for the ordination of married gays and lesbian pastors. But the rot had its inception from the very beginnings of Protestantism where it soon collapsed into warring offshoots and factions.
Thus one can hopscotch across town through half a dozen corner street Bible-Christian churches: a First Baptist; a First AME; a First Presbyterian; a First Methodist; a First Unitarian; a first Emmanuel (Please no “Seconds”) until one settles in a congregation that is more in line with her/her interpretations of scripture. In short, every Tom, Dick, and Harry and their “milkmaid” (a term used by Luther himself) gets a freelance hand to know the Word of God and ironically from a Bible whose canonical texts were first infallibly authenticated under Petrine authority in the Synod of Rome AD 382.
Protestants should at least concede a point which Martin Luther, their religion’s founder, also conceded, namely, that the Catholic Church safeguarded and identified the Bible: He wrote: “We are obliged to yield many things to the Catholics – (for example), that they possess the Word of God, which we received from them; otherwise, we should have known nothing at all about it.”
That infallibility and the authority to teach ONE truth as Christ commanded in His Great Commission to “go Forth and TEACH all nations” This is to teach ONE truth and assured to Peter:
“And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.”
However, here in the US and elsewhere we have low-information shallow Bible Christians flooding the pews of the Joel Osteens and Moonies of this world, all lapping up the vapid rubbish spewed by these charlatans while they make a nice living for themselves and their families. We have seen this with the Rev. Schullers and Billy Grahams preaching their own vapid nonsense.
For example, Easter Service becomes a sunrise picnic on the beach holding hands and doing an early morning Kumabaya. At the times Protestant Churches borrow Catholic ritual like Stations of the Cross and imitate the display of the Creche, a practice started by St. Francis.
In the meantime while prominent Protestant theologians convert to Catholicism, shallow Bible Christians are left stranded in the pews while the more educated among them converted to Catholicism. A few examples of note will suffice.
1. Ulf Ekman, the founder of Scandinavia’s biggest Bible school, with a congregation of some 4000 individuals, converted to Catholicism because his theological inquiry confirmed for him the indispensability of the Catholic sacraments.
2. Francis J. Beckwith, a “born-again” evangelical, a tenured professor at Baptist-affiliated Baylor University in Waco, Tex, was the president of the Evangelical Theological Society, an association of 4,300 Protestant theologians resigned and joined the Catholic Church. One blogger likened it to Hulk Hogan’s defection from the World Wrestling Federation to the rival World Championship Wrestling league.
3. Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, was a pre-eminent Lutheran theologian in America. He knew his Bible-text and history like no other Protestant. When he converted to Catholicism he said, “I have long believed that the Roman Catholic Church is the fullest expression of the church of Christ through time.”
The Bible Christians here on FR are reduced playing neophyte “internet” theologian by telling us how Paul tried to “correct” Peter etc., or this or that, or attacking the Eucharist, or the Sacraments; or Marian devotions with incoherent and out-of-context reference to scripture.
This is the shallow nonsense of Bible Christians and why now scores of Protestant theologians have decamped at great personal sacrifice and consider Protestantism awash in sheer rubbish.
Thus the early Church historian J. N. D. Kelly, a Protestant, writes,
“[W]here in practice was [the] apostolic testimony or tradition to be found? . . . The most obvious answer was that the apostles had committed it orally to the Church, where it had been handed down from generation to generation. . . . Unlike the alleged secret tradition of the Gnostics, it was entirely public and open, having been entrusted by the apostles to their successors, and by these in turn to those who followed them, and was visible in the Church for all who cared to look for it” (Early Christian Doctrines, 37).
Don’t take my word. Here’s one original source. St. Irenaeus:
“It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about” (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).
In the year 110 A.D., not even fifteen years after the book of Revelation was written, while on his way to execution St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote: “Where the bishop is present, there let the congregation gather, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic church”. The Church believes that when the bishops speak as teachers, Christ speaks; for he said to them: “He who hears you, hears me; and he who rejects you, rejects me” (Lk 10, 16).
It your reference to John 21:25 that is so neophyte and risible. By your lights the unwritten word of God got lost in the desert dust!
St. Paul in his letters also warns the faithful to hold fast to the tradition they received: “We command you, brothers, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to avoid any brother who wanders from the straight path and does not follow the tradition you received from us” (2 Th 3, 6).
In short, there is Catholicism and every other form of heretical belief under the sun.
For a comprehensive treatise on the Bible and its various Protestant variations for those seeking an escape from the shallow prison of Bible Christians,
See Graham Green and a convert to Catholicism:
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/wbible.htm
You've got that one wrong. Read CCC 841. Your Church believes in the same "god" as Muslims. Pretty much knocks you out of the running.
Christians are not determined by their denomination or church; they're determined by God Almighty himself. By their faith and trust in Christ alone for salvation. Not Mary. Not baptism. Not works. Faith. By the grace of God.
The Roman Catholic Church needs to sort out where it stands in terms of the true Gospel. The Roman Catholic Church needs it.
Hoss
Yeah, that's why you have the pope kissing the Quran and praying with Muslims.
>>But the rot had its inception from the very beginnings of Protestantism<<
The roots of Protestantism is in Catholicism from which it maintained many of it's errors. I'm not sure why you keep railing on protestants. There is as much error in Protestant denominations as there are in Catholicism so what's your point?
>>Protestants should at least concede a point which Martin Luther<<
I know Luther is a convenient whipping boy for Catholics but it's futile. If you know anything about those who post on these threads it's not Luther they look to. It's scripture. It's what Jesus and the apostles taught not some Johnny come lately. Paul said if someone teaches something they didn't they should be considered accursed. So stop trotting out anyone after the apostles unless they teach what the apostles taught.
John 3:14-18 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Romans 10:9-13 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”