So every Tom, Dick and Harry can crack open the pages of the Bible and with no singular teaching authority, “use them for edification and for instruction.”
Of course that’s what Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, Jimmy Swaggart; Billy Graham, Jim, Jones David Koresh, Benny Hinn, and every kind of “First” (First AME; First Presbyterian; First Methodist; First Unitarian; First Baptist) with all their contradictory teachings instruct, to say nothing of the mainline Protestant and Evangelical denominations that now use scriptural warrant for ordaining married gay and lesbian pastors, are all using scripture “foe edification and for instruction.”
Do you now see the sheer rubbish you write? It upends the entire teaching of Christ to Peter and his successors to found One Church to teach ONE truth for all times.
This is precisely why leading Protestant pastors have branded it a “shallow” exercise and anyone with an intellectual curiosity converts to Catholicism. Protestantism today in any of its variations is an embarrassment.
Ulf Ekman one of the world’s largest Lutheran congregations of some 4000 members in Sweden explains more of the reasoning behind his conversion to Catholicism:
“I discovered how little I really knew about [Catholics], their spirituality and their beliefs. Unconsciously I carried many prejudices and bad attitudes and have been quick to judge them without really knowing what they actually believed. It has been good to discover and to repent from nonchalant and shallow opinions, based not on their own sources but on their opponents, and to discover a very rich heritage, a strong theological foundation and a deep love for Jesus Christ among them.”
See also Dr. David Anders Protestant historian who tried to prove Catholicism wrong and ended up converting!
“I thought there could be no better preparation for assaulting the Catholic Church and winning converts than to thoroughly understand the minds of the great leaders of our faith — Martin Luther and John Calvin”
Stellar List of Converts to Catholicism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_converts_to_Catholicism
The large mustard tree keep growing while every kind of wild mushroom of Protestantism withers and dies. Their leaders decamp, and the poor souls are left stranded in the pews reciting the shallow rot as Ulf Ekman says
“…with no singular teaching authority…”
You like to misquote. What I wrote that you find objectionable was ‘Each person, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets to crack open the pages of the Bible authoritatively put together by the Holy Spirit and use them for edification and for instruction, as the Holy Spirit leads.’
Read the last five words here…’as the Holy Spirit leads’. Apparently you think the Catholic Church hierarchy has more teaching authority that the Holy Spirit.
But of course that is where you and so many like you have gone astray. Jesus did not come to form a new religion, it is all about relationship. God seeks relationship in a personal way with man, even with you and me. If you reject that personal relationship you reject God and you nullify the redemptive work of Jesus on the Cross. When Jesus refers to the church He is referring to the collective body of His followers, His body (bride). The ecclesia, the ‘called out’ ones. And yes, this is the universal church, lower case ‘c’.
God seeks relationship with man. God sought relationship with Adam…He walked with Adam in the Garden in the cool of the day. He found relationship with Enoch…Enoch walked with God. And so with Noah…Noah walked with God. Personal relationships – Enoch and Noah understood relationship and walked in relationship with God. When church hierarchy gets in the way, personal relationship with God does not happen. Church hierarchies are not my mediator.
Religions, all religions, all religious systems, are created by and are systems of men. The systems of men will pass away. This includes economic, political, religious systems – all will end. The world’s systems would have none of Him and that is their downfall. The systems of the world are not His way and they are crumbling. When Jesus sets foot on this earth again, He will establish a new-world order that He controls. And when He comes He will not be going to Wall Street nor to Washington DC nor to Rome seeking permission for what He is about to do. All systems of men will be gone. Kaput!
The Catholic church is not even consistent within itself as far as doctrine and teaching.
It’s change plenty over the last 2,000 years to no Catholic is in any legitimate position to criticize other churches for not being consistent with each other part of which reason is that they never claimed to be consistent with each other as Catholicism claims to be.
It appears that you have let the root of bitterness have quite a secure hold on your life.