“Well, the ‘evangelical leaders’ could start there by simply acknowledging Catholics ARE Christians, instead of an ‘unbiblical cult’. Someone send Ray Comfort, Ralph Drollinger, and the rest of ‘em a memo that Christianity didn’t start in the 1600s.”
Agree and disagree. Christianity, as a religion, is made up of Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and maybe some other branches of Christendom. There are true, born-again believers—followers of Christ—who are in the Catholic Church and other churches. I’m friends with Catholic believers who have a real relationship with Christ. In fact, I’m friends with some Catholics who are not born again as well. And they are nice people but have not yet entered into a personal relationship with Christ. Knowing that many Catholics are born-again believers does not mean that the teachings and practices or the Catholic religion are not subject to criticism.
People like Ray Comfort understand that religion is not a relationship with Christ. He will preach the Gospel to anyone—atheist, Catholic, Baptist, other Protestant evangelicals, Muslim, etc.
While I have some doctrinal issues with Catholicism, I appreciate many contributions Catholics make and even the hierarchal system of the Catholic Church has, over the years, proclaimed a lot of Biblical truth that Protestants ignored or shied away from.
But regarding the issue at hand, the modern problem of ritual sex abuse of children is absolutely a problem that Protestants need to face along with Catholics. There may be issues historically where Catholic doctrine was at the heart of a problem or abuse, but this is not really the case today, I feel, with these particular charges.
The real problem stems primarily from NAZI ratlines and Project Paperclip bringing NAZI occultists into our nation and other free countries around the world. Many of these infiltrated churches, including the Catholic Church. There are other separate sex abuse problems in Catholic and Protestant churches, such as the Amish and Mennonite communities which have tolerated multi-generational sex abuse of their girls.
But the infiltration of Satanists is a challenge for all churches and even other religions which at least generally have a basis in striving to do what is morally right. That is, most religions are at least well-intentioned. And all of them, even those founded on the solid bedrock of truth, are vulnerable to Satanic infiltration. This issue requires vigilance and perseverance to identify, address, and resolve within all churches.
This applies to Protestants and Catholics, and even Christian ministries and charities.
I’m not an advocate of ecumenicism, but I do think a lot of the bickering between Christian groups does more harm than good.
Of course the individual teachings and practices of a particular denomination can be the subject to criticism by other Christians.
For example, I think Calvinism is completely bonkers and that John Calvin strayed very, very far from traditional Christian dogma. I vehemently disagree with all five "TULIP" teachings of Calvinism.
But strongly disagreeing with the theology overall does not mean I would EVER say anyone who is a member of a Calvinist denomination "is not a Christian". It would extremely insulting and divisive to make public comments like "There are Christians and there are Calvinists. These are NOT the same thing. You CANNOT be a Christian and accept Calvinism. The Calvinists are a made man cult that worships John Calvin as their savior, and no Calvinist knows Jesus Christ as lord and savior. They must accept the true Christ of the bible and leave the false religion of Calvinism to be saved."
Now, replace the word Calvinism with Catholicism, and a ton of "evangelical leaders" DO spew that kind of nonsense. You can't "show compassion for fellow brothers and sisters in Christ" if you're not even willing to acknowledge they ARE Christians to begin with. To guys like Ray Comfort and his ilk, millions of people who sincerely believe in the Holy Trinity are no different than Buddhists.
As I noted, I think Calvinism is absolutely wrong. But I would NEVER claim a devout Presbyterian who fervently believes Jesus is fully God and fully man and that God the Father, God the Son, and The Holy Spirit are all different forms of the same loving God is "not a Christian" merely because he's a member of a calvinist church.
That's a very naive statement, since the theologies of the evangelical and liturgical churches have absolutely nothing in common (except a vocabulary that means something completely different to each group). Their doctrines are completely contradictory to each other. They can't all be true. To pretend that Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Nestorians, high church Anglicans, and low church Fundamentalist Protestants all share the same religion is simply nonsense on the face of it.
To say otherwise is to simply be engaging in ecumania.