Posted on 06/17/2021 3:39:12 PM PDT by MurphsLaw
Absurd, seeing as distinctive Catholic teachings are not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels).
Catholicism was/is a incremental deformation of the NT church.
Your mentioning that today Catholics politically are worthless is interesting. What is intriguing to me as a Catholic is the extreme differences within the Catholics serving in Washington DC.
We have those who claim to be Catholic like Biden, Pelosi, DeLauro, the idiot senator from Illinois whose name I cannot recall due to my advancing years, etc. [see I have an excuse]. And then there are some great new Catholic leaders joining in the fray such as Ron DeSantis & Scalise. Our old guard is aging unfortunately: Gingrich, Bennett, Emmer & Co.
This article has a lot of truth in it. People are indeed sorting themselves out into either true Conservatives or radical leftists. This is going on while the main-line Protestant churches are slowly disintegrating. There are plenty of lukewarm Catholics too, who are the ones who are easily swayed to vote liberal if they sense it is the popular way to think. Oh, woe is me. As I grow older, I no longer worry personally about some of these things except that I fear for the future for our children.
Yeah, conservatives REALLY want to be more like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Pope Che!
I don’t see conservatives jumping into bed with a church hierarchy that has large numbers of gay sex trysts around the world, a leader that is pure Communist, lawsuits from abuse that have bankrupted multiple diocese, and a structural inability to correct any of this, due to the Catholic church having perverted the normal safeguards described in the New Testament, to which the Catholic church states it follows.
Please tell us what is attractive about all of this.
There were multiple other Christian groups, including the Orthodox churches up to and through 500 AD.
Do you desire to tell the truth, now?
An anti-Christian persecution is come, which will make America an atheist country.
I am back again regarding the changes in the numbers of members in various denominations and why the numbers of Catholics as a % of population is dropping.
In the 19th century Catholics began immigrating in drove to the USA. Prior to that only Maryland accepted Catholic immigrants. One result was persecution of Catholics in the larger cities along the northeastern Atlantic coast. These first Catholic immigrants were mainly poor Irish who had no money to travel further inland and so they settled in Boston, New York, etc. The politicians did not like this and relegated them to service jobs such as maids, butlers, and eventually evolved into policemen and firemen, etc. The immigrants associated this unwelcome attitude with Republicans, especially in the Boston area, so they joined the Democrat party. o these people, being Catholic and Democrat was simultaneous - they went together. Further, the large populations of Irish in the eastern part of the country when the churches were being built, dioceses grew and were established, etc, resulted in a near dominance of Irishmen in the clergy and leadership of the RC church. Can you remember anyone other than an Irishman as Cardinal/Bishop in New York?
Today we are still living with the ‘joined at the hip’ remnant of the past, and this is why so many Catholics still cling to the notion that they must vote for Democrats. It’s tradition. When I was a kid in the ‘50’s, Catholic voters were about 80% Democrats. Now it is evolving and every election cycle sees the GOP getting more votes now than the Democrats, but just barely over 50%.
You mean there was not special quotas to fulfill so they hard to work harder to overcome discrimination?
"The immigrants associated this unwelcome attitude with Republicans, especially in the Boston area, so they joined the Democrat party. o these people, being Catholic and Democrat was simultaneous - they went together. "
Not only, Rome opposed the Revolution, Bible societies, supported unions, and required Catholic rulers to exterminate those she judged were heretics.
" When I was a kid in the ‘50’s, Catholic voters were about 80% Democrats. Now it is evolving and every election cycle sees the GOP getting more votes now than the Democrats, but just barely over 50%."
But with the GOP today doing what Democrats did in the recent past.
So are you claiming Catholics are God? I have a news flash, things are unfolding just as foretold long before Christ took His flesh journey.. Catholics love to take credit for Godly plans.
“Is the Pope Catholic?”
The question is:
Is the Pope Christian?”
No. He’s a Communist.
The closeted homosexuals in the collars and cassocks will never take this country, they can’t even hold onto their own faithful!
I do not: it is his conclusion here that it in error. If he were to see what your church has become then he would not have the same opinion.
"When the Christian purge finally comes to America- as is going on in Europe...the smaller protestant denominations will be easy to evaporate... its purely strength in numbers at that point- pride will not help you ."
To the contrary, as seen in communist countries, it is far harder to reduce believers that share a basic common faith but have no central leadership than those that do.
"as the man called it here... the protestant faithful share little or no solidarity to mount a strong resistance..."
Absurd. As said and substantiated, despite having no central head those who most strongly esteem Scripture as the accurate and wholly inspired word of God have long testified to being far more unified in polled core beliefs and values than overall those whom Rome counts as members in life and in death. Thus evangelicals have been religious enemy #1 for liberals and Trad.Catholics alike in the West.
Liberals both find a home in Rome and can depends upon about half of them voting for them, and you can only wish that Catholics had those stats, approx. 80% of Catholics would vote for the conservative candidate, and that Catholic states were not the most liberal.
"but just the same...as we were warned... ... a divided house will not stand."
Indeed, and while the young are becoming more liberal, it remains that those who most strongly esteem Scripture as the accurate and wholly inspired word of God remain the most conservative large religious body, since it changes not, unlike central leadership. And in Catholicism it is those who reject your current pope or otherwise dissent from him that are most conservative. As seen on FR, you all cannot even be unified on who the living pope is. Indeed, and
The Catholicism of HIS day, or of ours?
Catholicism seems to make the same claim.
Catholicism seems to make the same claim.
Joe Biden’s upcoming fate.
...something.
From Gospel Groupies to those truly seeking GOD, a gut feeling that there is MORE out there seems to be a condition of the human soul.
http://www.dotrose.com/etext/90_Miscellaneous/Tocqueville-Alexis/Democracy-in-America-p1.php
About fifty years ago Ireland began to pour a Catholic population into the United States; on the other hand, the Catholics of America made proselytes, and at the present moment more than a million of Christians professing the truths of the Church of Rome are to be met with in the Union. *d The Catholics are faithful to the observances of their religion; they are fervent and zealous in the support and belief of their doctrines. Nevertheless they constitute the most republican and the most democratic class of citizens which exists in the United States; and although this fact may surprise the observer at first, the causes by which it is occasioned may easily be discovered upon reflection.
d
[ [It is difficult to ascertain with accuracy the amount of the Roman Catholic population of the United States, but in 1868 an able writer in the "Edinburgh Review" (vol. cxxvii. p. 521) affirmed that the whole Catholic population of the United States was then about 4,000,000, divided into 43 dioceses, with 3,795 churches, under the care of 45 bishops and 2,317 clergymen. But this rapid increase is mainly supported by immigration from the Catholic countries of Europe.]]
I think that the Catholic religion has erroneously been looked upon as the natural enemy of democracy. Amongst the various sects of Christians, Catholicism seems to me, on the contrary, to be one of those which are most favorable to the equality of conditions. In the Catholic Church, the religious community is composed of only two elements, the priest and the people. The priest alone rises above the rank of his flock, and all below him are equal.
On doctrinal points the Catholic faith places all human capacities upon the same level; it subjects the wise and ignorant, the man of genius and the vulgar crowd, to the details of the same creed; it imposes the same observances upon the rich and needy, it inflicts the same austerities upon the strong and the weak, it listens to no compromise with mortal man, but, reducing all the human race to the same standard, it confounds all the distinctions of society at the foot of the same altar, even as they are confounded in the sight of God. If Catholicism predisposes the faithful to obedience, it certainly does not prepare them for inequality; but the contrary may be said of Protestantism, which generally tends to make men independent, more than to render them equal.
Catholicism is like an absolute monarchy; if the sovereign be removed, all the other classes of society are more equal than they are in republics. It has not unfrequently occurred that the Catholic priest has left the service of the altar to mix with the governing powers of society, and to take his place amongst the civil gradations of men. This religious influence has sometimes been used to secure the interests of that political state of things to which he belonged. At other times Catholics have taken the side of aristocracy from a spirit of religion.
But no sooner is the priesthood entirely separated from the government, as is the case in the United States, than is found that no class of men are more naturally disposed than the Catholics to transfuse the doctrine of the equality of conditions into the political world. If, then, the Catholic citizens of the United States are not forcibly led by the nature of their tenets to adopt democratic and republican principles, at least they are not necessarily opposed to them; and their social position, as well as their limited number, obliges them to adopt these opinions. Most of the Catholics are poor, and they have no chance of taking a part in the government unless it be open to all the citizens. They constitute a minority, and all rights must be respected in order to insure to them the free exercise of their own privileges. These two causes induce them, unconsciously, to adopt political doctrines, which they would perhaps support with less zeal if they were rich and preponderant.
The Catholic clergy of the United States has never attempted to oppose this political tendency, but it seeks rather to justify its results. The priests in America have divided the intellectual world into two parts: in the one they place the doctrines of revealed religion, which command their assent; in the other they leave those truths which they believe to have been freely left open to the researches of political inquiry. Thus the Catholics of the United States are at the same time the most faithful believers and the most zealous citizens.
It may be asserted that in the United States no religious doctrine displays the slightest hostility to democratic and republican institutions. The clergy of all the different sects hold the same language, their opinions are consonant to the laws, and the human intellect flows onwards in one sole current.
I happened to be staying in one of the largest towns in the Union, when I was invited to attend a public meeting which had been called for the purpose of assisting the Poles, and of sending them supplies of arms and money. I found two or three thousand persons collected in a vast hall which had been prepared to receive them. In a short time a priest in his ecclesiastical robes advanced to the front of the hustings: the spectators rose, and stood uncovered, whilst he spoke in the following terms:—
"Almighty God! the God of Armies! Thou who didst strengthen the hearts and guide the arms of our fathers when they were fighting for the sacred rights of national independence; Thou who didst make them triumph over a hateful oppression, and hast granted to our people the benefits of liberty and peace; Turn, O Lord, a favorable eye upon the other hemisphere; pitifully look down upon that heroic nation which is even now struggling as we did in the former time, and for the same rights which we defended with our blood. Thou, who didst create Man in the likeness of the same image, let not tyranny mar Thy work, and establish inequality upon the earth. Almighty God! do Thou watch over the destiny of the Poles, and render them worthy to be free. May Thy wisdom direct their councils, and may Thy strength sustain their arms! Shed forth Thy terror over their enemies, scatter the powers which take counsel against them; and vouchsafe that the injustice which the world has witnessed for fifty years, be not consummated in our time. O Lord, who holdest alike the hearts of nations and of men in Thy powerful hand; raise up allies to the sacred cause of right; arouse the French nation from the apathy in which its rulers retain it, that it go forth again to fight for the liberties of the world.
"Lord, turn not Thou Thy face from us, and grant that we may always be the most religious as well as the freest people of the earth. Almighty God, hear our supplications this day. Save the Poles, we beseech Thee, in the name of Thy well-beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who died upon the cross for the salvation of men. Amen."
The whole meeting responded "Amen!" with devotion.
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Note: I am not Catholic. (I am not Anti-Catholic) I have family members who are Conservative Catholics. The Catholic Church is divided internally by political mindset. I've seen that from both sides of the mindset. It goes back to the time in Europe when the State (Monarchy) and the Catholic Church were in essence married. The Colonies in North America were not all alike, many were not Catholic, that was caused by persecution in Europe. That is why many left Europe to escape the religious persecution and to attain higher degree of freedom. 250 years later, here we are.
The degree of participation of Catholics in the American Revolution was not large. Many, probably most, were Pro England and the Monarchy. It is interesting to note that today, the Supreme Court has only Catholic and Jewish Justices. The other Christian elements are not represented at all. Is that important? I'm not sure, it does affect how our constitution is interpreted.
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