[Arkansas Toothpick]

As a Protestant, I just am bewildered by the enormous, and I mean HUGE, complexity of the Roman Catholic sect; it is nothing like the simple faith of believers in the New Testament. How can this be justified? I recognize that Catholics do not believe in the limitations of Scripture, but surely, somewhere, Catholics must give pause to the mounds of legalism and sacerdotalism that just dwarfs the faith I read about in Acts, Paul’s epistles, and the remainder of the New Testament.

[caww]

All these years and I still can't grasp why Catholicism remains ‘stuck’ in all it's complex rituals and traditions rather than understanding the scripture teachings and examplesJesus taught.

[Alberta's Child]

I would make the case that Christianity was designed by God to be far more complex than the “simple faith of believers in the New Testament.” And that’s mainly because one of the defining characteristics of human nature is the progression and accumulation of knowledge over time.

If Christians over time were content to maintain that simple faith, then we’d be deprived of the great works of St. Augustine, the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, and the remarkable apologetics of John Cardinal Newman.