Christian vs. Catholic

[Kulindahr]

Thanks Kulindahr!

No prob, dude!

I try to bash unreasonable posts from time to time; it keeps my bashing muscles in shape.







I keep hoping it'll catch me a hot guy, too, but no one lives near me.....

 

[Hearts]

^^^^ I agree with Flip 42483, I am also a Catholic and I wish that those Protestants, and others, who criticize us for not being Christian would do their research, and ask questions, and realize that Catholics certainly are Christians. We follow the Good News of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, plain and simple. The Catholic faith/church was the first Christian church in the world, until the founders of the Protestant churches seperated themselves and their followers from Catholicism. I am not upset, I just wish the name-calling would stop.

 

[Kulindahr]

Actually the Roman Catholic church wasn't invented for several centuries after the beginnins of the whole thing, when Rome asserted a uniqueness over the other patriarchates with a claim of not only priority but dominance.
FINALLY Rome is backing down to its actual position as first among equals, instead of claiming first over equals as it did so long.
Nice to see.

BTW, Luther never separated himself from Rome; it was a case of a politically-oriented Pope booting a good Christian teacher of the scriptures.

 

[bulge]

The Roman Catholic Church at the time of the reformation was not a perfect organization, to say the least... and a number of the practices that were objected to by the original Protestant groups are no longer approved of by the Church. I think the vocubulary differences that you get into are less as in 'not Christian' and more into 'fallen into error'. Please don't take offence if you're Catholic, I'm trying to use historical wording there. The point of the original reformers was not that it was not 'Christian' in that it didn't profess to follow the teachings of Christ, but rather that have added to those teachings to the point that the saving message of Christ had been obscured.

Remember, at the time of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc... the battles over theological differences were played out in the political and military sphere as well. Nothing like a few excommunications, death sentences, armies, and invasions to escalate a religious disagreement into cries of 'Papist!' and 'Heretic!'.

In more recent history, most of the Protestant denominations, and even some of the fundamentalist (very hard to define that term, btw...) ones, have begun to recognize more shared ground than differences with the Roman Catholic Church.

There are still some significant distinctions, and lingering distrust from a few centuries of political opposition. (Founding a Catholic church in the south of the US is still probably easier than founding a Baptist one in Rome.) But I'd say the cry of 'not even Christian' directed from Protestants to Catholics is largely a thing of the past.

You can found a Baptist church in Rome tomorrow. Besides there is one:

http://www.crossspot.net/rbc/aboutrbc.htm

There have always been synagogues:

http://www.initaly.com/regions/ethnic/jewish.htm

There are numerous other religions in Rome.

I was raised a catholic, but I never believed since all religions are immoral, as they misuse the mortality awareness of people.It is per definition the thing you have to keep your hands of.

BTW, catholics think protestants have "fallen into error". Isn't that strange?

 

[Kulindahr]

I wouldn't go that far to say that Martin Luther was such a learned man on theology. For if he was he wouldn't have denied the the paramount teachings taught by the catholic church (orthodoxes included). As for the translation of the bible,who was he to remove books of the bible (deuterocanonical for catholics/orthodoxes and apocrypha for protestants/evangelicals), those books are referenced many times in the New Testament . The books of the Old Testament used by Catholics/Orthodoxes are based on the Septuigant. Looking into church history, one would notice that these were the books initially agreed upon by the councils. Luther's notion of Sola Scriptura, is unbiblical:

1. Luther denied no "paramount terachings taught by the catholic church"; he sought to affirm what had been believed and taught from the beginning, against aberrations.
2. Luther removed no books from the Bible. If you look at church history, you'll note that there were different ratings given to different books. The so-called "Protestant Bible" got cut off after the second "level", because the printers decided it would be too bulky if they threw in the next batch.
3. "Sola Scriptura" comes from Christ, who over and over said, "It is written", and that was the end of the argument.

Martin Luther WAS a catholic, who strove all his life to get the Roman church back on track.