I don't usually like to dwell on error but lets go ahead and look at this for a second.
You call Mary the mother of God. By doing that you agree with Arianism, in a way.
Mary is the mother of Jesus. God doesn't have a mother, otherwise you are placing Jesus as less God than the Father. Just saying...
Hardly, the title "Theotokos" (usually translated Mother of God) indicates that from the moment of his conception Christ was both fully God and fully man, and that his two natures are inseparable.
Arianism held that Christ was created by the Father and thus was a lesser God. This was rejected at the First Council of Nicaea, and is preserved today in the creed recited every Sunday in every Catholic parish.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
This is minor compared to people who trust in people and themselves over the power of God.
Tis not, failing to discern the nature of God is probably the most damaging heresy ever to plague Christendom.
How can a person come to Jesus and be taught by the Holy Spirit if they trust their church and their pope over Him???
Because the Church preaches the Truth given her by Christ and the Holy Spirit.
I haven't seen it written anywhere come to the catholic church and it will give you rest. Abide in the catholic church for without her you can do nothing. Its just silly and obviously wrong.
Say that to all the faithful Catholics over the years (me included) who have found rest in the Faith the Church proclaims.
Its different because you do it. Your church is infallible. Yeah, I've heard that before.
It's different by the way we go about it. No pentecostal group started in a Presbyterian church and then stayed under it's authority structure. Charismatic Catholics have to obey the same Church discipline we have to, they have to worship using the same liturgical rubrics we do, and obey their bishops just like we do. The reason for all this structure and rigidity, which people like you seem to disdain, is Lex orandi, lex credendi "That which is prayed is believed".
Only in your mind, not in mine.[/SIZE
I'm aware of that.
If your church were infallible why did Martin Luther point out all of its error???
What Dogma or Doctrine did he point out that we have since changed? You know we had a whole thing called the Counter-Reformation where instead of giving in we dug in our heels, handed out anathemas like crazy, and proclaimed a lot of dogma at the Council of Trent that closed the debate on things that had been debatable before.
You do believe the church was in error at that time, don't you???
I believe there were abuses of Church practice, such as selling indulgences when they were never meant to be sold.
How could someone point out that error if they were not led by the Holy Spirit but instead believed that the church and her leaders were infallible??
Look into Martin Luther a little bit, and the reasons he did what he did become clearer. He was actually an extremely over-scrupulous man who was constantly afraid of demons and going to Hell.
Even the supposedly dramatic moment when Luther nailed his theses to the church door wasn't dramatic. The church door was like a bulletin board, and often times theologians would nail theses to the door they wanted to discuss with others.
I don't see how people buy into that whole infallible stuff. Only the Lord Jesus Christ is infallible.
Well the easy answer is because it's true. The other easy answer is that people like to have all the answers, or an authority that can supply an authoritative answer if the question becomes important enough, and the Catholic Church offers that. Just think of it like this, your church could be overrun by liberals or any other group and they could take it in a direction very much opposed to what you had envisioned.
While in the Church such things are not a problem, if we have a bishop promoting gay marriage or abortion he gets excommunicated, and ultimately any liberal Catholics are fighting a lost cause because the Church has always pronounced both to be intrinsically evil and morally disordered, and once something is decided in the Church it is set in stone.
Come to think of it most of that can be distilled down to one phrase from St. Augustine: Roma locuta, causa finita ("Rome has spoken, the matter is settled").
