Catholics

Blain · Apr 30, 2015

So I have heard it said that Catholics beliefs are heresy and that they are not saved, now i do agree their beliefs are wrong but I have never felt they were not saved. I always felt like they were family just a different branch with different ideas because I have always believed God looks at the heart of a person. It may be true that many of them aren't saved it may be true that their beliefs and doctrines are heresy I don't know I am not a bible scholar but I do know this- There are some catholics I have met that are different than the average Catholic.

For instance there is one I am talking too she and I have a very similar relationship with God one with intimacy and a deep love and hunger one where we desire to see with his eyes and his alone to love all others as he does and to take on his very spirit and divine nature. I told her nothing about my relationship with him what he and I talk about what I desire in him more than anything but she told me hers and I was shocked as many of the things she spoke of was in my heart and my relationship with him as well. The love she expressed for him the deep hunger and passion for him she showed confirmed to me she was indeed saved. I admit her beliefs about mary bug me a little but she was proof that all this catholic bashing and saying they weren't saved was wrong.

I am sure this will not be pretty but I am posting this because I think we need to really think about who we call unsaved

DesiredHaven · Apr 30, 2015

Blain said:

So I have heard it said that Catholics beliefs are heresy and that they are not saved, now i do agree their beliefs are wrong but I have never felt they were not saved. I always felt like they were family just a different branch with different ideas because I have always believed God looks at the heart of a person. It may be true that many of them aren't saved it may be true that their beliefs and doctrines are heresy I don't know I am not a bible scholar but I do know this- There are some catholics I have met that are different than the average Catholic.

For instance there is one I am talking too she and I have a very similar relationship with God one with intimacy and a deep love and hunger one where we desire to see with his eyes and his alone to love all others as he does and to take on his very spirit and divine nature. I told her nothing about my relationship with him what he and I talk about what I desire in him more than anything but she told me hers and I was shocked as many of the things she spoke of was in my heart and my relationship with him as well. The love she expressed for him the deep hunger and passion for him she showed confirmed to me she was indeed saved. I admit her beliefs about mary bug me a little but she was proof that all this catholic bashing and saying they weren't saved was wrong.

I am sure this will not be pretty but I am posting this because I think we need to really think about who we call unsaved

There is what they call "cafeteria catholics" too, you can google that if you dont know what they are, they would be different.

mwc68 · Apr 30, 2015

Thank you for this thread! Catholics are very misunderstood here and at times abused

Blain · Apr 30, 2015

mwc68 said:

Yes I have seen the abuse which is very un Christ like

breno785au · Apr 30, 2015

Awaits Jeff_56's response

ThomistColin · Apr 30, 2015

breno785au said:

Speak of the devil and he shall appear, as the old phrase goes.

atwhatcost · May 1, 2015

Blain said:

Martin Luther was a Catholic (until he was excommunicated.) I was Catholic for the first four years after I was saved, and then I just couldn't do it anymore. (And, the straw that broke the camels back was Mary, the goddess.) Oddly enough, my brother was a Catholic, gave up on God entirely when Mom died, married a Lutheran, so became a Lutheran, and when he divorced and wanted to remarry a Catholic girl, he rejoined the Catholic Church with its blessing. Odd since, he's an atheist.

It is possible to be both Catholic and saved. It is likely you won't stay Catholic for long after being saved. (And, remember, four years for me, but I don't consider that long.) I would imagine others who are saved and remain in the church are trying what Luther tried for -- changing the church from the inside -- but considering what happened to him, and now it's bigger, there isn't any hope in changing it. Another oddity. After killing Luther, and a mere 500 years later, then the RCC reinstated him and consider he was always a Catholic.)

It is quicksand, and like quicksand, most only see the surface but the dicey stuff is hidden. Sure, they believe in God, but who is that God? If they only believe what they're taught, it's not the God of the Bible. It's the god that is the Catholic Church. That seems to come out quickly from those who aren't Christian, but are Catholics. They don't mind that Mary is a goddess. They don't mind that eating fish on Fridays wasn't around for the first 1200 years of church history, but then became a sin (and truthfully it was just some nice pope trying to help fisherman from starving, because no one was eating their fish), and then it wasn't, but it's all true. They don't mind that homosexuals are sinning, but they can't help themselves (that's their doctrine -- they really do have doctrine, but not many read what it is. Mary came close to goddess status in their doctrine, but was voted against by a narrow margin), but now they should include them because they could bring something to the church. They don't even know that goes against scripture way too often. There's just so much they'd rather believe for some lame excuse, than to read Gods word to find out what he says. They do get very uptight if others disrespect their church. Okay to disrespect God, just not the RCC.

That's just for starters. It's a mess.

crossnote · May 1, 2015

Blain, if God looked at the heart, none of us would be saved...

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
(Jer 17:9)

Rather, God looks at the perfect righteousness of His Son and sees those who trust Christ and Him alone as one of His.

DesiredHaven · May 1, 2015

Ezek 36:26 A new heart also will I give you,
and a new spirit will I put within you:
and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh,
and I will give you an heart of flesh.

Is the new heart just as deceitful as the old heart?

How do we figure this?

And would it be considered cool then to bid another God speed that comes with another doctrine?

Only because if you do then you are a partaker of their evil deeds just in doing that.

dcontroversal · May 1, 2015

Well lets see.....

1. Do you believe keeping the 7 sacraments will earn salvation?
2. Do you believe if you are not in the Catholic Church you are lost?
3. Do you believe there are more than one mediator between God and men?
4. Do you believe Mary can intercede for you?

My bible teaches me that none of the above save, help save, keep one saved and or facilitate salvation......!

There is but ONE (1) gospel of salvation that is biblical and to believe into the above 4 is to believe into a gospel of a differnt kind that has no power to save.........period!

mikeuk · May 1, 2015

atwhatcost said:

But therein lies the problem, it takes time in big institutions.

Luthers big gripe was " paid indulgencies" , and at the council of Trent a few years after his death, the pope did indeed speak out against the practice in no uncertain terms. Patience is a virtue and Luther's" I demand it now" was never going to achieve anything. He excommunicated himself in essence by speaking out against the institution , refusing it!

What few realize about Luther is in later life he profoundly regretted the mess he created where all felt empowered to create their own doctrine, " every milkmaid now has their own" " scandalous" he lamented, and said had he foreseen what would happen he would never have spoken out about it, saying " the only way back to unity was via the councils of a Rome" , so he showed contrition.

He also kept his belief in real presence, his veneration of Mary and so on. If present day Protestants studied his later writings, I doubt they would use him as such a poster boy, because abhorred the idea of modern Protestants, that " me, Jesus and the bible " are enough for sound theology.

mailmandan · May 1, 2015

Catholics who are saved, are saved IN SPITE of what the Roman Catholic church teaches about the plan of salvation and NOT because of what they teach. We are saved by grace through faith and not by works/rituals/sacraments etc.. Either we are trusting 100% in Jesus Christ as the ALL-sufficient means of our salvation (faith in Christ) or else we are 100% lost, regardless of what church that we attend/are a member of. I grew up in the Roman Catholic church, but once I received Christ through faith and my eyes were opened to the truth, I never went back to the Roman Catholic church.

mikeuk · May 1, 2015

But therein lies the problem.
The myths repeated so often, they gain the status fact.
If anybody cared to check BEFORE criticise, they would know RCC teaches we are saved by grace.

The catechism makes it clear in so many places.

1817 Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful."84 "The Holy Spirit . . . he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life."85

LOTS OF REFERENCES!

1987 The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ" and through Baptism:34

But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.35

1996 Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.46

1997 Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an "adopted son" he can henceforth call God "Father," in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.

1998 This vocation to eternal life is supernatural. It depends entirely on God's gratuitous initiative, for he alone can reveal and give himself. It surpasses the power of human intellect and will, as that of every other creature.47

1999 The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification:48

Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.49

2000 Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God's call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God's interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification.

And so on and so forth..

But that is not to deny the need for baptism.

Too many protestants think either or, not both and.

mailmandan said:

Jeff_56 · May 1, 2015

dcontroversal said:

you are right, and you already know also this is an understatement.

like mike, catholics who are not saved yet try to defend the catholic institution, holding out hope that
it can be saved. it only takes a few years, or less, for them to discover it is not redeemable, IF they get saved.

like the former catholics here and all over the world have found, once they are saved by JESUS, all the scales fell away, some quickly, some over years, and they all, every one, admit the catholic institution is lost and cannot itself be saved -- only some, whether few or many, catholics can and will be saved. the rest don't want to be. this is common also in other religions - not just catholicism.

passing_through · May 1, 2015

I believe that we should be civil and polite, I am polite to those who entered my country illegally, but I don't want them here.

I said that to say that everyone is due civility and respect until they prove themselves unworthy of it.

As for Catholicism, it is a ' ism ', it is not Christianity, it was contrived in the mind of a man named Origin, adapted by Constantine to please the pagans, and has been proven by history to be as bloody a religion as Islam. The Pope himself ordered assassination attempt's on King James who commissioned the authorised King James Translation.

Nevertheless, I will be polite to you Catholic's, or try to.

mikeuk · May 1, 2015

Jeff_56 said:

Don' t worry on my account!
I went through the decidedly unbiblical rituals like " altar calls " and " asking Jesus into your life" of a variety of congregations, some of whom believed in " fast food " salvation get rich quick scheme called OSAS,

So according to you I already am.

Then I realised that none of those things are biblical, and it is even less historical, so not early church.That the new testament did not drop out of the sky, it was decided by catholic councils, that the early church was handed by tradition, I found clauses that I. Had not seen that said" the pillar of truth was the church" , which rules out all the modern denominations.

I discovered the early fathers believed in sacraments, liturgy , real presence,
that bishops were needed for valid sacraments and so on, and they were saying this only one generation after the apostles.

At which point you realise the evangelists have got it wrong. And any way, if individual interpretation worked, why do Protestants post reformation diverge on every material point of doctrine? So most were false teaching..... And so on,

I concluded as countless Protestant ministers and theologians have done, that to study history is to cease to be Protestant.
but nobody mentions the traffic in that direction!

Utah · May 1, 2015

I once asked a Catholic why Protestant Christians are not allowed to receive Communion in Catholic Mass. His answer was simple: "That's easy, because you're not good enough."

He's in for a big surprise when he sees Christians in Heaven.

mikeuk · May 1, 2015

Utah said:

I do not think most would say that. I would not, I am profoundly aware of me not being good enough!

JesusIsAll · May 1, 2015

Utah said:

The question is, from what vantage? Hanging with the rich man? But wow! A thread titled Catholics. Now it's dropping down into the mainstream list. Anyway, being Friday, you Papists got any mackerel snapping tips?

AngelFrog · May 1, 2015

I think it the duty of every Christian to evangelize to a Catholic while they still have time to find their way to Christ.

[video=youtube;5oLtB0WI57o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oLtB0WI57o[/video]

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