So, the majority of Catholics that you’ve personally interviewed were ignorant.
There are JUST as many ignorant Protestants in MY experience.
I couldn’t agree more.....ignorance is very widespread in all the churches, especially in this day and age when ignorance is inexcusable. The Bible is available in so many languages and information is now instantly there at the click of a button. So these days when I speak to people at their doors they are wondering why the church is so redundant....why it has no answers to life’s most distressing problems I can tell them the truthful answers form the Bible itself. Starting in Genesis which tells us the why about all our troubles, and ending in Revelation that tells us how it all gets fixed in the end....and it doesn’t require a single Catholic doctrine to explain it. Those just muddy the waters.
When religion becomes mindless ritual instead of life giving knowledge, the failure is clearly with the church.
Christianity was not ritualistic like Judaism was. It had no earthly priests or grand ostentatious buildings, housing statues that are given reverence and pretending that it isn’t idolatry. There was no holy water or infant baptism, no heaven or hell as opposite destinations, no adoration of Mary or prayers to the saints.
I don’t think you have any idea how many things were introduced by the church that have no Scriptural basis at all....excused in the “abomination of sola scriptura”.
The early Christians departed from the trappings of Judaism and conducted their worship in modest surroundings. Their priesthood was to be served in heaven, not on earth. (Rev 20:6) And there was no longer a need for a temple because sacrifices were no longer required after Christ offered his life once and for all time. The “types and shadows” of the old Jewish system, were replaced by the heavenly realities.
The RCC lost that memo somewhere, and turned Christianity into a sham form of Judaism, copying its priesthood, its distinctive garb, rituals and substitute temples.
In the end – this is THEIR fault and NOT the fault of their priest/pastor.
Too many people don’t prioritize their faith over their personal life or career.
If the priest/pastor was doing his job, he would not be alone in his tending of the flock.....a body of older men were to take the lead in the first century congregations. Nothing was left to one individual. They were spiritually qualified men who had already earned the trust of their fellow Christians. This body of elders were to know their flock and personally see to it that all in the congregation were spiritually well fed, helped and assisted, as well as living a clean, moral life.
Those who prioritise their lifestyle or career over their Christianity have already lost the support of the one they purport to worship. He does not take second place to anything or anyone.
Do those priests and pastors know who are taking the bread and wine at their church services? Have they warned them that taking it under false pretences will merit God’s adverse judgment?
Do they know that repeating phrases like the “Our Father” or the “Hail Mary” have no Scriptural precedent?
Even Jesus, before he gave the Lord’s Prayer, said not to repeat the same things over and over again because God is not an unintelligent moron who accepts mindless repetition as worship?
Absolute historical ignorance and anti-Catholic nonsense . . .
The Scriptures have been OPENLY taught since the very beginning. The main difference between then and now – as I have already educated you – is that hand-copied Bibles were almost impossible to come by. Not to mention the fact that MOST people were functionally illiterate anyway. Because of this - evangelization for the first 1500 years of the Church was almost exclusively done ORALLY.
And those oral traditions you mentioned, made it into Scripture by quotation in the NT. Nothing that was written after the last apostle John penned his final contribution, can be accepted as Scripture...or as a substitute for it. God’s word is his alone. Nothing needs to be added. It tells us all we need to know about the past, the present, and a thousand years into the future.
Your church has no authority over Scripture just because God used them to accomplish his will at a time when “the church” was really the only one with any power over what people believed. The Reformation broke the power of the Roman church, but it did little to unite the Christians who are now more divided than they have ever been. The one thing it did accomplish was to bring the Bible back into the hands of the common people, after keeping them in ignorance for centuries. Are you denying that the church executed people for even possessing a Bible? Burning them at the stake for having the audacity to want to read it for themselves? Is history wrong about that?
If the church hierarchy was functionally literate, why did they not teach people to read and write? Jewish households taught their children many life skills including the ability to read and write. Many of the apostles were humble fishermen, but they wrote their contributions to Scripture in great detail....Peter and John especially.
Paul was the exception because he was an educated Pharisee, but he was chosen for a special assignment as “an apostle to the nations”.
You have to run out of excuses sooner or later.
