Zone1 My departure from Catholicism (very long OP)

[K9Buck]

That’s a strong argument my friend.

Erroneous but, yes, strong.

 

[K9Buck]

In any case, the Catholic Church is not a denomination. It is THE Church.

It is NOT "the church".

As I wrote in my OP, the CC is a worldly institution that is loved and adored by this evil, wicked, world.

Disagree?

The CC is the ONLY faith system in this world that is recognized by this world as being its own, sovereign, nation. Yep, the ONLY one! The CC has diplomatic emissaries in capitols throughout the world. World leaders line up to get their picture taken with the Pope.

Yes, the CC is loved by the world because it is "of the world". It is NOT Jesus's church in this world.

John 15:19
19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

 

[K9Buck]

So my advice to anyone seeking the 'one true Church' is that it doesn't exist.

Jesus is the head of the "one true church" and it definitely exists. It's just extraordinarily unlikely that any living human being knows all that it entails.

To avoid division when I am among other Christians, I stick to the Great Commandment. However, sometimes heretics spread egregiously false teachings that must be confronted.

 

[K9Buck]

Wow you put a lot of time and work into that. I hope you saved a copy and are able to use it elsewhere other than just here at USMB.

I recently typed it all up to share with some family members, friends, and acquaintances. I merely pasted it here.

I don't share it with all of my Catholic family and friends because some of them have a cult-like devotion to the CC. They love God and one another and try to live Godly lives. I think that's all that matters and so I leave them be. I certainly don't believe that it's a salvational issue.

 

[K9Buck]

The best we can do is find a Church denomination/congregation that we sense is right for us and accept it as the imperfect vessel that it will invariably be just as each of us is an imperfect vessel but still capable of doing great good.

Exactly right. Although there is a tongue-in-cheek saying that, if you want to learn false doctrines, go to church. Lol.

But I agree that finding fellowship and Godly spouses is best done through a Godly church!

 

[K9Buck]

Today, it is called the Catholic Church. And frankly, I don't feel very listened to by God anywhere else.

My brother, God wants you to be ALL in him and him in you. Neither Jesus nor the apostles said that a physical "church" is required to pray to God the Father. God wants you to talk and pray to HIM and to him alone. God is the only eternal being, not Mary, not the saints, nor any other human being that wasn't God in the flesh. If you do wrong, confess to God directly and ask him for forgiveness and help. Again, God wants you to talk and confess directly to him. God wants you to look to HIM! So do it!

Why did God say that he doesn't give his glory to "no other"? Is it because he's a raging megalomaniac? No! He said it because he doesn't want his children exalting others and following false teachers and false systems.

Isaiah 42:8

English Standard Version

​

8 I am the Lord; that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to carved idols.

 

[K9Buck]

"I will build My Church and thegates of Hell will not prevail against it" Mt 16:18

What do you believe Jesus meant by that statement?

 

[K9Buck]

I probably should have read further in OP before commenting (that I wouldn't read the whole thing) because I totally agree w/ poster about certain things. So anyhow, I just copied the whole thing, took out all the paragraph marks and extra spaces and will read it soon. Even after all that, it is 5 pages. But I am interested in what he is saying. I have also had many criticisms of the Church and even left it for a short time recently (not not in my heart), but that was not a good idea. As the saints have said, "The Church IS Jesus" and we don't want to leave Him. He is the only one who cares about us, objectively speaking.

My brother, if you read it and defer to what the scriptures say, I believe you will emerge with a new understanding of God's nature and what he desires.

 

[Meriweather]

I discussed a lot of that in my lengthy and detailed OP.

Your cut and paste OP?

 

[Meriweather]

Yea? When did Jesus and the apostles exalt and pray to Mary, as the self-proclaimed "universal" church does?

You cannot imagine them praying with Mary? She was there on Pentecost. Undoubtedly she was part of the early Christian community. You cannot imagine people praying with her?

 

[Meriweather]

The CC has diplomatic emissaries in capitols throughout the world. World leaders line up to get their picture taken with the Pope.

Yes, the CC is loved by the world because it is "of the world". It is NOT Jesus's church in this world.

People lined up, flocked to Jesus. By your definition, this means Jesus was "of the world". Are you even aware of how involved the Catholic Church is involved and helping the poor and destitute of this world?

 

[Libby von H]

Wow you put a lot of time and work into that. I hope you saved a copy and are able to use it elsewhere other than just here at USMB.

The Pope's dictates were never considered 'infallible' until the First Vatican Council convened and led by Pope Pius IX in the mid 19th Century. And it was by such Papal declarations over the millennia that such the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church developed. It was the decree of Emperor Constantine in the Fourth Century who for purely political purposes enlisted the organizational skills of the church that gave the church its power and allowed it to become such a dominating force in the Roman Empire. though it wouldn't be called the ROMAN Catholic Church until the 16th Century.

The 16th Century was the Reformation that pulled people out of the RCC and began spreading the church into thousands of different denominational groups and carried it into most of the world.

But don't be too hard on the RCC. No church denomination or independent congregation has ever been organized that did not intend to represent the closest thing to the one true church it could achieve. And every single one of them has come up with human engineered culture, emphasis, doctrine, rules, policy that is sometimes supportable by scripture, sometimes not. The Church is intended to be God's people on Earth, but because humankind is fallible, willful, and sometimes very stubborn, we now have an amazing 45,000 different Christian denominations around the world, over 200 in the USA alone.

So my advice to anyone seeking the 'one true Church' is that it doesn't exist. And yet the Church is the foundation for all that is good, ethical, provides a sense of right and wrong, like nothing else can do. Every believer is part of the Church and that makes the Church a vessel of God. The best we can do is find a Church denomination/congregation that we sense is right for us and accept it as the imperfect vessel that it will invariably be just as each of us is an imperfect vessel but still capable of doing great good.

I have never found a sincere ex-Catholic, and I still haven't. Do you ever hear such self-justifying hate and nonsense from an ex-Methodist for example,NO , Hillary has been attacking her own church for ages. They are wrong about abortion, They are wrong about homosexualty, we should have Lesbian bishops....She seems to believe nothing. You can get away with that in most non-Catholic churches but not in Catholicism
Pete Buttigied is in direct confrontation with the Catholic Catechsim and all of Catholic history with his gay 'union'
Same with Biden and abortion.

Pope Benedict once said of Judas, If he had left the Church in accord with his lack of faith and his behavior he would never have betreayed Jesus. Pete and Joe betray their Church every day.

 

[Meriweather]

Again, God wants you to talk and confess directly to him. God wants you to look to HIM! So do it!

Are you saying that those who confessed to Jesus did it wrong and that Jesus should have told them to confess directly to God?

Another thing I find amazing is that someone who claims to have been Catholic never once, in all that time, confessed directly to God? Never once said, "I confess to Almighty God..."

 

[Meriweather]

My brother, if you read it and defer to what the scriptures say, I believe you will emerge with a new understanding of God's nature and what he desires.

Deferring to "what scriptures say" in modern English misses what the authors and people who lived in that time (including Jesus) actually said.

Another point of interest: Studying what people and organizations are doing wrong is a far cry from studying and living scripture. In fact, it is the opposite.

 

[K9Buck]

I have never found a sincere ex-Catholic, and I still haven't.

I'm an ex-Catholic. Why do you believe that I am insincere? Is it because I follow the teachings of Jesus and his apostles instead of the teachings of the catechism?

 

[DGS49]

So let's have a little reality check. The Catholic Church has been in existence (as we conceive it) for about two thousand years. The Church has CONSTANTLY sought to remain faithful to the teachings of Christ and the guidance of the "founding fathers" [to coin a phrase]. It recognizes not only the Scriptures themselves, but also traditions that originated with the Apostles and have carried forward. It employs an army of linguists, theologians, and scientists around the world who strive to ensure that "we" are understanding everything correctly, even to correcting translations of biblical texts as new information comes to light.

The Church has done a lot of awful things in its history, but one is only appalled at these acts in a vacuum, as HUMANS have done a lot of awful things, in the name of religious dogma and other inexplicable principles. The Church is a human organization, like it or not. But it has always strived to "get it right," and it continues to do so today.

For illustration, there is TREMENDOUS global pressure on the Vatical (the Church) to accept homosexuals and other sexual irregulars, to condone abortion in some circumstances, to embrace divorce and remarriage as endemic to the human condition, but it declines to do these things, because the Scriptures and Traditions are clear, in the opposite direction of the public pressure.

K9Buck, you have embraced the folly of Protestantism. You believe that you can read the Book and decide for yourself what it means. In effect, you say, "No, I'm smarter than your armies of theologians and hundreds of years of study."

Based on what? Conceit?

Your thinking is literally analogous to someone with a telescope, spending 30 years looking up into the sky and coming to the conclusion that all of what astronomers have figured out for the past thousands of years is wrong, because that is not what your scope sightings tell you.

You are a fool. You have a right to be a fool, but make no mistake about it. There is only one true Christian Church, and you have rejected it out of nothing but personal arrogance.

P.S. I admit that I did not go through the OP in detail. I have better things to do with my time, and you don't have to test every apple in the barrel to conclude that it is a barrel of rotten apples.

 

[ding]

No other organization has done more to shape western civilization than the HRCC.

 

[K9Buck]

You are a fool.

Matthew 5:22
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother[a] will be liable to judgment; whoever insults[b] his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell[c] of fire.

 

[K9Buck]

The Church has CONSTANTLY sought to remain faithful to the teachings of Christ...

Not true.

Matthew 23:9
9 And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.

 

[K9Buck]

I admit that I did not go through the OP in detail. I have better things to do with my time, and you don't have to test every apple in the barrel to conclude that it is a barrel of rotten apples.

Yea, you don't need to read another's essay to determine that it's erroneous. Thanks for the laugh!