Believe me, I am not putting down Catholics in any way, for as it was stated before Catholics DO believe that Jesus Christ is their savior. However, some examples of what Roman Catholic traditions are like what Chad said - Catholics tend to, and not all of them i assume for i dont want to make a generalization, but for the most part being once a Catholic and having family that are strong believers in the Catholic faith, they tend to keep statues of saints and look to/pray to certain saints for certain things. Now this is obviously not good, for one of the commandments states : Thou shall not have any god before me. So obviously you shant pray to any other or worship any other being besides the one and only GOD.

Thats just to name one, but others as Chad already mentioned, believe that if you do not go to confession and confess your sins to the priest, than you are at fault. The Catholic tradition is that the priest "takes the position of Jesus Christ and forgives you of your sins".. Now when i was a Catholic this was the most disturbing practice, to me, of them all. Obviously nobody can ever take the place of such a divine being as Jesus Christ. So right there to even think about imitating/ taking the place of Jesus is not good. Rather our sins should simply be between us and the Lord. Why cant we just confess our sins to God? Nobody else has the authority to judge us...

Also within Catholic laws, you cannot participate in recieving the Eucharist if you have previously missed church. They put so much faith and belief in the fact that this priest, through divine intervension, has converted unleaven bread into the body of Jesus. Some churches do this simply as a symbol of reinacting the Last Supper, but Catholics are led to believe this is Jesus' body they are digesting. When i was little i remember my priest strictly telling us that we MUST believe this. I remember sitting in church trying soo hard to believe that what i was eating was Jesus' body... thats not something a little child should be worrying about. Jesus, to my knowledge, is the only one who posses the power to perform such outstanding miracles. I know the disciples, too, performed miracles, with the Holy Spirits' help, but something to the nature of turning bread into the body of the one and only Jesus Christ, is simply unfathomable.

Now I really do not intend to express all of the RC Church's faults here, and maybe certain Catholics are different, who knows really? All I am trying to say is it is clearly evident that most of, not all, but most of the Roman Catholic Church's beliefs are tradition and not all that accurate.

Remember, God never intended for their to be a specific religion governing all of his people, atleast not to my knowledge (please somebody inform me if i am mistaken), but He, being the loving Father He is, sent Jesus to us so that we, being the sinful bunch of people we are, could be saved from the darkness of this world. Jesus' disciples then went out and proclaimed the good news of Jesus. But God never said "create such n such a church and everyone who does not follow the church's traditions and ways shall be condemned." Thats all, PEOPLE thenceforth created churches which I assume were fine at the time, but over the years they have clearly become corrupt and it just seems right to simply hold strong belief in Jesus Christ and not associate oneself with foolish traditions and practices.


Now obviously I do not claim to know everything and I do not judge those who hold different beliefs than me. Im just stating my beliefs and facts on a certain topic, and do not intend to hurt anybody.
Please if I have anything wrong, feel free to correct me, I, too, am still learning.

And also, any half-truths or misunderstandings that I have mentioned or anybody else has mentioned in their posts, please tell me so that I will understand more clearly.


Peace and God Bless
-Eric

Originally Posted by DrBubbaLove

While not all agree with what the Church teaches and am certainly not making a call for them to here, it is still wrong to perpetuate half-truths and misunderstandings about what others believe.
At least explain what is believed with more understanding and then make refute rather than present a misrepresentation and refute nothing.

I have a simple question for you brother, assuming you will respond politely and humbly. If you know the faults of the Catholic system, why do you continue being a Catholic and not just a bible believing *Christian* without the traditions/system/faults of the Catholic church? I'm just curious that is all. Now, we're not talking about people being imperfect or misled. We're talking one who acknowledges a system of traditions and false teachings, yet hasn't left it and gone straight to being a Bible believing Christian. In other words, right to the core of GOD's word and right to Jesus Himself without any system.

Lol, thank you Chad, thats the jist of what i was trying to say, you obvoiusly explained a bit better.

If I saw the faults some imagined then this Church would never have attracted me, so I cannot answer that question. Perhaps you misunderstood.

My point was that one cannot make a false representation of the beliefs of another then make a meaningful argument against that representation. It would be no different than my proclaiming all Protestants believe in flying pink elephants and then say here is the scripture proving elephants cannot fly.

In short, was politely, humbly and with a lot of restraint suggesting that the characterizations of Catholics beliefs being presented in your first post are false and that it would be better to refute the Church’s actual teachings rather than a misrepresentation of it.

Originally Posted by DrBubbaLove

If I saw the faults some imagined then this Church would never have attracted me, so I cannot answer that question. Perhaps you misunderstood.

My point was that one cannot make a false representation of the beliefs of another then make a meaningful argument against that representation. It would be no different than my proclaiming all Protestants believe in flying pink elephants and then say here is the scripture proving elephants cannot fly.

In short, was politely, humbly and with a lot of restraint suggesting that the characterizations of Catholics beliefs being presented in your first post are false and that it would be better to refute the Church’s actual teachings rather than a misrepresentation of it.

My original post was not false at all. As a matter of fact, it has nothing to do with each individual "catholic" believer but the system itself. Perhaps you mis-read or misunderstood. The post is about the system, not each catholic's belief. They are catholics, therefore we can assume they believe in the catholic teachings. Does this not make sense to you at all?

There's a good reason why every person in this thread agrees to my post. Why? It is full of truth. Its about exposing false teachings, not condemning each catholic individual or judging them. Its for the sake of the 'misled' so they may see the false teachings of the catholic system.

I come from a huge catholic family, was sent to catholic school for 13 years so I do not speak ignorantly or in vain.

Brother, what misrepresentations were mentioned??
Seriously, Id like to know for my better understanding.


And another thing, comparing what is clear beliefs of the Catholic Church with a Protestants belief in pink flying elephants makes no sense at all.

Im not sure if you know this, but Chad was a catholic, for quite some time too. So was I, and spiritleded. We all attended catholic school, to my knowledge, so everything that we've said were accounts of the teachings in these schools and churches. Now maybe the Catholic churches that we went to were fake or something, because obviously they dont relate to what you claim to believe in..

oh well, i wish you would explain more about the false beliefs that we supposedly stated...

Peace and God Bless
-Eric

Originally Posted by EuphoricForest

Brother, what misrepresentations were mentioned??
Seriously, Id like to know for my better understanding.


And another thing, comparing what is clear beliefs of the Catholic Church with a Protestants belief in pink flying elephants makes no sense at all.

Im not sure if you know this, but Chad was a catholic, for quite some time too. So was I, and spiritleded. We all attended catholic school, to my knowledge, so everything that we've said were accounts of the teachings in these schools and churches. Now maybe the Catholic churches that we went to were fake or something, because obviously they dont relate to what you claim to believe in..

oh well, i wish you would explain more about the false beliefs that we supposedly stated...

Peace and God Bless
-Eric

Sorry, maybe poorly done. It was a comparison. Whether I truly believed all Protestants taught a belief in pink flying elephants or not does not matter. The point is that the claim is not true. So any argument I might make against Protestants believing in such creatures is false because the premise that you believe such things is false.
That is the same thing the writer in the first post is doing regarding some Catholic beliefs.

Chad and Euphoric,
Cannot speak to what you two were taught in Catholic schools or why your understanding of Catholicism is flawed. We all know plenty of people that went through school and did not really get everything that was taught. We also have all experienced teachers that were inept in getting particular messages across or even distorting the message for their own reasons. Not saying this was the case here, but what is true everywhere else is no less true in Catholic school.

On closer reading of the original post by Chad, it appears to be a quote from some unknown book and unknown author. We can only speculate what that persons motives might be for writing what they did.

Suffice to say Catholics believe in faith and works being necessary, so saying Catholics do not believe in faith alone is correct. As to whether either view is scriptural or not is debated, but at best all one could claim is that such a belief does not agree with one’s own understanding of scripture, not that Catholics do not use scripture to support belief. We could equally cite verses supporting works being necessary as well as faith.

A representation claimed to be the "official" position of the Church on salvation is made in the original post which is unfounded. While it may seem to a child being taught or outsiders that Catholics see obtaining salvation as getting a litany of check marks, that statement is not an "official" position or an accurate one. Since the Church teaches salvation being possible for even non-Christians, it cannot be that the Church sees only people believing as Catholics do, as in the never ending list presented in Chad's first post, are "saved". So a very inaccurate picture, perhaps deliberately is being painted in regards to Catholic beliefs on salvation in order to refute it, which makes the refute false rather than our beliefs.

Will skip next section, the pronouncement part of the first post, as it just makes a strings of claims against the Church rather than stating what Catholics believe and then refuting it. Not this, can’t be that, not this ...etc.

Dropping down a statement is made regarding Baptism and then a section of the Catechism is quoted to support that claim. For those wanting to join, the Church accepts the Baptism of believers from most Protestant faiths, so the implication being made that the Church teaches only those Baptized into the Church are saved is a blatantly false. As a technical point, any valid Baptism joins one to the body of believers, so it could not be possible for the Church to believe that while also excluding those with valid Baptisms performed outside the Catholic Church.
Also as already pointed out, the Church teaches the possibility of even non-Christians going to heaven, so it cannot be also true that it teaches no one outside the Catholic Church is saved as implied by the whole section where the book gives percentages of non-Catholic.

Furthermore that section of the Catechism quoted is discussing the necessity of Baptism, not salvation. So while connected to salvation and true the Church sees Baptism as necessary, it obviously does not follow that the Church teaches one has to be Catholic, or immersed only in the Church or even Christian as the only means for salvation, which is implied in this whole section of the first post.

Obviously the writer of that book quoted in Chad’s first post either did not bother to look up salvation in the Catechism or ignored it all together. The choice to find and present a single quote on the necessity of Baptism that supported a false representation of the Catholic view of salvation, a view that can conveniently then be easily refuted (commonly called strawman) is either an attempt to deceive, a case of blindly finding only what one wants to find or represents extremely lazy and possibly inept research.

The remainder of the post contains more pronouncements rather than stating what Catholics believe.

Originally Posted by DrBubbaLove

Chad and Euphoric,
Cannot speak to what you two were taught in Catholic schools or why your understanding of Catholicism is flawed. We all know plenty of people that went through school and did not really get everything that was taught. We also have all experienced teachers that were inept in getting particular messages across or even distorting the message for their own reasons. Not saying this was the case here, but what is true everywhere else is no less true in Catholic school. On closer reading of the original post by Chad, it appears to be a quote from some unknown book and unknown author. We can only speculate what that persons motives might be for writing what they did.
Suffice to say Catholics believe in faith and works being necessary, so saying Catholics do not believe in faith alone is correct. As to whether either view is scriptural or not is debated, but at best all one could claim is that such a belief does not agree with one’s own understanding of scripture, not that Catholics do not use scripture to support belief. We could equally cite verses supporting works being necessary as well as faith.
A representation claimed to be the "official" position of the Church on salvation is made in the original post which is unfounded. While it may seem to a child being taught or outsiders that Catholics see obtaining salvation as getting a litany of check marks, that statement is not an "official" position or an accurate one. Since the Church teaches salvation being possible for even non-Christians, it cannot be that the Church sees only people believing as Catholics do, as in the never ending list presented in Chad's first post, are "saved". So a very inaccurate picture, perhaps deliberately is being painted in regards to Catholic beliefs on salvation in order to refute it, which makes the refute false rather than our beliefs.
Will skip next section, the pronouncement part of the first post, as it just makes a strings of claims against the Church rather than stating what Catholics believe and then refuting it. Not this, can’t be that, not this ...etc.
Dropping down a statement is made regarding Baptism and then a section of the Catechism is quoted to support that claim. For those wanting to join, the Church accepts the Baptism of believers from most Protestant faiths, so the implication being made that the Church teaches only those Baptized into the Church are saved is a blatantly false. As a technical point, any valid Baptism joins one to the body of believers, so it could not be possible for the Church to believe that while also excluding those with valid Baptisms performed outside the Catholic Church.
Also as already pointed out, the Church teaches the possibility of even non-Christians going to heaven, so it cannot be also true that it teaches no one outside the Catholic Church is saved as implied by the whole section where the book gives percentages of non-Catholic. Furthermore that section of the Catechism quoted is discussing the necessity of Baptism, not salvation. So while connected to salvation and true the Church sees Baptism as necessary, it obviously does not follow that the Church teaches one has to be Catholic, or immersed only in the Church or even Christian as the only means for salvation, which is implied in this whole section of the first post.
Obviously the writer of that book quoted in Chad’s first post either did not bother to look up salvation in the Catechism or ignored it all together. The choice to find and present a single quote on the necessity of Baptism that supported a false representation of the Catholic view of salvation, a view that can conveniently then be easily refuted (commonly called strawman) is either an attempt to deceive, a case of blindly finding only what one wants to find or represents extremely lazy and possibly inept research.
The remainder of the post contains more pronouncements rather than stating what Catholics believe.

I cannot read your one giant paragraph. Please consider editing it so its readable instead of one long paragraph.

I would like to ask a further question about faith and works.

My understanding of the Bible is that our salvation is granted to us only by God's grace. The only way to access this grace is by faith.

So faith alone!

But James says "faith without works is dead" (2:26). There is no salvation without good works because good works are the mark of a true living faith.

So works are necessary!

I hope I have expressed this clearly and accurately. How close is this understanding to the teaching of the Catholic church?