Catholicism versus Protestantism down the centuries

I believe that the Bible which is certainly about Human Behavior has anticipated this division among Christians who were once all members for 1000 years of a singular church.The history of the church is that one schism after the next created a Religious Institution which mimics or models the human condition itself.We know today that Personality Tests divide us all into a dozen groups or kinds of people, in terms of our perceptions about the external world.
We are born with genetic propensities to see the real world from different perspectives.
This is very important to the concept of Love thy neighbor.If one does not grant the democracy of this difference toothers, or is unable to utilize the characteristics of Self Actualization, based upon recognition that there are different strokes for different folks, thn each of us will tend to demand we are right, our thinking is superior and better that that of others.Today, we see that American Christianity has fractionalized into twelve (12) denominational mainstream Chruches, each with their own take on a book they have read and reported on. If people do not learn this about us, how can they learn to love their neighbor who votes differently for reasons un recognized or opposed by them, etc.If we don't needto understand others in order to put up with them, at least we do need to realize they are probably as right fromtheir point of view as we think, no, are certain we are.

By closing their browsers, shutting down their computers, and going out in the world and helping people. Go do good works and you will be loving your neighbor, its that simple.Failing to understand obscure posts on the internet has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I'm moving this response to this thread because it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not god is good. But it shows a hilarious inconsistancy in the Protestant faith that can work as an example of its not so different to Catholicism.If you follow from Message 413 back through the replies, you can see how it kinda goes like this:First off, The Protestants have to believe that the Catholic Church is bad, and insist on faith alone, but maintain Sola Scriptura.So, what do they do when its pointed out that Peter is the rock of the church according to the Bible. Oh, well that just must refer to it being Peter's FAITH that is the rock of the church, because, you know, we already have the whole faith alone thing going. Oh, and we have to maintaint that the Catholic Church is bad. But what happened to Sola Scriptura!? It seems that as soon as something starts getting inconsistant, the first thing to go is the scripture. Well, maybe not "go", but it gets all twisted up and changed so that the other things can be maintained.Once could just as easily start with the position that the Catholic Church is good as God intended and then interpret this part of Scripture as upholding the value of the Church. It doesn't matter what side you start on, you can make the scripture fit with whatever you want to believe. I find that incredibly dishonest, both personally and socially.I think that shows a similiarity between both sides in that they're both capable of doing what they got to do to maintain their a priori belief system. Although, I gotta give it to the Catholics for being a little bit better at evolving along with what we learn about reality - you know: old earth, species evolve, that kind of stuff.Granted, I may be suffering from some bias here... The Catholic position will most likely stem from minimizing the differences betwee Protestantism and itself, for if they're not so different then that minimizes their legitimacy as having to be something seperate. And of course, the Protestants are going to be biased in maximizing the differences between themselves and the Catholic Church so they can legitimize the need for their protest.All in all, though, its all a bunch of bullshit anyways.

I'm bringing this response to JAR over from the Is God Good thread, Message 433
EvC Forum: Is God good?
since it's off topic there: You are SO devious.In Message 407 I wrote: In Message 408 you answered: THERE'S YOUR "COMMENTARY" right there, where you clearly interpret the scripture according to RCC doctrine.I responded in Message 409:And you answere that in Message 410: And there's the scripture you just interpreted according to RCC doctrine, OBVIOUSLY DEFENDING THE ROMAN CATHOLIC INTERPRETATION which uses that verse to call itself the true Church, and putting down Luther for his denunciations of the RCC Church. That was the whole context. How dare you now deny that's what you were saying. I can't believe the bald-faced lies you are committing yourself to, including accusing ME of lying. You give the RCC interpretation of Matthew 16:18, a while back you agreed with Rome's anathemas in the Council of Trent against the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, you excoriated the true gospel of the death of Jesus Christ as propitiation for our sins, which is the centerpiece of Protestant teaching, and yet you have the bald-faced lying nerve to call yourself a Protestant and call me a liar for proving that you aren't. If there's anybody on this whole God-forsaken website that has any honesty and a functioning brain cell left, they ought to be coming in at this point and agreeing with me. If they can rise above their partisanship for half a second.I'll answer the rest on the Is God Good thread because that's where it belongs.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Ah, Faith, did I actually include the exact words from Matthew?Oh yes, I did and you even quoted my quote from Matthew.Faith I am not interpreting what Jesus said, I quoted what Jesus said.And I am a member of a recognized Protestant Chapter of Club Christian.I am NOT a Lutheran even though I am the webmaster for a Lutheran Church.I am NOT a Baptist although I did join RAs one summer. There was this horny little red haired girl and ...But the Facts are pretty clear. Someone who is a member of the Elks is an Elk. Someone who is a member of the Roman Catholic Church is a Roman Catholic. Someone who is a member of a Protestant Church is a Protestant.

I thought that a major part of the Reformation was getting rid of the burden of tradition and authority, not replacing them with different traditions and authorities.

Whose name are Legion, because there are so many of them.Drive that herd of swine off a cliff.

I don't understand your point, or question, or whatever it is.Or maybe I should just say I wouldn't describe the objective of the Reformation as "getting rid of" anything I'd call tradition or authority. They got rid of a FALSE man-made authority and exchanged it for the Bible, the authority of God Himself. They also got ride of a false, man-made binding tradition, but we still have traditions we derive from the Bible, and there are some differences of opinions about this, and the issues don't affect salvation.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The Catholic Church had traditions in addition to the Bible, and the Church authorities were to be deferred to in the interpretation of the Bible. (Dealing with the latter is one of the reasons the Protestants favoured translating the Bible into the native languages of the people instead of using the common Latin translations).Yet you keep appealing to traditions, and to authorities (and ignoring the Bible). In fact you are claiming that jar is not a Protestant BECAUSE he does not defer to a Protestant authority.

One of the problems I've long seen with the Reformation is that, while splitting off from the Roman Catholic Church in order to get back to "original" Christianity, their starting point and their destination were still both products of Roman Catholicism.I rather liked James Burke's take on the difference between Catholic and Protestant church decor. In Catholicism, lay members were told by the clergy what the Bible said rather than being expected to read it for themselves. Since they had to memorize the teachings, the artwork in the churches were made more graphic in order to serve as "souvenirs", items to trigger our memories of something, or as Burke said, "That's not art! That's learning!". In contrast, the emphasis in Protestant churches was for everybody to read the Bible themselves; according to my world religions textbook, the purpose of the first Sunday schools was to teach adults and children alike how to read so that they could then read and study the Bible. Since Protestants were expected to be able to refer to the Bible to refresh their memories of Christian teachings, the artwork is much more sparce and abstract. Eg, in a friend's family the father was Catholic and the mother Protestant, so the children sometimes went to one service or the other with the appropriate parent. One day in Catholic Mass, the son suddenly blurted out, "Hey! Who's that guy up on that cross!" In a Protestant church, the actual purpose of that cross is never depicted.OK, so the Protestants got rid of Roman authority. But some Protestant churches are still patterned after the Catholic model. Even those Protestant churches that have differed themselves further still employ a Bible that was largely created by the Catholics (think of Emperor Constantine's role in the Council of Nicea). And still promote teachings that were created by the Catholics, including teachings that are extra-biblical (I do believe that Original Sin, the Rapture, the Millennium, etc, to be among those extra-biblical teachings). In other words, the Protestant Reformation was not by any stretch of the imagination a clean break from the Roman Catholic Church.In his allegorical Animal Farm, George Orwell penned one of the most apt phrasings: "All animals are equal! But some animals are more equal than others!" There is a multitude of "Protestants" out there, but you believe that some are more "Protestant than others".

You know, Paul, the main thing I get out of some of these discussions is how FAR our assumptions are from each other. I almost have to say I don't understand a word you just said here and I know you didn't understand anything I said. Certainly if you think I consider JAR to be not a Protestant "because he does not defer to a Protestant "authority" I can only say we live on entirely different planets.Maybe it will make more sense to me later.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't know what you're talking about either, sorry, or I don't know how you think it's relevant at least.

I think the problem is that you don't know what you REALLY believe...

I have been extremely clear on these things as I understand them, so I think there is a problem with unrecognized assumptions. I am NOT having a problem with what I believe, I'm having a problem with your argument.

No, I didn't really expect you to understand.Protestants' beliefs were invented by the Roman Catholic Church.Is that more clear?Protestants wanted to get back to the original religion. But they couldn't do that, because all they knew about that "original religion" had been passed to them through the Roman Catholic Church.Is that more clear?They went back to studying the "Bible", but then it was the Roman Catholic Church and Emperor Constantine who had determined arbitrarily which writings were to be part of the Bible and which were to be considered heretical. Please inform me of the Bible that is completely immune from the pernicious influence of the Roman Catholic Church. Completely immune. And every single one of your teachings! Where did they come from? Please trace each and every one of them back to their ultimate origins. Original Sin? Where did that teaching come from? Not what Bible verses are used to support it, but where exactly did it come from? What is the exact history of each and every one of your beliefs?I dabbled a bit with Bertrand Russell in my high school days. At the time, he reinforced my skepticism, but there are a couple things he wrote that still stick with me.During WWI (AKA "The Great War"), he was a pacifist and, as such, was imprisoned. His account of that imprisonment was that the old woman who processed him in asked him for his religion. "Agnostic." She wandered off muttering to herself about all the different religions, ending with "but they all worship the same God anyway." Russell wrote that that made his incarceration much more tolerable. That was emblematic of the "pious" and their inability to understand religion.The other thing that he wrote that sticks with me is what he said about free thought. He was quite an advocate of free thought, from what I understand. He made an observation of the difference between how a Catholic and a Protestant would view free thought and how one would react to converting to some form of free thought. That observation was that a Catholic would view free thought as heretical and that the conversion to free thought would require one to become an atheist. However, for a Protestant that conversion to free thought would not require atheism, but rather simply lead him to create yet another Protestant religion.Similarly, there was a cartoon drawn by Ed Babinski, a former ultra-fundamentalist fundamentalist Christian. This cartoon depicted the family tree of Christianity with its myriad and widely varied branches of Protestant Christianity, concluding that all these myriad and widely varied branches of Protestant Christianity demonstrates the impossibility of any single "Christ event" in the distant past to be able to account for them all -- just as creationists try to discount the far-less-convoluted "tree of life".Which brings us right back to your attempt to proclaim that many Protestants are "less than Protestants" in the strictly Orwellian sense.All Protestants are Protestants, whether you choose to acknowledge them or not. Despite your sanctimonious attitude of some being "more Protestant than others."And all Protestants base their beliefs on the beliefs of the Roman Catholics. And upon the Bible that the Catholics had created back in the time of Emperor Constantine, the inventor of Christianity. And upon many of the extra-biblical doctrines that the Catholics had created.