Catholicism versus Protestantism down the centuries

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

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".

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.

So you don't know whether they are telling the truth or lying to you in the most outrageous manner.As I had learned it, Martin Luther approached the Jews in friendship with the hope of converting them. When that failed, he became virulently anti-semitic. Kind of like you are when you fail to convert us.

Yeah, and I heard it was because he could not convince them to convert.What I had heard is so much more typical of religious zealots.Of course, you could quote those "blasphemous writings" that you keep going on about. Hmm?We've already seen that you depend entirely upon ignorance when it comes to geology. I'm sure that that is not the only area in which you depend upon ignorance. You only need to show us wrong. Quote directly from the Talmud. That massive work the size of an encyclopedia, lacking an index, because it's all memorized.Quotes. Specific quotes. That we can verify.

Which word are you referring to? An adjective, "free", in conjunction with a noun, "gift", such that the question boils down to whether there are two or just one word? I took a look the other day and I didn't see any adjective. Nor do I recall any notes about alternative versions of that verse. But it's not a question about additional words, since translating from one language to another never is not an exercise of substituting individual words; there is no one-to-one correspondence between all the words in the original to its translation. If the target language has no word that means exactly the same as a word in the original, then the translation may very well require additional words to try to convey the meaning of the original. For example, translate "Wurst" into English -- no, "sausage" is one particular type of Wurst.I only saw a single word, a noun meaning "gift". However, the bible's dictionary (it's Metzger's Greek New Testament) adds in parentheses that it's "freely given" and is of divine origin (as I recall; it's at work). I will need to look at it again, but I won't be able to report on it until I'm at home again.So this exercise will require us to investigate the meaning of that word ("khariston"? I need to verify that). One problem will be that Protestant reference works that are dedicated to their interpretation of the KJV, so you will need to consider the source. Also, for working in the English you have to keep in mind how the language has changed since the KJV was written, since that often changes the meaning, just as we see when reading Shakespeare.

Very quickly, since I'm at work.In the English, the word "gift" is used twice in that verse, but in the Greek two different words are used (from the KJV):"And not as [it was] by one that sinned, [so is] the
gift: ... " There the word used is δωρημα ("dorema")." ... for the judgment [was] by one to condemnation, but the
free gift [is] of many offences unto justification." There the word used is χαρισμα ("kharisma").Chosing to use two different words in juxtaposition tells me that a comparison or constrast between the two was being made. Therefore, the discussion here should include a comparison of the meanings of those two words, δωρημα and χαρισμα, how they differ, and what those differences are supposed to mean.I can't really contribute much more. I last worked with Greek about 40 years ago in college and, besides, I have very little patience with theology.

Except that the Catholics have always done it so much better.[voice=Londo Mollari]Oh, yes, you have all these piddly little insignificant differences that make you "entirely different". Like with the Cheronians (sorry, cross-over to Star Trek TOS):

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Bele: Are you blind, Commander Spock? Well, look at me. Look at me!
Captain James T. Kirk: You are black on one side and white on the other.
Bele: I am black on the right side!

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[/voice]In reality and in truth, there are no real differences between Catholics and Protestants, except that historically the Catholics know what to do. Which means that the Protestants do not know what they are doing. That makes the Protestants the much more dangerous camp.The Catholic Church had entered the Empire at the ground level. They had started as a grass-roots organization, but imperial sponsorship came with a strong hierarchical organization. In the subsequent centuries, as the Unified and Universal Church spread its influence, it learned how to insinuate itself into the offices of secular power. It learned the ways of politics. And because the Church held its own territories, the Papal States, it learned and came to know actual political power and how to administrate that power both politically and militarily.The Protestant churches came later. They never had the opportunity to hold actual political power. OK, there are a few exceptions, such as England's regicide and the subsequent rule of Puritanism during the English Civil War -- perhaps some of our British members could enlighten us about that "glorious Protestant period".I have to admit that I have always had a problem with Protestantism, even though my entire Christian experience and training has been Protestant. I mean, after 1500 years of Roman control over Christianity, suddenly the Protestants had recreated the "original unblemished form of Christianity"? Really? Like Catholicism had had absolutely no influence? Really? The Council of Nicea, what with its decisions of what was to be considered canon and what was to be considered heresy, that wasn't a Catholic filter on what the Protestants would later be working with?Are you at all familiar with the writings of a medical doctor, Michael Crichton? It was his sixth novel that had gained our attention, The Andromeda Strain. An important plot twist (or rather an almost "deux ex machina"solution to the overall problem) was something that MDs know: a new pathogen which at first appears very virulent will evolve into something much less virulent. The reason for this is simple Darwinian evolution. An extremely virulent disease will very quickly kill off its victims, usually before they have had a chance to infect others. A less virulent disease will have many more chances of infecting others. Therefore, a less virulent disease will eventually prevail over a more virulent disease.So then, let us consider the Catholics. They have had nearly two millennia to learn how to control political systems. And, being unified, they somewhat have a unified vision and set of goals to achieve. They know what they want to do and, with nearly two millennia of practical experience, they know how to do it.Now let us consider the Protestants. They have barely 500 years of experience, the vast majority of which has been circumvented by humanism. To begin with, they are extremely fragmented. The most fundamental nature of Protestantism is that they fracture and splinter away at the first sign of disagreement. Bertrand Russel observed that when one became a free-thinker, a Catholic would become an atheist whereas a Protestant free-thinker would merely create a new church -- think about that!. We have much more than a millennium of Catholics holding political power, but what examples do we have a Protestants holding such power? Cromwell in England perhaps. Brits, please inform us of how that had turned out! But very shortly after the spread of Protestantism we also had the spread of humanism. So not only did Protestantism not have that much political influence, what with its eternal splintering off, but there was also a movement towards secular governments.So then in comparing Catholic and Protestant meddling with politics, we find that Catholic meddling is fairly well defined and not overly virulent, albeit very unwelcome, whereas Protestant meddling is a largely unknown factor which promises to be extremely virulent.The most representative Protestant political movement in the USA would be the Christian Reconstructionist movement, also referred to as Dominion Theology. This is a movement to replace the US Constitution with an Old Testament theocracy. While it is theologically different from most fundamentalists (post-millennial, meaning that the 1000 years of Christian rule will precede the Christ's return), it nonetheless served as the political mentor of the pre-millennialist Radical Religious Right (RRR) of the 1980's. In Christianity Today's article, Democracy as Heresy (Christianity Today, 20 Feb 87 -- sorry, it's apparently not on-line), Christian Reconstructionists are quoted as denouncing the Founding Fathers' concepts of democracy and republican representative government, as well as all concepts of human rights as non-Christian (they go so far as to name the origin of these concepts as Satan himself). The same article even quotes one Christian Reconstructionist as using moral relativism ("the ends justify the means") by his applauding the use of appeals to "religious liberty in order to derive our opponents of their own religious liberties", which of course immediately reminds me of Faith's own self-serving appeals to religious liberty.To reiterate, while the Catholics have had millennia of political experience, the Protestants have not. The Catholics have had millennia of opportunity to learn what happens when ideology and fanaticism rule your actions, while the Protestants have not. As a result, the Catholics know better than to act mindlessly on their ideologies, whereas the Protestants do not. Couple with that an inherent Protestant fanaticism and you have the ideal ingredients for a bloodbath.Faith has already detailed to us the totalitarian Protestant state that she so fervently dreams of. Truly Hell on Earth!

To be honest, I have no idea what the differences are supposed to be, nor have I ever understood comments in the movies (eg, Hudson Hawk) about how much trouble Catholic girls are supposed to be. Before marrying a nominally Catholic girl who had never practiced the faith outside of playing hooky from cathecism class, I had a Jewish girl friend who turned out to be nothing but a massive headache; I doubt very much that either of them was typical or even stereotypical, neither of their religion nor even of their gender ... plus I have serious doubts how much the ex-wife could even be considered human.I don't believe that your study will hold much promise, since the two populations covered by your study are too dissimilar. While the Catholic population should be of sufficient uniformity to draw statistical conclusions, the Protestant population, being so extremely fragmented and widely varied into so many different churches, sects, and church cultures, is significantly lacking in any uniformity and hence not conducive to drawing valid statitistical conclusions. It should also be noted that references to "uniformity" have nothing whatsoever to do with school attire and must not be taken as any suggestion as where you should seek out test subjects.Though there is one general difference between Catholics and Protestants that might possibly have some bearing on your study, which is the role and practice of the Confessional. Catholics are taught to report to a priest, albeit "anonymously", to confess their sins whereupon they are advised what not to do anymore and given some kind of penance to perform, a form of punishment. In contrast, Protestants are taught that they have a personal relationship with whatever form of god their particular sect teaches, a kind of invisible friend that's always with them. So when a Protestant does something they think is wrong, they just confess to their invisible friend and as for forgiveness, which no invisible friend would not give ... except for the invisible friends of the extremely guilt-ridden; their invisible friends directly mirror themselves, including as to what groups they hate. They are both basically doing the same thing in order to deal with the feeling that they've done something wrong (eg, having engaged in sexual activity), but while the Protestant can just conduct that business inside her own head, she finds it much easier than the Catholic would who does not have the direct access to her invisible friend but rather has to go through a human intermediary to whom she must vocalize and describe what she's "done wrong", whom she can feel passes judgement on her, and who gives her some kind of punishment. A Protestant's invisible friend never passes judgement on her (unless she feels that he should) and never punishes her (unless she feels that she should, but that's her own mental health issue). So receiving forgiveness is a lot easier and less bothersome for a Protestant than for a Catholic.Does that help your research any?

Sorry, Phat, but your reply is almost entirely irrelevant. The discussion has nothing to do with individual personal religious practices, but rather with the practices of entire religious organizations. On that scale, what is important is how the entire organization behaves, while individual personal practices are meaningless. FWIW, I do believe that actual religious practice needs to be on the individual personal level and no longer exists on the large-scale organizational level. Unfortunately, it is what happens at the large-scale organizational level that has had and will have the most impact on everybody's lives both within and outside of the organization, AKA "The Church". Yes, obviously being a Christian is not about being a freethinker. Especially not within the context of the indirect quote, which included the British free-thinking tradition of questioning and even rejecting what churches teach. Refer to Wikipedia for more background information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_thought.You completely missed the point, which was to illustrate the Protestant tendency to form ever more splinter groups.In that comparison, Russel saw the Catholic tradition as teaching that there is only one Universal Truth and any other view is heresy, so when a Catholic would find himself questioning what the One True Universal Church was teaching, the only option he had been taught was to leave religion altogether and become an atheist. Yes, that is kind of simplistic and interviewing a number of people who had left the Catholic Church should paint a fully picture. Yet at the same time, we witness the most extreme Protestant groups, including fundamentalists and creationists (YEC especially) who routinely preach and teach and apparently even believe that you must choose either between young-earth creationism and atheism and that there is absolutely no middle position possible. So we have real live Protestant churches explicitly teaching what Russel described as the consequences of a Catholic starting to think for himself.In Russel's comparison, what does a Protestant do when he disagrees with what his church teaches? He forms his own church. That is the origins story of Protestantism and of the legions of Protestant churches and sects. The first generation of Protestant churches split off from the Catholic Church and then every time there was a disagreement or difference of opinion they split again, and again, and again. That's why Faith's dream of uniting Protestants will never work, because they're just going to splinter even more when they inevitably disagree. The only solution is to institute an old-style Catholic Church type of system in which a central authority decides what the doctrine will be and will not allow anybody to deviate, kind of like with the fundamentalist take-over of the Southern Baptist Conference. Yes, and all sailors know for a fact that the US Navy depends on evolution for its every-day operation. Oh yeah, different meaning of evolution. Just as you had applied different meanings fo "humanism" and even of "church". So your "point" doesn't qualify as moot, since it is clearly irrelevent.Now, just what were you supposedly "replying" to there? To this (abridged and with emphasis added): While there are many different aspects to humanism, basically it sets Man as the Measure, not religious doctrine. And a less than two centuries after the Reformation had started, humanism developed into the Age of Enlightenment. More specific to my point, we have humanism standing in constrast to the concept of the Divine Right of Kings, an idea with roots in medieval Europe based on an interpretation of Roman law, but brought to the fore and strongly promoted by a Protestant king, King James I of England (1603—1625), who even commissioned a special translation of the Bible to support that idea -- though the Catholics and many other cultures held similar views. Wikipedia describes the concept:

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The divine right of kings, or divine-right theory of kingship, is a political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving the right to rule directly from the will of God. The king is thus not subject to the will of his people, the aristocracy, or any other estate of the realm, including (in the view of some, especially in Protestant countries) the Church. According to this doctrine, only God can judge an unjust king. The doctrine implies that any attempt to depose the king or to restrict his powers runs contrary to the will of God and may constitute a sacrilegious act.

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Contrast that with such humanistic declaration as our Declaration of Independence proclaiming that the government instead derives its power from the consent of the governed and is to be judged by how well it governs and is subject to dismissal by the governed:

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That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

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Or contrast with the mind-set of the Divine Right of Kings, the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:

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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

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The People of the United States forming its own government for its own benefit? According to the Radical Religious Right in the early 1980's, that is pure secular humanism! Not the kind that your "reply" is talking about.In short, my point there is that the rise of humanistic thought and of the Age of the Enlightenment cut much shorter the very little time that Protestantism had to form that many political establishments. The only ones I can think of off-hand are the rule of King James I and of the Puritans after the execution of King Charles I.My time on this forum is very limited, since it is limited to what few hours I am at home. I will post more of my reply later.