It is unfair to say that Protestantism is split up into 33,000 different splintered groups to then suggest that roman Catholicism is one and unified over the world since the beginning.
The Catholic Church has changed over the course of history on very important issues. Some of these fringe protestant groups have been created out of reading the conditions and beliefs of the early Christian believers. Compare the disciplinary doctrines of the catholic church through out the early church fathers up until the 10th century (about) . If someone committed adultery, they were immediately excommunicated by the bishop and began a long process of restoration to a holy life in christ. There was a huge emphasis on the holiness of the church and was not content with just allowing anyone professing inside church. Nowadays, you can be whatever you want during the week, as long as you ‘‘repent’’ before communion. I grew up catholic and everyone I knew was like that (not saying that’s everyone). You have two different atmospheres today than you did then. There was close inspection of catechumens and the way they lived their lives before they were received into the church. If you were a visitor you needed letters of recommendation prior to receiving communion. If you had no letters, the laity and the clergy were to examine your fruits and lifestyle for 3 years before you received communion. If this was practiced today, 75% of catholic laity would be trying to sue the church and would be crying ‘‘scandalous judementalism!!!’’.
The protestant church of conservative Anglicanism resembles almost the same doctrine, it recognizes the authority of tradition., but does not contradict Scripture at any cost. To say the Anglican church is simply another blend of the 33,000 mix is just very deceptive and unfair.
What do you do when you are a catholic member and you see nothing but ungodliness and worldliness in every catholic church you attend, is Jesus with them into the end of the age, and at the same time he is not with helpless protestant believers around the world who are huddled together in love praying for one another, meeting each others needs, performing love feasts for the whole church, taking care of the sick and hungry???
Jesus is with those who practice righteousness. The kingdom is given to those who bear its fruits. I’m afraid Seton girl is going through what some of the reformers saw in the catholic church, a lot of high claims to authority and very little visible heart holiness and purity of life and righteous discipline of its members.
The catholic church h claims to be the only apostolic church (lets give it that they are one and so is orthodox) and yet the emphases on Christian doctrine are radically different now than they were in the 4 5 6 centuries. Now you read more and more about Mary, making infallible things which the apostles would have had no clue about. If Paul was here on earth now, he would be stracthing his head wondering where this ‘‘development’’ came from. You can only get orange juice from an orange. The product has to match the source of origin. Why do we not read anything about the virgin Mary’s prominent place in the present phase of redemptive history?
Catholics are very careful to provide a living voice which is contemporary that has tracings to history. And we love this, yes… but look at the incongruity of the early church to the roman catholic church . There was already a split from of the orthodox from the catholics because of the newness of the popes claim to authority. This was genuinely a new thing. It was not in the lectures to the catechumens of the 1 and 2nd centuries that christ established a supreme perpetual chair of authority in a successive line of petrine bishops. Otherwise the split would have had no justification in 1054 since it would have been common knowledge. If the apostles did not know it, it is post apostolic teaching.
to that.
