…Tim Staples …states that a non Catholic will only be saved if they “are unwillingly ingnorant” …(and this) causes a “seeker” to remain in ignorance … a terrible crime.
…Churches Together …leads Non Catholic …into the belief that they are a valid expression of the body of Christ when in fact they are not, by RC definition. …silence in this matter is as good as deception …a false view …leads them further away from …Truth…If …Roman Catholic Church…was open about its status as the One True Body …the whole thing would collapse!
…many …friends…convinced …that …all Christians (are) in the Body of Christ…(a) belief…according to Tim Staples, (they) remain in a state of deception.
All I know about what Tim Staples has stated is what you have represented. I do not question your understanding being accurately reflected, but I wonder if Tim meant what you heard.
One of my favorite verses is Matthew 19:26: ‘‘With men this is impossible…with God all things are possible.’’
A wordsmith can find dozens, if not hundreds, of verses in the Bible that might seem to contradict each other. For example, the Pauline verses on the importance of faith have precipitated the Calvinistic predestination controversy (faith v. works). (IMHO the New Testament’s seeming inconsistencies are part of the proof I see that it is not some intricate ruse concocted by pranksters! LOL!)
Jesus told the rich man that to get to paradise all he had to do was to keep the commandments. Jesus said the first commandment is to love God and the second to love neighbors as self. When Jesus returns, He will ask us only why we did not feed, clothe or comfort ‘‘HIM’’, albeit in the guise of our neighbors.
That said, for anyone to be
assured he/she is ‘‘keeping the commandments’’, one must have a rightly formed conscience (i.e. be aligned with the RCC).
So the question is whether any individual wants to bet his/her eternity on the logic of his/her own interpretations of scripture that differ from the RCC.
I doubt that Tim meant to state that Christ does not have the right and the power to make exceptional admissions to paradise. I suspect he states that anyone who differs is at risk, while anyone who follows RCC teaching is
assured.
But the real question is whether rapprochement is best done with vinegar or honey. The RCC wants all souls to be saved. The Catholic Church has FAR more in common with the hundreds of ‘‘other’’ Christian churches outside the Mystical Body than it does with atheists, etc.
Dialogue among these is enhanced, as the old song instructs, if it ‘‘accentuates the positive, then eliminates the negatives.’’
IMHO if an organization is honest but not frank in its initial pitch to new customers (telling the truth but not the whole truth), it can be judged — at worst — as being a tad disingenuous but never as, what you call, a ‘‘deception’’.
I doubt that the Catholics want to do, as you say, ‘‘anything that causes a ‘seeker’ to remain in ignorance’’, but the ‘‘terrible crime’’ would be to let them, as you say, ‘‘
remain’’ there. One must walk before one runs.
But all that being said, I get the impression your friends
feel hurt, indignant or insulted by the RCC focus on Christian commonalities rather than on their differences. I would posit that all feelings — not just bad ones — are ‘‘of the flesh’’. I would further pray that, as Christians, your friends may get past these ‘‘feelings’’ in order to dialogue with reason about preferred biblical interpretations.
It has been my experience, as John Newman and others have said, that what holds most Protestants away from the Catholic Church is not the things the Church does teach that they disagree with, but the things that they disagree with which they erroneously believe the Church teaches, when it does not. Why would any Christian want any dialogue to ‘‘collapse’’ before such misperceptions can be corrected?
Remember, Christ’s final instructions on building his Church on His chosen
rock was His plea that Peter feed and tend ‘‘his sheep’’. IMHO ‘‘sheep’’ might be interpreted to have
special reference to ‘‘one of these little ones that believe in me’’ (i.e. the young or the easily misled), even more than it does to the more earnestly learned. This so that one stops ‘‘separating himself from the Church’’ in such a way that ‘‘his gathering became a scattering’’ (Augustine).
Remember that Christ’s way to pray was also a promise: that God will ‘‘forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.’’ So tell your friends it is good to start by forgiving others lest thay be so judged.
Are there particular Catholic teachings that your friends find especially onerous? I would hope that no dialogue would, as you say ‘‘collapse’’ over emotions.
In Matthew 25.31-46, Jesus has nothing to say about which box people were in, & an awful lot about how they had treated others. Dogma & churchmanship & similar stuff is conspicuous by its absence.