"Founding" Another Sect

[Steadfast]

Steadfast

In any case, it gets you nowhere to try to draw this parallel over the lack of unity between Catholic and Orthodox.

I’m not trying to "get anywhere’…you don’t even understand what I’m saying anyway, so forget it.

If you think the wild disunity of Protestantism today is fine with Jesus … what can I say? Protestantism has collapsed into a thousand contradictions and the resultant vulnerability of Christianity in general to the mounting attacks of Atheists is evident everywhere.

I didn’t say it was “fine with Jesus”.

Haven’t you noticed that Unitarian/Universalists are now mostly agnostics and atheists? Haven’t you noticed that more Protestant denominations are tolerating more and more from their members … including men marrying men in the presence of a minister of the Gospel?

Why would I care what Unitarian/Universalists believe? One thing is for certain, they aren’t Protestant. They aren’t even Christian.

And for the record, my church doesn’t marry gays. The vast majority don’t, in fact, but one thing you’ve made abundantly clear: you’re only too willing to take the lowest denominator (common or not) and apply it to the whole for Protestants while angrily decrying any effort to apply the same principle to your communion.

I call that hypocrisy and unworthy of your namesake.

I know Chesterton and you’re no Chesterton.

Please try to follow more closely. This is not what Jesus wants … some warm and fuzzy agreement that anything goes. And if you don’t like your church, just start another!

Who is saying anything about “warm fuzzy”? What I am rejecting is the Catholic insistence that this Unity is necessarily cultic and pro forma. It isn’t.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

Steadfast

Why would I care what Unitarian/Universalists believe? One thing is for certain, they aren’t Protestant. They aren’t even Christian.

For once we agree. But Unitarians used to be Protestants, and in some listings of Protestant Churches they are still included … which makes my point that Protestantism is so fragmented it doesn’t any longer know what it is … except that all denominations are united against Catholicism and against each other.

I know Chesterton and you’re no Chesterton.

Alas! The deepest thrust!

 

[JohnWilliams]

And for the record, my church doesn’t marry gays. The vast majority don’t, in fact, but one thing you’ve made abundantly clear: you’re only too willing to take the lowest denominator (common or not) and apply it to the whole for Protestants while angrily decrying any effort to apply the same principle to your communion.

He would seem to be trying to bait you down to his level Steadfast. Just look at the paint brushes he uses. But the paint is all over him. As he is trying to paint your church as marrying gays, you have demonstrated remarkable restraint in not being more specific about the historical record, and extremely serious present day problems within the Catholic Church and seminaries, that have cost his church tens of millions in law suits, but he speaks as if his Church is exempt from error. I sometimes ponder the applicability of such judgment sometimes in the verse regarding the “man of sin”. I commend you for your restraint. Let him divide himself from the body of the Christ. Don’t let him drag you down, not that I thought there was really any danger of that.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

He would seem to be trying to bait you down to his level Steadfast. Just look at the paint brushes he uses. But the paint is all over him. As he is trying to paint your church as marrying gays, you have demonstrated remarkable restraint in not being more specific about the historical record, and extremely serious present day problems within the Catholic Church and seminaries, that have cost his church tens of millions in law suits, but he speaks as if his Church is exempt from error. I sometimes ponder the applicability of such judgment sometimes in the verse regarding the “man of sin”. I commend you for your restraint. Let him divide himself from the body of the Christ. Don’t let him drag you down, not that I thought there was really any danger of that.

Well John, I guess you’ve exhibited some restraint too haven’t you?

You are mixing apples with oranges. There are plenty of sinners to go around among the Catholics and Protestants. That has nothing to do with doctrinal unity. Please stay on track … the thread is about the breakdown of Christianity caused by denominationalism, not the particular sins of one side or the other. Men marrying men is abominable. The Catholic teaching is consistent and unified on that. Where is the consistency from one denomination to the next? Sure, some Protestants condemn it. But if you are a Protestant gay person and want to get married … no problem, just change your church. How cozy and convenient a morality is that. You’d never get away with it as a Catholic.

A Catholic pedophile priest who is caught is ruined. Please don’t let yourself fall off the deep end. Please don’t make it a matter of policy that the Church, or any group within the Church, teaches pedophilia is fine with Jesus.

Do you read me?

 

[PattiC]

/

You are mixing apples with oranges. There are plenty of sinners to go around among the Catholics and Protestants. That has nothing to do with doctrinal unity. Please stay on track … the thread is about the breakdown of Christianity caused by denominationalism, not the particular sins of one side or the other. /

I was just reading something today, one of Ronald Knox’s homilies, this one based on Edmund of Abingdon.

"Before our very eyes the half-faiths and the false Christianities which the Reformation brought with it are crumbling away. The number of their adherents is steadily dimminshing, and even those who do profess to adhere to them are more and more abandoning their belief in the Bible, belief in revelation, belief in the Sacraments, belief in a world of rewards and punishments hereafter.

And it is not only their beliefs but their moral standards that are disappearing. Especially the sanctity of marriage is being profaned; divorce is treated as a natural occurance; no age before ours has so openly and so flagrantly set at nourht the ordinance of God.

…We are like men fighting a fire, desperately keeping at bay, here and there, the flames of unbelief and of social disorder, while we hurriedly rescue all that we have time to rescue. (written very early 20th century)

How can one say there is not discord based on all these tens of thousands of denominations?
Didn’t Jesus establish one rock, one Church?
He also said that a house divided against itself shall not stand, which makes so much more sense to see just how many have splintered off, since even before the Reformation, actually even back to the time of Dominic. but that might be for another thread, entirely.

Just how many “bodies” of Christ (forgive me, Lord)… are there so that one can be part of it to build up the Church? There is much tearing down here, which probably delights the Deceiver no end.

just food for thought.
patti

 

[JohnWilliams]

He would seem to be trying to bait you down to his level Steadfast. Just look at the paint brushes he uses. But the paint is all over him. As he is trying to paint your church as marrying gays, you have demonstrated remarkable restraint in not being more specific about the historical record, and extremely serious present day problems within the Catholic Church and seminaries, that have cost his church tens of millions in law suits, but he speaks as if his Church is exempt from error. I sometimes ponder the applicability of such judgment sometimes in the verse regarding the “man of sin”. I commend you for your restraint. Let him divide himself from the body of the Christ. Don’t let him drag you down, not that I thought there was really any danger of that.

Well John, I guess you’ve exhibited some restraint too haven’t you?

You are mixing apples with oranges. There are plenty of sinners to go around among the Catholics and Protestants. That has nothing to do with doctrinal unity. Please stay on track … the thread is about the breakdown of Christianity caused by denominationalism, not the particular sins of one side or the other. Men marrying men is abominable. The Catholic teaching is consistent and unified on that. Where is the consistency from one denomination to the next? Sure, some Protestants condemn it. But if you are a Protestant gay person and want to get married … no problem, just change your church. How cozy and convenient a morality is that. You’d never get away with it as a Catholic.

A Catholic pedophile priest who is caught is ruined. Please don’t let yourself fall off the deep end. Please don’t make it a matter of policy that the Church, or any group within the Church, teaches pedophilia is fine with Jesus.

Do you read me?

I have continually. Unity will not be found in doctrine. Unity is found in those that have a relationship with Jesus Christ, of all denominations. It is found in those with a circumcision of the heart.

Read Revelation Chapter 2 and see if you can figure out what all the "overcommeth"ing is about. I believe it is about overcoming faulty doctrine. But it would also seem that there is at least a remnant of saved in even the worst Churches.

You still seem to have a hard time understanding that a doctrine can in part be judged by its fruit. I believe the three of us would agree on the fruit of the Episcopal Church doctrine, for example, or the Unitarian whatever you call something that wouldn’t seem to be a Church’s rules. I believe this is part and parcel with the “falling away” or apostasy, of this “time of the end”.

The fruit of Calvary Chapel is tremendous outreach with 80 ministries including a large Jewish ministry. From single mom residential center, to a house for pregnant unwed women, to mentoring programs for latch key kids, in conjunction with the public schools, if you can imagine that in this separation of Church and State state that the U.S. has become. Last I knew we were still bussing up to the gulf to rebuild homes from the 05 hurricanes. Outreach has been so conspicuous that Broward County even named a “Pastor Bob Coy, Calvary Chapel Day”. Yet the Church still understands humbly and profoundly it’s First Love. The Sunday and Wednesday Bible Study is an hour long. We spent 5 weeks in just the 4 chapters of Ruth.

While I am on the subject of judging doctrine by its fruit, how much pedophilia have you read about, and in which Protestant Church? I’ll leave that question rhetorical since I am not led to pursue this further.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

John Williams

I’ll leave that question rhetorical since I am not led to pursue this further.

And a good thing too, as if Protestants don’t have scandals to account for …

npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1142136

 

[RobedWithLight]

Integritus

You’re onto something here. Instant personal gratification and novelty as a way of life. We get more and more churches with fewer and fewer congregants. Would this be the Devil’s strategy?

Divide and Conquer!

And soon there would be as many individuals as there are denominations. Each man for himself, and I am the Church would be the battlecries of the future.

 

[JohnWilliams]

And soon there would be as many individuals as there are denominations. Each man for himself, and I am the Church would be the battlecries of the future.

The mathematics defy your supposition. From 2 families to 20,000 in 20 years. This is church growth, not the degeneration and shrinking to which you allude that we find in dead formalism and apostate churches like the Episcopal Church.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

John Williams,

From 2 families to 20,000 in 20 years.

This is church growth, not the degeneration and shrinking to which you allude that we find in dead formalism and apostate churches like the Episcopal Church.

---

I really don’t think you want to play the numbers game. The population of hell, for all we know, may be far greater than the population of heaven.

Moreover, the early heresies of the Church, such as Arianism, spread like wildfire throughout the Christian world. They are now dead and buried.

 

[JohnWilliams]

John Williams,

From 2 families to 20,000 in 20 years.

This is church growth, not the degeneration and shrinking to which you allude that we find in dead formalism and apostate churches like the Episcopal Church.

---

I really don’t think you want to play the numbers game. The population of hell, for all we know, may be far greater than the population of heaven.

Moreover, the early heresies of the Church, such as Arianism, spread like wildfire throughout the Christian world. They are now dead and buried.

Then consider the fruit. I believe I saw on TV just today another suit - 40 million dollars being brought by 600 plaintiffs, I think in LA county. I may have gotten the details wrong because I only got a glimpse, but you get the drift. It’s not like this is the first such suit.

Here’s one for 120 in a 2 minute search - hundreds of victums: catholic-forum.com/forums/showthread.php?mode=hybrid&t=2066
Yahoo up some more?
search.yahoo.com/search?p=catholic+church+million+suit&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8

Can this be the kind of thing that causes Christians to leave a Church and form another?

And the fruit of the Church you seem to desire to condemn? I wrote to that above in this post: forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=1705434&postcount=26

Why do you seem to want to insist on dragging us deeper down this road Gilbert? I am finished with your thread. Your effort was not hard to see, from the beginning.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

Why do you seem to want to insist on dragging us deeper down this road Gilbert?

Looks to me that you’re the one who’s doing the dragging.

Add to it … hit-and-run.

There are Protestant hypocrites too … and plenty of them. Don’t kid yourself all Catholics are going to hell and all Protestants are saved. I’ve been hearing that bull all my life in Texas.

So long. Try not to be a Pharisee.