Quite honestly, I’ve heard the whole “it doesn’t matter where you go” and stuff like that from people who claim to be Catholic!
We have to be VERY careful what we believe. I know that a lot of faiths, even some Catholics have been saying it “doesn’t matter” where you go. They are mistaken. They couldn’t be more wrong.
Well, I know of at least one faith that says to people, “if you just say this one prayer” that they came up with, “once saved always saved”. That is not only wrong, but downright dangerous!
The Bible says that we need to “persist to the end”. Nowhere in the Bible is that prayer.
It says again and again that you can have salvation and then lose it.
Further, a lot of denominations have at least 5 beliefs we, Catholics, believe are wrong. Was it Martin Luther who came up with these?
We call them the 5 “Solas”.
Sola Scriptura (Scriptura alone)
Sola Fide (Faith alone)
Sola Gracia (Grace alone)
Solo Christo (Christ alone)
Solo Deo Gloria (Glory to God alone)
Did you realize there are FIVE solas? (sola means …only). So, some say …ONLY through faith…or ONLY through grace…or ONLY through scripture, etc. First of all, how can we have FIVE onlys? I thought you could have only one “only”.
One website which debunks all five is:
catholicbible101.com/thefivesolas.htm .
Well, we are told ALL these ways help us reach God…through scripture, through faith, through Christ AND there are yet more ways, which we can prove, using the Bible, itself, as evidence.
Now, we Catholics, think faith is good, but do we believe faith is the ONLY way to God? No. We believe grace is, likewise, good, but is it the ONLY way to God? Again, no. We believe in scripture, but again, is it the ONLY way to God? No…because you can get to God through faith…through grace, but these are not the ONLY ways.
Have you ever studied logic? I’m not perfectly logical all the time, myself, but as you can see, it almost seems to be a problem with logic.
I’m trying to think of an adequate analogy.
Logic will teach you true forms of logic versus false forms
One true form of logic would say, “If the statement…all cars are blue WERE true, then would it be true that my car would also be blue would be true?” The answer would be, “yes”.
However, Martin Luther seemed to do what I think is called inductive reasoning…taking one specific and trying to generalize.
It’s be like saying…“My car is blue…therefore…ALL cars are blue!” While it can be possible that my car is blue, it doesn’t necessarily follow that ALL cars are blue.
Now, another issue I have with some other denominations is how from Martin Luther on that the Bible, itself, was modified. Specifically, Martin Luther removed 7 BOOKS of the Bible! By whose authority did he do that?
I don’t believe it was by divine authority.
We used to have 73 books of the Bible. After Martin Luther, we only had 66. Further, look at the symbolism of it. 7 has been used throughout the Bible to mean…completeness…perfection. Three has been used to symbolize a lot of good things. Six has been associated with incompleteness and worse.
Now, for me, some Bibles have the antichrist’s signature all over them! 66 books as opposed to 73?
We had people who had their own churches, such as Henry VIII! He had his own church rather than accept the scriptural passage that we are not to divorce our spouses! He pretty much tried to make up his own rules. He not only got into divorce, and encouraged others to do the same, but killed his wives! Yet, people follow his “church” to this day!
We’ve had some martyrs who stood up to him rather than compromise! One of them was St. Thomas Moore. He preferred to be thrown in the tower and eventually beheaded rather than compromise one iota on divorce.
Now, I’ve noticed that some Catholics even leave the Church when they want to, say, divorce. Many prefer to seek another denomination that will tell them divorce is “okay” rather than accept Christ’s own’s words!
Why? The Catholic faith is HARD. It’s easier to just give in.
So, I’ve seen people who will look around to find churches to go along with whatever they want! For example, do you realize there are churches who will tell you it’s okay to be gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual?
These churches make up their own rules as they go along, telling us whatever we want to hear rather than the truth!
So again, it matters where you attend church. Some have teaching which go AGAINST what Christ taught! Some teach that divorce is okay! Some teach that homosexuality is fine!
I tried a bunch of churches before I came to the truth. I went to the Unitarian Fellowship. Later, I once saw them put up a sign which said. “LGBT…get over it!” This is a CHURCH contradicting Christ!
It’s okay. I already know I can accidentally hurt someone if I’m not careful, just wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing that. Online, you can’t hear someone’s voice. So, if I put an exclamation point, you have no real way of knowing if I’m angry…or just passionate about the topic!
And, they can also answer questions you might have.