Yawn Old news. I started including atheists among my numbers, now there are like 700,000 Protestants.Dang it! You’re making too many for me to count! Let’s just round up to 50,000 denominations. I want to see at least 65k by next week!
I can. According to real sources, the number is 200 bajillion-zillion-billion-million-gumdrops. HA!
Thanks ERose, that’s a fascinating and detailed site.
I actually have to disagree because it is revelant. Whether it is 1 or tens of thousands is one way to many churches Christ never founded. Christ founded ONE church,which I do not know why it is so hard to comprehend. There is no logical reason to go and start your own church when Christ already accomplished it 2,000 years ago.
That’s the gist of the issue…Catholics say Protestants went out and founded a church of their own…most Protestants do not believe their denomination…the organizational structure through which The Church on earth operates as organized bodies of believers…comprises the True Church.
Actually there are issues with your argument. First of all, how can all the body of believers be the TRUE CHURCH,when they are divided over some of the basic elements. Case in point:
Man-made organizations? Prove it? Show me the founder of the Catholic and Orthodox churches? And save the Constantine argument because even a college freshman taking Western Civilizations knows that is a crock of baloney.
So when the Great Schism between east and west - two groups of “apostolic churches” - occurred, did Christ’s church fall apart?
Did either side eliminate sacraments or Apostolic Succession? The real Presence of the Eucharist? The Trinity? Incarnation? Infant Baptism?
Look at the beliefs of Eastern Orthodoxy and ask where is the presence of papal infallibility, papal supremacy, purgatory, absolutely no married priests, the immaculate conception of Mary…
Nope,not exactly! You are presenting half-truths. The Catholic Church has married priests in the Eastern Rites. And guess what? Even the Latin Rites has married priests. As for papal infallibility? Not true either. History does not prove an iota that the Eastern Church completely rejected the papal primacy.
Yawn Old news. I started including atheists among my numbers, now there are like 700,000 Protestants.
In other words…you have no power to destroy me.
There’s a big difference between individuals choosing to sin and a denomination redefining what constitutes a sin.Instead of this count, we could count how many Catholics use birth control, don’t go to Mass every Sunday, and are having out of wedlock births…
I have noticed on here that Catholics like to count how many Protestant “sects” there are yet they get very angry when you count statistics about how many pedophile priests have molested young boys (and occasionally girls)? Also after reading about NFP, it seems that Catholics don’t really buy into looking at statistics, just a small group of them. So probably the term “cafeteria catholics” which is a label I’ve noticed people like to throw in here at moderate to liberal Catholics, would apply to them.
The Eastern Rites entered Roman Catholicism after the fall of Constantinople, as an Orthodox attachment to the Roman Church (now the Latin Rite), in the same vein as the Anglican Rite in modern England. As for papal infallibility and supremacy…no orthodox Orthodox (no pun intended) believes in that, and the authority of the pope has always been a major contention between the two groups since the split and some centuries before. History does not prove? That only works if you ignore history. Likewise, no orthodox Orthodox (again, no pun intended) believes in Purgatory, the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and some other beliefs you left out in your response.
That’s what I’m asking you. You’re claiming Christ started one church, yet the apostolic churches split and have remained split. So I ask you: did Christ’s church fall apart and the gates of hell prevail?
Yeah…I always read “Even if it’s two churches it’s one too many.”…so when the Catholics, Orthodox, and the “Other Apostolic” groups get their stuff together…there may be an arguement that Jesus actually established one single eccleasitcal body…seems like Protestants just came along and followed the “tradition” set by the so-called “apostolic” churches…just a though:shrug:
The Eastern Rites entered in union with Rome after 1453? Historical dcuments and sources please…
No Orthodox believes in that…TODAY,but not prior to the Great Schism. So basically you are making a claim that NOT one Eastern Church Father ever defended or believed in papal primacy prior to 1054? And you speak of ignoring history? Just a tad bit of contradictions there.
Actually he’s making the claim that NOT one Eastern Church Father ever defended or believed in papal supremacy. Two different things.
Exactly! And the issue has been primacy,not so much supremacy. I do not know where people are claiming supremacy? It seems people have been mixing both terms or using them interchangably.
You’re now completely avoiding the topic altogether and going off on Eastern Orthodoxy. Even if we were to confess, “Oh, well, TODAY they believe all that,” that’s still a belief of an apostolic church founded by the apostles, using the same standards as we use for the church of Rome. Like it or not, in 1054 the eastern and western apostolic churches split. They ceased being unified. In other words, the supposed “one Church of Christ” divided. Saying they’re one church because they share a few common beliefs is like saying America didn’t split from Britain after the Revolution because both countries still spoke English.
You’re the one mixing them interchangably. He brought up papal supremacy, you changed it to primacy.