I am not asking anyone for a “green light” as I do not believe what I do is a sin.
Maybe not in so many words, but you did start this thread to present the idea that the “Church’s rules” are somehow oppressive to you because they do not condone what you do.
As for Presbyterisan, I never claim to represent any of them… I do not believe that oen person represents any group. And I have no “contempt”, but I will never give up my reasoning and become any part of a collective group think.
No “group think” for you, huh? Not like those mindless Catholics who just follow the Pope into hell, right? Nope, no contempt in that phrase at all, no sir. Come off it already, Mr. Ultra-Tolerant.
If it helps to shed any light on the mentality of the Catholic convert from your sect of Protestantism, I will tell you that one of my first statements after entering RCIA (to a priest, no less) was that I would not be joining the Church out of a lack of Papal guidance in my life. Of course, this was before I understood the role of the Pope in the Church as I do now, so now I would not make such a statement, but the fact that the priest did not tell me that this attitude was unacceptable (or anything close to that, really) told me more about the Catholic respect of the individual than probably any of the rest of the classes did. That was demonstrated again after the death of Pope John Paul II, sometime a bit later in the course, when vigorous debates often spilled over into the RCIA session (always with the point of illustrating this or that document, event, or person in Church history, of course
), centered around who ought to be the next Pope, why JPII was unique, the direction of the Church in general, etc. There was definitely NO group think in those sessions, nor even group concessions reached on who should be elected. And so it was after the election of Cardinal Ratzinger, when several people expressed concern over things related to him. Group think is not my experience in Catholicism at all. “Come, let us reason together”, remember? Catholics are very much involved in that.
While I have no problem with your faith and what you choose to believe, why do you (and others) take issue with mine?
I believe you do have a problem with my faith, though you’ve apparently convinced yourself that you do not. If you didn’t have a problem with my faith and what it teaches, you would not have made this thread, and it would not have devolved into anti-Catholic arguments pretty much immediately. Notice how I am not starting threads about how bad Presbyterians may be (mainly because I don’t think they are, but that’s beside the point).
As for why I take issue with yours: I take issue with any form of theology that leaves it up to the individual to decide for themselves out of their own personal feelings what is and is not okay to do. We are Christians, you and I, because we seek to fulfill
with our lives the work that the Lord has put us here to do. We are not here to bear no fruits, and be idle, and merely content ourselves with the idea that our “personal relationship” with the Savior corrects our sin while even in the act. Jesus is not my buddy. We do not go out for coffee when He’s passing through town for a Linguistics convention. The Holy Spirit does not give me understandings of the Bible and Tradition that are contrary to the traditional understandings of those means of transmission. Jesus is the Savior, the Deliverer of all mankind, True God from True God, and the Holy Spirit guides the men and women of His Church (and it is
One, Holy and Apostolic) in their continuation of the Church that He Himself established when He said that upon Peter He would build His Church.
I know that in the Protestant view the Catholic Church itself is no more man-made than any other, but obviously this is one point on which I will concede to you no ground. It appears that way, perhaps, after some 500 years of being told that it is so, but even then what is that against 2000 years of Church history and tradition? This something that, with all due respect, I do not think any Protestant, even those most friendly to the Catholics, can really understand, because they just do not have it.
Just curious, what parts of the Presbyterian church did you not like?
It was not this point or that point, but Protestantism as a whole. I used to wonder where it all came from, where it was all going, etc. Not even those who had never known anything else in their religious life, such as my own mother (may God rest her soul), could ever tell me. Just lame platitudes like “Trust in Jesus as your personal Savior” (of course He’s my Savior because he’s THE Savior, now how does that answer my questions?), and even at one point the pastor laying his hands on me in a way that I now recognize as being awfully similar to certain Catholic rites…hmmmmmmm…
Basically, the whole thing was strange,
rootless, and really did not suit my outlook as I grew to have more and more questions that they seemingly could not or would not answer (I say “would not” not because Presbyterians are inherently dishonest or sneaky, but in my case I was eventually asked to leave). That’s life. I bear no ill-will towards Presbyterians as a community, though. They’re not an abstract quantity to filed away somewhere, after all. That was most of my religous life, and I am still making my way through all that was told to me as a child on the basis of their specific reading of the Bible and resulting interpretations of Christianity.
As I put it to another Protestant sect I had mistakenly agreed to meet with a few weeks ago, there is Apostolic Christianity, and then there is everything else. I have made my decision.
