Need list of weird beliefs

  • Thread starter Thread starter iBoodle
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I

iBoodle

Guest
Hello!
I am writing a paper for school on the things that non-Catholics find weird, such as why we pray to Mary (or worship, according to them…) I want to debunk them, and give the correct answer to each one.

Any questions that people have asked you over the years, or that you have overheard, please share them with me! And any answers you have to them would be helpful, as well.

Thanks!

Becca
 
-Constantine created the Church and/or Christianity in order to gain/maintain control of the Roman Empire.
 
Where to begin???

Catholics are discouraged (or prohibited) from reading the Bible.

Catholics “added” books to the Bible (wrong - protestants removed books from the Bible).

Catholics think we can earn our salvation through works.

The Pope is supposed to be infallible in anything he says.

Catholics believe that Mary never had sexual relations with Joseph (which is true, but strange to them).

In the Assumption, Mary ascended to heaven of her own power (like Jesus).

We think that the Immaculate Conception is the conception of Mary, and the Virgin Birth was the birth of Jesus (which is true, but protestants get them backwards - they think that “immaculate conception” refers to the conception of Jesus, while “Virgin birth” refers to the birth of the Virgin.

Indulgences are a license to sin.
 
Well, this is all the stuff I was taught about Catholics growing up:
-worship Mary
-worship the Pope
-the Pope is the anti-Christ
-do not believe in salvation through faith
-do not believe Jesus’ death sufficient to atone for our sins
-are cannibals
-are not permitted to own or read a Bible
-believe you can buy your way into heaven

There’s probably more, but that’s all I can remember right now.
 
-Catholic worship Mary.
-Believe Mary can forgive our sins.
-Catholics worship the Pope.
-Catholics are the whore of babylon.
-We are cannibles.
-We are vampires. (:p)
-We worship the saints.
-We can buy our salvation.
-we kill Christ over and over.
-We are not Christian.
-We added more books.
-Our Bible is not the same as protestants, even the Gospels.
-We lost Christ.
-We can atone for our sins.
-We are saved by works alone.
-We do not believe we are justified by Christ death.
-We mind control
-We are a cult
-Catholics go against the scriptures
-Catholics are unbiblical
-Catholics do not allow meat to be consumed even though a verse says so and so…
-Catholics forbid priest to marry even though a verse says so and so…
-We have no soul.
-Were of Satan
-We worship statues.
-The pope is the antichrist.
-The pope is Satan himself.
-Constantine brought Paganism into the Church.
-We were not the first Church, Pentecostals or Orthodox were.
-We have so many restrictions to our people.
-Were not allowed to use the internet or drink tea or coffee.
-Were suppose to obey and fall before the knees of the pope.
AND A TONNN MORE…
Remember, these are ALL false.
MAKE sure when you are doing your report, pray so you do not fall into Satans clutches and bring you down.

I will be praying for you.
 
Don’t forget my Grandmother’s favourite!

“Catholics go to confession because they don’t have a personal relationship with God.”

Not exactly sure if this is common, but it’s one she uses a lot.
 
The Opening Post asks for answers, too, folks.

A single answer to some of these can fill a paper on the topic.

I have heard that business of Catholics not having a personal relationship with God a lot, here in New Jersey, I think with the advancement of Evangelical Protestantism.

I have a personal relationship with God BECAUSE OF the intermediary role of my Catholic priests and the grace-generating sacraments which they administer.

And, can you think of a closer personal relationship than taking into your own physiology the body and blood of Christ Himself in the priest-generated sacrament of the Eucharist?

In any event, the very accusation, “Those Catholics do not have a personal relationship with God!,” tends to verify the lack of a personal relationship with God in those who make that accusation, does it not? They seem to be judging us worthy of damnation! And God said, “Judge not, lest you be judged!”
 
DavidFilmer said:
Where to begin???

Catholics are discouraged (or prohibited) from reading the Bible.
Click to expand...
There are snap-kick answers to each of these, but those “quickies” rarely do the job to an adequate extent.

Re Catholics being prohibited from reading the Bible, there is some truth to this, oddly. Certain Council decrees and the Index of Forbidden Books prohibited Bible possession. Various rationales are given – the translations were defective, the Bibles must have been stolen because before the printing press they were fabulously expensive, and so on. But in the end the decrees and the Index were not limited to defective translations or stolen Bibles.

And, though the Church’s attitude is changing, one can still find elements of the truth of the accusatioin in the modern Church: Try to start-up a formal Bible study group in a parish-owned facility in a parish without a Bible study group. Even in this day-and-age, you will find barriers.

So, sometimes, the complaints about the Church are not 100% wrong. So, Operning Post-er, be mature and balanced in your analysis. Say, “Sometimes, there is some truth to the negative things said about the Church.”
 
DavidFilmer said:
Where to begin???

Catholics “added” books to the Bible (wrong - protestants removed books from the Bible).
Click to expand...
There is a very good answer to this: Christ’s “Bible” was the Septuagint, which included the Deuterocanonicals. One of the Protestant criteria for retaining a book in their post-Reformation Bibles was, “Did our Lord Jesus Christ quote from the book?”

Well, Christ quoted MASSIVELY from Wisdom and Sirach, two of the books removed by Protestant Bible publishers.
 
DavidFilmer said:
Where to begin???

Catholics think we can earn our salvation through works.
Click to expand...
Christ Himself was a “works man.” The Parable of the Good Samaritan was carefully structured to nastily criticize those dedicated to the concept that “salvation is by faith alone.” It is not an accident that the first two people to leave the robbery victim in the gutter, in the parable, were a “priest” and a “Levite,” the tribe from which Hebrew priests came. Each is a “Mr. Faith.” Neither “Mr. Faith” engages in good works. Both represent “faith without works.”

The Samaritans were regarded as heretics, in the time of Christ.

After the “faithless Samaritan” sees to the welfare of the robbery victim lying in the gutter, of the three, whom does Christ very, very, very clearly prefer?"

Either of the “Mr. Faith Without Works” guys?

Or, “Mr. Works Without Faith”?

You tell me.

If a zealoius Protestant were to run to Christ and say, “JESUS! JESUS! THAT DARN WORKS-REQUIRING CATHOLIC OVER THERE DOESN’'T BELIEVE IN SALVATION BY FAITH WITHOUT WORKS!.” what would Jesus’ answer be?

He would tell him the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and ask, “Of the three men, who do you think I prefer?” and then say, “Have you not read the words of my brother, the Holy Spirit, at James 2:14-20?”

In the end, “faith” necessarily includes, as its MOST IMPORTANT essential element, a readiness to perform good works.
 
Uzziah1 said:
There are snap-kick answers to each of these, but those “quickies” rarely do the job to an adequate extent.

Re Catholics being prohibited from reading the Bible, there is some truth to this, oddly. Certain Council decrees and the Index of Forbidden Books prohibited Bible possession. Various rationales are given – the translations were defective, the Bibles must have been stolen because before the printing press they were fabulously expensive, and so on. But in the end the decrees and the Index were not limited to defective translations or stolen Bibles.

And, though the Church’s attitude is changing, one can still find elements of the truth of the accusatioin in the modern Church: Try to start-up a formal Bible study group in a parish-owned facility in a parish without a Bible study group. Even in this day-and-age, you will find barriers.

So, sometimes, the complaints about the Church are not 100% wrong. So, Operning Post-er, be mature and balanced in your analysis. Say, “Sometimes, there is some truth to the negative things said about the Church.”
Click to expand...
What time period in history are you referring to? I could be wrong but that sounds like the middle ages.
 
DavidFilmer said:
Where to begin???

The Pope is supposed to be infallible in anything he says.
Click to expand...
We-e-e-e-ell, it’s not as simple as that.

The main problem is that God and Godly-action are ineffable - “not-fully-mentally-grabbable,” so-to-speak.

Thus, even our own Catholic understanding of infallibilty is fraught with uncertainty.

If it weren’t, infallibility would be a false doctrine, Almost invariably, doctrine, as doctrine, is not COMPLETELY understood.

One of the early popes, Liberius, condemned his own prior teaching after Athanasius and Jerome condemned the prior teaching.

And Catholics very frequently deny the correctness of papal teaching not expressly infallible. For instance, in the Encyclical where Pope Pius XII infallibly decalres the doctrine of the Assumption, he casually assures us that Mary “died” before the Assumption. Even many of the devout Catholics in this website simply blithely reject the teaching that Mary “died” before her Assumption.

I, personally, believe that unless one can point to a clear and convincing articulable rationale for denying such a teaching, even if it is not expressly infallible the pope’s teaching can not be rejected.
 
johnnyjones said:
What time period in history are you referring to? I could be wrong but that sounds like the middle ages.
Click to expand...
The two Council decrees came out in the 1100s and 1200s. I have never read that they were ever expressly reversed. Indeed, the fact that they came out in “the olden days” does not ultimately perfectly “fix things.” Catholics in this website, and even the Church itself, frequently invoke extremely ancient Council decrees.

I don’t know when the Index of Forbidden Books came to include the Bible.

I have a vague memory that, oddly, the Bible prohibition in the Index was not revoked until 1966!

And I stand on what I said about there still being “barriers” to Bible study within the Church. To this day, older priests resist Bible study. Anyone who denies this either does not know what he is talking about, or he is a liar.

When you hear that old Protestant shibboleth, “Catholic priests hate the Bible,” it is not hard to understand why they say this essentially untrue thing.
 
Like Peter Himself who expresasly and nastily denied that he would EVER betray Christ, and who did EXACTLY that THREE times AFTER an express prediction from Christ that he would do so, and like the present Church, with our Pope who appears to have himself placed children in harms way when as a bishop he approved the placement of a sexual predator priest in a German parish, sometimes our Church officials are darned embarrassing.

We should acknowledge this.
 
DavidFilmer said:
Where to begin???.

Catholics believe that Mary never had sexual relations with Joseph (which is true, but strange to them).
Click to expand...
Mary, of course, never had sexual relations with any man.

Years ago, I read an excellent essay on this subject. i remember the rationale, but not the author.

The logic was that Mary’s Annunciation experience and Joseph’s dream informing him that she was carrying the Son of God would have been piercing, shatteringf experiences, making it SHATTERINGLY clear to each that Mary had become the “espoused of God,” untouchable, sexually, by mortal man.

That makes sense to me.
 
DavidFilmer said:
Where to begin???

In the Assumption, Mary ascended to heaven of her own power (like Jesus).
Click to expand...
Mary CAN’T have ascended to Heaven under her own power.

She was just a lady.

Worse than that, she was, as Pope Pius XII teaches in Munificentissimus Deus, a DEAD lady!
 
JD27076 said:
-Catholic worship Mary.
-Believe Mary can forgive our sins.
-Catholics worship the Pope.
-Catholics are the whore of babylon.
-We are cannibles.
-We are vampires. (:p)
-We worship the saints.
-We can buy our salvation.
-we kill Christ over and over.
-We are not Christian.
-We added more books.
-Our Bible is not the same as protestants, even the Gospels.
-We lost Christ.
-We can atone for our sins.
-We are saved by works alone.
-We do not believe we are justified by Christ death.
-We mind control
-We are a cult
-Catholics go against the scriptures
-Catholics are unbiblical
-Catholics do not allow meat to be consumed even though a verse says so and so…
-Catholics forbid priest to marry even though a verse says so and so…
-We have no soul.
-Were of Satan
-We worship statues.
-The pope is the antichrist.
-The pope is Satan himself.
-Constantine brought Paganism into the Church.
-We were not the first Church, Pentecostals or Orthodox were.
-We have so many restrictions to our people.
-Were not allowed to use the internet or drink tea or coffee.
-Were suppose to obey and fall before the knees of the pope.
AND A TONNN MORE…
Remember, these are ALL false.
MAKE sure when you are doing your report, pray so you do not fall into Satans clutches and bring you down.

I will be praying for you.
Click to expand...
What a great list!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top