R
Roy5
Guest
A FEW MORE RESPONSES
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God bless Catholics, Protestants and all God’s children of every creed, color, and nation. Let us help make religion a bridge and not a barrier. Few will remember Seth Parker from years ago. He wrote a hymn which began: “I’ll go to my church and you go to yours, and let’s walk along together…” Good idea. I don’t know why some Catholics get so defensive when they believe that ‘the gates of hell’ will not prevail against their church.
Code:
I'm sure many of you will agree when I say that I should give this up and get busy with other things. But it's difficult to let certain things stand without clarifying or challenging. Here are a few examples in response to various postings.
1. First and foremost, every Protestant I know and has ever known honors Mary. I am repeating myself but this needs to be emphasized. The difference is that we do not venerate her, do not claim to see apparations of her, do not make her the "Queen of Heaven" and the patron saint of the USA - etc. I suspect that she was a humble young woman who must be troubled by such adulation. It appears to be a cult based on a medieval mindset and the monarchist tradition that seems so alien to this era of advanced education.
2. I doubt seriously if either Luther or Calvin believed in the Immaculate Conception or the Assumption. It's been years since I read their main writings, but I would need to know chapter and verse. They obviously believed in the Virgin Birth which scripture clearly states. But, in any case, Protestants that I know don't regard Luther, Calvin or any of the other Reformers as infallible, not even when it comes to doctrine. They were just pulling away from Catholicism and were developing their theologies. I don't look to any of them for my theology. I look to scripture, to reason, to modern science, etc. It was easy to believe in Adam and Eve centuries ago, but our knowledge has so expanded re the age of the world, Neanderthal Man, and much, much else that the notion that the first humans were created roughly 6000 years ago seems absurd today. But if you work out the genealogies of those allegedly between Adam and today it adds up to roughly 6000 years. So, what do we accept: the Biblical account or documented history?
3. Someone states, in effect, that Protestants will be treated gently for their heresies because they were born into Protestants families. Well, my paternal family was Catholic and my late and beloved wife had been Catholic, so I assume they will catch 'hell' because they left the true church. Where I attend now probably 50% of the congregation came from Catholicism. Fine people. We, by the way, don't speak of them as converts. We see Christianity as a house with many rooms, but they are and were all part of one family. I am troubled when Pope Benedict states that Protestant churches are not really churches but 'ecclesial' societies and that Protestant ministers do not officiate at authentic communion services!
4. As stated in Posting 12 Jesus did not seem to treat his mother deferentially as recorded in the gospels. And Paul, in his letters, doesn't mention her even once. That Paul omission strikes me as very indicative since Paul was so central in organizing the early churches.
5. I do admire some saints. One of my favorites is St. Francis of Assisi. And I admired Mother Theresa despite her confession of so many 'dark years'. She was a true worker in the Kingdom. But what about Padre Pio? Does anyone out there actually believe that Padre Pio could levitate and that he could be at more than one place at the same time? And so many other stories of saints are wild and simply over the top. This combined with Fatima, Lourdes, Guadalupe, etc., can make Catholicism seem to many like a relic of past generations when superstitions were widely accepted as fact.
6. Finally, millions of us are 'big tent' Protestants, not scriptura sola fundamentalists. Most of my Protestant friends are the same, So often the criticism of Protestantism forgets that mainline Protestants (and most Catholics I know) are generally ecumenical, friendly to other faiths, open to honest dialogue, but not able to believe the unbelievable. We can respect what others may believe (Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, etc.) but find it impossible to embrace all of their doctrines and traditions..God bless Catholics, Protestants and all God’s children of every creed, color, and nation. Let us help make religion a bridge and not a barrier. Few will remember Seth Parker from years ago. He wrote a hymn which began: “I’ll go to my church and you go to yours, and let’s walk along together…” Good idea. I don’t know why some Catholics get so defensive when they believe that ‘the gates of hell’ will not prevail against their church.
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