Teaching Authority of the Church

[IronHammer]

I am hoping to start a charitable discussion with our Protestant brothers on this topic.

I was reading another thread about the authority of the Pope and the Magisterium when a thought occurred to me.

If Protestants had it their way, and Christ didn’t leave us an infallible teaching authority (Magisterium) – how would the Body of Christ survive? I mean, when Jesus was around He was able to decide on things for us and settle matters personally. Now that He is in Heaven, how do issues get settled? If things are bad now with thousands of different Protestant theologies, all supposedly based on the same scripture, what hope do we possibly have of ever knowing how God wants us to live and worship Him? Without the authority of the Church to decide on matters of faith and morals we would all be poking in the dark as to what we thought God wanted of us (kind of like what the Protestant world is like now).

My question for this thread, then, is this: In light of 400-odd years of Protestant theology constantly dividing on itself, is it practicable for there NOT to be a Magisterium and we still remain a whole unified Body of Christ, as He intended?

Thanks for anybody willing to talk about this. It was this single lucid thought that led me to believe in the Truth as taught by the Catholic Church.

 

[savienu]

Great topic. I’m subscribing to this because I’m interested in seeing the responses.

 

[IronHammer]

My question for this thread, then, is this: In light of 400-odd years of Protestant theology constantly dividing on itself, is it practicable for there NOT to be a Magisterium and we still remain a whole unified Body of Christ, as He intended?

By the resounding silence on this thread I guess people are just not seeing the problem.

A world without a Teaching Authority (Magesterium) to lead Christians in matters of faith and morals would be disastrous. Because without an Authority to establish what we should and shouldn’t be doing you will have “churches” pop up that do ridiculous things like snake handling and walking on fire. Or worse, some “churches” without an authority begin to teach absurd things that have never been taught before like sola scriptura and sola fide. And then, a few members of Church A say that snake handling shouldn’t be a part of worship. Bear handling should a part of worship, because Jesus protects us from all things if we have pure faith! Yet another breakaway “church”.

Ultimately, some of these “churches” who have no guidance and no Authority begin to teach truly dangerous things like Jesus isn’t the Son of God…he is actually Michael the Archangel. He just another created being, not One with God and the Holy Spirit.

Or how about this one. At some unknown point in the future, Jesus will come and take all of His faithful (saved) to Heaven while we on earth toil and suffer with the AntiChrist. Some of us will be saved in the fight with the Beast and others will not.

You see, Protestants, it’s madness. There is no end to the silliness and it ultimately leads souls away from the One True path to God! In a world without a Magesterium Christianity would disappear because nobody would know what is “true” Christianity and the silliness of all the different viewpoints would cause people to consider Christianity (and thus Jesus) irrelevant!

That is where we are today. But there is hope! Thanks be to God we have the Catholic Church so that a person can know the fullness of the Gospel!